Syrian insurgents have reached the suburbs of Damascus, opposition activists and a rebel commander said, as a rapidly moving offensive in which they have taken over some of Syria’s largest cities continued.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were active in the Damascus suburbs of Moadamiyah, Jaramana and Darayya on Saturday.

He said opposition fighters were also marching from eastern Syria towards the Damascus suburb of Harasta.

Hassan Abdul-Ghani, an insurgent commander, posted on Telegram that opposition forces had started to encircle the capital in the “final stage” of their offensive. He said fighters were heading from southern Syria towards Damascus.

Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, was continuing to carry out his work from Damascus, the Syrian state news agency said.

Anti-government protesters toppled a statue of Assad’s late father, Hafez, in the mostly Druze and Christian Damascus suburb of Jaramana earlier on Saturday, witnesses told Agence France-Presse.

A witness said he had seen dozens of protesters tearing down the statue, which bears the former president’s name, in a main square. Another witness said the statue had been broken up when he went to the square later. Video footage circulating online and verified by AFP showed young men toppling the statue and chanting anti-Assad slogans.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, leader of the Islamist insurgent alliance that has captured swathes of Syria in a lightning offensive, is an extremist who has adopted a more moderate posture to try to achieve his goals.

At the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qadia, Jolani says the goal of his offensive is to overthrow president Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Jolani told CNN in an interview aired on Friday.

Jolani operated from the shadows for years. Now, he is in the limelight, giving interviews to the international media and appearing on the ground in Syria’s second city Aleppo after wresting it from government control for the first time in the country’s civil war.

He has over the years stopped sporting the turban worn by jihadists, often favouring military fatigues instead. On Wednesday, he wore a khaki shirt and trousers to visit Aleppo’s citadel, standing at the door of his white vehicle as he waved and moved through the crowds.

Since breaking ties with Al-Qaida in 2016, Jolani has sought to portray himself as a more moderate leader. But he is yet to quell suspicions among analysts and western governments that still class HTS as a terrorist organisation.

“He is a pragmatic radical,” said Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam.

“In 2014, he was at the height of his radicalism,” Pierret said, referring to the period of the war when he sought to compete with the jihadist Islamic State group. “Since then, he has moderated his rhetoric,” he added.

Born in 1982, Jolani was born to a well-to-do family and raised in Mazzeh, an upmarket district of Damascus.

During the offensive he launched on 27 November, he started signing his statements under his real name – Ahmed al-Sharaa.

In 2021, he told US broadcaster PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family roots in the Golan Heights, claiming that his grandfather had been forced to flee after Israel’s annexation of the area in 1967.

According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the 11 September 2001 attacks that Jolani was first drawn to jihadist thinking.

“It was as a result of this admiration for the 9/11 attackers that the first signs of jihadism began to surface in Jolani’s life, as he began attending secretive sermons and panel discussions in marginalised suburbs of Damascus,” the website said.

Following the US-led invasion of Iraq, he left Syria to take part in the fight.

He joined Al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and was subsequently detained for five years, preventing him from rising through the ranks of the jihadist organisation.

In March 2011, when the revolt against Assad’s rule erupted in Syria, he returned home and founded the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s branch of Al-Qaida.

In 2013, he refused to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would go on to become the emir of the Islamic State group, and instead pledged his loyalty to Al-Qaida’s Ayman al-Zawahiri.

A realist in his partisans’ eyes, an opportunist to his adversaries, Jolani said in May 2015 that he, unlike Islamic State, had no intention of launching attacks against the west. He also proclaimed that should Assad be defeated, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority which the president’s clan stems from.

He cut ties with Al-Qaida, claiming to do so in order to deprive the west of reasons to attack his organisation. According to Pierret, he has since sought to chart a path towards becoming a credible statesman.

In January 2017, Jolani imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in north-west Syria, thereby claiming control of swathes of Idlib province that had fallen out of government hands.

In areas under its grip, HTS developed a civilian government and established a semblance of a state in Idlib province, while crushing its rebel rivals. Throughout this process, HTS faced accusations from residents and rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent, which the UN has classed as war crimes.

Aware perhaps of the fear and hatred his group has sparked, Jolani has addressed residents of Aleppo, home to a sizeable Christian minority, in a bid to assure them that they would face no harm under his new regime.

He also called on his fighters to preserve security in the areas they had “liberated” from Assad’s rule. “I think it’s primarily just good politics,” said Aron Lund, a fellow of the Century International thinktank.

“The less local and international panic you have and the more Jolani seems like a responsible actor instead of a toxic jihadi extremist, the easier his job will become. Is it totally sincere? Surely not,” he said. “But it’s the smart thing to say and do right now.”

A motion to impeach the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, over his ill-fated declaration of martial law this week has failed after members of his party boycotted the vote.

The walkout on Saturday meant the national assembly did not have the 200 votes needed to begin the process of forcing out the embattled Yoon.

“With a total of 195 votes, the number of members who voted did not reach the required two-thirds majority of the total members,” the national assembly speaker, Woo Won-shik, said. “Therefore, I declare that the vote on this matter is not valid.”

The dramatic walkout meant uncertainty surrounds Yoon’s fate.

Having indicated on Friday that some members of Yoon’s People Power party (PPP) could join opposition lawmakers and support impeachment, the mood had changed by Saturday, with MPs rallying around their embattled president.

Opposition parties, led by the Democrats, hold 192 seats in the 300-seat assembly and needed just eight PPP lawmakers to join them for the impeachment motion to succeed.

But the plan unravelled when members of the PPP filed out of the chamber just before the televised vote, leaving the assembly without enough MPs for the motion to pass unless they returned.

The lawmakers left to angry protests from some of those still in the chamber, while an estimated 150,000 people demonstrated outside.

Three PPP lawmakers returned to the chamber, but the assembly’s speaker, Woo Won-shik, stopped short of calling the result and appealed to other absent lawmakers to return “to protect the Republic of Korea and its democracy”.

Yoon is less than three years into his five-year single term. His declaration of martial law, which lasted six hours before it was overturned by MPs in the early hours of Wednesday, has drawn widespread condemnation across the South Korean political spectrum and triggered mass protests in Seoul and other cities.

Demonstrators booed, and some wept in frustration, as the lawmakers walked out on Saturday. “Even though we didn’t get the outcome we wanted today, I am neither discouraged nor disappointed because we will get it eventually,” said Jo Ah-gyeong, who was among the protesters.

Given their failure to start the legislative and legal process that could have led to the end of Yoon’s presidency, opposition parties could introduce a second impeachment motion, possibly as early as Wednesday.

There is speculation that PPP lawmakers wanted to avoid the drama of impeachment – a move that could hand the political advantage to the main opposition Democratic party when the country elects a new president – and try instead to arrange a more orderly exit.

Hours before MPs gathered at the national assembly, Yoon apologised for his short-lived attempt to impose martial law, promising to face any legal or political consequences.

In a two-minute televised address, his first public appearance since he rescinded the martial law order, Yoon said he was “very sorry” for the decision, which he said was born of desperation, and promised not to attempt to impose martial law again.

“I am very sorry and would like to sincerely apologise to the people who were shocked,” Yoon said, before bowing. “I leave it up to my party to take steps to stabilise the political situation in the future, including the issue of my term in office.”

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main opposition Democratic party, said Yoon’s apology was “very disappointing” and had only increased public anger and the sense of betrayal.

“The president’s very existence is the biggest risk to South Korea right now,” Lee said, maintaining that there was “no other solution” than his immediate resignation or removal through impeachment.

The leader of Yoon’s own party, Han Dong-hun, said the president’s early resignation was unavoidable and that he was no longer in a position to fulfil his duty, according to Yonhap.

The turmoil resulting from Yoon’s stunt has sparked alarm among key diplomatic partners, including neighbouring Japan and Seoul’s biggest ally, the US, as one of the strongest democracies in Asia faces a political crisis.

Opposition lawmakers claim Yoon’s martial law declaration amounted to a self-coup and drafted their impeachment motion around rebellion charges.

The Democratic party lawmaker Soyoung Lee sought to reassure the international community on Friday night.

“If President Yoon is impeached today or tomorrow, there is no need to be alarmed; the international community can continue to invest with confidence in Korea’s strong democracy and resilience,” she said.

The PPP decided to oppose impeachment at a lawmakers’ meeting, despite pleas by Han, who isn’t a lawmaker and has no vote.

A recent poll showed 73.6% of South Koreans support impeachment, with majority support even in traditional conservative strongholds.

Han said on Friday he had received intelligence that during martial law, Yoon ordered the country’s defence counterintelligence commander to arrest and detain unspecified politicians based on accusations of “anti-state activities”.

Hong Jang-won, the first deputy director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, later told lawmakers that Yoon called after imposing martial law and had ordered him to help the defence counterintelligence unit to detain key politicians.

The targeted politicians included Han, Lee Jae-myung and the national assembly speaker Woo, according to Kim Byung-kee, one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting.

Yoon’s presidency has been plagued by policy failures, mounting economic problems and controversial appointments, as well as scandals involving his wife, Kim Keon-hee, who has proved to be his greatest political liability.

These include allegations of stock price manipulation, unlawful involvement in party candidate nominations, and accepting a 3m won (£1,675) Dior bag as a gift from a pastor.

Yoon has vetoed three separate bills seeking to establish a special counsel to investigate his wife, leading opposition lawmakers to include the alleged attempts to shield his family from investigation among their reasons for impeachment.

On Saturday, MPs voted down a fourth attempt to establish a special counsel to investigate Kim immediately before the impeachment motion. The back-to-back vote was designed to ensure ruling party lawmakers took part in both motions, but PPP lawmakers began leaving as soon as the first vote concluded.

Agencies contributed to this report

The Prince of Wales will meet Donald Trump in Paris when he joins world leaders for the ceremonial reopening of Notre Dame.

William will travel to Paris on Saturday at the request of the French government for the high-profile event celebrating the restoration of the cathedral, “the soul of France”, after a devastating fire in 2019.

While there, William will hold meetings with the US president-elect and the first lady, Jill Biden, where he is expected to discuss the importance of the US-UK relationship, Kensington Palace said.

Trump and dozens of heads of state and government accepted invitations from President Emmanuel Macron to attend the ceremony.

William last met Trump in 2019 when the then president made a state visit to the UK.

The prince’s last official visit to Paris was in 2017 when he and the Princess of Wales made a two-day trip after the Brexit vote.

William also joined world leaders in Normandy for the 80th-anniversary commemorations of the second world war D-day landings earlier this year.

Notre Dame’s reopening will include the ritualised opening of the cathedral’s huge doors, the reawakening of its thunderous organ and the celebration of the first mass.

For France and the Catholic church, the televised and tightly scripted ceremonies will be an opportunity to display resilience and global influence. Tickets for the first week of masses were sold out in 25 minutes, the cathedral’s rector said.

In the first part of Notre Dame’s rebirth on Saturday evening, the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, will lead more than 1,500 guests through a reopening service.

An inaugural mass will be held featuring special rites to consecrate the main altar on Sunday.

Silicon Valley poured more than $394.1m into the US presidential election this year, according to a Guardian analysis, the bulk of it coming from an enormous donation of about $243m Elon Musk made to Donald Trump’s campaign.

The analysis of new election data from the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows the increasingly heavy influence of the tech industry in US elections. Advocates of cryptocurrency were particularly active in this election as they fought to stave off regulation, pumping money into the presidential campaigns and key congressional races.

The donors came from tech’s biggest companies: Google, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Netflix. Others were powerful venture capitalists who had made billions from investing in tech.

Trump overall received $273.2m in donations from some of tech’s biggest names, including:

• $242.6m from Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) who has an estimated net worth of $350bn.

• $5.5m from Marc Andreessen, the billionaire founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. Andreessen’s co-founder, Ben Horowitz, initially supported Trump but flipped to Harris.

• $5.1m from Jan Koum, the founder of WhatsApp who made the bulk of his fortune when Facebook acquired the messaging app in 2014 for $19bn.

Kamala Harris received a total of $120.9m, including:

• $51.1m from the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who left the social media company in 2008 to start the workflow software company Asana.

• $17m from Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn.

• $11.7m from Chris Larsen, the billionaire chair of Ripple, a cryptocurrency company.

The FEC filings offer only a glimpse of the millions tech is pouring into Washington as it seeks to influence government and regulators. The accounting of US political giving is complicated and opaque and donors can find ways to give money without it being publicly reported.

There are a few ways a person can donate to a political campaign in the United States. The first is a direct contribution to a campaign, which is capped at $3,300 per candidate. The second is donating to a political action committee (Pac) that contributes directly to a political campaign, helping to pay for staffing, outreach, events and advertising.

The 2010 landmark supreme court case Citizens United v FEC made it much easier for industries and wealthy individuals to contribute to a political campaign, often in ways that are hard to track but that are entirely legal.

The court’s decision gave way to a third, more opaque way of donating: Super Pacs. Corporations and wealthy individuals can give an unlimited amount of cash to a Super Pac. The only caveat is that Super Pacs can’t contribute to a campaign directly – but they can spend all they want to on political advertising for their preferred candidate.

Individual and corporate spending on campaigns are thus virtually limitless. It’s how Elon Musk donated his $242.6m to Trump’s campaign, and how many others were able to spend millions supporting their candidate of choice.

For many of Trump’s wealthiest supporters, Trump’s rhetoric was overshadowed by his 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. The cuts significantly decreased taxes for the wealthy and for corporations.

Trump has also blessed his closest supporters with unfettered access to the White House since his win in November. For Musk, $242.6m was probably a small price to pay for the direct line he now has to the president-elect: Trump appointed Musk to co-head the new “Department of Government Efficiency”, or Doge, an advisory commission to evaluate government spending, with fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

It’s an about-face from just two years ago when Musk said that Trump should “hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”. For his part, Trump had bashed Tesla and SpaceX and said he could make Musk “drop to his knees and beg”.

But Musk isn’t the only billionaire who endorsed Trump after publicly criticizing him for years. Andreessen was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a critic of Trump’s anti-immigration stances. The Sequoia venture capitalist Doug Leone called the January 6 insurrection “horrific” and held Trump responsible for the attack in the aftermath, but ultimately went on to donate $3.5m to his campaign this year.

The tide of reversals is indicative of an ideological shift happening in Silicon Valley. Big tech long eschewed Washington but has become increasingly involved in politics as it has coalesced around crypto and AI, two relatively new technologies that have yet to see much government scrutiny or regulation.

Friendliness toward Trump has shown to be fruitful for industries looking to stave off regulation. Oil and gas executives donated millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign, with the former president promising to “drill, baby, drill”.

Crypto’s donations, and Trump’s changing views, have also arguably already borne fruit. On Wednesday, Trump nominated Paul Atkins, CEO of Patomak Global Partners, to be head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US’s top financial watchdog. Atkins is seen as crypto-friendly and would replace Gary Gensler, whose efforts to clamp down on the $3.5tn crypto market have set him at loggerheads with the digital currency community.

Though companies in the fossil fuel industry are typically the top corporate spenders in elections, the cryptocurrency lobby is quickly becoming the biggest spender in US elections. According to a report from the progressive thinktank Public Citizen, the crypto industry was the top corporate contributor in the 2024 election.

Much of crypto’s impact was seen in congressional elections – the crypto lobby spent $40m tanking the campaign of the incumbent Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown – but crypto had its hands in the presidential races, too.

Though Trump was once a critic of crypto, calling it a “scam”, he has since embraced the industry as its advocates have entered his circle. Trump himself has launched a cryptocurrency.

In May, Trump became the first presidential candidate to accept donations in bitcoin. Shortly after, the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the billionaire founders of the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, donated a combined $2.5m, much of it in actual bitcoin, to Trump’s campaign. Tyler Winklevoss has called Gensler “evil” and both twins have lobbied hard for light-touch regulation of the industry.

The twins had some of their bitcoin refunded by Trump’s campaign committee after they exceeded the maximum cap for donating.

Over the summer, Trump praised the Winklevosses as “male models with a big, beautiful brain”.

Harris too indicated that she would be more supportive of the industry than her counterpart in the White House. It seemed to pay off: Chris Larsen, chair of Ripple, a cryptocurrency company that manages its own digital token, gave at least $11.7m to Harris’s campaign.

“She knows people who have grown up in the innovation economy,” Larsen said in October, of Harris. “I think she gets it at a fundamental level, in a way that I think the Biden folks were just not paying attention to.”

Crypto advocates were “willing to hedge their bets and play both sides”, said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. “In any individual race where they thought one candidate was the crypto candidate, they weighed in heavily and often got real results.”

But dark money is not just a thing of the conservative right. The Guardian’s analysis omitted a key donation from Bill Gates, the second-wealthiest person in the world, who reportedly donated $50m to Harris’s campaign. That’s because his donation does not appear in FEC data, since he donated the money through a non-profit, which doesn’t have to disclose donors.

“There are many avenues of giving. A big one of them is non-profits, that are secret and the limits are almost nonexistent,” Gilbert said. The US “has a complex system, and it exacerbates our problem of too much money in politics, by making huge swaths of it secret”.

Silicon Valley poured more than $394.1m into the US presidential election this year, according to a Guardian analysis, the bulk of it coming from an enormous donation of about $243m Elon Musk made to Donald Trump’s campaign.

The analysis of new election data from the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows the increasingly heavy influence of the tech industry in US elections. Advocates of cryptocurrency were particularly active in this election as they fought to stave off regulation, pumping money into the presidential campaigns and key congressional races.

The donors came from tech’s biggest companies: Google, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Netflix. Others were powerful venture capitalists who had made billions from investing in tech.

Trump overall received $273.2m in donations from some of tech’s biggest names, including:

• $242.6m from Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) who has an estimated net worth of $350bn.

• $5.5m from Marc Andreessen, the billionaire founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. Andreessen’s co-founder, Ben Horowitz, initially supported Trump but flipped to Harris.

• $5.1m from Jan Koum, the founder of WhatsApp who made the bulk of his fortune when Facebook acquired the messaging app in 2014 for $19bn.

Kamala Harris received a total of $120.9m, including:

• $51.1m from the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who left the social media company in 2008 to start the workflow software company Asana.

• $17m from Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn.

• $11.7m from Chris Larsen, the billionaire chair of Ripple, a cryptocurrency company.

The FEC filings offer only a glimpse of the millions tech is pouring into Washington as it seeks to influence government and regulators. The accounting of US political giving is complicated and opaque and donors can find ways to give money without it being publicly reported.

There are a few ways a person can donate to a political campaign in the United States. The first is a direct contribution to a campaign, which is capped at $3,300 per candidate. The second is donating to a political action committee (Pac) that contributes directly to a political campaign, helping to pay for staffing, outreach, events and advertising.

The 2010 landmark supreme court case Citizens United v FEC made it much easier for industries and wealthy individuals to contribute to a political campaign, often in ways that are hard to track but that are entirely legal.

The court’s decision gave way to a third, more opaque way of donating: Super Pacs. Corporations and wealthy individuals can give an unlimited amount of cash to a Super Pac. The only caveat is that Super Pacs can’t contribute to a campaign directly – but they can spend all they want to on political advertising for their preferred candidate.

Individual and corporate spending on campaigns are thus virtually limitless. It’s how Elon Musk donated his $242.6m to Trump’s campaign, and how many others were able to spend millions supporting their candidate of choice.

For many of Trump’s wealthiest supporters, Trump’s rhetoric was overshadowed by his 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. The cuts significantly decreased taxes for the wealthy and for corporations.

Trump has also blessed his closest supporters with unfettered access to the White House since his win in November. For Musk, $242.6m was probably a small price to pay for the direct line he now has to the president-elect: Trump appointed Musk to co-head the new “Department of Government Efficiency”, or Doge, an advisory commission to evaluate government spending, with fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

It’s an about-face from just two years ago when Musk said that Trump should “hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”. For his part, Trump had bashed Tesla and SpaceX and said he could make Musk “drop to his knees and beg”.

But Musk isn’t the only billionaire who endorsed Trump after publicly criticizing him for years. Andreessen was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a critic of Trump’s anti-immigration stances. The Sequoia venture capitalist Doug Leone called the January 6 insurrection “horrific” and held Trump responsible for the attack in the aftermath, but ultimately went on to donate $3.5m to his campaign this year.

The tide of reversals is indicative of an ideological shift happening in Silicon Valley. Big tech long eschewed Washington but has become increasingly involved in politics as it has coalesced around crypto and AI, two relatively new technologies that have yet to see much government scrutiny or regulation.

Friendliness toward Trump has shown to be fruitful for industries looking to stave off regulation. Oil and gas executives donated millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign, with the former president promising to “drill, baby, drill”.

Crypto’s donations, and Trump’s changing views, have also arguably already borne fruit. On Wednesday, Trump nominated Paul Atkins, CEO of Patomak Global Partners, to be head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US’s top financial watchdog. Atkins is seen as crypto-friendly and would replace Gary Gensler, whose efforts to clamp down on the $3.5tn crypto market have set him at loggerheads with the digital currency community.

Though companies in the fossil fuel industry are typically the top corporate spenders in elections, the cryptocurrency lobby is quickly becoming the biggest spender in US elections. According to a report from the progressive thinktank Public Citizen, the crypto industry was the top corporate contributor in the 2024 election.

Much of crypto’s impact was seen in congressional elections – the crypto lobby spent $40m tanking the campaign of the incumbent Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown – but crypto had its hands in the presidential races, too.

Though Trump was once a critic of crypto, calling it a “scam”, he has since embraced the industry as its advocates have entered his circle. Trump himself has launched a cryptocurrency.

In May, Trump became the first presidential candidate to accept donations in bitcoin. Shortly after, the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the billionaire founders of the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, donated a combined $2.5m, much of it in actual bitcoin, to Trump’s campaign. Tyler Winklevoss has called Gensler “evil” and both twins have lobbied hard for light-touch regulation of the industry.

The twins had some of their bitcoin refunded by Trump’s campaign committee after they exceeded the maximum cap for donating.

Over the summer, Trump praised the Winklevosses as “male models with a big, beautiful brain”.

Harris too indicated that she would be more supportive of the industry than her counterpart in the White House. It seemed to pay off: Chris Larsen, chair of Ripple, a cryptocurrency company that manages its own digital token, gave at least $11.7m to Harris’s campaign.

“She knows people who have grown up in the innovation economy,” Larsen said in October, of Harris. “I think she gets it at a fundamental level, in a way that I think the Biden folks were just not paying attention to.”

Crypto advocates were “willing to hedge their bets and play both sides”, said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. “In any individual race where they thought one candidate was the crypto candidate, they weighed in heavily and often got real results.”

But dark money is not just a thing of the conservative right. The Guardian’s analysis omitted a key donation from Bill Gates, the second-wealthiest person in the world, who reportedly donated $50m to Harris’s campaign. That’s because his donation does not appear in FEC data, since he donated the money through a non-profit, which doesn’t have to disclose donors.

“There are many avenues of giving. A big one of them is non-profits, that are secret and the limits are almost nonexistent,” Gilbert said. The US “has a complex system, and it exacerbates our problem of too much money in politics, by making huge swaths of it secret”.

The notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes is facing battery charges in Illinois after authorities say he pepper-sprayed a woman who knocked on his front door when he enraged many on the internet by tweeting the misogynistic slogan “your body, my choice” following Donald Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.

Fuentes, 26, was arrested on 27 November on a count of misdemeanor battery and released the same day, according to documents filed on Wednesday in the Cook county circuit court that were reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times. He is tentatively scheduled to appear in court on 19 December.

The far-right, avowedly antisemitic influencer seemingly sought to make light of his legal predicament on Friday on social media, publishing a post on X that contained a thinly disguised racial slur as well as the words “Free me”.

Meanwhile, the Jewish feminist activist pressing the case against Fuentes, 57-year-old Marla Rose, also commented on social media, writing on Facebook: “It. Is. On.” She added “civil case pending” to the post that displayed three fire emojis.

Fuentes invited the digital sphere’s fury by celebrating Trump’s return to the presidency at the expense of Kamala Harris on 6 November with a barb on X reading: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”

The post taunting the concept of bodily autonomy for women – along with the 2022 elimination of federal abortion rights at the hands of a US supreme court dominated by judges either appointed or aligned with Trump – had gained more than 99.7m views as of Saturday. And some of Fuentes’ political opponents retaliated by publishing his home address on social media while declaring: “Your house, our choice.”

Rose ultimately told police that she went to record the outside Fuentes’ home in the Chicago-area suburb of Berwyn on 10 November. He soon allegedly pepper-sprayed her, pushed her on to the concrete and broke her cellphone.

Video of the encounter that Rose later released showed Fuentes open his front door as she reached up to ring the doorbell. He extended his left arm while holding a bottle of pepper spray, which prompted Rose to say: “Oh my God, what are you doing?” The phone was then seen falling while Fuentes could be heard saying: “Get the fuck out of here.” Fuentes then seemingly used his foot to drag the phone inside his house before closing the door and locking it.

A police report filed on 11 November said another woman driving by Fuentes’ house at the time called officers. That witness described seeing a man shove a woman outside a home, the report recounted.

Rose was still at the scene when police arrived, and officers reportedly spoke with her as well as Fuentes separately.

The report added that Fuentes claimed to police that he had received death threats as well as “people showing up to his house unannounced” after posting “a political joke online” had left him “in fear for his life”. He eventually “became uncooperative” and refused to further address the confrontation with Rose, as NBC News reported.

Rose had “watery” eyes but listed no other visible physical injuries, the report said.

Possible punishments for misdemeanor battery under Illinois law include relatively short jail sentences, probation and fines.

Prior to the fallout of his infamous post-election tweet, perhaps the most mainstream attention Fuentes received was in late 2022, when Trump hosted him as a guest for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort as he geared up to run for a second presidency. Another guest at that dinner was the rapper previously known as Kanye West, who had propagated antisemitic remarks that – among other consequences – cost him a business partnership with the sportswear company Adidas.

The FBI has said it is offering $50,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the gunman who fatally shot the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare in New York City, as efforts to identify and locate a suspect continue.

The FBI’s reward, which is in addition to a $10,000 reward offered by police, come as investigators try to piece together the movements of the man suspected of what they called the “targeted” attack that killed Brian Thompson in Manhattan early on Wednesday morning.

After combing through surveillance video that shows him fleeing the scene of the shooting on a bicycle before entering Central Park, police say they believe the suspect may have fled the city by bus. Video shows him then walking and taking a taxi to a bus terminal that has interstate services.

“We have reason to believe he’s no longer in New York City,” said Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the New York police department.

Police officers, aided by drones, have scoured Central Park and have found a backpack believed to have been discarded by the suspected killer during his escape. Despite the suspect’s apparent fleeing from the city, Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, said that “we are on the right road to apprehend him and bring him to justice”.

Images of the alleged gunman during and after the shooting show that he was masked or wearing a hood, with an image circulated by police of his face taken at a hostel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, when a person believed to be the suspect lowered his face covering to talk to the receptionist.

The identity of the suspect is still unknown, though, as is the motive. However, the apparently targeted nature of the attack and the words “delay,” “deny” and possibly “depose” written on the shell casings – along with bullets recovered from the scene of the shooting – have suggested it is linked to the healthcare insurance industry’s routine denial of payments for medical services to many Americans.

Healthcare debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US, with for-profit healthcare insurers such as UnitedHealthcare among the wealthiest corporations in the country. Thompson, who lived in Minnesota near the company’s headquarters, earned $10m a year in his role as chief executive.

The shooting has caused deep shock within the health insurance industry. And UnitedHealthcare has since started looking to upgrade its security for staff. “While our hearts are broken, we have been touched by the huge outpouring of kindness and support in the hours since this horrific crime took place,” the company said in a statement.

Other insurers have taken similar precautionary steps in the wake of the attack, with government health insurance provider Centene Corp changing its investor day to a virtual event. And Medica, a Minnesota-based non-profit healthcare firm that has about 3,000 employees, said it is temporarily closing all six of its offices. Staff will work from home in a measure the company said was due to an “abundance of caution”.

Momentum has returned to the Gaza peace talks and an agreement is possible before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Qatar’s prime minister has said.

Speaking at the annual Doha forum, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said the two key issues were whether there was willingness to have a prisoner hostage exchange, and whether there was a desire to end the war.

He said Qatar had stepped back from its role of mediator a few months ago because some countries were exploiting the process for political reasons, but added: “There had been a lot of encouragement to secure a deal before the president comes to office so we are trying to get things back on track.”

Al Thani implied that he had received assurances from the US president-elect’s advisers about their determination to reach a negotiated settlement. He said: “We have sensed after the election that the momentum is coming back.” Comparing Trump’s approach with that of Joe Biden, he said: “There will be some differences, but we did not see any disagreement on the goal of ending the war. That was very important for us to understand.”

He said the gaps between Hamas and Israel were not substantial, but that he was trying to protect the negotiations because in the past everything had been put into the public domain, leading to disappointment.

It is understood the disagreements between Hamas and Israel largely revolve around whether Israel is prepared to accept that a ceasefire reflects a permanent end to the conflict, and not a temporary respite in which there is an exchange of Palestinian political prisoners and Israeli hostages.

This issue has dogged the talks for months, but the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may feel his options are more limited if Trump insists he wants the war to be brought to an end. Israel has been silent on its future intentions for the administration of Gaza.

Referring to the spread of the conflict, Al Thani said: “We have been trying to warn everyone in the world that the situation in Gaza is going to expand.”

In 1561, a little-known charter granted the University of Cambridge the power to arrest and imprison any woman “suspected of evil”. For nearly 350 years, the ­university used this law to ­incarcerate young working-class women found walking with undergraduates after dark in Cambridge.

The women were considered prostitutes and could be forcibly taken to the university’s private prison and sentenced to weeks of confinement by the vice-chancellor. More than 5,000 were arrested in the 19th century alone.

Now, a local historian is seeking to shine a light on what happened to these women – many of whom were teenagers – and is calling on Cambridge University to apologise or publicly acknowledge the ­injustices they suffered.

“None of the women ever got a fair trial, and none of them had actually even broken the law, according to the law of the land – there was no ­evidence of wrongdoing,” said Caroline Biggs, author of The Spinning House: How Cambridge University locked women in its private prison.

“The university didn’t really care how they were treated. They wanted the women to be removed from the streets so they couldn’t tempt the undergraduates.”

When women in Cambridge fell on hard times, it was easy to make money from sex work: Cambridge dons were not allowed to marry until the 1880s, and many young undergraduates had money to spend. “Parents became very concerned that their sons would come to Cambridge and be contaminated by the local women,” said Biggs.

In 1825, an act of parliament gave the university its own police force of special constables, nicknamed bulldogs, to patrol the town at night. They worked alongside university officials called proctors.

Biggs spent five years uncovering what happened to the women by researching the university’s committal books, along with court reports and national records. “Girls were arrested at night, taken to a cell in the prison, known as the Spinning House, and in the morning the vice-chancellor would come and ask: ‘Did she come quietly? Did she come meekly?’ And if she hadn’t, if she’d kicked off, chances are she’d get a longer sentence.”

Corporal punishments were also used, Biggs discovered. In 1748, the vice-chancellor paid the town crier 10 shillings to whip “10 unruly women”, Spinning House accounts show. Prison inspectors frequently condemned the jail, which the social historian Henry Mayhew called an “abomination” in 1851, noting the keeper pulled the girls’ hair if they didn’t keep quiet and threw them into solitary confinement.

“The prison was notoriously cold and damp, and the food was just bread and sometimes gruel,” Biggs said.

In December 1846, the 17-year-old Elizabeth Howe died after spending a night in a Spinning House cell with a broken window and a damp bed.

Her only crime had been ­walking in the vicinity of a brothel with a female friend. “I was so gobsmacked when I first read the inquest of her death, I couldn’t take notes. I wanted to cry,” said Biggs, who is giving a talk to the Mill Road History Society in Cambridge this week.

In another case, a councillor’s wife and daughter were stopped by proctors because they had walked ahead of the councillor, unchaperoned. “It was a massive insult.”

The university made more than 6,000 arrests, with many women held multiple times and detained for two to three weeks at a time.

Biggs said that the Spinning House was just one method the university used to exercise “complete power and control” over the people of Cambridge for centuries. The university also controlled the sale of wine and spirits, the licensing of pubs and how much credit students were allowed. “There was a power battle between town and gown in Cambridge which still exists today, I think, in some ways.”

In her book, she focuses on four women who challenged the university in court over their arrests.

In 1891, accused women were finally allowed legal representation after a national outcry about the university’s powers and treatment of women. When Daisy Hopkins, 17, was arrested on the charge of “walking with a member of the university”, she was illegally tried for a different offence – immoral conduct.

Her case established an important habeas corpus precedent still cited today. The ensuing scandal led ­parliament in 1894 to revoke the university’s Elizabethan charter and remove the vice-chancellor’s power to arrest and imprison suspected sex workers. The Spinning House was demolished soon afterwards.

Biggs would like the university to work with the city to erect a memorial plaque for the women, and hold a public exhibition about the Spinning House and its inhabitants. “I’d like the university to acknowledge that they did wrong,” she said.

The University of Cambridge did not respond to requests for comment.

An aspiring author who went viral after selling two books at an event has described seeing her novel climb up Amazon’s bestseller charts as “amazing” and “unbelievable”.

Vicky Ball, a 48-year-old from Colchester, showcased her two novels, one titled Powerless and the other Abandoned, at an authors’ event on Tuesday at Galleywood Heritage Centre in Chelmsford.

“Sold 2 books 😁😁,” she wrote on X afterwards, which she described as positive because: “I’ve done some events where I haven’t sold any.”

Ball’s X post has now had more than 24m views and 745,000 likes. Her novel Powerless, a thriller with “lots of twists”, shot up the Amazon bestsellers charts in subsequent days – and is now No 3 in its “teen and young adult fiction on sexual abuse” list.

Speaking to the Guardian about her newfound success, she said: “I’ve been getting messages on Instagram of people saying: ‘I’m in Colombia and just bought your book’; ‘I’m in Salt Lake City’; ‘I’m in Belgium.’ It’s amazing really – it’s just unbelievable.”

Ball, who works at the University of Essex and is also studying for a masters in creative writing, said she wrote Powerless during the Covid lockdown in 2020. She wrote mostly at weekends – because she was then working as a teacher – in her lounge, with the laptop on her knees, in the home she shares with her husband and two daughters.

“It was so helpful having a purpose and something to keep my mind off the stress and worry” of the pandemic, Ball said, with the writing helping fill a need at a time she was yearning for connection with friends and family.

Virality has catapulted other undiscovered authors to public attention in recent years, with posts on platforms such as TikTok and X wielding the power to boost sales and interest. In 2023, a struggling YA (young adult) author Shawn Warner topped the Amazon bestseller list after a TikTok video of the Texas-based writer at a quiet event went viral.

Ball’s simple advice to other aspiring authors was: “Just write!” She doesn’t wait until her novels are completely plotted before putting words on the page. “I just go with it. It’s like a journey, and I really enjoy the process,” she said. “You never know where it’s going to go.”

Powerless is about two sisters, with one returning home after going missing, while Abandoned is about a daughter with an alcoholic mother.

Ball’s novels were published by Burton Mayers Books. Richard Mayers, the director of the small publisher in Dundee, said: “She just messaged me saying: ‘I’ve gone viral! I’ve had 25 million views,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s crazy.’

“Like a lot of indie authors, they do these events … and maybe you sell one or two books. So to be propelled into the limelight like this, it’s a real positive,” Mayers said. “I say to all the authors, you must be prepared to slog it out. It’s a marathon not a sprint – the message is: persevere.”

Ball wrote thanking her supporters later on X: “I am amazed and so grateful for all your likes, comments and purchases 🥰.”