Joe Biden has pledged to defend the Philippines from any attack in the South China Sea, as he hosted the first joint summit with Manila and Tokyo amid growing tensions with Beijing.

“The United States’ defence commitments to Japan and to the Philippines are ironclad,” the US president said on Thursday as he met the Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos and Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida.

The summit at the White House comes after repeated confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels in the disputed waterway that have raised fears of a wider conflict.

Biden’s pledge follows a bilateral meeting between Biden and Kishida and the upgrading of their alliance, which also drew strong condemnation from the Chinese government.

“Any attack on Philippine aircraft, vessels or armed forces in the South China Sea would invoke our mutual defense treaty,” said Biden.

The US president made a similar commitment when he hosted the Philippine president at the White House last year.

China claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea, brushing aside competing claims from several south-east Asian nations including the Philippines.

The so-called “gray-zone” harassment by China has included shining military-grade lasers at the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), firing water cannon at vessels and ramming into Philippine ships running resupply missions near the Second Thomas Shoal, which both Manila and Beijing claim.

In 1999, Manila intentionally ran a second world war-era ship aground on the shoal, establishing a permanent military presence there.

Beijing accused the Philippines of violating Chinese sovereignty in the South China Sea on Thursday.

The foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said China was “committed to managing the situation at Ren’ai Jiao with the Philippines through dialogue and consultation” but that the Philippines had refused to tow away the vessel. She said Beijing would “allow” the resupply missions if it was given prior notice and the ability to inspect and monitor the process.

Mao also accused Manila of ignoring a “gentleman’s agreement” made with the previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, who on Friday told the Chinese state media outlet, the Global Times, that he believed the US was directing the new Philippines government.

“When I was president of the Philippines, there was no quarrel in the South China Sea, we were able to return to normal (relations),” he told the nationalistic tabloid.

“I’m pretty sure that it’s the US that is giving instructions to the Philippines, telling the current Philippine government not to be afraid (to go for a fight) because the US will support Manila.”

Chinese coast guard ships also regularly approach disputed Japanese-controlled East China Sea islands near Taiwan, and the increasing tensions have prompted Biden to boost alliances in the region.

As they met around a horseshoe-shaped wooden table in the grand East Room of the US presidential residence, the US, Japanese and Philippine leaders hailed the meeting as “historic.”

Without mentioning China by name, they painted their alliance as a bedrock of peace and democracy in the Asia-Pacific region in contrast to authoritarian Beijing.

Marcos, seen as closer to Washington than his more China-leaning predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, said they shared an “unwavering commitment to the rules-based international order.”

Kishida said that “multi-layered cooperation is essential” and that “today’s meeting will make history.”

Biden, 81, also held separate talks with Marcos, 66, the son and namesake of the country’s former dictator.

The joint summit came a day after Biden hosted a lavish state visit for Japan’s Kishida during which he unveiled a historic upgrade in defense ties aimed at countering a resurgent China.

Directly warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States.

China responded, saying the United States and Japan had “smeared” its reputation during Kishida’s state visit.

Beijing foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Washington and Tokyo had “attacked China on Taiwan and maritime issues, grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs, and seriously violated the basic norms governing international relations.”

Japan and the Philippines are the latest Asia-Pacific allies to be hosted by Biden, who was joined by Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at Camp David in August.

But Biden has also moved to manage tensions with China, holding a two-hour phone call with President Xi Jinping last week after a face-to-face meeting in San Francisco in November.

On Wednesday Biden said the major upgrade in defense ties with Japan was “purely defensive” and “not aimed at any one nation or a threat to the region.”

With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press

William Wordsworth’s best‑known poem may be addressed to daffodils, but his favourite flower in the year’s bright early succession was the lesser celandine. It’s a preference I share. On the whole, gardeners and botanists do not. Those I’ve canvassed for their opinion regard its cold-months, late-February-to-early-May profusion along verges and across lawns with something approaching disdain. I view it as our native miniature tournesol, or sunflower, following the brief sallies of sunlight, clamming up and drooping under the grey skies of a Welsh spring.

Here along the sodden vernal lanes of Radnorshire, its mounded growths of heart-shaped leaves and its vivid golden flowers on frail stems are ubiquitous, bringing a stellar texture to roadside banks and meadows. They impart and enrich the winter-grey grasses with sun‑tones before primroses and daffodils are fully in flower, then age before our eyes to a blanched drabness that still retains the charm of heart-shaped petals to complement its fleshy leaves.

There is something about the lesser celandine that resonates with our own blossoming and fading. From its gold-spangled profusion across every field, along the banks of each sunken lane at the earliest hint of spring, here’s a flower that is responsive to every climatic vagary the season can offer. Small wonder that Wordsworth thrilled to its responsiveness. He took it as correlative to his own sensitivity to nature and, in espousing its cause, defended it against an apparent disregard in English verse that paralleled the one he had suffered in that sphere.

It’s an odd flower – so delicate to be flowering in the harshest of seasons, so slight, and yet so vivid. Wordsworth actually wrote three poems to it, all of them fine and complex verses. He doesn’t mention the wealth of names bestowed on it (my favourite is “spring’s messenger”), nor does he refer to its exposed pale tubers, cabbage-scented, from which another name tells us of folk‑medicine usage: “pilewort”.

Such a wealth of cultural texture attached to this glowing early visitant! Enjoy it this year while you can, for its heliophilic brilliance is already fading, and you will have to wait till late February of 2025 to rejoice in it again.

A vast network of undocumented “ghost roads” is pushing into the world’s untouched rainforests and driving their destruction in the Asia-Pacific region, a new study has found.

By using Google Earth to map tropical forests on Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea islands, researchers from James Cook University in Australia documented 1.37 m kilometres (850,000 miles) of roads across 1.4m sq kilometres of rainforest on the islands – between three and seven times what is officially recorded on road databases.

These ghost roads, which include bulldozed tracks through natural rainforest and informal roads on palm-oil plantations, were “almost always” an indicator of future destruction of nearby rainforests, according to the study published in the journal Nature. They are “among the gravest of all direct threats to tropical forests”, the researchers concluded.

“They’re being constructed by a range of people, including legal or illegal agriculturalists, miners, loggers, land grabbers, land speculators and drug traffickers,” said Prof Bill Laurance, a co-author of the study. “By sharply increasing access to formerly remote natural areas, unregulated road development is triggering dramatic increases in environmental disruption due to activities such as logging, mining and land-clearing.”

A team of more than 200 trained volunteers and study authors performed the analysis over a combined 7,000 hours. They estimate 640,000 hours would be required to map all of the roads on Earth.

“There are some 25m kilometres of new paved roads expected by mid-century and 90% of all road construction is happening in developing nations, including many tropical and subtropical regions with exceptional biodiversity,” Laurance said.

“Worryingly, our new findings show that the extent and length of roads in the tropical Asia-Pacific is severely underestimated, with many roads being out of government control. In these findings, nature is the big loser.”

The researchers said their findings tally with earlier studies in Cameroon, Solomon Islands and Brazil, with road building almost always preceding local forest loss.

“Informally or illicitly constructed ghost roads can be bulldozed tracks in logged forests, roads in palm-oil plantations and other roads missing from existing road datasets for various reasons,” said Laurance.

Last year, the destruction of the world’s most pristine rainforests continued at a relentless rate despite efforts to slow the loss. While there were falls in Colombia and Brazil, the world lost an area nearly the size of Switzerland from previously undisturbed forests.

The survival of rainforests is essential to meeting the goals of the Paris agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C and the Kunming-Montreal framework on biodiversity.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

The new Irish taoiseach is to meet the Spanish prime minister to discuss their joint plan to recognise Palestine as a nation state and their attempts to force the EU to assess Israel’s human rights obligations as a condition of their trade deal with the bloc.

Pedro Sánchez, who is due to arrive in Dublin on Friday, is the first foreign premier Simon Harris will meet since his promotion to the office of the taoiseach this week.

In the months since the Hamas attacks of 7 October and Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Spain and Ireland have emerged as the EU’s most pro-Palestinian member states.

On Thursday in Brussels, Harris said he had made clear Ireland’s position on the need for an immediate ceasefire, during a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. He also reiterated its formal request, made with Spain two months ago, to review the Israel-EU association agreement.

“I believe the European Union must use all of the levers at its disposal [to protect the Palestinian people],” Harris said.

His remarks came as he faced sharp criticism from Israel for not mentioning the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza during his debut speech to the Irish parliament as taoiseach.

Harris – who was sworn in on Tuesday – spoke on Tuesday of “the unforgivable terrorist actions of Hamas on 7 October”, as well as “the disproportionate reaction of the Israeli government”.

But Israel’s foreign ministry, in a statement released on Thursday, criticised him for neglecting to mention the hostages still being held by Hamas.

It said Ireland was also “planning to award additional prizes to terrorism” by intervening in the case taken by South Africa at the international court of justice in which it accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, and by “the possible recognition of a Palestinian state in the future”.

“After the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust … there are those in Ireland who persist on being on the wrong side of history,” the statement added, alluding to the Hamas attacks on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Since then, Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 33,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, and created an acute humanitarian crisis.

Ireland and Spain have written a letter to the European Commission chief asking for an “urgent review” of whether Israel is complying with its human rights obligations. Neither country has had a response yet, indicating the sensitivity of the issue.

On Thursday, Harris said Sánchez was a welcome guest to Dublin. “He’ll be the first head of government that I will welcome to government buildings, and I look forward to having the opportunity to discussing with Pedro the issue of the recognition of the state of Palestine and broader matters, including that letter,” he said.

Harris said Von der Leyen pointed out there was an opportunity at the next summit of EU foreign ministers “to discuss and consider these matters”, indicating a review was in the works.

“This is not about anything other than ensuring that international human rights law is respected. And that it is followed,” he said.

You have to admire the chutzpah of Apple TV+. They’ve chosen to make an eight-part miniseries out of the towering intellectual-slash-action figure of Benjamin Franklin – the son of a Boston candlemaker, who ran away to Philadelphia at 17 and rose to become one of the US’s founding fathers, via polymathic stints as a printer, publisher, inventor, writer and scientist. And they’ve based it on what was surely one of the least televisual accomplishments of his entire storied career.

Franklin (whose eponymous hero is played by Michael Douglas) is adapted from the historian Stacy Schiff’s 2005 book A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America. It tells the story of the then 70-year-old statesman’s unofficial eight-year-long series of negotiations with the Gallic great and good, beginning in 1776 as America’s losses in the revolutionary war looked set to crush the young nation before it had fairly begun. Over to Paris hops Benjamin in the hope that the – well, let’s call them longstanding contretemps – between the French and the English would help him persuade the former to provide money, weapons and other supplies to the beleaguered seekers after independence.

His teenage grandson Temple (Noah Jupe) accompanies him – not his son, William, because he is a wellknown loyalist (and the less charming Frenchmen Franklin meets like to bring this shame up from time to time). Temple learns a lot about diplomacy and even more about fashion and fornication as he is taken under the wing of the Marquis de Lafayette (later to become a hero of révolutions américaine et française and more importantly, a star in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton), played by Théodore Pellerin. Metaphors about seduction and chess abound as grandfather tries to keep the boy’s focus on their real mission.

Unfortunately for the viewer, that mission is composed mostly of meetings. Some more clandestine than others, but mostly in virtually indistinguishable chateaux with virtually indistinguishable French ministers and rich men. Those we do learn to pick out – such as the secretly sympathetic foreign minister Comte de Vergennes (Thibault de Montalembert) and the wealthy merchant Chaumont (Olivier Claverie), who decides to help fund US independence for the trading opportunities that would result – too often get sidelined by lesser characters. We spend too much time with the pawns in this monumental chess game, when we would really rather be concentrating on the alliances and treacheries among the main pieces.

Franklin is dogged by the same slight but dreary sense of worthiness that attended Apple’s other recent foray into US period drama, the meticulous Manhunt (about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the conspiracy behind it, and – almost as a distasteful afterthought – the capture and trial of his killer, John Wilkes Booth). This time, though, it doesn’t even have the background pursuit of a murderer to keep things moving. Douglas is wholly convincing as the experienced but idiosyncratic statesman and 18th-century celebrity. And he has his usual undeniable presence (so compelling but always with a hint of creepiness at the edges). But Franklin himself was wearying by this point in his illustrious career and it feels as though we are concentrating on the wrong part of his astonishing story. And when Congress becomes frustrated with Franklin’s perceived lack of progress and send John Adams (Eddie Marsan) over instead, Douglas/Franklin has to join le comte and Chaumont towards the sidelines too.

Doubtless it plays slightly better in its native land, where Franklin’s more immediately interesting and understandable accomplishments are better known. It probably feels more like a wrong being righted as an underacknowledged period of the national hero’s life is given its due. Whether this is quite enough to bring the punters in and satisfy the expectations for entertainment they have – mostly rightly – come to expect from Apple TV+, I am not nearly so sure.

Most of life on Earth is not like us at all. Barely 5% of all known living creatures are animals with backbones. The rest – at least 1.3 million species, and many more still to be discovered – are spineless. They are the invertebrates, animals of wondrous diversity, unique niches and innovative and interesting ways of making a living on this planet, which include insects (at least a million), arachnids, snails, crustaceans, corals, jellyfish, sponges and echinoderms.

And yet, despite their numerical advantage, originality and dazzling charisma, invertebrates are usually overlooked in favour of animals that more closely resemble ourselves. So, over the last two weeks, we’ve gone in search of the UK’s invertebrate of the year, and profiled 10 different invertebrates – plus the invertebrate nominated by readers, Lumbricus terrestris, the common earthworm.

And if you need a reminder of them, here they are: glowworm, Clifden nonpareil, swallowtail, Asian or yellow-legged hornet, barrel jellyfish, St Piran’s hermit crab, distinguished jumping spider, ash-black slug, minotaur beetle, shrill carder bee and the common earthworm.

And now we’re asking you to choose your favourite by clicking on one of the options below. In reality, of course, they are all winners, and we are winners, too, lucky enough to share the Earth with these amazing creatures.

As one reader, James Chisnall, put it: “It’s important to remember it’s not just our planet, and everything from the largest to the smallest deserves our respect and its place on this sphere we call home.”

Voting ends at 8am BST on Monday 15 April, after which the votes will be tallied and the champion invertebrate will be crowned.

Shell has argued that it “lobbies for, not against, the energy transition” on the final day of its appeal against an important climate ruling.

The fossil fuel company is fighting the decision of a Dutch court in 2021 that forces it to pump 45% less planet-heating CO₂ into the atmosphere by 2030 than it did in 2019. In court on Friday, Shell argued the ruling is ineffective, onerous and does not fit into the existing legal system.

Lawyers for Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands), which brought the case against Shell, repeated their calls for the company to act in line with climate science and international agreements to stop extreme weather from growing more violent. They said the outcome of the case will determine how much the climate changes.

“It’s not just about Shell,” said Donald Pols, the Milieudefensie chief executive, after the hearing. “We want to hold all companies accountable – to combat dangerous climate change.”

Shell argued in court that it plays its role in energy transition and pointed to the lobbying it had done in favour of climate policies such as the EU emissions-trading scheme and the US Inflation Reduction Act.

Milieudefensie said it was “quite clear” that Shell had used its social influence to safeguard the role of oil and gas and that it had continued to do so with its policies. In recent months, Shell has backtracked on a series of clean energy ambitions.

“I think it’s a little bit far-fetched from Shell to argue they are in favour of the energy transition, at least to the extent of being in line with the Paris agreement,” said Roger Cox, Milieudefensie’s lawyer in the case.

The appeal wraps up just days after the European court of human rights sided with a group of 2,400 Swiss women who sued their government over its climate policy.

Both Shell and Milieudefensie cited the Swiss case to support their arguments on Friday. Shell argued that the decision of the 17 Strasbourg judges showed it was up to states, rather than companies, to rein in emissions. Milieudefensie said it showed that “judges have an important role to play in the complex debate on preventing dangerous climate change”.

A report last week found that 57 companies are linked to 80% of carbon emissions since 2016, though the bulk of that comes from their customers burning the fuels they sell.

At the appeal, Milieudefensie argued that Shell should not achieve the original emissions reduction target by simply selling off fossil fuel assets, which may then land in the hands of companies with less public scrutiny and dirtier operations. Shell argued that the original ruling gave it the freedom to do so and said the activist group had failed to contest this point by lodging a cross-appeal.

Frans Everts, director of Shell in the Netherlands, said in the company’s closing remarks that he was concerned by the “unintended consequences” of the lawsuit. He said the activists wanted to limit the supply of Shell’s products before its customers are “able, willing or ready to switch to less fossil fuels”.

He said: “As long as the demand for these products doesn’t change – and people can just go to the competitor – there is not one less carbon molecule in the air. And without a clean alternative to oil and gas products, the energy transition will not benefit either.”

In 2021, after evidence for the original case was filed, the International Energy Agency published a report on reaching net zero emissions by 2050 that found no room for new oil and gas exploration. Companies including Shell have since continued to invest in new oil and gas fields despite protests from climate scientists and activists.

A verdict is expected on 12 November 2024.

A carer who says he was “dragged through the courts” and had to sell his home to pay back almost £20,000 in benefit overpayments is fighting to clear his name after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) acknowledged he made an innocent mistake.

George Henderson, 64, said he made a gain of just 30p a week while claiming carer’s allowance for his son John, who has learning difficulties and is addicted to heroin. He now costs the Treasury £1,000 a month more in benefits, having become homeless and too unwell to work.

Henderson said he was left suicidal after being prosecuted by the DWP, which accused him of fraudulently claiming the benefit for six years while he was caring for John, who is now 42.

He wrongly ticked a box saying he was unemployed while filling in the “tricky” application form for carer’s allowance in 2010. “I thought they were asking about John,” he told the Guardian.

The DWP has records of him working as a taxi driver since 2002, earning about £7.50 an hour. Yet it took more than six years for anyone at the department to tell him he was claiming the benefit incorrectly.

By that point he had claimed £19,506.20 – about £60 a week. The DWP not only wanted it all back but also prosecuted him for fraud. Investigators said he had lied about having a job and had ignored annual letters reminding him to report any changes in circumstances.

He protested his innocence but was found guilty. In 2018, a judge at Preston crown court gave him a 32-week suspended sentence and ordered him to wear an electronic tag for 16 weeks.

Never in trouble with the law before, Henderson found it humiliating having the tag fitted and suddenly having a 9pm curfew. “My stomach was churning watching them putting it on,” he said. “I just felt helpless, embarrassed, degraded … I’d been dragged through the courts like a criminal, and I’m not.”

Afterwards, he received letters from the DWP every three weeks demanding he sell his two-bed former council house to pay the debt or face a seven-month jail term, he said.

Henderson eventually sold the property for £115,000, and after paying off his mortgage and the DWP he was left with just £6,000. “It breaks my heart,” he said. “I’ve been back and looked at [the house] twice and I’ve actually broke down and cried.”

His mental health deteriorated to the point that he attempted to kill himself and became seriously unwell. “I’d lost four stone. You could actually see my ribcage.”

Henderson is one of a number of carers the Guardian has spoken to after exposing how people looking after disabled, frail or ill relatives are being forced to repay huge sums to the government and threatened with criminal prosecution after unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week.

The government is facing calls to overhaul the system after the Guardian revealed that tens of thousands of unpaid carers are facing severe fines, some over £20,000, for relatively modest and unintentional breaches of rules branded “cruel and nonsensical”.

John, Henderson’s middle child, was born healthy but lost most of his hearing and developed disabilities after contracting measles aged three. He was unable to manage living independently as an adult, particularly after becoming addicted to heroin, and so moved in with his father.

Initially, John was claiming disability benefits worth about £60 a week. But Henderson soon realised that John’s drug dealers would wait by the cashpoint each week when he was paid, taking his money off him for heroin.

Henderson claimed that in 2010 a DWP official came to the house to assess John and they discussed the pros and cons of claiming carer’s allowance instead.

The new benefit was worth 30p a week more but meant Henderson could receive the money into his bank account and pay it to his son as a daily allowance, with the aim of stopping it being taken by the heroin dealers.

After his conviction in 2017, Henderson tried and failed to appeal. He was left homeless and had to be housed by the local council in sheltered accommodation, at a cost to the public purse. Too unwell to work, he now relies on universal credit, receiving £1,300 a month to cover his housing and living costs.

“Believe it or not, when I moved in I couldn’t get in and out of the bath because I’ve got two hip replacements and I’ve got a serious spinal condition. So it cost them £7,000 to put in a wet room. It’s costing them the universal credit. It’s absolutely ludicrous. It’s actually cost the taxpayer or the government money by doing this,” he said.

Recently, Henderson decided to try to clear his name and wrote to Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary. Last month he received a letter from the DWP apologising for his ordeal but refusing to give him the money back.

The letter said: “The appeal conceded that you were a convincing and credible witness [and] it was more probable than not that you were telling the truth and that the false declaration was an innocent mistake.”

It went on: “I am so sorry that you feel that experiences with DWP have contributed to your financial problems, severe emotional trauma and mental health.”

Henderson refuses to accept the apology. “It’s not addressing what I need addressed,” he said. “Why did it take six years to find that I ticked the box incorrectly? Why not in the first year? Then it would be acceptable. I would have been able to pay the first year, I made a mistake.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “We are committed to fairly supporting all those who need the welfare system, while fulfilling our duty to treating taxpayers’ money responsibly.

“Claimants have a responsibility to inform DWP of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award, and it is right that we recover taxpayers’ money when this has not occurred. We will work with those who need support with their repayment terms whilst protecting the public purse.”