An Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was attacked by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces has been released from detention.

Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians left a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they were being held on Tuesday. Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.

The three had spent the night on the floor of a military base while suffering from serious injuries sustained in the attack, according to Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel.

Earlier this month Ballal and the other directors of No Other Land, which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, appeared on stage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles to accept the award for best documentary film.

Tsemel said Ballal and the other detained people had been accused of throwing stones at a young settler, allegations they deny.

Palestinian residents say about two dozen settlers – some masked, some carrying guns and some in military uniforms – attacked the West Bank village of Susya on Monday evening as residents were breaking their Ramadan fast.

Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones, they said.

The Israeli military said on Monday it had detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at forces and one Israeli civilian involved in a what it described as a violent confrontation. On Tuesday, it referred further queries to police, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she heard her husband being beaten outside their home as she huddled inside with their three children. She heard him screaming, “I’m dying!” and calling for an ambulance. When she looked out the window, she saw three men in uniform beating Ballal with the butts of their rifles and another person in civilian clothes who appeared to be filming the violence.

“Of course, after the Oscar, they have come to attack us more,” Lamia said. “I felt afraid.”

West Bank settlers are often armed and sometimes wear military-style clothing that makes it difficult to distinguish them from soldiers.

On Tuesday, a small bloodstain could be seen outside their home, and the car’s windshield and windows were shattered. Neighbours pointed to a nearby water tank with a hole in the side that they said had been damaged by the settlers.

No Other Land, which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.

The joint Israeli-Palestinian production has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International film festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad. Miami Beach in Florida proposed ending the lease of a movie theatre that screened it.

Basel Adra, another of the film’s co-directors who is a prominent Palestinian activist in the area, said there had been a massive increase in attacks by settlers and Israeli forces since the Oscar win.

“Nobody can do anything to stop the pogroms, and soldiers are only there to facilitate and help the attacks,” he said. “We’re living in dark days here, in Gaza, and all of the West Bank … Nobody’s stopping this.”

Masked settlers with sticks also attacked Jewish activists in the area on Monday, smashing their car windows and slashing tyres, according to Josh Kimelman, an activist with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. Video provided by the group showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to more than 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centres.

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. About 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive groves – and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

The Palestinians also face threats from settlers at nearby outposts. Palestinians and rights groups say Israeli forces usually turn a blind eye to settler attacks or intervene on behalf of the settlers.

The war in Gaza has brought a surge of violence in the West Bank, with the Israeli military carrying out widespread military operations that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has been a rise in settler violence as well as Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

Press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza on Monday, who died in separate targeted airstrikes by the Israeli armed forces.

Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, was killed by an airstrike on his car in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya.

Video reportedly from minutes after the airstrike, which has not been verified by the Guardian, shows people gathering around the shattered and smoking car and pulling a body out of the wreckage.

Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was also killed on Monday, reportedly along with his wife and son, in an airstrike on his home in south Khan Younis.

In the hours after the deaths, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Palestinian press freedom organisations released statements condemning the attacks.

“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director.

“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour. Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted and killed Shabat and Mansour and labelled them as terrorists. The IDF said it had “eliminated the terrorist Hossam Basel Abdul Karim Shabat, a sniper terrorist from the Beit Hanoun Battalion of the Hamas terrorist organisation, who cynically posed as an Al Jazeera journalist.”

The IDF said it had documentation exposing Shabat’s “direct affiliation with the military wing of the Hamas terrorist organisation”.

The IDF also said that it had struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in Khan Younis, where Mohammed Mansour was killed.

In October 2024, the IDF had accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working for Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant arm of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Al Jazeera and Shabat denied Israel’s claims, with Shabat stating in an interview with the CPJ that “we are civilians … Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”

The CPJ has previously denounced the Israeli authorities for the “smearing of killed Palestinian journalists with unsubstantiated ‘terrorist’ labels”.

In its statement condemning the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, the CPJ again called on Israel to “stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press”.

The CPJ estimates that more than 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the organisation began gathering data in 1992.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says it believes the number is higher and, with the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, 208 journalists and other members of the press have been killed over the course of the conflict.

Under international law, journalists are protected civilians who must not be targeted by warring parties.

Hours after his death, Shabat’s team posted a message on X, written by the journalist to be published in the event of his death.

“I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents – anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival,” he wrote. “I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side … I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest – something I haven’t known in the past 18 months … for the last time, Hossam Shabat, from northern Gaza.”

Hillary Clinton – the former US secretary of state who lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump amid a scandal over her use of a private server for classified emails – reacted to Monday’s news of a leak of highly sensitive military plans at the White House by saying: “You have got to be kidding me.”

Clinton punctuated her reaction on the X platform with an eyes emoji and a link to an Atlantic article that revealed how Trump officials inadvertently broadcast plans of US airstrikes on Houthi rebels through a Signal group chat with a journalist reading along.

Trump and his supporters criticized her ruthlessly for her classified emails and private server use before and after he defeated her in the presidential election nine years earlier, even calling for her to be imprisoned.

Among them were some of the participants in the group chat reported on by the Atlantic: the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the Central Intelligence Agency director, John Ratcliffe; and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.

“If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now,” ex-Fox News host Hegseth said on his former network in 2016, as CNN showed in a montage which went viral Monday night.

That same year, Rubio remarked on Fox: “Nobody is above the law – not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is.”

In 2019, Ratcliffe told Fox: “Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act.”

And in a 2023 CNN appearance, Waltz complained about the lack of prosecution over “the Clinton emails”.

All were appointed to Trump’s cabinet after he won his second presidency in November.

On Monday, the White House confirmed the leak reported by the Atlantic but essentially insisted it had been harmless, demonstrating “deep and thoughtful coordination between senior officials”.

“The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security,” White House spokesperson Brian Hughes told the Guardian.

Hegseth, meanwhile, insulted the Atlantic journalist who was inadvertently brought into his Signal chat, Jeffrey Goldberg, as “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes”. Hegseth asserted: “Nobody was texting war plans,” prompting Goldberg to respond on MSNBC by saying he had seen a “minute-by-minute accounting” of plans to bomb targets in Yemen associated with Houthis.

Asked Monday for his take on Goldberg’s report, Trump claimed: “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic … but I know nothing about it.”

By Tuesday, he reportedly told NBC News that Waltz “has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man”. He also echoed Hughes in claiming Goldberg’s presence in the Signal chat “had no impact at all” on the ensuing military operation.

Clinton served as secretary of state under former president Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013.

As she ran for the presidency, the FBI’s then-director James Comey said there was evidence Clinton had either sent or received 113 emails on a private server with information that was classified at the time of the correspondence. Information in another 2,000 emails or so was later classified.

Comey said Clinton had been “extremely careless” but had not acted in a way rising to the level of criminal charges.

The leak of top US officials’ deliberations over planning for this month’s strikes on the Houthis in Yemen – revealed by a journalist who was accidentally invited to a chat group on the Signal messaging app – will be highly useful for hostile intelligence agencies.

Donald Trump defended his embattled national security adviser on Tuesday and said the leak of highly classified military plans was “the only glitch in two months”, as scrutiny intensified into how top US officials shared operational details for bombing Yemen in a group chat.

In an interview with NBC, Trump said, “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” as Democrats called for an investigation into the sharing of the plans for this month’s major airstrikes in Yemen on the Signal app.

The Atlantic reported that Waltz, who was a congressman representing Florida before being appointed national security adviser by Trump, sent a connection request on the chat app Signal to the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on 11 March. Goldberg was then included in a chat group in which detailed information about plans for an attack on the Houthi armed group in Yemen was shared.

Trump told NBC News that Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation, and defended Waltz, claiming that the leak was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one”.

Asked how Goldberg was added to the chat, Trump said: “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

Key figures in the Trump administration, including Waltz, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, were present in the Signal chat.

Goldberg said he assumed he was being spoofed until the attacks in Yemen occurred exactly as the participants described in the chat.

Gabbard and other intelligence officials were due to appear before the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday morning, when they are likely to face questions about the leak.

While most Republicans, including Trump and the House leader, Mike Johnson, rallied around Waltz, a few joined Democrats in condemning the leak. Don Bacon, a Republican congressman from Nebraska, told CNN the debacle was a “gross error” for which there was “no excuse”.

“They intentionally put highly classified information on an unclassified device. I would have lost my security clearance in the air force for this and for a lot less,” Bacon said. “I will guarantee you, 99.99% with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones. So I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the actual attacks on Yemen or the Houthis.”

Nick LaLota, a Republican congressman from New York, told Politico: “At minimum, it’s totally sloppy.”

Hegseth claimed on Monday that “nobody was texting war plans” and said that Goldberg “peddles in garbage”.

Goldberg responded to Hegseth in an interview with MSNBC.

“I haven’t seen this kind of unserious behavior before,” he said.

“And the secretary of defense, all due respect, in that presentation seems like a person who’s unserious and is trying to deflect from the fact that he participated in a conversation on an unclassified commercial messaging app that he probably shouldn’t have participated in.”

The French actor Gérard Depardieu has admitted in court that he grabbed the hips of a woman who has accused him of sexual assault, but said it was to avoid slipping and was not a sexual attack.

“I grabbed her hips,” the actor, 76, told his trial for sexual assault at the Paris criminal court on Tuesday. The head judge noted that this was a change from his testimony during police interrogation when he had denied that any physical contact had taken place with the 54-year-old set decorator.

Depardieu is on trial for the alleged sexual assault of the set dresser as well as alleged sexual assaults of a 34-year-old assistant director during the shooting of the feature film Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021.

He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£63,000) if convicted. He denies any wrongdoing, telling the court on Tuesday: “I deny all of it.”

Depardieu – the biggest French cinema star to face trial for sexual assault since the #MeToo movement – said: “I grabbed her hips so as not to slip because I was so upset by her, by the heat. It was a Friday – it was the end of a film shoot with a man who was very tired.”

Depardieu said any crude comments he made while grabbing the set decorator were because he was in a bad mood at the end of the day’s filming.

The court heard that the set decorator, Amélie, had been working on styling film sets in a building in the 16th arrondissement of Paris on 10 September 2021.

She told the court that Depardieu, who had been seated on a stool in the corridor between takes, began talking to her about the set and complained of the heat in the building. She said he told her: “It’s so hot, I can’t get an erection.” He also allegedly said: “I know how to make a woman come without touching her.”

After he went to another room to film a scene, he returned to sit in the same corridor, she told the court. He asked Amélie why she was on the phone to her “bloke”, she said. She told him she was in fact busy on the phone trying to track down parasols for the film. He allegedly said: “Come and touch my big parasol. I’ll stick it in your pussy.”

Amélie alleged that he then grabbed her hips, pulled her towards him and trapped her between his thighs with great force, and grabbed her body, including her pubis, waist and chest. “He grabbed me by the hips, pulled me forwards [towards him], trapped me with his legs,” she said.

“That’s where I understood the strength he had, he held me very, very hard. I remember his eyes, I saw this big face, red eyes, very angry, very agitated. And he was saying: ‘Come touch my big parasol’, with a crazy look. I’ve never seen anything like that. That phrase is so idiotic; how would I have invented that – it makes no sense to talk of genitals like a parasol.”

She said: “That fear that I felt – what stands out for me is not his sexual desire, but his savagery. It was the fact that he knew I was afraid – I saw his eyes light up with a kind of pleasure in making someone afraid. I remember that savagery. He really terrified me, and that amused him.”

Depardieu denied assault. He said he had been unhappy with Amélie’s work as a set decorator, because a bedroom scene wasn’t ready and was done poorly. He had made comments that Amélie couldn’t even run a bric-a-brac shop let alone decorate a set, he said.

Depardieu said he weighed 150kg at the time and was so overweight he couldn’t possibly have gripped anyone between his thighs. He told the panel of three judges: “I would never put anyone between my legs. You can do a test if you like – with the paunch I have, I can’t do it.”

He said he did tend to make vulgar comments on set, telling the court he could often shout things like “Pussy! Pussy!”

When the head judge questioned that he would actually speak like that on a film set, he said he could: “If it’s hot, if I’m in a bad mood, things always go on too long.”

Depardieu said: “I don’t see why I would go around groping a woman, her buttocks, her breasts. I’m not somebody who rubs himself against others on the Métro. I’ve been told that exists, I don’t know about those types of things, there are so many vices I don’t know.” He said there was no way he would put his hands on a woman’s backside.

He said, however, that he did use crude language on set but just to be “provocative” and to “relax” people. Asked by the head judge if he had said: “It’s so hot I can’t get an erection”, Depardieu replied: “Maybe I said that, yes, why not?”

Depardieu said the media had used the allegations against him to damage his reputation. He attacked the #MeToo movement as well as the women who had held protest placards outside a concert tour he was giving at the time of the allegations. “This movement is going to become a terror,” he said.

Amélie told the court that no conversation had taken place with Depardieu where he had criticised her work.

The trial continues.

The French actor Gérard Depardieu has admitted in court that he grabbed the hips of a woman who has accused him of sexual assault, but said it was to avoid slipping and was not a sexual attack.

“I grabbed her hips,” the actor, 76, told his trial for sexual assault at the Paris criminal court on Tuesday. The head judge noted that this was a change from his testimony during police interrogation when he had denied that any physical contact had taken place with the 54-year-old set decorator.

Depardieu is on trial for the alleged sexual assault of the set dresser as well as alleged sexual assaults of a 34-year-old assistant director during the shooting of the feature film Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021.

He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£63,000) if convicted. He denies any wrongdoing, telling the court on Tuesday: “I deny all of it.”

Depardieu – the biggest French cinema star to face trial for sexual assault since the #MeToo movement – said: “I grabbed her hips so as not to slip because I was so upset by her, by the heat. It was a Friday – it was the end of a film shoot with a man who was very tired.”

Depardieu said any crude comments he made while grabbing the set decorator were because he was in a bad mood at the end of the day’s filming.

The court heard that the set decorator, Amélie, had been working on styling film sets in a building in the 16th arrondissement of Paris on 10 September 2021.

She told the court that Depardieu, who had been seated on a stool in the corridor between takes, began talking to her about the set and complained of the heat in the building. She said he told her: “It’s so hot, I can’t get an erection.” He also allegedly said: “I know how to make a woman come without touching her.”

After he went to another room to film a scene, he returned to sit in the same corridor, she told the court. He asked Amélie why she was on the phone to her “bloke”, she said. She told him she was in fact busy on the phone trying to track down parasols for the film. He allegedly said: “Come and touch my big parasol. I’ll stick it in your pussy.”

Amélie alleged that he then grabbed her hips, pulled her towards him and trapped her between his thighs with great force, and grabbed her body, including her pubis, waist and chest. “He grabbed me by the hips, pulled me forwards [towards him], trapped me with his legs,” she said.

“That’s where I understood the strength he had, he held me very, very hard. I remember his eyes, I saw this big face, red eyes, very angry, very agitated. And he was saying: ‘Come touch my big parasol’, with a crazy look. I’ve never seen anything like that. That phrase is so idiotic; how would I have invented that – it makes no sense to talk of genitals like a parasol.”

She said: “That fear that I felt – what stands out for me is not his sexual desire, but his savagery. It was the fact that he knew I was afraid – I saw his eyes light up with a kind of pleasure in making someone afraid. I remember that savagery. He really terrified me, and that amused him.”

Depardieu denied assault. He said he had been unhappy with Amélie’s work as a set decorator, because a bedroom scene wasn’t ready and was done poorly. He had made comments that Amélie couldn’t even run a bric-a-brac shop let alone decorate a set, he said.

Depardieu said he weighed 150kg at the time and was so overweight he couldn’t possibly have gripped anyone between his thighs. He told the panel of three judges: “I would never put anyone between my legs. You can do a test if you like – with the paunch I have, I can’t do it.”

He said he did tend to make vulgar comments on set, telling the court he could often shout things like “Pussy! Pussy!”

When the head judge questioned that he would actually speak like that on a film set, he said he could: “If it’s hot, if I’m in a bad mood, things always go on too long.”

Depardieu said: “I don’t see why I would go around groping a woman, her buttocks, her breasts. I’m not somebody who rubs himself against others on the Métro. I’ve been told that exists, I don’t know about those types of things, there are so many vices I don’t know.” He said there was no way he would put his hands on a woman’s backside.

He said, however, that he did use crude language on set but just to be “provocative” and to “relax” people. Asked by the head judge if he had said: “It’s so hot I can’t get an erection”, Depardieu replied: “Maybe I said that, yes, why not?”

Depardieu said the media had used the allegations against him to damage his reputation. He attacked the #MeToo movement as well as the women who had held protest placards outside a concert tour he was giving at the time of the allegations. “This movement is going to become a terror,” he said.

Amélie told the court that no conversation had taken place with Depardieu where he had criticised her work.

The trial continues.

A former member of the Baader-Meinhof group, also known as the Red Army Faction, has gone on trial in Germany for robberies she allegedly committed during three decades hiding in broad daylight.

Daniela Klette, the last female member of the far-left terror network still on the run before her arrest, appeared before a court in the north-central city of Celle on Tuesday charged with 14 criminal offences including armed robbery and attempted murder.

Police detained the 66-year-old last February in her flat in Berlin’s gentrified Kreuzberg district where, unsuspected by her neighbours, she had walked her dog, danced capoeira and reportedly tutored schoolchildren in maths. Investigators found an anti-tank grenade and a Kalashnikov in her flat.

The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, was responsible for a campaign of domestic terror in the 1970s and 1980s that included dozens of murders.

With Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who are still on the run, Klette belonged to the so-called third generation of the group. It disbanded in the 1990s but the trio are alleged to have financed their lives in hiding through at least a dozen armed robberies in northern Germany.

The trial will cover Klette’s alleged involvement in the robberies but not the group’s terror-related activities, which are expected to be covered by a further indictment. Klette is suspected of being involved in terror attacks on Deutsche Bank in 1990, the US embassy in Bonn in 1991, and a prison in Hessen in 1993.

The trial is being held before Verden lower regional court, but because of security concerns the proceedings are taking place in the high-security building of Celle upper regional court.

A protest of about 50 people from leftwing and far-left groups gathered outside the court in solidarity with Klette on Tuesday morning, the regional public broadcaster NDR reported.

Lawyers for Klette went on to call for the proceedings to be dismissed and the arrest warrant lifted, NDR reported, arguing that fair and due process was not possible.

Klette is alleged to have been a driver for a spate of armed robberies spanning three decades.

The Verden public prosecutor’s office has alleged that in 2015 the group drove to a supermarket car park near Bremen to rob an armoured car holding €1m (£835,000). Klette is said to have carried a “non-functional RPG-7 anti-tank gun and a submachine gun”, while Garweg is said to have shot an automatic rifle at the window of the passenger door of the vehicle from close range.

When Klette was arrested last year she allegedly texted Garweg, buying him time to run. He, too, is thought to have been living in Berlin under an alias.

One of Klette’s lawyers, Ulrich von Klinggräff, in an interview with the leftwing newspaper taz last week, criticised the trial for conflating Klette’s alleged involvement in the robberies with “completely arbitrary and unsubstantiated allegations about the RAF”. He cited the heavy security measures in the court and repeated references to the RAF in the indictment, which runs to 600 pages.

Von Klinggräff said Klette was “quite nervous” about the trial but would “approach it with a fighting spirit”.

The court has scheduled hearings until the end of the year.

“Yes, it’s likely that Ms Klette had something to do with the robberies,” said Undine Weyers, another of Klette’s lawyers, in the taz interview. “But there’s not a single piece of evidence that she was at any of the crime scenes or what role she played.”

Globalisation “may have now run its course” in its current form, according to the chair of HSBC, as geopolitical tensions and US tariffs threaten to upend existing global trade.

Speaking at the bank’s global investment summit in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Sir Mark Tucker warned that trade tensions created uncertainty that posed a “serious potential risk to global growth”, in remarks reported by the Financial Times. He predicted stronger economic ties would develop between regional groups and trade blocs.

Since starting his second term as US president in late January, Donald Trump has imposed various tariffs on leading trading partners such as Canada, Mexico and China, as well as global steel and aluminium tariffs. The EU has announced retaliatory measures from April, while the UK has chosen to adopt a “pragmatic approach” while it tries to negotiate a wider trade deal with the US.

Trump is expected to impose more tariffs on 2 April, when his administration will announce “reciprocal tariffs” on countries around the world.

Last week, officials at the US Federal Reserve cut their US economic growth forecasts and raised projections for price growth as the central bank kept interest rates on hold. Some of the increase in the Fed’s inflation expectations was “clearly” due to tariffs, according to its chair Jerome Powell.

“As we consider present developments … we believe that globalisation as we knew it may have now run its course,” Tucker said in his speech.

“Economic considerations guiding optimally efficient supply chains led to one of the world’s greatest periods of wealth creation we have ever seen. The balance of economic power changed as a result, and what used to be sustainable no longer is.”

This does not mean, however, that the world will “regress or geo-fragment and de-globalise”. New opportunities will arise of stronger economic ties between different “political groupings and trade blocs”, including the “Brics-plus group of countries,” which will increasingly trade with each other, Tucker predicted.

The Brics group, originally made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has expanded to include Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia.

Tucker said the world was undergoing a “period of deep and profound change” in trade, economic policy and international security arrangements.

HSBC has said it is the world’s largest trade finance bank, and its network gives its clients access to 85% of the world’s trade flows. It is also a leading foreign exchange house and payments provider.

HSBC is in the middle of a big shake-up announced last October by its new chief executive, Georges Elhedery, the bank’s former finance chief who took the reins from Noel Quinn. The bank is splitting its operations into eastern and western markets, to help it cut costs and navigate rising geopolitical tensions.

Tucker said economic links between Asia and the Middle East, an important focus for the bank, would “soar” in the coming years.

“The rising trade and financial linkages of these economies with the rest of the emerging world suggests there could be notable growth spillovers,” Tucker said. He said more emerging markets would join the Brics group to have a stronger voice on the world stage.

Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, has accused the US of putting “unacceptable pressure” on Greenland – which she has vowed to resist – before an unsolicited visit to the Arctic island by members of the Trump administration.

The White House surprised Nuuk and Copenhagen on Sunday by announcing that a US delegation led by the second lady, Usha Vance, would be arriving in Greenland later this week.

Also due to participate in the visit from Thursday to Saturday are the White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, now embroiled in an embarrassing security leak, and the energy secretary, Chris Wright.

“I have to say that it is unacceptable pressure being placed on Greenland and Denmark in this situation. And it is pressure that we will resist,” Frederiksen told Danish channel TV 2 on Tuesday.

The Danish leader also dismissed the idea of the trip being a private visit, saying: “You cannot make a private visit with official representatives from another country.”

Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland, she said, should be taken seriously. “President Trump is serious … He wants Greenland. Therefore, it cannot be seen independently of anything else,” she told Danmarks Radio (DR).

She said: “It is clearly not a visit that is about what Greenland needs or what Greenland wants from a visit. Therefore, no matter how we twist it, it is a completely unacceptable pressure on Greenland, the Greenlandic politicians and the Greenlandic population, but it is also on Denmark and thus the kingdom.”

Copenhagen, Greenland’s former colonial ruler, retains control of security and foreign policy in the autonomous territory, which is still part of the kingdom of Denmark. Trump has repeatedly stated his desire for the US to gain control over the island, which he has said is crucial for American security.

Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Bourup Egede, has accused Washington of “foreign interference” in relation to the planned visit, amid political uncertainty in the territory as coalition talks continue less than a fortnight after a general election.

The US president responded by saying the delegation had been invited by “officials” on the Greenlandic side. “People from Greenland are asking us to go there,” he told reporters on Monday.

The Nuuk government, however, disputed that. “For the record, the Greenlandic government has not issued any invitations for visits, either official or private,” it said in a statement. “The current government is acting as an interim government pending the formation of a new coalition, and we have kindly requested all countries to respect this process.”

The territory is led by a caretaker government as the Greenlandic Democrats continue with coalition talks following an election earlier this month. On Monday, Greenland’s most US and Trump-friendly party, Naleraq, left negotiations over their belief that Greenland should rapidly declare independence.

Kuno Fencker, a member of parliament for Naleraq, which came second to the Democrats in the election, said the party had been “thrown out” of coalition talks, in part because of the upcoming US visit.

“It has an effect because many of the members think that we, especially me, are selling the country to the US,” he said, adding that it was not in his authority to do so.

Accusing the Danish media of “fear-mongering” over the US and Trump, he said: “Divide and rule is being used extremely towards Greenland and fear-mongering about the United States. And especially Donald Trump is framed as the big villain, big bad wolf, here.”

The White House has said Waltz and Wright will visit the US space force base in Pituffik, in the north of Greenland, for briefings from US personnel, and they are expected to join Vance to visit historical sites and attend a dog-sled race.

The White House National Security Council has said the delegation aimed to “learn about Greenland, its culture, history and people”.

Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, has accused the US of putting “unacceptable pressure” on Greenland – which she has vowed to resist – before an unsolicited visit to the Arctic island by members of the Trump administration.

The White House surprised Nuuk and Copenhagen on Sunday by announcing that a US delegation led by the second lady, Usha Vance, would be arriving in Greenland later this week.

Also due to participate in the visit from Thursday to Saturday are the White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, now embroiled in an embarrassing security leak, and the energy secretary, Chris Wright.

“I have to say that it is unacceptable pressure being placed on Greenland and Denmark in this situation. And it is pressure that we will resist,” Frederiksen told Danish channel TV 2 on Tuesday.

The Danish leader also dismissed the idea of the trip being a private visit, saying: “You cannot make a private visit with official representatives from another country.”

Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland, she said, should be taken seriously. “President Trump is serious … He wants Greenland. Therefore, it cannot be seen independently of anything else,” she told Danmarks Radio (DR).

She said: “It is clearly not a visit that is about what Greenland needs or what Greenland wants from a visit. Therefore, no matter how we twist it, it is a completely unacceptable pressure on Greenland, the Greenlandic politicians and the Greenlandic population, but it is also on Denmark and thus the kingdom.”

Copenhagen, Greenland’s former colonial ruler, retains control of security and foreign policy in the autonomous territory, which is still part of the kingdom of Denmark. Trump has repeatedly stated his desire for the US to gain control over the island, which he has said is crucial for American security.

Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Bourup Egede, has accused Washington of “foreign interference” in relation to the planned visit, amid political uncertainty in the territory as coalition talks continue less than a fortnight after a general election.

The US president responded by saying the delegation had been invited by “officials” on the Greenlandic side. “People from Greenland are asking us to go there,” he told reporters on Monday.

The Nuuk government, however, disputed that. “For the record, the Greenlandic government has not issued any invitations for visits, either official or private,” it said in a statement. “The current government is acting as an interim government pending the formation of a new coalition, and we have kindly requested all countries to respect this process.”

The territory is led by a caretaker government as the Greenlandic Democrats continue with coalition talks following an election earlier this month. On Monday, Greenland’s most US and Trump-friendly party, Naleraq, left negotiations over their belief that Greenland should rapidly declare independence.

Kuno Fencker, a member of parliament for Naleraq, which came second to the Democrats in the election, said the party had been “thrown out” of coalition talks, in part because of the upcoming US visit.

“It has an effect because many of the members think that we, especially me, are selling the country to the US,” he said, adding that it was not in his authority to do so.

Accusing the Danish media of “fear-mongering” over the US and Trump, he said: “Divide and rule is being used extremely towards Greenland and fear-mongering about the United States. And especially Donald Trump is framed as the big villain, big bad wolf, here.”

The White House has said Waltz and Wright will visit the US space force base in Pituffik, in the north of Greenland, for briefings from US personnel, and they are expected to join Vance to visit historical sites and attend a dog-sled race.

The White House National Security Council has said the delegation aimed to “learn about Greenland, its culture, history and people”.

A long investigation into the mysterious death in 2023 of a French toddler took a surprise turn on Tuesday when police arrested the boy’s grandparents on suspicion of murder.

The death of Émile Soleil, who was two and a half when he went missing in a French Alpine village in July 2023, has remained unexplained even after the discovery of his skull and teeth by a walker just over a mile from the village nine months after his disappearance.

Prosecutors at the time said the cause of his death, which shocked the country, could have been “a fall, manslaughter or murder”. Police later found more bones and items of the boy’s clothing.

Émile was at his grandparents’ summer home in the small hamlet of Le Haut-Vernet when he vanished. Two neighbours last saw him walking alone on a street in Le Vernet, 1,200 metres (4,000ft) up in the French Alps. His mother and father were absent on the day of his disappearance.

Some media outlets had focused on the role of the boy’s grandfather, who was questioned in the 1990s over alleged violence and sexual assault at a private school, but police had considered his involvement as only one of many possible hypotheses explaining the boy’s death.

But on Tuesday morning the grandfather, Philippe Vedovini, and his wife were arrested on suspicion of “voluntary homicide”, the chief prosecutor of Aix-en-Provence, Jean-Luc Blachon, said in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse.

Contacted by AFP the couple’s lawyer, Isabelle Colombani, said she had no comment, having “only just heard” about the development.

Two other members of the family were also arrested, prosecutors said. Their identity was not revealed.

Speculation that a development in the case was imminent resurfaced earlier this month when investigators returned to the village. Tuesday’s arrests were the result of fact-finding “over recent months”, the prosecutor told reporters, adding that forensic police were examining “several spots in the area”.

A funeral mass for the toddler was held in February this year in the presence of several hundreds of mourners. Within hours of the ceremony, the grandparents published a statement saying “the period of silence must yield to the period of truth”, adding: “We need to understand, we need to know.”

Pope Francis came so close to death while in hospital with pneumonia that doctors had to choose whether “to let him go, or push forward”, the head of the pontiff’s medical team said.

Francis, 88, spent more than five weeks at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, where he was treated for pneumonia in both lungs, before being discharged on Sunday. He suffered four breathing crises during his stay in hospital, the most critical episode being on 28 February, when he inhaled his vomit.

“We were all aware that the situation had further worsened and there was a risk that he would not make it,” Sergio Alfieri, a general surgeon at Gemelli hospital, said in an interview with Corriere della Sera published on Tuesday.

“We had to choose whether to stop [treatment] and let him go, or push forward and try [to save him] with all the drugs and therapies possible, running the very high risk of damaging other organs. In the end, we took this path.”

It was the pope’s personal nurse, Massimiliano Strappetti, who instructed the team to continue treatment, telling them: “Try everything, don’t give up,” Alfieri recalled.

The pontiff was fully aware that he might not make it through the night. “We saw a man who was suffering,” Alfieri told Corriere. “But from day one he wanted us to tell him the truth about his condition.”

During the episode, Alfieri said he “saw tears in the eyes of some of the people” around him. “People who, I understood, sincerely love him, like a father.”

The pope suffered subsequent respiratory attacks, including another critical one while he was eating, which again caused him to inhale his vomit, putting more pressure on his lungs. “In these cases, if not promptly helped, you risk sudden death,” said Alfieri. “It was terrible, really we thought he wouldn’t make it.”

The pope’s health started to improve and doctors declared on 10 March that he was no longer in imminent danger. As he started to feel better, the pontiff moved around the ward in his wheelchair and on one evening offered a pizza takeaway for all those who had assisted him.

At his own insistence, Francis returned home to Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City, where he must convalesce for at least two months as he continues treatment. Alfieri told reporters on Saturday that it would take time for the pope’s body to fully heal.

Francis is prone to lung infections because he developed pleurisy as a young adult and had part of one lung removed while training to be a priest in his native Argentina.

Escalating reports of vandalism at Tesla dealerships and charging stations across the US have prompted the FBI to create a taskforce to target the perpetrators.

The development, announced by Kash Patel, the bureau’s director, comes as White House officials close ranks around Elon Musk, the Tesla owner and world’s richest person who has been leading efforts to slash federal jobs and budgets as head of the “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

Protests against the cutbacks have taken place at dozens of the electrical vehicle maker’s dealerships in recent days and weeks, with some taking on a sinister air. Incendiary devices were discovered at a Tesla property in Austin, Texas, on Monday. And a man in West Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, was charged with aggravated assault after allegedly trying to drive into a group of protesters on Saturday.

Patel gave no details about the makeup of the taskforce, which comes amid reports he is bolstering his agency’s numbers by reassigning up to 1,000 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) – of which he is also acting director – to the FBI.

Ben Williamson, the FBI’s assistant director of public affairs, confirmed its formation in a tweet and said the taskforce would work “in conjunction with ATF to coordinate investigative activity and crack down on violent Tesla attacks”.

A group called TeslaTakedown is planning a “global day of action” this Saturday at hundreds of Tesla locations around the world, urging people to “turn out in numbers to fight Elon Musk’s illegal coup”.

Tesla sales have plummeted by almost 45% in Europe. And the company’s stock market value has tanked since Musk’s Doge began firing thousands of federal employees and cutting budgets at numerous agencies at the behest of Trump, whom the Tesla CEO supported as he successfully ran for a second presidency in November.

Trump has falsely labeled a boycott of Tesla products as “illegal” and called acts of vandalism such as setting fire to Tesla vehicles or charging stations domestic terrorism. Patel repeated the claim on Monday in a tweet insisting that “those responsible will be pursued, caught, and brought to justice”.

On Friday, Trump warned “sick terrorist thugs” convicted of arson or other offenses of violence at Tesla dealerships that they risked being sent to prison in El Salvador to serve 20-year sentences.

TeslaTakedown, meanwhile, said people have the right to protest peacefully on sidewalks and streets in front of the company’s showrooms. “Peaceful protest on public property is not domestic terrorism. We will not be bullied or allow our rights to be trampled on or stolen,” the group said in a statement.

Other senior Trump administration officials have also stepped in. On Sunday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, warned a Democratic Texas congresswoman, Jasmine Crockett, to “tread very carefully” after she recently appeared at a virtual rally hosted by TeslaTakedown and called for Musk “to be taken down”.

Crockett said during the rally that her call was for nonviolent action.

Bondi told Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures: “She is an elected public official, so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country.”

Bondi recently announced charges against three people accused of “violent destruction of Tesla properties” after incidents in three states.

One person was accused of being armed with an AR-15 rifle and throwing molotov cocktails at a Salem, Oregon, dealership. And a second was arrested in Loveland, Colorado, for allegedly trying to set a building on fire.

Authorities in Charleston, South Carolina, said they charged a person who allegedly “wrote profane messages against President Trump around Tesla charging stations before lighting the charging stations on fire with molotov cocktails”.

In a statement, Bondi said the unnamed defendants will face “the full force of the law”.

She wrote: “The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended. Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”

The double Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen described a childhood marked by fear and manipulation when he took the witness stand on Tuesday in a Norwegian court to testify against his father and former coach.

Gjert Ingebrigtsen has pleaded not guilty to charges of physically abusing two of his seven children, namely the track athlete and his sister, Ingrid. The 59-year-old faces up to six years in prison, with the trial due to run until 16 May in Sandnes, south-western Norway.

“My upbringing was closely tied to fear. I’ve been aware of a fear-based culture for a long time. As a teenager, it was a concept I really identified with, because I felt I had no free will or say in anything,” said Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who won 5,000m gold at the Paris Games and the 1500m in Tokyo.

“I was in an environment where everything was controlled and decided for me,” he was quoted as telling the Sør-Rogaland district court by the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK. “There was an enormous amount of manipulation.”

During the first day of the trial on Monday, Gjert Ingebrigtsen told the court he was innocent of the charges against him, the Norwegian news agency NTB reported. He is due to testify next week, NTB said.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen, 24, told the court about several incidents of violence.

Prosecutors allege Gjert Ingebrigtsen struck Jakob several times after he received a negative report about his behaviour from school when he was aged eight. “I remember being extremely scared. Now I’ve done something seriously wrong. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen,” Jakob told the court about the lead-up to the incident.

Jakob also told the court that when at age 16 he met Elisabeth Asserson, who is now his wife, his father tried to put a stop to the relationship, fearing having any relationship would harm his son’s sporting career. “I found it extremely difficult that someone like my own father could speak that way about Elisabeth, someone I cared about,” he told the court.