European leaders holding emergency talks in Brussels have agreed on a massive increase to defence spending, amid a drive to shore up support for Ukraine after Donald Trump halted US military aid and intelligence sharing.

It came as French president Emmanuel Macron warned on Thursday night that “the only imperial power that I see today in Europe is Russia” and called Vladimir Putin as “an imperialist who seeks to rewrite history” after the Russian president appeared to compare him to Napoleon Bonaparte.

Macron also hit back at Russian reactions to his description of Moscow as an existential threat to Europe, saying the Kremlin had clearly been piqued by the fact their game had been uncovered. Macron said Russia reacted the way it did to his speech warning that Russian aggression “knows no borders” because it was true.

The European show of unity was marred by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, failing to endorse an EU statement on Ukraine pushing back against Trump’s Russia-friendly negotiating stance.

The 26 other EU leaders, including Orbán’s ally Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, “firmly supported” the statement. “There can be no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the statement, a response to Trump’s attempt to sideline Europe and Kyiv.

The European Council president António Costa, who called the meeting, said: “Hungary has a different strategic approach on Ukraine, but that means Hungary is isolated among the 27.”

Arriving at the summit, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had originally been scheduled to join by video link, said: “We are very thankful that we are not alone.”

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who presented to leaders an €800bn (£670bn) plan to increase European defence spending, said it was “a watershed moment for Europe” and also for Ukraine.

Von der Leyen later told reporters that if Trump wanted “peace through strength” this would only be possible with the EU and its member states “because preconditions have to be met”. There were “many examples that show how important the support of Europe is to come to a positive end”, she said citing EU economic, military aid and support to keep Ukraine’s energy system running.

Earlier in the day, Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, set the tone of the meeting. “Spend, spend, spend on defence and deterrence,” she said. “That is the most important message, and at the same time, of course, continue to support Ukraine, because we want peace in Europe.”

Zelenskyy shook leaders’ hands and was embraced by several around the table at the start of the meeting. It was a stark contrast to the hostility from Washington, where US officials doubled down on the decision to cut intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

The US envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said it had been done to show the US was serious about ending the war. “The best way I can describe it is sort of like hitting a mule with a two by four across the nose. You get their attention,” he said.

Separately, Ukrainian opposition leaders confirmed they had met members of Trump’s entourage, but they denied seeking to remove Zelenskyy from power.

Addressing EU leaders, Zelenskyy said: “The real question for any negotiations is whether Russia is capable of giving up the war,” as he noted Russia was increasing military spending, growing its army and “making no pauses in trying to overcome sanctions”.

Zelenskyy later said on social media he planned to visit Saudi Arabia on Monday to meet the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. “After that, my team will stay in Saudi Arabia to work with our American partners,” he wrote. “Ukraine is most interested in peace. As we told POTUS, Ukraine is working and will continue to work constructively for a swift and reliable peace.”

The EU special summit was called last week after Trump embarked on his direct diplomacy with Vladimir Putin, but before the US president’s bullying encounter with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and the suspension of US military aid.

EU leaders largely endorse the plan to “rearm Europe” outlined by von der Leyen earlier this week, although the €800bn is highly theoretical, depending on decisions by member states.

“Europe must become more sovereign, more responsible for its own defence and better equipped to act and deal autonomously with immediate and future challenges and threats,” the final conclusions state. The EU “will accelerate the mobilisation of the necessary instruments and financing” to boost security and “reinforce its overall defence readiness [and] reduce its strategic dependencies”.

Arriving at the summit, von der Leyen told reporters: “Europe faces a clear and present danger, and therefore Europe has to be able to protect itself, to defend itself, as we have to put Ukraine in a position to protect itself and to push for a lasting and just peace.”

The commission has said its plan is worth €800bn, including a €150bn loan scheme secured against unused funds in the EU budget, as well as greater flexibilities in the EU’s fiscal rules that could unlock €650bn in new spending.

Member states would still have to agree to the €150bn loans scheme, while it is unclear if governments would make full use of the €650bn financial leeway the commission suggests.

Some of the money could be used by EU countries to finance military aid for Ukraine. “The best security guarantees are the Ukrainians themselves,” Costa said, although EU diplomats privately acknowledge Europe will not be able to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of US military aid.

Pressure is growing on all countries to increase national defence budgets, especially the seven EU Nato members, including Spain and Italy, that are below the 2% target set more than a decade ago. Belgium’s new prime minister, Bart De Wever, said his country was “an extremely poor pupil” and “getting a slap on the wrist that we deserve”.

In a seismic shift, Germany’s probable next coalition partners, the CDU-CSU and SPD, have agreed to change the country’s “debt brake” to allow increased spending on defence, heralding billions for armaments production. Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, the fiscal hawk turned defence spending advocate, met von der Leyen and Costa before the summit, although he is not yet at the table.

The current German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who represents Germany as coalition talks continue, said there appeared to be growing consensus on changing the German constitution to allow greater defence spending. The unexpected move from Berlin has left Germany’s frugal-minded allies scrambling to understand the ramifications.

Scholz gave a cool response to Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to allow European allies to shelter under the French nuclear umbrella, saying Europe should not give up on US involvement. Merz, however, has said he wants to discuss with Paris and London whether British and French nuclear protection could be extended to Germany.

With a mixture of regret, laced with incredulity, European leaders gathered in Brussels to marshal their forces for a power struggle not with Russia, but with the US.

Even now, of course at the 11th hour, most of Europe hopes this coming battle of wills can be averted and the Trump administration can still be persuaded that forcing Ukraine to the negotiating table, disarmed and blinded, will not be the US’s long-term strategic interest.

It has fallen to John Healey, the UK defence secretary; and Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, meeting their opposite numbers in Washington to see if there are any conditions in which the US will provide the backstop Europe insists it needs to send a reassurance force into Ukraine to protect a ceasefire. One European diplomat said: “We will know very soon if the US has set its face against helping Europe, and what its explanation is.”

As the French president, Emmanuel Macron, put it in his patriotic address on Wednesday night: “I want to believe that the United States will remain at our side. But we must be ready if that is not the case.” In saying this, he caught the spirit of the Brussels summit, and the new mood in Germany being led by the chancellor-elect, Friedrich Merz.

It is, so far as relations with Washington are concerned, a mood of optimism of the will combined with pessimism of the intellect. It requires Europe to prepare for a severance with the US, and one that may come much sooner than Nato planners had envisaged.

Specifically, it requires European nations to upend their economies and throw out their fiscal debt rules that once seemed immutable, even if it risks a confrontation with the bond markets as well as part of their electorates. “Whatever it takes,” the slogan coined by Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, to get Europe through the eurozone crisis, is being revived to get Europe through this security crisis.

But in a sense, diplomats say, as with the eurozone crisis this is not just about money, or even transferring resources to spend more on defence over the next four years, critical as this will be. This is about political will, and taking the mental leap of independence from America. One western diplomat said: “Macron was probably right in his talk of European strategic autonomy. We have wasted seven years not building a European defence capability, and now we must make up for lost time.”

The first stage is to put Donald Trump on the back foot by showing that Ukraine is not the war party, as claimed by the US vice-president, JD Vance. Kyiv’s proposal for an immediate pause in the fighting covering sea, air and energy installations is backed by Macron and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer. The aim is to flush Vladimir Putin out and try to show the White House that the obstruction to a ceasefire and a just deal lies in Moscow and not Ukraine.

One European diplomat said: “With Trump only putting pressure on Ukraine to negotiate, no questions have been asked of Putin’s terms for a deal, and no pressure has been applied on him by the White House. It is outrageous.”

The second stage is to consider what Europe, probably allied with Turkey, Canada and even Australia, can do to help Ukraine if the US refuses to provide the backstop, or to end the pause on its supply of weapons to Ukraine. Can Europe self-assemble a short-term package of ammunition, weaponry and intelligence that acts as a substitute for what the US supplied and at least buys Volodymyr Zelenskyy some time? European countries insist they can send to Ukraine this year at least 1.5m rounds of artillery ammunition, air defence systems and missiles, drones and other equipment.

An additional proposal is to challenge Trump to sell to Europe the arms he is refusing to supply to Ukraine. If Washington rejected such a highly commercial offer it would reveal that Trump’s concern was not the cost to the American budget of helping Ukraine, but something more geo-strategic. The seizure of Russian central bank assets to fund this has not yet been ruled out, diplomats say, but will be discussed later.

But either way, it is the speed of irreversible events, notably in Germany as much as Brussels, that have diplomats on the back foot.

German concerns about debt, born of historical fears around Weimar-era inflation, are being hurled out the window. Merz’s Christian Democratic Union campaigned right up to election day on a promise to make budget savings while Olaf Scholz insisted lifting the restrictive debt brake rules in the German constitution was unavoidable. The SPD badly lost the election, but triumphantly won on the policy when Merz did a post-election volte face.

In a bid to push the extra spending through, and knowing they lack the required two-thirds majority to change the debt rule in the newly elected Bundestag, the SPD and CDU are rushing the change through the outgoing Bundestag elected in 2021.

It is a head spinning change. It is also deeply ironic that an election triggered largely by a coalition dispute about spending an extra €8bn-€9bn (£6.7bn-£7.5bn) has ended with an agreement to set up an off-the-books €100bn infrastructure fund over 10 years. Moreover, this is all being proposed by Merz, the most staunch Atlanticist in the CDU.

But Germany now openly questions where Trump’s loyalties lie, and even if he will be seen in Red Square on 9 May alongside Putin on the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war.

Indeed it is unlikely Merz would disagree with the Ukrainian ambassador to London, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who told a Chatham House conference: “We see that it is not only Russia and the axis of evil trying to destroy the world order, but the US is actually destroying it completely.”

The Ukrainian envoy, a former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, added that talks between the US and Russia – the latter of which was “headed by a war criminal” in Putin – showed the White House was making “steps towards the Kremlin regime, fully realising that in this case Europe could be a new target for Russia”.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said talks between Ukraine and the US on ending the war will take place in Saudi Arabia next week. In his nightly address on Thursday, Zelenskyy said he would travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday and his team would stay on to hold talks with US officials. “Ukraine is most interested in peace,” Zelenskyy said.

• European leaders held emergency talks in Brussels where they endorsed a plan to mobilise €800bn for European defence. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who made the proposal, called it a “watershed moment”.

• The agreement was made on the same day Donald Trump said the US may not defend Nato allies who have not contributed their share of defence spending. “I think it’s common sense,” he told reporters. “If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them.”

• Ukraine’s opposition leaders confirmed they had discussions with members of Trump’s entourage, but denied they were part of a reported White House plot to remove Zelenskyy from power.

• Petro Poroshenko, the former Ukrainian president who lost to Zelenskyy in the 2019 election, said he took part of the talks but opposed Trump’s demands for wartime elections.

• French president Emmanuel Macron doubled down in his criticisms of Vladimir Putin, calling him “an imperialist who seeks to rewrite history” after the Russian president appeared to compare him to Napoleon Bonaparte.

• Macron said he had been approached by other leaders all day in Brussels about his recent offer to extend French nuclear deterrence and that he hopes to see cooperation by the end of the first half of 2025.

• Russia views comments by President Emmanuel Macron about extending France’s nuclear deterrent to other European countries as a “threat”, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday. Lavrov also reaffirmed his country’s opposition to European forces being deployed in Ukraine if an accord was made to halt the conflict.

• Zelenskyy, who was at the talks in Brussels, presented “practical proposals” to European and Nato leaders to end the war, starting with a ceasefire in the sky and at sea, including the halting of all military operations in the Black Sea.

• Britain will continue to supply intelligence to Ukraine, sources told the Guardian, after the Trump administration said the US would stop doing so.

• The UK will also continue to supply its analysis of the raw data, sources said, though in line with normal intelligence practice it will not simply pass on US information obtained via long-established sharing arrangements between the two countries.

• Russian forces launched a new mass drone attack on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa late on Thursday, damaging energy infrastructure and triggering fires, the regional governor said, the latest of what have become daily assaults on the city. “On the outskirts of Odesa, three private homes are on fire and energy infrastructure has been damaged,” Governor Oleh Kiper wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Kiper said information on casualties was being clarified. Waves of drones have swarmed on the city every night this week.

US President Donald Trump has cast doubt on his willingness to defend Washington’s Nato allies, saying that he would not do so if they are not paying enough for their own defense.

“It’s common sense, right,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “If they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them. No, I’m not going to defend them.”

Trump said he had been of this view for years and shared it with Nato allies during his 2017-2021 presidential term. Those efforts prompted more spending from other members of the 75-year-old transatlantic alliance, he said, but that “even now, it’s not enough.”

He added: “They should be paying more.”

A mutual assistance clause lies at the heart of the Nato alliance, which was formed in 1949 with the primary aim of countering the risk of a Soviet attack on Allied territory.

Trump’s remarks could trigger alarm bells in capitals from Europe to Asia, where leaders were already worried about a withdrawal of US security support after Trump clashed with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and showed greater willingness to deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Earlier on Thursday, concerned European leaders backed plans to spend more on defense and pledged to continue to stand by Ukraine.

“I know some may have concerns about Nato’s future,” Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said. “So let me be clear, the transatlantic relationship and the transatlantic partnership remains the bedrock of our alliance. President Trump has made clear the commitment of the US and his commitment personally to Nato, and it has also made clear the expectation that we in Europe must do more in terms of defense spending.”

In the Oval Office, Trump said Nato members were friends of his but questioned whether France or a “couple of others” would protect the US in a moment of crisis.

“You know the biggest problem I have with Nato? I really, I mean, I know the guys very well. They’re friends of mine. But if the United States was in trouble, and we called them, we said, ‘We got a problem, France. We got a problem, couple of others I won’t mention. Do you think they’re going to come and protect us?’ They’re supposed to. I’m not so sure.”

The alliance came to the aid of the US after September 11, the only time in its history that the defense guarantee has been invoked. Article 5 was invoked after the attacks on the twin towers in 2001, leading to Nato’s largest operation in Afghanistan. France’s military participated in the operation.

Trump on Thursday said he viewed Nato as “potentially good” if what he saw as the spending issue could be fixed. “They’re screwing us on trade,” he said of the security alliance.

Trump’s comments denigrating Nato are largely in line with his years-long criticism of the alliance, but they come at a time of heightened concern in the western world over Trump’s cozy relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has long seen Nato as a threat.

Trump had affirmed the US’s commitments to the mutual defense of Nato as recently as last week during a press conference alongside British prime minister Keir Starmer.

The French embassy in Washington could not immediately be reached. A Nato spokesperson referred to Rutte’s earlier comments.

A German court has jailed five members of an extremist group linked to the Reichsbürger (Reich Citizens) movement for plotting a coup and to kidnap the health minister.

The defendants, four men, aged 46 to 58, and a 77-year-old woman, who belonged to the self-styled “United Patriots” group, were sentenced to between five years and nine months and eight years’ jail by the Koblenz higher regional court on Thursday.

A fifth defendant received a sentence of two years and 10 months, the German news agency dpa reported.

It was one of several trials targeting the wider far-right movement, whose members adhere to conspiracy theories and reject the legitimacy of the modern German state.

Together they had hatched a plan to kidnap the health minister, Karl Lauterbach, a figure of scorn for many opponents of Covid-era restrictions, and to kill his bodyguards if necessary.

After the verdict, Lauterbach, of the centre-left Social Democrats, thanked “the police and the judiciary for solving and punishing the planned crime”.

The court heard that the plotters had joined forces by January 2022, planning to create conditions for civil war in Germany through violence and take over state power. Their scheme had included sabotaging and disabling the power grid, an operation they named “Silent Night”.

They hoped that in the ensuing chaos they would be joined by disgruntled members of the security forces.

Adherents of the Reichsbürger movement claim the German empire, which collapsed in 1918, still exists.

Other cases have been launched by courts in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart. Some have led to convictions, while others are continuing.

The eclectic movement of malcontents and gun enthusiasts was led by a minor aristocrat and businessman, Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss.

The alleged putschists are said to have taken inspiration from the global QAnon movement.

The Koblenz court also found two of the main defendants guilty of weapons offences and one of planning a serious act of violence endangering the state.

The men were arrested in April 2022 and the woman in October that year. The trial began in May 2023.

Last April, German prosecutors said they had charged a sixth suspect in the kidnap plot.

Nancy Faeser, the interior minister, said: “The investigations into this terrorist group have revealed an abyss. The violent plans for a coup, for attacks on the electricity infrastructure, for the kidnapping of health minister Karl Lauterbach and for the killing of his bodyguards have shown an enormous threat.”

She said security services took “threats posed by the Citizens of the Reich scene seriously and are acting accordingly. We are protecting our democracy”.

Elon Musk is telling Republican lawmakers in private meetings that he is not to blame for the mass firings of federal workers that are causing uproar across the country, while Donald Trump reportedly told his cabinet secretaries on Thursday that they are ultimately in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies – not billionaire aide Musk.

The two powerful figures appeared to be making parallel efforts to distance Musk from radical job slashing made over the last two months. This is despite the tech entrepreneur boasting about cuts, recommending the US “delete entire agencies” and taking questions on the issue alongside the US president, then wielding a chainsaw at an event to symbolize his efforts – all amid legal challenges and skepticism from experts.

Musk said in private talks with lawmakers who are experiencing blowback from constituents angry over the firings of thousands of federal workers, including military veterans, that such decisions are left to the various federal agencies, the Associated Press reported.

Despite copious evidence that Musk has acted as if he has the authority to fire federal workers, the representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who leads the House Republicans’ campaign arm, said on Thursday: “Elon doesn’t fire people.”

“He doesn’t have hiring and firing authority,” Hudson said after a meeting with Musk over pizza in the basement of the US Capitol in Washington DC. “The president’s empowered him to go uncover this information, that’s it.”

That came as Trump told his cabinet that Musk’s authority lay in making recommendations to departments about staffing, not making unilateral decisions on that, Politico reported.

The new Trump administration created and then expanded the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and put the unelected Musk in charge of it, with a mandate to slash jobs and costs across the federal government despite critics’ outcry about a growing US oligarchy.

Trump reiterated earlier this week in a joint address to Congress that Musk was the head of Doge, which was quickly introduced as evidence in one lawsuit against the job cutting, and despite recent claims to the contrary from Musk and the administration.

It’s a remarkable shift of emphasis away from the chainsaw-wielding tech entrepreneur whose vast power has made him an admired, revered and deeply feared figure in the second Trump administration.

Trump said on Thursday that he had instructed department secretaries to work with Doge but to “be very precise” about which workers would stay or go, using a “scalpel rather than a hatchet”.

He later told reporters at the White House: “I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut.”

Then, after suggesting that cabinet and agency leaders would take the lead, he said Musk could push harder down the line.

“If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting,” Trump said.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting

Donald Trump pulled back from his trade war with Canada and Mexico on Thursday, temporarily delaying tariffs on many goods from the two countries once again.

Two days after imposing sweeping tariffs on all imports from his country’s closest trading partners, the US president announced that duties on a wide range of products would be shelved until April.

There are “no delays at all”, he told reporters in the Oval Office, signing an order that postponed the tariffs.

Trump has already softened the attack on Canada and Mexico, granting carmakers a one-month reprieve after they warned of widespread disruption. Top retail CEOs have also been bracing customers for significant price increases in grocery stores within days.

After a call with Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, Trump declared: “Mexico will not be required to pay Tariffs on anything” that falls under an existing trade deal between the US, Mexico and Canada known as USMCA.

Tariffs are not paid by countries, but importers – in this case, US companies – that buy products from businesses in the targeted countries.

Hours later, Trump signed an amendment which extended the same relief to Canada until 2 April. Earlier in the day he had pointedly attacked Justin Trudeau, his Canadian counterpart, claiming he was “using the Tariff problem” to stay in office.

Trump said the reversal has “nothing to do” with turbulence in the stock market in recent days, as investors weigh his economic plans. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell 1.8% on Thursday. “I’m not even looking at the market,” he claimed.

During the president’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday evening, he acknowledged that tariffs would cause disruption. There will be “a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that”, he said.

Trump had initially pledged to target Canada and Mexico with tariffs on his first day back in office. Upon his return, however, he said he was considering imposing the tariffs at the start of February. Last month, he offered Canada and Mexico a one-month delay at the 11th hour.

Only on Tuesday did he pull the trigger, imposing 25% duties all goods from Mexico, and 25% duties on most goods from Canada, with 10% duties on Canadian energy products. He also doubled a tariff on Chinese exports from 10% to 20%.

Trump and his allies claim that higher tariffs on US imports from across the world will help “make America great again”, by enabling it to obtain political and economic concessions from allies and rivals on the global stage.

But businesses, both inside the US and worldwide, have warned of significant damage to companies and consumers if the Trump administration pushes ahead with this strategy.

The president has repeatedly vowed to reduce the US trade deficit – the gap between what it exports to the world and imports from it – which hit a record $131.4bn in January.

Trump blamed the trade deficit on Joe Biden, his predecessor, on social media: “I will change that!!!”

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship’s breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX livestream of the mission showed.

The failure comes just more than a month after the company’s seventh Starship flight also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, indicating serious setbacks for a program Musk has sought to speed up this year.

The 403ft (123-meter) rocket system had lifted off at about 6.30pm ET (2300 GMT) from SpaceX’s sprawling Boca Chica, Texas, rocket facilities, with its Super Heavy first-stage booster returning to land as planned.

But minutes later, SpaceX’s livestream showed the Starship upper stage spinning in space, while a visualization of the rocket’s engines showed multiple engines shut down before the company confirmed it had lost contact with the ship.

“Unfortunately, this happened last time, too, so we’ve got some practice now,” Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesperson, said on the livestream.

The rocket wasn’t carrying any astronauts. SpaceX stopped the livestream shortly after the launch and gave no indication where debris would fall.

SpaceX posted online that “the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost”. The company said its team was coordinating with safety officials and it would review flight data to understand the root cause of the explosion, adding: “Success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.”

As debris scattered over parts of the Caribbean, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly issued ground stops of commercial flights at the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando airports because of “space launch debris” until at least 8pm ET. Flights were also diverted around Turks and Caicos.

The FAA said it had opened a mishap investigation into the incident, and would require SpaceX to examine the failure’s cause and get the agency’s sign-off before Starship can fly again.

The failure of Starship’s first attempt to launch since exploding in space on 16 January puts a dent in Musk’s development vision. He aims to build a rocket capable of sending bigger batches of satellites to space as well as humans to the moon and Mars.

The Starship failure in January ended eight minutes into flight when the rocket exploded in space, raining debris over Caribbean islands. The explosion was caused by a fire that ignited near the ship’s liquid oxygen tank. At the time, the FAA temporarily grounded commercial flights and ordered SpaceX to carry out an investigation. SpaceX said it had since made changes to the fuel lines and fuel temperature.

Authorities in the United States have offered a $10m reward for information that leads to the arrest of a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder-turned-international drug kingpin.

Police in Los Angeles said on Thursday that Ryan Wedding – also known as “El Jefe”, “Giant” and “Public Enemy” – is wanted for his role in a billion-dollar cross-border drug trafficking operation and for several homicides linked to his drug sprawling network.

Wedding, who the FBI said is one of the US’s top 10 most-wanted fugitives, is probably hiding in Mexico under the protection of the Sinaloa drug cartel, officials said.

“The increase in the reward should make it clear: there is nowhere safe for Wedding to hide,” the LAPD deputy chief, Alan Hamilton, told reporters.

The 43-year-old, who grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, competed for Team Canada in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic games, where he placed 24th in the parallel giant slalom event.

Four years after the Games, Ryan Wedding was named in a search warrant investigating a marijuana-growing operation in British Columbia, but was never charged.

In 2010, Wedding was convicted of drug trafficking after attempting to buy cocaine from a US government agent and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Described by media at the time as a 2010 “Olympic hopeful”, Wedding sought to dismiss the charges, alleging “outrageous conduct” by US authorities, suggesting they used a “violent former KGB agent” as an undercover operative.

But in the years since, he has emerged as a powerful and ruthless transnational narcotics trafficker.

Last year, Wedding was charged by the US Department of Justice for leading a group that engaged in “cocaine trafficking and murder, including of innocent civilians”.

Wedding is alleged to have overseen the transport of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and southern California, and into Canada. Los Angeles police said Wedding’s operation also moved “five metric tonnes of fentanyl per month” to US and Canadian cities.

Wedding and fellow Canadian Andrew Clark are also accused of hiring hitmen to murder those the pair believed were obstacles to their operation, including a man murdered sitting in his car in the driveway of his home, who police said had drug debts.

But in one case, officials say two victims were the inadvertent targets of retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.

In 2023, gunmen attacked a rental home in Caledon, Ontario, killing Jagtar Singh Sidhu, 57, and Harbhajan Kaur Sidhu, 55, who had arrived to Canada four months earlier. Their daughter Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu, was shot 13 times and left critically injured.

Of the 16 defendants sought by police, Wedding and another are the only ones still on the loose.

Clark was arrested on 8 October 2024 by Mexican law enforcement and was transferred on 27 February to the United States.

Authorities in the United States have offered a $10m reward for information that leads to the arrest of a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder-turned-international drug kingpin.

Police in Los Angeles said on Thursday that Ryan Wedding – also known as “El Jefe”, “Giant” and “Public Enemy” – is wanted for his role in a billion-dollar cross-border drug trafficking operation and for several homicides linked to his drug sprawling network.

Wedding, who the FBI said is one of the US’s top 10 most-wanted fugitives, is probably hiding in Mexico under the protection of the Sinaloa drug cartel, officials said.

“The increase in the reward should make it clear: there is nowhere safe for Wedding to hide,” the LAPD deputy chief, Alan Hamilton, told reporters.

The 43-year-old, who grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, competed for Team Canada in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic games, where he placed 24th in the parallel giant slalom event.

Four years after the Games, Ryan Wedding was named in a search warrant investigating a marijuana-growing operation in British Columbia, but was never charged.

In 2010, Wedding was convicted of drug trafficking after attempting to buy cocaine from a US government agent and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Described by media at the time as a 2010 “Olympic hopeful”, Wedding sought to dismiss the charges, alleging “outrageous conduct” by US authorities, suggesting they used a “violent former KGB agent” as an undercover operative.

But in the years since, he has emerged as a powerful and ruthless transnational narcotics trafficker.

Last year, Wedding was charged by the US Department of Justice for leading a group that engaged in “cocaine trafficking and murder, including of innocent civilians”.

Wedding is alleged to have overseen the transport of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and southern California, and into Canada. Los Angeles police said Wedding’s operation also moved “five metric tonnes of fentanyl per month” to US and Canadian cities.

Wedding and fellow Canadian Andrew Clark are also accused of hiring hitmen to murder those the pair believed were obstacles to their operation, including a man murdered sitting in his car in the driveway of his home, who police said had drug debts.

But in one case, officials say two victims were the inadvertent targets of retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.

In 2023, gunmen attacked a rental home in Caledon, Ontario, killing Jagtar Singh Sidhu, 57, and Harbhajan Kaur Sidhu, 55, who had arrived to Canada four months earlier. Their daughter Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu, was shot 13 times and left critically injured.

Of the 16 defendants sought by police, Wedding and another are the only ones still on the loose.

Clark was arrested on 8 October 2024 by Mexican law enforcement and was transferred on 27 February to the United States.

The US state department is preparing to shut down a number of consulates that are mainly in western Europe in the coming months and looking to reduce its workforce globally, multiple US officials said on Thursday.

The state department is also looking into potentially merging a number of its expert bureaus at its headquarters in Washington that are working in areas such as human rights, refugees, global criminal justice, women’s issues and efforts to counter human trafficking, the officials said.

Reuters reported last month that US missions around the world had been asked to look into reducing US and locally employed staff by at least 10% as Donald Trump and his billionaire aide Elon Musk have unleashed an unprecedented cost-cutting effort across the US federal workforce.

The Republican president wants to ensure his bureaucracy is fully aligned with his “America first” agenda. Last month he issued an executive order to revamp the US foreign service to ensure “faithful and effective” implementation of his foreign policy agenda.

During his electoral campaign, he had repeatedly pledged to “clean out” what he refers to as “the deep state” by firing bureaucrats that he deems disloyal.

Critics say the potential cuts in the US diplomatic footprint coupled with the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) that provided billions of dollars worth of aid globally risk undermining American leadership and leaves a dangerous vacuum for adversaries like China and Russia to fill.

Trump and Musk say the US government is too big and American taxpayer-funded aid has been spent in a wasteful and fraudulent way.

Leipzig, Hamburg and Dusseldorf in Germany, Bordeaux and Strasbourg in France, and Florence in Italy were among a list of smaller consulates that the state department is considering shutting down, three officials said, adding that could still change as some staff were making a case for them to stay open.

Officials said the department on Monday had notified Congress that it plans to shutter its branch in Turkey’s south-eastern city of Gaziantep, a location from which Washington has supported humanitarian work in northern Syria.

“The state department continues to assess our global posture to ensure we are best positioned to address modern challenges on behalf of the American people,” a state department spokesperson said.

The department operates in more than 270 diplomatic missions worldwide with a total workforce of nearly 70,000, according to its website.

Pope Francis has recorded and released an audio message thanking those who have been praying for his recovery, his voice breathless as he nears three weeks in hospital with pneumonia.

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers for my health from the square, I accompany you from here,” Francis said in a message broadcast in St Peter’s Square.

“May God bless you and the Virgin protect you. Thank you,” he said, taking laboured breaths as he spoke in his native Spanish, with some words fading away into nothing.

It was the first time the world has heard Francis’ voice since the 88-year-old was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on 14 February.

Pilgrims have been gathering in St Peter’s Square every evening to pray for the pope’s recovery. The hundreds of people there on Thursday applauded when they heard his message.

The Vatican said earlier on Thursday that the Argentine, head of the worldwide Catholic church since 2013, is in a “stable” condition.

There had been no repeat of Monday’s respiratory failure, it said, and the pope’s blood work “remained stable”. Francis continued with his breathing exercises and physiotherapy, did not have a fever, and managed to do some work in the morning and afternoon, it said.

The Vatican has been providing twice daily updates on the pope’s health, in the morning on how the night went and an evening medical bulletin. But on Thursday it said that “in view of the stability of the clinical picture, the next medical bulletin will be released on Saturday”.

Nonetheless, “the doctors are still maintaining a reserved prognosis”, it said, meaning they will not say how they expect his condition to evolve.

For the last three nights Francis – who had part of a lung removed as a young man – has worn an oxygen mask to help him sleep. On Thursday morning, as on the previous day, he switched to a less onerous nasal cannula – a plastic tube tucking into his nostrils – which provides high-flow oxygen, a Vatican source said.

Francis missed the formal Ash Wednesday celebrations in Rome marking the start of Lent, but took part in a blessing in his private suite on the 10th floor of the Gemelli.

The leader of the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics has not been seen in public since his hospitalisation – the longest of his papacy. Neither has the Vatican issued any photos, although Francis has published several texts.

During previous hospitalisations, the pope appeared on the Gemelli balcony for his weekly Angelus prayer at noon on Sundays. But he has missed the last three, and no announcement has yet been made about whether he will make an appearance this weekend.

The Vatican confirmed on Thursday that senior cardinal Michael Czerny would stand in for the pope and lead the mass marking the first Sunday of Lent.

The mass was also part of celebrations for the Jubilee 2025, a Holy Year led by the pope, dedicated this weekend to volunteers.

The Holy See said on Thursday that the event “takes on an even deeper meaning, as the thoughts and prayers of all the brothers and sisters turn to the Holy Father and the experience he is going through”.

Pilgrims will pray in front of the hospital on Saturday, it said, as well-wishers have done since Francis was admitted.

The pope was initially diagnosed with bronchitis but it developed into pneumonia in both lungs, sparking alarm across the globe.

On 22 February, he suffered a “prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis” and on 28 February had “an isolated crisis of bronchospasm” – a tightening of the muscles that line the airways in the lungs.

On Monday, Francis “experienced two episodes of acute respiratory failure, caused by a significant accumulation of endobronchial mucus and consequent bronchospasm”, according to the Vatican.

Francis’s health has regularly led to speculation, particularly among his critics, as to whether he could resign like his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and, later, Elon Musk showed support on Wednesday for the firing of a state employee who refused to remove his pronouns from his work email signature.

Frank Zamora, 31, was let go from his job as a program manager at the Texas real estate commission (TREC) last month because he refused to comply with a mandate from the organisation to employees to remove gender pronouns from email signatures.

“I actually anticipated this coming, just because we knew that many changes that were being made at the federal level were being mimicked at the state level,” Zamora said.

Abbott celebrated the move on X, sharing a report from the Austin American-Statesman on the firing and writing: “A Texas state employee refused to remove pronouns from email signature. He was fired before noon.”

Musk, who was appointed by Donald Trump to lead the so-called “department of government efficiency” tasked with reducing federal spending, replied to Abbott’s post with two fire emojis.

Soon after Trump signed an executive order on 20 January titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”, which recognized only two sexes – male and female – Abbott issued his own directive for the state on 30 January with similar language.

State agencies like the TREC interpreted Abbott’s directive for themselves and issued rules and guidelines to employees accordingly, which included removing gender pronouns from official work communications, including email signatures.

“Greetings all. It was a beautiful weekend in Austin and I hope you were able to enjoy it … On a very different note, based on a recent directive from Governor Abbott, the agency is modifying its employee email signature block template by removing preferred pronouns,” read an email seen by the Guardian from Zamora’s supervisor at the TREC.

“The new template is attached. Please look at your signature and make sure yours complies. I understand this change may have an impact on employees and I am sensitive to that. The Governor, however, has directed the agency to act and so we will.”

It was the first time Zamora had been asked to comply with an order that went against his personal beliefs, he said.

“While I have long felt that there was a disconnect between my personal beliefs and my personal politics and that of the state which I live in, I always sort of wrote it off as separate entities,” Zamora said.

“Politics can change every two and four years, but a good career can be for life, so I sort of kept those two entities compartmentalized. I kept them separate. But I was firm in my convictions and I made the stand that I felt was right.”

Zamora announced his refusal to comply in a letter penned to his supervisors, which read in part: “I recognize that my employer has the right to dictate the manner in which I address the public. I also recognize that in the grand scheme of things, the layout of an email signature block is a fairly innocuous and inconsequential piece of our daily duties.

“However … it is clear that this latest directive is part of a broader effort to wipe out the acknowledgement of non-binary, intersex and transgender persons throughout Texas as well as sending the societal message that these individuals are not accepted in this state.”

After sending the letter, Zamora said he was “ultimately given the choice between removing the pronouns, resigning or being terminated”.

He chose to keep the pronouns and refused to resign. He was then fired in the first week of February.

When asked about the response from Abbott and Musk, Zamora said: “I don’t really have a response to that. They are doing what they must to appease the groups that have kept them in power. That would be my only comment on the subject.”

Zamora added: “Pronouns are grammar. They’re a function of almost every sentence that we speak. Their origins go back to old English and the Vikings.

“However, we have chosen to make them a politicized topic and a hot-button issue. I felt that this order was strictly passed down to appease a certain political movement, and that it was strictly done, essentially, to win a culture war. And I do not believe that the LGBTQ+ community – trans individuals, non-binary, intersex or any individuals who choose to display their preferred pronouns – deserve to be made political collateral or to be put on the chopping block.”

The TREC did not respond to a request for comment.

Members of the Garifuna community are celebrating “a historic and long-awaited victory” after the Caribbean nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) announced the purchase of a privately owned island where thousands of their ancestors perished from disease and starvation.

The uninhabited island of Baliceaux has long held great significance for the Garifuna people, the descendants of enslaved Africans and Indigenous Kalinago and Arawak people.

In 1796, British forces ejected about 5,000 Garifuna men, women and children from their homes on mainland St Vincent and marooned them on the barren island in an attempt to quell decades of resistance to colonisation.

Left with no shelter and little food or water, nearly half of the exiles had died from starvation and disease before British ships returned the following year to transport them 1,700 miles away to the island of Roatán off the coast of Honduras.

Since then, Baliceaux has been seen as a sacred place by today’s Garifuna, a population of about 600,000 scattered around the world. Activists have long campaigned for the island to be bought from its private owners and designated as a heritage site.

On Thursday, the SVG prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, announced in parliament that the island had been acquired for the nation because of its historical significance.

“The Government of St Vincent and Grenadines, given the historic importance of Baliceaux, has taken the decision to acquire Baliceaux,” he told lawmakers.

He did not reveal the terms of the deal, but said the owners would be given “fair compensation within a reasonable time”.

Ubafu Topsey, an activist from Belize who has been at the forefront of the fight for Baliceaux said: “We are ecstatic that the government of SVG is doing the right thing for us. [Gonsalves] put his money where his mouth is. He made his promise a reality.”

Topsey, who is preparing for an annual Garifuna pilgrimage to Baliceaux on 14 March – celebrated in SVG as National Heroes Day in honour of the Garifuna chief Joseph Chatoyer – said this year’s visit would be an occasion for special celebration.

“It is our homeland… and every Garifuna around the world understands that these are holy, sacred grounds. We are just so thankful and joyful,” she said.

Topsey is hoping the island will become a World Heritage Site in honor of the Garifuna people, who she said were “transnational” and borderless”.

She also expressed hope that vegetation could be encouraged on the parched island.

“That barrenness is too much of a reminder of our grief and our suffering, and moving forward, we have to go beyond the pain and the agony and the suffering. Although we will never forget it, it is a tremendous opportunity for healing and setting an example for unlimited possibilities for future generations,” she said.

Princess Eulogia Gordon, 35, a California publicist and Garifuna campaigner, described the news as an opportunity for unity.

“Baliceaux doesn’t just belong to us. This is bigger than us. This is truly about unity and family and togetherness,” she said.