Ukrainian armed forces have begun a surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, according to Ukrainian officials and Russian military bloggers.

Video showed Ukrainian armoured columns advancing across snowy fields towards the village of Bolshoe Soldatskoe, north-east of the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. The scale of the Sunday morning operation was not immediately clear.

There were unconfirmed reports Ukrainian troops had captured the Russian settlement of Berdin and that Ukrainian sappers had removed mines overnight. Fierce fighting was taking place, with electronic countermeasures used to knock out some Russian drones.

Ukraine launched a significant cross-border raid nearly six month ago into the Kursk region. Since then the Kremlin has been attempting to evict Ukrainian forces. It has had some success – recapturing about 40% of lost territory – but has been unable to push them out fully.

Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, suggested the attack had been successful. “Kursk region, good news, Russia is getting what it deserves,” he wrote on Sunday.

Andriy Kovalenko, a senior official with Ukraine’s national security and defence council, confirmed the operation. “In the Kursk region the Russians are deeply concerned. They were attacked on multiple fronts, which came as a surprise to them,” he posted on Telegram.

Russian military bloggers speculated that Ukraine was trying to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant in the town of Kurchatov. Kyiv has previously denied this. The power plant is situated far away from the existing frontline.

Inside Ukraine, Russia has been advancing at the fastest rate since its full-scale 2022 invasion. Russian troops are attempting to flank the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. In the past two days they captured several outlying villages, to the south-west.

The last Ukrainian defenders were recently forced to abandon their defensive stronghold in a thermal power plant in the eastern city of Kurakhove. The Russians have since captured the ruined complex, with battles taking place on Kurakhove’s outskirts.

The latest Kursk raid was made possible by freezing weather, which made it easier for Ukrainian armoured units to advance. There were reports that US-supplied Bradley fighting vehicles were deployed to ferry Ukrainian infantry to forward positions beneath a tree line.

Sunday’s operation comes before Donald Trump’s return to the White House on 20 January and possible “peace” negotiations later this year. Zelenskyy has hinted that Ukrainian-controlled land around Kursk could play a part in any deal.

Russia has shown few signs it is willing to stop fighting. Vladimir Putin has said his territorial demands are unchanged. They include four Ukrainian regions that he “annexed” in 2022, including the cities of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and other areas Russia does not control.

On Saturday, Zelenskyy said Russia had lost up to a battalion of North Korean soldiers, brought in to join the battle for Kursk oblast, in just two days. They had been wiped out in the village of Makhnovka, together with Russian paratroopers, he said.

North Korean combat groups have been sent to several frontline villages south-east of Sudzha, according to reports.

Social order in Gaza is likely to collapse further if Israel goes ahead with its threat this month to end all cooperation with the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, Louise Wateridge, its senior emergency officer, has warned.

Wateridge – who has just returned from Gaza – described the territory as increasingly fractured and said the two Knesset bills due to come into force at the end of the month blocking cooperation with the agency will make it impossible for Unrwa to operate or to distribute aid in a war zone.

“If we’re no longer able to communicate to the Israeli authorities, we no longer have a deconfliction process in place, so none of our buildings will be de-conflicted or protected any more, and we simply won’t be able to be there,” she said.

She said the levels of lawlessness already occurring in the Kerem Shalom crossing had so far not spread across Gaza due to the societal ties Palestinians have with each other and their relationship with Unrwa.

“If people don’t have flour one day, people understand and trust that the agency will do what they can, because it’s their cousin or brother that works at Unrwa, so they know that the agency is trying to help, and it’s not that agency’s fault.

“If that agency is removed, it takes this buffer away, and what’s to say people don’t fight more? I’m surprised social order hasn’t collapsed more than it has. People have been pushed to the brink.”

Wateridge said the threat to Unrwa’s future was coming at a time when the general consensus in Gaza is that they’ve been abandoned by the international community. “If you speak to any person, any civilian, they feel in absolute despair,” she said. “There’s a quadcopter, then there’s a drone, it’s like a fish bowl, and you’re just having to dodge being killed. And while you’re dodging being killed, you have to get water and food for your family, and now you have to keep warm.”

She said she knew of no plan B for what might happen after the deadline for the Israel Defense Forces to end cooperation. Two bills were passed by the Knesset in October to ban Unrwa from “any activity” and to declare it a terror group after allegations by Israel that members of the Unrwa staff in Gaza were involved in the 7 October Hamas attacks that led to the deaths of more than 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of hundreds more. The UN launched an investigation into the Israeli claims and fired nine Unrwa staff as a result.

“If Unrwa is no longer functioning, there’s just not any other agency that can come in,” she said. “Unrwa does something like 17,000 health consultations a day in the Gaza Strip. It’s impossible for another agency to replace that.”

She warned civil order was already breaking down in parts of Gaza. “There are areas in Kerem Shalom and around that border that are just absolutely lawless. There’s no other way to describe it. Local criminal families are operating here. We’ve had drivers killed which is absolutely appalling, and then all of the aid looted.”

She said IDF actions in Gaza were making “the living conditions as miserable as possible in every way you can imagine” after 15 months of war.

“The bombing and the strikes are one part of this war, and another huge part of the war is the undignified living. Just every aspect of society has gone.”

She added: “My friend’s sister had hepatitis A this summer, and she didn’t have fluids. There’s no fluids in the hospital, so she’s just suffering in this tent, in this heat. You hit the side of these tents, and all these cockroaches come out, and all these bugs scuttle away, and it’s just miserable, and now in winter the tents are flooded, they’ve got snakes in them, there’s rats in them, and the water is coming in, and people are sleeping on the floor with water dripping on their head in the freezing cold.”

She described meeting one tearful student who showed her the book she was studying. “She was living in a toilet in a school and she had made it home. She was using a torch light to study. She said ‘we don’t have internet. I don’t have online classes. My future is ruined. I was supposed to be going to university, and now I’m living in a toilet in a school. I am trapped’ … After so long of the war, people are realising the long-term depression and frustration that … their homes are gone. They have nothing to go back to.”

In the central town of Deir al-Balah, she said, “we have around 20,000 people inside the schools, so say five or six families in a classroom, and then outside the schools there’s around 60,000 people in the perimeter of the school because they try to access the aid supplies that the school provides … Despite all the attacks that have been on the facilities throughout the war, they do tend to go towards these facilities, but it will be about 12 bathrooms for 60,000 people.”

Northern Gaza remains off-limits to the agency, she said. In its latest update, Unrwa said that between 6 October and 30 December 2024, the UN attempted to reach besieged areas in the north 164 times; of these, 148 attempts were denied by the Israeli authorities and 16 were impeded.

Wateridge said many Palestinians displaced from the north arrived without any male members of the family, with the women saying they had either been arrested or shot.

“Some women you speak to are very quiet about it, and very subdued and almost defeated, and some are very angry. They will shout at us, which is completely fair enough, but they shout and scream in our faces and say, ‘Why? Why aren’t you doing more? Why are we just being pushed around from place to place, being told to go to a safe place when nowhere is safe?’”

When the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was asked in an interview about the barrage of insults being directed at him and other German leaders by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, his reply was: “Don’t feed the troll.”

Speaking to the German weekly Stern, Scholz described the criticisms as nothing new. “You have to stay cool,” he said in the interview. “As Social Democrats, we have long been used to the fact that there are rich media entrepreneurs who do not appreciate social democratic politics – and do not hide their opinions.”

He said he would make no efforts to engage with Musk, who has endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in next month’s federal elections and will host a live discussion on his social media platform X with its candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel. “I don’t believe in courting Mr Musk’s favour. I’m happy to leave that to others,” he said. “The rule is: don’t feed the troll.”

It was the chancellor’s most direct response to Musk, coming days after he urged voters not to let the “owners of social media channels” decide the outcome of the general election in a New Year’s Eve address that did not mention Musk by name nor his platform X.

Since taking the reins of X, Musk has increasingly used the social media platform’s global reach to push his own political views. After spending a quarter of a billion dollars to help secure Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Musk has used his influence to back far-right and anti-establishment parties across the continent, while attacking some of its most prominent centre-left leaders.

In November, after the collapse of Scholz’s centre-left coalition, Musk called the chancellor a “fool” on X, reiterating the criticism after five people were killed and more than 200 injured in a Christmas market attack allegedly carried out by a Saudi-born assailant with far-right sympathies.

As 2024 drew to a close, Musk again took aim at Scholz, offering his view on the outcome of Germany’s election, to be held on 23 February: “Chancellor Oaf Schitz or whatever his name is will lose.”

In recent days Musk has waded into UK politics, calling on King Charles to step in and dissolve parliament as he criticised the government over child grooming cases, related to abuse by organised groups after multiple convictions of sexual offences against children between 2010 and 2014. He also said he believes Nigel Farage should be replaced as Reform leader amid reports he could donate $100m (£80m) to the party.

Scholz brushed off the comments aimed at him, pointing instead to Musk’s endorsement of the AfD. “What I find much more worrying than such insults is that Musk is supporting a party like the AfD, which is in parts rightwing extremist, which preaches rapprochement with Putin’s Russia and wants to weaken transatlantic relations,” said Scholz.

Musk’s foray into the politics of Europe’s top economy has sparked outrage in Germany and accusations of interference.

His support for the AfD – last month, he wrote on social media that “Only the AfD can save Germany” – comes months after the party was expelled from a pan-European parliamentary group of populist far-right parties after a string of controversies, including a comment by a senior AfD figure that the Nazi SS were “not all criminals”. Elements of the party have been classed as rightwing extremists by Germany’s domestic intelligence services.

Musk later doubled down on his support for the AfD. In a guest editorial in the broadsheet Welt am Sonntag, Musk defended the party and claimed it was the “last spark of hope” for Germany.

The AfD is polling second before the general election and a strong showing for the party could complicate coalition building, as mainstream parties have ruled out collaborating with the AfD at state or federal level.

Scholz also used his interview to hit back at Musk’s description last month of the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as an “anti-democratic tyrant”.

“The German president is not an anti-democratic tyrant and Germany is a strong and stable democracy – never mind what Mr Musk says,” said Scholz. “In Germany, the will of the citizens prevails, not the erratic comments of a billionaire from the USA.”

In addition to his involvement in German and UK politics, Musk has also held talks with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, whose government has been under an EU sanctions procedure since 2018 for posing a “systemic threat” to democracy and the rule of law. Musk has also criticised the judges who annulled Romania’s presidential election over suspicions of Russian interference and enthusiastically supported Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.

Elon Musk has said Nigel Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to be Reform UK’s leader, hours after Farage refused to condemn the billionaire businessman for his inflammatory comments about Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips.

In a surprise intervention, less than three weeks after Musk met Farage at Donald Trump’s Florida home amid reports he could donate $100m (£80m) to Reform, Musk used X, the social media platform he owns, to say: “The Reform party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes.”

It was not clear what prompted Musk, who has tweeted numerous times recently about UK politics, to change his mind about the Reform leader.

But Farage indicated it could have been due to disagreement about Tommy Robinson, the jailed far-right anti-Islam agitator whom Musk has characterised as a political prisoner, but whom Farage condemns.

“Well, this is a surprise!” Farage wrote on X after Musk’s tweet. “Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree. My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles.”

Speaking earlier, Farage said Musk, who has called Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” and said Starmer was “complicit in the rape of Britain”, had brought back free speech on social media since buying Twitter, which he renamed X.

“I don’t agree with everything he stands for,” Farage told BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg. “But I do believe in free speech. I think he’s a hero.”

He added: “Free speech is back. Well, you may find it offensive, but it’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

Speaking later to the BBC, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, condemned Musk’s comments about Phillips, among a mass of messages on the subject of grooming gangs Musk has sent to his 210 million X followers in recent days.

“It is a disgraceful smear of a great woman who has spent her life supporting victims of the kind of violence that Elon Musk and others say that they’re against,” he said.

Streeting condemned what he called “armchair critics on social media”, contrasting them with people such as Starmer and Phillips, who “have done the hard yards of actually locking up wife beaters, rapists, paedophiles”.

Asked about Musk, Streeting said: “If he wants to roll his sleeves up and actually do something about tackling violence against women and girls, then online platforms, whether X or any of the other platforms, have got a role to play in keeping people safe online, helping law enforcement clamp down on perpetrators of violence against women and girls, and people who want to groom kids online.”

Farage, speaking after he addressed supporters at Reform’s east of England conference in Chelmsford on Saturday, described Musk’s language as “very, very tough terms”, but indicated it would only be seen as unacceptable if it was deemed to be inciting violence.

“You know, in public life, tough things get said,” he said. “Those on the left have thrown these sort of jabs at the right for many, many decades and will go on doing so.”

Farage said he believed Musk had justification in calling Starmer complicit in the failures to swiftly prosecute gangs who targeted vulnerable young girls in a series of UK towns and cities because of the prime minister’s role as director of public prosecutions before he became a politician.

“What he’s referring to, specifically, is that in 2008 Keir Starmer had just been appointed as director of public prosecutions, and there was a case brought before them of alleged mass rape of young girls that did not lead to a prosecution.

“I don’t know the rights and wrongs of that any more than you do, but if you believe in free speech, people are allowed to have an opinion.”

Farage denied his disinclination to criticise Musk was connected to reports that Musk could donate as much as $100m to Reform. While saying Musk “may well” donate, Farage dismissed the idea of a $100m gift.

Being dropped by Musk might not be entirely without political benefit for Farage, however embarrassing.

Polling shows Musk is personally unpopular with many UK voters, and a number of the issues he is commenting on, for example support for Robinson and the idea that the king should dissolve parliament and call an election, were not prominent beyond limited social media bubbles.

Musk’s interest in sexual exploitation in the UK follows reports that Phillips told Oldham council that it would be better for it to hold its own inquiry into local failure, rather than commissioning a national version.

Streeting defended this decision, telling Sky News there had already been a national inquiry on the subject, headed by the child welfare expert Alexis Jay. He said: “What I think not just historic victims, but victims today, tomorrow, next week, deserve is the full implementation of the Alexis Jay recommendations. Our predecessors didn’t implement one of them.”

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, made a flying visit to Donald Trump’s Florida golf club on Saturday, during which the US president-elect praised the far-right leader for “really taking Europe by storm”.

The pair were photographed in the grand ballroom of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

The five-hour visit comes a few days before Meloni is due to welcome Joe Biden to Rome in what is expected to be the last foreign trip of his presidency.

“This is very exciting,” Trump told a group gathered at Mar-a-Lago, according to a media pool report. “I’m here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy. She’s really taken Europe by storm.”

Potential members of the future Trump administration were present, including Marco Rubio, the nominee for secretary of state, who welcomed Meloni to Florida and described her as a “great ally, strong leader”, according to the Wall Street Journal reporter Alex Leary.

The group then watched the premiere of The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice, a documentary on the efforts of Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman to keep him in power after the 2020 US presidential elections.

No official agenda was announced, but the New York Times reported that Meloni pressed hard on the case of Cecilia Sala, an Italian journalist detained in solitary confinement in Iran. Sala’s arrest in December on charges of breaching Islamic law was allegedly a reprisal for the arrest, at the request of the US, of a Swiss-Iranian businessman and alleged arms trafficker with ties to the Iranian regime at Milan’s Malpensa airport. Italy is aggressively pressing for the immediate release of Sala from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

Other topics reportedly included the war in Ukraine, gas supplies and possible new US tariffs on EU goods.

It is the second time Meloni has met Trump since he won the US elections in November. Trump called the Italian leader “a real live-wire” when they met in Paris in early December for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Before taking power in October 2022, Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, was an explicit supporter of Trump, praising his brand of politics as a model for Italy and regularly travelling to his political gatherings. But she has also been savvy in building good relations with Biden and bolstering Italy’s Atlanticist credentials.

Observers have said that common views on issues ranging from immigration to abortion, alongside Meloni’s strong relationship with Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk, could result in her becoming the US president-elect’s main interlocutor in Europe.

Biden is due to arrive in Rome on Thursday for a four-day visit that will include a meeting with Meloni and Pope Francis.

Dame Sally Davies has a straightforward message about the coming year. We face a growing antibiotic emergency that could have devastating impacts on men, women and children across the globe, she says.

Davies, a former chief medical officer for England, has become a leading advocate for global action to fight the scourge of superbugs.

She told the Observer that there is a real danger that routine procedures – from surgery to childbirth – could carry widespread life-threatening risks because of the spread of bacteria that possess antimicrobial resistance (AMR). “About a million people die every year because of the spread of microbial resistance, and that figure will rise over the next 25 years,” she said. “It is really scary.”

Estimates suggest that by 2050, death rates from AMRs will have doubled, with figures indicating almost 40 million people will lose their lives to superbugs over the next 25 years, with elderly people especially at risk.

“Recent data shows AMR is going down in the under-fives, which is good news. For the over-70s, mortality rates have gone up 80% since 1990; that is very concerning.”

As the population ages, more people are living with chronic disease and that makes them more vulnerable to AMR, researchers have argued.

In the face of these threats, doctors have tried to limit prescriptions of antibiotics as much as possible while patients have been pressed to complete courses of treatments. However, medical misuse of antibiotics is not the only route by which resistance spreads. The landscape itself plays a critical role, a problem that stems from the fact that about 70% of all antibiotics are given to livestock, creating a pool of animals in which resistance can evolve.

“We’re essentially throwing antibiotics at cows and chickens and sheep as cheap alternatives to giving them growth promoters or prophylactics to prevent the spread of disease,” said Davies. Such actions help microbes to evolve, so they develop the ability to ward off antibiotics, resistance that then spreads across the globe.

“If you’ve got intensive farming where a lot of antibiotics are used or a busy hospital that has a poor sewage system, resistant bacteria can get into waterways,” added Davies. “Winds blow over these patches of contaminated land or water and pick up bacteria and genes with resistance in them, then let them rain down in other places. That is how pernicious this problem has become.”

The reason AMRs spread is a simple matter of the survival of the fittest, added Davies. “Bacteria take about 20 minutes to multiply. They also mutate a great deal, and if they do so in the presence of antibiotics and that mutation protects them, these strains will multiply. Crucially they can pass that on to any bacteria with which they make contact.”

The ease with which AMR spreads means it is becoming more and more important that we do not misuse the antibiotics we possess. It also generates a need for new antibiotics to be developed – and again this raise problems, said Davies.

“We’ve had no new classes of antibiotics come into routine use since the late 80s and the market model that would promote the creation of new ones is broken. If you develop a new antibiotic, it might be used by someone for a weekly course once a year. Where’s the profit in that?”

“By contrast, blood pressure drugs that have to be taken every day, or cancer drugs that have to be administered for months, offer pharmaceuticals far greater profits. So there is no incentive for them to try to develop new antibiotics. It is a real headache.”

The problems that lie ahead in dealing with AMR are not insurmountable, Davies insists, but they must be addressed with an increased sense of urgency. The G7 forum of industrialised nations has at least recognised the crisis. However, there is still a lack of adequate action and that needs to be tackled as an imperative in the coming year, she insists.

Dame Sally Davies has a straightforward message about the coming year. We face a growing antibiotic emergency that could have devastating impacts on men, women and children across the globe, she says.

Davies, a former chief medical officer for England, has become a leading advocate for global action to fight the scourge of superbugs.

She told the Observer that there is a real danger that routine procedures – from surgery to childbirth – could carry widespread life-threatening risks because of the spread of bacteria that possess antimicrobial resistance (AMR). “About a million people die every year because of the spread of microbial resistance, and that figure will rise over the next 25 years,” she said. “It is really scary.”

Estimates suggest that by 2050, death rates from AMRs will have doubled, with figures indicating almost 40 million people will lose their lives to superbugs over the next 25 years, with elderly people especially at risk.

“Recent data shows AMR is going down in the under-fives, which is good news. For the over-70s, mortality rates have gone up 80% since 1990; that is very concerning.”

As the population ages, more people are living with chronic disease and that makes them more vulnerable to AMR, researchers have argued.

In the face of these threats, doctors have tried to limit prescriptions of antibiotics as much as possible while patients have been pressed to complete courses of treatments. However, medical misuse of antibiotics is not the only route by which resistance spreads. The landscape itself plays a critical role, a problem that stems from the fact that about 70% of all antibiotics are given to livestock, creating a pool of animals in which resistance can evolve.

“We’re essentially throwing antibiotics at cows and chickens and sheep as cheap alternatives to giving them growth promoters or prophylactics to prevent the spread of disease,” said Davies. Such actions help microbes to evolve, so they develop the ability to ward off antibiotics, resistance that then spreads across the globe.

“If you’ve got intensive farming where a lot of antibiotics are used or a busy hospital that has a poor sewage system, resistant bacteria can get into waterways,” added Davies. “Winds blow over these patches of contaminated land or water and pick up bacteria and genes with resistance in them, then let them rain down in other places. That is how pernicious this problem has become.”

The reason AMRs spread is a simple matter of the survival of the fittest, added Davies. “Bacteria take about 20 minutes to multiply. They also mutate a great deal, and if they do so in the presence of antibiotics and that mutation protects them, these strains will multiply. Crucially they can pass that on to any bacteria with which they make contact.”

The ease with which AMR spreads means it is becoming more and more important that we do not misuse the antibiotics we possess. It also generates a need for new antibiotics to be developed – and again this raise problems, said Davies.

“We’ve had no new classes of antibiotics come into routine use since the late 80s and the market model that would promote the creation of new ones is broken. If you develop a new antibiotic, it might be used by someone for a weekly course once a year. Where’s the profit in that?”

“By contrast, blood pressure drugs that have to be taken every day, or cancer drugs that have to be administered for months, offer pharmaceuticals far greater profits. So there is no incentive for them to try to develop new antibiotics. It is a real headache.”

The problems that lie ahead in dealing with AMR are not insurmountable, Davies insists, but they must be addressed with an increased sense of urgency. The G7 forum of industrialised nations has at least recognised the crisis. However, there is still a lack of adequate action and that needs to be tackled as an imperative in the coming year, she insists.

Keir Starmer’s efforts to reset Britain’s relations with its European allies is contingent upon a UK-EU youth mobility scheme, a top diplomat has indicated.

Miguel Berger, Germany’s ambassador to the UK, said stability across Europe could be undermined if the allies could not secure a number of “clear measures” that demonstrate the “concrete advantages” of their relationship – one being the youth mobility scheme.

While Berger appeared to accept the pressure Starmer was under from Eurosceptics and Brexit supporting newspapers in the UK, he said the scheme was ultimately “quite simple”.

“The most important thing is [that] people who come here will go home after that. So the idea is really to have the experience, but then go home,” he told the Guardian.

“It should be quite simple. But there are visible attempts to portray this as migration, or to portray it as freedom of movement.”

A poll conducted by YouGov for the European Council on Foreign Relations found almost seven in 10 Britons, including a 55% majority of former pro-Brexit voters, would support a scheme that would allow 200,000 18- to 40-year-olds from the UK and the EU to travel, study and work freely in each other’s countries for up to four years.

When asked if the prime minister’s willingness to join the youth mobility scheme would mark a successful reset for him in showing how far he would go to improve cooperation, Berger said: “I think it is an important element. Another one is the Erasmus scheme. All of that, at least for us, is really, really important.”

Berger noted that ultimately it should be the responsibility of British officials to highlight the advantageous elements of this reset in relations, but he criticised those attempting to mislead the public on what the scheme actually means.

“We also see, looking at social media and some papers, that there is an attempt, obviously, to portray things in the wrong way.”

Before Christmas, the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, criticised the prime minister for planning to “give away our hard-won Brexit freedoms”.

Starmer gave his last interview before Christmas to the Sun, and when asked about the mobility scheme, he said: “I’ve been clear from the get-go that freedom of movement is a red line for us, and no plans in relation to free movement on any level, but we’re entering into discussions.”

Despite this, the diplomat maintained that the scheme had “nothing to do with reversing Brexit. It respects all the red lines. And it’s simply trying to see where are areas, where it’s in our mutual interest to work more closely together.” He added“: “I’m confident we will find a solution.”

Berger’s comments follow what officials believe have been a successful six months in reaching out to European allies, given the progress the UK and Germany have made on “concrete projects” including the Trinity House defence pact.

The bilateral treaty could have been signed before the German elections, Berger said, but noted, “we need a new government that will work on its implementation over the next few years, which is why it’s better to wait”.

He also made a point of noting that politicians from the Conservative Christian Democratic Union of Germany party have already made visits to see UK officials to mark how important they take Germany’s partnership with Britain.

For Berger this is important given the two Nato allies, who appear to be aligned on the security of Ukraine, face an important task in engaging with the US administration and Russia to ensure peace in Ukraine.

“The challenge for the British government, Germany and for all of us will be to talk with the new US administration about how to engage Russia.”

Echoing the comments Starmer made at a foreign policy speech in December, Berger said: “We want to see that Ukraine is at the table of negotiations. We want Ukraine to take the leading role. We will think about how to strengthen Ukraine, but this will then depend, obviously, also on the new American government.

“And at the same time, because this is so important for our security in the next 15 to 20 years, so we must make sure that the main European countries are also at the table.

“So that means the United Kingdom, countries like Poland, France, Germany, we all need to have a say in that, because if the outcome is not the desired one, it will impact our security.”

Starmer is to meet EU leaders in an informal summit next month, the first invite the UK has received since the bitter battle of Brexit.

Berger’s comments appear to signal that Starmer may have to agree to some concessions like youth mobility in order to secure economic benefits, such as on EU trade.

Americans are hoping for a rare moment of political unity this week when all five living presidents – including Donald Trump – are expected to come together to mourn Jimmy Carter, who died last Sunday aged 100.

Joe Biden is set to lead the tributes at a funeral service on Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. He let slip last year that Carter had asked him to give a eulogy (“Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that,” the president admitted).

Biden may be forced to confront uncomfortable parallels with his own political fate. Hurt by inflation and failure to secure the release of hostages in the Middle East, Carter was rebuked by the public and served only one term. However, he was often dubbed the “nation’s greatest former president” for his humanitarian work.

But cameras are likely to be trained on Trump, who will be just 11 days away from his inauguration as president. Although the 78-year-old is notorious for trampling on norms, and for trashing his predecessors, he paid warm tribute to Carter and accepted the invitation to attend.

Sarah Purcell, a historian at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said: “It shows maybe there is at least some desire in Trump to hew to the example of what a president or former president should act like. Maybe there is some line beyond which he will not go: he’s not going to refuse to attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral; he’s not going to stand up and start yelling at Biden during the funeral.”

Still, Trump’s demeanour towards Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama will be closely scrutinised. At George HW Bush’s funeral in 2018 he shook hands with Obama but did not interact with Hillary Clinton, whom he defeated in the 2016 election, or her husband Bill. Purcell added: “I’m sure it will be slightly awkward but it’s maybe in a way more remarkable that he’s there at all.”

The cathedral service will include Democrats and Republicans and feature bipartisan eulogies from Carter’s predecessor, Gerald Ford, who died in 2006, read by his son Steven, and from Carter’s vice-president Walter Mondale, who died in 2021, read by his son Ted.

The occasion promises brief respite from the rancour that prevails in today’s Washington, especially after a bitterly fought election campaign. Purcell, author of Spectacle of Grief, said: “You’ll see both politicians and some everyday people showing signs of unity. It’s usually not a time when people throw eggs.

“Our political culture is extremely disrespectful now and so it’s at least a moment where respectful treatment of potential political enemies is likely to win the day. I don’t know if it’s actual unity but it might show the capacity to unify around some kind of ritual of respect, if not around any substance.”

The official six-day state funeral was due to begin on Saturday as Carter’s remains travel by motorcade through his home town of Plains, Georgia, stopping at the farm where he grew up. The National Park Service will ring the historic farm bell 39 times because Carter was the 39th president.

Carter’s body will then be carried to Atlanta, where he will lie in repose at the Carter Presidential Center until Tuesday morning. He will be flown to Washington, where he will lie in state in the rotunda of the US Capitol, a tradition dating back to Abraham Lincoln.

After the cathedral service on Thursday, Carter will be flown back to Georgia and the family will hold a private funeral and interment. He will be buried in a plot next to his wife, Rosalynn Carter, on the grounds of their longtime home in Plains.

Admirers of Carter hope that the tributes will encourage appreciation not only of the way he reinvented the post-presidency, winning the Nobel peace prize, but of his accomplishments in office. They also welcome the happenstance that it falls to Biden to deliver the defining eulogy.

Jim Pattiz, who along with his brother Will is a film-maker, environmentalist and co-director of the 2021 documentary Carterland, said: “Successive Democratic administrations and powerbrokers turned their backs on Jimmy Carter and kept him at arm’s length and even had some disdain for him – including as recently as Obama.

“Joe Biden was not one of those people. Joe Biden never turned his back on Jimmy Carter and was the original supporter of him. He was the first federally elected official to endorse him in 1976 and they’ve been friends ever since. I’m glad that Biden is in charge and able to give Carter the honour that he deserves.”

Justin Welby will relinquish his role as archbishop of Canterbury at midnight on Monday, formally starting the firing gun in the search for a new de facto leader of the Church of England and the global Anglican church.

The process is expected to take months, with the name of the new archbishop unlikely to be announced until the autumn.

Welby quit over failures to take effective action against a sadistic serial abuser. An independent review concluded that John Smyth, an eminent barrister and Christian camp leader who abused as many as 130 boys and young men over five decades, might have been brought to justice had Welby formally reported him to police in 2013.

The unprecedented resignation of the most senior cleric in the C of E has plunged the church into a crisis, with no clear path to restoring trust and confidence in its leadership. Since Welby announced his resignation on 12 November, there have been repeated calls for Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, who will take over Welby’s duties in the interim, to stand down over a separate abuse case.

Welby has kept a low profile since announcing his resignation, and did not give the traditional Christmas Day sermon from Canterbury Cathedral.

He is expected to spend Monday privately at his London headquarters, Lambeth Palace, attending a lunchtime Eucharist and later a service of Evensong. During the latter, he will lay down his bishop’s crozier – a ceremonial long staff – in a symbolic act that marks the official end of his ministry as archbishop of Canterbury.

His successor will be chosen in an opaque process led by the UK’s former spy chief, Lord Evans of Weardale. Members of the public will be permitted to submit names to the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), but potential candidates will not be able to nominate themselves. Instead they will be “invited in” to the process after a “careful period of reflections and discernment” by the commission, according to a well-placed source.

Candidates for the de facto leader of the C of E and of the global Anglican church are likely to be drawn from people already holding “significant leadership roles” in the church, said the source.

The CNC will comprise 17 voting members and three non-voting participants. For the first time, five members will be drawn from the global church, which is generally more conservative than the C of E. The names of all 17 will be announced in March.

The group is expected to meet at least three times between spring and autumn before voting in a secret ballot. The successful candidate must secure two-thirds of the votes. He or she will ultimately be appointed by King Charles.

In the past year, the CNC has been unable to reach a two-thirds majority in two recent cases concerning the appointment of bishops, reflecting divisions within the church.

In November, Welby said he was stepping down “in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse”. But later he made a jocular speech about his resignation in the House of Lords, described by one abuse survivor as “tone deaf”. Welby subsequently apologised.

Last month, the Children’s Society rejected a Christmas donation from Welby saying that accepting it “would not be consistent with the principles and values that underpin our work”.

From Tuesday, most of the official functions normally held by the archbishop of Canterbury will be delegated to Cottrell, with some being undertaken by Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London.

Cottrell has been accused of failing to take action against a priest accused repeatedly of sexual misconduct and abuse. He has rejected calls for his resignation, saying he would work to implement independent scrutiny of safeguarding in the C of E.

Months before the deadly New Orleans vehicle attack on New Year’s Day, the city modeled scenarios for how an attacker could enter Bourbon Street at various intersections in a crew-cab Ford F-150 similar to the one used to kill 14 people and injure dozens more.

Engineers found such a pickup could enter the crowded tourist strip at speeds ranging from 12-70mph – yet city officials are installing new street barriers that can only withstand 10mph impacts, according to an April city-contracted engineering analysis and city bid documents reviewed by Reuters.

Those new barriers, or bollards, had not yet been installed on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day but are planned to be by the 9 February NFL Super Bowl in New Orleans. The documents reviewed by Reuters, which have not been previously reported on, make clear that the system won’t be able to prevent vehicle attacks at moderate to high speeds.

In selecting the new bollard system, the city prioritized ease of operation over crashworthiness because of chronic problems in operating the old one, according to the documents and a source with direct knowledge of the city’s Bourbon Street security planning. Unlike some pedestrian-only zones, such as in New York City’s Times Square, Bourbon Street is open to regular vehicle traffic for much of the day, requiring city officials to block parts of it off from surrounding streets each evening.

Since the New Year’s Day attack, New Orleans officials have faced scrutiny over whether they left citizens vulnerable as crews were removing old bollards and installing new ones. But neither barrier system would have prevented the deadly attack, according to the source and a Reuters review of the city documents.

The city currently has no bollards at Canal and Bourbon streets, where the attacker entered. Instead, on New Year’s Day, the roadway was blocked by an SUV police cruiser parked sideways.

Attack suspect Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US combat veteran from Texas, exploited another vulnerability in the city’s security planning: he squeezed his 7ft-wide pickup onto an 8ft-wide sidewalk between a drugstore wall and the police vehicle, stomping the accelerator and plowing through the crowd at about 3.15am.

Jabbar died after the attack in a shootout with police. Federal authorities have said he had been radicalized and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.

The city’s security modeling, in an engineering study conducted to help choose a new barrier system, had only considered scenarios where a vehicle entered Bourbon Street on the roadway – not the sidewalk. A vehicle could not enter most Bourbon Street blocks on its skinny sidewalks, which have other existing barriers such as fire hydrants and balcony or streetlight posts, the source said.

City officials would face “tough meetings” about the continuing vulnerabilities of the new bollards being installed now, the person said, which “wouldn’t have made any difference” on New Year’s Day.

New Orleans city officials did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters about their Bourbon Street security planning and the decision to select barriers with a 10mph crash rating.

The person with direct knowledge of the city’s security planning emphasized the difficulty all cities face in protecting against vehicle attacks while preserving access to routine vehicle and pedestrian traffic, including accessible sidewalks for people with disabilities.

The source said officials chose a bollard system rated for 10mph impacts from a company called 1-800-Bollards Inc. City bidding documents, dated in August and September, sought an installer of the system, calling it the “RCS8040 S10 removable bollard”. The city’s April engineering analysis describes the same product as having an “S10” crash rating and explains it can stop a 5,000lb vehicle traveling 10mph.

“Crash ratings are specified as S10 (10mph impact), S20 (20mph impact), and S30 (30mph impact),” the engineering analysis said.

The source said a barrier rated for 10mph impacts could still slow or significantly damage a vehicle traveling faster.

Representatives from 1-800-Bollards Inc declined to comment.

Two of the Bourbon Street attack scenarios modeled by city-contracted engineers involved entering the street in a straight line, without turning, after building up speed.

The study found a 2015 F-150 could achieve speeds of 50mph by accelerating from the stoplight across Canal Street, a wide boulevard with streetcar tracks in the median. The same vehicle could hit 70mph entering from the opposite end of the section of Bourbon Street that is protected by bollards.

Jabbar drove a deadlier weapon than the truck used in the report’s scenarios: a newer F-150 Lightning, a much faster, heavier and quieter electric vehicle.

During major events such as New Year’s or Mardi Gras, the source said, city security plans call for parking large vehicles at the ends of Bourbon Street that are most vulnerable to high-speed vehicle attacks. But such measures, the person said, are not practical on a daily basis in the crowded tourist zone.

Since at least 2020, city officials have studied how best to replace New Orleans’ failing system of street barriers to protect against vehicle attacks, the source said.

The city initially chose a system called the Heald HT2-Matador that allowed workers to move the barriers into position along tracks in the street, according to city documents. The source told Reuters the system was selected in large part because it had already been bid and priced by the federal government, allowing the city to install it faster.

But the barriers proved problematic under the rigors of Bourbon Street, and were often inoperable because the tracks became jammed with litter including Mardi Gras bead necklaces.

Because of those problems, the city prioritized factors including ease of operation and maintenance over crash safety ratings in choosing a new system, according to the source and an April 2024 report from Mott MacDonald, an engineering firm hired by the city to evaluate dozens of bollard options.

Representatives of Mott MacDonald did not comment.

The city chose the 1-800-Bollards Inc system with the 10mph rating, relatively lightweight stainless-steel posts that drop into street foundations, in part because the bollards could be installed and removed daily by a single city staffer, the source said. Those posts weigh 44lbs, the engineering analysis said, whereas similar, 20mph bollards weigh 86lbs.

The source said the primary concern of city officials, along with French Quarter resident and business representatives, was protecting pedestrians from vehicles turning onto Bourbon from side streets at lower speeds.

The report scored different systems on various criteria. The system ultimately chosen by the city received a deduction in its “safety rating” score because it did “not meet the project requirements specified”.

It received higher marks for the weight of the bollards and their low costs.

The top bidder at a Tokyo fish market has paid $1.3m for a tuna, the second highest price ever paid at an annual prestigious new year auction.

Michelin-starred sushi restaurateurs the Onodera Group said they had paid 207 million yen on Sunday for the 276 kilogram (608 pound) bluefin tuna, roughly the size and weight of a motorbike.

It is the second highest price paid at the opening auction of the year in Tokyo’s main fish market since comparable data started being collected in 1999.

The powerful buyers have now paid the top price for five years straight – winning bragging rights and a lucrative frenzy of media attention in Japan.

“The first tuna is something meant to bring in good fortune,” Onodera official Shinji Nagao told reporters after the auction. “Our wish is that people will eat this and have a wonderful year.”

The Onodera Group paid 114 million yen for the top tuna last year.

But the highest ever auction price was 333.6 million yen for a 278 kilogram bluefin in 2019, as the fish market was moved from its traditional Tsukiji area to a modern facility in nearby Toyosu.

The record bid was made by self-proclaimed “Tuna King” Kiyoshi Kimura, who operates the Sushi Zanmai national restaurant chain.

During the Covid-19 pandemic the new year tunas commanded only a fraction of their usual top prices, as the public were discouraged from dining out and restaurants had limited operations.