Comments follow an announcement from newly inaugurated US secretary of state Marco Rubio that he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days. What we know on day 1,068

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The US has not stopped military aid to Ukraine after newly sworn in US secretary of state Marco Rubio announced he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday. The Ukrainian leader did not clarify whether humanitarian aid had been paused. Ukraine relies on the US for 40% of its military needs. “I am focused on military aid; it has not been stopped, thank God,” he said at a press conference alongside Moldovan president Maia Sandu.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to offer coal to Moldova, which is gripped by an energy crisis after flows of Russian gas through Ukraine stopped in the new year. Moldova accuses Moscow of refusing to send gas by other routes. “Russia’s latest move has been to orchestrate an energy crisis,” Sandu told reporters. The Moldovan president said energy prices had shot up in areas controlled by her government, and the situation was worse in a region held by pro-Russian separatists who relied on Russian energy and were subject to daily power cuts.

US president Donald Trump could fulfil his promise to end the war in Ukraine, but only if he includes Kyiv in any talks, Zelenskyy said on Saturday. Zelenskyy also said the terms of any deal that might arise under Trump were still unclear – and might not even be clear to Trump himself – because Russian president Vladimir Putin had no interest in ending the war. Putin has said he is ‘ready for negotiations” on the war in Ukraine with Trump and suggested it would be a good idea for them to meet.

Zelenskyy said he hopes Europe and the United States would be involved in any talks about ending the war. He told reporters on Saturday that Ukraine also needed to be involved in any discussions on ending the war for such negotiations to have any meaningful impact. “As for what the set-up of the talks will be: Ukraine, I really hope Ukraine will be there, America, Europe and the Russians,” Zelenskyy said, later clarifying that no framework had been established.

The Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, has rejected calls for his resignation after tens of thousands demonstrated against his government’s policy shift closer to Russia. About 60,000 people protested in the capital, Bratislava, on Friday and approximately 100,000 turned out for rallies in cities across the country, the largest demonstrations since Fico returned to power in 2023.

Three civilians were killed on Saturday in shelling in the Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Moscow-installed governor Vladimir Saldo said. He urged the residents of Oleshky, which sits close to the frontline in southern Ukraine, to stay in their homes or in bomb shelters.

Russia attacked Ukraine with two missiles and 61 Shahed drones overnight Saturday, said officials. Ukrainian air defences shot down both missiles and 46 drones, a statement from the air force said. Another 15 drones failed to reach targets due to Ukrainian countermeasures. The downed drones caused damage in the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Khmelnytskyi regions.

Russia also struck Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region with drones causing casualties and damage, local authorities said on Saturday. Drones targeted the city’s Shevchenkivskyi, Kyivskyi and Kholodnohirskyi districts, said mayor Ihor Terekhov. Terekhov said the number of victims was still being determined, while Kharkiv’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said three people, two women and a man, were injured in the strikes.

Too dark, too cold – winter’s charms aren’t as obvious as summer’s brassy joys. But for Robert Macfarlane, Alice Oswald, Poppy Okotcha and others, this is a rich season. Here, they offer ways to lean into it, with an introduction by Jeanette Winterson

Steel-lit days. Charcoal evenings. Dark nights.

Winter is part of the cycle of life. Every season brings us something different. Something to celebrate. And that includes winter.

Kumar does his best to inject some humanist gravitas into a film set during the 1965 India-Pakistan war, that is otherwise obsessed with duty and sacrifice

The hope is that the Hindi mainstream is learning from its current spell of commercial turbulence. The evidence, alas, suggests otherwise. For Republic day in 2024, we got Fighter, a glossy all-star flypast that aped Top Gun: Maverick with added flagwaving; despite a considerable promotional push, it divebombed at the box office. This year, we get Sky Force, a period variation on much the same theme, unpicking the fallout from an Indian strike on a Pakistani airbase during the conflict of 1965. While avoiding complete crash-and-burn, directors Abhishek Anil Kapur and Sandeep Kewlani are but tinkering within an increasingly resistible framework.

For starters, this sortie is sober rather than flashy. Scenes are timestamped to underline the factual basis; the xenophobia gets dialled down as far as the genre allows. Yet the arms budget has also been slashed in Fighter’s wake. It’s not so noticeable on the ground, where Akshay Kumar’s upright Group Captain Ahuja briefs his squadron of young Tigers: flyboys with try-hard call names like Cockroach, Panther and Bull. (Imperfectly-chiselled, almost-hunky newcomer Veer Pahariya draws the short straw as Tabby, Sky Force’s own Private Ryan.) You can’t, however, miss the cheapness up in the air, where every dogfight has the look of cutscenes from a mid-90s PlayStation game.

Chancellor calls for more positivity about Britain’s strengths after returning from World Economic Forum in Davos

Britain needs to learn from Donald Trump’s “boosterism” and be more positive about its strengths, the UK chancellor has said.

Rachel Reeves said the UK should be “shouting from the rooftops”, after travelling to Davos to seek more investment in Britain at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting and visiting China in an effort to rebuild trading and financial links.

Former Beatles member says government should protect creative workers as consultation on copyright continues

Sir Paul McCartney has warned artificial intelligence could “rip off” artists if a proposed overhaul of copyright law goes ahead.

The proposals could remove the incentive for writers and artists and result in a “loss of creativity”, he told the BBC.

Sadiye, 55, a retired lawyer, meets Iwan, 62, a radiologist

What were you hoping for?
Good company and good food.

Ukrainian president issues warning after Russia’s leader said he was ‘ready for negotiations’ with US counterpart on the war. What we know on day 1,067

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Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has warned that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, is aiming to “manipulate” Donald Trump, after Putin praised the US leader and said he was ready for talks with him. “He wants to manipulate the desire of the president of the United States of America to achieve peace,” Zelenskyy said during his daily evening address on Friday. He said Putin was ready to continue the war and “manipulate the leaders of the world”.

Putin has said he is ‘ready for negotiations” on the war in Ukraine with Donald Trump and suggested it would be a good idea for them to meet. The Russian president struck a favourable tone towards his US counterpart, describing his relationship with Trump as “businesslike, pragmatic and trustworthy”. Putin echoed the US president’s claim that he would have prevented the war starting in Ukraine in 2022, and parroted Trump’s debunked assertion that the 2020 US elections were “stolen” from him.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has ordered a halt to virtually all US foreign aid, but made an exception for funding to Israel and Egypt, according to an internal memo to staff at the US state department. The sweeping order appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid – including potentially to Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Donald Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, as it tries to repel a Russian invasion. The scope of the order was not immediately known and it was unclear what funding could be cut given that the US Congress sets the federal government budget.

North Korea is preparing to send more soldiers to fight in Ukraine, military officials in South Korea have said, despite reports of heavy casualties among troops from the communist state. South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement on Friday that four months after the North sent an estimated 11,000 troops to the Ukraine conflict – a significant number of whom have been killed or wounded – the regime “is suspected of accelerating follow-up measures and preparation for an additional dispatch of troops”.

Russian aerial attacks near Kyiv killed three people and wounded several others, Ukrainian officials said on Friday. “Three people were killed in an enemy attack in the Kyiv region,” the emergency services said in a statement on social media. Fragments of a drone had struck a 10-storey residential building after the head of the region said a private home had also been hit, it added.

An overnight Ukrainian attack involving more than 121 drones had targeted 13 Russian regions, Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday, but they were repelled. Ukraine’s military said the attack hit a Russian oil refinery and a microchip factory in the Bryansk region with a video posted online showing a giant plume of smoke and flames engulfing an oil refinery in the Ryazan region.

Tens of thousands of protesters flocked to a central square in the Slovakian capital Bratislava on Friday, waving banners opposing prime minister Robert Fico’s policy shift closer to Russia. Opposition parties last week said they were initiating a no-confidence vote against Fico’s government, but the prime minister has looked set to survive the vote. The latest round of protests come after Fico privately travelled to Moscow in December to meet Vladimir Putin, a rare encounter for an EU leader since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Sales of US military equipment to foreign governments in 2024 rose by 29% to a record $318.7bn as countries sought to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine and prepare for major conflicts, the US state department said on Friday. Sales approved in the year included $23bn worth of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, $18.8bn worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel and $2.5bn worth of M1A2 Abrams tanks to Romania.

Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault and excessive drinking, and has endorsed extremist Christian doctrine

The Senate has confirmed Fox News host and army veteran Pete Hegseth to be the US secretary of defense, placing him in charge of the federal government’s largest agency after a tie-breaking vote had to be cast by JD Vance.

Three Republican senators – Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins – and every Democratic senator voted against his confirmation, leaving him with 51 votes, enough to become Donald Trump’s third cabinet member to secure Senate confirmation.

Internal memo to US state department staff explicitly makes exceptions for military assistance to Israel and Egypt

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has ordered a halt to virtually all US foreign aid, but made an exception for funding to Israel and Egypt, according to an internal memo to staff at the US state department.

“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved … as consistent with President Trump’s agenda,” said the memo.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Women from all over West Bengal and beyond travel to Vrindavan for a life of prayer, many having suffered abuse, stigma and abandonment by families who see them as cursed. Up to 20,000 widows – nearly 20% of the city’s population – have found refuge in ashrams and shelters that have sprung up to support them

• Words and photographs by Rana Pandey

Biologist says the massive numbers of jellyfish and algae in Tasmania’s Storm Bay are ‘drivers of harm in the ocean’

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A “magical” swarm of moon jellyfish colliding with algae dazzled onlookers this week, but it comes with a warning.

The bloom of jellyfish – temporary increases in populations – has occurred over the past few weeks in Storm Bay, east of Hobart, and as far as halfway up Tasmania’s east coast. The biologist and jellyfish expert Lisa-ann Gershwin said the population growth was “unprecedented” and had “stepped up dramatically” last month.

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Serge Atlaoui is expected to be transferred after an agreement was reached with the government in Paris, Yusril Ihza Mahendra says

A French man who has been on death row in Indonesia since 2007 for alleged drug offences is expected to return home in weeks after an Indonesian minister said an agreement would be signed on Friday to allow his transfer.

Serge Atlaoui is expected to return to France on 5 or 6 February, the senior minister for law and human rights affairs, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, told Reuters on Friday.

Trump says Opec should cut oil prices to starve Russia of war funding; Ukraine evacuating children from towns in Kharkiv region. What we know on day 1,066

• See all our Ukraine war coverage

Russian crews were responding to an air attack in the Ryazan region south-east of Moscow over Thursday night. Social media channels posted videos of what appeared to be very large blazes in the city and said a major oil refinery and a power station had been hit by Ukrainian drones. The Ryazan governor, Pavel Markov, said air defence units destroyed drones. The Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said air defences intercepted attacks by Ukrainian drones at four locations around Russia’s capital and more drones headed for the capital.

Donald Trump has told the Davos World Economic Forum conference that he wants to meet Vladimir Putin soon and “stop this ridiculous war”. Trump, who has threatened to impose punitive measures on Russia if no deal is reached, said: “I really would like to be able to meet with President Putin soon to get that war ended … And that’s not from the standpoint of economy or anything else. It’s from the standpoint of millions of lives are being wasted … It’s a carnage. And we really have to stop that war.”

Heather Stewart writes that in his online address to Davos, the US president accused the Opec global oil producers of prolonging the Ukraine war by failing to cut their prices, which, if they did, would hurt Russian oil revenues and “the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately”.

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was nothing particularly new in Trump’s threats about ending the war but Moscow was following closely “all nuances” in rhetoric and remained open to dialogue. Peskov said Trump had often applied sanctions on Russia during his first term as president.

Trump’s comments have been welcomed by Ukraine. “We do really welcome such strong messages from President Trump and we believe that he will be the winner. And we believe that we have an additional chance to get new dynamic in diplomatic efforts to end this war,” said Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha.

Russia has rejected the idea of Nato countries sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire. Maria Zakharova, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said it could cause an “uncontrollable escalation”. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said on Tuesday that at least 200,000 European peacekeepers would be needed to prevent a new Russian attack after any ceasefire deal.

Ukraine announced evacuations of children from several towns in the north-eastern Kharkiv region threatened by Russian forces. The Kharkiv region governor, Oleg Synegubov, said “267 children and their families are to be evacuated from 16 settlements to safe places”. Synegubov said the towns and villages affected were near Kupiansk, a town Russia has tried to capture for months where fighting is raging around its outskirts. “The decision was made due to the intensified hostile shelling. We urge families with minors to save their lives and leave the dangerous areas,” Synegubov said.

Ukraine is in the final stages of drafting recruitment reforms to attract 18- to 25-year-olds who are currently exempt from mobilisation, the battlefield commander recently appointed to the president’s office said. Col Pavlo Palisa said the current drafting system inherited from Soviet times was hindering progress. Though Ukraine has already passed a mobilisation law lowering the age of conscription from 27 to 25, the measures have not had the impact needed to replenish its ranks or replace battlefield losses in its war with Russia.

One initiative is what Palisa described as an “honest contract” that includes financial incentives, clear guarantees for training, and measures to ensure dialogue between soldiers and their commanders. The plan would also target Ukrainians who have the right to deferment or were discharged after the mobilisation law was passed. “As of now, my view is that we need to start an open dialogue with society,” Palisa said. “Because the defence of the state is not only the responsibility of the armed forces. It is the duty of every Ukrainian citizen, and it is their obligation.”

Executive order signed by Trump, which was to take effect on 19 February, is already the subject of five lawsuits

A federal judge in Seattle blocked Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday from implementing an executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.

US district judge John Coughenour at the urging of four Democratic-led states issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, which the Republican president signed on Monday during his first day on office.

Spanish Town brought to standstill amid gunfire on streets after police kill Othneil ‘Thickman’ Lobban

Schools and businesses in a Jamaican city have been closed and taxis and buses stopped running after the police shooting of a powerful gang boss prompted a violent backlash.

Gunfire echoed throughout Spanish Town on Thursday and at least one business was burned hours after police shot dead Othneil “Thickman” Lobban, whom they described as a top leader of the One Order gang.

Our writers highlight the films they find endlessly rewatchable, including Notting Hill and Married to the Mob

“Feelgood” movies are often thought of as big-hearted romantic comedies, comforting classics, or childhood favourites that still hold up decades later. In our series, My feelgood movie, Guardian writers reflect on their go-to flick, and explain why their pick is endlessly rewatchable.

This list will be updated weekly with further picks.

Married to the Mob is available on Hoopla, Kanopy and Pluto in the US and Amazon Prime in the UK

Hughes fire near Castaic Lake broke out on Wednesday and led to evacuation orders or warnings for more than 50,000

Firefighters fought to maintain the upper hand on a huge and rapidly moving wildfire that swept through rugged mountains north of Los Angeles and resulted in more than 50,000 people being put under evacuation orders or warnings.

The Hughes fire broke out late Wednesday morning and in less than a day had charred nearly 16 sq miles (41 sq km) of trees and brush near Castaic Lake, a popular recreation area about 40 miles (64km) from the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires that are burning for a third week.

Thailand has become the first country in south-east Asia to hold legal same-sex weddings, with LGBTQ+ groups aiming to mark the occasion with more than 1,000 marriage registrations in a single day

• ‘I am so proud’: Joy as Thailand’s same-sex couples can at last get married

Photographer Richard Sharum visited the central states – condescendingly dismissed for years – to see if he could find any unifying aspects of national spirit

Houthis in Yemen said 25-member crew of Galaxy Leader had been freed ‘in support’ of the Gaza ceasefire agreement

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Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have released the crew of the Galaxy Leader more than a year after they seized the Bahamas-flagged vessel off the Yemeni Red Sea coast, Houthi-owned Al Masirah TV has reported.

It said on Wednesday the crew were handed to Oman “in coordination” with the three-day-old ceasefire in Gaza’s war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Over a four-decade career, the Franco-Haitian artist has built his own world of contrasts, contradictions and blissful escape

Juan Guillermo Garcés had a brush with death while burning jungle for cattle pasture – now he runs a nature reserve in Colombia where more than 100 new species have been discovered

• Words and photographs by Anastasia Austin and Douwe den Held

Juan Guillermo Garcés remembers coming face to face with death at age 17. Smoke filled the air, choking his lungs. The temperature rose and Garcés struggled to see through the haze. Panic set in as he watched monkeys, snakes, lizards and birds desperately trying to escape the flames surrounding them.

Garcés and his brother started the fire that nearly killed them to clear a large stretch of land. But when the wind suddenly changed direction, they found themselves locked in. The brothers survived, but the fire destroyed the little remaining patch of virgin forest on the family’s 2,500-hectare (6,200-acre) ranch, nestled along Colombia’s Magdalena River. Experiencing firsthand what the animals and plants endured was a turning point for Garcés.