Sajid Javid has been accused of moral cowardice and “treating the UK as a banana republic” in pursuit of his leadership ambitions following the death of Jarrah, the three-week-old son of Isis bride Shamima Begum.

A Church of England bishop and a former director of public prosecutions led the chorus of outrage directed at the home secretary as demand grew for him to review his controversial decision to strip the 19-year-old of British citizenship – a move that left her stateless and her baby in legal limbo.

“This was an abject decision by a home secretary apparently so intent on furthering his leadership ambitions that he has lost sight of sovereignty, treating the UK as a banana republic incapable of regulating its own citizens,” said Lord Macdonald, who was director of public prosecutions of England and Wales between 2003 and 2008.

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The peer, who oversaw a 2010 government review of counter-terrorism and security powers, told the Observer that Javid’s “opportunism has other costs, including a more dangerous world where stateless individuals roam with no allegiance, and the death of unprotected innocents, in this case a vulnerable British baby”. And he warned of blowback to the UK.

“No dignified self-governing state should abandon responsibility for its own citizens in this way, trying to dump them on to poorer countries with failed security arrangements. Mr Javid’s behaviour is a recipe for refugee chaos and moral cowardice of the worst sort,” he said.

The bishop of St Albans, the Rt Rev Dr Alan Smith, said: “She should come back, be properly interviewed and, if it’s found that she has broken the law, she should face the law. If it’s found that she has been radicalised, she should be given help and support.

“The home secretary has a responsibility to ensure people in this country are protected. We could have done this by taking her through due process and it is to be regretted if we are not following it, because this is a human rights issue.”

Begum, from Bethnal Green, east London, was 15 when she and two other schoolgirls went to join Isis in February 2015. She gave birth in a Syrian refugee camp last month, having already lost two children.

News that a third child had now died has left her relatives in London distraught. The Begum family’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, said: “They are utterly crushed and despondent at the moment.”

Javid’s decision to strip the teenager of her British citizenship triggered a ferocious debate over whether she should be allowed to return and raised questions about the legality of his decision.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott tweeted yesterday: “It is against international law to make someone stateless, and now an innocent child has died as a result of a British woman being stripped of her citizenship. This is callous and inhumane.”

Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson Ed Davey said: “Many of us feared this tragic outcome when the home secretary washed his hands of Britain’s responsibility for a British citizen and a British baby. If the courts eventually show he has acted illegally in making a British citizen stateless, we will remember this baby in holding him to account.”

Several fellow Conservative MPs have also expressed anger at Javid’s position. Bracknell MP Phillip Lee said he was deeply concerned by the decision, which he believed was “driven by a sort of populism”.

Anna Soubry, who left the Tories to join the Independent Group, tweeted that Javid must now restore Begum’s citizenship. “Shamima Begum is our responsibility, whatever she may or may not have done, however abhorrent her views,” she said.

There are claims that Javid did not consult either the attorney general or the solicitor general before making his decision, something that could leave him vulnerable in the event of a legal challenge. When asked if this was the case, a Home Office spokesman said: “We do not comment on individual cases.”

Javid confirmed last month that Jarrah was a British citizen and said that he had considered the child’s interest when deciding to revoke Begum’s citizenship. But he told the Commons home affairs committee that it would be “incredibly difficult” for the government to facilitate the return of a child from Syria.

Conservative party chairman Brandon Lewis defended Javid. “The home secretary will have had advice and I know he made a decision based on what is in the national interest and the security of people here in the UK,” Lewis said. “There is no question that the duty of a home secretary in this country is to keep British people safe.”

The Begum family in the UK are understood to be exploring their legal options, including bringing a private prosecution against the home secretary. Tasnime Akunjee said he will soon be flying out to Syria to help Begum prepare her appeal. “I’m going to Syria to meet somebody who has lost three kids, so I can show her some paperwork which is quite dense, and so I can obtain her signature. It’s totally ridiculous,” said the lawyer.

Begum’s father, Ahmed Ali, speaking to the BBC from Bangladesh before he found out her baby had died, apologised to the British people but asked for their forgiveness, saying his daughter should be allowed back to the UK and “punished if she had made any mistake”.

“She was under age at that time, she couldn’t understand that much. I suppose someone influenced her to do that,” he said. “I admit that she might have done wrong without realising it.”

Outside east London mosque on Saturday, few people wanted to discuss Begum’s situation. “I don’t want to chat shit and be put on some watch list for saying I feel sorry for her,” said one man in his 20s. “What she did was wrong, but what they’ve done is worse. They used all this power of the state against a teenage girl and her baby – and for what?”

In a Punjabi cafe in Whitechapel, a family of four were split in their views. Parents Sobia and Rizwan discussed whether Javid had been right to deny Begum the chance to return to the UK.

“I don’t think he did it with good intention,” said Sobia. “I understand why he did it, because he wants to show he won’t be soft on Muslims, but that was a baby’s life. He punished an innocent baby.”

However, her husband said it was important to demonstrate that there are serious consequences to joining Isis. Did he agree with the decision to make her stateless? “Obviously not now, because her baby has died and we are supposed to be a civilised country. But what is the law around it? We should be using the proper laws. Why isn’t the government going by their own rules?”

The bodies of Tom Ballard and Daniele Nardi, the British and Italian climbers who went missing a fortnight ago, have been found on the mountain Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.

Italy’s ambassador to Pakistan, Stefano Pontecorvo, said on Saturday that the search team had confirmed that silhouettes spotted on the mountain “through telescope and pics beyond reasonable doubt” were the bodies of the two men.

Four Spanish rescuers were flown in by a military helicopter on Monday, joining Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara at base camp to conduct the search.

On Twitter, Pontecorvo wrote: “With great sadness I inform that the search for Daniele Nardi and Tom Ballard is over as Alex Txikon and the search team have confirmed that the silhouettes spotted on Mummery at about 5,900 metres are those of Daniele and Tom. RIP.”

While the bodies were difficult to reach, rescuers promised that everything would be done to recover them. Ballard and Nardi last made contact on 24 February, from an elevation of 6,300 metres (20,670 feet). Nardi, 42, had attempted the Nanga Parbat summit several times before. In 2015, Ballard, 30, became the first person to solo climb all six major north faces of the Alps in one winter.

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He and Nardi began prepping for the challenge in December. Dubbed “Killer Mountain”, Nanga Parbat is in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan area and is the ninth highest mountain in the world at 8,126 metres (26,660 feet). Two Pakistani mountaineers had joined the pair on the expedition but turned back because they thought the weather conditions too dangerous.

Nonetheless, spirits were high. In his last post on Facebook, on 19 February, Ballard wrote: “Basecamp life is becoming, almost, like a holiday while we wait for that elusive weather window. Many new and interesting drytooling boulder problems, luncheon in the sun and afternoon skiing. What more could you want?”

Twenty-four years ago, Ballard’s mother, Alison Hargreaves, died while climbing K2, another infamous Pakistani mountain. Hargreaves had recently embarked upon a career as a professional mountaineer but died just months after becoming the first woman to conquer Everest unaided.

Ballard was born in Derbyshire but the family, which included his father, Jim, and younger sister, Kate, moved to the Scottish Highlands in 1995. In more recent years, Ballard had been living in Italy’s Dolomites mountain range with his father. On Facebook, Ballard’s girlfriend, Stefania Pederiva, wrote that her heart was “completely drowned” with sorrow. She added: “There are or will never be words suitable to describe the void you left.”

The cabinet minister in charge of Brexit has held detailed talks with Labour MPs who are championing plans for a second referendum – amid signs of mounting desperation inside Theresa May’s government about what to do if the prime minister’s deal suffers another crushing defeat on Tuesday.

Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, called the meeting with Labour’s Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson in Downing Street last Thursday as negotiations with Brussels to resolve the deadlock over the Northern Ireland backstop floundered and ministers privately began to concede that May’s plan could be doomed.

Kyle told the Observer on Saturday that Barclay had “remained loyal to government policy”, which is to oppose any second referendum. But the MP for Hove said Barclay talked to him and Wilson for at least 45 minutes and was “fully engaged”.

Under the Kyle-Wilson plan, which could receive Labour’s official backing after Tuesday’s vote but before Brexit day on 29 March, an amendment would be put down in parliament allowing MPs to approve May’s deal, but on the condition that it is then put to the country in a second public vote. The other option on the ballot paper would be to remain in the EU.

Kyle said: “Clearly the Brexit secretary is fully engaged in the battle to deliver support for the vote on Tuesday. But that didn’t stop him from engaging fully with the possibilities our compromise offers. We didn’t enter the meeting with expectations of converting him to our cause but we hope that government now understands what our plan offers, should a new direction be demanded by parliament in the coming days.”

A senior Downing Street source said May remained “100% opposed to a second referendum, with bells on” and insisted that she and all cabinet ministers were still determined to persuade enough Tory MPs and the 10 DUP members to rally behind her deal this week.

But – with little sign of progress in talks with Brussels – there is a growing recognition among ministers that all other options must now be considered to avoid a disastrous no-deal outcome. Backers of the Kyle-Wilson plan, including senior members of the shadow cabinet, accept that there is currently no parliamentary majority for a second referendum.

But they believe this could change if May’s deal goes down and no alternative to it can win sufficient parliamentary backing. In that event, they say that even the prime minister could see the merits of fighting for her deal out in the country.

A Downing Street source said on Saturday that the RAF plane that ferries the prime minister and senior ministers to EU capitals would be on standby this weekend in case further last-minute meetings with Europeanleaders in Brussels or elsewhere were called. Negotiations were continuing “at all levels” before Tuesday’s vote. “These are tough talks with the [European] commission which we are expecting to go right down to the wire,” said the source. “The PM, ministers and her negotiating team are intensely focused this weekend on making progress so that ultimately we can, in the country’s best interests, leave the EU with a deal.”

If May loses on Tuesday, she has said she will call a vote on Wednesday on whether parliament should rule out a no-deal Brexit and then a further one, probably on Thursday, on delaying Brexit. No decision has yet been made on whether Tory MPs will be granted free votes on the two amendments, and Downing Street has refused to say how May will herself vote on them.

It is understood that if she loses, the prime minister has not ruled out trying to bring back her deal to parliament a third time, nearer to Brexit day, when she would tell MPs that the only alternative to backing her would be a lengthy delay that could mean Brexit not happening at all.

Labour will delay putting down an amendment in favour of a second referendum until nearer Brexit day. Campaigners for a second public vote now believe that their best chance of success will be late in the process when there is no other viable option. This could even mean tabling the plans after 29 March, assuming Brexit has been delayed.

But the new Independent Group of MPs will table an amendment for a second referendum to take place after a series of indicative votes on alternatives to May’s deal had been held.

At least 40 Labour MPs – and all but about nine Tories – are said to be opposed to a second referendum, although party sources believe this would change if Jeremy Corbyn came out strongly in favour. Writing on theguardian.com, the Labour MP Jon Cruddas and the director of Hope not Hate, Nick Lowles, argue that another referendum will only be seen as “legitimate” if the option of no-deal is also put on the ballot paper.

A poll by BMG for the anti-Brexit youth campaigns Our Future Our Choice and For Our Future’s Sake (details on theguardian.com) shows that some 87% of young people who were ineligible to vote in the 2016 referendum, but would now be old enough to do so, and would definitely take part, would back Remain. Some two million young people who could not vote last time due to their age would now be able to do so.

Donald Trump will be making a significant request for border wall funds and seeking money to stand up his “Space Force” as a new branch of the military in the White House budget being released next week, an administration official said on Saturday.

As the official did so, the president was on Twitter calling the hard-right commentator Ann Coulter a “Wacky Nut Job” for questioning his success on the wall.

Coulter, previously a supporter of the president and the author of a book entitled In Trump We Trust, has turned on him over his failure to secure funding for the wall by conventional means.

Late on Saturday, after a day’s golf in Florida, the president tweeted that “Wacky Nut Job Ann Coulter … still hasn’t figured out that, despite all odds and an entire Democrat Party of Far Left Radicals against me (not to mention certain Republicans who are sadly unwilling to fight), I am winning on the Border.

“Major sections of Wall are being built and renovated, with MUCH MORE to follow shortly. Tens of thousands of illegals are being apprehended (captured) at the Border and NOT allowed into our Country. With another President, millions would be pouring in. I am stopping an invasion as the Wall gets built.”

The tweets from Trump represented a harshening of rhetoric since January, during the record-breaking government shutdown over his demands for a wall. Then, the president mused that Coulter might have turned against him because he did not return her calls. On Saturday, Coulter did not immediately return his tweet.

The official who spoke anonymously about the budget, to the Associated Press, said the White House would propose serious cuts in safety net programs used by many Americans and other non-defense accounts. That will probably trigger a showdown with Congress.

It is unclear how much more money the president will seek to build the wall on the border with Mexico. The request is coming on top of the $8.1bn Trump already has access to, which includes some $3.6bn he has trying to shift from military accounts after declaring a national emergency. Trump invoked the emergency declaration last month after Congress denied his request for $5.7bn. Instead, Congress approved nearly $1.4bn for the border barriers, far less than he wanted.

The president’s Republican allies in the Senate, uneasy over the emergency declaration, are poised next week to debate terminating it. Some view it as an overreach of executive power. Congress appears to have enough votes to reject Trump’s declaration, but not to overturn his expected veto of their action.

Budgets are mainly seen as blueprints for White House priorities. But they are often panned on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers craft the appropriation bills that eventually fund the government if the president signs them into law.

Trump’s budget for the 2020 fiscal year will increase requests for some agencies while reducing others to reflect those priorities. Reductions are proposed, for example, for the Environmental Protection Agency.

The official said Congress had ignored the president’s spending cuts for too long. The federal budget was bloated with wasteful spending, the official said, and the administration remained committed to balancing the budget.

The cuts being requested by the White House would hit discretionary spending as well as some mandatory safety net programs, which Trump has proposed in the past. Many Republicans are eager to reduce government spending but Congress has had trouble passing bills that seriously slash the safety net programs used by many Americans.

Supporters of Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his US-backed challenger, Juan Guaidó, returned to the streets on Saturday amid fears the political crisis could be entering a turbulent new phase.

After a strained 48 hours for Venezuela, in which almost the entire country was affected by a blackout, thousands of demonstrators turned out to champion their respective leaders, both of whom claim the presidency.

“I’m here to support President Maduro … he is the constitutional president of our Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” said María Reyes, a 52-year-old housewife who was among the crowds at a pro-Maduro rally in central Caracas. She said she was there to defend Hugo Chávez’s political heir and denounce “the imposter Guaidó” as a threat to peace.

Experts blame the massive power cut on poor maintenance, incompetence and corruption. But Maduro and his backers claim it was part of a US plot to destroy Chávez’s leftist Bolivarian revolution and force him from power.

“We condemn this cowardly terrorist attack,” tweeted Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, one of Maduro’s few remaining regional allies.

Reyes said she believed that version, but was also willing to countenance opposition claims that the blackout was caused by government failings. “Perhaps it was a lack of maintenance. We aren’t ruling any hypothesis out,” she said.

Oskar Oramas, a 24-year-old student activist for Maduro’s ruling Socialist party, said he was protesting the “escalation of persecution” against his government by the US. “I have come to take a stand against the United States because they have made it clear they are our enemies … We will defeat them because we are experts in peace,” he added.

“They want to turn us into another Syria and we will not allow this to happen,” one activist shouted from a red sound truck bearing the slogan: ‘Here you don’t speak badly of Chávez!’

In cities across Venezuela, members of the opposition poured on to the streets to demand political change amid fears that Maduro’s security forces would seek to put down anti-government protests with force.

“They have destroyed a whole country,” demonstrator Jorge Lulo, a psychologist, told the Efecto Cocuyo website as he marched in Caracas carrying his country’s red, yellow and blue tricolor. “We are fighting to escape from tyranny.”

Guaidó, who most western governments have recognised as Venezuela’s legitimate president, told supporters at the rally: “Right now we are [protesting] in more than 50 cities around the country in order to bring an end to the darkness, the hunger and the misery.”

Speaking through a loudhailer, he urged demonstrators to remain mobilised “until we achieve the freedom of Venezuela” and announced that he would summon a peaceful march on the capital at a yet-to-be announced date.

“Today this [tragedy] has a name and a surname … Nicolás Maduro!”, Guaidó said to loud cheers.

The latest chapter of Venezuela’s long-running political crisis began on 23 January when Guaidó, a young opposition leader, declared himself the legitimate interim president. He was quickly recognised by regional powers including Brazil, Colombia and the US, and anti-government demonstrations ensued, leaving many convinced that Maduro’s fall was imminent.

Those predictions did not come to pass, however, and the opposition challenge had appeared to be losing steam. Last week, however, Guaidó made his return to Venezuela after conducting a tour of South America in violation of a travel ban imposed by Maduro’s government.

Efforts to unseat Maduro may also be re-energised by this week’s power cut, which left hospitals and homes without power, and reinforced opposition to him.

“This is a joke,” complained one disillusioned civil servant who was looking on as the pro-Maduro march passed down Avenida Mexico in Caracas. “We’ve got no electricity and they’re using the generators to stage a march rather than sending them to the hospitals.”

“His government is like a cancer,” added a woman, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. “This government is a goner.”

On Saturday, anti-Maduro marches were also reported in cities across the country including Barcelona, Barquisimeto, Coro, La Asunción, Maracaibo and Puerto Ordaz.

The power outage, which continues to blight large swathes of Venezuela, has also sparked fears that the South American country could enter a period of disorder.

“It’s a tinderbox, and Maduro’s survival thus far gives a false sense of stability,” said Benjamin Gedan, the national security council’s Venezuela adviser during the Obama presidency. “A sustained blackout could … spark widespread dissent.”

Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, said that despite the battle of rhetoric between Maduro and Guaidó, he believed some kind of back-channel talks were taking place that could lead to a peaceful settlement.

“I get the sense things are happening behind the scenes. I am more optimistic than I was, say, a month ago about the prospect of some kind of non-violent, negotiated transition,” Ramsey said.

Addressing his rally on Saturday, Maduro lashed out at his political foes in Venezuela and the US and accused “infiltrated coup-mongers and saboteurs” of attacking the country’s electricity system in a high-tech bid to topple him.

“We are at war,” Maduro said. “We have been at war for 20 years.”

Since Donald Trump was sworn in as president he has met his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, five times. The details of their conversations remain unknown to the public, and in most cases even to senior administration officials.

Democrats in Congress are now demanding more details of communications between the two leaders. Secrecy around such meetings, they say, raises fresh questions about the nature of Trump’s relationship with Putin at a time when his ties to Russia are the subject of several investigations.

The meetings with Putin are not the only subject of such Democratic demands. House leaders left little room for doubt this week that they will utilize their newly minted majority to cast a wide net around the president, his family and their businesses.

The judiciary committee issued document requests to 81 individuals and entities, seeking information on everything from contacts between Trump aides and Moscow to hush money payments to women and possible obstruction of justice.

It all came a week after Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress and implicated the president in alleged criminal activity spanning decades.

Nonetheless, according to some national security experts, when it comes to uncovering the motivations behind the president’s desire for closer relations with the Kremlin and the complex web of contacts between his associates and Moscow, few interactions might be more consequential than those between Trump and Putin.

“What kind of things are being discussed that the president does not want to share?” said Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine who served on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council as senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.

“Is he discussing Trump Tower? What’s the basis for the discussion? We just don’t know.

“I don’t know why the president doesn’t have a notetaker … That would be the best way to send off any suspicions that something untoward has been done.”

In fact, translators have been present at meetings between Trump and Putin, such as in Hamburg in 2017 and in Helsinki last year. But it has been reported that the president has taken unusual steps to keep their notes private.

Trump’s posture towards Russia has been a focus of his time in the White House, confounding national security officials and exposing rifts between the president and prominent members of his administration.

In his first year in office, after Congress forced his hand by building a veto-proof majority, Trump begrudgingly signed sanctions that were passed in part to punish Moscow for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. But he resisted attempts to impose additional sanctions, including over Kremlin support for chemical weapons attacks carried out by the Assad regime in Syria.

The president has publicly disagreed with warnings from his own intelligence chiefs that the Russians are still seeking to influence US elections. The National Security Agency chief, Adm Mike Rogers, testified before Congress last year that the administration was not doing enough to disrupt Russian cyberattacks at the source, in part because the president had not authorized such an effort.

Trump has continued to express admiration for Putin, accepting his denials of Russian involvement in the 2016 election at their summit in Finland. That put the president squarely at odds with the US intelligence community and invited an avalanche of criticism.

Democrats now say Trump’s reportedly forceful attempts to conceal his communications with Putin raise questions about his motivations in pursuing closer relations with a regime largely regarded as a primary adversary.

In a joint letter this week, the chairs of the House intelligence, foreign affairs and oversight committees raised “profound national security, counterintelligence and foreign policy concerns, especially in light of Russia’s ongoing active measures campaign to improperly influence American elections.

“In addition, such allegations, if true, undermine the proper functioning of government, most notably the Department [of State]’s access to critical information germane to its diplomatic mission and its ability to develop and execute foreign policy that advances our national interests.”

If Trump’s communications were intentionally manipulated or withheld from the official record, the Democrats said, it would be a possible violation of federal law requiring “that presidents and other administration officials preserve such materials”.

Cohen’s testimony opened several lines of inquiry regarding Trump’s ties to Russia. But few revelations have drawn more scrutiny than those regarding negotiations about building a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Cohen previously told the Senate intelligence committee conversations about a potential Trump Tower Moscow ended before February 2016, when primary voting began. It was later uncovered, through his cooperation with the special counsel, that attempts to reach a deal continued until at least that summer, past the point at which Trump had in effect secured the Republican nomination.

Cohen, who will begin a three-year prison sentence in May, has said he received an implicit order from Trump to lie to Congress. The president denies it. The president’s former lawyer and fixer also said two of Trump’s children, Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump, were briefed on Trump Tower Moscow approximately 10 times, contradicting their claims of minimal knowledge of the discussions.

Democrats have signaled they will call both Donald Jr and Ivanka before Congress. They have also summoned Felix Sater, a longtime associate of Trump, to testify in public before the intelligence committee on 14 March. Sater has been linked to the Russian mob and allegedly suggested Trump Tower Moscow, which never came to fruition, should include a $50m penthouse as a gift to Putin.

Democrats say there is reason to delve into the negotiations, which took place as the then candidate Trump lavished praise on Putin and vowed to improve US-Russia relations.

Cohen also alleged that Trump was aware of his longtime adviser Roger Stone’s outreach to WikiLeaks, in advance of its release of hacked Democratic party emails.

In their document requests, Democrats included the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and at least three individuals associated with Stone who were believed to have been in contact with WikiLeaks: Jerome Corsi, Randy Credico and Ted Malloch.

Some of those subjects have been interviewed by the special counsel Robert Mueller. His investigation will conclude with a report to Congress. It is not expected to break with justice department guidelines suggesting a sitting president cannot be indicted.

The onslaught of congressional inquiries means the president will remain under an investigative cloud for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his time in office. Trump has accused Democrats of “presidential harassment” and being more preoccupied with investigating than legislating.

“Instead of doing infrastructure, instead of doing healthcare, instead of doing so many things that they should be doing, they want to play games,” he said. “It’s a disgrace to our country.”

Polling has found that a majority of Americans back the Democrats’ investigations of Trump, although fewer support impeachment, the procedure to remove a president that could follow such committee investigations.

Trump has said he will cooperate with the inquiries, even as he has decried them as part of a “witch-hunt” against him. The White House has stymied several requests and is expected to argue that many of Trump’s dealings in office are protected by executive privilege.

Alice Stewart, a Republican strategist, said it was no surprise Democrats were on the offensive after campaigning in the 2018 midterms on restoring congressional oversight of the executive branch.

“They’re following through on what a lot of people expected them to do,” she said. “Republicans are going to take issue with it, but this is what their base really wants them to do.”

Stewart, a supporter of Trump, said it was “appropriate” for Democrats to ask questions and request documents.

“I take the president and the administration at their word when they say there’s nothing wrong, that there’s no collusion,” she said.

“The best way for them to put this all to rest is for them to comply with these investigations, put the information out there, let them find what they’re going to find, and then we can move on.”

A ferry collided with what was believed to be a marine animal off a Japanese island on Saturday, injuring more than 80 people, local media reported.

The incident happened just after noon off Sado island, Kyodo News agency reported.

Five of the injuries were serious and a 15cm crack was found at the ferry’s stern. Ferry operator Sado Steam Ship Co said the jetfoil ferry still reached its intended destination on the island, located off the west coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu.

The ferry, which departed from Honshu’s Niigata port, was carrying 121 passengers and four crew members.

The cause of the accident was under investigation by coastguard officials, who said the ferry may have struck a whale or some other sealife, Kyodo reported.

A former member of the Irish Defence Forces who converted to radical Islam has been detained in Syria, according to reports in Irish newspapers.

The woman is thought to be from the north-east of the republic and left the country several years ago. The Irish Times reports that she is believed to be in her late 30s, and left the forces in 2011, having served in an infantry unit and the country’s air corps.

The Garda released a statement saying: “An Garda Síochána is aware of an Irish woman who left Ireland three or four years ago having become radicalised. She was previously a member of the Irish Defence Forces.”

Her existence appears to have been revealed 10 days ago, when an ITV news crew visited a camp in northern Syria. While they interviewed people alleged to be foreign fighters and their families, the crew noticed that one woman spoke with an Irish accent.

The woman told ITV: “The people don’t have food. They’re struggling for food and money and everything is expensive, so I don’t know how they’re going to keep living.”

A spokesman for Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs said: “Where possible, we will provide consular assistance, but we do not comment on individual cases.”

A source told the Irish Times that as the woman had not contacted the Irish government, she could not be offered consular assistance. They said: “Until we get a request for her for assistance, there is little we can do.”

A spokesman for the Ministry for Justice in Ireland said they were aware of the woman, but that “it would not be appropriate to comment on the detail of security matters, or indeed on individual cases”.

A 64-year-old woman allegedly hired four Sicilian mafia henchmen to murder her ex-lover who had stolen her jewels, according to police. The killers, all Sicilians, carried out their order by walling the man in cement while he was still alive.

The victim, named as Lamaj Astrid, a 41-year-old Albanian national, disappeared without a trace in 2013. Six years later, an investigation in Sicily by anti-mafia prosecutors in Caltanissetta province led to the discovery of his corpse sealed inside a concrete pillar in a villa in Senago, a few kilometres from Monza on the mainland.

The man’s body was found in January while the villa was being renovated, but the authorities only disclosed the news on Friday.

The four alleged killers, arrested in Sicily, were linked to a powerful mafia family from Riesi, in Caltanissetta. They are accused of murder and concealing a corpse. After learning of the discovery of the body of her ex-lover, the woman reportedly attempted to flee via Genoa airport. Police arrested her before she could leave.

According to investigators, the woman could not accept being jilted and had not forgiven the man for having stolen some of her jewellery. She reportedly decided to take revenge by contacting a group of men she knew in Sicily to organise the killing. “The woman had important contacts in the Riesi mafia,” a police commander told the newspaper La Repubblica. “A mafia boss would have finally given the OK for the murder to go ahead. The Sicilian hitmen then went to northern Italy to execute the order.”

The man’s body was identified from shreds of his clothing that were recovered from the pillar’s cavity.

‘‘The act of walling up bodies was a very common practice by the Sicilian mafia,” said Salvatore Lupo, a professor of contemporary history at the University of Palermo and a renowned expert in the history of Italy’s so-called Cosa Nostra.

“It is a very rational practice because if the body is not found, police investigations are slowed down,” said Lupo. “Other times, however, the mafia wants the corpses to be found to send out a message. If a victim talked to police about their business, he was killed and a stone was put in his mouth. If instead the victim stole money or was too greedy, the killers put banknotes on his genitals.’’

In 2009, the skeleton of a man was found in a cave in Rocca Busambra, near Corleone. A DNA test and a long investigation confirmed that the corpse belonged to the local trade unionist Placido Rizzotto, killed by Corleone bosses in 1948. To date, according to investigators, there are dozens if not hundreds of mafia victims whose bodies have never been found.

A slate of Democratic presidential candidates will this weekend speak at South by Southwest (SXSW), seeking to connect with a young and liberal crowd at the tech-heavy festival in Austin.

Among declared candidates for the party nomination, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota was the first to take the stage on Saturday, followed by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts later in the afternoon.

The former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro, the former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper and Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, will speak on Sunday.

Klobuchar, who has been dogged by reports of mistreating her staff, was asked about the allegations and repeated a defense she used last month at a rally.

“I have high expectations for myself and I have high expectations for the people who work for me and I have high expectations for this country,” she said.

Klobuchar said she was “sometimes too tough” on the people who worked for her, then moved on to questions about the crowded Democratic field and tech policy.

She said she wanted to investigate how tech firms such as Facebook and Google have monopolized power and obtained vast amounts of user data.

“The first thing we do is privacy legislation,” Klobuchar said. “Second thing we do is look at how much they’re making off of us.”

Hours later, Warren faced an audience that included employees of Amazon, Facebook and Google and explained the pledge she made on Friday to rein in the influence such big-tech companies have on American lives.

Warren said a problem had emerged in the tech industry where companies such as Amazon have data on buyers and sellers and are able to compete in online markets in a different way from average sellers and small businesses.

“My view on this is: it’s a little like baseball,” Warren said. “You can be an umpire, a platform, or you can own teams, that’s fine. But you can’t be an umpire and own teams.”

In a quick-fire round of questions, Warren said she thought hype directed at the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was to speak later Saturday evening at SXSW, was justified.

She also said she read two books per week, mostly by listening to audiobooks, and confessed that her drink of choice was the beer Michelob Ultra, “the club soda of beers”.

Three underdog candidates are also scheduled to speak at the festival, at a CNN-hosted town hall on Sunday night. They are the former Maryland congressman John Delaney; the South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg; and the Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

The California senator Kamala Harris, a heavyweight contender, will not appear. On Saturday, she was due to appear in South Carolina. Hickenlooper and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders were visiting Iowa.

In Austin on Saturday, the former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke attended the premiere of a documentary chronicling his long-shot US Senate campaign that ended in a narrow defeat by the hardline Republican incumbent, Ted Cruz. O’Rourke has not yet announced if he will run for president.

The film, Running with Beto, will air on HBO and was cobbled together from 700 hours of campaign footage. After its premiere, O’Rourke, who attended with his wife and daughter, said he had made up his mind about whether to run or not and plans to let everyone know soon.

O’Rourke briefly took questions from reporters but provided no details. Seeing the documentary was “very emotional”, he said.