A sense of normalcy was returning to New Orleans on Friday as the city continued to deal with the aftermath of a lethal attack by the Islamic State-inspired military veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who killed 14 and wounded dozens before he was killed in a shootout with police.

The scene of the shocking mass murder – the Louisiana city’s famed Bourbon Street nightlife destination – reopened amid tight security on Thursday.

At the same time, the Sugar Bowl college football game between the US colleges of Notre Dame and Georgia, which was postponed by a day in the interest of national security, was played on Thursday evening.

The Joan of Arc parade in the French Quarter is also still scheduled to take place on Monday to kick off carnival season ahead of Mardi Gras, Antoinette de Alteriis, one of the organizers, told the Associated Press. She said they expect close to its typical crowd in the thousands.

Staff at Felix’s Restaurant & Oyster Bar on Bourbon Street gathered for a prayer just before reopening as makeshift memorials to the victims were erected along the famed street and groups of national guard members were stationed throughout the French Quarter.

“I declare Bourbon Street is open,” the New Orleans police department superintendent, Anne Kirkpatrick, said on Thursday, barely 18 hours after the attack. The city’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, and local religious leaders laid 14 yellow roses on Bourbon Street to honor the victims, while a brass band played I’ll Fly Away.

The restoration of business comes as video from inside Jabbar’s mobile home in north Houston showed a bomb-making station and questions are raised about why safety barriers on the street were not functioning at the time of the early morning attack.

That has sparked recriminations among local politicians. Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, Billy Nungesser, a Republican, said he was frustrated with “excuses” from Mayor Cantrell and her deputies.

“I’ve held my tongue long enough,” said Nungesser. “Her lack of leadership is an embarrassment.”

According to the New York Times, a confidential security report warned that the Bourbon Street was vulnerable to a “vehicular ramming”.

The assessment, compiled by a New York security firm in 2019, warned that bollards designed to block vehicles from entering Bourbon Street did “not appear to work” and warned “the two modes of terror attack likely to be used are vehicular ramming and active shooting”.

Police officials on Thursday said the city had started work to replace the old barriers in November and said they did not anticipate an attacker would use the sidewalk to evade a police car blocking the street.

“This should be no surprise to anyone who’s ever been tasked with protecting an area dense with pedestrian traffic,” said Don Aviv, chief executive of the security firm Interfor International, which performed the 2019 security assessment, told the outlet.

“The French Quarter is the perfect target,” Aviv added.

Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, will travel to New Orleans on Monday.

“The President and First Lady will grieve with the families and community members impacted by the tragic attack on January 1 and meet with officials on the ground,” the White House said in a statement.

Authorities now say Jabbar was the sole attacker after raising warnings that he was accompanied by other suspects and that he was inspired by the Islamic State (IS) to conduct a “premeditated act of terrorism”.

Investigators have also released images of the suspect placing what they say were two improvised bombs hidden in blue drink coolers in the area. Jabbar was seen on surveillance video placing the coolers on Bourbon Street hours before the incident, authorities said in Thursday press conference.

Investigators have unearthed religious recordings made by Jabbar and posted to a SoundCloud account in which he likened music to “Satan’s voice”.

“Forbidding the evil is a mandate on all of mankind,” Jabbar said in the recording. Bourbon Street is famous for its music, seeding the careers of Louis Armstrong and others.

FBI officials also said they do not believe there is any connection between the Bourbon Street attack and a Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas hours later.

“At this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans the one in Las Vegas,” Christopher Raia, an assistant director from the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, said during the Thursday press conference.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Like the rest of those living in New Orleans at the time, Aaron Miller – then the city’s homeland security director – was terrified after a gunman drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French coastal city of Nice in 2016, killing 86 people and wounding many more in a terrorist attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS).

Similar car attacks in Berlin, London, New York and Barcelona also put him on edge as he thought about the safety of his city.

“We just said … it’s just too risky right now” to not fortify New Orleans’ most famous thoroughfare, Bourbon Street, the globally renowned festive drag. “God forbid somebody does this [here].”

By the end of 2017, Miller had overseen the city’s acquisition of road-blocking, cylindrical columns known as bollards – along with other barriers – designed to prevent terrorists from driving into revelers descending on Bourbon Street for one of the city’s many celebrations.

The barriers were part of a broader $40m public safety package unveiled by Miller’s boss in those days, Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who left office in 2018 and more recently served as the co-chairperson of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

Some of the most visible elements of that plan remained in place early on Wednesday when a former US army veteran driving a rented pickup truck – flying a pole-mounted IS flag in the back – drove around a police barricade at the foot of Bourbon Street and plowed into a crowd of New Year’s Day revelers, killing 14 and injuring more than 30 others before police shot him to death.

Among those elements were ubiquitous street surveillance cameras with bright flashing lights and strategically positioned license plate readers meant to inform authorities of motorists’ comings and goings should they become of interest to investigators.

Yet the bollards at 11 of 16 locations – including at the foot of Bourbon Street, where the attack began – were down for repairs on Wednesday, with officials saying they had become “unreliable and [had] been non-operational” ahead of New Orleans’ hosting duties for the National Football League’s Super Bowl on 9 February.

One factor they cited: beads thrown during the city’s renowned Carnival parades had clogged the barrier system.

Surveillance video from the attack showed the former military member drive over another type of impediment on the first block of Bourbon Street – known as a wedge barrier and implemented as part of the 2017 safety plan – that had been left in the down position. Officials said they had left that wedge barrier down on purpose on the day of the attack to ensure emergency vehicles could get through as necessary.

But that blockade was seen up again on Thursday.

And not present at all was a third kind of blockade deployed previously by New Orleans’ public safety officials: portable, L-shaped archer barriers that are typically erected three or four abreast across a roadway and on sidewalks to stop even speeding motorists by tilting back if struck and wedging under their vehicles.

One such barrier stopped a motorist that rammed into it at the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, on 1 January 2024, protecting the crowd at the event, NBC News reported.

The New Orleans police superintendent since November 2023, Anne Kirkpatrick, stunned television viewers on Thursday when she acknowledged to reporters that she was unaware her agency even had the archer barriers as part of their toolkit.

“Actually, we had them,” Kirkpatrick said when asked about the archers, which were put out Thursday as New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome prepared to host the football teams of Notre Dame and Georgia universities’ postponed Sugar Bowl showdown. “I didn’t know about them, but we have them.”

Miller, who moved on to other professional opportunities as New Orleans’ incumbent mayor LaToya Cantrell took over for a term-limited Landrieu, said the city was using alternate, more temporary “solutions” designed to stop a vehicle attack on Bourbon Street. He mentioned portable gates, parked dump trucks and a police cruiser with its flashers blocking the road at the foot of the famed street.

But the attacker simply drove around the front of the police cruiser, climbed the unimpeded sidewalk and hurtled up Bourbon Street, which was packed with people partying among the street’s bars, clubs, eateries and other establishments.

The carnage stopped only after the attacker’s pickup crashed into a construction lift about three blocks away from the impotent patrol car, resulting in his being killed in a shootout with police.

Had the attacker been able to activate a control later found in his truck for two pipe bombs left in a pair of ice chests a couple of blocks up Bourbon Street, there is no telling how many more people could have been hurt or killed.

Miller, the deputy county manager of Arlington, Virginia, and an adjunct assistant professor at Tulane University’s school of public health and tropical medicine in New Orleans, made it a point to not criticize or blame anyone in the local government for the attack having taken place.

Earlier on Thursday, Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, Billy Nungesser, publicly upbraided New Orleans officials on the local CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana. “To think that someone in the city wasn’t on top of this is unthinkable,” Nungesser said, prompting Cantrell’s office to respond in part: “New Orleans … will not be distracted by outside commentary.”

University of Michigan professor and counter-terrorism expert Javed Ali told the BBC that he wondered whether the Bourbon Street attacker was going too fast to be stopped by bollards.

Separately, despite acquiring the multimillion-dollar public safety package, Bourbon Street has intermittently reeled from deadly violence, including mass shootings, though they have often been fights that spiral out of control – and occasionally ensnare bystanders – rather than deliberate, indiscriminate attacks.

Nonetheless, Miller said he regretted seeing that some of the protective investments New Orleans made in 2017 were missing in action when perhaps they were most needed. For one, a report commissioned by the city’s government determined the French Quarter was at risk of being targeted for terrorism and was a concern that municipal officials “must address”.

He – and multiple sources in local law enforcement – recalled simulating an attack years earlier that was eerily similar to the one attributed to Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, of Houston, Texas. That exercise involved a garbage truck being intentionally barreled into a crowd, Miller said.

Miller declined comment when asked if the city could have better maintained its missing bollards. He declined to comment on the wedge barrier left in the down position at the time of the attack – but then propped back up a day later, flanked by archer barriers on each adjacent sidewalk.

And he also declined to discuss Kirkpatrick’s comment about not having initially realized that her agency was in possession of those archer barriers as officials continued their work identifying Jabbar’s victims.

“This is one of the worst-case scenarios that we trained and exercised for,” Miller said. “These are the things that keep us up at night.”

The deadly New Year’s Day terrorist attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas have brought renewed attention to the scourge of extremism in the US military, but efforts to tackle it wilted in the later years of the Biden administration, and are unlikely to be revived once Donald Trump begins his second term this month.

Both the New Orleans vehicle attack that killed 14, and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas in which the driver died, were perpetrated by discharged or serving members of the armed forces.

Though investigators have yet to officially link the events, they follow a pattern of active or veteran military personnel involvement in acts of domestic terrorism, including the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot; a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; and the 2009 mass shooting at the former Fort Hood army base in Texas that killed 13.

In response to the series of deadly events, defense secretary Lloyd Austin promised to tackle longstanding failures by the US military to address the problem. In 2021 he announced a series of initiatives, including a working group to study white nationalism and other extremist behavior within the defense department, and the commissioning of an independent report to review the issue and make recommendations.

The efforts, however, fizzled. Congressional Republicans effectively killed the Countering Extremism Working Group in December 2023, starving it of funds in the annual defense authorization bill, months after CNN reported the Pentagon group had “vanished virtually without a trace” because of what analysts said was a concerted Republican “war on woke”.

Its demise, which was never publicly announced, came just weeks after the publication of a report to Congress by the inspector general of the US defense department that detailed 183 investigations of alleged extremism within military ranks.

Dozens of the investigations involved allegations of military members advocating, engaging in or supporting terrorism in the US or overseas, while 14 army investigations related to “advocating or engaging in unlawful force or violence to achieve goals that are political, religious, discriminatory, or ideological in nature”.

The independent report that Austin commissioned, by the Virginia-based Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), was eventually published in December 2023, 18 months behind schedule, and quickly became the subject of controversy.

It found “no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the US as a whole”, and “no evidence of violent extremist behavior by department of defense civilians”.

Republicans seized on the report as “proof” that the media had colluded with Democrats to create a false narrative about the existence of extremism in the military, while the Republican bloc of the House armed services committee posted to X, then known as Twitter, that Joe Biden had “wrongly targeted our servicemembers with a divisive and political witchhunt”.

But in a November 2024 investigation, the Associated Press found that the IDA report included data two years out of date, “grossly undercounted” the number of serving military and veterans arrested for the 6 January attack, and “provided a misleading picture of the severity of the growing problem” of military extremism, the AP said.

An IDA spokesperson said its report was delivered to the defense department in June 2022. “IDA stands behind the rigor of the analysis and remains confident that the findings, including with regard to the prevalence of violent extremism in the DoD, were solidly based on the best data available at the time the work was conducted,” the group said in a statement.

The defense department did not respond to a request for comment.

Heidi Beirich, chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the Biden administration began with good intentions to tackle extremism in US military ranks, and made progress in several areas, but was ultimately unable to deliver verifiable progress.

“There were positives, introducing a tattoo database to screen recruits, and tightening up the security clearance process. They created a definition for extremism, and regulations in the army, marines and navy to ban fundraising for, or liking extremist groups on social media,” she said.

“But the issue is enforcement. We have no idea if these things are getting done, how many people have been sanctioned for these things? We don’t have good data from inside the DoD, we have no good information, really, about levels of extremism within the military.”

Beirich said the issue became “a political football” for Republicans, and that she feared the situation would become worse if Pete Hegseth, Trump’s controversial nominee for defense secretary, was confirmed.

“They started having conversations about how you’re smearing the military when you even talk about extremism, which is most evident with Hegseth saying that rooting out extremists is essentially a scam, or some kind of woke,” she said.

“It’s depressing that this problem looks like it’s not going to be taken seriously, and we’re probably going to have more incidents of terrorism from veterans or active duty. The American public is going to be more at risk.”

Other analysts say that tackling the issue is not just the responsibility of the defense department.

“A lot of the individuals who commit these acts are primarily veterans, and often honorably discharged,” said Matt Dallek, a political history professor at George Washington University and author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.

“The question is how does the government, particularly the Department of Veterans Affairs, try to prevent this sort of radicalization? How do they address the wider problems and challenges that veterans face, access to healthcare, mental health care, readjusting to civilian society and finding gainful employment?

“Although many of these cases may be different, it’s perhaps not all that surprising that a couple of decades post 9/11, a couple of decades of US war in Afghanistan and Iraq, we’re seeing at least some of these incidents of radical association, maybe anger at the US government and military, anger at the way the wars were conducted.”

South Korea’s political crisis took a dramatic turn on Friday when investigators were forced to abandon an attempt to arrest the impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, over his attempt last month to impose martial law after a tense standoff with his security forces.

The confrontation unfolded on a freezing winter’s day in Seoul, as an estimated 1,200 Yoon supporters gathered outside Yoon’s official residence while as many as 150 police and other officials attempted to execute an arrest warrant – the first for a sitting South Korean president over allegations his martial law declaration in December amounted to an insurrection.

But hours after they entered the presidential compound in Seoul, anti-corruption officials said they were halting efforts to detain Yoon.

Local media reports said anti-corruption officials – who are leading a joint team of police and prosecutors – entered the compound to find themselves blocked by troops under the control of the presidential security service.

“Regarding the execution of the arrest warrant today, it was determined that the execution was effectively impossible due to the ongoing standoff,” the Corruption Investigation Office said in a statement. “Concern for the safety of personnel on-site led to the decision.”

The investigators’ office said it would discuss further action but did not immediately say whether it would make another attempt to detain Yoon. The warrant for his detention will expire on Monday.

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is set to arrive in South Korea the same day for talks between the two allies.

The Yonhap news agency said the team comprised 30 people from the anti-corruption office and 120 police, 70 of whom were initially waiting outside the residence compound.

Having managed to find a way past the troops, officials were confronted by other security service staff.

The warrant was issued on Tuesday after Yoon again ignored a court order to submit himself for questioning over his short-lived declaration of martial law, for which he was impeached in mid-December.

Yoon’s lawyers describing the attempt to detain him as “illegal and invalid”, claiming the warrant could not be enforced at the presidential residence due to a law preventing locations potentially linked to military secrets from being searched without the consent of the person in charge – in this case Yoon.

Seok Dong-hyeon, one of the lawyers, said the anti-corruption agency’s efforts showed an “outrageous discard for the law”.

What happens next is unclear. The anti-corruption office could attempt another arrest, seek a warrant extension, or pursue a pre-trial detention warrant that would require less immediate physical enforcement. Police have meanwhile filed obstruction of justice charges against the head and deputy head of the presidential security service, who have been summoned for questioning.

If he is eventually detained, Yoon, would become South Korea’s first sitting president to be arrested and be held at the Seoul Detention Centre while the anti-corruption agency had 48 hours to investigate him and either request a warrant for his formal arrest or release him.

Yoon’s defence minister, police chief and several top military commanders have already been arrested over their roles in the martial law declaration.

He declared martial law on 3 December in an attempt to root out what he described as “anti-state, pro-North Korean” forces – a reference to opposition MPs in the national assembly – without providing any evidence for those claims.

He was forced to lift the order six hours later after lawmakers forced their way past troops into the parliament building to vote it down.

While the country’s constitutional court decides whether to uphold the impeachment vote – a move that would trigger an election for a new president – Yoon appears ready to continue defying anti-corruption officials over his martial law edict.

The criminal allegations against Yoon, an ultra conservative whose two and a half years in office have been marred by scandal and policy gridlock, are serious.

Insurrection is one of the few crimes from which South Korean presidents do not have immunity, and comes with penalties that can include life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

The raid took place amid a huge security presence. The broadcaster YTN reported that 2,800 police had been mobilised in the area, along with 135 police buses that have been positioned to create a barrier, as Yoon’s supporters maintained a round-the-clock vigil outside the residence.

A makeshift stage hosted impassioned speeches, with one woman appearing to break down in tears when describing Yoon’s situation. Another declared: “Ladies and gentlemen, President Yoon is truly remarkable… I love President Yoon Suk Yeol”.

Supporters, mostly elderly though with some younger faces present, gathered around tables offering tea and instant noodles. Many in the crowd insisted Yoon’s martial law declaration had been constitutional and justified.

Pyeong In-su, 74, said the police had to be stopped by “patriotic citizens” – a term Yoon has used to describe people standing guard near his residence.

Holding a US-South Korea flag with the words “Let’s go together” written on it in English and Korean, he said he hoped Donald Trump would come to Yoon’s aid after he becomes president later this month. “I hope after Trump’s inauguration he can use his influence to help our country get back on the right track,” he explained.

Yoon, who has not left his residence since his impeachment, has told supporters he will fight until the end. “I am watching on YouTube live all the hard work you are doing,” he wrote late on Wednesday. Yoon has refused to retract his claims opposition MPs were pro-North Korean and also aired unsupported allegations of election tampering.

South Korea’s traditionally conservative media have however taken a harsh stance against Yoon. The influential Chosun Ilbo’s editorial condemned his behaviour as “deeply inappropriate for a president with a prosecutor background”.

Dong-A Ilbo delivered a scathing critique, describing the situation as “beyond embarrassing and reaching a deplorable level”. It criticised Yoon for continuing to rely on extreme supporters rather than taking responsibility for what it called “a month that has left the country in tatters”.

South Korean anti-corruption officials attempting to arrest the country’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, must know by now what he meant by his repeated vows to “fight to the end”.

In the month since his calamitous declaration of martial law, Yoon, along with most of his party, his legal team and, crucially, his security detail, have resisted at every turn attempts to hold him politically and legally accountable.

On Friday, after a tense standoff between anti-corruption officials and security staff assigned to Yoon, South Korea’s gravest political crisis in decades rumbled on, the day closing with another cliffhanger worthy of one of the country’s wildly popular TV dramas.

No one who has followed the turmoil in recent weeks could have guessed how Friday’s visit by 100 officials and police officers would play out. Almost six hours after the attempted arrest began, it ended with Yoon still ensconced in his official residence and not staring at the walls of a cell in Seoul’s detention centre.

Yoon is responding to a political crisis of his making with the same qualities he used to confront striking doctors and resist calls for an investigation into scandals surrounding his wife, Kim Keon Hee – with a defiance that borders on arrogance.

This, after all, is the same man who rejected calls – including those from political allies – to immediately lift martial law after it was imposed late in the evening of 3 December. It was only after opposition MPs grappled with armed troops and scaled walls into the national assembly building to vote down his edict that he finally relented.

Days later, members of Yoon’s conservative People Power party were similarly unyielding, refusing to take part in a first attempt to impeach their conservative figurehead amid chaotic scenes in parliament and leaving the chamber without enough votes to proceed.

A second impeachment attempt succeeded a week later, after a small number of People Power rebels found the courage to vote with the opposition.

Yoon is now channelling his energies into the legal battle. He has refused to submit to questioning over the martial law order – a criminal investigation separate from the impeachment process – while members of the presidential security service have prevented officials from searching his office, citing national security and legal concerns.

It is now up to South Korea’s constitutional court to decide whether to approve Yoon’s impeachment or reinstate him as president. If at least six of its eight justices vote in favour, his obstinacy will have been in vain. Instead, his refusal last month to comply with calls from his own party’s leader to resign could result in the election of a Democratic president to add to the party’s majority in parliament.

Yoon has much to lose by allowing the investigation to run its course unimpeded and risk the ignominy of becoming the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested. Insurrection is one of the few crimes from which the country’s leaders do not have immunity. If found guilty, he could face life imprisonment – or even the death penalty – and join the long list of former South Korean presidents forced to reflect on their actions inside a cell.

The odds are still long on a speedy resolution to a crisis so entrenched it has enabled North Korea to engage in irony-free schadenfreude over the “chaos and paralysis” afflicting its democratic, capitalist neighbour.

But if there is anything positive to be salvaged from the past month it is that, for all the anger and uncertainty, South Korea’s political meltdown has played out without a shot being fired. Many of its citizens will remember a time in their country’s recent history when that was not the case.

Elon Musk’s satellite-based Starlink – currently unlicensed for use in India – is being used by militant groups in the conflict-ridden state of Manipur to circumvent government internet shutdowns, fighters and security sources have said.

The satellite internet service provider, operated by Musk’s SpaceX company, is not permitted to legally operate in India amid security concerns but is allowed by Myanmar, which neighbours Manipur.

The north-east Indian state has been engulfed in a deadly conflict since May 2023 between the majority Meitei population and the minority Kuki population. More than 250 people have been killed and armed groups have formed on both sides as the state has become divided along ethnic lines.

As the state and national governments have failed to bring the security situation under control, they have repeatedly shut down all internet access across Manipur, often for months or weeks at a time.

But multiple sources within armed groups and the police confirmed to the Guardian that Starlink satellite internet worked in several areas of Manipur and had been used by individuals and militants groups during those periods when the government shut down mobile and broadband internet.

One leader from the Meitei separatist militant group, the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur (PLA), said that Starlink devices had been used by the group to access the internet inside Manipur when it had been cut by the authorities during flare-ups of violence.

The PLA source said the Starlink device had initially been used by the group in Myanmar but then members had realised it also functioned over the border in Manipur.

Musk has been vocal about his hopes to bring Starlink to India, a vast and growing market of 1.4 billion people, and in November the Indian government confirmed that Starlink was in the process of seeking necessary security permissions.

However, telecoms, including satellite internet, is one of the most strictly regulated industries in India and concerns have been raised by experts and thinktanks that Starlink could pose a security threat, or could be used to get around internet blackouts, which have become a regular mechanism of control by the Indian government and resulted in India having the highest number of internet shutdowns for the past seven years.

Officials from two different security agencies working in the state said it had recently been brought to their attention that Starlink devices had been used by civilians and armed groups to illegally access the internet in Manipur.

“Our initial information suggests that Starlink indeed works in some areas of Manipur, particularly in some areas that are closer to the Myanmar border,” said one senior police officer in Manipur, who said they believed the Starlink device they had recently uncovered had been smuggled in from Myanmar.

SpaceX, which operates Starlink, did not respond to a request for comment.

One person in Manipur’s state capital of Imphal, speaking on conditions of anonymity for fear of police action, said he had witnessed someone using a Starlink device brought over from the US during a wedding.

“The internet was working on it,” he said. “It was the period when the internet was turned off in our region. I was surprised to see the internet working when I connected my own phone.”

There is no confirmation on how many armed groups in Manipur have access to this technology. Four other armed groups – two from the Kuki side and one from the Meitei side – denied that they had been using Starlink to access the internet.

This is not the first incident of police encountering Starlink being used within Indian territory. In December, the Indian Coast Guard said they had found a Starlink device onboard a boat they had seized close to the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar, which was being used to smuggle an estimated £3bn worth of methamphetamine.

Police said they believed the device was being used for navigation and internet access in Indian waters and said they had reached out to Starlink for their assistance in the investigation.

The foreign ministers of France and Germany have said they want a new relationship with Syria and a peaceful, inclusive transition during the highest-level western visit to Damascus since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last month.

Jean-Noël Barrot and Annalena Baerbock, the first EU ministers to travel to the Syrian capital since rebels seized control on 8 December, held talks with the country’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, at the People’s Palace on Friday.

The diplomats earlier visited Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison complex and met civil society representatives as western powers cautiously open channels with Syria’s new rulers after 13 years of a devastating civil war that cost more than 500,000 lives.

The trip was intended to show European openness to acknowledging the Islamist rebels, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), while also urging conciliation, moderation, inclusivity and respect for the rights of Syria’s minorities.

“Our message to Syria’s new leadership: respecting the principles agreed with regional actors and ensuring the protection of all civilians and minorities is of the utmost importance,” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said on Friday.

Baerbock said in a ministry statement before arriving in Damascus that the visit was meant to send “a clear signal to the Syrians: a new political beginning between Europe and Syria, between Germany and Syria, is possible.”

She said Germany and the EU wanted to help Syria become a “safe home” for all its people and a “functioning state, with full control over its territory”, adding that despite scepticism about HTS “we must not miss this opportunity”.

Baerbock asked the new rulers to renounce “acts of vengeance”, hold elections soon, and avoid attempting to Islamise the judicial and education systems. The goal was for Syria to become a respected member of the international community again, she said.

Barrot said the two EU heavyweights “stand together alongside the Syrian people in all their diversity” and wanted a “peaceful transition”.

At a meeting with civil society leaders he said he hoped for a “sovereign and safe” Syria, with no room for terrorism or chemical weapons. He told journalists that France and Germany intended to offer technical help and advice on a new constitution.

Hope for the country’s democratic transition was “fragile but real”, Barrot said. Details of the pair’s meeting with Sharaa were not immediately released.

HTS, a Sunni Muslim group previously affiliated with al-Qaida and Islamic State, is still designated a terrorist organisation by numerous national governments but has assured the international community it aims to govern on behalf of all Syrians.

Having led the offensive that toppled the Assad family’s brutal, decades-long rule, the group’s senior figures, who dominate Syria’s interim authorities, face the task of rebuilding the country’s decimated state institutions.

Major questions remain about whether minority rights in Syria’s multi-ethnic society will be properly guaranteed, as well as over continuing malign foreign influence in a country where states including Turkey and Russia have strong competing interests.

Barrot also visited the French embassy, which has been closed since 2012.He met the Syrian staff who maintained the facilities and reaffirmed the need to work towards re-establishing diplomatic representation.

Baerbock said she was travelling to Syria with an “outstretched hand” as well as “clear expectations” of the new rulers, who she said would be judged by their actions.

“We know where the HTS comes from ideologically, what it has done in the past,” she said. “But we also hear and see the desire for moderation and for understanding.”

Western allies were committed to ensuring Syria’s internal affairs were not disrupted by outside influences, she said, and called on Russia to leave its military bases in Syria.

Sednaya prison, not far from the capital, was the site of extrajudicial killings, torture and forced disappearances, epitomising the atrocities committed by the Assad regime against its opponents.

“Now it’s up to the international community to help to bring justice to the people who have suffered here in this prison of hell,” Baerbock said after touring the complex.

The Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, has removed his vice-president, Sara Duterte, from the national security council (NSC) a month after she allegedly plotted to kill him, according to an executive order released on Friday.

The order, signed on Monday by Lucas Bersamin, a lawyer and the Philippines’ executive secretary, removed Duterte and all former presidents from the council, which advises the president on policies affecting national security.

Bersamin said the move was “to reorganise and streamline” the council’s membership, which comprises key legislative, defence, foreign and cabinet officials.

“At the moment, the VP is not considered relevant to the responsibilities of membership in the NSC,” Bersamin told reporters, adding that the president was free to add other members or advisers as needed.

Duterte is facing an investigation over her alleged threat to kill Marcos and his family.

In late November, Duterte, 46, – the daughter of the former president Rodrigo Duterte – delivered an expletive-laden online news conference in which she claimed to have told someone to assassinate Marcos if she was killed. She later said the comments were misinterpreted.

Duterte swept to power in 2022 in an alliance with Marcos that has unravelled spectacularly in recent months, with both sides trading allegations of drug addiction and extreme rhetoric before this year’s midterm elections.

Duterte is also the subject of multiple impeachment complaints over her alleged misuse of millions of dollars in government funds.

Duterte has not responded to a request for comment.

The Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, has removed his vice-president, Sara Duterte, from the national security council (NSC) a month after she allegedly plotted to kill him, according to an executive order released on Friday.

The order, signed on Monday by Lucas Bersamin, a lawyer and the Philippines’ executive secretary, removed Duterte and all former presidents from the council, which advises the president on policies affecting national security.

Bersamin said the move was “to reorganise and streamline” the council’s membership, which comprises key legislative, defence, foreign and cabinet officials.

“At the moment, the VP is not considered relevant to the responsibilities of membership in the NSC,” Bersamin told reporters, adding that the president was free to add other members or advisers as needed.

Duterte is facing an investigation over her alleged threat to kill Marcos and his family.

In late November, Duterte, 46, – the daughter of the former president Rodrigo Duterte – delivered an expletive-laden online news conference in which she claimed to have told someone to assassinate Marcos if she was killed. She later said the comments were misinterpreted.

Duterte swept to power in 2022 in an alliance with Marcos that has unravelled spectacularly in recent months, with both sides trading allegations of drug addiction and extreme rhetoric before this year’s midterm elections.

Duterte is also the subject of multiple impeachment complaints over her alleged misuse of millions of dollars in government funds.

Duterte has not responded to a request for comment.

Police in the US were still probing the possible motivations and background of Matthew Livelsberger, the decorated special forces soldier who died in an apparent suicide and vehicle bombing of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.

Authorities said that Livelsberger shot himself dead inside the Tesla seconds before the vehicle packed with fireworks, gas-filled tanks and camping fuel exploded outside the hotel lobby.

The incident came hours after an Islamic State-inspired veteran killed 14 and wounded dozens in a truck attack, setting off speculation that the two incidents could be linked. However, no link has yet emerged and the two attacks are now widely seen as separate, though investigations continue.

Playful texts to an ex-girlfriend sent by Livelsberger just two days before the incident showed that the Green Beret, who was on leave from his post in Europe, was excited to rent the Tesla Cybertruck used in the attack.

“I rented a Tesla Cybertruck. It’s the s***,” he wrote to former girlfriend Alicia Arritt on 29 December from Denver. “I feel like Batman or halo.” He said the vehicle was “ungodly” fast.

The texts, obtained by the Denver Gazette, showed that Livelsberger, 37, continued to communicate with Arritt, including on New Year’s Eve, when he sent photos and videos of the electric vehicle.

Arritt, who provided the texts to the outlet, said she had not heard from Livelsberger for three years after they broke up in 2021 and said she had no foresight that he was planning to blow up the Las Vegas strip hotel.

FBI investigators told her that she was not the only ex-girlfriend Livelsberger had recently contacted.

Livelsberger was a resident of Colorado Springs, 60 miles (97km) south of Denver. He had spent most of his 19-year military career at Fort Carson and was last stationed at Camp Panzer Kaserne just south-west of Stuttgart, Germany, where he worked as a remote and autonomous systems manager for the army.

He told Arritt in one of his texts reported by the outlet that he was “building drones in my new position”, he wrote. “You would love it.”

Arritt told the Denver Gazette that Livelsberger was deeply patriotic and knew him as politically conservative. But said his behavior had changed in 2019 after he returned from a tour in the Middle East with a traumatic brain injury.

Arritt said he became isolated and the depressive symptoms he showed went untreated because “it’s not acceptable to seek treatment when someone is in Special Forces”.

Separately, the New York Post reported that Livelsberger’s wife broke up with him six days before the explosion after an argument over apparent infidelity. The couple had recently welcomed the birth of a baby girl.

Investigators are now looking at whether Livelsberger’s motive was personal and not political – an assumption that gained traction given the conjunction of the Elon Musk-developed vehicle and the location of the attack.

“It’s not lost on us that it happened in front of the Trump building and a Tesla vehicle was used,” said Spencer Evans, the FBI special agent in charge, on Thursday.

Livelsberger’s uncle Dean Livelsberger had told reporters that his nephew was a “Rambo-type” patriot who loved his nation and president-elect Donald Trump. “He used to have all patriotic stuff on Facebook, he was 100% loving the country,” he told the Independent.

“He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American,” the uncle told the news website. “It’s one of the reasons he was in Special Forces for so many years. It wasn’t just one tour of duty.”

Seven people suffered minor injuries from the blast, while Livelsberger’s body was burned beyond recognition and he was identified from his passport and army ID found inside the vehicle.

Investigators are now looking into whether Livelsberger chose the steel-sided vehicle to limit civilian casualties. “Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted. “Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken.”

Neil Young has confirmed that he will headline this year’s Glastonbury festival, clarifying on his blog that he had received “an error in information” that had initially prompted him to pull out.

“Happily, the festival is now back on our itinerary and we look forward to playing! Hope to see you there!” he wrote. He did not explain what the “error” was.

Festival organiser Emily Eavis swiftly posted on Instagram: “What a start to the year!” she wrote. “Neil Young is an artist who’s very close to our hearts at Glastonbury. He does things his own way and that’s why we love him. We can’t wait to welcome him back here to headline the Pyramid in June.”

Young joins Rod Stewart – and Nile Rodgers, who accidentally confirmed that Chic will play – as the only acts slated so far for the 2025 event.

On Tuesday, Young had posted on his site the Neil Young Archives that he was pulling out of the festival – “one of my all-time favourite outdoor gigs” – because of his perception that Glastonbury was “under corporate control” owing to its partnership with the BBC.

“We were told that BBC was now a partner in Glastonbury and wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in,” he wrote. “It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way I remember it being.”

The broadcaster has partnered with the festival since 1997. A spokesperson offered no comment when reached by the Guardian. The Guardian has also contacted Glastonbury for comment.

When Young headlined Glastonbury in 2009, he reached an agreement with the BBC that it could only broadcast portions of his two-hour set. Five songs were shown. “They believe in the live event and retaining its mystery and that of their artist,” the BBC said at the time.

Tickets for this year’s festival sold out in 35 minutes when they went on sale in November. The headliners are usually announced in March with the rest of the bill unveiled closer to the festival date in June. The 1975 and Olivia Rodrigo are among those rumoured to appear.

The festival’s Companies House accounts recently revealed that it doubled its annual profits in the 12-month period leading up to March 2024. It donated £5.2m to charities and paid £1.3m to charities and local groups that ran site services.

It also spent £3.7m on new land acquisition, and 89-year-old founder Michael Eavis transferred his shares in the festival to daughter Emily, who runs the event.

The festival will probably take a fallow year in 2026.

Young, 79, has confirmed that he and the Chrome Hearts are working on a new album, potentially to be called Talking to the Trees, produced by Lou Adler. The record followed a two-year spell of being unable to write, he told podcast The Mentors Radio.

“You don’t have a plan,” he said. “I went for two years without writing anything, and I was wondering, ‘Well, is that it?’ Who knows? I can’t tell.”

He detailed one new song, called Movin’ Ahead. “There’s so many people with things on their minds now, where there’s something wrong in their life, and maybe they have a threat on their health or it’s just trying to forget what’s going on in the world, and [wondering] how we’re gonna live with the situation of ignoring the climate change and ignoring everything and having our leaders totally into money instead of saving the planet and helping everybody else on Earth. You know, those things, they make you think.”

More than 2,200 people either died or went missing in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe in search of refuge in 2024.

The figure, cited in a statement from Regina De Dominicis, the regional director for Europe and central Asia for the UN’s children’s agency, Unicef, was eclipsed on New Year’s Eve when 20 people were reported missing after falling into the sea when a boat started to take in water in rough seas about 20 miles off the coast of Libya.

Despite the waves, seven people, including an eight-year-old Syrian boy, managed to continue the journey on the tilting vessel before being found by an Italian police patrol boat on Tuesday night close to the southern island of Lampedusa.

The 6-metre boat had left Zuwara in Libya at 10pm on Monday and started to take in water about five hours later, creating panic and causing 20 passengers to fall overboard, according to witness statements provided by the six adult survivors.

In a separate incident on Monday, two people, including a five-year-old child, died and 17 survived after the vessel they were on broke down off the northern Tunisian coastline during an attempt to reach Europe.

De Dominicis said: “The death toll and number of missing persons in the Mediterranean in 2024 have now surpassed 2,200, with nearly 1,700 lives lost on the central Mediterranean route alone.

“This includes hundreds of children, who make up one in five of all people migrating through the Mediterranean. The majority are fleeing violent conflict and poverty.”

In December, an 11-year-old girl, wearing a simple life vest and clinging to a pair of tyre tubes, was rescued off Lampedusa. She told rescuers she had spent three days at sea after a shipwreck that is presumed to have killed 40 people.

A month earlier the German NGO Sea-Watch filed a criminal complaint to prosecutors in Sicily accusing the Italian coastguard of negligence and multiple manslaughter over a shipwreck off Lampedusa that killed 21 people. The NGO said it had notified the Italian authorities of the boat in distress on 2 September, but alleged that the coastguard did not dispatch a rescue vessel until two days later.

At least four boats have capsized in the central Mediterranean since Tuesday, according to Alarm Phone, an organisation that runs a hotline for people in distress at sea.

Italy is one of the main landing points for people trying to reach Europe, with the central Mediterranean route considered one of the world’s most dangerous. The UN’s International Organization for Migration has registered at least 25,500 deaths and disappearances during the Mediterranean crossing since 2014. Most of the deaths or disappearances are attributed to boats departing from either Tunisia or Libya.

People still attempt the high-risk journey despite deals struck between Italy and the EU with Tunisia and Libya to stop migrant boats from leaving.

According to the Italian interior ministry, 66,317 people managed to reach Italy in 2024, less than half the number in 2023. The hardline policies of Giorgia Meloni’s government are at least partially credited for the decrease.

The deal with Libya essentially pushes people back to detention camps where they face torture and other abuses. Shocking abuse against migrants in Tunisia was reported by the Guardian in September.

A €670m (£556m) deal to transport 3,000 people intercepted in Italian seas each month to Albania, where they would have their asylum claims processed, came into force in October and is also supposed to act as a deterrent. But the plan has so far been unsuccessful due to legal issues.

Alcohol use is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the US after tobacco and obesity and should carry a label warning consumers about their cancer risks, according to a new advisory by the US surgeon general.

Released on Friday, the advisory revealed that alcohol use contributes to nearly 100,000 cancer cases and about 20,000 cancer deaths each year. It also found that alcohol-related cancer deaths shorten the lives of those who die by an average of 15 years.

The US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, also called for the guidelines on alcohol consumption limits to be reassessed so consumers can weigh the cancer risk when deciding whether or how much to drink. Alcohol in the US already has warnings on birth defects and impairments when operating machinery.

“Alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, after tobacco and obesity, increasing risk for at least seven types of cancer,” Murthy’s office said in a statement with the new report.

Any such change to warning labels has to be made by the US Congress.

According to the advisory, the largest burden of alcohol-related cancer in the US is for breast cancer in women, with an estimated 44,180 cases in 2019, marking 16.4% of the approximately 270,000 total breast cancer cases for women.

Among women, breast cancer makes up approximately 60% of alcohol-related cancer deaths. Meanwhile, liver cancer, at approximately 33%, and colorectal cancer, at approximately 21%, make up the majority of alcohol-related cancer deaths in men.

Overall, consuming alcohol increases the risk of developing at least seven types of cancer. In addition to colorectal and breast cancers, alcohol consumption increases the risk of mouth, throat, esophagus, voice box and liver cancers.

The advisory also found that about 83% of the estimated 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths in the US annually occur among people who drink at levels above the federally recommended limits of two drinks daily for men and one drink daily for women. It also stated that the remaining 17% of the estimated 20,000 annual alcohol-related cancer deaths occur at levels within the recommended limits.

The advisory listed four ways that alcohol can cause cancer including alcohol’s breakdown into acetaldehyde in the body, which damages DNA in various ways, thereby increasing the risk of cancer. Alcohol can also induce oxidative stress, in turn increasing cancer risk by damaging DNA, proteins and cells, and increasing inflammation. The third way is alcohol’s ability to alter levels of multiple hormones including estrogen, which can increase breast cancer risk. Alcohol consumption can also lead to greater absorption of carcinogens.

Despite the clear links between alcohol consumption and cancer risk, less than half of Americans are actually aware of the risk. According to a 2019 survey cited in the advisory, 45% of Americans recognized alcohol use as a risk factor for cancer compared with 91% of Americans who recognized the risk of radiation exposure, 89% for tobacco use, 81% for asbestos exposure and 53% for obesity.

Friday’s advisory is not the first report to highlight the link between alcohol consumption and cancer risk.

In August, a similar report by the Autonomous University of Madrid found that harms related to drinking may be greater for people in worse health. According to researchers, high-risk drinking posed a higher risk of dying from cancer or cardiovascular disease.

Moreover, a report by the American Association of Cancer Research published in September found that heavy alcohol consumption increased the risk of six types of malignancies. Those include esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, as well as certain types of head, neck, breast, colorectal, liver and stomach cancers, the New York Times reported, citing the report.

Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, has declared £324m in assets including a collection of 217 designer handbags and 75 luxury watches in submissions on her wealth to a government body.

Paetongtarn, daughter of the billionaire ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, took office in September, the fourth member of the powerful family to lead Thailand.

Details of her wealth were revealed in declarations made to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), which is a requirement for those who hold public office and implies no suggestion of wrongdoing.

According to an NACC document published in local media, Paetongtarn declared investments worth more than £250m, and another £23m in deposits and cash. The declaration, which listed land in Japan and properties in London, also included 75 watches worth £3.8m, 217 handbags worth £1.8m, 23 vehicles worth £1.6m, 205 sets of earrings worth £1.2m and 67 necklaces worth £800,000.

She also declared liabilities of nearly £117m, giving her a net worth of £208m.

The extent of Paetongtarn’s wealth is unlikely to surprise most Thai voters. Her father, who made his fortunes in telecommunications and once owned Manchester City football club, has a net worth of £1.7bn, according to Forbes, making him the 10th richest person in Thailand.

Paetongtarn is often pictured in high-end designer clothes, from Chanel jackets and bags to Gucci shoes, while out on political engagements or in her own Instagram posts.

She is not the only Thai politician with expensive taste, however. Her rivals are also known for sporting designer labels and expensive watches. Prawit Wongsuwon, a former army general and part of the junta that took power after Paetongtarn’s aunt Yingluck was ousted, became infamous for a collection of more than 20 luxury watches that he was spotted wearing in public but had not declared to the NACC. Prawit said he had borrowed them from a dead friend – a claim that was ridiculed by many, though he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the NACC in 2018.

The Shinawatra family has dominated Thai politics since Thaksin was first elected prime minister in 2001. He went on to develop a loyal following among rural voters in the north, but was loathed by the military royalist establishment, which ousted him and other family members from power.

Much has changed since Thaksin first soared to popularity, however. The family, once seen as unbeatable at the ballot box, was surpassed by a newer, more progressive party, Move Forward, in the 2023 elections. Thaksin’s Pheu Thai party formed a deal with its old rivals to keep this newer party, now a mutual enemy, from power – a deal that proved controversial among its supporters.