French prosecutors have demanded that Dominique Pelicot be jailed for 20 years, the maximum sentence, for having drugged and raped his wife, Gisèle and inviting at least 70 strangers to rape and abuse her over a decade.

Assistant state prosecutor Laure Chabaud said the sentence was “at the same time, long but not long enough given the gravity of the facts that were committed and repeated”.

“His search for pleasure was reflected in a desire to subjugate his wife, to humiliate and even degrade through his actions and words, the person he cherished most in the world,” Chabaud told the court in Avignon where Pelicot and 50 other men have been on trial since September.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted the charges. Most of the others have admitted abusing Gisèle Pelicot but denied rape, suggesting they thought they were taking part in a couple’s fantasy.

The lawyers for 33 have made a special plea that their clients were acting under diminished responsibility.

On the 50th day of the marathon hearing, the lead public prosecutor, Jean-François Mayet, said the case “has shaken our society in terms of our relationship with others”.

“This is not about conviction or acquittal but fundamentally changing the relationship between men and women.”

Gisèle Pelicot has become an international feminist icon for waiving her anonymity and allowing the hearing to be held in public and for the videos her husband made of her rape and abuse while she was unconscious to be shown. She has said she hopes the trial will change society’s macho attitude towards the sexual abuse of women.

Entering the court to applause on Monday – as she has every day of the trial – she said: “It’s very emotional.”

Launching into her summing up for sentencing, Chabaud told the hearing: “It is obvious that Mme Pelicot was not in a normal conscious state. She was in a state of torpor closer to a coma than sleep. The reactivity of a subject plunged into a coma didn’t seem to dissuade the participants.”

The court heard how Dominique Pelicot, who will be 72 on Wednesday, obtained a total of 700 pills for the drug Temesta, a tranquilliser often prescribed as anti-anxiety medicine and for sleep problems, with prescriptions from his local GP.

“The risk was considerable. She [Gisèle] could have died,” Chabaud said.

Chabaud added that Pelicot’s arrest owed much to the security guard at the Leclerc supermarket in Carpentras who had stopped him filming under the skirt of four women in September 2020 and removed his phone on which 300 photos and films of the abuse of his wife were found. Police found a total of 20,000 videos and photos on phones and hard drives at the couple’s rented home at Mazan, where they had lived for more than a decade after retiring.

Earlier in the hearing, the court was told Pelicot had continued inviting men to rape his wife, via an online chatroom, called A son insu (without him/her knowing) after being interviewed by police in September then released, and before he was taken into custody in December, two months later. On three occasions during this period men allegedly raped his wife and he filmed the abuse.

Asked why he had continued, Dominique Pelicot said last week: “I had to maintain the rendezvous. I realised I was finished so I went ahead with them as arranged.”

On Monday, Chabaud said: “The images speak a thousand words.”

She said Gisèle Pelicot, who told how she had faced suspicions that she was drunk, a libertine or had been complicit in her own abuse or – by one defence lawyer – that she was under the malign influence of her husband, clearly knew nothing of her abuse and criticised attempts to suggest she did.

“You only find what you look for and there was no reason [for her] to look. Should we add on top of the trauma of betrayal, the guilt of seeing nothing?” she said.

Chabaud said reducing Pelicot to a man of two faces was “reductive” and he was “capable of declaring his love for Gisèle Pelicot and saying that he has a great deal of respect for her, yet he does not suffer from any mental pathology and is therefore fully responsible.”

She added his level of criminal dangerousness had been judged “high” because of his lack of “sufficient introspection, lack of empathy, psychologically rigid and cold in relationships. We have to question his sincerity.”

After requesting the maximum prison sentence for Dominique Pelicot, prosecutors addressed jail terms for the other accused men, aged between 26 and 74, nearly all of whom are charged with the rape of Gisèle Pelicot with aggravating circumstances and as part of a group.

Chabaud pointed out that none of the 50 accused had had any direct contact with Gisèle Pelicot before allegedly abusing her – when she was unconscious – and none had sought her consent. She added that arguments that Gisèle Pelicot had somehow “implicitly consented” or that her husband had consented on her behalf, could not be allowed.

“We cannot say in 2024, because she said nothing she agreed. That is from another age … the absence of consent cannot be ignored.”

Gisèle Pelicot has told the court she believes she may have been raped up to 200 times between 2011 and 2020 at her home and her daughter’s second home.

The couple’s three children, David, Caroline and Florian, were in court last week to give statements. Caroline, who believes she was also drugged and abused by her father after photos of her asleep were found in files in his computer, angrily accused him of lying when he denied laying a finger on her. “You will die alone like a dog,” she shouted in tears.

The 11th week of the trial, which will continue until 20 December, when verdicts will be delivered by the panel of magistrates, continues with the public prosecutor’s demand for sentences of each accused for the next three days. Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, will then begin her summing up.

Germany is drawing up a list of bunkers that could provide emergency shelter for civilians, the interior ministry has said, at a time of rising tensions with Russia.

The list would include underground train stations and car parks as well as state buildings and private properties, a ministry spokesperson said.

A digital directory of bunkers and emergency shelters will be drawn up so people can find them quickly using a planned phone app. People would also be encouraged to create protective shelters in their homes by converting basements and garages, the spokesperson told a press briefing.

He declined to give a timetable, saying it was a big project that would take some time, involving the Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance and other authorities.

The country of 84 million people has 579 bunkers, mostly from the second world war and the cold war era, which can provide shelter for 480,000 people, down from about 2,000 bunkers previously.

The spokesperson said the key points of the plan were agreed at a conference of senior officials in June and a special group was looking into it.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, concerns have been growing about Moscow’s potential to target other Nato members. In October, German intelligence chiefs warned that Russia would probably be capable of launching an attack on the military alliance by 2030.

German officials say the country is already experiencing a sharp rise in Russian spying and sabotage activities. Last week the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said the conflict in Ukraine had characteristics of a “global” war and he did not rule out strikes on western countries.

Israel’s security cabinet is due to meet on Tuesday to decide on a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon after more than a year of fighting between Israeli forces and the Shia militia Hezbollah, according to reports from the region.

Under the deal being considered, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah would pull its heavy weapons north of the Litani River, about 16 miles (25km) north of the Israeli border, and the Lebanese army would move in to provide security in the border zone alongside an existing UN peacekeeping force, during an initial 60-day transition phase.

The US would lead a five-country international monitoring committee which would act as a referee on infringements and the US has guaranteed support for Israeli military operations over the border if Hezbollah mounts an attack or reconstitutes its forces south of the Litani.

The conflict started on 8 October last year, when Hezbollah fired shells and missiles into Israeli border towns in solidarity with Hamas, and the fighting has intensified significantly since the end of September, when Israel launched a ground invasion amid intensified bombing across Lebanon which has killed about 3,500 Lebanese people as well as much of Hezbollah’s leadership.

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is under domestic political pressure to agree a deal that would allow about 60,000 Israelis from the border region to return home, after spending a year in displacement camps, and their safe return is Israel’s primary war aim in Lebanon.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said on Monday that ceasefire talks were “moving forward”, but insisted that Israel would retain its capacity to strike southern Lebanon in any agreement. He confirmed that the issue would be discussed by Israel’s security cabinet in the next two days.

Lebanon’s deputy parliamentary speaker, Elias Bou Saab, told Reuters there were “no serious obstacles” to starting the implementation of the truce.

A Guardian investigation has found that Israel used a US munition to target and kill three journalists and wound three more in a 25 October attack in south Lebanon which legal experts have called a potential war crime.

On 25 October at 3.19am, an Israeli jet shot two bombs at a chalet hosting three journalists – cameraman Ghassan Najjar and technician Mohammad Reda from pro-Hezbollah outlet al-Mayadeen, as well as cameraman Wissam Qassem from the Hezbollah-affiliated outlet al-Manar.

All three were killed in their sleep in the attack which also wounded three other journalists from different outlets staying nearby. There was no fighting in the area before or at the time of the strike.

The Guardian visited the site, interviewed the owner of the property and journalists present at the time of the attack, analysed shrapnel found at the strike site, and geo-located Israeli surveillance equipment in range of the journalists’ positions. Based on the Guardian’s findings, three experts in international humanitarian law said the attack could constitute a war crime and called for further investigation.

“All the indications show that this would have been a deliberate targeting of journalists: a war crime. This was clearly delineated as a place where journalists were staying,” said Nadim Houry, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative.

After the strike, the Israeli military said that it had struck a “Hezbollah military structure” while “terrorists were located inside the structure”. A few hours after the attack, the Israeli army said that the incident was “under review” following reports that journalists were hit in the strike.

The Guardian found no evidence of the presence of Hezbollah military infrastructure at the site of Israel’s attack, nor that any of the journalists were anything but civilians. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for clarification of which of the journalists were Hezbollah militants nor on the status of the strike’s review.

“Ghassan was not a member of Hezbollah, he was a member of the press. He never had a gun, not even for hunting. His weapon was his camera,” Sana Najjar, Ghassan Najjar’s wife, said in an interview with the Guardian. Ghassan left behind a three-and-a-half-year-old son.

The coffin of one of the journalists, Qassem from al-Manar, was buried wrapped in a Hezbollah flag. The practice is an honorific for people or families who profess political support for the group, but does not indicate that the journalist occupied a political or military role in Hezbollah.

Regardless of their political affiliation, killing journalists is illegal under international humanitarian law unless they are actively participating in military activities.

Janina Dill, co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, said: “It is a dangerous trend already witnessed in Gaza that journalists are linked to military operations in virtue of their assumed affiliation or political leanings, then seemingly become targets of attack. This is not compatible with international law.”

A day after Israel began its ground offensives inside Lebanon, a group of about 18 journalists arrived at a luxury guest house resort in Hasbaya, south Lebanon in October. The Israeli advance had forced them to relocate from Ebl al-Saqi, a town in south Lebanon where they had stayed for the past 11 months to cover the hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.

They chose to stay in the Druze-majority town due to its lack of affiliation with Hezbollah and because it had not previously been targeted by Israeli strikes, according to Yumna Fawaz, a journalist for Lebanese outlet MTV who was present on the day of the attack.

The guest houses were owned by a Lebanese-American, Anoir Ghaida, who said that he searched the chalet and car of the targeted journalists after the strike “like you would search for a needle in a haystack,” but found “nothing suspicious” about the journalists.

The reporters used the guest houses as a base for 23 days, travelling to a hilltop a 10-minute drive away to film hostilities and produce live coverage each day. The hilltop gave a view of the border villages of Chebaa and Khiam, where fighting between Hezbollah and Israel continued. They drove cars marked with “Press”, and wore flak jackets and helmets emblazoned with press symbols.

The hilltop was in direct line of sight of three Israeli watchtowers – all within approximately 10km from the live location. Israeli watchtowers are commonly equipped with “Speed-er” cameras, which can automatically track targets up to 10km away, as well as video, thermal and infrared imaging capabilities.

Other journalists in the group said that the presence of Israeli reconnaissance drones was “constant” over both the live location and the Hasbaya guest house during their 23-day stay there.

“On the night of the attack, we were sitting in front of the chalets and the drone was flying super low on top of us,” said Fatima Ftouni, a journalist at al-Mayadeen who was staying a few chalets down from her colleagues when they were struck.

Ftouni went to bed but was awakened a few hours later by the sound of an explosion. She dug herself out from beneath the rubble of her chalet’s collapsed roof and reached for her helmet. Her flak jacket had been shredded by the force of the blast. She escaped her smoke-filled room to find her colleagues dead on the ground.

The chalet where Najjar, Reda and Qassem had been sleeping had been directly struck by a bomb delivered by an Israeli jet, with another bomb landing beside the structure.

Remnants of munitions found at the site revealed that at least one of the weapons was a 500lb MK-80 series bomb guided by a US-made JDAM – a kit that converts large dumb bombs into precision-guided weapons. The fragments were verified by Trevor Ball, a former bomb disposal specialist for the US army, a second arms expert at Omega Research Foundation and a third weapons expert who was not authorised to speak to the media.

A piece of the tail fin of the Jdam, produced by Boeing, as well as part of the internal control section that moves the fin, was found. A cage code on the remnant of the control section revealed that it was produced by Woodward, a Colorado-based aerospace company. Neither Boeing nor Woodward responded to requests for comment.

The use of at least one precision-guided bomb would imply that the Israeli military selected the chalet housing the three journalists as a target before the strike. The presence of drones and watchtowers overlooking the group of clearly marked journalists for the prior 23 days makes it likely that Israeli forces were aware of their location – and their status as members of the press.

A state department spokesperson declined to comment on the attack in Hasbaya but said that the US has “consistently urged Israel to ensure protection of civilians, including journalists”.

Under US law, if a country uses arms supplied by the US in a war crime, military assistance to that country should be suspended. Despite evidence of several instances where US munitions have been used by Israel to commit potential war crimes, US military assistance to Israel has continued unaffected.

Israel has killed six journalists in Lebanon and at least 129 in Gaza since 7 October 2023 – the deadliest period for journalists in the last four decades, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

According to Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Israeli authorities are “blatantly ignoring” its international legal obligations towards the protection of journalists.

Khan said: “The Guardian’s story of what happened in southern Lebanon matches with the pattern of killings and attacks by Israeli forces on journalists in Gaza. Targeted killings, the excuse that the attacks were aimed against armed groups without providing any evidence to support the claim, the failure to conduct thorough investigations, all seem to be part of a deliberate strategy by the Israeli military to silence critical reporting on the war and obstruct the documentation of possible international war crimes.”

Despite statements indicating that it would review certain attacks against journalists, the Israeli military has yet to release any information regarding investigations into its killing of journalists.

“It is the silence of the international community that let this happen,” Ftouni said.

Attacks on journalists in Hasbaya and other parts of south Lebanon have had a chilling effect on media workers in Lebanon, who no longer know where they can work safely.

Meanwhile, the families of the journalists are unable to move past the loss of their loved ones.

“He really was a great man. I know he looked so big, but he was really a gentle man. And he was so, so funny,” Najjar said of her husband, Ghassan.

“I still don’t believe that Ghassan died. I’m still waiting for the door to open and for him to enter. He promised me that someday we would grow old and we would go live in the south together – but now he stayed there and I will stay here, in Beirut, forever,” she said.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has attacked several key US alliances such as Nato, allied countries such as Turkey and international institutions such as the United Nations in two recent books, as well as saying US troops should not be bound by the Geneva conventions.

At the same time, the man who would head America’s gigantic military has tied US foreign policy almost entirely to the priority of Israel, a country of which he says: “If you love America, you should love Israel.”

Elsewhere, Hegseth appears to argue that the US military should ignore the Geneva conventions and any international laws governing the conduct of war, and instead “unleash them” to become a “ruthless”, “uncompromising” and “overwhelmingly lethal” force geared to “winning our wars according to our own rules”.

Hegseth’s policy preferences may raise concerns about the future of Nato, the escalation of tensions with Israel’s arch-foe Iran, and impunity for US war criminals, such as those who Hegseth persuaded Trump to pardon in his first term.

Tom Hill, executive director of the Center for Peace and Diplomacy (CPD), told the Guardian that Hegseth’s nomination reflected the fact that for Donald Trump, “one of the bases of support he owes is the Christian nationalist evangelical movement”.

In Hegseth, “what he is offering is Israel policy and a warping of foreign policy around Israel as a reward to this Christian nationalist base,” said Hill.

‘Europe has already allowed itself to be invaded’

While in the more distant past Hegseth was a foreign policy hawk aligned with neoconservatism, since what he has called his “Trump conversion”, he has written scathingly of multilateral institutions.

In American Crusade (AC), published in 2020, Hegseth asks bluntly: “Why do we fund the anti-American UN? Why is Islamist Turkey a member of Nato?”

Elsewhere in that book, Hegseth disparages the International Security Assistance Force, the UN security council’s peacekeeping force sent to Afghanistan in 2006, with claims based on his own service in Afghanistan: “On my camouflage uniform, I wore an American flag on one shoulder and an Isaf patch on the other,” he writes, adding: “The running joke of US troops in Afghanistan was that the Isaf patch actually stood for ‘I Saw Americans Fighting’.”

Like Trump, Hegseth characterizes Nato allies as not paying their way: “Nato is not an alliance; it’s a defense arrangement for Europe, paid for and underwritten by the United States.”

He also embeds criticisms of Nato in apocalyptic, “Great Replacement”-style narratives of European immigration. Hegseth writes at one point in AC: “Europe has already allowed itself to be invaded. It chose not to rebuild its militaries, happily suckling off the teat of America’s willingness to actually fight and win wars.”

Hegseth is particularly incensed by the inclusion of Turkey in Nato. He argues that the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “openly dreams of restoring the Ottoman empire” and is “an Islamist with Islamist visions for the Middle East”.

“The defense of Europe is not our problem; been there, done that, twice,” Hegseth writes, adding: “Nato is a relic and should be scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended.

“This is what Trump is fighting for,” he concludes.

The UN, meanwhile, he calls “a fully globalist organization that aggressively advances an anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-freedom agenda. Here’s one set of rules for the United States and Israel, another for everyone else.”

On Hegseth’s characterization of Turkey as Islamist – the same descriptor he uses for militant non-state actors such as Isis – Hill said: “It’s extremist rhetoric that’s trying to paint literal treaty allies as illegitimate actors.”

‘If you love America, you should love Israel’

Hegseth’s belief in the UN’s bias against Israel mirrors his deepest apparent commitments: that any vision of international cooperation is rooted in his support of Israel, which at times he couches in religious terms.

In a striking passage in AC he presents his support for Israel as a renewal of medieval crusades.

“Our present moment is much like the 11th century,” he writes in AC, adding: “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians a thousand years ago, we must. We need an American crusade.”

He adds: “We Christians – alongside our Jewish friends and their remarkable army in Israel – need to pick up the sword of unapologetic Americanism and defend ourselves.”

Hegseth continues: “For us as American crusaders, Israel embodies the soul of our American crusade – the ‘why’ to our ‘what’.”

Hegseth concludes: “Faith, family, freedom, and free enterprise; if you love those, learn to love the state of Israel. And then find an arena in which to fight for her.”

Hill said Hegseth’s Christian nationalism, rooted in fundamentalist Christianity, is key to understanding his perspective on Israel.

“He is centering Israel in everything because of theology,” he said. “There’s an eschatology and a prophetic interpretation the Book of Revelations – the Second Coming, Armageddon, the return of Jesus that is really important, and Israel is central to that eschatology.”

The Guardian previously reported that Hegseth, who has a tattoo of the crusader motto “Deus vult”, similarly presented the struggle against “internal” or “domestic enemies” as a “crusade” or “holy war”.

In AC, he explicitly connects this domestic crusade with his support for Israel, writing that “we have domestic enemies, and we have international allies … it’s time to reach out to people who value the same principles, relearn lessons from them, and form stronger bonds.”

Hegseth writes in AC that Israel, along with the European far right and Brexit, are among the overseas reservoirs of American values.

“Americanism is alive in Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu boldly stands against international antisemitism and Islamism,” he writes.

Hegseth continues: “Americanism is alive in the hearts of Brexiters in the United Kingdom who yearn for national sovereignty. Americanism is alive in places such as Poland, which reject the globalist visions of leftist bureaucrats in old Europe.”

Israel, meanwhile, “continues to vanquish its Islamist foes – thanks to the big, beautiful wall and big, beautiful army it has built,” he writes.

Earlier this week, the international criminal court issued a warrant for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu over the conduct of Israel’s war on Gaza.

‘We will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs’

In 2024’s The War on Warriors, Hegseth argues at length that US forces should ignore the Geneva conventions and other elements of international law governing the conduct of war.

In the book, Hegseth asks: “The key question of our generation – of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – is way more complicated: what do you do if your enemy does not honor the Geneva conventions?

“We never got an answer. Only more war. More casualties. And no victory.”

Hegseth’s answer is that the conventions should be ignored.

“What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?” he asks. “Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: if you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs.”

He then writes: “We are just fighting with one hand behind our back – and the enemy knows it … If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?!”

He continues: “Who cares what other countries think?”

Hill said Hegseth’s rhetoric blamed “liberal ideas” for military defeat in a way that resembled the narratives far-right movements have historically used to scapegoat their political opponents for military defeats.

Hegseth concludes the discussion by writing: “If we’re going to send our boys to fight – and it should be boys – we need to unleash them to win.” He adds: “They need them to be the most ruthless. The most uncompromising. The most overwhelmingly lethal as they can be.

“We must break the enemy’s will.”

Hegseth, who in 2019 persuaded Trump to pardon US soldiers charged or convicted of war crimes, then writes: “Our troops will make mistakes, and when they do, they should get the overwhelming benefit of the doubt.”

The identities of private donors funding Donald Trump’s presidential transition are being kept secret in a break with precedent that is obscuring which groups, businesses or wealthy individuals are helping to launch his second presidency.

The president-elect has been able to maintain secrecy over his financial backers by neglecting to sign an agreement with the outgoing Biden administration that would put strict limits on private funding in exchange for up to $7.2m in federal funding for his transition effort.

The agreement requires an incoming president to disclose the names of private donors and caps their donations at $5,000.

Sidestepping it means Trump can raise unlimited amounts of cash from rich backers to finance his return to the White House while concealing what they are being promised in return.

He is the first incoming president not to sign the federal transition funding agreement, which is dictated by the Presidential Transition Act.

Transition funds are typically raised to pay for staff, office space and travel needed to put together an administration.

Trump’s decision to avoid the standard procedure has alarmed ethics experts, who warn that it enables wealthy individuals to influence the makeup of a new administration without their names or potential conflicts of interest being disclosed.

It also means the president-elect can accept unlimited donations from foreign donors, who – in contrast to rules prohibiting foreigners from contributing to election campaigns – are legally allowed to donate to transitions.

“When the money isn’t disclosed, it’s not clear how much everybody is giving, who is giving it and what they are getting in return for their donations,” said Heath Brown, a professor of public policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to the New York Times.

“It’s an area where the vast majority of Americans would agree that they want to know who is paying that bill.”

The New York Times previously reported that Trump had missed a 1 October deadline to submit a legally required ethics pledge agreeing to avoid conflicts of interest while in office.

His campaign has also avoided signing memorandums of understanding with the General Services Administration, allowing it to provide transition facilities.

The refusal to sign the agreements stands in contrast to Trump’s actions in the run up to his 2016 election victory, when his campaign closely followed the established transition process.

The alternative path followed this time comes against a backdrop of mistrust the president-elect has voiced in many public institutions, including the FBI, which has been excluded from carrying out the standard background checks on Trump’s nominees.

Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington-based non-profit group, said Trump’s motives in avoiding the standard transition process went beyond lack of trust.

“The [reason] that I have seen, reported on consistently, is this notion of the requirement to limit donations to $5,000 and be transparent about where that money comes from,” he said.

Stier added: “There is a strong public interest in knowing who is funding the transition process and limiting contributions, so that no single individual is able to put too strong a thumb on the scale. Because that transition process is so closely connected to the ultimate governance process, even though it is still on the private sector side.”

Seventeen people, including a number of British nationals, are missing after a tourist boat on a diving trip capsized in the Red Sea.

The Sea Story was carrying 31 tourists from several countries and 14 crew when it sent a distress signal at 5.30am local time, according to a statement from Egypt’s Red Sea governorate.

It was not immediately clear what caused the four-deck, wooden-hulled motor yacht to sink.

So far 28 people have been rescued, leaving 17 people missing.

The British Foreign Office confirmed it was providing consular support to a number of British national and their families after the incident.

The boat left Port Ghalib, near Marsa Alam in Egypt, for a diving trip that was due to finish on Friday in the town of Hurghada, 124 miles (200km) north.

The governor, Amr Hanafi, said some survivors had been rescued by an aircraft, while others were transported to safety onboard a warship.

“Intensive search operations are under way in coordination with the navy and the armed forces,” Hanafi said.

Authorities have not indicated the possible cause of the incident or issued a breakdown of the nationalities of the missing people. According to unverified local media reports, those onboard included four Britons, four Germans, five Spaniards, two Belgians, three Slovaks and two Americans.

The area of Marsa Alam has had at least two similar incidents this year. Both ended without any deaths.

The Red Sea coast is a popular tourist destination in Egypt, a country of 105 million people that is in the grip of an economic crisis. Nationally, the tourism sector employs 2 million people and generates more than 10% of GDP.

This month, 30 people were rescued from a sinking dive boat near the Red Sea’s Deadalus reef.

In June, 24 French tourists were safely evacuated before their boat sank in a similar accident.

Last year, three British tourists died after a fire broke out on their yacht, engulfing the vessel in flames.

Dozens of diving boats make trips between coral reefs and islands off Egypt’s eastern coast every day. Safety regulations are known to be robust but unevenly enforced.

Seventeen people, including a number of British nationals, are missing after a tourist boat on a diving trip capsized in the Red Sea.

The Sea Story was carrying 31 tourists from several countries and 14 crew when it sent a distress signal at 5.30am local time, according to a statement from Egypt’s Red Sea governorate.

It was not immediately clear what caused the four-deck, wooden-hulled motor yacht to sink.

So far 28 people have been rescued, leaving 17 people missing.

The British Foreign Office confirmed it was providing consular support to a number of British national and their families after the incident.

The boat left Port Ghalib, near Marsa Alam in Egypt, for a diving trip that was due to finish on Friday in the town of Hurghada, 124 miles (200km) north.

The governor, Amr Hanafi, said some survivors had been rescued by an aircraft, while others were transported to safety onboard a warship.

“Intensive search operations are under way in coordination with the navy and the armed forces,” Hanafi said.

Authorities have not indicated the possible cause of the incident or issued a breakdown of the nationalities of the missing people. According to unverified local media reports, those onboard included four Britons, four Germans, five Spaniards, two Belgians, three Slovaks and two Americans.

The area of Marsa Alam has had at least two similar incidents this year. Both ended without any deaths.

The Red Sea coast is a popular tourist destination in Egypt, a country of 105 million people that is in the grip of an economic crisis. Nationally, the tourism sector employs 2 million people and generates more than 10% of GDP.

This month, 30 people were rescued from a sinking dive boat near the Red Sea’s Deadalus reef.

In June, 24 French tourists were safely evacuated before their boat sank in a similar accident.

Last year, three British tourists died after a fire broke out on their yacht, engulfing the vessel in flames.

Dozens of diving boats make trips between coral reefs and islands off Egypt’s eastern coast every day. Safety regulations are known to be robust but unevenly enforced.

A DHL cargo plane from Germany has crashed into a house as it made its approach to land at Vilnius airport in Lithuania, killing a Spanish crew member and injuring three others on the aircraft, officials said.

Lithuanian authorities, who in the past weeks have been investigating alleged incidences of incendiary devices being sent on western-bound cargo planes, stopped short of linking the crash with that investigation.

“So far, there are no signs or evidence suggesting this was sabotage or a terrorist act,” the Lithuanian defence minister, Laurynas Kasčiūnas, told reporters, adding that the investigation to establish the cause could take “about a week”.

German officials said they would be launching their own investigation and were in “close contact with the relevant institutions here and abroad to get to the bottom of the situation as quickly as possible”, a security source told the news weekly Die Zeit. Germany is already investigating several fires caused by incendiary devices hidden inside parcels at DHL warehouses earlier this year, the country’s prosecutor general has said.

The flight was operated by Swiftair on behalf of DHL and had taken off from Leipzig, Germany, before the plane crashed in overcast conditions at about 03.30 GMT, a spokesperson for the national crisis management centre said.

“Thankfully, despite the crash occurring in a residential area, no lives have been lost among the local population,” the Lithuanian prime minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, said after meeting with rescue officials. She cautioned against speculation, saying investigators needed time to do their job.

“The responsible agencies are working diligently,” Šimonytė said. “I urge everyone to have confidence in the investigating authorities’ ability to conduct a thorough and professional investigation within an optimal timeframe. Only these investigations will uncover the true causes of the incident – speculation and guesswork will not help establish the truth.”

The crisis management centre spokesperson said there was nothing to suggest an explosion preceded the crash. “At the moment we don’t have any data that there was an explosion,” he said.

The country’s counter-intelligence chief, Darius Jauniškis, told reporters: “We cannot reject the possibility of terrorism … But at the moment we can’t make attributions or point fingers, because we don’t have such information.”

The general commissioner of the Lithuanian police, Arūnas Paulauskas, said investigators were considering possible causes, including technical failure and human error.

An airport spokesperson said the plane was a Boeing 737-400. The airport said in a statement that because of rescue work in the area, several departures were delayed and one incoming flight was diverted to Riga.

Police told a press conference that 12 people had been evacuated from the house hit by the plane. Rescue services said the aircraft hit the ground and slid at least 100 metres (110 yards) before crashing into the building, setting it ablaze.

Stanislovas Jakimavicius, who lives about 300 metres from the crash site, told AFP: “We were woken by the sound of an explosion. Through the window, we saw the wave of explosions and a cloud of fire. Like fireworks.”

The three crew members who were injured were Spanish, German and Lithuanian citizens, said Ramūnas Matonis, the head of communications for Lithuanian police.

Firefighters were seen at 05.30 GMT pouring water on to a smoking building 0.8 miles (1.3km) north of the airport runway. A large police and ambulance presence was seen nearby and main streets nearby were cordoned off.

The flight had departed from Leipzig at 02.08 GMT, Flightradar24 said on X. Neither DHL nor Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor, offered immediate comment.

Earlier this month, Lithuania carried out arrests as part of a criminal investigation into the sending of incendiary devices on western-bound planes. According to Polish and Lithuanian media, the devices, including electric massagers implanted with a flammable substance, were sent from Lithuania to the UK in July and could be behind a lorry fire outside Warsaw.

Poland and Lithuania, both Nato members bordering Russia, are staunch allies of Ukraine and have frequently warned of Russian-inspired sabotage on EU soil. Moscow has denied any involvement.

In October, after Germany’s investigation came to light, British counter-terrorism police said they were investigating a warehouse blaze in July which was caused by a package catching fire, and liaising with other European law enforcement agencies to see if there was a connection with similar incidents elsewhere.

Reuters, Associated Press and AFP contributed to this report

An ultranationalist, Moscow-friendly Nato critic is set to face a centre-right candidate in the runoff of Romania’s presidential elections after a shock first-round result that has upended the country’s politics and could jeopardise its support for Ukraine.

With 99.98% of votes counted, Călin Georgescu, an independent who has praised Vladimir Putin as “a man who loves his country”, was on 22.9%, with the reformist Elena Lasconi, of the Save Romania Union (USR), second on 19.17%.

The result, one of the biggest electoral upsets in Romania’s post-communist history, triggered the swift resignation as leader of the country’s centre-left, pro-EU party of prime minister Marcel Ciolacu, the pre-ballot frontrunner, who finished third on 19.15%.

The runoff – the first for three decades without a candidate from Ciolacu’s Social Democrats (PSD) – is due on 8 December, after parliamentary elections next Sunday. Romania’s president has a semi-executive role with significant decision-making powers over national security, foreign policy and judicial appointments.

The race is being watched well beyond Romania, which shares a 400-mile border with Ukraine and is seen by western allies as playing a key strategic role, hosting a Nato military base, donating a Patriot air defence battery and providing a vital transit route for millions of tonnes of Ukrainian grain.

“Tonight, the Romanian people cried out for peace. And they shouted very loudly, extremely loudly,” Georgescu, a 62-year-old university professor who was polling at 5% before the elections, said on Sunday night. “We are strong and brave, many of us voted, and even more will do so in the second round.”

Lasconi, a former war correspondent and TV news presenter, joined the centre-right USR in 2018 and became party leader this year. Twice elected as mayor of the small town of Câmpulung, she believes in boosting defence spending and helping Ukraine.

Georgescu, who left the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) after it criticised his pro-Russia, anti-Nato stance, ran a viral TikTok campaign focused on reducing Romania’s need for food and energy imports and ending aid for Ukraine.

The election focused largely on Romania’s soaring cost of living: the Black Sea country has the EU’s biggest share of people at risk of poverty, as well as the bloc’s highest inflation rate and largest budget deficit, at 8% of economic outlook.

Georgescu said on Facebook after he had voted that he was standing “for those who feel they do not matter, and actually matter the most”. Later, he said the results were “an extraordinary awakening” of the people.

“There was an expectation, a desire for a revenge vote, a protest vote, on the part of people with many frustrations, with revolt, with anger towards the system,” international relations expert Valentin Naumescu told media outlet Digi24.ro.

Social media had reached many voters who may not even have had a clear idea of who Georgescu was, Naumescu said, “bombarding them with these ideas, that he is a true Romanian, a strong leader for Romania, that he has a plan, that it has solutions”.

Georgescu, a sustainable development consultant who has worked for several UN bodies, has called Nato’s ballistic missile defence shield over Romania a “shame of diplomacy” and said the alliance would not protect its members from Russian attack.

He has also described Corneliu Codreanu, the leader of Romania’s 1930s fascist Iron Guard, and Ion Antonescu, who led its pro-German wartime government and was executed for his part in Romania’s Holocaust, as national heroes.

In other interviews, Georgescu has said Romania was not ready to independently handle diplomacy and strategy and that its best chance lay with “Russian wisdom”. He has refused to explicitly say he supports Russia in its war on Ukraine.

Radu Magdin, a political analyst, said the difference between the far-right independent’s single-digit poll popularity and the first-round result was without precedent since Romania emerged from communism in 1989. “Never in our 34 years of democracy have we seen such a surge compared to surveys,” Magdin told Reuters.

Cristian Pîrvulescu, a political scientist, told Agence-France Presse: “The far right is by far the big winner of this election.”

Unlike neighbouring Hungary and nearby Slovakia, Romania had largely resisted populist nationalism, but with the far-right AUR’s George Simion finishing fourth, about one-third of voters on Sunday cast their ballots for far-right candidates.

The result was also further confirmation of a global trend to oust incumbent parties: the leaders of Romania’s two ruling parties, Ciolacu’s Social Democrats (PSD) and the centre-right National Liberal party (PNL), were both eliminated in the first round.

It is the first time in Romania’s post-communist history that the PSD has not had a candidate in the second round of a presidential race. About 9.4 million people – 52.5% of eligible voters – cast ballots, according to the Central Election Bureau.

Simion is facing accusations of meeting Russian spies, a claim he has denied. Sergiu Mișcoiu, a political scientist, said Russian meddling could not be ruled out given Georgescu’s stance on Ukraine and the discrepancy between the polls and the result.

The Kremlin said on Monday it was not well acquainted with Georgescu’s views, although it “clearly understood” the stance of the current Romanian leadership, which its spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said was hostile to Russia.

Other analysts suggested Georgescu’s shock success could have a contagion effect on the parliamentary elections scheduled on 1 December, meaning it may prove very difficult for the winning parties to form a stable new coalition government.

Reuters, Associated Press and AFP contributed to this report

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has repeated her threat to back a censure motion that could topple the French prime minister, Michel Barnier, after the two met for talks on his government’s budget.

Barnier has been meeting party leaders to persuade them to back the budget in parliament amid speculation that the prime minister – appointed by the president, Emmanuel Macron, at the head of a minority government – may attempt to use a constitutional clause to force it through without a vote.

The leftwing coalition, the New Popular Front (NFP), has already threatened to table a censure motion if Barnier uses the measure, known as the 49:3, to push through the 2025 budget.

After Monday’s meeting, Le Pen said she had reminded the prime minister of the far-right National Rally’s (RN) “red lines”, which include dropping budget plans to increase taxes on electricity and the delaying of increases to certain pensions to cover inflation.

“We will see if today’s proposals are taken on board, but nothing is certain,” Le Pen said.

BFMTV reported that the RN is due to decide whether to lodge the censure motion at a meeting on 18 December, throwing doubt on whether Barnier could continue in his post.

Le Pen, who is president of the RN parliamentary group in the Assemblée Nationale, said Barnier was “courteous” at Monday’s meeting but appeared “fixed on his position”.

If MPs for the NFP and RN all vote for the censure motion it will pass and the government will fall.

Barnier has described any alliance of left and far right to overturn the government as a “coalition of opposites”.

Last week, during a conference of French mayors, he said: “I know this is not what the French want. What they want is stability and serenity.”

Another RN source told BFMTV: “He [Barnier] listened to us but did not hear us. I don’t have the feeling he has understood that things have changed.”

Barnier was made prime minister by Macron at the beginning of September after July’s snap general election.

Macron had hoped that the election would strengthen his position but the move backfired, forcing his centrist government to resign and leaving the lower house of parliament divided into three equal blocs – far right, left and centre – none of which has an absolute majority.

Last week, leaders of the parties in the NFP coalition, including France Unbowed (LFI), the Socialists (PS), the French Communist party (PCF) and the Greens said in a statement they would attempt to bring the government down if the 49:3 was used.

“Our aim is simple: to protect our fellow citizens from the impact of a budget that will not open the way for a new future for the country but will prolong the social divide, ecological irresponsibility and democratic brutality,” they wrote.

Donald Trump imposing massive US tariffs on Chinese imports could drag down global inflation by lowering the price of goods in other countries, a senior Bank of England policymaker has said.

Swati Dhingra, an external member of the Bank’s rate-setting monetary policy committee, said Trump imposing a threatened 60% tariff on goods from China sold in the US could lead Chinese exporters to cut their prices elsewhere to ensure they maintained current trade volumes.

“If there is the kind of big 60% type of tariff increase that’s been proposed, that will have repercussions on to world prices, and mostly on the downward direction,” she said.

Speaking at a conference in London on Monday, the economist said there was heightened uncertainty about what policies the president-elect would carry through from the campaign trail. Trump warned before this month’s election that he would slap tariffs of up to 60% on China and up to 20% on other US trade partners.

However, Dhingra said the “textbook” impact of the world’s largest goods importer imposing such a large tariff on products from the world’s biggest exporter would be for global goods prices to fall.

Chinese firms would respond to tougher trade barriers by attempting to find buyers in alternative markets, which could lead them to lower their prices to sell similar volumes, including in the UK, she said.

“It takes a massive amount of demand out of the world market. The way exporters, say in China, would respond to that would be to respond with prices, world prices, as they don’t want to lose market share,” she said.

Economists have warned Trump imposing punitive import tariffs on US trading partners will drive up inflation in the world’s largest economy, as the costs would be borne by US consumers. However, it would also affect the wider global economy.

Dhingra said much would depend on the response to a burgeoning trade war, particularly if governments chose to retaliate with “tit for tat” tariffs on US imports, or with protectionist measures to prevent an influx of cheap Chinese goods reallocating away from the US market.

“Then we’re in a completely different situation,” she said.

Drawing a comparison with Brexit, Dhingra said that leaving the EU had led to “permanently” higher prices of products for British households. This had generated inflation as prices rose, before prices stabilised at a higher level.

“We saw much higher price increases in the UK compared to everywhere else and those pressures have now come off much more quickly as well, for the reason they’re not inflationary, they change the price levels, permanently,” she said.

Analysts have warned that the euro risks falling to parity with the US dollar for the first time since late 2022 if a new transatlantic trade war weakens the already struggling eurozone economy.

A Turkish woman who shared a Guardian article on social media about a British woman killed fighting with Kurdish forces in Syria has described how she was twice convicted of “sharing terrorist propaganda” in an Istanbul court.

“I am basically just an ordinary citizen, there is no reason why I should attract any special attention. This is the disturbing part,” said Peri Pamir, a 71-year-old retired researcher.

Pamir has been twice convicted on terrorism charges after sharing the 2018 Guardian article about Anna Campbell, who was killed while fighting with Kurdish forces in the besieged city of Afrin.

Campbell was a member of an all-female militia of the People’s Protection Units known as the YPG, a linchpin of the US and UK-backed Syrian Democratic forces battling Islamic State militants in Syria.

In her 2018 Facebook post linking to the article, Pamir called Campbell “a young idealist” and mused on the battle between Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish fighters. “Which ideology do you think will win in the end?” she asked.

A month after posting the article, Pamir received notice from local prosecutors telling her that she was under investigation for the crime of “creating propaganda for a terrorist organisation”. A police report detailed a lengthy investigation of her social media accounts, highlighting her post about Campbell and the Guardian article, and pointing to the YPG emblem pictured on Campbell’s uniform.

Turkey regards the YPG – and other Kurdish militant groups such as the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) – as terrorist organisations. While the UK and US also consider the PKK a terrorist organisation, Washington and London have long provided support to the YPG in Syria in their fight against IS forces.

The investigation into Pamir’s Facebook post was the beginning of an ordeal that is due to last until 2029. In recent years Turkish authorities have accused hundreds of thousands of its citizens of posting social media content constituting “acts of terrorism”, including 132,310 people last year alone, according to the interior ministry.

More than 9,000 were detained on these charges, according to the rights group Freedom House, which said that “sharing pro-Kurdish content online has resulted in criminal penalties”.

Pamir was convicted under anti-terror legislation by an Istanbul court in 2020 of “spreading propaganda for a terrorist organisation” for her Facebook post. She received a suspended 15-month prison sentence with five years of probation.

“I’m not guilty of anything. Surely I can share a Guardian article in full and make commentary. This is part of my right to free expression,” she said.

She described the probationary period as “a sword of Damocles over your head” designed to prevent her from posting freely on social media for five years. The authorities “want you to think you’re being surveilled since their intention is to intimidate and silence you”, she said.

Pamir appealed against the decision, resulting in a lengthy journey to a retrial in the same Istanbul court last week. “I do not think I did anything wrong by sharing my personal ideas,” she told the court, denying that she encouraged “any terrorist act against my country”.

Despite Pamir’s demands for an acquittal, she was dealt the same 15-month suspended sentence by the court, including a further five years of probation. ⁠⁠

“So much for asking for a fair hearing, I got the same hearing as before,” she said.

Her probationary period will now last until 2029, and Pamir said she plans to appeal again despite the risk of receiving a third sentence with more probation. “I will fight,” she said.