Thousands of firefighters labored to contain the four wildfires raging across the Los Angeles area Saturday before evening winds forecasted to fan additional flames.

In the Pacific Palisades, incarcerated firefighters dug wide trenches across the charred landscape in an attempt to contain the blaze, which has been called the most destructive in the city’s history. Across the city, in Altadena, first responders dragged hoses over burned-out cars and rebar. In Mandeville Canyon, where the Palisades fire grew closer to the UCLA campus – prompting evacuation orders across the Brentwood and Encino neighborhoods – firefighting planes dropped water and retardant in an aggressive aerial attempt to halt the fire’s path.

As containment levels on the two largest fires grew, city and county officials began the difficult work of identifying victims. At least 16 fatalities were confirmed in the Palisades and Eaton fires Saturday, according to the Los Angeles county medical examiner. Relatives have begun coming forward to identify the victims, which include several older Black residents of Altadena who refused to leave their longtime homes, and multiple people with disabilities or receiving home healthcare, who could not be moved, including an Australian former child actor.

The Los Angeles county sheriff, Robert Luna, said the death toll is expected to rise as authorities deploy search dogs to devastated areas. The sheriff also said 13 people are reported missing.

The fires, which have consumed an area about two and a half times the size of Manhattan, have displaced 200,000 people and destroyed more than 12,000 homes and structures, including entire residential neighborhoods. They have also prompted a political brawl – in both Los Angeles and nationally.

On Friday, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, ordered an inquiry into LA county’s water management after reports emerged that a critical reservoir was offline when the fires started, leaving some emergency hydrants with low water pressure before running dry. The LA fire chief, Kristin Crowley, has been vocal about how the water supply issues – and budget cuts – “failed” her firefighters.

A spokesperson for the water and power department confirmed the Santa Ynez reservoir, which helps supply water in the Pacific Palisades, had been offline for scheduled maintenance when the fire ignited.

On Saturday, the LA department of public works issued its own statement “correcting misinformation” about the water system.

“Water pressure in the system was lost due to unprecedented and extreme water demand to fight the wildfire without aerial support,” it said. The department “was required to take the Santa Ynez Reservoir out of service to meet safe drinking water regulations,” it added.

The water supply debacle has prompted national debate, with Donald Trump chiming in.

At the same time, nearby blue and red states as well as foreign countries are making their own political statements in their decisions to deploy firefighters to aid California. On Saturday, the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, announced that his state would deploy first responders to left-leaning California – just a day after Mexico and Canada announced both countries would send firefighters to aid the United States even as Trump has threatened to levy tariffs against both.

Arrests and more evacuation orders

On the ground in California on Saturday, Los Angeles county officials said they had made 22 arrests – 19 people in the Eaton fire and three in the Palisades fire. At least some of those charges were for burglary and looting. Hours earlier, the sheriff’s office had issued a 6pm to 6am curfew in all mandatory evacuation areas affected by the Palisades and Eaton wildfires, in part to protect the property of homeowners who had obeyed orders to evacuate from being looted.

The most recent areas to be put under evacuation orders are close to Brentwood’s Mandeville Canyon Road, a two-lane road that makes emergency access to the pricey homes difficult. The orders also encompass the s, the Los Angeles Times reported.

A spokesperson for the J Paul Getty Trust, which funds the museum, said the institution was complying with the evacuation order and is now closed, with only emergency personnel in place.

The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in west LA says it relocated residents from its community-living facility on the north campus “out of an abundance of caution”.

Earlier, US officials declared a public health emergency due to the air-quality effects of the California fires.

The LA public health department said it had declared a local health emergency and issued a public health order in response “to the widespread impacts of the ongoing multiple critical fire events and windstorm conditions”. The order applies to all areas of Los Angeles county.

The department said in a statement that “the fires, coupled with strong winds, have severely degraded air quality by releasing hazardous smoke and particulate matter, posing immediate and long-term risks to public health”.

It advises anyone who must go outside for long periods of time in areas with heavy smoke or where ash is present to wear a mask.

According to the California department of forestry and fire protection, the Palisades fire is 11% contained, and the Eaton fire, affecting Altadena and Pasadena, is 15% contained. Smaller wildfires – such as the Kenneth and Hurst fires, some of which may have been set deliberately – are more in the control of firefighters.

The Santa Ana winds that drove the wildfire destruction earlier in the week are forecast to come and go over the next several days. Strong gusts are forecast for Monday night and into Tuesday, but they are not expected to attain the 100mph strength that drove the firestorms earlier.

Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, appeared briefly to put his long-running feud with Donald Trump to one side on Friday, when he invited the president-elect to Los Angeles to survey devastation from the wildfires and meet with first responders, firefighters and the “Americans” affected.

“In the spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines,” Newsom wrote in a letter to Trump on Friday. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans – displaced from their homes and fearful for the future – deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild.”

The détente lasted less than 24 hours. By Saturday, Newsom, who is in contention to become the Democratic party leader in time for 2028, had returned to a more familiar, oppositional stance.

In an interview with Pod Save America, he rejected Trump’s claim that water is being withheld from southern California to save an endangered fish, the delta smelt, calling the president-elect’s messaging on the issue “delusional” and part of a “consistent mantra from Trump going back years and years, and it’s reinforced over and over within the right wing … and it’s profoundly ignorant ”.

Newsom said Californians’ fears that Trump could try to withhold federal relief funds was reasonable, notwithstanding the governor’s outreach a day earlier; Newsom said Saturday evening Trump had yet to return his call about wildfire response.

“He’s done it in the past, not just here in California,” Newsom told the podcasters, pointing to Tump’s prior actions in Puerto Rico, Utah, Connecticut and Georgia. “The rhetoric is very familiar, it’s increasingly acute, and obviously we all have reason to be concerned about it.”

The politicization of the Los Angeles fires could be showing signs of intensifying. To opposing political factions, the ruin of parts of Los Angeles offers an inviting but deadly tableau on which to lay out their contrary agendas.

To Democrats, the intensity with which the fires took hold, propelled by the late-season Santa Ana winds, is evidence of climate change that some Republicans deny as a political hoax. To some Republicans, including Trump, the fires are evidence of mismanagement under Democrats’ racial- and gender-equity drives.

Even before the extent of the devastation became clear last week, Trump had assailed Newsom as “Newscum”, and called on the governor to resign.

Addressing the governor in a post on his Truth Social website, Trump said: “One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!”

Trump blamed Newsom for refusing to sign a water-restoration declaration “that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way”.

On the Republican sidelines, Warren Davidson, an Ohio representative, called on Friday for federal disaster relief to be withheld from California unless the state reforms its forestry management practices.

The feud between the two political leaders over environmental issues has been percolating since at least 2018, after wildfires devastated Malibu and Paradise, when Trump accused Newsom and Democratic state leaders of “gross mismanagement” of forests by failing to make firebreaks or clear flammable undergrowth.

At the time, Newsom defended California’s wildfire-prevention efforts while criticizing the federal government for not doing enough to help protect the state. “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation,” Newsom told Trump in a post on X.

That dispute was revived earlier last year when Trump appeared to confuse the former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown with the former governor Jerry Brown, saying he’d nearly crashed in a helicopter while assessing wildfire damage with (governor) Brown.

A spokesperson for Newsom, who had been on the flight, said there had been no issues, no emergency landing and no disparaging conversation about Kamala Harris, as Trump had claimed.

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign spokesperson, later responded that “the president has a lot of amazing stories from his life”.

The ties, and potential fissures, run deeper than politics. Newsom was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle from 2001 to 2006. Guilfoyle subsequently dated Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, and was recently appointed US ambassador to Greece after leading a fundraising division of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.

The chafing between the two looks set to continue, although, according to Politico, an unnamed Trump official downplayed the idea that he would withhold aid to the state.

Joe Biden has already approved a disaster declaration for the southern California fires, committing the federal government to covering all of the fire management and debris removal costs for six months.

“We are with you,” Biden pledged. “We are not going anywhere.”

Newsom thanked Biden – his fellow Democrat – for having “approved our major disaster declaration”. According to Politico, in his letter to Trump, Newsom wrote Biden’s action had been “a strong indication of the partnership California needs and appreciates with any federal administration”.

“However,” Newsom added, “the threat to lives and property remains acute.”

Late Friday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had appointed Ed Russo – who describes himself as a “dirt-kisser tree hugger” and has described Trump as an “environmental hero” – to an environmental advisory group.

Trump wrote in the post: “Together, we will achieve American Energy DOMINANCE, rebuild our Economy, and DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

That comes as Newsom has moved in lock step with the California state legislature and the outgoing Biden administration to thwart Trump’s “America first” energy agenda before Trump’s inauguration in 10 days.

Newsom has said California’s legislative efforts are precautionary in nature and he would approach the return president with an “open hand, not a closed fist”.

But Trump made future disaster funds to California an issue during his 2024 campaign when, in September, he demanded Newsom reform water policy to divert more water to California’s farmers if he wanted the flow of federal funds to continue.

“If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires,” Trump said.

Donald Trump may invite ­populist rightwing leaders from Europe such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to the White House before Keir Starmer, senior UK ­diplomats believe.

Downing Street and the Foreign Office are eagerly pressing for the prime minister to be at the head of the traditional “beauty parade” of overseas leaders who are called to see the new president in the days after the inauguration on 20 January. Representations are being made via the UK embassy in Washington.

But senior diplomatic figures are warning that Trump may prefer to give the first visits to political soulmates on the hard right, rather than social democratic and left-of-­centre Europeans, and are suggesting that Starmer and his team prepare a face-saving response just in case.

In January 2017 Theresa May was the first foreign leader to be invited to see Trump at the start of his first term. May wanted to extract a strong statement from Trump in support of Nato, and to warn him over his closeness to Vladimir Putin.

But the visit became strained when Trump grabbed her by the hand as they walked through the White House, which May, it later emerged, found distinctly awkward.

One former top-rank UK ambassador said there was certainly no guarantee that Trump would honour the special relationship by asking the UK prime minister first, particularly as Starmer has ­different political views to his own.

“No one knows what Trump will do but I would not be surprised if he asks Meloni first or Orbán as they are from the right. There has already been talk in Trump circles about this dreadful leftwing socialist Starmer government.”

But such a decision would be a temporary embarrassment for Starmer, and not a serious lasting problem, say diplomats.

Peter Ricketts, former UK ambassador to Paris, said he too believed Trump might prefer Meloni or Orbán first.

Starmer’s team needed to be ready, he said. “They need to discount the market. What they then need to say is that we are really more interested in substance rather than who gets the first call. There is always this beauty parade and it is what is said and how they get on that matters.” Ricketts added that the UK’s best chance of getting in early was to be clear in advance about what Starmer and the UK could offer Trump. “There is no point in having a ­conversation with Trump for the sake of it. He is purely transactional.”

Another UK diplomat with US experience said that if Starmer is granted an audience he needed to keep it light.

“You don’t want to go in with your six-point plan on Ukraine. He will just switch off or interrupt and change the subject.

“Trump likes at least one ­session one-to-one with no ­officials. He likes the personal stuff, what do you think of him? What did you make of her? Do not appear needy or ask for too much. He finds that contemptuous.”

Nigel Sheinwald, a former UK ambassador to the US, said most western leaders were likely to have testing relationships with Trump. But this did not mean an initial meeting with Starmer would be ­confrontational. “Trump can be ­gracious and he likes the UK and its traditions. Starmer has met him so will know this will be no ­conventional first meeting. He’ll need to roll with the Trump free flow. I don’t think it will be high noon.”

Meloni met Trump last week for dinner at the ­president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago home and he said at the time how much he admired her. “This is very exciting,” he said. “I am here with a fantastic woman. She has really taken Europe by storm.”

A historic court ruling that found Belgium guilty of crimes against humanity during its colonial rule of central Africa has been hailed as a turning point that could pave the way for compensation and other forms of justice.

Belgium’s court of appeal ruled last month that the “systematic kidnapping” of mixed-race children from their African mothers in Belgian-ruled Congo, Rwanda and Burundi was a crime against humanity. The case was brought by five women who were removed from their Congolese mothers as small children between 1948 and 1953, and who now live in Belgium and France. Each was awarded €50,000 (£42,000) in damages.

The colonial-era policy affected thousands more métis, children of African mothers and European fathers whom imperial Belgium deemed a threat to the white supremacist order. Many lost all contact with their mothers after being moved hundreds of miles away to live in uncaring religious institutions with meagre rations and inadequate education.

The president of the Association of Métis of Belgium, François Milliex, said the decision “surely opens the door” to those seeking financial compensation for forced separation from their parents.

Milliex was moved to Belgium in 1960 aged 14, and was immediately sent to a children’s home with two of his brothers after being separated from his other siblings. The family was split although Milliex’s Rwandan mother and Belgian father were both alive, recognised and wanted to care for their children. He was stripped of his Belgian nationality the following year, leaving him stateless and unable to leave the country. As an adult he spent one month of salary in fees to regain Belgian nationality.

“Most métis who were moved to Belgium regret that the state never proposed financial compensation for the suffering, the pain,” he said. “There are people who continue to suffer today from this separation, this loss of identity, to understand why they were taken from their mother, why their father did not recognise them, 70 years later they are still, some of them, asking these questions. It is real pain that remains in the hearts of all the métis.”

Michèle Hirsch, the lawyer who represented the five women, said she thought the court ruling opened the door to reparations for those in a similar situation to her clients, but cast doubt on the prospect. “I think we are going to have to fight for it to happen,” she said.

Belgium’s then prime minister, Charles Michel apologised on behalf of the state in 2019 for the kidnapping of mixed-race children, and the state launched an initiative later that year so victims could gain access to official archives that would help them trace their family origins. As colonial officials had unilaterally changed or misspelled names, many children had lost contact with their families.

But unlike other countries that have faced a reckoning for the similar treatment of Indigenous people, such as Australia and Canada, Belgium has resisted demands for financial compensation.

Résolution Métis, the state research body facilitating access to archives, is studying how many people were affected by the policy, but has said it is not possible to give a definitive answer.

Hundreds of mixed-race children are believed to have been forcibly moved to Belgium between 1960 and 1962, when Congo, Rwanda and Burundi gained independence, but the vast majority subjected to state kidnapping remained in central Africa.

Geneviève Kaninda, of the NGO African Futures Lab, who works with victims of state kidnapping in present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Burundi, said the Belgian government had long overlooked them.

The court judgment “could constitute a turning point for the people in the Great Lakes region to be able, if they wish, to obtain justice,” she said. Victims of the policy, both mothers who lost their children and those who were taken, could use the court ruling in any attempt to obtain reparations from the Belgian government, she suggested.

The group is also seeking greater recognition of the women forced to give up their toddlers to the state. They were often teenagers, sometimes as young as 14 or 15, when they became pregnant by European colonialists, who were in their 30s, 40s or 50s. Some died without being reunited with their children, or even knowing where they had been taken.

Kaninda said victims of the policy in the Great Lakes region also faced serious obstacles in researching their past, such as huge difficulties obtaining visas to go to Belgium for archival research or DNA tests. African Futures Lab argues that all mixed-race people put under Belgian state guardianship in colonial times should be able to obtain Belgian nationality if they wish.

The Belgian foreign ministry, which is handling the case, said: “The Belgian government has not yet decided on its position regarding the follow-up it will take to this judgment of the court of appeal. This judgment is still being analysed.”

The government can appeal to the country’s supreme court, the court of cassation, but only on a point of law.

Jérémiah Vervoort, a legal scholar at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), said the court’s decision was historic in Belgium because “effectively it is the first time that the state has been condemned for colonial crimes”.

Belgium was hesitant about reparations, he said, in contrast to other western countries. He said the state could follow the Australian treatment of its “stolen generations” by passing a law to compensate everyone affected by the policy.

Alternatively, Belgium could wait for individuals to make claims, an approach that would disadvantage those who lacked documents, Vervoort said. He said: “To prove that they actually suffered kidnappings and segregation will be difficult for those who have fewer documents at their disposal. Not all mixed-race people are equal in terms of the documentation that concerns them.”

The Association of Métis of Belgium hopes the court ruling will raise awareness of an episode of history it regards as still widely unknown. It is preparing a lesson kit of written material and video testimony for teachers that it hopes will be adopted in Belgian schools.

From Milliex’s experience of school visits, there is much to be done. “When you ask [pupils] what was the Congo and the colonies, they say ‘Belgium built big roads, schools and hospitals’ etc. Never, ever does anyone talk about the métis,” he said.

Shipwrecked colonial treasures that have lain on the seabed for centuries could be recovered and returned to their countries of origin as reparations for slavery.

Tim Maxwell, an international cultural heritage lawyer, said repatriating artefacts found underwater could help former colonial powers meet moral obligations to countries they had historically exploited for their transatlantic trade.

“Former colonial powers have dominated claims to ownership of these historic shipwrecks, even once brought on shore,” he said. “Spain in particular has been active in claiming the contents of colonial-era shipwrecks against private salvage companies. In general, ‘source’ countries have not had much of a look-in. This is an anomaly in a world where Commonwealth and other governments are demanding slavery reparations. Why should countries in the Caribbean, South America and elsewhere not be able to lay claim to their underwater cultural heritage?”

Maxwell, a partner at London law firm Wedlake Bell, highlighted the example of a Spanish galleon, the San José, sunk by a British squadron in 1708. It went down with gold, silver and emeralds worth billions of dollars today – sparking ownership claims in recent years from Colombia, Spain, Bolivian Indigenous groups and a US salvage company. Although it lies in Colombian waters, Spain has argued it was part ofits fleet returning from what was then part of the Spanish empire. The wreck could be lifted this year.

Maxwell has been involved with restitution cases for colonial and Nazi artefacts. He argues that, while governments and the art world largely recognise the importance of returning colonial-era artefacts to their countries of origin, this should apply to colonial-era underwater heritage.

Many European museums have returned artefacts looted or removed during the colonial era to the countries of origin. Germany and the Horniman Museum have handed back Benin bronzes to Nigeria; in 2023, the Netherlands repatriated more than 200 artefacts to its former colony, Indonesia.

Maxwell said: “Enormous quantities of natural resources, including gold, silver and precious stones, were shipped on trade routes to Europe … While much of this enriched the colonial powers, some of it never reached port due to the perils of early modern shipping. The Caribbean and the waters around South America, in particular, are littered with colonial-era shipwrecks where ships were caught out in fierce storms or attacked by rival colonial powers.

“Most of their cargo has either remained on the seabed, unable to be claimed by the countries of origin, or where accessible, excavated by private salvage companies, with former colonial powers then weighing in to claim ownership over source countries.”

Caecilia Dance, a Wedlake Bell solicitor, is working with Maxwell on the proposal. She said: “Places like Peru, Colombia, Bolivia were looted by the colonial powers but, at the moment, flag states generally say, actually, it all belongs to us.”

Last year, Wreckwatch magazine published an issue on the San José galleon. It noted that much of the treasure was mined in Potosi in modern Bolivia: “Spain’s exploitation of Potosi led to … forced and enslaved Indigenous people dying in the production of … precious metals.”

Wreckwatch editor Dr Sean Kingsley is a maritime archaeologist and co-author of Enslaved: the Sunken History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He said: “There is absolutely a discussion to be had about who owns the sunken past with entangled links. The thorny question is how to ensure equality in reparations. Spanish treasure ships returning from the Americas were notoriously valuable.

“Sub-dividing consignments of gold, silver, emeralds and pearls to the ‘representatives’ of past atrocities in the mines of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, in theory is quite achievable … But there are snags. Not every Spanish treasure ship is a San José. Values of cargoes oscillate dramatically.”
In contrast, the most valuable item on shipwrecks of slave traders from west Africa tended to be sugar – “dissolved and worthless today” – which would leave little of value to be given as reparations.
“So far, politicians have been tone deaf in really listening to the interests of Indigenous peoples in weighing up the fates of this sunken history.”

Historian Jeff Forret, author of The Price They Paid: Slavery, Shipwrecks, and Reparations Before the Civil War, said the proposal was “pretty plausible”, adding: “But what it ultimately all boils down to is a political will.”

Among those who were injured but survived the deadly New Year’s Day truck attack on New Orleans’ most famous street was a former Princeton University football player whose ex-teammate was murdered by the assailant.

Ryan Quigley, 26, was in New Orleans with Martin “Tiger” Bech – who grew up about a two-hour drive west of the city in Lafayette, Louisiana – to ring in 2025 after both had forged a friendship while playing for Princeton University’s college football team. They had joined other revelers on Bourbon Street when a former US army veteran inspired by the Islamic State (IS) terror group managed to drive a pickup truck into the crowd that had gathered on one of the world’s most festive thoroughfares.

Bech, 27, was one of 14 victims slain before police could fatally shoot the attacker, who had planted undetonated homemade bombs further up Bourbon Street. Quigley was among about 30 who were injured – he was treated at a hospital, was discharged, and has been navigating a physical recovery since his subsequent release from the hospital, according to a GoFundMe campaign established to support him as well as a statement from Princeton’s football team.

The victims on Bourbon Street were targeted after city officials either removed or failed to deploy three different types of barriers that it had and were designed to prevent intentional ramming attacks such as the one on Bourbon Street. At least six of the victims who survived the attack – and the father of a man who was killed – have sued New Orleans’ city government, alleging that it failed to protect New Year’s Day revelers.

Quigley and Bech’s story was one of the earliest to emerge in the wake of the attack.

Beside their having graduated from Princeton and winning a football championship together there, they were colleagues at a financial firm on Manhattan’s Wall Street.

Bech’s younger brother Jack is also well-known in his own right, having played the sport for high-level programs at Texas Christian and Louisiana State universities.

Nonetheless, neither Quigley nor his family have said much about him since his injuries and his witnessing Bech’s killing. In a note attached to the page for his GoFundMe, which had raised nearly $80,000 as of Saturday, the campaign organizer wrote: “Ryan is doing OK … and resting in the company of his family and friends.”

Yet his account on the social media platform X suggests he has been grieving his friend while finding inspiration to continue his recovery.

One of Quigley’s recent reposts showed Bech scoring a long touchdown against a Princeton opponent.

Quigley also reposted a photo showing him with former Ultimate Fighting Championship interim titleholder Dustin Poirier, the Bech brothers’ fellow Lafayette native. The photo depicts Quigley holding a walker with visible scrapes on his face as well as a large brace on his right leg.

“This guy is the real deal,” Poirier wrote above the photo. “Great meeting him today. Safe travels brother and heal up.”

Quigley, a former two-time most valuable player of Philadelphia’s Catholic high school football league, replied to Poirier: “Taking lessons from the best.”

Bech’s funeral was in Lafayette five days after the attack, and he attended in a wheelchair.

At a public meeting the day after the funeral, the city’s mayor – at a public meeting after the funeral – made Quigley an honorary Cajun, referring to the Louisiana French ethnicity that is synonymous with the Lafayette region.

“You’re one of our own,” mayor Monique Blanco Boulet said, according to Louisiana’s Acadiana Advocate newspaper.

There was no mention of the honor on Quigley’s X account that day. Instead, a day later, he reposted a particularly poignant tribute to Tiger from Jack Bech.

The younger Bech’s X account had published a screenshot of a text message reading: “FBI just called they said they have video surveillance of … girls that were talking with, tiger pushing the girl out of the way to save her life. He’s a true American hero. Chills.”

Above that screenshot, Jack Bech wrote: “My brother is a true hero. Can’t express the love I have for him.”

Quigley, in turn, reposted Jack Bech while adding: “True hero and brother for life.”

Ukraine’s capture of two North Korean soldiers on the battlefield has provided a rare glimpse into their role and Pyongyang’s participation in the Russian invasion, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

The two soldiers were taken prisoner in Kursk oblast, the scene of intense fighting since Ukraine launched a cross-border raid five months ago. Video showed special forces soldiers carrying one of the wounded North Koreans across a snowy forest.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine would give journalists access to the pair, so the world “can learn the truth about what is happening”.

The prisoners have been transported to Kyiv and given appropriate “medical treatment” for their injuries, Zelenskyy said. He praised the paratroopers and tactical group that retrieved them, saying: “This was not an easy task”.

Russian forces and North Korean military personnel had previously executed their wounded in order to “erase” any trace of Pyongyang’s involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine, he claimed.

Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency is questioning the soldiers, who were given fake Russian names and military documents. The pair speak no foreign languages. South Korea’s NIS intelligence service has been assisting, the SBU said.

The soldiers are the first captive North Koreans to survive. They represent a PR opportunity for Kyiv, during a precarious moment for Ukraine as Donald Trump returns to the White House.

Zelenskyy is keen to emphasise that Ukraine is fighting an unprecedented coalition of malign autocratic states. One is North Korea, which has supplied Moscow with short-range ballistic missiles, artillery shells and – since last November – about 10,000 elite troops.

Russia has also deepened its cooperation with Iran. Tehran provides kamikaze drones used in nightly attacks against Ukrainian towns and cities. China does not contribute directly military aid but is a key diplomatic ally and delivers micro-electronic components used extensively in Russian weapons systems.

On Saturday, the SBU released video footage and photographs showing the two North Koreans in hospital bunks, one with bandaged hands, the other with a bandaged jaw. There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga, wrote on social media: “We need maximum pressure against regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang.”

The soldiers had reportedly told the SBU they were experienced fighters. One said he had been sent to Russia for training, not to fight. One had no identity documents, while the other was in possession of a Russian military ID card said to have been “issued in the name of another person”, a 26-year-old from Russia’s Tuva region, which borders Mongolia.

According to the SBU he was a rifleman who was born in 2005 and had been in the North Korean army since 2021. The other wrote his answers due to his injured jaw, stating that he was born in 1999, had joined the army in 2016 and was a scout sniper.

South Korea’s intelligence agency, NIS, confirmed Ukraine’s account, adding that one of the soldiers had said North Korean forces had suffered “significant losses during battle”. One of the men said he had gone without food or water for up to five days before his capture.

Russia, meanwhile, reported that its military had advanced to within 3km of the strategically important town of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donetsk province and had seized a village south of the town. Ukraine’s general staff said its forces had repelled 46 out of 56 attacks on about a dozen towns in the Pokrovsk sector.

On Saturday, the Russian news agency RIA reported for the first time from the Ukrainian town of Kurakhove, a logistics centre south of Pokrovsk. Russian military said last week that it had captured the town, the scene of intense fighting. Ukrainian combat units recently pulled out of their last stronghold in Kurakhova, a thermal power plant.

Ukraine’s military made gains in the Kursk border region, according to reports by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which said geolocated videos showed Ukrainian soldiers had advanced to just north of the village of Pogrebki.

On Sunday, Germany’s chancellor said it was “no bad news” that Trump hoped to arrange a meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in an effort, according to the incoming US president, to “get that war over with”. However, Olaf Scholz stressed that Ukraine’s sovereignty should not be called into question. Kyiv has rejected any deal that forces it to cede territory to Russia.

Referring to his own telephone conversation with Putin last month, for which he received much criticism, Scholz told the broadcaster ARD: “The point will come when real conversations have to be had.” Germany, the second largest contributor to Ukraine’s war effort after the US, would continue to support Ukraine, he said, “but at the same time the killing has to stop at some point.”

He said it was necessary to “find a way out of this war, without a dictated peace in which the Ukrainians have no say”.

Early on Sunday, a Russian oil tanker that had run adrift in the Baltic Sea north of the German island of Rügen after suffering a blackout when its electricity supply failed, was manoeuvred safely into the port of Sassnitz by tug boats.

The tanker, Eventim, containing an estimated 99,000 tons of oil, is believed to be part of an extensive operation by Moscow to try to circumnavigate sanctions, for which dilapidated, unseaworthy ships are often used. The 274-metre-long vessel with 24 crew members has effectively been impounded by authorities until a decision is made as to how to deal with it.

A close friend of a British hiker who has been missing in the Dolomites since New Year’s Day has said “there is an acceptance that it won’t be good news” as search efforts continued.

Sam Harris, 35, and Aziz Ziriat, 36, from London, last sent messages home on 1 January and the pair did not check in to their flight home on 6 January. Friends and relatives have travelled to Italy.

The body of Harris was found on Wednesday buried in deep snow at the foot of a cliff about 2,600 metres (8,500ft) above sea level in the area of the Conca pass in the Adamello nature park.

Joe Stone, a university friend of Ziriat, told the PA Media news agency that the authorities were “trying everything” to find the 36-year-old, who has now been missing for 10 days.

“There is an acceptance among us that it’s not going to be good news,” Stone said on Saturday. “But it would be really nice to find him and be put out of this limbo.”

The pair’s last known location had been a mountain hut called Casina Dosson, close to the town of Tione di Trento, near Riva del Garda on Lake Garda.

Italy’s national alpine cliff and cave rescue corps said on Saturday that the search for Ziriat, who works for the Crystal Palace FC charity Palace for Life, had resumed at first light.

About 40 rescuers were airlifted to high altitudes and were digging into the snow to search for Ziriat in the area where Harris’s body was found.

On Wednesday, the alpine rescue service said ground teams had found a body “sadly deceased, buried under the snow” in the area of Passo di Conca.

The rescue teams had been searching the area after tracking a “phone of one of the two mountaineers”.

They said the “dynamics of the accident are still being examined by the police but it is possible that the mountaineer fell from a height”.

Palace for Life posted on X: “We are aware of reports that the body of Sam Harris has been recovered.

“We are devastated to receive this news and our thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to his loved ones.

“No further information is currently available regarding the whereabouts of Aziz.”

A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Friday: “We are supporting the family of a British man who has died in northern Italy and are in contact with the local authorities.”

South Korea’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, will not attend the first hearing of his impeachment trial next week because of safety concerns, his lawyer has said.

Yoon has been holed up in the presidential residence and protected by an elite guard force since being suspended and impeached last month following a short-lived declaration of martial law that plunged the country into political chaos.

He has refused to meet prosecutors and investigators, and earlier this month his presidential guard unit thwarted an attempt to arrest him after a tense hours-long standoff.

The constitutional court has scheduled five trial dates between 14 January and 4 February, which will proceed in his absence if he does not attend.

“Concerns about safety and potential incidents have arisen. Therefore, the president will not be able to attend the trial on 14 January,” lawyer Yoon Kab-keun said in a statement on Sunday. “The president is willing to appear at any time once safety issues are resolved.”

The court will decide whether to uphold his impeachment or restore him to office.

Separately, investigators seeking to question Yoon on insurrection charges linked to his ill-fated martial law declaration are preparing another arrest attempt. Yoon would become the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested if investigators are able to detain him. If convicted of insurrenction he faces prison or even the death penalty.

Yoon’s legal team said his guards remained on “high alert”.

A team of Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) investigators and police were planning for the next attempt, which they said could be their last.

The CIO said anyone obstructing their attempt could be detained themselves and police reportedly held a meeting of top commanders on Friday to plan for the renewed effort.

The former presidential guard security chief Park Chong-jun – who resigned on Friday and was automatically replaced by a more hardline Yoon loyalist – told reporters there must be no bloodshed in any second arrest attempt.

The National Office of Investigation, a police unit, sent a note to high-ranking police officials in Seoul requesting they prepare to mobilise 1,000 investigators for the fresh attempt, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Rival protesters for and against Yoon have gathered almost daily in the South Korean capital since the crisis unfolded.

As the crisis goes on, Yoon’s ruling party has seen a bump in approval ratings.

A new Gallup survey published on Friday showed the People Power party’s approval rating had risen to 34%, from 24% three weeks ago.

Throughout Roger Thiberville’s long life, he never once visited the Normandy town that gave him his last name. Descended from a family of vineyard owners, he inherited property in Paris from his parents and worked as a meteorologist.

But when Thiberville died in August at the age of 91 leaving no descendants, the mayor of the town (population 1,773) received a phone call. Thiberville, the man, had left Thiberville, the town, most of his estimated €10m (£8.4m) fortune.

Guy Paris, the mayor of Thiberville, said astonished and delighted local people and officials were now considering how to spend the unexpected windfall, which is five times the municipality’s annual budget. “It’s an exceptional sum of money. Obviously the amount is beyond imagination,” Paris told the local radio station, France Bleu. “We don’t yet know what we will do with it.

“We’re not going to spend it all. We’re going to manage this dowry as we’ve always done with our municipal budget – with prudence and responsibility.”

The French commune is now looking to pay off a bank loan of more than €400,000 used to build a new primary school. Because the town is a public body it will not have to pay any inheritance tax.

Paris said it appeared Thiberville’s only link with the town was his name and that he understood the town’s benefactor had lived “humbly in Paris”, where he owned four apartments in the city’s south-western 15th arrondissement. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no known photographs of him. Thiberville’s only stated wish was for his ashes to be placed in a memorial in the commune’s cemetery.

“Monsieur Thiberville did not demand anything in return for his legacy, but we owe him at least that,” the mayor said.

Thiberville is an unremarkable town boasting a late-19th-century château and a former ribbon factory, but little else to mark it out from other Norman communes. The nearest significant attraction is the grand Basilica at Lisieux – 10 miles (16km) to the west – constructed in honour of Saint Thérèse and opened in the 1950s.

Paris said: “We have projects: a public garden with a play area, a boules ground with solar panels that will serve as shade, the renovation of the elementary school, a synthetic football pitch … ”

While Thiberville celebrated its good fortune, the neighbouring villages of Le Planquay and La Chapelle-Hareng may be regretting a decision not to merge with the town so that all three could receive subsidies reserved for communes with more than 2,000 inhabitants. The plan was rejected by the neighbouring councillors, meaning Thiberville will not have to share its inheritance.

In March 1964, the rock journalist Al Aronowitz awoke to find Bob Dylan asleep on his sofa and the lyrics to Mr Tambourine Man crumpled up in his rubbish bin.

The 22-year-old Dylan had spent the night writing and rewriting his new song on a portable typewriter at Aronowitz’s home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, before chucking away the early drafts and stretching out on his friend’s couch.

Now, Dylan’s stained, crumpled and partially torn lyrics – which Aronowitz rescued from his trash can that morning and passed on to his children when he died in 2005 – could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars when they are sold at auction on Saturday.

“My father never threw anything away, and we knew the story of Mr Tambourine Man … but he had lost track of it,” said Myles Aronowitz, who unearthed the lyrics last year after spending three years looking through 250 boxes of his father’s papers, ­photographs and audio tapes. “It meant a lot to him, but he didn’t know where it was.”

The three drafts of the song in Aronowitz’s archive reveal that Dylan substituted words like “bootheels” for “feet” and “magic” for “priceless”. He also deleted and shortened lines, and inserted new verses into later drafts.

“It feels like there’s a stream of consciousness there – but you can also see from the drafts how carefully each word was crafted,” said Myles.

Being able to see the words Dylan crossed out and inserted on the manuscript is like being able to look over the artist’s shoulder as he is writing the song, he said. “It gives you a feeling for what was going on in Bob Dylan’s head.”

Al Aronowitz had already made a name for himself as a journalist by writing about Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac when he was assigned to interview Dylan in 1963. After the two men became friends, Aronowitz introduced Ginsberg to Dylan and Dylan to the Beatles. “He brokered that meeting and brought some marijuana,” said Myles. He believes members of the Beatles then tried the drug for the first time.

In March 1964, the Aronowitz family home was a “safe haven” for Dylan, who had recently broken up with his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo.

“He was licking his wounds,” said Laura Woolley, managing director at Julien’s Auctions, which is selling the lyrics. “And he just threw himself into his work.”

Aronowitz later recalled how Dylan had sat typing that night at “my white Formica breakfast bar in a swirl of chain-lit Camels cigarette smoke, his bony, long-nailed fingers tapping the words out … while the whole time, over and over again, Marvin Gaye sang ‘Can I Get A Witness’ from the six-foot speakers of my hi-fi in the room next to where he was, with Bob getting up from the typewriter each time the record finished in order to put the needle back at the start”.

Woolley thinks it’s likely Dylan had jotted down some notes for the song lyrics by hand a few weeks earlier, when he had experienced Mardi Gras in New Orleans for the first time. “I believe our first draft is basically a typed version of a lot of those notes – he was taking the thoughts and the ideas that were dancing around in his head and getting them down.”

The lyrics appear to have been written quickly, with vernacular spelling (“tho you might hear laughin spinnin swingin madly thru the sun”) and the word “to” repeatedly abbreviated to “t”. But they also reveal how hard Dylan worked to find the right words that night: “He is constantly in search for perfection, on some level, of things having the right ring and sound,” said Woolley.

“No one will ever know how Dylan came up with some of these lines. And I think it makes him human that not everything he wrote just poured out of him. He really did have to work on this one.”

The auction house has officially estimated the lyrics will sell for $400,000 to $600,000.

Also on sale are 50 other items from Aronowitz’s personal archive, including an early oil painting by Dylan from 1968 (valued at $200,000 to $300,000), a 1963 handbill from Dylan’s first major headline performance, at Town Hall in New York City, and vintage photos.