Mark Carney has used his victory speech to claim Donald Trump wanted to “break us” as he led Canada’s Liberal party to a fourth term in office, in a race that was upended by threats and aggression from the US president.

The Liberal triumph capped a miraculous political resurrection and marked a landmark victory for Carney, the former central banker and political novice who only recently succeeded Justin Trudeau as prime minister. Results on Tuesday confirmed that the Liberals fell just short of a majority government and would therefore need the support of political rivals to govern.

Mirroring a theme of the campaign, Carney told election-night supporters that Trump wanted to “break us, so that America can own us”, adding: “That will never, ever happen,” to shouts from the crowd.

He also gave a stark assessment of a world order once defined by an integrated global trading system with the US at the centre, saying such a system was over, and he pledged to reshape Canada’s relationships with other nations.

“We are over the shock over American betrayal. But we will never forget the lessons,” he said.

Later on Tuesday, the two leaders struck a more conciliatory tone and agreed to meet “in the near future”, according to Carney’s office, which said Trump had congratulated the prime minister for his victory. “The leaders agreed on the importance of Canada and the United States working together – as independent, sovereign nations – for their mutual betterment,” it said.

In a shock result, the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, lost the seat he has held since 2004, even as his party performed better than had previously been expected. The Tory leader pledged to keep his job during his election night speech, but the loss is expected to inflame tensions within the party.

“While we will do our constitutional duty of holding the government to account and proposing better alternatives, we will always put Canada first as we stare down tariffs and other irresponsible threats from President Trump,” Poilievre told supporters.

“Conservatives have been leading the debate and we will continue to put forward the best arguments to improve the lives of our people right across this country.”

Jagmeet Singh, leader of the progressive New Democratic party leader, also lost his seat in a national vote that saw the NDP have their worst-ever result, losing party status and most of their seats. In an emotional speech Singh announced he would resign as leader.

Carney praised other party leaders for campaigns that he said had strengthened the country’s democracy. “Let’s put an end to the division and anger of the past. We are all Canadian and my government will work for and with everyone.”

After a narrow victory in the previous federal election, the Liberals relied on the leftwing New Democratic party to help it pass legislation. Monday’s vote appeared likely to produce a similar result, with the Liberals and the NDP together holding enough seats to pass legislation.

For the Liberals, the win marks a remarkable recovery for a party that was, until recently, on track for electoral devastation. Carney’s predecessor as leader, Justin Trudeau, served as prime minister for nearly 10 years but the twilight of his leadership was marked by repeated threats of mutiny, bitter feuding and a fed-up electorate.

Until the end of 2024, internal discussions within the Liberal party were grim: under their most optimistic scenarios, they could only hope of holding the Conservatives to a minority government. Outright victory was nowhere on the party’s radar.

“We were dead and buried in December. Now we are going to form a government,” David Lametti, a former Liberal justice minister, told CTV late on Monday. “We have turned this around thanks to Mark.”

Trump’s threats to annex the country to make it the 51st state, his belittling of Trudeau as “governor” and threats of economic coercion have all contributed to a sharp feeling of anger and betrayal towards Canada’s southern neighbour.

“The shift in polls was absolutely without precedent,” said David Coletto, the head of the polling firm Abacus. “But to see the honeymoon that followed – and the way that support held, is also unprecedented. I can’t think of other jurisdictions around the world where we’ve seen this complete reset. And this turns on two factors: how unpopular Justin Trudeau was, and how much of a threat and gamechanger Donald Trump has meant to Canada.”

For the Conservatives, defeat marks a disappointing end to an election campaign the party had been demanding for months. Under the leadership of Poilievre, the Tories had for the past two years seemed all but certain to form a government.

But within weeks of Trump’s threats and the emergence of Carney as the new Liberal leader, their 25-point poll lead evaporated.

To have come inches from victory and then to lose is likely to kick off a sombre postmortem for the party – and internal feuding over the future of the Conservative movement.

For Carney, who served as prime minister for only nine days before calling a snap election, the gambit was one in which he hoped to make history for the party. But also on the line for Carney was the prospect of making history for an entirely different reason: had he lost, he would have inherited the mantle of Canada’s shortest-serving prime minister.

Ian Laroque, a campaign volunteer who lives in Carney’s Ottawa electoral district, said: “I saw how Carney conducted himself and I felt like he was really a man who met the moment. He wasn’t a polished politician. But he’s the kind of person we need to lead the country right now. It’s not every day you get an economist during an economic crisis.”

Monday’s vote was unusual in other ways, too: for the first time in nearly 70 years, the two main parties were set to take more than 80% of the vote between them, reflecting the collapse of other smaller opposition parties including the NDP and the separatist Bloc Québécois.

In an emotive speech to supporters, Jagmeet Singh announced he would step down as leader of the NDP after failing to win his seat. In its worst-ever performance, the progressive party failed to meet the 12-seat threshold needed to retain official party status – the second time in its history it has been unable to do so.

The loss of party status means the NDP loses certain parliamentary privileges, including the ability to ask questions during question period as often as recognized parties. These rules can be amended at the discretion of the speaker, however. The NDP will also lose out on money allocated to parties for research purposes, which is distributed proportionally to the number of seats held by a recognized party.

Canada’s Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, has lost his own seat in the country’s general election, in a stunning blow for the 45-year-old career politician who until recently had been widely expected to become the country’s next prime minister.

Although Conservatives increased both their seat count and vote share, Mark Carney’s Liberal party secured control of parliament, and Poilievre’s defeat in the Carleton electoral district is certain to fuel mounting questions over his future as party leader.

Once considered a long shot, the Liberal party candidate Bruce Fanjoy flipped the Carleton riding which Poilievre had held for seven consecutive elections. The two men were among 91 candidates on the ballot – most of whom were part of a protest calling for electoral reform.

In a speech late on Monday, Poilievre conceded the election, but pledged to stay on as Conservative leader, saying it was an “honour” to hold the role.

“To my fellow Conservatives, we have much to celebrate tonight. We’ve gained well over 20 seats,” Poilievre said. “We are cognizant of the fact that we didn’t quite get over the finish line. Yet we know that change is needed, but change is hard to come by. It takes time.”

But without a seat in the House of Commons, Poilievre cannot serve as leader of the official opposition, and it is also unclear if he can retain his residence at Stornoway, the official residence of the opposition leader.

If he does stay on as leader, Poilievre will need a Conservative MP to sacrifice their seat, allowing to him run in the by-election to fill the vacancy. That process takes time – Canada’s governor general must call the election between 11 and 180 days after being notified of the seat vacancy – and in all likelihood, Poilievre would not be able to return to parliament until the fall sitting.

In recent weeks, Conservative officials confirmed to the Guardian that there was growing tension within the party over Poilievre’s leadership – and speculation that he would soon be forced out.

“There will be a need for bloodletting,” said one senior member. “That could be the leader, or it could be the campaign manager. But there are some who feel the party fell far short of its goal – to win. And there is a price.”

Poilievre became the youngest MP in Canadian history at the age of 25, and became Conservative leader in 2022. A sharp-tongued political brawler who cultivated a populist image, he became a lightning rod for discontent with the former prime minister Justin Trudeau over whom he at one point enjoyed a 25-point lead.

When Donald Trump began to threaten Canada’s economy and autonomy – and then Trudeau stood down to be replaced by Mark Carney – Poilievre found himself on the wrong side of a surge of patriotic anger.

Despite Poilievre’s personal defeat, the Conservatives did, however, win enough seats to form the largest official opposition in Canadian history at the expense of other opposition parties.

And Poilievre was not the only party leader to lose his place in parliament: Jagmeet Singh, leader of the progressive New Democrats also failed to retain his Burnaby seat as the party saw its vote share collapse.

“It’s been the honour of my life to represent the people of Burnaby Central,” he said in an emotional speech, in which he announced his resignation as party leader. “Tonight they chose a new member of parliament and I wish them well.”

The New Democrats – who held the balance of power after the 2021 federal election – were on track to lose 17 of the 24 seats they had in the last parliament and are likely to lose official party status.

The loss of party status means the NDP will lose certain parliamentary privileges, including the ability to ask questions during question period as often as recognized parties. The NDP will also lose out on accessing money allocated to parties for research purposes, which is distributed proportionally to the number of seats held by a recognized party.

The Green party’s co-leader Jonathan Pedneault also lost his bid to represent a district in Montreal.

At the beginning of the year, Canada’s Conservatives had a 25-point lead over the Liberal government, and their leader, Pierre Poilievre, looked certain to be the country’s next prime minister. But as the votes cast in Monday’s election have been counted, the story of the campaign has been confirmed: victory for the Liberals and their new leader, Mark Carney, who have extended their decade of rule by as much as another five years.

With almost all polls counted, it appears likely that the Liberals will fall just short of a majority, and instead be the leading party in a minority government, as in the last two elections. Regardless, it represents a remarkable turnaround, and vindication for Carney’s efforts to present himself as the prime ministerial candidate who would most effectively stand up to Donald Trump. As for Poilievre: the CBC projects he has lost his seat.

What happened?

In one sense, the result isn’t surprising: even with well-documented antipathy to the Liberals after a decade in office, the task for a party that could so easily be portrayed as sympathetic to Donald Trump became insurmountable once the US president started threatening to annex Canada and ramping up tariffs.

By the same token, the lessons for other western democracies may be quite limited. But the result is still an index of Trump’s power as a recruiting sergeant for his opponents as well as his supporters – and, in Canada, a major blow to the prospects of rightwing populism, at least for now.

The last day of the election campaign was bleakly overshadowed by the deaths of 11 people after an attacker rammed a car into a Filipino street festival in Vancouver – an event whose sheer horror makes it hard to decipher its political valence. Until then, the month-long campaign was defined by Donald Trump.

Even on Monday, Trump told Canadians to “elect the man” who would make Canada the 51st state, which appeared to be a reference to himself. The election can broadly be described as pitting Liberal efforts to place that issue front and centre against Conservative attempts to play down their ties to Trump, neutralise the subject and pivot back to the cost-of-living concerns that had previously given them such a massive advantage.

Despite that drama, the extraordinary reversal in fortunes against the state of play when Justin Trudeau stood down in January was largely baked in by the time his successor, Mark Carney, called the election. And while there was a late tightening in the polls that ate into the Liberals’ lead, nothing happened during the campaign to change the fundamental calculus.

What were the actual results?

As of Tuesday morning the Liberals were leading or confirmed as victorious in 168 of 343 electoral districts, with the Conservatives on 144. This left the Liberals just short of the 172 threshold for an outright majority, meaning they would need the support of smaller parties to govern – but either way, their supporters were delighted.

“There was a bit of a sombre mood early on as Conservatives picked up some seats in Newfoundland,” said the Guardian’s Leyland Cecco, who was reporting from Ottawa.

“But as it became clear that Liberals were outperforming that level elsewhere, it started to feel buoyant. And when it was called, the room erupted in cheers. Now they’re in a weird ‘can we have it all’ feeling – but in the context of where they were a couple of months ago, this result is absolutely unbelievable.”

The former Liberal justice minister David Lametti summarised the mood: “We were dead and buried in December. Now we are going to form a government.”

What does this mean for Canada’s relationship with the US?

Mark Carney, whom British readers will remember from his stint running the Bank of England, is the model of a modern central banker: competent, conventional and colourless, more likely to be popular at Davos than in retail politics.

While the conventional wisdom for years has been that such figures are no longer viable political leaders, the specific circumstances in Canada this year have turned that analysis on its head. As he said himself in March: “I’m most useful in a crisis. I’m not that good in peacetime.”

Carney has promised to negotiate a new trade deal with the US, and has said he hopes to meet Trump in person soon – but that Canada has the leverage to wait until the time is right to do so. In the meantime, he wants to focus on lowering internal trade barriers and bolstering major investment projects, such as housing construction, to spur the economy.

He has also said that the old relationship with the US is over, and emphasised closer ties with the UK and Europe in his brief tenure as prime minister since he replaced Justin Trudeau. In his victory speech, Carney said: “This is Canada, and we decide what happens here.” He added: “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we must never forget the lessons.”

“Senior members of his team expect a call with Trump in the next few days,” Cecco said. “The US is obviously top of mind. We’re not talking about Europe becoming the dominant trading partner – but there will be an examination of whether the extent of the relationship with the US is still in Canada’s national interest.”

What does it mean for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives?

Before the tariff and annexation issues blew up, Poilievre, generally regarded as an effective and experienced politician, thought he had hit on a winning formula: stop short of Trump’s most radical positions on issues such as immigration and the role of the government, but mimic the Maga movement’s embrace of culture war issues and convince Canadians that someone aligned with Trump would be the best possible leader to deal with the White House.

It is now clear that this alignment was toxic. But whether the Conservatives are likely to tack back towards the centre is much less obvious, because the circumstances of this election were so remarkable – and it is anyone’s guess as to whether Trump will present such problematic baggage during the next election campaign.

“Poilievre leaned heavily on this more aggressive approach that energised the party base,” Cecco says. “In any other election, that might have been enough. But the collapse in the vote share for the smaller parties tilted things towards the Liberals.”

It’s too soon to say if Poilievre will be held personally responsible for the defeat. “Change did not get over the finish line tonight,” he said on Tuesday. “Change takes time. Most of all, it requires that we never give up.”

The CBC reported that he has told allies he wanted to stay on as party leader, pointing to the fact that the Conservatives had their highest vote share in many years. The most immediate and stunning challenge to his hopes: he lost his own seat in Ontario.

What about the smaller parties?

As the election turned into a binary choice about such a fundamental issue as which prime minister would be best placed to deal with the threat from Trump, the smaller parties appeared bound to suffer – and that was borne out in the results.

The New Democratic party, to the left of the Liberals, saw many of its supporters defect to Carney, and fell from 24 seats to fewer than 10; its leader, Jagmeet Singh, announced his resignation after being pushed into third place in his own seat. The separatist Bloc Québécois also saw its support collapse, falling from 32 seats to a projected 23. (This article from Montreal last week charts the damage done by Trump to the prospects of separatism in Quebec.)

The proportion of the vote share going to the two biggest parties was on track to be comfortably over 80%, the highest it’s been in almost 70 years. “The race was presidentialised,” Cecco said. “A lot of people who voted for the NDP in the past couldn’t see the point now. They have won majorities provincially, so the brand is not totally dead, but the federal wing has lost its way.”

Is this result a model for other progressive parties?

Up to a point. Some liberals will undoubtedly take heart from the idea that a moderate centre-left politician without a radical prescription for reconstructing how the state operates has prevailed against a Trump-adjacent opponent – and the election stands as evidence that Trump’s unpopularity can be turned to his opponents’ advantage around the world.

But the circumstances in Canada are so specific, and Canada’s ties to the US so unusually deep, that the parallels for other democracies are probably quite limited. And there is a danger that anyone who concludes that the way forward is to come across as a defender of the status quo is learning the wrong lesson. Studying Kamala Harris’s defeat in the US elections, after all, or looking at the state of French politics, would lead to very different conclusions.

But that is not to understate the significance of a seismic victory. “It’s an incumbent government surviving in what has recently felt like a sweep against them. And Donald Trump was on the ballot,” Cecco says. “This is the first major electoral repudiation of Trump outside of the United States. As one person put it to me: in Canada, we live on the edge of the volcano.”

In his victory speech early on Tuesday, Mark Carney wasted little time calling for a dramatic reshaping of his government’s relationship with the United States, arguing that threats from Donald Trump cast doubt Canada’s ability to function as a “free, sovereign, and ambitious” nation.

The former central banker and investment executive had for months focused his electoral campaign on the threats from Canada’s largest trading partner and longtime political ally.

Carney, a self-professed lover of policy mechanics, has pledged to redevelop Canada’s economy to reduce its reliance on the US – a daunting task, given that bilateral trade contributes to a fifth of Canada’s gross domestic product.

And in what should have been a celebratory address, he took on a somber tone as he considered the end of the affair.

“Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States – a system that Canada has relied on since the second world war, a system that while not perfect has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades – is over,” he said.

He also called for national unity, cognizant of the geographic and political frictions that had until recently, suggested Canadians would elect a Conservative government.

“My message to every Canadian is this: no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak, no matter how you voted, I will always do my best to represent everyone who calls Canada home,” Carney said.

Along with external pressure from Trump, Canada still faces a raft of unresolved internal tensions: a housing shortage, amplified by high immigration levels and the spiralling cost of living, has left voters increasingly frustrated and distrustful of the Liberal party. Carney has pledged to use the power of government to combat the interlocking crises, telling supporters on Tuesday morning that his ministers could “do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations”.

“The point is is that we can give ourselves far more than the Americans can ever take away.

The prime minister expects to have a call with Trump in the coming days, a senior Liberal said, and will begin negotiations on a new trade agreement.

“He is treating his upcoming meeting like he did debate prep during the election: preparing for all possible scenarios,” the source said. “Because he doesn’t know which version of the president he might get.”

There is little doubt Canada is at both an economic and political crossroads and Carney must navigate competing visions for the country’s future trajectory.

“The big question is how much Canadian federal government wants to pursue closer relations with the United States,” said Peter Morrow, an associate professor of economics at the University of Toronto. “The challenge for Canada is that it’s not really is not in a good position to diversify away too much from its economic relationship with United States. Geography just makes it an obvious trading partner. And if you diversify too much, then it’s almost like you’re trying to pull a Brexit.”

But Morrow says Canadian officials face a challenge in revisiting a trade agreement previously negotiated with Trump in his first term. “What sorts of concessions do you make in an agreement with a partner who’s shown that they’re willing to throw those agreements out the window?”

In recent weeks, Canadians have engaged in economic nationalism, boycotting American goods and encouraging fellow citizens to seek out domestic options to supplant imports.

“Everything we know is that companies that engage in global transactions tend to be more productive than companies that don’t. This nationalist turn inward for Canada is really not a good idea,” said Morrow. “What Canada should be doing is trying to buy from Europe, engage with a wider array of trading partners and resisting the temptations of economic nationalism.”

Morrow points to recent discussions in Canada on whether to continue with the purchase of American-made F-35 fighter jets, knowing that the US might be an “unreliable partner” in the future. Critics of the multibillion-dollar deal with Lockheed Martin have suggested that Canada instead examine offers from European defense manufacturers.

In his election night speech, Carney hinted at a goal of strengthening relations with like-minded allies in Europe. The technocratic Liberal leader, who previously served as governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, has been eager to burnish his global credentials.

In his brief, nine-day tenure as prime minister before calling a snap election, he met the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and UK prime minister, Keir Starmer. Carney’s defensive positioning of Canada’s economy and political alliances will be on display in June, when he hosts leaders from G7 countries in the province of Alberta.

Juliette Théorêt, a University of Ottawa student of defence policy who attended Carney’s victory party, said the prime minister won her vote by pitching a vision of the country that involved less reliance on its longtime ally.

“Before Trump, I don’t think national security and national sovereignty were big topics of conversation. And without him, there’s a good chance the election would have swayed in a different direction,” she said. “But threats of [making Canada the] 51st state, and this idea of not having a border between Canada and the US – that really pushed people to unite.”

The embattled UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, has accused Israel of abusing dozens of its staff in military detention and using some as human shields.

The head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, said that more than 50 staff members, including teachers, doctors and social workers, had been detained and abused since the start of the 18 month-long war in Gaza.

“They have been treated in the most shocking & inhumane way. They reported being beaten + used as human shields,” Lazzarini wrote on X.

Those detained had been subjected to “sleep deprivation, humiliation, threats of harm to them & their families + attacks by dogs … [and] forced confessions”.

UN officials said the reported abuse had taken place in Gaza and also in military detention sites in Israel.

The Israeli military has not responded directly to Lazzarini’s accusation, but has previously denied allegations of widespread abuse in its detention facilities and by its troops.

It has, however, launched investigations into abuse by individual soldiers during the war, and into the use of detainees as human shields, bringing charges against service personnel in some cases.

In a statement, the Israeli military said it acted in accordance with Israeli law and international law, and protects the rights of individuals held in detention facilities under its responsibility.

“Any abuse of detainees, whether during their detention or during interrogation, violates the law and the directives of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and as such is strictly prohibited,” the statement said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), said on Tuesday that Israel had released a medic held since a deadly and hugely controversial attack by Israeli troops on ambulances in southern Gaza on 23 March.

Eight PRCS staff members, six from the Gaza civil defence agency and one Unrwa employee, were killed in the attack, according to the UN humanitarian office OCHA.

The killings sparked international condemnation, including concern from the UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, about possible war crimes.

Relations between Israel and Unrwa have plunged since the beginning of the war, which was triggered by a surprise attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel in October 2023 during which they killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 250 hostage.

Israel banned all cooperation with Unrwa’s activities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank earlier this year, and claims the agency has been infiltrated by Hamas, an allegation that has been fiercely contested.

The international court of justice, the UN’s highest court, is hearing statements from dozens of countries and organisations before delivering a legal opinion on Israel’s humanitarian obligations to Palestinians. A key issue is whether Israel’s ban on Unrwa’s operations in Palestine is legal.

Israel is not participating at the ICJ but has dismissed the hearings as “part of the systematic persecution and delegitimization” of the country. The foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said on Sunday that the hearings were “another attempt to politicise and abuse the legal process to persecute Israel”.

“The goal is to deprive Israel of its most basic right to defend itself,” he said. “It is not Israel that should be on trial. It is the UN and Unrwa. The UN has become a rotten, anti-Israel and antisemitic body.”

The hearings come amid an intensifying bombardment of Gaza, which had killed at least 27 Palestinians in the past 36 hours, according to local health officials on Monday. The Israeli military said airstrikes had killed three militant commanders and that all targets were “subject to relevant provisions of international humanitarian law, including the taking of feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

Palestinian health officials in the territory say 2,151 people, including 732 children, have been killed since Israel broke a fragile ceasefire on 18 March that had been in place since mid-January.

Israel imposed a tight blockade on Gaza almost two months ago, stopping all food, fuel, medicines and other items from entering. It says the measure is intended to force Hamas into releasing hostages and accuses it of systematically stealing humanitarian assistance.

Rights groups accuse Israel of using a “starvation tactic” that endangers the whole population, potentially making it a war crime.

Humanitarian workers say supplies are running desperately low, with most people eating one meal or less a day. Major agencies such as the World Food Programme and Unrwa have distributed their last stocks of flour and other basic foodstuffs, and medics say malnutrition levels are rising.

Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements and other deals.

Families of deceased hostages called on Tuesday for the return of their loved ones’ remains. There are fears that poor conditions and continuing fighting could lead to many being destroyed or soon becoming unidentifiable.

“After everything we went through on that day and since, it cannot be that my father’s body will also disappear from the face of the Earth,” said Bar Godard, whose parents were killed during the 2023 Hamas raid and whose father’s body was taken to Gaza.

Negotiations for a fresh ceasefire appear to have stalled, with conflicting reports about progress in ongoing talks. Few observers expect a breakthrough in the near future, though analysts say Donald Trump’s scheduled visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in May could lead to renewed US pressure on Israel that might secure a deal.

Israeli forces have killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since it launched its offensive on Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Bombardments and ground operations have also destroyed vast areas and displaced about 80% of the population, many of them 10 or more times.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to continue the offensive until all the hostages are returned and Hamas is either destroyed or agrees to disarm and leave the territory.

The White House accused Amazon of committing a “hostile and political act” after a report said the e-commerce company was planning to inform customers how much Donald Trump’s tariffs would cost them as they shopped.

The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was responding to a report in Punchbowl News, which, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that Amazon would begin displaying on its site how much the tariffs had increased the prices of individual products, breaking out the figure from the total listed price.

“Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” Leavitt asked during a press briefing.

Trump himself called Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s billionaire founder, shortly after the report published to complain about the change, according to multiple reports.

Amazon’s online marketplace has seen prices rise across the board since Trump announced sweeping tariffs at the start of April, particularly on China, where many products listed on Amazon.com ship from. In response, the company has pressured its third-party sellers to shoulder the burden of the extra import costs rather than pass them on to customers. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“This is another reason why Americans should buy American,” Leavitt continued, though Amazon is headquartered in Seattle.

Amazon moved to distance itself from the report, saying the idea had been considered by Amazon Haul, the company’s recently launched low-cost shopping hub, but had been rejected.

“The team that runs our ultra-low-cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products. This was never approved and is not going to happen,” said Tim Doyle, Amazon spokesperson.

Online shopping has been upended by Trump’s trade policies. The day before the White House took aim at Amazon, discount retailers Temu and Shein, which ship from China, began displaying 145% “import charges” in customers’ totals to reflect the surcharge on Chinese goods.

Asked if the strident statement from the White House signaled a rift between Trump and Bezos, who stepped down as CEO in 2021 and donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund earlier this year, Leavitt said: “I will not speak to the president’s relationships with Jeff Bezos.”

Bezos and Trump endured a strained relationship during the president’s initial run for the White House. During the 2016 campaign, the Amazon founder publicly argued that some of Trump’s rhetoric, including threats to lock up his political opponents, damaged democracy, while Trump accused the tech giant of failing to pay enough taxes.

Scrutiny of Trump’s first term by the Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, angered the US president. He was further infuriated by Bezos’s apparent refusal to intervene. In a bid to pile pressure on Amazon, Trump threatened to block federal aid for the US Postal Service unless it hiked shipping rates for online firms.

Since Trump’s return to power, however, Bezos has taken a noticeably different approach to the president. He attended Trump’s inauguration, alongside a string of other big tech founders, and Amazon donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Days before last November’s presidential election, the Washington Post announced its editorial board would not endorse a candidate for the first time in more than three decades – prompting an exodus of subscribers. Bezos insisted the move was a “principled decision” and claimed that “inadequate planning” had led to the last-minute call.

The Post went a step further in February, announcing an overhaul of the newspaper’s opinion section to focus its output “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets”, Bezos said. The decision angered readers and staff and prompted the resignation of the opinions editor, David Shipley.

His actions drew a sharp rebuke from Marty Baron, the highly regarded former editor of the Washington Post, who told the Guardian that Bezos’s plan for the newspaper’s opinion section amounted to a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression” that had left him “appalled”.

Amazon, meanwhile, is reportedly paying some $40m to license a documentary on the life of the first lady, Melania Trump.

Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, has abruptly banished the Pentagon’s Women, Peace and Security program as part of his crusade against diversity and equity – dismissing it as “woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative” despite it being a signature Donald Trump achievement from his first term.

In a post on X, Hegseth wrote: “This morning, I proudly ENDED the ‘Women, Peace & Security’ (WPS) program inside the [Department of Defense]. WPS is yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING.”

The defense secretary added the program was “pushed by feminists and left-wing activists”, claiming “Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it.”

But the decision is raising some eyebrows as the initiative was established during Trump’s first administration when he signed the Women, Peace and Security Act in 2017, making the United States the first country in the world to codify standalone legislation on the matter.

The Trump campaign even courted women voters by citing the initiative as one of its top accomplishments for women on its website.

Attempting to square this circle, Hegseth later claimed the Biden administration had “distorted & weaponized” the original program. “Biden ruined EVERYTHING, including ‘Women, Peace & Security,’” he insisted.

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment clarifying what will change in this iteration of the WPS following the secretary’s announcement. Hegseth had indicated the Pentagon would comply with minimum requirements under federal statute but would lobby to defund the program during the next budget cycle in his initial post.

The defense secretary’s problems with the program could also create awkward tension with multiple Trump cabinet members who were architects of the very policy he’s now dismantling. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, wrote the 2017 legislation while serving in Congress and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, co-sponsored the Senate version.

Rubio, just this month, called it “a bill that I was very proud to have been a co-sponsor of when I was in the Senate”, at the state department’s international women of courage awards ceremony.

Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, also supported other legislation to strengthen the WPS and served as co-chair of the bipartisan Women, Peace and Security Caucus.

And first-daughter Ivanka Trump, back in 2019, also publicly promoted the program, writing on social media that “Today I was proud to announce, with female police cadets, that Colombia will develop a #WPS National Action Plan as part of our WPS partnership.”

The WPS program, which originated from a 2000 United Nations security council resolution, was first created to boost women’s participation in peace and security planning and protect women from violence in conflict situations.

Iterations of the program have since been widely adopted globally as research has shown that peace agreements with women’s participation are more durable.

Donald Trump’s administration has dismissed all contributors to the US government’s flagship study on how to prepare for climate change impacts, prompting strong criticism from experts over a “senseless” move.

The climate assessment is used by federal and local governments to understand how to prepare for climate crisis impacts including from extreme heat, hurricanes, flooding and drought.

The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors, who are scientists and other experts, to the sixth National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is mandated by Congress, leaves the future of the report in doubt since the multi-year, peer-reviewed analysis is due for publication in 2028.

The experts were notified on Monday by email. “At this time, the scope of the NCA6 is being evaluated in accordance with the Global Change Research Act of 1990,” the email, seen by Reuters, said, referring to the legislation that kickstarted the assessments that was signed by George HW Bush, a Republican president.

The NCA has been overseen by the Nasa-supported Global Change Research Program, which the Trump administration dismissed earlier this month, and had coordinated input from 14 federal agencies and hundreds of external scientists.

The NCA reports have been published since 2000.

Dr Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and an NCA6 report author on the coasts chapter, said in a statement: “Today, the Trump administration senselessly took a hatchet to a crucial and comprehensive US climate science report by dismissing its authors without cause or a plan.

“People around the nation rely on the NCA to understand how climate change is impacting their daily lives already and what to expect in the future.

“Trying to bury this report won’t alter the scientific facts one bit but without this information our country risks flying blind into a world made more dangerous by human-caused climate change. The only beneficiaries of disrupting or killing this report are the fossil fuel industry … Congress must step up to ensure the report it requires by law is conducted with scientific integrity and delivered in a timely way.”

Dave White, senior global futures scientist at Arizona State University, a lead author of NCA5, said the NCA “translates cutting edge science to inform American communities, including farmers, ranchers and businesses”.

“Dismissing its authors and cancelling its development undercuts decades of bipartisan progress,” White added. “This leaves the nation more vulnerable to extreme heat, water shortages, floods and other climate-related disasters. This decision is not only reckless, but also indifferent to the economic, environmental and human health impacts already occurring.”

Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Center for Climate and Security in the US, a thinktank, said in a social media post: “Pretending climate risks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away, unfortunately. This move puts Americans, our communities, and our security at risk.”

Dismissing the experts working on the assessment is the latest in a barrage of moves by the Trump administration to end or reduce research into climate as it pursues a “drill, baby, drill” agenda to prioritize the fossil fuel industry.

Federal websites have been purged of information related to the climate and extreme weather and agencies reduced in size, prompting warnings Americans’ are being made less safe amid the reality of the climate crisis.

In February, Trump officials also denied US scientists permission to attend a meeting of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading climate science entity. The federal government also cancelled its contract with ICF International to maintain US support for and involvement in the body.

Reuters contributed reporting

Three people were killed in a shooting in the Swedish city of Uppsala on Tuesday, police said.

A large area was cordoned off in the centre of Uppsala, a university city 45 miles north of Stockholm, after witnesses described hearing multiple shots at about 5pm local time and seeing people running in different directions and hiding.

A masked person was seen fleeing the crime scene on an electric scooter and a police hunt was under way, said police, who appealed to the public for information.

“Quite soon we encountered three people who appeared to have been shot. They did not need to be taken to hospital,” Magnus Jansson Klarin, a spokesperson for Uppsala police, told Svenska Dagbladet.

“We cannot answer whether there is one or more perpetrators at this time,” he added.

The minister of justice, Gunnar Strömmer, condemned the “brutal act of violence” and said his department was in close contact with police and was closely monitoring developments.

The deadly incident came as the city prepared to celebrate Valborg – a Swedish bonfire festival marking the arrival of spring – on Wednesday, with an event to be attended by thousands of people.

Strömmer said: “A brutal act of violence has occurred in central Uppsala. The police have confirmed that three people have lost their lives.

“This at the same time as the whole of Uppsala has begun the Valborg weekend. What has happened is extraordinarily serious.”

Trains coming in and out of the city were temporarily stopped between about 5.30pm and 6pm local time.

A large police operation was under way near Vaksala Square. TV4 News reported that the incident had taken place inside a hair salon.

Police said they were first alerted to the incident shortly after 5pm when they received several calls from members of the public about loud bangs.

Several people were found with suspected gunshot wounds and police cordoned off a large area while they investigated.

At 7.25pm, police confirmed that three people were dead after the shooting and that relatives were yet to be notified.

“Police are investigating the incident as murder,” the force said in an update. Later a spokesperson said the crime had been declared a special incident.

Three people were killed in a shooting in the Swedish city of Uppsala on Tuesday, police said.

A large area was cordoned off in the centre of Uppsala, a university city 45 miles north of Stockholm, after witnesses described hearing multiple shots at about 5pm local time and seeing people running in different directions and hiding.

A masked person was seen fleeing the crime scene on an electric scooter and a police hunt was under way, said police, who appealed to the public for information.

“Quite soon we encountered three people who appeared to have been shot. They did not need to be taken to hospital,” Magnus Jansson Klarin, a spokesperson for Uppsala police, told Svenska Dagbladet.

“We cannot answer whether there is one or more perpetrators at this time,” he added.

The minister of justice, Gunnar Strömmer, condemned the “brutal act of violence” and said his department was in close contact with police and was closely monitoring developments.

The deadly incident came as the city prepared to celebrate Valborg – a Swedish bonfire festival marking the arrival of spring – on Wednesday, with an event to be attended by thousands of people.

Strömmer said: “A brutal act of violence has occurred in central Uppsala. The police have confirmed that three people have lost their lives.

“This at the same time as the whole of Uppsala has begun the Valborg weekend. What has happened is extraordinarily serious.”

Trains coming in and out of the city were temporarily stopped between about 5.30pm and 6pm local time.

A large police operation was under way near Vaksala Square. TV4 News reported that the incident had taken place inside a hair salon.

Police said they were first alerted to the incident shortly after 5pm when they received several calls from members of the public about loud bangs.

Several people were found with suspected gunshot wounds and police cordoned off a large area while they investigated.

At 7.25pm, police confirmed that three people were dead after the shooting and that relatives were yet to be notified.

“Police are investigating the incident as murder,” the force said in an update. Later a spokesperson said the crime had been declared a special incident.

Iranian journalists have warned of a media crackdown after a series of incidents, the most recent an explosion at a munitions company in which one person was killed and two injured.

The explosion on Tuesday, for which there has been no official explanation, occurred in Isfahan, only two days after a thwarted cyber-attack on the communications infrastructure on Sunday, and a huge explosion on Saturday at the strategic southern port of Shahid Rajaee, near Bandar Abbas.

The death toll from the explosion at the port has increased to 65, with more than 1,000 people injured.

Iran has ruled out foreign involvement in the Shahid Rajaee explosion, pointing instead to negligence and strong evidence that unlabelled combustible chemicals, undeclared to customs, were inappropriately stored, leading to a fire and a deadly chain reaction of explosions. An MP who visited the site put the chances of sabotage at 1%.

Suspicion of cover-ups is rife, however, and the filing of criminal charges against media outlets and activists by the Tehran prosecutor’s office has caused journalists in Iran to voice concern about press freedom. Mizan news agency, the judiciary’s official media outlet, said violators would face legal consequences for attempting to publish “illegal news” about the explosion.

One Tehran-based reporter, speaking to the Guardian on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns, said: “Not only were we warned against ground reporting, we were also banned effectively from sharing reports on social media. In face of a tragedy such as this, what is there to hide? Either the death toll is way more than 70, or they are suppressing the real cause of the explosion. Following the filing of charges, our newsrooms are also self-regulating in fear that they’ll be facing legal consequences.”

Officials have confirmed only that the goods that exploded on Saturday did not appear to have had a digitised reference code as required by Iranian customs law.

As many as 130,000 containers are stored at the port, partly because the lack of infrastructure means customs authorities and government ministries do not process goods for export for weeks, a problem raised by the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on his visit on Sunday.

Iranian officials said on Tuesday that the fire had, after four days, been brought under control and toxic substances had not leaked into the Persian Gulf. Reporting of the explosion has become increasingly difficult, with officials warning against believing foreign media or opposition groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Iranian officials have blamed mislabelling of dangerous cargo, but media outlets have not yet identified the company alleged to have imported the combustible material. The naval branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps insisted that the port was purely commercial, and said military goods did not pass through.

Tuesday’s factory explosion was reported to have happened at the Ava Nar Parsian chemicals company, located in the Meymeh district of Isfahan, a site overseen by Iran’s national security council.

The official committee investigating Sunday’s port explosion has said “failures in observing safety principles and passive defence have been confirmed”.

Shahid Rajaee port, with an area of ​​about 2,400 hectares, has an annual capacity to handle 70m tonnes of cargo, and is estimated to process half of Iran’s imports.

Mohammad Mehdi Shahriari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission, said four committees were examining potential causes, including the possibility that Israel had been involved in an attempt to disrupt negotiations between the US and Iran over the future of its nuclear programme.

Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker, said parliament was looking at whether any negligence or intent was involved.

A 71-year-old man who has said he played a bit part in a jewellery heist in which Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in 2016 has said he “totally regretted” having participated.

Yunice Abbas is one of 10 people on trial in Paris for having taken part in the robbery on the night of 2-3 October.

He said he had remained in a Paris hotel lobby on the lookout while two other suspects stormed into the US celebrity’s room, tied her up and made away with $10m (£7.5m) worth of her jewels.

Abbas sought to capitalise on the crime by publishing his version of events in a 2021 book titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. On Tuesday a prosecutor held up a copy of the book in court, and the presiding judge asked the author why he had bragged about the theft.

Sitting in the dock in a short-sleeved check shirt, Abbas shook his head vigorously. “It makes me very uneasy,” he said, adding that he “totally regretted” taking part in the theft.

Abbas said he had arrived at the scene of the robbery on a bicycle and left by the same means, dropping a bag of stolen items as he fled. He picked it up but missed a diamond necklace, the only item that police were able to retrieve from the holdup.

Abbas told the hearing on Tuesday that stealing from Kardashian had been one job “too many” and that it had “opened his eyes” to his wrongdoing.

The defendant, who now has Parkinson’s disease, held his right hand over his left placed on his heart throughout the court session. He said it was to stop it from racing when he became anxious.

The presiding judge on Tuesday reviewed the accused’s criminal past.

He listed, among others, a conviction for fake number plates for carrying out robberies, another for equipping cars with secret compartments to hide cannabis and a third for armed robbery in which Abbas held a gun.

Between, he worked as a car mechanic. Abbas said that he had had “moments of weakness” when he needed money. “I fell back on things that I thought were easy shortcuts but only ended up complicating my life,” he said.

Abbas, like all other nine defendants, is not in custody.

Kardashian, 44, is due to testify on 13 May.

Those on trial – nine men and a woman – are mainly in their 60s and 70s with previous criminal records and underworld nicknames such as Old Omar and Blue Eyes.

But the lawyer for one of the victims on Monday was eager to dispel the image of “kind old men” on trial for the robbery during Paris fashion week.

Henri de Beauregard, who represents the night receptionist forced to accompany the robbers to Kardashian’s room, said the public must not fall for the “myth of friendly, Robin Hood-style pensioners”.

Recovery operations to raise the 56-metre British-flagged superyacht Bayesian from the seabed off Sicily, where it sank last summer killing seven people – including the British tech entrepreneur, Mike Lynch – will begin on Wednesday, weather permitting, according to the Italian port authorities.

On 19 August 2024, the luxury vessel, with a 75-metre (246ft) mast, was anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello, in the province of Palermo, when it was struck shortly before dawn by a violent storm. Lynch, once described as Britain’s Bill Gates, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, were among the victims.

Lynch, who in June last year was cleared of fraud charges in the US relating to the purchase of his company, Autonomy, by Hewlett-Packard in 2011, was enjoying a lavish voyage around Sicily to celebrate his acquittal alongside Hannah, and his wife, Angela Baraces, whose company owned the Bayesian.

Among those onboard were Lynch’s attorney from Clifford Chance, Chris Morvillo, and his wife, the jewellery designer Neda Morvillo, and Morgan Stanley International’s chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife, Judy Bloomer, a former psychotherapist. All four died in the incident. The yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, was the seventh person who died.

Fifteen people survived, including Baraces.

Investigators hope the yacht will yield vital clues: whether a series of human errors led to the sinking, as initially suspected, or if other factors were at play. Once ashore, forensic examination will determine if one of the hatches remained open and whether the keel was improperly raised.

The wreckage sits at a depth of 50 metres in the bay of Porticello, which is under surveillance by Italian authorities.

Experts expect the salvage operation to be fiendishly complex.

Sicilian port officials have declared a 650-metre exclusion zone around the sunken vessel, forbidding “any navigation, anchoring, diving, swimming or fishing until the work is complete”. The recovery, which could stretch on for weeks, has been entrusted to Hebo Maritiemservice and Smit International.

A 55-metre barge, the Hebo Lift 2, will arrive in Porticello soon, its 700 sq metre deck carrying a heavy-lift crane, specialist diving apparatus and a remotely operated underwater vehicle. Offshore, the Hebo Lift 10 – one of Europe’s largest floating cranes – will use its 83-metre boom to hoist the yacht from the seabed.

To facilitate the lift, the master mast of the Bayesian – standing 75  metres tall and weighing over 24 tonnes – will be cut away. Once raised, the vessel will be towed to Termini Imerese, where prosecutors have opened an inquiry into suspected manslaughter. The captain, James Cutfield, a New Zealander, and two British crew members, Tim Parker Eaton and Matthew Griffiths, have been placed under investigation.

Being put under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow.

Insurers estimate the salvage will cost about $30m (£22.4m), a bill the Bayesian’s underwriters will pick up.

Experts are baffled by how the Bayesian sank within 60 seconds. Some experts speculate the crew may have underestimated the weather bulletin.

Search efforts began within hours of the incident, with divers from the fire brigade working non-stop.

The first body to be recovered was that of Thomas, on the afternoon of the sinking. Two more bodies were recovered two days later, those of Jonathan Bloomer and Chris Morvillo. In the afternoon, their spouses were also found.

The following day, Mike Lynch’s body was found and a few hours later divers recovered the body of his daughter, Hannah, the seventh and final victim.

All of their bodies have undergone postmortem examinations. Lucio Di Mauro, a forensic doctor and technical consultant for the Morvillo’s family, said the victims all died due to “so-called mechanical asphyxia by drowning”.

“It is important to clarify that, in forensic medicine, the determination of death by drowning is particularly complex, as there is no single pathognomonic lesion that alone allows for an incontrovertible diagnosis,” Di Mauro added. ‘‘Nevertheless, the data collected are consistent with this pathophysiological mechanism.”

Last September, Italian authorities requested additional security around the wreck of the luxury yacht, after fears were raised that material in watertight safes onboard could be of interest to foreign governments.

The authorities were reportedly concerned that two super-encrypted hard drives in the sunken yacht’s watertight safes could fall into the wrong hands.

Recovery operations to raise the 56-metre British-flagged superyacht Bayesian from the seabed off Sicily, where it sank last summer killing seven people – including the British tech entrepreneur, Mike Lynch – will begin on Wednesday, weather permitting, according to the Italian port authorities.

On 19 August 2024, the luxury vessel, with a 75-metre (246ft) mast, was anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello, in the province of Palermo, when it was struck shortly before dawn by a violent storm. Lynch, once described as Britain’s Bill Gates, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, were among the victims.

Lynch, who in June last year was cleared of fraud charges in the US relating to the purchase of his company, Autonomy, by Hewlett-Packard in 2011, was enjoying a lavish voyage around Sicily to celebrate his acquittal alongside Hannah, and his wife, Angela Baraces, whose company owned the Bayesian.

Among those onboard were Lynch’s attorney from Clifford Chance, Chris Morvillo, and his wife, the jewellery designer Neda Morvillo, and Morgan Stanley International’s chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife, Judy Bloomer, a former psychotherapist. All four died in the incident. The yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, was the seventh person who died.

Fifteen people survived, including Baraces.

Investigators hope the yacht will yield vital clues: whether a series of human errors led to the sinking, as initially suspected, or if other factors were at play. Once ashore, forensic examination will determine if one of the hatches remained open and whether the keel was improperly raised.

The wreckage sits at a depth of 50 metres in the bay of Porticello, which is under surveillance by Italian authorities.

Experts expect the salvage operation to be fiendishly complex.

Sicilian port officials have declared a 650-metre exclusion zone around the sunken vessel, forbidding “any navigation, anchoring, diving, swimming or fishing until the work is complete”. The recovery, which could stretch on for weeks, has been entrusted to Hebo Maritiemservice and Smit International.

A 55-metre barge, the Hebo Lift 2, will arrive in Porticello soon, its 700 sq metre deck carrying a heavy-lift crane, specialist diving apparatus and a remotely operated underwater vehicle. Offshore, the Hebo Lift 10 – one of Europe’s largest floating cranes – will use its 83-metre boom to hoist the yacht from the seabed.

To facilitate the lift, the master mast of the Bayesian – standing 75  metres tall and weighing over 24 tonnes – will be cut away. Once raised, the vessel will be towed to Termini Imerese, where prosecutors have opened an inquiry into suspected manslaughter. The captain, James Cutfield, a New Zealander, and two British crew members, Tim Parker Eaton and Matthew Griffiths, have been placed under investigation.

Being put under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow.

Insurers estimate the salvage will cost about $30m (£22.4m), a bill the Bayesian’s underwriters will pick up.

Experts are baffled by how the Bayesian sank within 60 seconds. Some experts speculate the crew may have underestimated the weather bulletin.

Search efforts began within hours of the incident, with divers from the fire brigade working non-stop.

The first body to be recovered was that of Thomas, on the afternoon of the sinking. Two more bodies were recovered two days later, those of Jonathan Bloomer and Chris Morvillo. In the afternoon, their spouses were also found.

The following day, Mike Lynch’s body was found and a few hours later divers recovered the body of his daughter, Hannah, the seventh and final victim.

All of their bodies have undergone postmortem examinations. Lucio Di Mauro, a forensic doctor and technical consultant for the Morvillo’s family, said the victims all died due to “so-called mechanical asphyxia by drowning”.

“It is important to clarify that, in forensic medicine, the determination of death by drowning is particularly complex, as there is no single pathognomonic lesion that alone allows for an incontrovertible diagnosis,” Di Mauro added. ‘‘Nevertheless, the data collected are consistent with this pathophysiological mechanism.”

Last September, Italian authorities requested additional security around the wreck of the luxury yacht, after fears were raised that material in watertight safes onboard could be of interest to foreign governments.

The authorities were reportedly concerned that two super-encrypted hard drives in the sunken yacht’s watertight safes could fall into the wrong hands.

The first 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday, kicking off the long-delayed deployment of an internet from space network that will rival SpaceX’s Starlink.

The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon plans to send into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper, a $10bn effort announced in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses and governments – customers that SpaceX has courted for years with its powerful Starlink business.

Sitting atop an Atlas V rocket from the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint-venture United Launch Alliance, the batch of 27 satellites was lofted into space at 7pm EDT from the rocket company’s launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Bad weather scrubbed an initial launch attempt on 9 April.

Kuiper is arguably Amazon’s biggest bet under way, pitting it against Starlink as well as global telecommunications providers like AT&T and T-Mobile. The company has positioned the service as a boon to rural areas where connectivity is sparse or nonexistent.

The mission to deploy the first operational satellites has been delayed more than a year – Amazon once hoped it could launch the inaugural batch in early 2024. The company faces a deadline set by the US Federal Communications Commission to deploy half its constellation, 1,618 satellites, by mid-2026, but its slower start means Amazon is likely to seek an extension, analysts say.

Hours or possibly days after the launch, Amazon is expected to publicly confirm initial contact with all of the satellites from its mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. If all goes as planned, the company said it expects to “begin delivering service to customers later this year”.

ULA could launch up to five more Kuiper missions this year, the ULA CEO, Tory Bruno, told Reuters in an interview this month. Amazon said in a 2020 FCC filing that it could begin service in some northern and southern regions at 578 satellites, with coverage expanding toward Earth’s equator as the company launches more satellites.

The web services and e-commerce giant’s Project Kuiper is an ambitious foray into space, with a late start in a market dominated by SpaceX. But Amazon executives see the company’s deep consumer product experience and established cloud computing business that Kuiper will connect with as an edge over Starlink.

Amazon launched two prototype satellites in 2023 in tests it said were successful, before de-orbiting them in 2024. It had been relatively quiet about the program’s development until announcing its first Kuiper launch plans earlier this month.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with a unique edge as both a satellite operator and launch company with its reusable Falcon 9, has put more than 8,000 Starlink satellites in orbit since 2019, marking its 250th dedicated Starlink launch on Monday. Its deployment pace has hastened to at least one Starlink mission a week, each rocket with roughly two dozen satellites on board to expand the network’s bandwidth and replace outdated satellites.

That quick pace has helped Musk’s company amass more than 5 million internet users across 125 countries, upend the global satellite communications market and woo military and intelligence agencies that have sought to use Starlink and its manufacturing line for sensitive national security programs.

The Amazon executive chair, Jeff Bezos, has voiced confidence that Kuiper can compete with Starlink, telling Reuters in a January interview “there’s insatiable demand” for internet.

“There’s room for lots of winners there. I predict Starlink will continue to be successful, and I predict Kuiper will be successful as well,” he said.

“It will be a primarily commercial system, but there will be defense uses for these LEO constellations, no doubt,” he added, referring to low-Earth orbit.

Amazon in 2023 revealed its Kuiper consumer terminals, an LP vinyl record-sized antenna that communicates with Kuiper satellites overhead, as well as a smaller terminal whose size it compares to its e-book Kindle device. The company expects to make tens of millions of the devices for under $400 each.

Amazon in 2022 booked 83 rocket launches from ULA, France’s Arianespace and Blue Origin, Bezos’s space company, snagging the industry’s biggest-ever launch deal as it prepared to begin Kuiper deployment.

US sailors had to leap for their lives when a fighter jet fell off a navy aircraft carrier that was reportedly making evasive maneuvers to avoid Houthi militant fire in the Red Sea on Monday.

The F/A-18 fighter Super Hornet jet, along with the vehicle towing it into place on the deck of the USS Harry S Truman, rolled right out of the hangar and into the water, the navy said.

Unnamed US officials indicated to CNN that the ship was swerving to avoid incoming fire from Yemen’s Houthi rebel force. Carriers make a zigzag maneuver when attempting to evade missile fire, causing them to list to one side.

An official account of the ship’s movements was awaited on Tuesday as an investigation was being carried out.

The Truman has been patrolling in the Middle East for several months, and recently had its stint extended by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

It is one of two US aircraft carriers operating in the area, where US forces have been striking the Houthis on a near daily basis using fighter jets, bombers, ships and drones.

“The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” the navy said. The jet was part of Strike Fighter Squadron 136.

The crew members who were in the pilot seat of the Super Hornet and on the small towing tractor both jumped out before the jet and the tug went into the Red Sea. Fighter jets are routinely towed around the hangar deck to park where they are needed.

Monday’s incident was the second F/A-18 operating off the Truman to be lost in six months, after one was mistakenly shot down by the USS Gettysburg late last year.

Associated Press contributed reporting

The drama on Wisteria Lane looks set to continue with a new iteration of the hit ABC show Desperate Housewives in development.

The show is scheduled at Onyx Collective, with Kerry Washington to executive-produce along with Pilar Savone and Natalie Chaidez. The latter, who recently worked on The Flight Attendant, will also write the spin-off series, currently titled Wisteria Lane.

The series, first reported by Deadline, will purportedly be a fun, dark, sexy soap/mystery set among five different frenemies who live on a picture-perfect cul-de-sac with the same name as the original series. “On the surface, all the Wisteria neighbors are living the dream: beautiful homes, gorgeous families, shiny SUVs in the driveway,” according to the initial report. “But behind those white-picket fences and smiling Insta posts are SECRETS.”

The original series, created by Marc Cherry starring Teri Hatcher, Eva Longoria, Nicolette Sheridan, Felicity Huffman and Marcia Cross, became a quick hit in 2004. It ran for eight seasons and more than 200 episodes on ABC, racking up 38 Emmy nominations and a win for Huffman, for best comedy actress, in 2005.

It’s unclear whether Washington will star in the new series, which falls under her Simpson Street banner. Cherry was not involved in the pitch but may still collaborate on the project, sources told Deadline.

The news comes on the heels of the 20th anniversary of Desperate Housewives’ premiere last fall, which brought a new wave of nostalgia and speculation over a reboot. In November, Cherry told People that “about 70,000 people” had asked him about a reboot, but that he would probably set it in an earlier period. “I would probably want to do the idea maybe in an earlier decade. Because the character I miss writing the most is actually Wisteria Lane,” he said. “That was the most fun playground anyone in the history of television has ever had, because we owned the whole street.” The show’s set remains a tourist attraction at Universal Studios and has been used for numerous films and commercials.

The original cast have engaged with reboot talk, as well, with Longoria telling Stellar Magazine earlier this month that she “would be the first person” to sign up for a new Desperate Housewives. As of now, there are no plans for any of the original cast members to appear on the new Wisteria Lane.

Kharmel Cochrane, the casting director of Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has defended the choice of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi for the leading roles.

Speaking at the Sands film festival in Scotland, Cochrane responded to criticism of both actors’ ages and Elordi’s ethnicity by saying there was “no need to be accurate” as the source material is “just a book”, Deadline reported.

Brontë’s novel is set in the late 1700s in rural Yorkshire and depicts the passionate relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, an orphan fostered by her father, who is described in the book as having dark hair, dark eyes and dark skin. Many believe the character is meant to hail from a Romany or Gypsy background, which accounts for much of the prejudice against him.

Most big and small screen adaptations of the novel have ignored this, with the character having been played by actors including Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy and Timothy Dalton. However, Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation did cast a mixed race actor, James Howson, in the role.

Both Howson and his co-star, Kaya Scodelario, were also a similar age to the characters in the novel, who are in their early 20s for much of the story. Robbie is 34, while Elordi – who also hails from Australia – is 27.

“There was one Instagram comment that said the casting director should be shot,” said Cochrane. “But just wait till you see it, and then you can decide whether you want to shoot me or not. But you really don’t need to be accurate. It’s just a book. That is not based on real life. It’s all art.”

She continued: “There’s definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy. Wait until you see the set design, because that is even more shocking. And there may or may not be a dog collar in it.”

Her response also met with online comebacks. “So they saw the whitewashing backlash and proceeded to ignore it,” wrote one user on X. Another flagged Wuthering Heights’ engagement with contemporary issues. “A classic book that famously talks about class politics, racism & the patriarchal system of the time.”

Elordi starred in Fennell’s irreverent black comedy Saltburn, released in 2023, loosely inspired by Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. The director won an Oscar in 2021 for the screenplay of her debut film, Promising Young Woman.

Robbie starred in and produced Barbie, the biggest film of 2023. Leaked photographs of her on set of Fennell’s film in an anachronistic wedding dress attracted ire earlier this year.