Firefighters battling the disastrous wildfires around Los Angeles are prepared for a return of dangerous winds that could again stoke the flames as the death toll in the tragedy has hit at least 24.

Fierce gusts known as Santa Ana winds have been largely blamed for turning the wildfires into devastating infernos that leveled huge tranches of entire neighborhoods around America’s second-largest city which has also been hit by drought.

The National Weather Service has issued a rare warning of a “particularly dangerous situation”, beginning overnight Monday into Tuesday with severe fire conditions through Wednesday. There could be sustained winds of up to 40mph (64 km/h) and gusts in the mountains reaching 70 mph (113 kph).

Los Angeles county fire chief Anthony C Marrone said 70 additional water trucks had arrived to help firefighters fend off flames spread by any renewed gusts. “We are prepared for the upcoming wind event,” Marrone said.

In all, four fires have consumed more than 62 sq miles (160 sq km), an area larger than San Francisco. The Eaton fire near Pasadena and the Palisades fire, in a wealthy enclave along the Pacific coast, alone accounted for 59 sq miles (nearly 153 sq km). Early estimates suggest they could be the nation’s costliest ever, as much as $150bn, according to an AccuWeather estimate.

But in a sign of some progress, firefighters battling the blazes had established some form of containment around each fire, which increased over the weekend.

The relative calm in the winds on Sunday also allowed some people to return to previously evacuated areas.

But even as containment increased in the worst of the fires, more bad news emerged from the ashes: The death toll surged to 24 late Sunday after an update from the Los Angeles county medical examiner. Sixteen of the 24 deaths were attributed to the Eaton fire and eight to the Palisades fire, according to the Los Angeles county coroner’s office. The toll could also rise as search dogs conducted systematic searches in leveled neighborhoods.

At least 16 people were also missing, a number authorities said was also likely to rise.

Some residents have been able to return to their homes to survey the damage.

Jim Orlandini, who lost his hardware store in Altadena, a hard-hit neighborhood next to Pasadena, said his home of 40 years survived.

“Tuesday night we didn’t sleep at all because we figured the house was gone,” he told the Associated Press. “The whole time I was thinking, I don’t know what I’m going to find when I get back here and after 40 years, you know, you got a lot of stuff you forget about that would disappear if the house burned down. So we’re thankful that it didn’t.”

Crews from California and nine other states are part of the ongoing response that includes nearly 1,400 fire engines, 84 aircraft and more than 14,000 personnel, including newly arrived firefighters from Mexico.

Looting continued to be a concern, with authorities reporting more arrests as the devastation grew. Those arrested included two people who posed as firefighters going into houses, Michael Lorenz, the Los Angeles police department captain, said.

With California national guard troops on hand to guard properties, Governor Gavin Newsom posted on X: “California will NOT allow for looting.”

Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass said Sunday that she had spoken with Donald Trump’s incoming administration and expected that the president-elect would visit the city.

Bass faces a critical test of her leadership during the city’s greatest crisis in decades, but allegations of leadership failures, political blame and investigations have begun.

Newsom on Friday ordered state officials to determine why a 117m-gallon (440m-liter) reservoir was out of service and some hydrants had run dry.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

As efforts continue to put out two massive firestorms that are ravaging Los Angeles, officials have started to investigate the cause and origin of the blazes that have killed at least 24 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

Multiple reports have explored a developing theory that the Palisades fire is connected to an earlier fire that was put out in the early hours of new year’s day.

The fire started just after midnight of 2025 in an area similar to where the Palisades fire began. Sources who spoke anonymously to the Los Angeles Times said that investigators are aware that the fire’s origins are close to the site of the new year’s fire.

The area has a trail that is frequented by the public, raising questions of whether the fire has human origins. Investigators are exploring whether the new year’s blaze was caused by fireworks, though officials have not determined a cause for the fire, which was put out at about 4.30am on new year’s day. Wind conditions on that day were much calmer than what the area would see a few days later, when the fires started.

A resident of the area, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post that an investigator – who was knocking on doors in the neighborhood after the new year’s fire – suggested that the small fire was caused by people who were on the trail. The resident said that his family heard fireworks in the area where the fire was started on new year’s.

The new year’s fire and the Palisades fire appear to have started in a brushy area of the Pacific Palisades, in Topanga state park. An analysis of satellite images of the area by the Post shows what appears to be a burn scar from the New Year’s fire in the brushy hillside of the Summit, a neighborhood in the Palisades. Early in the Palisades fire, smoke could be seen in the same area as the new year’s blaze.

Fire experts told the Post that rekindling is possible, even days after a fire is put out, because heat can remain trapped in the roots of trees.

“We know that fires rekindle and transition from smoldering to flaming,” Michael Gollner, a fires scientist and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, told the Post. “It’s certainly possible that something from that previous fire, within a week, had rekindled and caused the ignition.”

In the days before the LA fires began, city officials issued warnings of strong winds that put the region in “major risk” of wildfires. Officials at the time said the winds were particularly dangerous because the region hadn’t seen significant rainfall for months. One meteorologist with the National Weather Service said that plant material in the area were “at near-critical levels in terms of moisture content” and were “a recipe for fire”.

Farther east, residents in the area where the Eaton fire captured images of flames burning around an electrical transmission tower just as the fire was starting. Multiple residents said they first saw a small fire around the tower before the flames spread down the ridge.

The tower’s operator, Southern California Edison, told the LA Times they don’t believe their equipment was responsible for the fire – and that analysis of electrical circuit information from around the time that the fire started showed no anomalies before the blaze started.

In a Sunday press release, the company said that it discovered an incident involving a downed power line at about the same time that the Hurst fire farther north of the city was first reported.

Officials emphasize that they have not determined what started the fires, and an investigation will probably take time since the fires are still active. A specialized team from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is leading the fire investigation, will begin processing the scene in the Pacific Palisades this week, according to the LA Times.

As of Monday morning, the Palisades fire was about 13% contained after burning 23,000 acres. The Eaton fire was 27% contained after burning 14,000 acres. The Hurst fire is 89% contained and has burned about 800 acres.

When Aaron McNeil moved from Maryland to Los Angeles three years ago, his biggest worry was earthquakes.

“I had heard of a fire here and there in this area, but it wasn’t anything to be really concerned about,” McNeil said on Sunday.

But after being evacuated from his Brentwood home after a fire ripped through the Palisades, his fears changed.

“So yeah, it’s definitely beat out the earthquake thing.”

After he was evacuated, McNeil, his wife and two kids fled to a Culver City hotel.

“Because it was just so close, down the street. We could definitely see the smoke. I don’t know if I ever saw the fire but I’m sure people who stayed longer than we did could.”

On Sunday afternoon, he returned to his home for more belongings.

“We have no idea when they’re going to lift the evacuation. So just since we’re at least allowed in right now … we just grabbed a few more essential stuff,” he said.

As of Sunday afternoon, fires across Los Angeles had burned through 40,000 acres. The number of people killed from the Palisades and Eaton fires rose to 24, according to the county medical examiner, and 13 were reported as missing. The Palisades fire, according to Cal Fire, was 11% contained. Several exits on the 405 remained closed, and residents in parts of Santa Monica, Malibu and Topanga were still in evacuation zones. Parts of Calabasas, Tarzana and Encino remained under warning on Sunday.

Even after fire crews made progress on the Palisades fire, residents braced for new danger. According to Cal Fire, strong Santa Ana winds are still expected up until Wednesday. The strongest could happen on Tuesday.

“ I mean, we got our fingers crossed that the winds that are coming tomorrow and through Wednesday, I think, don’t whip it back up to what it was. Looks like they’ve got it under control to a certain extent right now, so hopefully it stays that way,” McNeil said.

On Sunday afternoon, Los Angeles police officers and national guardsmen directed traffic at intersections in Brentwood, where many residents had already been ordered to evacuate. Residents dropped off pallets of bottled water and snacks in front of Los Angeles fire department’s station 19 on Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood.

Barbara and Marc Fishman stood in front of the fire station, observing the scene. They said they’d been without power since Friday. They were keeping an eye on the wind, but playing it by ear.

“ Our bags are packed.” Barbara Fishman said. “ And how do you decide what to take after you’ve lived in a house for 28 years and you have all kinds of things that you love and you have to take, you know, suitcases of shit? You just decide, I’ll take this sweatshirt, leave this one. I wear these shoes, I’ll lose those, whatever. I mean, the reality of it doesn’t set in until God forbid, like some of those people, they lost their houses.”

Nancy Zezlarian, whose house overlooks Sullivan Canyon in Brentwood, came back to the area on Sunday to try to get more records, but wasn’t allowed back. She and her husband left their house on Tuesday.

“We saw all the smoke from the Palisades because we have a bird’s eye view. When we started to see flames, we said: ‘We gotta leave. This is not good. This is not healthy. We need to leave now.’”

Israel’s foreign minister has described progress in talks for a Gaza ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages amid intensifying indirect negotiations in Qatar attended by Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy.

Gideon Saar, speaking at a joint press conference with his Danish counterpart, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said Israel was working hard to reach a deal.

Israel and Hamas have been holding indirect talks for more than a year mediated by Qatar, the US and Egypt but they have previously stalled over issues including the exchange of hostages for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, whether a ceasefire is permanent and the extent of the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

Officials on both sides stopped short of confirming that a final draft had been reached in Qatar – which would still need to be agreed by both sides to bring an end to the war – but described progress after reports of a midnight “breakthrough” in talks attended by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the region.

The US president, Joe Biden, had on Sunday stressed to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the “immediate need” for a ceasefire and a hostage release deal, the White House said in a readout of their conversation.

Biden urged the return of the Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza with an increase in humanitarian aid enabled by a stoppage in the fighting under the deal, it said, as US officials race to reach an agreement before Trump, takes office on 20 January.

His inauguration is widely seen as a de facto deadline after Trump said there would be “hell to pay” unless hostages held by Hamas were freed by that date.

Both sides have agreed for months broadly on the principle of halting the fighting in return for the release of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Hamas has, however, always insisted that the deal must lead to a permanent end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel has said it will not end the war until Hamas is dismantled.

On Saturday, Witkoff, after meeting the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, flew to Israel where he met Netanyahu, who, following their discussion, sent the director of the Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea, to Qatar’s capital “in order to continue advancing a deal to release our hostages”.

The talks included Barnea, Qatar’s prime minister, as well as Witkoff and officials from the outgoing US administration.

A Palestinian official close to the talks told Reuters that information from Doha was “very promising”, adding: “Gaps were being narrowed and there is a big push toward an agreement if all goes well to the end.”

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that an Israeli official denied a final draft had been sent, although other sources confirmed that “a significant development occurred in the negotiations overnight into Monday”, adding that they believed the agreements could be finalised soon.

Just one brief ceasefire has been achieved in 15 months of war, in the earliest months of fighting.

Hamas insists that any negotiations to secure the release of hostages must form part of a comprehensive pact to end the hostilities in Gaza, while Netanyahu is seeking a more segmented agreement, aiming for a deal that would lead to the liberation of some, though not all, hostages, while simultaneously preserving Israel’s prerogative to recommence hostilities against Hamas upon the deal’s expiration.

Israeli and western intelligence services estimate that at least one-third of the remaining 95 or so Israeli captives in Gaza are dead.

Palestinian officials have indicated that Israel continues to block the release of 10 specific prisoners. These include Marwan Barghouti, the leader of Fatah’s armed faction, Tanzim, and Ahmad Saadat, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was behind the assassination of the Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001, among other high-ranking members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s military branches.

To avert a potential stalemate in the negotiations, an agreement has been reached to defer discussions on the release of these contentious figures until after the initial phase of the deal, sources who took part in the negotiations said.

The families of the hostages who have been protesting against the Israeli government for months, fear that the optimism for a deal that now more than ever seems close may be hindered by the far-right parties of Netanyahu’s coalition that refuse to accept an agreement until Hamas is completely defeated.

The Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, head of one of the hardline nationalist religious parties in the ruling coalition, on Monday denounced the agreement being worked out in Qatar as a “surrender” deal.

“The deal that is taking shape is a catastrophe for the national security of the state of Israel,” Smotrich said.

Conditions in Gaza, where almost all of the population of 2.3 million are living in makeshift accommodation, are deteriorating in the face of cold and wet winter weather, which has caused flooding.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 46,500 Palestinians and wounded 109,571 since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian territory’s health ministry said, following Hamas’s attack on Israel in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage.

Donald Trump supporters who carried out violence during the US Capitol attack in early January 2021 should not be pardoned by him after he begins his second presidency, JD Vance said Sunday.

The incoming vice-president’s remarks on Fox News Sunday with host Shannon Bream slightly deviated from a prior promise by Trump to consider pardoning even those who acknowledged assaulting police officers, saying “a very corrupt system” left them with “no choice”.

“If you committed violence on that day, obviously you should not be pardoned,” Vance said to Bream.

Yet, later off air, Vance assured that pardons remained on the table for at least some convicted in the 6 January 2021 attack, saying the second Trump administration cared about “people who got a garbage trial” and were “unjustly locked up”.

More than 1,200 people have been convicted in connection with an attack on Congress that has been linked to several deaths – including officer suicides – and was meant to keep Trump in the Oval Office after he lost re-election in 2020 to Joe Biden.

After he won a second presidential term by defeating Kamala Harris in the 5 November election, Trump went on NBC News and said one of his first acts in office would be to free convicted Capitol attackers prosecuted in a “very nasty system”.

“The system’s a very corrupt system,” said Trump, who himself was convicted in May in New York state court on felony charges of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. “And … their whole lives have been destroyed.”

Appearing on Fox in what was billed as Vance’s first television interview since November’s race, Trump’s running mate said those who “protested peacefully … should be pardoned”. He made it a point to add that those who “committed violence on that day, obviously”, should not receive the same benefit.

Some of Trump’s fiercest supporters reacted angrily to Vance’s comments with their 20 January inauguration looming.

One – far-right provocateur Nicholas Fuentes – published a social media post seeming to allude to how Trump avoided substantial punishment in the Daniels case as well as rulings from the conservative-dominated US supreme court that undermined efforts to prosecute the president-elect for the Capitol attack.

“If Trump got a ‘get out of jail free’ card, then so should EVERY ONE of his supporters who rallied for him January 6th,” Fuentes wrote on social media.

Luke Lints, who pleaded guilty to interfering with law enforcement during an instance of civil disorder on the day of the Capitol attack, separately wrote on social media: “I’m absolutely emotionally distraught right now.”

Vance subsequently sought to clarify his comments on social media, saying he and Trump would weigh all January 6 convictions for pardons individually – whether or not the underlying offenses were violent in nature.

“We care about people unjustly locked up,” Vance wrote, in part. “It includes people who got a garbage trial.”

Just Stop Oil (JSO) supporters have spray-painted “1.5 is dead” on Charles Darwin’s grave after confirmation that last year was the first to breach the important global warming threshold.

Two people used chalk paint on the naturalist’s grave in Westminster Abbey, London, at about 9.30am on Monday, the climate protest group said.

Alyson Lee, 66, a retired teaching assistant from Derby, and Di Bligh, a 77-year-old former chief executive of Reading council, from Rode in Somerset, were involved in the action, JSO added.

The Metropolitan police confirmed two women were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage “with what is believed to be powdered paint at Westminster Abbey”.

A spokesperson for the church said they did not anticipate there would be any permanent damage and its doors remained open for worshippers and visitors.

Police led two women away from Westminster Abbey after the protest.

Lee said: “We are trying to get the government to act on climate change. They are not doing enough.”

Bligh said: “We’ve done this because there’s no hope for the world, really. We’ve done it on Darwin’s grave specifically because he would be turning in that grave because of the sixth mass extinction taking place now.”

Lee added: “I believe he would approve because he was a good scientist and he would be following the science, and he would be as upset as us with the government for ignoring the science.”

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed on Friday that 2024 was the warmest on record globally and the first calendar year that the average temperature exceeded 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

Pursuing efforts to prevent the world warming more than 1.5C above preindustrial temperatures is one of the key commitments of the global Paris treaty that countries agreed to in 2015, in an effort to avert the most dangerous impacts of climate breakdown.

The scientists said human-caused climate change was the primary driver for record temperatures, while other factors such as the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño weather phenomenon, which raises global temperatures, also had an effect.

Analysis from the Met Office, University of East Anglia and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science also found 2024 was the hottest on record, and “likely” the first year exceeding 1.5C.

A Westminster Abbey spokesperson confirmed that orange chalk was sprayed by climate activists on Darwin’s gravestone.

They added: “The abbey’s conservators are taking immediate action to clean the memorial and do not anticipate that there will be any permanent damage.

“The police were called to the scene and dealt with the incident. The abbey remains open for visiting and worshipping.”

The impeached South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, will receive a pay rise, official documents revealed, as he continues to resist arrest over his ill-fated martial law declaration.

Yoon suspended civilian rule on 3 December, sending soldiers into parliament and plunging the country into its worst political crisis in decades. He was forced to backtrack hours later.

He has been impeached by lawmakers and is awaiting a final constitutional court ruling that could finalise his removal from office, while separately facing an insurrection investigation with investigators seeking to detain him for questioning.

Yoon was given the scheduled pay rise, according to the civil servant salary table for 2025, even as he remains holed up in the presidential residence using his security detail to resist arrest.

The document from the ministry of personnel management, seen by Agence France-Presse on Monday, indicates Yoon’s salary will rise to 262.6m won (£147,000) – a 3% raise compared with last year.

Yoon is suspended from duty only because the impeachment motion is still being deliberated by the constitutional court, so he retains his status as president and will be able to receive his salary and security benefits.

His successor as acting president, the prime minister, Han Duck-soo, who was himself impeached and is suspended from office, will also receive a salary raise of 3% to 203.5m won.

“It makes my blood boil. He’s (Yoon) getting paid for doing nothing,” one user wrote in a post on social media that quickly went viral.

Yoon has refused to meet prosecutors and investigators looking into his martial law declaration, and his presidential guard unit thwarted an attempt to arrest him following a tense, hours-long standoff this month.

Investigators are preparing another arrest attempt.

Rival protests for and against Yoon have been staged almost daily in the South Korean capital, Seoul, since the crisis began.

The impeached South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, will receive a pay rise, official documents revealed, as he continues to resist arrest over his ill-fated martial law declaration.

Yoon suspended civilian rule on 3 December, sending soldiers into parliament and plunging the country into its worst political crisis in decades. He was forced to backtrack hours later.

He has been impeached by lawmakers and is awaiting a final constitutional court ruling that could finalise his removal from office, while separately facing an insurrection investigation with investigators seeking to detain him for questioning.

Yoon was given the scheduled pay rise, according to the civil servant salary table for 2025, even as he remains holed up in the presidential residence using his security detail to resist arrest.

The document from the ministry of personnel management, seen by Agence France-Presse on Monday, indicates Yoon’s salary will rise to 262.6m won (£147,000) – a 3% raise compared with last year.

Yoon is suspended from duty only because the impeachment motion is still being deliberated by the constitutional court, so he retains his status as president and will be able to receive his salary and security benefits.

His successor as acting president, the prime minister, Han Duck-soo, who was himself impeached and is suspended from office, will also receive a salary raise of 3% to 203.5m won.

“It makes my blood boil. He’s (Yoon) getting paid for doing nothing,” one user wrote in a post on social media that quickly went viral.

Yoon has refused to meet prosecutors and investigators looking into his martial law declaration, and his presidential guard unit thwarted an attempt to arrest him following a tense, hours-long standoff this month.

Investigators are preparing another arrest attempt.

Rival protests for and against Yoon have been staged almost daily in the South Korean capital, Seoul, since the crisis began.

Apple has asked shareholders to vote against a proposal to scrap its diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, as tech rivals scale back similar schemes before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative thinktank, wants the iPhone maker to end its DEI efforts because they expose companies to “litigation, reputational and financial risks”. The proposal will be voted on at Apple’s annual general meeting on 25 February.

In a notice to shareholders, Apple’s board has recommended investors vote against the proposal because, it says, it already has the right compliance procedures to deal with any risks and because the proposal “inappropriately attempts to restrict Apple’s ability to manage its own ordinary business operations, people and teams, and business strategies”.

DEI schemes are sets of measures designed to make people of all backgrounds – regardless of ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender – feel supported and included in the workplace.

Discussions on ways to increase diversity, particularly on race, rose to global prominence in 2020 when the murder of George Floyd by a US police officer prompted businesses to examine their own policies amid global protests.

However, the concept has since become a focus for rightwing politicians and Trump has pledged to ban DEI programmes in both the government and the private sector.

Last week, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, said it was terminating its DEI programmes immediately.

“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the US is changing,” said Janelle Gale, the vice-president of human resources at Meta, in an internal memo.

Meta also referenced recent supreme court decisions and the “charged” views of DEI that are held by some people. The US supreme court, which has a conservative majority, ruled in 2023 to overturn “affirmative action” policies under which universities sought to adjust admissions to take into account disadvantages for racial minorities.

The change followed Meta’s announcement that it was changing moderation practices at the company to “get back to our roots around free expression”.

Meta is not the only company to row back on diversity programmes.

Amazon also announced last week that it was winding down its diversity programmes. In a memo to employees on Friday, the tech company said it was “winding down outdated programmes and materials” related to representation and inclusion.

McDonald’s last week said that it would end some diversity goals for its leadership and suppliers, also citing the supreme court decision. The company had introduced the targets – including having women account for 45% of leaders, and 35% of US company leaders to come from “underrepresented” groups – in 2021 after lawsuits alleging discrimination and sexual harassment.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, in November said that it would stop using the term DEI, drop DEI training and stop considering race or gender when deciding on supplier contracts, after it was threatened with a boycott by conservatives.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a century-old campaign group, has said that it will take legal action to prevent what it describes as the “second Trump administration’s retreat from civil rights enforcement and attacks on efforts to promote racial justice”.

“Even though most of the country supports efforts to address racial inequality, Trump promises to eradicate many of those efforts and thereby worsen racial disparities,” the ACLU said before Trump’s election in November.

Other companies have signalled a shift in focus away from other issues supposedly aligned with progressive politics. Six of the world’s largest banks – JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs – have left the UN-sponsored net zero banking alliance since the start of December. Activists have criticised the move as a way to avoid attacks from the Trump administration, which is strongly committed to the fossil fuel sector.

Tyson Fury has announced he is retiring from boxing in the aftermath of a second defeat in his rematch with Oleksandr Usyk last month.

The former world heavyweight boxing champion posted a video on social media while sat in a car announcing that he would quit the sport three weeks after failing to claim the unified world titles from the Ukrainian in Riyadh by unanimous decision.

“Hi everybody. I’m going to keep this short and sweet,” Fury said in the video. “I would like to announce my retirement from boxing. It’s been a blast, I’ve loved every single minute and I’m going to end with this. Dick Turpin wore a mask. God bless everybody, see you on the other side.”

Fury had previously announced a retirement from the ring back in 2022 after beating Dillian Whyte, only to return at the end of the year to fight Derek Chisora and going on to set up the unification bouts with Usyk. He also had short-lived retirements in 2013 and 2017 which were similarly announced on social media.

The 36-year-old’s announcement has come at at time when pundits had been speculating over whether Fury could be tempted into a blockbuster fight against fellow British heavyweight Anthony Joshua.

Fury’s promoter Frank Warren told Sky Sports: “Good luck to him, God bless him. I’m thrilled for him. I’ve been saying since his last fight whatever he chooses to do I support him 100%. He’s done unbelievably great things for British boxing, world boxing. He’s been involved in some of the most exciting fights, certainly in the second coming, it’s been exciting fights every one of them. I’m delighted for him. I hope he and his family enjoy the fruits of his labour.”

Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn said he doubted Fury’s career was over and when asked if an all-British showdown could persuade him to change his mind, added: “It’s up to him. If he wants to, he will. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t. He doesn’t have to prove anything to anybody.”

A rise in online racism driven by fake images is “just the start of a coming problem” after the latest release of X’s AI software, online abuse experts have warned.

Concerns were raised after computer-generated images created using Grok, X’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot, flooded the social media site in December last year.

Signify, an organisation that works with prominent groups and clubs in sports to track and report online hate, said it has seen an increase in reports of abuse since Grok’s latest update, and believes the introduction of photorealistic AI will make it far more prevalent.

“It is a problem now, but it’s really just the start of a coming problem. It is going to get so much worse and we’re just at the start, I expect over the next 12 months it will become incredibly serious.”

Grok was launched in 2023 by Elon Musk, and recently gained a new text to image feature named Aurora, which created photorealistic AI images based on simple prompts written by the user.

A previous, less advanced version, called Flux, drew controversy earlier this year as it was found to do things that many other similar software would not, such as depict copyrighted characters and public figures in compromising positions, taking drugs or committing acts of violence.

There have been several reports of the newest Grok update being used to create photo realistic racist imagery of several football players and managers. One image depicts a player, who is black, picking cotton while another shows that same player eating a banana surrounded by monkeys in a forest. A separate image depicts two different players as pilots in a plane’s cockpit with the twin towers in the background. More images depict a variety of players and managers meeting and conversing with controversial historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Callum Hood, the head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), said X had become a platform that incentivised and rewarded spreading hate through revenue sharing, and AI imagery made that even easier.

“The thing that X has done, to a degree that no other mainstream platform has done, is to offer cash incentives to accounts to do this, so accounts on X are very deliberately posting the most naked hate and disinformation possible.”

A key concern outlined by many is not only the relative lack of restrictions on what users can ask for, but also the ease with which prompts given to Grok can circumvent the AI’s guidelines by “jailbreaking”, which includes describing the physical features of whoever the prompter wants in the image, rather than just naming them.

A summer report published by the CCDH found that when given different hateful prompts, Grok created 80% of them, 30% of which it created without pushback and another 50% of which it made after a jailbreak.

The Premier League have said they are aware of the images and have a dedicated team assigned to help find and report racist abuse directed towards athletes, which can lead to legal action. It is believed the Premier League received more than 1,500 such reports last year and that they have introduced filters for players to use on their social media accounts to help block out large amounts of abuse.

A spokesperson from the FA said: “Discrimination has no place in our game or wider society. We continue to urge social media companies and the relevant authorities to tackle online abuse and for action to be taken against offenders of this unacceptable behaviour.”

X and Grok have been contacted for comment.

When the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, sought to shut down a Catholic charity that was was providing shelter and aid to undocumented migrants at the border, the San Diego cardinal, Robert McElroy, took a robust public stand against the attempt.

“The state of Texas is using governmental pressure to curtail the work of the church in one of its most fundamental obligations: to feed the hungry, to shelter the homeless, and to provide drink to the thirsty,” McElroy said in a statement at the time. “No government can morally tell us to abandon or limit this mission.”

Last week, as billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg adopted policies that seemed designed to ingratiate themselves with the incoming Trump administration, Pope Francis took a different tack when he tapped the Harvard and Stanford-educated McElroy to the role of archbishop of Washington DC – one of the most high-profile positions in the US Catholic church.

It followed Donald Trump’s own announcement that he was appointing Brian Burch, a rightwing political activist and critic of Francis who heads CatholicVote, a conservative advocacy group, to the role of US ambassador to the Vatican. In his statement, Trump claimed that Burch had helped deliver him more Catholic votes than any other presidential candidate.

Both allies and critics of Francis say the appointments set the stage for conflict between the Vatican and Trump’s Washington, at a time when rightwing and far-right Catholics – from Leonard Leo to Steve Bannon – wield significant influence in the US capital. It was noted, too, that Francis chose 6 January, the anniversary of the Trump-inspired insurrection on the Capitol, to make the announcement.

“McElroy is incredibly polished intellectually. He is a thinker. He is a quiet man and he can say the strongest things against a certain kind of immigration policy with a soft voice. He’s courageous,” said Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology and religious studies, who noted that McElvoy was one of closest officials to Francis in North America.

“He is Francis’s voice in many ways, and being in Washington DC elevates his voice. It is the place where power is brokered, and not just at the White House. In the Congress and the supreme court,” Faggioli added.

Those corridors of power have increasingly been influenced by rightwing Catholics who are opposed to Francis’s agenda. The most prominent politicians who support him are losing influence and power, from Joe Biden to Nancy Pelosi. Both are devout Catholics.

Steve Bannon, the Christian nationalist Trump adviser, who is also Catholic, said Francis’s choice of McElroy showed he was on a “collision course” with the incoming White House over one of Trump’s main agenda items.

“The whole process of deportations will begin when President Trump takes his hand off the King James Bible,” Bannon told the Guardian. “Immediately you are going to have the Vatican, through their cardinal, trying to confront this.

Bannon, who lives in Washington DC, said he believed the Catholic church and affiliated charities could face criminal investigations by the DoJ for their role in facilitating what Bannon and other rightwing leaders of the Maga movement have called an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants into the US. “I believe this will lead to the actual technical bankrupty of the church,” he said. McElroy, he added, “is a player, not some shrinking violet”.

Bannon is not the only Maga hardliner to show contempt for church practices. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has previously said that Satan was “controlling the church” and has repeated rightwing claims that Catholic charities are being enriched by US government contracts to help migrants.

In his first press conference last Monday, McElroy said a “wider, indiscriminate, massive deportation across the country would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine”.

It is far from clear whether Trump’s DoJ or judges would find Catholic charity groups liable for helping undocumented immigrants. Texas attorney general Paxton’s efforts to shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House has so far been rejected by lower courts but the case will be heard before the state’s supreme court today.

The issue could get complicated even for some rightwing judges because Annunciation House has argued that its service of immigrants is an issue of religious liberty, a principle frequently cited in conservative legal complaints.

Jerome Wesevich, who represents Annunciation House, said the most fundamental principle of Christianity – loving thy neighbor – was at stake.

“We’re not talking about getting new people in the country, we are trying to make sure people are served and not out on the streets. People can demagogue it but we are trying to serve the people in front of us,” he said.

Just as some supporters of Francis believed McElroy was a pick that seemed too good to be true, Bannon praised the appointment of Brian Burch to represent the US in the Holy See. The job has traditionally gone to major donors but not political operatives. Even the choice of Calista Gingrich, the wife of former House speaker Newt Gingrich, was not seen as too controversial.

Bannon said he believed the choice of Burch was connected to Leonard Leo, the rightwing Catholic activist who has almost singlehandedly turned the supreme court into a rightwing power base. A non-profit linked to Leo has donated more than $1m to Burch’s CatholicVote group.

Burch has previously criticized Francis for his 2023 decision to allow priests to bless same-sex unions, and has accused the pope of governing with a “pattern of vindictiveness”. He has previously suggested the pope would not be serving in his position for too much longer given his advanced age. It is not clear whether the remarks could lead to the Vatican rejecting Burch’s appointment, but observers noted that it was possible.

In 2023, Francis remarked on his critics in the US, saying he faced a “very strong, organized, reactionary attitude” against him.

Vatican watchers are now wondering whether Francis has another possible maneuver in mind that would shape the other high-profile archdiocese: this time in Trump’s native home state of New York, where Cardinal Timothy Dolan – who is seen as an ally of Trump and has said the president-elect “takes his Christian faith seriously” – will be reaching retirement age in February.

If Francis wants to pack a punch, the US could soon see another cardinal who is politically aligned with the Argentine pontiff move to New York City.

Ryanair wants a limit of two alcoholic drinks at airports, as the airline released further details of legal action to recover €15,000 (£12,615) in costs related to a diversion it said was caused by an allegedly disruptive passenger.

The airline has called on European authorities to bring in new curbs on alcohol to stop passengers getting drunk before boarding a plane.

Airlines reserve the right to deny boarding to anyone they deem to be excessively intoxicated. However, Ryanair now wants airports to require boarding passes be shown when passengers purchase alcohol at airport bars and pubs as they are in duty free shops.

“We fail to understand why passengers at airports are not limited to two alcoholic drinks (using their boarding pass in exactly the same way they limit duty free sales), as this would result in safer and better passenger behaviour on board aircraft, and a safer travel experience for passengers and crews all over Europe,”the airline said on Monday.

“During flight delays, passengers are consuming excess alcohol at airports without any limit on purchase or consumption,” it added.

This month, Ryanair revealed it was suing an unidentified passenger for €15,000 in an effort to recover costs when the flight from Dublin to Lanzarote was redirected to Porto last April.

In its case against the individual, being brought in Irish courts, the airline is claiming €7,000 for hotel costs for 160 passengers and crew, €2,500 in landing and handling fees at the Portuguese airport and €1,800 in the cost of replacing the crew because of restrictions on flying hours.

Ryanair is also demanding the passenger cover €800 for excess fuel costs, €750 in loss of inflight sales and €2,500 in Portuguese legal fees.

The airline said: “None of these costs could have been incurred if this disruptive passenger had not forced a diversion to Porto”.

Aircraft crews already have the right not to serve alcohol to passengers but Ryanair is now looking for legal limits in airports across Europe where the airline operate 3,600 flights a day in 37 countries.

“It is time that EU authorities take action to limit the sale of alcohol at airports,” it said.

Most airports in Europe sell alcohol, with British airports offering a range of high street style pubs.

Ryanair staff claim the problem is not so much with passengers drinking on the plane but with those who get inebriated at an airport, seem under control when they get on board and then become unruly during a flight.

After the Lanzarote flight was diverted last year the airline launched legal action in Portugal but the Portuguese prosecution authorities ruled that because the aircraft and the passenger were Irish the case should be heard in Dublin.

“Ryanair is therefore taking a civil proceeding against this passenger in the Irish courts to recover these costs, which were incurred wholly and exclusively as a result of the disruptive passenger’s behaviour, which caused not just a diversion, but an overnight in Porto of over 160 passengers and six crew member and the operating aircraft,” said the airline.