The Trump administration is withdrawing from an international body formed to investigate responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine in the latest sign that the White House is adopting a posture favouring Vladimir Putin.

The Department of Justice said it was pulling out of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA) two years after the Biden administration joined it with a commitment to hold Putin, Russia’s president, to account for the 2022 invasion and subsequent crimes committed by Russian forces.

An announcement by the justice department was expected later on Monday.

The centre was established to hold the leaders of Russia and its allies in Belarus, North Korea and Iran accountable for a category of crimes listed as aggression under international law for undertaking and supporting the attack.

Merrick Garland, the US attorney general during Joe Biden’s presidency, announced that the US would contribute $1m to the organisation, based in the Hague, in November 2023, making it the only non-European country to send a prosecutor to take part in the centre’s investigation, along with prosecutors from Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states, Romania and the international criminal court.

“The United States stands in steadfast and unwavering support for the people of Ukraine as they defend their democracy against the brutal and unjust war being waged by the Russian regime,” Garland said at the time.

On Monday, the New York Times cited an internal letter from the group’s parent organisation, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust).

“The US authorities have informed me that they will conclude their involvement in the ICPA,” Michael Schmid, Eurojust’s president wrote.

He said the centre’s work would continue without US participation, with the group “fully committed” to holding accountable “those responsible for core international crimes”.

The decision follows weeks of tension between Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, amid efforts by Washington to broker an end to the three-year war between Russia and Ukraine.

After Trump berated Zelenskyy publicly in the White House, the US suspended military assistance and intelligence sharing to Ukraine, although they were subsequently restored after Kyiv supported American calls for a ceasefire.

Trump had earlier called Zelenskyy “a dictator without election”, falsely accused him of provoking the invasion and said Putin wanted to end the war – although the Russian leader has yet to agree to a ceasefire.

The justice department also said it was reducing the work of its war crimes accountability team, set up by Garland in 2022 to hold Russia accountable for atrocities committed following its invasion of Ukraine.

Garland said at the time that “there is no hiding place for war criminals” and vowed that the department would “pursue every avenue of accountability for those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine”.

The unit provided logistical help, training and direct assistance to overburdened Ukrainian prosecutors, who are investigating more than 150,000 possible war crimes, including the summary execution of prisoners, the targeted bombing of civilians and torture.

Donald Trump is to speak to Vladimir Putin on Tuesday after the Russian president last week pushed back on a US-brokered plan for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine with a series of sweeping conditions he said would need to be met.

The Kremlin confirmed on Monday that the two leaders were due to speak on Tuesday by phone, after Trump’s statement that he planned to discuss with Putin ending the war in Ukraine. The US president also said that negotiators had already talked about “dividing up certain assets”, including power stations.

“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a flight back to the Washington area from Florida.

“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance,” Trump said.

US and Russian officials have engaged in discussions about Ukraine in recent weeks, with talks accelerating after Washington and Kyiv agreed on a proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire last week.

Nevertheless, Putin in effect rejected the plan, instead outlining a series of conditions, including a halt to Ukraine’s rearmament and mobilisation, as well as a suspension of western military aid to Kyiv during the 30-day ceasefire. He also renewed calls for broader negotiations on a long-term settlement to the war.

Ukraine, which has agreed to the truce, accused Putin of seeking to prolong the war. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, has also consistently said the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and that Russia must surrender the territory it has seized.

Trump said: “We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants.”

The US president did not elaborate, but he was most likely referring to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the largest in Europe. He said: “I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We are already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

The comments came hours after his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said that the Russian president “accepts the philosophy” of Trump’s ceasefire and peace terms.

Witkoff told CNN that discussions with Putin over several hours last week had been “positive” and “solution-based”.

But he declined to confirm when asked whether Putin’s demands included the surrender of Ukrainian forces in Kursk, international recognition of Ukrainian territory seized by Russia as Russian, limits on Ukraine’s ability to mobilise, a halt to western military aid, and a ban on foreign peacekeepers.

Putin said on Thursday that he supported a truce but outlined numerous maximalist demands that he said needed to be negotiated before the deal could be completed. Moscow has among other things firmly opposed the deployment of European troops to provide security guarantees for Ukraine after any eventual ceasefire.

Before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s top diplomat, criticised Putin’s negotiation tactics. She said: “What Russia has put forward makes it clear they don’t truly want peace. They are setting their ultimate war objectives as preconditions.”

On Sunday, Emmanuel Macron said Russia’s permission was not needed, noting that Ukraine was a sovereign state. The French president said: “If Ukraine requests allied forces to be on its territory, it is not up to Russia to accept or reject them,” he said in remarks quoted by several French newspapers.

Later on Sunday Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, said that any long-lasting peace treaty on Ukraine must meet Moscow’s demands.

“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,” Izvestia cited Grushko as saying. “Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of Nato countries to accept it into the alliance.”

Regarding the possibility of European troops in Ukraine, he said: “It does not matter under what label Nato contingents were to be deployed on Ukrainian territory: be it the European Union, Nato, or in a national capacity … If they appear there, it means that they are deployed in the conflict zone with all the consequences for these contingents as parties to the conflict.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice has notified European officials that the United States is withdrawing from a multinational taskforce established to investigate leaders behind the invasion of Ukraine, including Putin.

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which the US joined under Biden in 2023, signals the latest shift in the unprecedented warming relations between Moscow and Washington. The US previously voted against a UN resolution drafted by Ukraine and the European Union condemning Russia on the third anniversary of its full-scale invasion.

On Monday, Russia also welcomed Trump’s decision to cut funding for Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, two US-funded news organisations that broadcast to audiences in authoritarian states. The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, described the media outlets as “propagandistic, purely propagandistic”.

In February last year, Russia designated Radio Free Europe as an “undesirable organisation”, a move that effectively bans an organisation outright and creates problems for anyone who interacts with it

The Trump administration is withdrawing from an international body formed to investigate responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine in the latest sign that the White House is adopting a posture favouring Vladimir Putin.

The Department of Justice said it was pulling out of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA) two years after the Biden administration joined it with a commitment to hold Putin, Russia’s president, to account for the 2022 invasion and subsequent crimes committed by Russian forces.

An announcement by the justice department was expected later on Monday.

The centre was established to hold the leaders of Russia and its allies in Belarus, North Korea and Iran accountable for a category of crimes listed as aggression under international law for undertaking and supporting the attack.

Merrick Garland, the US attorney general during Joe Biden’s presidency, announced that the US would contribute $1m to the organisation, based in the Hague, in November 2023, making it the only non-European country to send a prosecutor to take part in the centre’s investigation, along with prosecutors from Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states, Romania and the international criminal court.

“The United States stands in steadfast and unwavering support for the people of Ukraine as they defend their democracy against the brutal and unjust war being waged by the Russian regime,” Garland said at the time.

On Monday, the New York Times cited an internal letter from the group’s parent organisation, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust).

“The US authorities have informed me that they will conclude their involvement in the ICPA,” Michael Schmid, Eurojust’s president wrote.

He said the centre’s work would continue without US participation, with the group “fully committed” to holding accountable “those responsible for core international crimes”.

The decision follows weeks of tension between Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, amid efforts by Washington to broker an end to the three-year war between Russia and Ukraine.

After Trump berated Zelenskyy publicly in the White House, the US suspended military assistance and intelligence sharing to Ukraine, although they were subsequently restored after Kyiv supported American calls for a ceasefire.

Trump had earlier called Zelenskyy “a dictator without election”, falsely accused him of provoking the invasion and said Putin wanted to end the war – although the Russian leader has yet to agree to a ceasefire.

The justice department also said it was reducing the work of its war crimes accountability team, set up by Garland in 2022 to hold Russia accountable for atrocities committed following its invasion of Ukraine.

Garland said at the time that “there is no hiding place for war criminals” and vowed that the department would “pursue every avenue of accountability for those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine”.

The unit provided logistical help, training and direct assistance to overburdened Ukrainian prosecutors, who are investigating more than 150,000 possible war crimes, including the summary execution of prisoners, the targeted bombing of civilians and torture.

Donald Trump is to speak to Vladimir Putin on Tuesday after the Russian president last week pushed back on a US-brokered plan for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine with a series of sweeping conditions he said would need to be met.

The Kremlin confirmed on Monday that the two leaders were due to speak on Tuesday by phone, after Trump’s statement that he planned to discuss with Putin ending the war in Ukraine. The US president also said that negotiators had already talked about “dividing up certain assets”, including power stations.

“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a flight back to the Washington area from Florida.

“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance,” Trump said.

US and Russian officials have engaged in discussions about Ukraine in recent weeks, with talks accelerating after Washington and Kyiv agreed on a proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire last week.

Nevertheless, Putin in effect rejected the plan, instead outlining a series of conditions, including a halt to Ukraine’s rearmament and mobilisation, as well as a suspension of western military aid to Kyiv during the 30-day ceasefire. He also renewed calls for broader negotiations on a long-term settlement to the war.

Ukraine, which has agreed to the truce, accused Putin of seeking to prolong the war. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, has also consistently said the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and that Russia must surrender the territory it has seized.

Trump said: “We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants.”

The US president did not elaborate, but he was most likely referring to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the largest in Europe. He said: “I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We are already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

The comments came hours after his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said that the Russian president “accepts the philosophy” of Trump’s ceasefire and peace terms.

Witkoff told CNN that discussions with Putin over several hours last week had been “positive” and “solution-based”.

But he declined to confirm when asked whether Putin’s demands included the surrender of Ukrainian forces in Kursk, international recognition of Ukrainian territory seized by Russia as Russian, limits on Ukraine’s ability to mobilise, a halt to western military aid, and a ban on foreign peacekeepers.

Putin said on Thursday that he supported a truce but outlined numerous maximalist demands that he said needed to be negotiated before the deal could be completed. Moscow has among other things firmly opposed the deployment of European troops to provide security guarantees for Ukraine after any eventual ceasefire.

Before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s top diplomat, criticised Putin’s negotiation tactics. She said: “What Russia has put forward makes it clear they don’t truly want peace. They are setting their ultimate war objectives as preconditions.”

On Sunday, Emmanuel Macron said Russia’s permission was not needed, noting that Ukraine was a sovereign state. The French president said: “If Ukraine requests allied forces to be on its territory, it is not up to Russia to accept or reject them,” he said in remarks quoted by several French newspapers.

Later on Sunday Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, said that any long-lasting peace treaty on Ukraine must meet Moscow’s demands.

“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,” Izvestia cited Grushko as saying. “Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of Nato countries to accept it into the alliance.”

Regarding the possibility of European troops in Ukraine, he said: “It does not matter under what label Nato contingents were to be deployed on Ukrainian territory: be it the European Union, Nato, or in a national capacity … If they appear there, it means that they are deployed in the conflict zone with all the consequences for these contingents as parties to the conflict.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice has notified European officials that the United States is withdrawing from a multinational taskforce established to investigate leaders behind the invasion of Ukraine, including Putin.

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which the US joined under Biden in 2023, signals the latest shift in the unprecedented warming relations between Moscow and Washington. The US previously voted against a UN resolution drafted by Ukraine and the European Union condemning Russia on the third anniversary of its full-scale invasion.

On Monday, Russia also welcomed Trump’s decision to cut funding for Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, two US-funded news organisations that broadcast to audiences in authoritarian states. The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, described the media outlets as “propagandistic, purely propagandistic”.

In February last year, Russia designated Radio Free Europe as an “undesirable organisation”, a move that effectively bans an organisation outright and creates problems for anyone who interacts with it

Canada is the “most European of the non-European countries”, Mark Carney has said during his first overseas trip as prime minister to France and the UK, where he is seeking stronger alliances to deal with Donald Trump’s attacks on his country’s sovereignty and economy.

Without mentioning Trump by name, Carney and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, held a joint press conference in Paris to show a united stance against what they said were economic and geopolitical crises – a reference to Trump’s trade war and “America first” diplomacy that has left longtime allies scrambling.

“Canada is a unique friend,” Macron said, adding that fair trade was more effective than tariffs. Carney spoke in French and English, and said it was important for Canada to strengthen ties with “reliable allies”.

“I want to ensure that France and the whole of Europe work enthusiastically with Canada, the most European of non-European countries, determined like you to maintain the most positive possible relations with the United States,” he said.

A senior Canadian government official who briefed reporters on Carney’s plane said the purpose of the trip was strengthen partnerships with Canada’s two founding countries. The official said Canada was a “good friend of the United States but we all know what is going on”.

Carney is deliberately making his first foreign trip to the capital cities of the two countries that shaped Canada’s early existence. At his swearing-in ceremony on Friday, he noted the country was built on the bedrock of three peoples: Indigenous, French and British.

He said Canada was fundamentally different from the US and would “never, ever, in any way shape or form, be part of the United States”.

Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said: “The Trump factor is the reason for the trip. The Trump factor towers over everything else Carney must deal with.”

Carney, a former central banker who turned 60 on Sunday, will later travel to London to meet the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, in an effort to diversify trade and coordinate a response to Trump’s tariffs.

He will also meet King Charles, Canada’s head of state. The trip to England is something of a homecoming, as Carney is a former governor of the Bank of England, the first non-citizen to be named to the role in its more than 300 years.

Carney then travels to the edge of Canada’s Arctic to “reaffirm Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty” before returning to Ottawa, where he is expected to call an election within days.

Carney has said he is ready to meet Trump if he shows respect for Canadian sovereignty. He said he did not plan to visit Washington at the moment but hoped to have a phone call with the president soon.

Sweeping tariffs of 25% and Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st US state have infuriated Canadians, and many are avoiding buying American goods.

Carney’s government is reviewing the purchase of US-made F-35 fighter jets in light of Trump’s trade war.

The governing Liberal party had appeared poised for a historic election defeat this year until Trump declared economic war and said repeatedly that Canada should become the 51st state. Now the party and its new leader, Carney, could come out on top.

Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, said Carney was wise not to visit Trump. “There’s no point in going to Washington,” Bothwell said. “As [former prime minister Justin] Trudeau’s treatment shows, all that results in is a crude attempt by Trump to humiliate his guests.”

Bothwell said Trump demanded respect, “but it’s often a one-way street, asking others to set aside their self-respect to bend to his will”.

Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said it was absolutely essential Canada diversified amid the trade war with the US. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the US.

Béland said Arctic sovereignty was also a key issue for Canada. He said: “President Trump’s aggressive talk about both Canada and Greenland and the apparent rapprochement between Russia, a strong Arctic power, and the United States under Trump have increased anxieties about our control over this remote yet highly strategic region.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s trade wars are splintering the global economy and unpicking progress made to reboot growth and tackle inflation, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said.

In its latest update on the health of the world economy, the leading Paris-based institution downgraded the prospects for global growth this year and next, including a sharp hit to activity in the US, Canada and Mexico.

The OECD cut its forecast for UK growth by 0.3 percentage points this year to 1.4%, and by 0.1 percentage points for 2026 to 1.2%, underscoring the challenge for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, before next week’s spring statement.

The body representing the world’s richest economies said recent higher levels of economic growth and progress to bring down inflation was being undermined by the fallout from higher trade barriers and mounting geopolitical uncertainty.

Cutting its global growth forecast for this year from 3.3% to 3.1%, it said that significant risks still remained. The global economy grew by 3.2% in 2024.

Higher and broader increases in trade barriers would hit growth and add to inflation, while a climbdown would help reduce uncertainty and strengthen activity.

“Significant risks remain. Further fragmentation of the global economy is a key concern. Higher and broader increases in trade barriers would hit growth around the world and add to inflation,” the OECD said in its interim economic outlook report.

The OECD said: “Governments need to find ways of addressing their concerns together within the global trading system to avoid a significant ratcheting-up of retaliatory trade barriers between countries …

“A broad-based further increase in trade restrictions would have significant negative impacts on living standards.”

Basing its projections on the assumption that Trump pushes ahead with plans to impose 25% tariffs on almost all merchandise imports from Canada and Mexico from April, the OECD said activity would be hit and inflation stoked across all three economies.

It said Mexico would be pushed into a deep recession this year – with output shrinking by 1.3% in 2025 and 0.6% in 2026 – and almost halved its forecasts for growth in Canada.

It reduced its US growth forecasts from 2.5% to 2.2% for this year and from 2.1% to 1.6% in 2026. Growth in China is projected to slow from 4.8% this year to 4.4% in 2026.

In its first report since Trump’s return to the White House in January, the OECD said a further escalation of trade tensions would cause significantly more damage for the world economy.

In a scenario in which 10% blanket tariffs were imposed on all US imports – a threat Trump made on the campaign trail before last November’s election – with a matched response from all trading partners, it said global output could fall by 0.3% within three years relative to its current forecast. The US would be hit significantly, with output declining by 0.7% by the third year and inflation rising by an average 0.7 percentage points a year.

Canada and Mexico would also be affected significantly, reflecting their comparatively open economies and high exposure to the downturn in demand in the US and elsewhere.

With the UK government on the back foot on the economy before next week’s spring statement, Reeves said the OECD report showed the world was already changing in response to mounting trade uncertainty.

“Increased global headwinds such as trade uncertainty are being felt across the board. A changing world means Britain must change too, and we are delivering a new era of stability, security and renewal, to protect working people and keep our country safe,” Reeves said.

“This means we can better respond to global uncertainty, with the UK forecast to be Europe’s fastest-growing G7 economy over the coming years – second only to the US.”

The downbeat OECD assessment comes before an expected UK growth downgrade from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the independent Treasury watchdog, due alongside next week’s spring statement.

The OBR had previously expected growth of 2% this year and 1.8% in 2026, but official figures and business surveys have since shown output skirting close to zero amid weakness in business and consumer confidence.

Highlighting the pressure on households and the challenge for the government and the Bank of England, the OECD held its predictions for UK inflation at 2.7% this year and 2.3% in 2026.

Last month, the Bank halved its own UK growth forecast for 2025 – from 1.5% to 0.75% because of weakness in household and business confidence. On Friday, official figures showed the UK economy contracted by 0.1% in January.

Edelman, the world’s largest public relations agency, is in talks to work with the Cop30 team organising the UN climate summit in the Amazon later this year despite its prior connections to a major trade group accused of lobbying to roll back measures to protect the area from deforestation, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.

The summit is set to take place in November in the city of Belém on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, which has been ravaged by deforestation linked to Brazil’s powerful agriculture industry. For the first time, the talks will be “at the epicenter of the climate crisis”, the summit’s president wrote last week. “As the Cop comes to the Amazon, forests will naturally be a central topic,” he added.

But now questions are being asked about a possible conflict of interest after his team confirmed to the Guardian and CCR that it is considering bringing in the American PR giant Edelman to work on the summit. As well as its past work with some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, Edelman previously developed a “communications strategy” and message “playbook” for a trade group representing major players in the Brazilian soy industry, according to US Foreign Agent Registration Act filings.

“Edelman’s conflicts of interest at a climate conference are almost too many to count,” said Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, which campaigns for the PR and ad industry to cut ties with fossil fuel clients. He said the agency “maintains at least a dozen contracts with fossil fuel polluters like Shell and Chevron”.

“These conflicts of interest make it impossible for Edelman to be effective advocates for Cop30’s agenda, and put the outcome of the talks in jeopardy.”

Edelman defends its approach, saying it works with a range of companies and organizations to help clients reduce emissions while meeting global energy demands.

Brazil is the world’s largest producer and exporter of soy. Rather than directly owning farms, most of the major companies in the country’s soy industry source from a complex network of suppliers across Brazil. Members of the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oils Industry group, known as Abiove, include the biggest soy traders, such as Cargill, Bunge and Cofco. JBS, the controversial Brazilian meatpacker whose complex beef supply chain has been linked to deforestation of the Amazon, is also a member.

Abiove members agreed in 2006 not to source soy from recently cleared tracts of the Amazon, a major milestone that experts credit with drastically reducing the impact of the industry on deforestation in the region. But in 2022, an investigation by the Guardian – in collaboration with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Greenpeace Unearthed, Repórter Brasil and Ecostorm – revealed that Cargill had bought soy from a farm linked to deforestation in the Amazon. And recently, Abiove has been seeking to amend the 2006 moratorium which campaigners worry will put the rainforest in jeopardy once again.

Meanwhile, deforestation has continued apace elsewhere. Driven in part by the country’s booming soy industry, deforestation of the Cerrado, a vast grassland in central Brazil, has reached record levels in recent years. The campaign group Global Witness has described it as an “ecological catastrophe” for the world’s most biodiverse savannah.

An agreement similar to the Amazon’s soy moratorium was first mooted for the Cerrado in 2017 by a group of 60 NGOs. Nearly two dozen major companies, including McDonald’s, Tesco and Walmart, supported its aims. In 2020, the head of Abiove said that such an agreement for the Cerrado was “unfeasible”.

Between 2017 and 2023 (the most recent data available), 520,200 hectares of the Cerrado – an area larger than the Grand Canyon national park – were cleared and planted with soy, according to figures provided to the Guardian and CCR by the research group Trace. This was significantly higher than in any other biome: over the same period, there were 146,800 hectares cleared for soy planting in the Amazon, the group said.

Cargill and JBS have said they are taking efforts to help curb deforestation.

Edelman was hired by Abiove in 2023 to develop an “overarching communications strategy” and “message architecture playbook”, a copy of a contract filed with the US Department of Justice shows. The firm was paid $75,000 over a three-month period for work including “narrative development” and “risk analysis and scenario planning”.

The firm was also scoping a potentially more lucrative second phase of its work with Abiove, which involved “coalition building” and an “ongoing communications program”. This second phase could have generated more than $50,000 per month for the agency, according to estimates included in the contract.

A spokesperson for Edelman said its contract with Abiove ended in December 2023. They declined to answer questions about whether its work with Abiove involved developing messaging on deforestation and if it had informed the Cop30 team of its prior relationship with the group. Abiove did not respond to a request for comment.

While press reports last month suggested Edelman had already been awarded the Cop30 contract, a spokesperson for the summit said a final decision had not yet been made. “The Brazilian Cop30 presidency is in talks with multiple consulting firms, including Edelman,” the spokesperson said. “The hiring process will involve an open bid conducted through the UNDP [United Nations Development Program].”

If Edelman were to ultimately win a bid to work on Cop30 in Brazil, it would be the second time in three years it has been closely involved in efforts to deliver one of the major UN climate summits.

Edelman was hired by the United Arab Emirates team hosting Cop28 in Dubai in 2023. One of Edelman’s managing directors – a former deputy press secretary for Donald Trump during his first term – was working as the summit’s president Sultan Al Jaber’s “media support”, according to an internal Cop28 document previously reported by CCR. The agency’s work with Al Jaber, who alongside his role as the UAE’s climate envoy now heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, dates back to the mid-2000s, DoJ filings show.

Edelman’s work on Cop28 came after a period of intense scrutiny of the agency’s relationship with one of the world’s biggest oil producers, ExxonMobil, and other major fossil fuel companies.

A petition circulated at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 by campaign group Clean Creatives called on Edelman to cut its ties with the industry. But during a videoconference for employees that year to address the issue, Richard Edelman was reportedly resolute: the agency would not walk away from its fossil fuel clients, he told staff, according to a New York Times report at the time.

In a blogpost on the company’s website reflecting on the summit in Glasgow, Edelman praised a number of “commendable” pledges including ones to end deforestation and cut methane emissions. The summit will “serve as an important milestone in the march towards progress,” it said.

According to Clean Creatives, Edelman’s work with ExxonMobil has since ended but the group claims that in recent years it has inked contracts with three more fossil fuel companies. An Edelman spokesperson said one of those three, the South African energy company Sasol, is no longer a client.

Last year, the Guardian revealed that the agency had also recently worked for the Charles Koch Foundation, which is part of the libertarian network of nonprofits funded by the billionaire Koch family that has pushed back against climate policies.

“Edelman works with a wide range of companies, associations and organizations across every sector of the global energy industry,” a statement posted on the agency’s website states. “We are proud of the work we do to support our energy clients as they work to reduce emissions while continuing to provide reliable, affordable, and ever cleaner energy to meet the demands of a growing global population.”

Donald Trump claimed on Monday, without offering evidence, that pardons signed by Joe Biden were “void, vacant and of no further force and effect” because they were signed with an autopen.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an autopen as “a device that mechanically reproduces a person’s signature”.

Trump made his claim in a post to his social media platform that used his abusive nicknames for Biden and members of the House January 6 committee, writing: “The ‘Pardons; that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.

“In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”

Close aides to Trump have said he often does not write his own Truth Social posts. They have also said his authorship can be detected by factors including the free use of capital letters.

Trump made the same autopen claim on board Air Force One on Sunday, telling reporters: “It’s not my decision – that’ll be up to a court – but I would say that they’re null and void, because I’m sure Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place, and somebody was using an autopen to sign off and to give pardons.”

The claim came after the Heritage Foundation, a pro-Trump rightwing thinktank, released a report into Biden’s autopen use, claiming “whoever controlled the autopen controlled the presidency”. The fact-checking website Snopes debunked the claim, noting in a lengthy article various ways presidential signatures are affixed to documents, commonly including the use of a sample signature which a National Archives spokesperson said officials “use to create the graphic image for all presidential documents published in the Federal Register”.

Smithsonian Magazine has described how presidents since Thomas Jefferson have used devices to help them sign documents with greater efficiency. Jefferson, the third president from 1801 to 1809, used a polygraph, a device he found so useful he said he “could not live without it”.

According to the Smithsonian, “Harry Truman was the first president to use” an actual autopen, in the years after the second world war, “and [John F] Kennedy allegedly made substantial use of the device. However, the White House autopen was a closely guarded secret until Gerald Ford’s administration publicly acknowledged its use”.

In 2011, Barack Obama faced controversy when he signed an extension of the Patriot Act, contentious national security legislation, with an autopen. In 2013, Obama memorably used an autopen to sign a congressional bill heading off financial disaster, while on vacation in Hawaii.

According to Snopes, it is “unclear whether Trump has signed legislation or policy with an autopen, although some reports suggest he signed campaign items for sale via the device”.

Furthermore, court precedents suggest Trump was wrong to say a president must personally sign any pardon, reprieve or other act of clemency.

In 1929, the US justice department held that “it is wholly for the president to decide” the method by which a pardon is handed down. Last year, a federal appeals court said presidential pardons do not even have to be in writing.

On 20 January, his last day in office, Biden gave pre-emptive pardons to family members and all members of the House committee that investigated the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited in his attempt to overturn his defeat by Biden in the 2020 election.

Two Republican Trump opponents, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, sat on the committee. Both have since left Congress.

In his social media post, Trump wrote, again without providing evidence: “The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime.”

Repeating unsubstantiated rightwing claims about the committee’s treatment of records, he continued: “Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.”

Members of the January 6 committee said they did not want pardons from Biden, stressing they did nothing wrong.

On Monday, Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chaired the committee, told Axios: “I am not afraid of Trump’s latest midnight rant that has no basis in reality.”

Kinzinger wrote: “Please! You guys have been threatening this forever! Bring it on, it’s getting boring waiting.”

Nonetheless, fear of revenge investigations and prosecutions remains high, particularly as Trump’s administration targets government lawyers who investigated him in his two federal criminal cases and outside lawyers with links to Democrats.

Other recipients of pre-emptive pardons from Biden included Anthony Fauci, the public health adviser who rose to prominence under Covid, and Mark Milley, a retired general and chair of the joint chiefs of staff who has called Trump “a fascist to the core” and said he fears revenge.

Japan is planning to deploy long-range missiles on its southern island of Kyushu amid concerns around the Trump administration’s stance towards its security pacts and continuing regional tensions.

The missiles, with a range of about 1,000km, would be capable of hitting targets in North Korea and China’s coastal regions, and are due to be deployed next year in two bases with existing missile garrisons. They would bolster the defences of the strategically important Okinawa island chain and are part of Japan’s development of “counterstrike capabilities” in the event it is attacked, according to reports from Kyodo News agency, citing government sources.

Deployment of long-range missiles on the Okinawa islands, which stretch to within 110km of Taiwan, is unlikely to happen, to avoid provoking China. The islands already house a number of missiles batteries with shorter ranges.

“As the threat from the China and North Korea has been mounting, it is natural for Japan to counter this with more effective weapons systems,” said Yoichi Shimada, professor emeritus at Fukui Prefectural University. “I think Japan should rapidly take measures such as the deployment of longer-range missiles to develop more robust security.”

On 6 March, the US president, Donald Trump, complained that the Japan-US security treaty was nonreciprocal: “We have a great relationship with Japan, but we have an interesting deal with Japan that we have to protect them, but they don’t have to protect us,” adding, “That’s the way the deal reads … and by the way, they make a fortune with us economically. I actually ask who makes these deals?”

The treaty was first signed in 1951, when Japan was still occupied by US forces. Japan’s ability to take military action is restricted by the pacifist article 9 of its constitution, which was effectively imposed on it by Washington after the second world war.

Shimada believes that “proactive measures” such as boosting its missile systems will strengthen US-Japan ties, and that “demands from the Trump administration for reciprocal defence arrangements with Japan are not so unreasonable”.

However, Trump’s pronouncements on allies and fellow Nato members, including Canada and Denmark, have some in Japan concerned about his administration’s commitment to honouring longstanding treaties, according to Robert Dujarric of Temple University in Tokyo.

“It is clear to anyone who is watching this carefully that the US-Japan alliance is in bad shape,” said Dujarric. “Even if China attacked Japan, there is no guarantee that the US under Trump would do anything. That is a big problem.”

Two ground self-defense force (GSDF) bases are being considered for the new missiles, Camp Yufuin in Oita, and Camp Kengun in Kumamoto, both on Kyushu and already home to missile batteries. The new weapon systems are reported to be upgraded versions of the GSDF’s Type-12 land-to-ship guided missiles.

“This is just one part of a gradual increase in Japanese military capacity,” said Dujarric, who believes the country “needs to rethink its security policy” in light of the shifting geopolitical landscape.

Despite having been largely taboo in the 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if Japan feels it can no longer rely on US military support, that would “spark debate as to whether to acquire nuclear weapons”, suggested Dujarric.

Japan is planning to deploy long-range missiles on its southern island of Kyushu amid concerns around the Trump administration’s stance towards its security pacts and continuing regional tensions.

The missiles, with a range of about 1,000km, would be capable of hitting targets in North Korea and China’s coastal regions, and are due to be deployed next year in two bases with existing missile garrisons. They would bolster the defences of the strategically important Okinawa island chain and are part of Japan’s development of “counterstrike capabilities” in the event it is attacked, according to reports from Kyodo News agency, citing government sources.

Deployment of long-range missiles on the Okinawa islands, which stretch to within 110km of Taiwan, is unlikely to happen, to avoid provoking China. The islands already house a number of missiles batteries with shorter ranges.

“As the threat from the China and North Korea has been mounting, it is natural for Japan to counter this with more effective weapons systems,” said Yoichi Shimada, professor emeritus at Fukui Prefectural University. “I think Japan should rapidly take measures such as the deployment of longer-range missiles to develop more robust security.”

On 6 March, the US president, Donald Trump, complained that the Japan-US security treaty was nonreciprocal: “We have a great relationship with Japan, but we have an interesting deal with Japan that we have to protect them, but they don’t have to protect us,” adding, “That’s the way the deal reads … and by the way, they make a fortune with us economically. I actually ask who makes these deals?”

The treaty was first signed in 1951, when Japan was still occupied by US forces. Japan’s ability to take military action is restricted by the pacifist article 9 of its constitution, which was effectively imposed on it by Washington after the second world war.

Shimada believes that “proactive measures” such as boosting its missile systems will strengthen US-Japan ties, and that “demands from the Trump administration for reciprocal defence arrangements with Japan are not so unreasonable”.

However, Trump’s pronouncements on allies and fellow Nato members, including Canada and Denmark, have some in Japan concerned about his administration’s commitment to honouring longstanding treaties, according to Robert Dujarric of Temple University in Tokyo.

“It is clear to anyone who is watching this carefully that the US-Japan alliance is in bad shape,” said Dujarric. “Even if China attacked Japan, there is no guarantee that the US under Trump would do anything. That is a big problem.”

Two ground self-defense force (GSDF) bases are being considered for the new missiles, Camp Yufuin in Oita, and Camp Kengun in Kumamoto, both on Kyushu and already home to missile batteries. The new weapon systems are reported to be upgraded versions of the GSDF’s Type-12 land-to-ship guided missiles.

“This is just one part of a gradual increase in Japanese military capacity,” said Dujarric, who believes the country “needs to rethink its security policy” in light of the shifting geopolitical landscape.

Despite having been largely taboo in the 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if Japan feels it can no longer rely on US military support, that would “spark debate as to whether to acquire nuclear weapons”, suggested Dujarric.

North Macedonia has declared a seven-day period of mourning after a fire in a nightclub that left at least 59 dead and scores injured, as authorities detained 15 people for questioning and the interior minister said a preliminary inspection revealed the club was operating without a proper licence.

At the end of a day in which the small Balkan country grappled with a disaster not seen in decades, its interior minister Panche Toshkovski said the venue in the eastern town of Kočani where the pre-dawn blaze occurred appeared to be operating illegally.

“This company does not have a legal licence for work,” Toshkovski told reporters. “This licence, as many other things in Macedonia in the past, is connected with bribery and corruption,” he added without elaborating.

More than 20 people were under investigation, 15 of whom were in police custody, while others suspected of involvement were in hospital, he said.

Most of those killed by the blaze, which ripped through the Pulse nightclub during a hip-hop concert, were teenagers and young adults. Over 155 were injured, many critically.

The premises had previously served as a carpet warehouse in Kočani, a town about 60 miles (97km) east of the capital, Skopje. Press reports described it as an “improvised nightclub”.

The prime minister, Hristijan Mickoski, said the loss of so many young lives was “irreparable”. “All competent forces will do whatever is necessary to address the consequences and determine the causes of this tragedy,” he promised earlier on Sunday.

The fire, thought to have been triggered by the use of special-effects pyrotechnic devices, erupted at about 2.35am local time (1.35am GMT). Some of those taken to medical facilities were as young as 14. Pictures showed the club’s corrugated iron roof burnt through and collapsed in places, its interior wooden beams exposed and blackened.

Marija Taseva, 22, told Reuters: “When the fire broke out, everyone started screaming and shouting: ‘Get out, get out.’” As she tried to escape, Taseva fell to the ground and people trod on her, injuring her face. In the crush, she lost contact with her sister, who did not make it out. “My sister died,” Taseva said, breaking into tears.

“It’s hard to believe how this happened,” the country’s president, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, told distraught parents gathered outside a hospital in the capital. “We must give these young people courage to continue.” Dressed in black and fighting tears, she said authorities were ready to do everything to help all those affected.

Medical officials said many people had suffered severe burns and carbon monoxide poisoning and that plans were under way to transport the critically wounded to specialised hospitals across Europe. Dr Kristina Serafimova, the head of Kočani general hospital, told reporters that at least 10 were on respirators and fighting for their lives. It was the biggest loss of life in the country of 1.8 million people since the early 1990s.

The rightwing nationalist-led government, which was returned to power last year, moved quickly to detain suspects.

Initial reports suggested about 1,500 clubgoers were crammed into the discotheque to watch the popular hip-hop band DNK – a number far exceeding the venue’s capacity. The club had only one exit and a lack of fire extinguishers, according to local media outlets.

One young person who was attending the concert told local media: “The fire started around 2.30am. The sparklers that were on stage ignited the styrofoam on the ceiling. I heard an explosion and the roof collapsed. We all rushed to get out – we all ran towards one door that was for both entry and exit.”

Visiting the site early on Sunday, Toshkovski said the blaze was probably caused by pyrotechnic devices “used for lighting effects at the concert”. As they were set off, “the sparks caught the ceiling, which was made of easily flammable material, after which the fire rapidly spread across the whole discotheque, creating thick smoke”, he told reporters.

The government said it would immediately step up inspections of nightclubs and similar venues to ensure they complied with international safety regulations. “The most important thing is to find out all the facts and evidence necessary for the follow-up measures,” Toshkovski said. “We must remain calm while taking all these steps so that something like this doesn’t happen again.”

Images on social media showed chaotic scenes as the fire broke out and the band’s singer urged the audience to vacate the premises as quickly as possible. Serafimova attributed the deaths to the panic-stricken crush that ensued, as well as smoke inhalation and burns. Among the injured were musicians in the eight-member band, DNK’s manager said.

Branko Gerovski, a veteran journalist in Skopje, said: “In a country as small as ours, and with the death toll likely to rise, the impact has been huge. We haven’t seen anything like this since the devastating air crashes in Macedonia in 1993. Everyone feels very emotional. They can relate to this because everyone’s kids go to nightclubs.”

Neighbouring countries including Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania were quick to offer assistance. Senior European Union officials also expressed their condolences, while the Vatican said Pope Francis sent prayers to the victims and survivors of the fire.

Italy’s government has profoundly undermined the rule of law with changes to the judiciary and showed “heavy intolerance to media criticism”, in an emblematic example of Europe’s deepening “democratic recession”, a coalition of civil liberties groups has said.

A report by the Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) said Italy was one of five “dismantlers” – along with Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovakia – that “intentionally undermine the rule of law in nearly all aspects”.

In Hungary, long classified as an “electoral autocracy”, researchers detected “significant regression” in the rule of law in 2024. Pressure on non-governmental groups and media intensified after the launch of Hungary’s sovereignty protection office, which has broad powers to investigate Hungarians active in public life.

“Europe’s democratic recession has deepened in 2024,” Liberties said in a statement. The report, shared with the Guardian before publication, highlighted judicial systems subject to political manipulation, weak law enforcement against corruption, overuse of fast-track legislative procedures, harassment of journalists and growing restrictions on peaceful protests. “Without decisive action, the EU risks further democratic erosion,” the report – compiled by 43 human rights organisations in 21 EU member states – concluded.

Liberties began the annual exercise in 2019 to shadow the European Commission’s rule of law reports, which are meant to serve as a democratic health check on EU member states. The NGO’s six reports showed “the alarming persistence of rule of law violations throughout the European Union,” said Viktor Kazai, senior rule of law expert at Liberties. “All fundamental aspects of the rule of law have faced increasingly severe problems in the past few years,” he added, while the EU’s attempts to reverse the decline had been “disappointingly limited”.

“The most worrying category of countries” were the “dismantlers”, Kazai said, governments that were taking steps to undermine the rule of law.

In Italy, researchers highlighted how Giorgia Meloni’s government had drafted proposals to give “open-ended powers” to the justice ministry over prosecutors, which would increase political control over the judiciary. The Italian contributors also flagged “unprecedented levels of interference in public service media”, such as the cancellation of the author Antonio Scurati’s “anti-fascist manifesto” and the disciplinary case opened against the host of the talkshow in which the speech was to have been performed.

In Bulgaria, the report looked at how anti-corruption investigations were launched against prominent political opponents of the government, while long-running schemes – such as the dumping of construction waste in the Sofia municipality – continued. In Slovakia, red flags have been raised about numerous changes introduced by the government of the nationalist populist Robert Fico, including the abolition of the office of the central prosecutor and a “Russia-style” foreign agents bill that would require NGOs to bear the stigmatising label of “foreign-supported organisation” if they receive more than €5,000 (£4,200) from outside the country.

In Croatia, the integrity of the justice system was seen as damaged, after the elevation to the position of state attorney general of Ivan Turudić, a judge with close links to the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HSZ) party. The European public prosecutor’s office has complained of “Croatia’s systemic challenges in upholding the rule of law”, after Turudić’s office appeared to challenge EPPO’s right to investigate a suspected case of fraud against the EU budget.

In Romania, recent presidential elections revealed how TikTok could allow a little-known ultranationalist to surge to victory, while a bill to secure the independence of public service TV and radio has been languishing in parliament since 2021.

The report authors also warned that “role-model democracies”, including France and Germany, in north-western Europe were not immune to problems.

In France, researchers warned about the growing use of the article 49.3 procedure to push through decisions without a vote, as well as increasing restrictions on freedom of expression, introduced before the Olympics or to counter foreign interference.

In Germany, researchers praised stronger rules designed to combat “revolving doors”, where senior officials take up jobs in sectors they recently regulated. But they raised concerns about “excessive and disproportionate” responses to pro-Palestinian events, including censoring pro-Palestinian voices or denying entry to the country to the Greek former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who had been invited to speak at such an event. Last April police shut down what would have been a three-day Palestinian conference in Berlin, fearing it would give a platform to antisemitic views.

Poland, which is attempting to roll back the assault on independent institutions, was described as a cautionary tale. The coalition government led by Donald Tusk has sought to restore judicial independence and media pluralism, but has run into conflict with the president, Andrzej Duda, who is aligned with the previous ruling party, as well as the complexities of unpicking compromised institutions. Poland “illustrates that addressing the compromised independence of institutions is an extremely challenging and fragile endeavour”, Liberties said.

The NGO is calling on the European Commission to toughen up the EU monitoring exercise by linking it to the release of EU funds, as well as accelerated legal action for violations of the rule of law.

Hungary’s ruling coalition is continuing its crackdown on the country’s LGBTQ+ community, as members submitted a bill to parliament that would ban the popular Budapest Pride event and allow authorities to use facial recognition software to identify people attending.

The bill, presented on Monday, is almost certain to pass as the coalition has a two-thirds majority in parliament.

It would make it an offence to hold or attend events that violate Hungary’s contentious “child protection” legislation, which prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to under-18s.

Attending a prohibited event would carry fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian forints (£420), which the state would forward to “child protection”.

Pride organisers have called the prime minister Viktor Orbán’s drive to ban the event a restriction of fundamental freedoms of speech and assembly.

The proposal is the latest step against LGBTQ+ people taken by the government, which has passed legislation that rights groups and other European politicians have decried as repressive.

The government portrays itself as a champion of traditional family values and a defender of Christian civilisation from what it calls “gender madness”, and says its policies are designed to protect children from “sexual propaganda”.

Hungary’s “child protection” law was passed in 2021. Aside from banning the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality in content available to minors – including in television, films, advertisements and literature – it also prohibits the mention of LGBTQ+ issues in school education programmes, and forbids the public depiction of “gender deviating from sex at birth”.

In a speech in February, Orbán hinted that his government would take steps to ban Budapest Pride, which attracts thousands of participants and celebrates the history of the LGBTQ+ movement while asserting the equal rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Budapest Pride will mark its 30th anniversary this year.

Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder and chief executive of Telegram, has returned to Dubai after authorities allowed him to leave France, where he is under investigation over criminal activity on the messaging app.

The billionaire, 40, was arrested at Le Bourget airport outside Paris last August. He was subsequently placed under formal investigation and banned from leaving the country, where he holds citizenship.

Durov said in a message on Telegram that he had returned to Dubai after spending several months in France “due to an investigation related to the activity of criminals on Telegram”.

“The process is ongoing, but it feels great to be home,” he said. “I want to thank the investigative judges for letting this happen, as well as my lawyers and team for their relentless efforts in demonstrating that, when it comes to moderation, cooperation and fighting crime, for years Telegram not only met but exceeded its legal obligations.”

Reports by Agence France-Presse suggest a judge had modified the conditions of his bail several days previously and authorised him to leave France for “several weeks”.

Durov flew to Dubai on Saturday morning from the airport where he had been arrested. His lawyers have been approached by French media but have made no comment. Until his conditions were relaxed, he was required to report to a police station in France twice a week and had paid €5m (£4.2m) bail. The conditions were relaxed from 15 March until 7 April.

Durov’s arrest last year was the first time the founder of a major social media company has been held over content on their platform. With more than 900 million active users, Telegram is one of the world’s top messaging apps. Durov, who launched the app in 2013, is worth more than $12bn, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index.

After days of questioning after his arrest, he was charged with several counts of failing to curb child sexual abuse images and other extreme material and released on bail.

Durov is a self-avowed libertarian who has championed encrypted messaging. Telegram permits users to post video, pictures and comments on “channels”. Durov’s has just under 12 million subscribers. Telegram also supports “groups”, or communities with up to 200,000 members each.

Talking to the US journalist Tucker Carlson last year, Durov said: “[People] love the independence. They also love the privacy, the freedom, [there are] a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram.”

Durov holds Russian, French and United Arab Emirates passports. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, expressed surprise at his arrest last year, calling France’s actions “selective in nature”.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has defended a decision to grant French nationality to Durov in 2021, saying it was a strategy concerning those who “shine in the world”. Sources close to the investigation said Durov had emphasised his links to Macron during questioning.

Telegram has also flagged attempts to clean up the platform since Durov’s arrest. According to the app’s moderation page, it has blocked more than 6.1m groups and channels in 2025, including 160,000 related to child sexual abuse material. Telegram also claims to have blocked 57,000 “terrorist related communities” this year.

Durov has also received support from Elon Musk, who posted comments on his social network X under the hashtag FreePavel. The Kremlin has warned France against turning the case against Durov “into political persecution”.

Durov initially criticised his arrest and extracts from his questioning, seen by AFP, show that he initially blamed French authorities for failing to alert Telegram to alleged criminal activity.

But he also said that “it was while I was held in custody that I realised the seriousness of all the allegations”. Investigators have confronted him with more than a dozen specific cases, ranging from child abuse to drug trading, scams, arms sales and the hiring of hitmen.

Belgian actor Émilie Dequenne died of a rare cancer on Sunday in a hospital just outside Paris, her family and her agent confirmed. She was 43 years old.

She revealed in October 2023 that she was suffering from adrenocortical carcinoma, a cancer of the adrenal gland.

Her first role in the film Rosetta, by the Dardenne brothers, launched her career after she won best actress at the Cannes film festival for her performance in the film, which also won the Palme d’Or.

She picked up a string of other awards in appearances in mainly French-language films, including the 2009 movie The Girl on the Train and the 2012 drama Our Children.

She returned to the Cannes film festival in 2024 to mark the 25th anniversary of her triumph there with the Dardenne brothers, and to promote the English-language disaster movie, Survive, released the same year.

It was the last film she appeared in before illness forced her to stop working.