Ukraine said it was ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia, as the US announced it would immediately lift its restrictions on military aid and intelligence sharing after high-stakes talks in Saudi Arabia.

Donald Trump said he now hoped Vladimir Putin would reciprocate. If the Russian president did, it would mark the first ceasefire in the more than three years since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Hours after Ukraine’s declaration, Russia launched an air attack on Kyiv, with mayor Vitali Klitschko saying air defences were engaged in repelling the strikes.

The agreement, announced in a joint statement following talks between senior US and Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, came nearly two weeks after an Oval Office blowup between Trump and the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that led the White House to suspend aid to Ukraine over the objections of its European allies.

“That’s a total ceasefire,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday after the talks. “Ukraine has agreed to it. And hopefully Russia will agree to it.”

US officials said they hoped the agreement would help lead to talks to end the war. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to travel to Moscow in the coming days to propose the ceasefire to Putin.

It is not clear if Putin is ready to accept the ceasefire in its current form. Trump said he is expecting to speak with Putin later this week. Russian media have reported that their conversation could take place on Friday.

Trump continued: “We’re going to meet with them [the Russians] later on today and tomorrow and hopefully we’ll be able to [work] out a deal. I think the ceasefire is very important. If we can get Russia to do it, that’ll be great. If we can’t we just keep going on and people are gonna get killed, lots of people.”

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said the ball was “now in Russia’s court” after the negotiations concluded. “If they [Russia] say no then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here,” he said.

In London, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, welcomed the agreement, saying: “This is an important moment for peace in Ukraine and we now all need to redouble our efforts to get to a lasting and secure peace as soon as possible … Russia must now agree to a ceasefire and an end to the fighting too.” He said he would be “convening leaders this Saturday to discuss next steps”.

French president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday hailed the “progress” made in the Jeddah talks but insisted that Kyiv needs “robust” security guarantees in any ceasefire.

In Poland, prime minister Donald Tusk praised the “important step towards peace” by the US and Ukraine.

In the joint US statement, Ukraine said that it had “expressed readiness to accept the US proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation”.

After the talks, Zelenskyy thanked Trump in a televised statement and said that Ukaine was committed to seeking a peace “so that war does not return”.

“Ukraine is ready to accept this proposal—we see it as a positive step and are ready to take it,” Zelenskyy said. “Now, it is up to the United States to convince Russia to do the same. If Russia agrees, the ceasefire will take effect immediately.”

Putin will now be forced to decide whether to conclude a temporary ceasefire or risk souring relations with the White House under the new Trump administration.

“The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace,” the statement read.

The decision came more than a week after the US cut off crucial aid to Ukraine, including deliveries of military radars and ammunition, as well as information sharing, which put significant pressure on Ukraine to agree to a US-proposed deal.

“The Ukrainian delegation today made something very clear: that they share President Trump’s vision for peace,” said the US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who also joined the negotiations.

As a result, the US said it would “immediately lift the pause on intelligence sharing and resume security assistance to Ukraine”.

The statement also revived plans for a controversial minerals deal that would give the United States a 50% stake in revenues from the sale of Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Trump has said that the deal would provide implicit security guarantees by linking US economic interests with Ukraine’s security.

Trump and Zelenskyy will “conclude as soon as possible a comprehensive agreement for developing Ukraine’s critical mineral resources to expand Ukraine’s economy and guarantee Ukraine’s long-term prosperity and security,” the statement read.

The marathon crunch talks in Saudi Arabia aimed to build confidence despite a personal crisis between Trump and Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy sent his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, while Trump sent Rubio and Waltz.

“We are ready to do everything to achieve peace,” Yermak told reporters as he arrived for the talks, held in an opulent room provided by the Gulf state.

The two sides talked for about three hours in the morning before taking a break, then into the afternoon and early evening. During the talks, Yermak posted one line on social media: “Work in progress.”

It was expected that the Ukrainians would suggest to the Americans a one-month ceasefire in the air and at sea, if Russia agreed to the same, during which time further discussions could take place on a more lasting end to the fighting.

The offer was designed to show the Americans that Ukraine was bringing constructive proposals to the table.

Rubio, on his flight out, said Washington’s main aim was to see if Kyiv was “prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things, to end this conflict or at least pause it in some way, shape or form”.

Domestically, Zelenskyy’s flagging ratings were boosted by his dressing down in the White House but while there is anger at Trump’s demands, there is a strong feeling that, given the difficult situation at the front and exhaustion after three years of war, the Ukrainian president should make every effort to mend relations with the White House.

Since the debacle in Washington, Ukraine has sought to flatter Trump, to prevent a peace plan from being forced upon it. Writing in the Guardian before the talks started, Yermak complimented a “strong American leadership” but said “a peace must be found that is both just and sustainable”.

It is understood that British and French officials were particularly key in advising Kyiv on how best to put their position to the Americans. Jonathan Powell, an adviser to Starmer, is in regular contact with Yermak and visited Kyiv over the weekend. Yermak said the visit was part of “joint work with partners to develop a plan for achieving a just and lasting peace” before the Saudi summit.

The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, posted a social media update on Tuesday stressing the importance of the day’s US-Ukraine talks.

“Dear Americans, dear Ukrainians, don’t waste this chance. The whole world is watching you in Jeddah today. Good luck!” he said.

Russia had celebrated the loss of military and intelligence support from Ukraine’s largest, and previously steadfast, backer.

It remains to be seen how ready Russia is for any peace deal, even in the current scenario in which the Trump team seems to be requiring more sacrifices from Kyiv than Moscow.

On Tuesday, Putin’s spokesperson, speaking before the ceasefire proposal, said the signals from Washington were causing many in Moscow to rejoice, but added there should not be premature celebration.

“You always need to hope for the best but still be prepared for the worst, and we should always be ready to defend our interests,” Dmitry Peskov said at a conference, in comments reported by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper. “Many people are rushing to put on rose-tinted spectacles and are saying that the Americans will now stop providing weapons or have already done so, that Musk will turn all the communications systems off, and everything will work out for us. But it will work out for us anyway.”

On the battlefield, Moscow has seized the moment to launch a recent offensive in the Kursk region of western Russia, where it is trying to eject the Ukrainian army.

On Tuesday, Russia’s defence ministry said its troops had regained more than 100 sq km (38.6 sq miles) of territory and 12 settlements in Kursk, which was taken by Ukrainian forces seven months ago. Kyiv has said the Kursk operation was an attempt to gain a bargaining chip in future negotiations and to force Russia to shift forces from eastern Ukraine.

In an attempt to put pressure on Moscow hours before the Jeddah peace talks, Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on Moscow since the start of the war.

The Russian defence ministry reported 337 drones were launched at Russia overnight on Monday, including 91 targeting the Moscow region, killing two people, sparking fires and disrupting flights and train services.

Suddenly the ball is in Russia’s court. The flow of US intelligence and military aid to Ukraine is to resume – and the Kremlin is being asked to agree to a 30-day ceasefire that Kyiv has already told the Americans it will sign up to.

It is a dizzying turnaround from the Oval Office row between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump and the apparent abandonment of the White House’s strategy to simply pressurise Ukraine into agreeing to a peace deal. Now, for the first time, Russia is being asked to make a commitment, though it is unclear what will follow if it does sign up.

Announcing the peace proposal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said that he hoped Russia would accept a peace agreement “so we can get to the second phase of this, which is real negotiations”.

That may leave plenty of room for interpretation. Russia has also been pushing for a ceasefire, though the Kremlin had wanted that to be followed by elections in Ukraine, before any full negotiation about territory and Kyiv’s future security.

Ukraine, meanwhile, will want strong security guarantees to avoid a resumption of the war, involving European peacekeepers on the ground, which Russia has so far said it is against. An open question, perhaps, is whether peacekeepers could enter Ukraine during a ceasefire period, but this is speculative.

Until Tuesday’s discussions between US and Ukrainian delegations bore fruit, the battlefield dynamics did not appear to favour a ceasefire. Ukraine’s decision to launch a drone attack into Russia on Monday night was a clear demonstration that its military capacity had not yet been significantly dented by the pause in supply of US military intelligence. It was also an aggressive effort to put pressure on Moscow to agree a peace.

Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had attacked with 337 drones, 91 of which were aimed at Moscow and the surrounding region. Three people were reported to have been killed, all four of the Russian capital’s airports had to be closed, and local air defences were not entirely effective in repelling the assault.

A handful of residential buildings were visibly damaged, though not too seriously. Moscow’s regional governor said that two people had been killed at a car park near a meat processing plant in Domodedovo, 5 miles from an airport. Fragments of a drone hit the ground, setting fire to cars shortly after 5am, Andrei Vorobyov wrote on his Telegram channel. Later, it was reported that a third man had died.

Striking at civilian targets is never attractive, though the images were not dissimilar to those of Ukrainian cities hit nightly by Russian bombing over the past three years. Russia has also been increasing the scale of its drone attacks recently – on Monday it launched 126 Shahed drones, as well as other, decoy drones, into Ukraine, alongside a ballistic missile.

Fighting on the frontline has favoured Russia for some time, but not dramatically or decisively so. On Thursday last week, a day after the US confirmed its decision to halt the flow of intelligence, Russia launched an effort, with the help of North Korean troops, to recapture the remainder of the Kursk area held by Ukraine.

That has forced the defenders back by between 4 and 8 miles (6.5km and 13km) and into the outskirts of Sudhza, a village that Ukraine has occupied since August. But its success may well be a function of a concerted attack, rather than a beginnings of a rout caused by the temporary absence of targeting data. That means Russian progress in the Kursk sector, for example, is very likely to continue if no ceasefire is agreed.

Nevertheless, the diplomatic momentum is suddenly with Ukraine, though with the mercurial Donald Trump involved, it is unclear for how long. Around $1bn (£772m) of US military aid is now potentially unblocked, while key functions for totemic weapons such as F-16s are presumably being restored – and the Kremlin’s immediate hopes of grinding down Kyiv on the frontline are set back.

Suddenly the ball is in Russia’s court. The flow of US intelligence and military aid to Ukraine is to resume – and the Kremlin is being asked to agree to a 30-day ceasefire that Kyiv has already told the Americans it will sign up to.

It is a dizzying turnaround from the Oval Office row between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump and the apparent abandonment of the White House’s strategy to simply pressurise Ukraine into agreeing to a peace deal. Now, for the first time, Russia is being asked to make a commitment, though it is unclear what will follow if it does sign up.

Announcing the peace proposal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said that he hoped Russia would accept a peace agreement “so we can get to the second phase of this, which is real negotiations”.

That may leave plenty of room for interpretation. Russia has also been pushing for a ceasefire, though the Kremlin had wanted that to be followed by elections in Ukraine, before any full negotiation about territory and Kyiv’s future security.

Ukraine, meanwhile, will want strong security guarantees to avoid a resumption of the war, involving European peacekeepers on the ground, which Russia has so far said it is against. An open question, perhaps, is whether peacekeepers could enter Ukraine during a ceasefire period, but this is speculative.

Until Tuesday’s discussions between US and Ukrainian delegations bore fruit, the battlefield dynamics did not appear to favour a ceasefire. Ukraine’s decision to launch a drone attack into Russia on Monday night was a clear demonstration that its military capacity had not yet been significantly dented by the pause in supply of US military intelligence. It was also an aggressive effort to put pressure on Moscow to agree a peace.

Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had attacked with 337 drones, 91 of which were aimed at Moscow and the surrounding region. Three people were reported to have been killed, all four of the Russian capital’s airports had to be closed, and local air defences were not entirely effective in repelling the assault.

A handful of residential buildings were visibly damaged, though not too seriously. Moscow’s regional governor said that two people had been killed at a car park near a meat processing plant in Domodedovo, 5 miles from an airport. Fragments of a drone hit the ground, setting fire to cars shortly after 5am, Andrei Vorobyov wrote on his Telegram channel. Later, it was reported that a third man had died.

Striking at civilian targets is never attractive, though the images were not dissimilar to those of Ukrainian cities hit nightly by Russian bombing over the past three years. Russia has also been increasing the scale of its drone attacks recently – on Monday it launched 126 Shahed drones, as well as other, decoy drones, into Ukraine, alongside a ballistic missile.

Fighting on the frontline has favoured Russia for some time, but not dramatically or decisively so. On Thursday last week, a day after the US confirmed its decision to halt the flow of intelligence, Russia launched an effort, with the help of North Korean troops, to recapture the remainder of the Kursk area held by Ukraine.

That has forced the defenders back by between 4 and 8 miles (6.5km and 13km) and into the outskirts of Sudhza, a village that Ukraine has occupied since August. But its success may well be a function of a concerted attack, rather than a beginnings of a rout caused by the temporary absence of targeting data. That means Russian progress in the Kursk sector, for example, is very likely to continue if no ceasefire is agreed.

Nevertheless, the diplomatic momentum is suddenly with Ukraine, though with the mercurial Donald Trump involved, it is unclear for how long. Around $1bn (£772m) of US military aid is now potentially unblocked, while key functions for totemic weapons such as F-16s are presumably being restored – and the Kremlin’s immediate hopes of grinding down Kyiv on the frontline are set back.

The US Department of Education intends to lay off nearly half of its workforce. The layoffs of 1,300 people were announced by the department on Tuesday and described by the education secretary, Linda McMahon, as a “significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system”.

In a post on X, McMahon said: “Today’s [reduction in force] reflects our commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”

After the most recent round of layoffs, the department’s staff will be roughly half of its previous 4,100, the agency said in a statement. According to the department, another 572 employees had already accepted “voluntary resignation opportunities and retirement” over the last seven weeks. The newly laid-off employees will be placed on administrative leave at the end of next week.

The department is also terminating leases on buildings in cities including New York, Boston, Chicago and Cleveland, officials said. The agency will continue to oversee the distribution of federal aid to schools, student loan management and oversight of Pell grants, the statement released on Tuesday reads.

Trump campaigned on a promise to close the department, claiming it had been overtaken by “radicals, zealots and Marxists”. At McMahon’s confirmation hearing, she acknowledged that only Congress has the power to abolish the agency but said it might be due for cuts and a reorganization.

The layoff announcement has been met with swift condemnation from Democratic and progressive officials. The Texas representative Greg Casar wrote in a post on X that those in charge were “Stealing from our children to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.”

In a statement, Rosa DeLauro, the ranking member of the House appropriations committee, said: “Presidents Trump and Musk and their billionaire buddies are so detached from how Americans live that they cannot see how ending public education and canceling these contracts kills the American Dream … If kids from working class families do not have access to schools, how can they build a future?”

On Monday, McMahon wrote to 60 universities to warn them that they were under investigation for supposed violations of the Civil Rights Act because of protests against Israel’s war on Gaza that the Trump administration defined as “antisemitic harassment and discrimination” of Jewish students.

As the department pushes ahead with cuts, a federal judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration’s plan to cut hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training, finding that cuts were already affecting training programs aimed at addressing a nationwide teacher shortage.

The US district judge Myong Joun sided with eight states that had requested a temporary restraining order. The states argued the cuts were likely driven by Trump’s drive to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which the president seems to believe are a form of racism against white Americans.

Affected education department employees will be placed on administrative leave starting on 21 March, the department said.

Donald Trump said he is buying a “brand new Tesla” and blamed “Radical Left Lunatics” for “illegally” boycotting Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company. The announcement came a day after Tesla suffered its worst share price fall in nearly five years.

Later, the president also said he would label violence against Tesla showrooms as domestic terrorism. Trump was responding to a question during a Tuesday press conference, in which a reporter said, “Talk to us about some of the violence that’s been going on around the country at Tesla dealerships. Some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists.”

“I will do that. I’ll do that,” Trump said. “I’m going to put a stop to it. Because they’re harming a great American company.”

Trump spoke on the White House driveway, alongside Musk and Musk’s young son. Several Tesla vehicles were parked in the driveway for Trump to pick which vehicle to buy. In August 2024, a podcaster gifted Trump a Cybertruck. On Tuesday, Trump selected a red Model S, which he said he would pay for by check.

“Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday morning.

During the press conference, Trump reiterated these statements saying: “We already know who some of them are. We’re going to catch them, and they’re bad guys.”

Tesla’s shares fell sharply on Monday as markets reacted to the threat of a recession and Trump’s tariff plans. Tesla’s slide came amid widespread protests over the billionaire Musk’s influence in the federal government at Tesla dealerships, a boycott campaign, car owners selling their Tesla vehicles, and activists pushing members of the public to sell Tesla shares.

“In any event, I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American. Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???”

Trump’s claim the boycott is “illegal” is false. The supreme court ruled in 1972 that the first amendment of the US constitution protects Americans’ right to protest against private businesses.

The group TeslaTakedown, which has been organizing the anti-Tesla protests nationwide, says people also have the right to protest peacefully on the sidewalks and streets in front of the company’s showrooms.

“Peaceful protest on public property is not domestic terrorism,” the group said in a statement. “We will not be bullied or allow our rights to be trampled on or stolen.”

Musk’s net worth decreased by $29bn yesterday alone, and has fallen by $132bn over the past 12 months, as Tesla shares’ gains have been wiped out. Tesla shares have declined every week since Trump took office, declining 15% on Monday alone. He remains the richest man in the world with a fortune of more than $320bn, according to Forbes.

Tesla’s board members, including Musk’s brother Kimbal Musk, have offloaded millions of dollars worth of shares in recent months. Tesla vehicle sales abroad have also dropped significantly, including by 76.3% in Germany in February 2025 compared with February 2024.

The boycott has emerged as Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has wreaked havoc throughout the federal government in a proclaimed effort to reduce federal spending. The access and actions by Musk and his team have incited concerns over the lack of transparency, false claims about cancelled contracts and grants and the amount of savings made.

Polls have shown public support for Doge is mixed to unfavorable, with the vast majority of Democratic voters polling that Musk has too much power.

The looming trade war between the US and Canada escalated on Tuesday as Donald Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum after Canadian threats to increase electricity prices for US customers.

On Tuesday morning Trump announced plans to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% and once again threatened to annex Canada as retaliation for the province of Ontario’s imposition of a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to several US states, in a dramatic escalation of the trade war between the two ostensibly allied countries.

The news set off another stock market sell-off on Wall Street that was tempered when Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said he made a deal with the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to suspend Canada’s 25% tariff on exports of electricity to Michigan, New York and Minnesota after Lutnick agreed to discuss renewing existing trade relations.

New tariffs of 25% on all imported steel and aluminum are still scheduled to take effect at midnight on Wednesday, including against allies and top US suppliers Canada and Mexico, the White House confirmed to Reuters.

Incorrectly calling Canada “one of the highest tariffing nations anywhere in the world”, Trump said he had instructed his secretary of commerce to increase levies on the metals due to start on Wednesday morning. He also threatened more tariffs on 2 April on the car industry that would “essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada”.

Asking rhetorically why the US received electricity from another country, he accused Canada of using energy, “that so affects the life of innocent people, as a bargaining chip and threat” and said “they will pay a financial price for this so big that it will be read about in History Books for many years to come”.

Mark Carney, Canada’s incoming prime minister, called Trump’s latest move “an attack on Canadian workers, families and businesses” and promised to “keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect and make credible, reliable commitments to free and fair trade”.

The Trump administration was also reportedly preparing on Tuesday to institute a new rule that would require some Canadians staying in the US for more than 30 days to register personal information and agree to fingerprinting, according to Bloomberg. Currently there is largely frictionless travel for citizens between the two countries.

The fractious economic battle between the US and Canada has developed even graver undertones as Trump makes increasingly aggressive threats for the US to absorb its northern neighbour. Although at first claiming that he wanted Canada to crack down on fentanyl, Trump has now accused the US ally of underpaying for military protection and incorrectly described the trade imbalance with Canada as a $200bn subsidy from the US.

Trump coupled his tariff declaration with openly aggressive language about making Canada “our cherished Fifty First State”, repeating a constant refrain over the last few months. He claimed American statehood for Canada would make “all tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear”, called the border “an artificial line of separation drawn many years ago” and suggested the Canadian national anthem, O Canada, would become a state anthem.

The rhetoric has inspired a rare unity among Canadian politicians, with Carney campaigning for Liberal leader on standing up to Trump, and saying to a standing ovation in his acceptance speech on Sunday that “Canada never, ever will be part of America”.

Trump’s moves are just the latest in the chaos around the president’s trade policy, amid tumbling stock markets and fears it could trigger a possible US recession.

The White House’s strategy so far has been to play down the anxiety on Wall Street, even as stocks waver. After Trump refused to rule out the possibility of a recession in an interview with Fox News over the weekend, the Nasdaq had its worst day on Monday since September 2022, dropping 4%.

Shares in US automakers also fell after the announcement, as traders bet that high metal tariffs would drive up costs for the American industrial sector, eating into their profits. Ford Motor dropped nearly 4%, while General Motors dipped by 1.3%. Shares in the carmaker Stellantis – which has several manufacturing facilities in Canada – fell by more than 5%.

Price premiums for aluminum on US physical market soared to a record high above $990 a metric ton, Reuters reported.

The Ontario premier Ford has said that Trump must take the blame if there is a recession in the US, telling MSNBC on Tuesday: “If we go into a recession, it will be called the Trump recession.”

Ford has said in the past that he would be willing to cut off US energy supply from Canada completely in response to Trump’s tariffs.

“We will be relentless,” Ford said, adding he would not “hesitate” to shut off electricity exports to the US if Trump continues the trade war.

“That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to send more electricity down to the US, to our closest allies or our best neighbors in the world. I want to send more electricity.” But, he said, “Is it a tool in our toolkit? One hundred per cent, and as he continues to hurt Canadian families, Ontario families, I won’t hesitate to do that.”

Ford also encouraged American CEOs, who have been largely silent on the trade war and threats to Canadian sovereignty, to speak up. On Tuesday Trump is set to meet with the Business Roundtable, an influential group of business leaders that includes the CEOs of Google, Amazon and JPMorgan.

Ford said: “We need those CEOs to actually get a backbone and stand in front of him and tell him, ‘This is going to be a disaster. It’s mass chaos right now.’”

The group said in a statement last week that while it supported trade policies that “open markets to US exports, revitalize the domestic manufacturing base and de-risk supply chains”, it called on the White House to “preserve the benefits” of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which Trump himself signed in 2020 but has since apparently violated by suddenly imposing steep tariffs on both countries.

Tariffs of 25% on steel and aluminum imports were already slated to apply to all countries globally on Wednesday, after Trump announced them last month.

Both consumer and business confidence has dropped in the US since Trump entered office.

A survey published on Monday in Chief Executive magazine found that CEOs’ rating of the current business climate fell 20% in January, from 6.3 out of 10 – with 1 being “poor” and 10 being “excellent” – to 5, the lowest since spring 2020.
Meanwhile, consumer confidence measured by the Conference Board found that confidence dropped over 6% in February, its biggest month-to-month drop since August 2021.

Trump had not yet spoken with Carney, said the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday, arguing that the tariffs on Canadian metals “was a retaliatory statement due to the escalation of rhetoric that we’ve seen out of Ontario, Canada”.

“I think Canada is a neighbor. They are a partner. They have always been an ally,” she said, adding: “Perhaps they are becoming a competitor now.”

An Australian man with heart failure has become the first person in the world to walk out of a hospital with a total artificial heart implant.

The Australian researchers and doctors behind the operation announced on Wednesday that the implant had been an “unmitigated clinical success” after the man lived with the device for more than 100 days before receiving a donor heart transplant in early March.

The BiVACOR total artificial heart, invented by Queensland-born Dr Daniel Timms, is the world’s first implantable rotary blood pump that can act as a complete replacement for a human heart, using magnetic levitation technology to replicate the natural blood flow of a healthy heart.

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The implant, still in the early stages of clinical study, has been designed for patients with end-stage biventricular heart failure, which generally develops after other conditions – most commonly heart attack and coronary heart disease, but also other diseases such as diabetes – have damaged or weakened the heart so that it cannot effectively pump blood through the body effectively.

Every year more than 23 million people around the world suffer from heart failure but only 6,000 will receive a donor heart, according to the Australian government, which provided $50m to develop and commercialise the BiVACOR device as part of the artificial heart frontiers program.

The implant is designed as a bridge to keep patients alive until a donor heart transplant becomes available, but BiVACOR’s long-term ambition is for implant recipients to be able to live with their device without needing a heart transplant.

The patient, a man in his 40s from New South Wales who was experiencing severe heart failure, volunteered to become the first recipient of the total artificial heart in Australia and the sixth in the world.

The first five implants took place last year in the US and all received donor hearts before being discharged from hospital, with the longest time in between implant and transplant 27 days.

The Australian patient received the device on 22 November at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney in a six-hour procedure led by the cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon Paul Jansz.

The patient, who declined to be identified, was discharged from the hospital with the implant in February. A donor heart became available to be transplanted in March.

Jansz said it was a privilege to be part of such an historic and pioneering Australian medical milestone.

“We’ve worked towards this moment for years and we’re enormously proud to have been the first team in Australia to carry out this procedure,” Jansz said.

Prof Chris Hayward, a cardiologist at St Vincent’s who led the observation of the man in after a few weeks in the intensive care unit, said the BiVACOR heart would transform heart failure treatment internationally.

“The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart ushers in a whole new ball game for heart transplants, both in Australia and internationally,” he said. “Within the next decade we will see the artificial heart becoming the alternative for patients who are unable to wait for a donor heart or when a donor heart is simply not available.”

Prof David Colquhoun from the University of Queensland and board member of the Heart Foundation, who was not involved in the trial, said the success was a “great technological step forward for artificial hearts – bridging hearts – before transplant”.

But Colquhoun cautioned that the functioning time span of the artificial heart – more than 100 days – was still significantly less than that of a donor heart, which is more than 10 years (or 3,000 days).

Colquhoun said for that reason it was still “a long way to go” before the artificial heart could be considered a replacement for a heart transplant.

He emphasised however the numbers per population experiencing heart failure are far less because of the heart medications now available – the peak of death rate from heart disease was around 1967-68 with 47,000 Australians dying from heart disease out of a then population of 11 million, compared with 45,000 of 26 million Australians in 2022.

The implant is the first in a series of procedures planned in Australia as part of the Monash University-led Artificial Heart Frontiers Program, which is developing three key devices to treat the most common forms of heart failure.

An Australian man with heart failure has become the first person in the world to walk out of a hospital with a total artificial heart implant.

The Australian researchers and doctors behind the operation announced on Wednesday that the implant had been an “unmitigated clinical success” after the man lived with the device for more than 100 days before receiving a donor heart transplant in early March.

The BiVACOR total artificial heart, invented by Queensland-born Dr Daniel Timms, is the world’s first implantable rotary blood pump that can act as a complete replacement for a human heart, using magnetic levitation technology to replicate the natural blood flow of a healthy heart.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

The implant, still in the early stages of clinical study, has been designed for patients with end-stage biventricular heart failure, which generally develops after other conditions – most commonly heart attack and coronary heart disease, but also other diseases such as diabetes – have damaged or weakened the heart so that it cannot effectively pump blood through the body effectively.

Every year more than 23 million people around the world suffer from heart failure but only 6,000 will receive a donor heart, according to the Australian government, which provided $50m to develop and commercialise the BiVACOR device as part of the artificial heart frontiers program.

The implant is designed as a bridge to keep patients alive until a donor heart transplant becomes available, but BiVACOR’s long-term ambition is for implant recipients to be able to live with their device without needing a heart transplant.

The patient, a man in his 40s from New South Wales who was experiencing severe heart failure, volunteered to become the first recipient of the total artificial heart in Australia and the sixth in the world.

The first five implants took place last year in the US and all received donor hearts before being discharged from hospital, with the longest time in between implant and transplant 27 days.

The Australian patient received the device on 22 November at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney in a six-hour procedure led by the cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon Paul Jansz.

The patient, who declined to be identified, was discharged from the hospital with the implant in February. A donor heart became available to be transplanted in March.

Jansz said it was a privilege to be part of such an historic and pioneering Australian medical milestone.

“We’ve worked towards this moment for years and we’re enormously proud to have been the first team in Australia to carry out this procedure,” Jansz said.

Prof Chris Hayward, a cardiologist at St Vincent’s who led the observation of the man in after a few weeks in the intensive care unit, said the BiVACOR heart would transform heart failure treatment internationally.

“The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart ushers in a whole new ball game for heart transplants, both in Australia and internationally,” he said. “Within the next decade we will see the artificial heart becoming the alternative for patients who are unable to wait for a donor heart or when a donor heart is simply not available.”

Prof David Colquhoun from the University of Queensland and board member of the Heart Foundation, who was not involved in the trial, said the success was a “great technological step forward for artificial hearts – bridging hearts – before transplant”.

But Colquhoun cautioned that the functioning time span of the artificial heart – more than 100 days – was still significantly less than that of a donor heart, which is more than 10 years (or 3,000 days).

Colquhoun said for that reason it was still “a long way to go” before the artificial heart could be considered a replacement for a heart transplant.

He emphasised however the numbers per population experiencing heart failure are far less because of the heart medications now available – the peak of death rate from heart disease was around 1967-68 with 47,000 Australians dying from heart disease out of a then population of 11 million, compared with 45,000 of 26 million Australians in 2022.

The implant is the first in a series of procedures planned in Australia as part of the Monash University-led Artificial Heart Frontiers Program, which is developing three key devices to treat the most common forms of heart failure.

Astronomers have discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn, giving it an insurmountable lead in the running tally of moons in the solar system.

Until recently, the “moon king” title was held by Jupiter, but Saturn now has a total of 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets combined. The team behind the discoveries had previously identified 62 Saturnian moons using the Canada France Hawaii telescope and, having seen faint hints that there were more out there, made further observations in 2023.

“Sure enough, we found 128 new moons,” said the lead researcher, Dr Edward Ashton, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Academia Sincia in Taiwan. “Based on our projections, I don’t think Jupiter will ever catch up.”

There are 95 moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits as of 5 February 2024.

The moons have been formally recognised by the International Astronomical Union this week and, for now, have been assigned strings of numbers and letters. They will eventually be given names based on Gallic, Norse and Canadian Inuit gods, in keeping with convention for Saturn’s moons. Most of the new moons fall in the Norse cluster, meaning astronomers are now on the hunt for dozens of obscure Viking deities. “Eventually the criteria may have to be relaxed a bit,” Ashton said.

The moons were identified using the “shift and stack” technique, in which astronomers acquire sequential images that trace the moon’s path across the sky and combine them to make the moon bright enough to detect. All of the 128 new moons are “irregular moons”, potato-shaped objects that are just a few kilometres across. The escalating number of these objects highlights potential future disagreements over what actually counts as a moon.

“I don’t think there’s a proper definition for what is classed as a moon. There should be,” said Ashton. However, he added that the team may have reached a limit for moon detection – for now.

“With current technology, I don’t think we can do much better than what has already been done for moons around Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” said Ashton.

Closer observations of the bonanza of tiny moons could give scientists a window into a turbulent period in the early solar system, in which the planets migrated around in unstable orbits and collisions were common. The new moons are clumped together in groups, suggesting that many of them are the remnants of much larger objects that collided and shattered within the last 100m years. The moons all have large, elliptical orbits at an angle to those of moons closer to the planet.

“[They] are likely all fragments of a smaller number of originally captured moons that were broken apart by violent collisions, either with other Saturnian moons or with passing comets,” said Prof Brett Gladman, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia.

Understanding the dynamics of Saturn’s many moons could also help resolve questions about the origin of Saturn’s rings, which scientists have suggested could be the aftermath of a moon that was ripped apart by the planet’s gravity.

Separately, the European Space Agency Hera spacecraft will conduct a Mars flyby on Wednesday and come within 190 miles (300km) of its smallest and most distant moon, Deimos. The moon, which is about 7 miles across, is thought to be the product of a giant impact on Mars or an asteroid that was captured in the red planet’s orbit. Hera will also image Mars’s larger moon, Phobos, before continuing its mission to survey an asteroid, Dimorphos, that was deliberately hit with a Nasa probe three years ago.

Once it reaches the asteroid, Hera will perform a detailed post-impact survey to help develop technology that could deflect dangerous asteroids that may collide with Earth in future.

The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has left Manila on a plane headed to The Hague, hours after he was served with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court over the killings resulting from his “war on drugs”.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr told a press conference that a plane carrying Duterte took off at 11.03pm local time on Tuesday. “The plane is en route to The Hague in the Netherlands, allowing the former president to face charges of crimes against humanity in relation to his bloody war on drugs,” he said.

Duterte’s youngest daughter, Veronica Duterte, said on social media that the plane had been used to “kidnap” her father.

The former leader, who will turn 80 this month, is accused by ICC prosecutors of crimes against humanity over his anti-drugs crackdowns, in which as many as 30,000 people were killed. Most of the victims were men in poor, urban areas who were gunned down in the streets.

Duterte was arrested on Tuesday morning at Manila’s main airport after flying back from Hong Kong. “Early in the morning, Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC,” the presidential palace said in a statement. “As of now, he is under the custody of authorities.”

Video shared online had earlier showed the former leader walking with a stick and being helped to board the stairs of a plane, surrounded by security. His lawyer, Martin Delgra, told local media it was bound for The Hague, where the ICC is based, although this has not been confirmed by officials until Marcos spoke after its departure.

Marcos, who was previously allied with Duterte’s elder daughter Sara, the country’s vice-president, had in the past refused to cooperate with the ICC investigation. However, his stance shifted after the two families became embroiled in a feud.

Marcos said the arrest came at the request of the ICC. “I am confident the arrest was proper, correct and followed all necessary legal procedures,” he said after Duterte’s departure. “We did not help the International Criminal Court in any way. The arrest was made in compliance with Interpol.”

Sara Duterte said she had “no message” for her former ally. “If you are a Filipino, you will never obey the foreigners inside your own country,” she said. “I don’t have any message for [Marcos]. I don’t think there’s any point talking to a person who will allow a citizen to be turned over to foreigners.”

A video shared by the broadcaster GMA had shown the moment of arrest as Duterte was stopped onboard a plane as he arrived in Manila. “You will just have to kill me. I won’t allow you to take the side of the white foreigners,” he said in the footage.

Philippine police said 379 police personnel had been deployed to the airport and other key locations. Duterte told police after he was taken into cusody he should be put on trial in a court in the Philippines. “If I committed a sin, prosecute me in Philippine courts,” he said in a video shared on social media by a relative.

Leila de Lima, one of the fiercest critics of Duterte and the “war on drugs” who was jailed for more than six years on baseless charges under his former government, said: “Today, Duterte is being made to answer – not to me, but to the victims, to their families, to a world that refuses to forget. This is not about vengeance. This is about justice finally taking its course.”

Josalee S Deinla, the secretary general of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, which represents the victims of the war on drugs, said justice was “finally catching up” with the former leader.

Much of the day’s events were relayed on social media and Veronica Duterte posted updates throughout Tuesday. In one clip, an official said Duterte’s family could select three people to accompany him to a charter flight. “Tell where he will be brought. You son of a bitch,” a voice shouted. In another update, Veronica Duterte warned about her father’s health, posting a photograph of him resting and receiving oxygen.

Duterte’s supporters have argued that, as the Philippines withdrew from the Rome statute in 2019, the ICC no longer has jurisdiction. However, the ICC has previously said it retains jurisdiction for alleged crimes that occurred in the country before its withdrawal.

Rights groups had urged the government to swiftly surrender him to the ICC.

Duterte became president in 2016 after promising a merciless, bloody crackdown that would rid the country of drugs. On the campaign trail he once said there would be so many bodies dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them. After taking office, he publicly stated he would kill suspected drug dealers and urged the public to kill addicts.

Since his election, between 12,000 and 30,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in connection with anti-drugs operations, according to data cited by the ICC.

Even as his crackdowns provoked international horror, he remained highly popular at home throughout his presidency.

Police reports often sought to justify killings, saying officers had acted in self-defence, despite witnesses stating otherwise. Rights groups documenting the crackdowns allege police routinely planted evidence, including guns, spent ammunition and drugs. An independent forensic pathologist investigating the killings has also uncovered serious irregularities in how postmortems were performed, including death certificates that wrongly attributed fatalities to natural causes.

Duterte, who appeared before a senate inquiry into the drugs war killings in 2024, said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his policies, saying: “I did what I had to do, and whether you believe it or not, I did it for my country.” During the same hearing, he told senators he had ordered officers to encourage criminals to fight back and resist arrest, so that police could then justify killing them – but also denied authorising police to kill suspects.

Duterte also told the hearing that he kept a “death squad” of criminals to kill other criminals while serving as a mayor of Davao, before becoming president.

The ICC’s investigation into the anti-drugs killings covers alleged crimes committed from November 2011 to June 2016, including extrajudicial killings in Davao City, as well as across the country during his presidency up until 16 March 2019, when the Philippines withdrew from the court.

The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has left Manila on a plane headed to The Hague, hours after he was served with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court over the killings resulting from his “war on drugs”.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr told a press conference that a plane carrying Duterte took off at 11.03pm local time on Tuesday. “The plane is en route to The Hague in the Netherlands, allowing the former president to face charges of crimes against humanity in relation to his bloody war on drugs,” he said.

Duterte’s youngest daughter, Veronica Duterte, said on social media that the plane had been used to “kidnap” her father.

The former leader, who will turn 80 this month, is accused by ICC prosecutors of crimes against humanity over his anti-drugs crackdowns, in which as many as 30,000 people were killed. Most of the victims were men in poor, urban areas who were gunned down in the streets.

Duterte was arrested on Tuesday morning at Manila’s main airport after flying back from Hong Kong. “Early in the morning, Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC,” the presidential palace said in a statement. “As of now, he is under the custody of authorities.”

Video shared online had earlier showed the former leader walking with a stick and being helped to board the stairs of a plane, surrounded by security. His lawyer, Martin Delgra, told local media it was bound for The Hague, where the ICC is based, although this has not been confirmed by officials until Marcos spoke after its departure.

Marcos, who was previously allied with Duterte’s elder daughter Sara, the country’s vice-president, had in the past refused to cooperate with the ICC investigation. However, his stance shifted after the two families became embroiled in a feud.

Marcos said the arrest came at the request of the ICC. “I am confident the arrest was proper, correct and followed all necessary legal procedures,” he said after Duterte’s departure. “We did not help the International Criminal Court in any way. The arrest was made in compliance with Interpol.”

Sara Duterte said she had “no message” for her former ally. “If you are a Filipino, you will never obey the foreigners inside your own country,” she said. “I don’t have any message for [Marcos]. I don’t think there’s any point talking to a person who will allow a citizen to be turned over to foreigners.”

A video shared by the broadcaster GMA had shown the moment of arrest as Duterte was stopped onboard a plane as he arrived in Manila. “You will just have to kill me. I won’t allow you to take the side of the white foreigners,” he said in the footage.

Philippine police said 379 police personnel had been deployed to the airport and other key locations. Duterte told police after he was taken into cusody he should be put on trial in a court in the Philippines. “If I committed a sin, prosecute me in Philippine courts,” he said in a video shared on social media by a relative.

Leila de Lima, one of the fiercest critics of Duterte and the “war on drugs” who was jailed for more than six years on baseless charges under his former government, said: “Today, Duterte is being made to answer – not to me, but to the victims, to their families, to a world that refuses to forget. This is not about vengeance. This is about justice finally taking its course.”

Josalee S Deinla, the secretary general of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, which represents the victims of the war on drugs, said justice was “finally catching up” with the former leader.

Much of the day’s events were relayed on social media and Veronica Duterte posted updates throughout Tuesday. In one clip, an official said Duterte’s family could select three people to accompany him to a charter flight. “Tell where he will be brought. You son of a bitch,” a voice shouted. In another update, Veronica Duterte warned about her father’s health, posting a photograph of him resting and receiving oxygen.

Duterte’s supporters have argued that, as the Philippines withdrew from the Rome statute in 2019, the ICC no longer has jurisdiction. However, the ICC has previously said it retains jurisdiction for alleged crimes that occurred in the country before its withdrawal.

Rights groups had urged the government to swiftly surrender him to the ICC.

Duterte became president in 2016 after promising a merciless, bloody crackdown that would rid the country of drugs. On the campaign trail he once said there would be so many bodies dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them. After taking office, he publicly stated he would kill suspected drug dealers and urged the public to kill addicts.

Since his election, between 12,000 and 30,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in connection with anti-drugs operations, according to data cited by the ICC.

Even as his crackdowns provoked international horror, he remained highly popular at home throughout his presidency.

Police reports often sought to justify killings, saying officers had acted in self-defence, despite witnesses stating otherwise. Rights groups documenting the crackdowns allege police routinely planted evidence, including guns, spent ammunition and drugs. An independent forensic pathologist investigating the killings has also uncovered serious irregularities in how postmortems were performed, including death certificates that wrongly attributed fatalities to natural causes.

Duterte, who appeared before a senate inquiry into the drugs war killings in 2024, said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his policies, saying: “I did what I had to do, and whether you believe it or not, I did it for my country.” During the same hearing, he told senators he had ordered officers to encourage criminals to fight back and resist arrest, so that police could then justify killing them – but also denied authorising police to kill suspects.

Duterte also told the hearing that he kept a “death squad” of criminals to kill other criminals while serving as a mayor of Davao, before becoming president.

The ICC’s investigation into the anti-drugs killings covers alleged crimes committed from November 2011 to June 2016, including extrajudicial killings in Davao City, as well as across the country during his presidency up until 16 March 2019, when the Philippines withdrew from the court.

Israeli police have raided the leading Palestinian bookshop in East Jerusalem for the second time in a month, detaining one of its owners for several hours and seizing some of its stock.

The deputy state attorney’s office had warned police that they overstepped their authority with the first raid on the shop in February. Officers again arrived at the Educational Bookshop without a warrant on Tuesday morning, staff said.

They searched stock using Google Translate, confiscated about 50 books and arrested one of the owners, 61-year-old Imad Muna, his brother Morad Muna told the Guardian.

“They chose books by the cover, taking books that had a Palestinian flag, or just the word Palestine in the title,” Muna said. “They were using Google Translate and took photos to send to their bosses.”

The confiscated books included titles on the work of British artist Banksy, and others by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé and the US academic Noam Chomsky. After taking them, the police locked the shop and left with the key, taking Imad Muna to a nearby police station before releasing him without charge in the afternoon.

In February, Imad’s son Ahmed Muna, 33, and another brother, Mahmoud Muna, 41, were detained for two days, then held under house arrest for five days, but have not been charged. Police cited a children’s colouring book as evidence of incitement to terrorism in the shop.

Rights groups and leading authors, intellectuals and diplomats warned at the time that targeting the shop appeared designed to create a “culture of fear” among Palestinians.

All prosecutions relating to freedom of speech have to be approved by the attorney general’s office. However, police had not sought permission to open an investigation, search the Educational Bookstore or detain its staff.

After the February arrests, prosecutors met police officers to ensure “such incidents don’t happen again”, the office of the deputy state attorney said in a letter to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel about the case.

Police said they made the second raid after getting a complaint from a man who visited the bookstore on Tuesday morning. The man “stated that he had observed books containing inciting content”, a police spokesperson said in a statement.

Officers detained Imad Muna “to verify his identity and details of the store”, the statement said, and are now reviewing three books seized at the store.

“Based on the findings, a determination will be made on whether to refer the matter to the state attorney’s office for further investigation into the suspected sale of inciting materials,” the statement said.

After Muna was freed on Tuesday afternoon, most books were returned and the shop reopened. The family-owned Educational Bookshop has been at the heart of cultural life in Jerusalem for more than four decades.

Its broad collection of books by Palestinian, Israeli and international authors is popular with residents and tourists, and its cafe hosts regular literary events, including recently the launch of the Pulitzer prize-winning nonfiction book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall.

A German tourist detained by US immigration authorities is due to be deported back to Germany on Tuesday after spending more than six weeks in detention, including eight days in solitary confinement.

Jessica Brösche, a 29-year-old tattoo artist from Berlin, will reportedly join Lucas Sielaff, 25, from Bad Bibra in Saxony-Anhalt, who is reported to have returned to Germany on 6 March, after being arrested at the Mexican border on 18 February before being detained for almost two weeks.

The families of the two tourists, who were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) had compared their ordeals to “a horror film”.

Both Germans were held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, a prison in San Diego, California.

Their cases, followed closely by German consulate staff in the US and the foreign ministry in Berlin, share similarities with the fate of the British tourist Rebecca Burke, 28, a graphic artist from Monmouthshire who was handcuffed and taken to a detention facility in Washington state more than 11 days ago while trying to cross into the US on the Canadian border, according to her family.

All the incidents are being described as evidence of the immigration crackdown in the US since the inauguration of Donald Trump. Not only has there a crackdown on entries into the US, but the increase in cases has reportedly meant a bureaucratic backlog leading to delays in decisions on cases of those who have been detained.

Brösche’s mother, Birgit, confirmed to German media on Tuesday that her daughter was on her way home. Brösche’s friend Nikita Lofving, whom the Berliner had intended to visit in Los Angeles, confirmed to the LA Times she had spoken to her friend.

Speaking to a journalist from ABC 10News San Diego in a phone interview on 1 March, Brösche said she had spent eight days in solitary confinement. She said: “It was horrible. Like, it’s really horrible. I just want to get home, you know? I’m really desperate.”

Lofving, who had been in constant contact with her friend, said: “[Brösche] says it was like a horror movie. They were screaming in all different rooms. After nine days, she said she went so insane that she started punching the walls and then she’s got blood on her knuckles.”

The staff at the prison had called a psychologist who wanted to prescribe anti-psychotic medicine to calm her down, but Brösche had refused to take anything, Lofving said.

Brösche’s mother told the Berlin tabloid BZ: “I will believe it [her release] only when I am able to take her in my arms.”

CoreCivic, the company that owns the Otay Mesa Detention Center, denied Brösche’s claims that she had been in solitary confinement, according to ABC 10News.

Brösche and Lofving had attempted to enter the US from Tijuana in Mexico on 25 January. The two were traveling with tattoo equipment. Lofving said that Brösche was arrested and taken away by officers on the border. The US immigration authorities, Ice, assumed Brösche was intending to work illegally in the US, Lofving said. Her friend was in possession of an Esta travel permit.

According to Brösche’s Instagram profile, she had only intended to stay in LA until mid-February. Germany’s foreign ministry confirmed it had worked together with its consulate general in LA to resolve the issue.

Sielaff returned to Germany last week after spending two weeks in detention, after his entry permit was cancelled at the Mexican border, amid suspicions by the US authorities that he had remained in the US longer than he was allowed.

He was arrested at the border point at San Ysidro on 18 February. He had entered the US on a tourist visa and had subsequently visited Mexico with his girlfriend, Lennon Tyler, where they had taken her dog to the vet. According to Tyler, on their return to the US, Sielaff had incorrectly answered a question as to where he lived, due to his poor grasp of English. He had said Las Vegas, where he was staying with Tyler, his fiancee, when he should have said Germany, where he permanently resides, she said.

After two weeks in detention, Sielaff was allowed to leave. His girlfriend said she booked him a flight from San Diego to Munich on 6 March. In an interview with the Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger, Tyler warned people against travelling to the US. “Don’t come here,” she said. “Especially not if you’re on a tourist visa, and especially not over the Mexican border.”

US authorities have yet to issue a statement on the German cases.

Rebecca Burke’s father said on Monday that he was trying to get his daughter out of the detention centre, and had been in touch with the British consulate in San Francisco. He described the conditions in which she was being held as “horrendous”. She had been travelling on a tourist visa, but was told she should have applied for a working visa as she planned to stay with a family receiving accommodation in exchange for carrying out domestic chores.

New Zealand police are launching a fresh operation in the rugged North Island wilderness to track down a fugitive father and his three children who have been missing for more than three years.

Just before Christmas 2021, Tom Phillips fled into a remote area of Waikato with his children Ember, thought to be now aged 9, Maverick, 10, and Jayda, 11, following a dispute with their mother. Phillips does not have legal custody for his children.

Phillips comes from a farming family in Marokopa – a tiny coastal settlement of fewer than 100 people, part of the vast Waikato region where he and his children are presumed to be hiding.

“Police will be present in the wider Marokopa area over the next few days as we continue making inquiries into the whereabouts of Tom Phillips and his three children,” detective senior sergeant Andy Saunders said in a statement.

Officers will be conducting inquiries north of Marokopa, in and around the remote settlements of Te Waitere and Te Maika.

“This has not been prompted by any specific sighting – it is simply a continuation of the ongoing investigation,” Saunders said.

The Guardian has contacted the police for further comment.

The Waikato area is made up of long sweeping coastline to the west, forested terrain and farmland in the centre, limestone cave networks to the north and a smattering of small rural towns and settlements throughout. Marokopa is a quiet, isolated settlement in the Waikato, two hours from the nearest city, Hamilton, with one long winding road in and out of the densely forested and hilly landscape.

The remoteness of the landscape has so far frustrated police attempts to locate Phillips.

The case has fascinated New Zealanders, who have struggled to understand how, in a country of close-knit communities, Phillips has evaded detection. While there is no suggestion his family has helped him, the question of how Phillips has managed to conceal himself and his three children – and survive – in the harsh terrain has puzzled the nation, leading to speculation others in the community may be aiding him.

Phillips’ lengthy disappearance was preempted by an earlier – albeit shorter – stint where he went bush with his children. In September 2021, the four were reported missing and his ute was found abandoned along the Marokopa shoreline, resulting in a major search operation across land and sea.

Nineteen days later, Phillips and the children walked into his parents’ farmhouse just outside Marokopa. Phillips claimed he had taken his children on an extended camping trip in dense bush in an effort to clear his head. He was charged with wasting police time and resources.

But fewer than three months later, the four were reported missing again and when Phillips failed to show for a January court appearance, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Sightings of Phillips and his children over the last three years have been rare and fleeting. In November, Phillips allegedly stole a quad bike from a rural property and broke into a shop in Piopio, with CCTV footage showing two figures on a street, believed to be Phillips and one of his children. While there were reportedly several other sightings in mid-2023 and an $80,000 reward put up for information in June, the trail later went cold.’

Police describe Phillips as someone who “doesn’t live a mainstream lifestyle”, eschewing social media and limiting his use of mainstream banks. Meanwhile, his purchases of camping items and seedlings suggest he may be living off the land.

In October 2024, footage emerged of an adult and three children walking through Marokopa farmland, after a chance encounter with teenage pig hunters who pulled out their phones and began filming. Police believed it to be Phillips and his three children. A police search of the area the following day failed to find them.

The children’s mother, Cat, has spoken of her grief being separated from her children and has regularly appealed to Phillips to come forward.

The growing saltwater crocodile population in the Northern Territory has led to the creatures gorging on nine times more prey than they did 50 years ago, with the apex predators contributing important nutrients to Top End waterways, new research suggests.

Saltwater crocodile populations have increased exponentially in recent decades, from less than 3,000 in 1971, when a ban on hunting was introduced, to more than 100,000 animals today.

According to new modelling, the NT crocodile population consumed less than 20kg of prey per square kilometre of wetland in 1979, increasing to about 180kg per square kilometre in 2019. The analysis was based on 50 years of NT government surveys which record crocodile size and density.

That increase coincided with a shift from predominantly aquatic prey, which comprised 65% of croc diets in 1979, to mostly land animals in 2019, with animals such as feral pigs, cattle and Asian water buffalo making up 70% of the diet.

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As ectothermic (commonly known as “cold-blooded”) animals, crocodiles eat far less prey than other apex predators, according to research lead Prof Hamish Campbell of Charles Darwin University. “Crocodiles eat about 10% of the food of an equal-sized lion,” he said.

But because they have become concentrated in far higher densities in the Northern Territory, they have significant impacts, he added. “In terms of the amount they’re eating and the amount they’re excreting, it’s incredibly high purely because of their biomass … it’s equal or even greater than a lot of terrestrial endothermic [warm-blooded] populations, such as the lions on Serengeti or the wolves in Yellowstone,” Campbell said.

The Top End crocodile population consumes about six feral pigs per square kilometre of wetland floodplain each year, the researchers estimate.

In 50 years, the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that crocodiles excreted into NT waterways increased 186-fold and 56-fold respectively, the study also found.

“They’re pulling that in from the terrestrial food web which is what makes it really impactful,” Campbell said. “They’re digesting it, and they’re excreting all those nitrates and phosphates into the water.

“That’s going to be having huge impacts on phytoplankton and zooplankton productivity, which are the building blocks of the food chain.”

The ecological role of crocodiles has been hotly debated among researchers, with some previously arguing there had been little evidence to date for their importance as ecosystem-defining keystone species.

The research modelled prey rates and nutrient excretion on the energy inputs required for the growth in crocodile numbers and biomass in the NT over the half-century period.

To reveal the animals’ dietary habits over time, the researchers used stable isotope analysis of historical and contemporary crocodile bones.

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.