Ukraine’s president has said he hopes the US will take “strong steps” against Russia if Moscow fails to support a 30-day ceasefire, agreed at a meeting between Ukrainian and US delegations in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

“I understand that we could count on strong steps. I don’t know the details yet but we are talking about sanctions and about strengthening Ukraine,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

He described Tuesday’s marathon negotiations in Jeddah, between a US delegation led by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and a Ukrainian delegation made up of his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, and the country’s foreign and defence ministers, as “very positive”.

The talks were an attempt to repair relations after a disastrous White House meeting between Zelenskyy and Donald Trump two weeks ago.

In Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia was awaiting detailed information from Washington about what was discussed in Jeddah and that Vladimir Putin must first be briefed by the US before deciding whether the proposal would be acceptable to Russia.

He added that the Kremlin could organise a call between Putin and Donald Trump at short notice if needed.

Rubio confirmed the US would have contact with Russia on Wednesday about the ceasefire agreement reached with Ukraine, though stopped short of spelling out what consequences Russia might face if it did not agree.

“We all eagerly await the Russian response and urge them strongly to consider ending all hostilities,” Rubio said during a stop in Ireland. “If they say no, then obviously we’ll have to examine everything and sort of figure out where we stand in the world and what their true intentions are.”

The White House Middle East envoy and close Trump ally, Steve Witkoff, is expected to travel to Moscow this week for a meeting with the Russian leader, though the Kremlin has yet to confirm this.

Zelenskyy said the Ukrainians had come to the table in Saudi Arabia with a suggestion for a 30-day ceasefire in the air and at sea, during which details of a more lasting settlement could be discussed. However, the Americans proposed a full ceasefire, which was agreed after calls made by the two delegations to their respective presidents.

He said that while monitoring sea and air ceasefires would be easy, he hoped Ukraine’s western partners would provide a plan for how to monitor a ceasefire along the frontline, “given who we are dealing with and given our experience of the past years”.

Some Russian officials in Moscow indicated scepticism about the prospect of a ceasefire, saying that Moscow was unwilling to stop the fighting as its forces this week made rapid gains in reclaiming territory in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a surprise incursion last year. On Wednesday, Russian forces entered the central square of Sudzha, the largest Russian settlement controlled by Ukraine.

“Russia is advancing [on the battlefield] … Any agreements must be on our terms, not American ones … Washington should understand this as well,” the senior Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev wrote on Telegram.

Ruslan Leviev, the founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team, an open-source investigation unit, said Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region appeared to be conducting a controlled withdrawal, ceding their positions without resistance.

“All areas gradually coming under the control of Russian forces [and] have been taken with little to no resistance. It can already be said that the entire city of Sudzha is now under Russian control,” Leviev said.

Zelenskyy also appeared to hint at an organised withdrawal in his comments on Wednesday. “The military command is doing what it should do – saving the maximum number of lives of our soldiers,” he said.

Last month, in an interview with the Guardian, Zelenskyy said Ukraine hoped to swap the territory it held in Kursk region for areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia.

Putin has repeatedly rejected the possibility of a temporary ceasefire, saying that he was focused on addressing what he calls the “root causes” of the conflict. Earlier this year, he told Russia’s security council that there “should not be a short truce, not some kind of respite for regrouping forces and rearmament with the aim of subsequently continuing the conflict, but a long-term peace”.

Instead, the Russian leader has set out a list of maximalist demands to end his invasion, including Ukraine forgoing Nato membership, undergoing partial demilitarisation, and ceding full control of the four Ukrainian regions Putin claimed in 2022.

On Wednesday, Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Russian foreign policy analyst who heads a council that advises the Kremlin, wrote that a ceasefire agreement “contradicts” Moscow’s repeatedly stated position that no truce will take place until the foundations of lasting peace are determined.

“In other words, we fight until a comprehensive settlement framework is developed,” Lukyanov concluded.

Still, an outright rejection of the ceasefire by Putin would risk angering Trump and undermining their warm relationship, which has led the US administration to adopt a fundamentally different approach to Moscow compared with Europe.

Reacting to the change in US policy, European leaders have rushed to come up with possible mechanisms to support Ukraine after a potential ceasefire, with efforts to put together a peacekeeping force led by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and UK prime minister, Keir Starmer.

However, details of how a peacekeeping mission might look and what its rules of engagement would be are still up in the air, and there is no sign that Russia would sign on to any deal that involved the deployment of such troops to Ukraine.

Russia’s longtime foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in an interview this week with a group of far-right bloggers from the US, reiterated that Moscow would not accept western peacekeepers in Ukraine as security guarantees “under any conditions”.

Ukraine has said it will need some kind of security guarantee in order to sign a lasting ceasefire deal, and the US has so far declared that it is unwilling to provide one.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy said discussions on the topic would continue. “We will talk in more detail about security guarantees if the ceasefire holds for 30 days,” he said.

Ukraine has said it is ready to accept a US proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia.

Details of the deal – agreed after talks between senior US and Ukrainian officials in the Saudi city of Jeddah – have not been released in full but here is what is known about the terms:

Ukraine’s agreement to support a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in its war against Russia’s invasion has focused attention on what Moscow may or may not agree to, and what pressure can be brought to bear on Vladimir Putin by the Trump administration.

While the question has frequently been asked over the last few years as to what leverage Putin might have over Trump, the question here is what leverage Trump might have to persuade Putin.

On Wednesday the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the US expected to have contact with Russia later in the day, suggesting Washington hoped for a “positive answer”.

For its part, Moscow has said it needs to be briefed by Washington before replying, with the Kremlin press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, cautioning media against “getting ahead” of themselves, while suggesting Putin and Trump could speak in person.

By Wednesday it was clear that despite Rubio’s optimism, Putin intended to secure maximum advantage from talks over a ceasefire, even a preliminary and brief one.

“It is difficult for Putin to agree to this in its current form,” a senior Kremlin source said, adding: “Putin has a strong position because Russia is advancing.

“So yes, we are in favour of a truce with both hands, but we need at least framework guarantees and at least from the United States,” the source said.

The reality is that despite Russia’s heavy combat losses, damage to its economy, and diplomatic isolation, it believes it is winning the war.

It sees a ceasefire as benefiting Ukraine, even as the Russian military continues to make glacial progress at a large cost, and believes that view should be reflected in negotiations.

With Rubio admitting that territorial concessions had already been raised in talks with the Ukrainian delegation in Jeddah earlier this week, what Trump has to offer Putin appears more in the way of carrots than sticks – some of which would be hard for Ukraine to accept.

Wider US sanctions and tariffs against Russia – which Trump said he was considering in recent days – to persuade Moscow to agree to the ceasefire and negotiations are unlikely to have much impact.

As Alexander Kolyandr of the Center for European Policy Analysis said: “Russian exports to the US dropped by more than 80% last year, compared to the prewar period, to about $3bn, the lowest since 1992. The only damaging banking sanctions the US can swiftly impose would be the end of an exception from the existing measures, which allows some Russian banks to receive payments for energy exports.”

The alternative is what Trump could give Putin.

The US administration’s dealings with Moscow have already broken one taboo from the Biden era – deflating the widespread US-European unanimity that Russia should be diplomatically isolated.

It is in the economic sphere, however, that Russia remains most vulnerable. While the cost of war and international sanctions have not collapsed the economy in the way some suggested it might, high interest rates and low growth are slowly crippling Russia.

As an incentive, the US could offer an end to its banking sanctions and its prohibition on access to western technology, bearing in mind many non-US sanctions are likely to remain in place from countries allied with Ukraine.

Beyond that, issues become more complicated. Putin’s long-term demands have not shifted: the demilitarisation of Ukraine, a commitment that Ukraine will not join Nato in the future, and his desire to hold on to annexed territory – not least the Crimean peninsula.

None of which are likely to fly with Ukraine’s European allies.

Trump’s one-sided pressure on Ukraine – including the recent meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the White House – may have persuaded Putin of the relative weakness of Trump’s leverage with Russia.

As John Lough, an associate fellow at Chatham House, wrote presciently last year, “Trump is likely to find that Putin believes he now has the upper hand in relations with the US because of his sense that the west has lost its dominance in global affairs.”

All of which leaves one meaningful lever: increasing US military support to Ukraine.

It will be lost on no one, however – particularly after the temporary suspension of such aid to Kyiv – that this is likely to be Trump’s least favoured approach.

An operation to rescue hundreds of people taken hostage when a train was hijacked by a separatist militant group in remote south-west Pakistan has continued into its second day, with dozens killed in the onslaught.

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s security services claimed to have rescued about 190 people who were being held captive after militants from the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) blew up a railway line and launched an attack on the Jaffar Express train.

The hijacking took place as the train, which was carrying about 450 passengers, was travelling through a tunnel in the rugged mountains of Balochistan province on Tuesday afternoon.

Officials said that by Wednesday about 30 militants had been killed, as military and security personnel launched an air and land offensive to take back control. However, the efforts were hindered by the remote, treacherous terrain, which has made communication and mobilisation difficult.

A government official said about 130 hostages were still being held by the BLA and remained on the train. “There was an attempt to rescue the hostages last night but it was repelled by the insurgents. In the morning, another attempt was repelled,” the official said, requesting anonymity as he did not have permission to brief the media.

The BLA has claimed that large numbers of those it is holding are military or police personnel, but the regional government has said that the hostages are mostly civilians.

According to local media reports, the BLA had stationed suicide bombers in explosive vests close to some of the hostages, further complicating their rescue. “The terrorists are using innocent people as human shields,” an official told Radio Pakistan.

Yousaf Bashir was among the passengers who were allowed to leave the train. Describing the moment that the train was held up by the militants, he said: “There was a huge blast. Everyone was scared and people were screaming and crying loudly. We laid down during the blasts. Everyone laid down in the train as there was firing too.”

He said militants had come over after the firing stopped and demanded all the passengers get off the train or they would be killed. “They freed my children, my wife and me too. They warned us not to look back and kept walking. I did not see how many people there were left behind,” said Bashir.

Those who the BLA allowed to leave the train described walking to safety through the rugged mountain terrain for more than seven hours overnight.

In a written statement sent to the Guardian, the BLA said the hijacking was “a direct response to Pakistan’s decades-long colonial occupation of Balochistan and the relentless war crimes committed against the Baloch people”.

Balochistan, a vast but underdeveloped region bordering Iran and Afghanistan, has for decades been home to a separatist insurgency fighting against the Pakistani state and military, which it has accused of neglecting and exploiting the region.

“The Bolan operation is a tactical response to these atrocities, intended to demonstrate that the occupying forces are not invincible and that their continued presence in Balochistan will be met with unwavering resistance,” the BLA statement said.

The BLA continued to claim it still had 200 hostages, a number that could not be independently verified. On Tuesday evening, it offered to swap the hostages for Baloch political prisoners.

The BLA has recently ramped up its operations in Balochistan and has been behind some of the worst terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the past few years. Zahid Hussain, a security analyst, said the train hijacking was “unprecedented”. He added: “This attack shows the situation in Balochistan has become very challenging for the military. They have failed to contain the insurgency and militants are recruiting large numbers to carry out such attacks.”

The EU has announced it will impose trade “countermeasures” on up to €26bn (£22bn) worth of US goods in retaliation to Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, escalating a global trade war.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called the 25% US levies on global imports of the metals “unjustified trade restrictions”, after they came into force at 4am GMT on Wednesday.

“We deeply regret this measure,” von der Leyen said in a statement, where she announced “strong, but proportionate” countermeasures would come into force from 1 April. “Tariffs are taxes, they are bad for business and worse for consumers. They are disrupting supply chains. They bring uncertainty for the economy,” she said.

The retaliatory measures include Brussels reimposing tariffs on US goods including bourbon whiskey, jeans and Harley-Davidson motorbikes, which it introduced during the first Trump term and later suspended after talks with his successor, Joe Biden.

These tariffs, which target notable US goods worth €4.5bn, often from Republican states, will snap back on 1 April. The list was worth €6.3bn in 2018 but has shrunk because of Brexit and declining US exports.

Separately, the commission plans further retaliation targeting goods worth €18bn, including a wide range of steel and aluminium products, as well as agricultural produce, such as poultry, beef, seafood and nuts. These tariffs would be imposed from mid-April, after a vote by EU member states and consultations with industry in an attempt to minimise damage to the European economy.

“We try to hit … where it hurts,” said a senior EU official, who said the bloc was targeting soya beans, which are grown in Louisiana, the state of the US speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. “We love soybeans, but we’re happy to buy them from Brazil or from Argentina or from anywhere else.”

While the commission announced that its measures would total €26bn, EU officials later said they would probably target €22.5bn of US goods, as some products were likely to be filtered out after talks with businesses and member states.

However, further steps have not been ruled out. France’s European affairs minister, Benjamin Haddad, said on Wednesday that the EU could “go further” in its response to the US tariffs. The measures “are proportionate”, Haddad told TF1 television. “If it came to a situation where we had to go further, digital services or intellectual property could be included,” he said.

EU officials hope that pressure on Republican states and US business will help bring about a deal.“We will always remain open to negotiation,” von der Leyen said. “We firmly believe that in a world fraught with geopolitical and economic uncertainties, it is not in our common interest to burden our economies with tariffs.”

While the UK did not announce retaliatory measures, Keir Starmer did not rule them out in future. The prime minister told MPs on Wednesday he was “disappointed” by the tariffs, but would “take a pragmatic approach”.

He said Britain was “negotiating an economic deal which covers and will include tariffs if we succeed. But we will keep all options on the table”.

Starmer, who had previously said that the UK did not need to choose between the EU and the US, had already announced on Tuesday that Britain would not respond with its own counter-tariffs, after last-ditch efforts to persuade Trump to spare British industry from his global tariffs failed.

EU officials said they were talking to counterparts in other countries, including the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Canada and Japan, but there had not been any coordination over responses.

Officials also indicated they had not ruled out imposing “safeguard measures” – tariffs or quotas on steel and aluminium from other countries – if US trade barriers resulted in a flood of imports into Europe. In 2019, Switzerland, one of the EU’s closest trading partners, complained when it was affected by EU restrictions on steel imports designed to protect EU industry.

The UK steel industry warned that Trump’s tariffs would have “hugely damaging consequences for UK suppliers and their customers in the US”.

Gareth Stace, the director general of the trade association UK Steel, said: “President Trump must surely recognise that the UK is an ally, not a foe. Our steel sector is not a threat to the US but a partner to key customers, sharing the same values and objectives in addressing global overcapacity and tackling unfair trade.

“These tariffs couldn’t come at a worse time for the UK steel industry, as we battle with high energy costs and subdued demand at home, against an oversupplied and increasingly protectionist global landscape.”

Bernd Lange, the German Social Democratic MEP who chairs the European parliament’s trade committee, described the tariffs as “another dose of self-inflicted tariff pain by the Trump administration”.

He said the latest tariffs were “particularly bad” because “they target US trade partners, they are set arbitrarily, without legal and economic justifications, and they fail to address non-market overcapacity – the main issue steel and aluminium industry across the Atlantic is confronted with”.

The introduction of EU measures came after a day of drama on Tuesday, when Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium in response to Canadian threats to increase electricity prices for US customers.

The US president backed off from those plans after the Ontario premier, Doug Ford, agreed to suspend his province’s decision to impose a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the states of Minnesota, Michigan and New York.

The renowned German classical violinist Christian Tetzlaff was blunt in explaining why he and his quartet have cancelled a summer tour of the US.

“There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” Tetzlaff said, describing his horror at the authoritarian polices of Donald Trump and the response of US elites to the country’s growing democratic crisis.

“I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts.”

Tetzlaff is not alone in acting on his disquiet. A growing international move to boycott the US is spreading from Scandinavia to Canada to the UK and beyond as consumers turn against US goods.

Most prominent so far has been the rejection by European car buyers of the Teslas produced by Elon Musk, now a prominent figure in Trump’s administration as the head of the “department of government efficiency” a special group created by Trump that has contributed to the precipitous declines in Tesla’s share price. About 15% of its value was wiped out on Monday alone.

The fall in Tesla sales in Europe has been well documented, as has a Canadian consumer boycott in response to trade tariffs and Trump’s calls for Canada to become America’s 51st state, but the past week has seen daily reports of cultural and other forms of boycotts and disinvestment.

In Canada, where the American national anthem has been booed during hockey matches with US teams, a slew of apps has emerged with names such as “buy beaver”, “maple scan” and “is this Canadian” to allow shoppers to scan QR barcodes and reject US produce from alcohol to pizza toppings.

Figures released this week suggested the number of Canadians taking road trips to the US – representing the majority of Canadians who normally visit – had dropped by 23% compared with February 2024, according to Statistics Canada.

While Canada and Mexico have been at the frontline of Trump’s trade war, the boycott movement is visible far beyond countries whose economies have been targeted.

In Sweden, about 40,000 users have joined a Facebook group calling for a boycott of US companies – ironically including Facebook itself – which features alternatives to US consumer products.

“I’ll replace as many American goods as I can and if many do so, it will clearly affect the supply in stores,” wrote one member of the group.

In Denmark, where there has been widespread anger over Trump’s threat to bring the autonomous territory of Greenland under US control, the largest grocery company, the Salling group, has said it will tag European-made goods with a black star to allow consumers to choose them over products made in the US.

“We are making it easier to shop for European brands,” its chief executive, Anders Hagh, wrote on LinkedIn, although he said the company would still stock US products.

More striking, perhaps, is the decision by companies to cut ties with the US. Norway’s largest oil bunkering operation, the privately owned Haltbakk, recently announced a boycott of its occasional supplying of fuel to US navy ships.

Referring to the fiery meeting in the White House between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump last month, the company posted on Facebook: “We have today been witnesses to the biggest shit show ever presented “live on TV” by the current American president and his vice-president.

“Huge credit to the president of Ukraine restraining himself and for keeping calm even though USA put on a backstabbing TV show. It made us sick.

“As a result, we have decided to [immediately] STOP as fuel provider to American forces in Norway and their ships calling Norwegian ports … We encourage all Norwegians and Europeans to follow our example.”

While boycotts have been a familiar tactic in the past – targeting apartheid South Africa and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories – what is striking is how quickly the second Trump administration has become a target for both consumer anger and ethically minded companies.

Trump this week has commented on the issue for the first time, bemoaning the impact of the Tesla customer boycott and demonstrations.

He wrote on social media: “To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, 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 so often do, are trying to illegally and collusively [sic] boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers and Elon’s baby.”

Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote for the Centre for European Policy Analysis this week: “Nobody – nobody – would have thought that western businesses or consumers would use such tools against America.

“The United States is, after all, the leader of the free world. Or was: its vote with Russia, against Ukraine, at the United Nations last month, combined with Trump’s and Vance’s verbal attack on Zelenskyy, along with Trump’s denunciation of Zelenskyy as a dictator and a refusal to use similar language about the Russian despot, suggests to many that America is no longer an instinctive member of what we term the west.”

For some, the backlash was entirely predictable.

When Trump first threatened to impose sweeping tariffs this year, Takeshi Niinami, the chief executive of the Japanese multinational brewing and distilling group Suntory Holdings, which owns several major US brands, told the Financial Times international consumers were likely to shun American brands in the event of a trade war.

“We laid out the strategic and budget plan for 2025 expecting that American products, including American whiskey, will be less accepted by those countries outside of the US because of first, tariffs and, second, emotion,” Niinami said.

And it is likely to spread further still. Zoe Gardner, an organiser of the Stop Trump Coalition in the UK, is seeing rapidly increasing interest in the issue.

“A lot of what we are seeing is coming about organically, people putting stuff on TikTok. People are so furious, and this is about taking back power. Already across Europe we are seeing sales of Tesla falling of a cliff because Musk encapsulates so much of the problem with the Trump administration, both its culture of horrible racism and the economic side.”

Bone fragments unearthed at an ancient cave in Spain belong to the oldest known human face in western Europe, researchers say.

The fossilised remains make up the left cheek and upper jaw of an adult member of an extinct human species who lived and died on the Iberian peninsula between 1.1m and 1.4m years ago.

The discovery suggests that at least two forms of early human occupied the region in the early Pleistocene, when the cave sat within humid woodland rich in wildlife and crossed with rivers and streams.

“This paper introduces a new actor in the story of human evolution in Europe,” said Dr Rosa Huguet of the University of Rovira i Virgili in southern Catalonia, who helped uncover the fossils at the Sima del Elefante (Pit of the Elephant) cave near Atapuerca in Burgos.

Early humans reached Eurasia from Africa at least 1.8m years ago, as evidenced by five skulls dating from the period in Dmanisi in Georgia. The skulls are attributed to Homo erectus, the first early human species to have left the African continent.

Until now, the earliest human remnants in western Europe were 1.1m- to 1.2m-year-old pieces of jawbone and teeth from Sima del Elefante. Younger human remains, dating to 800,000 years ago, were unearthed at the nearby Gran Dolina (Giant Sinkhole) cavern. Particular features of the latter led researchers to consider them a distinct species, namely Homo antecessor, or pioneer man.

Writing in the journal Nature, the Spanish team say the latest remains are more primitive than Homo antecessor but resemble Homo erectus. Given the uncertainty over the fossil’s identity, the team has designated the species Homo affinis erectus, reflecting its close relationship with the older human.

The Latin name is not the only one used for the remains, however. Informally, the researchers nicknamed the fossil “Pink” after Pink Floyd, whose album The Dark Side of the Moon translates to “La cara oculta de la luna”, where “cara oculta” means “hidden face”.

Dr María Martinón-Torres, the director of the National Centre for Research on Human Evolution in Burgos, said among its distinctive characteristics, Pink had a flatter nasal structure than Homo antecessor, which shares the more modern-looking face and prominent nasal bones of Homo sapiens.

Chris Stringer, a research leader on human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London, said the fossil was “a very important find”. In 2023, Stringer and others identified a period of extreme cooling about 1.1m years ago that may have driven early humans out of western Europe, possibly explaining the different population found at Sima del Elefante afterwards.

Excavations at Sima del Elefante paint a picture of lush meadows and woodlands more than 1.1m years ago with oaks, pines, juniper and hazel trees in abundance. Rivers cutting through the landscape drew water voles and mice, hippos, bison and deer. Quartz and flint tools have also been recovered alongside animal bones bearing cut marks from butchering.

More insight into the Sima del Elefante lifestyle is apparent from a groove that runs across the partial crown of a tooth in the Pink fossil, believed to be a wear mark from using a rudimentary toothpick.

“This is another step towards understanding the first Europeans,” said Dr José María Bermúdez de Castro, the co-director of the Atapuerca Project. “We now know that this first species had an appearance reminiscent of the specimens included by many in Homo erectus. However, the remains from the Sima del Elefante site have a very particular combination of features. More fossils should be found in other contemporary sites to reach a more robust conclusion about the identity of this species.”

An Israeli hostage freed by Hamas last month has described the distressing conditions and abuse he says he endured during 505 days held in Gaza.

In an interview on Israeli television, Omer Wenkert, 23, said he had hidden in a bomb shelter with a close friend when it became clear the Nova music festival was under attack by Hamas and other militants from Gaza on 7 October 2023.

“You say, ‘Well … this is probably the end,’ and then one of them … started shooting us. It started to get hot and smoke came into the shelter, and then someone shouted from the entrance ‘Listen, they’re burning us.’ … There was silence in the shelter,” Wenkert told Channel 12.

“I was very busy the whole time … It’s terrible to say that, busy taking people’s bodies and putting them on my head to protect my head if they come to shoot us again, if a grenade comes.”

Wenkert survived but was forced into a pickup truck, driven into Gaza and hidden underground in a tunnel. His friend Kim Damti, a 22-year-old Irish-Israeli, was killed in or around the shelter.

In remarks widely reported in Israel, Wenkert said that he was held in a very small cell for much of his time in captivity, usually in complete darkness. The former restaurant manager described being punched, beaten with an iron bar, spat on and forced to do physical exercises.

Mistreatment by his captors was often sparked by events during the war, Wenkert said.

“Every hostage deal that falls through … it brings up a lot of frustration and rage and anger in them … That’s just one of the reasons [for the abuse], also some days when their father is killed, their families, their elders are killed. You feel it. You know exactly what’s happening,” Wenkert said.

At night, there was “complete darkness, silence; absolute fear”, Wenkert said, saying he spoke to himself out loud for two hours a day in order to “stay sane.”

More than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the surprise Hamas raid into Israel and 251 taken hostage. In the ensuring Israeli offensive, more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, also mostly civilians, and much of the territory devastated.

After a short-lived truce in November 2023, multiple efforts to secure a further pause in hostilities have failed.

There was no independent confirmation of Wenkert’s statements, but they match those of many other accounts.

Since a ceasefire deal came into effect in mid-January, 25 living Israeli hostages have been freed by Hamas and the remains of eight returned. Israel has freed 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and withdrawn from many of its positions in Gaza.

Accounts of mistreatment and the poor physical condition of some released hostages have increased pressure on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to agree a deal to secure the release of the 59 still held, of whom two-thirds are thought to be dead.

The first phase of the ceasefire ended almost 10 days ago, but so far both Israel and Hamas have maintained a fragile de facto truce. There are currently daily Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, which have killed dozens. Israeli military officials say they are targeting militants who threaten their forces.

Indirect talks are currently under way in Qatar but the demands of Israel and Hamas are proving difficult to reconcile. Israel has proposed an extension to the first phase of the ceasefire for up to 60 days along with further hostage and prisoner releases. Hamas want a definitive end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

An Israeli hostage freed by Hamas last month has described the distressing conditions and abuse he says he endured during 505 days held in Gaza.

In an interview on Israeli television, Omer Wenkert, 23, said he had hidden in a bomb shelter with a close friend when it became clear the Nova music festival was under attack by Hamas and other militants from Gaza on 7 October 2023.

“You say, ‘Well … this is probably the end,’ and then one of them … started shooting us. It started to get hot and smoke came into the shelter, and then someone shouted from the entrance ‘Listen, they’re burning us.’ … There was silence in the shelter,” Wenkert told Channel 12.

“I was very busy the whole time … It’s terrible to say that, busy taking people’s bodies and putting them on my head to protect my head if they come to shoot us again, if a grenade comes.”

Wenkert survived but was forced into a pickup truck, driven into Gaza and hidden underground in a tunnel. His friend Kim Damti, a 22-year-old Irish-Israeli, was killed in or around the shelter.

In remarks widely reported in Israel, Wenkert said that he was held in a very small cell for much of his time in captivity, usually in complete darkness. The former restaurant manager described being punched, beaten with an iron bar, spat on and forced to do physical exercises.

Mistreatment by his captors was often sparked by events during the war, Wenkert said.

“Every hostage deal that falls through … it brings up a lot of frustration and rage and anger in them … That’s just one of the reasons [for the abuse], also some days when their father is killed, their families, their elders are killed. You feel it. You know exactly what’s happening,” Wenkert said.

At night, there was “complete darkness, silence; absolute fear”, Wenkert said, saying he spoke to himself out loud for two hours a day in order to “stay sane.”

More than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the surprise Hamas raid into Israel and 251 taken hostage. In the ensuring Israeli offensive, more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, also mostly civilians, and much of the territory devastated.

After a short-lived truce in November 2023, multiple efforts to secure a further pause in hostilities have failed.

There was no independent confirmation of Wenkert’s statements, but they match those of many other accounts.

Since a ceasefire deal came into effect in mid-January, 25 living Israeli hostages have been freed by Hamas and the remains of eight returned. Israel has freed 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and withdrawn from many of its positions in Gaza.

Accounts of mistreatment and the poor physical condition of some released hostages have increased pressure on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to agree a deal to secure the release of the 59 still held, of whom two-thirds are thought to be dead.

The first phase of the ceasefire ended almost 10 days ago, but so far both Israel and Hamas have maintained a fragile de facto truce. There are currently daily Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, which have killed dozens. Israeli military officials say they are targeting militants who threaten their forces.

Indirect talks are currently under way in Qatar but the demands of Israel and Hamas are proving difficult to reconcile. Israel has proposed an extension to the first phase of the ceasefire for up to 60 days along with further hostage and prisoner releases. Hamas want a definitive end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Greenland has voted for a complete overhaul of its government in a shock result in which the centre-right Democrat party more than tripled its seats after a dramatic election campaign fought against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire the Arctic island.

Tuesday’s election, in which the Democrats replaced Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA), the party of the former prime minister Múte B Egede, as the biggest party in the Inatsisartut, the Greenlandic parliament, also led to a doubling of seats for Naleraq – the party most open to US collaboration and which supports a snap vote on independence – making it the second-biggest party.

The Democrats and Naleraq each favour independence from Denmark but differ on the pace of change, with Naleraq favouring a faster pace than the Democrats (known as Demokraatit in Greenland).

The result – an earthquake in Greenlandic politics – surprised even the Democrat leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen. The party has never before secured so many seats – it won 10 seats, an increase of seven on the last election and three more than its previous record of seven in 2005 – and was not considered one of the key players, with most attention on IA, Naleraq and Siumut, IA’s coalition partner.

While the Democrats have been involved in several coalitions, they have never led a government, as they are expected to after coalition talks.

There are a total of 31 seats in the Greenlandic parliament, with 16 seats needed for a majority.

IA lost almost half its seats – going from 12 to seven – making it the third-biggest party. With no party having won a majority of the 31 seats, leaders will next head into coalition talks to negotiate the formation of the next government.

The Democrats describe themselves as being “social liberal” and have called for independence but in the longer term. Nielsen said: “We didn’t expect the election to have this outcome. We’re very happy.”

The 33-year-old former badminton champion said: “The Democrats are open to talks with all parties and are seeking unity. Especially with what is going on in the world.”

With 90% of the vote counted, the Democrats held a 29.9% share of the vote, an insurmountable lead, according to Greenland’s public broadcaster KNR. Naleraq’s share of the vote stood at 24.5%.

The Naleraq leader, Pele Broberg, said the election day would be remembered and congratulated Nielsen. He thanked voters and said: “We will work with the people of the country to honour the power they have given us. Without exception, thank you all for the day.”

Egede, who on Tuesday said it had been a campaign “burdened by geopolitical tensions”, said: “We respect the election. I’m so glad so many people came out to vote.” The party took a 21.4% vote share.

The leader of the Siumut party, IA’s coalition partner, conceded defeat.

The future government is expected to map out a timeline for independence, which is backed by a large majority of Greenland’s 57,000 inhabitants. The longstanding movement has gained significant traction in recent years after a series of scandals highlighting Denmark’s racist treatment of Greenlanders – including the IUD scandal, in which up to 4,500 women and girls were allegedly fitted with the contraceptive device without their knowledge, and “parenting competency” tests that have separated many Inuit children from their parents.

Amid worldwide attention largely spurred by Trump, who last week told Congress he would acquire Greenland “one way or the other” and has promised to make Greenlanders rich, turnout in Tuesday’s election was higher than usual, election officials said.

The election was also watched closely in Denmark, which ruled Greenland as a colony until 1953 and continues to control its foreign and security policy. Greenland, along with the Faroe Islands, is part of the kingdom of Denmark.

The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said Tuesday had been “a joyful day and a celebration of democracy”. She added: “I would like to congratulate Demokraatit on a very good election. The Danish government will await the results of the negotiations that will now take place in Greenland. But we look forward to working with Greenland’s future Naalakkersuisut [the Greenlandic government].”

Kuno Fencker, a member of parliament for Naleraq, which increased its seats from four to eight, said the party immediately got to work with a four-hour meeting after a jubilant victory event in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital.

This election was a “gamechanger” for Greenlandic politics, Fencker said. “Before, people voted mostly Siumut – it was like a football club that they never left. But people have had enough and voted very differently this time,” he said.

Despite all the international attention, Fencker said the election was won on domestic issues such as business, fisheries, pensions, people’s livelihoods and healthcare.

He hopes that Naleraq will be able to form a coalition with the Democrats as the ruling party, as both parties want reforms on business, fisheries, tax and pensions, and Fencker believes they could agree on a path to Greenland becoming a sovereign country.

Fencker, who travelled to Washington DC for Trump’s election and has been described as “Greenland’s most pro-Trump politician”, said that although relations between Greenland and Denmark had been improving under Frederiksen, he wishes she would mirror some of Trump’s most recent rhetoric on Greenland, but that he is strongly opposed to any form of US ownership.

He said: “I just hope that Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, would say the same thing as Donald Trump: that she respects our right to becoming a state and if we want to join Denmark we are absolutely open to join Denmark after sovereignty of Greenland, and that Denmark wants to invest a lot of billions of kroner in Greenland.”

Fencker said the “optimal” solution for Greenland, in terms of independence, would either be a free association agreement with Denmark or a new agreement within the Danish commonwealth.

Nielsen, however, said they must not get ahead of themselves. “We must have a calm course in relation to the USA. In relation to state formation, we must first build the foundation. We must not build the house from the chimney down,” he told KNR.

Donald Trump’s repeated mantra of “drill, baby, drill” demands that more oil and gas be extracted in the United States, but the president has set his sights on an even broader goal: keeping the world hooked on planet-heating fossil fuels for as long as possible.

In deals being formulated with countries such as Japan and Ukraine, Trump is using US leverage in tariffs and military aid to bolster the flow of oil and gas around the world. In Africa, his administration has even touted the resurrection of coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, to bring energy to the continent.

“We’ve had years of western countries shamelessly saying: ‘Don’t develop coal, coal is bad,’” said Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, last week. Such an attitude has been “paternalistic” and counterproductive for Africa, he added. “That’s just nonsense, 100% nonsense,” Wright said. “Coal transformed our world and made it better.”

Wright built on this theme on Monday at the CeraWeek oil industry conference in Houston, Texas, where he said the world needed more, rather than less, fossil fuels. He also attacked Joe Biden for “irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change” and claimed “there is no physical way” renewables such as solar and wind could replace fossil fuels – a view disputed by experts.

This vision of a world wedded long-term to fossil fuels could spur greater US backing for drilling in Africa, delighting business interests that claim oil and gas are the answer to bringing power to the 600 million people on the continent who lack electricity.

“With President Trump’s rollbacks of restrictions, there will be new opportunities for US investors to engage with Africa’s oil and gas sector,” said Robert Stryk, chair of Stryk Global Diplomacy, a consultancy helping the African Energy Chamber facilitate US-funded oil and gas projects in Africa. “It has the potential to unlock real benefits for African nations. Secretary Wright made a powerful statement. It was a genius move.”

Stryk said it was “hypocritical” for western countries to demand Africa forgo fossil fuels after powering their own economies on coal, oil and gas. “Let Africa choose its own destiny,” he said. “People talk about renewables, but it’s hollow. It just keeps people where they are there, which is in poverty.”

Scientists have made clear that the climate crisis, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, poses catastrophic risks around the world, particularly in poorer African countries that have emitted a small fraction of planet-heating pollution. Africa is heating up faster than the global average and is already suffering from worsening floods, heatwaves and droughts, with countries there losing up to 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) responding to climate extremes.

“One of the transformations caused by American fossil fuels was destroying our previously well-balanced climate and plunging some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in Africa into a life dealing with extreme weather and lost homes and livelihoods,” said Mohamed Adow, founder and director of Power Shift Africa.

“It’s a sign of huge ignorance that the US energy secretary is talking up coal, but it’s also obvious lobbying on behalf of the US fossil fuel companies which backs Republican politicians.”

Adow said Africa does require assistance from wealthy countries such as the US to build out renewable energy. However, richer nations have long lagged in providing the required finance and Trump has imposed further cuts, axing an initiative to help shift developing countries to clean energy, halting American aid to countries vulnerable to extreme weather and pulling the US from the Paris climate agreement.

“So they have no moral authority to dictate to Africa on the development approach to pursue,” Adow said of the US. “African leaders must choose a path that helps secure energy access and the economic wellbeing of their people. Exacerbating the climate crisis that their people are suffering from would be the opposite of this and undo the development gains of recent years.”

While the world is shifting towards cleaner forms of power, albeit too slowly to stave off worsening climate impacts, Trump has sought to entrench the status quo of fossil fuels. The president lifted a Biden-era pause on exports of American gas, and Japan and South Korea have expressed interest in investing in an Alaska gas project, in part to avoid the threat of tariffs from Trump.

“Japan will soon begin importing historic new shipments of clean American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in record numbers,” the president said last month. “It’ll be record numbers.”

Last month, Shigeru Ishiba, the Japanese prime minister, met with Trump at the White House and announced plans for Japan to import more LNG from Freeport, Texas. Manning Rollerson, an environmental justice activist from Freeport, said the US exporting LNG abroad harms communities like his.

“People are being poisoned,” Rollerson said at a protest outside CeraWeek on Monday. “We got babies being born sick, and our economy is in the tank.”

In 2022, a major explosion and fire occurred at the Freeport LNG natural gas export terminal, causing a temporary shutdown and sending pollutants into the air. This highlighted the dangers of the fuel, Rollerson said.

Before the meeting between Ishiba and Trump, Rollerson travelled to Japan to meet with officials and encourage them not to make a “deal with the devil”.

“I invited the Japanese government to come look at Freeport and see what 57 years of industrial build-out … has done for this city,” he said. “It’s not pretty.”

Meanwhile, a deal under negotiation with Ukraine would give the US access to the country’s store of minerals, which includes oil and gas but also materials such as graphite, used in batteries. The deal could help reverse a pause Trump has placed on US military support to Ukraine, which has been fighting an invading Russian army since 2022.

Ukraine has, even under Russian bombardment, sought to ramp up its clean energy infrastructure. But the new deal could “reverse these advances, potentially forcing our nation back into fossil fuel dependency and external energy control – a devastating setback for a country that has sacrificed so much for its independence”, said Svitlana Romanko, a Ukrainian environmental lawyer and executive director of Razom We Stand.

“Trump’s neocolonial mineral grab would make Ukraine a vassal state and accelerate the climate crisis while doing nothing to protect our sovereignty,” Romanko added. “The only people who win from this proposal are the shareholders of American companies and [Russian president Vladimir] Putin.”

Countries and businesses will continue to recognize the threats posed by the climate crisis, but Trump’s slashing of support for renewable energy domestically and immolation of USAid and other internationally focused bodies will hinder efforts to reduce emissions, according to Jonathan Elkind, a global energy expert at Columbia University.

“To a much greater extent than ever before, this Trump team is saying that they have no problems with fossil fuels being a part of the energy mix indefinitely,” Elkind said.

“People around the world need climate solutions, not only people in very poor economies but also in the US. But Donald Trump has made clear he’s not going to address this problem on his watch.”

The arrested master of the Solong, a container ship that crashed into another vessel in the North Sea, is a Russian national, its management company has confirmed.

The 59-year-old was arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter on Tuesday after Monday’s fiery collision about 12 miles off the East Yorkshire coast, which left one man presumed dead.

The vessel hit a US-flagged tanker, Stena Immaculate, carrying jet fuel for the American military, which was anchored while waiting for space at a port in the Humber, having travelled from the Peloponnese region of Greece.

The Solong was sailing from Grangemouth in Scotland to Rotterdam in the Netherlands at a speed of about 16 knots, equivalent to 18mph, when it collided with the tanker.

Both vessels caught fire after several explosions and 36 crew were rescued, including Americans onboard the Stena Immaculate and the Russian and Filipino nationals that made up the Solong’s crew.

Investigators said nothing was being ruled out, but added there was nothing at this point to suggest there was Russian state involvement in the incident.

It was initially feared the Solong, a cargo ship with a Portuguese flag, was carrying the highly toxic chemical sodium cyanide but its owner, the Hamburg-based maritime firm Ernst Russ, said four containers that had previously held the substance were empty.

Air quality sampling carried out onshore has shown no toxins and modelling from the Met Office indicates no threat to the public, HM Coastguard said.

Though it drifted at least 2 miles south of the collision, the Solong is no longer expected to sink and is anchored with support from a tugboat. The Stena Immaculate is also being held in place by tugboats.

Some of the jet fuel that was onboard the tanker, equivalent to 220,000 barrels in total, will have been burned in what was described as a “massive fireball” but it remains likely some may have been spilled into the sea, causing possible environmental damage.

On Tuesday evening, assistant chief coastguard John Craig said the fire on the Stena Immaculate, which continued to burn throughout the second day, had “greatly reduced”.

He said: “A comprehensive counter-pollution response is in place and HM Coastguard continues to make preparations for any pollution that may occur as a result of the damage to the vessels.

“We continue to engage actively with Humberside police, salvors, the port authorities and other agencies to protect the public and the environment as far as possible while continuing to respond to the developing situation.”

While it will take the Marine Accident Investigation Branch some time to fully investigate the causes of the crash, Humberside police launched a parallel investigation into the man’s death.

On Tuesday Ernst Russ confirmed to the Guardian that the ship’s master had been detained by Humberside police, adding: “The master and our entire team are actively assisting with the investigations. Out of respect for the investigation and all involved we will not comment further at this time.”

The senior investigating officer, DCS Craig Nicholson said on Tuesday: “Extensive work has already been carried out, and we are working closely with our partners to understand what happened, and to provide support to all of those affected.

“The man arrested remains in custody at this time whilst inquiries are under way, and we continue speaking with all those involved to establish the full circumstances of the incident.”

Nasa’s newest space telescope rocketed into orbit on Tuesday to map the entire sky like never before – a sweeping look at hundreds of millions of galaxies and their shared cosmic glow since the beginning of time.

SpaceX launched the Spherex observatory from California, putting it on course to fly over Earth’s poles. Tagging along were four suitcase-size satellites to study the sun. Spherex popped off the rocket’s upper stage first, drifting into the blackness of space with a blue Earth in the background.

The $488m Spherex mission aims to explain how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years and how the universe expanded so fast in its first moments.

Closer to home in our own Milky Way galaxy, Spherex will hunt for water and other ingredients of life in the icy clouds between stars where new solar systems emerge.

The cone-shaped Spherex – at 1,110lb (500kg) or the heft of a grand piano – will take six months to map the entire sky with its infrared eyes and wide field of view. Four full-sky surveys are planned over two years, as the telescope circles the globe from pole to pole 400 miles (650km) up.

Spherex will not see galaxies in exquisite detail like Nasa’s larger and more elaborate Hubble and Webb space telescopes, with their narrow fields of view.

Instead of counting galaxies or focusing on them, Spherex will observe the total glow produced by the whole lot, including the earliest ones formed in the wake of the universe-creating big bang.

“This cosmological glow captures all light emitted over cosmic history,” said Jamie Bock, the mission’s chief scientist of the California Institute of Technology. “It’s a very different way of looking at the universe,” enabling scientists to see what sources of light may have been missed in the past.

By observing the collective glow, scientists hope to tease out the light from the earliest galaxies and learn how they came to be, Bock said.

“We won’t see the big bang. But we’ll see the aftermath from it and learn about the beginning of the universe that way,” he said.

The telescope’s infrared detectors will be able to distinguish 102 colors invisible to the human eye, yielding the most colorful, inclusive map ever made of the cosmos.

It’s like “looking at the universe through a set of rainbow-colored glasses”, said the deputy project manager, Beth Fabinsky, of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

To keep the infrared detectors super cold – minus 350F (-210C) – Spherex has a unique look. It sports three aluminum-honeycomb cones, one inside the other, to protect from the sun and Earth’s heat, resembling a 10ft (3-meter) shield collar for an ailing dog.

Besides the telescope, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket provided a lift from Vandenberg Space Force base for a quartet of Nasa satellites called Punch. From their own separate polar orbit, the satellites will observe the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and the resulting solar wind.

The evening launch was delayed two weeks because of rocket and other issues.

Thousands of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) in England are to become the first in Europe to benefit from a major roll out of an immunotherapy pill.

Current treatments involve regular trips to hospital, drug infusions, frequent injections and extensive monitoring, which add to the burden on patients and healthcare systems.

The new tablet, cladribine, can be swallowed at home, and needs to be taken only 20 times in the first two years of a four-year cycle. The regime consists of a maximum of 10 days of treatment in the first year and 10 days in the second; no additional treatment is needed in the next two years.

Patients thinking about having children can also safely conceive in the third and fourth years of the treatment cycle. This is an important development, as MS is most commonly diagnosed in women in their 20s and 30s.

The NHS in England is the first healthcare system in Europe to widely introduce the drug to patients with active relapsing-remitting MS after it received the go-ahead from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice).

It was previously approved only for patients with more severe, highly active MS, but cladribine, made by Merck, will now be available to many more patients.

MS is a debilitating neurological condition affecting the brain and spinal cord, causing severe pain, fatigue, cognitive issues and vision problems.

More than 150,000 people in the UK live with the condition; when first told they have MS, about 85% are diagnosed with the relapsing-remitting type.

As well as benefits for the patient, the rollout is expected to save thousands of clinical hours each year, freeing up NHS capacity by reducing the need for hospital appointments and time consuming treatments.

Klaus Schmierer, professor of neurology at Queen Mary University and a consultant neurologist at Barts Health NHS trust, said: “This Nice decision gives people with relapsing MS access to a disease-modifying immunotherapy that interferes very little with their daily lives.

“For many people with MS, effective immunotherapy comes with a substantial burden, such as frequent infusions at the hospital, or taking medication at home daily, which is both demanding in terms of consistency and a constant reminder of their chronic condition. These factors can interfere with work, relationships, and more generally a sense of normality.

“Cladribine’s efficacy and unique dosing regimen enable people with relapsing MS to maintain their quality of life being able to largely ‘forget’ about their immunotherapy once the two short treatment-courses have been completed.”

Prof James Palmer, medical director for specialised commissioning at NHS England, said: “The NHS is proud to be the first healthcare system in Europe to roll out this innovative ‘take at home’ tablet widely for patients with active multiple sclerosis.

“Broadening access to cladribine means thousands more patients will benefit from managing their treatment at home rather than regularly attending hospital appointments – as well as giving women with MS who want to get pregnant more flexibility to do so around their treatment.

“This decision will also significantly free up clinical time, helping clinicians see more patients and boosting NHS productivity.”

Laura Thomas, head of policy at the MS Society, welcomed the news, saying expanding choices for patients was “vital”. “We’re so glad that more people with MS will now be able to choose an effective treatment which suits their lifestyle,” she added.

Meanwhile, in another medical advance, an early study revealed an annual jab to protect against HIV “shows potential”.

Millions of people globally are at high risk of HIV and take daily pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) tablets to reduce their risk. But challenges with adherence and persistence have limited their overall effect.

The new study, presented to the 2025 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, found that a yearly injection, lenacapavir, made by Gilead Sciences, was “safe and well tolerated”.

“Yearly dosing of lenacapavir has the potential to further decrease current barriers to PrEP by increasing the uptake of, persistence on, and, therefore, scalability of PrEP,” experts wrote in The Lancet.