The rebel leader now running much of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has offered rewards for senior army and intelligence officers involved in war crimes, as the Assad regime’s sudden fall brought hopes of justice for the many atrocities of one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships.

“We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday. He added that Syria’s new authorities would seek the return of Assad regime officials who have fled abroad.

However, legal experts who been compiling evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria cautioned that Syria was a long way from having a legal system capable of conducting war crimes trials. The regime was the worst abuser by far, and was detaining more than 135,000 people – including nearly 4,000 children –at the time of its fall. But there were other perpetrators too, including Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS), which is thought responsible for the detention or forcible disappearance of 2,514 Syrians, including 46 children.

“In the euphoria and the thrill of the moment, we should not lose sight [of these problems],” said Alan Haji, who is working on war crimes cases in The Hague for the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), a Syrian-led human rights organisation. “In the Syrian penal code, there is no such thing as a war crime or crimes against humanity or genocide, and there’s no prescribed punishment for such crimes.”

If a path to justice has been opened up by the regime collapse, it is likely to be long and strewn with obstacles.

The Assad family have fled to Russia, but there was limited space on the private plane which reportedly whisked them out of Syria. The intelligence agency officers who were the levers and cogs of the Syrian torture and killing machine have mostly been left to fend for themselves. Many are expected to try to use human smuggling networks to reach Europe, and efforts are under way to track them as they seek to escape.

At the same time, the abrupt implosion of the infrastructure of state terror has made available a huge volume of evidence in the form of witnesses and filing cabinets full of documents.

“It’s a situation much like Germany in 1945 or Iraq in 2003. You have a sudden availability of all state records,” said William Wiley, the founder and executive director of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), a NGO largely financed by western governments which has been collecting war crimes evidence in Syria for more than a decade. “It’s a very unusual situation, and its suddenness creates challenges and opportunities in simply dealing with the material.”

CIJA, which has investigated atrocities by the Assad regime and Islamic State, has so far gathered 1.3m pages of documentary evidence, but Wiley anticipates much more will now be available.

The organisation has 30 investigators who have been working inside Syria, and it hopes to bolster that number by at least 10. Meanwhile, it is shipping in equipment such as scanners for digitising documentary evidence.

For human rights activists inside Syria as the regime fell, the priority was to stop it claiming more victims. Syria Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, offered a $3,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of any secret prisons or detention cells where regime victims might be trapped.

Farouq Habib, the group’s deputy general manager, said the ultimate aim would be for those responsible for the brutality of the regime to be held accountable by Syrian courts, but that might not be feasible for some time.

“The regime has just fallen in Syria,” Habib said. “We will definitely see justice but [the country] is not ready for it. The whole system was built by the Baath party and it has been there for 50 years. It’s corrupted and it does not meet the best standards to respect international humanitarian law and human rights.”

In the absence of a functioning justice system in Syria, there is a range of options in the international arena.

The international criminal court in The Hague does not have direct jurisdiction because Syria has not joined the court or accepted its jurisdiction, and an attempt to impose jurisdiction through the UN security council was blocked in 2014 by Russia and China.

However, several human rights groups have argued there is a precedent for a new pathway for ICC involvement in Syria, created in 2018 when the court’s judges ruled it had jurisdiction over crimes committed by the Myanmar government (a non-member of the court) because some of the criminal conduct spilled into neighbouring Bangladesh (a member).

Nick Leddy, a former ICC trial lawyer, said there were “considerable parallels” between the violent deportations in Myanmar and the situation in Syria which has resulted in the displacement of about 650,000 people into Jordan, the only neighbouring country that accepts the ICC’s jurisdiction.

Leddy, now the head of litigation for Legal Action Worldwide, said ICC member states should “seize the opportunity” offered by Assad’s fall to request an investigation into well-documented crimes against humanity in Syria.

“The sudden collapse of the Assad regime should change the equation as far as the ICC is concerned,” said Rodney Dixon, a British lawyer who has been representing Syrian refugees in Jordan and applying on their behalf to request the ICC to open an investigation against the Assad regime. “Syria itself and other states can and should refer the situation to the ICC under its statute for investigation and prosecution given the gravity of the crimes.”

No public action has been taken so far, but diplomats from multiple European member states are now understood to be discussing making a referral to Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor.

Another option is to establish a hybrid court, modelled on the UN special court for Sierra Leone, in which the affected nation partnered with the UN to create a court staffed by judges taken largely from the region.

David Crane, the Sierra Leonian court’s founding chief prosecutor, argued on the Jurist website that a similar court for Syria would “serve not only as a tool for justice but also as a testament to the commitment of the Arab world to uphold human rights and human dignity”.

An ICC investigation or hybrid court would take a considerable amount of time to get up and running. The requirement for legal action might come much sooner, however, as Assad’s torturers and executioners seek to flee.

“Our assessment is they will seek to leverage existing human smuggling networks into Europe, where, in a worst-case scenario where they get caught, they’re not going to get executed,” Wiley said.

The CIJA has already helped support more multiple prosecutions of Assad loyalists in Europe, mostly in Germany, under universal jurisdiction laws applicable for mass atrocities and other international crimes.

The organisation has a tracking team for pursuing fugitive suspects, which Wiley hopes will now be “bolstered to the degree required with our existing law enforcement partners across the west and then ultimately, when it becomes possible, with the Syrian national authorities”.

He added: “If there’s any security intelligence guy that rocks up in Europe, there’s typically going to be enough material already to hand.”

The SJAC interviews refugees with the aim of supporting war crimes prosecutions. It is likely to be these same diaspora communities that will raise the alarm if suspects surface in Europe.

“There is an opportunity that the doors of these fortresses of horror and death are open now,” Haji said. “The evidence is out there. The victims and witnesses are out there, but don’t forget, the perpetrators are out there too.”

The UN would consider taking the Syrian rebel group that toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad off its designated terrorist list if it passes the key test of forming a truly inclusive transitional government, according to a senior official at the world body.

Geir Pedersen, UN special envoy for Syria, held out the prospect of removing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from the organisation’s list of proscribed terrorist groups. But he said the group could not seek to govern Syria in the way that it had governed Idlib, the northern province where it was based and from where it led the military breakout that resulted in the sudden collapse of the Assad regime.

At a briefing in Geneva, Pedersen also said Syria remained at a crossroads and that the situation was extremely fluid.

He urged Israel to cease its land and aerial attacks inside Syria immediately, saying the development was very troubling. “The bombardment needs to stop,” he said. He added that Israel’s actions around the Golan Heights represented a violation of the disengagement agreement signed with the UN in 1974.

Pedersen had briefed the UN security council in a closed session on Monday, telling it that initial signs from the armed groups in Damascus were encouraging in that they were co-operating and eager to protect existing state institutions.

Addressing the issue of the future terrorist status of HTS, he said it was undeniable that UN resolution 2254 designated the precursor to HTS – the al-Nusra Front – as a terrorist organisation. “It is a complicating factor for all of us”, he said.

“We have to be honest and look at the facts. It has been nine years since that resolution was adopted and the reality so far is that HTS and other armed groups have been sending good messages to the Syrian people of unity and inclusiveness. In Hama and Aleppo there have been reassuring things on the ground.”

He said there was no doubt that HTS was an Islamist group based in Idlib province, adding: “My message is Syria cannot be run like Idlib.” He also said that HTR had itself discussed dismantling the organisation, and reforming as group overtly opposed to international terror, a means whereby the terrorist designation issue could be bypassed.

At his Geneva briefing, Pedersen said the international community at the UN had been united in pushing for a cohesive Syria run by a transitional body that is inclusive of all communities. The risk is that behind this facade of unity lay rival factions and countries determined to advance their individual interests.

Speaking in Geneva, Pedersen said: “We need to focus on credible and inclusive transitional arrangements in Damascus. This means we need orderly inclusive arrangements, ensuring the broadest possible representation of Syrian society and parties. If this is not happening, we risk new conflict in Syria.”

He added: “So far the messaging coming out by and large from the armed groups is positive but what is extremely important is that we see this implemented on the ground.”

Syria, he admitted, was being run by a patchwork of groups not formally united but coordinating by and large. He said the looting of private homes and attacks on state institutions that occurred on Sunday had been brought under control.

Outside Damascus, Pedersen highlighted three immediate areas of concern: the fate of the Alawite community on the Syrian coast close to the Russian naval base, continuing clashes in the north-east between the Syrian national army and Syrian Kurds working under the banner of the Syrian defence forces, and finally, Israel’s incursions into Syria.

A key test is whether the countries that have some leverage over HTS and the other armed groups – Turkey and Qatar – are able to prevent ethnic and sectarian rivalries spilling over in Damascus. In the past few years, Pedersen has cut a sometimes ineffectual profile, but largely because none of the external powers seemed to be willing to force Assad to the negotiating table. Diplomats also say it would take as long as 18 months to prepare elections, a long time for sectarian and ethnic splits to be overcome.

Syrian negotiations about a future constitution have also been dogged about how to ensure a truly inclusive body can be established in which the huge variety of interested groups and ethnicities feel fairly represented.

In an attempt to incentivise the armed groups, Pedersen said that the establishment of such a body could result in sanctions being lifted, humanitarian support increased, refugees returned, the economy relaunched and the process of securing justice against leaders of the old regime finally reached.

On Sunday morning, a bearded 42-year-old man wearing a plain green military uniform walked into the Umayyad mosque in Damascus and addressed a small crowd, the Syrian nation, the region and the world.

With the mosque’s glittering decorations providing a backdrop, Ahmed al-Sharaa described the fall of the house of Assad as “a victory for the Islamic nation” and called for reflection and prayer.

“I left this land over 20 years ago, and my heart longed for this moment,” he said. “Sit quietly my brothers and remember God almighty.”

For most of the last two decades, the de facto ruler of much of Syria has not used his real name at all. Ahmed al-Sharaa, who grew up in a progressive household in a prosperous neighbourhood of Damascus and studied medicine, entirely disappeared. In his place was Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, a nom de guerre formulated according to the convention of jihadi militants seeking new identities redolent of historic Muslim glory and offering the shield of anonymity.

So it was Jolani who fought US soldiers in Iraq alongside jihadi insurgents between 2003 and 2006, and was then incarcerated there for five years in detention camps. It was Jolani too who returned to Syria in 2011 to play important roles in the campaigns of both the Islamic State (IS) and then al-Qaida.

It was Jolani who took over the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and from 2017 imposed his rule on 2 million people in the north-western Syrian enclave of Idlib. Last month, it was Jolani who launched a rebel coalition dominated by HTS on its blistering 12-day campaign that ended in Damascus on Sunday.

The question now is which man will rule Syria: Jolani, who is designated as a terrorist by the US, UK and others and has a $10m price on his head, or Sharaa, who has gone out of his way over recent years to signal that his organisation will not attack the west?

There is little consensus on the answer. Many analysts say Sharaa’s decision on entering Damascus to drop his nom de guerre is just one indicator among many that suggests the transition from jihadi extremism to something more moderate is genuine.

In Aleppo, the first city to be captured by the rebel alliance when it launched its offensive last month, HTS offered amnesties to former regime foot soldiers, went door to door to reassure Christian residents they would not be harmed, and sent a message to Kurds saying “diversity is a strength of which we are proud”. Sharaa himself is reported to have led diplomatic efforts to win over Ismaili Shia leaders and so secure key towns for the rebels without loss.

“From what we can see, he is a genuinely changed person. He has been on a journey and in Idlib he developed a pragmatic theology,” said Shiraz Maher, an expert in extremist Islam at King’s College London.

Nor is this a sudden shift. Sharaa, even in his former avatar, had turned against both al-Qaida and IS, fighting their militants and savagely purging his own group of anyone suspected of dual loyalties. Though he recently said he did not regret celebrating al-Qaida’s 2001 attack on the US, few doubt that Syria’s new leader has genuinely rejected the hardliners’ vision of a global campaign, limited neither in time nor space, against western powers or other members of the so-called Crusade-Zionist alliance.

Some experts point out that the use of Jolani as a nom de guerre did not merely indicate the HTS leader, or at least his family, was from the Golan heights, but also implied a strong personal commitment to end Israel’s occupation of the area. Dropping it sends a message, they say.

It appears equally clear that Sharaa’s focus is local and his interest nationalist: the greater welfare of Syria and its battered, traumatised, suffering people.

Quite how this welfare is best achieved is where Sharaa might well begin to diverge from his carefully curated image as a reformed man. Wearing a plain uniform does not just signify a change from the standard garb of a militant Islamist fighter, it is a rejection of the robes, gold braid and medals that are so often marks of rank in the region. But, even if popular protests have occasionally forced concessions, many dissidents have been treated harshly under HTS rule in Idlib.

“The challenges are going to be massive, and he does have an authoritarian streak … Is he creating a secular state? I don’t think so. My guess is that it is going to be Taliban-lite in terms of what he is going to implement,” said Maher.

Other analysts believe that some senior leaders of HTS and the group’s most effective fighters, who include central Asian veteran extremists, remain committed to a “jihadi core ideology”. Some commentators believe that any newly minted moderation is a merely a “makeover” disguising radical ambitions, both local and global, over the long term, and they caution that neither the west nor regional powers should drop their guard.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, an expert at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defence of Democracy, pointed to what he identified as a “jihadist flag” next to the flag of the Syrian revolution behind Sharaa during an interview last week with CNN.

“So far he has been saying all the right things … and I’m seriously hoping he is the guy he says he is,” Abdul-Hussain said.

“But the country is a shambles. There is no economy, no money. There is crime, poverty, millions of refugees who want to come back. Now everyone is happy, but sooner or later, things are going to get real and my fear is that he turns back to his Islam.”

Sharaa – or Jolani – has an answer to sceptics and supporters alike. “Don’t judge by words, but by actions,” he told CNN.

The family of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the 4 December murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, reported him missing in November after he withdrew from social contact following surgery on his back.

Mangione, 26, was reported missing on 18 November, police told the New York Post, after family members became worried that they had lost touch with him. A message from relatives had earlier been circulated to his circle of friends asking for help finding him after Mangione had undergone back surgery a few months previously.

Late on Monday, Mangione was charged with murder and other counts by New York prosecutors relating to the brazen killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO on a street in midtown Manhattan. After a manhunt lasting several days, he was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, having been recognized by a local person from photographs released by police.

He is being held without bail in Pennsylvania ahead of extradition to New York which could come as early as Tuesday.

As detectives begin to piece together the suspect’s history, one line of inquiry is the chronic back problems that he appears to have suffered since childhood. According to CNN, Reddit posts that match the description of Mangione talked about wrestling with spondylolisthesis, a condition where a vertebra, often in the lower back, slips out of place.

The condition had become much more severe, the Reddit user said, after a surfing accident. “My back and hips locked up after the accident,” the user said, causing “intermittent numbness” which left him “terrified of the implications”.

The owner of Surfbreak, a housing community in Honolulu, Hawaii, where Mangione lived for a few months, told CNN that Mangione had struggled from the back pain that could force him to stay in bed for days. “It was really traumatic and difficult, you know, when you’re in your early 20s and you can’t, you know, do some basic things,” RJ Martin said.

After he went through surgery, Mangione sent a text showing X-ray images, Martin said. “It looked heinous, with just giant screws going into his spine,” he said.

Mangione had alluded to his ongoing health battles on his social media feeds. He posted an image of a person following spinal fusion surgery as the banner of his X account.

His reading list on Goodreads included five books on how to cope with chronic back pain, including Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery.

Mangione’s withdrawal from social connections appears to have started several months ago, the Wall Street Journal reported. A friend raised concerns on social media in July, saying: “I don’t know if you are ok or just in a super isolated place … but I haven’t heard from you in months.”

A post from another friend in October said: “Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you.”

The suspect comes from a wealthy family in Baltimore, Maryland, that owns a real estate portfolio, nursing homes and a local radio station. He attended top Baltimore schools and the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania.

So far his family has not commented on Mangione’s apparent disappearance or his back issues. In a statement issued following the shooting, they said: “Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”

Mangione made his first court appearance on Monday night to face charges relating to the killing of Thompson outside the annual UnitedHealthcare investors meeting in New York. In addition to the murder charge, he faces counts over the criminal possession of a weapon and silencer.

Police said that they arrested him in possession of a so-called ghost gun – that could have been produced by a 3D printer – and a suppressor.

Mangione was largely silent during the court hearing, though he did speak out to dispute the account being presented by prosecutors. They had said he was carrying about $10,000 in cash, and asserted that the bag he was carrying had the ability to block cellphone signals, which all pointed to his sophisticated criminal planning.

“I’d like to correct two things,” Mangione said, according to CNN. “First, I don’t know where any of that money came from – I’m not sure if it was planted. And also, that bag was waterproof, so I don’t know about criminal sophistication.”

Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspected in the shooting death of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, has been charged with murder by prosecutors in New York, court records show.

The move follows his arraignment at the Blair county courthouse in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday night, where gun and forgery charges were read against him. The judge asked Mangione if he understood the charges against him, and he said he did. No plea was entered.

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania, citing false IDs and a large sum of cash found on Mangione, argued he was a flight risk and asked that bail be denied, which it was.

Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, said he expected Mangione to face charges in New York shortly.

The Mangione family later released a statement saying :“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”

On Monday morning, Mangione was seen at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and was recognized by someone who then called local police.

“Today at 9.14am, Altoona police officers were dispatched to a McDonald’s restaurant for reports of a male matching the description of the UnitedHealthcare CEO murder suspect. Officers made contact with the male who was subsequently arrested on unrelated charges. At this time, the Altoona police department is cooperating with local, state, and federal agencies,” local police said in a statement on Monday.

Police found Mangione in possession of a firearm suppressor, a mask consistent with that worn by the gunman, a fraudulent New Jersey ID matching the ID the man used to check into the New York City hostel before the shooting, and a handwritten document that “speaks to both his motivation and mindset”, Tisch noted.

“This apprehension is thanks to the tireless work of the greatest detectives in the world and, of course, the strong relationships we have with our local law enforcement partners on every level, local, state and federal,” said Jessica Tisch, New York City police commissioner.

Upon arrest, police said that Mangione was in possession of a ghost gun that may have been made on a 3D printer, that had the capability of firing a 9mm round and a suppressor. A ghost gun is a weapon put together with parts sold online, and the one found, police say, matches descriptions of the gun used in the shooting.

Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, officials said, with ties to San Francisco, California, and his last known address was Honolulu, Hawaii.

His LinkedIn page indicates he studied at the University of Pennsylvania for both his undergraduate education and his master’s degree, graduating in 2020.

A Penn spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that Mangione had received his bachelor of science in engineering and master of science in engineering at the school.

His most recent employment appears to have been in Santa Monica, California, per his LinkedIn.

Earlier on Monday, citing a senior law enforcement source, the New York Times reported that the man we now know was Mangione was confronted at a McDonald’s – and showed the same fake New Jersey identification that police believe Thompson’s killer presented when he checked into a hostel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on 24 November. The outlet said an elderly employee had spotted the man and called 911.

Monday’s development came after police on Sunday again searched a Central Park lake for evidence – including the murder weapon – connected to the Midtown shooting.

Law enforcement sources told CBS News that the New York police department and the US marshals had sent investigators to Atlanta to make inquiries and review surveillance footage from Greyhound bus stops on the route from Georgia.

Before Mangione’s arrest, two additional images were also released of a masked man in the back of and outside a taxi he used soon after Thompson was fatally shot outside a Midtown hotel the morning of 4 December. Thompson’s killer used a gun with a suppressor, surveillance video showed.

Only one photograph of the suspect without a mask had previously been made public: an image taken at a hostel soon before the murder when he apparently dropped the mask at the request of a front desk employee.

NYPD divers searched Central Park’s lake on Sunday after failing to recover anything from a similar underwater drag a day earlier, police confirmed in Monday’s press conference. That came after a backpack containing a jacket and Monopoly money that is believed to be the Thompson murder suspect’s was found in the park.

In a statement to the Guardian, a UnitedHealthcare spokesperson responded to the news of the arrest of a person of interest in connection with the killing of Brian Thompson.

“Our hope is that today’s apprehension brings some relief to Brian’s family, friends, colleagues and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy,” the statement said. “We thank law enforcement and will continue to work with them on this investigation. We ask that everyone respect the family’s privacy as they mourn.”

Though his survivors include a widow and two sons aged 16 and 19, Thompson’s death elicited a grim schadenfreude from many in the US who had been mistreated by the country’s rapacious health insurance industry. A private funeral for Thompson was planned for Monday, NBC New York reported.

Seventy-seven Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging the US Senate to reject Robert F Kennedy Jr as Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, arguing that he is unfit and would put American public health “in jeopardy”.

It is believed to be the first time in living memory that Nobel prize winners have united against a presidential cabinet pick, and comes against a backdrop of Kennedy’s public support for discredited theories, including a claim that childhood vaccines cause autism.

In their letter, prize winners in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics and economics castigate Kennedy for a “lack of credentials” and point out that he has been “a belligerent critic” of some of the agencies that he would oversee, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The proposal to place Mr Kennedy in charge of the federal agencies responsible for protecting the public health of American citizens and for conducting the medical research that benefits our country and the rest of humanity has been widely criticised on multiple grounds,” the laureates say in the letter, first obtained by the New York Times.

They also point to Kennedy’s vocal opposition to the measles and polio vaccines, his support for ending fluoridation of the water supply and his promotion of conspiracy theories over the treatments for Aids and other diseases.

Kennedy has threatened to fire employees of the FDA, which he has accused of “waging war on public health”, and has said he will replace hundreds of NIH employees on his first day. He has also said many vaccine scientists should be in jail.

“The leader of DHHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) should continue to nurture and improve – not threaten – these highly respected institutions and their employees,” the laureates write.

“In view of his record, placing Mr Kennedy in charge of DHSS would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in health sciences, in both public and commercial sectors.”

Signatories include Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, who won this year’s Nobel prize for physiology or medicine for their discovery of microRNA.

The letter comes after Trump – who has previously spoken of letting Kennedy “go wild on health” – suggested in an interview with NBC that his health and human services nominee could investigate the supposed link between vaccines and autism, a theory that Kennedy has repeatedly peddled but that numerous studies have comprehensively debunked.

One of the letter’s drafters, Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine, said scientists had felt the needed to respond to attacks by Kennedy and others.

“These political attacks on science are very damaging,” he told the New York Times. “You have to stand up and protect it.”

In response, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team said: “Americans are sick and tired of the elites telling them what to do and how to do it. Our healthcare system in this country is broken, Mr Kennedy will enact President Trump’s agenda to restore the integrity of our healthcare and Make America Healthy Again.”

France has begun recalling its military assets from its former ally Chad, the latest blow to its dwindling influence across its former colonies in Africa.

Two Mirage fighter jets returned to a base in eastern France on Tuesday, said the army spokesperson Col Guillaume Vernet. “It marks the beginning of the return of French equipment stationed in [Chadian capital] N’Djamena,” Vernet said.

The withdrawal of the planes came only two weeks after the central African state announced it was ending a decades-long military cooperation with Paris.

Chad’s foreign minister, Abderaman Koulamallah, said in a statement at the time that the country “remains determined to maintain constructive relations with France in other areas of common interest, for the benefit of both peoples”. Until then, there were about 1,000 French troops stationed in the country.

On the same day, the Senegalese president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, also requested the departure of French troops, saying it was “not compatible” with his country’s sovereignty.

Chad was long seen as the west’s last dependable ally in the Sahel as military juntas with increased disdain for France’s continued presence in the area installed themselves in power via a series of coups since 2020.

The military takeovers coincided with rising anti-French sentiment over the continuing real and perceived interference of Paris. In recent years, Burkina Faso and Mali, where foreign mercenaries have been reportedly on the rise in the face of jihadism, have either expelled French diplomats or in some cases, banned French media. French troops have left both countries and also Niger, where a coup on 30 July last year deposed the democratically elected Mohamed Bazoum, who was seen as being too friendly with Paris.

Chad has sought new partnerships elsewhere. Its leader, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, has embraced the United Arab Emirates and Russia openly since taking office after his father’s death in 2021.

The departure from Chad will end decades of French military presence in the Sahel region and ends direct French military operations against Islamist militants there.

Vernet said a calendar to draw down its operations would take several weeks for the two countries to finalise.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is recovering in intensive care having undergone emergency surgery after a brain bleed was detected during an MRI scan.

At about 9.20am local time (1220 GMT) the medical team at Sírio-Libanês hospital in São Paulo held a press conference to announce that surgery to drain a haematoma caused by bleeding in the president’s brain had been successful.

“The president has progressed well; he returned from surgery almost fully awake and has been extubated,” said Lula’s personal doctor, the cardiologist Dr Roberto Kalil. He added that Lula “is now stable, speaking normally, eating, and will remain under observation in the coming days”.

According to the doctors, Lula, 79, underwent a trepanation: having a 3cm hole made in the skull to insert a drain to remove the bleeding.

The doctors attributed the intracranial haemorrhage to a domestic accident to a fall Lula had in October while taking a shower in the Alvorada Palace, the official presidential residence in Brasília. The accident forced Lula to cancel a trip to a Brics summit in Russia and left him with several stitches.

Lula was admitted to hospital in Brasília on Monday night after complaining of a headache. When the haemorrhage was detected he was transferred 620 miles (1,000km) south to one of Brazil’s top hospitals for the operation.

The newspaper O Globo said Lula arrived in São Paulo at about 11pm on Monday and by 4.45am he had undergone the surgery. “Throughout the journey, both by ambulance and by air, the president was lucid, alert and speaking, just as he is now – lucid, alert, speaking and eating,” said Dr Ana Helena Germoglio, who was the first to attend Lula after his fall in October and again on Monday.

Lula was accompanied on the journey and in the hospital by the first lady, Rosângela da Silva, known as Janja.

Kalil repeatedly emphasised during the press conference that the president “suffered no brain injury and has no neurological impairment”. He said the haematoma was “completely drained”.

The president will remain under observation in the intensive care unit for at least 48 hours and is only expected to return to Brasília – where the executive branch headquarters and the presidential residence are located – at the beginning of next week, the doctor said.

Lula’s personal doctor also said that, if all went well, the president would be able to resume air travel, including international trips.

“He spoke with me normally [this morning]. He understands what happened and asked the usual questions a patient would after undergoing surgery. The fact that he’s staying in the ICU under monitoring is primarily for safety. It’s protocol,” Kalil said.

A medical bulletin is expected to be released early on Wednesday morning.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is recovering in intensive care having undergone emergency surgery after a brain bleed was detected during an MRI scan.

At about 9.20am local time (1220 GMT) the medical team at Sírio-Libanês hospital in São Paulo held a press conference to announce that surgery to drain a haematoma caused by bleeding in the president’s brain had been successful.

“The president has progressed well; he returned from surgery almost fully awake and has been extubated,” said Lula’s personal doctor, the cardiologist Dr Roberto Kalil. He added that Lula “is now stable, speaking normally, eating, and will remain under observation in the coming days”.

According to the doctors, Lula, 79, underwent a trepanation: having a 3cm hole made in the skull to insert a drain to remove the bleeding.

The doctors attributed the intracranial haemorrhage to a domestic accident to a fall Lula had in October while taking a shower in the Alvorada Palace, the official presidential residence in Brasília. The accident forced Lula to cancel a trip to a Brics summit in Russia and left him with several stitches.

Lula was admitted to hospital in Brasília on Monday night after complaining of a headache. When the haemorrhage was detected he was transferred 620 miles (1,000km) south to one of Brazil’s top hospitals for the operation.

The newspaper O Globo said Lula arrived in São Paulo at about 11pm on Monday and by 4.45am he had undergone the surgery. “Throughout the journey, both by ambulance and by air, the president was lucid, alert and speaking, just as he is now – lucid, alert, speaking and eating,” said Dr Ana Helena Germoglio, who was the first to attend Lula after his fall in October and again on Monday.

Lula was accompanied on the journey and in the hospital by the first lady, Rosângela da Silva, known as Janja.

Kalil repeatedly emphasised during the press conference that the president “suffered no brain injury and has no neurological impairment”. He said the haematoma was “completely drained”.

The president will remain under observation in the intensive care unit for at least 48 hours and is only expected to return to Brasília – where the executive branch headquarters and the presidential residence are located – at the beginning of next week, the doctor said.

Lula’s personal doctor also said that, if all went well, the president would be able to resume air travel, including international trips.

“He spoke with me normally [this morning]. He understands what happened and asked the usual questions a patient would after undergoing surgery. The fact that he’s staying in the ICU under monitoring is primarily for safety. It’s protocol,” Kalil said.

A medical bulletin is expected to be released early on Wednesday morning.

Weeks before Jay-Z was publicly named in a lawsuit of raping an unnamed teenage girl alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs in 2000, the rap mogul born Shawn Carter received a letter from the plaintiff’s lawyer threatening to “immediately file” a “public lawsuit” against him unless he agreed to resolve the allegations through mediation for a financial payout, his lawyers have said.

Instead, his lawyers sued the lawyer behind the demand, Tony Buzbee, citing Jay-Z as a John Doe. Buzbee has filed at least 20 civil lawsuits, initially by anonymous plaintiffs, against Combs accusing him of sexual misconduct, and has used Instagram, a phone hotline and a news conference to find clients.

Lawyers for Jay-Z accused Buzbee of trying to “extort exorbitant sums” from him via false assault claims; they said they received letters about two clients, though only one has been filed, by the anonymous woman. “Plaintiff presently faces a gun to his head,” they wrote in the suit, filed on 18 November in Los Angeles.

“Either repeatedly pay an exorbitant sum of money to stop defendants from the wide publication of wildly false allegations of sexual assault that would subject Plaintiff to opprobrium and irreparably harm plaintiff’s reputation, family, career and livelihood, or else face the threat of an untold number of civil suits and financial and personal ruin.”

Jay-Z denies the allegations and has said “whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away”. Combs is in jail awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges, and has denied the allegations.

Jay-Z is seeking to dismiss the case, claiming the court does not have jurisdiction over a lawsuit such as this.

His lawyer Alex Spiro asked the judge to expedite the hearing on the motion to dismiss, “due to the highly sensitive nature of this matter and the intense media scrutiny”.

Spiro described the case as “a shakedown. [Carter] is not mentioned, referenced, or implicated in any way in the criminal investigation of Mr Combs. He is neither a target nor a person of interest in that investigation.”

Lawyers for Jay-Z have also argued that the unnamed woman should file her complaint under her real name, claiming that there is insufficient reason for her to remain anonymous. “Mr Carter deserves to know the identity of the person who is effectively accusing him – in sensationalised, publicity-hunting fashion – of criminal conduct, demanding massive financial compensation, and tarnishing a reputation earned over decades,” wrote lawyer Spiro.

On 8 December, Buzbee amended the lawsuit to name Carter, previously described as a John Doe and “celebrity and public figure”, as accused of raping the girl with Combs in 2000, when she was 13.

A day later, lawyers for Jay-Z said that he was the John Doe behind the suit against Buzbee.

In a public statement, Jay-Z accused Buzbee of “blackmail”, said Buzbee had made “a terrible error in judgment” and lamented the effect of the allegations on his family with Beyoncé, particularly his oldest daughter, Blue Ivy, 12.

Buzbee responded accusing Jay-Z of “orchestrating a conspiracy of harassment” against him and other lawyers in his firm in an attempt to intimidate and silence his client.

On Monday, Buzbee told the New York Times that “sending a basic litigation demand letter” was not tantamount to extortion of blackmail, and had asked Jay-Z for a “confidential sit down” to protect the privacy of his client.

“We won’t get bogged down in a silly sideshow that tries to make the lawyers the focus of what are very serious allegations brought by a courageous woman,” Buzbee told the Times.

A combative Benjamin Netanyahu has become the first Israeli prime minister to take the stand as the defendant in a criminal trial for corruption as he assailed the accusations against him as an “ocean of absurdness”.

“I have waited eight years for this moment, to say the truth as I remember it, which is important for justice,” said Netanyahu, who was wearing a blue suit and white shirt, with a flag of Israel on one lapel and the yellow ribbon symbol of Israel’s hostages in Gaza on the other.

“But I am also a prime minister. I am leading the country through a seven-front war. And I think the two can be done in parallel.”

Criticising media and investigators, Netanyahu gave often tangential testimony, veering between self-aggrandising, as he emphasised his international importance, and painting himself and his family as victims.

Netanyahu assailed the Israeli media for what he called its leftist stance and accused journalists of hounding him for years because his policies did not align with a push for a Palestinian state.

Charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases, Netanyahu is expected in the first instance to be questioned by his defence lawyer for several days.

The 75-year-old is accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of cigars and champagne from a billionaire Hollywood producer in exchange for assisting him with personal and business interests, and of promoting advantageous regulation for media moguls in exchange for favourable coverage of himself and his family.

He denies wrongdoing, saying the charges are a witch-hunt orchestrated by a hostile media and a biased legal system out to topple his lengthy rule.

The court has spent months hearing prosecution witnesses in the three cases, including some of Netanyahu’s once-closest aides who turned state witnesses, and have testified in detail, painting him as controlling and image-obsessed.

Asked by his lawyer Amit Hadad on Tuesday about the accusation that he had “indulgently” exploited his position to receive “benefits worth hundreds of thousands of shekels” Netanyahu said the allegations were “total lies”.

Netanyahu’s tactic on the opening day appeared to be to treat the trial as a political event, listing what he sees as his many political achievements in the hope of swaying the judges.

In his opening replies Netanyahu took the opportunity to paint himself as a significant global figure, a public servant who had no interest in the media, who needed to be constantly connected even as the trial proceeded.

At one point he appeared to criticise the former Obama administration’s Middle East policy and at another complained about press coverage of himself and his wife, as he depicted himself working long hours.

“I work 17, 18 hours a day,” he said. “Everyone who knows me knows this. That’s how I work. I eat my meals at my work table, it’s not cordon bleu, it’s not waiters coming with white gloves.”

He said he smoked cigars but could rarely finish them because of his workload, and detested champagne.

Netanyahu’s testimony follows evidence from 120 prosecution witnesses in three cases known popularly as Cases 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000. Netanyahu had arrived in court earlier appearing serious and somewhat haggard, shaking hands with the ministers and MPs who had come to support him as he arrived.

Other government ministers, including Israel’s justice minister, issued statements of support before the proceedings. Critics of the prime minister and supporters mounted rival demonstrations outside the court building.

Netanyahu, who is also wanted under an international warrant issued by the ICC for alleged war crimes in Gaza, has long tried to avoid this day, despite insisting in a taped video address on Monday night that he welcomed the opportunity to give evidence.

His appearance in a small, stuffy and crowded courtroom follows last-minute efforts by his political allies in the Knesset to put off the court date, citing clashes over voting, as well as the invocation of the security situation in Israel.

In his opening speech, Hadad criticised the indictment against his client, saying: “The Israeli police did not investigate a crime, but a person” provocatively comparing the process against Netanyahu to something that might be seen in “Russia or North Korea”.

The appearance is an embarrassing milestone for a leader who has tried to cultivate an image as a sophisticated and respected statesman, while also making high-profile attempts to sideline Israel’s independent judiciary.

Dozens of people gathered outside the court in Tel Aviv, some protesting against Netanyahu, including family members of hostages held in Gaza, and also a group of his supporters. A banner draped in front of the court read: “Crime Minister.”

Under Israeli law, indicted prime ministers are not required to step down. Nevertheless, the charges against Netanyahu have exposed deep divisions in Israel. Protesters demanded he resign and former political allies refused to serve in his government, triggering a political crisis that led to five elections in less than four years beginning in 2019.

Before the war, Netanyahu’s legal troubles bitterly divided Israelis and shook Israeli politics through five rounds of elections. His government’s attempt last year to curb the powers of the judiciary further polarised Israelis.

The shock Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, and the ensuing Gaza war swept Netanyahu’s trial off the public agenda as Israelis came together in grief and trauma. But as the war dragged on, political unity crumbled.

Ireland has allowed itself to become a “data dumping ground” for big technology companies such as Amazon and Meta which are monopolising clean energy generation for their datacentres, campaigners claim.

They say the growth of the cloud storage sector in Ireland is so rapid it is threatening the country’s legally binding decarbonisation commitments.

Independent expert research commissioned by Friends of the Earth found that between 2017 and 2023, datacentres absorbed the same amount of energy as that generated by wind power over the period.

“Datacentres are growing far faster than the renewable energy procured to meet their needs,” said the report’s author, Hannah Daly, professor of sustainable energy and energy systems modelling at University College Cork.

She found that electricity demand from datacentres had grown by 22.6% since 2015, compared with 0.4% for other industrial sectors.

By 2030 the demand for energy from datacentres to serve the increasing needs of the internet and artificial intelligence would “exceed that of Ireland’s entire industrial sector under high-demand scenarios”, the report said.

Government data published by the Central Statistics Office in July found the total energy use by datacentres rose from 5% in 2015 to 21% of national consumption in 2023.

Friends of the Earth is now calling on the Irish government to reconsider its policy on expansion of datacentres.

“This expert research completely blows out of the water the PR spin that datacentres expansion is in any way sensible or sustainable on both climate and energy security grounds,” said Jerry Mac Evilly, head of policy change at the charity. “They are adding more fuel to the fire and increasing reliance on fossil gas and the gas network.”

He added that the investment in renewable energy such as wind and solar power by the state was “planned to get our communities off polluting expensive fossil fuels, not to myopically serve the unlimited expansion of one colossal industry”.

Daly’s report also found that “dozens of datacentres” were seeking connections to the natural gas network, which relies heavily on supplies from the UK and Norway, “to overcome local power network constraints”.

“This is prolonging Ireland’s dependency on fossil fuels and will make legally binding carbon budgets unachievable,” Daly said. “This underscores the need for policy interventions that ensure renewables displace fossil fuels rather than fuelling new demand.”

The expansion of datacentres in Ireland will come increasingly under the spotlight with the new EU AI Act, which requires countries to publish figures on energy use for general purpose AI.

The EU is also finalising rules to monitor the energy performance of datacentres, including their energy and water footprint.

In August, South Dublin county council refused planning permission to Google Ireland for a new datacentre in a business park. It cited “the existing insufficient capacity in the electricity network (grid) and the lack of significant on-site renewable energy to power the datacentre” as reasons for its decision.

On Sunday, the former chief executive of Ireland’s electricity grid, Eirgrid, said the commentary on datacentres was “inaccurate, misinformed and damaging to the national interest”. He told the Business Post the level of demand was “healthy” for a growing economy and would help finance offshore windfarms.

The projected 30% increase in demand for power should not be a concern, he said, if the government achieved the 50% growth in energy generation by 2030 Eirgrid had recommended.

A sponge made of cotton and squid bone that has absorbed about 99.9% of microplastics in water samples in China could provide an elusive answer to ubiquitous microplastic pollution in water across the globe, a new report suggests.

Just as importantly, the filter’s production appears to be scalable, the University of Wuhan study authors said in the paper, which was peer-reviewed and published in the journal Science Advances. That would address a problem that has stymied the use of previous microplastic filtration systems that were successful in controlled settings, but could not be scaled up.

If it is successfully deployed on a larger scale in forthcoming research, the filter could change the course of one of the world’s most serious public health crises.

“Microplastic remediation in aquatic bodies is essential for the entire ecosystem, but is challenging to achieve with a universal and efficient strategy,” the study’ authors wrote in the paper.

Microplastics have been detected in water samples around the world at levels that are increasingly worrying researchers as the substance’s health threats become clearer. By one estimate, the average person ingests about 4,000 plastic particles in drinking water annually, while the substance has been found in clouds above Mount Fuji and in the ocean’s deepest trench.

Microplastic pollution can contain any number of 16,000 plastic chemicals, and often is attached to highly toxic compounds – like PFAS, bisphenol and phthalates – linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, hormone disruption or developmental toxicity. Microplastics can cross the brain and placental barriers, and those who have it in their heart tissue are twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke during the next several years.

The study tested the material in an irrigation ditch, a lake, seawater and a pond, where it removed up to 99.9% of plastic. It addressed 95%-98% of plastic after five cycles, which the authors say is remarkable reusability.

The sponge is made from chitin extracted from squid bone and cotton cellulose, materials that are often used to address pollution. Cost, secondary pollution and technological complexities have stymied many other filtration systems, but large-scale production of the new material is possible because it is cheap, and raw materials are easy to obtain, the authors say.

The equipment for the material’s production, such as freeze dryers and mechanical stirrers, is also widely available, while the absorption capacity was not significantly affected by other pollutants, another common problem researchers have previously encountered.

Others have had some success with a biomass sponge – different Chinese researchers previously developed a similar sponge that removed about 90% of plastic.

The authors say they could have an industrial scale model ready within several years, if larger-scale testing proves successful, and it could be used in home or municipal filtration systems. A sponge could also be used in clothes washing machines, dishwashers and other source of microplastic pollution.

More than 150 competitors representing 20 countries descended on a hotel on the outskirts of Granada last month to battle it out at the Spanish World Scrabble Championships.

Now, weeks after the letter tiles were meticulously placed and the points tallied, news of the tournament’s winner, Nigel Richards, has made waves across Spain, with many scratching their heads over the fact he does not speak Spanish.

“An incredible humiliation” was how one news presenter described it this week, while another report labelled it “the height of absurdity”.

But for those who have tracked the rise of Richards, a Malaysia-based New Zealander hailed as the Tiger Woods of Scrabble, the feat seemed fitting.

“This is someone with very particular, incredible abilities; he’s a gifted guy,” Benjamín Olaizola, who came second to Richards in the Spanish-language tournament, told the broadcaster Cadena Ser. “We are talking about a New Zealander who has won multiple championships in English – at least five of them.”

The Spanish title wasn’t the first time Richards’ Scrabble skills had shattered linguistic barriers: in 2015 he made headlines when he won the francophone world championships without being able to speak or understand French. Instead he reportedly memorised the entire French Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks.

“He doesn’t speak French at all – he just learned the words,” his friend Liz Fagerlund told the New Zealand Herald at the time. “He won’t know what they mean, wouldn’t be able to carry out a conversation in French, I wouldn’t think.”

In 2018 he again won the francophone tournament, casting off any suggestion that his French title had been a one-off.

After nearly three decades of playing Scrabble competitively, Richards is widely viewed as the best player of all time, with some chalking up his skills to his photographic memory and ability to quickly calculate mathematical probabilities. Intensely private and swift to turn down interviews, very little is known about his personal life.

His reclusive nature – along with his decades of Scrabble conquests and coups – have turned him into a legend of sorts for some.

“Just mentioning his name makes me tingle; he’s a phenomenon,” Eric Salvador Tchouyo, a world champion Scrabble player from Cameroon, told Radio France Internationale. “I often say he would make a good doctoral thesis topic for students in medicine because it’s incomprehensible that someone could have such memory capacity in a language he doesn’t speak.”

Describing Richards as an “exceptional” person, he noted that whenever Richards turned up at a tournament, the other players knew they were playing for second place at best. “When Nigel Richards sits at a table, everyone loses their nerves, even the biggest champions,” he said. “Playing against Nigel Richards is like playing against a computer.”