One of the four bodies returned by Hamas to Israel on Thursday is not that of Shiri Bibas, Israel’s military has said, calling it a “violation of utmost severity” of a ceasefire deal that was already precarious.

The Israeli military confirmed that two of the bodies belonged to Bibas’ children, Ariel and Kfir, in the early hours of Friday. However, it added “During the identification process, it was determined that the additional body received is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage. This is an anonymous, unidentified body.”

“We demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all our hostages,” it said. There was no immediate response from Hamas. Thursday’s release marked the first time the group has returned the remains of dead hostages.

The army said it had notified the family, including Yarden Bibas, Shiri’s husband and father of the two boys, who was released early this month as part of the ceasefire deal.

Bibas and her children – who Hamas says were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the early days of the war – became a symbol of the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. The body of the fourth hostage has been confirmed as that of 85-year-old Oded Lifshitz, according to his family.

A top US official issued a stark warning for Hamas after the announcement from Israel that Shiri Bibas’s body had not been returned. Speaking to CNN, US envoy Adam Boehler said it was “horrific” and a “clear violation” of the ceasefire halting fighting in the Gaza Strip.

“If I were them, I’d release everybody or they are going to face total annihilation,” said Boehler, who serves as the US envoy for hostages.

Friday’s statement came hours after Israeli prime Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to conduct an “intense operation” against “terror hubs” in the occupied West Bank after a series of explosions on three parked buses in Bat Yam, a city outside Tel Aviv, that authorities said was a suspected terrorist attack. No injuries were reported.

Explosives were found on two other buses but did not detonate, police spokesperson Asi Aharoni told Channel 13 TV. Israeli police said the five bombs were identical and equipped with timers, and bomb squads were defusing the unexploded bombs.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosions.

Israel has been carrying out intensified raids on the occupied West Bank since October 2023, killing hundreds of Palestinians. At least 51 Palestinians including seven children have been killed an a crackdown on the northern West Bank launched by Israel on 21 January, according to the UN.

Thursday’s handover of bodies is to be followed by the return of six living hostages on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinian prisoners and detainees, expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Negotiations for a second phase, expected to cover the return of about 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip to allow an end to the war, are expected to begin in the coming days.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has ordered the military to conduct an “intense operation” against “terror hubs” in the West Bank after a series of explosions on three parked buses that authorities said was a suspected terrorist attack. No injuries were reported.

The explosions on Thursday happened on a day when Israel was grieving after Hamas returned the bodies of four hostages from Gaza as part of a ceasefire deal. The bus explosions were reminiscent of bombings during the Palestinian uprising of the 2000s, but such attacks are now rare.

Explosives were found on two other buses but did not detonate, police spokesperson Asi Aharoni told Channel 13 TV. Israeli police said the five bombs were identical and equipped with timers, and bomb squads were defusing the unexploded bombs.

Investigators in white coveralls searched for evidence inside the burned-out metal shells of the buses, which blew up in a parking lot in Bat Yam, a city outside Tel Aviv.

The city’s mayor, Tzvika Brot, said it was a miracle no one was hurt. The buses had been parked after finishing their routes, he said.

Defence minister Israel Katz accused “Palestinian terrorist organisations” of carrying out the blasts.

“Preliminary report – suspected terror attack. Multiple reports have been received of explosions involving several buses at different locations in Bat Yam,” the police said in a statement.

The head of the bus company, Ofir Karni, said they immediately ordered all bus drivers to stop and conduct a “thorough inspection”. They resumed their routes once they were found to be safe.

Netanyahu’s office said he was receiving updates from his military secretary. The Shin Bet internal security agency was taking over the investigation, police said.

“We need to determine if a single suspect placed explosives on a number of buses, or if there were multiple suspects,” police spokesperson Haim Sargrof told Israeli TV.

Sargrof said the explosives used on Thursday matched explosives used in the West Bank, but he declined to elaborate.

The Israeli military said early on Friday it had imposed restrictions on Palestinian movement and sealed off parts of the West Bank amid its ongoing security operations there.

Israel’s military has repeatedly carried out raids on suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank since Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack sparked the devastating war in Gaza. As part of that crackdown, Israel has greatly restricted entry into Israel for Palestinians from the occupied territory.

A group identifying itself as a branch of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, from the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, posted on the messaging app Telegram: “We will never forget to take vengeance for our martyrs as long as the occupation is on our lands.” The group did not claim responsibility for the attack.

Tulkarem and two refugee camps in the city have been a focus of Israel’s broad military offensive in the West Bank, since the ceasefire in Gaza took effect on 19 Jan. In the past, militants have entered Israel and carried out shootings and bombings in Israeli cities.

Brot urged residents to stick with their routines but also stay vigilant, telling Channel 13 TV that schools will be open Friday and public transport will be operating.

The remains of two young children and an elderly man who were taken hostage by Hamas, as well as a fourth person who remains unidentified, have been handed over to Israel in what onlookers described as one of the “hardest days” for Israelis since the Palestinian militant group attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

A convoy carrying what was thought to be the bodies of Shiri Bibas, 32, her sons Ariel and Kfir, four years and nine months old respectively, and 85-year-old Oded Lifshitz, all from the Nir Oz kibbutz, arrived at a forensics centre in Tel Aviv yesterday for DNA checks and autopsy procedures.

Last night the Israeli military said that while two of the bodies had been identified as Kfir and Ariel, the third was not that of Shiri Bibas, the children’s mother, and that it did not belong to any other hostage. The body remains unidentified, the military said.

Armed Hamas militants wearing black and camouflage placed four black coffins on a stage in a cemetery in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis before giving them to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) amid growing international criticism of the group’s highly choreographed handover ceremonies.

The ICRC, which is mandated to maintain impartiality, issued an unusual statement after the bodies were returned to Israel, saying the transfer should not have been public.

“These operations should be done privately out of the utmost respect for the deceased and for those left grieving. We have been unequivocal: every release – whether of the living or the deceased – must be conducted with dignity and privacy,” the organisation said. The United Nations said the staging was “abhorrent and cruel” and “flies in the face of international law”.

The Israeli army held a ceremony attended by a rabbi upon receiving the bodies, and then transferred them to caskets draped in the Israeli flag before they were driven to Tel Aviv.

The transfer of the four bodies marks the first release of bodies in the fragile month-old ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. In its first stage, which expires in early March, 33 living and dead Israeli hostages and soldiers are supposed to be exchanged for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

Bibas and her children – who Hamas claims were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the early days of the war – became an indelible symbol of the attack of 7 October 2023. Without Israeli confirmation of their deaths, relatives clung to hope, marking Kfir’s first and second birthdays and his brother’s fifth. Shiri Bibas’s parents were killed in the Hamas offensive, and her husband, Yarden, was taken captive and released earlier this month.

Lifshitz, a peace activist and retired journalist, had not previously been confirmed as dead. His wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, was released by Hamas in November 2023.

The sombre mood across Israel on Thursday contrasted with the sense of joy and relief that has accompanied the recent return of living hostages.

Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by. In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some cyring, at what has come to be known as Hostages Square outside Israel’s defence headquarters.

“This is one of the hardest days, I think, since 7 October,” said Tania Coen Uzzielli, 59, a museum manager, who had gathered in the square with about 100 others. “I think the feeling of personal guilt is something each of us carries – that maybe we could have done more, that maybe we didn’t do enough to prevent this tragedy.”

In a statement, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said: “The hearts of an entire nation lie in tatters.

“On behalf of the state of Israel, I bow my head and ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day. Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely,” he said.

Lifshitz’s son, Yizhar, told Israel’s Army Radio: “The release of my father … is part of the terrible tragedy of those who went in alive and were murdered inside. To the people who prayed for my father and wanted a different end [I say]: continue. There are still a lot of living people inside whom we need to pray and work for.”

Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, said: “I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Oded Lifshitz after he was taken hostage by terrorists in Gaza, and I extend my heartfelt condolences to his daughter Sharone and his wife Yocheved.

“When I met Sharone in Downing Street, she showed remarkable strength in the face of the most difficult circumstances. The news of her father’s death is a tragedy. It is my hope that the peace he worked to see in the region through his charity work and activism will be achieved.

“My thoughts are also with the Bibas family, who have faced immense pain as they awaited news of Shiri and her sons Kfir and Ariel.

“We must see all remaining hostages released, and the ceasefire upheld. My government remains committed to working with our international partners to bring an end to this suffering and secure a long-term peace in the Middle East.”

Hamas has said it will release six living hostages on Saturday, and another four bodies next Thursday, speeding up the conclusion of the first stage of the truce. Amid fears over the ceasefire’s future after a near-collapse last week, the Palestinian group said on Wednesday it was ready to release all of the remaining hostages in a single exchange if the truce agreement moved forward to a second phase next month.

The offer came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, signalled his readiness to talk about a second phase after an extended delay, by appointing one of his closest advisers, Ron Dermer, a US-born cabinet minister and former ambassador to Washington, to lead the Israeli delegation.

Netanyahu has long resisted any talk about the second phase, which would involve a complete military withdrawal from Gaza and effectively end the war. Much of his far-right coalition government opposes such a step if it leaves Hamas as a significant force inside the strip.

About 48,000 people have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, which has caused a devastating humanitarian crisis and levelled much of the territory to rubble. About 1,200 people were killed in the 7 October attack, and 250 taken hostage.

With agencies

White House officials have told Ukraine to stop badmouthing Donald Trump and to sign a deal handing over half of the country’s mineral wealth to the US, saying a failure to do so would be unacceptable.

The US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, should “tone down” his criticism of the US and take a “hard look” at the deal. It proposes giving Washington $500bn worth of natural resources, including oil and gas.

Waltz said Kyiv was wrong to push back against the US president’s approach to peace talks with Moscow, given everything the US had done for Ukraine. He denied accusations the US had snubbed Ukraine and America’s European allies by excluding them from talks earlier this week with Russia. This was routine “shuttle diplomacy”, he said.

“Some of the rhetoric coming out of Kyiv … and insults to president Trump were unacceptable,” Waltz later told reporters at the White House.

“President Trump is obviously very frustrated right now with president Zelenskyy, the fact that he hasn’t come to the table, that he hasn’t been willing to take this opportunity that we have offered.”

On Wednesday, Trump called Zelenskyy “a dictator” who refused to hold elections and blamed Ukraine for the war. Zelenskyy, for his part, said Trump was living in a Kremlin “disinformation bubble” and that he wished Trump’s team were “more truthful”.

The world’s richest man Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s huge US government overhaul, also attacked Zelenskyy on Thursday, claiming Ukrainians “despised” their president and that Trump was right to leave him out of the talks with Russia.

The tech boss launched into a tirade against Zelenskyy on his X social network, accusing him without evidence of running a “massive graft machine feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.”

“He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election. In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine,” Musk wrote. In fact a recent poll shows that 57% of Ukrainians trust their president.

The US’s rapid dumping of Zelenskyy as an ally was underlined when Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, cancelled a press conference in Kyiv. Journalists were summoned to the presidential palace to ask questions after his meeting with Zelenskyy but were stood down.

Later Zelenskyy said he had a “good discussion” with Kellogg. It covered the battlefield situation, how to return Ukrainian prisoners of war, and “effective security guarantees”. He said he was grateful to the US for its assistance and bipartisan support, adding: “It’s important for us – and for the entire free world – that American strength is felt.”

Kellogg is seen as the most pro-Ukrainian of Trump’s entourage. He did not take part in a meeting earlier this week between the US and Russia in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. One Ukrainian official said Kellogg had been sidelined from the peace talks, adding that Zelenskyy was in an “engaged” frame of mind and “highly motivated”.

The envoy is due to leave Kyiv on Friday after a three-day trip. It was unclear if he would take up Zelenskyy’s proposal that they visit the frontline and talk to senior commanders, who are fending off a superior and advancing Russian force in the war-torn east.

Ukrainians are sceptical any deal with Moscow will stick and believe Vladimir Putin’s original war goals – to conquer as much territory as possible – are unchanged. The US vice-president, JD Vance, said on Thursday that talks with Russia were making progress. “I really believe we are on the cusp of peace in Europe for the first time in three years,” he said, adding that Trump was determined to stop the war.

Vance told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland: “I think with president Trump, what makes him such an effective negotiator, and I have seen this in private, is that he does not take anything off the table … Everything is on the table. And of course that makes the heads explode in America because they say: ‘Why are you talking to Russia?’”

There were further signs that the Trump administration now considers Ukraine an adversary, and is working against it on a diplomatic level.

According to Reuters, the US was refusing to co-sponsor a draft UN resolution to mark the third anniversary on Monday of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. The resolution condemns Russian aggression and reaffirms Ukraine’s sovereignty and pre-2014 international borders, before Russia annexed Crimea and started a covert military takeover of the eastern Donbas region.

This is the first time since the war started that the US has failed to back the resolution. About 50 countries are likely to support it, including the UK and most EU governments, it is understood.

The White House was blocking a similar statement from the G7 group of countries blaming Russia for the conflict, the Financial Times reported. It said US envoys had objected to the phrase “Russian aggression” and had not signed off on a plan to allow Zelenskyy to address G7 leaders by video.

Meanwhile, the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the White House could be willing to lift sanctions on Russia, or increase them, depending on Moscow’s readiness to negotiate. Bessent visited Kyiv this week, presenting Zelenskyy with the demand for minerals and saying it was “payback” for previous US military assistance.

Bessent said he had received assurances Ukraine would sign the deal. On Wednesday, however, Zelenskyy said the US had provided $69.2bn in assistance under the Biden administration – far less than the figure the new White House is demanding. He said an agreement depended on the US giving security guarantees for a postwar settlement.

European leaders have offered support to Ukraine, including Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron. Zelenskyy said he spoke on Thursday to Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. “We deeply appreciate Denmark’s clear stance on a true peace – the peace we all strive for, that must be securely guaranteed,” he wrote on social media.

The Kremlin has reacted with jubilation to Trump’s unprecedented attacks on Ukraine and to his false claim Zelenskyy has a 4% popularity rating. The actual figure is 57%, according to the latest opinion polls. “The rhetoric of Zelenskyy and many representatives of the Kyiv regime leaves much to be desired,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and now deputy chair of Russia’s security council, said he was stunned at how quickly Trump’s stance on Ukraine had evolved. “‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Medvedev posted on X.

He added in English: “If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud. Trump is 200 percent right.”

Donald Trump’s tarring of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” who is to blame for the war with Russia, plunging Ukraine into a Darwinian struggle for its very existence, landed like a bombshell on the diplomatic landscape. But it did not come out of nowhere.

The US president has left the already badly frayed western alliance in disarray with a devastating social media attack on his Ukrainian counterpart, just hours after he had already implicitly blamed Kyiv for Russia’s invasion.

After much of what he said appeared to echo Kremlin talking points, including falsehoods about Zelenskyy’s popularity being at 4% (a recent poll put it at 57%), Ukraine’s president attributed it to Trump being trapped in a Russian “disinformation bubble”.

In fact, Trump may be the author of his own misconceptions about Ukraine – or at least responsible for having built the bubble himself, by surrounding himself with prominent figures who have often seemed to echo the Russian line.

A year before he left European leaders mortified at last week’s Munich security conference by accusing them of threatening their own democracies with supposed free speech restrictions, JD Vance – now Trump’s vice-president – was already questioning military support for Ukraine.

“How long is this expected to go on? How much is it expected to cost?” he said, complaining of a “lack of strategic clarity” in US and allied goals.

It was one of Vance’s milder comments. Last year he labelled Zelenskyy “disgraceful” when he visited Washington last year to lobby Congress for military aid, and days before Russia’s invasion in February 2022 he told Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon he did not “really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other”.

As stories emerged of Russian atrocities, he doubled down, telling Bannon: “I don’t care enough about what’s going on over there that I’m going to step in, get a bunch of our citizens killed and pour more and more money into the war sinkhole.”

Other members of Trump’s inner circle long associated with a pro-Russian viewpoint also include Tulsi Gabbard, newly confirmed as director of national intelligence, and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who remains one of the president’s most influential backers.

Gabbard has been accused of parroting Kremlin talking points and was challenged on the subject at her recent Senate confirmation hearings – particularly her decision to blame the Russian invasion on Ukraine, as Trump has now done.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden admin/Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she wrote, as Russian missiles struck Ukrainian cities.

Carlson, meanwhile, conducted a face-to-face interview with Vladimir Putin last year as the war raged, which some commentators said the Russian leader used to broadcast a message to Trump and other US conservatives. Carlson was ridiculed for a Pravda-esque video segment praising Russian supermarkets for having coin-operated shopping trolleys, which all western supermarkets have had for decades.

In fact when Pete Hegseth, Trump’s new defence secretary, gave a speech shortly after Vance’s in which he said the US would no longer be “primarily focused” on European security and that Ukraine would never be allowed to join Nato – appearing to simply hand Russia key concessions in the negotiations over ending the war without getting anything in return – he was condemned by the Republican senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate’s powerful armed services committee.

“I don’t know who wrote the speech – it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Wicker said.

But Wicker – and recently Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, who wrote on social media, “Mr President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war” – are rare Republican voices of dissent. The Reaganite hawks from Trump’s first term such as Pence, Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger, who might have advised a US president to hold the line against Russian expansionism into Europe, have been purged.

Regardless, Trump may need little outside prompting to feel friendly towards Russia, or Putin, for whom he has long displayed personal admiration. Russian interference on Trump’s behalf during his victorious 2016 presidential election campaign against Hillary Clinton was well-documented by the US intelligence community – and Trump has since developed a hatred of those agencies such as the FBI and CIA, who pointed it out.

In particular, an inquiry conducted by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, into alleged collusion between the campaign and Russia, was bitterly resented by Trump, who denounced the allegations as a “hoax”.

And in 2019 Trump attempted to pressure Zelenskyy to launch an investigation into Joe Biden and the business interests of his son, Hunter, in Ukraine, in return for US military assistance – an apparently clear abuse of presidential power for Trump’s personal political gain, and which led to his first impeachment.

What’s more, his new righthand man Elon Musk, who supported Ukraine with Starlink satellite service to help repel Russia’s invasion, tangled with Zelenskyy in 2022 after suggesting Ukraine abandon Crimea permanently to Russia and drop its ambitions to join Nato. In recent days, Musk has targeted Zelenskyy on social media in personal terms – perhaps providing the inspiration for Trump’s dismissal of the Ukrainian president as “a modestly successful comedian”.

Yet the causes of Trump’s latest breach with Zelenskyy are equally likely to be immediate and devoid of outside influences, said Charles Kupchan, a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations.

“Part of it is Mr Trump’s thin skin and his response to what he sees as criticism,” said Kupchan, a member of the White House national security staff in the Obama and Clinton administrations.

“I think he sees himself as going out and trying to help Europe and help Ukraine – and instead, he’s been met with a wave of criticism. And I see his calling Zelenskyy a dictator, blaming him for starting the war, as a kind of impulsive, angry response.”

Kupchan believes that given Trump’s whims, the relationship could be suddenly repaired under pressure of self-interest.

“Trump’s relationship with leaders blows hot and cold. He’s had good meetings with Zelenskyy,” he said. “If you look at Trump’s history, one day he’s good buddies with Macron and then they fall out. I don’t think there is an enduring nature to Trump’s relationships with foreign heads. It’s very much: what have you done for me today?

“At the end of the day, Trump wants a deal to end the war. If he’s going to get that, he needs a working relationship with Zelenskyy … If Trump goes over the heads of Zelenskyy and European allies, to cut some kind of deal with Putin, it will not stick.”

It’s a bustling morning at the Dongmen wet market, in inner-city Taipei. Mr Yu is shouting at passersby, trying to offload his boxes of freshly steamed dumplings. In between customers, the self-professed “dumpling king” and his wife, Ms Liao, discuss Donald Trump.

“He’s very positive, energetic,” says Yu, handing flour-covered coins to a customer. Liao chimes in: “The dancing! Isn’t he in his 80s?” Yu nods in agreement. But asked what Trump means for Taiwan, the elderly couple is less effusive.

“With higher tariffs, prices will rise, and people won’t be able to stand it,” says Yu. “He just wants money,” Liao shrugs.

The last time Trump was president he was relatively popular in Taiwan, seen as a strong foil to China’s threats of annexation.

During that first term, approvals of US weapons sales to Taiwan soared, US navy movements in the Taiwan Strait increased, and Trump broke with convention to accept a phone call from Taiwan’s then-president Tsai Ing-wen, lending legitimacy to her administration.

But Trump’s return has brought a global shake-up, from the shuttering of USAid and negotiating with Russia over Ukraine, to talk about annexing Greenland and Canada, and taking control of Gaza for “redevelopment”. His messaging about support for Taipei has been mixed at best, and the island is on edge. A withdrawal of American support here would spark an existential crisis.

“The Trump administration has already demonstrated that it is willing to suddenly and without warning break from decades of bipartisan US policy on China,” says Bethany Allen, head of China investigations and analysis at ASPI.

“[It] is signalling that it is excising liberal democratic values from its foreign policy calculations – opening up the possibility that US support for Taiwan may become divorced from any inherent value ascribed to Taiwan as a democracy worth preserving for its own sake.”

China has long threatened to invade and annex Taiwan if it refused to peacefully accept “reunification” with the mainland. A military modernisation campaign driven by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is bringing Beijing closer to being able to follow through.

Support from the US, Taiwan’s biggest backer, is considered crucial for the island’s survival. While the US officially refuses to say if it would militarily defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, former president Joe Biden said repeatedly that under his leadership they probably would. The US sells Taiwan billions of dollars in weapons under legal obligations to provide it with defensive means and uses its military and foreign policy to support the peaceful “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait.

But Trump is now questioning the worth of the US’s support and floated the idea of charging Taiwan for protection. He’s accused Taiwan of “stealing” the US’s semiconductor business, and railed against trading partners – including Taiwan – having surpluses against the US. He has threatened or imposed steep and sweeping tariffs.

His stance has prompted questions about how Trump sees Taiwan – as a longstanding US friend, as a strategic asset, a business rival, or a bargaining chip with China.

“There are two areas of uncertainty – the first is how the president will assess Taiwan’s value to the US in any given scenario or contingency, and the second is whether the rest of the government is influential when it comes to Trump’s opinion on how to support Taiwan,” says Rorry Daniels, managing director of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Beijing’s ‘nightmare scenario’

There have been some positive signs. Earlier this month, after Trump met Japan’s prime minister Ishiba Shigeru, the two leaders released a statement specifically referencing Taiwan, with updated and stronger language saying the US and Japan “opposed any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion”. This week the US state department removed a line from its Taiwan page that explicitly said the US did not support Taiwan independence. Both were welcomed by Taipei and criticised by Beijing.

But analysts have cautioned that these events have come from Trump’s administration, not the individual president who is prone to sudden pronouncements and executive orders that can undo decades of policy on a whim.

Daniels says key members of the administration have “more expansive views” on Taiwan and hawkish stances on China – such as secretary of state Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz – “but it’s not clear how deeply those views influence the president on any given day or issue”.

Trump’s negotiations over Ukraine have particularly alarmed people in Taiwan, who see parallels between Russia’s invasion and China’s aims. Allen says there is far less sympathy for China in the Republican party than there is for Russia. But it’s another area where Trump’s unpredictability has made people nervous, given Trump doesn’t seem to value defending democracies against authoritarianism. Few analysts think that Taiwan could be used effectively as a bargaining chip. But it’s possible that President Xi Jinping could ask Trump to support “peaceful reunification” and weaken Taiwan’s position. Biden was asked and refused. Trump might agree. Or, he could go the other way.

“For Beijing, the nightmare scenario is that the Trump administration begins to support the Lai [Ching-te] government in unprecedented ways, a possibility that increases if US-China relations fall apart,” says Amanda Hsiao, China director at the Eurasia Group. “I don’t know that they know what Trump wants.”

Privately, Taiwan government officials insist the Taiwan-US relationship remains strong and unchanged, pointing to moves such as the Trump-Ishida statement and the state department web edits.

But worries about Trump’s “lukewarm” view of Taiwan are becoming more obvious even if the Taiwan government was being outwardly reassuring, says Kwei-bo Huang, professor of diplomacy at Taiwan’s National ChengChi university.

“Taiwan can’t have wishful thinking that Trump, who personally hasn’t given Taiwan a security assurance since at least the end of his first term, will definitely order US troops to come to Taiwan’s aide whenever urgent needs arise,” said Huang.

Chips are down

Trump’s proposed tariffs on Taiwan’s crucial semiconductor exports have angered people in Taiwan, and are the dominant topic of discussion in local media. Taiwan’s government has sent delegations to Washington, pledged to buy more US gas and weapons to reduce the trade surplus, and vowed to raise its defence budget above 3% of GDP.

Semiconductors power everything from phones to cars and large weapons systems, and many analysts believe a large part of Taiwan’s protection strategy comes from keeping production of its most advanced chips – which form 90% of the world’s supply – onshore.

This week Trump announced tariffs would start at 25% across the whole sector (without specifying Taiwan) and rise from there. It’s not clear exactly how they would be applied.

Trump’s team has also reportedly urged chip-making giant TSMC to enter into an unspecified partnership with Intel’s factories. It all appears linked to Trump’s belief that Taiwan “stole US” chip tech, and what Mark Williams, the chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, says is a “gradual shift under way to rebuild chip-making capacity in the US”.

Taiwan’s major semiconductor manufacturers, including TSMC, declined to comment.

Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the US-based German Marshall Fund, says the US-Taiwan relationship will probably stay strong. “But Taiwan will likely face pressure from Trump to accede to his demands.”

At the Dongmen market, Yu sums up the quandary. If Trump keeps supporting Taiwan, selling it weapons, holding back on tariffs, they’ll be OK. But it’s out of Taiwan’s control, he says.

“He’s unpredictable,” says Yu. “His focus is on what’s beneficial for the US, but the key point is that you don’t know how he thinks, right?”

Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu

The Trump administration can for now continue its mass firings of federal employees, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting a bid by a group of labor unions to halt Donald Trump’s dramatic downsizing of the roughly 2.3 million-strong federal workforce.

The ruling by the US district judge Christopher Cooper in Washington DC federal court is temporary while the litigation plays out. But it is a win for the Trump administration as it seeks to purge the federal workforce and slash what it deems wasteful and fraudulent government spending.

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and four other unions sued last week to block the administration from firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and granting buyouts to employees who quit voluntarily.

The unions are seeking to block eight agencies including the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Veterans Affairs from implementing mass layoffs.

In his 16-page order, Cooper started by acknowledging Trump’s “onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society”.

He went on to add: “Affected citizens and their advocates have challenged many of these actions on an emergency basis in this Court and others across the country.”

However, Cooper on Thursday said, he likely lacks the power to hear the case, and the unions instead must file complaints with a federal labor board that hears disputes between unions and federal agencies.

Cooper wrote: “NTEU fails to establish that it is likely to succeed on the merits because this Court likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the claims it asserts. The Court will therefore deny the unions’ motion for a temporary restraining order and, for the same reasons, deny their request for a preliminary injunction.”

Trump has tapped the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, to lead a so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, which has swept through federal agencies slashing thousands of jobs and dismantling federal programs since Trump became president last month and put Musk in charge of rooting out what he deems wasteful spending as part of Trump’s dramatic overhaul of government. Trump also ordered federal agencies to work closely with Doge to identify federal employees who could be laid off.

Termination emails were sent last week to workers across the federal government – mostly recently hired employees still on probation at agencies such as the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the General Services Administration and others.

The plaintiffs, which include the United Auto Workers, the NTEU and the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in their lawsuit that White House efforts, including through Doge, to shrink the federal workforce violate separation-of-powers principles by undermining Congress’s authority to fund federal agencies.

The unions said that unless the court intervenes, they will be irreparably harmed by lost revenue from dues-paying members who were either fired or retired early to take buyouts.

In a statement released last Wednesday, NTEU president Doreen Greenwald said: “We will not stand idly by while this administration takes illegal actions that will harm citizens, federal employees and the economy.”

She went on to add: “All of these orders are further evidence that this administration is motivated not by efficiency, but by cruelty and a total disregard for the government services that will be lost.”

Most civil service employees can be fired legally only for bad performance or misconduct, and they have a host of due process and appeal rights if they are let go arbitrarily. The probationary employees primarily targeted in last week’s wave have fewer legal protections.

A judge overseeing a similar case in Boston federal court allowed the buyouts to move forward in a ruling on 12 February, finding labor unions that filed the case did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit because they had not shown how they would be harmed by the plan.

The window to accept buyouts has now closed, and about 75,000 workers took up the administration’s offer, according to the US office of personnel management. That represents about 3% of the total federal workforce.

The unions are asking the judge to declare the firings and buyouts illegal and block the government from firing more employees or offering another round of buyouts.

In a Monday court filing, the government said the unions did not have a right to sue because they would not be harmed by the firings and buyouts. Granting the unions’ request would also inappropriately interfere with the president’s efforts to streamline the federal workforce, the government argued.

More than 70 lawsuits have been filed seeking to block Trump’s efforts to remake the federal workforce, clamp down on immigration and roll back transgender rights.

The results have so far been mixed, but judges have blocked some aspects of Trump’s marquee policies, including his bid to end automatic birthright citizenship to children born in the US.

On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that the Internal Revenue Service had began firing employees as part of the widespread layoffs.

Speaking to the outlet, a person familiar with the decision said that approximately 7,000 employees were expected to lose their jobs, marking 7% of a 100,000-person agency.

Reuters contributed reporting

JD Vance marked one month since the Trump administration returned to power on Thursday by again claiming uncontrolled immigration was “the greatest threat” to both Europe and the United States.

The vice-president took the stage at the country’s largest conservative voters conference in National Harbor, Maryland, to double down on his criticism that stunned European leaders last week when he accused them of suppressing free speech and “running in fear” from voters’ true beliefs.

“The greatest threat in Europe, and I’d say the greatest threat in the US until about 30 days ago, is that you’ve had the leaders of the west decide that they should send millions and millions of unvetted foreign migrants into their countries,” Vance told the crowd.

His rhetoric represents the administration’s dramatic U-turn in long-standing American domestic and foreign policy priorities, making clear the aim is to bolster border security with more agents and be more cautious about European military commitments.

Vance also made the extraordinary claim, without evidence, that the month-old administration was about to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict in decades.

“I really believe we are on the cusp of peace in Europe for the first time in three years,” he said about the war in Ukraine. “How are you going to end the war unless you are talking to Russia? You’ve got to talk to everybody involved in the fighting.”

The remarks landed well at a transformed Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where establishment Republicans that once dominated the stage have been replaced by nationalist figures including Steve Bannon, Britain’s Nigel Farage, and the tech billionaire and “department of government efficiency” operator Elon Musk. While speaking on Thursday, Bannon appeared to give a fascist-style salute, the same gesture associated with Nazi Germany that Musk made after the inauguration.

The conference’s shift over the years mirrors the broader changes in Republican politics since Trump’s first nomination – at the 2016 event, Trump finished third in the conference’s straw poll with just 15%, behind Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

This year, thousands of conservatives near and far have flocked to CPAC, many donning “Make America great again” (Maga) apparel and America-centric costumes, including a Statue of Liberty outfit and flag shirts.

The nationalist vibe at CPAC was further reflected by the presence of prominent European rightwing and Trump-friendly figures, including András László, a Hungarian member of the European parliament and president of the Patriots for Europe foundation.

Speaking to the Guardian on the sidelines of the conference, László defended the Trump administration’s existential stance on European politics.

“We need to have honest discussions, even if they are difficult to have,” László said, echoing Vance’s criticisms of European speech restrictions. “What are we fighting for? Sovereignty and democracy for Ukraine if we don’t practice it at home? We need to stop stifling freedom of speech, have more discussion, even if sometimes that might be painful for some people.”

His organization, which launched last year and is now the third-largest group in the European parliament, with 86 members from 13 states, has been gaining influence across the continent, reflecting the same nationalist currents reshaping American conservatism.

The conference also drew Liz Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, who crashed the UK economy with tax cuts for the wealthy before resigning after just 49 days in office. Reinventing herself as a rightwing populist, Truss used her CPAC platform to claim her political failures were actually the fault of shadowy elites.

“The British state is now failing, is not working. The decisions are not being made by politicians,” Truss said, claiming her country was controlled by a “deep state” while calling for a British version of Trump’s movement. “We want to have a British CPAC.”

Hours before his appearance at CPAC, Vance had posted a lengthy critique of traditional US and European foreign policy writ-large on X, dismissing concerns about the administration’s stance on Ukraine as “moralistic garbage” and defending its push for peace negotiations.

“President [Donald] Trump and I have made two simple arguments: first, the war wouldn’t have started if President Trump was in office; second, that neither Europe, nor the Biden administration, nor the Ukrainians had any pathway to victory,” Vance wrote.

Vance got more specific on the CPAC stage, suggesting that the US’s military commitment to European allies could be contingent on their domestic policies, particularly targeting Germany.

“Germany’s entire defence is subsidised by the American taxpayer. There are thousands upon thousands of American troops in Germany today,” he said. “Do you think the American taxpayer is going to stand for that if you get thrown in jail for posting a mean tweet?”

Mexico will never tolerate an “invasion” of its national sovereignty by the United States, Claudia Sheinbaum has warned after Washington designated Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.

“This cannot be an opportunity for the US to invade our sovereignty,” the Mexican president said. “With Mexico, it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination or interventionism, and even less invasion.”

Sheinbaum said her government was not consulted by the United States in its decision to include Mexican cartels on a list of global terrorist organizations, adding that she would propose a constitutional reform aimed at further protecting Mexico’s national sovereignty.

“The Mexican people will under no circumstances accept interventions, intrusions, or any other action from abroad that is detrimental to the integrity, independence or sovereignty of the nation … [including] violations of Mexican territory, whether by land, sea or air,” said Sheinbaum, speaking during her regular morning news conference on Thursday.

Sheinbaum’s comments marked an implicit rebuke for Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that Mexico has enabled a migrant “invasion” of the United States. They also reflected the troubled history between the two allied nations: US forces have invaded Mexico at least 10 times and in 1846 claimed nearly half of the country’s territory for the US.

Sheinbaum said she would also propose a second constitutional reform that would stiffen the penalties for Mexicans and foreigners who engage in arms trafficking. Most guns used in crimes in the country are trafficked from the United States.

She also repeated a pledge that Mexico would expand its legal action against US gun manufacturers, which her government accuses of negligence in the sale of weapons that end up in the hands of drug traffickers.

The lawsuit could lead to a new charge of alleged complicity with terrorist groups, Sheinbaum said.

Donald Trump’s decision targeting eight Latin American drug-trafficking groups – including several Mexican cartels – is the latest step in the US president’s intensifying crackdown on gang members.

The measure covers eight Mexican organized crime groups, including the two biggest factions, the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels, as well as MS-13, the Salvadoran gang founded in Los Angeles, and Tren de Aragua, a group rooted in Venezuela.

Mexico has long opposed the move, arguing the cartels are not motivated by political ends like others on the terror list, but by profit.

The designation could shift the legal landscape for US asylum claims, potentially hurting migrants who are forced to pay extortion or ransoms to cartels, as they could be accused of supporting a terrorist organization.

Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House saying that the cartels “constitute a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime”.

The move has raised speculation about possible military action.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has been given a prominent role in the Trump administration, suggested the designation “means they’re eligible for drone strikes”.

Since Trump returned to power, the US military has increased its airborne surveillance of the cartels along the border between the two countries, while the CIA has stepped up drone flights over Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs – though Sheinbaum said that this was with Mexico’s permission.

Elon Musk has got into a heated row with a Danish astronaut who criticised the tech billionaire’s claim that former president Joe Biden intentionally abandoned two American astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Andreas “Andy” Mogensen had on Thursday shared on X a Fox News clip featuring Musk and his boss, US President Donald Trump, in which Musk claimed Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were left stranded on the orbital outpost for “political reasons” by Biden, and that the new administration was now coming to the rescue.

“What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media,” wrote the 48-year-old European Space Agency astronaut, who has flown to the ISS twice, including onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule during a 2023 mission.

Musk responded by calling Mogensen “fully retarded,” adding that “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago” and that he had made such an offer to the Biden administration. Musk did not elaborate on what that offer entailed.

Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS in June onboard a Boeing Starliner for what was meant to be an eight-day test mission to certify the new spaceship.

But thruster problems led Nasa to decide that Starliner should return without its crew, and the agency tasked SpaceX with bringing the veteran astronauts home.

Nasa then announced the pair would return on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission’s spaceship, which launched in September with a crew of two instead of four in order to accommodate them.

The voyage home was initially scheduled for February but later shifted to March due to delays by SpaceX in preparing the spacecraft for Crew-10, whose crew will replace Crew-9’s.

If there was an alternate rescue plan that could have been executed sooner, Musk has not revealed it.

“Elon, I have long admired you and what you have accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla,” Mogensen replied to Musk’s missive.

“You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”

Elon Musk has got into a heated row with a Danish astronaut who criticised the tech billionaire’s claim that former president Joe Biden intentionally abandoned two American astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Andreas “Andy” Mogensen had on Thursday shared on X a Fox News clip featuring Musk and his boss, US President Donald Trump, in which Musk claimed Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were left stranded on the orbital outpost for “political reasons” by Biden, and that the new administration was now coming to the rescue.

“What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media,” wrote the 48-year-old European Space Agency astronaut, who has flown to the ISS twice, including onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule during a 2023 mission.

Musk responded by calling Mogensen “fully retarded,” adding that “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago” and that he had made such an offer to the Biden administration. Musk did not elaborate on what that offer entailed.

Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS in June onboard a Boeing Starliner for what was meant to be an eight-day test mission to certify the new spaceship.

But thruster problems led Nasa to decide that Starliner should return without its crew, and the agency tasked SpaceX with bringing the veteran astronauts home.

Nasa then announced the pair would return on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission’s spaceship, which launched in September with a crew of two instead of four in order to accommodate them.

The voyage home was initially scheduled for February but later shifted to March due to delays by SpaceX in preparing the spacecraft for Crew-10, whose crew will replace Crew-9’s.

If there was an alternate rescue plan that could have been executed sooner, Musk has not revealed it.

“Elon, I have long admired you and what you have accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla,” Mogensen replied to Musk’s missive.

“You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”

Hong Kong’s oldest pro-democracy party, which became an influential voice of opposition before Beijing cracked down on dissent, will start preparations to shut down, its leader has said.

Lo Kin-hei, chair of Hong Kong’s Democratic party, said on Thursday: “We are going to proceed and study on the process and procedure that is needed for the disbanding.”

Lo told reporters: “We considered the overall political environment in Hong Kong and all those future plans that we can foresee, and that is the decision that we make.”

Lo said the final decision to dissolve the party must be left to a members’ vote, but did not say when that would take place.

The Democratic party was founded in 1994, near the end of British colonial rule, when Hong Kong’s leading liberal groups merged.

Early leaders of the Democratic party played a key role in shaping “one country, two systems”, a constitutional arrangement that promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and rights protections.

After the city was handed over to China in 1997, the party became the most influential voice of opposition in Hong Kong’s legislature and led peaceful street demonstrations.

But the party’s fortunes declined after Beijing tightened its grip and imposed a national security law in Hong Kong, after huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in 2019.

“Developing democracy in Hong Kong is always difficult,” Lo said on Thursday. In recent years “we see a lot of civil society groups or political parties disbanding”, he added.

Asked whether the democrats were pressured by Beijing to fold, Lo said he would not disclose details of internal discussions.

Four of the party’s ex-lawmakers – including former party leader Wu Chi-wai – are serving prison sentences after being found guilty of subversion under the national security law last year.

The party no longer holds any legislature seats after Hong Kong changed its electoral system in 2021 to ensure only “patriots” can take office.

A three-person team that includes Lo will look into the legal and accounting rules on party dissolution, as the start of a multi-step process. The group currently has 400 members and is not experiencing acute financial stress, according to Lo.

A vote to dissolve the party will require the support of 75% of meeting participants.

Lo said he hoped Hong Kong could return to values such as “diversity, inclusion and democracy” that underpin its past success.

Well-known figures from the party include Martin Lee – hailed by some as Hong Kong’s “father of democracy” – as well as Albert Ho, who organised annual vigils to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Western nations including the United States have criticised Hong Kong for curtailing rights. City officials say the security laws are needed to restore order.

Hong Kong’s second-largest opposition group, the Civic party, dissolved in 2023.

Doctors in London have become the first in the world to cure blindness in children born with a rare genetic condition using a pioneering gene therapy.

The children had leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a severe form of retinal dystrophy that causes vision loss due to a defect in the AIPL1 gene. Those affected are legally certified as blind from birth.

But after doctors injected healthy copies of the gene into their eyes with keyhole surgery that took just 60 minutes, four children can now see shapes, find toys, recognise their parents’ faces, and in some cases, even read and write.

“The outcomes for these children are hugely impressive and show the power of gene therapy to change lives,” said Prof Michel Michaelides, a consultant retinal specialist at Moorfields Eye hospital and professor of ophthalmology at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology.

“We have, for the first time, an effective treatment for the most severe form of childhood blindness, and a potential paradigm shift to treatment at the earliest stages of the disease.”

Four children aged between one and two from the US, Turkey and Tunisia were selected by specialists from Moorfields and UCL in 2020. The operations were carried out at London’s Great Ormond Street hospital.

Healthy copies of the AIPL1 gene, contained in a harmless virus, were injected into the retina, the light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye.

The gene is vital for the function of photoreceptors, light-sensing cells in the retina that convert light into electrical signals that the brain interprets as vision.

The therapy was only administered into one eye per patient to overcome any potential safety issues. The children were then followed up for five years. The results were published in the Lancet journal.

Prof James Bainbridge, consultant retinal surgeon at Moorfields and professor of retinal studies at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, said children born with LCA can distinguish only light and dark, and what little sight they do have they will lose within a few years.

“Some children are even able to read and write following the intervention which is something that one would absolutely not expect in this condition, untreated.”

The parents of one of the children described the results as “pretty amazing” and said they felt “lucky” to have benefited. Their six-year-old son Jace, who was two when he was treated, can now pick tiny things up off the floor and identify toys at a distance.

Brendan and DJ, who did not wish to share their surname, travelled from Connecticut in the US for the treatment in September 2020.

“Pre-surgery, at around two years old, you could have held up any object, even a couple of inches away from Jace’s face, and he would not be able to track it,” said DJ. “It didn’t matter how bright it was, what colour it was, what shape it was.

“And now we get calls and notes home from school that he’s stealing phones out of teachers’ back pockets, which is hysterical to us.”

Brendan said he noticed a difference within the first month when his son reacted to the sun shining through a window. “He kind of pulled himself back. It wasn’t just even an eye shut, it was more of a physical reaction.

“And I remember welling up and getting really emotional because that was the first time that Jace ever had any reaction to any sort of light stimulus or anything of the sort. From there, it’s been pretty amazing.”

UCL developed the treatment using a special licence granted by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and backed by gene therapy company MeiraGTx.

Since the four children received the therapy, a further seven have been treated at Evelina London Children’s Hospital by specialists from St Thomas’ hospital, Great Ormond Street and Moorfields.

A court in Argentina has dropped charges of criminal negligence against three of the five people indicted in connection with the death of Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who fell from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last October.

In a decision issued Wednesday, the Argentine federal appeals court ordered the other two defendants in the case to remain in custody. They are facing prosecution on charges they supplied the famed British boy band star with narcotics.

The ruling drops charges against three key defendants: Rogelio Nores, an Argentinian businessman with US citizenship who had accompanied Payne during his trip to Buenos Aires; Gilda Martin, the manager of the Casa Sur Palermo hotel where Payne died on 16 October; and Esteban Grassi, the hotel’s main receptionist.

The charge of negligent homicide carries a sentence of one to five years in prison in Argentina.

A toxicology report from tests taken after an autopsy revealed that Payne, 31, had alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he fell from the balcony.

Prosecutors argued that Nores had failed to comply with his duties of care by leaving Payne alone while inebriated. The court sided with defense attorneys who contended that Nores had no legal, moral or social duty to care for Payne. He also was outside the hotel at the time of his friend’s death.

The two hotel employees, Martin and Grassi, were in the Casa Sur lobby on 16 October when they saw Payne severely intoxicated and decided to take him to his room with the help of others, investigators determined.

Prosecutors said that the men should have kept Payne away from his hotel room, where a balcony posed a clear danger, until the singer could receive proper medical care. On Wednesday, the court ruled that prosecutors failed to prove how taking Payne to his hotel room “constituted unlawful, unruly, clumsy, reckless, imprudent or negligent conduct”.

The court also ordered the other two defendants in the case – Ezequiel David Pereyra, a former employee at Casa Sur Hotel and Braian Paiz, a waiter who had served Payne at an upscale Buenos Aires restaurant – to remain in detention on charges that they supplied Payne with narcotics in the days, even hours, leading up to his death.

Because the charge they face carries a sentence of four to 15 years in prison, the court said that preventative detention was justified.

Payne’s sudden death drew an outpouring of grief around the world from heartbroken fans of One Direction, among the best-selling boy bands of all time.

A court in Argentina has dropped charges of criminal negligence against three of the five people indicted in connection with the death of Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who fell from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last October.

In a decision issued Wednesday, the Argentine federal appeals court ordered the other two defendants in the case to remain in custody. They are facing prosecution on charges they supplied the famed British boy band star with narcotics.

The ruling drops charges against three key defendants: Rogelio Nores, an Argentinian businessman with US citizenship who had accompanied Payne during his trip to Buenos Aires; Gilda Martin, the manager of the Casa Sur Palermo hotel where Payne died on 16 October; and Esteban Grassi, the hotel’s main receptionist.

The charge of negligent homicide carries a sentence of one to five years in prison in Argentina.

A toxicology report from tests taken after an autopsy revealed that Payne, 31, had alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he fell from the balcony.

Prosecutors argued that Nores had failed to comply with his duties of care by leaving Payne alone while inebriated. The court sided with defense attorneys who contended that Nores had no legal, moral or social duty to care for Payne. He also was outside the hotel at the time of his friend’s death.

The two hotel employees, Martin and Grassi, were in the Casa Sur lobby on 16 October when they saw Payne severely intoxicated and decided to take him to his room with the help of others, investigators determined.

Prosecutors said that the men should have kept Payne away from his hotel room, where a balcony posed a clear danger, until the singer could receive proper medical care. On Wednesday, the court ruled that prosecutors failed to prove how taking Payne to his hotel room “constituted unlawful, unruly, clumsy, reckless, imprudent or negligent conduct”.

The court also ordered the other two defendants in the case – Ezequiel David Pereyra, a former employee at Casa Sur Hotel and Braian Paiz, a waiter who had served Payne at an upscale Buenos Aires restaurant – to remain in detention on charges that they supplied Payne with narcotics in the days, even hours, leading up to his death.

Because the charge they face carries a sentence of four to 15 years in prison, the court said that preventative detention was justified.

Payne’s sudden death drew an outpouring of grief around the world from heartbroken fans of One Direction, among the best-selling boy bands of all time.

An ancient gummy-looking worm-like creature with a vicious hunting method that involves projecting sticky goo from its head has been crowned New Zealand’s bug of the year.

The Peripatoides novaezealandiae is from the family of velvet worms, or Ngāokeoke in the Māori language. The invertebrates have rows of pudgy legs and skin speckled like a galaxy, and are considered “living fossils”, having remained virtually unchanged for 500m years.

“They are from this ancient lineage and they are unique,” says On Lee Lau, who works in the collections team at Tūhura Otago Museum and backed the creature to win the country’s annual bug of the year award.

“They seem very soft and like a slow-moving, stumpy kind of caterpillar,” Lau said. “But they have that dark secret where they’re really amazing hunters, and can shoot slime out of their oral papillae.”

Velvet worms are not actually worms or caterpillars, despite their names and resemblance. Rather, they are considered something of a missing link between worms and insects and are so distinctive from other invertebrates they have their own taxonomic rank below “kingdom” and above “class,” called Onychophora.

The Peripatoides novaezealandiae is one of roughly 30 velvet worms endemic to New Zealand. They typically reside on the forest floor, where they shoot jets of sticky fluid on to their prey, before dissolving it into a soup and slurping it up. Velvet worms are thought to live for roughly five years and produce 10 to 20 offspring annually. Some, including the winner, hatch their eggs internally and bear live young.

The elusive velvet worms are difficult to study as they can be hard to find, and while the winning species is thought to have a stable population, they are subject to threats such as habitat loss and predators, according to the Department of Conservation. Globally, insect numbers are plummeting due to intensive agriculture, urbanisation and climate change.

The Entomological Society of New Zealand launched the bug of the year competition in 2023, inspired by the country’s wildly popular bird of the year competition. The popularity of the bug awards is growing, with this year’s competition generating the highest number of voters so far – nearly 10,000.

The velvet worm won with 2,652 votes, just 110 points ahead of the runner-up – an endemic apple-green praying mantis. Other contenders included a wingless fly that hitches rides on bats, a slug that looks remarkably like a gherkin, an exquisite lichen-coloured moth, and a sea slug named after Sméagol from Lord of the Rings.

Jenny Jandt, a senior zoology lecturer at the University of Otago who helps coordinate the competition, said this year’s line-up was the most diverse yet, with every one of the 21 bugs representing a different taxonomic family.

The competition aims to highlight not just the conservation status of bugs and the important ecological role they play, but to foster celebration, Jandt said.

Many of the creatures go unnoticed and unrecognised, Jandt said. “You have to look for them. But once you start looking, the world becomes this bigger, more magical place.”

A highly pathogenic strain of bird flu has been detected at a third property in Victoria, with farmers warning it could exacerbate Australia’s egg shortage in coming months.

Agriculture Victoria on Thursday said the H7N8 strain of avian influenza had been detected at a third poultry farm at Euroa in Victoria’s north-east.

The detection occurred at a property belonging to Kinross Farms – the same business where influenza was found at two other sites.

Kinross Farms’ managing director, Philip Szepe, said the latest outbreak was “detected quickly and managed immediately”.

Hundreds of thousands of chickens were euthanised after the outbreak was detected at the first two properties earlier this month. Guardian Australia understands the number of chickens to be euthanised across the three properties will rise to about 500,000.

Meg Parkinson, the president of the Victorian Farmers Federation Egg Group, said the latest outbreak would extend the timeframe of supply issues that are being seen at supermarkets and grocery stores across the nation.

“It just means that it’ll take longer for the shelves to fill up,” she said.

Parksinon said it would take six months for the impact of the latest outbreak to flow through to stock on store shelves.

“It just depends on what happens. Hopefully this will be the end of it, but if there’s more [outbreaks] it will take longer,” she said.

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Purchase limits on eggs remain in place at major supermarkets across Australia due to supply issues caused by the 2024 bird flu outbreak.

Victoria’s acting chief veterinary officer, Dr Cameron Bell, said given the close proximity of the infected farms, the latest detection was not unexpected.

Agriculture Victoria said its staff were working on the ground with industry to contain and eradicate the virus.

The outbreak of H7N8 avian influenza was first detected on 8 February at a Kinross egg farm in northern Victoria.

Szepe said Kinross Farms had been “closely monitoring” all of its farms since the start of the outbreak and it was “not unusual for an avian influenza outbreak to spread to neighbouring properties”.

“This latest outbreak was detected quickly and managed immediately, in line with well-established national response arrangements to manage an avian influenza outbreak,” he said.

“As previously mentioned, avian influenza doesn’t affect eggs or chicken meat, and we appreciate all customers who continue to support Kinross Farms.”

February’s H7N8 outbreak came only weeks after quarantine restrictions were lifted on the last property affected by Victoria’s 2024 avian influenza outbreak – Australia’s largest on record.

An exclusion zone, with a 5km radius around the farms, has been established as well as a broader control area.

Since the detection of the latest outbreak, control orders have been in place to restrict the movement of poultry, poultry products and equipment between properties in designated zones to prevent the spread of the disease.

A Coles spokesperson said it was closely monitoring the outbreak of avian influenza in Victoria.

“We will continue to work closely with all our suppliers to ensure eggs remain available for our customers,” the spokesperson said.

“To manage availability, we will continue to maintain the purchase limits that have been in place since the first outbreak in Victoria in 2024.”

Woolworths has had a two-pack purchase limit on eggs in all stores except Western Australia since mid-last year, due to supply impacts from the 2024 bird flu outbreak.

A spokesperson for Woolworths said the higher demand for eggs over Christmas and the new year period put an additional short-term strain on egg availability across all retailers but supply remained stable.

“Our egg supply has continued to improve and we are working closely with our suppliers to source as many eggs as possible.”

A 27-year-old man has died at Manchester airport after being arrested by Border Force officers.

The man had been stopped while going through security in Terminal 2 on Wednesday after “displaying unusual behaviour”, the police watchdog said.

It is understood he was later detained in connection with alleged drug offences, according to the Manchester Evening News. He subsequently became unwell and was pronounced dead at 1.53pm.

An investigation has begun into his death, with the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) carrying out independent inquiries into the incident.

The man’s family were being supported by specialist officers and updated on the progress of the investigation.

An IOPC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that we are independently investigating the circumstances of a 27-year-old man’s death following his arrest by Border Force officers at Manchester airport on Wednesday 19 February.

“Our investigation follows a referral from the Home Office which detailed how the man was due to travel from the airport on Wednesday and was stopped after displaying unusual behaviour.

“He was subsequently arrested by officers and taken to a holding area where he became unwell and paramedics were called. Sadly, he was pronounced dead at 1.53pm.

“After being notified of the man’s death, we declared an independent investigation into the circumstances at 4.29pm on Wednesday. IOPC investigators were sent to the scene to begin gathering evidence.”

The IOPC’s director, Amanda Rowe, said: “First and foremost, our thoughts are with the man’s family and loved ones, as well as all those affected by his death.

“When someone dies after being taken into custody, it is important for there to be a thorough investigation to understand what has happened.

“We have been in touch with the man’s family to explain our role and will keep them updated as the investigation progresses. Our investigation is in its very early stages and no further information is available at this time.”

The long-running Australian soap Neighbours has been cancelled – again, just two years after it was revived by streaming giant Amazon.

“We are sad to announce that Neighbours will be resting from December 2025,” read an official statement from the show on Friday morning.

Production on Neighbours will wrap in July, its producer, Fremantle, confirmed. New episodes will continue to air on Amazon Prime Video globally and Australia’s Channel Ten four times a week until the end of 2025 – “with all the big soapie twists and turns that our viewers love”, the statement read.

Neighbours first ended production in 2022, capping off a record 37-year run, when Fremantle failed to secure another UK broadcaster after Channel 5 withdrew support. The subsequent outpouring of affection for the show after the cancellation led to Amazon announcing a few months later it would reboot Neighbours for its now-defunct Freevee streaming service, with Neighbours: A New Chapter launching in 2023.

Channel 5 backed out for financial reasons, but the show had continued to rate well in the UK’s busy soap market, attracting 1.5 million UK viewers a day in 2022.

With Amazon withdrawing now, Neighbours is yet again dependent on locking in another international sale or streaming deal to save it, as Ten has previously said it was not commercially viable for it to fund production alone.

Neighbours, which launched the international careers of a number of stars including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Margot Robbie and Guy Pearce, is still the longest-running drama series on Australian television, having been filmed in Melbourne since 1985.

Within Australia’s television industry, Neighbours is also regarded as an important training ground for crew and production workers, with many in the industry having learned on the job there.

“Audiences all around the world have loved and embraced Neighbours for four decades and we are very proud of the huge success over the last two years,” Neighbours’ executive producer, Jason Herbison said, citing its continued popularity in the UK and its first Daytime Emmy nomination last year.

“As this chapter closes, we appreciate and thank Amazon MGM Studios for all that they have done for Neighbours – bringing this iconic and much-loved series to new audiences globally. We value how much the fans love Neighbours and we believe there are more stories of the residents of Ramsay Street to tell in the future.”

Ten thanked the cast and crew for their work, as well as “the Australian fans and audiences for their continued support of the series”.

“It is a mighty achievement that the series will reach the 40-year milestone next month,” the spokesperson for Ten said. “The program will be missed by the fans and the people who have been part of this amazing journey. We wish them well.”