Pope Francis was in critical condition on Saturday after he suffered a prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis while being treated for pneumonia and a complex lung infection, the Vatican said.

The 88-year-old pope, who remains conscious, received “high flows” of oxygen to help him breathe. He also received blood transfusions after tests showed low counts of platelets, which are needed for clotting, the Vatican said in a late update.

The pope has been hospitalised for a week with a complex lung infection.

The statement said the “Holy Father continues to be alert and spent the day in an armchair although in more pain than yesterday. At the moment the prognosis is reserved.”

Earlier, doctors said his health remains touch and go and he is expected to remain in hospital for at least another week.

They have warned that the main threat facing the pope would be the onset of sepsis, a serious infection of the blood that can occur as a complication of pneumonia.

As of Friday, there was no evidence of any sepsis, and Francis was responding to the various drugs he was taking, the pope’s medical team said.

Saturday’s blood tests showed that he had developed a low platelet count, a condition thrombocytopenia. Platelets are cell-like fragments that circulate in the blood that help form blood clots to stop bleeding or help wounds heal.

Low platelet counts can be caused by a number of things, including side effects from medicines or infections, according to the US National Institutes of Health.

Francis, who has chronic lung disease, was admitted to Gemelli hospital in Rome on 14 February after a week-long bout of bronchitis worsened.

Doctors first diagnosed the complex viral, bacterial and fungal respiratory tract infection and then the onset of pneumonia in both lungs.

They prescribed “absolute rest” and a combination of cortisone and antibiotics, along with supplemental oxygen when he needs it.

Dr Sergio Alfieri, the head of medicine and surgery at Gemelli hospital, said: “He knows he’s in danger,” Alfieri added. “And he told us to relay that.”

The Vatican hierarchy tried to tamp down speculation that the pope might decide to resign. There is no provision in canon law for what to do if a pope becomes incapacitated.

Francis has said that he has written a letter of resignation that would be invoked if he were medically incapable of making such a decision. The pope remains fully conscious, alert, eating and working.

The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, gave a rare interview to Corriere della Sera to respond to rumours about a possible resignation.

It came after the Vatican issued an unusual and official denial of an Italian media report that said Parolin and the pope’s chief canonist had visited Francis in the hospital in secret.

Given the canonical requirements to make a resignation legitimate, the implications of such a meeting were significant, but the Vatican flat out denied that any such meeting occurred.

Parolin said such speculation seemed “useless” when what really mattered was the health of the pope, his recovery and return to the Vatican.

“On the other hand, I think it is quite normal that in these situations uncontrolled rumours can spread or some misplaced comment is uttered. It is certainly not the first time it has happened,” Parolin was quoted as saying.

“However, I don’t think there is any particular movement, and so far I haven’t heard anything like that.”

God save the king. Drunk on power, Donald Trump spent Saturday afternoon before adoring fans, boasting of his victories, taunting his enemies and casting himself as America’s absolute monarch, supreme leader and divine emperor rolled into one.

Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland began with country singer Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA and raucous cheers in a crowded ballroom that included January 6 insurrectionists.

Seventy-five minutes later, it concluded with the US president standing between two stars-and-stripes flags, pumping his fists and swaying to the Village People’s anthem YMCA.

What emerged in between was a man who has never felt so sure of himself, so contemptuous of his foes and so convinced of his righteous mission to make America great again, even if it means breaking china, cracking skulls and leaving global destruction in his wake.

As the title of Michael Wolff’s new book puts it, last November’s election was All or Nothing. Defeat meant ruin, disgrace and prison. Victory meant what Trump’s cheerleaders like to call the greatest comeback in political history. It also meant vengeance against his perceived tormentors in the justice department, Democratic party and media. As the martyr of Mar-a-Lago put it at CPAC two years ago: “I am your retribution.”

The message he took from that win over Kamala Harris was that he had broken his opponents, broken the checks and balances and broken reality itself. He was invincible.

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world/Like a Colossus,” Cassius tells Brutus in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, “and we petty men/Walk under his huge legs and peep about/To find ourselves dishonorable graves.”

This was the 15th time Trump has addressed CPAC, the biggest annual gathering of conservative activists. When he was out of power, his freewheeling speeches could be dismissed as the ravings – or “weavings” – of a madman. Even during his first term, his extremist rhetoric came with some expectation that the democratic guardrails would hold.

But as America and the world have discovered during his first month back in the White House, Trump is unbound, unhinged and looking for blood. He took the stage at CPAC brimming with confidence and basking in chants of: “USA! USA!”

The 78-year-old Florida resident describes his presidency as a game of golf in which he can match Arnold Palmer all the way: “If you golf, when you sink that first four-footer at the first hole, it gives you confidence, and then the next hole you sink another and now you go on to that third hole and by the time you get to the fifth hole you feel you can’t miss.”

To be here was to live in a world turned upside down. Trump said: “For years, Washington was controlled by a sinister group of radical-left Marxists, war-mongers and corrupt special interests,” which would have been news to Karl Marx.

But then, on 5 November, “we stood up to all the corrupt forces that were destroying America. We took away their power. We took away their confidence … and we took back our country.”

Trump should in fact have won by a bigger margin, he claimed without evidence, but Democrats “cheated like hell” only to find his victory was “too big to rig”. Later, he revisited his 2020 loss, too, assuring conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell that “now it’s OK” to say the election was “rigged”.

The president bragged about pardoning hundreds convicted of crimes in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, describing them as “political prisoners” and “J6 hostages”. Some of them were in the room, chanting “J6! J6!” and shouting “Thank you!”. They have gone from prison cells to being CPAC’s newest celebrities.

Trump also boasted about killing diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, denying the identity of transgender people, yanking the US out of the Paris climate agreement and sending undocumented immigrants (“monsters”) to Guantánamo Bay. He hailed Elon Musk’s evisceration of the federal government, including the international aid agency USAid.

Each time, the crowd cheered.

Up until then, CPAC had felt toned down this year, with few if any chants of “Lock her up!” or T-shirts portraying Joe Biden as Satan. After all, Republicans won and there is no obvious Democratic leader to target. Still, that did not prevent Trump unleashing the usual insults and lies at his opponents.

“Kamala,” he said, eliciting boos. “I haven’t heard that name in a while. Nobody ever knows her last name … But think of it, I was beating Joe badly and they changed him. Think of it, I’m the only one who had to beat two people.”

The Biden presidency already feels like a millennium ago but Trump did not want his audience to forget, asking whether they preferred the nickname “Crooked Joe” or “Sleepy Joe”. For the record, “Crooked Joe” won.

Trump mocked Biden’s golf handicap and bathing suit and offered a baseless opinion: “He was a sleepy, crooked guy. Terrible, terrible president. He was the worst president in the history of our country … Every single thing he touched turned to shit.”

Such magnanimity!

He took aim at the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren over her past claims of Native American ancestry, recycling the “Pocahontas” nickname he once gave her and jibing: “She does not like me. She’s a very angry person. You notice the way she is? She’s always screaming. She’s crazy.”

And don’t get Trump started on liberal TV host Rachel Maddow: “I watch this MSNBC – which is a threat to democracy,actually – they’re stone-cold mean. But they’re stuttering. They’re all screwed up. They’re all mentally screwed up. They don’t know what – their ratings have gone down the tubes. I don’t even talk about CNN, CNN’s sort of like, I don’t know, they’re pathetic, actually.

“This Rachel Maddow, what does she have? She’s got nothing. Nothing. She took a sabbatical where she worked one day a week. They paid her a lot of money. She gets no ratings. I should go against her in the ratings because, I’ll tell you, she gets no ratings. All she does is talk about Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. All different subjects: Trump this, Trump, that. But these people are really, I mean, they lie. They shouldn’t be allowed to lie every night. They are really a vehicle of the Democrat party.”

Trump loves the rightwing media that populates CPAC, however. He smugly quoted conservative host Bill O’Reilly as saying that after four weeks Trump had become “the greatest president ever in the history of our country”, beating George Washington.

O’Reilly was hardly alone this week in building an image of Trump as a superman who thinks sleep is for wimps. How do they love him? Let us count the ways.

Dan Scavino, a Trump golf caddie turned White House deputy chief of staff, described his boss as “the greatest host in America”. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former White House press secretary, said Trump is “maybe the most popular human on the face of the planet right now”, adding: “He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t expect anyone to sleep either. He’s twice my age and has twice my energy.”

Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, confirmed that Trump works 21 or 22 hours a day and, along with the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, confidently forecast that Trump would receive the Nobel peace prize for his capitulation to Vladimir Putin masterful negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.

Border tsar Tom Homan called Trump “the greatest president of my lifetime”. Elise Stefanik, the US ambassador-designate to the United Nations, went one better by calling him “the greatest president in the history of our country”.

And the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, whose home state of South Dakota includes the ripe-for-addition Mount Rushmore, topped them all by just coming out with it: “Our president wakes up every day knowing he’s the greatest president of all time.”

When someone wakes up knowing that, when their self-aggrandisement is so monumental, they are like a golfer who believes they will never miss. But as Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine put it, Trump is living inside a disinformation bubble. The iron law of politics is that all bubbles burst.

In a campaign-style performance, Donald Trump delivered the more-than-hour-long finale at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, hitting familiar notes about his election victories, ending the war in Ukraine, US border militarization and what he characterized as the liberation of Washington from “deep-state bureaucrats”.

Speaking to an auditorium filled to the brim at National Harbor in Maryland, Trump went all-in on his deployment of active-duty troops to the southern border, which he characterized as responding to an “invasion”. He also boasted that his administration had terminated temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants and attempted to ban birthright citizenship for children of non-legal permanent residents.

“We’ve begun the largest deportation operation in American history,” Trump said.

In one of several digressions, Trump portrayed his return to office as a victory over what he called a “sinister group of radical informers, war-mongers and corrupt special interests” whom he claimed had previously controlled Washington. The president reserved particular ire for media outlets, labeling MSNBC a “threat to democracy” and mocking Rachel Maddow, whose show is watched by more than 2 million viewers, for what he claimed were her low ratings.

He also claimed Democrats had “lost their confidence” and possessed “the worst policy in history” while boasting about his administration’s first month in office.

“Nobody has seen four weeks like we’ve had,” he said.

Some of the other early moves he discussed included sweeping cuts to the federal workforce and regulations, baseless allegations of massive social security fraud, withdrawal from international climate agreements and the imposing of new tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico.

He also addressed ongoing international conflicts, incorrectly claiming that US aid to Ukraine had exceeded European contributions, and saying the United States had sent $350bn to the war-torn country since the Russian invasion in 2022. That number isn’t close to the amount the US has allocated, with a government oversight office putting that estimate closer to $183bn. European nations have combined to contribute more.

He noted the recent return of Israeli hostages while claiming that “Biden got back zero”, apparently forgetting that the US helped broker the return of 105 hostages in November 2023.

The annual conference has become a key venue for Republican politicians to connect with conservative grassroots activists, though it’s clear the event has abandoned traditional GOP policies to fully embrace Trump’s Maga-centric approach.

Several international conservative politicians attended the speech, including the Argentine president, Javier Milei, who is currently facing a widespread crypto scandal; the Polish president, Andrzej Duda; and the British Reform party leader, Nigel Farage, all praised by Trump during his remarks.

Keir Starmer has raised the stakes before a crucial meeting in Washington with the US president, Donald Trump this week, by insisting that Ukraine must be “at the heart of any negotiations” on a peace deal with Russia.

The prime minister made the remarks – which run directly contrary to comments by the US president last week – in a phone call on Saturdaywith Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he also said that “safeguarding Ukraine’s sovereignty was essential to deter future aggression from Russia”.

Downing Street made clear that the prime minister would carry the same tough messages into his meeting with Trump in the White House on Thursday.

Starmer is likely to tell the US president that the UK will raise its defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product, in line with Labour’s election manifesto commitment.

The prime minister is also expected to extend an invitation to Trump from King Charles for a second state visit to the UK.

But the meeting is also expected to represent the biggest test of Starmer’s diplomatic and negotiating skills in his prime ministership by far, as he tries to retain good relations with Trump while making clear the UK and Europe’s red lines on Ukraine and Russia.

In a further sign of the UK government’s resolve, it will announce on Sunday that it will impose the largest package of sanctions against Moscow since the conflict began.

David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, who may fly to Washington with Starmer and attend the meeting with Trump, said the aim was to hit Russia’s revenues and hamper Putin’s “military machine”.

“On the battlefield, we remain committed to providing £3bn of military support a year to put Ukraine in the strongest position possible, and being ready and willing to provide UK troops as part of peacekeeping forces if necessary,” Lammy said.

“Off the battlefield, we will work with the US and European partners to achieve a sustainable, just peace, and in doing so, remaining clear that there can be nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.

“This is also the time to turn the screws on Putin’s Russia.”

Sources said Starmer may speak to Emmanuel Macron on Sunday before the French president’s talks with Trump on Monday. The aim would be to agree a broad European position on the Trump-led effort to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Starmer also spoke yesterday to the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, and agreed that Europe must “step up” to ensure Ukraine’s security.

Starmer’s meeting with Trump is being described in Westminster as possibly career-defining for the prime minister. Former UK foreign secretary William Hague said it was the most important first bilateral between a prime minister and a president since the start of the second world war.

After a week of extraordinary anti-Zelenskyy and pro-Russian rhetoric from Trump and his team, the US president issued another dismissive assault on Zelenskyy’s leadership and relevance to a peace deal on Friday, saying: “I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings, to be honest with you. When Zelenskyy said: ‘Oh, he wasn’t invited to a meeting,’ I mean, it wasn’t a priority because he did such a bad job in negotiating so far.”

As well as dismissing the democratically elected Zelenskyy as a dictator, the White House has been pressuring Ukraine’s president to sign a $500bn minerals deal in which he would give the US half of his country’s mineral resources. The Trump administration says this is “payback” for earlier US military assistance.

Zelenskyy has so far refused to sign, arguing that the agreement lacks clear US security guarantees.

Reuters reported that the US was also threatening to disconnect Ukraine from Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system if Zelenskyy does not accept the Trump administration’s sweeping terms.

Ukrainian officials characterised the threat as “blackmail”, saying to do so would have a catastrophic impact on the ability of frontline Ukrainian combat units to contain Russia.

The news agency said the US envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, raised the possibility of a shut-off during talks on Thursday with Zelenskyy in Kyiv. An under-pressure Zelenskyy has signalled his willingness to accommodate Washington’s demand, but he has stressed he cannot “sell out” his country.

Ukrainian officials are scrambling to find alternatives to Starlink in the event that Trump’s threat is carried out. Ukraine’s armed forces depend on the system to provide real-time video drone footage of the battlefield and to conduct accurate strikes against Russian targets.

The Russian military uses Starlink too. Ukrainian commanders are now contemplating a nightmare scenario, in which Musk’s SpaceX company switches off Ukrainian access while continuing to offer it to the Russians – with the White House in effect helping Moscow to win the war.

A senior Ukrainian official said his country’s armed forces need American satellite intelligence data. If intelligence sharing were to stop, Ukraine would struggle to continue its successful campaign of long-range strikes against targets deep inside Russia, he said.Asked if the US threat to turn off Starlink was blackmail, he replied: “Yes. If it happens, it’s going to be pretty bad. Of that we can be sure.” Frontline troops used the internet system continuously and it was fitted on advanced naval drones used to sink Russian ships in the Black Sea, he noted.

Speaking on Friday, Trump rowed back on some of his earlier comments, which included a false claim that Zelenskyy was deeply unpopular, with a “4%” rating. Trump told Fox News that Russia did invade Ukraine but said Zelenskyy and the then US president Joe Biden should have averted it. “They shouldn’t have let him [Putin] attack,” he declared.

Trump’s aggressive remarks have consolidated support for Zelenskyy among Ukrainians, with 63% now approving of him, according to the latest opinion poll before the third anniversary on Monday of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

An Opinium poll for the Observer finds more than three times as many UK voters (56%) disapprove of the Trump’s administration handling of Ukraine as approve (17%).

About 55% think it likely the UK will need to participate in a large military conflict over the next five years, compared with a fifth (20%) who think it unlikely. A majority (60%) of people believe the UK should increase defence spending.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday praised the UK for showing “leadership” on the war with Russia after the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, pledged his “ironclad support” for Kyiv in a phone call. Ahead of a planned meeting with Donald Trump this week, Starmer insisted that Ukraine must be “at the heart of any negotiations” on a peace deal with Russia. Zelenskyy said in his evening address: “We have coordinated our positions and our diplomacy. We appreciate that the UK is committed to maintaining leadership in protecting life and just normalcy.”

• About 62% of Britons believe Ukraine should be allowed into Nato, according to new polling.

• Starmer and the EU chief Ursula von der Leyen discussed “the need to secure a just and enduring peace in Ukraine” in a call on Saturday, a Downing Street spokesperson said.

• London will unveil a significant package of sanctions against Russia on Monday, according to the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, who said it was “time to turn the screws on Putin’s Russia. Tomorrow, I plan to announce the largest package of sanctions against Russia since the early days of the war.”

• A second meeting between representatives of Russia and the US is planned for the next two weeks, the RIA state news agency reported on Saturday, citing the Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov. Preparations for a face-to-face meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were under way, Ryabkov said, adding that a possible summit could involve broad talks on global issues, not just Ukraine.

• Vladimir Putin said early on Sunday that meeting the needs of troops fighting in Ukraine and boosting the armed forces were Russia’s key strategic priorities. “Today, in the context of rapid changes in the world, our strategic course to strengthen and develop the armed forces remains unchanged,” Putin said in a video posted online.

• The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has urged UN members to approve a new US-proposed resolution on the Ukraine war that according to diplomats omits any mention of territory occupied by Russia. The US wants the UN security council to vote on a brief draft resolution marking the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Monday before the 193-member general assembly votes on the same text, diplomats said on Saturday. The US move pits it against Ukraine and the EU, who have for the past month been negotiating with UN member states on their own draft text on the war.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “not ready” to sign a deal that would give the US preferential access to his country’s critical minerals, a Ukrainian source told AFP. Donald Trump has demanded Kyiv supply the US with the resources as recompense for military aid. Zelenskyy has so far rejected US proposals for their harsh terms and lack of security guarantees for Ukraine. The White House national security adviser has told Zelenskyy to “tone done” his complaints about the US and “sign that deal”.

• An economic partnership between Ukraine and the US would benefit both countries, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, wrote in an opinion piece for the Financial Times on Saturday. Bessent wrote that the US had proposed revenue received by Ukraine’s government from natural resources, infrastructure and other assets be allocated to a fund focused on the long-term reconstruction and development of Ukraine, with the US having economic and governance rights in those future investments.

• Russia claimed its forces had captured the village of Novolyubivka in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region. The Ukrainian army controls a handful of localities in Luhansk, whose annexation Moscow illegally claimed in 2022.

• A 70-year-old woman was killed and three others were injured in Russian guided bomb attacks on the industrial city of Kostiantynivka in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials said late on Saturday. Seven apartment buildings and 14 other buildings were damaged in the attack, the service said.

Preparations for a face-to-face meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are under way, Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said.

The event would mark a dramatic shift away from western isolation of Moscow, which has been in place since Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking to Russian state media, Sergei Ryabkov said a possible Putin-Trump summit could involve broad talks on global issues, not just Ukraine.

“The question is about starting to move towards normalising relations between our countries, finding ways to resolve the most acute and potentially very, very dangerous situations, of which there are many, Ukraine among them,” he said.

But he said efforts to organise such a meeting were at an early stage, and that making it happen would require “the most intensive preparatory work”.

Ryabkov added that US and Russian envoys could meet “within the next two weeks” to pave the way for further talks between senior officials.

Russian and US representatives agreed on Tuesday to start working toward ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties, according to the two countries’ top diplomats, at a high-level meeting in Saudi Arabia that marked an extraordinary about-face in US foreign policy under Trump.

After the meeting, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told the Associated Press that the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow; to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks; and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.

He stressed, however, that the talks, which were attended by his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and other senior Russian and US officials, marked the beginning of a conversation, and more work needed to be done. Lavrov, for his part, said the meeting was “very useful”.

No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting. The country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops, nearly three years after Moscow launched an all-out invasion of its smaller neighbour.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his country would not accept any outcome of the talks, since Kyiv didn’t take part, and he postponed his own trip to Saudi Arabia, which had been scheduled for last Wednesday. European allies have also expressed concerns that they are being sidelined.

Hamas released six Israeli hostages on Saturday, but Israel suspended the handover of more than 600 Palestinians it was due to free from its prisons in exchange, putting the five-week-old ceasefire agreement once more in jeopardy.

In a statement on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “In light of Hamas’ repeated violations – including the disgraceful ceremonies that dishonour our hostages and the cynical use of hostages for propaganda – it has been decided to delay the release of terrorists that was planned for yesterday [Saturday] until the release of the next hostages is ensured, without the humiliating ceremonies.”

Israeli authorities had earlier said the release would be delayed “until the release of the next hostages is guaranteed, and without the degrading ceremonies” at handovers of Israeli captives in Gaza.

The release of 620 Palestinian prisoners had already been delayed for several hours and was meant to occur just after six Israeli hostages were released on Saturday. Vehicles apparently carrying Palestinian prisoners eventually left the open gates of Ofer prison, only to turn around and go back in.

The delay imposes further strain on the precarious truce, which is at a particularly vulnerable moment, between first and second phases. The first phase is due to end next Saturday, but negotiations on the second phase have yet to begin.

Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif al-Qanou issued a statement accusing Israel’s prime minister of “procrastination and stalling tactics”.

“The [Israeli] occupation’s failure to comply with the release of the seventh batch of prisoners in the exchange deal at the agreed-upon time constitutes a blatant violation of the agreement,” al-Qanou said.

While a majority of Israelis want the release of the remaining hostages to be the government’s priority, there is resistance from the right wing of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which wants the war to resume with the aim of obliterating Hamas.

The hostages released by Hamas on Saturday included an Ethiopian-born Israeli and a Bedouin man, both with a history of mental illness, who had been held captive for a decade after they wandered into Gaza on foot.

Avera Mengistu, aged 39, crossed a barbed wire fence on the Gaza beach in September 2014.

“Our family has endured 10 years and five months of unimaginable suffering. During this time, there have been continuous efforts to secure his return, with prayers and pleas, some silent, that remained unanswered until today,” Mengistu’s family said in a statement.

Hisham al-Sayed, 36, a Bedouin from the Negev desert, walked into Gaza from the east in April 2015 and was detained by Hamas.

“Why were they holding someone like that who did nothing wrong? He’s a man of peace, a man who wanted to reach Gaza. He loves Gaza, he did not go there as an aggressor,” Sayed’s father, Shaaban, told Israeli public radio earlier in the week. “This was more painful for us than everything else.”

Five of the hostages released on Saturday were handed over in ceremonies that Hamas has used for propaganda and that have been condemned as cruel and disrespectful by the Red Cross.

In one ceremony, Omer Wenkert, Omer Shem Tov and Eliya Cohen were posed alongside armed and masked Hamas fighters in front a large propaganda poster. An overjoyed Shem Tov kissed two militants on the head and blew kisses to the crowd assembled to watch the release.

Under the terms of a ceasefire deal, Israel was supposed to free 602 Palestinians from its prisons, of which 445 had been captured in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the war. They were due to be released inside Gaza. Of the remaining 157 Palestinians freed, some were due to be deported while others were transferred to the West Bank. Of them, 50 had been serving life sentences.

The head of the Israeli prison service, Kobi Yakobi, has sought to use the exchanges to make political points. Palestinians freed in an exchange the previous week had been made to wear T-shirts with an Arabic inscription: “We will not forget and we will not forgive”.

On Saturday, Yakobi prepared sweatshirts for the Palestinians being handed over that said: “I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not return until they are destroyed”, as well as bracelets inscribed: “The eternal people do not forget. I will pursue my enemies and overtake them.”

The release of six Israelis yesterday brought to 25 the number of hostages freed by Hamas in the first phase of the ceasefire. They also handed over four bodies of hostages who had been killed during the conflict, and are due to hand over four more in the coming week.

Among the bodies handed over on Thursday were those of two small boys from the same family, Ariel Bibas, four, and his brother Kfir, nine months old, who were kidnapped in the surprise Hamas attack on Israel’s western Negev region on 7 October 2023. The remains of their mother, Shiri Bibas, were also handed over, but only after the body of another woman, presumed to be a Palestinian, was transferred. Hamas claimed it was a mistake but it caused outrage in Israel.

The US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has encouraged the parties to move forward to a second phase, which would involve the release of the remaining 60 or so hostages (at least half of whom are believed by Israeli authorities to be dead), as well as hundreds more Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Donald Trump has however continued to offer Netanyahu support should he choose to go back to war, pointing to the incident involving Bibas’s body.

“He is not torn. He wants to go in,” Trump told Fox News Radio on Friday. “He is just so angry at what happened yesterday and he should be.”

Hamas released six Israeli hostages on Saturday, but Israel suspended the handover of more than 600 Palestinians it was due to free from its prisons in exchange, putting the five-week-old ceasefire agreement once more in jeopardy.

In a statement on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “In light of Hamas’ repeated violations – including the disgraceful ceremonies that dishonour our hostages and the cynical use of hostages for propaganda – it has been decided to delay the release of terrorists that was planned for yesterday [Saturday] until the release of the next hostages is ensured, without the humiliating ceremonies.”

Israeli authorities had earlier said the release would be delayed “until the release of the next hostages is guaranteed, and without the degrading ceremonies” at handovers of Israeli captives in Gaza.

The release of 620 Palestinian prisoners had already been delayed for several hours and was meant to occur just after six Israeli hostages were released on Saturday. Vehicles apparently carrying Palestinian prisoners eventually left the open gates of Ofer prison, only to turn around and go back in.

The delay imposes further strain on the precarious truce, which is at a particularly vulnerable moment, between first and second phases. The first phase is due to end next Saturday, but negotiations on the second phase have yet to begin.

Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif al-Qanou issued a statement accusing Israel’s prime minister of “procrastination and stalling tactics”.

“The [Israeli] occupation’s failure to comply with the release of the seventh batch of prisoners in the exchange deal at the agreed-upon time constitutes a blatant violation of the agreement,” al-Qanou said.

While a majority of Israelis want the release of the remaining hostages to be the government’s priority, there is resistance from the right wing of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which wants the war to resume with the aim of obliterating Hamas.

The hostages released by Hamas on Saturday included an Ethiopian-born Israeli and a Bedouin man, both with a history of mental illness, who had been held captive for a decade after they wandered into Gaza on foot.

Avera Mengistu, aged 39, crossed a barbed wire fence on the Gaza beach in September 2014.

“Our family has endured 10 years and five months of unimaginable suffering. During this time, there have been continuous efforts to secure his return, with prayers and pleas, some silent, that remained unanswered until today,” Mengistu’s family said in a statement.

Hisham al-Sayed, 36, a Bedouin from the Negev desert, walked into Gaza from the east in April 2015 and was detained by Hamas.

“Why were they holding someone like that who did nothing wrong? He’s a man of peace, a man who wanted to reach Gaza. He loves Gaza, he did not go there as an aggressor,” Sayed’s father, Shaaban, told Israeli public radio earlier in the week. “This was more painful for us than everything else.”

Five of the hostages released on Saturday were handed over in ceremonies that Hamas has used for propaganda and that have been condemned as cruel and disrespectful by the Red Cross.

In one ceremony, Omer Wenkert, Omer Shem Tov and Eliya Cohen were posed alongside armed and masked Hamas fighters in front a large propaganda poster. An overjoyed Shem Tov kissed two militants on the head and blew kisses to the crowd assembled to watch the release.

Under the terms of a ceasefire deal, Israel was supposed to free 602 Palestinians from its prisons, of which 445 had been captured in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the war. They were due to be released inside Gaza. Of the remaining 157 Palestinians freed, some were due to be deported while others were transferred to the West Bank. Of them, 50 had been serving life sentences.

The head of the Israeli prison service, Kobi Yakobi, has sought to use the exchanges to make political points. Palestinians freed in an exchange the previous week had been made to wear T-shirts with an Arabic inscription: “We will not forget and we will not forgive”.

On Saturday, Yakobi prepared sweatshirts for the Palestinians being handed over that said: “I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not return until they are destroyed”, as well as bracelets inscribed: “The eternal people do not forget. I will pursue my enemies and overtake them.”

The release of six Israelis yesterday brought to 25 the number of hostages freed by Hamas in the first phase of the ceasefire. They also handed over four bodies of hostages who had been killed during the conflict, and are due to hand over four more in the coming week.

Among the bodies handed over on Thursday were those of two small boys from the same family, Ariel Bibas, four, and his brother Kfir, nine months old, who were kidnapped in the surprise Hamas attack on Israel’s western Negev region on 7 October 2023. The remains of their mother, Shiri Bibas, were also handed over, but only after the body of another woman, presumed to be a Palestinian, was transferred. Hamas claimed it was a mistake but it caused outrage in Israel.

The US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has encouraged the parties to move forward to a second phase, which would involve the release of the remaining 60 or so hostages (at least half of whom are believed by Israeli authorities to be dead), as well as hundreds more Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Donald Trump has however continued to offer Netanyahu support should he choose to go back to war, pointing to the incident involving Bibas’s body.

“He is not torn. He wants to go in,” Trump told Fox News Radio on Friday. “He is just so angry at what happened yesterday and he should be.”

A 69-year-old man who intervened when a suspected terrorist attacked police officers with a knife shouting “Allahu Akbar” has died in eastern France.

Two police officers were also seriously injured in the suspected Islamist terrorist act, which took place in the city of Mulhouse during a demonstration in support of the Congo on Saturday afternoon. Three other police officers were lightly wounded.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the knife attack was “without any doubt an act of Islamist terrorism”. The suspected attacker, an Algerian male who has been arrested, is on a terror prevention watchlist, according to the anti-terrorism prosecution office (PNAT).

He has been under judicial supervision and house arrest, and was under an expulsion order from France, according to union sources.

Shortly before 4pm, he attacked local police officers shouting “God is greatest” in Arabic, PNAT said in a statement. Witnesses confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the suspect had several times shouted the phrase.

One of the seriously wounded police officers sustained an injury to the carotid artery, and the other to the thorax.

The passerby, who is understood to have been a Portuguese national, was killed trying to intervene, the PNAT said.

“Horror has seized our city,” Mulhouse mayor Michèle Lutz said on Facebook. The incident was being investigated as a terror attack, she said, but “this must obviously still be confirmed by the judiciary”.

The French interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, is expected to travel to the scene of the attack on Saturday evening. Police have established a security perimeter after the attack, as forensic scientists searched for evidence. Military units have been sent to the scene as backup.

The government was determined to continue doing “everything to eradicate terrorism on our soil”, Macron said. The “solidarity of the nation” was with the attack victim and his family, he added.

France’s terror prevention list compiles data from various authorities on people to prevent terrorist radicalisation. It was launched in 2015 after deadly attacks on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and on a Jewish supermarket.

A grenade believed to be more than 25 years old killed two toddlers when it blew up near their homes in rural Cambodia, officials said.

The accident happened on Saturday in Siem Reap province’s Svay Leu district, where there had been heavy fighting in the 1980s and 90s between Cambodian government soldiers and rebel guerrillas from the communist Khmer Rouge. The group had been ousted from power in 1979.

Muo Lisa and her cousin, Thum Yen, lived in neighbouring homes in the remote village of Kranhuong. Their parents were doing farm work when the two toddlers apparently came across the unexploded ordnance and it detonated.

Old unexploded munitions are especially dangerous because their explosive contents become volatile as they deteriorate.

“Their parents went to settle on land that was a former battlefield, and they were not aware that there were any land mines or unexploded ordnance buried near their homes,” said Heng Ratana, the director general of Cambodian Mine Action Center, which determined it was a rocket-propelled grenade after analysing the fragments. “It’s a pity because they were too young and they should not have died like this.”

An estimated 4m-6m land mines and other unexploded munitions were littered in Cambodia’s countryside during decades of conflict that began in 1970 and ended in 1998.

Since the end of the fighting in Cambodia, nearly 20,000 people have been killed and about 45,000 injured by leftover war explosives. The number of casualties has declined over time; last year there were 49 deaths.

“The war is completely over and there is fully peace for more than 25 years, but the blood of the Khmer (Cambodian) people continues to flow because of the remnants of land mines and ammunition,” Ratana said on his Facebook page.

Cambodian deminers are among the world’s most experienced, and several thousand have been sent in the past decade under UN auspices to work in Africa and the Middle East.

Cambodia’s demining efforts drew attention earlier this month, when US financial assistance for it in eight provinces was suspended due to president Donald Trump’s 90-day freeze on foreign assistance.

Heng Ratana said on Thursday he had been informed that Washington had issued a waiver allowing the aid – $6.36m covering March 2022 to November 2025 – to resume flowing.

Perpetrators of “revenge porn” offences are being allowed to keep explicit images of their victims on their devices, after a failure by prosecutors to obtain orders requiring their deletion.

An Observer analysis of court records in intimate image abuse cases has found that orders for the offenders to give up their devices and delete photos and videos are rarely being made. Of 98 cases concluded in the magistrates courts in England and Wales in the past six months, just three resulted in a deprivation order.

In other cases involving digital devices, such as offences regarding indecent images of children, these orders were made consistently.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) this weekend said more must be done to “stop ­perpetrators retaining these images and continuing to take gratification from their crimes”.

In one case earlier this month, a man was rebuked by magistrates for “thoroughly disgraceful” and “deeply disturbing” behaviour “designed to emotionally blackmail and control” his victim. The 35-year-old from Swansea was given a six-month suspended sentence, a rehabilitation order and a three-year restraining order – but no deprivation order, leaving the police with no legal power to retain and wipe his devices.

In another case last October in Crawley, West Sussex, a 32-year-old man was jailed for 26 weeks after sharing private sexual photos of his ex-girlfriend. He was given a ­restraining order until 2029 – but no deprivation order.

The findings point to a systemic failure of courts to impose the orders, and of prosecutors to request them in the first place.

A spokesperson for the CPS said: “While courts already have the power to deprive convicted offenders of nonconsensual intimate images and videos, we accept there is more we can do.” It is reviewing its guidance for prosecutors. The Sentencing Council, which produces guidelines for magistrates and judges in England and Wales, will also consider whether updates are needed.

Campaigners said the failure to force deletion in every case was ­leaving victims “living in fear” that the images could be shared again.

Sophie Mortimer, who runs the Revenge Porn Helpline, said that even if there was no such threat, just ­knowing the perpetrator still had access to them was a “vile thought”.

Mortimer said she also knew of cases where images obtained ­illicitly, such as through voyeurism, were not destroyed. One man who secretly recorded a woman was convicted and given a suspended sentence – only to be handed back devices containing the imagery afterwards.

When the victim challenged the decision, police said they had no legal power to act because there was no court order. “They told her: ‘Our hands are tied,’” Mortimer said.

She called for urgent changes to ensure content was destroyed in every case – from cloud storage, hard drives, and social media accounts, as well as physical devices. “The ­government says the courts already have powers to order this, but it’s pointless if it’s never used,” she said.

Elena Michael, of the campaign group #NotYourPorn, said ­allowing perpetrators to keep images and devices sent the message that they were “untouchable”. “You’re ­handing back the weapon that caused the crime and rolling out the carpet for them to do it again,” she said.

She said the group had worked with 450 victims and found there was “no consistent approach” to the issue. “Sometimes the police try really hard to hold on to devices or find a way of getting rid of ­content. But they’re in a situation where the law is not supporting them even if morally they know it’s right,” she added.

A victim in a case where the ­perpetrator was not made to delete sexual videos said: “It makes my skin crawl to know that he could still be watching these, let alone uploading them on the internet again.”

Emma Pickering, head of technology-facilitated abuse at the charity Refuge, said: “This critical loophole needs to be urgently addressed.”

The Observer’s analysis looked at cases of sharing or threatening to share intimate photos of a ­person without consent that have been heard in the magistrates courts since August 2024, using records from the Courtsdesk database of hearings in England and Wales.

It also looked at people convicted in the past six months of an earlier version of the offence: “disclosing or threatening to disclose private sexual photos with intent to cause distress”.

Of about 600 defendants who appeared before magistrates charged with the crimes, many were awaiting further hearings. The cases considered most serious were referred to the crown court for trial or sentencing.

For the defendants who were sentenced by magistrates, punishments varied widely. They ranged from 50 to 250 hours of unpaid work, rehabilitation orders requiring them to attend “building better relationships” courses, fines of between £100 and £450, and suspended or immediate custodial sentences.

Of the 98 defendants, 54 were also given restraining orders lasting from one to five years that, in 17 cases, explicitly prohibited posting about their victims online. The three cases where ­prosecutors did request deprivation orders included one in December in Bromley, southeast London, where ­magistrates ordered a 27-year-old man be “deprived of the photographs used in the course of the offence”. He was also given an eight-week suspended sentence and a five-year restraining order.

In another case in September, Hull magistrates jailed a man for 22 weeks and ordered that his phone be destroyed. In both cases the men had also been convicted of a further offence – harassment – as well as the intimate image crime.

In a third case, court records show prosecutors requested a deprivation order from Chester magistrates for a man convicted of sharing intimate photos. He was also given a 12-month suspended sentence and 200 hours of unpaid work in October. It is not clear whether the order was made.

The inconsistencies are revealed as the government prepares to introduce its new crime and policing bill to parliament, which seeks to tighten the law on sharing intimate images without consent.

Charlotte Owen, a Conservative peer, said she was “appalled” that content was being destroyed in so few cases. “No one should have to suffer from the ongoing trauma of knowing their abuser still owns intimate images of them,” she said.

Lady Owen previously introduced a private member’s bill that included a line on forced deletion of imagery, “including physical copies and those held on any device, cloud-based ­program, or digital or messaging ­platform they control”.

The government responded that there was already provision under the Sentencing Act 2020 for courts to deprive offenders of their rights to any property linked to the crime. The Observer’s findings show the power is not consistently being used.

Owen subsequently requested amendments to her data bill, suggesting the creation of a code of practice for the courts. On 28 January, the government responded that it would be “constitutionally inappropriate” to do so but that the Sentencing Council was conducting a review.

The Sentencing Council told the Observer it was monitoring the government’s plans for new intimate image legislation and would look at “what new guidelines or changes are required” when that came into force.

Owen said clear guidance was “urgently needed” for both the ­judiciary and prosecutors. It does not currently advise the use of deprivation orders in intimate image abuse cases. For other offences, such as those involving indecent images of children, prosecutors are told they should always request forfeiture and take a “robust approach” requiring “complete hard drives of any device”.

Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University and an expert in image-based abuse, said it was a “real injustice” that deprivation orders were not routinely being made.

She said changes were also needed to protect the thousands of victims who “don’t want to go down the criminal route”, to enable them to request orders for the deletion of explicit images without going through a criminal process. “The law currently is failing to deal with these issues,” she said.

The Revenge Porn Helpline and #NotYourPorn are also calling for content linked to intimate image abuse to be made illegal, such as indecent images of children and terrorist content, to make it easier to require internet providers to block or remove it.

The act of sharing or threatening to share content without consent is illegal, but the content itself is not, even if it was used in a criminal offence.

They also want all images used in offences to be given unique digital identifiers – known as hashing – to make it easier to detect if someone tries to upload them again, and say the police response must improve to ensure devices are seized promptly, before suspects can delete evidence.

Data obtained by Refuge shows only about 4% of intimate image abuse cases reported to police currently result in the perpetrator being charged. The Revenge Porn Helpline has dealt with 60,000 cases since it was founded 10 years ago, with reports rising on average 57% each year.

The Ministry of Justice declined to comment.

Perpetrators of “revenge porn” offences are being allowed to keep explicit images of their victims on their devices, after a failure by prosecutors to obtain orders requiring their deletion.

An Observer analysis of court records in intimate image abuse cases has found that orders for the offenders to give up their devices and delete photos and videos are rarely being made. Of 98 cases concluded in the magistrates courts in England and Wales in the past six months, just three resulted in a deprivation order.

In other cases involving digital devices, such as offences regarding indecent images of children, these orders were made consistently.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) this weekend said more must be done to “stop ­perpetrators retaining these images and continuing to take gratification from their crimes”.

In one case earlier this month, a man was rebuked by magistrates for “thoroughly disgraceful” and “deeply disturbing” behaviour “designed to emotionally blackmail and control” his victim. The 35-year-old from Swansea was given a six-month suspended sentence, a rehabilitation order and a three-year restraining order – but no deprivation order, leaving the police with no legal power to retain and wipe his devices.

In another case last October in Crawley, West Sussex, a 32-year-old man was jailed for 26 weeks after sharing private sexual photos of his ex-girlfriend. He was given a ­restraining order until 2029 – but no deprivation order.

The findings point to a systemic failure of courts to impose the orders, and of prosecutors to request them in the first place.

A spokesperson for the CPS said: “While courts already have the power to deprive convicted offenders of nonconsensual intimate images and videos, we accept there is more we can do.” It is reviewing its guidance for prosecutors. The Sentencing Council, which produces guidelines for magistrates and judges in England and Wales, will also consider whether updates are needed.

Campaigners said the failure to force deletion in every case was ­leaving victims “living in fear” that the images could be shared again.

Sophie Mortimer, who runs the Revenge Porn Helpline, said that even if there was no such threat, just ­knowing the perpetrator still had access to them was a “vile thought”.

Mortimer said she also knew of cases where images obtained ­illicitly, such as through voyeurism, were not destroyed. One man who secretly recorded a woman was convicted and given a suspended sentence – only to be handed back devices containing the imagery afterwards.

When the victim challenged the decision, police said they had no legal power to act because there was no court order. “They told her: ‘Our hands are tied,’” Mortimer said.

She called for urgent changes to ensure content was destroyed in every case – from cloud storage, hard drives, and social media accounts, as well as physical devices. “The ­government says the courts already have powers to order this, but it’s pointless if it’s never used,” she said.

Elena Michael, of the campaign group #NotYourPorn, said ­allowing perpetrators to keep images and devices sent the message that they were “untouchable”. “You’re ­handing back the weapon that caused the crime and rolling out the carpet for them to do it again,” she said.

She said the group had worked with 450 victims and found there was “no consistent approach” to the issue. “Sometimes the police try really hard to hold on to devices or find a way of getting rid of ­content. But they’re in a situation where the law is not supporting them even if morally they know it’s right,” she added.

A victim in a case where the ­perpetrator was not made to delete sexual videos said: “It makes my skin crawl to know that he could still be watching these, let alone uploading them on the internet again.”

Emma Pickering, head of technology-facilitated abuse at the charity Refuge, said: “This critical loophole needs to be urgently addressed.”

The Observer’s analysis looked at cases of sharing or threatening to share intimate photos of a ­person without consent that have been heard in the magistrates courts since August 2024, using records from the Courtsdesk database of hearings in England and Wales.

It also looked at people convicted in the past six months of an earlier version of the offence: “disclosing or threatening to disclose private sexual photos with intent to cause distress”.

Of about 600 defendants who appeared before magistrates charged with the crimes, many were awaiting further hearings. The cases considered most serious were referred to the crown court for trial or sentencing.

For the defendants who were sentenced by magistrates, punishments varied widely. They ranged from 50 to 250 hours of unpaid work, rehabilitation orders requiring them to attend “building better relationships” courses, fines of between £100 and £450, and suspended or immediate custodial sentences.

Of the 98 defendants, 54 were also given restraining orders lasting from one to five years that, in 17 cases, explicitly prohibited posting about their victims online. The three cases where ­prosecutors did request deprivation orders included one in December in Bromley, southeast London, where ­magistrates ordered a 27-year-old man be “deprived of the photographs used in the course of the offence”. He was also given an eight-week suspended sentence and a five-year restraining order.

In another case in September, Hull magistrates jailed a man for 22 weeks and ordered that his phone be destroyed. In both cases the men had also been convicted of a further offence – harassment – as well as the intimate image crime.

In a third case, court records show prosecutors requested a deprivation order from Chester magistrates for a man convicted of sharing intimate photos. He was also given a 12-month suspended sentence and 200 hours of unpaid work in October. It is not clear whether the order was made.

The inconsistencies are revealed as the government prepares to introduce its new crime and policing bill to parliament, which seeks to tighten the law on sharing intimate images without consent.

Charlotte Owen, a Conservative peer, said she was “appalled” that content was being destroyed in so few cases. “No one should have to suffer from the ongoing trauma of knowing their abuser still owns intimate images of them,” she said.

Lady Owen previously introduced a private member’s bill that included a line on forced deletion of imagery, “including physical copies and those held on any device, cloud-based ­program, or digital or messaging ­platform they control”.

The government responded that there was already provision under the Sentencing Act 2020 for courts to deprive offenders of their rights to any property linked to the crime. The Observer’s findings show the power is not consistently being used.

Owen subsequently requested amendments to her data bill, suggesting the creation of a code of practice for the courts. On 28 January, the government responded that it would be “constitutionally inappropriate” to do so but that the Sentencing Council was conducting a review.

The Sentencing Council told the Observer it was monitoring the government’s plans for new intimate image legislation and would look at “what new guidelines or changes are required” when that came into force.

Owen said clear guidance was “urgently needed” for both the ­judiciary and prosecutors. It does not currently advise the use of deprivation orders in intimate image abuse cases. For other offences, such as those involving indecent images of children, prosecutors are told they should always request forfeiture and take a “robust approach” requiring “complete hard drives of any device”.

Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University and an expert in image-based abuse, said it was a “real injustice” that deprivation orders were not routinely being made.

She said changes were also needed to protect the thousands of victims who “don’t want to go down the criminal route”, to enable them to request orders for the deletion of explicit images without going through a criminal process. “The law currently is failing to deal with these issues,” she said.

The Revenge Porn Helpline and #NotYourPorn are also calling for content linked to intimate image abuse to be made illegal, such as indecent images of children and terrorist content, to make it easier to require internet providers to block or remove it.

The act of sharing or threatening to share content without consent is illegal, but the content itself is not, even if it was used in a criminal offence.

They also want all images used in offences to be given unique digital identifiers – known as hashing – to make it easier to detect if someone tries to upload them again, and say the police response must improve to ensure devices are seized promptly, before suspects can delete evidence.

Data obtained by Refuge shows only about 4% of intimate image abuse cases reported to police currently result in the perpetrator being charged. The Revenge Porn Helpline has dealt with 60,000 cases since it was founded 10 years ago, with reports rising on average 57% each year.

The Ministry of Justice declined to comment.

A police officer was killed Saturday after responding to a shooting at a central Pennsylvania hospital, officials said.

The officer slain in the shooting at UPMC memorial hospital in York was identified as Andrew Duarte of the West York borough police department. He had been responding to a mutual aid call, the department posted on its Facebook page.

“We all have broken hearts and are grieving at his loss,” said the West York borough manager Shawn Mauck.

A gunman also died, officials said. Officials at UPMC memorial said that no patients had been injured.

Law enforcement were on the premises and managing the situation, Susan Manko, vice-president of public relations for UPMC, said in an emailed statement.

Duarte was a six-year law enforcement veteran who joined the West York borough police department in 2022 after five years with the Denver police department in Colorado, according to Duarte’s LinkedIn profile.

In a statement on its website, the hospital asked employees who had not been scheduled to work Saturday to stay home.

Families of patients arriving on site should report to the parking lot of the OSS building across the street from the hospital, Manko said.

The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, said in a social media post he was on the way to the hospital after being briefed on the shooting. He said the hospital was “secure”.

UPMC Memorial is a five-story, 104-bed hospital that opened in 2019 in York, a city of about 40,000 people known for its creation of York Peppermint Patties in 1940.

The shooting is part of a wave of gun violence in recent years that has swept through US hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the growing threats. Such attacks have helped make healthcare one of the nation’s most violent fields, with workers suffering more non-fatal injuries from workplace violence than workers in any other profession, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2023, a shooter killed a security guard in the lobby of New Hampshire’s state psychiatric hospital before being fatally shot by a state trooper. And an Oregon hospital security guard was shot to death while protecting a maternity ward from an attacker.

In 2022, a man killed two workers at a Dallas hospital while there to watch his child’s birth. In May of that year, a man opened fire in a medical center waiting room in Atlanta, killing one woman and wounding four. Just one month later, a gunman killed his surgeon and three other people at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office because he blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after an operation.

Duarte was one of at least three police officers in the US who had been killed on duty since Friday.

Two Virginia Beach, Virginia, police department officers were reportedly shot and killed Friday night during a traffic stop. That department issued a statement on social media saying it was investigating the officers’ killings while grieving “the loss of two of [their] own”.

• Guardian staff contributed reporting

Donald Trump’s second presidential administration shut down a national database that tracked misconduct by federal police, a resource that policing reform advocates hailed as essential to prevent officers with misconduct records from being able to move undetected between agencies.

The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), which stored police records documenting misconduct, is now unavailable, the Washington Post first reported.

The US justice department also confirmed the database’s elimination in a statement issued online.

“User agencies can no longer query or add data to the NLEAD,” the statement read. “The US Department of Justice is decommissioning the NLEAD in accordance with federal standards.”

A weblink that hosted the database is no longer active.

The police misconduct database, the first of its kind, was not publicly available. Law enforcement agencies could use the NLEAD to check if an officer applying for a law enforcement position had committed misconduct, such as excessive force.

Several experts celebrated the NLEAD when Joe Biden first created it by an executive order issued in 2023, the third year of his presidency.

“Law enforcement agencies will no longer be able to turn a blind eye to the records of misconduct in officer hiring and offending officers will not be able to distance themselves from their misdeeds,” the Legal Defense Fund president and director-counsel, Janai Nelson, said of the database at the time.

But Trump has since rescinded Biden’s executive order as part of an ongoing effort to slash federal agencies down. Trump himself initially proposed the database after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, months before Biden defeated him in the presidential election that November.

In an emailed statement to the Washington Post, the White House confirmed the database’s deletion.

“President Trump believes in an appropriate balance of accountability without compromising law enforcement’s ability to do its job of fighting crime and keeping communities safe,” read the statement. “But the Biden executive order creating this database was full of woke, anti-police concepts that make communities less safe like a call for ‘equitable’ policing and addressing ‘systemic racism in our criminal justice system.’ President Trump rescinded the order creating this database on Day 1 because he is committed to giving our brave men and women of law enforcement the tools they need to stop crime.”

News of the NLEAD’s erasure comes as police misconduct is far from rooted out in American law enforcement. For instance, in Hanceville, Alabama, an entire department was recently put on leave amid a grand jury investigation that found a “rampant culture of corruption”.

The 18-person grand jury called for the Hanceville police department, which only has eight officers, to be abolished.

A probe into that police department came amid the death of 49-year-old Christopher Michael Willingham, a Hanceville dispatcher. Willingham was discovered dead at work from a toxic combination of drugs.

The department also “failed to account for, preserve and maintain evidence and in doing so has failed crime victims and the public at large”, the grand jury ruled.

China’s navy has reportedly conducted a second live-fire exercise in international waters, a day after a similar drill forced multiple airlines to change flight paths between Australia and New Zealand.

New Zealand navy personnel advised live rounds were fired from a Chinese warship in international waters near the island nation on Saturday.

“Reporting from the New Zealand Defence Force that the Chinese naval Task Group has advised of a second window for live firing activity, on Saturday afternoon,” a spokesperson for the defence minister, Judith Collins, said in a statement seen by Reuters.

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China’s naval taskforce had given radio notice of its intent to conduct firing, and the NZ prime minister, Christopher Luxon, said the group had acted under international law.

Anthony Albanese earlier bristled at suggestions he should get Beijing on the phone after China’s military carried out a live-fire exercise off the Australian coast on Friday.

The prime minister said senior Defence officials continued to monitor three Chinese warships after they were spotted moving south in international waters about 280km off Sydney on Thursday.

The foreign minister, Penny Wong, met with her Chinese counterpart and demanded to know why the vessels only offered limited notice before the firing was carried out.

In a post on X late on Friday night Australian eastern time, Wong said she met with China’s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in South Africa that day.

“Calm and consistent dialogue with China enables us to progress our interests and advocate on issues that matter to Australians,” Wong said.

China’s actions are believed to have complied with international law and the Australian Defence Force has advised there was no imminent threat to its assets or those of NZ.

Analysts believed the sailing was an attempt by Beijing to project power and send a message to Canberra about China’s capability.

Albanese was asked on Saturday if he would call president Xi Jinping in light of the incident but instead defended China’s right to carry out the exercise as it had not breached international law.

“It’s important to not suggest that wasn’t the case,” he said.

“What we have done is to make appropriate representation through diplomatic channels, including foreign minister to foreign minister.

“They could have given more notice but Australia has a presence from time to time in the South China Sea [and] this activity took place outside of our exclusive economic zone. Notification did occur.”

Australia has coordinated its response with NZ but has not spoken with Anzus ally the United States since the incident.

The opposition defence spokesperson, Andrew Hastie, suggested China’s actions amounted to “gunboat diplomacy”.

“This is Chinese warships imposing themselves on our commercial airspace and that’s why I come back to that question for the PM – where’s his limit?” he told ABC Radio.

“Why is he being weak about this? Why isn’t he picking up the phone and making representations on behalf of the Australian people and our national interests?”

The defence minister, Richard Marles, earlier said Australia had not received satisfactory answers when it queried the incident.

“They notified a live firing exercise but with very short notice, which meant that was very disconcerting for planes that were in the air,” he told Channel Seven.

Australian officials said it was customary to give 24 to 48 hours notice of live fire activity.

Qantas, Emirates and Air New Zealand modified flight paths between Australia and NZ after receiving reports of live firing in international waters.

A Defence spokesperson said China advised via a radio broadcast on a civilian channel that it would carry out its drill.

“[China] did not inform Defence of its intent to conduct a live fire activity and has not provided any further information,” a statement read.

The live-fire exercise follows a run-in with the Chinese military last week when a fighter jet fired flares in front of an RAAF surveillance aircraft during a patrol over the South China Sea.

The government lodged a complaint with Beijing over the near-miss.

With Stephanie Convery and Reuters

To uncover the location of one long-lost pharaoh’s tomb is a career-defining moment for an archaeologist. But to find a second is the stuff of dreams.

Last week British archaeologist Piers Litherland announced the find of the century – the first discovery of a rock-cut pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt since Tutankhamun’s in 1922.

His team found the pharaoh Thutmose II’s tomb underneath a waterfall in the Theban mountains in Luxor, about 3km west of the Valley of the Kings. It contained almost nothing but debris, and the team believe it was flooded and emptied within six years of the pharaoh’s death in 1479BC.

Now Litherland has told the Observer he believes he has identified the location of a second tomb belonging to Thutmose II. And this one, he suspects, will contain the young pharaoh’s mummified body and grave goods.

Archeologists believe this second tomb has been hiding in plain sight for 3,500 years, secretly buried beneath 23 metres of limestone flakes, rubble, ash and mud plaster and made to look like part of the mountain.

“There are 23 metres of a pile of man-made layers sitting above a point in the landscape where we believe – and we have other confirmatory evidence – there is a monument concealed beneath,” he said. “The best candidate for what is hidden underneath this enormously expensive, in terms of effort, pile is the second tomb of Thutmose II.”

While searching close to the first tomb for clues about where its contents were taken after the flood, Litherland found a posthumous inscription buried in a pit with a cow sacrifice. This inscription indicates the contents may have been moved by the king’s wife and half-sister Hatshepsut – one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs and one of the few women to rule in her own right – to an as-yet undiscovered second tomb nearby.

Last week the New Kingdom Research Foundation, a British independent academic body, and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities revealed that a project led by Litherland had found the first tomb in 2022, after more than a decade of work.

For about a year, he and his team of Egyptian archaeologists – “discoveries like this are not made by individuals”, he says – have been investigating ways to get access to the second tomb by excavating the 3,500-year-old human-made layers of rock and plaster that surround it.

At the top of layers of thick limestone plaster, limestone flakes “the size of a dining room table”, tufa (a flaky limestone which forms a cement) and rubble, is a layer of mud plaster with ash on top, Litherland said. “Among that ash, we found the remains of beer jars and chisel ends used by workmen who made tombs. So there’s no doubt these layers are man-made.”

At that point, any tomb underneath the layers would have been well covered. But a further step was taken “and that is what is slowing everything down” on the dig, said Litherland. The ancient Egyptians then “levered away large portions of the cliff and made them come crashing down on top”. These large rocks – some of which are the size of a car – were then “cemented in place using limestone plaster”.

Now Litherland’s team is trying to detach those rocks and the limestone plaster by hand: “We’ve tried to tunnel into it, we’ve tried to shave away the sides, but there are overhanging rocks, so it’s too dangerous,” Litherland said.

He, his foreman, Mohamed Sayed Ahmed, and his archeological director, Mohsen Kamel, took the difficult decision to remove the entire structure – which stands out from the cliff – three weeks ago, and are about halfway there. “We should be able to take the whole thing down in about another month,” Litherland said.

He speculates that both tombs were constructed by the 18th dynasty architect Ineni, who wrote in his biography that he had “excavated the high tomb of His Majesty, no one seeing, no one hearing”, and was facing “a very serious problem” after the first tomb flooded. “If [Ineni] was being regarded as a failure for not delivering what he was supposed to deliver – a secure resting place for a king who, on his death, became a god – he may have been in a bit of a panic, trying to make sure that whatever happened this time, the tomb was not going to be flooded.”

All kings from the 18th dynasty were buried under waterfalls. By covering the tomb with layers of plaster and limestone flakes, Ineni protected it from water while simultaneously sealing and concealing the site from robbers. “Ineni says in his biographies that he did a lot of clever things to hide the locations of tombs, including covering the tombs with layers of mud plaster, which he says has never been done before. This has not been remarked on ever, to my knowledge.”

It is a strategy that appears to have worked. While grave goods from the ransacked tombs of pharaohs from the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties are commonplace in museums, “there are no burial goods of any sort relating to the burial of Thutmose II in any museum or private collection”, Litherland said.

The body of a 30-year-old, found in 1881 in Deir el-Bahari and previously identified as Thutmose II, is too old to belong to the pharaoh, Litherland said. “He is described in Ineni’s biography as coming to the throne ‘the falcon in the nest’ – so he was a young boy.” Some Egyptologists believe he reigned for just three to four years and died shortly after fathering Thutmose III.

For Litherland, who became fascinated with ancient Egypt as a young boy, the thought of finding Thutmose II’s final resting place is breathtaking. “You dream about such things. But like winning the lottery, you never believe it will happen to you.”