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.

• 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.

• Russia launched several waves of missile and drone attacks over Saturday night targeting Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine, killing one civilian in Kryvyi Rih and damaging buildings and cars in Kyiv and elsewhere, officials said early on Sunday. Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that its air defence units had intercepted and destroyed 20 Ukrainian drones overnight over six regions.

• 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.

German voters go to the polls today but it is a different world from when the campaign began only a few weeks ago.

Nearly 60 million ­people are choosing a government that will have to grapple with the breakdown of the transatlantic alliance under Donald Trump and new threats to European security just as the country’s vaunted economic model is hitting the skids.

If the polls are correct, the man leading that administration will be conservative opposition chief Fried­rich Merz, a corporate lawyer with a decades-long desire to be chancellor despite never ­serving in government. His in-tray will be staggering. “The big expectations ­mirror the big challenges he’ll face from day one of his likely chancellor­ship,” news weekly Der Spiegel said. “An ­aggressive Russia, a hostile America and a Europe that is drifting apart: Merz could be tested more strongly […] than any ­chancellor of the postwar republic.”

Merz recently admitted that Trump’s effective abandonment of European defence pledges and his vice-president JD Vance’s aggressive backing of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) heralded ­“tectonic shifts in the political and economic power centres of the world”. Germany, he said, would not emerge unscathed.

Trump’s undermining of Nato and betrayal of Ukraine are “a wrenching punch to the gut”, said Ursula Münch, director of the Academy for Political Education thinktank in Bavaria, particularly for Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has “solidarity and friendship with the US deep in its DNA”. “The ­biggest ­challenge [for Ger­many] will be ­mustering a united show of strength by the EU and the UK.”

Germany, the world’s third largest economic power and most populous EU country, was already struggling with the muddled legacy of Angela Merkel, one of Merz’s predecessors as CDU leader and his longtime nemesis.

Her 16-year tenure as ­chancellor was marked by reliance on cheap Russian gas, brisk trade with China and Washington’s military and ­intelligence might, allowing Germany to focus on what it did best: manufacturing cars and machine tools while holding the EU together.

Merkel’s successor, Olaf Scholz, took office in December 2021 buoyed by hopes for a fresh approach to long-neglected problems with a technocratic “traffic light” coalition named for the party colours of his centre-left Social Democrats, the pro-business Free Democrats and the ecologist Greens. But only weeks later, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine blew the best-laid plans of Scholz’s “coalition for progress” permanently off course.

Within days of the war’s outbreak, Scholz declared a Zeitenwende (turning point), establishing a €100bn (£85bn) fund to beef up Germany’s paltry military equipment stocks and pledging to meet a Nato commitment of defence spending at 2% of GDP. By 2024, he had kept that promise.

But the halt of Russian energy supplies sent prices soaring, ­spurring galloping post-pandemic inflation and weighing heavily on industries such as steel and chemicals. Scholz’s government scrambled to find new fuel sources while pushing ­renewables.

China, in the meantime, ­pivoted from buying German vehicles to undercutting them with cheaper models, particularly in the EV sector.

At a recent televised debate Merz, who left politics for business for 12 years after losing a power struggle with Merkel, accused Scholz’s government of economic “incompetence” after two years of recession. Scholz shot back: “I didn’t invade Ukraine!”

Scholz’s coalition finally ­collapsed in November – within hours of Trump winning the US election – over a still unresolved conundrum around the strict “debt brake” that keeps ­federal government annual ­borrowing to 0.35% of GDP. The implosion ­triggered a general ­election seven months ahead of schedule.

But Scholz’s era of political turmoil might soon look like halcyon days.

Germany’s true Zeitenwende is still to come, argues veteran political ­analyst Herfried Münkler, as Berlin faces up to the painful realisation that the postwar order that welcomed the country back into the community of nations after the Nazi atrocities has come to an end.

“The biggest loser of the latest developments is Germany, not only because its economic power has shrunk but also because German poli­ticians relied unconditionally to the end on the transatlantic relationship,” he wrote in the newspaper Die Zeit.

“The next government will have to take great pains to reassert German leadership in Europe.”

Reforming the debt brake will be essential to that process, said Sascha Huber, a political scientist at the University of Mainz, as more defence ­spending will have to be financed with new debt. “But the first challenge will be ­forming a stable coalition,” he said.

Because he is unlikely to win a majority, Merz has said he aims to build a new ­governing ­alliance by Easter, setting up long weeks of tense negotiations in which Germany will be focused inward. His most likely partner will be Scholz’s Social Democrats but he may need yet another party to make the maths add up – a recipe for further volatility, Münch said.

Meanwhile, surveys suggest the anti-immigration, anti-Islam AfD will double support from the last ­election, to win about 20% of the vote. It has been polling in second place to Merz’s CDU-CSU bloc for more than a year. It calls for mass ­deportation of migrants, a resumption of Russian gas imports, an end to military aid for Ukraine and exiting the eurozone.

During the election campaign there has been a series of attacks in which the suspect is from a migrant background, which some analysts believe could boost AfD support. The latest came on Friday, when a Spanish tourist was stabbed at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial. Prosecutors saidon Saturday that the suspect was a 19-year-old Syrian refugee who appeared to have planned to kill Jews.

Although most analysts expect Merz to maintain the “firewall” ­barring formal cooperation with the far right, a strong AfD finish would greatly complicate his efforts to produce a reliable majority.

“I think it will be essential to a centrist coalition for him to make clear that he won’t accept support from the AfD again,” Huber said, referring to a taboo-busting move by Merz last month to solicit far-right votes in parliament for hardline migration proposals. “Otherwise it won’t work. Tthe AfD will always be trying to drive a wedge between the coalition parties.”

Germany has long been considered among the most politically stable of the world’s big democracies, only triggering snap elections roughly every two decades. But that pace could accelerate if the political fringes grow in influence, Huber said.

That sense of looming turbulence, with the AfD waiting in the wings, has troubled many voters, drawing hundreds of thousands on to the streets in recent weeks in defence of democracy.

At a recent protest co-organised by senior activists Grannies Against the Right (Omas Gegen Rechts) in the eastern town of Teltow, 70-year-old retired history teacher Sabine Ludwig said she saw “scary” echoes of the Weimar era, a century ago.

“There won’t be endless chances for the democratic centrist parties to come together and keep the AfD out,” she said. “I hope they seize it.”

Tens of thousands of people have attended a funeral in Beirut for Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Iran-backed, Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah for three decades before being killed in an Israeli bombing last September.

The ceremony was held in a sports stadium in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which had extra seats installed prior to the ceremony in anticipation of the massive crowds.

The funeral for Nasrallah and his deputy, Hashem Safieddine, also killed in an Israeli airstrike in early October, was delayed for five months due to security concerns.

Most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership was killed by Israel late last year, due to what analysts have described as Israel’s deep intelligence infiltration of a group once famed for its secrecy.

The stadium was packed by mourners carrying pictures of Nasrallah and waving Hezbollah flags, with attendees hanging off floodlights to get a better vantage point of the stage. Several foreign delegations attended the funeral, including the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, and several Iraqi lawmakers.

“I can’t even express how I feel, it feels like my father or grandfather I died. Most of us still don’t believe he’s actually dead,” said Mohammed Khalifeh, a Lebanese man who traveled from Australia for the funeral.

Nasrallah was born into a working-class family in Beirut in 1960, though he was originally from south Lebanon. One of the founding members of Hezbollah, he was the longest-serving leader of the group and was famed for his charisma and skills as an orator.

He became a celebrated figure in Lebanon for Hezbollah’s role in ending Israel’s 18-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000, although that image was tarnished after the group’s intervention in Syria’s civil war in support of the long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad. The group’s dominance of Lebanon’s politics over the last two decades also engendered resentment among its opponents.

Mourners wept as Nasrallah and Safieddine’s caskets were paraded around the stadium and threw rings, jackets and scarves for pallbearers to rub on the coffins and return to them as mementoes of the late leaders. As the caskets were unveiled, four Israeli fighter jets flew low over the stadium, prompting cries of “Death to Israel!” by attender.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said the planes were “conveying a clear message: whoever threatens to destroy Israel and attacks Israel – that will be the end of him. You will specialise in funerals – and we will specialise in victories.”.

Israeli fighter jets bombed south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley before and during the funeral ceremony, despite the ceasefire agreement signed months earlier.

Nasrallah’s death marked the beginning of an escalation in the Hezbollah-Israel war, which up until then had mostly been defined by low-level, tit-for-tat-style fighting in Lebanon’s border region.

Hezbollah attacked Israel on 8 October 2023 “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack from Gaza on Israel the day before. The conflict was confined mainly to the Lebanese border until a dramatic Israeli escalation and ground invasion in south Lebanon in late September 2024, which left more than 3,000 people in Lebanon dead and displaced more than a million people.

Fighting officially ended under a ceasefire agreement and Israeli troops mostly withdrew on 18 February, though Israeli troops have remained in five points in south Lebanon and continue to strike targets periodically.

Despite the organisation’s massive losses and the immense humanitarian cost of the war, Hezbollah’s followers said on Sunday that they remained undeterred.

“They thought that after they killed our leaders that we would become weak and that they could occupy Lebanon, but they couldn’t do it,” said Lina Jawad, a 27-year-old designer and Beirut resident.

Hezbollah’s secretary general, Naim Qassem, whose speech during the ceremony was televised from a remote location, said the group would “not submit” and would not accept Israeli forces remaining in the country.

The group’s status in the country and influence on the state after the war has been diminished, with Lebanon’s new government attempting to disarm the non-state group.

Hezbollah has long claimed its forces acted a deterrent to Israeli invasions, although some of the Lebanese public has grown frustrated with the now-weakened militant group.

In the government’s first statement last week, it dropped any references to the right to “armed resistance” – a reference to Hezbollah’s right to hold weapons – the first time since 2000 that the state did not pay homage to Hezbollah.

In a meeting with an Iranian delegation on Sunday, the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, said the country was “tired of others’ wars” and that Lebanon had paid a “heavy price” for the Palestinian cause.

The state faces the task of reconstruction, after large swathes of the country were levelled by Israeli bombing. It is courting international donors, including gulf countries, for funds.

The new government also has demanded the full withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Lebanon and is relying on diplomatic channels to pressure Israel to do so.

The new FBI director, Kash Patel, has told his agency employees to hold off on responding to an email from the Donald Trump administration asking them to list their accomplishments in the last week as tech billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the federal government’s size.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers had been given little more than 48 hours to explain what they achieved to the office of personnel management (OPM), sparking confusion across key agencies that included the US’s top law enforcement agency.

But the FBI director – confirmed by the Senate on Thursday – undercut the request. According to ABC News, the agency was seeking additional guidance from the US justice department on next steps.

“FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information,” Patel’s message read. “The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures. When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”

Patel’s missive came amid reports on Sunday indicated that he was expected to be named acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a domestic law enforcement agency that – like the FBI – sits within the Department of Justice.

Separately, the US attorney John Durham, the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of New York, also sent a message to his staff to hold off, according to the outlet.

“Of course, a majority of our work is law enforcement sensitive (in addition to much classified work), so even assuming this is legitimate, we will need to be careful in how we respond to this inquiry. As noted, the deadline isn’t until 11.59pm on Monday, so we have plenty of time,” Durham wrote in his letter.

Musk, who has been tasked to ostensibly cut government costs during Donald Trump’s second presidency, telegraphed the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday.

“Consistent with [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Shortly afterwards, federal employees – including some judges, court staff and federal prison officials – received a three-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”

The deadline to reply was listed as Monday at 11.59pm, although the email did not include Musk’s social media threat about those who fail to respond.

The latest unusual directive from Musk’s team has injected a fresh sense of chaos across beleaguered agencies, including the National Weather Service, the state department and the federal court system, as senior officials worked to verify the message’s authenticity on Saturday night and in some cases, instructed their employees not to respond.

The president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 workers in the federal government, issued a statement saying: “Elon Musk and the Trump Administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.”

“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” said Everett Kelley, the AFGE president.

Thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce – either by being fired or offered a buyout – during the first month of Trump’s administration. In fire both new and career workers, the White House and Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency (Doge) have been telling agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” and freeze trillions of dollars in federal grant funds.

There is no official figure available for the total number of firings or layoffs so far, but the Associated Press has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside Washington. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.

Musk on Friday celebrated his new role at a gathering of conservatives by waving a giant chainsaw in the air. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy” and said “waste is pretty much everywhere” in the federal government.

The former US ambassador to Panama has launched a stinging critique of Donald Trump’s approach towards Latin America, comparing his conduct to that of the ruthless and egotistical fictional mob boss Tony Soprano.

In the first month of his presidency, the US president has shocked some observers with his aggressive focus on a region many expected him to largely ignore. Early steps have included threatening to “take back” the Panama Canal, accusing Mexico’s government of being in cahoots with narco-traffickers, sending an envoy to meet the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and clashing with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, over deportation flights.

John Feeley, who was regarded as one of the state department’s top Latin America experts until he resigned from his job in Panama during Trump’s first term, said he was horrified but not surprised by Trump’s moves.

“If you use as your psychological paradigm [for Trump] a combination of Tony Soprano and Thucydides … it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he’s going to go to the Americas first,” the ex-ambassador said, referring to the ancient historian who chronicled the fifth-century BC struggle between Athens and Sparta.

Feeley believed the most famous line from Thucydides’s account of that war – “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” – explained Trump’s bully-boy worldview.

“[He’s doing it] because he can – because the asymmetry of American commercial and military power is so incalculable in relationship to Mexico, Central America, Panama, even Brazil, Argentina. They can’t really do much other than suffer the consequences. And so I think, in a sort of mafioso way, he is very adept at reading relative power,” said the former diplomat, who attributed his 2018 resignation to how Trump had “warped and betrayed … the traditional core values of the United States”.

“He’s a velociraptor … He kills anything he perceives as a threat.”

Feeley did not believe Trump would follow through on his threat to forcibly reclaim the Panama canal if his demands over alleged Chinese meddling in the trade route were not met.

“It’s all bluster. He doesn’t have the votes for it. He ran on a ticket of American isolation … He doesn’t want to keep US bases in Germany. He doesn’t want to protect Europe. He doesn’t want to send America’s blood and treasure to fight and die in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. He wants to ‘make America great’.

“His vision of a ‘Great America’ is an America that sits in its sphere of influence, king in its own castle, and exploiting parts of the world for American gain, such as $500bn in Ukrainian rare earths,” said the diplomat who also served in Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico during a 28-year state department career.

Feeley praised Panama’s handling of the “relentlessly transactional” US president’s tactics by making tactical concessions while maintaining control of the canal.

The former ambassador saw a similarly Soprano-like modus operandi in Trump’s engagement with Maduro, whom the US president appears to have warmed to after trying unsuccessfully to overthrow him during his first administration.

“A mobster doesn’t kill every one of his competitors. Frequently, he buys them off. Frequently, he corrupts them. Frequently, he co-opts them,” Feeley said. “And he saw in Maduro a tinpot little mobster in a country that he doesn’t care about – a country that he currently, in this transactional moment, needs to be able to send a bunch of C-17 Globemasters [transport planes] back to and dump out a bunch of Venezuelans in orange jumpsuits and shackles so that he can go back to his Maga base and say: ‘See, Joe Biden let these rapists and drug dealers in. I kicked them out.’”

Feeley thought Trump’s engagement with Maduro was motivated by his mass deportation campaign, not a desire to access Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. “The United States set record oil and gas productions last year … We don’t need the black gold from the Orinoco belt.”

By striking a deal with Maduro allowing him to send deportation flights to Caracas, Feeley argued that Trump had betrayed the opposition politicians widely believed to have beaten the Venezuelan autocrat in last July’s presidential election. “He sold them down the river after they gave him their vote,” the former ambassador said of the Venezuelan Americans who backed Trump in the 2024 US election hoping he would help rid their country of Maduro.

But if Trump was channeling Tony Soprano in his treatment of Latin America, Feeley believed he was also channeling Trump. “Donald Trump’s approach to Latin America is reminiscent of the manner in which he and his father ran their buildings in Queens. They put a big C [for “coloured”] on any application from a family that was Black or Hispanic. And not surprisingly, those people didn’t get apartments. They settled that case with the Department of Justice in the 1970s. But it’s very clear to me that Donald Trump sees Latin America as a place to exploit and to get rent from – but not to allow to live in his building,” he said.

“I am ashamed of my country. I am angry at my country for electing him. And I am hopeful that we have still the guardrails of democracy to get back to, not perfection, but a place where we value strategic alliances to keep us all safe, where we incorporate human rights and concepts of basic decency into our foreign policy, and where we cultivate our soft power.”

The former US ambassador to Panama has launched a stinging critique of Donald Trump’s approach towards Latin America, comparing his conduct to that of the ruthless and egotistical fictional mob boss Tony Soprano.

In the first month of his presidency, the US president has shocked some observers with his aggressive focus on a region many expected him to largely ignore. Early steps have included threatening to “take back” the Panama Canal, accusing Mexico’s government of being in cahoots with narco-traffickers, sending an envoy to meet the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and clashing with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, over deportation flights.

John Feeley, who was regarded as one of the state department’s top Latin America experts until he resigned from his job in Panama during Trump’s first term, said he was horrified but not surprised by Trump’s moves.

“If you use as your psychological paradigm [for Trump] a combination of Tony Soprano and Thucydides … it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he’s going to go to the Americas first,” the ex-ambassador said, referring to the ancient historian who chronicled the fifth-century BC struggle between Athens and Sparta.

Feeley believed the most famous line from Thucydides’s account of that war – “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” – explained Trump’s bully-boy worldview.

“[He’s doing it] because he can – because the asymmetry of American commercial and military power is so incalculable in relationship to Mexico, Central America, Panama, even Brazil, Argentina. They can’t really do much other than suffer the consequences. And so I think, in a sort of mafioso way, he is very adept at reading relative power,” said the former diplomat, who attributed his 2018 resignation to how Trump had “warped and betrayed … the traditional core values of the United States”.

“He’s a velociraptor … He kills anything he perceives as a threat.”

Feeley did not believe Trump would follow through on his threat to forcibly reclaim the Panama canal if his demands over alleged Chinese meddling in the trade route were not met.

“It’s all bluster. He doesn’t have the votes for it. He ran on a ticket of American isolation … He doesn’t want to keep US bases in Germany. He doesn’t want to protect Europe. He doesn’t want to send America’s blood and treasure to fight and die in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. He wants to ‘make America great’.

“His vision of a ‘Great America’ is an America that sits in its sphere of influence, king in its own castle, and exploiting parts of the world for American gain, such as $500bn in Ukrainian rare earths,” said the diplomat who also served in Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico during a 28-year state department career.

Feeley praised Panama’s handling of the “relentlessly transactional” US president’s tactics by making tactical concessions while maintaining control of the canal.

The former ambassador saw a similarly Soprano-like modus operandi in Trump’s engagement with Maduro, whom the US president appears to have warmed to after trying unsuccessfully to overthrow him during his first administration.

“A mobster doesn’t kill every one of his competitors. Frequently, he buys them off. Frequently, he corrupts them. Frequently, he co-opts them,” Feeley said. “And he saw in Maduro a tinpot little mobster in a country that he doesn’t care about – a country that he currently, in this transactional moment, needs to be able to send a bunch of C-17 Globemasters [transport planes] back to and dump out a bunch of Venezuelans in orange jumpsuits and shackles so that he can go back to his Maga base and say: ‘See, Joe Biden let these rapists and drug dealers in. I kicked them out.’”

Feeley thought Trump’s engagement with Maduro was motivated by his mass deportation campaign, not a desire to access Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. “The United States set record oil and gas productions last year … We don’t need the black gold from the Orinoco belt.”

By striking a deal with Maduro allowing him to send deportation flights to Caracas, Feeley argued that Trump had betrayed the opposition politicians widely believed to have beaten the Venezuelan autocrat in last July’s presidential election. “He sold them down the river after they gave him their vote,” the former ambassador said of the Venezuelan Americans who backed Trump in the 2024 US election hoping he would help rid their country of Maduro.

But if Trump was channeling Tony Soprano in his treatment of Latin America, Feeley believed he was also channeling Trump. “Donald Trump’s approach to Latin America is reminiscent of the manner in which he and his father ran their buildings in Queens. They put a big C [for “coloured”] on any application from a family that was Black or Hispanic. And not surprisingly, those people didn’t get apartments. They settled that case with the Department of Justice in the 1970s. But it’s very clear to me that Donald Trump sees Latin America as a place to exploit and to get rent from – but not to allow to live in his building,” he said.

“I am ashamed of my country. I am angry at my country for electing him. And I am hopeful that we have still the guardrails of democracy to get back to, not perfection, but a place where we value strategic alliances to keep us all safe, where we incorporate human rights and concepts of basic decency into our foreign policy, and where we cultivate our soft power.”

Pope Francis had a “restful night” in hospital, the Vatican said on Sunday morning, after announcing on Saturday that he was in critical condition following a prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis linked to pneumonia and a complex lung infection.

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

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni’s one-line statement on Sunday morning did not mention whether Francis was up or eating breakfast.

The pope has been hospitalised for a week with a complex lung infection. The statement on Saturday 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 remained touch and go and he was expected to remain in hospital for at least another week.

They 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.”

The Australian government should repatriate, monitor and investigate any crimes committed by a member of Islamic State who was wounded in the extremist group’s final battle, according to multiple security and international law experts.

Last week, the Guardian revealed an Australian man whose fate was not publicly known was alive and in custody in a prison in north-eastern Syria, run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Mustafa Hajj-Obeid, 41, who is one of a cohort of accused IS members whose Australian citizenship was stripped and then restored in 2022 after a legal challenge, has been reported as missing for the past six years since the military defeat of IS.

The Australian government has acknowledged the Guardian’s reporting on Hajj-Obeid’s detainment and said it was “closely monitoring the security situation in Syria”.

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“The Australian government’s ability to provide consular assistance to those in Syria is severely limited, due to the extremely dangerous security situation and because we do not have an embassy or consulate in Syria,” a government spokesperson said.

Despite this, the former director of two Australian intelligence agencies and founder of the Strategic Analysis Australia thinktank, Michael Shoebridge, said the federal government should seek to negotiate Hajj-Obeid’s return to Australia.

“Australians who are in refugee camps or Syrian prisons remain the responsibility of the Australian government and they should be brought back to Australia,” Shoebridge said. “We have the resources and means to manage them far better than the countries they are in.”

Dr John Coyne, who leads the national security programs at the defence supported Australian Strategic Policy Institute, also said Australia had “an obligation to repatriate its citizens, especially when they have been involved in terrorism related offences”.

“Moreover, he should be held to account for his alleged support of IS,” Coyne said. “While he has served six years of incarceration and apparently denounced IS, the fact remains he has not been tried in an Australian court for his alleged offences.

“Australia operates one of the most effective post sentence terrorism offender monitoring systems. The same cannot be said for Syria.”

When encountered by the Guardian during a rare tour of Panorama prison, Hajj-Obeid admitted to having been an IS member but said he had deeply regretted his actions.

“I’ve been here for six years and it’s been traumatising,” he said, the cell floor behind him lined with thin, grey sleeping mats and what appeared to be plastic children’s cutlery. “Many people died, it’s been overwhelming.”

The Australian Centre for International Justice’s acting executive director, Lara Khider, said: “Australia is obligated to investigate any allegations of international crimes committed by this Australian citizen”.

Shoebridge conceded the political appetite for repatriation to Australia was nonexistent, despite national security advantages. He said this was increasingly so, given the fracturing of social cohesion caused by the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“There is no political will to bring him or other Australians citizens back because we would prefer that distant problems remain distant. But we are not thinking through the consequences,” Shoebridge said.

“Having very troubled people with an increasing sense of grievance against their home country and government by being left in atrocious conditions … is a driver of exactly the kind of extremism that created IS.”

Dr Andrew Zammit, an expert in foreign fighters and a research fellow at Victoria University, said leaving foreign fighters in Syria presented a national security challenge given the region’s uncertain future.

“It’s ultimately Australia’s responsibility to bring the Australians to justice, not the SDF’s responsibility, particularly when the SDF’s future is so unclear following Assad’s overthrow.”

Hajj-Obeid said he left Australia in 2015, claiming he was motivated to travel to Syria “to help”. “It was the situation in Syria, Bashar [al-Assad, the former Syrian president], the killing, the drama,” he said.

The Australian government stripped Hajj-Obeid of his nationality in 2019, claiming he was eligible for Lebanese citizenship, but was forced to reverse the decision after a successful high court challenge by another man detained in Syria for his connections to IS.

The Syrian Democratic Forces were contacted for comment.

A man armed with a pistol and carrying zip ties entered a Pennsylvania hospital’s intensive care unit Saturday and took staff members hostage before he was killed by police in a shootout that also left an officer dead, authorities said.

Three workers at UPMC Memorial hospital, including a doctor, a nurse and a custodian, and two other officers were shot and wounded in the attack, York county district attorney Tim Barker said. A fourth staffer was injured in a fall.

Gunfire erupted after officers went to engage the shooter, whom Barker identified as Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, 49. He said Archangel-Ortiz was holding at gunpoint a female staff member who had her hands bound with zip ties when police opened fire.

“This is a huge loss to our community,” Barker said at a news conference following the shooting. “It is absolutely clear, and beyond any and all doubt, that the officers were justified in taking their action using deadly force.”

Barker added that while the investigation is in its early stages, it appears Archangel-Ortiz had previous contact with the hospital’s ICU earlier in the week for “a medical purpose involving another individual” – and he intentionally targeted the workers there.

No one answered the door on Saturday at an address in York believed to be that of Archangel-Ortiz.

The officer who died was identified as Andrew Duarte of the West York borough police department.

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

Duarte was a law enforcement veteran who joined the department in 2022 after five years with the Denver Police Department, according to his LinkedIn profile. He described receiving a “hero award” in 2021 from Mothers Against Drunk Driving for his work in impaired driving enforcement for the state of Colorado.

“I have a type A personality and like to succeed in all that I do,” his LinkedIn profile said.

Duarte also worked as a patrol officer in Denver, was highly regarded for his work and was close friends with other officers, the department there said in a statement.

The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, said he met on Saturday evening with Duarte’s parents and fellow officers who were wounded.

“Their willingness to run toward danger helped save the lives of others,” Shapiro said on the social platform X. “I’m grateful to them and all law enforcement who answered the call today in York.”

At a makeshift memorial on the front steps of the West York Borough Police Department, Linda Shields dropped off roses Saturday and dabbed tears as she thought of her son, a police officer in Maryland.

“He was so young,” Shields said of Duarte. “It makes no sense at all.”

Shapiro called the attack on police and health care workers “the act of a coward”.

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.

Saturday’s attack was one of more than 35 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan resource which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.

The perennially high numbers of mass shootings in the US have prompted many in the country to call for more substantial gun control, though Congress has been mostly unwilling or unable to enact such measures.

The attack on Saturday was also 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 nonfatal 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. An Oregon hospital security guard was shot to death while protecting a maternity ward from an attacker that year, too.

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. And 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.

• Guardian staff contributed reporting

The cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has called on the “brightest minds” in cybersecurity to help it recover $1.5bn (£1.2bn) stolen by hackers in what is thought to be the biggest single digital theft in history.

The Dubai-based crypto platform said an attacker gained control of a wallet of Ethereum, one of the most popular digital currencies after bitcoin, and transferred the contents to an unknown address.

Bybit immediately sought to reassure its customers that their cryptocurrency holdings were safe, while its chief executive said on social media that Bybit would refund all those affected, even if the hacked currency was not returned.

“Bybit is solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered, all of clients assets are 1 to 1 backed, we can cover the loss,” Ben Zhou, Bybit’s co-founder and chief executive, posted on X.

He added that the company held $20bn in customer assets, and would be able to cover any unrecovered funds itself or through loans from partners.

Bybit, which has more than 60 million users worldwide and is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, said news of the hack had led to a surge in withdrawal requests.

Zhou wrote that the company had received more than 350,000 requests from customers to withdraw their funds, which could lead to delays in processing.

Bybit said the hack occurred when the company was making a routine transfer of Ethereum from an offline “cold” wallet to a “warm” wallet, which covers its daily trading. An attacker exploited security controls and was able to transfer the assets. Zhou said all other wallets on the exchange were unaffected.

The price of Ethereum dropped by nearly 4% following news of the hack on Friday, but has since almost returned to previous levels.

The company has called on “the brightest minds in cybersecurity and crypto analytics” to help it try to recover the hacked funds, and is offering a reward of 10% of the amount recovered, which could total $140m if the entire hacked amount was retrieved.

“Bybit is determined to rise above the setback and fundamentally transform our security infrastructure, improve liquidity, and be a steadfast partner to our friends in the crypto community,” Zhou said in a statement.

The hack is a setback for the crypto industry, which has rebounded in recent months after benefiting from Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and his promises to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” amid looser regulation.

Although the identity of the Bybit attacker is unknown, some reports have suggested that the perpetrators could be North Korean state hackers, such as the Lazarus Group, who have been blamed for previous large-scale heists, including the $615m theft from the blockchain project Ronin Group in 2022.

Calling King Solomon.

The wiry terrier named Scrim who had virtually all of New Orleans looking for him while he spent most of the previous year on the run – enduring a hurricane, a historic snowfall and other perils – landed in the middle of an adoption controversy among those who recently brought him to heel again and then wanted to keep him.

But in a video showing them sharing a sofa with Scrim, those who helmed an effort to bring the dog off the streets to domesticity announced a Solomonic solution that would keep all of them involved in his life – though his owner would be a local animal rescue shelter proprietor who had lost him in November and ultimately reneged on an earlier agreement for a key search volunteer to adopt him.

News of shelter proprietor Michelle Cheramie’s change of heart had ignited a wave of social media hatred, including accusations of selfishness and her viewing the ungovernable pup as little more than “a meal ticket” given the viral media attention his abscondence had generated.

Nonetheless, in their video with Cheramie and Scrim, would-be adopters Tammy Murray and Freba Maulauizada pleaded for a stop to the acrimony that had erupted in what seemed like only the latest tale to prove the intense passions that pets can inspire in Americans – and how nothing good can truly last on the internet.

“Please, please … do not hate,” Murray said in the video, after having described herself as “devastated and really speechless” at her foiled adoption of Scrim in an earlier social media post that prompted the digital pile-on suffered by Cheramie. “It does not get us anywhere, and it feels awful.”

Zeus’ Rescues reportedly first took in Scrim after he was found astray in a south-east Louisiana trailer park on Halloween 2023. He bolted from Cheramie’s home in November, doing so by chewing through a second-floor window screen and leaping 13ft on to a driveway.

Scrim was staying with Cheramie – who owns Zeus’ Rescues – while he recovered from having earlier gone on the lam for six months after fleeing his then-adoptive family’s yard.

He survived summer temperatures above 100F, Hurricane Francine in September and wounds that were suspected to have been inflicted by someone wielding an air pellet gun. He was also missing a chunk of ear as well as several teeth – and had a number of abrasions – when he was caught in October and placed in Cheramie’s home to rest and await readoption.

After he skedaddled from Cheramie’s home in November, the trail went quickly cold after the batteries in Scrim’s GPS collar died within hours. People with nets and tranquilizer darts formed search parties that scoured the city for Scrim on both of his runs, but they came up empty-handed.

He eschewed baits of beef tripe and locally beloved Popeyes fried chicken while making fleeting appearances on doorbell camera videos across New Orleans, earning him international media coverage as well as a large online following within the city and beyond.

Eventually, on 11 February, an apparently hungry Scrim reportedly crawled into a narrow trap designed for cats, was recaptured and returned to Cheramie. She said a veterinary exam and X-rays indicated that Scrim had tapeworms and intestinal parasites but was otherwise in good health.

Murray at that point thought Scrim would be going to the home she shared with her partner, Maulauizada. The animal advocate and furniture designer, who had spent days and nights partaking in efforts to find Scrim, had submitted an application to adopt the dog through Zeus’ Rescues and had gained approval.

However, on 18 February, Cheramie announced on Facebook that she had decided to keep Scrim for herself after he had bonded with her dog, Scooby, and had even been received warmly by her cats.

“I had a change of heart,” Cheramie wrote. “I wanted him to be my dog.”

She acknowledged that Murray and Maulauizada “took it hard”, referred to “a lot of hurt and pain”, and expressed a desire for a time when “we will all heal”.

Murray herself confirmed that was the case in her own social media statement, writing: “No words. Devastated and really speechless. 10+ months of my life dedicated to bringing him home to safety. Even made it official and filled out an application and got approved only to be here … not my dog.”

Many sympathized with Murray. One user wrote Cheramie was acting “selfish … and … isn’t putting Scrim’s needs before her emotions”. Another wrote: “She sees him as a meal ticket.” And still another wrote to Zeus’ Rescues: “I think you have showed you can’t properly take care of him. This should not be your dog.”

The Louisiana news outlet Nola.com reported that someone telephoned Cheramie and threateningly told her: “You better never let me see you out on the street.”

The rancorous tone of the dialogue unwittingly set off by Murray’s and Cheramie’s dueling statements then evidently prompted both to collaborate on defusing it.

Convinced that Scrim was thriving in Cheramie’s home, Murray and Maulauizada then essentially dropped their adoption claim to leave him in the care of the Zeus’ Rescues proprietor, with assurances that they would still have roles in his life. They also made a conciliatory video with Cheramie and Scrim, on her lap, between them.

An intermittently teary-eyed Murray said in the video: “Our focus is on Scrim. I hope everyone can celebrate with us that this dog is just doing wonderful.”

Apologizing for the statement that unleashed the backlash directed at Cheramie, she added: We really want this to end on a good note.”

Cheramie, for her part, denied Scrim’s measure of fame was a factor in her love for him. She said she was grateful Murray and Maualauizada engaged in “honest and open conversations” with her about “a painful situation” – and wanted “what’s best” for Scrim.

“I love the fact that we can have this type of relationship and that we’re here now doing this,” Cheramie remarked.