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US funding for global internet freedom ‘effectively gutted’

For nearly two decades, the US quietly funded a global effort to keep the internet from splintering into fiefdoms run by authoritarian governments. Now that money is seriously threatened and a large part of it is already gone, putting into jeopardy internet freedoms around the world. Managed by the US state department and the US Agency for Global Media, the programme – broadly called Internet Freedom – funds small groups all over the world, from Iran to China to the Philippines, who built grassroots technologies to evade internet controls imposed by governments. It has dispensed well over $500m (£370m) in the past decade, according to an analysis by the Guardian, including $94m in 2024. Then came Doge, Donald Trump’s department of government efficiency, tasked with reducing the size of US government agencies and initiatives. Career employees who staffed Internet Freedom resigned or were sacked in 2025 as part of larger reductions. Many of its programmes were cut permanently; its main granting office issued no money in 2025. The Open Technology Fund (OTF), a nonprofit that works with the government to direct roughly half of this money, won a lawsuit to get some of this funding restored in December; the Trump administration is now appealing against that ruling. Meanwhile, the Trump administration this January withdrew from the Freedom Online Coalition, a global alliance set up by the US to defend digital rights. The cuts risk curtailing technologies that helped Iranians to coordinate during recent anti-government protests, and that allowed videos and images of massacres to reach the outside world. They could have a major impact in other nations too; the efforts of groups in Myanmar to get past the junta’s “digital iron curtain”, and the ability of users in China to avoid surveillance. “The programme was effectively gutted,” said a former US official. “They didn’t issue any grants this year.” “I would like to live in a world where a single US programme is not such a linchpin, such a load-bearing programme, but it has been. It’s hard to deny it has been,” said one digital rights expert based in Europe who has worked on a number of projects for Internet Freedom. To report this story, the Guardian spoke to 10 people with knowledge of Internet Freedom, including six of its grantees, and reviewed documents related to its operations and budget. The US Department of State has been approached for comment. The OTF declined to comment. The purpose of the programme was to make it extremely difficult to do what North Korea has accomplished through decades of censorship efforts, and what Iran succeeded in doing this January during a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests: cut an entire population off from the global internet. The US aimed to circumvent this by funding groups capable of building and harnessing technologies that evade such restrictions and censorship. These include familiar tools, such as the encrypted messaging service Signal and the Tor browser, which allows users to be anonymous online. They also include far more powerful tools. Advanced circumvention technologies can make it possible to get past even extremely powerful censorship regimes – to leap the firewall in China, for example, or to obtain international news in Iran even when mobile phone networks are out, through methods like satellite datacasting, in which data is broadcast in a similar way to television signal. Another technology has allowed Iranians to securely communicate during recent anti-government protests, alerting each other to shootings and police presence, even as the rest of the internet has been cut off. The soft-power aim behind this was to keep the internet as it is: mostly accessible, mostly a global commons. The groups it funded made censorship costly and difficult. “When you challenge censorship, the long-term effect is that oppressive governments must either open their internet, or to go in the direction of North Korea,” said the former US official. “But because each of those options is costly for them, they’ll keep trying to censor their networks so as to have the economic benefits of the internet without the drawbacks of freedom of speech and access to information. So the fight continues.” “Internet Freedom funded the development of many of the censorship-circumvention technologies that millions of people around the world depend on to maintain a link to the outside world,” said Doug Madory, an internet infrastructure expert who works closely with many of these groups. Their makers are “often operating on a shoestring and passion. They believe in the cause. There’s no fancy offices, they’re working out of their apartments. It’s not a moneyed industry.” Most recipients of this money keep it quiet; it’s a dangerous thing, in some places, to take state department funds. But even as the funds run out, more and more organisations – journalists, activists, and civil society – are seeking out these technologies, and the groups that build them. Censorship regimes are getting worse worldwide. “It’s a massive blow. The need is bigger and other funding is also gone. Organisations that provide these tools are being overwhelmed,” said the digital rights expert. “It’s not sustainable.” Some of the groups working on these technologies have laid off staff; others are continuing without pay. A few hold out hope that some money can be restored – although they fear that the Trump administration might more overtly politicise its aims. While a recent appropriations bill contains a budget line for Internet Freedom, it names no specific programmes as recipients of this cash. Others say they’re existing in a brief grace period as the rest of the funds run out. “Everybody’s just waiting right now, to be honest. But at the same time, wait at your own risk,” said an Iranian technologist funded through Internet Freedom. Meanwhile, censorship tech is growing cheaper and easier to access. Chinese companies have exported sophisticated middleboxes – devices that sit on network cables and allow authorities to monitor internet traffic – to countries across Africa and Asia in the past year. These allow regimes such as Iran’s to fine-tune their control over the domestic internet – allowing commerce to continue, for example, while communication is throttled. Several recipients of the US money expressed hope that Europe might fund these technologies in the future; some have already petitioned EU officials for funding. The cuts “make it easier to build a ‘digital iron curtain’. It makes it easier for the Kremlin to put Russians in a digital information bubble that reinforces specific narratives about people outside of Russia. This makes it easier for China to do this. For Iran to do this,” one said.

‘It’s a catastrophe’: Wellington rages as millions of litres of raw sewage pour into ocean

A tide of anger is rising in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, as the city’s toilets continue to flush directly into the ocean more than two weeks after the catastrophic collapse of its wastewater treatment plant. Millions of litres of raw and partially screened sewage have been pouring into pristine reefs and a marine reserve along the south coast daily since 4 February, prompting a national inquiry, as the authorities struggle to get the decimated plant operational. Abandoned beaches, public health warning signs and seagulls eating human waste are now features of the popular coastline, with the environmental disaster zone adjacent to the airport where thousands of international visitors alight every day. Fears for the safety of marine ecosystems – including vulnerable species such as the little blue penguin, or kororā, which nest along the shore – are mixed with concerns over the length and cost of disruption to those who depend on the coast for income, wellness, and recreation. As a southerly storm whipped through the lower North Island and churned up polluted seawater this week, hundreds of residents turned out to a public meeting to seek answers. “They’re warning us to close our windows because a shit-laden hurricane is coming at us,” said the south coast resident and environmentalist Eugene Doyle, whose house faces the sea. “Everyone in charge has done an appalling job, and they need to be held accountable.” Ray Ahipene-Mercer, 78, who led a 16-year campaign to get the treatment plant built throughout the 80s, said he felt gutted. Before 1998, the ocean smelled and looked terrible, with visible excrement on the rocks and surfers routinely emerging with ear infections and gastroenteritis. “I thought it was all done, and here we are back to where we were 30 years ago,” Ahipene-Mercer, of Ngāi Tara descent, said. “It’s a catastrophe.” On 4 February, an overnight electrical failure flooded the Moa Point wastewater treatment plant, destroying 80% of the equipment. Initially, raw sewage was being pumped directly out of a five-metre pipe near a beach at Tarakena Bay. Now, most sewage is being sent 1.8km offshore in the Cook Strait, after being screened for large objects such as tampons and wet wipes. Water management has long been a contentious issue in New Zealand, with legislation to centralise its control and overhaul outdated services thrown out by the National-led coalition government in favour of local reforms in early 2024. In Wellington, ageing pipes have caused issues with wastewater and stormwater flooding. The Moa Point plant is owned and overseen by two layers of local government and a council-owned water utility – Wellington Water – who contract the French-owned waste management company Veolia to run the plant. “It looked convoluted to me, and it wasn’t clear where actual authority lay,” the Wellington mayor, Andrew Little, who has been in the job four months, told the Guardian, adding that Wellingtonians were in a “state of shock”. A crown inquiry called by the local government minister, Simon Watts, will look into the causes of the disaster. “The public is owed the assurance that we understand what led to this failure and that we are taking steps to prevent it from happening again,” Watts told Radio New Zealand. He said that as part of the coalition government’s water reforms, a new entity, Tiaki Wai, would take over from Wellington Water in July, which he expected to improve services. Councils were responsible for underinvesting in water infrastructure, and new legislation would address this, he said. Little said he could not speculate on the causes due to the inquiry. Wellington Water did not respond to specific questions by deadline, and has said it could not comment publicly due to the ongoing inquiry. Veolia also declined to comment. Wellington Water chair Pat Dougherty previously told Radio New Zealand there had been underinvestment over a long period at Moa Point, and he backed an investigation. “I worry that there may have been some early warning signs that there were troubles with the discharge and we missed those. But everything needs to be on the table.” But for many, this is cold comfort. Locals say lower-level pollution has already marred the short Wellington summer, with recurring sewage discharges pointing to a deeper issue at the plant. Official reports showcontinuing issues and warnings about underfunding for years, and the authorities have said a fix could still be months away. “We are looking at generations of negligence, at a time where our climate is changing dramatically,” said Tamatha Paul, the Green party MP for Wellington Central and former city councillor who called this week’s meeting. “The way this will affect really vulnerable, delicate species that are already endangered, the fact their entire habitat is being devastated is heartbreaking.” Central government help is crucial, she said. Local iwi [tribes] have long opposed any wastewater going into the ocean, Taranaki Whanui chair Te Whatanui Winiata said. “This is our source of sustenance, we are relations to the moana [ocean]. We have been crying about this from the start, saying this kind of sewage system just causes havoc. The response from our people is outrage, shock, and anguish.” As beaches remain closed and businesses report losses, the Victoria University marine biologist Christopher Cornwall said “huge numbers” of marine creatures who call the various reefs around the south coast home would be suffering the most. Continued pollution could cause a mass kelp die-off in the Taputeranga Marine Reserve – home to species such as mussels, kina, pāua, sea sponges, fish, crayfish, octopus and penguins – killing their homes and food sources, he said. Human-borne bacteria and viruses could make these sea creatures sick, along with accumulating in shellfish, making them unsafe to eat. Microplastics get into the stomachs of seabirds and penguins who eat human waste, making them think they are full so that they die of starvation. The Department of Conservation has said the extent of the damage is not yet known, but would be affected by the length and volume of discharge, ocean currents and wind. New Zealanders needed to rethink why wastewater was going into oceans in the first place, Cornwall said. “I have no idea why you’d put a pipe in between two reefs anyway, and now all those fecal materials are just getting swept right in. Why are we pumping sewage out on to a kelp forest? It’s clearly not OK, and we should never have been in this situation.” It’s a feeling shared by many. From her home in Island Bay, Kayla Henderson often watches dolphins playing in Taputeranga reserve. Outside the meeting this week, the young ocean lover felt helpless. “I just care about the environment,” she said. “And I want to have faith that we won’t have raw sewage and rubbish going into protected marine waterways. I didn’t think it would be that hard.”

Ukraine war briefing: Trump sees conflict as ‘very unfair’ for war dead and US taxpayers, says White House

Donald Trump views the Ukraine war as very unfair on not only those killed but also on US taxpayers, the White House has said. Speaking in Washington after two days of trilateral peace talks in Geneva ended without a breakthrough, the White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said there had been “meaningful progress made” with pledges “to continue to work towards a peace deal together”. But she also said Trump viewed the situation – nearly four years into the war – as “very unfair, not just for Russians and Ukrainians who have lost their lives, but also for the American people and the American taxpayer who were footing the bill for this war effort before President Trump put a stop to it”. In March last year the Trump administration suspended delivery of all US military aid to Ukraine, blocking billions of dollars’ worth of crucial shipments, as the White House piled pressure on Kyiv to reach a peace deal with Russia. The US and its allies later developed a mechanism where Ukraine is supplied with weapons from US stocks bought with funds from Nato countries. After the two days of US-brokered talks in Geneva between Ukraine and Russia ended on Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was dissatisfied with the outcome. Officials from Kyiv and Moscow both said the discussions were difficult. At the conclusion the delegations said they would meet again, without providing a date, while Zelenskyy and the White House suggested discussions could occur soon. As fighting continued in the war, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address: “As of today, we cannot say that the result is sufficient. The military discussed certain issues seriously and substantively. Sensitive political matters, possible compromises and the necessary meeting of leaders have not yet been sufficiently addressed.” Zelenskyy wrote on X as the two sides met in the US-mediated talks that Russia was “trying to drag out negotiations that could already have reached the final stage”. Moments after his statement, the delegations broke off the talks after just two hours. Pjotr Sauer reports that Zelenskyy said after the talks that “some groundwork” had been done, “but for now the positions differ, because the negotiations were not easy”. The Ukrainian president said the status of Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine and the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which remains under Moscow’s control, were among the most contentious unresolved issues. Russian crude shipments in January made up the smallest portion of India’s oil imports since late 2022, according to data from industry sources. India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer, ramped up purchases of discounted Russian oil after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with volumes topping 2m barrels per day in some months. However, western sanctions over the war and pressure to clinch a trade deal with the US have forced India to scale back Russian oil purchases, the data showed. China has, since November, replaced India as Russia’s top buyer of seaborne crude. Ukraine imposed sanctions against the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, on Wednesday, vowing to “increase countermeasures” against Minsk for wartime assistance to close ally Russia. “We will significantly intensify countermeasures against all forms of [Lukashenko’s] assistance in the killing of Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said on social media. The Belarusian presidency’s press service did not immediately respond to a request for comment. With Lukashenko already under US and European sanctions, the move is largely symbolic. The owner of Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk has donated more than $200,000 to the skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych. The athlete was disqualified from the Winter Olympics before competing over the use of a helmet depicting Ukrainian athletes killed in the war with Russia, the club said on Tuesday. A delegation of Democratic US senators was returning Wednesday from a trip to Ukraine, hoping to spur action in Congress for a series of sanctions meant to economically cripple Moscow and pressure President Vladimir Putin to make key concessions in peace talks. It was the first time US senators have visited Odesa, an economically crucial Ukrainian Black Sea port city that has been particularly targeted by Russia in the war. “One of the things we heard wherever we stopped today was that the people of Ukraine want a peace deal, but they want a peace deal that preserves their sovereignty, that recognises the importance of the integrity of Ukraine,” said the senator Jeanne Shaheen. Hungary is suspending its shipments of diesel to neighbouring Ukraine until interruptions to Russian oil supplies via a pipeline that crosses Ukrainian territory are resolved, Hungary’s foreign minister said. Amid accusations from Hungary and Slovakia that Kyiv has deliberately held up supplies, Péter Szijjártó said in a video posted on social media that the interruption to oil deliveries was “a political decision made by the Ukrainian president himself”. Ukraine has denied such accusations.

Gaza death toll in early part of war far higher than reported, says Lancet study

More than 75,000 people were killed in the first 16 months of the two-year war in Gaza, at least 25,000 more than the death toll announced by local authorities at the time, according to a study published on Wednesday in the Lancet medical journal. The research also found that reporting by the Gaza health ministry about the proportion of women, children and elderly people among those killed was accurate. A total of 42,200 women, children and elderly people died between 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack into Israel that prompted a devastating Israeli offensive into Gaza, and 5 January 2025, the study found. These deaths comprised 56% of violent deaths in Gaza. “The combined evidence suggests that, as of 5 January 2025, 3-4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed violently and there have been a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict,” the authors of the study, a team including an economist, demographer, epidemiologist and survey specialists, wrote in the Lancet Global Health. The exact death toll in Gaza has been bitterly disputed, although last month a senior Israeli security officer told Israeli journalists that figures compiled by health authorities in Gaza were broadly accurate, marking a U-turn after years of official attacks on the data. The officer was quoted as saying that about 70,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks on the territory since October 2023, excluding those missing. Gaza health authorities now say the direct toll from Israeli attacks has exceeded 71,660 people, including more than 570 killed since a ceasefire came into effect in October 2025. Researchers who published a study in the Lancet last year estimated the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the war given by the Palestinian territory’s health ministry was about 40% lower than their estimate. The new research also suggests that official death toll was a substantial undercount, and by a roughly similar margin. It was based on a survey of 2,000 families in Gaza, carefully selected to be representative of the territory’s population, who were asked to give details of deaths among their members. The survey was run by experienced Palestinian pollsters known for their work in Palestine and elsewhere in the region. “This is a very sensitive survey, and potentially very upsetting [for respondents], so it was important to have Palestinians both asking and answering the questions,” said Michael Spagat, a professor of economics at Royal Holloway, University of London, one of the authors of the peer-reviewed study. Spagat, who has worked on the calculation of casualties of conflicts for more than 20 years, said the new research suggested 8,200 deaths in Gaza from October 2023 to January 2025 were attributable to indirect effects , such as malnutrition or untreated disease. He questioned another study published in the Lancet in 2024 that estimated there would be four “indirect” deaths for every “direct” death. “There is a huge variation depending on the specific circumstances of every conflict. In Kosovo [conflict of 1998-99] almost all the deaths were violent. In somewhere like Darfur, you see something very different. In Gaza, at least initially, there were resources in terms of well-trained doctors and a health system … Also, the territory is very small, so when aid does flow you can reach people,” Spagat said. “I would push back on the notion that this is a small number of deaths. I think we’re experiencing desensitisation effects …. But, yes, it’s much lower than what many people say and believe.” The Hamas raid of October 2023 killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while 250 were taken hostage by the militant Islamist organisation. Israel launched its retaliatory assault within hours, devastating much of Gaza with airstrikes, tank shelling and artillery bombardment. The study covers the most intense and lethal period of Israel’s offensive, but not the most acute period of the humanitarian crisis in the territory. Famine in Gaza was declared by UN-backed experts in August last year. The proportion of combatants to non-combatants among those killed in Gaza has also been bitterly disputed. Israeli officials have claimed their attacks killed an almost equal number of each. The new study contradicts this claim. In November, a research team from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research estimated that 78,318 people had been killed in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 31 December 2024 – almost exactly the same period as the new study. But that research also suggested a much higher number of indirect deaths, which contributed to a reduction of life expectancy in Gaza by 44% in 2023 and by 47% in 2024. Spagat said reaching a definitive figure of those killed in the conflict would take a long time and significant resources. Figures given even in the most recent study published this week have significant margins of error. “It is not a given that there will be a multimillion-pound research project to reconstruct what actually happened. It will be a long time before we get to a full accounting of all the people killed in Gaza, if we ever get there,” he said.

Trump tells Starmer handing Chagos Islands to Mauritius is a ‘big mistake’

Donald Trump has urged Keir Starmer not to hand the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius, warning he was “making a big mistake”. Under the deal agreed last year, Britain would cede control over the British Indian Ocean Territory but lease the largest island, Diego Garcia, for 99 years to continue operating a joint US-UK military base there. Earlier this month, Trump said the plan to hand the Chagos Islands back was the “best” deal Starmer could make, watering down his previous criticism. On Tuesday, the state department gave its official backing to the deal. However, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, the US president wrote: “Our relationship with the United Kingdom is a strong and powerful one, and it has been for many years, but prime minister Starmer is losing control of this important island by claims of entities never known of before. In our opinion, they are fictitious in nature.” Trump added that if Iran did not make a peace deal with the US, “it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia”, as well as RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, to “eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous regime – an attack that would potentially be made on the United Kingdom, as well as other friendly countries”. “Prime minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100-year lease,” the US president continued. “This land should not be taken away from the UK and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our great ally. We will always be ready, willing and able to fight for the UK, but they have to remain strong in the face of wokeism, and other problems put before them.” Last month, the US president had described ceding sovereignty as an “act of great stupidity”. His latest statement comes only a day after the US Department of State said it “supports the decision of the United Kingdom to proceed with its agreement with Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago”. When asked about Trump’s latest social media post on Wednesday evening, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters: “The post should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration. It’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth.” The UK’s shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, said Trump had “once again publicly rebuked Keir Starmer and his government over their ill-judged, unnecessary and expensive Chagos surrender. This is an utter humiliation for Starmer.” The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said Trump’s “flip-flopping” on the issue showed why Starmer’s approach was “doomed to fail”. “Britain can’t rely on the US while Trump is in the White House,” he said. “It’s time to strengthen our ties with allies we can depend on, starting with our neighbours in Europe.” A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The deal to secure the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia military is crucial to the security of the UK and our key allies, and to keeping the British people safe. “The agreement we have reached is the only way to guarantee the long-term future of this vital military base.” On Wednesday, British authorities issued removal orders against four Chagossians who landed this week on a remote atoll in the Chagos Archipelago in an attempt to complicate British plans to transfer the territory. The four landed on Monday on Île du Coin, part of the Peros Banhos atoll, with more expected to join them in what would be a permanent settlement. The removal orders seen by Reuters, addressed to them individually, were issued by a British Indian Ocean Territory immigration official and stated they are unlawfully present in the territory and will be removed. It warned that breaching the order by returning would be a criminal offence punishable with up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of £3,000 ($4,060). The UK’s deal is opposed by some Chagossians, who accuse Mauritius of decades of neglect. Mauritius has denied the accusations. Up to 2,000 Chagossians were forcibly removed from the archipelago in the 1960s and 1970s and resettled mainly in Mauritius and Britain. Many want the right to return to their homeland. The UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination has urged Britain and Mauritius not to ratify the 2025 agreement, saying it risks perpetuating historical rights violations.

Climber faces manslaughter charge after leaving girlfriend on Austria’s tallest peak

An Austrian mountaineer is to appear in court accused of gross negligent manslaughter after his girlfriend died of hypothermia when he left her close to the summit on a climb that went dramatically wrong. The 33-year-old woman, identified only as Kerstin G, froze to death on 19 January 2025, about 50 metres below the summit of the Großglockner, Austria’s tallest mountain, after an ascent of more than 17 hours with her boyfriend, Thomas P, 36. Prosecutors argue that Thomas P’s alleged poor judgment and willingness as the more experienced climber to take risks make him criminally liable for her death, in a case that could have implications for mountain sports and which has prompted debate in Austria and beyond. If found guilty, Thomas P could spend three years in prison. The couple had set out on the morning of 18 January but conditions deteriorated, leaving them struggling in darkness against a temperature that fell to almost -9C, a wind chill of -20C, and gusts of up to 45mph, the court in Innsbruck will hear when the trial opens on Thursday. Thomas P left Kerstin G at about 2am in a state of exhaustion and unprotected when he descended the mountain to fetch help. He denies manslaughter. His lawyer, Kurt Jelinek, called Kerstin G’s death “a tragic accident”. The senior public prosecutor Hansjörg Mayr and his team are citing the legal concept of the “tour guide acting as a courtesy” in the case, which designates the person with more experience and knowledge and the key decision-maker as having most responsibility. The prosecutors therefore accuse Thomas P of failing in his responsibility as the more experienced climber, listing nine major errors. These include forging ahead with the climb despite the fact Kirsten G had “never undertaken an Alpine tour of this length, difficulty and altitude and despite the challenging weather conditions”. The couple had started out two hours later than advised and had not been sufficiently equipped with emergency bivouac equipment, the prosecutors said. Neither had Thomas P advised Kerstin G that the snowboard boots she was wearing were inadequate for the terrain. Prosecutors also allege Thomas P was negligent in failing to turn back and question why, despite his partner’s exhaustion, he failed to make an emergency call before nightfall and did not send distress signals to a passing rescue helicopter. “Around 2am, the defendant left his girlfriend unprotected, exhausted, hypothermic, and disoriented approximately 50 metres below the summit cross of the Großglockner,” Mayr said. Jelinek disputes the prosecutor’s version, saying the couple had organised the tour together, and were “sufficiently experienced, adequately prepared and well-equipped”, with “relevant Alpine experience” and “in very good physical condition”. More than 7,000 people climb the 3,798-metre-high (12,461ft) Großglockner every year. About 200 deaths of mountaineers have been recorded there, but none has attracted as much attention as that of Kerstin G. Her mother, Gertraud G, who is due to give evidence, has said she does not hold Thomas P responsible for her daughter’s death and has spoken of a “witch-hunt” against him. In a recent interview with the German weekly Die Zeit, Gertraud G said she was upset at the way in which her daughter, who she said had discovered her passion for mountain climbing during the pandemic, had been depicted. “It makes me angry that Kerstin is being portrayed as a stupid little thing,” she said. “Kerstin was in top physical condition. And she had already mastered far more difficult climbing tours, both alone and with her boyfriend.”

Penelope Putz obituary

My wife, Penelope Putz, who has died aged 95, was a Quaker all her life and took inspiration from Quaker values. The passion she felt against injustice led her to become a committed activist. Penelope campaigned for peace, the environment, with the Conservation Society (one of the first British environment societies) and Extinction Rebellion (XR), and against her pension being invested in fossil fuels. She was bitterly opposed to the Iraq war and wrote often to Tony Blair to tell him so. She attended peace vigils and the regular silent vigils in Exeter to support Palestine and protest against the inhumane bombardment of Gaza. She was born in Wellington, Somerset. Her parents were Griselda (nee Bigland) and Lloyd Fox, both from Quaker families; Griselda contributed to the Guardian’s Country diary column for many years in the 1960s and 70s. Penelope attended the Mount school, York, and then went to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1949 to study history; I met her there through mutual Quaker friends and caught her interest when she heard that my father worked for the Manchester Guardian. We married in 1952 and the following year moved to a small village in Devon, where Penelope set up and chaired a local branch of the Family Planning Association. She joined the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital (NAWCH) after being shocked by our three-year-old daughter’s experience as a patient; she later campaigned nationally with the Conservation Society on green matters. In 1973 she became a social worker, mainly dealing with people with learning disabilities. Before retiring, Penelope qualified as a counsellor and when she finished full-time employment in 1995 she worked with Cruse, the bereavement support charity, for a number of years. Penelope loved to perform, acting in many amateur dramatic productions, writing sharp parody poems with a political message, which she shared with her friends. There were things she disliked deeply: muzak in restaurants, extremes of heat and cold, bigots and autocrats, magpies and pigeons, weeds, bought cut flowers and waste of any kind. Following a serious accident in 2024 while we were in the Greek islands, she persevered in order to return to her previous activities, using her buggy to get to demos and vigils. She is survived by me, our three children, Catherine, Rachel and Nick, and two grandchildren, Ruth and Bridget. A great-granddaughter, Alma, was born four days after Penelope’s death.

Zelenskyy says no agreement on key issues in peace talks as he accuses Russia of ‘dragging out negotiations’ – as it happened

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there has been no agreement between Ukraine and Russia on the key issues at the US-mediated talks in Geneva. “We can see that some groundwork has been done, but for now the positions differ, because the negotiations were not easy,” the Ukrainian president told reporters after the talks had finished, according to the AFP news agency. The latest round of US-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Geneva on Wednesday ended without a major breakthrough, as fighting continues in a war that will enter its fifth year next week. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said no agreement had been reached on the thorniest questions at the negotiations in Switzerland, accusing Moscow of “trying to drag out” the process. Ukraine has sanctioned the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko for providing military support to Russia and enabling “the killing of Ukrainians”, Zelenskyy has announced. Lukashenko, one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, has allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory as a launchpad for its invasion of Ukraine. Russia has demanded for evidence after five European countries accused Moscow of poisoning the outspoken Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny with a dart frog poison. The UK, France, Germany Sweden and the Netherlands said on Saturday that laboratory testing of samples from Navalny’s body had confirmed the presence of epibatidine, a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America and not found naturally in Russia. Slovakia has threatened to cut emergency electricity supplies to Kyiv if it does not reopen a pipeline that brings Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary. Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico, who is a close ally of Putin’s along with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, declared a state of emergency over oil supplies. Four South African men who were lured into fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine landed at Johannesburg’s main airport on Wednesday, public broadcaster the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. Police were waiting at OR Tambo International Airport, the SABC said. A police spokesperson declined comment, directing enquiries to the foreign affairs ministry. Ukraine’s sports minister has condemned the decision to allow six Russians and four Belarusians to compete under their nation’s flags at next month’s Winter Paralympics as “disappointing and outrageous” and said Ukraine officials will not attend the opening ceremony or other official events as a result. “The flags of Russia and Belarus have no place at international sporting events that stand for fairness, integrity, and respect,” said Matvii Bidnyi in response to the International Paralympic Committee’s decision on Monday. Russia and Cuba on Wednesday criticised the US energy blockade of the Caribbean island in a show of solidarity in Moscow, where Havana’s foreign minister was due to meet with president Vladimir Putin. Cuba’s top diplomat Bruno Rodriguez travelled to traditional ally Russia seeking help as his country reels from a severe fuel crisis – intensified by Washington’s de-facto oil blockade. Slovakia has threatened to cut emergency electricity supplies to Kyiv if it does not reopen a pipeline that brings Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary. Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico, who is a close ally of Putin’s along with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, declared a state of emergency over oil supplies. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was open to a social media ban for children. “If children today, at the age of 14, have up to five hours or more of screen time a day, if their entire socialisation takes place only through this medium, then we shouldn’t be surprised by personality deficits and problems in the social behaviour of young people,” he said in an interview with the podcast Machtwechsel. Heavy snow and rain across Romania left 200,000 homes without electricity on Wednesday, energy minister Bogdan Ivan said, with traffic blocked on motorways and national roads and dozens of trains delayed. Public transport in the capital, Bucharest, was struggling under 40 cm (16 inches) of snow, Reuters reported. Fallen trees halted road and rail traffic, schools closed in several towns and 10 ambulances in six counties were snowed in, the national emergency response agency said. France has launched wide-ranging investigations into human trafficking and financial fraud among contacts of the late convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following the release of a trove of files on his activities. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told France Info radio on Wednesday that the investigations will rely on publicly available material alongside complaints filed by child protection groups.