Israel’s cabinet is reportedly preparing to meet to ratify a widely anticipated ceasefire deal with Hamas over Gaza, amid rightwing threats to bring Benjamin Netanyahu’s government down if it agrees to the hostages-for-prisoners agreement.

Mediators in Doha have been reported to be on the brink of a deal for the past two days, with varying accounts circulated on who and what is to blame for the 11th-hour delays. Netanyahu’s office denied accounts saying that Hamas had accepted the bargain on the table in in the Qatari capital.

Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, was expected to hold a press conference on Wednesday evening, adding to the air of expectation.

With anticipation of a deal rising, Netanyahu and his defence minister, Israel Katz, met one of the leading far-right figures in the coalition, the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich has been highly critical of proposed deals with Hamas and fellow hardline minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has asked him to join forces and pull their respective parties out of the coalition if the deal is agreed, potentially causing the government to fall.

However, unlike Ben-Gvir, public opinion polls suggest Smotrich could face political oblivion in the event of new elections, and political analysts point out he has more of an incentive to keep the Netanyahu coalition afloat. According to an Israeli television report, Smotrich presented Netanyahu with a list of conditions for his support, including a pledge to go back to war if Hamas emerges from the ruins still in control of the Gaza Strip, and to strictly limit the quantity of humanitarian aid allowed in.

The deal being finalised in Doha by US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators is reported to involve a phased ceasefire. In the first, 42-day phase, Hamas would release 33 hostages, including children, women – including female soldiers – and over-50s. In exchange, Israel would release 50 Palestinian prisoners for every Israeli female soldier released by Hamas, according to the Associated Press, and 30 for other hostages.

All fighting would pause during the first phase, and Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza’s cities to a buffer zone along the edge of the strip, the details of which are to be laid out in maps both sides have to sign off on. The 2.3 milllion Palestinians in Gaza would be allowed to return to their homes, moving freely between south and north Gaza, and an increased flow of aid would be allowed into Gaza, though the details of how much assistance there would be are unclear.

The second phase is designed be more comprehensive, with the remaining living hostages to be sent back and a corresponding ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, alongside a complete Israeli withdrawal from the strip. That is a step Netanyahu has been very reluctant to take, and the specifics of this second phase would be a subject of further negotiations, which would start 16 days into the first phase.

The third phase would address the exchange of bodies of deceased hostages and Hamas members, and a reconstruction plan for Gaza would be launched, though how the strip would be governed remains hazy.

Officials in Doha said they were hopeful the remaining obstacles to a deal could be overcome late on Wednesday or early on Thursday, after 15 months of a war that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians and 1,700 Israelis, and over which the international court of justice is studying claims of genocide.

Israel’s cabinet is reportedly preparing to meet to ratify a widely anticipated ceasefire deal with Hamas over Gaza, amid rightwing threats to bring Benjamin Netanyahu’s government down if it agrees to the hostages-for-prisoners agreement.

Mediators in Doha have been reported to be on the brink of a deal for the past two days, with varying accounts circulated on who and what is to blame for the 11th-hour delays. Netanyahu’s office denied accounts saying that Hamas had accepted the bargain on the table in in the Qatari capital.

Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, was expected to hold a press conference on Wednesday evening, adding to the air of expectation.

With anticipation of a deal rising, Netanyahu and his defence minister, Israel Katz, met one of the leading far-right figures in the coalition, the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich has been highly critical of proposed deals with Hamas and fellow hardline minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has asked him to join forces and pull their respective parties out of the coalition if the deal is agreed, potentially causing the government to fall.

However, unlike Ben-Gvir, public opinion polls suggest Smotrich could face political oblivion in the event of new elections, and political analysts point out he has more of an incentive to keep the Netanyahu coalition afloat. According to an Israeli television report, Smotrich presented Netanyahu with a list of conditions for his support, including a pledge to go back to war if Hamas emerges from the ruins still in control of the Gaza Strip, and to strictly limit the quantity of humanitarian aid allowed in.

The deal being finalised in Doha by US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators is reported to involve a phased ceasefire. In the first, 42-day phase, Hamas would release 33 hostages, including children, women – including female soldiers – and over-50s. In exchange, Israel would release 50 Palestinian prisoners for every Israeli female soldier released by Hamas, according to the Associated Press, and 30 for other hostages.

All fighting would pause during the first phase, and Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza’s cities to a buffer zone along the edge of the strip, the details of which are to be laid out in maps both sides have to sign off on. The 2.3 milllion Palestinians in Gaza would be allowed to return to their homes, moving freely between south and north Gaza, and an increased flow of aid would be allowed into Gaza, though the details of how much assistance there would be are unclear.

The second phase is designed be more comprehensive, with the remaining living hostages to be sent back and a corresponding ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, alongside a complete Israeli withdrawal from the strip. That is a step Netanyahu has been very reluctant to take, and the specifics of this second phase would be a subject of further negotiations, which would start 16 days into the first phase.

The third phase would address the exchange of bodies of deceased hostages and Hamas members, and a reconstruction plan for Gaza would be launched, though how the strip would be governed remains hazy.

Officials in Doha said they were hopeful the remaining obstacles to a deal could be overcome late on Wednesday or early on Thursday, after 15 months of a war that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians and 1,700 Israelis, and over which the international court of justice is studying claims of genocide.

More than 6 million people in southern California remained in danger of life-threatening wildfires on Wednesday as weather officials in Los Angeles issued fresh warnings about more extreme winds set to blast the parched region and four blazes still burned fiercely.

The deadly Palisades fire in the western suburbs of Los Angeles – the largest of the four wildfires – was still only 18% contained on Wednesday morning, more than a week after it ignited, and has destroyed thousands of properties and killed residents. The Eaton fire, the next largest fire, in the Altadena area in north-eastern LA county, was only 35% contained with 14,100 acres burned. Firefighters were also struggling to put out two smaller fires, the persistent Hurst fire in north Los Angeles and the newer Auto fire, in Ventura county.

The authorities warned of a “particularly dangerous situation”. Such a warning, usually rare, has been issued three times this season as southern California has been suffering through a long drought and now faces the return of hurricane-strength gusts as the seasonal Santa Ana winds blast westwards from inland.

As of Tuesday, 88,000 people remained under evacuation orders, with another 84,000 at risk of being placed under new orders should the fires spread. Officials raised the official death toll on Tuesday to 25 people – 18 from the Eaton fires and seven from the Palisades fire. That number is expected to rise as crews strive to reach some of the burnt wreckage across many square miles, with huge swaths still ablaze.

The last significant rain in Los Angeles was in early May last year, when the city’s downtown saw just 0.13in of rain, according to the Los Angeles Times. The lack of moisture in the area, along with the winds, is a recipe for dangerous wildfire conditions.

“Any kind of red flag warning is dangerous. But there’s a gradient even within that range of situations, and so we wanted a way to message the extreme of the extremes. And the [‘particularly dangerous situation’ warning] is what came from that,” meteorologist Ryan Kittell told the LA Times.

Brief respite came on Tuesday, when winds were much tamer than what had been forecast, allowing firefighters to push forward efforts to contain the Palisades and Eaton fires. But forecasts say that extreme winds of 50mph to 70mph are possible in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura county until Wednesday night.

Estimates put economic losses due to the fire at between $250bn and $270bn, making it the costliest fire disaster in American history.

Erik Scott, fire captain of the LA fire department, told the LA Times on Tuesday that the wildfires are “the most devastating natural disaster to hit the Los Angeles area”.

“I’ve worked here for 20 years and I’ve never seen nor imagined devastation to be this extensive,” he said.

On Tuesday, Southern California Edison, the area’s largest electricity provider, shut off power for over 58,000 customers in Los Angeles and Ventura counties on Tuesday. The utility said more than 200,000 more customers could see their power shut off on Wednesday in anticipation of extreme winds.

The electricity provider has been under scrutiny in recent days as multiple lawsuits were filed against the company. Residents and business owners in neighborhoods close to the Eaton fire said they saw the base of a transmission tower on fire before the Eaton fire started.

The company has said it has received evidence preservation notices from insurance companies and noted that analysis of electrical circuit information showed no interruptions or anomalies around the time that the fire started.

In the year preceding the devastating Los Angeles county wildfires, big oil fiercely lobbied to kill a “polluter pay” bill that moved through the California senate and would have forced major fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate disasters.

Fossil-fuel industry lobbying in California spiked to record levels during the 2023-24 legislative session, and the polluter pay bill was among the most targeted pieces of legislation, a Guardian review of state lobby filings found.

The bill was included in about 76% of 74 filings last year from two top lobbying forces in the state – oil giant Chevron and the Western States Petroleum Association, the largest fossil-fuel trade group in California.

Chevron and Western States’ filings that included polluter pay totaled over $30m, although it is impossible to know spending levels for individual bills because lobbying laws do not require a breakdown. Others in the lobbying blitz included at least 34 of the world’s largest oil producers, industry trade groups, and a range of greenhouse gas-polluting companies such as Phillips 66 and Valero, records show.

The measure would have required the state’s largest carbon polluters to pay into a fund that would be used to prevent disasters or help cover cleanup efforts. The effort to thwart it leaves taxpayers for now shouldering much of the cost of catastrophes in part fueled by big oil’s pollution.

“The latest fire shows exactly how Californians are paying for climate destruction, not just with budget dollars, but with their lives, and it shows exactly why we need … to put the cost back on polluters” said Kassie Siegel, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, which has lobbied in support of the bill.

The legislation, called the Polluters Pay Climate Cost Recovery Act of 2024, has new life in the wake of the Los Angeles catastrophe, its supporters say, but the industry is already mobilizing. On the day after the wildfires started, Western States launched an ad campaign implying such measures would force them to increase oil prices.

Western States and Chevron did not respond to requests from the Guardian for comment.

The Los Angeles fires as of Tuesday had killed at least 25 people and burned 12,000 structures, making the crisis the second most destructive wildfire event in California. In terms of economic damage, many expect it to surpass the deadly 2018 Camp fire that destroyed Paradise and nearly 19,000 structures.

Though the wildfires’ impact on the state budget is unclear, the 2018 California fire season caused nearly $150bn in damage to the US economy, peer-reviewed research found. Meanwhile, the fossil-fuel industry’s efforts to kill the polluter pay bills come as California faces a $32bn budget shortfall – a figure expected to grow in the fires’ wake.

By contrast, Chevron recorded $30bn in profits in 2023, the last full year for which figures are available, and enacted a $75bn stock buyback program designed to enrich its executives and investors. Big oil’s top producers and trade groups spent over $80m lobbying in California last session, records show.

Just 57 companies are thought to be responsible for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions.

They are “desperately trying to avoid accountability”, said Meghan Sahli-Wells, a former mayor of Culver City, which is about seven miles from the nearest fire and holds several high burn risk areas.

“Accountability is an existential threat to their business model, and their business model is an existential threat to all of us, and that’s the bottom line,” added Sahli-Wells, who is now with Elected Officials To Protect America, a progressive environmental advocacy group.

The legislation would have effectively created a tax for fossil fuel producers and a “climate superfund” that would help cover climate disaster costs. The state would identify the biggest greenhouse gas polluters who emitted more than 1bn metric tons between 2000 and 2020, which would include about 40 companies.

After determining its climate costs, the state would divide that figure among the polluters. A legislative analysis estimated it could generate tens of billions of dollars annually, which would be put in a “Polluters Pay Climate Fund” and dispersed as needed.

The bill would have required two-thirds approval in the legislature because it is a tax, but it never made it to the floor for a vote because of a lack of support, especially among Republicans and centrist Democrats, those familiar with the issue say.

Still, the bill passed three committees, and though the industry ultimately derailed it, that achievement has supporters feeling optimistic.

The industry lobbyist pressure on lawmakers to oppose the legislation was intense, state senator Henry Stern, a bill co-author, told the Guardian. Stern said they argued that the law would lead to higher energy prices, and also threatened to shut down refineries. They also contended that they are already being “taxed” on carbon emissions in the state’s cap-and-trade program, so they should not have to pay a new fee.

“It’s been a pretty combative conversation,” Stern said. He added that some Democrats shared oil companies’ concern about being taxed twice, but he said the current carbon pricing program aims to mitigate emissions and largely uses tax revenue to push the state toward clean energy.

The polluter pay bill is something else entirely. It would pay for damages caused by the pollution, which the carbon pricing does not cover, and is a major strain on the state budget, Stern said. The federal government helps cover costs, but a hostile incoming Trump administration may not, he added.

“When the next flood or fire hits, and the federal government plays politics – do we have a back-up plan other than bankruptcy or gutting the education budget to pay for a fire ravaged state?” Stern asked. Frequent disasters are pushing the insurance market to the brink of collapse, and that may help pick up some moderate Democrat and GOP support for a bill, he added.

But potential new polluter pay legislation may not look the same as last session. Instead of functioning as a tax, it may include a trigger which would require companies to help cover the costs in the event of a disaster, instead of continuously paying into a fund, Stern said. That would eliminate the need for two-thirds approval in the legislature.

Moreover, the effort got a “major boost” last week when the state of New York enacted a similar “climate superfund” bill, Siegel said.

Though the industry successfully killed the California bill, several measures it opposed in recent years, like a ban on fracking, anti-price gouging measures, and limits on oil wells, have all passed over big oil’s objections, Siegel added.

But the industry appears to be mobilizing to head off any such effort. Though the social-media ad campaign launched by Western States on 8 January, does not specifically mention the polluter pay bill, it echoes the 2024 campaign that did.

One ad reads “California needs energy policies that balance affordability, reliability, and sustainability – not ones that make life harder” and urges readers to contact their legislator.

Western States’ decision to run the ads as the disaster ignited is “gobsmacking”, said Duncan Meisel of Clean Creatives, a campaign to convince advertisers to cut ties with the fossil fuel industry that first reported the industry’s ads.

“I’m normally pretty measured about this stuff because I understand that it’s hard to run an agency, but this is despicable,” Meisel said. “It’s absolutely wrong.”

Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, is expected to face scrutiny about her ability to resist political interference from the White House on Wednesday as she appears before the Senate judiciary committee for the first day of her confirmation hearing.

The hearing at 9.30 am comes at a crunch time for the department, which has faced unrelenting criticism from Trump after its prosecutors charged him in two federal criminal cases and is about to see Trump’s personal lawyers in those cases take over key leadership positions.

Bondi, the first female Florida attorney general and onetime lobbyist for Qatar, was not on the legal team defending Trump in those federal criminal cases. But she has been a longtime presence in his orbit, including when she worked to defend Trump at his first impeachment trial.

She also supported Trump’s fabricated claims of election fraud in 2020, which helped her become Trump’s nominee for attorney general almost immediately after Matt Gaetz, the initial pick, withdrew as he found himself dogged by a series of sexual misconduct allegations.

That loyalty to Trump has raised hackles at the justice department, which prides itself on its independence from White House pressure and recalls with a deep fear how Trump in his first term ousted top officials when they stopped acquiescing to his demands.

Trump replaced his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, after he recused himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia and, later, soured on his last attorney general, Bill Barr, after he refused to endorse Trump’s false 2020 election claims.

Bondi is also expected to be questioned about her prosecutorial record as the Florida attorney general and possible conflicts of interest arising from her most recent work for the major corporate lobbying firm Ballard Partners.

During her tenure as Florida attorney general, in 2013, Bondi’s office received nearly two dozen complaints about Trump University and her aides have said she once considered joining a multi-state lawsuit brought on behalf of students who claimed they had been cheated.

As she was weighing the lawsuit, Bondi’s political action committee received a $25,000 contribution from a non-profit funded by Trump. While Trump and Bondi both deny a quid pro quo, Bondi never joined the lawsuit and Trump had to pay a $2,500 fine for violating tax laws to make the donation.

As the chair of Ballard’s corporate regulatory compliance practice, Bondi lobbied for major companies that have battled the justice department she will be tasked with leading, including in various antitrust and fraud lawsuits.

Bondi was a county prosecutor in Florida before successfully running for Florida attorney general in 2010 in part due to regular appearances on Fox News.

South Korea’s impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was arrested and questioned for hours over his ill-fated declaration of martial law last month, handing himself in after an early-morning standoff outside his official residence in Seoul.

His detention on Wednesday makes him the first sitting president in the country’s history to be arrested.

“I decided to respond to the CIO’s investigation – despite it being an illegal investigation – to prevent unsavoury bloodshed,” Yoon said in a statement, referring to the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) that is heading the criminal inquiry.

Officials from the CIO said Yoon refused to talk during two and a half hours of questioning and refused to be filmed. His presidential motorcade was seen leaving the CIO offices late on Wednesday evening. Yoon is expected to be held at Seoul Detention Centre, where other high-profile figures have previously spent time.

He can be held for questioning for up to 48 hours on the existing arrest warrant. Authorities must then decide whether to release him or seek a fresh warrant to detain him for up to 20 days.

Yoon’s supporters and those who oppose him have been protesting in the capital for days. While the president was being interrogated on Wednesday, an unidentified person set themselves on fire nearby, authorities said, adding that the man, in his 60s, was left severely burned and unconscious.

The CIO is an independent agency launched in 2021 to investigate officials including presidents and their family members. But it does not have the authority to prosecute the president and must refer cases to prosecutors for further action.

Yoon’s arrest is the latest chapter of a saga that has rocked South Korean politics and triggered concern among its international allies. Yoon claimed the rule of law had “completely collapsed” after his detention and described the investigation as “illegal”.

The operation to detain Yoon began in the early hours of Wednesday, with investigators sealing off streets around the compound with police buses and thousands of officers deployed.

An unarmed team of investigators from the CIO and police officers tried to enter the residential compound but were blocked by unidentified personnel at the entrance gate, according to witnesses.

TV footage showed about 20 people believed to be investigators then climbing ladders into Yoon’s residential compound. Images showed scores of officers with “police” and “CIO” marked on their backs inside the compound.

Investigators also attempted to enter the residence via a mountain hiking trail, according to Yonhap News TV.

Investigators were involved in clashes with those defending the residence. Video footage showed investigating officers from the CIO trying to push through a crowd of Yoon’s supporters gathered outside his hillside villa in Seoul.

The investigating officials said they would detain anyone who tried to block their execution of a new warrant, Yonhap news agency reported. Police denied reports that they had arrested the acting head of the presidential guard.

At least one person was injured during the standoff. They were transported from the scene by fire authorities.

Investigators were seeking to execute a warrant for Yoon’s arrest over allegations that his declaration of martial law amounted to insurrection – a crime that can come with life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

Yoon has been holed up inside his Hannam-dong residence, protected by an armed security detail, since his impeachment in mid-December.

Earlier, there were fears that the latest attempt to arrest Yoon could end in a repeat of a tense standoff earlier this month, when investigators were blocked from detaining the suspended president by the presidential security service.

Crowds of Yoon supporters, most of them elderly, gathered near the residence gates and around makeshift stages hosting speeches describing the arrest warrant “fake” and calling for the arrest of the opposition leader Lee Jae-myung.

Braving the freezing early morning, many held up red light sticks, US flags and banners in both Korean and English, including “Stop the steal” and “CCP out”, embracing unfounded claims of electoral manipulation and alleged Chinese interference – despite the fact that no major election observers or courts have raised concerns about last April’s parliamentary vote in which the opposition secured a decisive victory.

Nearby, a smaller group of pro-impeachment protesters, kept apart from Yoon’s supporters by a police cordon, was chanting: “Enter! Enter! Arrest him!”

Activists on both sides had set up tea stations and were distributing heat packs.

Yoon’s short-lived imposition of martial law plunged South Korea into its worst political crisis in decades after he sent soldiers to storm parliament, shaking the vibrant east Asian democracy and briefly sending it back to the dark days of military rule.

Despite its name, the Seoul Detention Centre where he is expected to be held is in the city of Uiwang, 14 miles (22km) south of Seoul. If Yoon stays there he will probably be kept in a solitary cell bigger and better appointed than the standard 6.56 sq metre single cells. But in other ways he will be treated like any other detainee, rising at 6.30am, with lights out at 9pm.

South Korea’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has been arrested amid a huge police presence outside his official residence in the capital, Seoul. Officials from the Corruption Investigation Office had for weeks been seeking his arrest over insurrection allegations connected to his short-lived declaration of martial law in early December.

After their first attempt to execute an arrest warrant was abandoned in early January amid a standoff with Yoon’s security detail, investigators returned to his residence on Wednesday backed by an estimated 3,000 police officers.

The UK government will not sign off a deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius until Donald Trump’s administration has had a chance to consider the future of the joint military base, Downing Street has confirmed.

Allies of the US president-elect have been critical of the deal because of the implications for the strategically important Diego Garcia base, with concerns that it could bolster Chinese interests in the Indian Ocean.

Ministers had previously been hoping to secure an agreement with Mauritius over the islands’ future before Trump is sworn into office next Monday.

However, when asked about reports the Mauritian government was seeking further talks, Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson said: “We will only agree to a deal that is in the UK’s best interests and protect our national security. It is obviously now right that the new US administration has the chance to consider this and discuss this once they are in office … It’s perfectly reasonable for the new US administration to have a chance to consider the detail.”

The spokesperson dismissed suggestions Trump would have a “veto” on the deal, after the Mauritian government was reported to have hosted a special cabinet meeting to discuss the latest proposals. The Mauritian government is seeking further concessions, and rather than signing the deal off, has sent a delegation back to London for more negotiations.

The UK plans to hand over its final African colony to Mauritius while leasing back the Diego Garcia base, which is used by the US, at a reported cost of £90m a year for 99 years. The UK government argues that international court rulings in favour of Mauritian sovereignty mean a treaty settling the future of the archipelago is the only way to guarantee the continued operation of the base.

The Labour administration reached an agreement with Mauritius, but a change of government there and Trump’s election in the US have stalled progress. Discussions about the deal originally began under the Conservatives.

Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, and Mike Waltz, the incoming national security adviser, have both been critical of the plan and are understood to be following the issue closely. Joe Biden, however, was supportive.

Starmer defended the deal during Commons clashes with the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch. “We inherited a situation where the long-term operation of a vital military base was under threat because of legal challenge,” he said.

“The negotiations were started under the last government. The then foreign secretary came to this house to say why he was starting negotiations and what he wanted to achieve. He said the aim was to ‘ensure the continued effective operation of the base’. That is precisely what this deal has delivered.”

Badenoch said the prime minister was “negotiating a secret deal to surrender British territory, and taxpayers in this country will pay for the humiliation”.

Asked whether her party, which started the talks, were “part of the problem”, Badenoch’s spokesperson later said: “Starting the negotiations is not the error, it is the current status of the negotiations. She knew when to walk away from a bad deal, and clearly what Labour are currently negotiating is a bad deal. There is an ongoing issue, which is why the previous government started the talks, but the current deal is not fit for purpose.”

The UK government will not sign off a deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius until Donald Trump’s administration has had a chance to consider the future of the joint military base, Downing Street has confirmed.

Allies of the US president-elect have been critical of the deal because of the implications for the strategically important Diego Garcia base, with concerns that it could bolster Chinese interests in the Indian Ocean.

Ministers had previously been hoping to secure an agreement with Mauritius over the islands’ future before Trump is sworn into office next Monday.

However, when asked about reports the Mauritian government was seeking further talks, Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson said: “We will only agree to a deal that is in the UK’s best interests and protect our national security. It is obviously now right that the new US administration has the chance to consider this and discuss this once they are in office … It’s perfectly reasonable for the new US administration to have a chance to consider the detail.”

The spokesperson dismissed suggestions Trump would have a “veto” on the deal, after the Mauritian government was reported to have hosted a special cabinet meeting to discuss the latest proposals. The Mauritian government is seeking further concessions, and rather than signing the deal off, has sent a delegation back to London for more negotiations.

The UK plans to hand over its final African colony to Mauritius while leasing back the Diego Garcia base, which is used by the US, at a reported cost of £90m a year for 99 years. The UK government argues that international court rulings in favour of Mauritian sovereignty mean a treaty settling the future of the archipelago is the only way to guarantee the continued operation of the base.

The Labour administration reached an agreement with Mauritius, but a change of government there and Trump’s election in the US have stalled progress. Discussions about the deal originally began under the Conservatives.

Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, and Mike Waltz, the incoming national security adviser, have both been critical of the plan and are understood to be following the issue closely. Joe Biden, however, was supportive.

Starmer defended the deal during Commons clashes with the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch. “We inherited a situation where the long-term operation of a vital military base was under threat because of legal challenge,” he said.

“The negotiations were started under the last government. The then foreign secretary came to this house to say why he was starting negotiations and what he wanted to achieve. He said the aim was to ‘ensure the continued effective operation of the base’. That is precisely what this deal has delivered.”

Badenoch said the prime minister was “negotiating a secret deal to surrender British territory, and taxpayers in this country will pay for the humiliation”.

Asked whether her party, which started the talks, were “part of the problem”, Badenoch’s spokesperson later said: “Starting the negotiations is not the error, it is the current status of the negotiations. She knew when to walk away from a bad deal, and clearly what Labour are currently negotiating is a bad deal. There is an ongoing issue, which is why the previous government started the talks, but the current deal is not fit for purpose.”

Europe must “take responsibility” for its own security, Poland has told its fellow EU member states, as Warsaw takes over the rotating presidency of the bloc at a time of increasing geopolitical uncertainty.

Poland has started its six-month presidency as Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House having promised to bring a negotiated end to Russia’s war in neighbouring Ukraine and threatened to seize Greenland using military force.

“There is awareness among European countries that the next few months will be a very difficult time … That’s why we think that this particular moment is the right time to say loudly that it’s time to take responsibility for our future and our security,” said Poland’s Europe minister, Adam Szłapka, in an interview with the Guardian at the foreign ministry building in Warsaw.

“Security is something that we need to think about every day,” he said, adding that Poland defined European security in broad terms. “It’s not only about strengthening our defence industry capabilities. It’s also about internal security … about energy security and economic security.”

Poland has taken on the bloc’s rotating presidency before, but the country and the continent are experiencing a very different moment to that in 2011 when Warsaw was first in charge. Then, Poland had been an EU member for less than a decade; now, the country is one of the key European players in the response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Poland’s historical experience with Russia has made it a longstanding hawk when it comes to European policy towards Moscow, and after years of being dismissed by many politicians in western Europe, Warsaw feels vindicated now that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has prompted a major rethink of Russia policy across most of the continent.

“We have never been naive in terms of Russia. We were always trying to convince our partners that Russia is a real threat for our stability, our democracy, institutions and the security of the European Union … We were signalling these things for many years and I think only now it became something completely obvious to other countries too,” said Szłapka.

Poland has taken over the rotating EU presidency from Hungary, where the longstanding leader, Viktor Orbán, has frequently clashed with Brussels and had a friendly policy towards Russia and Vladimir Putin. Orbán began the Hungarian rotating presidency with a visit to Moscow – which he described as a “peace mission” – that infuriated many in Kyiv and other European capitals.

“He attempted to conduct talks on behalf of the European Union and use the presidency as permission to do so. But actually that was not true. He didn’t discuss this visit with anyone,” said Szłapka, who called Hungary’s Russia policy “disturbing”.

Under the previous populist Polish government run by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, Poland and Hungary were close allies, but since Donald Tusk’s government took over in late 2023, relations between Warsaw have become increasingly strained. In December, Hungary granted political asylum to the former deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski, who is wanted in Poland on criminal charges relating to his time in office.

“It was not a move we would consider very friendly,” said Szłapka, of the asylum decision. In response, the Hungarian ambassador was disinvited from a celebratory gala in Warsaw to mark the start of the Polish EU presidency earlier this month.

Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room is Trump. Polish officials are comfortable calling out the threat from Russia, but much more careful about talking about the potential uncertainty of Trump’s possible moves on Ukraine and threatening statements towards Greenland.

The Polish presidency’s list of priorities includes fighting disinformation, but this seems mainly directed at Moscow, rather than at Elon Musk and US social media giants. What should a security-minded nation do when some of the threats appear to be coming from a key ally?

It was too early to say, said Szłapka. “Now we are just talking about some statements and communication coming from President Trump’s team, we are not observing their actions yet. So it’s not a good time to speculate on what Trump presidency would look like. We are waiting for the inauguration, for his first official statements as president.”

Tusk has said previously that the “time for outsourcing our security is over”, and as a leading spender on defence as a proportion of GDP, Poland will at least be well placed to talk to Trump. He has long demanded that Europe spend more money on its own defence and recently called on Nato members to dramatically increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP.

How relations evolve with the Trump administration may end up being the most important aspect of Poland’s six months in charge, and as a staunchly pro-American country which has traditionally had good relations with both Republican and Democratic presidents, its government will be doing everything to push for a positive dynamic.

“The better the relations are between the European Union and the United States, the safer this part of the world is,” said Szłapka.

Donald Trump’s desperate legal battles to block a damaging special counsel report about his efforts to subvert his 2020 election loss and his sentencing for a 34-count felony conviction in New York ultimately failed, but former prosecutors say they nevertheless reveal his continual disdain for the rule of law and his penchant for rewriting history.

One area where that may imminently play out, as Trump prepares to return to the White House, is with his repeated pledge to issue “major pardons” to participants in the 6 January 2021 assault on the Capitol in Washington.

Trump and many of his allies have repeatedly sought to rewrite the events of January 6 as merely an enthusiastic protest by patriots, rather than an attempt to prevent Joe Biden’s legitimate election win being certified, underscoring Trump’s aversion to truth telling about the insurrection, critics say.

With Trump poised to take office, his lawyers scrambled in vain – and lost – an appeal to the supreme court – to stop a New York judge from sentencing him on 10 January with no penalty for falsifying records to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments in 2016 to a porn star who alleged an affair with him, making Trump the first felon to be elected president.

Trump’s lawyers have spent days battling aggressively in the courts – with some success thus far – to halt the release of a two-part report by the special counsel Jack Smith detailing federal charges relating to Trump’s moves to thwart his 2020 defeat, and charges that Trump improperly took a large cache of classified documents with him after he left office.

A Florida federal judge appointed by Trump blocked the release of Smith’s report on both federal cases for days, but on Monday dropped her objections to the justice department releasing Smith’s report on Trump’s drive to overturn his 2020 defeat.

The department’s Tuesday release of that report dealt a major rebuke to the incoming president. Smith stressed that his office remained “fully behind” the prosecution’s merits, and its belief that it would have won the case if it went to trial as originally intended last year.

Although the 137-page report contained few new details, it provided a strong historical account of Smith’s two-year investigation, which included grand-jury testimony from over 55 witnesses and voluntary interviews with more than 250 individuals, and stressed Trump’s multiple attempts to illegally thwart his loss.

The report highlighted Trump’s repeated promotion of “demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false” assertions about his 2020 election loss, which were integral to Trump’s pressure tactics and which helped fuel the January 6 attack.

Smith stressed that “but for Mr Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial”.

Trump, who has repeatedly denied all the charges, condemned Smith at 2am on Tuesday on Truth Social as a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election”.

The case was slated for trial last year but short-circuited by a much criticized supreme court ruling that barred prosecutions for a president’s “official acts”. It was dropped after Trump’s election victory, since sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.

The justice department’s release of the election subversion report by Smith, who resigned – as was expected – as special counsel on Friday, days before Trump takes office, is seen by legal experts as important for the historical record by summing up the election subversion case against Trump.

On another legal battleground, Trump has pledged that in his “first hour” in office he will make “major pardons” for some of the 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists – who he has called “patriots” – charged in the Capitol attack, despite strong concerns from legal experts that such pardons would hurt the criminal justice system. According to the US justice department, about 1,000 people have pleaded guilty to felonies or misdemeanors.

Legal critics worry, too, about potential violence and damage to the rule of law spurred by Trump’s drumbeat of dangerous threats to exact revenge against political foes, including Smith and the former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who led a House panel’s hearings into the Capitol attack.

Trump has repeatedly called the federal and New York cases against him “witch-hunts” and examples of “lawfare” that he portrays in conspiratorial terms as politically driven by Democrats.

But ex-prosecutors and legal scholars say Trump’s legal gymnastics to block his sentencing and Smith’s election subversion report, plus his promised pardons and talk of revenge, undermine the rule of law and are desperate attempts to rewrite history to avoid public stigmas.

“It is often said that we are a nation of laws and not men,” said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor for Michigan’s eastern district who now teaches law at the University of Michigan. “Trump seems to want us to be a nation of one man – Trump.”

McQuade added that what happens with “pardons for the Jan[uary] 6 defendants, Smith’s report on Trump’s retention of classified documents, and Trump’s call for revenge prosecutions will reveal whether the rule of law maintains its integrity”.

McQuade cautioned: “By promising to pardon the Jan[uary] 6 defendants and framing as wrongdoers the law enforcement officials who investigated him, Trump is attempting to rewrite history. As his former attorney general, William Barr, so cynically put it: ‘History is written by the winners.’”

Other former prosecutors concur that Trump has a long track record of retaliating against political critics.

“Trump’s narcissism compels him to attack anything or any person who portrays him negatively,” said Ty Cobb, a former justice department official who worked as a White House counsel during Trump’s first term. “Trump is all for transparency when it comes to the conduct of his enemies, but obstructs transparency in any form when it applies to him.”

Other justice department veterans have raised concerns about the dangers to the judicial system posed by Trump’s drive to block the release of Smith’s report and his New York sentencing.

“We shouldn’t be surprised at the unrelenting efforts by Trump to escape accountability for his conviction in the New York case,” said the former justice department inspector general Michael Bromwich. “That is what he does. But it is nothing short of mortifying that he came within one supreme court justice of nullifying the New York verdict.”

Bromwich said that the release of Smith’s election subversion report is “a pale substitute for a public trial, but a form of political and historical accountability”. Ironically, he noted that a few of Trump’s lawyers who “tried to bury the report of the special counsel” have been tapped by Trump for top posts in his justice department, where their jobs “will be to defend the special counsel regulations. Their arguments should be an interesting line of questioning during their confirmation hearings.”

Critics notwithstanding, Trump has launched withering personal and political attacks against the New York judge who sentenced him, and against Smith.

Although Juan Merchan only sentenced Trump to “unconditional discharge” with no jail time or probation, and allowed him to appear remotely at the hearing, Trump trashed the whole case against him.

“It was done to damage my reputation so I would lose the election, and obviously that didn’t work,” Trump said.

A week earlier, when Merchan announced the 10 January sentencing date, Trump lashed out, calling him “corrupt”, on his Truth Social platform, despite recent strong public warnings from the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, who, without mentioning Trump, decried mounting threats against judges and the judicial system.

And in apocalyptic fashion, Trump said the judge’s decision to sentence him “would be the end of the presidency as we know it”.

In a similarly conspiratorial and false vein before the release of Smith’s election subversion report, Trump attacked him on Truth Social last weekend, writing that “deranged Jack Smith was fired today by the DoJ”. Trump later endorsed and expanded an online post stating Smith should be “disbarred” and “ indicted”.

Such attacks have prompted legal critics to sound more alarms about Trump’s repeated threats to seek retribution against his political foes and to issue large-scale pardons when he assumes the presidency.

“It is a fundamental principle of our criminal justice system that we do not prosecute for the purpose of retribution,” said the former federal judge John Jones, who is now the president of Dickinson College. “Nor should charges be brought selectively,” stressing that these are “bedrock precepts”.

Likewise, Jones defended the fairness of the legal system that has led to 1,500 convictions and guilty pleas by January 6 defendants.

“Those who were prosecuted were given almost excessive due process,” he said, adding that blanket pardons would “signal to future insurrectionists that they can engage in violence impeding the operation of the government with impunity”.

Legal watchdogs, too, are concerned about Trump’s promised pardons.

“President Trump’s plan to pardon the January 6 attackers signals his intent to abuse his power. Pardoning loyalists for political violence is an action of an autocrat serving his own ends,” said Adav Noti, the executive director of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center.

Similarly, Bromwich warned of serious fallout if Trump “follows through on his pledge to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists, including those who assaulted police officers. If he does, it will be the most consequential abuse of the pardon power in American history.

“All the work of prosecutors, agents, judges and juries who were involved in those legitimate prosecutions will be for nought. Justice department officials who stand for the rule of law should do everything in their power to prevent it.”

The former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman, who now is a law professor at Columbia University, said he saw public benefits with Trump’s sentencing and the release of Smith’s election subversion report.

Richman said both “will be markers for history. Trump is now a convicted felon, the first to serve as president. And Smith’s report has laid out an account of criminal wrongdoing that only Trump’s successful delaying tactics prevented Smith from having a chance to prove up in court. Whether these are just time capsules or small moves toward accountability remains to be seen.”

Climate “whiplash” between extremely wet and dry conditions, which spurred catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, is increasing exponentially around the world because of global heating, analysis has found.

Climate whiplash is a rapid swing between very wet or dry conditions and can cause far more harm to people than individual extreme events alone. In recent years, whiplash events have been linked to disastrous floods in east Africa, Pakistan and Australia and to worsening heatwaves in Europe and China.

The research found that almost everywhere on the planet has experienced between 31% and 66% more whiplash events since the mid-20th century, as emissions from fossil fuel burning heated the atmosphere. The scientists said whiplash events would rise exponentially as heating continued, more than doubling if the world heats to 3C. Humanity is on track for 2.7C of heating.

The underlying cause for whiplash events is that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour. This means more torrential downpours when it rains but also more intense drought when it is dry, as the thirstier atmosphere sucks up more water from soil and plants. The experts liken the effect to a sponge absorbing water then releasing it when squeezed. As temperature rises, the atmospheric sponge gets larger at an even faster rate.

“The planet is warming at an essentially linear pace, but in the last five or 10 years there has been much discussion around accelerating climate impacts,” said Dr Daniel Swain at the California Institute for Water Resources. “This increase in hydroclimate whiplash, via the exponentially expanding atmospheric sponge, offers a potentially compelling explanation.”

“There is abundant evidence that increasing hydroclimate volatility will likely be a near-universal signature of climate change over global land area,” he said.

Prof Richard Allan, at the University of Reading, UK, and not part of the study team, said: “It is only by rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of society that we can limit the increasing severity of hot, dry and wet extremes, including conditions conducive to more potent wildfires.”

The new analysis, published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, assessed hundreds of previous studies to determine the trend of whiplash events. The LA fires are the latest example of whiplash, in which years of drought were followed by record-breaking winter rain and snow, leading to abundant grass and brush. Then a record-hot summer in 2024 and record-dry start to the rainy season, dried out the vegetation enabling the terrible wildfires.

In east Africa, drought left 20 million people short of food from 2020 to 2023, then in late 2023 torrential rains destroyed thousands of hectares of crops and displaced more than 2 million people from their homes.

Whiplash events increase the impact of floods, as hard dry ground struggles to absorb heavy rain, and can precipitate landslides, as dry land is suddenly drenched. They can also increase toxic algal blooms in water supplies, when high temperatures follow heavy rain, and cause surges in populations of disease carrying mosquitoes or rats.

“Increasingly rapid and large transitions between extreme wet and dry states are likely to challenge not only water and flood management infrastructure, but also disaster management, emergency response and public health systems that are designed for 20th-century extremes,” the researchers said.

They said the intensifying of cascading extreme weather impacts urgently needed to be incorporated into disaster planning and infrastructure design. For example, allowing rivers to access more of their natural floodplains slows the flow of water during wet periods and helps recharge aquifers for use during dry periods, as does making cities more permeable to rain by reducing the area covered by tarmac and concrete.

“This urgency is especially great in central and northern Africa, the Middle East and south Asia given the triple confluence of large projected increases in whiplash, very high population exposure and underlying socioeconomic factors that increase vulnerability in these regions,” they said.

Dr Kevin Collins, at the Open University, UK, said: “We have to stop thinking and planning as if weather events and climate are predictable and their pattern unchanging. Instead, we need to develop more systemic ways of understanding, planning and living in a climate changing world.”

Sir Brian Hoskins, at Imperial College London, UK, said: “It’s interesting to see the new paper’s findings that climate models likely underestimate the changes seen so far, but even those models suggest a doubling of the volatility for a global temperature warming of 3C – now looking increasingly likely that we’ll reach.”

From Neanderthals to royal courts, history seems awash with women upping sticks to join men’s families, but researchers have found that the tables were turned in Britain’s Celtic communities.

Researchers studying DNA from iron age individuals in Britain have found evidence that men moved to join their wives’ families – a practice known as matrilocality.

Dr Lara Cassidy, first author of the research from Trinity College Dublin said the findings challenged assumptions that most societies were patrilocal, with men staying put.

“Potentially there are periods in time where matrilocality is much more common and that has really important knock-on effects for how we view women in the past and their roles and their influences in society,” she said.

“There’s an awful habit that we still have when we look at women in the past to view them solely within the domestic sphere with little agency, and studies like this are highlighting that this is not the case at all. In a lot of societies today and in the past, women wield huge influence and huge power, and it’s good to remember that,” she said.

Writing in the journal Nature, archaeologists report how they studied the genomes of more than 50 individuals buried in a cluster of cemeteries in Dorset. Most of these individuals were associated with the Durotriges tribe, a Celtic group that occupied the central southern coast of Britain from about 100BC to AD100.

These sites have previously been of interest to experts, not only because iron age burials are rare but because the women tended to be buried with valuable items more often than the men.

“That is suggesting not much of a status difference between men and women, or even perhaps higher-status burials for women,” said Cassidy. “How that actually then translates into the role of women in the society, that’s hard to say. And that’s why genetic data adds another important dimension there.”

Cassidy and colleagues analysed DNA and mitochondrial DNA – genetic material from within the cells’ powerhouses – revealing that the majority of individuals were related to each other.

Crucially, many shared the same mitochondrial DNA – genetic material that is passed down only from mothers to their offspring. “They all were female-line descendants, [from the] same woman,” said Cassidy.

The team say this genetic evidence and modelling work suggest the community was matrilocal: in other words, the women stayed put, with men moving into the group to join their wives.

The conclusion was supported by considerable diversity in the Y chromosome of the men, with males showing significantly lower levels of genetic relatedness to other individuals, and by males being more likely to have different mitochondrial DNA than that which was widely shared.

The team then looked at DNA from other iron age burial sites across Britain, again finding signs of matrilocal communities. “It’s looking that this is quite widespread across the island by that period,” said Cassidy.

While the study does not reveal whether the iron age societies had tribal groupings organised specifically around the maternal line, or suggest there was a matriarchy, the results offer new insights into the communities.

“Matrilocality is a strong predictor of female social and political empowerment,” Cassidy said, noting that if the women stayed put, they were more likely to inherit, control land, be players in the local economy, and have influence.

Writing in an accompanying article, Dr Guido Alberto Gnecchi Ruscone from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said the findings echoed Roman writings that depicted Celtic women, such as Boudicca, as empowered figures.

“Although Roman writers often exoticised these societies,” he wrote, “the genetic evidence shown by Cassidy and colleagues validates some of their claims about the special role that women had in Celtic Britain.”