Thousands of people displaced from war-torn southern Lebanon have begun returning home after a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday, amid fears on both sides of the border about whether the truce would hold.

Israel heavily bombed the capital, Beirut, and the south of the country throughout Tuesday, killing 42 people, until the truce began at 4am local time, while Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, triggering air raid sirens.

On Wednesday, Lebanon’s motorways were thronged with packed vehicles carrying families and their belongings returning south despite warnings from the Israeli military that they should stay away while its forces remained in the area. The Lebanese army asked displaced people to avoid frontline villages and towns near the UN-drawn “blue line” that separates the two countries.

Lebanese military convoys were spotted travelling south as the army announced it would deploy to southern Lebanon under the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

“The army has begun to strengthen its deployment in the South Litani sector and extend state authority in coordination with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil),” the military said in a statement. “In this context, the concerned military units are moving from several areas to the South Litani sector, where they will be stationed at the locations designated for them.”

In a sign of how volatile the situation remains, Israeli forces opened fire on a number of cars that attempted to enter what it said was a restricted area on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if there were casualties in the incident. In televised remarks on Tuesday night, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that the country would “respond forcefully to any violation”.

The Israeli military declared a curfew for southern Lebanon from 5pm on Wednesday until 7am on Thursday, prohibiting people north of the Litani River in Lebanon from travelling south toward the border with Israel. Those in the area must stay put, the Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on social media.

“We do not want to harm you – but our forces will not hesitate to engage with any forbidden movements in this zone,” Adraee said.

In its first statement since the truce was announced, Hezbollah made no direct mention of the ceasefire and vowed to continue its resistance.

The militia said its fighters “remain fully equipped to deal with the aspirations and assaults of the Israeli enemy”. Its forces will monitor Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon “with their hands on the trigger”.

The US-brokered ceasefire, the most significant development in the effort to calm regional tensions that have rocked the Middle East since the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, has largely been welcomed by the war-weary Lebanese and Israelis.

Hezbollah began firing on Israel a day after its ally’s surprise assault, and the sides traded fire for a year before Israel stepped up its air campaign in late September and sent in ground troops. The deal is not linked to a ceasefire in Gaza – a previous Hezbollah demand.

The 60-day staged withdrawal, in which Israel will pull out of southern Lebanon and Hezbollah will move its fighters and heavy weaponry north of the Litani River, about 16 miles (25km) north of the frontier, is designed to broker a permanent end to 14 months of fighting. It will be monitored by a US-led supervisory mechanism that will mediate on infringements.

Predictably, Hezbollah and Israel are both seeking to portray themselves as the victorious side as the violence ends. The Lebanese group has suffered its worst losses since the group was formed to fight Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s: much of its leadership has been wiped out and its communication networks and security protocols are compromised.

It is unclear how much heavy weaponry and military infrastructure has been destroyed, but the group’s inability to cause significant damage with rocket strikes on Israeli cities suggests its military capabilities are severely degraded.

Hezbollah, which participates in Lebanon’s political system but is considered a terrorist organisation by many western states, participated in the talks for the truce via mediators but has not formally commented on the ceasefire.

To its supporters, however, the group’s survival is a win in itself. Street celebrations where people waved its yellow and green flag and honked car horns were held across southern Beirut on Wednesday, and celebratory gunfire rang out in some neighbourhoods.

Iran, Hezbollah’s ally, welcomed the end of Israel’s “aggression” in Lebanon on Wednesday morning. In a statement, the foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei stressed Iran’s “firm support for the Lebanese government, nation and resistance”.

In Israel, the ceasefire has met a more mixed reaction. On Tuesday night, Netanyahu said he had endorsed the deal after his cabinet approved it, despite opposition from his far-right allies. The country’s army relies heavily on reservists, units that are tired after more than a year of fighting in Gaza and Lebanon and will welcome the break.

But rightwingers and residents of Israel’s north – where about 60,000 were displaced from their homes at the beginning of the conflict – have criticised the agreement, which relies on the western-backed Lebanese army and UN peacekeeping troops to ensure Hezbollah does not redeploy to the border buffer zone. Dozens of people gathered outside the Israeli army’s headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night to protest against the ceasefire, blocking traffic on a motorway.

It is unclear how many displaced Israelis are now planning to go home. Gabby Neeman, the mayor of the northern town of Shlomi, told Israel’s army radio station that no residents were planning to return, and that he believed that the fighting would restart eventually.

“Everything we were shown testifies to the fact that the next round is ahead of us, whether in a month, two months or 10 years,” he said.

The Lebanon deal will not have any direct impact on the fighting in Gaza, where US efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly failed. Overnight on Wednesday, Israeli strikes on two schools turned shelters in Gaza City killed 11 people, including four children, according to hospital officials. Israel said one of the strikes targeted a Hamas sniper and the other targeted militants hiding among civilians.

Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, announced earlier this month it was quitting its role until both parties showed “willingness and seriousness” in the talks.

Announcing the Lebanon ceasefire on Tuesday night, the US president, Joe Biden, said his administration would now push to renew ceasefire talks in Gaza, but the delinking of the two fronts is likely to strengthen Israel’s hand in the Palestinian territory.

The French government has claimed that Benjamin Netanyahu has immunity from arrest warrants issued by the international criminal court for war crimes on the grounds that Israel is not an ICC member.

The claim came soon after Netanyahu’s cabinet agreed to a French-backed ceasefire in Lebanon and is in contrast to Paris’s attitude towards last year’s ICC war crimes warrant issued against Vladimir Putin, another leader of a non-member country.

After the court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, on Friday, France initially signalled that it would fulfil its obligations as a signatory to the Rome statute, the ICC’s founding document, if either visited the country.

However, on Wednesday, the French foreign ministry appeared to change its tone and claimed Netanyahu had immunity because Israel was not signatory to the statute.

“A state cannot be held to act in a way that is incompatible with its obligations in terms of international law with regard to immunities granted to states which are not party to the ICC,” the French statement said.

“Such immunities apply to prime minister Netanyahu and other ministers in question, and must be taken into consideration should the ICC ask us to arrest them and hand them over.”

Israel has informed the ICC that it intends to appeal the arrest warrants, which it described as “baseless” and “without any factual or legal foundation”, according to a statement issued by Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday.

“Should the ICC reject the appeal, this will underscore to Israel’s friends in the US and around the world how biased the ICC is against the State of Israel,” the statement said.

The French argument appeared to be a reference to article 98 of the Rome statute which states a country cannot “act inconsistently with its obligations under international law with respect to the … diplomatic immunity of a person”. However, article 27 of the statute says that the immunity of high office “shall not bar the court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person”.

The ICC ruled in 2019 that article 98 was not a “fountain of immunity” but rather a “procedural rule” that guided how the court should ask for a warrant to be carried out. The court ruled last month that Mongolia had violated its obligations as a party to the ICC by failing to arrest Putin when he visited the country in August, and that article 98 did not provide immunity from the war crimes charges against the Russian leader.

The French foreign ministry at the time said it gave full support to the ICC, “true to [France’s] longstanding commitment to combat impunity”.

“The French government’s legal position now with respect to Netanyahu is inconsistent as compared to its position just a few months ago with respect to Putin,” Milena Sterio, a professor at the Cleveland State University College of Law, said. “It is possible that the French government is softening its view vis-a-vis Israel/Netanyahu in order to maintain working ties with the Israeli government, and in order to be in a position to continue to mediate between Israel and Lebanese-based Hezbollah.”

Amnesty International France said the French position on Netanyahu “runs counter to France’s fundamental obligations as a member state of the ICC”.

“A cornerstone principle of the ICC statute is that no one is above the law, including heads of state sought for arrest, such as Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu,” the human rights group said. “This has been confirmed in a decision by the court’s appeals chamber in jurisprudence which is binding on all member states.”

David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, said he would continue to engage with Netanyahu despite the arrest warrant but added he was under an “obligation” to refer the Israeli leader to the domestic court system if he came to the UK.

“Should those named seek to come into our country that doesn’t allow me any discretion, I will issue that, transmit that to the courts, and then the courts will make their determination under our law,” Lammy told parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Before the ceasefire had even come into effect, Zeinab and Dina were already driving south. The two sisters had been forced to flee to Tripoli, northern Lebanon, for 64 days – they had counted – and they could not bear another day without seeing home.

“We were laughing and crying at the same time when we heard the news of the ceasefire. We were packing our stuff and still we didn’t believe it was happening, it was like a dream,” said Zeinab, 28, a resident of the town of Zibqeen in south Lebanon.

She and Dina joined the tens of thousands of Lebanese who headed south on Wednesday morning after a ceasefire came into effect, ending more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel’s military warned residents not to return south, sending pre-recorded messages across Lebanon with a reminder that despite the ceasefire, south Lebanon was still a military zone.

Israeli warnings were cast aside and Lebanon’s coastal road was soon backed up, stuffed with mattress-laden cars, families sitting two to a seat. People lined the highway, waving flags and cheering on the cars returning south. “You’ve arrived safely, thank God,” Lebanese soldiers and paramedics said, greeting people as they entered Tyre’s city limits.

As the coastal highway ended and cars peeled off into the winding mountain roads of Lebanon’s south, the cheering grew quieter.

Rubble and downed power lines covered the streets. Almost every single home was damaged – some had their windows blown out, others had been completely flattened, their roofs split like firewood. Trees lay heavy with overripe fruits and rotting citrus lay on the ground; their owners had missed the harvest.

Zeinab and Dina arrived in Zibqeen to find their home in ruins. It had been destroyed while they were gone.

“We feel happy and sad at the same time. Thank God we are home, but at the same time, we are heartbroken over all those we lost,” Zeinab said, her two-year-old son on her shoulder as she spoke in front of the remains of her home town. The two sisters would not be able to stay the night; there was no habitable home in the village.

Other residents of Zibqeen had already set to work, sweeping away chunks of broken concrete and shattered glass with horsehair brooms and clearing a path for the cars passing through the town towards their own homes. “It will take a while but we will rebuild,” Zeinab said.

In Bint Jbeil, a village about a kilometre from the Israel-Lebanon border, the scene was similar. The city’s main hospital’s front entrance had been shattered and the adjacent mosque had fallen in on itself. Returning residents took selfies in front of the mosque’s emerald-green dome, somehow still largely intact despite the minaret having been blown up.

In a sports stadium in the city centre, the Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah delivered a speech to a group of about a dozen reporters. He was declaring victory over Israel, proclaiming that “though it was painful” the group had prevented Israel from achieving any of its goals in south Lebanon.

Mohammed, who asked to be identified only by his first name, watched as residents of Bint Jbeil returned home. He had remained in the city throughout the prior two months, despite the advancing Israeli troops and the intense bombardment.

His phone lock screen bore a picture of his nephew, who had been killed fighting months earlier. “I am proud of his martyrdom. Blood is the price we need to pay for freedom,” he said, gesturing to the ruined city. He echoed the words of the Hezbollah MP and said that even with the scale of the destruction, the fact that Israel was not occupying south Lebanon was a victory.

In front of him were a group of women, crying and embracing as they saw their city for the first time in months. The mayor of the city, Afif Bazzi, declined a request for an interview, explaining that he was preoccupied with arranging the burial of the dead, their bodies finally able to be exhumed after weeks under the rubble.

In the distance, bursts of automatic gunfire rang out, prompting residents to begin to pack up and leave. “That’s Maroun al-Ras, it seems things are not settled there yet,” Mohammed said, referring to a village closer to the Israel-Lebanon border.

As the afternoon light began to fade, the southern villages emptied out once again. Just a few people sat and watched as cars passed, heading northwards. Dogs feasted on the corpse of a horse next to a stable, which seemed to have been abandoned some months prior. A Hezbollah Katyusha rocket launcher sitting in the back of a truck lay empty and unattended, its munitions spent and its tubes broken.

“We don’t know where we will sleep tonight – maybe Sour – but we will come back tomorrow,” Zeinab said.

Joe Biden has revived diplomatic efforts to achieve a truce in Gaza with the hope of building on momentum generated by the newly agreed ceasefire in Lebanon.

There are doubts, however, that such momentum exists outside the Biden administration, which is anxious to use its last few weeks to salvage scraps of diplomatic honour after the bloody past 14 months in the Middle East.

The national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday that the president had ordered his envoys to contact Turkey, Qatar, Egypt “and other actors in the region” to restart regional talks on Gaza, 18 days after Qatar publicly withdrew from its mediating role on the grounds that neither Israel nor Hamas were serious about reaching an agreement.

There is no evidence that either side has changed their positions as a result of the Lebanon deal. On the contrary, the ceasefire in Lebanon arguably makes it less likely that an agreement can be struck in Gaza – where the estimated death toll has now passed 44,000 – for domestic political reasons in Israel. The hard right hawks who resisted a truce on the northern border are likely to double down on their insistence of “total victory” in Gaza.

On Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 13 Palestinians and wounded dozens among families who had been sheltering in a school in Gaza City, and seven more were killed by the bombing of a nearby house in the same district. For now, Gaza’s agony seems doomed to continue.

Hamas said on Wednesday it was ready for a deal based on terms previously agreed, which it listed as an Israeli withdrawal, the return of displaced people to northern Gaza and an exchange of Palestinian detainees for Hamas-held Israeli hostages.

Benjamin Netanyahu has previously blocked progress towards a hostages-for-peace deal with his insistence that Israeli forces maintain control over the “Philadelphi Corridor”, a buffer zone inside the Gaza-Egyptian border. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) meanwhile appear focused on emptying northern Gaza of its Palestinian population, amid growing suspicions that Netanyahu’s hard-right government intends to occupy the territory permanently.

The Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said earlier this week that Israel should occupy the Gaza Strip and halve its Palestinian population through the “encouragement of voluntary emigration”.

“We can and must conquer the Gaza Strip. We should not be afraid of that word,” Smotrich said at an event on Monday night. At about the same time, the agriculture minister, Avi Dichter, was telling a group of foreign correspondents that the coalition remained focused on a “decisive victory” in Gaza.

“Are we at the beginning of the end? Definitely not. We still have a lot to do,” Dichter said, according to Reuters.

That is the key difference between a ceasefire in Lebanon and one in Gaza: the Israeli far right represented in the governing coalition has annexationist plans for Gaza, which it does not have in Lebanon. The security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, criticised the Lebanese ceasefire, but the right was not prepared to bring down the coalition over it. It has, however, credibly threatened to topple Netanyahu if there is a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

The prime minister has every reason to believe his coalition partners on this. He has promised them “total victory” and having reached a compromise in Lebanon against their wishes, he has even less leeway in Gaza. It would be hard to keep the current coalition together in the face of television pictures of released Palestinian detainees flashing victory signs, or of Mohammed Sinwar (brother of Yahya, the late Hamas leader) emerging from the Gaza rubble celebrating the group’s survival.

For the remaining leadership of Hamas, the ability to demonstrate proof of life, showing that the movement has survived 14 months of a war Hamas started, is a bottom line in any ceasefire talks. They have nothing else to lose.

Netanyahu has, meanwhile, become increasingly reliant on his status as a wartime leader to keep prosecutions on various corruption charges at bay. His legal team has requested a delay in his appearance on the defendant’s stand scheduled for next Monday, on the grounds that he is too busy leading the war effort.

Netanyahu faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust across three separate cases, and needs to stay in office to have the best chance of staying out of jail.

A continuing state of war is his best argument against early elections before this Knesset’s term ends in October 2026, and without a war in Lebanon, he depends even more on continuing war in Gaza. At the same time, the truce in the north frees up soldiers and munitions for use in the already devastated coastal strip.

There are two developments on the horizon that could break this remorseless logic. One is the prospect of a bigger war. The first justification Netanyahu presented for the Lebanon ceasefire was “to focus on the Iranian threat”, but he refused to clarify what that meant.

Netanyahu has made clear over his many years in office that he sees Iran’s nuclear programme as an existential threat to Israel, and he wants his legacy to be that of the leader who neutralised this threat. That would spark a conflict that would obviate the need for the Gaza war to provide his martial credentials and his alibi for skipping court dates.

The second critical development is the looming restoration of Donald Trump, who has made it clear to Netanyahu that he wants the fighting to be over by the time he returns to the Oval Office on 20 January. That demand puts Netanyahu in a potential dilemma, forced to choose between his most important patron on the world stage and his coalition partners.

It is a dilemma that Netanyahu will try to escape in the weeks to come. One way out for him could be to step up the merciless barrage on Gaza to appease the far right, so that the peace he offers Trump is the silence of the cemetery.

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has moved a step closer to jail after a federal police investigation laid bare what it called a murderous authoritarian plot to explode the country’s democratic system with a military coup that the far-right populist allegedly helped mastermind.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied involvement in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2022 presidential election, which he narrowly lost to his leftwing rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

But on Tuesday, an 884-page federal police report accused the former army captain of taking a lead role in planning and organizing the conspiracy and trying to persuade the most senior members of the military to join the criminal enterprise.

Several top members of the armed forces allegedly agreed, including the commander of the navy, Adm Almir Garnier Santos, and the army’s ground operations commander Gen Estevam Theophilo.

The police report paints the former defence minister, Gen Walter Braga Netto, as being one of the plot’s main architects, although he has denied a coup was ever discussed. Braga Netto, 67, who was Bolsonaro’s vice-presidential running mate in the 2022 election, has denied involvement in any coup plot. Garnier Santos and Theophilo have yet to publicly comment on the allegations.

Police allege Bolsonaro ultimately backed away from the three-year plot after the heads of the army and the air force, Gen Marco Antônio Freire Gomes and Air Lieutenant Brigadier Carlos de Almeida Baptista Júnior, refused to offer their support.

“We were very close to a coup – and a coup of crazies,” said political commentator Octavio Guedes of the apparent conspiracy that allegedly included plans to arrest or assassinate top leaders, including Lula before seizing television and radio stations to announce the military take-over.

A handwritten document discovered during a raid on the HQ of Bolsonaro’s political party outlined what appeared to be a six-stage “operation” to use troops to interrupt the transfer of power and annul the 2022 election. The text concludes with what it calls the operation’s “desired political end state”: preventing Lula walking into the presidential palace to take office.

“How could they think the world would accept this?” asked Guedes, who believed pressure from Joe Biden’s US administration had played an important role in ensuring the alleged plot flopped, as well as the refusal of military commanders to sign up. “Brazil also owes its democracy to Biden,” said Guedes, a commentator for the TV network GloboNews. “History would be very different if it had been Trump [in power].”

As details of the alleged plot have emerged, pro-democracy Brazilians have celebrated how their country’s justice system appears to be closing in on Bolsonaro, in contrast to the US. There, Bolsonaro’s ally, Donald Trump, has not been held to account for suspected crimes including inciting his followers to storm the US Capitol in January 2021 and trying to overturn his election defeat.

The federal police report claims Brazil’s answer to the Capitol attack – the 8 January 2023 rightwing riots in Brasília, when congress and the presidential palace were ransacked – was part of the long-running conspiracy to help Bolsonaro cling to power.

Bolsonaro allegedly shied away from approving a military takeover in December 2022, on the eve of Lula’s 1 January 2023 inauguration. But police claim plotters hoped the post-inauguration scenes of chaos in Brasília might provide what one accused general called “a trigger event” – an outbreak of disorder that would justify a military intervention.

“An attempt at this trigger event came on 8 January 2023,” the federal police report claims.

Ultimately, however, security forces contained the unrest and Lula’s administration reasserted control. Nearly two years later, Lula remains in office while media reports suggest Bolsonaro, 69, could face decades in prison if convicted of being part of a criminal conspiracy to destroy Brazilian democracy.

“The chances of him being arrested have never been higher,” said Celso Rocha de Barros, a political columnist and author, although he said it was not inevitable and refused to rule out an eventual political comeback.

Barros, who was among those who had spent years warning that Bolsonaro and his supporters were cooking up a coup, said the police investigation’s conclusions had not surprised him in the slightest. “In 2018 … I wrote an article saying: ‘Bolsonaro is going to stage a coup’. All you had to do was pay attention to what he was saying,” Barros said. “He never hid … that he wanted a coup – he always made it crystal clear. The only people who didn’t see this were those who didn’t want to see it or those who made money out of not seeing.”

Speaking to reporters in Brasília on Tuesday, Bolsonaro admitted he could be arrested but claimed he was the victim of political persecution and called the accusations against him “madness”.

Lula allies have used the police allegations to a counter rightwing push for an amnesty for hundreds of people who took part in the 8 January rampage – and perhaps even Bolsonaro himself. “We are dealing with very dangerous people … there can be no amnesty,” the president of Lula’s Workers’ party (PT), Gleisi Hoffmann, told CNN Brasil.

Referring to the alleged plot to kill Lula, Hoffmann added: “This cannot go unchallenged.”

Guedes said it remained unclear whether Bolsonaro would wind up in prison, noting: “Brazilian history is a history of impunity, not punishment.”

“Political history is full of unexpected twists,” he added, remembering how Lula had seemed politically dead and buried when he was jailed for corruption in 2018 but then staged a sensational comeback to defeat Bolsonaro in 2022.

The prosecutor general, Paulo Gonet, must now decide whether to bring charges against Bolsonaro and the 36 other alleged conspirators, or order further inquiries.

Guedes believed Bolsonaro’s future would be decided by how Brazil’s “democratic right” responded to the coup allegations and whether leading conservatives such as the governors of the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais distanced themselves from the disgraced former president.

“Bolsonaro’s destiny will be decided by the right and I think the democratic right has already abandoned Bolsonaro,” Guedes said. “This democratic right may isolate Bolsonaro – and I think this is already happening.”

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick, was among several cabinet nominees and appointees of the president-elect’s incoming administration who were targeted with bomb threats and so-called “swatting” on Wednesday, the Guardian has learned.

Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman of New York and Trump’s pick for US ambassador to the United Nations, who has emerged as a hard-right loyalist of Trump in the last few years, was the subject of a bomb threat, her office said.

The home of Howard Lutnick, Trump’s choice for commerce secretary and part of his transition team, was threatened, the Bronx outlet News 12 reported. And Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency pick, saw his Long Island home threatened, News 12 in Long Island also reported.

Zeldin later posted on X saying: “A pipe bomb threat targeting me and my family at our home today was sent in with a pro-Palestinian themed message.” He said they were not at home and were trying to find out more.

A report also emerged via CNN that Matt Gaetz was also targeted. The former congressman was Trump’s first choice for US attorney general but withdrew after eight days amid a sexual misconduct scandal that meant he risked not being confirmed by the Senate.

A spokesperson for Trump confirmed threats against some of his cabinet picks but did not initially give any names or say how many people had received threats.

The FBI then later said it was involved in investigating the incidents.

But Hegseth, the military veteran steeped in controversy over his hardline conservative views and a sexual scandal, was understood to be among those threatened, according to two people familiar with the developments.

He was understood to have received a threat at home of a pipe bomb targeting him. It was unclear whether the threats related to real weapons or were hoaxes, but as events unfolded in the early afternoon there was no sign of any bombs being located. The threat is understood to have prompted a law enforcement bomb squad to deploy to his residence.

Apart from the social media comment from Zeldin, there were no other comments on possible motive. Israel’s war in Gaza continues even as a ceasefire was declared with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

A wave of bomb threats also occurred during the election campaign, with election officials and their offices often targeted.

Trump has so far put together one of the most controversial and incongruous cabinet teams in US presidential history, delighting his supporters.

The threats were made on both Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Members of law enforcement and various authorities acted quickly to ensure the safety of those targeted, according to Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s spokesperson and incoming White House press secretary, who released a statement.

Leavitt did not give further details on the nature of the different threats. Spokespeople for the FBI and the justice department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Leavitt said the attacks “ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting’”, when a hoax call is made to police designed to prompt them to dispatch a significant, armed response to someone’s home and cause fear and maximum chaos.

Stefanik’s office said in a post on X: “This morning, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, her husband, and their three-year-old son were driving home to Saratoga county from Washington for Thanksgiving when they were informed of a bomb threat to their residence. New York State, county law enforcement, and US Capitol police responded immediately with the highest levels of professionalism.”

Wednesday’s developments follow two assassination attempts against Trump himself during his election campaign.

On 13 July, a shooter fired into the crowd during an open-air Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, injuring two attendees and killing one. Trump was grazed by the gunfire but emerged almost entirely uninjured.

Two months later, on 15 September, a suspect was caught while pointing a gun toward Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf course, where Trump was golfing. He was apprehended the same day.

Both incidents prompted the campaigns of both Trump and his rival, the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, to adopt heightened security for the duration of the race. After the Pennsylvania shooting, Trump frequently appeared at rallies behind bulletproof glass.

Elon Musk’s X is trying to block the transfer of the platform’s InfoWars accounts to the Onion after filing a legal objection stating that it owns users’ accounts.

The social network has filed a “limited objection” to the sale of InfoWars, a media platform run by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, to the satirical news outlet the Onion.

Although X said it did not oppose the sale as a “general matter”, it is arguing that its users do not own their accounts and cannot sell or transfer them without its permission.

“X Corp.’s TOS [terms of service] make clear that it owns the X Accounts, as the TOS is explicit that X Corp. merely grants its users a non-exclusive license to use their accounts,” the company wrote in a filing to a federal court in Texas.

InfoWars was put up for sale at bankruptcy auction after Jones was ordered by court judgments to pay $1.5bn to relatives of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre due to false claims he made about the mass shooting being a “hoax”.

The Onion announced it had bought InfoWars this month but the deal is on hold pending a court hearing next month after Jones and a losing bidder, First United American Companies, objected to the sale. Jones and FUAC, which is affiliated with Jones’s dietary supplements business, have accused the trustee overseeing the auction of colluding with the Onion and the Sandy Hook families.

The trustee, Christopher Murray, has denied the allegations and described them as a “desperate attempt” to delay the sale.

X wrote: “Regardless of the accounts’ use, X Corp. is plainly the owner of the X Accounts and the Services, and the Trustee cannot sell, assign, or otherwise transfer what it does not own or have an interest in.”

Musk has already signalled X’s control of accounts on the platform by taking over the previously dormant @america handle to advertise his pro-Donald Trump super political action committee during the presidential election.

A little-known Florida-based drones company said on Wednesday it had appointed Donald Trump Jr as an adviser – then saw its stock price surge.

“Don Jr joining our board of advisors provides us unique expertise we need as we bring drone component manufacturing back to America,” said Allan Evans, chief executive of Unusual Machines.

By mid-morning on the New York stock exchange, company shares had climbed as high as $11.67, more than double the day’s opening price.

Unusual Machines also said Trump Jr, the oldest son of the president-elect, was among its investors. A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission listed Trump Jr as the second-biggest shareholder.

In a press release that described Trump Jr as “a globally recognized business leader” and “best-selling author”, Evans said he would “bring a wealth of experience”.

Trump, typically referred to as Don Jr, has spent most of his adult life working for his father’s company, the Trump Organization, on real estate and branding. But he has risen to political prominence since his sister Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, distanced themselves from Donald Trump following his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress by Trump supporters who tried in vain to overturn his loss.

This year, Trump Jr was widely held to have helped steer the Ohio senator, JD Vance, onto the Republican ticket which defeated the Democratic ticket of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her running mate and Minnesota governor, Tim Walz.

On Wednesday, Trump Jr said: “The need for drones is obvious. It is also obvious that we must stop buying Chinese drones and Chinese drone parts. I love what Unusual Machines is doing to bring drone manufacturing jobs back to the USA.”

That was in line with statements from his father the president-elect, who has long said he will impose hefty tariffs on Chinese imports.

Unusual Machines, however, says in its SEC filing it “has been heavily dependent on Chinese imports for our products and operations”.

Referring to brands of drones and equipment, it said: “A substantial majority of Rotor Riot’s products are manufactured, directly and indirectly, using Chinese vendors. Fat Shark’s primary contract manufacturer is Shenzhen Fat Shark Technology Ltd … which is located in Shenzhen, China.”

Unusual Machines did not immediately comment further.

Colombian authorities working with dozens of other countries have seized 225 tonnes of cocaine in the space of six weeks, a global record for any single anti-narcotics operation, finding some of that haul on a “narco submarine” travelling on a new drug trafficking route to Australia.

In the six-week Operation Orion, law enforcement agencies and other organisations from 62 countries halted six semi-submersible vessels stuffed with cocaine and confiscated 1,400 tonnes of drugs in total, including more than 1,000 tonnes of marijuana.

The interception of 225 tonnes of cocaine marks a significant dent in the operations of Latin America’s cartels given that the UN estimates 2,700 tonnes are produced globally each year and Colombia’s record for annual seizures was the 671 tonnes confiscated in 2022.

“This is an important chunk of the cocaine trade, even when you consider the high amounts of the drug leaving the region,” said Captain Manuel Rodríguez, director of the Colombian navy’s anti-narcotics unit. “This will prevent thousands of deaths from overdoses and $8.5bn from reaching the cartels which definitely makes a hole in the profits of these criminal organisations.”

More than 400 people were arrested in the 45-day crackdown which also halted illegal shipments of weapons and caught migrant traffickers, and involved agencies from the US, the EU and Australia.

The Colombian navy has attributed the historical success to unprecedented cooperation between the 62 countries and academic institutions such as the Royal United Services Institute, a UK thinktank studying how Colombian and Mexican cartels smuggle drugs undetected.

Partner nations pooled together aeroplanes, helicopters and frigates to intercept the illegal shipments but most important was the sharing of intelligence, Rodríguez said.

One of the biggest breakthroughs was the interception of six semi-submersibles carrying cocaine which uncovered a new route used to ship unprecedented amounts of the drug to Australia.

Often branded “narco-submarines”, the majority of the 10-25-meter vessels sit low in the water so they are barely visible as they skim the ocean with up to 10 tonnes of cocaine onboard.

One of the semi submersibles was bound for Australia before it was intercepted with five tonnes of white powder on board 1,250 miles (2,000km) south-west of Clipperton Island, a tiny uninhabited French coral reef in the Pacific. Five people on board were detained.

“This is a new route that they have opened for semi-submersibles. The vessel was found in the middle of nowhere, close to 3,000 miles [4,800km] off the Colombian coast heading to Australia and New Zealand,” Rodríguez said.

Colombian drug traffickers usually only dare to ship 5 to 50kg to Australia concealed in cargo ships, the naval official said. The bust is the first time a semi-submersible was found sailing to Oceania, suggesting narcos have recently started using the inconspicuous vessels to bypass anti-narcotics officials in ports while going undetected on the seas.

Demand for cocaine continues to soar in Australia and sky-high prices are incentivising narcos to innovate, so more of their products make the journey across the globe, the naval official said.

The boat had set sail from Tumaco, a port city on Colombia’s pacific coast, on a 4,000-mile journey direct to Australia.

“They have improved the design of the semi submersibles and given them extra fuel capacity,” he said.

A kilogram of cocaine is sold for up to US$240,000 in Australia – between three and six times the average price in the US.

Naval officials ventured out thousands of miles at sea in small interceptor boats and waited weeks in the hopes of intercepting the shipments, Rodriguez said.

The success of the international cooperation showed authorities can keep up with narcos in their game of cat and mouse and could mark a turning point for anti- narcotics operations, Rodriguez said.

There is also hope that artificial intelligence could help them pick up more drugs concealed in cargo.

“It’s going to help us a lot to identify containers or cargo vessels that could be contaminated as there are millions moving around the region every day and profiling the suspicious one is really hard if you don’t have the way to process all that information,” he said.

Colombian authorities working with dozens of other countries have seized 225 tonnes of cocaine in the space of six weeks, a global record for any single anti-narcotics operation, finding some of that haul on a “narco submarine” travelling on a new drug trafficking route to Australia.

In the six-week Operation Orion, law enforcement agencies and other organisations from 62 countries halted six semi-submersible vessels stuffed with cocaine and confiscated 1,400 tonnes of drugs in total, including more than 1,000 tonnes of marijuana.

The interception of 225 tonnes of cocaine marks a significant dent in the operations of Latin America’s cartels given that the UN estimates 2,700 tonnes are produced globally each year and Colombia’s record for annual seizures was the 671 tonnes confiscated in 2022.

“This is an important chunk of the cocaine trade, even when you consider the high amounts of the drug leaving the region,” said Captain Manuel Rodríguez, director of the Colombian navy’s anti-narcotics unit. “This will prevent thousands of deaths from overdoses and $8.5bn from reaching the cartels which definitely makes a hole in the profits of these criminal organisations.”

More than 400 people were arrested in the 45-day crackdown which also halted illegal shipments of weapons and caught migrant traffickers, and involved agencies from the US, the EU and Australia.

The Colombian navy has attributed the historical success to unprecedented cooperation between the 62 countries and academic institutions such as the Royal United Services Institute, a UK thinktank studying how Colombian and Mexican cartels smuggle drugs undetected.

Partner nations pooled together aeroplanes, helicopters and frigates to intercept the illegal shipments but most important was the sharing of intelligence, Rodríguez said.

One of the biggest breakthroughs was the interception of six semi-submersibles carrying cocaine which uncovered a new route used to ship unprecedented amounts of the drug to Australia.

Often branded “narco-submarines”, the majority of the 10-25-meter vessels sit low in the water so they are barely visible as they skim the ocean with up to 10 tonnes of cocaine onboard.

One of the semi submersibles was bound for Australia before it was intercepted with five tonnes of white powder on board 1,250 miles (2,000km) south-west of Clipperton Island, a tiny uninhabited French coral reef in the Pacific. Five people on board were detained.

“This is a new route that they have opened for semi-submersibles. The vessel was found in the middle of nowhere, close to 3,000 miles [4,800km] off the Colombian coast heading to Australia and New Zealand,” Rodríguez said.

Colombian drug traffickers usually only dare to ship 5 to 50kg to Australia concealed in cargo ships, the naval official said. The bust is the first time a semi-submersible was found sailing to Oceania, suggesting narcos have recently started using the inconspicuous vessels to bypass anti-narcotics officials in ports while going undetected on the seas.

Demand for cocaine continues to soar in Australia and sky-high prices are incentivising narcos to innovate, so more of their products make the journey across the globe, the naval official said.

The boat had set sail from Tumaco, a port city on Colombia’s pacific coast, on a 4,000-mile journey direct to Australia.

“They have improved the design of the semi submersibles and given them extra fuel capacity,” he said.

A kilogram of cocaine is sold for up to US$240,000 in Australia – between three and six times the average price in the US.

Naval officials ventured out thousands of miles at sea in small interceptor boats and waited weeks in the hopes of intercepting the shipments, Rodriguez said.

The success of the international cooperation showed authorities can keep up with narcos in their game of cat and mouse and could mark a turning point for anti- narcotics operations, Rodriguez said.

There is also hope that artificial intelligence could help them pick up more drugs concealed in cargo.

“It’s going to help us a lot to identify containers or cargo vessels that could be contaminated as there are millions moving around the region every day and profiling the suspicious one is really hard if you don’t have the way to process all that information,” he said.

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) is seeking an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s military leader, Min Aung Hlaing, for crimes against humanity over the deadly crackdowns against the country’s Rohingya minority that drove hundreds of thousands to flee to Bangladesh.

Karim Khan said that “after an extensive, independent and impartial investigation” his office had concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe that the Myanmar junta chief “bears criminal responsibility for the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution of the Rohingya committed in Myanmar and in part in Bangladesh”.

A panel of three ICC judges must now rule on the prosecutor’s request. More applications for arrest warrants will follow, the prosecutor’s office said.

Tun Khin, a prominent Rohingya activist and the president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, welcomed the news as “huge step forward in the quest for justice”.

In 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee their homes in Rakhine state and cross over the border to Bangladesh after an operation by the Myanmar military that UN investigators said was carried out with “genocidal intent”.

Rohingya who fled across the border gave harrowing testimonies of mass rape, murder, and of torched homes. The events shocked the world, and for the past five years the ICC prosecutor’s office has been investigating the waves of violence that occurred during 2016 and 2017. Myanmar has denied accusations of genocide.

At the time of the killings, the western-backed politician Aung San Suu Kyi was Myanmar’s democratically elected de facto leader. She was accused by rights groups of standing by while the army committed massacres. Her supporters claimed, however, that Myanmar’s most famous politician was unable to stand up to the military.

Aung San Suu Kyi later defended her country against allegations of genocide at the UN’s top court. In 2021, she was arrested when the military took power in a coup.

Tun Khin said the news brought “a rare day of celebration for the Rohingya”. He said: “For decades the international community allowed the Myanmar military to violate international law against ethnic and religious minorities, without taking any action. This encouraged the Myanmar military to scale up abuses, including the genocide of the Rohingya. Today we have finally taken another step towards justice and accountability.”

Almost 1 million Rohingya remain in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in one of the world’s biggest and most densely populated refugee camps, which is plagued by insecurity. Rohingya who live in Myanmar continue to face persecution and violence, not only from the Myanmar military but also, activists say, from the Arakan Army, which is fighting against the military for control of Rakhine state.

Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya political activist, said the prosecutor’s application was long overdue. “We warmly welcome this move,” he said, adding that he hoped an arrest warrant would be issued promptly. “We deserve justice, we want justice, only the international court can deliver justice for us,” he said.

There is no set timeframe for the judge’s decision but it generally takes about three months to rule on issuing an arrest warrant.

Matthew Smith, a co-founder and the chief executive of Fortify Rights, a human rights group, described Min Aung Hlaing as “one of the world’s most notorious criminals”.

“He’s not only responsible for crimes against humanity against Rohingya but also for genocide and war crimes in Myanmar. He orchestrated the coup d’etat in 2021 and the subsequent mass murder, imprisonment and other atrocities against people throughout the country,” he said. “Min Aung Hlaing’s victims span Myanmar’s many ethnic groups and number in the tens of millions. He must be stopped and brought to justice.”

Some Democratic figures have accused Kamala Harris’s campaign of being self-congratulatory after a series of recent public appearances from the candidate and her senior staff in which they declined to admit making any errors that could have contributed to her defeat.

Some of the criticism was aimed at Harris herself, following a video call to thank campaign donors in which the vice-president expressed pride in her failed race for the White House.

She appeared to boast that the coalition assembled during her three-and-a-half-month campaign after succeeding Joe Biden as the Democrats’ nominee ranked among the “best political movements”. She insisted it would have “a lasting effect”, despite it ending in a decisive loss to Donald Trump, something she and her supporters warned beforehand would be a catastrophe.

“I am proud of the race we ran, and your role in this was critical,” the vice-president said in a 10-minute address. “What we did in 107 days was unprecedented. Think about the coalition that we built, and we were so intentional about that – you would hear me talk about it all the time.”

Although she admitted the election “didn’t turn out like we wanted”, she noted that the campaign raised nearly $1.5bn dollars, a record, and praised the success in fundraising from grassroots donors – despite reportedly ending the race $20m in debt and sending post-election fundraising emails to donors.

After some of the vice-president’s key staffers also appeared on a podcast billed as dissecting reasons for the defeat, one member of the Democratic National Committee’s finance team called the Harris campaign “self-congratulatory” .

Lindy Li told NewsNation she was “stunned that there was no sort of postmortem or analysis of the disastrous campaign”.

“It was just patting each other on the back,” she said. “They praised Harris as a visionary leader, and at one moment during the call, she was talking about her Thanksgiving recipe.”

Referring to a Pod Save America podcast posted on Tuesday in which Harris’s key aides discussed the $1bn-plus campaign spend, Li said: “They failed to mention that hundreds of millions of dollars went to them and their friends right through these consulting firms.

“These consultants were the primary beneficiaries of the Harris campaign, not the American people.”

One explanation on the podcast by Stephanie Cutter, a Harris adviser, on why the vice-president had declined to break with Biden despite the president’s persistently low approval ratings drew criticism.

“She felt like she was part of the administration. So why should she look back and cherry pick some things that she would have done differently when she was part of it?” Cutter told the podcast. “She had tremendous loyalty to President Biden. So the best we could do, and the most that she felt comfortable with was saying like, look, vice-presidents never break with their presidents.”

One X user posted: “If the guys at pod save America don’t have an episode just straight shit talking all these losers who helped us lose im never listening to another episode. [Because] wtf was this nonsense.”

Another podcast guest, David Plouffe, a former adviser to Barack Obama, was criticised after claiming: “It’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states.” He said the party needed “to dominate the moderate vote” to win future elections.

Jeet Heer, a writer for the leftwing Nation magazine responded: “Is it too much to ask for a little humility and self-reflection from the people whose strategies failed badly?”

Another social media user posted: “Anybody with more than two brain cells who’s committed to building up the democratic party would be analyzing the depressed voter turnout numbers. But the dudes at pod save America have no goal other than reliving their glory days.”

The discussion, which also included Harris’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, and Quentin Fulks, the campaign’s deputy manager, was also ridiculed by some on the right.

Bill O’Reilly, a former Fox News host, told NewsNation: “It’s kind of like the New York Jets. You guys follow the football, nobody did anything wrong, and they’re 3-8 … I hope people see the absurdity of this.”

James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist and the architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 election win, criticised aides who advised Harris not to go on the Joe Rogan podcast before election. Trump, by contrast, granted a three-hour interview to Rogan.

“If I were running a 2028 campaign and I had some little snot-nosed 23-year-old saying, ‘I’m going to resign if you don’t do this,’ not only would I fire that motherfucker on the spot, I would find out who hired them and fire that person on the spot,” Carville said in a foul-mouthed video rant posted on social media. “I’m really not interested in your uninformed, stupid, jackass opinion as to whether you go on Joe Rogan or not.”

The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has said the Baltic sea is now a “high risk” zone as he met Nordic and Baltic leaders days after a suspected sabotage attack on undersea cables.

The Swedish prime minister declined to speculate on who may have been responsible for the severing of two fibre optic telecoms cables in the Baltic last week. A Chinese ship – the Yi Peng 3 – that sailed over the cables about the time they were severed has remained anchored in the Kattegat strait between Sweden and Denmark since 19 November.

China’s foreign ministry has denied any responsibility in the matter.

Speaking from the summit, in Harpsund, the Swedish prime minister’s country retreat, Kristersson told the Guardian: “We are aware that there is a high risk for different types of activities on the Baltic sea that are dangerous.”

He added: “Now we are careful about not accusing anybody right now of anything. We don’t know that this is sabotage. But we are investigating the matter very carefully.”

Earlier this month, before the suspected attack on the two undersea cables between Sweden and Lithuania and Finland and Germany, Kristersson’s government vetoed plans for 13 offshore windfarms in the Baltic, citing unacceptable security risks.

The prime minister said the move was not connected to any prior knowledge of a potential imminent undersea cable attack.

The Swedish prosecutor on Wednesday said it had finished its crime scene investigations of the two damaged cables outside Gotland and Öland and that analysis of the material was continuing. A state prosecutor, Henrik Söderman, said:

“The preliminary investigation continues, and a closer collaboration will be initiated within the framework of the joint investigation group within the next period of time.”

The Danish navy and German and Swedish coastguards on Wednesday remained close to the Chinese ship, Yi Peng 3.

As a new Nato member, Kristersson said that Sweden was “safer and more secure” within the alliance than it was before – despite the longtime Nato scepticism of the US president-elect, Donald Trump.

He added: “We have known for a long time that the US administration, both Republican and Democrat, have waited for the European Nato countries to take greater responsibility for their own security. That is what we are working on right now.”

The prime ministers of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Estonia were also joined at the summit by the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, who was hoping to gain support for his “navy policing” initiative, which would see joint military patrols by countries around the Baltic to counter the threat of Russia.

The countries agreed to increase their support of Ukraine in terms of ammunition and defence.

In a resolution, they wrote: “Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine and increased use of hybrid measures have harmed peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area and seriously undermined global security.”

In a joint press conference, Kristersson said: “The decisions we make in the coming months will echo for many years.”

The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has said the Baltic sea is now a “high risk” zone as he met Nordic and Baltic leaders days after a suspected sabotage attack on undersea cables.

The Swedish prime minister declined to speculate on who may have been responsible for the severing of two fibre optic telecoms cables in the Baltic last week. A Chinese ship – the Yi Peng 3 – that sailed over the cables about the time they were severed has remained anchored in the Kattegat strait between Sweden and Denmark since 19 November.

China’s foreign ministry has denied any responsibility in the matter.

Speaking from the summit, in Harpsund, the Swedish prime minister’s country retreat, Kristersson told the Guardian: “We are aware that there is a high risk for different types of activities on the Baltic sea that are dangerous.”

He added: “Now we are careful about not accusing anybody right now of anything. We don’t know that this is sabotage. But we are investigating the matter very carefully.”

Earlier this month, before the suspected attack on the two undersea cables between Sweden and Lithuania and Finland and Germany, Kristersson’s government vetoed plans for 13 offshore windfarms in the Baltic, citing unacceptable security risks.

The prime minister said the move was not connected to any prior knowledge of a potential imminent undersea cable attack.

The Swedish prosecutor on Wednesday said it had finished its crime scene investigations of the two damaged cables outside Gotland and Öland and that analysis of the material was continuing. A state prosecutor, Henrik Söderman, said:

“The preliminary investigation continues, and a closer collaboration will be initiated within the framework of the joint investigation group within the next period of time.”

The Danish navy and German and Swedish coastguards on Wednesday remained close to the Chinese ship, Yi Peng 3.

As a new Nato member, Kristersson said that Sweden was “safer and more secure” within the alliance than it was before – despite the longtime Nato scepticism of the US president-elect, Donald Trump.

He added: “We have known for a long time that the US administration, both Republican and Democrat, have waited for the European Nato countries to take greater responsibility for their own security. That is what we are working on right now.”

The prime ministers of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Estonia were also joined at the summit by the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, who was hoping to gain support for his “navy policing” initiative, which would see joint military patrols by countries around the Baltic to counter the threat of Russia.

The countries agreed to increase their support of Ukraine in terms of ammunition and defence.

In a resolution, they wrote: “Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine and increased use of hybrid measures have harmed peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area and seriously undermined global security.”

In a joint press conference, Kristersson said: “The decisions we make in the coming months will echo for many years.”

• A senior official in Joe Biden’s administration has told the Associated Press that the US is urging Ukraine to quickly increase the size of its military by drafting more troops and lowering the conscription age to as young as 18. The official, speaking to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday the outgoing Democratic administration wants Ukraine to lower the mobilisation age from 25 to help expand the pool of fighting age men available.

• The Biden administration is preparing another urgent weapons package for Ukraine, this time worth $725m, two US officials said on Wednesday. It is predicted to include land mines, drones, Stinger anti-air missiles, and Himars ammunition, including GMLRS rockets with cluster warheads. The formal notification to Congress of the weapons package could come as soon as Monday, one official said. It is much more than the US president’s recent use of his presidential drawdown authority (PDA), which allows him to use weapons stocks to help allies in an emergency. Recent PDA announcements have typically ranged from $125m to $250 million. Biden has an estimated $4bn to $5bn in PDA already authorised by Congress that he could use before Donald Trump takes over on 20 January.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due on Thursday to sign Ukraine’s 2025 budget, which calls for the country’s first wartime tax increases. The finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, said Ukraine hoped tax increases would generate additional budget revenues of 141bn hryvnia (US$3.39bn). The prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said record sums would be directed to weapons production and purchases including modernising Ukraine’s defence industry and buying drones.

• There was no word on whether South Korea will supply arms to Ukraine after Kyiv’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, met with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, in Seoul on Wednesday. Yoon’s office said the two sides agreed to continue to share information on North Korean troops in Russia and North Korean-Russian weapons and technology transfers, while closely coordinating with the US. Umerov briefed other South Korean officials on the status of the Russia-Ukraine war and expressed hope that Kyiv and Seoul would strengthen cooperation, the statement said. Umerov predicted a “tangible strengthening of security for our peoples and regions”.

• Russia’s rouble has plunged to its lowest rate against the dollar since the early weeks of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the wake of new western sanctions and growing geopolitical tensions, Pjotr Sauer writes.

• Donald Trump has picked Keith Kellogg to serve as special envoy for Ukraine and Russia – a newly conceived role given the ongoing war, Gloria Oladipo writes. Kellogg served as a national security adviser to the former vice-president Mike Pence, then acting security adviser to Trump himself after Michael Flynn had to resign. Kellogg has said he would emphasise getting the two countries to the negotiating table.

• Russia’s sabotage of western targets may prompt Nato to consider invoking its article 5 mutual defence clause, Bruno Kahl, head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, has warned. The BND chief, speaking in Berlin on Wednesday, said he expected Moscow to further step up its hybrid warfare.

• Nordic and Baltic states and Poland said on Wednesday that they would in the coming months step up support for Ukraine, including to its defence industry, and invest in making more ammunition available. “We are committed to strengthening our deterrence, and defence, including resilience, against conventional as well as hybrid attacks, and to expanding sanctions against Russia as well as against those who enable Russia’s aggression,” the leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway, Poland and Sweden said in a statement.

• The head of the EU executive, Ursula von der Leyen, called for more defence spending in Europe over the next five years, as her top team was voted in by a wafer-thin majority in the European parliament. The EU faces acute challenges, including the war in Ukraine, the return of Donald Trump and the climate crisis, all against a backdrop of deepening fears of economic decline as von der Leyen starts her second term.

• Poland said on Wednesday that it had detained a German citizen and charged the suspect with brokering and exporting dual-use goods to Russia. The German citizen traded in specialist machines used in the technological industry, which – through his company – were illegally sent to Russian military plants involved in the production of weapons, said the Internal Security Agency (ISA). “The suspect pleaded guilty and filed a motion for voluntary submission to punishment.”

• Vladimir Putin arrived in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. Kazakhstan is a member of the Moscow-led CSTO security alliance but has expressed concern about the Ukraine war, which the Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has refused to condone. Kazakhstan is also working to detour away from Russia as a route for its oil export, using Turkey instead.

Donald Trump has picked Keith Kellogg to serve as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, a newly conceived role given the ongoing war between the two countries.

Kellogg, an 80-year-old retired US army lieutenant general, would start in the role as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues into its third year.

“Keith has led a distinguished Military and Business career, including serving in highly sensitive National Security roles in my first Administration. He was with me right from the beginning! Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Kellogg previously served as a national security adviser to the former vice-president Mike Pence during Trump’s first presidency. Kellogg later became acting security adviser to Trump himself after Michael Flynn resigned in 2017.

As per his plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, Kellogg previously told Reuters that he would emphasize getting the two countries to the negotiating table.

“We tell the Ukrainians: ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up,’” Kellogg said in a June interview. “And you tell [Vladimir] Putin [that] he’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.”

Early reactions to Kellogg’s potential confirmation have been tepid, the Hill reported.

“It was a gulp – not horrible, not amazing,” said one security analyst based in Washington DC, who spoke anonymously to the publication.

Oleh Shamshur, a former Ukrainian ambassador to the US, told the Hill he was pessimistic about Kellogg’s potential appointment.

“As I understand, he totally accepts the logic of Trump’s ‘peace plan’ as related by [vice-president-elect JD] Vance,” said Shamshur, referring to Vance’s support of ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia and rejecting plans for Ukraine to join Nato.

Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank, noted to the New York Times in September that Vance’s plans weren’t “a realistic proposal for peace”.

“He offered a plan for a Russian victory,” Coffey told the Times.

Trump’s upcoming presidency has prompted questions about the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine. He pledged to bring a quick end to the war as one of his main campaign promises, though he has not elaborated on how he will do so.

Some Ukraine supporters have voiced concerns that Trump’s steps to end the war could be detrimental to the country’s security or see Ukrainian land ceded to Russia, while Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says he is certain the war with Russia will “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Trump takes office.

Zelenskyy reportedly had a “constructive exchange” with Trump during a conversation in the aftermath of Trump’s victory the US presidential election.

Russia’s acts of sabotage against western targets may eventually prompt Nato to consider invoking the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defence clause, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has warned.

Speaking at an event of the German Council of Foreign Relations (DGAP) think tank in Berlin on Wednesday, BND chief Bruno Kahl said he expected Moscow to further step up its hybrid warfare.

“The extensive use of hybrid measures by Russia increases the risk that Nato will eventually consider invoking its Article 5 mutual defence clause,” he noted.

“At the same time, the increasing ramp up of the Russian military potential means a direct military confrontation with Nato becomes one possible option for the Kremlin.”

Under Article 5, if a Nato member comes under attack, the other members of the alliance are obliged to help it respond.

Nato and western intelligence services have warned that Russia is behind a growing number of hostile activities across the Euro-Atlantic area, ranging from repeated cyber attacks to Moscow-linked arson – all of which Russia denies.

Kahl said Russia’s military would likely be capable of attacking Nato by the end of the decade, adding that Moscow’s war on Ukraine meant that it had battle-proven troops under its command which raised the threat emanating from its conventional forces, while it also mastered modern drone warfare.

According to the assessment of his experts, high-ranking officials in the Russian defence ministry doubt whether Nato’s Article 5 including US protective measures for Europe would actually be invoked in case of an emergency, the intel chief said.

“We don’t have any indication yet that Russia intends to go to war, but if such sentiments gain the upper hand in the government in Moscow, then the risk for a military confrontation will grow over the coming years.”

Should Russia attack one or several Nato allies, it would not do so to grab massive swathes of land, Kahl said, but rather to test red lines set by the west with the aim of defeating western unity and Nato as a defensive alliance.

“In Russia’s view, this goal would be reached if Article 5 were to remain without effect in case of a Russian attack,” he said.

“To meet this target, you don’t need to send tank armies westwards, it is enough to dispatch little green men to the Baltics to protect allegedly threatened Russian minorities or adjust borders on [the Norwegian Arctic archipelago] Svalbard.”

Police believe Mohamed Al Fayed may have raped and abused more than 111 women over nearly four decades, with his youngest victim said to have been just 13 years old.

The scale of the criminality would make Fayed, who died last year at the age of 94, one of Britain’s most notorious sex offenders, and raises urgent questions about how he got away with his crimes.

Five unnamed individuals suspected of facilitating Fayed, the former owner of the luxury Knightsbridge store Harrods, are being investigated as potential “facilitators”, Scotland Yard said.

A huge review is also being undertaken into whether opportunities were missed in past police investigations and whether there are grounds to pursue past or current officers over historical corruption claims.

Last month, the Guardian reported claims that corrupt police officers had helped Fayed in persecuting members of his staff, including a young woman who allegedly rebuffed the Harrods owner’s sexual advances.

The 111 alleged cases of abuse involving Fayed include 21 alleged victims who reported crimes to the police between 2005 and his death, and 90 women who have come forward since the BBC aired a documentary on Fayed in September.

The Guardian understands that as soon as next week the Met will find out if it faces an independent investigation into whether it bungled the claims of sexual violence against the Harrods boss.

The police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, is considering whether its own investigators should investigate Britain’s biggest force.

A Met spokesperson said: “Following complaints from two women about the quality of investigations conducted in 2008, the Met has voluntarily referred these cases to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

“While these cases date back over a decade and we cannot change what happened in the past, we are committed to understanding, being open about any shortcomings and improving our response to survivors moving forward.”

Cmdr Stephen Clayman, of the Met’s Specialist Crime Command, said he recognised that trust in the police may have been eroded by its past conduct but called for any other survivors to come forward.

He said: “I recognise the bravery of every victim-survivor who has come forward to share their experiences, often after years of silence.

“This investigation is about giving survivors a voice, despite the fact that Mohamed Al Fayed is no longer alive to face prosecution. However, we are now pursuing any individuals suspected to have been complicit in his offending, and we are committed to seeking justice.

“We are aware that past events may have impacted the public’s trust and confidence in our approach, and we are determined to rebuild that trust by addressing these allegations with integrity and thoroughness.

“We encourage anyone who has information or was affected by Al Fayed’s actions to reach out to us. Your voice matters, and we are here to listen and to help.”

The crimes of which Fayed is accused span between 1977 and 2014. The Met said they had already reviewed more than 50,000 pages of evidence, including victim and impact statements, and retrieved “significant amounts of material from these investigations” stored in their archives.

As part of the inquiry, detectives from the Directorate of Professional Standards are seeking to establish if any serving or former officers at the Met were involved in any misconduct.

Detectives have been examining a witness statement from a former security director at the Knightsbridge store, Bob Loftus, who had claimed that one ex-Met commander received luxury hampers “whenever he had been a particularly great help to Harrods”.

Loftus had further claimed that a detective constable, who was accused of regularly taking cash bribes to carry out Fayed’s wishes, was secretly given a mobile phone from Harrods to facilitate his illicit work.

“It’s amazing what they will do for just a few readies,” John Macnamara, Fayed’s longtime security chief and an ex-detective, was said to have remarked about the police.

Loftus, 83, who worked for Fayed as the director of security at Harrods between 1987 and 1996, was unable to comment due to ill health when approached by the Guardian, but Eamon Coyle, 70, who was Loftus’s deputy, said he recognised the allegations contained in the statement to be true.

Coyle said: “I knew that there was a tame policeman. He was under the direct control of Macnamara. He was on tap. He was on the payroll.”

It is understood that detectives have interviewed a number of potential witnesses as part of the investigation into potential misconduct.

A Met spokesperson said: “The Metropolitan police is committed to thoroughly reviewing all information relating to historical allegations in the case of Mohamed Al Fayed, which includes our Directorate of Professional Standards assessing any indication of police misconduct.

“In line with this, we always look to acquire relevant documents, including witness statements, and other materials which we will actively review.”