Scores of sick and injured Palestinians, with wounded members of Hamas expected to be among them, have been allowed to cross into Egypt as the key Rafah border crossing was reopened after the release of three more Israeli male civilian hostages.

The opening of the Rafah border crossing, which was closed by Israeli forces nine months ago, took place as part of the continuing ceasefire deal in Gaza.

Egyptian television showed a Palestinian Red Cross ambulance pulling up to the crossing gate, and several children brought out on stretchers and transferred to ambulances on the Egyptian side, the first of an estimated 50 children expected to cross on Saturday.

The opening of Rafah for anticipated regular crossings by a set number of people, marks a highly significant moment in the complex ceasefire agreement and follows international outcry over the Israeli closure of the crossing to most medical cases for the past nine months.

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

The reopening of Rafah came as Hamas released three male Israeli hostages, which also triggered the release of 183 Palestinians from Israeli jails, including individuals convicted in the Israeli courts, and detainees.

Among the three released Israelis were Yarden Bibas, the father of a young family, whose wife and children became poignant symbols of the hostage crisis and remain unaccounted for amid continuing “grave concerns” in Israel for their wellbeing.

The Rafah crossing, long a lifeline for Palestinians, has been closed since Israeli forces took control of the surrounding area in May 2024.

The first crossings took place after buses were seen collecting the sick and wounded from Gaza hospitals.

The handover of the three Israeli hostages, Bibas, 35, the joint Israeli-US citizen Keith Siegel, 65, and the joint Israeli-French citizen Ofer Kalederon, 54, triggered the release of 183 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Gaza held in Israeli jails.

Later three busloads of Palestinian detainees arrived in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. It marked the first time any of the 1,000 detainees from Gaza that Israel has agreed to free during phase one of the deal have been released.

The handover the Israeli hostages in two locations – Khan Younis and at Gaza City’s port – was far more orderly than a chaotic release earlier this week that briefly threatened to upset the terms of the ceasefire deal.

The truce, which began on 19 January, is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and the Hamas militant group. The fragile deal has held for nearly two weeks, halting the fighting and allowing for increased aid to flow into the tiny coastal territory.

Seventeen of the 33 hostages due for release in the first stage of the ceasefire have now been released in exchange for 400 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

Negotiations are due to start by Tuesday on agreements for the release of more than 60 remaining hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in a second phase of the deal.

The release of Yarden Bibas without his family, however, represents a painful moment for the large numbers of Israelis and other supporters around the world who have long campaigned for the Bibas family’s release.

Video of Shiri Bibas holding on to her children as she was kidnapped by Hamas gunmen from the Nir Oz kibbutz became an enduring image of the 7 October 2023 attacks, with her son, Kfir, just nine months old when he was abducted.

On Saturday the Israeli coordinator for hostages and missing persons, Gal Hirsch, once again asked mediators to seek information on the missing members of the Bibas family who Hamas has said were killed in an Israeli strike in 2023.

“We have been searching for them for a long time, tracing their tracks and investigating what happened to them. Even in these very days and at these very hours, we are again demanding information from the mediators about their condition,” said Hirsch.

After the latest releases, Israel and Hamas are due next week to begin negotiating a second phase of the ceasefire, which calls for releasing the remaining hostages and extending the truce indefinitely. However, the war could resume in early March if an agreement is not reached.

The children allowed to cross Rafah with their families are the first in what are meant to be regular evacuations of Palestinians through the crossing for treatment abroad.

Over the past 15 months, Israel’s campaign against Hamas in retaliation for the militants’ 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel has decimated Gaza’s health sector, leaving most of its hospitals out of operation even as more than 110,000 Palestinians were wounded by Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The Rafah terminal that marks the crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt straddles a complicated border. On the Egyptian side, a double arch marks the entry to the terminal buildings themselves, and beyond Gaza.

On Saturday television cameras on the Egyptian side caught the moment that the crossing, which has been closed since May, was reopened for medical evacuations showing one young girl, whose foot had been amputated, being loaded into an Egyptian ambulance.

What cannot be underestimated is that any reopening of Rafah, even partial, is a moment of considerable significance.

Amid the long years of Israeli blockade that followed Hamas’s takeover of the coastal strip in 2007, Rafah – the only crossing out of Gaza that does not border Israel – has been seen as a safety valve as a potential access to the outside world.

If it was never really available to many, at least the possibility existed.

And for a period earlier in the war, Rafah was the exit point for those Palestinians with dual passports, employed by foreign organisations, or with the financial wherewithal and connections to pay to be put on an Egyptian list to leave.

But after Israeli forces launched an offensive in and around the southern city of Rafah in May last year, the border has been closed even for the most urgent medical evacuation cases, with Egypt closing its side in protest.

The situation was summed up starkly by the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, last month: “Only 5,383 patients have been evacuated [from Gaza] with support from WHO since October 2023, of which only 436 since the Rafah crossing was closed.

“Over 12,000 people still need medical evacuation. At this rate, it would take five to 10 years to evacuate all these critically ill patients, including thousands of children. In the meantime, their conditions get worse and some die.”

While a number of medical evacuations have been permitted by Israel since May, including 55 patients in December, it has been a drop in the ocean, an assessment underlined by the comments of the UN secretary general, António Guterres, last week that 2,500 children are in need of immediate evacuation.

If opening the crossing to 50 children and their families is a first step as an agreed part of the Gaza ceasefire deal that envisages further regular evacuations, it has another significance too.

While Israeli society has celebrated the release of hostages, ordinary Palestinians in Gaza in the past week have also begun to see benefits to the ceasefire deal beyond the cessation of fighting and killing.

Large numbers of residents of Gaza’s north have been permitted to return home to the devastated area having been forcibly displaced by Israel. On Saturday as well as the opening of Rafah, the first Palestinian detainees arrested in Gaza and held in Israel, numbering 111 were released home to the coastal strip.

Then there is the opening of Rafah itself, facilitated by an arrangement in which the deployment of EU monitors at the crossing supervising officials from Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, have been tasked with processing those leaving Gaza.

All of which suggests that – just maybe – there may be a hint of a potential dynamic for success emerging in the fragile and complex three-phase deal, which to many seemed set up for inevitable failure and a return to Israel’s offensive.

After today the next significant milestone will be marked by the planned beginning of negotiations for phase two of the deal next week, amid evidence that the Trump administration in Washington, despite a highly erratic and contradictory grasp of its Middle East policy, is still insisting that both sides cleave to the agreement and see it through.

What is clear today is that another important staging post in the deal has been passed, as well as the first small measure of relief for sick and wounded Palestinians.

The freed British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari spoke to Keir Starmer on Friday and told the prime minister Hamas held her in facilities belonging to the UN refugee agency Unrwa, her mother, Mandy, has said.

Damari, 28, who was released 12 days ago, after more than 15 months in captivity in Gaza, with two fingers missing, also told Starmer that Hamas had denied her access to medical treatment after shooting her twice.

Unrwa said claims that hostages had been held in its premises were “very serious”.

Its spokesperson Juliette Touma told the BBC the UN agency, which was set up to support the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees, and has brought in about 60% of the food aid that has reached Gaza since the war began, did not have access to several of its facilities for many months.

“The vast majority of our buildings were turned into shelter when the war started. There was also very, very little supplies and assistance that the agency could give them.”

She added: “We’ve been calling for the release of hostages for months on end … These claims that hostages have been held in Unrwa premises, even if they were vacated, are absolutely serious.

“We’ve repeatedly called for independent investigations into these claims, including the misuse and disregard of Unrwa premises by Palestinian armed groups. That also includes Hamas.”

An Israeli law banning the activities of Unrwa in Israel came into force on Thursday and international staff were forced to leave, a decision the agency predicted would “sabotage Gaza’s recovery and political transition” and critics say will jeopardise urgent humanitarian aid efforts in the region.

The Israeli government has accused Unrwa, which enjoys widespread international support and has more than 30,000 staff, of employing 190 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, and 12 people who took part in the 7 October 2023 attacks. The agency fired nine employees after an investigation but denied knowingly aiding armed groups.

Damari and her mother gave the prime minister an update on Damari’s condition on Friday, and the conditions she lived under while she was held hostage, and then urged Starmer to ensure the Red Cross has access to people still being held captive in Gaza.

“It’s a miracle that she survived, and we need to get aid to remaining hostages now,” her mother posted on X, along with a photograph of her holding the phone for her daughter to speak into.

Damari was taken from her home in the Kfar Aza kibbutz on 7 October and shot in the hand, then “blindfolded and forced into her own car with two other friends”, her family said previously.

Both Damari and her mother thanked Starmer for the government’s help bringing about her release on 19 January, and her mother said the prime minister invited Damari to visit Downing Street when she had recovered.

A fire onboard a Russian spy ship off the coast of Syria has underlined the poor state of the Russian navy as its toehold in the Mediterranean hangs in the balance, analysts and western security services say.

The 55-year-old Kildin got into trouble off the Syrian coast last Thursday, when flames and thick black smoke could be seen billowing from its funnel and it hoisted two black balls up its mast, signifying that the crew no longer had control of the vessel.

The ship notified a nearby Togolese-flagged cargo freighter, the Milla Moon, that it was unable to steer and warned it to stay at least 2km away. The Russian crew assembled on the Kildin’s aft deck and uncovered the lifeboats, but did not ask for help, and after five hours fighting the fire the Kildin restarted its engines and got under way again.

According to western security services, the ship was in the eastern Mediterranean to monitor events in Syria after the fall in December of the Moscow ally Bashar al-Assad, as the Russian navy began to move military equipment out of the part of the Tartus port it controls.

The western sources argued that the Kildin fire, after another blaze two months earlier on the Russian missile frigate the Admiral Gorshkov, revealed Russia’s maritime presence in the area to be in a state of disrepair and disarray. They said that, at the same time that the Kildin was in distress, two other Russian naval vessels, the landing ships Ivan Gren and the Aleksandr Otrakovsky were also adrift temporarily without control of navigation.

Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that mishaps on Russian naval vessels were nothing new, and not confined to the Mediterranean.

“The Russian navy has historically struggled with maintenance and readiness issues. Fires are not uncommon. Operations are undoubtedly taking a toll on an ageing Russian fleet, which lacks sufficient maintenance and support facilities,” Kofman said.

Those problems could become much more severe if the new rulers in Damascus, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), deprive Russia of the use of the Tartus base. So far, Moscow has kept a toehold in post-Assad Syria, at Tartus and the Khmeimim airbase, but the new government’s longer-term intentions are unclear in regard to the forces that helped keep the Assad regime in power for decades.

Last week, the HTS cancelled a 2019 contract with a Russian company, ending its control of the Tartus commercial port, which Moscow had hoped would be a $500m hub for exporting Russian agricultural products to the wider Middle East. That was a bad omen for the naval base, said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow on sea power at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) in London.

“The cancellation of the commercial arrangement is the writing on the wall for the navy, given how hand-in-hand the commercial and the strategic positions were,” Kaushal said.

The loss of Tartus would turn chronic problems in the Russian fleet into a crisis, he argued.

“The Russian navy, post cold war, wasn’t really built for endurance,” Kaushal said. “They built smaller vessels that they could build more rapidly, and packed them very heavily with missiles. That is very useful if you’re defending your own coastal waters but [over longer distances] the smaller the vessel, the more acute the maintenance problems.”

He added: “This is, and always has been, an issue for the Russians, but the issue will become much more significant in light of the potential loss of Tartus.”

Moscow is looking for alternatives in the Mediterranean, but all the options are problematic, according to a Rusi paper this month by Kaushal and Cmdr Edward Black, a former Royal Navy mine clearance diving officer now a visiting fellow at the institute.

Algeria is a longstanding Russian ally, but Moscow’s activities in Mali, where Wagner group mercenaries prop up a military junta, have driven a wedge between the two countries.

In Sudan’s civil war, Russia switched allegiances last year from the Rapid Support Forces to the Sudan Armed Forces, in a move most observers believe to be aimed at securing the use of Port Sudan on the Red Sea. However, access from there to the Mediterranean is dependent on use of the Suez canal, and negotiations with the Sudanese authorities have floundered.

A third option would be eastern Libya, where two ports, Tobruk and Benghazi, are under the sway of a Russian-backed general, Khalifa Haftar, and there are already an estimated 2,000 Russian mercenaries in the region.

A Russian base in Libya is the most likely alternative to Tartus, the Rusi study suggests, but it pointed out that it would make Russia’s ailing Mediterranean fleet a hostage to Haftar and his future choice of allies, and is therefore fraught with political risk for Moscow.

A letter submitted to the US Senate that states it was sent by physicians in support of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination as secretary of health and human services includes the names of doctors who have had their licenses revoked or suspended, or who have faced other disciplinary actions, the Associated Press has found.

The letter was meant to lend credibility to Kennedy’s nomination, which has faced strenuous opposition from medical experts due to his two decades of anti-vaccine activism. Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a medical doctor who boasts on his official website of an effort he created to vaccinate 36,000 children against hepatitis B, expressed hesitancy about Kennedy’s nomination and is seen as a key vote.

The AP found that in addition to the physicians who had faced disciplinary action, many of the nearly 800 signers are not doctors. The letter with the names of those who signed was provided to the AP by Senator Ron Johnson’s office after he entered it into the Congressional Record on Wednesday during the first of Kennedy’s two confirmation hearings.

Among those who signed it were a self-described journalist, a certified public accountant, a firefighter/paramedic, a certified health coach and someone who said they had a bachelor’s degree “with an emphasis on Jungian psychology”. The signers include at least 75 nurses, as well as physician’s assistants. More than 90 did not include any credentials at all.

More than 20 were chiropractors, representing an industry that has funded Kennedy’s work. An AP investigation found that donations from a chiropractic group represented one-sixth of the revenues collected by Kennedy’s anti-vaccine non-profit in 2019.

The letter was organized and submitted by Maha Action, which is run by Del Bigtree, who worked for Kennedy’s presidential campaign and is a longtime anti-vaccine activist. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Kennedy transferred the trademark for the “Maha” slogan to an limited liability company run by Bigtree. Kennedy reported that he received $100,000 in income from licensing the slogan and said in his financial disclosures that he had transferred the trademark for “no compensation”.

Maha stands for “Make America healthy again”, a play on Donald Trump’s “Make America great again”.

Emma Post, a Maha Action spokesperson, said in an email that the letter was “shared and circulated organically in a grassroots manner with explicit instructions that it was for physicians only to sign on to”. She did not address the AP’s questions about what further steps the group took to verify credentials, if any.

Bigtree and Kennedy did not return messages seeking comment. A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, said the administration looks forward to the Senate’s swift confirmation of Kennedy.

The letter includes the header “Doctors for Robert F Kennedy Jr” and begins with the words “We, the undersigned physicians”. It says lower down that it “reflects the collective voice of physicians and medical professionals” committed to addressing chronic disease.

The AP’s review found that at least 10 doctors who signed the letter had run into trouble with state medical boards or their board certification body for a variety of alleged misconduct. Sanctions they faced included having their license revoked or suspended, being put on probation, receiving a reprimand or other action. One received a warning letter from the Federal Trade Commission, which said he was unlawfully advertising products as treatments or prevention for Covid-19, including intravenous nutrient therapy and vitamins.

Among the signers was Paul Thomas, an anti-vaccine doctor who voluntarily surrendered his medical license in 2022 after Oregon’s medical board found he had engaged in repeated and gross negligence in the practice of medicine.

Thomas did not admit or deny the finding. NBC News reported that Thomas was part of a team assembled by Kennedy who remotely advised an anti-vaccine activist in Samoa during a measles outbreak there on how to treat children with vitamins. A person who responded on behalf of Thomas, DeeDee Hoover, said the information the AP had was inaccurate but did not reply when asked what specifically was wrong.

Other signers included Dr Simone Gold, who was reprimanded by California’s medical board after she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for her conduct at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Gold was recently pardoned by Trump and told the AP in an email that her reprimand and other disciplinary action were overturned by a judge prior to her pardon.

“Robert F Kennedy Jr is an honorable and honest person with vast subject matter knowledge and experience who values the health of the American people, and furthermore because he is willing to challenge corporate interests where they conflict with the best interests of those citizens,” Gold wrote in an email.

Meryl Nass, whose medical license was suspended in Maine over her treatment of Covid-19 patients, also signed. She told the AP she is appealing the decision and expects to be fully vindicated.

At least two of the doctors were disciplined, prior to the pandemic, for improperly giving out vaccine waivers, including one who had his license revoked and another who was put on probation. Another doctor’s license was revoked for refusing to follow Covid-19 guidelines.

Post said Maha Action’s letter was just one of several provided to the Senate supporting Kennedy, including one that she provided a link to that she said was signed by “17,000 medical professionals”. That letter stated it was from international medical providers and did not include the names of those who signed.

Opponents of Kennedy’s nomination sent their own letter with signatures from what they said were more than 18,000 “vetted and verified” doctors. The group, the Committee to Protect Health Care, said that the letter was initially circulated among verified physicians and that as additional signatures were added, their credentials were checked. The group provided the list of signatories to the AP but with anonymized names that included the first initial of their first name along with the first three letters of their last name, as well as their medical credentials. They said doctors’ names were anonymized for their privacy and to protect them from harassment.

Donald Trump’s rapid-fire and controversial moves that have ranged from banning birthright citizenship to firing 18 inspectors general means the US president has shown a greater willingness than his predecessors to violate the constitution and federal law, some historians and legal scholars say.

These scholars pointed to other Trump actions they say blatantly broke the law, such as freezing trillions of dollar in federal spending and dismissing members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), even though they were confirmed by the Senate and had several years left in their terms.

“Without any doubt Donald Trump is the most lawless and scofflaw president we have ever seen in the history of the United States,” said Laurence Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars and a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.

Tribe said Trump has carried out “a blitzkrieg on the law and the constitution. The very fact that the illegal actions have come out with the speed of a rapidly firing Gatling gun makes it very hard for people to focus on any one of them. That’s obviously part of the strategy.”

Tribe said the so-called pause in federal spending that the Trump administration ordered last Monday “was a clear usurpation of a coordinate branch’s [Congress’s] exclusive power of the purse”.

Before the Trump administration rescinded the freeze two days later, several groups had sued to stop the freeze, saying Trump had violated the constitution and the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which lets presidents withhold funds in limited circumstances, but only if they first follow several special procedures – which legal experts said Trump failed to do.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, also voiced dismay at what he said was Trump’s flagrant flouting of the law in his first few days back in office.

“A stunning number of his executive actions clearly violate the constitution and federal law,” Chemerinsky said. “I cannot think of any president who has ever so ignored the constitution as extensively in the first 10 days of office as this.

“I certainly doubt that any president has done so much lawless so quickly that affects so many people,” Chemerinsky continued. “The freeze of federal spending potentially affects tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people.”

That freeze caused alarm and chaos across the nation as it disrupted Medicaid payments, childcare programs, meals for seniors, housing subsidies and special ed programs. Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the office of management and budget, said the freeze was needed to stop “the use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies”.

Federal judges moved quickly to temporarily block the spending freeze and the ban on birthright citizenship. Last Tuesday, a federal district court judge in Washington DC, Loren AliKhan, suspended the spending freeze. Facing huge confusion and criticism over the freeze, the Trump administration rescinded it on Wednesday.

On 23 January, a federal district judge in Seattle, John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, temporarily blocked Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” Coughenour said. “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, defended the president’s move to ban birthright citizenship. In a briefing on Wednesday, she said: “We are prepared to fight this all the way to the supreme court if we have to, because President Trump believes that this is a necessary step to secure our nation’s borders and protect our homeland.”

Many legal experts and Democratic lawmakers condemned Trump’s firing of 18 inspectors general, who serve as independent officials who audit and investigate agencies for waste, fraud and abuse. Those critics, along with Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, noted that Trump had failed to give Congress the required 30-day advance notice and specific reasons for the firings.

Late last Monday, Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the NLRB, and two members of the EEOC, Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels. All three – members of independent boards – were appointed by Democratic presidents and had several years left in their terms.

Kate Andrias, a professor of constitutional law and administrative law at Columbia University, called those firings “unprecedented and illegal”. Regarding the Wilcox firing, she said: “The National Labor Relations Act makes clear that president can fire board members only for neglect of duty and malfeasance. NLRB members can’t be fired just because the president doesn’t want them on the board.”

Andrias noted, however, that the supreme court’s conservative supermajority might rule in Trump’s favor on these firings.

“Trump might have some support from the supreme court on this,” she said, adding that the court, with its “radical anti-administrative law” attitudes, “could reject 90 years of legal precedent and agree with the president that he had the authority to fire members of independent bodies.”

Andrias compared Trump with another president known for sometimes flouting the constitution and supreme court: “Andrew Jackson also had a record of violating the constitution in ways to expand his power,” Andrias said. “But in modern times, it’s unprecedented for a president to act this way to aggrandize his own power and act in contravention of the constitution and federal statutes.”

Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton, said Richard Nixon also sometimes broke the law – most notably in the Watergate scandal – but “I don’t think he tried to overturn parts of the constitution. So maybe there, Trump has him beat.”

Zelizer said Trump’s spending freeze was “an effort to essentially ignore Congress’s constitutional power” of the purse and to “throw the Impoundment Act in the garbage”.

“I can’t remember another president who has tried to throw so much of the constitution out the window to do what he wants,” Zelizer added.

Tribe voiced concern that Trump’s actions were weakening the rule of law as well as respect for the law.

“We have to focus on the fact that the sum of this is greater than the parts. Violating the constitution and acts of Congress repeatedly not only creates rips in the fabric that occur with each violation, but shreds the whole thing,” Tribe said. “It’s only the very beginning of this administration. If people normalize this lawbreaking instead of pushing back, it will be very hard ever to restore the system of government that most of us grew up assuming it would be in place.”

The body of a second woman has been found in the search for two sisters who went missing in Aberdeen last month.

Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32 and originally from Hungary, were last seen on CCTV near the Dee at Aberdeen harbour early in the morning on 7 January, walking towards a path along the river.

The first body of a woman was recovered from the Dee at about 8am on Friday and while formal identification has yet to take place, the sisters’ family has been informed.

Officers found the second body in an area of the river near Victoria Bridge at about 9.05pm on Friday. Police have not yet identified this person either, but again, the family has been informed.

Police Scotland said inquires were continuing, but there were no apparent suspicious circumstances.

Flowers have been left near Queen Elizabeth bridge for the sisters.

Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, expressed his condolences in a post on X. “Heartbreaking news from the City of Aberdeen this morning. My thoughts are with everyone affected by this very sad news,” he wrote.

The disappearance of the sisters, who are part of a set of triplets, sparked an extensive search.

Police said they had been made aware of the pair’s disappearance on 7 January by their landlady, who had received a text message from Henrietta’s mobile phone at 2.12am that indicated the sisters would not be coming home. The phone has not been active since.

CCTV footage showed that they had visited the path along the river that they are believed to have taken the day before at 2.50pm.

Twelve hours later, at 2.12am, CCTV showed the sisters walking from Market Street and across Victoria Bridge, which crosses the Dee where the river enters the harbour. The police believe they headed westwards towards Aberdeen boat club, where they vanished.

The twins’ sister, Edit Huszti, said earlier this month that it would be out of character for her sisters to venture out on the street during the early hours of the morning.

József, their brother, said the sisters, who moved to Scotland about seven years ago, appeared to be fine in the days before they went missing. The pair had a 40-minute phone conversation with their mother and everything seemed normal.

Edit Huszti told the BBC she had spoken to her sisters via a video call on New Year’s Eve and that they had appeared happy and cheerful. She said they were very close.

Supt David Howieson said: “Our thoughts remain with the Huszti family and we are keeping them fully updated following these recoveries.

“We know how much of an impact this has had in Aberdeen and much further afield and I would like to thank everyone who has assisted with our investigation.”

Fighters with the opposition Rapid Support Forces have attacked an open market in the Sudanese city of Omdurman, killing 54 people.

The attack on Sabrein market also wounded at least 158 others, Sudan’s health ministry said.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

The culture minister and government spokesperson, Khalid al-Aleisir, condemned the attack and said the casualties included many women and children. He also said the attack had caused “widespread destruction to private and public properties”.

“This criminal act adds to the bloody record of this militia,” he said. “It constitutes a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”

The conflict in Sudan started in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the leaders of the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum. The conflict has since spread across the country.

More than 28,000 people have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes. Famine has been declared in parts of the country, where some families have resorted to eating grass to survive.

The conflict has been marked by atrocities including ethnically motivated killing and rape, according the UN and human rights groups. The International criminal court has said it it investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Fighters with the opposition Rapid Support Forces have attacked an open market in the Sudanese city of Omdurman, killing 54 people.

The attack on Sabrein market also wounded at least 158 others, Sudan’s health ministry said.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

The culture minister and government spokesperson, Khalid al-Aleisir, condemned the attack and said the casualties included many women and children. He also said the attack had caused “widespread destruction to private and public properties”.

“This criminal act adds to the bloody record of this militia,” he said. “It constitutes a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”

The conflict in Sudan started in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the leaders of the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum. The conflict has since spread across the country.

More than 28,000 people have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes. Famine has been declared in parts of the country, where some families have resorted to eating grass to survive.

The conflict has been marked by atrocities including ethnically motivated killing and rape, according the UN and human rights groups. The International criminal court has said it it investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Top US officials have said the military helicopter that collided with a passenger jet over the Potomac River on Wednesday was on a training mission for evacuating members of government in the event of a catastrophe or attack.

The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, told Fox News that the helicopter was performing a “continuity of government” drill designed to help pilots “rehearse in ways that would reflect a real world scenario”. Hegseth declined to go further, saying he didn’t want to get “into anything that’s classified”.

The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter’s unit, the 12th aviation battalion, is assigned a mission to evacuate top US officials from Washington DC to secure locations in the event of an emergency.

Those locations include Raven Rock Mountain, a facility in Pennsylvania constructed in the 1950s for use as a command center in the event of a nuclear war.

Hegseth’s comments correlates with comments by Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for the army’s aviation directorate, who told reporters on Thursday that “some of their mission is to support the Department of Defense if something really bad happens in this area, and we need to move our senior leaders.

“They do need to be able to understand the environment, the air traffic, the routes, to ensure the safe travel of our senior leaders throughout our government,” Koziol added.

A preliminary FAA report into the midair collision has found that responsibility for handling air traffic control for helicopters and incoming planes at Reagan National airport had been combined earlier than usual on Wednesday night when the American Airlines flight crashed into the army’s Black Hawk helicopter.

All 67 aboard the aircraft involved were killed, marking the deadliest American aviation crash in 16 years.

Typically, responsibility for handling helicopters and planes are separated in the busy airspace from 10am to 9.30pm, the New York Times reported. After 9.30pm, when traffic slows down, the duties can be combined. The collision occurred soon before 9pm.

The FAA preliminary safety report found that staffing at the airport was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic”, the Associated Press reported. Staffing targets set by the FAA and the controllers’ union call for 30 air traffic controllers at the airport but as of September 2023 it had 19.

President Trump signed a presidential memorandum on aviation safety on Thursday which he said will undo “damage” done to federal agencies by the Biden administration. Trump has said “incompetence” may have played a role in the crash.

Less than 30 seconds before the helicopter and plane collided, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the plane in sight: “PAT-25, do you have the CRJ in sight?” The controller makes another radio call to PAT25 moments later: “PAT-25 pass behind the CRJ”, referring to the Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-700.

But there is mounting speculation that the helicopter’s pilots may have been looking at a plane following behind the American Airlines flight in the landing queue. Questions are also being asked about the altitude of the helicopter. It was cleared to fly at 200ft but appears to have ascended to 400ft, and into the path of the airliner.

As of Friday afternoon, rescue crews had recovered 41 bodies and 28 had been positively identified, the DC fire chief, John Donnelly Sr, said at a news conference. He said 18 families have been told their loved ones died.

Among the passengers on the plane were members of the Skating Club of Boston returning from a development camp that followed the 2025 US figure skating championship in Wichita, Kansas.

The victims also included a group of hunters returning from a guided trip in Kansas, nine students and parents from Fairfax county, Virginia, schools, four members of a steamfitters’ local in suburban Maryland and two Chinese nationals

The army has identified two of the three soldiers on the helicopter – Staff Sgt Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland. The third soldier’s name was not being released at the family’s request, the army said.

A Reform MP who was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend 18 years ago will not be suspended and would pass the party’s new vetting process, the party’s deputy leader has said.

Richard Tice has defended James McMurdock’s assault on his ex-girlfriend as a “mistake” and said his fellow MP was “doing brilliantly”.

Tice said McMurdock, who became Reform’s fifth MP after winning the Essex seat of South Basildon and East Thurrock by 98 votes at the general election, was someone who had “got things wrong, learned from it and has grown and succeeded”.

It comes days after a highly critical report from Whitehall’s spending watchdog said an “epidemic of violence against women and girls” in the UK was getting worse despite years of government promises and strategies.

The former investment banker did not publicly disclose his conviction for assault before being elected, and claimed he had “pushed” his partner when details were first disclosed this summer.

However, the Times later obtained information about his sentencing from the courts, which said he was detained for 21 days in a young offender institution for kicking the victim “around four times” in 2006 when he was a teenager.

Speaking after a party rally in north-west Essex, Tice said: “We’re a Christian nation and part of Christianity is about faith, it’s about trust but it’s also about forgiveness.

“We’re all sinners, we all make mistakes, and James by his own admission made a mistake, a bad mistake, but actually he did his time.

“So the system works. He was sentenced, he did his time, paid the price and now he’s shown a great example of someone who had a bad start with a bad mistake but look how well he’s done.

“And what that shows actually is, we can forgive and we learn from things, but people can succeed. And I think that’s really important.”

When asked whether McMurdock could ever face suspension for his conviction, Tice said: “The opposite. He’s doing brilliantly and he’s a shining example of someone who’s worked hard, got a lovely family.

“His wife’s pregnant literally as we speak, with a new baby on its way, and to be an MP is a great privilege, and we’re very proud of him and he’s doing a great job. [He’s] really really focused on his constituents and it’s another success story.

“Someone who made a mistake, got things wrong, learned from it and has grown and succeeded, taken a risk coming into politics and good on him. He’s put his head above the parapet and we’re very proud of him.”

Shortly after he was elected, the mother of McMurdock’s former girlfriend told the Daily Mail that the new MP was “a monster” who had “left marks on her body”, saying: “It took two security guards to pull him off her.”

In response to her comments, McMurdock told the paper: “A generous person might call it a teenage indiscretion, but I do not expect everyone to be so kind. Nearly 20 years ago, at 19 years of age, at the end of a night out together, we argued and I pushed her.

“She fell over and she was hurt. Despite being 38 now and having lived a whole life again, I still feel deeply ashamed of that moment and apologetic. Despite us both being very drunk, I handed myself into the police immediately and admitted my fault.”

Gavin Callaghan, the Labour leader of Basildon council, criticised Tice’s decision not to suspend McMurdock.

If McMurdock “was a true democrat and a real reformer he would resign his seat and let the people of South Basildon and East Thurrock decide, now they know the true extent of his conviction, whether or not they still want him as their MP”, he said..

“With regards to Reform and what Tice has said [about McMurdock] it is obvious that they are not a serious political party. In our view, they’re a rabble … to be honest.”

Speaking at the rally on Friday, the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, conceded the vetting of candidates had been “probably quite near a catastrophe” in past elections, after several were dropped for making sexist remarks and using racial slurs.

But Tice said he was confident McMurdock would still pass Reform’s new vetting process, a system he has described as “getting better and better”.

A medical transport jet carrying a child patient, her mother and four others including crew crashed into a north-east Philadelphia neighborhood on Friday evening, erupting in a fireball and setting several homes ablaze just 30 seconds after taking off.

“We cannot confirm any survivors,” said a statement from Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, which operated the Learjet 55. “Our immediate concern is for the patient’s family, our personnel, their families and other victims that may have been hurt on the ground.”

Shai Gold, a spokesperson for Jet Rescue, spoke to a local NBC affiliate about the people onboard the plane. The pediatric patient, a girl, was returning to Tijuana, Mexico. The others on the plane included her mother, a pilot, a co-pilot, a doctor and a paramedic, Gold said.

“All I can say is, the patient was sponsored by a third-partner charity to undergo life-saving treatment in the US,” Gold said. “She did her course of care. She was going home.

“She fought quite a lot to survive, and unfortunately, this tragedy on the way home.”

All six people aboard were from Mexico, according to reports, and the plane was registered there. Police said it was on medical assignment.

It was the second fatal crash in 15 months for Jet Rescue. In 2023 five crew members were killed when their plane overran a runway in the central Mexican state of Morelos and crashed into a hillside.

The Philadelphia crash happened less than 3 miles (4.8km) from Northeast Philadelphia airport, which primarily serves business jets and charter flights. It came two days after a commercial airliner collided with a military helicopter near Reagan Washington National airport outside of Washington DC, killing all 67 aboard both aircraft.

Photos taken at the crash site appear to show homes on fire. Fire officials confirmed that multiple structures were on fire following the crash around 6pm ET in the area of Cottman Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a statement about 6.40pm confirming the crashed plane was a Learjet 55 and had initially said two people were onboard. The agency later changed that assessment to confirm that six people were involved. Sean Duffy, the US secretary of transportation, had said there were at least six people onboard.

The FAA statement said the plane had been en route to Springfield-Branson National airport in Missouri. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board would investigate, it said.

Flight data showed a small jet taking off from the airport at 6.06pm and disappearing from radar about 30 seconds later after climbing to an altitude of 1,600 ft (487 meters). It was unclear what led to the crash.

The plane was a medical transport jet and was registered to a company operating as Med Jets.

State and local officials said late on Friday they could not yet confirm how many people might have died on the ground after the plane slammed into a heavily populated portion of the city. Injuries had been reported, police said.

Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, told a press conference at the crash scene that “we know there will be loss in this region”.

“We want to offer our thoughts and our serious prayers for those that are grieving at this moment,” he said.

Donald Trump, the US president, wrote on social media that it was “so sad to see the plane go down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More innocent souls lost. Our people are totally engaged. First responders are already being given credit for doing a great job.”

Shapiro posted on social media that he was in communication with the mayor and emergency responders. “We are offering all commonwealth resources as they respond to the small private plane crash in Northeast Philly.”

Videos posted on social media showed a bright streak as the plane plunged at a steep angle towards the ground, then a large explosion with a ball of flame and smoke smoke rising from the crash site.

Michael Schiavone, 37, was sitting at his home in Mayfair on Friday when he heard a loud bang and his house shook. He said it felt like a small earthquake and when he checked his home security camera footage, it looked like a missile was coming down. “There was a large explosion, so I thought we were under attack for a second,” he said.

The plane crashed in a busy intersection near Roosevelt Mall, an outdoor shopping center where, afterwards, first responders were blocking traffic and onlookers crowded on to a street corner in the residential neighborhood of Rhawnhurst. Philadelphia’s emergency management office said roads were closed in the area.

One cellphone video taken by a witness moments after the plane crashed showed a chaotic scene with debris scattered across the intersection. A wall of orange glowed just beyond the intersection as a plume of black smoke quickly rose into the sky, while some witnesses could be heard crying and sirens blared.

Jet Rescue, according to its website, is a licensed and insured company that has more than 20 years of experience providing critical care air ambulance services from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean to the US and Canada.

Small businesses are warning they have had to pause selling their products in the European Union and Northern Ireland since mid-December while they work out how to comply with new EU product safety regulations that caught many of them unawares.

Skye Weavers, a small family business on the Isle of Skye, says it has missed out on sales of its scarves, shawls and blankets to customers in both markets after halting internet orders from those locations because of the rule change.

“What I find extraordinary is it has gone pretty much under the radar. Nobody seemed to know it was coming, it was suddenly sprung on us without much announcement,” says Roger Holden, who has run Skye Weavers with his wife, Andrea, for over a decade.

The EU brought in its general product safety regulation (GPSR) on 13 December, which applies to all consumer products, apart from a few exceptions including food, antiques and some technical items.

The European Commission said the measure was designed to improve product safety standards across the 27 member states, especially for items sold online from other countries, and “ushers in a new era of consumer protection”.

British companies, and others located in “third countries” that export goods to the EU, are required to have a “responsible economic operator” located inside the bloc – which could be a manufacturer, importer, authorised representative or a third-party company that manages storage and shipping – to deal with any problems with products or consumer queries.

The issue also affects sales in Northern Ireland because under the Windsor framework deal struck in 2023, the region follows certain EU product safety regulations, including GPSR, to allow it to have access to both the UK’s internal market and the EU single market.

Skye Weavers first heard about the new regulation from another textile business, and set about working out how to comply so they can keep selling online to European customers.

The vast majority of the company’s textile products are sold from their shop on the Isle of Skye, many to overseas visitors. Brexit reduced online purchases from the EU, because shoppers are wary of buying without knowing in advance the additional import taxes and handling costs they will have to pay. Nevertheless the Holdens set about finding a solution for this market.

“It just seems ridiculous to me not to export to our neighbours while we are exporting to America or Australia,” says German-born Andrea. “It just seems wrong.”

After hours of research, she found a company to act as Skye Weavers’ representative in the EU, at a cost of several hundred pounds a year. The textile business hopes to reopen its website to EU customers in the coming weeks.

“As a small business you have limited resources of time and money, but on the other hand things can change so easily you need your income to come from various directions as you can’t count on one thing,” says Andrea.

The new EU safety regulation has hit small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) particularly hard, causing cost and confusion, says William Bain, the head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce.

The BCC boss accuses British officials of failing to communicate the changes to companies, especially smaller ones. “The UK government typically doesn’t provide guidance on EU measures, because it’s not their legislation,” Bain says. “The real problem still is that we don’t have sufficiently good advance sight or cooperation on regulatory changes on either side of the … Channel, so that needs to be improved.”

Before the mid-December deadline, the UK government did post guidance for businesses selling products to Northern Ireland on the gov.uk website. However, Bain believes it should have gone further to ensure businesses of all sizes, and not just those belonging to trade associations or business groups, knew about the changes.

“You are talking about time-poor, resource-intensive SMEs, and sole traders, who don’t have the capacity to follow the … new legislative change,” Bain says.

“In some sectors, we are seeing regulatory difference between Brussels and London,” he adds. “How can we improve that this year to make sure that we don’t have any further examples like this in future, where SMEs feel unaware, unprepared and unsure about how to comply with new rules that affect key markets.”

The BCC’s call for better cross-Channel cooperation on upcoming regulatory changes comes as the government is looking to “reset” its relationship with the EU, five years after Brexit. Setting out her plans for growth this week, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, stressed that a smoother relationship with the EU was in the “national interest”.

Bain says he has heard from companies who are “teaming up” and jointly engaging an authorised operator, in an attempt to reduce costs.

Tom Hagen runs Hagen Automation, a Bedfordshire-based business that sells lubricants and grease for cyclists online, and depends on EU customers for up to a fifth of his business. He has also had to pause sales to this market while he researched how to comply with the new regulation.

“It’s a huge distraction from running the business and also a huge concern as you might be losing 20% of business overnight, like we did with Brexit,” he says.

“This is the latest in a long line of things which we have had to figure out and work around as best we can. No one is giving us any proper guidance.”

Hagen has found a representative based in Estonia, which he expects to cost him “several hundred” euros each year. He has also redesigned stickers for his tubes of chain oil and wax to include the requisite new product information.

While Hagen will be able to continue selling to EU customers, he adds: “It’s becoming a full-time job to deal with the red tape.”

The Department for Business and Trade said it had “published clear guidance” for businesses on how to prepare for the new regulation.

A spokesperson said: “We engaged extensively with businesses ahead of the regulations coming into force – including hosting information sessions for companies, and contacting hundreds of businesses and trade associations who could be affected.

They said the department would continue to support businesses so that it was easier for them to trade with Europe and “play a pivotal role in the government’s growth mission”.

He was one of the most influential figures in jazz history, famous for hits such as What a Wonderful World, appearing in Hollywood movies and working with stars from Bing Crosby to Ella Fitzgerald.

Louis Armstrong’s childhood, however, was a world away from his later life – he grew up in serious poverty in a neighbourhood plagued by crime and violence. New evidence has now shed fresh light on the musician’s early life, including revelations that both his mother and sister faced arrests for prostitution.

Armstrong was born in 1901 in New Orleans. In 1912, he was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif’s Home where, under music teacher Peter Davis, he learned how to play the cornet and dreamed of becoming a professional musician. In 1922, he joined cornettist King Oliver’s band in Chicago and, by 1925, he was making records under his own name. By the 1960s, his recordings – notably his version of the title song from the musical Hello, Dolly! – were so popular that they knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts at the height of Beatlemania.

Armstrong spoke adoringly of his mother and sister, forever grateful for their encouragement. While biographers have written about his tough childhood, there has been no proof – although much speculation – that they had to turn to prostitution to make ends meet. Now police reports and interviews have come to light revealing that his mother, Mayann, and sister, Beatrice, were arrested on numerous occasions, spending days in jail.

The revelations will be published in a new book by Ricky Riccardi, director of research collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York and a Grammy award-winner for his work on Armstrong’s recordings.

Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong, which is published by Oxford University Press this month in the US, and in May in the UK, draws on unpublished tapes, manuscripts and letters, including interviews with Armstrong’s sister late in life, an unfinished autobiography by Armstrong’s second wife, Lil Hardin, and Armstrong’s unedited manuscript for his autobiography Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans.

Riccardi told the Observer: “Louis talked about the prostitution in his neighbourhood, but he never went into his mother doing it and getting arrested. Now I have the black-and-white proof. The incredible part is that all the police records were uploaded to ancestry.com [the family history website] about a year and a half ago.” They appear to have been held by the New Orleans public library.

In a police report of 1914, Armstrong’s mother faced either a $2.50 fine or 30 days in the House of Detention, with the note “occupation – prostitute”. The officer recorded: “Fine not paid.”

Riccardi said that Armstrong’s was the ultimate rags-to-riches story – a “kid who grew up eating food plucked from garbage cans”, whose father left almost immediately after his sister’s birth and who lived among violent criminals in a neighbourhood of New Orleans that was so dangerous it was known as “the battlefield”. He added: “Louis always treated people with respect and he was kind. He loved people and gave his mother all the credit for teaching him how to behave. But, at the same time, she would disappear for a month at a time.”

Riccardi said of Armstrong’s sister: “I found her arrest records for prostitution and a newspaper article that said she’d shot a man in a flat that was known for prostitution. Somehow she didn’t go away for any long period of time, but she was arrested for that.”

Riccardi was also struck by 1916 arrest papers for Armstrong himself, for “loitering”: “That vague term often gave police an excuse to round up black people for seemingly just existing, but it was sometimes applied to the world of prostitution.

“It ended with him getting stabbed in the shoulder by a prostitute. I found a tape where he talked about that and showed off his scar, and talked about his mother almost killing the prostitute when she found out.”

Armstrong said in the tape, a privately recorded conversation with his friend and record producer George Avakian in 1953 which was discovered in Avakian’s collection at the NY public library in 2023: “I don’t remember just how many times that I went to jail. It was a common thing in those days.”

Riccardi has also unearthed police reports relating to other characters from Armstrong’s childhood, showing that they were violent criminals in a “pretty scary environment”. They include “Black Benny”, who was a father figure to Armstrong, but was accused of violence against women and throwing a brick at a man, fracturing his skull.

In other previously unpublished interviews, Armstrong recalled dodging bullets: “They say the Lord takes care of fools – he’s sure looking after me. Those bullets are whizzing past and I’m just blowing the blues.

“But I never did get hurt … If somebody start shooting, I don’t see how I didn’t get hit.”

Riccardi said: “Just the fact that he survived was kind of a miracle.”

Armstrong never stopped performing until his death in 1971. Riccardi believes he was driven by his memories of poverty: “He had been hungry once, he had been poor – and he was not going to get that way again. He pushed himself to the brink, performing every night.”