The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday promised a multi-phased response to Yemen’s Houthis after the Iran-backed militants struck the area of Israel’s main airport with a missile.

“We have acted against them in the past and we will act in the future, but I cannot go into detail … it will not happen in one bang, but there will be many bangs,” Netanyahu said in a video published on the Telegram messaging platform.

European and US carriers have cancelled flights for the next few days after the missile landed near Ben Gurion international airport. After a ceasefire deal with the Palestinian militant group Hamas in January, many foreign carriers had begun to resume flights to Israel after halting them for much of the last year and a half.

Delta Air Lines said it had cancelled Sunday’s flight from JFK in New York to Tel Aviv and the return flight from Tel Aviv on Monday.

Lufthansa Group, which includes Lufthansa, Swiss, Brussels and Austrian, said it had halted flights to and from Tel Aviv through to Tuesday due to the situation. ITA said it had cancelled flights from Italy to Israel through to Wednesday, while Air France cancelled flights on Sunday, saying customers were being transferred to flights on Monday.

Ryanair suspended flights on Sunday but flights are still scheduled for Monday, according to the Israel Airports Authority.

Claiming responsibility for the strike that sent a plume of smoke into the air and caused panic among passengers in the terminal building, the Houthis’ military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said Israel’s main airport was “no longer safe for air travel”.

The Houthis, who control swathes of Yemen, began targeting Israel and Red Sea shipping in late 2023, during the early days of the war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.

The US president, Donald Trump, in March ordered large-scale strikes against the Houthis to reduce their capabilities and deter them from targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Reuters and Agence-France Presse contributed to this report

Anthony Albanese says his job is to “represent Australia’s national interest” after his thumping election win, shrugging off questions about when he might visit the United States to speak to Donald Trump about tariffs and trade.

The re-elected prime minister said he had spoken to the leaders of Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, France and the UK, and looked forward to calls with the presidents of Indonesia and Ukraine.

“My job here is to represent Australia’s national interest and that’s what I’ll be doing, and the first thing I’ll be doing is going to Canberra,” he said.

Trump cast a long shadow over the opposition’s campaign, particularly after early Coalition policies including a “government efficiency” push and public service cuts proved unpopular. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who lost his own seat of Dickson, had intermittently flirted with Trump-style politics, as did the shadow minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, whose mid-campaign call to “make Australia great again” was seen as a decisive moment by some in the Labor government.

Albanese promised that Labor would be “a disciplined, orderly government” in its second term. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government would use its increased parliamentary majority to address challenges in housing, the renewable energy transition and boosting economic productivity, and in emerging technological issues including artificial intelligence.

The work for Labor began immediately after Saturday night’s thumping win, with Albanese heading back to Canberra after a celebratory coffee and pastry in his Sydney electorate, and Chalmers receiving briefings from the Treasury early on Sunday.

The makeup of the Senate is still to be confirmed but Albanese is likely to enjoy one of the most progressive parliaments in Australian history. The ALP national president, Wayne Swan, said it was an opportunity for Albanese to “further reshape our nation as a prosperous, egalitarian and forward-looking society”, with some in Labor already thinking the size of the win and the decimation of the Liberal party as being an opening to lock down the Treasury benches for many years to come.

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“We’re not getting carried away with it,” Albanese said in Leichhardt on Sunday morning. “We’ve got a big job to do. We thank the Australian people for having faith in us.

“I think we’ve been a good government but we’ve got a good, positive agenda, and that’s what Australian people voted for yesterday.”

The Australian Electoral Commission has Labor leading in 73 seats, with a further nine likely, and about 20 still in play. The ABC has called 85 seats for Labor, with 18 still in doubt. Labor could end up with 90 or more, with the Coalition reduced to the low 40s.

The prime minister, in his victory speech on Saturday night, raised workers’ rights, housing, gender equality, childcare, the NDIS and Indigenous reconciliation as the priorities of his second-term government.

“We will be a disciplined, orderly government in our second term as we have been in our first.”

On Sunday morning Albanese visited Bar Italia, a cafe in his Grayndler electorate, in Sydney’s inner west, to have breakfast with a small group of supporters and friends. Joined by the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, and the MP Jerome Laxale, who turned Bennelong from notionally Liberal seat to a safe Labor seat with a 60-40 margin, Albanese posed for selfies with other cafe patrons and scooped gelato into cones and cups for a few customers.

He told one patron that the election result was “humbling”, then joked that Labor had “scooped up more than a few” seats.

Chalmers said the election result was “beyond even our most optimistic expectations”, pointing to unexpected seats like Petrie now likely to fall Labor’s way. On the ABC’s Insiders, the treasurer said Labor needed to approach its second term with “humility”, pointing to challenges including the cost of living and housing crisis.

“We know that this second term has been given to us by the Australian people because they want stability in uncertain times, and not because they think we’ve solved every challenge in our economy or in our society more broadly, but because we’re better-placed to work towards solving some of those challenges,” he said.

Chalmers said Labor had an “ambitious” agenda to implement but tempered expectations for further bolder reforms by cautioning that the government would not control the Senate.

“We have a big agenda,” he said. “We’re looking forward to implementing it with confidence, with the confidence that comes from a big majority, a substantial majority.

“We have to build more homes. We’ve got to get this energy transformation right. We’ve got to do more to embrace technology, particularly the AI opportunity. There’s a huge agenda there for us.”

Chalmers said he had received a briefing from the Treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy, at 6.45am and pointed to boosting productivity in the economy as the major objective of his next few years.

“The first term was primarily inflation without forgetting productivity,” he said. “The second term will be primarily productivity without forgetting inflation … And a much broader sense of [productivity].

“Human capital. Competition policy. Technology. Energy. The care economy. These are where we’re going to find the productivity gains – and not quickly, but over the medium term.”

The scale of Labor’s victory was not publicly foreshadowed by any in the government; indeed, numerous Labor sources told Guardian Australia that several seats, including Hughes and Moore, had not been on their radar. Another critical question is how the Liberal party will rebuild after its moderate wing was all but wiped out, with the party now having little representation in Australia’s major cities.

Swan, who was the treasurer under Kevin Rudd, called the result a “generational opportunity” for Labor and a “a moment to rejuvenate our party” with a more diverse grassroots membership.

“We need to capitalise by bringing more Australians – especially working Australians – into the ranks of our great party,” he said. “Because the surest way to safeguard Labor’s achievements and its future work is to build an even stronger party, with deeper grassroots.

“Our Tory opponents are in a withered state but they will reorganise and return. Perhaps in even darker guise than we saw this election. We need to be ready for that.

“We must build a larger and more representative membership that can campaign throughout the cycle, not just at election time.”

Joe Biden’s top staff debated the possibility of the embattled Democratic president taking a cognitive test last year as he geared up for re-election but eventually decided against the idea, a new book is set to reveal.

Debate around Biden’s mental acuity and his age was an acute issue during the run up to the 2024 election, which eventually saw Biden step down from his re-election campaign in favor of his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

Now a new book by three senior US political journalists called 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America has revealed that Biden’s aides seriously discussed a cognitive test, reported the New York Times – one of whose journalists is an author of the book.

“Biden’s aides were confident that he would pass a cognitive test, according to the book, but they worried that the mere fact of his taking one would raise new questions about his mental abilities,” the paper said.

The book reported that the discussion took place in February 2024. No such test was taken in the end.

However, that summer Biden turned in a poor debate performance against Donald Trump that shocked voters and his fellow Democrats. Eventually, amid intense pressure to step down, Biden stood aside for Harris. Harris then went on to lose the presidential election to Trump, ushering in the former reality TV star and real estate mogul’s second term.

Donald Trump has been accused of mocking the election of a new leader of the Catholic church after posting an artificial intelligence-generated picture of himself as the pope on social media.

The image, shared on Friday night on Trump’s Truth Social site and the White House’s official X account, raised eyebrows at the Vatican, which is still in the period of nine days of official mourning after Pope Francis’s funeral on 26 April.

Featuring Trump in a white cassock, a gold crucifix pendant and mitre, or bishop’s hat, and with his index finger pointed towards the sky, the image was the topic of several questions during the Vatican’s daily conclave briefing on Saturday.

It came as cardinals from around the world gathered in Rome before the conclave, the secret election process to choose a new leader of the 1.4-billion-strong Catholic church, and just days after Trump joked he would “like to be pope”.

The former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi said the image was shameful. “This is an image that offends believers, insults institutions and shows that the leader of the rightwing world enjoys clowning around,” he wrote on X.

In the US, the New York State Catholic Conference, which represents the bishops of the state, accused Trump of mockery.

“There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President,” they wrote. “We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.”

Italian and Spanish news reports lamented its poor taste and said it was offensive, given that the period of official mourning was still under way. Italy’s left-leaning la Repubblica also featured the image on its homepage Saturday with a commentary accusing Trump of “pathological megalomania”.

Asked to respond to the criticism, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Trump had “been a staunch champion for Catholics and religious liberty”.

Trump, who is not a Catholic and does not attend church regularly, attended the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome eight days ago.

The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, piled on what the New York Catholic leaders had branded mockery.

“I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope. This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility!” he wrote on X. “The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smoke …. Trump MMXXVIII!”

Jack Posobiec, a prominent far-right influencer and Trump ally who recently participated in a Catholic prayer event in March at Trump’s Florida resort, also defended the president.

“I’m Catholic. We’ve all been making jokes about the upcoming Pope selection all week. It’s called a sense of humour,” he wrote on X.

Donald Trump said “I don’t know” when asked if he needed to uphold the US constitution when it comes to giving immigrants the right of due process as he gave a wide-ranging TV interview broadcast on Sunday.

At the same time the US president also said he saw himself as leaving office at the end of his current term and not seeking a third one – something he has not previously always been consistent on even though a third term is widely seen as unconstitutional.

But when it comes to giving immigrants full rights in US law in the face of Trump’s long-promised campaign of mass deportations, Trump was less clear on the need for due process and following US law and court decisions.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump replied when asked by Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker whether he agreed with his secretary of state Marco Rubio who had previously expressed support for the idea that everyone had the right to due process.

When pressed Trump continued: “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the supreme court said. What you said is not what I heard the supreme court said. They have a different interpretation,” the US president added.

Trump also gave his clearest indication to date that he plans to leave office at the end of his second term, acknowledging the constitutional constraints preventing him from seeking a third term.

“I’ll be an eight-year president, I’ll be a two-term president. I always thought that was very important,” Trump said. But he acknowledged that some people want him to serve a third term, which is currently prohibited by a constitutional amendment passed in 1947.

“I have never had requests so strong as that,” told the broadcaster. “But it’s something that, to the best of my knowledge, you’re not allowed to do. I don’t know if that’s constitutional that they’re not allowing you to do it or anything else.”

“I’m looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody, ideally a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward,” he added.

Trump described the support for a third term as sign of approval, “because they like the job I’m doing, and it’s a compliment. It’s really a great compliment.”

The president’s comments downplaying the idea of a third term come as the Trump Organization began selling Trump 2028-branded red hats. The $50 hats are listed with the description: “The future looks bright! Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.”

In January, Tennessee Republican congressman Andy Ogles introduced a resolution in January seeking to amend the Constitution to allow the president to be elected for up to three terms. That was followed by calls to reaffirm the 22nd amendment’s prohibition on a third term.

Trump refused to be drawn on whom he might support as a successor, a position typical to president’s without the option to run again who do not want to be seen as lame ducks as party succession issues begin to bubble up.

Trump praised both vice president JD Vance and Rubio – two names that are consistently mentioned – and was asked if he saw Vance as his successor.

“It could very well be … I don’t want to get involved in that. I think he’s a fantastic, brilliant guy. Marco is great. There’s a lot of them that are great. I also see tremendous unity. But certainly you would say that somebody’s the VP, if that person is outstanding, I guess that person would have an advantage.”

French police are investigating a series of kidnappings of investors linked to cryptocurrency after a 60-year-old man had a finger chopped off by attackers who demanded his crypto-millionaire son pay a ransom.

In the latest of several kidnappings of cryptocurrency figures in France and western Europe, the man, who owned a cryptocurrency marketing company with his son, was freed from a house south of Paris on Saturday night. He had been held for more than two days.

One of the man’s fingers had been chopped off and investigators feared further mutilations could have happened if he had not been rescued.

The man, who has not been publicly identified, was abducted in broad daylight at 10.30am on Thursday morning as he walked down a street in Paris’s 14th arrondissement. Four men in ski masks forced him into a delivery van.

He was freed by armed police in a raid at 9pm on Saturday night from a house 20km (12 miles) south of Paris, in the Essonne area. Five suspects in their 20s were arrested at the house.

The state prosecutor said in a statement: “The victim appears to be the father of a man who made his fortune in cryptocurrencies, with the crime involving a ransom demand.”

The victim’s wife told investigators that her husband and wealthy son, who both owned a crypto marketing firm in Malta, had received threats in the past, a police source said.

Le Parisien reported that the attackers had demanded a ransom of €5-7m (£4-6m), which was not paid. The five kidnapping suspects, aged between 20 and 27, were still being questioned by police on Sunday.

The kidnapping is the latest in a series of abductions of cryptocurrency figures in France and neighbouring countries.

David Balland, the co-founder of the crypto firm Ledger, which is valued at more than $1bn , was abducted with his partner on 21 January at their home in Méreau, near Bourges in central France. He also had a finger cut off.

The attackers arrived at Balland’s house in the early hours of the morning, taking him and his partner and separating them. Balland was taken to a house in the town of Châteauroux, where one of his fingers was cut off.

Police were contacted by Balland’s business partner who received a video of the finger alongside a demand for a large ransom in cryptocurrency, of around €10m. Balland was freed in a police raid soon after. His partner was found tied up in the boot of a car in a carpark in the Essonne area south of Paris the next day.

Nine suspects are under criminal investigation in that case, including the alleged ringleader, 26, who has a police record for a previous kidnapping.

In December 2024, the 56-year-old father of a French cryptocurrency influencer based in Dubai, was the target of an alleged kidnapping in eastern France, local media reported. Attackers arrived at the man’s home, tied up his wife and daughter and forced him into a car.

The man’s influencer son received a ransom demand and contacted police. The two women were then quickly freed. The father was only discovered 24 hours later in the boot of a car in Normandy, tied up and showing signs of physical violence, having been sprinkled with petrol.

Other abductions of cryptocurrency figures or their partners were reported in Spain and Belgium in the past five months.

French police are investigating a series of kidnappings of investors linked to cryptocurrency after a 60-year-old man had a finger chopped off by attackers who demanded his crypto-millionaire son pay a ransom.

In the latest of several kidnappings of cryptocurrency figures in France and western Europe, the man, who owned a cryptocurrency marketing company with his son, was freed from a house south of Paris on Saturday night. He had been held for more than two days.

One of the man’s fingers had been chopped off and investigators feared further mutilations could have happened if he had not been rescued.

The man, who has not been publicly identified, was abducted in broad daylight at 10.30am on Thursday morning as he walked down a street in Paris’s 14th arrondissement. Four men in ski masks forced him into a delivery van.

He was freed by armed police in a raid at 9pm on Saturday night from a house 20km (12 miles) south of Paris, in the Essonne area. Five suspects in their 20s were arrested at the house.

The state prosecutor said in a statement: “The victim appears to be the father of a man who made his fortune in cryptocurrencies, with the crime involving a ransom demand.”

The victim’s wife told investigators that her husband and wealthy son, who both owned a crypto marketing firm in Malta, had received threats in the past, a police source said.

Le Parisien reported that the attackers had demanded a ransom of €5-7m (£4-6m), which was not paid. The five kidnapping suspects, aged between 20 and 27, were still being questioned by police on Sunday.

The kidnapping is the latest in a series of abductions of cryptocurrency figures in France and neighbouring countries.

David Balland, the co-founder of the crypto firm Ledger, which is valued at more than $1bn , was abducted with his partner on 21 January at their home in Méreau, near Bourges in central France. He also had a finger cut off.

The attackers arrived at Balland’s house in the early hours of the morning, taking him and his partner and separating them. Balland was taken to a house in the town of Châteauroux, where one of his fingers was cut off.

Police were contacted by Balland’s business partner who received a video of the finger alongside a demand for a large ransom in cryptocurrency, of around €10m. Balland was freed in a police raid soon after. His partner was found tied up in the boot of a car in a carpark in the Essonne area south of Paris the next day.

Nine suspects are under criminal investigation in that case, including the alleged ringleader, 26, who has a police record for a previous kidnapping.

In December 2024, the 56-year-old father of a French cryptocurrency influencer based in Dubai, was the target of an alleged kidnapping in eastern France, local media reported. Attackers arrived at the man’s home, tied up his wife and daughter and forced him into a car.

The man’s influencer son received a ransom demand and contacted police. The two women were then quickly freed. The father was only discovered 24 hours later in the boot of a car in Normandy, tied up and showing signs of physical violence, having been sprinkled with petrol.

Other abductions of cryptocurrency figures or their partners were reported in Spain and Belgium in the past five months.

Thousands of victims of abuse in juvenile facilities and foster homes across Los Angeles are being compensated for decades of mistreatment in a historic settlement, but some say the money will never rectify a system that hurt vulnerable children and protected their abusers.

LA county officials this week unanimously approved a landmark $4bn settlement to address nearly 7,000 claims of sexual abuse at county-run facilities. Some of those claims date back to the 1950s, but most took place throughout the 1980s through the 2000s. The payout is the largest of its kind in US history.

Many of the claims centered around an county-run foster home for young Angelenos, the shuttered MacLaren children’s center. The facility, which opened in 1961 as a temporary shelter for youth waiting to be placed in foster care, ended up overcrowded, with many children staying for months rather than the days they were otherwise meant to be there.

Over the decades, victims described being drugged and abused by carers, as well as threats of retaliation if they came forward. Many remembered periods of violence and said memories of their experiences had stayed with them throughout their lives.

A grand jury report later found the center had hired employees with criminal records.

MacLaren children’s center closed in 2003 amid years of concerns from civil rights groups and a lawsuit from the ACLU. No one has been arrested in connection with the abuses committed there, but officials have said a small number of cases have been referred to the district attorney for investigation.

Jimmy Vigil, now a mental health case manager in California, was incarcerated at another facility, the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, when he was 14. He described abuse by a physician who ordered him locked in handcuffs for hours when he called out for help.

Staff members, Vigil said, would arrange for new residents to clash with others in makeshift gangs to “watch us fight”. When he tried to file a complaint with a case manager, she advised him to “pick [his] battles wisely” and disconnected a call with his mother as he tried to detail his mistreatment.

“It doesn’t make me feel any sense of relief,” Vigil, 45, told the Guardian of the settlement deal. “It doesn’t undo anything. I went through some ordeals while I was incarcerated as an adolescent that required me to participate in years and years of therapy.”

“The way that the probationary staff ran that system, it was making us worse,” he added. “The irony is they called us monsters, [but] they created those monsters. They did not focus on rehab; they didn’t focus on therapy; they did not focus on teaching young men and women a better path.”

Kathryn Barger, a Los Angeles county supervisor, said the settlement was “unlike any other we have seen” and that she never imagined “those hired to protect and serve our most vulnerable could so profoundly betray their duty”.

“This recommendation is historic, and unfortunately, not for good reason,” Barger said in a statement. “This $4bn settlement marks a dark chapter in our history. It attempts to acknowledge and provide compensation for horrific past wrongs.”

“It is a sobering reckoning,” she went on. “An indictment of abuses of power by individuals who were trusted to protect our youth, a reflection of failed oversight systems, and a painful reminder of how vulnerable voices were ignored or silenced.”

Barger added the county would now face a great challenge to rebuild the public’s trust in its ability to protect the most vulnerable across Los Angeles.

The county has proposed reforms it described as major policy and legislative changes, including the creation of a countywide hotline to report child sexual abuse against county employees. The reforms would also see a system created to expedite investigations and allow the county to immediately terminate and refer to law enforcement anyone subject to substantiated allegations.

Vigil said while he was glad reforms would help children currently in the foster system and that money would soon flow to other victims that could benefit from financial support after a lifetime of trauma, closure would not come until those responsible for abuse were held accountable.

“For me the ultimate justice would be, which I know is probably never going to happen, would be to have these individuals that hurt us when we were children to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he said. “I feel like they’ve gotten away with this.”

The $4bn settlement came after California made a major change to the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims in 2020 and established a three-year “look-back window” to allow victims to file claims for old instances of abuse.

The short window to revive or file new claims led to a surge in lawsuits. Dozens of cases were filed against religious groups, nonprofits and both public and private schools, including against alleged perpetrators who have been dead for decades, according to The Los Angeles Times.

California had previously issued a temporary lift on the statute of limitations in 2003 after the first revelations about widespread abuse within the Catholic Church came to light.

Adam Slater, a lead counsel in the LA county settlement negotiations, said the deal was only possible due to the “bravery of the survivors, the perseverance of counsel, and the willingness of the county of Los Angeles to fully confront its problem head-on and help the generations of children it harmed find closure”.

His firm represented about 3,500 victims, many of whom were placed in MacLaren.

“When our firm filed some of the earliest complaints three years ago, we knew the abuse they described was horrific, traumatic, and widespread, but we truly had no idea about the magnitude of Los Angeles’ institutional sexual abuse problem until we began investigating and other survivors came forward,” Slater said in a statement.

“While no amount of money can erase the horrors that they endured, this agreement acknowledges the profound harm inflicted on thousands of children over the course of decades.”

Fesia Davenport, the chief executive officer of Los Angeles county, apologized on behalf of the county earlier this year.

“The historic scope of this settlement makes clear that we are committed to helping the survivors recover and rebuild their lives – and to making and enforcing the systemic changes needed to keep young people safe,” Davenport said.

She went on to say the deal would be the costliest in the history of the county and would have a “significant” impact on its budget for years. That figure will be paid for from cash reserves, the issuance of court bonds and cuts to the departmental budget.

Annual payments are expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year through 2030, but the county will still be paying the settlement through the 2050 fiscal year.

The county has an annual budget of about $48bn.

“We are going to be paying hundreds of millions of dollars that could be invested into the communities, into parks, libraries, beaches, public social services, until 2050,” Davenport added to the Los Angeles Times.

Money is expected to flow towards victims beginning in January.

Shell is talking to advisers about the potential for a takeover of the rival oil producer BP, according to reports.

The oil major has been discussing the feasibility and merits of a takeover of BP with its advisers in recent weeks, according to a report from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter.

If this were to happen, it would mark one of the biggest deals ever in the oil and gas industry.

Speculation about a possible takeover comes as BP shares have suffered this year. They have fallen by more than 30% in the past 12 months as a turnaround plan under the chief executive, Murray Auchincloss, has failed to inspire investors and oil prices have fallen.

Shell may also wait for BP to reach out for another possible suitor to make the first move, those familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Deliberations are allegedly still in the early stages, and Shell could decide to focus on share buybacks and smaller acquisitions rather than such a big merger, according to the report.

The combination of Britain’s biggest oil majors would be one of the biggest deals ever in the sector. Shell’s market value of £145.6bn is more than double the size of BP, at £55.9bn.

A spokesperson for Shell told the Guardian: “As we have said many times before, we are sharply focused on capturing the value in Shell through continuing to focus on performance, discipline and simplification.”

A spokesperson for BP declined to comment.

Earlier this year Auchincloss promised to “fundamentally reset” BP’s strategy, with the changes expected to include a watering down of its climate commitments and the pursuit of new fossil fuel projects in an attempt to bolster its market value.

The company’s profits dropped by almost 50% in the first three months of this year to $1.4bn (£1bn), from $2.7bn in the same period last year. Its flagging share price has also made the company a target for the New York hedge fund Elliott Management.

BP shares have lagged behind other oil and gas companies in recent years after its former chief executive Bernard Looney set the company on course to become a net zero energy company. He left BP abruptly in September 2023 after admitting he failed to fully disclose his relationships with female colleagues to the board.

Last week Shell reported adjusted profits of $5.6bn in its first quarter, down 28% compared with the same period last year but ahead of what City analysts had been expecting.

Wael Sawan, the chief executive of Shell, told the Financial Times last week that he would rather buy back more of the company’s own shares than launch a takeover bid for BP.

“We will always look at these things, but you are also looking to see what is the alternative,” he told the paper. “Right now, buying back Shell for us continues to be absolutely the right alternative to go for.”

Romanians are voting in a presidential election rerun that could propel to power an ultranationalist who opposes military aid to Ukraine, has fiercely criticised the EU’s leadership and describes himself as a “natural ally” of Donald Trump.

George Simion, 38, is comfortably ahead in the opinion polls before the first-round vote in the EU and Nato member state, nearly six months after the original ballot was cancelled amid evidence of an alleged “massive” Russian influence campaign.

The election is being closely watched: a far-right victory could lead to Romania, which shares a border with Ukraine, veering from its pro-western path and becoming another disruptive force within the bloc and the transatlantic defence alliance.

After the election was cancelled, hard-right politicians worldwide, including senior Trump administration figures, accused Bucharest of trampling on free speech and ignoring “the voice of the people”. The US vice-president, JD Vance, accused Romania’s authorities of “cancelling elections because you don’t like the result”.

The original vote last November was won by Călin Georgescu, a far-right, anti-EU, Moscow-friendly independent who declared zero campaign spending but surged from less than 5% days before the vote to finish first on 23%.

The constitutional court annulled the vote after declassified intelligence documents revealed an alleged Russian influence operation, including multiple cyber-attacks on the electoral IT system and large-scale social media meddling in Georgescu’s favour.

In February, Georgescu, who denies any wrongdoing, was placed under investigation on counts including misreporting campaign finances, misuse of digital technology and promoting fascist groups, and in March he was barred from standing in the rerun.

Simion hopes to benefit from public anger at the cancellation and Georgescu’s disbarment. “It is clear a strong anti-western trend has been built up and Romania’s direction is at unprecedented risk,” said Cristian Pîrvulescu, a political scientist.

As in the original campaign, social media – especially TikTok – is playing a major part. Simion, whose posts combine nationalist rhetoric with an emotionally charged delivery and direct-to-camera speeches, has 1.3 million followers on the app.

“The time for rebirth has come,” he said in a video posted on Tuesday. “Our nation will find its way again … We have within us the power to be reborn and to move forward, more united and stronger.”

The far-right candidate, whose party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), began as an anti-vaxx movement during the pandemic, aims to bring Georgescu into government if he wins, though the far right does not have a parliamentary majority.

Describing himself as “more moderate” than Georgescu, Simion has repeatedly insisted on Romania’s “sovereignty”. He has called for territories that were part of Romania but were ceded to the USSR in the second world war and are now part of Moldova and Ukraine to be returned to Romania. Simion is banned from entering both Moldova and Ukraine.

In contrast to Georgescu, however, Simion has frequently denounced Russia, while lashing out at Brussels and praising Trump’s Republicans in the US. He has said he aims to set up an alliance of countries within the EU “in the spirit of Maga”.

On about 30% in the polls, Simion is about 10 points clear of his two centrist rivals, the mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, and Crin Antonescu, backed by the ruling Social Democratic party (PSD) and centre-right National Liberal party (PNL).

Despite his convincing polling lead, it appears unlikely Simion will secure the 50% of the vote needed to win outright on Sunday. Instead, he is seen advancing to a second-round runoff, due on 18 May, against either Antonescu or Dan.

Romania’s president has a semi-executive role with considerable powers over foreign policy, national security, defence spending and judicial appointments. They also represent the country on the international stage and can veto important EU votes.

If he is elected, Simion has said he will make public the records of meetings that led to the original election being cancelled, and also reveal “how much we have contributed to the war effort in Ukraine, to the detriment of Romanian children and our elderly”.

Having placed fourth in the November ballot, he refused to participate in TV election debates this week, saying the annulment was a “coup d’état”, Georgescu should have been at the table, and he was staying away “out of respect for the will of the people”.

Polling stations opened at 7am local time on Sunday and close at 9pm, with the first exit polls expected soon after. In the event of a close result, the final outcome could take many hours to be confirmed, as between 5% and 7% of votes are cast abroad.

France and the EU are to step up their efforts to attract US-based scientists hit by Donald Trump’s crackdown on academia, as they prepare announcements on incentives for researchers to settle in Europe.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, alongside the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will make speeches on Monday morning at Sorbonne University in Paris, flanked by European university leaders and researchers, in which they are expected to announce potential incentives and protections for researchers seeking to relocate to Europe.

The event, bringing together European academics and European commissioners, is the latest push to open Europe’s doors to US-based academics and researchers who fear their work is threatened by federal spending cuts for universities and research bodies, as well as the targeting of US higher education institutions over diversity policies.

Macron’s office said the move comes “at a time when academic freedoms face a number … of threats” and when Europe “is an attractive continent”. An Élysée official said: “We are a space where there is freedom of research and no taboo topics.” The official said the event was about “affirming France and Europe as stable spaces that can guarantee freedoms and academic research”.

France is thought to be particularly keen to attract scientists working on health – particularly infectious diseases – as well as climate research and artificial intelligence.

Monday’s event, titled Choose Europe for science, comes after 13 European countries, including France, Germany and Spain, wrote to the European Commission urging it to move fast to attract academic talent.

France launched its own Choose France for science initiative in April with a dedicated platform for applications to host international researchers.

The French research ministry told Agence France-Presse: “Some foreign researchers have already arrived in France to familiarise themselves with the infrastructure, waiting for the funds and platform to be set up.”

In recent days, France’s flagship scientific research centre CNRS launched a new initiative to attract foreign workers whose research is threatened, as well as French researchers working abroad, some of whom “don’t want to live and raise their children in Trump’s United States”, its president, Antoine Petit, told AFP.

In France, Aix-Marseille University launched its “Safe place for science” programme in March. It will receive its first foreign researchers in June.

In a letter to French universities in March, Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister for higher education and research, wrote: “Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the United States. We would naturally wish to welcome a certain number of them.”

Challenges remain because research investment in the US – including private-public partnerships – has for many years been greater than in Europe. For decades, Europe has lagged behind the US on investment in universities and research centres.

French researchers have regularly raised the issue of the comparatively low salaries and precarious contracts for many researchers in France. On average, an academic researcher in the US is paid more than their French equivalent. Trade unions in France have called for better contracts, better salary provisions and better funding across the board at research institutions.

Some in France hoped the pay gap between scientists in France and the US would narrow, once the lower cost of education and health, and more generous social benefits in France were taken into account.

Germany’s incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said last month: “The American government is currently using brute force against the universities in the US, so that researchers from America are now contacting Europe. This is a huge opportunity for us.”

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has warned protesters in breakaway northern Cyprus not “to sow seeds of hatred” amid mounting discord over Ankara’s perceived attempts to Islamise one of the world’s most secular Muslim societies.

In a whirlwind visit to the Turkish-occupied territory on Saturday the leader had tough words for Turkish Cypriots who have stepped up demonstrations against policies he openly endorses, not least a controversial law allowing headscarves to be worn in schools.

“Those who try to disrupt our brotherhood, to create a rift between us, and to sow the seeds of hatred … will not be successful,” he said as he inaugurated a new presidential residence and parliament in the self-styled state.

Later, as he addressed a technology festival, he went further, telling trade unions that opposed the measure: “If you try to mess with our girls’ headscarves in the Turkish republic of northern Cyprus, I am sorry, you will find us against you.”

On Friday thousands of Turkish Cypriots took to the streets of Nicosia, the country’s war-split capital, chanting “hands off our land” as they denounced the legislation.

In a speech before a crowd metres away from Turkey’s embassy compound, Selma Eylem, who heads the Cyprus Turkish secondary education teachers’ trade union, said the regulation was tantamount to imposing political Islam on a society that not only prided itself on its secular identity but inherently secular way of life.

“We say, once again, to the representatives of the AKP [Erdoğan’s Islamist-rooted party]: Keep your hands off our children and keep your hands off our society.”

Erdoğan had hoped to use the trip to showcase Ankara’s continuing support for a community that it had in 1974 sought to rescue when Turkish troops were ordered to invade Cyprus, seizing its northern third.

The military operation had followed a rightwing, Athens-backed coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece. In the more than 50 years that have elapsed, the territory, which unilaterally declared independence in 1983, has been recognised by no other country but Turkey.

Ahead of his visit officials had said that Erdoğan’s focus would be on the opening of the big government complex, financed by Ankara with the aim of promoting international acceptance for the isolated entity.

On Saturday the Turkish president insisted that in the wake of decades of failed peace talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots only “a two-state solution” could be discussed to resolve the west’s longest running diplomatic dispute.

“The two-state solution is the joint vision of Turkey and northern Cyprus,” he said. “Any new negotiation process must be between two sovereign states.”

Friday’s demonstration, which followed almost daily protests over the hijab law, was organised by more than 100 trade unions and civil societies many of which still advocate the island’s reunification as a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation.

“Partly because of Kemalism but also because of eighty-two years of British colonial rule, Turkish Cypriots are by far the most secular Muslims in the world,” said Hubert Faustmann, professor of history and political science at the University of Nicosia in the internationally recognised south.

For Turkish Cypriots who have long opposed Ankara’s ever-expanding influence in the north, the regulation, he said, was further proof of the leader’s determination to not only erode long-held secular traditions but ultimately alter their own identity.

“What we are witnessing is a cultural clash,” Faustmann said. “The legislation on headscarves is seen as part of a package of continuous attempts by Erdoğan to unwind the secular character of the community.”

With the backlash showing no sign of abating, Turkish Cypriots appear determined to have the measure repealed – even if it has been vigorously defended by the community’s leader, Ersin Tatar, a close Erdoğan ally who argues the law protects students from discrimination.

“If we are to save ourselves we have to continue this struggle,” said Şener Elcil, a veteran former trade unionist.

Increasingly, he lamented, Turkish Cypriots had been made to feel like a minority “in our own land” as a result of hundreds of thousands of mainland settlers moving to the north.

“Religion was never a point of division on this island but after years of building mosques that Turkish Cypriots don’t even go to, they want to make it one in our schools,” he added. “Now, more than ever, we need to stand up to Erdoğan and have our voices heard.”