Russian diplomats accessed a private area of parliament in a major security breach just before Christmas that has alarmed security officials and prompted private warnings from the speakers of both houses, the Guardian understands.

The small group of diplomats joined a public tour of the Houses of Parliament and then broke off to enter a part of the House of Lords that was out of bounds, before they were found by security and thrown out.

“We suspect they were just wanting to crow to the Kremlin that they had infiltrated the British parliament. It’s not ideal but they were caught before any damage was done,” a parliamentary source said.

UK government ministers, however, were said to have been alarmed by the attempt to breach parliamentary security, which is understood to have occurred late last year.

As a result of the attempt, MPs and peers have been given a written warning not to invite Russian diplomats to parliament. It is unclear whether the group were on a guided tour sponsored by a politician, or if they requested one from the parliamentary visitors’ service.

The Russian ambassador, diplomats and officials based at the embassy in London have been banned from visiting parliament since 2022 when Moscow imposed sanctions on many MPs and peers after the invasion of Ukraine.

The Commons speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, and the Lords speaker, Lord McFall of Alcluith, on Thursday privately reminded MPs and peers that they should be cautious about Russian efforts to penetrate parliamentary security.

In separate letters, the speakers wrote: “With a number of new members joining the house recently, I would like to take this opportunity to remind colleagues of the ongoing arrangements which have been in place since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“As the formally accredited representative of the Russian government, the Russian ambassador should not be welcomed on to the parliamentary estate until further notice. This applies to all other Russian diplomats and officials at the Russian embassy accredited to the UK.”

A parliamentary spokesperson said: “The safety and security of all those who work and visit in parliament is our top priority. However, we cannot comment on our security measures.”

But the breach will once again raise questions about the security of parliament, which the Guardian understands comes under regular attempted attack by foreign powers.

Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, is one of two men due to stand trial for spying for China in breach of the Official Secrets Act this autumn. He pleaded not guilty at an earlier court hearing.

The government minister Pat McFadden, whose role includes responsibility for national security, warned in November that Russia was ready to carry out cyber-attacks on the UK and other allies in an attempt to weaken support for Ukraine.

The speakers’ joint warning came as Keir Starmer made his first visit to Kyiv as prime minister, saying the UK would support Ukraine “beyond this terrible war” and into a future where it is “free and thriving again”.

He added that “right now Putin shows no signs of wanting to stop” his “unrelenting aggression”. The point was dramatically underscored by a Russian drone flying over Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office in Kyiv while the two leaders were in the middle of talks. Loud booms were heard as Ukrainian air defences tried to shoot it down.

The Russian embassy has been approached for comment.

• Ukraine is to receive a new, rapidly developed bespoke air defence system called Gravehawk as part of the support announced by Keir Starmer as he visited Kyiv on Thursday. The system, roughly the size of a shipping container, has been developed by Britain and Denmark to allow the Ukrainians to shoot down aerial threats using retrofitted air-to-air missiles launched from the ground – meaning, according to the British government, that it can “use Ukrainian missiles already in their armed forces’ possession” to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. The British government revealed that two prototypes of Gravehawk were tested in Ukraine in September, with 15 to be sent this year.

• Ukraine’s military said on Thursday that it hit a large Russian depot for military fuel at Liskinska in the Voronezh region of Russia with drones, starting a “large-scale fire”. The governor of the Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev, confirmed that several drones “sparked a fire at an oil depot”. Videos posted by witnesses showed a substantial blaze.

• A major Russian gunpowder factory in the Tambov region was attacked, a Ukrainian official said on Thursday, without directly claiming Ukrainian responsibility or specifying the consequences of the attack. “The enterprise is one of the main suppliers of explosive materials for the army of the Russian Federation,” said Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s centre for countering disinformation.

• France and Norway will meet their commitments on schedule to deliver jet fighters to Ukraine, the two countries’ defence ministers said on Thursday in Oslo. Norway has promised Ukraine six US-made F-16s with deliveries spread out across 2024 and 2025, while France has said it will provide an unspecified number of Mirage 2000-5s during the first quarter of 2025.

• A Ukrainian brigade has used ground drones equipped with machine guns and mines to carry out what it claims is the first documented machine-only ground assault in the war with Russia. The Khartiia brigade said last month’s attack in the north-eastern Kharkiv region used assault, mine-laying and mine-clearing vehicles guided by aerial drones. The operation paved the way for a successful infantry advance, the brigade said. “They get as close to their [Russian] dugouts as possible and then explode,” a Ukrainian crew member explained to the Reuters news agency.

• Ukraine said on Thursday it had sentenced a former local official to 15 years behind bars on high treason charges for aiding Russian forces. Local media identified him as Oleksandr Kurpil, a deputy of the town of Trostianets in the Sumy region, and said he had been detained in May 2022.

• Russia’s rights ombudswoman said on Thursday that she had discussed with her Ukrainian counterpart the search for residents missing from Russia’s Kursk border region after Ukrainian troops seized territory there last August. Ukraine has said that about 2,000 civilians remain in territory it controls, while Russia has put the number reported missing at less than 1,000. Russian ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova called the talks “a big step towards strengthening trust and realising concrete joint actions”. Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets confirmed they “agreed to continue the mutual exchange of information regarding the search for missing persons among prisoners of war”.

• Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to slow to 2.7% this year from probably about 3.6% in 2024, deputy economy minister Andrii Teliupa said on Thursday. The forecast is below the 3-4% expected by most Ukrainian analysts and economists. Ukrainian businesses are suffering from staff shortages as tens of thousands of Ukrainian men have been mobilised into the army and millions of refugees remain abroad. Ukraine is also battling an energy crisis as Russia bombards the sector.

• A compensation scheme opened on Thursday for Ukrainians who have lost close relatives during Russia’s invasion. Thousands of requests for damages have already been received. The Register of Damages for Ukraine is based in The Hague and is designed to function as a record of all eligible claims seeking reparation for the damage, loss and injury over the Russian full-scale invasion. Created by the Council of Europe and joined by the EU, the register will ultimately work out a financial total with a view towards extracting reparations from Moscow.

• The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, are due to meet on Friday in Russia and sign a strategic cooperation agreement. Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, as saying the cooperation agreement would not include a mutual-defence clause like Moscow’s pacts with North Korea and Belarus. Ukraine said in 2024 that Russia had launched more than 8,000 Iran-developed Shahed drones since the invasion. Kyiv first accused Iran of supplying the drones to Russia in autumn 2022.

• Ukraine is to receive a new, rapidly developed bespoke air defence system called Gravehawk as part of the support announced by Keir Starmer as he visited Kyiv on Thursday. The system, roughly the size of a shipping container, has been developed by Britain and Denmark to allow the Ukrainians to shoot down aerial threats using retrofitted air-to-air missiles launched from the ground – meaning, according to the British government, that it can “use Ukrainian missiles already in their armed forces’ possession” to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. The British government revealed that two prototypes of Gravehawk were tested in Ukraine in September, with 15 to be sent this year.

• Ukraine’s military said on Thursday that it hit a large Russian depot for military fuel at Liskinska in the Voronezh region of Russia with drones, starting a “large-scale fire”. The governor of the Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev, confirmed that several drones “sparked a fire at an oil depot”. Videos posted by witnesses showed a substantial blaze.

• A major Russian gunpowder factory in the Tambov region was attacked, a Ukrainian official said on Thursday, without directly claiming Ukrainian responsibility or specifying the consequences of the attack. “The enterprise is one of the main suppliers of explosive materials for the army of the Russian Federation,” said Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s centre for countering disinformation.

• France and Norway will meet their commitments on schedule to deliver jet fighters to Ukraine, the two countries’ defence ministers said on Thursday in Oslo. Norway has promised Ukraine six US-made F-16s with deliveries spread out across 2024 and 2025, while France has said it will provide an unspecified number of Mirage 2000-5s during the first quarter of 2025.

• A Ukrainian brigade has used ground drones equipped with machine guns and mines to carry out what it claims is the first documented machine-only ground assault in the war with Russia. The Khartiia brigade said last month’s attack in the north-eastern Kharkiv region used assault, mine-laying and mine-clearing vehicles guided by aerial drones. The operation paved the way for a successful infantry advance, the brigade said. “They get as close to their [Russian] dugouts as possible and then explode,” a Ukrainian crew member explained to the Reuters news agency.

• Ukraine said on Thursday it had sentenced a former local official to 15 years behind bars on high treason charges for aiding Russian forces. Local media identified him as Oleksandr Kurpil, a deputy of the town of Trostianets in the Sumy region, and said he had been detained in May 2022.

• Russia’s rights ombudswoman said on Thursday that she had discussed with her Ukrainian counterpart the search for residents missing from Russia’s Kursk border region after Ukrainian troops seized territory there last August. Ukraine has said that about 2,000 civilians remain in territory it controls, while Russia has put the number reported missing at less than 1,000. Russian ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova called the talks “a big step towards strengthening trust and realising concrete joint actions”. Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets confirmed they “agreed to continue the mutual exchange of information regarding the search for missing persons among prisoners of war”.

• Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to slow to 2.7% this year from probably about 3.6% in 2024, deputy economy minister Andrii Teliupa said on Thursday. The forecast is below the 3-4% expected by most Ukrainian analysts and economists. Ukrainian businesses are suffering from staff shortages as tens of thousands of Ukrainian men have been mobilised into the army and millions of refugees remain abroad. Ukraine is also battling an energy crisis as Russia bombards the sector.

• A compensation scheme opened on Thursday for Ukrainians who have lost close relatives during Russia’s invasion. Thousands of requests for damages have already been received. The Register of Damages for Ukraine is based in The Hague and is designed to function as a record of all eligible claims seeking reparation for the damage, loss and injury over the Russian full-scale invasion. Created by the Council of Europe and joined by the EU, the register will ultimately work out a financial total with a view towards extracting reparations from Moscow.

• The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, are due to meet on Friday in Russia and sign a strategic cooperation agreement. Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, as saying the cooperation agreement would not include a mutual-defence clause like Moscow’s pacts with North Korea and Belarus. Ukraine said in 2024 that Russia had launched more than 8,000 Iran-developed Shahed drones since the invasion. Kyiv first accused Iran of supplying the drones to Russia in autumn 2022.

South Korea’s arrested president, Yoon Suk Yeol, will not attend a new round of questioning by investigators on Friday, his lawyer said, as authorities face an imminent deadline to obtain a warrant to extend his detention or release the embattled leader.

In order to hold Yoon in custody for longer, investigators are expected on Friday to ask a court to approve a detention warrant for up to 20 days, legal experts said.

On Wednesday, Yoon became the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested, over a probe into whether he committed insurrection when he briefly imposed martial law in early December. He is being held at the Seoul detention centre.

Although Yoon’s lawyers challenged the legality of his arrest, the Seoul Central district court struck down the challenge late on Thursday, ruling that the arrest was legal.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), which is leading the criminal probe, recalled Yoon for questioning on Friday, but his lawyer said the suspended president would not attend.

“He has fully stated his basic position on the first day (of the arrest), and we believe there is no reason or need to answer the Q&A style back-and-forth,” Yoon’s lawyer, Seok Dong-hyeon, said in a statement.

Yoon, who has stonewalled efforts to interrogate him, also refused to be questioned on Thursday.

Authorities have 48 hours to question the impeached president, after which they must release him or seek a warrant to detain him for up to 20 days.

The 48-hour countdown is expected to end on Friday evening after it was paused to allow a court to review the challenge to his arrest, Yonhap news agency said, citing the CIO.

Seok said on Friday that investigators were expected to seek a detention warrant, adding, “We hope that there will be more careful and comprehensive consideration” of the arrest’s “illegality” when a court reviews the warrant.

South Korea is grappling with its worst political crisis in decades, sparked by Yoon’s brief attempt to impose martial law on 3 December that was voted down by parliament.

While the US has criticised Yoon’s declaration of martial law, national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned last week there was a risk nuclear-armed North Korea could try to exploit the political situation in Seoul.

North Korea has largely avoided public comment on the situation in Seoul, but Yoon’s arrest was reported in state media on Friday, two days after the event.

The Rodong Sinmun newspaper cited foreign media to say it was the first arrest of an incumbent president in South Korea.

“Yoon Suk Yeol is not following legal procedures at the expense of the national order for individual interests,” the paper said.

In December, North Korean state news agency KCNA described Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law as an “insane” act that had unleashed a “dictatorship on the people”.

David Lynch, the maverick American director who sustained a successful mainstream career while also probing the bizarre, the radical and the experimental, has died aged 78.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” read a Facebook post. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.” It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

Last August, Lynch said he had been diagnosed with emphysema and in November, spoke further about his breathing difficulties. “I can hardly walk across a room,” he said. “It’s like you’re walking around with a plastic bag around your head.”

Deadline reported that sources had said Lynch’s health took a turn for the worse after he had to evacuate from his home due to the Los Angeles wildfires.

Lynch ploughed a highly idiosyncratic furrow in American cinema: from his beginnings as an art student making experimental short films, to the cult success of his surreal first feature Eraserhead, and on to a string of award-winning films including Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive, as well as the landmark TV show Twin Peaks. He received three best director Oscar nominations (for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive), and was given an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2019; he won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival for Wild at Heart in 1990.

Lynch also avidly practiced transcendental meditation, setting up the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in 2005; he also produced paintings, released albums (including collaborations with Julee Cruise, Lykke Li and Karen O), created a long-running YouTube weather report and opened a nightclub in Paris in 2011. In 2018 he explained his reclusive lifestyle to the Guardian: “I like to make movies. I like to work. I don’t really like to go out.” In 2024 he revealed his lifetime cigarette habit had resulted in debilitating emphysema.

Born in Missoula, Montana in 1946, Lynch went to art college in the 1960s and made his first experimental short, Six Men Getting Sick, while a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Lynch moved to Los Angeles in 1971 and studied film-making at the AFI Conservatory, where he began filming his first feature Eraserhead. Finally finishing it in 1976, the surreal black-and-white fable was received largely with bafflement, and rejected from most film festivals, but in the late 70s became something of a success on the late-night “midnight movie” circuit.

Eraserhead’s impact led to an offer from Mel Brooks’ production company to direct The Elephant Man; starring John Hurt in a biopic of Joseph Merrick, the film about the disfigured 19th-century man was nominated for eight Oscars and secured Lynch’s Hollywood status. After turning down an offer to direct Return of the Jedi, Lynch agreed to make an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel Dune, but the film was substantially recut in postproduction and proved a commercial and critical disaster. Instead of a planned Dune sequel, Lynch decided to make a more personal film: his dark noir thriller Blue Velvet was a cult hit and a hugely influential critical success on its release in 1986, and it resulted in Lynch’s second best director Oscar nomination.

Lynch then embarked on another noirish project, the opaque and surreal murder-mystery Twin Peaks that – unusually for notable film directors of the period – was envisioned as a TV series; Lynch developed it with former Hill Street Blues writer Mark Frost. A mix of small town comedy, police procedural and surreal dreamworld, and described as “the most hauntingly original work ever done for American TV”, Twin Peaks defied early predictions of failure on its broadcast in 1990; as a pioneer of “high-end TV” it is arguably Lynch’s most influential work. A second series was broadcast later in 1990, a feature film prequel Fire Walk With Me was released in 1992, and a third series launched more than a quarter of a century later in 2017.

As Twin Peaks went into production, Lynch began working on a feature film adaptation of Barry Gifford’s novel Wild at Heart, and cast Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern in the lead roles in a violent, haunting road movie with echoes of The Wizard of Oz. Wild at Heart premiered at Cannes in 1990 and won the Palme d’Or.

In 1997 Lynch began to edge back to his avant garde roots with Lost Highway, a surreal thriller starring Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette, which flopped at the box office. In complete contrast Lynch released The Straight Story in 1999, a bluntly straightforward story about an elderly man (played by Richard Farnsworth) who drives 240 miles across the country on a motorised lawnmower.

Lynch then embarked on another highly successful project: Mulholland Drive. Initially it appeared to go disastrously wrong, as Lynch had pitched it as a Twin Peaks-style TV series. A pilot was shot and then cancelled by TV network ABC. But the material was picked up by French company StudioCanal, who gave him the money to refashion it as a feature film. A noir-style mystery drama, it was another big critical success, secured Lynch a third best director Oscar nomination and in 2016 was voted the best film of the 21st century. Lynch followed it in 2006 with the three-hour surreal thriller Inland Empire, shot on video and starring Dern as an American movie star who appears to mysteriously transport into the Polish original of a film she is working on.

Thereafter Lynch appeared to step back from feature films, with only the third series of Twin Peaks in 2017 representing a big film-making project, although reports suggest he had been working on a series for Netflix. Lynch took acting roles in other people’s work, most notably as Gus the Bartender in Seth MacFarlane’s The Cleveland Show, and as legendary director John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s loosely autobiographical 2022 movie The Fabelmans.

Lynch was married four times and had a long-term relationship with his Blue Velvet star Isabella Rossellini.

Actors and directors have been paying tribute to the director David Lynch, who died this week at the age of 78.

The death of Lynch, whose works include Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, was announced by his family on Facebook earlier on Thursday. “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us,” they wrote. “But, as he would say: ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’”

Steven Spielberg, who cast Lynch as John Ford in his semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans praised him as “a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade” in a statement.

“The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice,” he wrote. “His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.”

Nicolas Cage, who starred in Lynch’s Wild at Heart, told Deadline that he was “one of the greatest artists of this or any time”. He continued: “He was brave, brilliant, and a maverick with a joyful sense of humor. I never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold.”

Kyle MacLachlan, who starred in Blue Velvet, Dune and Twin Peaks, wrote on Instagram that he owes “my entire career, and life really, to his vision”. He added: “While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I’ve lost a dear friend who imagined a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own.”

Naomi Watts, who starred in Mulholland Drive and the Twin Peaks reboot, wrote of his impact on her career. “My heart is broken. My Buddy Dave… The world will not be the same without him. His creative mentorship was truly powerful. He put me on the map,” she wrote, adding: “It wasn’t just his art that impacted me – his wisdom, humor, and love gave me a special sense of belief in myself I’d never accessed before.”

The Twin Peaks star Lara Flynn Boyle shared this statement with Deadline: “There goes the true Willy Wonka of film-making. I feel like I got the golden ticket getting a chance to work with him. He will be greatly missed.”

Laura Harring, who starred in Mulholland Drive, also paid tribute on Instagram. “All artists and humans who came across you, will mourn your passing on, but I know you are creating movies, writing, painting and meditating from up above,” she wrote.

Ron Howard called him “a gracious man and fearless artist who followed his heart & soul and proved that radical experimentation could yield unforgettable cinema”.

The Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn wrote that he “inspired so many of us” while Harmony Korine told Indiewire that he was “a once in a generation talent who absorbed the embers of America’s wildness”.

The film-maker Jane Schoenbrun, whose films I Saw the TV Glow and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair have been compared to those of Lynch, wrote: “He was the first to show me another world, a beautiful one of love and danger I sensed but had never seen outside sleep.”

A group of Greenlanders who attended a lunch hosted by Donald Trump Jr wearing Make America Great Again caps were not dedicated supporters of the US president-elect but homeless people enticed by the prospect of free food, it has been claimed.

Trump Jr visited the Greenlandic capital, Nuuk, last week, shortly after his father declared it was an “absolute necessity” for the US to take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

During his visit, Trump Jr went to the Hotel Hans Egede for lunch with a group of people wearing Maga hats and put his father on speakerphone. The president-elect told them: “We’re going to treat you well.”

But Jørgen Bay-Kastrup, the hotel’s chief executive, said many of his guests were not Trump supporters but people his team had met on the street who found out only later who Trump Jr was.

Describing many of the group as homeless people, he said Trump Jr “had just met them in the street and invited them for lunch, or his staff did. But I don’t think they knew who they were inviting”.

“That of course was a little bit strange to us because we saw guests that we have never seen in our hotel before – and will probably never see again because it’s out of their economical means.”

The group of about 15 people ate a traditional Greenlandic lunch including fish and caribou. They were not, Bay-Kastrup added, Trump supporters. “They were just, ‘hey, somebody invited us for lunch, let’s go and join him’. I think they found out later who it was.”

A spokesperson for Trump Jr denied the claims, describing them as “beyond the pale ridiculous”.

Trump Jr’s visit came as his father refused to rule out using military or economic action to acquire the world’s largest island.

Republicans in the House of Representatives have published a draft bill called the Make Greenland Great Again Act, which would allow the Trump administration, which takes office on Monday, to hold talks to attempt to purchase the territory.

Greenland and Denmark have repeatedly said that the island, whose foreign and security policy are controlled by Denmark, a Nato member, is not for sale. The Greenlandic prime minister has, however, said that his government is interested in deepening collaboration with the US and has its “doors open in terms of mining”.

Asked about Trump’s interest in Greenland, Bay-Kastrup, who is Danish, said: “We are not a trade, we are not something for sale. We would like to cooperate, but we are not for sale.”

Since Trump Jr’s visit, people dressed in Maga caps and American flags have reportedly been distributing $100 bills and filming it outside the supermarket opposite.

One man, Jacob Nordstrøm, was quoted in the Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq as saying his son, 11, had come home with a $100 bill. He told the paper, which described those handing out the money as Canadian-American influencers: “It’s really borderline shocking to find out that my 11-year-old son has received money from an adult he doesn’t know.”

Bay-Kastrup, who has witnessed the scenes from his office, said he thought most people probably found the stunt amusing, but that he had seen one person take a Maga cap and stamp on it.

In response to the Guardian’s request for comment about Trump Jr’s lunch guests, Arthur Schwartz, a political operative and friend of the president-elect’s son, said: “Do you think Donald Trump Jr was wandering around Greenland inviting homeless people … to lunch, or do you realise that the suggestion sounds so beyond the pale ridiculous that you should feel stupid even asking the question?

“There were cameras following him around from the second he got there to the second he left. Did they miss him recruiting homeless people … to his homeless person … lunch?”

Democrats are pressing Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, to use his last days in office to release the second volume of the special counsel’s report about Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents.

The demand comes after the justice department this week published the first part of Jack Smith’s report, which looked at the president-elect’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including inciting a violent mob to attack the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

That report concluded that Trump would have faced probable conviction had he not won the 2024 election, after which Smith – who resigned last week – dropped the case against him.

“It is in the public interest for the Department of Justice to expeditiously release the second volume of special counsel Smith’s report so the American people have as full an accounting as possible of Donald Trump’s lawless and criminal conduct,” said Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee.

The second volume is being withheld on the order of a US federal judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, on the basis that it would prejudice the case of two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who face charges of conspiring with Trump to hide a trove of documents from his first term as president at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The report is believed to detail Trump’s efforts to illegally withhold and conceal a large number of documents containing highly sensitive national security secrets after he removed them from the White House. They were eventually retrieved by FBI agents in 2022 after the justice department authorised a search of Trump’s home.

Cannon has scheduled a court hearing for Friday to consider the case for releasing or withholding the second volume.

Garland – who has been criticised by Democrats, including Joe Biden, for waiting too long to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump – has said he intends to keep the report secret while waiting for the case against Nauta and De Oliveira to play out – but with that case expected to be shelved after Trump’s incoming administration takes over the justice department next week, that would mean Smith’s charges would be unlikely to ever see the light of day.

Garland has suggested releasing the report just to House and Senate judiciary committee members for review.

But Democrats on the House judicial committee said that was insufficient and that a wider release to put the report in the public domain is essential.

“It is in the very nature of American democracy that the people have a right to know of the public actions of their public officials, and it is essential to the rule of law that Justice Department special counsel reports continue to be available and accessible to the public,” they wrote to Garland.

“As Attorney General, it is incumbent upon you to take all necessary steps to ensure the report is released before the end of your tenure, including, if necessary, by simply dismissing the remaining criminal charges against Mr Trump’s co-conspirators, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.”

Trump’s lawyers will try to persuade Cannon – who was appointed to the bench by Trump and has consistently ruled in his favour in the case – to prohibit even a limited disclosure to Congress, arguing that the report could leak.

When James Borow realized last Tuesday that his Palisades house was on fire, he was 300 miles away in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. The power was out at his house but a friend suggested he remotely turn on his Tesla and see if the cameras showed anything.

From the car camera, he watched in a panic as his house burned. As he drove home from Vegas to LA, he called his parents and told them: “You’ll see it on the news tomorrow, but the house is totally gone. I just watched it.”

Borow’s first concern was securing a place for his family to live. His second was insurance. Three months ago, he had received a letter from his insurer, State Farm, that his fire policy wasn’t being renewed. The letter advised him to get fire insurance through California’s Fair plan, created by lawmakers 50 years ago to help people who had no other options for insurance. “The end result was that my insurance increased 400%,” says Borow. “It was expensive, but it wasn’t complicated.”

Borow was one of 1,626 State Farm customers in the Palisades neighborhood whose fire insurance was not renewed at the end of 2024, according to California’s insurance office. They represented about 70% of State Farm’s market share in Pacific Palisades, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Some of the people dropped by insurance, like Borow, found insurance with Fair. For others, the steep prices, or certain fireproofing requirements issued by new insurers, were prohibitively expensive.

Francis Bischetti told the Los Angeles Times that Farmers Insurance, another major provider, had told him last year that his homeowners insurance for his house in the Pacific Palisades was going to increase from $4,500 to $18,000, which was out of reach for his budget. He was unable to get a Fair plan because he would have to cut down 10 trees around his house, another huge cost, he said. His house burned down, and he had no insurance.

Finding fire insurance for homes in areas with high fire risk is a challenge that will only increase for Californians, experts predict. Michael Coffey, an insurance defense litigator who works on large, global insurance cases, says he expects more insurance companies to leave the state – forcing prices up for everyone.

That will force more Californians into heartbreaking choices: pay up, live in a home that’s uninsured, or move elsewhere.

More than 450,000 California homeowners got their insurance through the Fair Plan in 2024 – more than double the number in 2020. Even for those who were able to afford the coverage, uncertainty surrounds the plan.

As of last Friday, the Fair Plan had just $377m available to pay claims, according to the office of the senator Alex Padilla, and policies only cover basic property damage within a $3m range.

It’s too soon to know if Fair has enough reserves to pay out the billions it may soon owe. Last year, Victoria Roach, president of the Fair Plan, told the California legislature that the system was only one large event away from insolvency. “There’s no other way to say it, because we don’t have the money on hand [to pay all the claims] and we have a lot of exposure.”

“Since the Fair Plan is run by the government, I’m sure they’ll try to craft the remedy,” Coffey said. “But unfortunately, that cost is going to be borne by taxpayers, either statewide or federally.”

In the short-term, the Los Angeles county insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, said he has used his moratorium power to prevent insurance companies from canceling or not renewing home coverage for Los Angeles wildfire victims in affected zip codes over the next year.

In the longer term, the state has been looking for fixes as its insurance market is overburdened by the devastation caused by climate crisis-fueled disasters. A new regulation that took effect this month allows insurers to consider the climate crisis when setting their prices – which many insurance companies had said was a reason they pulled out of the state’s insurance market. California previously did not let insurance companies factor in current or future risks when deciding how to price their policies.

Coffey says that the government cannot be a blind insurer of people’s homes. “That’s not something the government can be in the business of,” he says. “It’s too expensive and it would overwhelm the system economically.

“If people thought it was expensive now to live in California, I think they should understand that it’s priced based upon the risks,” Coffey says. “And California has a lot of insurance risk between earthquakes and wildfires, so you’re gonna have to pay a lot more.”

California is not alone – across the country, average homeowners insurance premiums have increased by more than 30% between 2020 and 2023, according to the Brookings Institution, due increases from climate-linked disasters as well as swelling home building costs. In Florida, the government-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp, their version of Fair, is one of the 10 largest home insurers in the state.

Borow is hopeful that Fair will pay out for his claim, and that he may get some supplemental funds from State Farm.

Coordinating between State Farm and Fair has been extremely difficult, he said. “There’s just a ton of unknowns. And so every question you have on the phone, the representatives are like, I honestly don’t know. I’m trying to find out the answer. So no one knows what the hell is going on.”

Getting the companies to pay out on claims could be a challenge in California even before the fires. In 2023, three home insurance companies in the state declined nearly half their claims – higher than the national average. LA-based Farmers Insurance topped the list, denying about 50% of claims for payment, according to reporting from the LA Times.

Borow hopes he eventually will get to rebuild his home in the Palisades – “hopefully, four years from now, we will have a house again. I would say that’s the best-case scenario.”

When James Borow realized last Tuesday that his Palisades house was on fire, he was 300 miles away in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. The power was out at his house but a friend suggested he remotely turn on his Tesla and see if the cameras showed anything.

From the car camera, he watched in a panic as his house burned. As he drove home from Vegas to LA, he called his parents and told them: “You’ll see it on the news tomorrow, but the house is totally gone. I just watched it.”

Borow’s first concern was securing a place for his family to live. His second was insurance. Three months ago, he had received a letter from his insurer, State Farm, that his fire policy wasn’t being renewed. The letter advised him to get fire insurance through California’s Fair plan, created by lawmakers 50 years ago to help people who had no other options for insurance. “The end result was that my insurance increased 400%,” says Borow. “It was expensive, but it wasn’t complicated.”

Borow was one of 1,626 State Farm customers in the Palisades neighborhood whose fire insurance was not renewed at the end of 2024, according to California’s insurance office. They represented about 70% of State Farm’s market share in Pacific Palisades, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Some of the people dropped by insurance, like Borow, found insurance with Fair. For others, the steep prices, or certain fireproofing requirements issued by new insurers, were prohibitively expensive.

Francis Bischetti told the Los Angeles Times that Farmers Insurance, another major provider, had told him last year that his homeowners insurance for his house in the Pacific Palisades was going to increase from $4,500 to $18,000, which was out of reach for his budget. He was unable to get a Fair plan because he would have to cut down 10 trees around his house, another huge cost, he said. His house burned down, and he had no insurance.

Finding fire insurance for homes in areas with high fire risk is a challenge that will only increase for Californians, experts predict. Michael Coffey, an insurance defense litigator who works on large, global insurance cases, says he expects more insurance companies to leave the state – forcing prices up for everyone.

That will force more Californians into heartbreaking choices: pay up, live in a home that’s uninsured, or move elsewhere.

More than 450,000 California homeowners got their insurance through the Fair Plan in 2024 – more than double the number in 2020. Even for those who were able to afford the coverage, uncertainty surrounds the plan.

As of last Friday, the Fair Plan had just $377m available to pay claims, according to the office of the senator Alex Padilla, and policies only cover basic property damage within a $3m range.

It’s too soon to know if Fair has enough reserves to pay out the billions it may soon owe. Last year, Victoria Roach, president of the Fair Plan, told the California legislature that the system was only one large event away from insolvency. “There’s no other way to say it, because we don’t have the money on hand [to pay all the claims] and we have a lot of exposure.”

“Since the Fair Plan is run by the government, I’m sure they’ll try to craft the remedy,” Coffey said. “But unfortunately, that cost is going to be borne by taxpayers, either statewide or federally.”

In the short-term, the Los Angeles county insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, said he has used his moratorium power to prevent insurance companies from canceling or not renewing home coverage for Los Angeles wildfire victims in affected zip codes over the next year.

In the longer term, the state has been looking for fixes as its insurance market is overburdened by the devastation caused by climate crisis-fueled disasters. A new regulation that took effect this month allows insurers to consider the climate crisis when setting their prices – which many insurance companies had said was a reason they pulled out of the state’s insurance market. California previously did not let insurance companies factor in current or future risks when deciding how to price their policies.

Coffey says that the government cannot be a blind insurer of people’s homes. “That’s not something the government can be in the business of,” he says. “It’s too expensive and it would overwhelm the system economically.

“If people thought it was expensive now to live in California, I think they should understand that it’s priced based upon the risks,” Coffey says. “And California has a lot of insurance risk between earthquakes and wildfires, so you’re gonna have to pay a lot more.”

California is not alone – across the country, average homeowners insurance premiums have increased by more than 30% between 2020 and 2023, according to the Brookings Institution, due increases from climate-linked disasters as well as swelling home building costs. In Florida, the government-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp, their version of Fair, is one of the 10 largest home insurers in the state.

Borow is hopeful that Fair will pay out for his claim, and that he may get some supplemental funds from State Farm.

Coordinating between State Farm and Fair has been extremely difficult, he said. “There’s just a ton of unknowns. And so every question you have on the phone, the representatives are like, I honestly don’t know. I’m trying to find out the answer. So no one knows what the hell is going on.”

Getting the companies to pay out on claims could be a challenge in California even before the fires. In 2023, three home insurance companies in the state declined nearly half their claims – higher than the national average. LA-based Farmers Insurance topped the list, denying about 50% of claims for payment, according to reporting from the LA Times.

Borow hopes he eventually will get to rebuild his home in the Palisades – “hopefully, four years from now, we will have a house again. I would say that’s the best-case scenario.”

SpaceX launched its Starship rocket on its latest test flight Thursday, but the spacecraft was destroyed following a thrilling booster catch back at the pad.

Elon Musk’s company said the spacecraft’s six engines appeared to shut down one by one, with contact lost just 8min 30sec into the flight.

“We did lose all communications with the ship – that is essentially telling us we had an anomaly with the upper stage,” SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said, confirming minutes later that the ship was lost.

The spacecraft was supposed to soar across the Gulf of Mexico from Texas on a near loop around the world similar to previous test flights. SpaceX had packed it with 10 dummy satellites for practice at releasing them. It was the first flight of this new and upgraded spacecraft.

The SpaceX mishap caused widespread disruptions to air traffic. At Miami international airport, some flights were grounded, according to a Reuters witness. Dozens of commercial flights diverted to other airports or altered course to avoid potential debris, based on flight records from tracking website FlightRadar24.

A minute earlier, SpaceX used the launch tower’s giant mechanical arms to catch the returning booster. The descending booster hovered over the launch pad before being gripped by the pair of arms dubbed chopsticks.

The thrill of the catch quickly turned into disappointment for not only the company, but the crowds gathered along the southern tip of Texas.

SpaceX CEO Musk posted a video on Twitter/X showing the debris field and said: “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”

“It was great to see a booster come down, but we are obviously bummed out about ship,” said Huot, adding it would take time to analyze the data and figure out what happened.

The last data received from the spacecraft indicated an altitude of 90 miles (146 km) and a velocity of 13,245mph (21,317km/h).

Musk said the preliminary indication is that “we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity.” He said there was nothing to suggest delaying the next launch.

The 400-ft (123-meter) rocket had thundered away in late afternoon from Boca Chica near the Mexican border. The late hour ensured a daylight entry halfway around the world in the Indian Ocean. But the shiny retro-looking spacecraft never got nearly that far.

SpaceX had beefed up the catch tower after November’s launch ended up damaging sensors on the robotic arms, forcing the team to forgo a capture attempt. That booster was steered into the gulf instead.

The company also upgraded the spacecraft for the latest demo. The test satellites were the same size as SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites and, like the spacecraft, were meant to be destroyed upon entry.

Musk plans to launch actual Starlinks on Starships before moving on to other satellites and, eventually, crews.

It was the seventh test flight for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket. Nasa has reserved a pair of Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. Musk’s goal is Mars.

Hours before in Florida, another billionaire’s rocket company – Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin – launched the newest supersized rocket, New Glenn. The rocket reached orbit on its first flight, successfully placing an experimental satellite thousands of miles above Earth. But the first-stage booster was destroyed, missing its targeted landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic.

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro – who is under investigation for allegedly plotting a coup – has seen his hopes of attending Donald Trump’s inauguration dashed after a judge ruled his confiscated passport would not be returned in case the disgraced politician used it to flee abroad.

Bolsonaro’s travel document was seized by federal police last February as investigators deepened their inquiries into what they call a sprawling conspiracy to dismantle Brazil’s 40-year-old democracy.

In November, the far-right populist, who governed Brazil from 2019 until 2023, was one of nearly 40 people who were formally accused of being part of a criminal plot to stop his leftwing successor from taking power by staging a rightwing coup.

Bolsonaro’s lawyers petitioned the supreme court earlier this month, arguing their client should be allowed a six-day trip to the US in order to attend the 20 January swearing-in of Trump, the Brazilian politician’s most important foreign ally. This week Bolsonaro told the New York Times he was so excited about the prospect of seeing Trump in the flesh that he wasn’t “even taking Viagra anymore”.

But the request was disregarded, and on Thursday, Judge Alexandre de Moraes ruled that the “seriousness of the crimes ascribed” to Bolsonaro meant he should not be given back his passport in case he absconded.

On the eve of that decision, the prosecutor general, Paulo Gonet, argued that the public interest in potentially stopping Bolsonaro from attempting to evade justice trumped Bolsonaro’s “private interest” in seeing the 47th US president take power on Monday.

A 884-page federal police report released in late 2024 accused Bolsonaro of taking a lead role in the alleged coup attempt and trying to persuade members of the military top brass to back him.

Part of the alleged intrigue included a plan to abduct or assassinate top leaders, including the leftist politician who beat Bolsonaro in the 2022 election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro, who has already been banned from seeking election until 2030 for spreading misinformation about Brazil’s electoral system, denies the accusations. “They’re trying to humiliate me … paint me as the world’s worst criminal,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

But analysts largely agree that the police report brought Bolsonaro a step closer to prison. “The chances of him being arrested have never been higher,” Celso Rocha de Barros, a political columnist and author, said last year.

Bolsonaro is likely to be represented at Trump’s inauguration by his congressman son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who some see as a potential political heir and a candidate in the 2026 presidential election. Writing on social media on Wednesday, Eduardo Bolsonaro claimed his father was the victim of “lawfare”.

“[They are] using the justice system as a weapon to crush political opponents in court because they are afraid to face them at the polls,” he wrote.

A lawyer for a Queensland woman accused of poisoning her one-year-old girl with unnecessary medications to gain a social media profile is seeking protective custody for his client due to the publicity.

The 34-year-old from the Sunshine Coast, who cannot be identified, appeared in Brisbane magistrates court on Friday wearing a long green police watchhouse top and green pants.

She is accused of giving her one-year-old child unauthorised prescription and pharmacy medications between August and October 2024 to grow her social media profile and gain $60,000 in donations.

The woman has been charged with five counts of administering poison with intent to harm, three counts of preparation to commit crimes with dangerous things and one count each of torture, making child exploitation material and fraud.

She looked calm while she stood with her hands clasped facing Magistrate Peter Saggers while her case was mentioned.

Her lawyer, Mathew Cuskelly, did not apply for bail on his client’s behalf, but asked for a pre-brief of evidence to be disclosed.

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This included CCTV related to the preparation to commit crime charges that police allege capture the offences on high-quality footage with correlated receipts and bank records.

He also asked for a video recording of an electroencephalogram (EEG) device, which records electrical activity of the brain, to be disclosed.

The woman was remanded in custody and the case was adjourned until 28 January when she is expected to apply for bail.

A female supporter sat in the front row of the courtroom smiling at the woman and blew kisses as the accused was led back to the watch house.

The woman will be taken from the Brisbane watch house to a women’s prison.

Cuskelly asked for the woman to be placed in protective custody when she arrived there.

“There is some publicity with regards to this matter and I am concerned with regard to the safety of my client,” he said.

Saggers said that was a matter for Corrective Services.

Police allege the allegations came to their attention after the little girl was admitted to a hospital in Brisbane’s south for a genuine and “serious medical condition” when hospital staff raised concerns she was being poisoned.

Police say they found unauthorised prescription drugs in the child’s system after testing, medical statements and expert opinions.

The woman allegedly disregarded medical advice by ignoring a hospital’s treatment plan and went to lengths to get unauthorised medicines to give to the child, including old medications for a different person, available at her home.

The woman allegedly filmed and posted videos to social media of the child while she was in “immense distress and pain”.

“We believe the person we have charged has administered these drugs to increase that person’s social media profile and views and thereby obtain financial benefit,” DI Paul Dalton said on Thursday.

He said the woman had GoFundMe pages set up for crowd fundraising and allegedly fraudulently obtained $60,000 in donations.

GoFundMe is repaying donors and police will seek the money back in restitution should the woman be convicted.

Dalton said the infant was doing well.

While leaving court, Cuskelly and the supporter declined to comment on the case.

Justin Baldoni has sued Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, claiming that the couple hijacked the production of It Ends With Us, the hit summer 2024 film he directed and sought to “destroy” him with false allegations of sexual harassment.

In the suit, filed in the southern district of New York, Baldoni and his publicists accuse the couple of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy, to the tune of $400m in damages.

The 179-page complaint is the latest volley in a bitter legal battle between the co-stars over the production and marketing of the film, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling book, that began when Lively filed a complaint with the California civil rights commission detailing alleged sexual harassment by Baldoni during production and retaliatory efforts to smear Lively’s reputation afterward via artificial social media activity and planted stories.

That complaint, and a subsequent New York Times report quoting numerous text messages between Baldoni and his team, sent shockwaves through Hollywood and prompted vigorous denials from Baldoni and his producing partner, Jamey Heath.

On 31 December, Lively filed her own lawsuit against Baldoni, Heath and publicists Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, alleging that the group orchestrated a clandestine smear campaign to “bury” her reputation. Baldoni followed a day later with a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, accusing the paper of working with Lively’s team and “cherry-picking” text messages out of context to defame him. His lawyer, Bryan Freedman, promised more lawsuits to follow.

“At bottom, this is not a case about celebrities sniping at each other in the press,” Baldoni’s suit against Lively reads. “This is a case about two of the most powerful stars in the world deploying their enormous power to steal an entire film right out of the hands of its director and production studio.”

The complaint further claims that “when Plaintiffs have their day in court, the jury will recognize that even the most powerful celebrity cannot bend the truth to her will”.

The new suit largely echoes the defamation suit against the New York Times, arguing that the full record of text messages and other communications would show how Lively and her team took messages out of context for a skewed version of events.

“This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media,” Freedman said in a statement. “It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret.”

This week Baldoni’s lawyer also demanded that Disney and Marvel retain any documents pertaining to what they see as a joke aimed at Baldoni in last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine. A letter called that any information relating to an effort to “mock, harass, ridicule, intimidate, or bully Baldoni” should be preserved.

Lively, Reynolds and their legal team have yet to respond.

A spokesperson for Brad Pitt has addressed the viral story about a French woman who believed she was in a long-term relationship with the actor and was scammed out of €830,000 ($855,000, £700,000) by someone posing as him.

“It’s awful that scammers take advantage of the strong bond between fans and celebrities,” the spokesperson said in a statement obtained by E! News. “But this is an important reminder not to respond to unsolicited online outreach, especially from actors who have no social media presence.”

The story first emerged on Sunday on the French news program Seven to Eight on the TF1 channel.

The woman, a 53-year-old interior designer who identified herself as Anne, appeared on the show, and shared that she had believed that she was in an online relationship with Pitt for more than a year, and even expressed that she thought they were in love.

The relationship reportedly began in February 2023 when Anne, who was married to a wealthy entrepreneur, received a message from someone posing as Pitt’s mother, which later led to another account contacting Anne, this time claiming to be the actor himself.

They communicated for over a year and a half, Anne said.

The impersonator used fake social media profiles and WhatsApp accounts, and used AI-generated images to produce pictures that looked like selfies of Pitt and even an apparent copy of Pitt’s passport.

At one point, Anne said the person told her that he needed financial assistance for cancer treatment because his accounts had been frozen due to his divorce proceedings with Angelina Jolie.

She said she received AI-generated pictures of the actor appearing in a hospital.

Anne transferred hundreds of thousands of euros to the person for medical expenses, only to realize she was scammed when she saw a photograph this summer of Pitt with his partner, Inés de Ramón.

The program said that Anne filed a police complaint over the scam.

After the show aired over the weekend, it quickly went viral online, sparking a wave of online jokes about gullibility.

As a result, on Tuesday, the channel decided to remove the episode from its replay services on its websites.

At the time of the broadcast, TF1 reported that Anne had been experiencing mental health issues, including severe depression, and had been hospitalized for treatment.