An American Airlines passenger jet collided with a military helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan national airport near Washington DC, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday night.

The American Airlines Flight 5342 departed from Wichita, Kansas, according to the FAA. According to American Airlines’ website, the jet has a capacity for up to 65 passengers.

Multiple helicopters, including those from the US Park police, the DC Metropolitan police department and US military, were flying over the scene of the incident in the Potomac River. DC Fire and EMS said on X that fireboats were on the scene.

Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center shows two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to conjoin in a fireball.

The airport said emergency personnel were responding to “an aircraft incident on the airfield”.

No other details were immediately available.

An American Airlines passenger jet collided with a military helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan national airport near Washington DC, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday night.

The American Airlines Flight 5342 departed from Wichita, Kansas, according to the FAA. According to American Airlines’ website, the jet has a capacity for up to 65 passengers.

Multiple helicopters, including those from the US Park police, the DC Metropolitan police department and US military, were flying over the scene of the incident in the Potomac River. DC Fire and EMS said on X that fireboats were on the scene.

Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center shows two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to conjoin in a fireball.

The airport said emergency personnel were responding to “an aircraft incident on the airfield”.

No other details were immediately available.

A man who had recently brought his family back to Pakistan from the United States has confessed to shooting dead his teenage daughter, motivated by his disapproval of her TikTok content.

The shooting happened on a street in the southwestern city of Quetta on Tuesday. The suspect, Anwar ul-Haq, initially said that unidentified gunmen shot and killed his American-born, 15-year-old daughter before he confessed to the crime, police official Babar Baloch said.

“Our investigation so far has found that the family had an objection to her dressing, lifestyle, and social gathering,” another police investigator, Zohaib Mohsin, said. “We have her phone. It is locked,” he told Reuters. “We are probing all aspects, including honour killing.”

The family had recently returned to Balochistan province in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, a nation with conservative social norms, having lived in the US for about 25 years, Baloch said.

The suspect has US citizenship, the officer said. He said Haq had told him his daughter began creating “objectionable” content on the social media platform TikTok when she lived in the US.

He told police that she continued to share videos on the platform after returning to Pakistan. Baloch said the main suspect’s brother-in-law had also been arrested in connection with the killing.

Police said they had charged Haq with the murder. They did not offer proof of Haq’s US citizenship except for the suspect’s own testimony and declined to say whether the US embassy had been informed of the incident.

His family declined to respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.

More than 54 million people use TikTok in Pakistan, a nation of 241 million. The government has blocked the video-sharing app several times in recent years over content moderation.

Islamabad often takes issue with what it terms “obscene content” with the social media platform, which has lately started complying with requests from Pakistan to remove certain content.

More than 1,000 women are killed each year in Pakistan at the hands of community or family members over perceived damage to “honour”, according to independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

That could involve eloping, posting social media content, fraternising with men, or any other infraction against conservative values relating to women.

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.

Trump signaled earlier on Wednesday that he intended to issue an order instructing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to open a center in order to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.

“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”

The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba, already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea, which is separate from the high-security prison for foreign terrorism suspects established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaida on the US.

The secretive immigrant detention facility does not appear in public government reports, and details have only recently surfaced, including about alarming conditions. As of February 2024, four people were being held at the facility, the New York Times reported, citing the department of homeland security.

Trump made the initial announcement as he signed the Laken Riley Act, which mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes. The act is named after a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia who was murdered in 2023 by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.

The executive order about Guantanamo itself came a little later on Wednesday afternoon, saying from Trump: “I hereby direct the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified by the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.”

It added: “This memorandum is issued in order to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”

Trump’s order on Wednesday marks the latest effort by the new administration to fulfill the president’s promised threat to remove millions of people from the country.

Since taking office on 20 January, Trump has signed a slew of executive orders aimed at cracking down on immigration, including declaring a “national emergency” paving the way to send US troops to the southern border, suspending the nation’s refugee resettlement program, and revoking temporary protected status for people fleeing humanitarian crises.

According to a Pentagon update on 6 January, 15 prisoners remain at Guantánamo, the smallest number of detainees in the facility’s 22-year history. During final weeks in office, Joe Biden accelerated the transfer of Guantánamo inmates to third countries.

Cuba responded to Trump’s announcement that he plans to open a detention center for migrants at Guantánamo Bay, with the foreign minister claiming the idea “shows contempt towards the human condition and international law”.

Writing on X, the US social media platform owned by Trump backer Elon Musk, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla slammed “the US government’s decision to imprison migrants at the Guantánamo Naval Base, in an enclave where it created torture centers and indefinite detention”.

Also writing on X, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, called the plan “an act of brutality”.

Amnesty International said Guantánamo has been a “site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial and other unlawful practices”, adding that Trump should be using his authority to close the prison and not repurposing it for offshore immigration detention.

As part of his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, US president Donald Trump has announced that the United States will hold migrants at the notorious Guantánamo military detention facility in Cuba.

Known primarily for holding suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, Trump ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” that he said would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said the idea “shows contempt towards the human condition and international law”.

Below, are some key facts about the detention facility in the US-run military enclave.

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to “combat antisemitism” that asks agencies to explore ways to deport pro-Palestinian activists, including student protesters.

The US president’s order instructs federal agencies to identify available civil and criminal authorities in order to “combat antisemitism”, specifically by deporting resident aliens – such as students with visas – who were found to have broken the law during protests.

Department and agency leaders will be required to provide recommendations to the White House within 60 days. It also instructs the Department of Justice to investigate pro-Hamas graffiti and intimidation, including incidents on college campuses.

The order appears to target students and other activists who engaged in pro-Palestinian demonstrations following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli war in Gaza.

Republicans have been threatening for months to punish colleges that allow pro-Palestinian protests. In October of last year, top Republicans warned that they would pull billions of dollars of federal funding from several of the most prestigious universities in the US, and strip them of official accreditation, to punish them for “allowing” the protests.

Last week, Trump proposed to “just clean out” the whole Gaza strip of Palestinians by moving them to other countries. His comments sparked immediate condemnation and accusations that he was essentially calling for ethnic cleansing.

During his campaign for president, Trump vowed to deport “pro-Hamas” students who are here on visas. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order that said: “The US must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the US do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.”

A US judge granted a restraining order to stop a federal funding freeze despite the Trump administration rescinding it on Wednesday, after conflicting messaging from the White House led to further confusion after days of chaos.

In a brief memo, the White House office of management and budget (OMB) said it rescinded a policy it announced on Monday that temporarily paused trillions of dollars in government support for everything from social services to security programs, in Trump’s first policy reversal since taking office last week.

The announcement of the funding freeze had thrown into question whether the government would continue honoring its obligations to pay for an array of programs, including the health insurance for disabled and low-income Americans provided by Medicaid.

However, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, attempted to downplay the OMB’s retraction of its original memorandum. “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo,” Leavitt wrote on X.

“Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”

A federal judge on Wednesday issued a restraining order against the funding freeze proposed in the OMB memo, pointing to Leavitt’s comments and contradictory messages from the White House. That order came after a different judge temporarily blocked the funding freeze on Tuesday.

The Rhode Island-based federal judge John McConnell intervened at the behest of Democratic state attorneys general amid the confusion, with the White House saying it had rescinded the memo but was not backing down from a freeze on funding in areas targeted by the recent executive orders. McConnell asked the attorneys general to submit a proposed temporary restraining order for him to sign.

Democrats quickly claimed victory for the reversal. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said that “Americans fought back and Donald Trump backed off” and called on the president to withdraw his nomination of Russel Vought, an author of Project 2025, to lead the OMB.

He said: “Though the Trump administration failed in this tactic, it’s no secret that they will try to find another, and when they do, it will again be Senate Democrats there to call it out, fight back, and defend American families.”

Trump put federal funding in his sights shortly after taking office, pausing disbursements under Joe Biden’s signature legislative programs to fight the climate crisis and improve the nation’s infrastructure. But this week’s memorandum went even further, blocking outlays for programs that had stood for years, often with bipartisan support.

“Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again,” the acting OMB director, Matthew J Vaeth, wrote in the original memo.

He went on to imply that federal money was being spent on “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies”, which he called “a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve”.

The pause was supposed to take effect on Tuesday evening, but before that deadline and the court order blocking it, lawmakers from states across the country reported that websites facilitating federal payments to healthcare and childcare providers were offline.

The potential for disruption was far and wide. Seth Magaziner, a Democratic congressman who is the ranking member on the homeland security subcommittee on counter-terrorism, shared a list of dozens of security-related programs that were having their funding frozen, and wrote: “This is a gift to terrorists and our adversaries across the world. Trump needs to stop this madness and resume funding now.”

Kendra Davenport, president and CEO of Easterseals, a national organization that provides services to seniors, children and adults with disabilities and veterans, said the possibility that federal grants would be cut off created “a day of heartache, chaos, panic and real fear”.

“Everybody wants to make sure every federal dollar is spent wisely. But we need to do it in a way that protects veterans, ageing adults, and more than one in four Americans with a disability,” Davenport said in a statement. “Now that a federal court has put a temporary pause on the grant freeze, let’s do a reset. We can have responsible government spending and support hardworking American families.”

Reuters contributed reporting

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s combative Senate confirmation hearing for health secretary erupted into fierce exchanges on Wednesday morning, as Democrats confronted one of the US’s most prominent vaccine skeptics, who will possibly be handed the reins of America’s public health system.

The Senate finance committee ranking member, Ron Wyden, challenged the 71-year-old Kennedy over seemingly contradictory statements, reading quotes from podcasts in which Kennedy had claimed “no vaccine is safe and effective” while testifying under oath that he supports vaccines. He read another quote from 2020 how Kennedy claimed he regretted vaccinating his children.

“All of these things cannot be true,” Wyden said. “So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all those podcasts?”

Kennedy disputed Wyden’s characterization, claiming his podcast comment was taken out of context. “[The host] asked me, ‘Are there vaccines that are safe and effective?’ And I said … there are no vaccines that are safe and effective for every person,” Kennedy responded.

“I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing, as HHS secretary, to make it difficult or discourage people from taking it,” Kennedy said.

The Colorado senator Michael Bennet accused Kennedy of “peddling half-truths” throughout his career, demanding yes or no answers about past controversial statements. When asked if he had called Lyme disease a “highly likely” military bioweapon, Kennedy said, “I probably did say that”, although he disputed other claims.

Bennet said: “Out of 330 million Americans, we’re being asked to put somebody in this job who has spent 50 years of his life … peddling theories that create doubt about whether things we know are safe are unsafe.”

Under tough questioning from the senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican and physician, Kennedy appeared to confuse Medicare and Medicaid, the government health programs for seniors and low-income people respectively.

“Medicaid is not working for Americans and is not working for the target population,” said Kennedy. “Most people on Medicaid are not happy, the premiums are too high, the deductibles are too high, the networks are too narrow,” he said.

Medicare, run by the federal government, has premiums and deductibles. Most Medicaid plans, run jointly by the state and federal governments, do not have premiums and deductibles, though it is true that networks can be narrow.

Kennedy then said Medicaid could be reformed with “pilot programs” and perhaps telemedicine, AI and direct primary care – a doctor’s office business model that operates like a subscription model.

“Americans don’t, by and large, do not like the [Obamacare], they don’t like it, they don’t like Medicaid – and they like Medicare and they like private insurance,” said Kennedy. “They would prefer to be on private insurance. Most Americans, if they could afford it, would be on private insurance.”

As health and human services secretary, Kennedy would oversee everything from vaccine policy to food safety, wielding enormous influence over public health decisions affecting millions of Americans. His controversial views – including debunked claims about vaccines and autism, fluoride safety and raw milk regulations – have put him at odds with mainstream medical consensus.

Kennedy told NPR in December that as a member of the administration, he was “not going to take vaccines away from anybody”, but he also added he wanted people to make “informed choices”.

In a letter to senators obtained by the Washington Post, Kennedy’s cousin Caroline branded him a “predator”, claiming he privately vaccinated his own children while publicly stoking vaccine hesitancy among worried parents. The accusation, from a former ambassador to Australia and Japan, lands as more than 15,000 medical professionals and 75 Nobel laureates have similarly mobilized against his confirmation.

Kennedy’s pledge to “make America healthy again” through stricter regulation of food additives has found a number of allies, even as Republican senators demand clarity on his stance toward abortion rights and vaccine policy.

The confirmation fight comes against a backdrop of shifting public attitudes: polling from Gallup over the summer showed nearly a third of Republicans now view vaccines as more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, a fivefold increase since 2001.

Despite the opposition, Kennedy will probably survive the hearings. The final voteis scheduled for next week.

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s combative Senate confirmation hearing for health secretary erupted into fierce exchanges on Wednesday morning, as Democrats confronted one of the US’s most prominent vaccine skeptics, who will possibly be handed the reins of America’s public health system.

The Senate finance committee ranking member, Ron Wyden, challenged the 71-year-old Kennedy over seemingly contradictory statements, reading quotes from podcasts in which Kennedy had claimed “no vaccine is safe and effective” while testifying under oath that he supports vaccines. He read another quote from 2020 how Kennedy claimed he regretted vaccinating his children.

“All of these things cannot be true,” Wyden said. “So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all those podcasts?”

Kennedy disputed Wyden’s characterization, claiming his podcast comment was taken out of context. “[The host] asked me, ‘Are there vaccines that are safe and effective?’ And I said … there are no vaccines that are safe and effective for every person,” Kennedy responded.

“I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing, as HHS secretary, to make it difficult or discourage people from taking it,” Kennedy said.

The Colorado senator Michael Bennet accused Kennedy of “peddling half-truths” throughout his career, demanding yes or no answers about past controversial statements. When asked if he had called Lyme disease a “highly likely” military bioweapon, Kennedy said, “I probably did say that”, although he disputed other claims.

Bennet said: “Out of 330 million Americans, we’re being asked to put somebody in this job who has spent 50 years of his life … peddling theories that create doubt about whether things we know are safe are unsafe.”

Under tough questioning from the senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican and physician, Kennedy appeared to confuse Medicare and Medicaid, the government health programs for seniors and low-income people respectively.

“Medicaid is not working for Americans and is not working for the target population,” said Kennedy. “Most people on Medicaid are not happy, the premiums are too high, the deductibles are too high, the networks are too narrow,” he said.

Medicare, run by the federal government, has premiums and deductibles. Most Medicaid plans, run jointly by the state and federal governments, do not have premiums and deductibles, though it is true that networks can be narrow.

Kennedy then said Medicaid could be reformed with “pilot programs” and perhaps telemedicine, AI and direct primary care – a doctor’s office business model that operates like a subscription model.

“Americans don’t, by and large, do not like the [Obamacare], they don’t like it, they don’t like Medicaid – and they like Medicare and they like private insurance,” said Kennedy. “They would prefer to be on private insurance. Most Americans, if they could afford it, would be on private insurance.”

As health and human services secretary, Kennedy would oversee everything from vaccine policy to food safety, wielding enormous influence over public health decisions affecting millions of Americans. His controversial views – including debunked claims about vaccines and autism, fluoride safety and raw milk regulations – have put him at odds with mainstream medical consensus.

Kennedy told NPR in December that as a member of the administration, he was “not going to take vaccines away from anybody”, but he also added he wanted people to make “informed choices”.

In a letter to senators obtained by the Washington Post, Kennedy’s cousin Caroline branded him a “predator”, claiming he privately vaccinated his own children while publicly stoking vaccine hesitancy among worried parents. The accusation, from a former ambassador to Australia and Japan, lands as more than 15,000 medical professionals and 75 Nobel laureates have similarly mobilized against his confirmation.

Kennedy’s pledge to “make America healthy again” through stricter regulation of food additives has found a number of allies, even as Republican senators demand clarity on his stance toward abortion rights and vaccine policy.

The confirmation fight comes against a backdrop of shifting public attitudes: polling from Gallup over the summer showed nearly a third of Republicans now view vaccines as more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, a fivefold increase since 2001.

Despite the opposition, Kennedy will probably survive the hearings. The final voteis scheduled for next week.

The former leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group which led the military operation to topple the former president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, last month, has been appointed president of Syria for a “transitional period”.

The appointment of Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has been acting as the de-facto leader of the country since early December, came after a meeting of rebel faction leaders on Wednesday and was announced by a military spokesperson.

The spokesperson announced a series of other changes, including the dissolution of Syria’s parliament, the formation of an appointed legislative council, and the cancellation of the country’s 2012 constitution. Syria’s military and security agencies were also dissolved, to be replaced by new security institutions and army.

In addition, all armed factions in Syria are to be disbanded and absorbed into the new national army. On its face, the order to dissolve armed factions should include HTS, though it did not name the group, which is the de-facto authority in the country.

Sharaa said that the country’s priorities were “filling the power vacuum, preserving civil peace, building state institutions”.

The transitional government is supposed to hand over power to a new government in March, but it is unclear how the transition will be managed. In an interview with Al Arabiya last month, Sharaa said holding elections could take up to four years, and rewriting the country’s constitution could take three.

Sharaa promised to hold a national dialogue conference to ensure the post-Assad era is inclusive of all facets of Syrian society, but has delayed the event repeatedly. His meetings have been mostly with individuals, rather than political parties.

The dissolution of military factions is sensitive. The presence and role of these factions have become a pressing question, as the country’s interim government – led almost exclusively by HTS appointees – tries to consolidate power.

HTS, originally an offshoot of the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, became Syria’s most powerful rebel group by the time it launched the military campaign to topple the Assad regime last year. Under its guidance, a patchwork of opposition factions across the country participated in the military operation.

In mid-January, the Syrian ministry of defence announced that it would be holding consultations with factions to see how they would form a unified military.

Challenges abound, as more radical Islamist rebel factions – many of which make up part of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army – are not as disciplined as HTS’s rank and file and differ with the group’s ideology. The sudden fall of the Assad regime also left weapons caches, tanks and artillery free for the taking across Syria, some of which have fallen into the hands of rebels.

Sharaa and the minister of defence have held near-daily meetings with rebel factions and given their leaders key posts in the interim government, such as making them provincial governors.

The question of how to restore the Syrian state’s monopoly on violence is believed to be critical to maintaining the internal stability of the country.

Foreign powers are watching to see if Syria maintains its current trajectory towards stability, wary of seeing a repeat of a Libya scenario, where the country was divided up by warring factions and experienced mass lawlessness after the toppling of the longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

The interim government has courted regional powers for support in bolstering its fledgling state and army, seeking foreign funds and legitimacy. The new government’s first foreign trip was to Saudi Arabia, and later to Turkey, where the foreign minister was accompanied by the defence minister and director of intelligence.

While the transitional government tries to consolidate power internally, it also has been negotiating with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led military force which controls a third of the country. The SDF has asked to maintain a degree of military independence within the new Syrian army, which the government has refused.

As negotiations continue, the pace of conflict between the SDF and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army has continued to escalate in northern Syria.

The leader of Germany’s conservative opposition has been backed in his controversial plans to restrict migration by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, in what Olaf Scholz branded “an unforgivable mistake.”

Friedrich Merz was accused by Scholz’s minority government of breaking a longstanding political firewall against the far-right populists. He had presented two non-binding motions to parliament, aimed at boosting security measures and closing all of Germany’s land borders to irregular migration.

On Wednesday the parliament narrowly voted in favour of one of them, which Merz described as his “five-point plan” to end irregular migration, with 348 MPs voting in favour of it, 345 against, and 10 abstaining. It proposes turning asylum seekers and other migrants back at the border, in a move that Scholz’s Social Democrats and the Greens have said contravenes both German and EU law on refugees.

The leader of the opposition CDU/CSU conservative alliance, which is leading the polls before the 23 February election, had shifted the debate on migration policy to the right, apparently in response to a knife attack last week in which two people were killed. Police arrested a 28-year-old Afghan man as the main suspect.

Outcry followed the attack, in particular after it was revealed that the man who was arrested had been receiving psychiatric treatment and had been due to be deported, but that the measure had been delayed due to apparent bureaucratic obstacles.

It was the latest in a string of attacks, the deadliest in Magdeburg last month when an SUV ploughed into a Christmas market, killing six people and injuring 300. A doctor from Saudi Arabia was arrested after that incident.

An unusually heated debate preceded the vote. Scholz attacked Merz for “having effectively cancelled the fundamental agreement of our republic in the heat of the moment”, by riding on the expectation that his motions would only stand a chance of success if they were supported by the anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin AfD. Scholz called it an “unforgivable mistake”.

He said that by relying on the support of the AfD, “the very same ones who are fighting against our democracy, who despise our united Europe, who have continued to poison the climate in our country for years”, Merz had overstepped “boundaries that as a statesman one should not overstep”.

Robert Habeck, the deputy chancellor and the Greens’ candidate for chancellor, urged Merz: “Mr Merz, don’t vote with racists. It is not necessary and it is ill-advised.”

Merz, however, said that getting his plans over the line with the help of the AfD would be merely “a last resort”. “It might be the case that the AfD enables the necessary majority for a law for the first time,” he said, adding that the thought of “jubilant and smirking AfD MPs”, caused him discomfort.

The AfD parliamentary leader and chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel, who was duly pictured laughing with and hugging party members after the result came in, said: “The so-called firewall is nothing other than an anti-democratic cartel agreement.” Merz’s migration plan, she added, had been “copied from us”.

Merz intends to put to parliament on Friday a draft migration bill furthering the existing measures already passed. It does not have the chance of becoming law until after the election, but if he became chancellor Merz could be well placed to get it through.

According to a poll by Insa, 66% of Germans support Merz’s plans, including 56% of supporters of Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SPD). But both the CDU/CSU and SPD have lost ground in the polls in recent days, while the AfD gained four percentage points.

Among opponents of Merz’s proposals were the leaders of the Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany, who in a joint letter addressed to him warned of the dangers of breaking the long-held taboo of not working with the AfD. “We fear that German democracy will be massively damaged if this political promise is abandoned,” they wrote.

The churches expressed their dismay at the “timing and tone” of the debate, warning it was likely to “defame all migrants living in Germany and stir up prejudice”. Neither they added, did it contribute to solving the existing challenges.

Ukraine is reeling from the shock decision by the Trump administration to pause all US foreign aid programmes immediately, as a variety of projects in the country – from military veteran rehabilitation programmes to independent media and anti-corruption initiatives – have effectively been stopped overnight.

It was seen as inevitable that the incoming administration would overhaul USAid, the US development agency, but there was an expectation that spending on Ukraine, or at least some of the most critical programmes, would be subject to a waiver – or there would at least be a winding-down period.

Instead, a “stop work” order issued last Friday has left hundreds of projects without funding, initially for a 90-day review period. Attempts by the Kyiv USAid office to save funding for some of the most important programmes have reportedly been rebuffed in Washington.

“They requested a waiver for some of the things they considered critical but didn’t get it,” said a source familiar with discussions over the future of USAid in Ukraine. “It’s clear that the new administration wants to destroy what was there before and build something completely new.”

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his government would prioritise the most important USAid-funded programmes and try to cover them with alternative funding solutions.

“There are programmes like those for prosthetic limbs, or those on special rehabilitation, which obviously can’t just be ended abruptly. There will be a prioritisation,” said Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak in an interview on Wednesday.

Military aid and direct budgetary assistance to Ukraine have not so far been affected, but USAid had sent more than $7.6bn (£6.11bn) in humanitarian and development aid since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 and backed a remarkable range of projects across many sectors.

“This was the worst-case scenario,” said George Chewning, the executive director of US-Ukraine Veterans Bridge, an organisation devoted to fostering links between military veterans in the two countries. He said several partner organisations in Ukraine had suddenly found out their projects would no longer be continued. One, Veteran Hub, said it was closing a telephone hotline that had provided support and counselling to traumatised veterans.

“A lot of people thought there might be a thorough review and were prepared to justify their work and their projects but there certainly wasn’t an expectation that the funding would be halted,” said Chewning.

For veterans’ organisations, the cuts could not have come at a worse time, said Chewning, as Donald Trump’s desire to negotiate an end to the war could result in hundreds of thousands of newly demobilised veterans needing to re-integrate into society. “All our partners are now scrambling for additional funding, which was not easy to come by in the first place,” he said.

USAid also handled a large number of regional humanitarian aid projects, many of which were left pondering how to fill the newly created gaps, and without any idea what would remain after the three-month review period.

“It just impacts our morale … Do we wait for their continuation? Do we redirect these projects to other agencies? We don’t really know what to do,” said Vitalii Lukov, the deputy mayor of the southern city of Mykolaiv, which has been reliant on international aid since being severely damaged in the early months of the war.

“USAid was the quickest to provide us with diesel generators and the energy efficiency projects are almost finished. But what will we do if Russia attacks our energy again tomorrow?” Lukov asked.

The US development agency was also a supporter of many of Ukraine’s independent media outlets.

Bohdan Lohvynenko, the founder of the Ukraïner online news portal, said more than 80% of the site’s funding came from the US, and the outlet was now in serious trouble. “There is no viable advertising market for war reporting, leaving us with community support or a paywall model,” he said. However, raising money in this way during wartime was very difficult, he said, with most citizens preferring to use their money to support the military.

“Some [media outlets] will survive but many will not. Already a lot of people are losing their jobs,” said Katerina Sergatskova, a co-founder of the 2402 foundation, which provides support and training to Ukrainian journalists. “If places have a cash reserve they may be able to survive for the next three months,” she said, until it became clear which USAid projects would be continued.

The “stop work” order meant that projects were abruptly ended with almost no warning. Oleh Velhan was one of thousands of Ukrainians to receive an email earlier this week informing him that his service agreement would be suspended, starting from Wednesday and “until further notice”. Velhan worked for a company that provided services to an organisation working in the healthcare sector.

The suspension was in order to “assess the effectiveness of programmes and their compliance with United States foreign policy”, said the email. A few minutes after receiving the message, Velhan found he was locked out of his work email account. “I felt frustrated and angry. All the projects I had been working on are gone. I’ve been notified that the contract might be renewed … but the uncertainty is killing me,” he said.

Ukraine is reeling from the shock decision by the Trump administration to pause all US foreign aid programmes immediately, as a variety of projects in the country – from military veteran rehabilitation programmes to independent media and anti-corruption initiatives – have effectively been stopped overnight.

It was seen as inevitable that the incoming administration would overhaul USAid, the US development agency, but there was an expectation that spending on Ukraine, or at least some of the most critical programmes, would be subject to a waiver – or there would at least be a winding-down period.

Instead, a “stop work” order issued last Friday has left hundreds of projects without funding, initially for a 90-day review period. Attempts by the Kyiv USAid office to save funding for some of the most important programmes have reportedly been rebuffed in Washington.

“They requested a waiver for some of the things they considered critical but didn’t get it,” said a source familiar with discussions over the future of USAid in Ukraine. “It’s clear that the new administration wants to destroy what was there before and build something completely new.”

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his government would prioritise the most important USAid-funded programmes and try to cover them with alternative funding solutions.

“There are programmes like those for prosthetic limbs, or those on special rehabilitation, which obviously can’t just be ended abruptly. There will be a prioritisation,” said Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak in an interview on Wednesday.

Military aid and direct budgetary assistance to Ukraine have not so far been affected, but USAid had sent more than $7.6bn (£6.11bn) in humanitarian and development aid since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 and backed a remarkable range of projects across many sectors.

“This was the worst-case scenario,” said George Chewning, the executive director of US-Ukraine Veterans Bridge, an organisation devoted to fostering links between military veterans in the two countries. He said several partner organisations in Ukraine had suddenly found out their projects would no longer be continued. One, Veteran Hub, said it was closing a telephone hotline that had provided support and counselling to traumatised veterans.

“A lot of people thought there might be a thorough review and were prepared to justify their work and their projects but there certainly wasn’t an expectation that the funding would be halted,” said Chewning.

For veterans’ organisations, the cuts could not have come at a worse time, said Chewning, as Donald Trump’s desire to negotiate an end to the war could result in hundreds of thousands of newly demobilised veterans needing to re-integrate into society. “All our partners are now scrambling for additional funding, which was not easy to come by in the first place,” he said.

USAid also handled a large number of regional humanitarian aid projects, many of which were left pondering how to fill the newly created gaps, and without any idea what would remain after the three-month review period.

“It just impacts our morale … Do we wait for their continuation? Do we redirect these projects to other agencies? We don’t really know what to do,” said Vitalii Lukov, the deputy mayor of the southern city of Mykolaiv, which has been reliant on international aid since being severely damaged in the early months of the war.

“USAid was the quickest to provide us with diesel generators and the energy efficiency projects are almost finished. But what will we do if Russia attacks our energy again tomorrow?” Lukov asked.

The US development agency was also a supporter of many of Ukraine’s independent media outlets.

Bohdan Lohvynenko, the founder of the Ukraïner online news portal, said more than 80% of the site’s funding came from the US, and the outlet was now in serious trouble. “There is no viable advertising market for war reporting, leaving us with community support or a paywall model,” he said. However, raising money in this way during wartime was very difficult, he said, with most citizens preferring to use their money to support the military.

“Some [media outlets] will survive but many will not. Already a lot of people are losing their jobs,” said Katerina Sergatskova, a co-founder of the 2402 foundation, which provides support and training to Ukrainian journalists. “If places have a cash reserve they may be able to survive for the next three months,” she said, until it became clear which USAid projects would be continued.

The “stop work” order meant that projects were abruptly ended with almost no warning. Oleh Velhan was one of thousands of Ukrainians to receive an email earlier this week informing him that his service agreement would be suspended, starting from Wednesday and “until further notice”. Velhan worked for a company that provided services to an organisation working in the healthcare sector.

The suspension was in order to “assess the effectiveness of programmes and their compliance with United States foreign policy”, said the email. A few minutes after receiving the message, Velhan found he was locked out of his work email account. “I felt frustrated and angry. All the projects I had been working on are gone. I’ve been notified that the contract might be renewed … but the uncertainty is killing me,” he said.

• A Ukrainian Holocaust survivor made an impassioned plea to the German parliament on Wednesday to do more to fight Russia’s “new war of extermination”, as Germany marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. “Back then Hitler wanted to kill me because I am Jew,” said Roman Schwarzman, 88. “Now Putin wants to kill me because I am a Ukrainian.” Schwarzman, born in Berschad in western Ukraine, was invited to address the Bundestag for its yearly session marking the liberation of the Auschwitz camp in what was Nazi-occupied Poland. Schwarzman, the president of Ukraine’s association for concentration camp and ghetto survivors, said he had first-hand experience of “Russian terror” when a missile hit his building in Odesa in December 2023, leaving everything inside his apartment smashed to pieces. “I have already been able to escape extermination once,” he said, referring to the Holocaust. “Now I am an old man and must once again live with the fear that my children and grandchildren could fall victim to a war of extermination.”

• Ukraine has confirmed it struck Lukoil’s Norsi refinery, Russia’s fourth-largest, in Kstovo, east of Moscow and about 800km (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian military said the strike on the refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region caused a large fire. The Reuters news agency verified a video posted on social media that showed orange flames lighting up the night sky in Kstovo, but could not confirm it was the refinery that was burning. The Russian petrochemicals company Sibur said it had temporarily suspended operations at its plant in Kstovo after a fire resulting from a drone attack.

• A Ukrainian drone attack hit Russia’s Andreapol oil pumping station, part of the oil export route via the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, causing a fire and leaks, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine said on Wednesday. The attack also hit a Russian missile storage facility in Russia’s Tver region, causing a string of explosions, the source told Reuters, which could not independently verify the information. A source in Russia’s oil pipeline monopoly, Transneft, said there had been no disruptions and described the damage in Tver region as limited.

• The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said a mother and her two-year-old child were killed when a drone struck a family home there. He said the child’s father and another child had been wounded and taken to hospital. Ukraine and Russia both deny targeting civilians, but thousands of civilians, mostly Ukrainians, have been killed.

• More details emerged of a standoff involving the Ukrainian defence minister, Rustem Umerov, over arms procurement. After a criminal investigation of Umerov was launched by anti-corruption investigators, his ministry’s press service said it was a legal formality containing no evidence of wrongdoing. The investigation began after a watchdog alleged Umerov had illegally sidelined the head of the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA), Maryna Bezrukova. Umerov is refusing to renew her contract after accusing the agency of playing “political games” and leaking information. The DPA was created to bring more accountability in arms buying and protect against corruption.

• The situation surrounding defence procurement has alarmed Ukraine’s G7 backers whose diplomats have urged Ukrainian officials to resolve it quickly. Bezrukova told Reuters she had not received any prior complaints about her work and the crisis could complicate future talks with prospective suppliers. “This has effectively spoiled a year of our work to a significant degree,” she said. “Confidence is built over a long time, but it can be destroyed very quickly.”

• In Russia, a former deputy defence minister, Timur Ivanov, was in court on Wednesday for a preliminary hearing on charges of embezzlement and money laundering. He will be tried alongside Anton Filatov, the former director of state defence corporation Oboronlogistika, owned by the defence ministry. Investigators have said Ivanov embezzled over 3bn rubles (€45m at the time) from a collapsed bank and over 200m rubles while buying ferries to serve Crimea. He also faces a bribery charge in a separate case that has not yet come to trial. Filatov was charged with embezzlement in 2018 and then the case was closed, only to be reopened in 2024. Both men denied any guilt while under investigation, Tass news agency reported.

• Germany’s budget committee of parliament called on the finance minister, Joerg Kukies, to approve an additional €3bn (US$3.13bn) in military aid for Ukraine, sources told Reuters on Wednesday. The call was backed by the opposition conservatives of the CDU and the Free Democrats (FDP), with the abstention of the governing Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, according to committee members. Budget committee members from the CDU and FDP have said there are enough funds in the budget for the request. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, from the SPD, is in favour of additional military aid but his insistence on an exception to the country’s “debt brake” led to the collapse of his government last year. As a result Germany is headed to elections on 23 February.

Tesla reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2024 on Wednesday after US stock markets closed, capping a bruising year for the company’s sales but a stellar one for its stock price.

The car company reported $0.73 per share and $25.71bn in revenue, slightly below Wall Street analysts predictions of revenue coming in at $27.22bn. Profit also declined year-over-year.

Tesla’s shares fell about 4% in after hours trading.

Musk presented the Tesla Cybercab, which he called a self-driving taxi, at a demonstration in October, and he said during Wednesday’s earnings call that the model would go into production in 2026, though Tesla has a long history of delayed releases. Musk added that Tesla’s robotaxi business would start in June this year, though what shape it will take is unclear. The company also announced that an advanced version of its Model Y sedan would go on sale in March. Tesla is under federal investigation for the alleged use of its full self-driving feature in multiple fatal crashes in the US.

“This is not some far-off, mythical situation,” he said. “2025 is going to be a pivotal year for Tesla.”

Elon Musk’s electric carmaker has struggled in recent years to compete with cheaper alternatives to its electric vehicles from competitors such as China’s BYD, which overtook Tesla in the last quarter of 2023 to become the world’s top electric manufacturer of electric vehicles. Tesla regained the top spot for the first three quarters of 2024, thanks in part to steep price cuts.

In its earnings report on Wednesday, Tesla reported 495,570 deliveries for the fourth quarter and 1.8m for the full year. This is the company’s first annual decline, which follows a year of repeatedly failing to meet quarterly delivery targets in 2024.

European subsidies for electric cars have declined, hurting Tesla in that market, where October registrations of Tesla vehicles fell by 24%. Some Wall Street analysts expect demand for Teslas to increase after the US Federal Reserve cuts interest rates.

Tesla’s disappointing delivery numbers point to its offerings failing to woo new customers last year. The trapezoidal, Hot Wheels-esque Cybertruck, released in November 2023 after lengthy delays and priced at roughly $80,000, has produced sales numbers that have not compensated for the decline in demand for Tesla’s older models.

Musk himself has threatened to step away from the company after a protracted legal battle over his compensation, set at $56bn but rejected twice by a judge.

Nevertheless, Tesla’s stock price has climbed more than 100% over the past year, rising 75% in the past six months alone. Musk’s proximity to Donald Trump has buoyed investors’ confidence in the billionaire’s ability to ensure a friendly regulatory and commercial environment for Tesla, despite congressional Republicans’ vows to do away with lucrative tax credits for electric vehicles.

The president, for his part, has threatened tariffs on a wide range of goods, including cars from China, which could strongly favor Tesla.

Meta has agreed to pay $25m to settle a lawsuit with Donald Trump. The suit originated in 2021 when Trump sued the social media company for suspending his accounts after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. The settlement was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and has been confirmed by a Meta spokesperson.

The majority of the settlement, $22m, will go toward a fund to pay for Trump’s presidential library, according to the Wall Street Journal. The remainder will pay for legal fees and go to other plaintiffs listed in the case. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s lawsuit against Facebook, which is now under parent company Meta, was one of several he brought against social media companies in the wake of January 6. He also sued YouTube, Twitter (now renamed X) and those companies’ executives. A federal judge dismissed the suit against Twitter. The Google suit was closed in 2023, but has the option to be reopened.

Shortly after the insurrection at the Capitol, Facebook suspended Trump’s accounts. At the time, the president was using the platform to spread false claims around election fraud and to repeatedly say he won the 2020 election.

Facebook broke with its hands-off approach for political leaders and updated its rules to allow for suspensions of lawmakers to be used in “exceptional cases” during periods of civil unrest and violence. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, said the company came to the decision because, “we believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”

The company gave Trump the maximum penalty under those rules, suspending his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!” Trump said at the time. He later said, “Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all business!”

A few months later, Facebook downgraded the suspension to two years. And, at the two-year mark in 2023, the company reinstated Trump’s access to the platform. Twitter and YouTube also allowed Trump back onto their platforms.

Zuckerberg has now made it onto Trump’s good side. He met with the president several times over the last couple of months and sat front row at the inauguration. Zuckerberg also hosted a black-tie party for the president during the inaugural celebrations.

The settlement discussions over the lawsuit began in November when Zuckerberg dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to the Wall Street Journal. The president reportedly said the lawsuit had to be dealt with before Zuckerberg could be “brought into the tent”. The Journal reported that Zuckerberg returned to Mar-a-Lago in early January for a day-long mediation.

Shortly after that trip to Florida, Zuckerberg made a dramatic public announcement saying Meta was lifting restrictions on its platform and allowing for more political content. Echoing Trump’s words, he said there was far too much censorship online and that “it’s time to get back to our roots”.

An avalanche in the French Alps has killed four Norwegian skiers who were swept away by an off-piste torrent of snow and ice in the southeastern Savoie region.

Also on Wednesday, a separate avalanche near Chamonix, in the Haute-Savoie region, killed a Swiss skier, according to the public prosecutor’s office in Bonneville.

The Norwegian victims were part of a group of seven skiers caught in the avalanche in Val-Cenis, on the border with Italy.

Three were killed on the spot while another, a woman, died after being taken to hospital in Grenoble with a cardiorespiratory arrest and severe hypothermia, an official in the Savoie prefect’s department said. The remaining three were unharmed.

All were equipped with avalanche beacons as they were engaged in off-piste ski touring, said the mayor of Val-Cenis, Jacques Arnoux.

“It was an avalanche of great size which was triggered outside the ski area,” he added.

A team of 10 high-mountain rescue specialists joined in the operation, according to a police source.

The victim in the Haute Savoie avalanche on Wednesday was a 30-year-old woman who was skiing off-piste on the north face of the Aiguillette des Posettes in the Mont Blanc massif, according to the office in Bonneville.

She was with her father, who was unhurt, and her brother, who was taken to the hospital for tests.

All three were equipped with transceivers and anti-avalanche airbags, the prosecutor’s office added.