Investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the plane involved in Wednesday night’s mid-air collision with a US military helicopter that killed all 67 people onboard both aircraft.

The recorders are currently at the National Transportation Safety Board labs for analysis, the agency said on Thursday evening, and are expected to shed light on exactly what went wrong. Preliminary reports raised questions over whether understaffing in an air traffic control tower at the Washington DC airport played a role in the United States’ worst aviation disaster in years.

As it approached Reagan National airport around 9pm, American Eagle flight 5342 collided with a US army Black Hawk helicopter, plunging wreckage of the two aircraft into the icy Potomac River and killing all 64 passengers and crew on the plane, along with three soldiers on the helicopter.

It was the first fatal commercial airline crash in the US since 2009, and was quickly described by Donald Trump and his top transportation officials as “preventable”, even as accident investigators cautioned that they had no answer yet as to what caused the tragedy.

But a preliminary investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration found that staffing at the airport’s control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic”, according to the New York Times. The airport is one of three serving Washington DC, and like many airports nationwide has struggled to properly staff its control tower.

The understaffing reportedly led to a single controller handling both arrivals and departures at the airport and also managing helicopter traffic – a job usually handled by two people.

A day before the collision, another jet trying to land at Reagan airport was forced to make a second approach due to a helicopter near its flight path, the Washington Post reported, citing an air traffic control audio recording.

The crash was the first national tragedy to strike since Trump was inaugurated last week, and at a White House press conference, the new president oscillated between consoling the nation and seizing on the deaths for political gain.

“This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history, and a tragedy of terrible proportions,” Trump said. “As one nation, we grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so suddenly.”

He then argued that changes made under Joe Biden to requirements for hiring air traffic controllers may have been a factor in the accident.

“We had the highest standard that you could have, and then they changed it back – that was Biden,” Trump said, adding that he believed the changes were made as part of diversity programs that his administration was vowed to repeal. The president also singled out the policies of Pete Buttigieg, a rising Democratic star who served as transportation secretary under Biden, saying that “he’s just got a good line of bullshit”.

Asked to provide proof of his assertions about air traffic controller hiring, Trump declined, saying that he had reached the conclusion “because I have common sense, okay. And, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

Later, Trump signed an executive order on aviation safety that rolls back diversity initiatives and repeated claims without evidence that those initiatives contributed to Wednesday’s crash.

Buttigieg responded to Trump’s comments by saying, “As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” and said the Biden administration had put safety first.

The crash is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, whose chair, Jennifer Homendy, described it as “an all-hands-on-deck event”. Board member Todd Inman said officials aimed to release a preliminary report into the incident within 30 days.

The agency has begun collecting wreckage, including portions of the helicopter, and is storing it at a hangar at the airport. Washington’s fire and emergency department said its divers had searched all accessible areas and would conduct additional searches to locate aircraft components on Friday.

Over the course of the day, Trump administration officials revealed more details of how the helicopter and passenger plane might have crossed paths. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said the helicopter involved carried “a fairly experienced crew” based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia that was conducting a “required annual night evaluation”. They had been equipped with night-vision goggles, he added.

“It’s a tragedy, a horrible loss of life,” Hegseth said.

At the Potomac River, which separates Washington DC from Virginia, more than 300 emergency workers, including divers, weathered high winds and packed ice to retrieve pieces of the plane and bodies.

The Bombardier CRJ-700 jet operated by regional carrier PSA Airlines broke into three parts and was in waist-deep water in the Potomac, US transportation secretary Sean Duffy said.

He noted that both the helicopter and the passenger plane had been flying in a “standard flight pattern” on a clear night before the crash, and that it was not uncommon for military aircraft to be seen in the skies over the nation’s capital, including near Reagan National, which is located in Arlington, Virginia.

Washington DC’s fire chief, John Donnelly, said the wreckage from the aircraft had been spread out by the wind but that he was confident rescuers could recover all those onboard. Of those found so far, 27 were from the plane and one from the helicopter.

“We will continue to work to find all the bodies to reunite them with their loved ones,” Donnelly said. “I’m confident that we will do that. It will take us a little bit of time. It may involve some more equipment.”

Several of the victims had been in Wichita, Kansas, where the flight began, for a development camp hosted by US Figure Skating, according to the Skating Club of Boston, which released the names of its six skaters, coaches and family members who had been onboard the jet.

“Our sport and this club have suffered a horrible loss with this tragedy,” the CEO and executive director, Doug Zeghibe, said on Instagram. “We are devastated and completely at a loss for words.”

Citing Russia’s state-run Tass news agency, Reuters reported that two world champion figure skaters from the country, Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, also had been onboard the plane.

Muriel Bowser, Washington’s mayor, said that the passengers on the plane had included “families from our region, Kansas and across the country. We share a profound sense of grief.”

Reagan National airport closed immediately after the incident, but flights resumed later on Thursday. A helpline for family and friends of those potentially affected was set up by American Airlines and can be reached at 800-679-8215.

A regional passenger jet from Wichita, Kansas collided with a military helicopter approaching Ronald Reagan National airport near Washington DC late on Wednesday, killing all 64 people onboard the plane and three soldiers in the helicopter. Here’s what we know a day after the crash:

• Investigators have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from American Eagle flight 5342, an American Airlines flight operated by PSA, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced late on Thursday. The recorders are now at the NTSB’s labs for evaluation. Board member Todd Inman said officials aimed to release a preliminary report into the incident within 30 days.

• At least 27 bodies have been recovered from the plane and one from the Black Hawk helicopter which crashed into the Potomac River. The Bombardier CRJ-700 jet broke into three parts and was in waist-deep water in the Potomac. More than 300 emergency workers, including divers, weathered high winds and packed ice to retrieve pieces of the plane and bodies.

• As many as 14 skaters and coaches, including two 16-year-olds and a married pair of world champions, were onboard the American Airlines plane. The Skating Club of Boston said Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, both aged 16, were on the plane. The club also said the Russian-born ice skating coaches and former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who were husband and wife, were onboard. Other victims included ice-skating coach Alexandr Kirsanov, and two of his young students Angela Yang and Sean Kay.

• Two Chinese citizens were also on the plane, state media reported citing the Chinese embassy. Senator Maria Cantwell said that the dead on the plane also included citizens from Russia, the Philippines and Germany.

• The pilot and first officer on the American Airlines flight were named as Jonathan Campos and Sam Lilley in media reports. Campos was 34 and Lilley 28, it was reported.

• President Donald Trump has been strongly criticised by Democrats after suggesting that the previous administration’s diversity policies were responsible for the crash. In a press conference, Trump told reporters, “We had the highest standard [of air traffic controllers in his first administration] that you could have, and then they changed it back – that was Biden,” Trump said, adding that he believed the changes were made as part of diversity programs that his administration was vowed to repeal.

• Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, said Trump had used the collision to “peddle lies, conspiracy theories, and attack people of color and women without any basis whatsoever”. He continued: “Have you no decency? Have you no respect for the families whose lives have been turned upside down?”

• Journalists also highlighted another exchange between the president and journalists. Trump responded to a question about whether he was going to visit the scene of the plane crash by saying: “What’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?”

• Trump later signed another executive order that officials said would stop “woke policies” in federal aviation. Trump had already signed an executive order ending diversity initiatives at the Federal Aviation Administration last week.

• Conflicting reports have emerged about whether staffing levels at Ronald Reagan national airport were “not normal”. According to an initial Federal Aviation Administration report, obtained by the New York Times, the Associated Press and others, staffing levels were “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic”. According to the report, one air traffic controller was responsible for coordinating helicopter traffic and arriving and departing planes when the collision happened, the Associated Press reported, and that configuration was described as “not normal”.

• But a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press that staffing at the air traffic control tower on Wednesday night was, in fact, at a normal level. The positions are regularly combined when controllers need to step away from the console for breaks or are in the process of a shift change, or air traffic is slow, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal procedures.

• Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, said the Pentagon had launched an investigation. He added that the army helicopter crew involved in the collision was “fairly experienced”. Describing the flight as an “annual proficiency training flight”, Hegseth said: “They did have night vision goggles.”

• Both the helicopter and the passenger plane had been flying in a “standard flight pattern” on a clear night before the crash, transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said. He added that it was not uncommon for military aircraft to be seen in the skies over the nation’s capital, including near Reagan National, which is located in Arlington, Virginia.

• The American Airlines CEO, Robert Eisen, said: “At this time we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the PSA aircraft.” He urged friends and family of those affected to call 1-800-679-8215, which is the helpline the airline has set up.

• A day before Wednesday night’s midair collision near Reagan airport, a different jet there had to abort its landing and make a second approach after a helicopter appeared near its flight path, the Washington Post reported.

• The US army saw an increase in very serious aviation incidents during the last fiscal year, with 15 flight and two ground incidents that resulted in deaths of service members, destruction of aircraft, or more than $2.5m in damage to the airframe, the Associated Press reported.

Among the confirmed victims of the American Airlines jet carrying 64 people that collided in midair with an army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers were young figure skaters returning from the US figure skating championships, along with their parents and coaches, and a North Carolina-based flight attendant.

The Skating Club of Boston said in a statement on Thursday that Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, along with their parents Jin Han and Christine Lane and coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were aboard the plane on Wednesday night.

The group was returning from the US figure skating national development camp, a program for “young competitive skaters of tomorrow”, following last week’s US championships in Wichita, Kansas.

“Our sport and this club have suffered a horrible loss with this tragedy,” said Doug Zeghibe, the CEO and director of the Skating Club of Boston. “Skating is a tight-knit community where parents and kids come together six or seven days a week to train and work together. Everyone is like family.

“We are devastated and completely at a loss for words.”

The most recent post on Lane’s Instagram profile was a photograph from the inside of a plane on a runway, with the caption “ICT -> DCA” – the codes for Wichita Dwight D Eisenhower National airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National airport in Washington DC.

Lane was reportedly 16 years old, and from Barrington, Rhode Island, according to Reuters.

The Russian-born ice-skating coaches and former world champions Shishkova and Naumov were married and had lived in the US since 1998. They won the 1994 world championships in pairs figure skating.

Inna Volyanskaya, a former skater who competed for the Soviet Union and was a coach at the Washington figure skating club, was also reported to have been onboard.

Volyanskaya’s ex-husband, Ross Lansel, also a skate coach, told NBC that he was devastated by the news.

“It’s going to be so hard without her, it’s tough, because she meant a lot to these kids,” he said. “Inna was unique, one of the best skaters I’ve ever seen.”

In a statement, US Figure Skating, the sport’s domestic governing body, said: “We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts.”

The International Skating Union added that the global skating community was “heartbroken to learn that figure skaters, along with their families, friends, and coaches, are understood to be among those on board”.

Loudoun county public school district in Virginia announced that multiple of the victims were former students and Fairfax county public schools in Virginia said that three of their students and six of their parents were among the victims. Two of the parents were current or former FCPS staff members, the statement added.

“We are devastated by the tragic news,” the statement reads.

Natalya Gudin, the wife of the ice-skating coach Alexandr Kirsanov, told ABC News that her husband and two young ice skaters he was coaching were onboard the flight.

Gudin, who is also an ice-skating coach, told the outlet she decided to stay home in Delaware while her husband flew to Kansas for the camp and that she last spoke with him as he boarded the flight on Wednesday.

“I lost my husband, I lost my students, I lost my friends,” Gudin said. “I need my husband back. I need his body back.”

Youth ice skaters Angela Yang and Sean Kay were Kirsanov’s students aboard the flight, Gudin confirmed to the Delaware News Journal. Yang and Kay had been dance partners on the ice.

“This young team – Sean Kay and Angela Yang – they were so amazing,” Gudin said. “All the judges were so proud and they had such a big future. And what, all on the same plane?”

Senator Maria Cantwell said that the fatalities on the passenger jet included citizens from Russia, the Philippines and Germany. The Chinese embassy in the US said two Chinese nationals were among those killed.

Bill Melugin, a correspondent for Fox News, wrote on X that his friend Wendy Shaffer lost her life in the plane crash.

“Wendy was an incredible wife to my friend Nate, and an amazing mom of two children, ages 3 and 1,” he wrote.

On social media, a woman said that her husband, Ian Epstein, a North Carolina-based flight attendant, was also onboard the plane.

Debi Epstein wrote in a post on Facebook that it is “with very heavy heart and extreme sadness that myself along with our children Hannah Epstein and Joanna Epstein and his sister Robbie Epstein Bloom her husband Steven Bloom and nieces Andi and Dani inform you that Ian Epstein was one of the flight attendants on American Airlines Flight 5342 that collided last night when they were landing in DC”.

Epstein’s own Facebook page notes that he worked at PSA Airlines, which is part of the American Airlines Group.

Other Facebook users have posted about the news regarding Epstein, describing him as someone who was “passionate about flying” and someone who loved his job.

“I will never forget walking you thru the airport after you saved and safely evacuated 80 people out of a burning plane a few years ago,” one user wrote. “And everyone applauding you as you walked through the terminal.”

A father has also identified his son, 28-year-old Sam Lilley, as one of the two pilots onboard the American Airlines aircraft.

On Facebook, his father, Timothy Lilley, wrote how “proud” he was when Sam became a pilot. “Now it hurts so bad I can’t even cry myself to sleep,” he wrote, adding that his son, who was the first officer on the flight, was engaged to get married in the fall.

American Airlines has not released the names of the flight crew members.

Hamaad Raza, also identified his wife, Asra Hussain, 26, to Newsweek as one of the passengers who was onboard the flight. Raza was interviewed on Wednesday night at the airport while he was waiting for his wife.

“I’m just praying that someone is pulling her out of the river right now,” he told the reporters.

A father in Wichita, Kansas, identified his daughter, 20-year-old Grace Maxwell, to the Wichita Eagle, as being one of the 60 passengers on the flight. Her father, Dean Maxwell, told the outlet that she was on her way back to college and had returned home to Wichita to attend her grandfather’s funeral.

He said that he didn’t know when he would get more information or whether she was among the passengers who had been recovered from the Potomac River. “We don’t know,” Maxwell said, adding “we do know she was on the plane.”

The United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry confirmed on Thursday that four members of the association’s steamfitters local 602 union in Maryland were among the victims of the flight. Their names have not yet been released.

“We’re heartbroken to share that four UA Brothers were among the victims of the tragic crash of American Airlines Flight 5342,” the labor union wrote in a statement. “May they rest in peace.”

The New York Times identified one of the steamfitters as 40-year-old Michael Stovall, a Maryland resident, who had been on a hunting trip with his friends in Kansas.

Stovall was flying with at least six of his friends from the trip on Wednesday night, a cousin said. Another member of the group has been identified as 30-year-old Jesse Pitcher, who had been married just over a year and owned his own plumbing business.

On social media, friends described Pitcher as a “true friend” who was “always down for an adventure”.

Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a statement that the committee was “deeply saddened by the tragic air accident in Washington DC”, and extended sympathies to all those affected.

On Thursday afternoon, officials said that the bodies of all three soldiers who were in the helicopter had been recovered. Their identities have not been released.

UN secretary-general António Guterres has called for 2,500 children to be immediately evacuated from Gaza for medical treatment after meeting with US doctors who said the children were at imminent risk of death in the coming weeks.

The four doctors had all volunteered in Gaza during the 15-month-long war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas that has devastated the territory of more than 2 million people and its healthcare system.

Guterres said he was “deeply moved” by his meeting with the American doctors on Thursday. “2,500 children must be immediately evacuated with the guarantee that they will be able to return to their families and communities,” Guterres posted on social media after the meeting.

Just days before a ceasefire began on 19 January, the World Health Organization said more than 12,000 patients were waiting for medical evacuations and it had hoped they could be ramped up during the truce.

Among those patients urgently needing treatment are 2,500 children, said Feroze Sidhwa, a California trauma surgeon who worked in Gaza from 25 March to 8 April last year.

“There’s about 2,500 children who are at imminent risk of death in the next few weeks. Some are dying right now. Some will die tomorrow. Some will die the next day,” Sidhwa told reporters after meeting with Guterres.

“Of those 2,500 kids, the vast majority need very simple things done,” he said, citing the case of a 3-year-old boy who suffered burns to his arm. The burns had healed, but the scar tissue was slowly cutting off blood flow, leaving him at risk of amputation, said Sidhwa.

Ayesha Khan, an emergency doctor at Stanford university hospital, worked in Gaza from the end of November until 1 January. She spoke about many children with amputations, who had no prosthetics or rehabilitation.

She held up a photo of two young sisters with amputations, who were sharing a wheelchair. They were orphaned in the attack that injured them and Khan said: “Their only chance for survival is to be medically evacuated.”

“Unfortunately, the current security restrictions don’t allow for children to travel with more than one caregiver,” she said. “Their caregiver is their aunt, who has a baby that she is breastfeeding.”

“So even though we were able to, with great difficulty, get evacuation set up for them, they won’t let the aunt take her baby with her. So the aunt has to choose between the baby she’s breastfeeding and the lives of her two nieces.”

Cogat, the Israeli defence agency that liaises with the Palestinians, did not respond to a request for comment on the demand for medical evacuation of 2,500 children by Guterres and the doctors he met. Israel’s mission to the UN also did not respond to a request for comment.

The doctors said they are advocating for a centralised process for medical evacuations with clear guidelines.

“Under this ceasefire agreement, there is supposed to be a mechanism in place for medical evacuations. We’ve still not seen that process spelled out,” said Thaer Ahmad, an emergency room doctor from Chicago, who worked in Gaza in January 2024.

Khan said there was no process in place to get the children out, adding: “And will they be allowed to return? There is some discussion right now of the Rafah border opening only for exits, but it’s exit without right to return.”

At the start of this month, before the ceasefire, the WHO said 5,383 patients had been evacuated with its support since the war began in October 2023, most of those in the first seven months before the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza was closed.

Three Israelis and five Thai citizens held in Gaza have been freed, as Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy met hostages’ relatives, reportedly telling them he was optimistic the ceasefire would hold to allow the return of all the living and the dead.

The handover on Thursday of seven hostages in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was delayed by a chaotic crowd surging towards the group, despite an escort of heavily armed militants, jostling and blocking their passage to waiting Red Cross vehicles.

Israel’s military confirmed that the Israelis Gadi Moses, 80, Arbel Yehoud, 29, and five Thai hostages – Pongsak Thaenna, Sathian Suwannakham, Watchara Sriaoun, Bannawat Seathao and Surasak Rumnao – had all been handed over at about 1pm local time.

Agam Berger, 20, the last female soldier held in Gaza, had been released earlier from northern Gaza.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, attacked the “shocking scenes” in Khan Younis and suspended the planned release of Palestinian prisoners “until the mediators guarantee the safe exit of the hostages” in future.

Buses carrying Palestinian prisoners due to be freed were sent back to Israeli jails in the early afternoon, before a new release time of 5pm was announced. Later on Thursday, buses arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah carrying some of the prisoners.

It was not the first crisis in a ceasefire deal that is not yet two weeks old. Yehoud had originally been listed for release on Saturday. When four female soldiers were handed over instead, Israel accused Hamas of violating the deal and suspended plans to allow Palestinian civilians to return to northern Gaza.

After last-minute negotiations, Hamas confirmed Yehoud would be freed on Thursday with two other hostages and Israel opened checkpoints to northern Gaza on Monday.

Shortly after the Thursday handover of the seven hostages in southern Gaza, Trump’s envoy for the region, Steven Witkoff, made a brief visit to Hostage Square in Tel Aviv.

Many people, when they realised Witkoff was there, raced to pay personal tribute to him for brokering the ceasefire agreement. “Thank you for freeing the hostages, thank you to Mr Trump,” one shouted.

He met families of hostages briefly in a public library beside the square, assuring them he was optimistic the deal would hold, Israeli media reported, and said he was committed to bringing home the living held in Gaza and the dead.

The first stage of the ceasefire is due to last 42 days and covers the release of 33 Israeli hostages, mostly women and older men. Of the 23 still to be released as part of the first phase, Hamas says eight are dead. Under the agreement, Israel will free about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and increase aid into Gaza.

Shortly after Thursday’s handover, Hamas confirmed the death of Mohammed Deif, the head of its military wing, six months after Israel announced he had been killed. It was the first statement that Hamas has released on Deif’s condition since the Israeli military said last August that he had been killed in an airstrike in southern Gaza the month before.

Witkoff was visiting Israel before negotiations on the second phase of the deal, due to start on Monday, and went from Hostage Square to hold talks with Netanyahu. The Israeli leader faces heavy pressure from far-right members of his coalition to restart the war rather than extend the ceasefire.

Trump’s envoy also visited Gaza with the Israeli military and met the four female soldiers freed on Saturday at the Israeli hospital where they were being treated.

Among those in the crowd grateful to Trump was Dani Miran, whose son Omri Miran, 47, is a hostage in Gaza. “Only one person made this happen. I want to thank Trump,” he said. His hopes of seeing his son again rested entirely on the US leader, he added.

He said that for one day he had put his own worries aside to celebrate, because after 15 months of intense campaigning, everyone held in Gaza feels like family. “I think all the time about [Omri’s return], but today I concentrate on the joy.”

Miran was part of the crowd waiting in Hostages Square to watch the releases in real time, beside a clock broadcasting a countdown of the days, hours and minutes of the hostages’ captivity.

Schoolchildren and parents pushing babies in prams mixed with adults who had taken the day off to be there for a “historic moment”, most veterans of the long campaign for a ceasefire deal.

They cheered and wept when the first footage streamed from Gaza showed Berger walking unaided. Like the four other female soldiers freed last weekend, she was dressed in military-style fatigues and put on stage for a ceremony that served as a show of the militants’ power after 15 months of war.

“She made it,” said Yahel Oren, 31, who served a decade ago at the Nahal Oz base, where Berger was captured by Hamas, and watched the video in tears. “It’s hard to think of her alone there, but at least we can count the minutes she has left.”

Oren was part of a group campaigning for the freedom of the female “spotter” troops held in Gaza, and was wearing a T-shirt saying: “Once a spotter always a spotter.”

Attention then shifted to the south, where seven hostages were due to be freed. Shlomo Zidkiahv, 83, waved a Thai flag in solidarity with a group of Thais taken hostage while working on one of the kibbutzim that was attacked.

He carried photos of all six still in Gaza, as neither Hamas nor Israel had initially identified the five who would be freed. They were later named as Thenna, Suwannakham, Sriaoun, Seathao and Rumnao.

The release of Moses, the first Israeli man freed in this exchange, was taken by many in the crowd as a tacit acknowledgment that the last living women held in Gaza had been released.

Myanmar is a south-east Asian country that has experienced decades of conflict and repressive military rule since it gained independence from Britain in 1948. Since a military coup in 2021, fighting has flared once again. Here’s a primer on the conflict:

Marianne Faithfull, whose six-decade career marked her out as one of the UK’s most versatile and characterful singer-songwriters, has died aged 78.

A spokesperson said: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull.

“Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.”

With a discography that spanned classic 60s pop tunes to the prowling synthpop of Broken English and onto collaborations with Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Lou Reed and more, Faithfull was idolised by fans and fellow musicians alike, and was also celebrated across the worlds of fashion and film.

Mick Jagger, with whom she had a four-year relationship, said: “I am so saddened to hear of the death of Marianne Faithfull. She was so much part of my life for so long. She was a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress. She will always be remembered.”

Born in 1946 in London, Faithfull was descended from Austrian nobility on her mother’s side – her great-great-uncle Leopold von Sacher-Masoch wrote the erotic novel Venus in Furs – but grew up in relatively ordinary surroundings in a terraced house in Reading.

After leaving for London in her teens, she met Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who asked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write her 1964 debut single As Tears Go By, which hit the UK Top 10. She had three other Top 10 singles in 1965, all of which also reached the Top 40 in the US.

Faithfull also began acting at that time, appearing on stage in productions of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, alongside Glenda Jackson, and Hamlet, playing Ophelia with Anjelica Huston as her understudy and performing each night’s climactic “madness” scene, she later revealed, high on heroin.

On screen, she acted alongside Orson Welles, Oliver Reed, Alain Delon and Anna Karina, and played herself in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 film Made in the USA.

Her fame as an icon of “swinging London” was superseded, though, by the infamy that came from her relationship with the Rolling Stones. She had married the artist John Dunbar in 1965 and had a son, Nicholas, but soon left Dunbar for Mick Jagger.

She was often described as a muse for the band: she once told Jagger “wild horses couldn’t drag me away”, which became the chorus line to Wild Horses, and her drug struggles also proved inspirational for the songs Dear Doctor and You Can’t Always Get What You Want. She said: “I know they used me as a muse for those tough drug songs. I knew I was being used, but it was for a worthy cause.”

She co-wrote her song Sister Morphine, recorded with Jagger, Richards and Ry Cooder, and later recorded by the Rolling Stones for their album Sticky Fingers, but her writing credit was left off until she won a protracted legal battle.

Her addiction to cocaine and heroin worsened, and her reputation was damaged by being discovered naked, wrapped in a fur rug after having a shower, during a 1967 police search of Keith Richards’ house, alongside Richards, Jagger and six other men (described by one person as an innocent gathering “of pure domesticity”). “It destroyed me,” she later said. “To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”

In 1970, Faithfull lost custody of her son, split with Jagger and became homeless, living on the streets of Soho in London as she tried to quit heroin. “I’d been living in a very fake sort of world in the 60s,” she said in 2016. “Suddenly, when I was living on the streets … I realised that human beings were really good. The Chinese restaurant let me wash my clothes there. The man who had the tea stall gave me cups of tea.” She slowly turned her life around, ending an almost decade-long spell away from music with the country album Dreamin’ My Dreams in 1976.

She cemented her comeback with one of her most acclaimed albums, 1979’s Grammy-nominated Broken English, embracing synthpop and postpunk with an affectingly raw, deepened voice. She quit drugs for good in 1985, and regularly released music throughout the rest of her career. Her collaborators over the years included Nick Cave, Damon Albarn, Emmylou Harris, Beck and Metallica. She released 21 studio albums.

Faithfull married and divorced two additional times, to Ben Brierly of punk band the Vibrators, and the actor Giorgio Della Terza. “I’ve had a wonderful life with all my lovers, and husbands,” she said in 2011, excepting Della Terza: “He was American, and he was a nightmare.”

There were other acting roles, too, notably playing God in two episodes of the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous; the devil in a 2004 production of The Black Rider, a musical by Tom Waits and William Burroughs; and Empress Maria Theresa in Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette.

In her later years she lived in Paris, and reacted to the 2015 terror attack at the city’s Bataclan concert venue, in which 90 people were killed, with a song called They Come at Night written on the day of the attacks.

Faithfull had numerous health issues. In 2007, she announced she had the liver illness hepatitis C, having been diagnosed 12 years previously. She had successful surgery following a breast cancer diagnosis in 2006, and weathered numerous joint ailments in her later years, including arthritis. In the early 1970s, she also suffered from anorexia during her heroin addiction. In 2020, she contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalised for 22 days.

She is survived by her son, Nicholas Dunbar.

Marianne Faithfull, whose six-decade career marked her out as one of the UK’s most versatile and characterful singer-songwriters, has died aged 78.

A spokesperson said: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull.

“Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.”

With a discography that spanned classic 60s pop tunes to the prowling synthpop of Broken English and onto collaborations with Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Lou Reed and more, Faithfull was idolised by fans and fellow musicians alike, and was also celebrated across the worlds of fashion and film.

Mick Jagger, with whom she had a four-year relationship, said: “I am so saddened to hear of the death of Marianne Faithfull. She was so much part of my life for so long. She was a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress. She will always be remembered.”

Born in 1946 in London, Faithfull was descended from Austrian nobility on her mother’s side – her great-great-uncle Leopold von Sacher-Masoch wrote the erotic novel Venus in Furs – but grew up in relatively ordinary surroundings in a terraced house in Reading.

After leaving for London in her teens, she met Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who asked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write her 1964 debut single As Tears Go By, which hit the UK Top 10. She had three other Top 10 singles in 1965, all of which also reached the Top 40 in the US.

Faithfull also began acting at that time, appearing on stage in productions of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, alongside Glenda Jackson, and Hamlet, playing Ophelia with Anjelica Huston as her understudy and performing each night’s climactic “madness” scene, she later revealed, high on heroin.

On screen, she acted alongside Orson Welles, Oliver Reed, Alain Delon and Anna Karina, and played herself in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 film Made in the USA.

Her fame as an icon of “swinging London” was superseded, though, by the infamy that came from her relationship with the Rolling Stones. She had married the artist John Dunbar in 1965 and had a son, Nicholas, but soon left Dunbar for Mick Jagger.

She was often described as a muse for the band: she once told Jagger “wild horses couldn’t drag me away”, which became the chorus line to Wild Horses, and her drug struggles also proved inspirational for the songs Dear Doctor and You Can’t Always Get What You Want. She said: “I know they used me as a muse for those tough drug songs. I knew I was being used, but it was for a worthy cause.”

She co-wrote her song Sister Morphine, recorded with Jagger, Richards and Ry Cooder, and later recorded by the Rolling Stones for their album Sticky Fingers, but her writing credit was left off until she won a protracted legal battle.

Her addiction to cocaine and heroin worsened, and her reputation was damaged by being discovered naked, wrapped in a fur rug after having a shower, during a 1967 police search of Keith Richards’ house, alongside Richards, Jagger and six other men (described by one person as an innocent gathering “of pure domesticity”). “It destroyed me,” she later said. “To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.”

In 1970, Faithfull lost custody of her son, split with Jagger and became homeless, living on the streets of Soho in London as she tried to quit heroin. “I’d been living in a very fake sort of world in the 60s,” she said in 2016. “Suddenly, when I was living on the streets … I realised that human beings were really good. The Chinese restaurant let me wash my clothes there. The man who had the tea stall gave me cups of tea.” She slowly turned her life around, ending an almost decade-long spell away from music with the country album Dreamin’ My Dreams in 1976.

She cemented her comeback with one of her most acclaimed albums, 1979’s Grammy-nominated Broken English, embracing synthpop and postpunk with an affectingly raw, deepened voice. She quit drugs for good in 1985, and regularly released music throughout the rest of her career. Her collaborators over the years included Nick Cave, Damon Albarn, Emmylou Harris, Beck and Metallica. She released 21 studio albums.

Faithfull married and divorced two additional times, to Ben Brierly of punk band the Vibrators, and the actor Giorgio Della Terza. “I’ve had a wonderful life with all my lovers, and husbands,” she said in 2011, excepting Della Terza: “He was American, and he was a nightmare.”

There were other acting roles, too, notably playing God in two episodes of the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous; the devil in a 2004 production of The Black Rider, a musical by Tom Waits and William Burroughs; and Empress Maria Theresa in Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette.

In her later years she lived in Paris, and reacted to the 2015 terror attack at the city’s Bataclan concert venue, in which 90 people were killed, with a song called They Come at Night written on the day of the attacks.

Faithfull had numerous health issues. In 2007, she announced she had the liver illness hepatitis C, having been diagnosed 12 years previously. She had successful surgery following a breast cancer diagnosis in 2006, and weathered numerous joint ailments in her later years, including arthritis. In the early 1970s, she also suffered from anorexia during her heroin addiction. In 2020, she contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalised for 22 days.

She is survived by her son, Nicholas Dunbar.

Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s nominee for national intelligence director, refused to call the whistleblower Edward Snowden a “traitor” but sought to rein in her unorthodox views on foreign dictators and opposition to electronic surveillance during a tense confirmation hearing that could sink her nomination to oversee the country’s sprawling intelligence community.

In a three-hour hearing before the Senate intelligence committee, Gabbard, a former congresswoman and member of the Hawaii army national guard, partially recanted her views that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine, said she had “no love” for the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and denied meeting with Hezbollah representatives during a trip to Lebanon in 2017.

Gabbard, who has ruthlessly criticised the US intelligence community that she now aims to lead, has said that she has been the target of “lies and smears” ahead of a committee vote in which she cannot afford to lose the support of a single Republican member.

Skeptical senators said she was unfit to serve as national intelligence director because of questions over her “judgment” in past statements on Vladimir Putin’s “legitimate security concerns” in Ukraine, an independent 2017 visit to Damascus in which she met Assad, as well as her support for Snowden, whom she admitted had “broken the law” but refused to condemn as a “traitor” despite heated – and sometimes shouted – questioning from Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee on Thursday.

“Those who oppose my nomination imply that I am loyal to something or someone other than God, my own conscience and the constitution of the United States, accusing me of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, Modi’s puppet, not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet masters,” she said.

“The fact is, what truly unsettles my political opponents is I refuse to be their puppet,” she said. “I have no love for Assad or Gaddafi or any dictator. I just hate al-Qaida. I hate that we have leaders who cozy up to Islamist extremists.”

Gabbard, who was dressed in a snow-white pantsuit and sweater, responded in an even baritone as she toned down her criticism of the US intelligence apparatus, including her past efforts to shutter the Fisa Section 702 law that allows electronic surveillance abroad without a warrant. She now supports reauthorizing the law.

“I don’t find your change of heart credible,” said Mark Warner, the committee’s head vice-chair, indicating that and her past support for Snowden were key concerns for members of the committee.

Gabbard’s hearing was a tightrope walk. A majority of members of the Senate intelligence committee must support her in order for her candidacy to advance to a floor vote in the Senate. A number of US media including Fox News on Thursday reported that she did not yet have the votes to win confirmation.

Her candidacy was also endangered by a series of recent leaks in the press. The New York Times this week reported that US intelligence had intercepted a phone call between two Hezbollah operatives who said that Gabbard had met with “the big guy” during a visit to Lebanon in 2017, indicating a senior Hezbollah official.

During the hearing, Gabbard denied having met with Hezbollah operatives and said it was an “absurd accusation”.

Those ties to foreign governments were a key concern of members of the committee before the hearing. “There is real concern about her contacts [in Syria] and that she does not share the same sympathies and values as the intelligence community,” a person familiar with discussions among senior intelligence officials previously told the Guardian. “She is historically unfit.”

During the hearing, the Colorado senator Michael Bennet attacked Gabbard for a tweet sent out just hours after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in which she said: “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns.”

While she did not explain those remarks, she did indicate that she had had a change of heart. Asked bluntly who she blamed for the war between Russia and Ukraine, she said: “Putin started the invasion of Ukraine.”

Yet the strongest questions regarded her past support for Snowden, whom she admitted had broken US laws by taking a trove of top secret intelligence documents while working as a contractor for the National Security Agency and later leaking them to media, including the Guardian.

“Is Edward Snowden a traitor: yes or no?” Gabbard was asked by successive Democratic senators, including Bennet.

“Snowden broke the law,” said Gabbard. “He released information about the United States … I have more immediate steps that I would take to prevent another Snowden.”

“This is when the rubber hits the road,” Bennet retorted, demanding a “yes” or “no” answer. “This is not a moment for social media. It’s not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories … This is when you need to answer questions of the people whose votes you’re asking for.”

Those questions were foreseen by Snowden himself, who wrote in a tweet on Thursday that Gabbard would be “required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation”.

“I encourage her to do so. Tell them I harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff,” he said. “In DC, that’s what passes for the pledge of allegiance.”

The committee is expected to hold a closed session to discuss sensitive matters later on Thursday and then would move to a vote “as soon as possible”. said Tom Cotton, the committee chair.

“Obviously we didn’t select this nominee,” said Bennet, Gabbard’s most vocal skeptic. “But can’t we do better than somebody who doesn’t believe in [Fisa law] 702? Can we believe that somebody who can’t answer whether Snowden was a traitor five times today, who made excuses for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?”

A study has found microplastic and nanoplastic pollution to be significantly higher in placentas from premature births than in those from full-term births.

The levels were much higher than previously detected in blood, suggesting the tiny plastic particles were accumulating in the placenta. But the higher average levels found in the shorter pregnancies were a “big surprise” for the researchers, as longer terms could be expected to lead to more accumulation.

Preterm birth is the leading cause of infant death worldwide, and the reasons for about two-thirds of all preterm births were unknown, said Dr Enrico Barrozo, of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, US. The established link between air pollution and millions of premature births had spurred the research team to investigate plastic pollution.

The new study only demonstrates an association between microplastics and premature births. Further research is needed in cell cultures and animal models to determine if the link is causal. Microplastics are known to cause inflammation in human cells, and inflammation is one of the factors that prompts the start of labour.

Microplastics, broken down from plastic waste, have polluted the entire planet from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People are already known to consume the tiny particles via food, water and by breathing them in.

Microplastics were first detected in placentas in 2020 and have also been found in semen, breast milk, brains, livers and bone marrow, indicating profuse contamination of people’s bodies. The impact on human health is little known, but microplastics have been linked to strokes and heart attacks.

“Our study hints at the possibility that the accumulation of plastics could be contributing to the occurrence of preterm birth,” said Prof Kjersti Aagaard, at Boston children’s hospital in the US. “Combined with other recent research, this study adds to the growing body of evidence that demonstrates a real risk from exposure to plastics on human health and disease.”

The research was presented on Thursday at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s annual meeting in Denver, and has been submitted to an academic journal. The researchers analysed 100 placentas from full-term births (37.2 weeks, on average) and 75 from preterm births (34 weeks), all from the Houston area.

Analysis with highly sensitive mass spectrometry found 203 micrograms of plastic per gram of tissue (µg/g) in the premature placentas – more than 50% higher than the 130µg/g in the full-term placentas.

Twelve types of plastic were detected, with the most significant differences between the full and preterm birth placentas being for PET, as used in plastic bottles, PVC, polyurethane and polycarbonate.

Some mothers are at higher risk of preterm births, due to their age, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. But a strong link between the plastic particles and premature birth remained even when these factors were taken into account.

“This study showed an association and not causation,” said Barrozo. “But I think it is important to increase people’s awareness of microplastics and their associations with potential human health effects.”

The effectiveness of actions to cut people’s exposure to microplastics also needed urgent study, he said. “Those interventions need to be studied in order to show that there’s a benefit to avoiding these plastics.”

America’s biggest trading partners are bracing for Donald Trump to impose sweeping tariffs on their exports after the US president repeated his threat to hit Canada and Mexico with new duties.

Officials in Ottawa and Mexico City have drawn up plans to retaliate against Washington with tariffs of their own, raising the prospect of a damaging trade war. Businesses inside the US and across the world have warned of widespread disruption if the Trump administration pushes ahead.

Trump repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail to use tariffs to revive the US economy, disregarding many economists’ concerns that imposing higher duties on goods from overseas would exacerbate inflation, rather than rapidly bring down prices, as the president has promised.

While the Trump campaign mooted a universal tariff on all foreign goods, the Trump administration has so far opted to target specific US trading partners. The president has made clear that China and the European Union are in his sights, but has so far focused on America’s closest neighbors.

Weeks after his election victory last November, Trump announced on his own social network that upon his return to office he would “sign all necessary documents” to impose a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada. Mexico must stop “illegal aliens” from crossing its border with the US, he said, and Canada must halt the flow of drugs like fentanyl. “Until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

Trump did not, in fact, sign these documents following his inauguration. Instead, he introduced a deadline – 1 February – by which both countries are supposed to resolve his concerns.

Asked about the deadline on Thursday, he said: “We may or may not. We’re going to make that determination probably tonight.”

Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, has already taken Trump through the various migration initiatives her government has undertaken. Experts have raised questions over Trump’s demand from Canada, with so little fentanyl entering the US through its northern border that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) omitted to even mention Canada in a 2020 report.

Unswayed by such details, in recent weeks Trump has claimed his administration will raise “hundreds of billions of dollars, and even trillions of dollars” through tariffs that would boost the US economy. He has spoken of establishing an “external revenue service” to collect the money.

While he and his allies continue to talk up tariffs as a viable financial revenue stream for the US, Trump – who as both politician and reality TV star has spoken highly of his dealmaking prowess – has previously raised them as a negotiating tactic, only to withdraw the threat.

This strategy played out less than a week after his inauguration, when the White House threatened Colombia with tariffs and sanctions as punishment for its refusal to accept military flights carrying deportees. Colombia later agreed, and the threat was withdrawn.

In Canada, ministers have expressed optimism that a resolution by Saturday remains possible. “I remain hopeful we’re going to be able to solve this. We’ve been doing it for 150 years together,” David McGuinty, the public safety minister, told reporters. “I don’t see why we can’t do it now.”

Since Trump’s initial social media post about the Canadian border, officials in Ottawa have pledged to spend C$1.3bn for new measures, including the use of two Black Hawk helicopters and 60 drones.

But it stands ready to hit back. A first round of retaliatory tariffs would cause minimal damage to the US, covering C$37bn of its exports to Canada, and if needed, Canada’s federal government plans to escalate by imposing tariffs on C$110bn worth of goods.

“The reality is that a large, uncontrolled bully is using his position as the most powerful political leader in the world, to put pressure on a whole range of allies,” said Lawrence Herman, an international trade lawyer and senior fellow at the CD Howe Institute. “We have to, in Canada and the rest of the world, recognize that we’ve entered a new era.

“With the Trump administration, there are no rules. There is no respect for international treaties or agreements. There is no longer value to the US signature on international documents.”

In Mexico, meanwhile, the government has sent signals it is prepared to do more on migration and fentanyl trafficking – even notching up a record seizure soon after Trump’s threats began – but it has also sought to play down the prospects of a trade war.

“We don’t think [the tariffs] will happen. And if they do, we have our plan,” Sheinbaum said on Wednesday.

“People are worried here, and there is a sense of uncertainty – which is what Donald Trump seeks to create,” said Kenneth Smith Ramos, Mexico’s former chief negotiator during talks over the USMCA free trade deal, struck between the US, Mexico and Canada during the first Trump administration.

“It’s a bit like a game of chicken: the two cars are hurtling towards each other at top speed,” he said. “Mexico has to send the signal that its car is not a little one but a big one that could also hurt the United States.”

Exports account for roughly 40% of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP), and more than 80% of them go to the US. While the country would try to diversify its export markets in the event of an economic dispute with the US, “you’re never going to be able to replace the US market with any other country”, said Smith Ramos.

Ministers have stressed that “cool heads” are required in the face of Trump’s public threats and declined to disclose their plan of action if tariffs are imposed. “But you can be sure we have studied it a great deal,” Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican economic secretary, said recently. “There will be no surprises, nor untimely reactions.”

Have a question about tariffs? We’re here to help. Email callum.jones@theguardian.com and we’ll aim to answer in a future story

America’s biggest trading partners are bracing for Donald Trump to impose sweeping tariffs on their exports after the US president repeated his threat to hit Canada and Mexico with new duties.

Officials in Ottawa and Mexico City have drawn up plans to retaliate against Washington with tariffs of their own, raising the prospect of a damaging trade war. Businesses inside the US and across the world have warned of widespread disruption if the Trump administration pushes ahead.

Trump repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail to use tariffs to revive the US economy, disregarding many economists’ concerns that imposing higher duties on goods from overseas would exacerbate inflation, rather than rapidly bring down prices, as the president has promised.

While the Trump campaign mooted a universal tariff on all foreign goods, the Trump administration has so far opted to target specific US trading partners. The president has made clear that China and the European Union are in his sights, but has so far focused on America’s closest neighbors.

Weeks after his election victory last November, Trump announced on his own social network that upon his return to office he would “sign all necessary documents” to impose a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada. Mexico must stop “illegal aliens” from crossing its border with the US, he said, and Canada must halt the flow of drugs like fentanyl. “Until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

Trump did not, in fact, sign these documents following his inauguration. Instead, he introduced a deadline – 1 February – by which both countries are supposed to resolve his concerns.

Asked about the deadline on Thursday, he said: “We may or may not. We’re going to make that determination probably tonight.”

Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, has already taken Trump through the various migration initiatives her government has undertaken. Experts have raised questions over Trump’s demand from Canada, with so little fentanyl entering the US through its northern border that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) omitted to even mention Canada in a 2020 report.

Unswayed by such details, in recent weeks Trump has claimed his administration will raise “hundreds of billions of dollars, and even trillions of dollars” through tariffs that would boost the US economy. He has spoken of establishing an “external revenue service” to collect the money.

While he and his allies continue to talk up tariffs as a viable financial revenue stream for the US, Trump – who as both politician and reality TV star has spoken highly of his dealmaking prowess – has previously raised them as a negotiating tactic, only to withdraw the threat.

This strategy played out less than a week after his inauguration, when the White House threatened Colombia with tariffs and sanctions as punishment for its refusal to accept military flights carrying deportees. Colombia later agreed, and the threat was withdrawn.

In Canada, ministers have expressed optimism that a resolution by Saturday remains possible. “I remain hopeful we’re going to be able to solve this. We’ve been doing it for 150 years together,” David McGuinty, the public safety minister, told reporters. “I don’t see why we can’t do it now.”

Since Trump’s initial social media post about the Canadian border, officials in Ottawa have pledged to spend C$1.3bn for new measures, including the use of two Black Hawk helicopters and 60 drones.

But it stands ready to hit back. A first round of retaliatory tariffs would cause minimal damage to the US, covering C$37bn of its exports to Canada, and if needed, Canada’s federal government plans to escalate by imposing tariffs on C$110bn worth of goods.

“The reality is that a large, uncontrolled bully is using his position as the most powerful political leader in the world, to put pressure on a whole range of allies,” said Lawrence Herman, an international trade lawyer and senior fellow at the CD Howe Institute. “We have to, in Canada and the rest of the world, recognize that we’ve entered a new era.

“With the Trump administration, there are no rules. There is no respect for international treaties or agreements. There is no longer value to the US signature on international documents.”

In Mexico, meanwhile, the government has sent signals it is prepared to do more on migration and fentanyl trafficking – even notching up a record seizure soon after Trump’s threats began – but it has also sought to play down the prospects of a trade war.

“We don’t think [the tariffs] will happen. And if they do, we have our plan,” Sheinbaum said on Wednesday.

“People are worried here, and there is a sense of uncertainty – which is what Donald Trump seeks to create,” said Kenneth Smith Ramos, Mexico’s former chief negotiator during talks over the USMCA free trade deal, struck between the US, Mexico and Canada during the first Trump administration.

“It’s a bit like a game of chicken: the two cars are hurtling towards each other at top speed,” he said. “Mexico has to send the signal that its car is not a little one but a big one that could also hurt the United States.”

Exports account for roughly 40% of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP), and more than 80% of them go to the US. While the country would try to diversify its export markets in the event of an economic dispute with the US, “you’re never going to be able to replace the US market with any other country”, said Smith Ramos.

Ministers have stressed that “cool heads” are required in the face of Trump’s public threats and declined to disclose their plan of action if tariffs are imposed. “But you can be sure we have studied it a great deal,” Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican economic secretary, said recently. “There will be no surprises, nor untimely reactions.”

Have a question about tariffs? We’re here to help. Email callum.jones@theguardian.com and we’ll aim to answer in a future story

An “epidemic of violence against women and girls” in the UK is getting worse despite years of government promises and strategies, a highly critical report from Whitehall’s spending watchdog has said.

The National Audit Office report comes four years after a major government response to violence against women and girls (VAWG) was launched after the murders of Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard.

The watchdog found “disjointed” efforts meant VAWG was a “significant and growing problem” affecting one in 12 women in England and Wales and causing physical, mental, social and financial harm to survivors.

A review of the previous government’s 2021 strategy to tackle VAWG found it had not helped victims or delivered long-term societal change. The review said the departments tasked with making progress lacked a clear picture of how money was being spent and what policies actually worked.

“Government’s disjointed approach to tackling the epidemic of violence against women and girls has so far failed to improve outcomes for victims,” said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the Commons public accounts committee. “It is disappointing that the Home Office does not know where money is being spent and whether it is making a difference.”

The report will put pressure on Keir Starmer’s government to urgently address concerns amid ballooning reports of violence against women and girls, which accounted for 20% of all police-recorded crime in 2022-23.

Starmer’s government has promised to halve VAWG in a decade, which campaigners said was laudable but impossible without the commitment of every government department, and without combating deep-rooted sexism and misogyny in the UK.

The prevalence of sexual assaults (the proportion of the population to have suffered an assault each year) increased from 3.4% of the population each year to 4.3% in 2023-24, while the prevalence of domestic abuse against women dropped from 9.2% to 7.4%, the report said. Police reports of rape and sexual assault increased from 34,000 to 123,000 over the same period, in part because of improved recording.

The report said that the Home Office – the main department charged with tackling VAWG – “is not currently leading an effective cross-government response”, stating: “To meet [the government’s] ambition the Home Office will need to lead a coordinated, whole-system response that addresses the causes of VAWG.”

The Labour government has told campaigners it is conducting “an analytical sprint” of VAWG policy behind the scenes, with a new strategy expected in the late spring. A Home Office spokesperson said the report exposed the previous government’s failure, and pointed to new protection orders for women experiencing domestic abuse, a review of how police deal with stalking and the embedding of domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms. The spokesperson said it was “pioneering a truly cross-government approach”.

In 2021, the then home secretary, Priti Patel, also promised to “deliver real and lasting change”, but the report said the government had “not been on track since the beginning of the VAWG strategy”. Despite having a dedicated team under the Conservatives, the National Audit Office said the department had “found it challenging to get buy-in from other government departments”. An oversight group first met a year after the launch, and a ministerial group set up to track progress met only three times in four years.

Previously, the Conservative government said it had made “significant progress” in tackling rape after a comprehensive 2021 review of the criminal justice system’s approach to it, and the introduction of the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act.

However, criticising the lack of overall progress, the report found:

• The Home Office did not have “centrally coordinated funding” for VAWG, unlike that for the 2021 illegal drugs strategy, and had underspent on its own VAWG budget by an average of 15% between 2021-22 and 2023-24.

• There was no consistent definition for VAWG – the Home Office includes all victims, while police forces only include women and girls – which “made it difficult to measure progress in a consistent way”.

• While 78% of the commitments in the strategy had been met by July 2024, several were not new, and “most” related to additional funding, holding meetings and publication of new guidance.

Most prevention activities introduced in recent years focused on reducing reoffending rather than avoiding initial offences, the report found.

“This confirms our concern that meaningful and dedicated primary prevention work has been sidelined,” said Andrea Simon, the director of the End Violence Against Women coalition. “The lack of attention to prevention is deplorable, especially as we know VAWG is significantly under-reported.” She added: “It is imperative that any new VAWG strategy comes with spending commitments that match the scale and seriousness of an epidemic of offending.”

Plans to increase confidence in police had been undermined by the “capacity that exists to manage increased demand”, those working in the sector told the report. Giving an example of how women are let down by the criminal justice system, the report noted that in rape cases in England and Wales, there was an average of 158 days between a police referral and a charge from the Crown Prosecution Service – for all crimes the average is 46 days.

Isabelle Younane of Women’s Aid urged the government to invest in reliable data and work with services supporting victims. “Our concern is that it was a difficult autumn budget for violence against women and girls, the sector is really struggling in terms of funding in this space,” she said, adding that the final Home Office allocation for funding to tackle VAWG had not yet been announced. “The commitment to halve VAWG is really welcome, but we can only be confident that we’re going to see a long-term change in this area if it delivers a shift in cultural attitudes.”

• A Russian drone attack on a residential block killed nine people including three elderly couples in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, officials said on Thursday. Images distributed by the emergency services showed a gaping hole in the facade of the long block of flats and rescue workers digging through debris for survivors. “This is a terrible tragedy, a terrible Russian crime. It is very important that the world does not pause in putting pressure on Russia for this terror,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media. National Police later said the search operation had been completed after 19 hours, with rescuers finding nine bodies in the ruins, while 13 people were wounded. Among the dead were three couples – men and women between the ages of 61 and 74 – Ukrainian prosecutors said. Those killed also included a 37-year-old woman, while her eight-year-old daughter was wounded, the Sumy prosecutor’s office said.

• Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s nominee for national intelligence director, partially recanted her views that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine, during a tense confirmation hearing before the Senate intelligence committee. Colorado senator Michael Bennet attacked Gabbard for a tweet sent out just hours after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in which she said: “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns.” While she did not explain those remarks, she did indicate that she had had a change of heart. Asked bluntly who she blamed for the war between Russia and Ukraine, she said: “Putin started the invasion of Ukraine.”

• Sweden’s government on Thursday pledged an additional $1.2bn in military aid to Ukraine, saying Europe needed to prepare to shoulder a larger part in supporting Kyiv. Defence minister Pal Jonson said the package, the country’s 18th since Russia’s 2022 invasion, was the largest to date and was a sign that Sweden was ready to support Ukraine in the “long term”. “This is also a signal to our other allies that we need to prepare for Europe to take more responsibility for supporting Ukraine,” Jonson told a press conference.

• Ukraine’s foreign ministry summoned Slovakia’s ambassador on Thursday to reject accusations that it is meddling in its neighbour’s internal affairs and to accuse Slovak prime minister Robert Fico of being a “mouthpiece” for Russia. Kyiv and Bratislava have been at odds for weeks over Ukraine’s decision not to extend a Russian gas transit deal that expired at the end of December. Kyiv’s move came a day after Slovakia’s foreign ministry said it had summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to protest against Ukrainian comments criticising Fico that it said amounted to interference in Slovak affairs.

• A British man captured fighting on the Ukrainian side in Russia’s Kursk region will face terrorism and mercenary charges that could see him jailed for years, Russian state investigators said on Thursday. Moscow announced in November it had captured James Anderson, describing him as a former British soldier. Britain’s foreign minister, David Lammy, said at the time he was aware of the case and that London would do all it could to offer him assistance. Russia’s Investigative Committee released video on Thursday showing a handcuffed Anderson dressed in a prison uniform with a shaven head, being brought into a room for questioning and confirming his name. In a statement, it said he would face terrorism and mercenary charges on allegations he participated “in an armed conflict as a mercenary on the territory of the Russian Federation for financial remuneration”. It did not say how Anderson pleaded to the charges, some of which are punishable by up to 20 years in jail if he is found guilty.

The coastguard of St Kitts and Nevis has discovered 13 decomposing bodies in a boat adrift off the coast, days after another five bodies were found in a skiff near Trinidad and Tobago.

Officials of the two Caribbean countries said it was not immediately clear if there was any link between the two incidents, or who the deceased were.

Cromwell Henry, deputy commissioner of St Kitts and Nevis police, said the 13 bodies found on Wednesday were in an advanced state of decomposition. He could not give the victims’ age or gender.

The captainless boat was towed to shore and an investigation opened.

On Saturday, a similar callout led to the discovery of a skiff with five dead people onboard off Trinidad and Tobago, about 1,200km (750 miles) away.

That vessel was in a poor state and sank while being towed to the island, officials said.

A Trinidadian coast guard statement noted a “striking resemblance” between the vessel found on Saturday and another discovered nearby in 2021 which contained the remains of 15 people.

It was speculated that that boat had drifted from the African coast with migrants on board.

Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón is under fire after old tweets uncovered a range of troubling opinions on subjects including Islam and George Floyd.

The Spanish actor, who recently became the first ever openly transgender person to receive an acting nomination at the Oscars, has since deleted a number of tweets after users, including writer Sarah Hagi, uncovered them. Variety and the Hollywood Reporter have since reported the news and translated older posts.

Gascón, originally in Spanish, called Floyd “a martyr hero” weeks after his death and wrote: “I truly believe that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict and a hustler, but his death has served to highlight once again that there are those who still consider Black people to be monkeys without rights and those who consider the police to be murderers. All wrong.”

She followed up by writing that it “is no longer a question of racism but social classes that feel threatened by each other”.

In November 2020, she also wrote about “more and more Muslims in Spain” before adding: “Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Maybe next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.”

In another post, she wrote: “Until we ban religions that go against European values and violate human rights, such as Islam, under the protection of freedom of worship, we will not end part of the huge problem we face. Faith manipulates those who cling to faith.”

In a tweet from 2016, she also wrote: “Islam is becoming a hotbed for infection for humanity that urgently need to be cured.”

In a post about the Oscars after the 2021 ceremony where Nomadland took home best picture, she wrote: “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”

Gascón, who shared the best actress prize at last year’s Cannes film festival with her co-stars, has since released a statement. “I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” she said. “As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain. All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

Netflix purchased the film at Cannes and has yet to comment.

Gascón recently made headlines for criticising the social media team involved with her fellow best actress Oscar nominee, I’m Still Here star Fernanda Torres. “I have never, at any point, said anything bad about Fernanda Torres or her movie,” she said in an interview. “However, there are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Pérez down. That speaks more about their movie than mine.”

She later clarified that it wasn’t meant to be an attack on Torres but on “toxicity and violent hate speech on social media”.

Emilia Pérez has been nominated for 13 Oscars, a record for a film not in the English language, yet has faced criticism from both the LGBTQ+ community and in Mexico, where it is set. It tells the story of a cartel boss transitioning into a woman.

Advocacy group Glaad called it “a profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and that it represented “a step backward” for representation while the film has been accused of perpetuating Mexican stereotypes.

French director Jacques Audiard has since apologised: “If there are things that seem shocking in Emilia Pérez then I am sorry … Cinema doesn’t provide answers, it only asks questions. But maybe the questions in Emilia Pérez are incorrect.”