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Hundreds of Japanese and Americans airlifted out of city at heart of outbreak in China, with Australia to follow suit. All the latest news, live

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2.47am GMT

In Tokyo, passengers from the evacuation from Wuhan have spoken to media.

Takeo Aoyama, who works for Nippon Steel Corp, and Takayuki Kato, who works for Intec, said they felt relieved but also exhausted, Associated Press reports.

2.32am GMT

The news that Christmas Island will be used to potentially quarantine Australians with the coronavirus has led to renewed calls for the government to release a family of Tamil asylum seekers from Biloela currently detained there.

Priya and Nadesalingam, and their Australian-born children, Kopika and Tharunicaa had fled the Sri Lankan civil war, and lived in the Queensland town of Biloela since 2014.

Trump’s defense team and his Republican allies have argued against the inclusion of witnesses at impeachment trial

Republicans do not yet have the needed votes to block witnesses from appearing at the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, told his caucus in a meeting on Tuesday night, according to multiple reports.

With an unknown number of Republican senators still undecided on the question of calling witnesses, McConnell could still get the votes he needs to block witnesses and stop the trial from reeling off into unpredictable – and potentially hazardous – territory for the president. At least four Republicans would need to join Democrats to force witness testimony.

Plan offers route to Palestinian state but recognises Israeli settlements in West Bank

• Trump’s Middle East peace plan: key points at a glance

Donald Trump has unveiled his vision for Middle East peace in a White House launch that gifted Israel a wishlist of its long-held demands while promising Palestinians a potential “state”, but with severe restrictions.

Standing next to the smiling Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced details of the 181-page plan to cheers and applause. Palestinian leaders were absent from the launch, having pre-emptively rejected his proposal, citing flagrant bias.

Bibi, freed last year and now in Canada, will release her autobiography on Wednesday

Asia Bibi, the Christian woman who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy, has released two photographs taken in exile, as she prepares for the launch of her autobiography on Wednesday.

The former farm labourer, whose case became one of the most high-profile human rights campaigns in the world, was freed last year and flew to Canada, where she was reunited with her family. They are all believed to be living under assumed identities, at a secret location, as they still receive death threats from extremists.

• Felicia Sonmez tweeted article on rape allegation
  
• Paper says it regrets speaking publicly about suspension

Following an internal revolt from hundreds of journalists, the Washington Post said on Tuesday afternoon that a reporter it suspended had not violated the company social media policy by tweeting an article about Kobe Bryant’s historical rape accusation hours after his death.

The Washington Post’s managing editor, Tracy Grant, also said the newspaper regretted speaking publicly about suspending Felicia Sonmez, a national politics reporter, for the tweets, which Post management had initially said “undermined the work of her colleagues”.

Rick Wilson, whose joke about Trump playing to his base led to the spat, hits back at first daughter’s ‘breathtaking hypocrisy’

Ivanka Trump has waded into a row over a CNN segment in which host Don Lemon laughed as two guests ridiculed supporters of her father.

Related: How to dump Trump: Rick Wilson on Running Against the Devil

Agriculture minister announces an end to cruel mass culling method, and castration of piglets without anaesthesia

France has said it will ban the controversial but widespread practices of live-shredding male chicks and castrating piglets without anaesthesia, in a move cautiously welcomed by animal welfare activists.

Some 7bn male chicks, unwanted because they provide neither meat nor eggs, are culled around the world every year. Many are ground up alive, others are gassed, electrocuted, or asphyxiated in plastic bags.

Warplanes dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions, the most since Pentagon began keeping track in 2006

The US dropped more bombs on Afghanistan in 2019 than any other year since the Pentagon began keeping a tally in 2006, reflecting an apparent effort to force concessions from the Taliban at the negotiating table.

According to new figures released by US central command, US warplanes dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions on Afghanistan, a nearly eightfold increase from 2015.

Trump and other officials initially said 8 January attack on Iraq airbase had not killed or injured any US service members

The Pentagon said on Tuesday 50 US service members were now diagnosed with traumatic brain injury after missile strikes by Iran on a base in Iraq earlier this month, 16 more than the military had previously announced.

Donald Trump and other top officials initially said Iran’s 8 January attack had not killed or injured any US service members.

Officials say that between 10 and 30 people were killed in the northern Soum province

Dozens of people are feared dead following an attack by Islamic militants on a village in Burkina Faso, the latest bloody incident in an unprecedented surge of violence across the restive Sahel region.

Details of the attack, which occurred on Saturday and targeted the village of Silgadji in the northern Soum province, were still unclear on Tuesday but a security official said casualties in the assault totalled between “10 and 30 dead”.

MPs call for inquiry into case of Errol Graham, 57, who weighed 28.5kg when he was found dead

MPs and campaigners have called for an independent inquiry after it emerged a disabled man with a long history of mental illness starved to death just months after welfare officials stopped his out-of-work and housing benefits.

Errol Graham, a 57-year-old grandfather, and in his younger days a keen amateur footballer, weighed just four and a half stone (28.5kg) when his emaciated body was discovered by bailiffs who had broken down his front door to evict him for non-payment of rent.

The Senakw development aims to ease the city’s chronic housing crisis – and to challenge the mindset that indigeneity and urbanity are incompatible

The scrubby, vacant patch beneath the Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver looks at first glance like a typical example of the type of derelict nook common to all cities: 11.7 acres of former railway lands, over which tens of thousands of people drive every day.

This is not any old swath of underused space, however. It’s one of Canada’s smallest First Nations reserves, where dozens of Squamish families once lived. The village was destroyed by provincial authorities more than a century ago.

Amazon have arrived in force in rapidly expanding Hyderabad, with designs on the currently almost non-existent Indian e-commence market

The futuristic lobby of the new Amazon building in Hyderabad feels as though it should have a permanent orchestra blasting out Also Sprach Zarathustra. The scale is intended to awe. A large slogan on a wall suggests the company is “Delivering smiles”. The only sound that rises above the hush is a synthesised beep, coming from a giant screen playing a video of the campus at various stages of its construction.

Built on nine acres in this Indian city’s financial district, it is Amazon’s single largest building globally and the only Amazon-owned campus outside the US. It can house over 15,000 employees, but its size is its main architectural feature: it resembles the same cube of glass steel and chrome seen in corporate offices across Hyderabad, though a flash of magenta reflected in one of the top floor windows, from a billowing sari across the road, is a nice Indian touch.

Minibuses that run on Friday evenings and Saturdays buck state’s religious restrictions

Tel Aviv is one of Israel’s most dynamic cities, but the latest local craze could appear fairly humdrum to outsiders – a bus service that runs at weekends.

Packed 19-seat minibuses fill up fast with passengers, who excitedly gossip about the new routes. People patiently queue at bus stops, knowing they might have to wait for two or three buses to pass before there is a space. Still, they are upbeat. “It’s a pleasure,” said Ben Uzan, a 30-year-old electronic engineer. “It’s a blessed initiative.”

The Garbage Cafe in Ambikapur, India, is helping to tackle the country’s plastic waste problem – and their novel idea is catching on

On bad days, when his employer made some excuse for not paying him his paltry daily wage, Ram Yadav’s main meal used to be dry chapatis, with salt and raw onion for flavour. Sometimes he just went hungry. For a ragpicker like him, one of the thousands of Indians who make a living bringing in plastic waste for recycling, eating in a cafe or restaurant was the stuff of fairytales.

But last week, Yadav was sitting at a table at the Garbage Cafe in Ambikapur, in the state of Chhattisgarh, over a piping hot meal of dal, aloo gobi, poppadoms and rice. He earned the food in exchange for bringing in 1kg of plastic waste. “The hot meal I get here lasts me all day. And it feels good to sit at a table like everyone else,” he said.

The plethora of dating apps has bolstered society’s obsession with sex, but many people find that a period of abstinence makes them happier and healthier

In a world where you can get a sexual partner faster than a pizza delivery, it has never been easier to play the field. Yet, despite all that swiping right, a surprising number of people are not having sex at all – not for religious reasons, or because they can’t get a date, but because they find that celibacy makes them happier.

Some have never had much interest in sex, while others are taking a break to address personal problems, recover from bad dating experiences or change the way they approach relationships.

Choudhry Ikhalaq Hussain has been returned to UK to serve 19-year jail term

A child sex offender who sexually exploited an underage girl in Rochdale has been returned to the UK to serve a 19-year jail sentence after fleeing to Pakistan halfway through his trial.

Choudhry Ikhalaq Hussain, 42, was extradited on Tuesday after being arrested in January last year in the province of Punjab, Greater Manchester police (GMP) said.

European assembly says WikiLeaks founder’s detention ‘sets dangerous precedent’

Julian Assange’s detention “sets a dangerous precedent for journalists”, according to politicians from the Council of Europe’s parliamentary arm, who voted on Tuesday to oppose the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the US.

The words of support for Assange and implicit criticism of the UK government will be contained in a final report produced by the Labour peer Lord Foulkes for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which focuses on upholding human rights across the continent.

• 7.7 magnitude quake struck in the sea south of Cuba
• No immediate reports of damage or injuries

A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake has struck in the sea south of Cuba, shaking a vast area from Mexico to Florida and beyond, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage.

Tsunami warnings for Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands were issued but lifted shortly afterward with no reports of major damage.

Orroral Valley fire downgraded from watch and act to advice level as Scott Morrison tells National Press Club there’s much to learn from this summer’s fires. Follow live news and latest updates

2.57am GMT

Let’s do a quick recap of what we know.

2.48am GMT

Good news. The ACT Emergency Services Agency has downgraded the Orroral Valley fire from watch and act to an advice level.

It says there is now limited activity on the eastern edge of the fire, although there is an increase in fire activity on the western side of the fire.

Climate emergency is fuelling drought, food poverty and disaster in the global south but humanitarian crises under-reported

The African continent is a “blind spot” for coverage of the humanitarian crises that are being fuelled by the climate emergency, according to a new analysis [pdf].

Madagascar’s chronic food crisis, where 2.6 million people were affected by drought in 2019, came top of the list of 10 of the most under-reported crises last year, Care International’s annual survey found.

Outbreaks such as coronavirus, Sars and Ebola have taught us communication is key, and that the world is only as strong as its weakest health system

A patient presents at an emergency department somewhere in the world. They are feverish and vomiting. Doctors suspect it is influenza, but they are wrong.

When the outbreak of a virulent new disease such as the coronavirus is identified, the starting gun is fired on a vast, multimillion-dollar international effort to try to contain it.

Housing officers are using their local knowledge to spot abuse and exploitation, particularly ‘cuckooing’ of vulnerable residents by drug gangs

Housing associations are playing a growing role in tackling county lines crimes, using their knowledge of local communities to spot early signs of abuse and exploitation.

In the north west of England, the exploitation of young people by drug gangs – known as “county lines” crime – is a serious problem, not just in poorer areas but in York, Harrogate and places with good transport links. Now lawyers, housing associations and police are building networks of support to try and provide innovative solutions to the crisis.

In one of the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso, a very special school gives new hope to orphaned or disadvantaged girls

In Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso in west Africa, a school and training programme is combating entrenched attitudes and gender stereotypes that confine women to low-paid unskilled labour, or worse. At the CFIAM, girls and young women, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, can train to be car mechanics, a trade that offers them the skills necessary to enable them to pursue independent lives and achieve a measure of socio-economic progress. Such is the success of CFIAM and its students that it has been the subject of an award-winning documentary Ouaga Girls

Forced from their homes by floods and fighting, 800,000 people have crammed into informal settlements in the Somali capital. Now efforts are afoot to bolster local resources

The number of Somalis being pushed out of the countryside and into the capital Mogadishu has reached an unprecedented high, putting pressure on the city’s already poor infrastructure and threatening its faltering recovery from three decades of conflict.

More than 800,000 internally displaced people dwell in informal settlements across Mogadishu, according to the office of the mayor. They are crammed into makeshift shelters with little or no sanitation and limited access to the most basic services. There are “critical” levels of malnutrition, according to an assessment by Somalia’s food security and nutrition analysis unit.

Winston Peters has been a kingmaker for years but faces a National backlash after helping Labour into office

Winston Peters is a colossus of New Zealand politics, and his New Zealand First party is, once again, poised to be the lynchpin in this year’s election campaign. But so much hinges on whether his party makes it over the electoral system’s all-important 5% threshold.

Being the only centre party in parliament has made NZ First incredibly powerful. It can, and does, pivot between the left and right blocs of Labour-Greens and National-Act. Since 1996 when New Zealand adopted the mixed-member proportional electoral system, NZ First has decided the government three times – throwing its lot in with National once and Labour twice.

Region no longer views fate of Palestinians as lynchpin, or – in some cases – even a cause worth championing loudly

• Trump unveils ‘realistic two-state solution’
  

For much of the last 70 years the cause of Palestine stirred the Arab street. From Yemen to Morocco and all points in between, laments were sung in song and enshrined in poetry as the decades mounted without a Palestinian state. Regional statesmen built careers by standing by a people without a land. Wars were fought and lost in their name.

After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, that slowly began to change and by the time Iran became the preoccupation of the US and its allies in the region, the Palestinians were cast into the unfamiliar role of playing second fiddle. Then came Donald Trump, and ever since the once-overarching cause of the region has barely been given a seat in the orchestra pit.

What are the symptoms, how is it transmitted from one person to another, and how is the virus from Wuhan in China related to Sars?

• Coronavirus: how to protect yourself from infection
• Germany confirms first human transmission in Europe
• Coronavirus latest - live updates

It is a novel coronavirus – that is to say, a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals. Many of those infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city, which also sold live and newly slaughtered animals. New and troubling viruses usually originate in animal hosts. Ebola and flu are examples.

The New Zealand prime minister was lauded for her handling of the Christchurch massacre and climate issues. But she faces a stiff test to meet pledges on affordable housing and Māori rights

• Jacinda Ardern sets September election date

Handling of Christchurch massacre

Donald Trump's defence team has urged senators to acquit the president as they wrapped up their arguments in his impeachment trial. Dismissing objections to Trump’s conduct towards Ukraine as 'policy disagreements', Trump's lawyers also sought to marginalise former national security adviser John Bolton's explosive allegations about Trump's conduct as 'inadmissible' in the proceedings

• Trump lawyers dismiss Ukraine scandal and urge swift end to impeachment trial

The US president launches his plan for peace in the Middle East, saying the 80-page proposal offers a 'realistic two-state solution' that has already been agreed to by Israel as the basis for negotiations. Despite the absence of a Palestinian presence at the launch, Trump says the US will support Palestine if the president, Mahmoud Abbas, 'chooses the path to peace'

• Trump unveils 'realistic two-state solution' for Middle East peace

Police have used teargas and water cannon on protesting firefighters in Paris. Thousands of firefighters attended the demonstration in the French capital, asking for an increase in their hazard bonus, which has not changed since 1990

• French police clash with firefighters during Paris protest

Footage has emerged appearing to show a man being forcibly removed from the Guangzhou metro by security staff for not wearing a face mask, after the South China province implemented a mandatory order to wear them amid the coronavirus crisis. 

Chinese companies are working overtime to produce masks amid soaring demand caused by the country’s coronavirus outbreak.

• Coronavirus outbreak – latest updates

Guardian US health reporter Jessica Glenza speaks to anti-abortion activists at the 2020 March for Life in Washington, to discuss their views on abortion and women's rights – and what they think liberals get wrong about the issue

Shouts of 'jiāyóu' can be heard echoing between Wuhan's high-rise apartment blocks as people take to their balconies to shout what translates literally as "add oil", meaning 'keep up the fight', to their neighbours.  It is day six of life under lockdown for the Chinese city's 11 million residents, who have found themselves at the centre of the outbreak of coronavirus. 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces the next general election will be held on 19 September and promises a transparent campaign free of misinformation. She says Labour has signed up to Facebook's advertising transparency tool, adding: 'New Zealanders deserve freedom from misinformation and some of the negative style of campaigning that we have seen take place overseas in the past.' Ardern says Labour will also have its major policy costings independently verified.

She says Labour has run 'a strong economy with low unemployment and growth rates that others look to with envy, outstripping countries we often compare ourselves to, like Australia and the UK while making critical investments in health and education and reducing child poverty.'

• New Zealand election: Jacinda Ardern sets September date for poll