Russia has taken control of several villages in the Kursk region and claims its forces are close to surrounding thousands of Ukrainian troops fighting on Russian territory.

For seven months, Ukraine has controlled a pocket inside western Russia. Last week, Russian and North Korean troops launched a major offensive, shortly after Donald Trump pulled the plug on military support, intelligence and satellite feeds with Kyiv.

The Russians are closing in on the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. They have recaptured villages to the north – Staraya, Novaya Sorochina and Malaya Loknya – as well as other small settlements to the immediate east.

There were unconfirmed reports some Ukrainian soldiers had been captured amid heavy fighting. The crucial supply road between Sudzha and Ukraine’s Sumy region is under constant Russian fire.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff said it had repelled an extraordinary attack by Russian sabotage and assault groups via a gas pipeline. About 100 Russian soldiers spent four days crawling through the 15km-long pipe that leads to Sudzha’s outskirts.

Ukrainian airborne assault forces wiped out some of the Russians using artillery strikes soon after they emerged, video footage suggests. “Russian special forces are being detected, blocked and destroyed. Enemy losses in the Sudzha area are very heavy,” Ukraine’s military said.

It admitted the situation was difficult but under control, with Russia employing North Korean combat units. They include replacement soldiers sent by Pyongyang after the original 11,000-strong North Korean contingent that arrived last November suffered heavy losses.

On Sunday, Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medevdev claimed Kyiv’s forces were nearly surrounded and would soon be driven out. “The lid of the smoking cauldron is almost closed. The offensive continues,” he posted on Telegram.

The US appears determined to force further concessions on Ukraine before talks this week between US and Ukrainian representatives in Saudi Arabia. According to NBC news, Trump wants Zelenskyy to yield territory to Russia and to move towards elections.

The US president is unwilling to resume the supply of weapons and intelligence to Kyiv, even if Zelenskyy signs a favourable minerals deal with the US, it reported. Last month, Trump called Ukraine’s president a “dictator” with a “4%” approval rating, echoing Kremlin disinformation.

Elections are not permitted under martial law. In the wake of Trump’s attacks, Zelenskyy’s popularity has risen to above 60%. Most Ukrainians do not support a poll at a time when millions of citizens have gone abroad, and when cities and towns are under massive Russian aerial bombardment.

Over the weekend, Trump’s pro-Russian ally Elon Musk offered a fresh warning to Kyiv. Posting on X, he wrote: “My Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their front line would collapse if I turned it off.”

His threat prompted a rebuke from Poland’s foreign minister, Radislaw Sikorski, who pointed out that his government had a commercial contract with Starlink and paid $50m for Ukraine to access Musk’s satellite internet service.

“The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,” Sikorski wrote back on X. Ukrainian engineers are urgently exploring alternatives.

According to the FT, negotiations are taking place with four European satellite operators. Replacing Starlink terminals across a 1,000km frontline would take time, the paper noted.

Zelenskyy will hold talks on Monday with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh. On Tuesday, a delegation led by Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, will meet with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other senior White House officials. Zelenskyy will not take part in the negotiations.

The Ukrainian side is likely to propose a peace plan sketched out by Zelenskyy last week featuring a halt to drone and missiles strikes, as well as a suspension of military activity in the Black Sea. So far, however, Vladimir Putin has showed no interest in a ceasefire.

More than 20 people have been killed in the last two days by Russian bombs. On Friday, several ballistic missiles smashed into a five-storey residential block in the eastern Donetsk region, killing 11 civilians and injuring dozens, including three children.

Overnight, Ukraine carried out its own long-range drone attacks deep inside Russia. According to Telegram channels, oil refineries in Ryazan and Lipetsk were hit, together with an oil depot in Cheboksary in Russia’s Chuvashia Republic.

The depot is located more than 900km from the Ukrainian border and was targeted for the first time.

More than 1,000 people, including 745 civilians, were killed in the two days of clashes between Syrian security forces and fighters loyal to the former Assad regime and ensuing revenge killings, a war monitor has said, one of the highest death tolls in Syria since 2011.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, said 745 civilians were killed mostly execution-style, while 125 Syrian security forces and 148 Assad loyalists were killed. Death tolls from the two days of fighting have varied wildly, with some estimates putting the final death toll even higher.

Fighting began on Thursday after fighters loyal to the ousted Assad regime ambushed security forces in Jableh, in the coastal Latakia province.

The wide-ranging, coordinated assault was the biggest challenge to the country’s Islamist authorities so far, and came three months after opposition fighters led by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

To crush the rebellion, the Syrian government called for re-enforcements, with thousands of fighters converging on Syria’s coast from all over the country. Though fighters are nominally under the auspices of the new Syrian government, militias still persist, some of which have been implicated in past human rights abuses and are relatively undisciplined.

The Syrian government has insisted that “individual actions” led to the killing of civilians and said the massive influx of fighters on the coast led to human rights violations.

On Sunday, Syria’s transitional president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, said the developments were within “expected challenges” and called for national unity.

“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together,” he said in a video circulated by Arab media, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighbourhood of Mazzah in Damascus.

“Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival … What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.”

In a speech on Friday, Sharaa had said that “anyone who harms civilians will face severe punishment”.

Videos showed the bodies of dozens of people in civilian clothes piled up in the town of al-Mukhtariya, where more than 40 people were killed at one time, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Other videos showed fighters wearing security uniforms executing people point blank, ordering men to bark like dogs and beating captives. The Guardian was not able to independently verify these videos.

The Syrian coast is heavily populated by the minority Islamic Alawite sect, from which the deposed Syrian president hailed, though most Alawites were not associated with the Assad regime.

Syria’s new authorities promised Alawites that they would be safe under their rule and that there would be no revenge killings. Government security forces’ killings of hundreds of mainly Alawite civilians this week, however, have sent waves of fear through the religious minority community.

A man from the town of Snobar, Latakia, detailed how gunmen killed at least 14 of his neighbours who were all from the Arris family, including the execution of a 75-year-old father and his three sons in front of the family’s mother.

“After they killed the father and his boys, they asked the mother to take her gold off, or they would kill her,” said the man who was close to the family but spoke under the condition of anonymity for his safety.

Another resident of Latakia said that power and water to the area had been cut off for the past day, and that they had been sheltering in their house, scared of the militants on the streets.

“There’s no water and no power for more than 24 hours, the factions are killing anyone who appears in front of them, the corpses are piled up in the streets. This is collective punishment,” the Latakia resident said.

The UN envoy for Syria, Gier Pedersen, on Friday urged civilians to be protected, while France condemned what it said was violence targeting “civilians because of their faith”. The French foreign ministry also urged Syria’s authorities to make sure that “independent investigations can shed light on these crimes and that the perpetrators are sentenced”.

Rights groups said that a real commitment to transitional justice and an inclusive government was key to preventing Syria from spiralling into a cycle of violence. Syria’s transitional authorities are set to announce a new government this month, which will be scrutinised closely for being representative of Syria’s religious and ethnic diversity after this week’s violence.

Actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, who were found dead last month in Santa Fe, New Mexico, were rarely apart from each other, and it’s that closeness that may have led to the circumstances of their deaths.

Arakawa had become Hackman’s caregiver in his later years when he developed Alzheimer’s disease and became incapable of carrying out even the simplest of tasks. She ran the household errands, made sure he remained active and protected him from illnesses.

Authorities in Santa Fe revealed on Friday that the couple had died of natural causes, Hackman from heart disease and Arakawa from a rare viral infection. Arakawa died first, perhaps on 11 February, when she was last seen or heard from. Investigators said in a press conference that Hackman, 95, was likely unaware that his wife had died.

He would have been alone in the house for days, disoriented and too frail to seek help. His pacemaker last recorded his heartbeat on 18 February, which indicates that he died about a week after his wife.

Their decomposing bodies were discovered on 26 February when a maintenance worker called security after no one answered the door. Emergency responders found Arakawa, 65, on the bathroom floor near spilled pills and a medicine bottle. The pills were identified as an unspecified thyroid medication, Tylenol and the high blood pressure medication diltiazem. Her body showed signs of “mummification”, which suggests she had been dead for some time.

Zinna, one of their three dogs, was found dead in a crate in a closet. Hackman’s body, wearing slippers, was found in a mudroom near a cane.

New Mexico’s chief medical examiner confirmed that Arakawa had succumbed to hantavirus, a rare and often fatal illness contracted from exposure to rodent droppings. Hackman’s Alzheimer’s, combined with his declining physical state, was listed as a contributing factor in his death.

“Autopsy examination and a full body postmortem CT examination demonstrated no acute findings of internal or external trauma, and showed severe heart disease including multiple surgical procedures involving the heart, evidence of prior heart attacks, and severe changes of the kidneys due to chronic high blood pressure,” said Dr Heather Jarrell, New Mexico’s chief medical investigator.

The exact details of that final week remain unclear. Friends and neighbors told the New York Times about how the couple had increasingly withdrawn from public life, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Arakawa had taken mighty precautions to avoid exposing Hackman to illness. She often wore a mask in public, and surveillance footage from 11 February showed her visiting a Sprouts Farmers Market, a CVS pharmacy and a pet food store in Santa Fe before driving back to their gated community around 5.15pm.

After that, she was never seen or heard from again. Investigators believe she stopped checking her emails that evening, and no further communication was recorded, authorities said on Friday.

The sheriff’s office found no evidence that anyone had been caring for Hackman besides Arakawa.

Hackman’s decline starkly contrasts with the life he had once built. The Oscar-winning actor moved to Santa Fe in the late 1980s after divorcing his first wife, and quickly fell in love with the city’s landscape and artistic community. He had already won an Oscar for his role in The French Connection in 1971 and would later earn another for 1992’s Unforgiven.

“I think you can escape anywhere, but I think the beauty of the city – they just loved the area,” Mark Kreusch, a photographer, told Fox News after the couple’s deaths. “Even though he was a bit reclusive, he really loved Santa Fe. It resonated with him.”

Arakawa, a classical pianist from Hawaii, met Hackman while working part time at a Los Angeles fitness center. When Hackman forgot his entry card one day, Arakawa refused to let him in. That encounter led to a relationship that bloomed despite their 30-year age difference.

“That part never came to mind because they seemed equal in so many ways,” a friend, Susan Contreras, told the New York Times. “She was a personality unto herself.”

As time went on, Hackman’s health visibly declined.

“Obviously, he was 95, so he was slowing down,” Stuart Ashman, who met Hackman in the late 90s when they served on a committee together at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, told Fox News. “And after Covid, he was more reclusive, protecting his immune system and everything else.”

Two of the couple’s family friends, Daniel and Barbara Lenihan, along with their son Aaron, told People magazine that Hackman had become “essentially home-bound” in recent times and had “stopped riding his bike through the neighborhood”.

“Betsy tried to keep him kind of active and engaged,” said Aaron, adding that Hackman did puzzles and yoga via Zoom daily. “She was still trying to keep him as active and engaged and healthy as possible.”

Daniel and Barbara Lenihan noted that in the “last couple of months”, the late actor “was really slipping there”.

Gary Sinise, who worked with Hackman on the 1995 film The Quick and the Dead, made a similar observation.

“I know once he retired to New Mexico, he was retired. He did not want to come back and get any awards or, you know, go to any Hollywood events or anything like that. He was done, and he was moving on from that part of his life,” Sinise told Fox News.

Their privacy, much-valued in Santa Fe, may ultimately have contributed to their tragic deaths.

Visitors from around the world have been flocking to the Pompidou Centre in Paris this weekend, seizing the last opportunity to enjoy Europe’s largest temple of modern and contemporary art before it closes its doors for a five-year overhaul.

In one of the most complex closures of its kind, the task of removing the museum’s 2,000-strong permanent collection will start on Monday. The Pompidou’s Chagalls, Giacomettis and myriad other treasures will be relocated to other sites in Paris and museums elsewhere in France and around the world.

The refit of the nearly 50-year-old building, constructed in the heart of Paris by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, is expected to cost an estimated €262ms and will require the entire centre – including its huge library and music research unit – to be closed from late September.

The building, famous for its facade adorned with colourful pipes and ventilation shafts, will be given a top-to-toe renovation, with everything from its technology and accessibility to its energy efficiency due to be reconditioned. Most crucial is the removal of asbestos present everywhere from the museum’s ceilings to its pipes, a task so huge a complete demolition had been proposed.

Once complete, the cultural colossus, named after Georges Pompidou, France’s conservative president between 1969 and 1974, is to be reopened with a new exhibition space, offering what museum bosses have called a “multidisciplinary perspective” with new spaces for children and young people, as well as an enlarged library.

Art lovers have until 9pm on Monday to take a final stroll through the permanent collection. However, Laurent Le Bon, art historian and the museum’s head, said those who missed the deadline would have plenty of other chances to see the Pompidou’s works. Calling the renovation a “an unprecedented opportunity to reinvent the Centre Pompidou”, he has said: “We will use the time we have well.”

Some of the works will be brought out of storage for an exhibition in Paris’ Grand Palais – which itself was reopened last summer after a major renovation..

French visitors and foreign tourists were among those to take advantage of the last weekend, for which entrance was free, with workshops, art performances and DJ sets contributing to a lively atmosphere.

Alyssa, an 11-year-old French girl visiting with her 62-year-old grandfather, said she wanted to “see for real” the abstract paintings of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, which she had been shown in school.

Paula Goulart, a 25-year-old from Brazil, told Agence France-Presse she was a fan not so much of the artworks as of the spectacular views of the Paris skyline from the building’s upper storeys. Her Portuguese friend Luis Fraga said he was a regular visitor to the museum and was keen to lap up and “enjoy as much as possible” the artworks “before they are no longer here”.

The Pompidou Centre, which attracted more than 3 million visitors last year, is one of the most popular museums in the world, ranking in Paris behind only the Louvre (8 million) and the Musée d’Orsay (3.7 million) in terms of popularity.

Its closure comes weeks after major renovation work was announced at the Louvre amid heavy criticism that the museum had become overcrowded and unmanageable. For that project, estimated to cost €700-800m, which involves creating a new, more accessible entrance and putting the Mona Lisa in a separate room with its own means of access, the museum will not be closed, though some individual rooms will be, temporarily. It is due to be completed in 2031.

Those who consider the Pompidou’s planned closure to be lengthy may take solace when looking to Berlin, where visitors wanting to visit the Pergamon Museum, which houses a collection of ancient Greek and Roman art as well as the Pergamon Altar, will have to wait up to 20 years for extensive renovation works to be completed. The museum closed in October 2023.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.

“Nothing is off the table” when it comes to raising money for defence, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said, as she warned European values such as democracy and the rule of law were under threat in a increasingly “transactional” world.

Without mentioning Donald Trump by name, the head of the EU executive told reporters there was a new sense of urgency in the geopolitical sphere and that “something fundamental” had shifted since she began her second term in office on 1 December, nearly 100 days ago.

“Our European values, democracy, freedom, the rule of law are under threat,” von der Leyen told reporters at a press conference on Sunday. “We see that sovereignty, but also ironclad commitments are called into question. Everything has become transactional.”

After being asked about the matter repeatedly, von der Leyen said the US was still an ally, although “we have our discussion points without any question”. She said: “From the viewpoint of the European Union, I think it’s a very strong wake-up call.”

EU leaders last week pledged to dramatically increase military spending after von der Leyen presented a €800bn (£670bn) plan to allow member states to take out loans and increase national debts without incurring penalties under the the bloc’s strict fiscal rules.

Many member states would like to go further, however, with common borrowing to fund direct grants, rather than loans, to boost defence spending.

Asked on Sunday about such proposals, von der Leyen said: “Nothing is off the table. I am open to whatever is necessary.” Such a move would require backing from Germany, which has been opposed to joint defence borrowing under the outgoing coalition government led by Olaf Scholz.

The incoming centre-right chancellor, Friedrich Merz, however, has raised hopes of a change of heart in Berlin, after he made a speedy agreement with his Social Democrat coalition partners to change Germany’s constitution to embark on a spending plan for defence and infrastructure.

While von der Leyen described the US repeatedly as an ally, EU officials are concerned about Trump, who has suspended US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv, derided Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and appeared tolerant of Vladimir Putin’s deadly bombardment of Ukrainian homes and civilian infrastructure.

While von der Leyen spoke of support for Kyiv so Ukraine “can keep on fighting” she did not refer directly to a proposal for short-term military aid from the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. The former Estonian prime minister has called on member states to accelerate efforts to aid Ukraine in 2025, including by delivering “as soon as possible” 1.5m rounds of ammunition, air defence systems and drones among other support.

After the latest devastating attacks on Ukraine this weekend that killed at least 14 and injured many more, Kallas stepped up her calls for the EU to increase military support “otherwise, even more Ukrainian civilians will pay the highest price”.

Asked about the Kallas proposal and military aid for Ukraine in 2025, von der Leyen said “we will have to step up without any question” and referred to how Kyiv could benefit from the €800bn plan – loans and fiscal flexibilities that have yet to be finalised.

The EU has supplied €52bn military aid to Ukraine, on a par with the US, according to the commission.

Von der Leyen said her €800bn plan could be “the foundation of a European defence union” and raised the possibility of “team[ing] up with other like-minded countries such as the UK or Norway or Canada”. One open question is whether these non-EU European countries could be involved in billion-euro defence contracts. Macron is leading a “buy European” policy, but Germany and Poland have signalled greater openness to procuring costly defence equipment from countries outside the bloc.

Without giving a definitive answer, von der Leyen appeared to lean to a more open approach. Companies already had strong cross-border ties, she said. “We do not have to reinvent the wheel, we have to think about a smart mechanism, how we can use this cooperation that is already established at a high level of quality.”

She stressed that the EU remained wedded to phasing out Russian gas, despite two delays to a plan on achieving this goal. “I commit very clearly to phasing out the Russian gas,” she said. “This is an absolute must.”

Europe bought a record 18.8m tonnes of Russian liquefied natural gas in 2024, despite a steep decline in imported pipeline gas, coal and oil.

“Nothing is off the table” when it comes to raising money for defence, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said, as she warned European values such as democracy and the rule of law were under threat in a increasingly “transactional” world.

Without mentioning Donald Trump by name, the head of the EU executive told reporters there was a new sense of urgency in the geopolitical sphere and that “something fundamental” had shifted since she began her second term in office on 1 December, nearly 100 days ago.

“Our European values, democracy, freedom, the rule of law are under threat,” von der Leyen told reporters at a press conference on Sunday. “We see that sovereignty, but also ironclad commitments are called into question. Everything has become transactional.”

After being asked about the matter repeatedly, von der Leyen said the US was still an ally, although “we have our discussion points without any question”. She said: “From the viewpoint of the European Union, I think it’s a very strong wake-up call.”

EU leaders last week pledged to dramatically increase military spending after von der Leyen presented a €800bn (£670bn) plan to allow member states to take out loans and increase national debts without incurring penalties under the the bloc’s strict fiscal rules.

Many member states would like to go further, however, with common borrowing to fund direct grants, rather than loans, to boost defence spending.

Asked on Sunday about such proposals, von der Leyen said: “Nothing is off the table. I am open to whatever is necessary.” Such a move would require backing from Germany, which has been opposed to joint defence borrowing under the outgoing coalition government led by Olaf Scholz.

The incoming centre-right chancellor, Friedrich Merz, however, has raised hopes of a change of heart in Berlin, after he made a speedy agreement with his Social Democrat coalition partners to change Germany’s constitution to embark on a spending plan for defence and infrastructure.

While von der Leyen described the US repeatedly as an ally, EU officials are concerned about Trump, who has suspended US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv, derided Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and appeared tolerant of Vladimir Putin’s deadly bombardment of Ukrainian homes and civilian infrastructure.

While von der Leyen spoke of support for Kyiv so Ukraine “can keep on fighting” she did not refer directly to a proposal for short-term military aid from the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. The former Estonian prime minister has called on member states to accelerate efforts to aid Ukraine in 2025, including by delivering “as soon as possible” 1.5m rounds of ammunition, air defence systems and drones among other support.

After the latest devastating attacks on Ukraine this weekend that killed at least 14 and injured many more, Kallas stepped up her calls for the EU to increase military support “otherwise, even more Ukrainian civilians will pay the highest price”.

Asked about the Kallas proposal and military aid for Ukraine in 2025, von der Leyen said “we will have to step up without any question” and referred to how Kyiv could benefit from the €800bn plan – loans and fiscal flexibilities that have yet to be finalised.

The EU has supplied €52bn military aid to Ukraine, on a par with the US, according to the commission.

Von der Leyen said her €800bn plan could be “the foundation of a European defence union” and raised the possibility of “team[ing] up with other like-minded countries such as the UK or Norway or Canada”. One open question is whether these non-EU European countries could be involved in billion-euro defence contracts. Macron is leading a “buy European” policy, but Germany and Poland have signalled greater openness to procuring costly defence equipment from countries outside the bloc.

Without giving a definitive answer, von der Leyen appeared to lean to a more open approach. Companies already had strong cross-border ties, she said. “We do not have to reinvent the wheel, we have to think about a smart mechanism, how we can use this cooperation that is already established at a high level of quality.”

She stressed that the EU remained wedded to phasing out Russian gas, despite two delays to a plan on achieving this goal. “I commit very clearly to phasing out the Russian gas,” she said. “This is an absolute must.”

Europe bought a record 18.8m tonnes of Russian liquefied natural gas in 2024, despite a steep decline in imported pipeline gas, coal and oil.

Peers who sat in the House of Lords during the last parliament have given a combined £109m in political donations, almost £50m of which was contributed before they secured their seats.

In a detailed study of the role the Lords plays in financing British politics, the Guardian has found that £1 in every £14 raised since donations were first published in 2001 came from peers either before or after they entered the second chamber.

The total contribution is almost certainly higher, as the data only counts donations to parties and individual MPs by those who sat in the Lords during the last parliament.

Peers are chosen from lists put forward by political parties, and the Conservatives have benefited more than any other party from those they nominated, taking 62% of the £109m. Labour took a 21% share and 16% went to the Liberal Democrats.

The findings will fuel debate around the role of the UK’s second chamber and the means used to select its members. Campaigners have called for a ban on political donors becoming peers, and raised concerns about the “privileged access” such donations can buy.

Historically, reasons have not needed to be given for political appointments, but the government has recently changed the rules so leaders of political parties must explain future nominations.

Guardian analysis shows that 266 peers made a political donation in the period covered by the analysis, with 115 of these donating at least once before they entered the Lords.

Analysis of Electoral Commission figures shows:

• A group of 20 super-donors – all male – have given more than £1m each.

• Nearly £48m came from donors before they joined the Lords, with 91% of that sum going to the Conservatives.

• Donations after joining the Lords were split more evenly, with 42% given to the Conservatives, 33% to Labour and 25% to the Lib Dems.

• The top three donors were David Sainsbury, with £25m to Labour and the Lib Dems, and the Conservative supporters Anthony Bamford with £10m and Michael Farmer with £9m.

Dr Susan Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said: “The ongoing link between political party donations and peerages is deeply damaging to trust in parliament and politics more widely. Peers play a public service role, and carrying on being a party donor is incompatible with that role. Donations from current members of the Lords should be stopped immediately.”

She called for a ban on political donors becoming peers and an urgent overhaul of the appointments process, with political parties surrendering their power to select peers to a beefed-up House of Lords appointments commission.

The commission, set up in 2000 to ensure transparency in the appointments process, vets nominees put forward by the prime minister. It also nominates a small number of people, typically two a year, to sit as crossbench peers unaffiliated with any political party.

Cash before honours

Political financing within the Lords is dominated by a small group of 20 super-donors – mostly financiers and businessmen – who have given in excess of £1m to the parties they support. Their combined donations of £92m account for the vast majority of the money analysed by the Guardian.

That figure includes individuals who donated large sums before being nominated. Parties have collected a total of £48m from donors who went on to join the Lords, with most of that sum coming from just 13 individuals. All but one gave to the Conservatives, and three were former treasurers of the Conservative party, responsible for leading its fundraising.

The numbers suggest becoming a major donor is one established route to securing a seat in the Lords.

Selling honours is a criminal offence. However, state prosecutors have advised that the law only applies if there is evidence of “an unambiguous agreement” to award a peerage in exchange for a gift. So long as any expectation remains unspoken, neither the donor nor the recipient are breaking the law.

A second tier of political donors – those who give between £100,000 and £1m before joining the Lords – have also tended to support the Conservative party. There were 21 of these in the last parliament. Fifteen were Tory benefactors, four were Labour and two donated to the Lib Dems.

In general, super-donors make smaller contributions to the work of the house once inside.

Analysis shows that peers who gave £1m or more before joining the Lords spoke 20 times on average over the course of the last parliament. That average includes the politically active Michael Farmer, who spoke 204 times. Removing him from the calculation means the rest of this group made an average of four speeches each – fewer than one a year.

Members of the £100,000 to £1m club were more likely to contribute in the chamber. They spoke 180 times each on average, compared with 188 times for peers overall.

The lord giveth and the lord taketh away

Money from those writing big cheques before entering the Lords tends to dry up once they secure their seats, the analysis shows. All but one of those who gave more than £1m before being nominated reduced their donations afterwards, when averaging them over time. The exception was the JCB diggers boss Anthony Bamford, who left the Lords last year.

The Guardian contacted the 13 peers who had donated more than £1m before joining the house. Rami Ranger, the chair of the consumer goods group Sun Mark, said he had not got a peerage for money and that he had “done more for Britain than many”, sharing a list of his business, political and community service achievements.

Lord Farmer, a former Tory party treasurer, said he donated in order to further his political values around family life. He said: “Generally, treasurers are given peerages shortly before or when they leave office, with similar pathways in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.”

The hedge fund manager Stanley Fink said his donations to the Tory party remained constant outside general elections, where he occasionally gave more. He said: “Truthfully, I received my peerage for being co-treasurer of the party,” and he had never used donations as a means of advancing policies.

The businessman Michael Bishop agreed that he had not donated as much since entering the second chamber with the title Lord Glendonbrook. Regarding his speaking record, he said he had Australian and British citizenship and travelled a lot. He said he did not claim attendance allowances.

Michael Spencer, a billionaire businessman and former Tory treasurer, noted there was no state funding of political parties in the UK. He said that although he did not often speak in the Lords, he attended and voted regularly, did not claim expenses, and continued to support the Conservative party financially from time to time.

The billionaire Peter Cruddas said he had been appointed to the Lords by Boris Johnson “to support his government to get Brexit done following his election victory” and that he had a strong voting and attendance record in the chamber.

The wider group of 20 super-donors also includes peers who have given huge sums since joining. Peers such as David Sainsbury, the former supermarket group chair, whose donations since 2001 outstrip those of any other member. He was Labour’s largest individual donor (£15m), then gave to the Lib Dems (£10m) while Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, before retiring from the second chamber in 2021.

The multimillionaire former Carpetright chair Philip Harris, who became a peer in 1996, donated more than £2.4m to the Conservative party from 2001 onwards before switching sides with a £5,000 gift to Labour last year.

The Domino’s Pizza entrepreneur Rumi Verjee donated just over £900,000 to the Lib Dems before being nominated by the party’s former leader Nick Clegg, and went on to give another £1.3m to the party once in the chamber.

Waheed Alli, who was last year embroiled in the “passes for glasses” scandal, is also high up the list, donating almost £1m to Labour after becoming a peer.

The analysis shines a light on the high value of donations handed to political parties and raises questions about the balance of influence enjoyed by individuals who are major party funders and also legislators.

A spokesperson for the campaign group Transparency International said: “It’s clear some parties have an unhealthy and increasing dependency on a small number of very wealthy donors. The privileged access and potential influence money can buy, especially for those donors sitting in our legislature, reinforces the view that politics is a profession reserved for the rich, and inaccessible to ordinary people.”

The figures only cover the historical donations of those peers who have sat in the Lords since the 2019 election. That means donations from former peers such as Michael Ashcroft, who has given millions to the Conservative party but who resigned in 2015, are not included in the total.

Political parties have only been obliged to publish donations data since the creation of the Electoral Commission in 2001, meaning the Guardian was unable to analyse donations before that date.

Pope Francis has issued a message from his hospital bed thanking medical staff and volunteers for the “miracle of tenderness” that they offer the sick, as he continues his recovery from pneumonia.

After more than three weeks in hospital, the 88-year-old pontiff is responding well to treatment and has shown a “gradual, slight improvement” in recent days, doctors said.

For the fourth Sunday in a row, Francis did not appear for his weekly noon blessing, but the Vatican distributed the text he would have delivered if he had been well enough. In it, he thanked all those who were caring for him and others who are sick and experiencing a “night of pain”.

“Brothers and sisters, during my prolonged hospitalisation here, I too experience the thoughtfulness of service and the tenderness of care, in particular from the doctors and health care workers, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart,” read the message issued from Gemelli hospital in Rome.

“And while I am here, I think of the many people who in various ways are close to the sick, and who are for them a sign of the Lord’s presence. We need this, the ‘miracle of tenderness’ which accompanies those who are in adversity, bringing a little light into the night of pain,” he wrote.

Francis, who has chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, has remained in a stable condition, with no fever and good oxygen levels in his blood, for several days, doctors reported in a Vatican statement on Saturday.

The doctors said the pope’s condition testified to “a good response to therapy”. It was the first time they had reported that Francis was responding positively to the treatment for the complex lung infection that was diagnosed after he was admitted to hospital on 14 February.

But they kept his prognosis as “guarded”, meaning he was not out of danger. On Sunday morning, the Vatican reported the Francis was resting after a quiet night.

In his absence, the Vatican’s day-to-day operations continued alongside celebrations of its Holy Year, a quarter-century jubilee that brings millions of pilgrims to Rome. On Sunday, the Canadian cardinal Michael Czerny, who is close to Francis, celebrated the Holy Year mass for volunteers the pope was meant to lead.

During the mass in St Peter’s Square, the giant banner bearing Francis’s papal coat of arms fluttered from the loggia of the basilica above. Even while in hospital, the Argentinian cleric remains in charge of the Catholic church.

South Korea’s impeached conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has been released from prison, a day after a Seoul court cancelled his arrest to allow him to stand trial for insurrection without being detained.

After walking out of a detention centre near Seoul on Saturday, Yoon waved, clenched his fists and bowed deeply to his supporters who were shouting his name and waving South Korean and US flags. Yoon climbed into a black van headed to his presidential residence in the capital.

In a statement distributed by his lawyers, Yoon said that he “appreciates the courage and decision by the Seoul central district court to correct illegality”, in an apparent reference to legal disputes over his arrest. He said he also thanked his supporters and asked those who were on hunger strike against his impeachment to end it.

On Saturday, about 55,000 Yoon supporters rallied in Seoul’s main districts, while 32,500 people demonstrated against him near the constitutional court, Yonhap news agency reported, citing unofficial police estimates.

The public, however, remains largely anti-Yoon, with 60% of respondents saying he should be removed from office and 35% opposing removal, according to a Gallup Korea poll on Friday.

Yoon was arrested and indicted by prosecutors in January over his 3 December martial law decree, which plunged the country into political turmoil. The liberal opposition-controlled National Assembly separately voted to impeach him, leading to his suspension from office.

The constitutional court has been deliberating whether to formally dismiss or reinstate Yoon. If the court upholds his impeachment, a national election will be held to find his successor within two months.

The Seoul central district court said on Friday it accepted Yoon’s request to be released from prison, citing the need to address questions over the legality of the investigations of the president. Yoon’s lawyers have accused the investigative agency that detained him before his formal arrest of lacking legal authority to investigate rebellion charges.

The Seoul court also said the legal period of his formal arrest expired before he was indicted.

Yoon’s release came after prosecutors decided not to appeal against the decision by the Seoul court. South Korean law allows prosecutors to continue to hold a suspect while pursuing an appeal, even after his or her arrest is cancelled by a court.

The main liberal opposition Democratic party, which led Yoon’s 14 December impeachment, lashed out at the prosecutors’ decision, calling them “henchmen” of Yoon, a former prosecutor general. Party spokesperson Cho Seung-rae urged the constitutional court to dismiss Yoon as soon as possible to avoid further public unrest and anxiety.

Investigators have alleged Yoon’s martial-law decree amounted to rebellion. If he is convicted of that offence, he would face the death penalty or life imprisonment. Yoon has presidential immunity from most criminal prosecutions but that does not cover grave charges like rebellion and treason.

Yoon has said he did not intend to maintain martial law for long as he only attempted to inform the public of the danger of the Democratic party, which obstructed his agenda and impeached many senior officials and prosecutors. In his martial law announcement, Yoon called the assembly “a den of criminals” and “anti-state forces”.

South Korea’s conservative-liberal divide is severe and rallies either supporting or denouncing Yoon’s impeachment have divided Seoul streets. Experts say whatever decision the constitutional court makes, the division is certain to worsen.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Digital blackouts reached a record high in 2024 in Africa as more governments sought to keep millions of citizens off the internet than in any other period over the last decade.

A report released by the internet rights group Access Now and #KeepItOn, a coalition of hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide, found there were 21 shutdowns in 15 African countries, surpassing the existing record of 19 shutdowns in 2020 and 2021.

Authorities in Comoros, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritius joined repeat offenders such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea and Kenya. Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania were also on the list. But perpetrators also included militias and other non-state actors.

Telecommunication and internet service providers who shut services based on government orders are also complicit in violating people’s rights, said Felicia Anthonio, the #KeepItOn campaign manager at Access Now, citing the UN guiding principles on business and human rights.

The details showed that most of the shutdowns were imposed as a response to conflicts, protests and political instability. There were also restrictions during elections.

The trend was replicated across the world with more internet shutdowns and in more countries: 296 shutdowns across 54 countries, compared with 283 shutdowns in 39 countries the previous year.

Access Now said the figures were the worst since it started keeping records in 2016 and that the rise reflected “a world where internet access is consistently weaponised, restricted, and precarious”.

“Behind each of the 1,754 shutdowns since 2016 is a story of people and communities cut off from the world and each other, often during political upheaval, unrest, violence and war,” the report said.

At least five shutdowns in Africa had been imposed for more than a year by the end of 2024, according to Access Now. As of early 2025, the social network Meta was still restricted in Uganda, despite authorities engaging with its representatives. On the Equatorial Guinean island of Annobon, internet and cell services have been cut off since an August 2024 protest over environmental concerns and isolation from the rest of the country.

The increase in shutdowns led the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to pass a landmark resolution in March 2024 to help reverse the trend.

But the regression had continued, said Anthonio. “It’s rather unfortunate we saw more election-related shutdowns in Africa and other places in 2024 despite the adoption of the ACHPR resolution last year,” she said.

“Despite this, the resolution is a positive step as it has served as a vital resource and reference for civil society’s advocacy against rights-harming shutdowns. It is difficult for us to tell if the resolution is yielding results already, but we did see authorities in countries like Mauritius and South Sudan [in January 2025] backtrack or reverse shutdown orders.”

Christel Van Iseghem was sitting in a radio studio when she heard the last words of her great uncle Norbert, murdered by the Nazis for his role in the Belgian resistance.

“My heart stood still,” said the 71-year-old from Kallo in Flanders. “This was something I didn’t know existed. I sat there shaking, my hands trembling … It means so much to me. He will not be forgotten.”

Before his execution in Munich on 27 October 1944, alongside his friend Noël Boydens, 19-year-old Norbert Vanbeveren wrote to his parents that he felt “a kind of peace and satisfaction in my heart, because our death will have served a purpose after all: that you are free again and no longer have to live under occupation”.

Vanbeveren was one of 1,500 Belgian resistance fighters allowed to write to his loved ones before the Nazis murdered him. His letter is one of about 20 that recently surfaced thanks to the Last Words project, a collaboration between the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), the Heroes of the Resistance remembrance association and 15 volunteers, adding to an archive of some 350 letters.

Dany Neudt, co-founder of Heroes of the Resistance, read aloud Norbert’s words on Belgian radio and is calling for a reappraisal of resistance groups, whose heroism he believes was forgotten in a traumatised silence after the war, while collaboration – including by Flemish nationalists – was seen more sympathetically.

Neudt posts every day on social media the story of one “hero” and organises “resistance cafe” evenings to share their tales. He wants more people to search attics and archives for examples of these letters of last words. “War brings out the worst in people … but also the best in humanity, and that is what you see in the stories of resistance.”

The liberation of Belgium had begun by the time Vanbeveren was killed, but his father was dead and the letter did not reach his mother. Van Iseghem, his great niece, was the first family member to hear his words, eight decades later.

Neudt’s search for this archive began after his father died during the pandemic and he began researching his grandfather, Henri Neudt, part of the Geheim Leger [secret army] resistance group, who narrowly escaped deportation to Germany on the “ghost” train. “It was the last train going to the Neuengamme concentration camp, but was attacked by the resistance and went back,” he said. “My grandfather was on that train but nothing was ever said in my family. What a strange situation it is that in Flanders, we know about collaborators but we don’t know names of people in the resistance. Even for me, as a historian, this is a blind spot.”

Many modern historians believe the fragmented Belgian resistance movement suffered a postwar image problem, according to Nel de Mûelenaere, VUB professor of contemporary history and chair of the Traces of the Resistance project. “The Flemish-nationalist collaborators, more unified and with support of Flemish-nationalist and Catholic politicians, falsely portrayed themselves as misled young men who were seduced by anti-communism and unjustly punished after the war by the resistance, who were opportunists, criminals, communists,” she said. “In France, you had General de Gaulle, the idea that France liberated itself by the resistance; in the Netherlands you have Hannie Schaft. In Belgium, it was very much a fractured movement and fractured memory … [of] trauma and repression.”

Others, like Ellen De Soete, whose uncle, Albert Serreyn, was executed, argue for a revival of the 8 Mayliberation day public holiday. “Especially in Flanders, there was a lot of collaboration, and some political parties thought if the stories were forgotten, in a few generations people would not know,” she said. “It was a way of wiping stories from the collective memory. But now young people do want to know, and a new wind is blowing.”Dr Samuël Kruizinga, historian of 20th-century war and violence at the University of Amsterdam, said reviving resistance stories could be a way for Belgium to move away from black-and-white thinking. “Acts of resistance were after the second world war quite consciously framed as acts in favour of the Belgian unitary state,” he said.

“There’s also the memory of the first world war where Belgium is also under German occupation, and the formal instructions given to Belgians by the government in exile were that swift resistance will only provoke retaliation. This is very consciously trying to reframe and rediscover the enormous personal heroism of people resisting Nazi rule.”

De Mûelenaere said that with talk of war in western Europe returning, these letters resonate. “I was reading one yesterday evening, and it was of a man who lived in a little village very near where my family is from,” she said. “At the end of the letter, it said: greetings to the family de Mûelenaere. It’s a world we can almost touch. We need those stories … and the almost healing idea that ordinary people said no to an authoritarian regime.”