Donald Trump has said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is likely to visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal to pay for US military aid to defend against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The announcement followed days of tense negotiations between the US and Ukraine in which Zelenskyy alleged the US was pressuring him to sign a deal worth more than $500bn that would force “10 generations” of Ukrainians to pay it back.

Media outlets reported late on Tuesday that the terms of an agreement had been reached.

“I hear that he’s coming on Friday,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Certainly it’s OK with me if he’d like to. And he would like to sign it together with me. And I understand that’s a big deal, very big deal.”

According to the Financial Times, which first reported the deal, the new terms of the deal did not include the onerous demands for a right to $500bn in potential revenue from exploiting the resources, which include rare earth metals and Ukrainian oil and gas resources.

A framework for the deal included joint ownership of a fund to develop Ukraine’s mineral resources with certain caveats for those resources already contributing to the state budget.

It was more favourable to Ukraine than the original deal proposed by Washington, but did not include references to long-term security guarantees that Kyiv wanted to receive in the deal.

Certain details of the deal remained unclear, including the US’s ownership stake in the new fund.

Asked what Ukraine would receive in the deal, Trump said: “$350bn, military equipment and the right to fight on.”

“We’ve pretty much negotiated our deal on earth and various other things,” Trump added. “We’ll be looking … general security for Ukraine later on. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. There are a lot of people that want to do it, and I spoke with Russia about it. They didn’t seem to have a problem with it. So I think they understand they’re not going back. And once we do this, they’re not going back.”

Neither the US nor Ukrainian governments immediately responded to requests for comment from the Guardian on whether the deal had been agreed.

The Kremlin has appeared to reject Donald Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin is open to European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, underscoring Moscow’s reluctance to align with Trump’s efforts to quickly end the war despite a thaw in relations.

Pushing to deliver on a central campaign pledge, Trump asserted on Monday that the Ukraine war “could end within weeks” and claimed that he and Putin supported the presence of European troops on the ground.

“Yeah, he will accept that,” Trump said, speaking to reporters during a meeting at the White House with the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

“I specifically asked him that question. He has no problem with it,” Trump added.

But at a press conference on Tuesday, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, referred to an earlier statement that such a move would be unacceptable to Moscow.

“There is a position on this matter that was expressed by Russian foreign minister [Sergei] Lavrov. I have nothing to add to this and nothing to comment on,” Peskov said.

After talks with the US in Riyadh last week, Lavrov said the presence of European peacekeepers in Ukraine would be “unacceptable”.

The latest divergence weakens Trump’s push for a swift peace deal, despite intensified diplomatic efforts, including last week’s talks and a noticeable thaw in rhetoric between Washington and Moscow.

The Kremlin’s rejection of western forces in Ukraine could pose a major early test for Trump’s team in handling a public rebuke from Moscow, and also exposes Washington’s limited influence over Putin’s willingness to make concessions.

It also raises questions about whether European leaders will move forward with solidifying their plans for a peacekeeping force, as Putin makes it clear that he will not accept the presence of European troops in Ukraine as part of any settlement.

While Ukraine has signalled openness to territorial compromises, potentially ceding some of its land lost since 2014, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is unlikely to sign any agreement without tangible security guarantees from the west, most notably the presence of European troops on the ground.

Speaking in front of Russian officials on Monday, Putin tempered expectations about negotiations reaching a quick conclusion, saying he had only broadly discussed the issue of resolution of the conflict in Ukraine with Trump.

“But it was not discussed in detail,” Putin said. “We only agreed that we would move toward this. And in this case, of course, we are not refusing the participation of European countries [in talks].”

The Kremlin has dismissed the idea of a simple ceasefire, arguing that Ukraine could use the pause to rearm.

Putin has instead insisted on addressing what he calls the “root causes” of the conflict, citing Ukraine’s Nato membership ambitions and what he describes as an anti-Russian government in Kyiv.

The Russian leader remains committed to limiting the size and power of Kyiv’s military, prohibiting foreign weapons on Ukrainian soil, ensuring Ukraine’s permanent neutrality, and maintaining influence over its political future, according to two people familiar with Kremlin thinking.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter freely, said Putin viewed the peace talks as an opportunity to reshape Europe’s security order, with one key condition for normalising relations with the US being the withdrawal of Nato forces from eastern Europe.

Kremlin officials have also emphasised in public that they are unwilling to make territorial concessions, insisting on full control over the four Ukrainian regions Moscow claimed in 2022 – some of which it has yet to fully occupy.

Thomas Graham, a former White House adviser on Russia who recently travelled to Moscow, where he met Russian officials, said: “It’s quite clear from the Russian standpoint that president Putin wants to control Ukraine and all of Ukraine. That he wants control over Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation, to a limited extent its domestic politics.”

Graham added: “That his vision of a future Ukraine that’s beyond Russia’s physical control is along the lines of the relationship that Belarus has with Russia at this point … How you reconcile those two diverging visions, I think, is quite difficult. That will be the sticking point. And I think the Russians are in a position now where they realise that there will be a problem.”

For now, Putin is likely to keep the dialogue going. Trump was accused of handing Putin a symbolic victory when the two had a telephone call earlier this month, breaking the western unity that had sought to isolate Moscow since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The US administration has also echoed some Russian narratives, suggesting that Ukraine bears responsibility for a war that actually began with Russia’s invasion.

“To address pressing issues, Russia and the US must trust each other,” Putin said on Monday, signalling his openness to future talks with Washington.

Meanwhile, Moscow remains committed to its military campaign, believing that battlefield gains will only strengthen its position at the negotiating table.

While earlier this year there were indications that Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine was slowing, the past week has shown a renewed push by Moscow. According to Deep State, a Ukrainian open-source research group, Russian forces have captured nearly 90 sq km of territory – their largest weekly gain since December.

Ukraine at the same time confronting the grim but realistic question of how long it can sustain the fight if Trump decides to cut off US military support.

“With every town and city captured, Russia’s position will only harden,” said the source familiar with Moscow’s thinking. “Moscow has time on its side,” the source added.

The Kremlin has welcomed what it said was a “much more balanced” US stance on Ukraine after the Trump administration pushed through a UN security council resolution on the war that included no criticism of Russia.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the move was evidence of Washington’s willingness to try to find a peaceful settlement. Moscow backed the resolution, which was passed late on Monday, although European countries abstained, in a sign of a deepening rift with Washington.

In a simple three-paragraph motion on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, the US took a neutral position on the war and called for a “swift end” to the conflict and “lasting peace”. It presented a sharply different tone to that of the Biden administration, which had supported Ukraine throughout.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, acknowledged what he said were “constructive changes” in the US position on the conflict. US allies in Europe on the 15-member council – France, Britain, Denmark, Greece and Slovenia – abstained from the vote.

The UK’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, said after the vote that while London shared the “ambition to find a lasting end to this war”, there should be “no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this council refers to this war”.

She added the UK regretted “our proposals making these points clear were not taken onboard, and as such we could not support this resolution”.

It was the first security council resolution to pass during the war. The council had been unable to take any action because Russia holds a veto.

The US proposal did not call for a ceasefire or any concrete action. Asked by a reporter if Washington was seeking “global support for vague peace”, one state department official responded: “Absolutely. That’s what the UN is all about.”

In contrast, and highlighting the US and Russia’s global isolation, the 193-member UN general assembly earlier backed a resolution drafted by Ukraine and the EU condemning Russia.

While security council resolutions are considered binding, general assembly resolutions are not. However, general assembly resolutions carry diplomatic and political gravity as they illuminate the global consensus on issues.

The US, Russia, Israel, Belarus and North Korea all voted against the EU-Ukrainian resolution, underlining an extraordinary shift since the election of Donald Trump, who has largely absolved Vladimir Putin of responsibility for the invasion.

In the vote, 93 countries supported the joint European resolution that named Russia as an aggressor state and called on it to remove its troops from Ukraine.

The US failed earlier on Monday to convince the general assembly to pass the same three-paragraph resolution adopted by the security council, and it was only passed after being amended to include its long-held language supporting Ukraine.

The votes came as Trump met the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the White House on Monday and the two spoke with G7 leaders to discuss peace talks to end the war and the growing gulf between Washington and European capitals over the future of the Nato alliance.

Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, warned this weekend that Europe should seek greater independence from the US and said an “absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA”.

The US president has quickly moved to direct talks with Putin that have sidelined Ukraine and has sought to strongarm Kyiv into a “critical minerals and rare-earths deal” to recoup the cost of US war aid.

“I am in serious discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia concerning the ending of the war, and also major economic development transactions which will take place between the United States and Russia,” Trump said in a statement on Monday. “Talks are proceeding very well!”

French political commentators reacted with cautious optimism after Emmanuel Macron’s meeting with Donald Trump on Monday, which was considered by some as a “last chance” to ensure a balanced and lasting peace in Ukraine.

Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to the US, said the French president had undertaken what he called “mission impossible” but pointed out that Macron had experience of dealing with the volatile US leader.

“In a way this trip was a last chance … the Europeans are very worried and he went there to avoid the worst. He is the only one who can do this, firstly the Germans had an elections and the British have left Europe,” Araud told BFMTV. “The worry of Europeans is that Trump will deliver Ukraine hands and feet tied to Russia.”

He added: “I was ambassador during the first Donald Trump administration and I can attest that he [Macron] knew how to maintain a good working relation.”

Asked if he thought Macron’s mission had succeeded, Araud said: “It was mission impossible and he did his best. Did he succeed? We will see in the coming days.”

In an editorial FranceInfo wrote: “Emmanuel Macron has already scored a point by being the first European head of state to visit Donald Trump since his election. He got his foot in the door.

“He still had to make sure he didn’t come back empty handed and, on the face of it, that’s the case. But we must remain cautious, as we know how unpredictable the occupant of the White House is and that what is agreed today, or rather what appears to be agreed … will not necessarily be agreed tomorrow. Each of the two leaders may have chosen what suited them.”

Claude Blanchemaison, a former French ambassador to Moscow, said Macron had “done well” to go to Washington on Monday and that the French president had been “well prepared” for the difficult meeting.

“He had consulted all the other Europeans at the very start of the week plus a few non-Europeans, he arrived armed with a certain number of arms and also it was the day the EU was able to agree a new set of sanctions against Russia,” Blanchemaison told FranceInfo.

The economic newspaper, Les Echos, said Macron was “optimistic” about the visit.

“Emmanuel Macron was playing a complex game in Washington … preserving and relaunching the personal relationship he formed with the American president during their first term in office. And at the same time defending Ukraine and reinvigorating a transatlantic alliance weakened by an administration in a hurry to disengage from the old continent,” it wrote.

“The good understanding displayed between the two leaders in reality masks deep-seated differences that were clearly visible on the same day at the United Nations,” it added.

Le Point magazine wrote: “There were jokes and smiles; ‘Emmanuel’ and ‘dear Donald’; nods and compliments.

“‘Emmanuel is a very special person’, according to Donald Trump, and he speaks ‘a very beautiful language’ … under the gilded East Room of the White House, the two leaders may repeat that they are on the same wavelength, but the differences are obvious.”

The UK government has announced it will cease attending events hosted by the Rwandan government and suspend aid to the east African nation over advances by Kigali-backed rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Britain has also threatened sanctions against Rwanda, which is supporting the M23 rebel group in the DRC.

The group has occupied the cities of Goma and Bukavu in recent weeks as it fights for control of the DRC’s mineral-rich eastern region with UN experts claiming that the rebels are also supported by about 4,000 Rwandan troops.

On Tuesday, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said it would limit engagement with the government in Kigali over its links to the rebel offensive.

“The UK calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access, respect for international humanitarian law, meaningful engagement with African-led peace processes, and the withdrawal of all Rwanda Defence Forces from Congolese territory,” the government department said.

The British government will “cease high-level attendance at events hosted by the government of Rwanda” and will also pause financial aid to all but the “poorest and most vulnerable” in Rwanda, as well as limit trade promotion activities.

Export licences for the Rwanda Defence Force are under review, and training for its soldiers have been suspended, the FCDO said.

The UK also warned it may “coordinate with partners on potential new sanctions designations”.

The statement added: “Rwanda may have security concerns but it is unacceptable to resolve these militarily. There can only be a political solution to this conflict. We encourage DRC to engage with M23 as part of an inclusive dialogue.

“We will continue to keep our policy under review.”

Last week, the government summoned Rwanda’s top diplomat in the UK, high commissioner Johnston Busingye, to raise concerns about the conflict.

The eastern DRC has been the site of repeated outbreaks of hostilities since the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in neighbouring Rwanda, when many Hutus fled into the area around Goma and Bukavu.

Rwanda has accused the Congolese government of enlisting some of those Hutus responsible for genocide into its armed forces, which the government denies.

M23 claims it is fighting to protect Tutsis in the eastern DRC from discrimination, with some analysts suggesting the group is intent on seizing power in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.

The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, has “taken from the mouths of the hungriest people in the world” by cutting aid spending, campaigners have warned.

The announcement that UK Official Development Assistance would be cut to 0.3% of gross national income (GNI) in order to fund an increase in defence spending was called cruel and shameful. Experts working in the aid sector said they feared a disproportionate impact on women and girls, and on sexual and reproductive rights globally.

The UK announcement comes weeks after a shock decision by the Trump administration in the US to freeze international aid and dismantle USAid, its flagship aid organisation.

David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, said: “The UK government’s decision to cut aid by £6bn in order to fund defence spending is a blow to Britain’s proud reputation as a global humanitarian and development leader. Today, an unprecedented 300 million people are in humanitarian need around the world. The global consequences of this decision will be far reaching and devastating for people who need more help not less.”

Pete Baker, policy fellow and deputy director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development (CGD), said the US move had already prompted a severe health financing crisis in many low-income countries “with clinics shutting and health services disrupted”.

He added: “Rather than rising to this challenge and offering emergency support, the UK is delivering another blow to health systems around the world. This shameful decision will leave the world less safe from infectious diseases and further hinder global efforts to combat health crises.”

Elizabeth Sully, principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, said the UK reduction would be “devastating” for family planning programmes around the world.

Its data shows the US funding freeze has already resulted in more than 4 million women and girls being denied contraceptive care “which will likely result in many unintended pregnancies and preventable maternal deaths”, she said.

Further cuts from the Netherlands and UK, who are the two largest funders of family planning aid after the US “will be almost impossible to recuperate”, she said. “This loss of funding means that the rights, dignity and lives of people around the world, particularly women and girls, are even more at risk.”

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said: “Starmer’s announcement today is politics at its most base. To appease Trump, he will cut aid to its lowest level in a generation, forcing the poorest to pay so he can push taxpayer money into the coffers of arms corporations.

“There are numerous policies the government could take to avoid this – from a wealth tax on the super-rich to scrapping white elephants like Trident. Instead, Starmer has taken it from the mouths of the hungriest people in the world. It is a day of shame for Britain.”

The prime minister described the decision to cut development aid as “very difficult and painful”. However, Ian Mitchell, senior policy fellow at the CGD, said that “cutting funding for the world’s poorest people is the easiest – and cruellest – choice he could make”. He called for “at the very least” a guarantee that the reduced aid budget would be spent overseas and “not on admin costs or refugee hotels in the UK”.

The UN has a target for countries to spend 0.7% of their GNI on overseas development assistance, which was achieved by the UK in 2013 for the first time, and made a statutory duty in 2015. However, in 2021 Boris Johnson’s government reduced spending to 0.5%, and in recent years more than a quarter of that has been spent in the UK on hosting refugees.

In its 2024 autumn budget, Labour had promised to restore spending to 0.7% “as soon as fiscal circumstances allow”.

The UK is the second largest funder of official development assistance to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), according to analysis by Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW), an international development organisation.

The US has historically been the main supporter of those programmes, meaning they have been hit hard by the USAid freeze. DSW said the previous cut in UK aid spending had already resulted in “significant cuts” to SRHR programmes.

Lisa Goerlitz, head of DSW’s Brussels’ office, said: “Seeing a further decrease would have dramatic consequences on women and girls in low- and middle-income countries but also for societies and sustainable development as a whole because access to SRHR is a pre-condition for most development objectives related to health, education and economic growth.”

Research on the previous round of UK cuts by Care International UK found that programmes focusing on women and girls in crisis had been disproportionately affected.

Claudia Craig, senior advocacy adviser at the charity, said it was vital that the new cuts were implemented with “transparency, clear communication and timelines”.

“The women leading their communities and defending their rights deserve not to be disproportionately impacted by the decisions of men, made in London,” she said.

Donald Trump has stepped in to defend Elon Musk from a mounting backlash in his own administration after some cabinet members told US federal workers to ignore the billionaire entrepreneur’s demand that they write an email justifying their work.

The US president was driven to intervene amid the first signs of internal dissension over the disruptive impact of Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which Trump has authorised to seek mass firings in the federal workforce and reduce supposed waste and corruption.

Newly confirmed cabinet officials, including the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director, told underlings not to comply with a weekend order from Musk for all staff to send an email detailing their past week’s work by midnight on Monday or face termination.

As other government departments added to the pushback, the office of personnel management (OPM) issued a statement advising employees to respond but removed the sacking threat, while giving agency heads the authority to excuse staff from Musk’s demand.

“Agency heads may exclude personnel from this expectation at their discretion and should inform OPM of the categories of the employees excluded and reasons for exclusion,” the OPM wrote in a statement. “It is agency leadership’s decision as to what actions are taken.”

Cabinet officials will face Musk on Wednesday as the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that the tech billionaire will join Trump’s first cabinet meeting despite not being a member of the cabinet.

He will be “talking about all of Doge’s efforts and how all of the cabinet secretaries are identifying waste, fraud and abuse at their respective agencies”.

With his wealthiest and most high-profile lieutenant threatened with loss of face and authority, Trump used a meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron at the White House on Monday to deliver a vote of confidence.

“What he’s doing is saying: ‘Are you actually working?’ Trump said. “And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.

“I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government.”

On Tuesday Trump added further to the confusion regarding Musk’s demand for an emailed response while talking to reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s somewhat voluntary,” he said, but added that “if you don’t answer, I guess you get fired”.

Musk’s original post at the weekend had come after Trump had praised Doge’s work but urged him to “get more aggressive”.

Intelligence-related bodies, including the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency, argued that employees could risk divulging classified information if they complied.

There was also resistance from other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon – both run by key Trump loyalists Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth respectively, and which told employees not to respond. The Department of Justice told its staff that they need not do so “due to the sensitive and confidential nature of the department’s work”.

The Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) – headed by one of Trump’s most contentious nominees, Robert F Kennedy Jr – told workers to be vague if they wished to answer.

“Assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly,” staff were told in an email.

A more audacious sign of dissent was on display at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud), where television monitors played what appeared to be AI-generated false images of Trump sucking Musk’s toes in a loop, with “long live the real king” written over the footage, according to the Washington Post, citing people working at the department.

The episode crystallised an air of rebellion at many government agencies amid a mounting spate of court actions challenging the legality of Doge’s actions.

“There’s a full revolt going on right now,” Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a centre-right thinktank, told the Washington Post. “Doge’s stated objective was to reorganize the agencies to meet their goals, but Cabinet heads want to run their own agencies, and they are objecting to the across-the-board cuts coming from Musk’s team.”

Despite the backlash, Musk took Trump’s comments as a signal to again threaten workers with the sack.

“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” he posted on his own social media platform, Twitter/X, on Monday.

A later post mocked the resistance to his original email. “Absurd that a 5 min email generates this level of concern!” he wrote. “Something is deeply wrong.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union representing about 800,000 of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce, said Musk’s original email was a cynical ploy aimed at intimidating workers into resigning.

“If we took the time to comment on each and every ridiculous thing that Elon Musk tweets out, we’d never get any work done,” Brittany Holder, a union spokesperson said. “AFGE will challenge any unlawful discipline, termination or retaliation against our members and federal employees across the country.”

The White House said it will take control over which news organizations and reporters are allowed into the presidential press pool covering Donald Trump.

“The White House press team in this administration will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing on Tuesday.

The announcement came a day after the Trump administration won a temporary ruling allowing it to bar the Associated Press (AP) in retaliation for the outlet’s decision to resist Trump’s demand to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), an independent association made up of members of the media, traditionally coordinates rotating pool coverage of more than a dozen journalists allowed access to the president in smaller settings.

Leavitt asserted that the WHCA “should no longer have a monopoly” of press access at the White House and that “legacy media outlets who have been here for years will still participate in the pool, but new voices are going to be welcomed in as well”.

After Trump signed an executive order last month directing the US interior department to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name, the AP said it would continue to use the gulf’s long-established name in stories while also acknowledging Trump’s efforts to change it.

In response, the White House banned AP journalists from accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One, accusing the news agency of “irresponsible and dishonest reporting”.

The US district judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, denied a request by the AP on Monday to restore its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House.

The news agency had argued that the decision to block its reporters violates the US constitution’s first amendment protections against government abridgment of speech by trying to dictate the language they use in reporting the news.

Leavitt celebrated the judge’s ruling and said the White House wants “more outlets and new outlets to cover the press pool”. “It’s beyond time the White House press pool reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025,” she added.

In a statement, the WHCA said the decision “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States”.

“It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” the organization’s president, Eugene Daniels, said.

“For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.”

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it “a drastic change in how the public obtains information about its government.

“The White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency,” the group’s president, Bruce Brown, said in a statement.

Donald Trump on Tuesday opened yet another front in his assault on global trade norms, ordering a new investigation into possible tariffs on copper imports to rebuild US production of a metal critical to electric vehicles, military hardware, semiconductors and a wide range of consumer goods.

Trump, looking to thwart what his advisers see as a move by China to dominate the global copper market, signed an order directing commerce secretary Howard Lutnick to start a new national security investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the same law that Trump used in his first term to impose 25% global tariffs on steel and aluminum.

A White House official said any potential tariff rate would be determined by the investigation, adding that Trump preferred tariffs over quotas.

The White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said the investigation would be completed quickly, “in Trump time”.

Navarro claimed China was using state subsidies and economic influence to gain control over global copper production, in much the same way it now dominates steel and aluminum production.

That said, the countries set to be most affected by any new US copper tariffs would be Chile, Canada and Mexico, which were the top suppliers of refined copper and copper articles in 2024, according to US Census Bureau data.

“Like our steel and aluminum industries, our great American copper industry has been decimated by global actors attacking our domestic production,” Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, said in a statement. “To build back our copper industry, I will investigate the imposition of possible tariffs.“

Lutnick said US industries and national defense depended on copper and “it should be made in America, no exemptions, no exceptions”.

“It’s time for copper to come home,” Lutnick added.

The White House official said the investigation would look at imports of raw mined copper, copper concentrates, copper alloy, scrap copper and derivative products made from the metal. The official declined to identify any specific derivatives, saying that would prejudge the investigation.

The official added that the Department of Energy recognized copper as a critical material in the medium term due to increased demand for solar energy technologies and global electrification, noting that it was the second most widely used material in US weapons platforms.

The official said based on current demand for electric vehicles and power-hungry artificial intelligence applications, there will be a US copper shortage in the future, and the US cannot develop adequate copper smelting and refining capacity unless there is a reasonable certainty of long-lasting trade protection for the sector.

The move is the latest effort by Trump to build a tariff wall around the nation’s economy as part of his drive to rebuild a long-declining US manufacturing base and redraw decades of trade relationships.

Trump said on Monday that separate 25% general tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada were “on schedule” ahead of a 4 March implementation deadline despite efforts by both to avoid them by securing their US borders and halting the flow of fentanyl, the deadly opioid.

More than 20 staffers of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) stepped down on Tuesday, saying in a joint letter they refused to use their expertise to “dismantle critical public services”.

The mass resignations are the latest rebuke to the billionaire entrepreneur’s hard-handed approach to slashing jobs and resources from federal government agencies. Musk had demanded federal workers email his office with five things they did the week prior to justify their positions.

Donald Trump defended Musk from a mounting backlash in his own administration after some cabinet members – including the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director – told their employees to ignore the demand and refrain from emailing a response.

Here are the biggest stories in US politics on Tuesday, 25 February.

A new search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been launched more than a decade after the plane went missing in one of aviation’s greatest enduring mysteries.

Maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity has resumed the hunt for the missing plane, Malaysian transport minister Anthony Loke said on Tuesday.

Loke told reporters the contract details between Malaysia and the firm were still being finalised but welcomed “the proactiveness of Ocean Infinity to deploy their ships” to begin the search for the plane, which went missing in March 2014.

Details about how long the search would last had not been negotiated yet, he said. He also did not provide details about when exactly the British firm had restarted its hunt.

MH370’s disappeared from radar shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur airport in March 2014. It was bound for Beijing, with 12 crew and 227 passengers on board. The plane has never been found, and the reason for its disappearance is unknown.

“We’re very relieved and pleased that the search is resuming once again after such a long hiatus,” Malaysian Grace Nathan, 36, who lost her mother on the doomed jet, told AFP.

Jaquita Gonzales, 62, wife of MH370 flight supervisor Patrick Gomes, said she hoped the resumption of the search would bring her family much-needed closure.

“We just want to know where it is and what happened,” she said. “Memories come back like yesterday, it’s fresh in our heads.”

Marine tracking website Marinetraffic.com showed that the Ocean Infinity vessel was in the south Indian ocean as of 23 February.

Malaysia agreed to resume the search in December 2024, with Ocean Infinity conducting the search on a “no-find-no-fee” basis. Loke said the government would sign a contract for 18 months, in return for which Ocean Infinity would receive $70m if the wreckage was located and verified. The search would cover 15,000 sq km, Loke said.

On 8 March 2024, on the 10-year anniversary of the disappearance, Australia offered the Malaysian government support for a renewed search. Eight Australians were on board the flight. But on Tuesday a spokesperson for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said that Australian authorities were not involved in the renewed search.

Flight MH370, a B777-200 aircraft, departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time on 8 March 2-14, bound for Beijing. The plane was last seen on military radar at 2.14am, heading west over the strait of Malacca. Half an hour later, the airline announced it had lost contact with the plane, which was due to land at its destination about 6.30am.

The families of those on board are still waiting for answers about what happened to their loved ones. Some travelled to Madagascar in 2016 to comb the beaches there for debris: pieces of the plane had been found off the Tanzanian and Mozambican coasts.

In January 2017, after nearly three years of searching 120,000 sq km in the southern Indian Ocean, Australian authorities ended the underwater hunt for the wreckage. On 3 October that year, Australian investigators delivered their final report on the disappearance, saying the inability to bring closure for victims’ families was a “great tragedy” and “almost inconceivable” in the modern age.

Among the questions that remain is why the plane made a seemingly controlled turn off course towards the Indian ocean and, critically, why two pieces of key communication and tracking equipment on the plane went silent.

Theories of what happened have ranged from a pilot “gone rogue” to sabotage and conspiracies that the flight was shot down or “disappeared” by a nefarious government agency and landed at a dark site, either because of sensitive cargo or a politically significant passenger.

Data recovered from a home-built flight simulator owned by the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, showed that someone had plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean.

Ocean Infinity, based in Britain and the United States, carried out an unsuccessful hunt in 2018.

With Agence France-Presse

A new search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been launched more than a decade after the plane went missing in one of aviation’s greatest enduring mysteries.

Maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity has resumed the hunt for the missing plane, Malaysian transport minister Anthony Loke said on Tuesday.

Loke told reporters the contract details between Malaysia and the firm were still being finalised but welcomed “the proactiveness of Ocean Infinity to deploy their ships” to begin the search for the plane, which went missing in March 2014.

Details about how long the search would last had not been negotiated yet, he said. He also did not provide details about when exactly the British firm had restarted its hunt.

MH370’s disappeared from radar shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur airport in March 2014. It was bound for Beijing, with 12 crew and 227 passengers on board. The plane has never been found, and the reason for its disappearance is unknown.

“We’re very relieved and pleased that the search is resuming once again after such a long hiatus,” Malaysian Grace Nathan, 36, who lost her mother on the doomed jet, told AFP.

Jaquita Gonzales, 62, wife of MH370 flight supervisor Patrick Gomes, said she hoped the resumption of the search would bring her family much-needed closure.

“We just want to know where it is and what happened,” she said. “Memories come back like yesterday, it’s fresh in our heads.”

Marine tracking website Marinetraffic.com showed that the Ocean Infinity vessel was in the south Indian ocean as of 23 February.

Malaysia agreed to resume the search in December 2024, with Ocean Infinity conducting the search on a “no-find-no-fee” basis. Loke said the government would sign a contract for 18 months, in return for which Ocean Infinity would receive $70m if the wreckage was located and verified. The search would cover 15,000 sq km, Loke said.

On 8 March 2024, on the 10-year anniversary of the disappearance, Australia offered the Malaysian government support for a renewed search. Eight Australians were on board the flight. But on Tuesday a spokesperson for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said that Australian authorities were not involved in the renewed search.

Flight MH370, a B777-200 aircraft, departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time on 8 March 2-14, bound for Beijing. The plane was last seen on military radar at 2.14am, heading west over the strait of Malacca. Half an hour later, the airline announced it had lost contact with the plane, which was due to land at its destination about 6.30am.

The families of those on board are still waiting for answers about what happened to their loved ones. Some travelled to Madagascar in 2016 to comb the beaches there for debris: pieces of the plane had been found off the Tanzanian and Mozambican coasts.

In January 2017, after nearly three years of searching 120,000 sq km in the southern Indian Ocean, Australian authorities ended the underwater hunt for the wreckage. On 3 October that year, Australian investigators delivered their final report on the disappearance, saying the inability to bring closure for victims’ families was a “great tragedy” and “almost inconceivable” in the modern age.

Among the questions that remain is why the plane made a seemingly controlled turn off course towards the Indian ocean and, critically, why two pieces of key communication and tracking equipment on the plane went silent.

Theories of what happened have ranged from a pilot “gone rogue” to sabotage and conspiracies that the flight was shot down or “disappeared” by a nefarious government agency and landed at a dark site, either because of sensitive cargo or a politically significant passenger.

Data recovered from a home-built flight simulator owned by the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, showed that someone had plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean.

Ocean Infinity, based in Britain and the United States, carried out an unsuccessful hunt in 2018.

With Agence France-Presse

The Australian government has revealed that a further 220 Indonesian children may have been wrongly detained as adult people smugglers, doubling the number initially thought.

Late in 2023 the federal court ordered $27.5m in compensation for an estimated 220 Indonesian children who were wrongly detained as adult people smugglers between 2010 and 2012.

The children were wrongly deemed to be adults by federal police, who relied on a wildly inaccurate technique using interpretations of wrist X-rays to determine age.

In fact the children were as young as 12, and should have been sent home to Indonesia in line with Australian government policy. They were instead sent to immigration detention and Australian jails, including, in many cases, maximum-security adult jails, where they languished for years until the error was discovered.

A Guardian Australia investigation in 2022 revealed how the AFP relied on the wrist X-ray technique despite being aware of information casting serious doubt on its reliability and accuracy. The Guardian also revealed how dates of birth were altered on sworn legal documents to pave the way for the children to be prosecuted as adults.

The federal court is working through a process to identify the Indonesians involved and compensate them using the $27.5m won in the class action.

That process is being led by the administrator Mark Barrow, a lawyer with Ken Cush and Associates, the firm that represented the wrongly detained Indonesians.

The court heard on Wednesday that the commonwealth had shared new records which suggested that the number of those owed compensation has risen to a possible cohort of 440 people.

That is double the number initially thought.

Anthony Strahan KC, acting for the administrator, said that had caused a significant blowout in the administrator’s costs as he attempts to track down the Indonesians.

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“There was an expectation that it may amount to more than [220 people],” he said. “No one was expecting it to be very substantially more than that.

“In fact as it’s turned out … records recently disclosed by the respondent have identified a possible cohort of universal group members in the amount of approximately 440 people.

“So the number of potential people has doubled.”

In class action cases of this kind, additional costs incurred by the administrator need to be approved by the court, a measure designed to stop legal costs unreasonably chewing through compensation amounts.

But Strahan said the administrator could never have anticipated that the federal government would find an extra 220 Indonesians who needed to be found and potentially compensated.

“The total cohort is nearly twice as big as was anticipated and that has some fixed costs associated with it,” he told the court.

The counsel for the commonwealth, Jonathan Kirkwood SC, took issue with any suggestion that the federal government might be to blame for the late doubling of the cohort of Indonesians.

“There’s a lot of nuance,” he said. “And obviously there’s a lot of things that have happened in the meantime, including that the Indonesian lawyer, whose name I will not mispronounce, has provided additional information.”

The hearing continues before Justice Christopher Horan on Wednesday.

The imprisonment of the Indonesians was caused, in part, by the use of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, introduced by the Howard government, which compelled courts to hand out five-year prison terms for people smuggling.

Many of the children were duped into crewing the people-smuggling boats. They were from impoverished areas of Indonesia and were often given vague offers of work on boats, transporting cargo or livestock, only to find themselves transporting people to unknown locations.

Labor has had a longstanding position of opposition to mandatory sentencing laws because of the risk they would “lead to unjust outcomes” and are “often discriminatory in practice”.

That changed this month when it decided, contrary to its 2023 policy platform, to back mandatory sentencing for hate speech, part of its attempt to respond to antisemitism.

Documents obtained by Guardian Australia in the class action case show the Indonesian children repeatedly told immigration and police that they were children. The dates of birth they gave were altered – keeping the month and day but changing the year – to ensure their ages matched what had been suggested by the flawed wrist X-ray assessments.

Separately to the class action, half a dozen of the children have had their criminal convictions in the Western Australian courts quashed, with the court finding “a substantial miscarriage of justice has occurred”.

More than 2,000 dolphins gathered off the California coast to form a “superpod”, gliding and breaching the clear, aquamarine waters off Monterey Bay.

The superpod included Northern right whale dolphins and Pacific white-sided dolphins, as well as light grey baby calves. Evan Brodsky, a captain and videographer with the private boat tour company Monterey Bay Whale Watch, captured a video of the dolphins, and his company shared it on Facebook, calling the spectacle “mind-blowing”.

Brodsky was out with the private whale-watching tour company’s survey team, conducting research in the area. The company had also recently spotted thousands of Risso’s dolphins in the same region.

“Super pods like this are rare, especially of Northern right whale dolphins,” Monterey Bay Whale Watch wrote on Facebook, noting that winter is the best time to watch for dolphins in this area. Northern right whale dolphins typically travel in smaller clusters of 100 or 200, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

They are the only species of dolphin in the north Pacific region that lack dorsal fins, and are known to be acrobatic swimmers who can leap more than 20ft above the water.

“They’re all smooth,” Brodsky told the Associated Press. “When they jump, they look like flying eyebrows.”

He and his crew became entranced by the sight, he said: “We were so excited, it was hard to hold in our emotions. We had the biggest grins from ear to ear.”

Dolphins might cluster to fend off predators, or feed together. “In pods they play, babysit, alert each other to danger like predators, practice courtship, and hunt together,” according to the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

Monterey Bay, south of San Francisco, is a destination for marine wildlife enthusiasts. The bay is part of a national marine sanctuary stretching from Marin county in the north to Cambria in the south.

Two politicians for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) who were sidelined over remarks they made relating to the Nazis have been welcomed back into its parliamentary group after the party’s historic performance in the German general election.

Maximilian Krah resigned from the AfD’s federal executive board before the European elections last June after telling an Italian newspaper that not all members of Adolf Hitler’s SS had been “automatically criminals”.

Matthias Helferich was elected to the German parliament in 2021 but resigned his seat after prompting outrage by his declaration in a leaked internet chat that he was “the friendly face of the Nazis”. He insisted he had been simply “parodying” online leftwingers.

Krah’s resignation followed pressure by other far-right parties, including Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, Italy’s Lega and the Danish People’s party.

The controversy sparked by his remarks – as well as by the arrest of one of his advisers on suspicion of spying for China – led to him being suspended from the European election campaign by the AfD leadership.

It also prompted the AfD’s expulsion from the now defunct Identity and Democracy group in the European parliament, with Le Pen saying it was necessary to create “a cordon sanitaire” between the AfD and other parties.

The AfD, working with far-right parties from seven other EU countries, founded a new parliamentary group, Europe of Sovereign Nations, in the European parliament.

At the time Krah said on X: “I recognise that truthful and nuanced statements made by me are being misused as a pretext to damage our party.”

Krah and Helferich are now part of the AfD’s newly elected parliamentary group after its inaugural meeting on Tuesday at which it was decided not to exclude the two MPs any longer.

The decision was announced on the sidelines of the gathering in the Bundestag. The new group also includes allies of Björn Höcke, the figurehead of the party’s most extreme flank, known as Der Flügel. The former history teacher has been convicted of using the banned Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland” (Everything for Germany) in campaign speeches.

After their admission, Krah and Helferich can only be removed from the group with a two-thirds majority.

Krah, who is popular with young male voters and won the most votes in his constituency in Saxony, is now poised to sit in parliament alongside co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla.

The two were jubilant after the anti-Islam, anti-immigration AfD more than doubled its voter support to more than 20% on Sunday, making it the second largest group in the German parliament, with 152 seats.

The reinstatement of Krah and Helferich led to renewed calls for an attempt to ban the AfD, which was last debated in parliament at the end of January.

Carmen Wegge, of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), said she would continue the cross-party campaign that has the support of more than 100 MPs, even though it is not thought to have much chance of succeeding.

“The AfD poses the greatest danger to our democracy,” she told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper.

“This is clearly shown by the fact that the AfD parliamentary group has now reinstated Mr Helferich (and admitted Krah), having considered him too far-right in their previous legislative state. They are consciously deciding to put their most openly rightwing extremist faces in the front row,” she added.

Helferich said he welcomed his inclusion in the parliamentary group and would now do “patriotic-parliamentary work” for the AfD in the Bundestag. As a member of the parliamentary cultural committee, he said he hoped to be able to “answer the left-wing cultural struggle with right-wing cultural policy”.

Two politicians for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) who were sidelined over remarks they made relating to the Nazis have been welcomed back into its parliamentary group after the party’s historic performance in the German general election.

Maximilian Krah resigned from the AfD’s federal executive board before the European elections last June after telling an Italian newspaper that not all members of Adolf Hitler’s SS had been “automatically criminals”.

Matthias Helferich was elected to the German parliament in 2021 but resigned his seat after prompting outrage by his declaration in a leaked internet chat that he was “the friendly face of the Nazis”. He insisted he had been simply “parodying” online leftwingers.

Krah’s resignation followed pressure by other far-right parties, including Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, Italy’s Lega and the Danish People’s party.

The controversy sparked by his remarks – as well as by the arrest of one of his advisers on suspicion of spying for China – led to him being suspended from the European election campaign by the AfD leadership.

It also prompted the AfD’s expulsion from the now defunct Identity and Democracy group in the European parliament, with Le Pen saying it was necessary to create “a cordon sanitaire” between the AfD and other parties.

The AfD, working with far-right parties from seven other EU countries, founded a new parliamentary group, Europe of Sovereign Nations, in the European parliament.

At the time Krah said on X: “I recognise that truthful and nuanced statements made by me are being misused as a pretext to damage our party.”

Krah and Helferich are now part of the AfD’s newly elected parliamentary group after its inaugural meeting on Tuesday at which it was decided not to exclude the two MPs any longer.

The decision was announced on the sidelines of the gathering in the Bundestag. The new group also includes allies of Björn Höcke, the figurehead of the party’s most extreme flank, known as Der Flügel. The former history teacher has been convicted of using the banned Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland” (Everything for Germany) in campaign speeches.

After their admission, Krah and Helferich can only be removed from the group with a two-thirds majority.

Krah, who is popular with young male voters and won the most votes in his constituency in Saxony, is now poised to sit in parliament alongside co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla.

The two were jubilant after the anti-Islam, anti-immigration AfD more than doubled its voter support to more than 20% on Sunday, making it the second largest group in the German parliament, with 152 seats.

The reinstatement of Krah and Helferich led to renewed calls for an attempt to ban the AfD, which was last debated in parliament at the end of January.

Carmen Wegge, of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), said she would continue the cross-party campaign that has the support of more than 100 MPs, even though it is not thought to have much chance of succeeding.

“The AfD poses the greatest danger to our democracy,” she told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper.

“This is clearly shown by the fact that the AfD parliamentary group has now reinstated Mr Helferich (and admitted Krah), having considered him too far-right in their previous legislative state. They are consciously deciding to put their most openly rightwing extremist faces in the front row,” she added.

Helferich said he welcomed his inclusion in the parliamentary group and would now do “patriotic-parliamentary work” for the AfD in the Bundestag. As a member of the parliamentary cultural committee, he said he hoped to be able to “answer the left-wing cultural struggle with right-wing cultural policy”.

Wes Streeting will axe thousands of jobs at NHS England after his ousting of its chair and chief executive in what health service staff fear is a power grab.

The health secretary’s plan follows Amanda Pritchard’s shock announcement on Monday that she was stepping down as the organisation’s chief executive next month.

She will be replaced, for the foreseeable future, by Sir Jim Mackey, the widely admired chief executive of the NHS trust that runs the acute hospitals in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Streeting plans to gain and assert much more control over NHS England as part of his mission to usher in “a new era for the NHS” and revive the public service that voters care most about.

This will include shrinking the size of the body in operational charge of the health service through deep cuts to its 13,000-strong workforce, and it doing much less in the future.

He plans to end the situation whereby separate teams of officials at NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) cover the same area of health policy, such as primary care, which he regards as an unnecessary “duplication” of roles. While those teams often agree on changes needed, disagreements between them have also held up key policy initiatives.

However, NHSE personnel will bear the brunt of job losses, which will be “significant” in scale, it is understood. Some teams will be merged, including the two organisations’ respective communications teams, amid much closer joint working.

A Whitehall source said: “In future, NHS England will still play a crucial role but it will have a smaller and leaner role. It will be a smaller role than what it’s currently doing, which is a lot, but which involves a lot of duplication.

“Historically there have been too many disagreements [between the overlapping teams of officials] and duplication of tasks and roles and responsibilities.”

In an example of the tension that can occur, Streeting’s desire to publish a new plan to tackle the long waits patients can face for urgent and emergency care, such as A&E treatment and getting an ambulance, has been delayed after NHS England raised doubts about whether such a plan was needed and what genuinely new initiatives could be included, one senior official said.

Streeting has already removed Richard Meddings, NHS England’s Conservative-appointed chair. He has chosen Dr Penny Dash – a doctor who shares his zeal to radically reform the NHS – to replace Meddings, in a move NHS insiders and health policy experts say will strengthen Streeting’s grip.

Meddings was “disappointed” and “dismayed” when the minister told him he wanted him to quit a year before the end of his four-year tenure, he told the Sunday Times recently.

Dash is the chair of the north-west London integrated care board – a regional grouping of NHS trusts and local councils. She is a “no-nonsense character who is happy to provide robust challenge to senior people in the NHS about the progress they are, or aren’t, making”, according to someone who has worked closely with her.

One former DHSC special adviser said Pritchard’s resignation will give Streeting more power and “is another sign of power moving back to DHSC and ministers. With Meddings and Pritchard now gone, ministers are fully in control.” The layoffs will further weaken NHS England, they added.

But Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King’s Fund thinktank, issued a veiled warning to Streeting not to impinge too much on the freedom that NHS England was given as a result of then health secretary Andrew Lansley’s controversial shake-up of the service in 2012.

“It is crucial that the two organisations continue to work well together but equally important that NHS leaders retain operational and clinical independence for the day-to-day running of the service,” she said.

Pritchard explained her “hugely difficult decision for me to stand down” saying it was her belief that the NHS needed new leadership to implement the government’s forthcoming 10-year health plan.

Streeting has denied he had asked Pritchard to step down. Speaking at an event at Apple’s headquarters in London, he said: “No, I have so much respect and time for Amanda Pritchard. I’ve loved working with Amanda Pritchard for nearly eight months now, since I became health and social care secretary. She’s given me wise counsel, she’s led the NHS from the front … over the last more than half a decade now.”

However, NHS sources said that in recent meetings Streeting had encouraged her to consider her future, given the major reforms he was planning, and that as a result she concluded that she should go. In an unusual move, two Commons select committees last month criticised her alleged lack of drive and dynamism.

A well-placed source said that the office of Christopher Wormald, the cabinet secretary – who until recently was the DHSC’s permanent secretary – had advised Streeting to “do it nicely” when announcing Pritchard’s exit, and “make it look like she was leaving on her own terms”.

An unknown illness first discovered in three children who ate a bat has killed more than 50 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) over the past five weeks, according to health workers.

As of 16 February there have been 431 cases and 53 deaths in two outbreaks across remote villages in Équateur province, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a bulletin.

“The outbreaks, which have seen cases rise rapidly within days, pose a significant public health threat. The exact cause remains unknown,” a WHO spokesperson, Tarik Jašarević, told a briefing on Tuesday.

The villages have limited surveillance capacity and health infrastructure, he noted.

The larger outbreak, reported on 13 February from Bomate village in the Basankusu health zone, has killed 45 people out of 419 cases.

The interval between the onset of symptoms – which include fever, vomiting and internal bleeding – and death has been 48 hours in most cases and “that’s what’s really worrying”, said Serge Ngalebato, medical director of Bikoro hospital, a regional monitoring centre.

Samples from 13 cases have tested negative for Ebola and Marburg, but the WHO said health teams were locally investigating other potential causes, including malaria, food poisoning, typhoid, meningitis or other viral haemorrhagic fevers.

An earlier outbreak, involving eight deaths among 12 cases, was reported from Boloko village in the Bolomba health zone on 21 January, the WHO said.

This outbreak was traced back to three deaths among children under five years old in the village earlier that month. Symptoms including fever and fatigue progressed to haemorrhagic signs such as nosebleeds and vomiting blood.

Reports indicated that the children had eaten a dead bat before falling ill.

The other cases were found in Boloko and the nearby Dondo village, all with similar symptoms.

The WHO said no links had been established between the two clusters of cases.

“We are looking into whether it is another infection or whether it is some toxic agent. We have to see what can be done and at what point WHO can support,” said Jašarević, noting similar outbreaks in the past.

An outbreak of unknown cause reported in the DRC in December was ultimately identified as malaria.

A notorious French fugitive who staged a deadly escape that killed two guards last year has been extradited from Romania to France, days after his arrest in Bucharest ended a nine-month international manhunt.

Mohamed Amra, nicknamed “The Fly”, was arrested near a shopping centre in Bucharest on Saturday after being identified by Romanian police, despite having dyed his hair red, possibly to evade detection. The Bucharest court of appeal approved his extradition request on Sunday.

An official at Romania’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the legal case was still ongoing, confirmed to The Associated Press that Amra was handed over to French authorities for extradition on Tuesday at an airport near Bucharest, where he arrived in handcuffs, flanked by armed police officers.

Upon arrival in France, he was taken to the main Paris courthouse, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. He will be ordered to carry out the sentence he escaped last year, for burglary, and also face charges in other cases, including murder, attempted murder and escaping from custody.

The high-profile search for Amra began last May when armed assailants ambushed a prison convoy in Normandy, killing two guards and seriously wounding three others in the process of aiding his escape.

Amra fled after being sentenced for burglary in the Normandy town of Évreux. He was also under investigation for an attempted organised homicide and a kidnapping that resulted in death, French prosecutors said.

The international police organisation Interpol issued a notice for his arrest, while French investigators alerted counterparts in other countries after they suspected Amra had left France.

After Amra’s arrest on Saturday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, hailed his capture as a “formidable success” and praised European colleagues who had ended the long cross-border hunt.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau has said that Amra had connections with Marseille’s organised crime syndicates and was suspected of heading a drug trafficking network.

As of Monday night, 25 people had been detained in multiple countries suspected of some role in his escape or in the aftermath, the Paris prosecutor said.

Authorities in Chile have declared a state of emergency and overnight curfew after a sweeping blackout stranded commuters, knocked out traffic lights, paralyzed countless businesses and left millions of people in the South American country without electricity.

The National Electrical Coordinator, Chile’s grid operator, said a disruption had occurred in a high-voltage transmission line that carries power from the Atacama Desert of northern Chile to the capital of Santiago in the country’s central valley.

It did not say what actually caused the disruption that pushed much of the country’s power grid into shutdown, from the northernmost Chilean port of Arica to the southern Los Lagos agricultural region.

Chile’s national disaster response service, Senapred, reported that a “disruption in the supply of electricity” had provoked a “massive power outage” across 14 of the country’s 16 regions, including Santiago, a city of 8.4 million people, where authorities said there would be no subway service until further notice.

Interior minister Carolina Tohá said hospitals, prisons and government buildings were switching on backup generators to keep essential equipment operating.

In a press conference, Tohá urged the public to stay calm and said officials were racing to put the grid back in operation and restore electric service across the country of some 19 million people.

“It’s affecting the entire electrical system of the country,” she said of the breakdown in the 500-kV backbone transmission line.

Tohá said if all areas didn’t return to normal by sunset the government would take emergency measures to avert a crisis.

One of the country’s main electricity distributors, Saesa, which serves more than a million people across Chile, confirmed that all of its customers had experienced the power failure.

Officials said they were evacuating passengers from darkened tunnels and subway stations in Santiago and elsewhere in the country, including the coastal tourist hotspot of Valparaíso.

Videos on social media from all over Chile, a long ribbon of a country stretching 4,300km (over 2,600 miles) along the southern Pacific coast, showed chaos at intersections with no functioning traffic lights, people having to use their mobile phones as torches in the underground metro and police dispatched to help evacuate office buildings.

Transport minister Juan Carlos Muñoz urged people to stay home, saying it’s “not a good time to go out since we have a transport system that is not operating normally.” At the very most, he said, just 27% of city traffic lights are working.

Mobile phone services also blinkered offline in parts of the country. Authorities at Santiago international airport said terminals had switched to emergency power to keep flights operating as usual.