Hungary will leave the international criminal court because it has become “political”, the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said as he welcomed his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanhayu – the subject of an ICC arrest warrant – to Budapest for an official visit.

Standing beside Netanyahu at the start of the four-day visit, Orbàn said on Thursday that Hungary was convinced the “otherwise very important court” had “diminished into a political forum”. Netanyahu hailed “a bold and principled” decision.

“I thank you, Viktor … It’s important for all democracies,” the Israeli prime minister said. “It’s important to stand up to this corrupt organisation.” Netanyahu has been under an international arrest warrant since November over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.

He also said he believed Israel and Hungary, both of which are led by rightwing nationalist governments, were “fighting a similar battle for the future of our common civilisation, our Judeo-Christian civilisation”.

Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, announced shortly after Netanyahu landed at Budapest airport that the government would “initiate the withdrawal procedure on Thursday in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework”.

Leaving the court, to which all 27 EU members belong, would entail first passing a bill through parliament, dominated by Orbàn’s Fidesz party, then formally notifying the UN secretary general’s office. Withdrawal comes into effect one year later.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, welcomed what he termed an “important decision” and thanked Hungary for its “clear and strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty”.

Saar added that the “so-called international criminal court” had “lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defence”.

The Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, however, told reporters on the sidelines of a Nato meeting in Brussels on Thursday that as long as Hungary remained officially a member of the ICC, it should “fulfil all its obligations to the court”.

Netanyahu was welcomed in Budapest in an official ceremony, standing alongside Orbán as a military band played and cavalry carrying swords and bayonets passed by. He is expected to tour Budapest’s Holocaust Museum and hold a number of political meetings before leaving on Sunday.

Orbán invited his Israeli counterpart to visit the day after The Hague-based ICC, the world’s only permanent global tribunal for war crimes and genocide, issued the warrant, described by Israel as politically motivated and fuelled by antisemitism.

Netanhayu’s government has repeatedly said the court lost its legitimacy by issuing a warrant against a democratically elected leader exercising his country’s right to self-defence after the October 2023 attack by Hamas-led fighters on southern Israel.

In principle, Hungary, which signed the ICC’s founding document in 1999 and ratified it in 2001, should be required to detain and extradite anyone subject to a warrant from the court, but Budapest has argued the law was never promulgated.

“It was never made part of Hungarian law,” Gulyás said late last year, meaning no ICC measure can be legally carried out within Hungary. Orbán, in any case, has said he would not respect the ruling, calling it “brazen, cynical and completely unacceptable”.

Hungary’s illiberal prime minister told reporters in November that he would “guarantee” the ICC’s ruling would “have no effect in Hungary”, and has floated the prospect of pulling his country out of the court on several occasions since.

“It’s time for Hungary to review what we’re doing in an international organisation that is under US sanctions,” Orbàn said on in February when Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan.

Orbàn has strongly supported Netanyahu for many years, embracing Israel’s rightwing prime minister as an ally who shares the same conservative, sovereignist and authoritarian views. Hungary has frequently blocked EU statements or sanctions against Israel.

The visit marks Netanyahu’s second trip abroad since ICC warrants were announced against him and his former defence chief Yoav Gallant, as well as for the Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Masri. In February, he travelled to the US, which – like Israel, Russia and China – is not a member of the ICC.

For the Israeli prime minister, the visit is a chance to show – at a time of mounting criticism of his leadership and a lengthening list of domestic scandals – that despite widespread international opposition to Israel’s conduct of the war he remains a leader on the world stage. For Orbàn, it is another act of attention-grabbing defiance.

ICC judges said when they issued the warrant that there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war.

EU members are divided over whether to enforce the warrants, with some, such as Spain, the Netherlands and Finland, saying they would enforce them and others, including Germany and Poland, suggesting they could find a way for Netanyahu to visit without being arrested. France has said Netanyahu should be immune from the warrant since Israel is not an ICC member.

The court, whose 124 members also include the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan and many African, Latin American and Asia-Pacific countries, aims to pursue people responsible for grave crimes when countries cannot or will not do so themselves.

It has opened more than 30 cases for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and offences against the administration of justice, but is hampered by a lack of recognition and enforcement. Only Burundi and the Philippines have so far left the ICC.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “seizing territory” and intends to “divide up” the Gaza Strip by building a new security corridor, amid a major expansion of aerial and ground operations in the besieged Palestinian territory.

“Tonight, we have shifted gears in the Gaza Strip. The [Israeli army] is seizing territory, hitting the terrorists and destroying the infrastructure,” the prime minister said in a video statement on Wednesday evening.

“We are also doing another thing – seizing the ‘Morag route’. This will be the second Philadelphi route, another Philadelphi route,” he said, referring to an Israeli-held corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border.

“Because we are currently dividing up the strip, we are adding pressure step by step, so that our hostages will be given to us,” Netanyahu added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have seized buffer zones around Gaza’s edges totalling 62 sq km, or 17% of the strip, since the war began in October 2023, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha.

The Netzarim corridor, named for a defunct Israeli settlement, now cuts off Gaza City from the south of the strip.

Morag was a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, so the use of the name suggests the new corridor is designed to separate the two southern cities.

The Israeli prime minister’s announcement follows remarks on Wednesday from his defence minister, Israel Katz, who said the Israeli army would “seize large areas” of Gaza, necessitating large-scale civilian evacuations.

Neither Netanyahu nor Katz elaborated on how much Palestinian land Israel intended to capture in the renewed offensive, but the move is likely to complicate ceasefire talks and inflame fears that Israel intends to take permanent control of the strip when the war ends.

Israel’s newly stated intentions to establish another military corridor followed a night of intense airstrikes on Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, which hospital officials said had killed at least 21 people.

An airstrike on Wednesday afternoon on a Jabaliya health clinic housing displaced people killed at least 19 people, including nine children, according to the civil defence agency.

The IDF said in a statement it had taken precautions to avoid civilian casualties in the bombing of what it said was a Hamas control centre in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the strip. It later said it was aware the target was located in the same building as the clinic.

Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said in a statement that the strike hit “two rooms on the first floor of an Unrwa destroyed health centre” that had been used as a shelter for 160 displaced families.

“Many displaced families have not left the site, simply because they have absolutely nowhere else to go,” the statement said. The agency had shared the building’s coordinates with the IDF, it added.

In Khan Younis, the bodies of five women, one of them pregnant, two children and three men from the same family were brought to Nasser hospital on Wednesday morning, medics said. The IDF said it was examining the reports of civilian deaths.

Palestinian media reported bombing and shelling along the Egyptian border, at least two airstrikes on Gaza City, and Israeli troop movement in the Rafah area. The IDF said it had deployed an extra division to southern Gaza early on Wednesday.

The Israeli military issued sweeping evacuation orders last week telling people in Rafah and a swath of land stretching northwards towards Khan Younis to move to al-Mawasi, an area on the shore that Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone but has repeatedly bombed.

Israel renewed intensive bombing across Gaza on 18 March, followed by the redeployment of ground troops, abruptly ending the two-month ceasefire and exchanges of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militant groups and Palestinians in Israeli jails.

According to the terms of the truce, the sides were supposed to negotiate implementing further phases of the deal during the first 42-day stage, but the Israeli government repeatedly postponed the talks.

The latest UN estimate, from 23 March, suggested approximately 140,000 people had been displaced since the end of the ceasefire. More than 90% of the strip’s population of 2.3 million have been forced to flee their homes during the conflict, many of them multiple times.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since it ended the ceasefire. Israel has also cut off humanitarian aid, food and fuel to the strip in an effort to pressure Hamas. The month-long blockade is now the longest in the war to date.

Efforts led by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to resume talks aimed at ending the war have not yet led to a breakthrough. The resumption of fighting in Gaza has also fuelled protests in Israel against the government from supporters of the remaining hostages and their loved ones.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents most captives’ relatives, said it was “horrified to wake up this morning to the defence minister’s announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza”.

The group said: “Our highest priority must be an immediate deal to bring ALL hostages back home – the living for rehabilitation and those killed for proper burial – and end this war.”

The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which Israel says 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed and a further 250 taken captive, was the trigger for the conflict in Gaza, the worst war between Israel and the Palestinians in more than 70 years of fighting.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 50,357 people, the majority of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “seizing territory” and intends to “divide up” the Gaza Strip by building a new security corridor, amid a major expansion of aerial and ground operations in the besieged Palestinian territory.

“Tonight, we have shifted gears in the Gaza Strip. The [Israeli army] is seizing territory, hitting the terrorists and destroying the infrastructure,” the prime minister said in a video statement on Wednesday evening.

“We are also doing another thing – seizing the ‘Morag route’. This will be the second Philadelphi route, another Philadelphi route,” he said, referring to an Israeli-held corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border.

“Because we are currently dividing up the strip, we are adding pressure step by step, so that our hostages will be given to us,” Netanyahu added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have seized buffer zones around Gaza’s edges totalling 62 sq km, or 17% of the strip, since the war began in October 2023, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha.

The Netzarim corridor, named for a defunct Israeli settlement, now cuts off Gaza City from the south of the strip.

Morag was a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, so the use of the name suggests the new corridor is designed to separate the two southern cities.

The Israeli prime minister’s announcement follows remarks on Wednesday from his defence minister, Israel Katz, who said the Israeli army would “seize large areas” of Gaza, necessitating large-scale civilian evacuations.

Neither Netanyahu nor Katz elaborated on how much Palestinian land Israel intended to capture in the renewed offensive, but the move is likely to complicate ceasefire talks and inflame fears that Israel intends to take permanent control of the strip when the war ends.

Israel’s newly stated intentions to establish another military corridor followed a night of intense airstrikes on Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, which hospital officials said had killed at least 21 people.

An airstrike on Wednesday afternoon on a Jabaliya health clinic housing displaced people killed at least 19 people, including nine children, according to the civil defence agency.

The IDF said in a statement it had taken precautions to avoid civilian casualties in the bombing of what it said was a Hamas control centre in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the strip. It later said it was aware the target was located in the same building as the clinic.

Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said in a statement that the strike hit “two rooms on the first floor of an Unrwa destroyed health centre” that had been used as a shelter for 160 displaced families.

“Many displaced families have not left the site, simply because they have absolutely nowhere else to go,” the statement said. The agency had shared the building’s coordinates with the IDF, it added.

In Khan Younis, the bodies of five women, one of them pregnant, two children and three men from the same family were brought to Nasser hospital on Wednesday morning, medics said. The IDF said it was examining the reports of civilian deaths.

Palestinian media reported bombing and shelling along the Egyptian border, at least two airstrikes on Gaza City, and Israeli troop movement in the Rafah area. The IDF said it had deployed an extra division to southern Gaza early on Wednesday.

The Israeli military issued sweeping evacuation orders last week telling people in Rafah and a swath of land stretching northwards towards Khan Younis to move to al-Mawasi, an area on the shore that Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone but has repeatedly bombed.

Israel renewed intensive bombing across Gaza on 18 March, followed by the redeployment of ground troops, abruptly ending the two-month ceasefire and exchanges of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militant groups and Palestinians in Israeli jails.

According to the terms of the truce, the sides were supposed to negotiate implementing further phases of the deal during the first 42-day stage, but the Israeli government repeatedly postponed the talks.

The latest UN estimate, from 23 March, suggested approximately 140,000 people had been displaced since the end of the ceasefire. More than 90% of the strip’s population of 2.3 million have been forced to flee their homes during the conflict, many of them multiple times.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since it ended the ceasefire. Israel has also cut off humanitarian aid, food and fuel to the strip in an effort to pressure Hamas. The month-long blockade is now the longest in the war to date.

Efforts led by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to resume talks aimed at ending the war have not yet led to a breakthrough. The resumption of fighting in Gaza has also fuelled protests in Israel against the government from supporters of the remaining hostages and their loved ones.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents most captives’ relatives, said it was “horrified to wake up this morning to the defence minister’s announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza”.

The group said: “Our highest priority must be an immediate deal to bring ALL hostages back home – the living for rehabilitation and those killed for proper burial – and end this war.”

The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which Israel says 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed and a further 250 taken captive, was the trigger for the conflict in Gaza, the worst war between Israel and the Palestinians in more than 70 years of fighting.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 50,357 people, the majority of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Elon Musk’s polarizing stint slashing and bashing federal bureaucracy will probably soon end, with the world’s richest person’s government service hitting its legal limit in the coming weeks.

“He’s got a big company to run … at some point he’s going to be going back,” Donald Trump told reporters on Monday.

“I’d keep him as long as I could keep him,” the president added.

As a special government employee, Musk faces a strict 130-day cap on his service – probably expiring in late May if counted from the day of inauguration, despite earlier White House claims Musk was “here to stay”.

Administration insiders told Politico on Wednesday that Musk would indeed be stepping down from his lead role in the weeks to come.

But Musk called the reporting “fake news” and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Wednesday said the Politico story was “garbage”.

“Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at Doge is complete,” she said.

The White House did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

While Musk looks for the exit door, his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is set to continue until 2026 under Trump’s executive order, and high-level leaders installed by Musk to run agencies throughout the government are likely to outlast the billionaire’s tenure in public service.

Doge has operated figuratively – and one time literally – with a “chainsaw” through government agencies since Musk joined Trump’s team as an unvetted, high-level employee in January.

Doge has since triggered large-scale civil service layoffs including about 10,000 people at the Department of Health and Human Services this week alone, while moving to eliminate entire agencies such as humanitarian-focused USAID and the state-backed global media outlet Voice of America.

There have been an estimated 56,000 federal jobs cut since 20 January and another 75,000 accepting voluntary buyouts, with at least another 171,000 planned reductions, according to the New York Times.

The huge cuts have not gone over well, according to a new poll from Marquette Law School, which found that just 41% of the US public approve of Doge’s work, while Musk’s personal likeability was even lower, at 38%.

A mid-March Quinnipiac poll found that over half the country believed Musk and Doge were harming the US.

Doge claims $140bn in savings already – though eagle-eyed reporters have identified significant errors in these calculations. Musk told Fox News he expected to accomplish “most of the work required to reduce the deficit by $1tn” before his time expires.

The billionaire’s involvement has raised significant conflict-of-interest concerns given his companies’ extensive government contracts, though as a special government employee, his financial disclosure forms remain confidential.

The nearly shuttered USAID had initiated an investigation on agency oversight into Starlink terminals sent to Ukraine, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau was targeted nearly a week after publishing a rule that would put technology companies such as X – which was planning a partnership with Visa – in its crosshairs over regulation, and many other agency attacks.

Democrats have increasingly targeted Musk politically, most recently criticizing his over $20m investment in a Wisconsin supreme court race. The New Jersey senator Cory Booker broke the record for longest speech in Senate floor history after more than 24 hours assailing Trump and Musk.

Democrats were tasting unfamiliar triumphalism on Wednesday after the election for a vacant Wisconsin supreme court seat turned into an emphatic repudiation of Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s richest supporter and key ally.

Musk endured a wave of gloating on Twitter/X, his own social media platform, after Brad Schimel, a Trump-endorsed judge that he spent $25m supporting lost by 10 percentage points to Susan Crawford, whose victory sustained a 4-3 liberal majority on the court.

On a day that Trump has earmarked as “liberation day” to mark his long-awaited roll out of trade tariffs, Democrats seized on the result as a referendum on Musk – who has spearheaded the president’s slashing of federal government workers and spending programmes – while casting it as a platform for a recovery in next year’s congressional midterm elections.

In a display of schadenfreude, the Democrats’ official account posted a picture of Musk donning a cheese head and accompanied with the single word “Loser”.

Crawford, a former attorney for Planned Parenthood, presented her success as a triumph over Musk. “As a little girl, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin. And we won,” she told cheering supporters on Tuesday night.

The result is politically significant because the court is due to issue abortion rulings while also deciding on electoral redistricting questions which now have the potential to help Democrats in future elections in a state where contests are traditionally close.

Democrats have sought to exploit Musk’s growing unpopularity to tar Trump and the Republican generally. Recent polls show a majority of voters have a negative view of Musk, who was once popular with the US public.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat leader in the House of Representatives, said it was now on Republicans to separate themselves from Musk.

“Time for them to walk away from this unelected, unpopular, unhinged and un-American billionaire puppet master,” he told MSNBC. “He tried to spend his unlimited resources to buy a state supreme court seat in Wisconsin, and it failed spectacularly.”

Chuck Schumer, the party’s leader in the Senate, said the result “sent a decisive message to Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Doge… our democracy is not for sale.”

Other party figures were blunter. Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’s running mate for the Democrats in the 2024 presidential election, was succinct on Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“Wisconsin beat the billionaire,” he posted.

Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat House member from Texas, posted: “Well well well, I guess Wisconsin agreed on the message for old Elon: “F’ off!,” she wrote.

Eric Swalwell, a California representative, called the result an “ass-kicking” for Republicans, adding: “Where else does Elon want to try and buy an election.”

JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois and himself a billionaire, wrote: “Elon Musk is not good at this.”

Suspicions that Musk’s profile and conspicuous wealth have become an electoral turnoff also appeared to infect Republicans.

Pam Van Handel, a Republican party chair in Wisconsin’s Outagamie county, told Politico: “I thought [Musk] was gonna be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don’t love everybody he supports.”

The site quoted Rohn Bishop, the Republican mayor of the Wisconsin city of Waupun, as saying: “I thought maybe Elon coming could turn these people to go out and vote, [but] I think… he may have turned out more voters against [Schimel].”

Charlie Kirk, a pro-Trump social media influencer and activist, implied – without mentioning Musk by name – that his wealth and profile might have played a role.

“We did a lot in Wisconsin but we fell short,” he wrote. “We must realize and appreciate that we are the LOW PROP party now. We are the party of welders, waiters and plumbers. We are the party of people who work with their hands, who shower before and after work.”

Neither Musk nor Trump mentioned the supreme court result in its immediate aftermath, trumpeting instead another Wisconsin ballot result that amended the state constitution to require photo ID as a condition for voting.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, Politico and ABC News reported that Trump told his inner circle, including some Cabinet secretaries, that Musk will soon leave his role as a top adviser to the president, overseeing federal government job cuts. The reports cited anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, Republicans won victories on Tuesday in two special House elections in Florida caused by the resignations from the US Congress of Matt Gaetz, Trump’s original attorney general designee but who later withdrew amid sexual misconduct allegations, and Mike Waltz, now the national security adviser.

But the elections were won by margins of around half of what Trump achieved last November. Jimmy Patronis beat Democratic challenger Gay Valimont to win Gaetz’s former seat, while Randy Fine defeated Josh Weil in Florida’s sixth district, once held by Waltz.

The results bolstered the GOP’s wafer thin House majority to 220-213.

Trump hailed the outcomes, which he attributed to his personal endorsement. “THE TRUMP ENDORSEMENT, AS ALWAYS, PROVED FAR GREATER THAN THE DEMOCRATS FORCES OF EVIL. CONGRATULATIONS TO AMERICA!,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

But Jeffries claimed the reduced victory margins augured well for the Democrats in next year’s midterms.

“One point that should have my Republican colleagues quaking in their boots,” he said. “In the Florida sixth race, which was a Trump +30 district, the margin was cut in half. There are 60 Republicans in the House who currently represent districts where Trump did worse than 15 or 16 points.”

The Charity Commission has said it has opened a case into “concerns raised” about the charity Sentebale, which the Duke of Sussex quit as patron of last week amid a boardroom battle.

More details soon …

In the aftermath of the disastrous debate against Donald Trump that ultimately ended his political career, Joe Biden skipped a White House meeting with the congressional Progressive caucus in favor of a Camp David photoshoot with the fashion photographer Annie Leibovitz, a new book says.

“You need to cancel that,” Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff and debate prep leader, told the president, as he advocated securing the endorsement of the group of powerful progressive politicians perhaps key to his remaining the Democratic nominee.

“You need to stay in Washington. You need to have an aggressive plan to fight and to rally the troops.”

As described by Klain to Chris Whipple, the author of an explosive new book on the 2024 campaign, Biden “seemed to relent. ‘OK,’ he said.”

“But the president’s resolve didn’t last,” the book continued. “That weekend, Biden and his family were at Camp David having their pictures taken” by Leibovitz.

The president did speak to the progressives by Zoom, Whipple writes, only to scold them over their stance on Israel and claim to have stronger progressive bona fides than they did.

Whipple’s book, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Klain was White House chief of staff from 2021 to 2023. He became chief legal officer for Airbnb but returned to Biden’s side last June to prepare him to debate Trump.

Concern over the octogenarian president’s fitness for the job was a feature of Biden’s White House term. As reported by the Guardian, Klain told Whipple debate preparations left him alarmed by Biden’s physical and mental decline.

But Klain told Whipple: “This was about something other than his age. It was a struggle over power in our party.” According to Klain, Democratic donors were “tired” of Biden because of his ties to labor, and wanted a more business-oriented leader.

Such calls grew deafening after the debate, in which Biden performed with painful, halting confusion. According to Whipple, Klain called Biden the next day, 28 June, and said: “Look, we’re hemorrhaging badly. We need to get the progressive caucus to the White House this weekend. And you need to agree with them on an agenda for a second term, and they will endorse you. So you can walk out there with one hundred members of Congress saying, ‘You should stay in the race.’

“Biden wasn’t convinced: ‘Well, I’m supposed to go to Camp David this weekend for a photo shoot with my family.’”

Klain offered his “blunt” advice and Biden seemed to back down, Whipple writes. But the president left Washington anyway, for a stay with family members who were widely reported to be urging him not to drop out of the race.

“Klain was angry,” Whipple reports. “He called [Jeff] Zients, his successor as White House chief of staff. The president needed to rally the progressives ASAP, Klain told him. But Zients didn’t share his alarm. ‘Look, we’ve got a plan,’ he told Klain. ‘We’ve got a schedule. We’re going to stick to the schedule.’”

Zients and his team had been trying to rally support for Biden from Democrats in Congress but Klain “felt more drastic action was needed”. A Zoom call was set up with the progressives. It proved a “fiasco”, with Biden giving members of Congress led by Pramila Jayapal of Washington state “a scolding”, saying: “All you guys want to talk about is Gaza … What would you have me do?” and “I was a progressive before some of you guys were even in Congress.”

Jayapal called Klain. Klain called Zients. Zients passed blame to another Biden aide, Steve Ricchetti, “the progressives’ least favorite White House official”. Klain told Zients: “Jeff, this is life or death for this presidency this weekend.” Zients pushed back. Klain was convinced Biden’s aides did not have “a strategy to save his presidency”.

The battle to force Biden out continued. On 21 July, the president bowed to pressure and quit. Klain told Zients: “Jeff, that’s too bad. I think that’s a mistake. I think this was an avoidable tragedy.”

Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, fought off attempts to deny her the nomination, then fought a 100-day campaign that ended in defeat by Trump.

Despite his first-hand experience of Biden’s struggles, and his failure to corral the president into doing simple political legwork instead of attending a glitzy photoshoot, Klain still thought Biden could have won a second term.

In August, he told CNN the president was “clearly up to the job. He’s doing it every day. He’s doing it successfully.”

He also said Biden had “done well” in debate preparation.

The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.

Global carbon emissions are still rising and current policies will result in a rise in global temperature between 2.2C and 3.4C above pre-industrial levels. The damage at 3C will be so great that governments will be unable to provide financial bailouts and it will be impossible to adapt to many climate impacts, said Thallinger, who is also the chair of the German company’s investment board and was previously CEO of Allianz Investment Management.

The core business of the insurance industry is risk management and it has long taken the dangers of global heating very seriously. In recent reports, Aviva said extreme weather damages for the decade to 2023 hit $2tn, while GallagherRE said the figure was $400bn in 2024. Zurich said it was “essential” to hit net zero by 2050.

Thallinger said: “The good news is we already have the technologies to switch from fossil combustion to zero-emission energy. The only thing missing is speed and scale. This is about saving the conditions under which markets, finance, and civilisation itself can continue to operate.”

Nick Robins, the chair of the Just Transition Finance Lab at the London School of Economics, said: “This devastating analysis from a global insurance leader sets out not just the financial but also the civilisational threat posed by climate change. It needs to be the basis for renewed action, particularly in the countries of the global south.”

“The insurance sector is a canary in the coalmine when it comes to climate impacts,” said Janos Pasztor, former UN assistant secretary-general for climate change.

The argument set out by Thallinger in a LinkedIn post begins with the increasingly severe damage being caused by the climate crisis: “Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time.”

“We are fast approaching temperature levels – 1.5C, 2C, 3C – where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks,” he said. “The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.” He cited companies ending home insurance in California due to wildfires.

Thallinger said it was a systemic risk “threatening the very foundation of the financial sector”, because a lack of insurance means other financial services become unavailable: “This is a climate-induced credit crunch.”

“This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry,” he said. “The economic value of entire regions – coastal, arid, wildfire-prone – will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.”

No governments will realistically be able to cover the damage when multiple high-cost events happen in rapid succession, as climate models predict, Thallinger said. Australia’s disaster recovery spending has already increased sevenfold between 2017 and 2023, he noted.

The idea that billions of people can just adapt to worsening climate impacts is a “false comfort”, he said: “There is no way to ‘adapt’ to temperatures beyond human tolerance … Whole cities built on flood plains cannot simply pick up and move uphill.”

At 3C of global heating, climate damage cannot be insured against, covered by governments, or adapted to, Thallinger said: “That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.”

The only solution was to cut fossil fuel burning, or capture the emissions, he said, with everything else being a delay or distraction. He said capitalism must solve the crisis, starting with putting its sustainability goals on the same level as financial goals.

Many financial institutions have moved away from climate action after the election of the US president, Donald Trump, who has called such action a “green scam”. Thallinger said in February: “The cost of inaction is higher than the cost of transformation and adaptation. If we succeed in our transition, we will enjoy a more efficient, competitive economy [and] a higher quality of life.”

The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.

Global carbon emissions are still rising and current policies will result in a rise in global temperature between 2.2C and 3.4C above pre-industrial levels. The damage at 3C will be so great that governments will be unable to provide financial bailouts and it will be impossible to adapt to many climate impacts, said Thallinger, who is also the chair of the German company’s investment board and was previously CEO of Allianz Investment Management.

The core business of the insurance industry is risk management and it has long taken the dangers of global heating very seriously. In recent reports, Aviva said extreme weather damages for the decade to 2023 hit $2tn, while GallagherRE said the figure was $400bn in 2024. Zurich said it was “essential” to hit net zero by 2050.

Thallinger said: “The good news is we already have the technologies to switch from fossil combustion to zero-emission energy. The only thing missing is speed and scale. This is about saving the conditions under which markets, finance, and civilisation itself can continue to operate.”

Nick Robins, the chair of the Just Transition Finance Lab at the London School of Economics, said: “This devastating analysis from a global insurance leader sets out not just the financial but also the civilisational threat posed by climate change. It needs to be the basis for renewed action, particularly in the countries of the global south.”

“The insurance sector is a canary in the coalmine when it comes to climate impacts,” said Janos Pasztor, former UN assistant secretary-general for climate change.

The argument set out by Thallinger in a LinkedIn post begins with the increasingly severe damage being caused by the climate crisis: “Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time.”

“We are fast approaching temperature levels – 1.5C, 2C, 3C – where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks,” he said. “The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.” He cited companies ending home insurance in California due to wildfires.

Thallinger said it was a systemic risk “threatening the very foundation of the financial sector”, because a lack of insurance means other financial services become unavailable: “This is a climate-induced credit crunch.”

“This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry,” he said. “The economic value of entire regions – coastal, arid, wildfire-prone – will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.”

No governments will realistically be able to cover the damage when multiple high-cost events happen in rapid succession, as climate models predict, Thallinger said. Australia’s disaster recovery spending has already increased sevenfold between 2017 and 2023, he noted.

The idea that billions of people can just adapt to worsening climate impacts is a “false comfort”, he said: “There is no way to ‘adapt’ to temperatures beyond human tolerance … Whole cities built on flood plains cannot simply pick up and move uphill.”

At 3C of global heating, climate damage cannot be insured against, covered by governments, or adapted to, Thallinger said: “That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.”

The only solution was to cut fossil fuel burning, or capture the emissions, he said, with everything else being a delay or distraction. He said capitalism must solve the crisis, starting with putting its sustainability goals on the same level as financial goals.

Many financial institutions have moved away from climate action after the election of the US president, Donald Trump, who has called such action a “green scam”. Thallinger said in February: “The cost of inaction is higher than the cost of transformation and adaptation. If we succeed in our transition, we will enjoy a more efficient, competitive economy [and] a higher quality of life.”

The deaths of a married British couple at their home in the south of France are being treated as a murder – and suicide, according to reports.

Andrew Searle and Dawn Kerr, both in their 60s, were found dead in the hamlet of Les Pesquiès in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, Aveyron, on 6 February.

Kerr was found lying dead in front of her house partly undressed and with a significant head injury and Searle was found hanged inside.

Police launched an investigation to establish whether the couple died as a result of a murder-suicide, or if a third party was involved.

The BBC reported that the prosecutor in charge of the case has now told the broadcaster there is no evidence that anybody else was involved in the deaths.

It is understood Kerr and Searle were the mother and stepfather of the Scottish actor and musician Callum Kerr, who played PC George Kiss in the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks, and appeared in Netflix’s Virgin River.

A statement posted on Callum Kerr’s social media accounts on 8 February said: “At this time, Callum Kerr and Amanda Kerr are grieving the loss of their mother, Dawn Searle (nee Smith, Kerr), while Tom Searle and Ella Searle are mourning the loss of their father, Andrew Searle.”

It asked for the family’s privacy to be respected “during this difficult period”.

According to Searle’s LinkedIn page, he was a retired fraud investigator specialising in financial crime prevention who worked at companies including Standard Life and Barclays.

A statement issued by French prosecutors in February said: “The two deceased persons, a man and a woman, were the owners of the house in which their bodies were discovered. They were British expatriates, retired, and had been living in Aveyron for five years.

“The first victim, Ms Kerr, has a significant head injury. A box containing jewellery was found near to her, but no item or weapon which could have caused the injuries were located.

“Mr Searle, who was found hanged … did not show any visible defensive injuries.”

Samoa is in the grip of an “energy crisis” prime minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said this week, as she declared a state of emergency over power outages that have swept the country for weeks, causing huge disruption to businesses and daily life.

The government is scrambling to provide relief to affected businesses and households, with temporary power generation units due to arrive next week.

For weeks, frustration over regular electricity blackouts has been building across Upolu, Samoa’s main island where the capital Apia is located. The tourism sector has been heavily affected and only major resorts have back up generators. Hospitals, schools and households have also struggled with regular interruptions to power supplies..

On Monday, Fiame warned the crisis could wipe off about 16% off the national economy this year due to “severe disruptions” to public services and economic activity.

Business owner Filisitia Fa’alogo, who runs a small shop on the southern side of Upolu, is among those to suffer heavy losses. Fa’alogo told the Guardian she had just bought over US$500 worth of frozen goods when the power outages began more than two weeks ago.

“Initially the ice was able to hold up the goods, but after the second day, I literally had to give the meat away to save it from spoiling,” Fa’alogo said.

The loss meant she could not make a profit for the month, as she only sells basics to the local villages, such as milk, bread, butter and canned goods.

“This is just outrageous, this is a bare necessity I need to run my village store,” she said.

Fa’alogo is just one of many business owners who have suffered as a result of the failure of the power sector. More than 90% of businesses have experienced frequent outages, with 70% facing disruptions multiple times per week, according to a survey by the Samoa Chamber of Commerce and Industry conducted in mid-March. Firms reported equipment damage and significant revenue losses. More than half of the businesses reported losses exceeding $1,000 tala ($350) per incident.

Power outages are not unusual in Samoa, but they are usually associated with cyclones. It is rare for them to occur island-wide and drag on for such a long period of time.

The crisis has been caused by multiple technical issues, including the breakdown of key generators at the Fiaga power station on Upolu island, and a fault in a crucial underground transmission cableThese problems, compounded by ageing infrastructure and delays in acquiring replacement parts, led to widespread electricity outages across Upolu. At one point, the entire island was without power.

The state of emergency declared on Monday will run for 30 days. Authorities have begun efforts to urgently restore power supplies and support affected homes and businesses. Full power restoration across Upolu is expected before the end of April. Permanent generators aren’t due to be ready for use until August.

Pacific business sustainability expert Tupa’imatuna FotuoSamoa said the persistent power failures have harmed Samoa’s economy.

“There is significant impact on business … continued disruptions can have long-term impacts for many in our community.”

“While it’s welcome news that there is consideration for relief, such as importing generators, you need to think broader, not just relying on hydropower but incentivising other means of power generation nationally.”

As construction crews churned up dirt to renovate a football pitch in Vienna last October, they happened upon an unprecedented find: a heap of intertwined skeletal remains in a mass grave dating to the first-century Roman empire, most likely the bodies of warriors killed in a battle involving Germanic tribes.

This week, after archaeological analysis, experts at the Vienna Museum gave a first public presentation of the grave – linked to “a catastrophic event in a military context” and evidence of the first known fighting in that region.

The bodies of 129 people have been confirmed at the site in the Vienna neighbourhood of Simmering. The excavation teams also found many dislocated bones and believe the total number of bodies could exceed 150 – a discovery they said would be unprecedented in central Europe.

Michaela Binder, who led the archaeological dig, said: “Within the context of Roman acts of war, there are no comparable finds of fighters. There are huge battlefields in Germany where weapons were found. But finding the dead, that is unique for the entire Roman history.”

Soldiers in the Roman empire were typically cremated until the third century.

The pit where the bodies were deposited suggests a hasty or disorganised dumping of corpses. Every skeleton examined showed signs of injury – to the head, torso and pelvis in particular.

Kristina Adler-Wölfl, the head of the Vienna city archaeological department, said: “They have various different battle wounds, which rules out execution. It is truly a battlefield. There are wounds from swords, lances; wounds from blunt trauma.”

The dead are all male. Most were aged 20 to 30 years old and generally showed signs of good dental health.

Carbon-14 analysis helped date the bones to between AD80 and AD130. That was cross-checked against artefacts found in the grave – armour, helmet cheek protectors and nails used in distinctive Roman military shoes known as caligae.

One of the biggest clues was the presence of a dagger of a type in use specifically between the middle of the first century and the start of the second.

So far, only one victim has been confirmed as a Roman legionary. Archaeologists hope DNA and strontium isotope analysis will help further identify the fighters, and whose side they were on.

Adler-Wölfl said: “The most likely theory at the moment is that this is connected to the Danube campaigns of Emperor Domitian – that’s 86 to 96 AD.”

The archaeologists said they had also found signs of the founding of the settlement that would become Vienna.

Nestled among tulip fields not far from Amsterdam, the world-famous Keukenhof garden has opened for the spring, welcoming camera-wielding visitors to its increasingly selfie-friendly grounds.

On a sunny day, the paths, park benches and cafes are crowded with tourists taking photos and selfies with one of the Netherlands’ most iconic products – the tulip.

Those kinds of pics, posted on social media, are what drew the Austrian lawyer Daniel Magnus. “Whenever you see the kind of pictures which were taken from an influencer, they make something with you. You get a new impression of new locations, traditions, people and so on … You want also to be there,” Magnus said.

Magnus had just finished taking his own photos on a small boat, staged in one of the park’s canals for visitors to take their own Instagrammable images.

Staff plant and nurture a staggering 7m flower bulbs to ensure visitors who flock to the Keukenhof from around the world all get to see a vibrant spectacle during the eight weeks the garden is open.

In recent years, the garden has increasingly catered to the public’s thirst for social media content and created spaces where guests are encouraged to pose.

Selfie spots include flower archways, pink velvet couches and another Dutch classic – oversized wooden clogs.

The Keukenhof’s own social media channels have some suggestions about the best locations and the Dutch tourism board even advises on how to get the perfect tulip selfie.

“Make your image come alive and place the subject of your photo slightly off-centre. This will make your photo look more dynamic,” the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions says.

The Keukenhof garden’s more than 1 million expected visitors don’t need too much encouragement to snap pics among the tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and myriad other flowers. The blossoms are meticulously hand planted throughout its manicured lawns by a small army of gardeners.

“There’s always something blooming. I think that’s the reason why everyone is happy. There’s also always something to see,” one gardener, Patrick van Dijk, said.

Not everyone is happy about tourists taking photos. Some flower farmers have put up signs and barriers to deter aspiring influencers from trampling tulips in nearby fields.

“We are following the ‘invertebrate of the year’ series with bated breath,” began the email that arrived in the Guardian’s inbox last week.

Mark Blaxter leads the Sanger Institute’s Tree of Life programme, a project that sequences species’ DNA to understand the diversity and origins of life on Earth. But far more importantly, Blaxter and his team are superfans of our invertebrate of the year competition and have offered to map the genome sequence of whoever wins this year.

“The genome sequence of each species is a kind of time machine – we can look back through evolutionary history to understand its origins, and also go some way to saying how the species is faring under the climate emergency,” he said. “Each and every genome includes amazingly detailed insights into the ‘special powers’ of the species, increasing our depth of understanding.

“As part of our daily work, we are picking up interesting species to sequence,” Blaxter told the Guardian. “And the ones we pick are often interesting for the same reasons they are nominated for invertebrate of the year.” They have superpowers, they’re beautiful, they have crazy lifecycles.

Blaxter’s team, which voted for the 2024 winner, the common earthworm, has already sequenced many creatures on the 2025 shortlist. The tiny tardigrade? Done. The dark-edged bee fly, a twerking impostor that drops sticky egg bombs? Done. The evolutionary scandal that is the common rotifer has also laid bare its genetic code. So has a close relative of the tongue-biting louse, a nominee whose name only begins to describe the horror of its antics.

The shortlisted tardigrade, Milnesium tardigradum, is the size of a speck of dust. When hunkered down it completely dries out, yet its cells and DNA are preserved. In this shrunken “tun” state, the animal needs no food or water and can endure DNA-shattering radiation. Rehydrate the little ball and the creature carries on as before. “It’s amazing to watch,” says Blaxter, who has witnessed the transformation on a microscope slide. “It expands, comes back to life and starts crawling around. It only takes about 25 minutes.”

The tardigrade’s secret is written in its genes, but there is more reason to read the code than curiosity. Understanding the process could help researchers make other biological material impervious to extreme conditions. Think vaccines that don’t need refrigeration, or astronauts that are shielded against space radiation. “There are biotechnology applications hidden inside all these little organisms’ genomes that we think are going to be really valuable as we move to a post-oil economy and start thinking about looking after the planet better,” said Blaxter.

We may not want to emulate all of the nominees’ traits. The shortlisted rotifer, a microscopic aquatic animal, has gone without sex for tens of millions of years. Rather than displaying sympathy, researchers have dubbed them an “evolutionary scandal”. Without sex to swap genes, a species can expect harmful mutations to build up, making them sicker and sicker until they die out. The rotifer, however, did not get the memo: life finds a way.

Much more is buried in these creatures’ genomes. The Tree of Life programme aims to generate reference genomes for the 70,000 or so species found in Britain and Ireland and the waters around. Armed with the sequences, researchers can estimate the animals’ population sizes back to the last ice age. They can unravel the big events that species have lived through and see when their ancestors split from other lineages. They can assess how diverse today’s populations are, and so how vulnerable they are to the multitude of pressures they face. All of this informs work to conserve biodiversity in the face of the climate emergency.

Invertebrates don’t always get the love the deserve, and some can hardly be said to help themselves. But Blaxter wants people to take a closer look. “I spend a lot of time on my knees with a hand lens looking at small wiggly things and they are all very beautiful, they are all equally and individually amazing,” he says. “They are essential to the functioning of the ecosystems on which we depend, and they’ve got a lot to teach us about how to survive on this planet.”

• Voting to choose invertebrate of the year is now open: vote here by midday UK time on Friday 4 April and the heroic winner will be announced on Monday 7 April