Mark Carney, the former central banker who oversaw the response to financial crises in North America and the UK, will become the next prime minister of Canada after winning the race to lead the country’s federal Liberal party.

Carney, 59, takes on the role as Canada is locked in a potentially catastrophic trade war with the US, long its closest ally and largest trading partner. Last week Donald Trump announced a 25% tax on all Canadian goods, with a carveout for the automotive and energy sectors. The tariffs have the power to push Canada’s fragile economy in a recession.

“America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form,” Carney told supporters, laying bare the existential crisis that has outraged Canadians, riven the longstanding relationship with the US, and promises to be the overarching theme in his tenure as prime minister.

Carney said that while Canada had not asked for the fight: “We will win.”

Before the announcement, the outgoing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, electrified the crowd by telling Liberals he was “damn proud” of his government’s legacy.

But he warned of dangerous time for the country. “This is a nation-defining moment. Democracy is not a given. Freedom is not a given. Even Canada is not a given,” he told supporters.

He also drew on the “elbows up” rallying cry to intense applause – a phrase from ice hockey legend Gordie Howe popularised in recent weeks after threats from Trump to annex Canada.

It is unclear when Carney, who was governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, will assume office. Trudeau and the new Liberal leader are expected to hold conversations in the coming days to determine the outgoing prime minister’s final day in office.

With 85.9% of the vote, Carney beat the former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, the former government house leader Karina Gould and the former member of parliament Frank Baylis.

Carney has followed an unusual path to power: he will be only the second prime minister in Canadian history without a seat in the House of Commons. While no rule bars this, convention suggests Carney will need to quickly announce plans to run for a federal seat.

He will also be the first Liberal prime minister from western Canada, a valuable identity in a country that is politically divided along geographical lines.

Carney spent much of his campaign pitching himself as an outsider, despite years-long ties to the Liberal party, including serving as an economic adviser to Trudeau, the outgoing prime minister.

His definitive victory, foreshadowed by fundraising success and a spate of key endorsements from senior cabinet members with vast organising networks, could energise the incumbent Liberals.

In recent weeks, the party has reversed its political freefall, sharply rebounding to such a degree that a previously expected Conservative majority in the next general election looks increasingly unlikely.

The shift in the polls has been so dramatic that pollsters have struggled to find any historical precedent.

In a leaked memo, the leftwing federal New Democratic party recently warned its members Carney would probably call a snap election within days of winning the leadership race, capitalising on his rising popularity and depriving the opposition parties the rich political optics of bringing down the Liberal government through a vote of non-confidence to force an election.

The move in the polls is, in part, explained by repeated threats by Trump to annex Canada. In polling, Carney is widely viewed as the most trusted federal leader to navigate the current trade crisis because of his extensive economic background.

“My government will keep the tariffs on until the Americans show us respect,” said Carney.

Carney also attacked the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, the current frontrunner if an election were held soon, calling him a “career politician” who was running a deeply divisive campaign. “Division doesn’t win in a tariff war,” Carney said.

But in recent weeks, several fumbles have underlined the challenges in moving from the corporate world to politics.

Carney has waffled over his role at the investment firm Brookfield Asset Management, when it moved its headquarters from Toronto to New York – a politically sensitive issue given recent pressure from the US on businesses to uproot and move south.

His attempts to clarify the issue prompted the Globe and Mail’s editorial board to praise him as a “fast learner in the art of prevarication and hairsplitting”.

He has promised to put his substantial assets, believed to be valued at more than C$30m (£16m), into a blind trust immediately.

Speaking before the new leader was announced, former prime minister Jean Chrétien said Trump had united Canadians “like never before” and jokingly called on him to receive the country’s highest honours as thanks.

“From one old guy to another old guy. Stop this nonsense. Canada will never join the United States,” he said to raucous cheers.

“No one will starve us into submission because Canada is and will remain the best country in the world. Vive le Canada!”

Mark Carney, soon to become Canada’s new prime minister, is a two-time central banker and crisis fighter about to face his biggest challenge of all: steering Canada through Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The 59-year-old will be the first person to become Canadian prime minister without being an MP or having any cabinet experience.

Carney’s credentials as a political outsider would in normal times have killed his candidacy in Canada but the distance from unpopular incumbent Justin Trudeau and a high-profile banking career played to his advantage, and Carney argues he is the only person prepared to handle Trump.

“I know how to manage crises … in a situation like this, you need experience in terms of crisis management, you need negotiating skills,” Carney said during a leadership debate late last month.

He argues Canada must fight Trump’s tariffs with dollar for dollar retaliation and diversify trading relations in the medium term.

Last month he said: “President Trump probably thinks Canada will cave in. But we are going to stand up to a bully, we’re not going to back down. We’re united and we will retaliate.”

Carney has called the threats posed by Trump “the most serious crisis of our lifetime” and said on Sunday that the US wants “our resources, our water, our land, our country”.

Daniel Beland, director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University, described Carney as a “technocrat”. “He’s a boring guy who in general doesn’t have a lot of charisma,” Beland said but he noted that his rigorous competence with no flash may be appealing, given Canada is rattled by Trump’s trade chaos and attacks on its sovereignty.

Carney presents “the image of a reassuring guy who knows what he is talking about,” Beland said.

Carney was born in Fort Smith, a small town in the remote Northwest Territories, where his parents were teachers, but he was raised in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital. He attended Harvard where he played college level ice hockey, starring as a goalkeeper, and studied at Oxford.

He made a fortune as an investment banker during 13 years at Goldman Sachs, working in New York, London, Tokyo and Toronto before being named deputy governor of the Bank of Canada in 2003. He left in November 2004 for a top finance ministry job and returned to become governor of the central bank in 2008 at the age of just 42.

Carney won praise for his handling of that year’s financial crisis, when he created new emergency loan facilities and gave unusually explicit guidance on keeping rates at record low levels for a specific period of time.

Even back then, rumours swirled that he would seek a career in politics with the Liberals, prompting him to respond with a prickliness that is still sometimes evident.

The Bank of England was impressed enough though to poach him in 2013, making him the first non-British governor in the central bank’s three-century history, and the first person to ever head two G7 central banks. Britain’s chancellor at the time, George Osborne, called Carney the “outstanding central bank governor of his generation”.

Carney, though, had a challenging time, forced to face zero inflation and the political chaos of Brexit.

He struggled to deploy his trademark policy of signalling the likely path of interest rates. The bank said its guidance came with caveats but media often interpreted it as more of a guarantee, with Labour legislator Pat McFadden dubbing the bank under Carney as an “unreliable boyfriend”.

But he infuriated Brexit supporters by talking about the economic damage that he said was likely to be caused. Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg called him the “high priest of project fear” but Carney said it was his duty to talk about such risks.

When sterling tumbled in the hours after the Brexit referendum result in 2016, Carney delivered a televised address to reassure markets that the bank would turn on the liquidity taps if needed.

“Mark has a rare ability to combine a central banker’s steady hand, with a political reformer’s eye to the future,” said Ana Botin, Santander’s executive chairman, in a written comment to Reuters. She said Carney “steadied the ship” in the UK after Brexit.

He left the Bank of England in 2020, and then served as a United Nations envoy on finance and climate change, continuing to write and work on an area he emphasised as governor: the need for financial markets to catch up with the risks of the climate crisis.

After launching the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero in 2021 to act as an umbrella group for financial sector efforts to get to net-zero emissions, Carney oversaw a surge in membership as boards rushed to signal a willingness to act.

He launched his bid for the Liberal leadership on 16 January. Although his path to office appeared unusual, Carney told supporters in Edmonton in January: “Our times are anything but ordinary.”

However, Carney may not be prime minister for long, with a general election due to be held by 20 October that the opposition Conservatives are slight favourites to win, according to polls. The Conservatives are led by Pierre Poilievre, a career politician with little international exposure.

Lori Turnbull of Dalhousie University cautioned that Carney may struggle to connect with the public. “He’s not a particularly great communicator when it comes to the public,” she said. “He is unusually well-equipped to deal with economic crises” but “it’s very hard to see how anybody would be successful in politics if you can’t bring people on board with you,” she told AFP.

“The Conservatives are trying to cast him as an elite who doesn’t understand what regular people go through. And I think if he can’t communicate well, then he runs the risk of being typecast in that way,” Turnbull said.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Mark Carney, soon to become Canada’s new prime minister, is a two-time central banker and crisis fighter about to face his biggest challenge of all: steering Canada through Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The 59-year-old will be the first person to become Canadian prime minister without being an MP or having any cabinet experience.

Carney’s credentials as a political outsider would in normal times have killed his candidacy in Canada but the distance from unpopular incumbent Justin Trudeau and a high-profile banking career played to his advantage, and Carney argues he is the only person prepared to handle Trump.

“I know how to manage crises … in a situation like this, you need experience in terms of crisis management, you need negotiating skills,” Carney said during a leadership debate late last month.

He argues Canada must fight Trump’s tariffs with dollar for dollar retaliation and diversify trading relations in the medium term.

Last month he said: “President Trump probably thinks Canada will cave in. But we are going to stand up to a bully, we’re not going to back down. We’re united and we will retaliate.”

Carney has called the threats posed by Trump “the most serious crisis of our lifetime” and said on Sunday that the US wants “our resources, our water, our land, our country”.

Daniel Beland, director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University, described Carney as a “technocrat”. “He’s a boring guy who in general doesn’t have a lot of charisma,” Beland said but he noted that his rigorous competence with no flash may be appealing, given Canada is rattled by Trump’s trade chaos and attacks on its sovereignty.

Carney presents “the image of a reassuring guy who knows what he is talking about,” Beland said.

Carney was born in Fort Smith, a small town in the remote Northwest Territories, where his parents were teachers, but he was raised in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital. He attended Harvard where he played college level ice hockey, starring as a goalkeeper, and studied at Oxford.

He made a fortune as an investment banker during 13 years at Goldman Sachs, working in New York, London, Tokyo and Toronto before being named deputy governor of the Bank of Canada in 2003. He left in November 2004 for a top finance ministry job and returned to become governor of the central bank in 2008 at the age of just 42.

Carney won praise for his handling of that year’s financial crisis, when he created new emergency loan facilities and gave unusually explicit guidance on keeping rates at record low levels for a specific period of time.

Even back then, rumours swirled that he would seek a career in politics with the Liberals, prompting him to respond with a prickliness that is still sometimes evident.

The Bank of England was impressed enough though to poach him in 2013, making him the first non-British governor in the central bank’s three-century history, and the first person to ever head two G7 central banks. Britain’s chancellor at the time, George Osborne, called Carney the “outstanding central bank governor of his generation”.

Carney, though, had a challenging time, forced to face zero inflation and the political chaos of Brexit.

He struggled to deploy his trademark policy of signalling the likely path of interest rates. The bank said its guidance came with caveats but media often interpreted it as more of a guarantee, with Labour legislator Pat McFadden dubbing the bank under Carney as an “unreliable boyfriend”.

But he infuriated Brexit supporters by talking about the economic damage that he said was likely to be caused. Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg called him the “high priest of project fear” but Carney said it was his duty to talk about such risks.

When sterling tumbled in the hours after the Brexit referendum result in 2016, Carney delivered a televised address to reassure markets that the bank would turn on the liquidity taps if needed.

“Mark has a rare ability to combine a central banker’s steady hand, with a political reformer’s eye to the future,” said Ana Botin, Santander’s executive chairman, in a written comment to Reuters. She said Carney “steadied the ship” in the UK after Brexit.

He left the Bank of England in 2020, and then served as a United Nations envoy on finance and climate change, continuing to write and work on an area he emphasised as governor: the need for financial markets to catch up with the risks of the climate crisis.

After launching the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero in 2021 to act as an umbrella group for financial sector efforts to get to net-zero emissions, Carney oversaw a surge in membership as boards rushed to signal a willingness to act.

He launched his bid for the Liberal leadership on 16 January. Although his path to office appeared unusual, Carney told supporters in Edmonton in January: “Our times are anything but ordinary.”

However, Carney may not be prime minister for long, with a general election due to be held by 20 October that the opposition Conservatives are slight favourites to win, according to polls. The Conservatives are led by Pierre Poilievre, a career politician with little international exposure.

Lori Turnbull of Dalhousie University cautioned that Carney may struggle to connect with the public. “He’s not a particularly great communicator when it comes to the public,” she said. “He is unusually well-equipped to deal with economic crises” but “it’s very hard to see how anybody would be successful in politics if you can’t bring people on board with you,” she told AFP.

“The Conservatives are trying to cast him as an elite who doesn’t understand what regular people go through. And I think if he can’t communicate well, then he runs the risk of being typecast in that way,” Turnbull said.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Israel is to cut off any remaining electricity supplies to Gaza in an apparent attempt to ramp up pressure on Hamas amid increasingly chaotic multi-track negotiations over the fragile ceasefire in the territory.

The potential consequences of the Israeli decision for the 2.3 million residents of the devastated Palestinian territory are unclear, as most rely on diesel-fuelled generators for power.

But humanitarian officials in Gaza contacted on Sunday afternoon said they thought the two functioning desalination plants would be forced to shut down, reducing the already meagre supply of clean water. Others have suggested the remaining sewage treatment plant could be affected.

In a video announcing the directive, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister, said that Israel would use “all means available … to ensure the return of all Israeli hostages” and that Hamas would not remain in Gaza after the war.

Hamas accused Israel of “cheap and unacceptable blackmail” over its decision. “We strongly condemn the occupation’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza, after depriving it of food, medicine and water,” Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement, adding it was “a desperate attempt to pressure our people and their resistance through cheap and unacceptable blackmail tactics”.

Israel is seeking to force Hamas to accept an extension until mid-April of the first phase of the ceasefire, which came into effect in mid-January but ended formally last weekend. Israel has already cut off all supplies of goods to the territory, claiming that Hamas was stealing aid and profiting from its distribution.

Israel has also intensified strikes in Gaza, while military officials have briefed local and international journalists that preparations for a major offensive are under way.

There are daily reports of casualties inflicted by Israeli warplanes, drones or artillery.

On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an airstrike in northern Gaza, which a spokesperson said was aimed at militants “attempting to plant an explosive device in the ground in northern Gaza” near Israeli troops.

A day earlier, an airstrike in Rafah in southern Gaza targeted a drone that entered the territory from Israel and a group of suspected militants, according to the IDF.

Israel wants Hamas to release more of the 58 hostages the group and its allies in Gaza are believed to be holding. Fewer than half are thought to still be alive. Hamas has rejected any extension and wants an immediate start to negotiations on the ceasefire’s second phase, which aims to bring a permanent end to the war and was supposed to directly follow the first phase.

Representatives of the group met mediators in Cairo over the weekend, emphasising the urgent need to resume humanitarian aid deliveries to the territory “without restrictions or conditions”.

“We call on mediators in Egypt and Qatar, as well as the guarantors in the US administration, to ensure that [Israel] complies with the agreement … and proceeds with the second phase according to the agreed-upon terms,” the Hamas spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, told Agence France-Presse.

Hamas’s key demands for the second phase include further releases of Palestinians held in Israeli jails in exchange for hostages, a complete withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, a permanent ceasefire and the lifting of the Israeli blockade.

The office of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said it would send delegates to Doha on Monday to join talks on continuing the ceasefire in one form or another.

Complicating the picture further are unprecedented direct talks between the US and Hamas aimed primarily at freeing five US citizens among the hostages still held by Hamas. Only one is thought to be still alive.

The US envoy involved in the direct talks, which were revealed by US-based media last week, described on Sunday his meeting with Hamas as “very helpful” and said he was confident a hostage release deal could be reached “within weeks”. Speaking to CNN, Adam Boehler acknowledged it had been “odd” sitting face to face with leaders of a militant Islamist group that the US has listed as a terrorist organisation since 1997, but did not rule out further meetings.

Boehler said he understood Israel’s “consternation” that the US had held talks with the group, but said he had been seeking to jump-start the “fragile” negotiations. “I think something could come together within weeks … I think there is a deal where they can get all of the prisoners out, not just the Americans,” he added.

January’s truce paused more than 15 months of fighting in Gaza in which virtually the entire population was displaced, swaths of the territory were reduced to rubble and more than 48,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed by Israel’s military offensive. The war was triggered by Hamas’s surprise attack into Israel in October 2023, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 251 hostages taken.

The six-week first phase of the ceasefire led to the exchange of 25 living Israeli hostages and the remains of eight others, for the release of about 1,800 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. It also allowed much-needed food, shelter and medical assistance to re-enter Gaza.

Since Israel subsequently cut off the aid flow, UN rights experts accused the government of “weaponising starvation”.

Last week, Donald Trump threatened further destruction of Gaza if all remaining hostages were not released, issuing what he called a “last warning” to Hamas leaders. The US president caused outrage in February when he said the US wanted to oversee the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza to allow the territory to be reconstructed as the “riviera of the Middle East”. On Sunday Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, said that proposal was “taking shape”.

Smotrich said the government was planning to establish a “migration directorate” to assist residents of Gaza who wanted to leave the territory permanently.

Arab leaders have proposed an alternative plan under which Gaza’s reconstruction would be financed through a trust fund, with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority returning to govern the territory.

At a weekend rally in Tel Aviv, family members of Israeli hostages demanded their government fully implement the ceasefire. “The war could resume in a week,” Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, told the crowd. “The war won’t bring the hostages back home. It will kill them.”

Donald Trump on Sunday refused to rule out the possibility that the US economy will head into recession this year and that inflation will rise, as his chaotic trade tariffs policy cause uncertainty and market turbulence.

The US president predicted that his economic goals would take time and a period of transition to bear fruit. But when asked in an interview with the Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures “are you expecting a recession this year?” he demurred.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of, it takes a little time. It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us,” Trump said.

When asked whether he thought his tariffs on US imports would fuel inflation, he said: “You may get it. In the meantime, guess what? Interest rates are down.”

He downplayed recent stock market volatility that followed his ducking and weaving over tariff policy on exports from Canada, Mexico and China and similar threats to other countries, despite his usual fixation with market performance in relation to the politics of the day and an appetite to claim credit when stocks rise on his watch.

“You have to do what’s right,” he said.

Last week the Atlanta Federal Reserve suggested that the US economy is on course to contract in the first quarter, triggering fears a recession could hit the world’s largest economy if weakness persisted and fueling stock market jitters.

In 2018 Trump posted on Twitter, now X, that “trade wars are good, and easy to win”, a view that is not widely shared by financial and economic experts.

On Sunday, however, he was cautious overall after boasting throughout his election campaign of the swift gains his policies would bring for the US economy and ordinary Americans’ finances.

Fox News Sunday Morning Futures anchor Maria Bartiromo introduced the topic of recession by telling Trump “look, I know you inherited a mess”, even though most experts agree that predecessor Joe Biden, a Democrat, left the Republican president a stable economy where inflation, although painfully high for a long time, was continuing to come down and international trading conditions for the US were steady.

Meanwhile, also on Sunday morning, NBC’s Meet the Press TV politics show was interviewing US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick.

He pushed back on concerns that the prospect of Trump’s global tariffs would cause a recession in the US. “Absolutely not,” he said. “There’s going to be no recession in America.”

Lutnick added: “Anybody who bets against Donald Trump, it’s like the same people who thought Donald Trump wasn’t going to win a year ago … you are going to see over the next two years the greatest set of growth coming from America … I would never bet on recession, no chance.”

• Reuters contributed reporting

A prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s student encampment movement was arrested on Saturday night by federal immigration authorities who claimed they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney.

Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment, blocks from the private Ivy League university’s main campus in New York when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press.

One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a state department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated last December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.

The arrest comes as Donald Trump vows to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The administration has placed particular scrutiny on Columbia, announcing Friday that it would be cutting $400m in grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the elite school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus.

The authorities declined to tell Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, why he was being detained, Greer said. Khalil has since been transferred to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained,” Greer told the AP. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”

A spokesperson for Columbia said law enforcement agents must produce a warrant before entering university property. The spokesperson declined to say if the school had received a warrant for Khalil’s arrest.

Messages seeking comment were left with the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice.

Khalil had become one of the most visible faces of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia. As students erected tents on campus last spring, Khalil was picked to serve as a negotiator on behalf of students and met frequently with university administrators.

When classes resumed in September, he told the Associated Press that the protests would continue: “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist.”

An immigration court can revoke a green card but government departments do not have that power.

Last week it was reported by Axios that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to revoke visas from foreign nationals who are deemed to support Hamas or other terrorist groups, using artificial intelligence (AI) to pick out individuals.

Khalil was among several investigated by a newly-created university disciplinary committee – the Office of Institutional Equity – looking into students at the institution who have expressed criticism of Israel, according to records shared with the AP.

In recent weeks, the committee has sent notices to dozens of students for activities ranging from sharing social media posts in support of Palestinian people to joining “unauthorized” protests.

“I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” Khalil said last week.

After refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, Khalil said the university threatened to block him from graduating. But when he appealed the decision through a lawyer, they eventually backed down, Khalil said.

“They just want to show Congress and rightwing politicians that they’re doing something, regardless of the stakes for students,” Khalil said. “It’s mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech.”

Columbia students kick-started the tent encampment protests at their Manhattan campus last spring, with the idea catching on at dozens of campuses across the US. At Columbia and many other colleges, their academic administrations called in the relevant local police department and hundreds of students were arrested.

“Targeting a student activist is an affront to the rights of Mahmoud Khalil and his family. This blatantly unconstitutional act sends a deplorable message that freedom of speech is no longer protected in America. Furthermore, Khalil and all people living in the United States are afforded due process. A green card can only be revoked by an immigration judge, showing once again that the Trump administration is willing to ignore the law in order to instill fear and further its racist agenda,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of New York Immigration, Coalition said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.

“DHS must immediately release Khalil,” he said.

Donald Trump has refused to rule out the possibility the US economy will head into recession this year and that inflation will rise, as his chaotic trade tariffs policy caused uncertainty and market turbulence.

The US president predicted that his economic goals would take time and a period of transition to bear fruit. But when asked in an interview with the Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures “are you expecting a recession this year?” he demurred.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of, it takes a little time. It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us,” Trump said.

Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday announced new leadership at the agency tasked with immigration enforcement as she also pledged to step up lie detector tests on employees to identify those who may be leaking information about operations to the media.

Noem confirmed, in addition, that the government will expand immigration detention operations further into the military sphere, following reports of the intention to use the huge Fort Bliss army base close to the US-Mexico border in Texas for that purpose.

“There is, yes, a plan to use the facility at Fort Bliss for detention,” she said.

The secretary also warned that her department has “just weeks” before running out of money for its mass deportation mission unless Congress ups funding.

“The authorities that I have under the Department of Homeland Security are broad and extensive, and I plan to use every single one of them to make sure that we’re following the law, that we are following the procedures in place to keep people safe and that we’re making sure we’re following through on what President Trump has promised,” Noem told Face the Nation on CBS.

While these polygraph exams are typically not admissible in court, they are frequently used by federal law enforcement agencies and for national security clearances.

White House officials have previously expressed frustration with the pace of deportations, blaming it in part on recent leaks revealing cities where authorities planned raids.

This despite the department’s publicity blitz about raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), invitations to journalists to accompany agents and also witness deportation flights and questions about the facts Ice is issuing and the justifications they are using for arresting, detaining and deporting some of those affected.

Todd Lyons, the former assistant director of field operations for the agency’s enforcement arm, will serve as acting Ice director. Madison Sheahan, secretary of the Louisiana department of wildlife and fisheries and Noem’s former aide when she was governor of South Dakota, has been tapped to be the agency’s deputy director.

The leadership changes come after Ice’s acting director Caleb Vitello was reassigned on February 21 for failing to meet anti-immigration expectations, Reuters reported. Two other top immigration enforcement officials were reassigned February 11.

The Trump administration deported 37,660 people during the president’s first month back in office, DHS data first reported by Reuters last month show, far less than the monthly average of 57,000 people removed from the US in the last full year of Joe Biden’s administration.

Arrest rates were higher than usual in the first few weeks of the Trump administration, a Guardian analysis showed, but arrests and detentions do not always translate into removals and, at the same time, the numbers of people crossing the US-Mexico border without authorization has dropped dramatically since last summer, first under new Biden restrictions and now further under Trump.

Noem said on Friday that the agency planned to prosecute two “leakers of information”.

On Sunday, she said these two people “were leaking our enforcement operations that we had planned and were going to conduct in several cities and exposed vulnerabilities”. She said they could face up to 10 years in federal prison. A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting

Russia has taken control of several villages in the Kursk region and claims its forces are close to surrounding thousands of Ukrainian troops fighting on Russian territory.

For seven months, Ukraine has controlled a pocket inside western Russia. Last week, Russian and North Korean troops launched a major offensive, shortly after Donald Trump pulled the plug on military support, intelligence and satellite feeds with Kyiv.

Ahead of talks this week between US and Ukrainian representatives in Saudi Arabia, the Russians are closing in on the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. They have recaptured villages to the north – Staraya, Novaya Sorochina and Malaya Loknya – as well as other small settlements to the immediate east.

There were unconfirmed reports some Ukrainian soldiers had been captured amid heavy fighting. The crucial supply road between Sudzha and Ukraine’s Sumy region is under constant Russian fire.

On Monday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy will hold talks with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh and on Tuesday, a delegation led by Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, will meet with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other senior White House officials. Zelenskyy will not take part in the negotiations.

The Ukrainian side is likely to propose a peace plan sketched out by Zelenskyy last week featuring a halt to drone and missiles strikes, as well as a suspension of military activity in the Black Sea. So far, however, Vladimir Putin has showed no interest in a ceasefire.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff said it had repelled an extraordinary attack by Russian sabotage and assault groups via a gas pipeline. About 100 Russian soldiers spent four days crawling through the 15km-long pipe that leads to Sudzha’s outskirts.

Ukrainian airborne assault forces wiped out some of the Russians using artillery strikes soon after they emerged, video footage suggests. “Russian special forces are being detected, blocked and destroyed. Enemy losses in the Sudzha area are very heavy,” Ukraine’s military said.

It admitted the situation was difficult but under control, with Russia employing North Korean combat units. They include replacement soldiers sent by Pyongyang after the original 11,000-strong North Korean contingent that arrived last November suffered heavy losses.

Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medevdev claimed Kyiv’s forces were nearly surrounded and would soon be driven out. “The lid of the smoking cauldron is almost closed. The offensive continues,” he posted on Telegram.

The US appears determined to force further concessions on Ukraine before the talks in Saudi Arabia this week. According to NBC news, Trump wants Zelenskyy to yield territory to Russia and to move towards elections.

On Sunday Trump suggested that Ukraine may not be able to survive in the war against Russia even with support from the US.

In an interview with Fox News while defending his decision to draw down on support to Ukraine, he said: “Well, it may not survive anyway.”

Trump also said that Zelenskyy took money from the US under the Biden administration like “candy from a baby”. He repeated his claim that Zelenskyy was not “grateful” but did describe him as “smart” and “tough”.

Trump’s pro-Russian ally Elon Musk earlier offered a fresh warning to Kyiv. Posting on X, he wrote: “My Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their front line would collapse if I turned it off.”

His threat prompted a rebuke from Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who pointed out that his government had a commercial contract with Starlink and paid $50m for Ukraine to access Musk’s satellite internet service.

“The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,” Sikorski wrote back on X. Ukrainian engineers are urgently exploring alternatives.

According to the FT, negotiations are taking place with four European satellite operators. Replacing Starlink terminals across a 1,000km frontline would take time, the paper noted.

Musk later said on Sunday said that no matter how much he disagreed on Ukraine policy, Starlink would never turn off its terminals. “We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip,” he wrote on X.

More than 20 people have been killed in the last two days by Russian bombs. On Friday, several ballistic missiles smashed into a five-storey residential block in the eastern Donetsk region, killing 11 civilians and injuring dozens, including three children.

Overnight, Ukraine carried out its own long-range drone attacks deep inside Russia. According to Telegram channels, oil refineries in Ryazan and Lipetsk were hit, together with an oil depot in Cheboksary in Russia’s Chuvashia Republic.

The depot is located more than 900km from the Ukrainian border and was targeted for the first time.

Russia has taken control of several villages in the Kursk region and claims its forces are close to surrounding thousands of Ukrainian troops fighting on Russian territory.

For seven months, Ukraine has controlled a pocket inside western Russia. Last week, Russian and North Korean troops launched a major offensive, shortly after Donald Trump pulled the plug on military support, intelligence and satellite feeds with Kyiv.

Ahead of talks this week between US and Ukrainian representatives in Saudi Arabia, the Russians are closing in on the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. They have recaptured villages to the north – Staraya, Novaya Sorochina and Malaya Loknya – as well as other small settlements to the immediate east.

There were unconfirmed reports some Ukrainian soldiers had been captured amid heavy fighting. The crucial supply road between Sudzha and Ukraine’s Sumy region is under constant Russian fire.

On Monday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy will hold talks with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh and on Tuesday, a delegation led by Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, will meet with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other senior White House officials. Zelenskyy will not take part in the negotiations.

The Ukrainian side is likely to propose a peace plan sketched out by Zelenskyy last week featuring a halt to drone and missiles strikes, as well as a suspension of military activity in the Black Sea. So far, however, Vladimir Putin has showed no interest in a ceasefire.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff said it had repelled an extraordinary attack by Russian sabotage and assault groups via a gas pipeline. About 100 Russian soldiers spent four days crawling through the 15km-long pipe that leads to Sudzha’s outskirts.

Ukrainian airborne assault forces wiped out some of the Russians using artillery strikes soon after they emerged, video footage suggests. “Russian special forces are being detected, blocked and destroyed. Enemy losses in the Sudzha area are very heavy,” Ukraine’s military said.

It admitted the situation was difficult but under control, with Russia employing North Korean combat units. They include replacement soldiers sent by Pyongyang after the original 11,000-strong North Korean contingent that arrived last November suffered heavy losses.

Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medevdev claimed Kyiv’s forces were nearly surrounded and would soon be driven out. “The lid of the smoking cauldron is almost closed. The offensive continues,” he posted on Telegram.

The US appears determined to force further concessions on Ukraine before the talks in Saudi Arabia this week. According to NBC news, Trump wants Zelenskyy to yield territory to Russia and to move towards elections.

On Sunday Trump suggested that Ukraine may not be able to survive in the war against Russia even with support from the US.

In an interview with Fox News while defending his decision to draw down on support to Ukraine, he said: “Well, it may not survive anyway.”

Trump also said that Zelenskyy took money from the US under the Biden administration like “candy from a baby”. He repeated his claim that Zelenskyy was not “grateful” but did describe him as “smart” and “tough”.

Trump’s pro-Russian ally Elon Musk earlier offered a fresh warning to Kyiv. Posting on X, he wrote: “My Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their front line would collapse if I turned it off.”

His threat prompted a rebuke from Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who pointed out that his government had a commercial contract with Starlink and paid $50m for Ukraine to access Musk’s satellite internet service.

“The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,” Sikorski wrote back on X. Ukrainian engineers are urgently exploring alternatives.

According to the FT, negotiations are taking place with four European satellite operators. Replacing Starlink terminals across a 1,000km frontline would take time, the paper noted.

Musk later said on Sunday said that no matter how much he disagreed on Ukraine policy, Starlink would never turn off its terminals. “We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip,” he wrote on X.

More than 20 people have been killed in the last two days by Russian bombs. On Friday, several ballistic missiles smashed into a five-storey residential block in the eastern Donetsk region, killing 11 civilians and injuring dozens, including three children.

Overnight, Ukraine carried out its own long-range drone attacks deep inside Russia. According to Telegram channels, oil refineries in Ryazan and Lipetsk were hit, together with an oil depot in Cheboksary in Russia’s Chuvashia Republic.

The depot is located more than 900km from the Ukrainian border and was targeted for the first time.

The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.

Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.

The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.

Mandeep Tiwana, co-secretary general of Civicus, said that the watchlist “looks at countries where we remain concerned about deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.

The selection process, the website states, incorporates insights and data from Civicus’s global network of research partners and data.

The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.

In the news release announcing the US’s addition, the organization cited recent actions taken by the Trump administration that they argue will likely “severely impact constitutional freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association”.

The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid.

The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”.

The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.

Civicus described Trump’s actions since taking office as an “unparalleled attack on the rule of law” not seen “since the days of McCarthyism in the twentieth century”, stating that these moves erode the checks and balances essential to democracy.

“Restrictive executive orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks, and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic dissent, a cherished American ideal,” Tiwana said.

In addition to the watchlist, the Civicus Monitor classifies the state of civic space in countries using five ratings: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed.

Currently, the US has a “narrowed” rating, which it also had during the Biden administration, meaning that while citizens can exercise their civic freedom, such as rights to association, peaceful assembly and expression, occasional violations occur.

For part of Trump’s first term, Tiwana said, the US had been categorized as “obstructed”, due to the administration’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests and restrictive state laws that were enacted limiting the rights of environmental justice protesters, and other actions.

Under Joe Biden, the classification went back to “narrowed”, Tiwana, said, but as of Monday, the US has been placed on the watchlist as the group says it sees “significant deterioration” in civic freedoms occurring.

Tiwana noted that the US is again seemingly headed toward the “obstructed” category.

While the Trump administration often say they support fundamental freedoms and individual rights, like free speech, Tiwana believes that the administration seem “to be wanting to support these only for people who they see as agreeing with them”.

Historically, Tiwana said, the US has been “considered the beacon of democracy and defense of fundamental freedoms”.

“It was an important pillar of US foreign policy, even though it was imperfect, both domestically and how the US promoted it abroad,” he added.

But Tiwana believes that the recent actions and statements made by this US administration could empower authoritarian regimes around the world, undermine constitutional principles, and embolden those who “want to accumulate power and increase their wealth and their ability to stay in power for as long as possible”.

Tiwana says that he and the organization want to draw attention to the fact that those in power in the US are, in his view, engaging in a “zero-sum politics game” that is eroding “constitutional principles and frankly, engaging in, anti American behavior”.

“We urge the United States to uphold the rule of law and respect constitutional and international human rights norms,” said Tiwana.

The UN has condemned what it called “extremely disturbing” reports of entire families being killed in north-west Syria as clashes between security forces and Assad regime loyalists resulted in the country’s highest death toll since the start of its revolution in 2011.

The UN commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, called on Sunday for investigations into the killings and for perpetrators to be held accountable. “We are receiving extremely disturbing reports of entire families, including women, children and hors de combat [surrendered] fighters, being killed,” he said in a statement. “The killing of civilians in coastal areas in north-west Syria must cease, immediately.”

Fighting began on Thursday after fighters loyal to the ousted Assad regime ambushed security forces in Jableh, in the coastal Latakia province, sparking a wave of revenge attacks, including against civilians belonging to the minority Alawite sect. Clashes erupted once again on Sunday after security forces were attacked by Assad loyalists at a power plant in Banias, Latakia.

To crush the rebellion, the Syrian government called for reinforcements, with thousands of fighters converging on Syria’s coast from all over the country. Though fighters are nominally under the auspices of the new Syrian government, militias still persist, some of which have been implicated in past human rights abuses and are relatively undisciplined.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that more than 1,000 people had been killed in the attack, including 745 civilians, 125 members of Syrian security forces and 148 Assad loyalists.

Death tolls from the two days of fighting varied wildly, with a second rights group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) saying 148 civilians were killed by Assad loyalists and 327 civilians and captured militants were killed by Syrian security forces.

The Syrian government has not released figures for casualties, and the Guardian has not been able to independently verify the number of deaths.

On Sunday, Syria’s transitional president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said the developments were within “expected challenges” and called for national unity. “We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace; we can live together,” he said in a video circulated by Arab media, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighbourhood of Mazzah in Damascus.

Later on Sunday, the Syrian presidency announced the formation of a seven-person committee, comprising judges and one lawyer, tasked with investigating the killings of civilians and security forces in north-west Syria. The committee, which was formed to “achieve civil peace and uncover the truth”, will issue a report with its findings in 30 days.

The US and Russia have asked the UN security council to meet behind closed doors on Monday over the escalating violence, diplomats said on Sunday.

The wide-ranging, coordinated assault was the biggest challenge to the country’s Islamist authorities, three months after opposition fighters led by the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) toppled Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian government has said “individual actions” led to the killing of civilians and that the influx of fighters on the coast had led to human rights violations.

An adviser to Syria’s foreign ministry estimated that 4,000 Assad loyalists were involved in the attacks. Videos showed the bodies of Syrian security officers strewn on the streets as well as bodies seemingly buried hastily in a mass grave in the coastal province of Tartus. The Guardian was unable to independently verify the contents of these videos.

In his statement, Türk said: “There are reports of summary executions on a sectarian basis by unidentified perpetrators, by members of the caretaker authorities’ security forces, as well as by elements associated with the former government.”

The wave of revenge killings, mostly targeting Alawites, by Syrian security forces in Syria’s coastal communities has struck fear into the Alawite community. The Syrian coast is heavily populated by the sect, from which the deposed Syrian president hailed, though most Alawites were not associated with the Assad regime.

Videos showed the bodies of dozens of people in civilian clothes piled up in the town of al-Mukhtariya, where more than 40 people were killed at one time, according to the SNHR.

Other videos showed fighters in security uniforms killing people point-blank, ordering men to bark like dogs and beating captives. The Guardian was not able to independently verify these videos.

A man from the town of al-Sanobar, Latakia, detailed how gunmen killed at least 14 of his neighbours who were all from the Arris family, including a 75-year-old father and his three sons in front of the mother.

“After they killed the father and his boys, they asked the mother to take her gold off, or they would kill her,” said the man who was close to the family but spoke under the condition of anonymity for his safety.

Another person in Latakia said power and water to the area had been cut off for the past day and they had been sheltering in their house, scared of the militants on the streets. “There’s no water and no power for more than 24 hours. The factions are killing anyone who appears in front of them; the corpses are piled up in the streets. This is collective punishment,” they said.

Rights groups said a real commitment to transitional justice and an inclusive government was crucial to preventing Syria from spiralling into a cycle of violence. Syria’s transitional authorities are due to announce a new government this month, which will be scrutinised closely for how representative it is of Syria’s religious and ethnic diversity after this week’s violence.

Syria’s new authorities will probably face more difficulties in getting international sanctions lifted, particularly US sanctions, after the wave of violence on Syria’s coast. Damascus has been courting international powers to help its beleaguered economy by removing sanctions, which are seen as one of the main obstacles to the country’s stability.

Western powers have stressed that respect for the country’s minority populations will be key to removing economic sanctions.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, condemned the attacks, which he said were committed by “radical Islamic terrorists” and called for Damascus to hold the perpetrators accountable. “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families,” he said.

The actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, who were found dead last month in Santa Fe, New Mexico, were rarely apart from each other, and it’s that closeness that may have led to the circumstances of their deaths.

Arakawa had become Hackman’s caregiver in his later years when he developed Alzheimer’s disease and became incapable of carrying out even the simplest of tasks. She ran the household errands, made sure he remained active and protected him from illnesses.

Authorities in Santa Fe revealed on Friday that the couple had died of natural causes, Hackman from heart disease and Arakawa from a rare viral infection. Arakawa died first, perhaps on 11 February, when she was last seen or heard from. Investigators said in a press conference that Hackman, 95, was likely unaware that his wife had died.

He would have been alone in the house for days, disoriented and too frail to seek help. His pacemaker last recorded his heartbeat on 18 February, which indicates that he died about a week after his wife.

Their decomposing bodies were discovered on 26 February when a maintenance worker called security after no one answered the door. Emergency responders found Arakawa, 65, on the bathroom floor near spilled pills and a medicine bottle. The pills were identified as an unspecified thyroid medication, Tylenol and the high blood pressure medication diltiazem. Her body showed signs of “mummification”, which suggests she had been dead for some time.

Zinna, one of their three dogs, was found dead in a crate in a closet. Hackman’s body, wearing slippers, was found in a mudroom near a cane.

New Mexico’s chief medical examiner confirmed that Arakawa had succumbed to hantavirus, a rare and often fatal illness contracted from exposure to rodent droppings. Hackman’s Alzheimer’s, combined with his declining physical state, was listed as a contributing factor in his death.

“Autopsy examination and a full body postmortem CT examination demonstrated no acute findings of internal or external trauma, and showed severe heart disease including multiple surgical procedures involving the heart, evidence of prior heart attacks, and severe changes of the kidneys due to chronic high blood pressure,” said Dr Heather Jarrell, New Mexico’s chief medical investigator.

Authorities are still waiting for the dog’s necropsy results. During the press conference on Friday, New Mexico state public health veterinarian Erin Phipps said “it is a possibility” that the dog, Zinna, died of dehydration and starvation.

The exact details of that final week remain unclear. Friends and neighbors told the New York Times about how the couple had increasingly withdrawn from public life, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Arakawa had taken mighty precautions to avoid exposing Hackman to illness. She often wore a mask in public, and surveillance footage from 11 February showed her visiting a Sprouts Farmers Market, a CVS pharmacy and a pet food store in Santa Fe before driving back to their gated community around 5.15pm.

After that, she was never seen or heard from again. Investigators believe she stopped checking her emails that evening, and no further communication was recorded, authorities said on Friday.

The sheriff’s office found no evidence that anyone had been caring for Hackman besides Arakawa. “There was no food in his stomach, which means he had not eaten recently,” said Jarrell.

Hackman’s decline starkly contrasts with the life he had once built. The Oscar-winning actor moved to Santa Fe in the late 1980s after divorcing his first wife, and quickly fell in love with the city’s landscape and artistic community. He had already won an Oscar for his role in The French Connection in 1971 and would later earn another for 1992’s Unforgiven.

“I think you can escape anywhere, but I think the beauty of the city – they just loved the area,” Mark Kreusch, a photographer, told Fox News after the couple’s deaths. “Even though he was a bit reclusive, he really loved Santa Fe. It resonated with him.”

Arakawa, a classical pianist from Hawaii, met Hackman while working part time at a Los Angeles fitness center. When Hackman forgot his entry card one day, Arakawa refused to let him in. That encounter led to a relationship that bloomed despite their 30-year age difference.

“That part never came to mind because they seemed equal in so many ways,” a friend, Susan Contreras, told the New York Times. “She was a personality unto herself.”

As time went on, Hackman’s health visibly declined.

“Obviously, he was 95, so he was slowing down,” Stuart Ashman, who met Hackman in the late 90s when they served on a committee together at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, told Fox News. “And after Covid, he was more reclusive, protecting his immune system and everything else.”

Two of the couple’s family friends, Daniel and Barbara Lenihan, along with their son Aaron, told People magazine that Hackman had become “essentially home-bound” in recent times and had “stopped riding his bike through the neighborhood”.

“Betsy tried to keep him kind of active and engaged,” said Aaron, adding that Hackman did puzzles and yoga via Zoom daily. “She was still trying to keep him as active and engaged and healthy as possible.”

Daniel and Barbara Lenihan noted that in the “last couple of months”, the late actor “was really slipping there”.

Gary Sinise, who worked with Hackman on the 1995 film The Quick and the Dead, made a similar observation.

“I know once he retired to New Mexico, he was retired. He did not want to come back and get any awards or, you know, go to any Hollywood events or anything like that. He was done, and he was moving on from that part of his life,” Sinise told Fox News.

Their privacy, much-valued in Santa Fe, may ultimately have contributed to their tragic deaths.

The actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, who were found dead last month in Santa Fe, New Mexico, were rarely apart from each other, and it’s that closeness that may have led to the circumstances of their deaths.

Arakawa had become Hackman’s caregiver in his later years when he developed Alzheimer’s disease and became incapable of carrying out even the simplest of tasks. She ran the household errands, made sure he remained active and protected him from illnesses.

Authorities in Santa Fe revealed on Friday that the couple had died of natural causes, Hackman from heart disease and Arakawa from a rare viral infection. Arakawa died first, perhaps on 11 February, when she was last seen or heard from. Investigators said in a press conference that Hackman, 95, was likely unaware that his wife had died.

He would have been alone in the house for days, disoriented and too frail to seek help. His pacemaker last recorded his heartbeat on 18 February, which indicates that he died about a week after his wife.

Their decomposing bodies were discovered on 26 February when a maintenance worker called security after no one answered the door. Emergency responders found Arakawa, 65, on the bathroom floor near spilled pills and a medicine bottle. The pills were identified as an unspecified thyroid medication, Tylenol and the high blood pressure medication diltiazem. Her body showed signs of “mummification”, which suggests she had been dead for some time.

Zinna, one of their three dogs, was found dead in a crate in a closet. Hackman’s body, wearing slippers, was found in a mudroom near a cane.

New Mexico’s chief medical examiner confirmed that Arakawa had succumbed to hantavirus, a rare and often fatal illness contracted from exposure to rodent droppings. Hackman’s Alzheimer’s, combined with his declining physical state, was listed as a contributing factor in his death.

“Autopsy examination and a full body postmortem CT examination demonstrated no acute findings of internal or external trauma, and showed severe heart disease including multiple surgical procedures involving the heart, evidence of prior heart attacks, and severe changes of the kidneys due to chronic high blood pressure,” said Dr Heather Jarrell, New Mexico’s chief medical investigator.

Authorities are still waiting for the dog’s necropsy results. During the press conference on Friday, New Mexico state public health veterinarian Erin Phipps said “it is a possibility” that the dog, Zinna, died of dehydration and starvation.

The exact details of that final week remain unclear. Friends and neighbors told the New York Times about how the couple had increasingly withdrawn from public life, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Arakawa had taken mighty precautions to avoid exposing Hackman to illness. She often wore a mask in public, and surveillance footage from 11 February showed her visiting a Sprouts Farmers Market, a CVS pharmacy and a pet food store in Santa Fe before driving back to their gated community around 5.15pm.

After that, she was never seen or heard from again. Investigators believe she stopped checking her emails that evening, and no further communication was recorded, authorities said on Friday.

The sheriff’s office found no evidence that anyone had been caring for Hackman besides Arakawa. “There was no food in his stomach, which means he had not eaten recently,” said Jarrell.

Hackman’s decline starkly contrasts with the life he had once built. The Oscar-winning actor moved to Santa Fe in the late 1980s after divorcing his first wife, and quickly fell in love with the city’s landscape and artistic community. He had already won an Oscar for his role in The French Connection in 1971 and would later earn another for 1992’s Unforgiven.

“I think you can escape anywhere, but I think the beauty of the city – they just loved the area,” Mark Kreusch, a photographer, told Fox News after the couple’s deaths. “Even though he was a bit reclusive, he really loved Santa Fe. It resonated with him.”

Arakawa, a classical pianist from Hawaii, met Hackman while working part time at a Los Angeles fitness center. When Hackman forgot his entry card one day, Arakawa refused to let him in. That encounter led to a relationship that bloomed despite their 30-year age difference.

“That part never came to mind because they seemed equal in so many ways,” a friend, Susan Contreras, told the New York Times. “She was a personality unto herself.”

As time went on, Hackman’s health visibly declined.

“Obviously, he was 95, so he was slowing down,” Stuart Ashman, who met Hackman in the late 90s when they served on a committee together at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, told Fox News. “And after Covid, he was more reclusive, protecting his immune system and everything else.”

Two of the couple’s family friends, Daniel and Barbara Lenihan, along with their son Aaron, told People magazine that Hackman had become “essentially home-bound” in recent times and had “stopped riding his bike through the neighborhood”.

“Betsy tried to keep him kind of active and engaged,” said Aaron, adding that Hackman did puzzles and yoga via Zoom daily. “She was still trying to keep him as active and engaged and healthy as possible.”

Daniel and Barbara Lenihan noted that in the “last couple of months”, the late actor “was really slipping there”.

Gary Sinise, who worked with Hackman on the 1995 film The Quick and the Dead, made a similar observation.

“I know once he retired to New Mexico, he was retired. He did not want to come back and get any awards or, you know, go to any Hollywood events or anything like that. He was done, and he was moving on from that part of his life,” Sinise told Fox News.

Their privacy, much-valued in Santa Fe, may ultimately have contributed to their tragic deaths.

Visitors from around the world have been flocking to the Pompidou Centre in Paris this weekend, seizing the last opportunity to enjoy Europe’s largest temple of modern and contemporary art before it closes its doors for a five-year overhaul.

In one of the most complex closures of its kind, the task of removing the museum’s 2,000-strong permanent collection will start on Monday. The Pompidou’s Chagalls, Giacomettis and myriad other treasures will be relocated to other sites in Paris and museums elsewhere in France and around the world.

The refit of the nearly 50-year-old building, constructed in the heart of Paris by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, is expected to cost an estimated €262ms and will require the entire centre – including its huge library and music research unit – to be closed from late September.

The building, famous for its facade adorned with colourful pipes and ventilation shafts, will be given a top-to-toe renovation, with everything from its technology and accessibility to its energy efficiency due to be reconditioned. Most crucial is the removal of asbestos present everywhere from the museum’s ceilings to its pipes, a task so huge a complete demolition had been proposed.

Once complete, the cultural colossus, named after Georges Pompidou, France’s conservative president between 1969 and 1974, is to be reopened with a new exhibition space, offering what museum bosses have called a “multidisciplinary perspective” with new spaces for children and young people, as well as an enlarged library.

Art lovers have until 9pm on Monday to take a final stroll through the permanent collection. However, Laurent Le Bon, art historian and the museum’s head, said those who missed the deadline would have plenty of other chances to see the Pompidou’s works. Calling the renovation a “an unprecedented opportunity to reinvent the Centre Pompidou”, he has said: “We will use the time we have well.”

Some of the works will be brought out of storage for an exhibition in Paris’ Grand Palais – which itself was reopened last summer after a major renovation..

French visitors and foreign tourists were among those to take advantage of the last weekend, for which entrance was free, with workshops, art performances and DJ sets contributing to a lively atmosphere.

Alyssa, an 11-year-old French girl visiting with her 62-year-old grandfather, said she wanted to “see for real” the abstract paintings of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, which she had been shown in school.

Paula Goulart, a 25-year-old from Brazil, told Agence France-Presse she was a fan not so much of the artworks as of the spectacular views of the Paris skyline from the building’s upper storeys. Her Portuguese friend Luis Fraga said he was a regular visitor to the museum and was keen to lap up and “enjoy as much as possible” the artworks “before they are no longer here”.

The Pompidou Centre, which attracted more than 3 million visitors last year, is one of the most popular museums in the world, ranking in Paris behind only the Louvre (8 million) and the Musée d’Orsay (3.7 million) in terms of popularity.

Its closure comes weeks after major renovation work was announced at the Louvre amid heavy criticism that the museum had become overcrowded and unmanageable. For that project, estimated to cost €700-800m, which involves creating a new, more accessible entrance and putting the Mona Lisa in a separate room with its own means of access, the museum will not be closed, though some individual rooms will be, temporarily. It is due to be completed in 2031.

Those who consider the Pompidou’s planned closure to be lengthy may take solace when looking to Berlin, where visitors wanting to visit the Pergamon Museum, which houses a collection of ancient Greek and Roman art as well as the Pergamon Altar, will have to wait up to 20 years for extensive renovation works to be completed. The museum closed in October 2023.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.

Romania’s central election authority has barred far-right pro-Russia candidate Călin Georgescu from running in May’s presidential election re-run.

The rejection of his candidacy, which was announced on Sunday evening and was condemned by far-right party leaders as undemocratic, can be challenged at the constitutional court.

Dozens of supporters of the populist Georgescu gathered outside the election bureau shouting “Freedom” and briefly tried to force their way through the security cordon.

Georgescu submitted his candidacy for the May ballot re-run on Friday amid doubts that he would be allowed to run.

Romania’s highest court annulled the ballot two days before the second round of voting in December, citing allegations of Russian interference in Georgescu’s favour, which Moscow has denied.

Members of US President Donald Trump’s administration called Romania’s cancelled election an example of European governments suppressing freedom of speech and political opponents.

Tech billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk called the election authority’s decision “crazy” on his social media platform X.

Georgescu is under criminal investigation on six counts, including membership of a fascist organisation and communicating false information about campaign financing. He has denied all wrongdoing.

Germany’s chancellor-to-be, Friedrich Merz, has said he will reach out to France and Britain to discuss the sharing of nuclear weapons, but cautioned that such a move could not be a replacement for the US’s existing protective shield over Europe.

“The sharing of nuclear weapons is an issue we need to talk about,” Merz said in a wide-ranging interview on Sunday with the broadcaster Deutschlandfunk (DLF). “We have to be stronger together in nuclear deterrence.”

Merz, an erstwhile passionate transatlanticist who has spoken out in recent weeks on Donald Trump and Europe’s need to be “independent”, said he hoped the US nuclear shield would remain in place, and that a European shield should be viewed as a “complement” to it.

“We should talk with both countries [France and Britain] always, and in addition, from the perspective of supplementing the American nuclear shield, which we of course want to see maintained,” he said.

In a guarded reference to Trump, Merz said: “The changed global security situation now necessitates that we Europeans discuss this matter together.”

Owing to its second world war past as the aggressor, Germany has committed itself to non-nuclear defence in international treaties, according to which it is banned from acquiring nuclear weapons, at the same time as cooperating in Nato weapons-sharing agreements.

Merz’s comments came after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced on Wednesday he was open to a discussion on widening France’s nuclear deterrent programme to other European nations.

At an extraordinary meeting in Brussels on Thursday, EU leaders agreed on plans to boost spending on defence over the need to build an alternative model to military support from Washington and amid concerns that Russia, encouraged by its war on Ukraine and encouraging signs from the White House, could set its future sights on attacking an EU state.

Merz, the leader of the conservatives in Germany, has put his political reputation on the line by reneging on a pre-election promise to keep the country’s rigid debt rules intact, announcing proposals last week for a massive rise in spending for defence and infrastructure.

His plans, which involve altering the constitution, will come before the German parliament on Thursday. Merz is hoping for the backing of the Social Democrats and the Greens, with whom the necessary two-thirds parliamentary majority is still possible in the existing parliament, which remains in place until 25 March.

However, Merz acknowledged on Sunday he still had work to do in order to win over the Greens to his plans, whose support is needed if a two-thirds majority is to be reached. The Greens have signalled their strong objection to the fact that hardly any reference has been made to climate protection in Merz’s proposals.

Merz said in the Deutschlandfunk interview that “intensive” talks would take place with the Green party next week. “We will integrate climate protection measures [in the investment proposals],” he said.

Merz’s CDU/CSU came first in a federal election last month and is seeking to form a “mini-grand” coalition with the Social Democrats. The two parties announced on Saturday they had completed a round of “sounding talks” to establish whether there was sufficient common ground between them before the start of formal negotiations. Official talks could begin in the coming week.

Major sticking points are expected to be migration and security, with Merz having ridden on a pre-election ticket of considerably toughening up on rules over who can enter Germany and under what circumstances they could stay.

The new government is under huge pressure to take the wind out of the sails of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, which soared to second place in the election, with almost 21%, promising among other policies a mass “remigration” of criminal foreigners and migrants with no legal right to stay in Germany, should it come to power.

Addressing concerns that his plans to tighten migration regulations would put Germany at odds with its neighbours, Merz said he intended to be fully compliant with EU rules and would seek pan-European consensus. “We want European solidarity … but Germany also of course has a right to defend its own security and order,” he said.

Merz has said he has hopes of forming a coalition by Easter, on 20 April.

The South African playwright and director Athol Fugard, whose works included the play Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and the novel Tsotsi, has died at the age of 92. The actor John Kani paid tribute on X on Sunday, saying “I am deeply saddened by the passing of my dear friend”. The mayor’s office in Cape Town said: “Athol Fugard was not just a luminary in the world of theatre; he was a teller of profound stories of hope and resilience about South Africa.”

A major political dissident playwright of the 20th century, Fugard wrote more than 30 dramas including Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (in 1972) and “Master Harold” … and the Boys (1982). Both of those drew upon the time in the 1950s when he could only find employment as a clerk in one of the courts where black South Africans were charged (and inevitably convicted) of breaches of the “pass laws”, designed to control the movements of a racially segregated population under the apartheid system. There, he witnessed hourly the dehumanisation of those who had chosen the “wrong” streets or people.

Fugard’s cultural and political impact was rivalled elsewhere only by the dramas of Václav Havel in what was then Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. Havel was jailed and, when released, abandoned theatre to become the first president of the Czech Republic. Fugard – despite setting up two theatre companies in the segregated black townships and courageously refusing to play to the state-mandated “whites only” audiences – avoided prison, due to being white and therefore not a primary target of the racist government. The worst direct personal persecutions Fugard suffered were the removal of his passport and the occasional banning of plays and burning of books. He was always conscious, though, of benefiting from the immoral hierarchy his writing decried.

The writer’s race would also have made him an impossible political leader in the new Republic of South Africa: its dissident turned president in the Havel manner was Nelson Mandela, who had a strong background presence in Fugard’s plays, especially The Island (1972), set on Robben Island, the penitentiary for political prisoners where Mandela had spent some of his 27 years of incarceration.

Born in 1932, Fugard was the only child of Harold, from an immigrant family of Irish descent, and Elizabeth, whose Potgieter clan were among the early Afrikaans settlers of Dutch stock. A jazz pianist turned shopkeeper, Harold moved his family in 1935 to Port Elizabeth, an urban industrial town that remained Fugard’s main home and most regular dramatic setting for the next nine decades.

During his childhood, the family ran a hotel and cafe in Port Elizabeth where “Hally” (as the young Athol was known) grew up. There, as a teenager in the late 1940s, an incident occurred that would lie at the heart of his psychology and creativity. In published extracts from his notebooks, Fugard explained how Sam Semela, a black employee in the family businesses, became “the most significant – the only – friend of my boyhood years”. But, after a “rare quarrel”, Hally pulled racial rank and spat in Semela’s face.

While confiding to his journal that he would never be able to “deal with the shame that overwhelmed me the second after”, Fugard made literary recompense with “Master Harold” … and the Boys, its title acknowledging a racist hierarchy between white people and their servants that is overturned by a devastatingly apologetic depiction of how the demon of superiority can rise even in the mind of someone who defines as a liberal: the spitting scene is its climax. One of the dedicatees of the published play is “Sam”, with whom Fugard had been reconciled.

Public admission of this shaming story was typical of Fugard’s personal honesty, but can also be seen as an attempt to forestall any “saint” or “saviour” interpretation of his work. The contemporary pejorative term “white saviour”, with its implication of credit stolen and virtue claimed, was not yet widely used, but, once it was, Fugard faced retrospective accusation.

A complication arose with the working methods of the African Theatre Workshop and Serpent Players, two multi-racial companies Fugard and his wife, Shiela (also a writer) formed either side of 1960, first in Johannesburg and then Port Elizabeth. Early Fugard plays such as No-Good Friday (1958), Nongogo (1959) and The Coat (1966) improvised scenes with actors based on their own experiences and then created a fixed text for performance.

As a major Fugard scholar, Professor Dennis Walder, has pointed out, it was yet another horror of the system that the writer could only work with colleagues of colour at his home by registering them, for bureaucratic purposes, as his domestic staff.

Fugard’s desire to collaborate with the wronged community, rather than writing anti-apartheid stories from an isolated study in a white area (a criticism of some contemporaries), can reasonably be seen as another compensating response to the Sam shame. But a majority black co-operative run by a white man subsequently raised issues of “appropriation” to which Fugard was alert: editions of The Island and its companion play, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972), in which someone takes on the identity of a dead man in order to use his “pass book” (ID papers), have the credit “devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona”, with royalties split three ways.

The circumstances in which Fugard’s early plays were made now sound like something from dystopian fiction. The South African police would raid rehearsals, check scripts and take the names of actors; it became standard for performers to be listed in programmes and on posters under the identities of fictional characters they had previously played.

The end of apartheid and Mandela’s presidency removed, from 1994, what the novelist Nadine Gordimer had called “the only subject” for white liberal writers in South Africa. Fugard, though, wrote plays that effectively reflected the country’s “truth and reconciliation” phase of attempted restorative justice.

In The Train Driver (2010), his strongest late work, the white title character seeks out the family of a black mother and child who died when they stepped in front of his train; in Sorrows And Rejoicing (2001), the family of a dead, white anti-apartheid writer reflect on the evasions of his life.

That Fugard continued as a dramatist even when the driving cause of his first plays was achieved was due to the incompleteness of the victory. Whereas anti-Soviet dramas now have only historical interest – as relative democracy has continued in Russia’s former bloc – the 2021 revival of Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, at the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond, remained disconcertingly relevant.

While the specific evil it dramatised – the ban on interracial sex in South Africa from 1927 to 1985 – was gone, the play now served a new purpose: a metaphor for the continuing inequalities of opportunity and security suffered by people of colour around the world. The unexpected longevity of Statements continued a paradox that ran through Fugard’s career: situations that he detested as a citizen were his dramatic fuel.

Parents leaving the London production of Statements could be heard explaining to appalled children that the immorality laws had existed in a Commonwealth country during the lifetime of anyone older than 36. That duty of education will keep Fugard’s plays in the theatrical canon, as will the broader lessons of Statements, “Master Harold” … and the Boys and The Island in how racism roots and grows. His 1980 novel Tsotsi, about crime in Johannesburg, was adapted as an Oscar-winning 2005 film, directed by Gavin Hood.

Fugard would have been the first to acknowledge that others, such as Kani and Ntshona, were the theatrical Mandelas of free South Africa, but the man who called himself “a classic example of the impotent, white liberal” was an epitome of the good people who, in Hannah Arendt’s formulation, must act if evil is not to prevail.