The UK supreme court has issued a historic and definitive ruling that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex.

In a decision that delighted gender-critical activists, five judges ruled unanimously that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 did not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs).

The judgment could have far-reaching ramifications and lead to greater restrictions on the access for trans women to services and spaces reserved for women. It prompted calls for the UK’s laws on gender recognition to be rewritten.

The UK government said the ruling brought “clarity and confidence” for women and those who run hospitals, sports clubs and women’s refuges.

A spokesperson said: “We have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex. Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government.”

The case was brought to the supreme court by the gender-critical campaign group For Women Scotland, which is backed financially by JK Rowling, after two Scottish courts rejected its arguments that the Equality Act’s definition of a woman was limited to people born biologically female.

Lord Hodge, the deputy president of the court, said the Equality Act was very clear that its provisions dealt with biological sex at birth, and not with a person’s acquired gender, regardless of whether they held a gender recognition certificate.

That affected policymaking on gender in sports and the armed services, hospitals, as well as women-only charities, and access to changing rooms and women-only spaces, he said. However, trans women still have equal pay rights as women, and could have the right to be treated as women in some situations.

In its 88-page judgment, the court said that while the word “biological” did not appear in the definition of man or woman in the Equality Act, “the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman”.

If “sex” did not only mean biological sex in the 2010 legislation, providers of single-sex spaces including changing rooms, homeless hostels and medical services would face “practical difficulties”, it said.

The justices added: “Read fairly and in context, the provisions relating to single-sex services can only be interpreted by reference to biological sex.”

The ruling represents a significant defeat for the Scottish government. For Women Scotland had initially challenged legislation that allowed trans women with a GRC to sit on public boards in posts reserved for women.

Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, said his government accepted the court’s judgment. He said it clarified the limits of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which introduced gender recognition certificates for trans people.

“We will now engage on the implications of the ruling,” he said. “Protecting the rights of all will underpin our actions.”

The Scottish government defended its actions in the case, which it said were always guided by the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s advice. It said it would now engage with UK ministers and with the EHRC to look at the ruling’s implications, since the legislation involved was passed by Westminster.

Trans rights campaigners urged trans people and their supporters to remain calm about the decision.

The campaign group Scottish Trans said: “We are really shocked by today’s supreme court decision, which reverses 20 years of understanding of how the law recognises trans men and women with gender recognition certificates.

“We will continue working for a world in which trans people can get on with their lives with privacy, dignity and safety. That is something we all deserve.”

Sacha Deshmukh, the chief executive of the human rights group Amnesty International UK, which joined with the Scottish government in the supreme court case, said the decision was “clearly disappointing”.

“There are potentially concerning consequences for trans people, but it is important to stress that the court has been clear that trans people are protected under the Equality Act against discrimination and harassment,” he said.

“The ruling does not change the protection trans people are afforded under the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’, as well as other provisions under the Equality Act.”

Susan Smith, a co-founder of For Women Scotland, said the legal action had been “a really, really long road”. “Today the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, that women are protected by their biological sex,” she said.

“Sex is real and women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women and we are enormously grateful to the supreme court for this ruling.”

In a social media post, JK Rowling said: “It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the supreme court,” adding: “I’m so proud to know you.”

Hodge, the deputy president of the court, said it believed the position taken by the Scottish government and the EHRC that people with gender recognition certificates did qualify as women, while those without did not, created “two sub-groups”.

This would confuse any organisations they were involved with. A public body could not know whether a trans woman did or did not have that certificate because the information was private and confidential.

And allowing trans women the same legal status as biological women could also affect spaces and services designed specifically for lesbians, who had also suffered historical discrimination and abuse.

Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the EHRC, said it was pleased the ruling had dealt with its concerns about the lack of clarity around single-sex and lesbian-only spaces, but would need time to fully understand its implications.

“We are pleased that this judgment addresses several of the difficulties we highlighted in our submission to the court, including the challenges faced by those seeking to maintain single-sex spaces, and the rights of same-sex attracted persons to form associations.”

For all the negative stereotypes, many politicians are thoughtful, diligent and caring. But they are also human, and it is their more self-serving instincts that may have caused some to breathe a sigh of relief at the supreme court ruling on gender recognition.

After a challenge by the gender-critical group For Women Scotland – which started out as a dispute over Scottish government legislation about female representation on public boards – judges ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to biological women and biological sex.

The verdict will be heavily contested, and could bring serious and perhaps unforeseen repercussions for transgender women. But such an unexpectedly definitive view allows leaders in Scotland and Westminster to (and there is no gentle way of putting this) dodge responsibility over one of the most contentious and toxic debates of our age.

The Scottish government’s response was particularly eloquent. While stressing that no one should see the ruling as cause to triumph, it otherwise talked blandly about “engaging with the UK government to understand the full implication of this ruling”.

There is logic to this. The Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, the legislative focus of the deliberations, are both UK-wide and thus not something the Holyrood administration can decide unilaterally.

But beneath this reassuring constitutional hum lurks the sound of quiet footsteps, as the SNP’s first minister, John Swinney, shuffles his party away from an era when Nicola Sturgeon’s government was very proudly at the vanguard of transgender rights.

It was little more than two years ago that Sturgeon’s government was openly seeking a battle with Westminster over a plan to make it easier for transgender people in Scotland to get gender recognition certificates – a move blocked by Rishi Sunak.

We are in a very different political climate now, and not just with the open prejudice of the Donald Trump administration, which is purging transgender people from the military on the stated basis that their very identity makes them unfit to serve.

Scotland’s government has been on the receiving end of pushback from other controversies, for example the decision to send Isla Bryson, a transgender woman convicted of double rape, to a women’s prison. To again frame it in slightly unpalatable political terms, this is no longer seen as a vote-winner for the SNP.

For Keir Starmer and the Westminster administration, there had been an unspoken worry about a fudged or unclear court ruling, one that placed the impetus on politicians to decide.

Instead, as a UK government spokesperson said, it gave “clarity and confidence”, both for women and for those who run single-sex spaces. Clarity and confidence, perhaps. Political cover? Most definitely.

Starmer has spent his five years as Labour leader having TV and radio interviewers intermittently asking him to declare, yes or no, whether a woman can have a penis. Starmer’s standard dual response – under the law, a tiny number of trans people are recognised as women but might not have completed gender reassignment surgery – prompted an inevitable and arguably damaging wave of attacks from political opponents.

Kemi Badenoch has been particularly relentless in this, despite having served as equalities minister in a government that did not amend or clarify the Equality Act to reflect her view that, as she put it in a celebratory tweet on Wednesday, “saying ‘trans women are women’ was never true in fact”.

This was not just a Conservative obsession. Starmer faced criticism from some inside Labour – notably from the now independent MP for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield – for, as they saw it, failing to stand up for women. Others condemned him in the belief he was edging away from trans rights.

From a nakedly political-management perspective, the supreme court decision was ideal, making the decision judicial rather than political. No 10 officials believe there will be no need to tweak the Equality Act, leaving their role as little more than a neutral voice in helping organisations adjust to the new reality.

Starmer’s aides deny he has been on a political journey from a few years ago, when as a Labour leadership candidate he signed up to a pledge from the LGBT Labour group “that trans women are women, that trans men are men” – or 18 months later when he criticised Duffield for saying only women could have a cervix.

This is perhaps disingenuous. But in a debate where niceties and nuance are so often trampled on, the prime minister is very much not the first politician to try to fudge things.

The UK supreme court has ruled on how a woman is defined in the Equality Act, deciding unanimously that this does not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs). The judgment could significantly affect how associated rules and restrictions are applied in Scotland, England and Wales.

For all the negative stereotypes, many politicians are thoughtful, diligent and caring. But they are also human, and it is their more self-serving instincts that may have caused some to breathe a sigh of relief at the supreme court ruling on gender recognition.

After a challenge by the gender-critical group For Women Scotland – which started out as a dispute over Scottish government legislation about female representation on public boards – judges ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to biological women and biological sex.

The verdict will be heavily contested, and could bring serious and perhaps unforeseen repercussions for transgender women. But such an unexpectedly definitive view allows leaders in Scotland and Westminster to (and there is no gentle way of putting this) dodge responsibility over one of the most contentious and toxic debates of our age.

The Scottish government’s response was particularly eloquent. While stressing that no one should see the ruling as cause to triumph, it otherwise talked blandly about “engaging with the UK government to understand the full implication of this ruling”.

There is logic to this. The Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, the legislative focus of the deliberations, are both UK-wide and thus not something the Holyrood administration can decide unilaterally.

But beneath this reassuring constitutional hum lurks the sound of quiet footsteps, as the SNP’s first minister, John Swinney, shuffles his party away from an era when Nicola Sturgeon’s government was very proudly at the vanguard of transgender rights.

It was little more than two years ago that Sturgeon’s government was openly seeking a battle with Westminster over a plan to make it easier for transgender people in Scotland to get gender recognition certificates – a move blocked by Rishi Sunak.

We are in a very different political climate now, and not just with the open prejudice of the Donald Trump administration, which is purging transgender people from the military on the stated basis that their very identity makes them unfit to serve.

Scotland’s government has been on the receiving end of pushback from other controversies, for example the decision to send Isla Bryson, a transgender woman convicted of double rape, to a women’s prison. To again frame it in slightly unpalatable political terms, this is no longer seen as a vote-winner for the SNP.

For Keir Starmer and the Westminster administration, there had been an unspoken worry about a fudged or unclear court ruling, one that placed the impetus on politicians to decide.

Instead, as a UK government spokesperson said, it gave “clarity and confidence”, both for women and for those who run single-sex spaces. Clarity and confidence, perhaps. Political cover? Most definitely.

Starmer has spent his five years as Labour leader having TV and radio interviewers intermittently asking him to declare, yes or no, whether a woman can have a penis. Starmer’s standard dual response – under the law, a tiny number of trans people are recognised as women but might not have completed gender reassignment surgery – prompted an inevitable and arguably damaging wave of attacks from political opponents.

Kemi Badenoch has been particularly relentless in this, despite having served as equalities minister in a government that did not amend or clarify the Equality Act to reflect her view that, as she put it in a celebratory tweet on Wednesday, “saying ‘trans women are women’ was never true in fact”.

This was not just a Conservative obsession. Starmer faced criticism from some inside Labour – notably from the now independent MP for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield – for, as they saw it, failing to stand up for women. Others condemned him in the belief he was edging away from trans rights.

From a nakedly political-management perspective, the supreme court decision was ideal, making the decision judicial rather than political. No 10 officials believe there will be no need to tweak the Equality Act, leaving their role as little more than a neutral voice in helping organisations adjust to the new reality.

Starmer’s aides deny he has been on a political journey from a few years ago, when as a Labour leadership candidate he signed up to a pledge from the LGBT Labour group “that trans women are women, that trans men are men” – or 18 months later when he criticised Duffield for saying only women could have a cervix.

This is perhaps disingenuous. But in a debate where niceties and nuance are so often trampled on, the prime minister is very much not the first politician to try to fudge things.

The UK supreme court has ruled on how a woman is defined in the Equality Act, deciding unanimously that this does not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs). The judgment could significantly affect how associated rules and restrictions are applied in Scotland, England and Wales.

UK officials are tightening security when handling sensitive trade documents to prevent them from falling into US hands amid Donald Trump’s tariff war, the Guardian can reveal.

In an indication of the strains on the “special relationship”, British civil servants have changed document-handling guidance, adding higher classifications to some trade negotiation documents in order to better shield them from American eyes, sources told the Guardian.

The White House has upended global financial markets and torn up key relationships, with unpredictable and rapidly changing taxes on trading partners including China, the EU and the UK.

Officials were told that the change in protocols was specifically related to tensions over important issues on trade and foreign policy between Washington and London, sources said.

Keir Starmer has prioritised striking a trade deal with Washington, opting not to retaliate over Trump’s decision to impose 10% tariffs on goods exported to the US, and 25% tariffs on UK car and steel exports, instead offering concessions on areas including digital taxes and agriculture.

JD Vance said on Tuesday he believed a mutually beneficial US-UK trade deal was within reach. The US vice-president said officials were “certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government” on a trade deal, adding that it was an “important relationship”.

“There’s a real cultural affinity,” Vance said. “And, of course, fundamentally, America is an anglo country. I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries.”

However, behind the scenes concern is growing over the vulnerability of UK industries and companies to Trump’s “America first” agenda.

Before Trump’s inauguration, UK trade documents related to US talks were generally marked “Official – sensitive (UK eyes only)”, according to examples seen by the Guardian, and officials were allowed to share these on internal email chains. This classification stood while British officials attempted to negotiate with Joe Biden’s administration, even after a full-blown trade deal was ruled out by the White House.

Now, a far greater proportion of documents and correspondence detailing the negotiating positions being discussed by officials from No 10, the Foreign Office and the Department for Business and Trade come with additional handling instructions to avoid US interception, with some classified as “secret” and “top secret”, sources said. These classifications also carry different guidance on how documents may be shared digitally, in order to avoid interception.

Companies with commercial interests in the UK have also been told to take additional precautions in how they share information with the trade department and No 10, senior business sources said. These include large pharmaceutical companies with operations in the UK and EU.

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “The US is an indispensable ally and negotiations on an economic prosperity deal that strengthens our existing trading relationship continue.”

Wider questions have been asked about whether the special relationship between the UK and US can withstand increasingly divergent policies on Russian hostility, as well as deep criticisms of Nato and defence collaboration. On trade, pressures are mounting in sensitive areas such as car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.

Other reports suggest the European Commission has also changed its perspective on the risks of sensitive or secret information being intercepted by the US. Commission employees have been issued with burner phones if they are visiting the US, the Financial Times has reported.

So close has the UK and US position been on defence and security in recent years that secure government material is sometimes marked “UK/US only”, or given a “Five Eyes” marking, in reference to the intelligence-sharing collective made up of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. So far, the Guardian has only established a change in document-handling related to trade discussions.

Trump’s plan to reboot domestic industry, including in automotive and pharmaceutical manufacturing, has caused consternation among foreign governments keen to protect domestic industries and jobs while trying to strike trade deals to protect against heavy tariffs.

Trump has sought to defend his decision to put vast tariffs in place, saying there would be a “transition cost” from his policies.

The US president also said he would “love” to make a deal with China and that, in his view, he and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, would “end up working out something that’s very good for both countries”.

In a move regarded by some observers as an attempt to soothe market reactions, including a rise in US government borrowing costs, Trump said last week that he would delay further tariffs for 90 days. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU would also delay its response to US tariffs.

Until July, the EU will face a 10% duty on exports to the US, rather than the 20% “reciprocal tariff” rate that was in force for a matter of hours, until Trump’s reversal last Wednesday. US duties of 25% tariffs on steel, aluminium and cars are still in place, however.

Despite suggestions that Trump may be chastened by the markets’ volatile response to his trade policies, the president’s incremental steps have increased duties on Chinese imports to 145%. China responded on Friday by announcing it would increase tariffs on US goods to 125%. The announcement from the Chinese commerce ministry also suggested that it would not pursue higher tariffs in any further retaliatory steps against the US, adding that “at the current tariff level, there is no market acceptance for US goods exported to China”.

“If the US continues to impose tariffs on Chinese goods exported to the US, China will ignore it,” it said, flagging that there were other countermeasures to come. Xi, meanwhile, urged the EU to resist Trump’s “bullying”.

Where is your magic now? As the night wore on at an increasingly sullen Bernabéu, as the latest keepers of the Real Madrid shirt tried and failed to crank their way up through the emotional gears, this felt a bit like watching a conjuring act gone wrong. Pick a card. Any card. No. Not that one. Wait. Keep your eyes on the ball. The glass. Hang on.

Such is the voodoo around Real Madrid, the white magic stuff, it had been necessary to process quite a lot of this chat in the buildup. Had Arsenal won too well at the Emirates Stadium? Was a three-goal advantage further proof of their naivety?

Perhaps not. By the time Gabriel Martinelli went skittering through on goal at the death to complete Arsenal’s hugely deserved 2-1 victory here, the crowd had at least offered up an obliging glimpse of what lies beneath the magic, a cut to the bone of this mythical footballing beast. The answer, it turns out, is a lot of empty plastic seats. That curtain has now been swished back. And yes, it turns out the emperor isn’t wearing any trousers after all.

It felt significant that it should be Arsenal conclusively outplaying Real Madrid, led by brilliant performances from Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice. Even more so for a side that has been repeatedly and unfairly accused of not quite being there, of being a little fey, built on hot air and slogans.

For Mikel Arteta’s team a Champions League semi-final is a standalone achievement in itself, a sign of the right kind of progress. This is how sport is meant to work. Teams are built, slowly sometimes. This might just be the making of this one.

In isolation this game was a tale of Saka and two dinks. The first was a truly abysmal missed penalty, awarded with 11 minutes gone after a confusing VAR-based fudge. Saka stepped up to take it with a slightly alarming sense of rakishness, then produced a stubbed panenka, dinked straight at Thibaut Courtois as he dived, Courtois who is vast, with arms like the sails of a windmill.

There was a sense of Bond‑style drama about this. You’ve literally got Real Madrid right there, tied to a chair. So, yes, why not bring on the overly complex revolving blade death-scheme. Is this really the best option here? Put the shark tank away. Forget about the room full of deadly snakes. You don’t get another chance with these guys.

Except, it turns out sometimes you do. The game was still 0-0 when Saka scored on 65 minutes to make it 4-0 on aggregate. This was a beautiful thing, all craft and patience with a single killer thrust. Best of all it was made by Saka and Martin Ødegaard doing that thing they do on the right side, fluttering around one another like a pair of butterflies in a summer embrace, the pass-and-move love affair that was missing from this team as the title challenge died in mid-season.

Rice stepped in as Ødegaard fed the ball across, allowing him to creep inside, shadowed by a run from Saka behind the defence. Mikel Merino produced the key prompt, finding Saka’s run with a perfect pass, the angle and weight on the ball demanding he produce that second dink, a delightful little flicked finish over Courtois.

It was in its own way a perfectly understated show of sporting will, and of strength too. Anyone can miss a penalty. What you do afterwards matters. And Saka was sensational here, beating David Alaba repeatedly with that same little step inside, passing and holding the ball, leading from the flank.

Inside him Rice was sensationally good once again, and good when it mattered, while the air was still crackling with possibilities at the start. Rice is an endearingly unusual shape, with a long torso, short legs, broad shoulders, the build of a very tall centaur, source perhaps of his remarkable running power.

With an hour gone he still hadn’t misplaced a pass. Mainly he just ran, and blocked and covered and led his team out of difficult holes, running right at this game from the start. These two games have given a glimpse of his ultimate levels as an outstanding all-round midfield leader.

WEB CUT HERE The main thing for Arsenal here wasn’t so much that they beat this Real Madrid team, but they beat the ghosts too, some of them their own. The Real Madrid plan is always the same. That plan is: we will be Real Madrid. And you will allow us to be Madrid. It is the footballing version of Authority Bias. People basically want to be told what to do. Act like you’re in control and suddenly you are.

The experience, it is often said, begins with the buses in the streets, the feeling of being a sacrificial goat at someone else’s coronation. Madrid was a cold, damp, gusty place before kick off, the streets shiny with April rain. There were cheers and shouts. The crowd surged. Madrid’s social media feed did its best through the day, like an angsty host talking too loudly to cover the party silences. Ninety minutes at the Bernabeu are very long, the club admin had warned. Well, yes. Must have felt like old boy.

Madrid are a weirdly configured team right now. At their best they flow like smoke all over the pitch. This version feels fractured and two-tier, built around surely the most self‑absorbed elite footballer ever to make it to this level, with an attack for whom defensive duties seem like a curiosity, a fish out of water comedy setup, like a reality TV show where Jacob Rees-Mogg becomes a binman for a day.

Arteta had looked small and a little frantic out there at the start, all in black like some evangelical curate pounding his fists at the sky. But victory here is an outstanding achievement, and vindication for the ultimate systems man, the team with a midfielder in attack, pilloried for failing to take the final steps, for shrinking under the harshest of lights. There is still time for that. But not here and not this night.

Mikel Arteta joked that he could have given Bukayo Saka a “clip round the ear” after his dinked penalty was saved by Thibaut Courtois, but the Arsenal manager described the winger as “incredible” for the way he recovered to score the goal that helped to send the Gunners into the Champions League semi-finals.

Arteta described Arsenal’s 2-1 victory at the Bernabéu as probably the proudest moment in his career, and announced “the feeling we have is a reality” and that his team are “ready to compete against anybody” after going through 5-1 on aggregate. He also revealed that he called Pep Guardiola on the morning of the game to thank him for being an inspiration as a player and a coach and giving him the opportunity that led to him coaching here for the first time.

Asked if he had ever felt prouder of his players, Arteta replied: “Probably not, not only because we’re in the semi-final but the manner we did it. Because of the circumstances, the amount of injuries. It shows the character of this team, this club. This is another massive step for us.”

Arteta admitted it only took a couple of minutes for him to realise that this was a stadium where anything could happen, but his players had shown the maturity to manage the difficult moments and find a way past Madrid. None more so than when Saka missed a first-half penalty.

“It could have been a turning point emotionally in the game but the way he handles it, the personality, at his age playing in this stadium for the first time was incredible,” Arteta said. “I could have given him a clip round the ear. But he decided what is best: he had the courage to take it, that’s what he thought was best. I was more concerned about the emotional part of it [than the miss itself]. Then with the penalty [for Madrid] that they ruled out. I felt then that the game might be going somewhere we didn’t want.

“You come here and see it live and you realise how difficult it is here, how anything can happen. They can drive you into scenarios that are very difficult. But we have done it and we did it in a very clever way. We were very clear. The biggest pride is when I look at my players and I talk to them and I can see how convinced they feel.”

Saka said: “We showed that we can play in Europe and beat one of the best teams in the world, home and away. I’m very proud of this team. Tonight was a big statement.”

The doctor who carried out the postmortems of the 15 paramedics and rescue workers who were killed by Israeli troops in Gaza in March has said they were mostly killed by gunshots to the head and torso, as well as injuries caused by explosives.

There was international outcry last month after it emerged that Israeli troops had launched a deadly attack on a group of paramedics from the Palestinian Red Crescent, civil defence and United Nations workers, as they carried out a rescue operation in southern Gaza.

Their bodies, along with the crushed vehicles, were buried in a sandy mass grave in Gaza by Israeli troops. After digging up the bodies days later, the UN claimed they had been executed “one by one”.

Ahmed Dhair, the forensic pathologist in Gaza who carried out autopsies on 14 out of the 15 victims, told the Guardian he had found “lacerations, entry wounds from bullets, and wounds resulting from explosive injuries. These were mostly concentrated in the torso area – the chest, abdomen, back, and head.”

Most had died from gunshot wounds, including what Dhair said was evidence of “explosive bullets”, otherwise known as “butterfly bullets”, which explode in the body upon impact, ripping apart flesh and bone.

“We found remains of explosive bullets,” said Dhair. “In one case, the bullet head had exploded in the chest, and the rest of the bullet fragments were found within the body. There were also remnants or shrapnel from bullets scattered on the back of one of the victims.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not immediately respond to allegations that these bullets had been used in the attack.

Details of the incident have remained disputed. Video footage that emerged from the beginning of the attack shows the convoy of ambulances coming under fire, but the subsequent events that led to the bodies of 15 workers being buried in a mass grave are still unclear.

Israel’s military admitted carrying out the killings but was forced to change its version of events after evidence emerged that contradicted its account that the vehicles had been “moving suspiciously” without lights.

Israel has claimed, without publicly presenting evidence, that six of the unarmed workers killed were Hamas operatives, which has been denied by Red Crescent.

Dhair said his findings did not suggest the paramedics had been shot at close range, but emphasised he was not a munitions expert. He said the shrapnel found in the bodies also suggested they had been hit with some form of explosive devices. “In some cases, the injuries seemed to be a mix of explosive and regular gunfire wounds,” he said.

Responding to the allegations that some of the bodies had been dug up with their hands tied, suggesting they were captured or held before they were killed, Dhair said he had not seen visible signs of restraint.

“Only in one case, there were discoloration and bruising on the wrists that could possibly be due to restraints,” he said. All the men were clearly in their work uniforms and their bodies had begun to decompose.

The findings are likely to increase pressure on Israel to give a full account of the incident amid accusations of a war crime. Israel has said it is still under investigation.

This week it emerged that one of the two paramedics who survived the incident, Assad al-Nsasrah – whose whereabouts had been unknown since – was being held in Israeli detention.

The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said on Wednesday that Gaza was becoming a “mass grave for Palestinians”.

Aid supplies including food, fuel, water and medicine have been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza since 2 March, more than two weeks before the collapse of the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group with a return to air and ground attacks on the territory.

Israel has said it will keep blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, as it vowed to force Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages from the 7 October 2023 attacks.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said: “Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population.”

“No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid,” said Katz, who threatened to escalate the conflict with “tremendous force” if Hamas did not return the hostages.

Amnesty International is among the aid agencies that have described Israel’s blockade on all supplies going into Gaza as a crime against humanity and a violation of international humanitarian law. Israel has denied any violations.

More than 51,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the conflict began, including more than 1,600 since Israel resumed airstrikes and ground operations on 18 March. The Gaza health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but has said more than half of those dead were women and children.

Another 13 people were killed in airstrikes overnight, with a well-known photographer, Fatema Hassouna, among those reported dead in the northern area of the strip.

Doctors and aid groups on the ground said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was becoming graver by the day.

“The situation is the worst it has been in 18 months in terms of being deprived of your basic necessities and the resumption of hostilities and attacks against Palestinians in all of Gaza,” said Mahmoud Shalabi, a director at Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity.

Israel has been accused of worsening the humanitarian situation by targeting hospitals and medical personnel working in Gaza, with two hospitals struck and debilitated by airstrikes this week. Israel has claimed Hamas has used medical facilities as a cover for terrorist operations.

The resumption of aid into Gaza has become a highly inflammatory political issue in Israel. There are 58 hostages still in Gaza, who were taken captive after the Hamas attacks on southern Israel in October 2023, with 24 believed to still be alive.

Far-right figures in prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have said no aid should be restored to the civilians of Gaza until Hamas agrees to the hostages’ release.

“As long as our hostages are languishing in the tunnels, there is no reason for a single gram of food or any aid to enter Gaza,” the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said on Wednesday.

The UK Foreign Office has confirmed that the foreign secretary, David Lammy, met his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Sa’ar, while Sa’ar was on an unannounced visit to London.

The Foreign Office described Sa’ar’s visit as “private”, though it said Lammy had discussed a full range of Middle East issues with the Israeli foreign minister. News of Sa’ar’s presence in the UK – at a time when Israel is intensifying its offensive in Gaza, having ended a ceasefire last month – has triggered outrage among critics of Israel, and a formal request from activists for an arrest warrant to be issued against him on charges of alleged complicity in war crimes.

The Global Legal Action Network (Glan), a London-based group seeking legal redress for disadvantaged and persecuted communities, and the Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), which focuses on legal accountability for Israeli war crimes, wrote joint letters on Wednesday to the UK’s attorney general and the director of public prosecutions to seek their consent for a private prosecution against Sa’ar in the UK.

They also said an application for an arrest warrant had been prepared for Westminster magistrates court.

Glan and the HRF cited Sa’ar’s position in the Israeli security cabinet and his public statements on Gaza as grounds for alleging the foreign minister’s complicity in war crimes carried out by Israeli forces.

Sa’ar’s visit to London was not publicised by him or his ministry, and the Israeli embassy did not reply to a request for comment on Wednesday afternoon. The Israeli government has denied committing war crimes, and has rejected the jurisdiction of the international criminal court (ICC) and the international court of justice (ICJ).

The HRF has been particularly criticised in Israel for its legal pursuit of Israeli soldiers when they travel abroad. The organisation’s founders, Dyab Abou Jahjah and Karim Hassoun, have been accused of expressing public support for Hezbollah and Hamas.

A spokesperson for the HRF said: “Since our formation, there has been a baseless campaign to smear our founders, led mostly by the Israeli government. Dyab Abou Jahjah is not, nor has he ever been, a member of Hezbollah. Karim Hassoun is originally from Morocco. While both support and respect the rights of all people to resist occupation – as is their human right under international law – neither adhere to any political party in Lebanon.”

The UK Foreign Office confirmed that Lammy met Sa’ar on Tuesday to discuss Gaza and other pressing Middle East issues, during what it described as the latter’s “private visit to the UK”.

Sa’ar was spotted by an Israeli journalist leaving Israel for the UK on Monday. His meeting with Lammy was first reported by the UK-based news website Middle East Eye, and Ynet in Israel.

Zarah Sultana, the independent MP for Coventry South, said Sa’ar’s visit was “a direct affront to both international law and the Palestinian people enduring genocide, military occupation and apartheid under his government”.

“Sa’ar has openly justified the denial of life-saving aid to a besieged civilian population,” Sultana said. “That is why I fully support the initiative by humanitarian law groups to demand an arrest warrant. The UK must stand firmly with international law and ensure all those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity are held accountable, no matter how powerful they are.”

In the submissions presented on Wednesday, Glan and the HRF said the ICC had issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant for their involvement in the military campaign in Gaza, in which an estimated 51,000 people have been killed over 18 months, and in the restriction of humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza’s population of 2.2 million.

On Wednesday, the ICC called on the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán to formally explain its actions earlier this month, when it hosted Netanyahu in Budapest, ignoring the arrest warrant. During Netanyahu’s visit, Hungary announced it was leaving the ICC, though under the court’s founding Rome statute, it takes a year for withdrawal to take effect.

The ICJ is also reviewing an allegation of genocide, first brought by South Africa, directed at Israel’s war in Gaza. The ICJ issued provisional orders last year calling for Netanyahu’s government to halt its offensive and urgently address the humanitarian situation. In March, the Netanyahu government ended a ceasefire agreement and intensified its military operations and aid blockage of Gaza.

Glan and the HRF said in a joint press statement: “As a senior member of Israel’s security cabinet alongside Benjamin Netanyahu – wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza – Gideon Sa’ar is deeply implicated in the collective decisions that led to mass civilian death and suffering following October 7, 2023.

“His central role in shaping and defending the government’s military policy makes him a key figure in the leadership responsible for a campaign the ICJ has found plausibly genocidal.”

The UK Foreign Office passed on a question about the arrest warrant request to the attorney general’s office. It said that in Lammy’s meeting with Sa’ar on Tuesday, the British foreign secretary “raised the ongoing hostage negotiations, protection of aid workers, the need to end the humanitarian blockade of Gaza and stop settlement expansion in the West Bank, and the Iranian nuclear issue”.

Lammy also “raised the importance” of visits by UK members of parliament to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, after two Labour MPs were denied entry by Israeli authorities.

In their submission, Glan and the HRF said Sa’ar had been a member of Israel’s security cabinet and an informal consultative group around Netanyahu since he rejoined the governing coalition in September.

Among their list of alleged war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza is the siege of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza between October and December last year and the detention of its medical director, Dr Hossam Abu Safiya, who the organisations say has been subjected to torture while in Israeli prisons.

Israel, the complaint says, is responsible in general for the “wanton destruction” of Gaza’s infrastructure, aimed at “destroying the fabric of Gaza’s society and for the purpose of starving Gaza”. It also pointed to the harm caused to civilians by the Israeli blockade of medical supplies and basic provisions into Gaza.

As well as citing Sa’ar’s membership of the Israeli security cabinet, the groups’ submission in support of the arrest warrant request quotes Sa’ar’s public statements on seizing territory in Gaza and cutting off humanitarian aid. They also argued that he did not have immunity from arrest on the basis of his government position.

The Israeli government and Sa’ar himself have previously denounced attempts to pursue prosecutions against Israel in international courts as antisemitic. In January, Sa’ar said: “What we are witnessing is a systematic and antisemitic campaign aimed at denying Israel’s right to self-defence.”

“Countless international actors and many countries are complicit in this,” he added.

Israel has said it will keep blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, as it vowed to force Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages from the 7 October attacks.

Aid supplies including food, fuel, water and medicine have been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza since 2 March, more than two weeks before the collapse of the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group with a return to air and ground attacks on the territory.

The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said on Wednesday that Gaza was becoming a “mass grave for Palestinians”.

The Israeli military, meanwhile, said it had converted 30% of Gaza into a buffer zone and that it had “achieved full operational control over several key areas and routes throughout the Gaza Strip”.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said: “Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population.”

“No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid,” said Katz, who vowed to escalate the conflict with “tremendous force” if Hamas did not return the hostages.

Amnesty International is among the aid agencies that have described Israel’s blockade on all supplies going into Gaza as a crime against humanity and a violation of international humanitarian law. Israel has denied any violations.

More than 51,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the conflict began, including more than 1,600 since Israel resumed airstrikes and ground operations on 18 March. The Gaza health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but has said more than half of those dead were women and children.

Another 13 people were killed in airstrikes overnight, with a well-known photographer, Fatema Hassouna, among those reported dead in the northern area of the strip.

Doctors and aid groups on the ground said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was becoming graver by the day. “The situation is the worst it has been in 18 months in terms of being deprived of your basic necessities and the resumption of hostilities and attacks against Palestinians in all of Gaza,” said Mahmoud Shalabi, a director at Medical Aid for Palestinians.

The resumption of aid into Gaza has become a highly inflammatory political issue in Israel. There are 58 hostages still in Gaza, who were taken captive after the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, with 24 believed to still be alive. Far-right figures in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have said no aid should be restored to the civilians of Gaza until Hamas agrees to the hostages’ release.

“As long as our hostages are languishing in the tunnels, there is no reason for a single gram of food or any aid to enter Gaza,” the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said on Wednesday.

Katz said Israel intended to eventually set up its own “civilian-based distribution infrastructure” for aid in Gaza, to prevent supplies falling into the hands of Hamas militants, but he gave no timelines or details of how it would be established.

Reports have suggested this could involve the Israel Defense Forces setting up and running logistics centres for aid, and vetted aid agencies being tasked with distributing it. However, the plan remains unclear and the UN is said to have so far refused to hand over the names of employees.

Efforts by mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US to restore the collapsed ceasefire in Gaza and return the hostages have continued to hit stumbling blocks.

Katz said that no matter what deal was agreed, Israeli troops would remain in the buffer zones it had occupied in Gaza, as well as in neighbouring Syria and Lebanon.

Since resuming operations in March, Israeli troops have seized control of 30% of the Gaza Strip, establishing what they describe as an “operational security perimeter”. Hamas has demanded that any hostage deal must guarantee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

Katz said: “Unlike in the past, the [Israeli military] is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized.” The military would “remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and [Israeli] communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza, as in Lebanon and Syria”, he said.

A giant planet 124 light years from Earth has yielded the strongest evidence yet that extraterrestrial life may be thriving beyond our solar system, astronomers claim.

Observations by the James Webb space telescope of a planet called K2-18 b appear to reveal the chemical fingerprints of two compounds that, on Earth, are only known to be produced by life.

Detection of the chemicals, dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) would not amount to proof of alien biological activity, but could bring the answer to the question of whether we are alone in the universe much closer.

“This is the strongest evidence to date for a biological activity beyond the solar system,” said Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge who led the observations. “We are very cautious. We have to question ourselves both on whether the signal is real and what it means.”

He added: “Decades from now, we may look back at this point in time and recognise it was when the living universe came within reach. This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we’re alone in the universe is one we’re capable of answering.”

Others are more sceptical, with questions remaining about whether the overall conditions on K2-18 b, are favourable to life and whether DMS and DMDS, which are largely produced by marine phytoplankton on Earth, can be reliably regarded as biosignatures.

K2-18 b, which sits in the Leo constellation, is nearly nine times as massive as the Earth and 2.6 times as large and orbits in the habitable zone of its star, a cool red dwarf less than half the size of the sun. When the Hubble space telescope appeared to spot water vapour in its atmosphere in 2019, scientists declared it “the most habitable known world” beyond the solar system.

The supposed water signal was shown to be methane in follow-up observations by Madhusudhan’s team in 2023. But, they argued, K2-18 b’s profile was consistent with a habitable world, covered in a vast, deep ocean – a view that remains contentious. More provocatively, the Cambridge team reported a tentative hint of DMS.

Planets beyond our solar system are too distant to photograph or reach with robotic spacecraft. But scientists can estimate their size, density and temperature and probe their chemical makeup by tracking the exoplanet as it passes across the face of its host star and measuring starlight that has been filtered through its atmosphere. In the latest observations, wavelengths that are absorbed by DMS and DMDS, were seen to suddenly drop off as K2-18 b wandered in front of the red dwarf.

“The signal came through strong and clear,” said Madhusudhan. “If we can detect these molecules on habitable planets, this is the first time we’ve been able to do that as a species … it’s mind-boggling that this is possible.”

The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggest concentrations of DMS, DMDS or both (their signatures overlap) thousands of times stronger than the levels on Earth. The results are reported with a “three-sigma” level of statistical significance (a 0.3% probability that they occurred by chance) although this falls short of the gold standard for discoveries in physics.

“There may be processes that we don’t know about that are producing these molecules,” Madhusudhan said. “But I don’t think there is any known process that can explain this without biology.”

A challenge in identifying potential other processes is that the conditions on K2-18 b remain disputed. While the Cambridge team favour an ocean scenario, others say the data is suggestive of a gas planet or one with oceans made of magma, not water.

There is a question of whether DMS could have been brought to the planet by comets – this would require an intensity of bombardment that seems improbable – or produced in hydrothermal vents, volcanoes or lightning storms through exotic chemical processes.

“Life is one of the options, but it’s one among many,” said Dr Nora Hänni, a chemist at the Physics Institute of the University of Berne, whose research revealed that DMS was present on an icy, lifeless comet. “We would have to strictly rule out all the other options before claiming life.”

Others say that measuring planetary atmospheres may never yield a smoking gun for life. “It’s under-appreciated in the field, but technosignatures, such as an intercepted message from an advanced civilisation, could be better smoking guns, despite the unlikelihood of finding such a signal,” said Dr Caroline Morley, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas, Austin, adding that the findings were, nonetheless, an important advance.

Dr Jo Barstow, a planetary scientist at the Open University, also viewed the detection as significant, but said: “My scepticism dial for any claim relating to evidence of life is permanently turned up to 11, not because I don’t think that other life is out there, but because I feel that for such a profound and significant discovery the burden of proof must be very, very high. I don’t think this latest work crosses that threshold.”

At 120 light years away, there is no prospect of resolving the debate through closeup observations, but Madhusudhan notes that this has not been a barrier to the discovery of black holes or other cosmic phenomena.

“In astronomy, the question is never about going there,” he said. “We’re trying to establish if the laws of biology are universal in nature. I don’t see it as: ‘We have to go and swim in the water to catch the fish.’”

A giant planet 124 light years from Earth has yielded the strongest evidence yet that extraterrestrial life may be thriving beyond our solar system, astronomers claim.

Observations by the James Webb space telescope of a planet called K2-18 b appear to reveal the chemical fingerprints of two compounds that, on Earth, are only known to be produced by life.

Detection of the chemicals, dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) would not amount to proof of alien biological activity, but could bring the answer to the question of whether we are alone in the universe much closer.

“This is the strongest evidence to date for a biological activity beyond the solar system,” said Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge who led the observations. “We are very cautious. We have to question ourselves both on whether the signal is real and what it means.”

He added: “Decades from now, we may look back at this point in time and recognise it was when the living universe came within reach. This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we’re alone in the universe is one we’re capable of answering.”

Others are more sceptical, with questions remaining about whether the overall conditions on K2-18 b, are favourable to life and whether DMS and DMDS, which are largely produced by marine phytoplankton on Earth, can be reliably regarded as biosignatures.

K2-18 b, which sits in the Leo constellation, is nearly nine times as massive as the Earth and 2.6 times as large and orbits in the habitable zone of its star, a cool red dwarf less than half the size of the sun. When the Hubble space telescope appeared to spot water vapour in its atmosphere in 2019, scientists declared it “the most habitable known world” beyond the solar system.

The supposed water signal was shown to be methane in follow-up observations by Madhusudhan’s team in 2023. But, they argued, K2-18 b’s profile was consistent with a habitable world, covered in a vast, deep ocean – a view that remains contentious. More provocatively, the Cambridge team reported a tentative hint of DMS.

Planets beyond our solar system are too distant to photograph or reach with robotic spacecraft. But scientists can estimate their size, density and temperature and probe their chemical makeup by tracking the exoplanet as it passes across the face of its host star and measuring starlight that has been filtered through its atmosphere. In the latest observations, wavelengths that are absorbed by DMS and DMDS, were seen to suddenly drop off as K2-18 b wandered in front of the red dwarf.

“The signal came through strong and clear,” said Madhusudhan. “If we can detect these molecules on habitable planets, this is the first time we’ve been able to do that as a species … it’s mind-boggling that this is possible.”

The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggest concentrations of DMS, DMDS or both (their signatures overlap) thousands of times stronger than the levels on Earth. The results are reported with a “three-sigma” level of statistical significance (a 0.3% probability that they occurred by chance) although this falls short of the gold standard for discoveries in physics.

“There may be processes that we don’t know about that are producing these molecules,” Madhusudhan said. “But I don’t think there is any known process that can explain this without biology.”

A challenge in identifying potential other processes is that the conditions on K2-18 b remain disputed. While the Cambridge team favour an ocean scenario, others say the data is suggestive of a gas planet or one with oceans made of magma, not water.

There is a question of whether DMS could have been brought to the planet by comets – this would require an intensity of bombardment that seems improbable – or produced in hydrothermal vents, volcanoes or lightning storms through exotic chemical processes.

“Life is one of the options, but it’s one among many,” said Dr Nora Hänni, a chemist at the Physics Institute of the University of Berne, whose research revealed that DMS was present on an icy, lifeless comet. “We would have to strictly rule out all the other options before claiming life.”

Others say that measuring planetary atmospheres may never yield a smoking gun for life. “It’s under-appreciated in the field, but technosignatures, such as an intercepted message from an advanced civilisation, could be better smoking guns, despite the unlikelihood of finding such a signal,” said Dr Caroline Morley, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas, Austin, adding that the findings were, nonetheless, an important advance.

Dr Jo Barstow, a planetary scientist at the Open University, also viewed the detection as significant, but said: “My scepticism dial for any claim relating to evidence of life is permanently turned up to 11, not because I don’t think that other life is out there, but because I feel that for such a profound and significant discovery the burden of proof must be very, very high. I don’t think this latest work crosses that threshold.”

At 120 light years away, there is no prospect of resolving the debate through closeup observations, but Madhusudhan notes that this has not been a barrier to the discovery of black holes or other cosmic phenomena.

“In astronomy, the question is never about going there,” he said. “We’re trying to establish if the laws of biology are universal in nature. I don’t see it as: ‘We have to go and swim in the water to catch the fish.’”

Michelle Trachtenberg, a popular TV actor, died of complications from diabetes, according to the New York City medical examiner’s office.

Trachtenberg, 39, was found dead in February and had recently received a liver transplant, according to NBC News, but the cause of her death had been unclear at the time.

Trachtenberg rose to fame at a young age, starting her career at the age of three when she starred in commercials before going on to join Nickelodeon’s show The Adventures of Pete & Pete, as well as the soap opera All My Children.

The actor landed her first lead film role in the 1996 film Harriet the Spy, acting alongside Rosie O’Donnell and J Smith-Cameron. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight in 2021, Trachtenberg said: “There was a lot required of me … I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity.”

Other projects Trachtenberg starred in include the teen comedy EuroTrip, as well as the critically acclaimed drama Mysterious Skin by Gregg Araki.

Reflecting on her experience with Mysterious Skin, Trachtenberg said: “I was this girl who had done glitzy, PG-themed stuff and here’s Gregg Araki, director of Doom Generation, and we sat down and had a cup of coffee and I said: ‘You’re probably not gonna hire me but this is what I got, this is what I feel. If you’re willing to take the chance, I’m willing to go there with you.’ It was the most exhilarating experience I’ve had as an actress.”

Following her death, Trachtenberg’s various cast members paid tributes to her, with her Gossip Girl co-star Blake Lively writing: “She was electricity … You knew when she entered a room because the vibration changed. Everything she did, she did 200%.”

Similarly, Smith-Cameron wrote: “She was always very warm toward me. I feel very shocked and unsettled to hear of her passing.”

Meanwhile, the Buffy the Vampire lead, Sarah Michelle Gellar, said: “Michelle, listen to me … Listen. I love you. I will always love you. The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it. I will be brave. I will live … for you.”

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that there was probable cause to hold Trump officials in criminal contempt for violating his temporary injunction that barred the use of the Alien Enemies Act wartime power to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

In a scathing 46-page opinion, James Boasberg, the chief US district judge for Washington, wrote that senior Trump officials could either return the people who were supposed to have been protected by his injunction, or face contempt proceedings.

The judge also warned that if the administration tried to stonewall his contempt proceedings or instructed the justice department to decline to file contempt charges against the most responsible officials, he would appoint an independent prosecutor himself.

“The court does not reach such conclusions lightly or hastily,” Boasberg wrote. “Indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to explain their actions. None of their responses have been satisfactory.”

The threat of contempt proceedings marked a major escalation in the showdown over Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members, without normal due process, in his expansive interpretation of his executive power.

It came one day after another federal judge, in a separate case involving the wrongful deportation of a man to El Salvador, said she would force the administration to detail what steps it had taken to comply with a US supreme court order compelling his return.

In that case, US district judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to answer questions in depositions and in writing about whether it had actually sought to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, who was protected from being sent to El Salvador.

Taken together, the decisions represented a developing effort by the federal judiciary to hold the White House accountable for its apparent willingness to flout adverse court orders and test the limits of the legal system.

At issue in the case overseen by Boasberg is the Trump administration’s apparent violation of his temporary restraining order last month blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act – and crucially to recall planes that had already departed.

The administration never recalled the planes and argued, after the fact, that they did not follow Boasberg’s order to recall the planes because he gave that instruction verbally and it was not included in his later written order.

In subsequent hearings, lawyers for the Trump administration also suggested that even if Boasberg had included the directive in his written order, by the time he had granted the temporary restraining order, the deportation flights were outside US airspace and therefore beyond the judge’s jurisdiction.

Boasberg excoriated that excuse and others in his opinion, writing that under the so-called collateral-bar rule, if a party is charged with acting in contempt for disobeying a court order, it cannot raise the possible legal invalidity of the order as a defense.

“If Defendants believed – correctly or not – that the Order encroached upon the President’s Article II powers, they had two options: they could seek judicial review of the injunction but not disobey it, or they could disobey it but forfeit any right to raise their legal argument as a defense,” Boasberg wrote.

Boasberg also rejected the administration’s claim that his authority over the planes disappeared the moment they left US airspace, finding that federal courts regularly restrain executive branch conduct abroad, even when it touches on national security matters.

“That courts can enjoin US officials’ overseas conduct simply reflects the fact that an injunction … binds the enjoined parties wherever they might be; the ‘situs of the [violation], whether within or without the United States, is of no importance,’” Boasberg wrote.

Boasberg added he was unpersuaded by the Trump administration’s efforts to stonewall his attempts to date to establish whether it knew it had deliberately flouted his injunction, including by invoking the state secrets doctrine to withhold basic information about when and what times the planes departed.

“The Court is skeptical that such information rises to the level of a state secret. As noted, the Government has widely publicized details of the flights through social media and official announcements thereby revealing snippets of the information the Court seeks,” Boasberg wrote.

The jail term given to a man who murdered his mother and two siblings as part of a plan to kill 30 children is to be reviewed after an intervention by an MP who claimed it was unduly lenient.

Nicholas Prosper, 19, was jailed for life last month with a minimum term of 49 years after he admitted murdering Juliana Falcon, 48, Kyle Prosper, 16, and Giselle Prosper, 13.

The murders were part of his wider plan to storm a morning assembly at his former primary school with a shotgun and “cause the biggest massacre of the 21st century”.

The attorney general’s office confirmed on Wednesday that the sentence had been referred to the court of appeal.

It comes after the Conservative shadow justice minister Kieran Mullan referred the sentence to the attorney general’s office under the unduly lenient sentence scheme on the day Prosper was jailed.

“It will be argued that Prosper ought to have been given a whole-life order,” a spokesperson for the attorney general said on Wednesday. “It is now for the court to decide whether to increase the sentence.”

Passing sentence last month, the high court judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told Luton crown court that she had met her duty to the public with the 49-year minimum term, rather than using “the sentence of last resort” and jailing him for the rest of his life.

Mullan welcomed the referral to the court of appeal, adding in a post on X: “These were the most heinous crimes deserving of the most severe penalty a court can give.”

Rules were changed in 2022 to allow defendants aged between 18 and 20 to receive whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances, but none of the orders imposed since then have been on criminals in that age bracket.

The court heard how Prosper had shot his family dead at their home in Luton after a violent struggle and how it was part of a wider plan to carry out a mass shooting at St Joseph’s Catholic primary school.

His plan was months in the making. Prosper surveilled St Joseph’s, taking images of staff and students from the school’s website and noting times of lessons and assembly.

The day before the murders, he bought a shotgun from an online seller for £650 after he “made a high-quality forgery of a shotgun certificate or licence”.

He had planned to murder his family while they slept on Friday 13 September, and then leave the home at about 8.30am to travel to St Joseph’s to carry out the attack. However, his plans were disrupted when his family realised that something was wrong. After they challenged him, there was a violent struggle.

Entire ecosystems have been “decimated” and endangered species put at risk after one of the worst wildfire seasons on record in the UK, charities have warned.

Vast areas of habitat for animals including butterflies, beetles and falcons have been damaged, and some peat bogs may take “hundreds of years” to recover following one of the driest Marches in decades combined with warmer than average temperatures in April.

Abergwesyn Common in Powys, Wales, was consumed by a 1,600-hectare (3,950-acre) fire, an area about 400 times larger than Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

The common is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI), and a breeding habitat for the area’s last known population of golden plovers. National Trust rangers now fear this rare, protected moorland bird may have been lost to the area entirely.

Chris Smith, the National Trust’s countryside manager for Mid and South Wales, said: “The impacts on wildlife are widespread, with birds’ nests, insects, amphibians and reptiles all scorched by fire.

“Whole ecosystems have been decimated and will remain altered well into the future.

“Alongside this, the huge loss of surface vegetation leaves the peat bogs we have been working hard to restore … vulnerable to erosion and at further risk of fire and carbon loss.

“Where the flames burnt down to the peat soils, they will take hundreds of years to recover.”In 2024, South Wales fire and rescue service responded to 34 wildfire callouts between 1 January and 10 April. This year, it has faced 445 over the same period – a 1,200% increase.

In total, Wales’s three fire services have reported responding to more than 1,300 grass fires so far this year.

In Northern Ireland, recent fires on the Mourne Mountains have scorched land used by an array of wildlife including small heath butterflies, rove beetles, skylarks and peregrine falcons.

Small birds such as skylarks rely on insects and beetles for food, and in turn provide a food source for birds of prey.

In the Peak District, the National Trust said a recent fire on Howden Moor that stretched for 2km had caused £30,000-worth of damage, ruining years’ worth of conservation efforts.

The National Trust said it is adapting its landscapes by making big areas of land wetter and boggier, including by planting special mosses that hold water and by creating wetlands that, once established, act like natural fire breaks.

Ben McCarthy, its head of nature conservation, said the country needs “urgent government action” to help mitigate and adapt to grass fires and other climate risks.

WWF Cymru said the “devastating” wildfires were a “stark reminder that the climate and nature crisis is upon us”.

Earlier this month, the National Fire Chiefs Council warned it needed “long term and sustained investment” to cope with climate change and “increased demand” on its services.

At the time, it said there had been over 100 more wildfires this year than in the first three months of 2022.

The bakery chain Gail’s is to drop its soya milk surcharge after a campaign by a leading animal rights charity argued the fee “unfairly discriminated” against customers.

Gail’s will offer free soya from 21 May, but will continue to charge between 40p and 60p if costumers want oat in their coffee or tea.

With at least one in three Britons now drinking plant-based milks, the animal rights charity Peta welcomed the move to help customers make more ethical choices, but also called on Gail’s to drop its additional charge for oat milk.

The charity’s vice-president of vegan corporate projects, Dawn Carr, said: “Charging more for plant milk leaves a bad taste in customers’ mouths, particularly when it is a choice they make for their health, to be kind to cows, or for the planet.

“Peta celebrates Gail’s taking the first step in offering soya without the surcharge, but to spare cows from harm and reduce methane emissions, the oat-milk upcharge also has to be ground down.”

Pret a Manger stopped charging extra for plant-based milks such as oat, almond, soya and rice-coconut in the UK in 2020 after calls from animal rights advocates. Starbucks dropped its vegan milk surcharge in the UK in 2022. Leon and Joe and the Juice do not charge extra for any standard dairy-free milk alternatives.

Costa Coffee and Caffè Nero do not charge for soya milk, but oat and coconut milk are an additional 45p at both. Costa also has an “ultimate blend” plant-based milk alternative at some coffee shops for 35p.

A spokesperson for Gail’s said: “We understand choice is important, which is why we’re proud to offer British-grown oat milk and soya as dairy alternatives. From 21 May, there will be no additional charge for soya milk in our bakeries.

“We want to make it easier for everyone to enjoy their coffee or tea the way they like it, while remaining dedicated to sourcing high-quality ingredients that are both delicious and sustainable.”