The Norwegian government has paused its plans to mine the deep sea in the Arctic, after pressure from a small leftwing party.

The agreement was reached after the Socialist Left (SV) party said it would not support the government’s budget unless it halted the first round of licences for deep-sea mining exploration, planned for the first half of 2025.

“This puts a stop to the plans to start deep-sea mining until the end of the government’s term,” said Kirsti Bergstø, the leader of the SV party.

In January, Norway became the first country in the world to give the go-ahead to commercial deep-sea mining, after parliamentary approval. The coalition government said that while the licences had been suspended preparatory work would still continue, including carrying out an environmental impact assessment and setting regulations.

“This will be a postponement,” the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, from the Labour party, told the private broadcaster TV2 on Sunday.

Environmental groups described the news as a “historic win” for ocean protection.

Oslo had planned to let companies apply to mine 280,000 sq km (108,000 sq miles) of its waters, an area greater than the UK, for deep-sea minerals.

“After hard work from activists, environmentalists, scientists and fishermen, we have secured a historic win for ocean protection, as the opening process for deep-sea mining in Norway has been stopped,” said Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, a deep-sea mining campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic.

Norway is being sued by one of the world’s largest environmental groups, WWF, over its move to open up the seabed for mining. WWF claims it has failed to properly investigate the consequences. The Norwegian Environment Agency, which advises the government, has also said the impact assessment does not provide a sufficient scientific or legal basis for deep-sea mining.

The plans have also met international opposition. In February, the European parliament expressed its concern over Norway’s decision, and called on member states to support a moratorium.

The government has said an official study showed that substantial accumulations of metals and minerals, ranging from copper to rare earth elements, had been found on its continental shelf. It argues such metals are needed for the green transition to fossil fuels.

A coalition of 32 countries, including the UK, Germany, France, Canada and Brazil, has called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters.

As meteorological autumn drew to a close at the end of last week, parts of the north-east of the US saw substantial snowfall thanks to a phenomenon known as “lake-effect snow”.

This occurs when cold air passes over relatively warm lake waters, causing the layer of air near to the surface to absorb heat and moisture. Warmer than the air above it, this layer of air then starts to rise, cooling and condensing into clouds that deposit snow on the windward side of the lakes in extremely localised bands.

Conditions in that region were ideal for producing lake-effect snow accumulations over the weekend. An area of low pressure over eastern Canada allowed cold Arctic air to sweep across the Great Lakes, leading to significant snowfall in five states downwind of lakes Ontario, Michigan and Erie.

Western New York state was hit particularly hard, with nearly 4ft (1.22m) of snow accumulating in just four days. In response to the heavy snowfall, New York and Pennsylvania declared states of emergency, enabling the deployment of National Guard troops to rescue drivers trapped in snow in post-Thanksgiving travel.

The Buffalo Bills American football team sought volunteers to clear snow in their home, Highmark Stadium in New York state, before a game on Sunday night.

Further snow is expected during the start of this week, with up to 6ft forecast to settle in upstate New York by Tuesday. Colder conditions are expected to spread farther south through the eastern US, with temperatures 10-15F below average forecast for central and eastern Gulf coast states as high pressure builds over the mid-Mississippi valley.

Snow has also caused disruption across South Korea, with the capital, Seoul, receiving its third heaviest snowfall on record. Last Wednesday more than 40cm (16in) fell, the heaviest November snowfall since records began a century ago.

There were 142 flights and 76 ferry routes cancelled or suspended as freezing temperatures continued into Thursday, and more than 1,000 schools were shut in Gyeonggi, South Korea’s most populous province, which borders Seoul.

Snowfall resulted in the deaths of at least five people, four of them due to structures collapsing and the fifth in a traffic accident. Temperatures have since risen, melting much of the snow by Sunday.

I often feel these days that I am going bonkers. Or that I am staying sane while the world goes bonkers around me, which amounts to the same thing. It is getting to the point where I will almost miss being disoriented if it ever stops.

There is no danger of that, however, for as long as Meet the Rees-Moggs exists. Yes, it is a reality show about the former Tory MP for North East Somerset, once described as “a haunted Victorian pencil”, Jacob Rees-Mogg, his wife, Helena, and their six children. “We had to try five times before we got one who looked like me,” says Helena, and she is right. Helena, I hazard a guess, is always right.

Do you know what I would do if I were a rich politician, had married an aristocratic heiress who was even richer, and had a lovely life split between a large house in London and a vast family pile for my massive family in Somerset? Not sign up to a reality show like an absolute berk, that’s what.

The why of it is a compelling question. On the one hand, a lust for fame does not jibe with what we know of poshos. On the other hand, anyone who puts together a persona as carefully as Jacob has over the years – and he is his own pastiche – is hardly someone not crying out for attention. Perhaps he thinks the show will do for him what appearing on Have I Got News for You did for Boris Johnson back in the day – make enough of the public fall for the act, and rise to power on that misbegotten popularity. If it works, we’ll deserve it.

Once the show begins, however, the why fades to a background hum as the Rees-Moggery begins. Contrary to expectations, Jacob seems overtly fond of and engaged with his children (three at home, three at boarding school). His daughter, Mary, says she often teaches him slang to amuse herself. “So,” we hear him ask her later at the dinner table, “‘wasteman’ is not rizz?” I’m not sure Helena gives any of her brood a thought if they are not in her eyeline, which I admire tremendously.

Helena quickly becomes the star of the show. The general election is announced. “The mood in the country,” she says, without moving her lips or jaw, “is anti-Conservative. Possibly with some justification, unfortunately.” It’s incredible. The words get out, but you cannot see how. The birthday of their fourth (I think) child, Anselm, falls on the day of Boris Johnson’s 60th birthday party, to which they are all going. Helena wonders if Anselm might want to do something in addition. Go-karting, he suggests. Helena computes this and agrees. Later, she preps the children for the likely outcome of the election. “Other careers are available.” Her wit is so dry it leaves you feeling sandpapered. I think she may become my new obsession.

The Rees-Moggs’ Catholicism is covered. “I’m very lucky to have my own chapel,” says Jacob, but there are plenty of truthful and non-risible remarks about the faith, too, plus an oddly endearing discussion with the children when one wonders whether transubstantiation isn’t a bit like, you know, cannibalism?

Their courtship is covered. She knew him as her friend Annunziata’s brother. He knew her as a descendant of one of his greatest political heroes, Thomas Wentworth. He told her all about him. “I staggered away after about 20 minutes,” says Helena (somehow, I still haven’t caught her in the act of enunciating). Before their first date, he tried to buy a book on Wentworth to give her, but it wasn’t in stock. So he bought her a pair of earrings instead – a move that suggests a degree of spontaneity in the Moggsian mind that is otherwise invisible. They both wanted lots of children, and that was that. Theirs is clearly a love match, though the L-word is never mentioned. His face lights up when she talks and especially when she teases him.

But the unexpectedly appealing scenes of their domestic life (yes, replete with staff and everything else you would have if you were sitting on a fortune, but also with children making jokes about poo, and Helena, to whom I have pledged allegiance by the end of episode two, delivering brutal apercus at every turn) contrast with interviews with people such as David Leverton. He is on the streets campaigning in the run-up to the election against Mogg and urging tactical voting to get him out. “Almost everything he stands for is bad,” he says, of the anti-abortion, pro-Brexit, anti-immigration MP. “He seems to despise people who are poorer [than he is] – which is almost all of us.” It is more than the Have I Got News for You team threw at Johnson. Whether it is enough to counteract the idiosyncratically charming picture painted elsewhere, we will have to wait and see.

Two spinal cords, a dozen ribs and a hollowed-out head lie next to a peak called “rock of the eagle” in Gaelic. These are the remains of a pair of three-month-old lambs. It’s muggy, and maggots and foxes will make light work of the remaining skin and bone. In a few weeks, it’ll be as if it never happened.

Ruaridh MacKay, who has been farming here at Stronmagachan Farm in Inveraray for 25 years, picks up one of the spinal cords: sodden and slimy from successive fronts of rain, every morsel of flesh has been excavated. He was expecting to take these lambs to market next month.

All around are miles of sheep-grazed hills, like a giant lawn spun inside a tumble dryer. The valley is bowl-shaped and gets steeper the higher it rises, finishing in sheer rock. The sheep that live up here are bred for these conditions – both farmer and sheep have long lineages. Farming on these hills has changed little in 150 years.

MacKay tosses the carcass, and drives a quad bike on to two more contortions of bones, which a few weeks ago were also large lambs. He says the mysterious deaths started about 12 years ago. In an average spring and summer, he expects to lose around 60 lambs to unexplained death: what farmers call “blackloss”. Last year, he lost more like 200. “The lambs out on the hill were decimated,” he says.

According to MacKay, the culprit was a sea eagle, an icon of the rewilding movement and a reintroduction success story. It is one of the world’s largest birds of prey. “Given the age that these lambs were, they shouldn’t have been killed by anything else,” he says.

MacKay, along with dozens of farmers in this region, is convinced that they are killing hundreds of lambs. “I’m 99% sure. I can’t be 100% – I can’t seem to get a photograph,” says MacKay. Conservationists remain adamant that sea eagles are innocent, and that the claims from farmers are inflated or fabricated.

In the absence of a smoking gun, competing narratives are coming to the fore – a microcosm of the conflicts over predator reintroductions that are playing out around the world. “I’m used to people thinking I’m lying,” says MacKay. “There is no definitive proof. It’s frustrating, but I’m used to it now.”

With hundreds of lambs dead, and the economics of the farm on the edge of survival, he says that just one thing could make this conflict better: “to be believed”.

The reintroduction

Sea eagles – also known as white-tailed eagles – are enormous, majestic birds. They have a wingspan of up to 2.5 metres and are the fourth largest eagle in the world. They were once so common in the UK that mountain tops and villages throughout the country are named after them.

For hundreds of years, however, landowners, gamekeepers, farmers and collectors killed them in large numbers. The last known wild bird in Britain died in 1918.

Then, with huge excitement, they were reintroduced to the west coast of Scotland 50 years ago. The early settlers were flown over from Norway and thrived. Now there are an estimated 150 breeding pairs in Scotland, with numbers increasing. Thousands of people love watching them soar over the island of Mull each year, bringing in millions to the local economy. It is against the law to harm or kill them.

At the time of reintroduction, conservationists said they posed no threat to livestock. The eagles are found across dozen of European countries, and have been reintroduced to the Isle of Wight and Ireland, with no substantial recorded issues relating to livestock attacks.

But farmers in Scotland have consistently said their lambs were being killed. In 1996, reports came through of rogue pairs killing lambs. In 1998, some estimates suggested up to 400 lambs were being lost in one season.

The Scottish government said the problem seemed to be “almost unique to Scotland”, and in 2015 launched its Sea Eagle Management Scheme in acknowledgment that it wasn’t just the odd farm being affected. More than 200 holdings have been accepted. Farmers can claim up to £5,000 through the scheme, which requires extensive documentation of losses, pest control and sheep health for approval.

The government emphasises that it is not “compensation” because it is rarely possible to prove that sea eagles were the killers.

The hard evidence seemed thin. There is no footage of an eagle attacking a live lamb. “The science, the evidence, the facts, just don’t support that at all,” says Dave Sexton, who was the RSPB’s officer on Mull until he retired recently.

Sexton helped establish the island as a sea eagle tourism destination and has been watching these birds almost every day for 21 years. He has never seen them attack a healthy lamb.

He believes “they could and probably do” take healthy lambs but disputes the scale claimed by farmers. “I hope that, in another 20, 30 years, people aren’t still having this argument about white-tailed eagles – that we have managed to find a way to live alongside these birds,” he says.

Environmental groups say eagles are being scapegoated – lambs die inexplicably all the time. A new apex predator is a more concrete culprit to blame than the vagaries of weather, foxes and fluctuating flock health. In a bid for evidence either way, a series of field studies was launched, including one involving 600 hours of people standing around looking for eagle predation. None saw any eagles taking livestock.

Many conservationists declared the case closed. One BirdLife report on the research concluded: “The white-tailed eagle is quite clearly not a threat to livestock.”

But the Scottish birds are teaching us new things about these apex predators. Ecologists say they could be a living example of how reintroduction of species to depleted ecosystems can have unpredictable results.

The bones

Sea eagles are said to feed mainly on fish, birds and mammals, and have large appetites, requiring up to 600g of food a day. They are adaptable generalists, consuming whatever is local – coastal birds eat more fish, inlanders consume more rabbits. And one thing is now unequivocal: they do eat lamb.

Once the eagles have left their nests and their young have fledged, ecologist and bird ringer Justin Grant abseils up to eagle nests and collects their leftovers – mainly bones and the odd feather – which he sorts into species. It’s a bit like going through someone’s household waste.

“Everything’s pretty much on the menu,” says Grant, but lamb is a recurring feature. “Some conservationists still think that all lamb in their diet is scavenged rather than killed – and much as I’d like that to be the case, I think it’s unlikely,” he says. “Any eagle that’s capable of killing red deer calves is clearly capable of killing small lambs.”

Grant’s forensic work resulted in a paper published at the end of 2023, analysing more than 11,000 bits of food found in sea eagle nests (the data does not tell us about juvenile birds, which do not have nests, or whether meat was scavenged). Overall, it found lamb accounted for just 6% of prey items in eagles’ nests. An RSPB press release trumpeted the research, saying it proved that lambs were “not a major food source for breeding white-tailed eagles”.

But the impacts were unevenly distributed. Some nests contained more than 30% lamb remains. Argyll had the most, with almost 20% of food in all nests across the region identified as lamb. On Mull and Lochaber, it was 14% and 13% respectively.

Joe Biden has issued “a full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter Biden covering convictions on federal gun and tax charges, the US president said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday.

The decision marks a reversal for the president, who had repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.

Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December. He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later.

In the statement, Joe Biden said that he had long maintained that he would “not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted”.

But, he argued, “it is clear that Hunter was treated differently”, adding that the charges in the case “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election”.

Hunter Biden was found guilty in Delaware in June on three felony counts relating to his purchase of a handgun in 2018. He had written on his gun-purchase form, falsely, that he was not a user of illicit drugs.

He pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September, opting for an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.

The tax charges carried up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges were punishable by up to 25 years, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible the president’s son would have avoided prison time entirely.

The pardon covers all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted”.

Joe Biden said on Sunday evening that his son had been prosecuted when “without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form”.

He noted in the statement that “those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions”.

Biden accused his political opponents of singling out his 54-year-old son.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said.

“There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

Speculation had been mounting that the president would issue a pardon since Hunter was seen with his father in Nantucket over the Thanksgiving break.

Donald Trump had said in October that he would not be surprised if Hunter Biden were to receive a pardon.

“I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump said. “See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously … And Hunter’s a bad boy.”

On Sunday, Trump reacted with outrage, writing on his social network: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Just one day earlier, though, Trump had reminded Americans that he himself had previously used the pardon power to wipe away convictions of those close to him. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. On Saturday, Trump announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the US ambassador to France.

Republicans have long zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s difficulties – questions around lucrative foreign consultancies, broken relationships and a crack cocaine addiction – in an effort to politically damage his father.

A laptop Hunter Biden left in a Delaware repair shop that made its way into Republican hands formed a scandal in the closing days of the 2020 election. Republicans claimed that the so-called “laptop from hell”, which featured images of Hunter posing with guns, sex workers and crack cocaine, was suppressed by media favorable to Democrats.

Hunter Biden later published a book, Beautiful Things: a Memoir, that detailed his struggles as a drug addict. The Biden family denied more serious accusations that Hunter’s profitable financial arrangements with businesspeople in Ukraine and China amounted to graft using the family name.

James Comer, one of the Republicans leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, denounced the pardon. “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people,” Comer wrote on X. “It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.”

Hunter Biden said in a statement to the Associated Press that he would never take for granted the relief granted to him and vowed to devote the life he has rebuilt “to helping those who are still sick and suffering … I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport.”

Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.

In the statement announcing the pardon, Joe Biden said that for his “entire career” he had followed a simple principle: to tell the truth to the American people.

“Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.

Bob Bryar, the former drummer of the US pop-punk band My Chemical Romance which was said to have influenced the youth culture movement emo, has died aged 44.

Bryar’s body was found in his home in Tennessee last week. The entertainment news outlet TMZ, which was the first to report his death, said that according to police no foul play was suspected as his possessions, including musical equipment and weapons, were untouched.

He performed with My Chemical Romance between 2004 to 2010, making him the band’s longest-standing drummer. In that period, they produced their biggest hit – the 2006 album The Black Parade which reached No 2 in the US Billboard 200 charts and also took the UK music scene by storm.

At the time of The Black Parade, the group became caught up in a moral panic around so-called “emo”. The Daily Mail castigated them as a “dangerous teen cult of self-harm”, though the band denied any association with emo.

“I’m surprised a newspaper thought we were such a threat that they had to write a whole article about us and our fans, calling them a death cult,” the frontperson Gerard Way told the Guardian in 2006.

Bryar was born in Chicago, Illinois, and learned percussion in a marching band at school. He took up sound engineering, which drew him into the orbit of touring rock bands that in turn led him to My Chemical Romance.

He replaced the band’s first drummer, Matt Pelissier, soon after the release of their second album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, in 2004. The group had been formed in 2001 by Pelissier and Way in their home state of New Jersey.

Bryar quit the band in 2010 at about the time of the release of Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.

My Chemical Romance is scheduled to go on a new US tour next year, starting in Seattle, Washington, in July. The current lineup consists of Way, his brother the bassist Mikey Way, lead guitarist Ray Toro, and rhythm guitarist Frank Iero.

Bryar formally retired from music in 2014 and began working as a real estate agent. His passion was advocating for dog rescue and other animal sanctuaries.

Three years ago he sold off the drum kit on which he played on The Black Parade tour to raise funds for an animal rescue center near his home in Tennessee.

Pep Guardiola said he expected more respect at Anfield after being taunted about the sack during Manchester City’s defeat at Liverpool, with the chants prompting the goalkeeper Stefan Ortega to criticise the city as “not the best part in the UK”.

Guardiola held six fingers up to the Anfield crowd – one for each Premier League title he has won at City – in response to chants of “You’re getting sacked in the morning”, as Liverpool moved 11 points clear of the faltering champions with a 2-0 win.

It was City’s sixth defeat in a seven‑game winless run, ­comfortably the worst sequence of Guardiola’s illustrious managerial career, but the City manager claimed he deserved better from Liverpool due to their fierce rivalry in recent seasons.

Ortega defended his manager’s reaction, while criticising the city of Liverpool. “Someone told me before that this area is probably not the best part in the UK,” the City keeper said. “I think he reacted really well.”

Guardiola said: “I’m so proud of my six Premier Leagues against that [Liver­pool] team and the previous team [under Jürgen Klopp]. I didn’t expect Anfield to start chanting at 0-2 that I would be sacked. Maybe I deserved to be sacked with our results! Maybe I’m still in the job because I won six Premier Leagues and a lot of titles.

“They want to sack me. I wish they were more kind. Why didn’t they do it at 0-1? Why didn’t they do it last season when we won the Premier League? Why do they want to sack me now? I didn’t expect that from Anfield, for other clubs like Brighton I can understand it. But for Anfield I didn’t expect this, maybe it is the respect we have. They know we have won six Premier Leagues. But it’s fine, it’s part of the game.”

Guardiola defended his team’s poor performance at Anfield, ­arguing his players refused to give in but admitting they created little. “I have the feeling that from here we can start to build something,” he said.

“Call me delusional but I have the feeling that from here we will start to build back to winning games and confidence. Our target cannot be talking about titles in November or December. We didn’t do that when we were top of the league. But at the same time we are still in December, not the end of the season, so many things can still happen.”

Arne Slot, the Liverpool head coach, said he has no ­sympathy for Guardiola’s predicament as he feels City will recover to challenge for a fifth Premier League title in succession. “You feel sympathy or empathy with managers who are in a really bad place, when they have lost many games or are down at the bottom of the league,” Slot said.

“Pep has won so many things and shown so many times already. The league is not decided in November or December so no one has to feel sympathy or empathy for Pep. He has won so many things and will be able to bring City back.”

Slot, however, described Liverpool’s defeat of the reigning Premier League champions, and their victory against the European champions Real Madrid on Wednesday, as a statement from the title favourites.

The Liverpool head coach, who confirmed he will be without ­Ibrahima Konaté and Conor Bradley for several weeks, said: “Yes it was [a statement]. Playing against Real Madrid, playing against Man City, teams that have been and are so good and with managers that have won so many trophies, it is always nice to come out in both situations as a winner. But the reason these teams have won so much is they weren’t able to win once or twice, they were able to win every single three days.

“We are really happy with these two wins but we also understand if we want to achieve more than this then winning once or twice, even against these big teams, is not enough to win anything at the end of the season.”

Donald Trump’s plan to nominate as FBI director the “deep state” conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, a virulent critic of the bureau who has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down the agency’s headquarters, is facing blowback in Congress as US senators begin to flex their muscles ahead of a contentious confirmation process.

Politicians from both main parties took to the Sunday talk shows to express starkly divergent views on Patel, whom Trump announced on Saturday as his pick to lead the most powerful law enforcement agency in the US. The move is dependent on the incumbent FBI chief, Christopher Wray, who Trump himself placed in the job in 2017, either being fired or resigning.

It is already clear that confirming Patel through the US Senate is likely to be less than plain sailing. Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, indicated that Patel could face a tough confirmation battle.

Rounds pointedly sang the praises of the existing FBI director in an interview with ABC’s This Week. He said that Wray, who still has three more years of his 10-year term to serve, was a “very good man”, adding that he had “no objections about the way that he is doing his job right now”.

The senator also emphasised the separation of powers between president and Senate, signaling possible trouble for Patel. Rounds said he gave presidents “the benefit of the doubt”, but also emphasised that “we have a constitutional role to play … that’s the process”.

Other Republican senators rallied to Patel’s side. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, told CBS’s Face the Nation that he believed Patel would be confirmed.

“Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption of the FBI.”

Bill Hagerty, a Republican senator from Tennessee, said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he would vote to confirm Patel. “Kash is the best at uncovering what’s happened to the FBI and I look forward to seeing him taking it apart,” he said.

Patel is a Trump loyalist who has published children’s books featuring “King Donald”. He has long denigrated the FBI as a pillar of what he calls the “deep state” or the “corrupt ruling class”.

In an interview with Shawn Ryan in September, Patel vowed to “shut down” the FBI’s headquarters in Washington DC and reopen the building the following day as a “museum of the deep state”.

He has also threatened to use the power of federal law enforcement to go after those he claims are responsible for corrupting the federal government, a list of whom he published in his memoir. Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s current national security adviser, was among that list: Patel called him “one of the corrupt actors of the first order”.

Sullivan was asked by ABC’s This Week whether he was worried personally about Patel’s potential leadership of the FBI, given the threats against him. He declined to comment, saying he was wholly focused on keeping the country safe in the remaining 50 days of his term in office.

But he did highlight that Biden had kept Wray on as FBI chief, despite having inherited the official from Trump. Sullivan said that Wray served “with distinction, entirely insulated from politics or the partisan preferences of the current sitting president. This is a good, deep bipartisan tradition that President Biden has adhered to.”

Jamie Raskin, a House Democrat from Maryland, challenged the claim by Trump and Patel that the FBI had been politically weaponised under Biden to go after Republicans. He pointed out on CNN’s State of the Union that over the past four years the FBI had prosecuted the disgraced Democratic senator from New Jersey, Bob Menendez, and the Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar.

“I think that’s what they mean when they talk about politicization in the deep state – anybody who doesn’t do the will of Donald Trump,” Raskin said.

According to an Axios report on Sunday, Trump had initially planned to appoint Patel as deputy FBI director but changed his mind after his pick to head the agency, the state attorney general of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, failed to impress him. Raising Patel to the number one position makes the move far more politically loaded.

Despite the storm he is generating, Trump shows no sign of moderating his leadership choices for his upcoming administration. Over the weekend he tapped Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner and a convicted felon whom Trump pardoned in 2020, as US ambassador to France.

On Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had chosen his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, to be senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Boulos, a Lebanese billionaire, was active in Trump’s presidential campaign as a liaison with Arab American and Muslim leaders.

Trump has also picked a county sheriff, Chad Chronister, from Florida to head the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The agency will have a key role in attempting to fulfill Trump’s pledge to staunch the cross-border flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the US, which is already causing diplomatic tensions with Canada and Mexico.

Chronister’s father-in-law, Edward DeBartolo, was pardoned by Trump three years ago on a 1998 conviction for involvement in a gambling fraud case. DeBartolo, the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers American football team, was fined $1m and suspended by the NFL for a year.

When times have been tough in the past for Manchester City under Pep Guardiola, there has always been the sense that they will pull through; it will be OK. Almost to the extent there has been little dramatic tension around them, only inevitability. Not now.

The City machine looks broken, the certainties that have driven them for so long absent, the control gone. They got exactly what they deserved here – another defeat, a sixth in seven matches in all competitions, and it is very difficult to see them defending their Premier League title.

The delirious Liverpool crowd informed Guardiola that he would be sacked in the morning, which prompted him to raise six digits in their direction, one for each of his league titles in England. It was an isolated act of defiance from someone with the club’s crest on their chest.

Liverpool were everything City were not; suffocating at the back, physical in every position, slick on the ball, menacing in front of goal. Cody Gakpo’s opener was scant reward for their initial dominance but it was never going to be an occasion when Arne Slot’s team did anything other than extend their lead over second-placed Arsenal to nine points. And put 11 points between themselves and City, who lag in fifth.

Guardiola had admitted that his players were suffering, as is he, and there is no doubt that this is the biggest crisis of his City tenure. At least there is some jeopardy now. Mohamed Salah made the points safe for Liverpool from the penalty spot. The title is theirs to lose.

City were 2-1 or longer to win with every bookmaker in England, the first time since Guardiola’s first season at the club in 2016-17 they had not been the favourites for a league game. City as the plucky underdogs? It went into the mix, as did Guardiola’s record at Anfield. Only once in nine previous visits in all competitions had his City team enjoyed victory – and that was when the ground was empty for the league fixture in the pandemic season of 2020-21.

It was rocking here, the home crowd sensing blood and tasting it after 12 minutes. Nobody could say that the breakthrough was not advertised; moments earlier, Virgil van Dijk had hit the far post with a thumping header. Stefan Ortega, who Guardiola preferred in the City goal, looked to have got his fingertips to the ball.

Trent Alexander-Arnold was the architect of the opener, moseying into midfield to ping a diagonal up the inside right for Salah, who had acres of space into which to run. City were exposed – and not for the last time in that area. Over came Manuel Akanji but Salah cut inside to curve over a beautiful low cross. Less beautiful from a City point of view was how Kyle Walker stopped and watched Gakpo attack the far post and tap home.

It was the symbol of what was a horrible start by City and there were others: loose passes, just a basic timidity. The nerves had been written all over Guardiola’s features before kick-off. His players were edgy. It was the 25th minute before City strung a few passes together inside the Liverpool half and even then, they ended going all the way back to Ortega, red shirts hounding them every step of the way.

Liverpool could have been further ahead by then because Van Dijk was guilty of heading off target from an Alexis Mac Allister corner. The captain was free; he seemed certain to score. Salah had won the corner after a foot-race with Nathan Aké following another lovely Alexander-Arnold pass; Salah had the City left-back for pace, Aké only just managing to get his foot in.

The excellent Dominik Szoboszlai, who more than justified his selection ahead of Curtis Jones, had worked Ortega with a stinging drive in the early going and there was the moment when Liverpool won the ball high up and menaced through Luis Díaz and Alexander-Arnold. Gakpo stepped in to lift high.

City stabilised over the final 20 minutes of the first half, although it was jarring to see how low their threat levels were, particularly up the wings. They wanted extra touches and Liverpool were in no mood to give them time. City’s only flicker before the interval came on 39 minutes when Rico Lewis prodded wide of the far post from an Erling Haaland pass. Just before that, Alexander-Arnold had fizzed inches wide after a corner came out to him.

Liverpool had further chances for the second after the restart, Matheus Nunes making a saving block to deny Gakpo and, from the resulting corner, Van Dijk flicking a header just over. A thought for City – maybe somebody mark the big man? Salah also blew a gilt-edged one-on-one with Ortega, firing high after Bernardo Silva had played a back pass to Akanji with directions to the Royal Liverpool Hospital on it.

City got on the ball more in the second period. They tried to work their short passing game. It was an exercise in rebuilding confidence as much as exerting control. Jérémy Doku made a difference when Guardiola introduced him for Nunes on the left wing. And yet where were the chances?

Liverpool continued to look the more dangerous team on the counter, Salah especially, and if their priority in the closing stages was to defend securely, then another goal would not hurt. It came when Rúben Dias dallied and Walker took a heavy touch, allowing Díaz to rob him and sprint away. When Ortega was late into the challenge with him, it was an obvious penalty, the only question being whether the goalkeeper would face censure. He did not, Salah’s penalty conversion punishment enough.

There was time for Van Dijk to err and present the City substitute Kevin De Bruyne with a one-on-one against the underworked Caoimhín Kelleher. The goalkeeper blocked. For City, there is no way out of the torment.