Keir Starmer has hailed a “new age of hope and opportunity” as millions of people prepare to vote in a general election that could deliver the biggest shake-up of British politics in a generation.

The Labour leader said he was “ready for government” and that his intended cabinet would “hit the ground running” if it wins Thursday’s election.

With Rishi Sunak’s closest allies appearing to concede defeat for the Conservatives, and the final opinion polls predicting an unprecedented Labour victory, Starmer said he hoped Britain was about to enter a new chapter.

On the last day of a fractious six-week campaign, the Guardian was told Sunak had confided to members of his inner circle that he was fearful of losing his own seat, and a new YouGov poll predicted 16 cabinet ministers would lose their seats – potentially handing Starmer the biggest majority for any single party since 1832.

Speaking at a campaign stop in Scotland, which will be one of the key battlegrounds on Thursday, Starmer told his activists they were “on the final few yards towards the start of a historic day”.

“This is a great nation, with boundless potential. The British people deserve a government that matches their ambition. Today is the chance to begin the work of rebuilding Britain with Labour.”

He promised a flurry of activity should he enter No 10, saying he would push back the parliamentary recess to get his legislative programme under way.

Starmer said he had told his shadow cabinet they will not be forgiven if did not show results immediately. He said he had told them: “I don’t want you having a phone call or a meeting the day after the election that you could have had six months before the election.”

In a rare sign that he was mentally preparing for victory at the end of a deeply cautious campaign, Starmer said: “I’m really pleased that four and a half years of work is being vindicated because this has not been an easy gig.”

Sunak spent the day campaigning in safe Conservative seats in the south of England. Sources told the Guardian he had privately confided his own vote in Richmond and Northallerton was too close to call.

In 2019, he won the seat with a majority of more than 27,000 and 63% of the vote. One source said “he is genuinely fearful of a defeat in Richmond: the risk that it could be tight has hit him hard. He’s rattled – he can’t quite believe it’s coming so close.”

Leading Tories, including the sacked former home secretary Suella Braverman and the work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, also made clear that election defeat appeared inevitable.

However, Sunak brushed aside the idea that the Conservatives had already accepted defeat, as he campaigned in ultra-safe Tory seats such as Hamble Valley on the final day before polls opened.

He claimed that “millions and millions” of voters had still not made up their minds, saying people should “separate the frustrations which they understandably have about me, the party and the past” from their ultimate decision.

Quizzed at a school about his highlight as prime minister, Sunak dodged the question, while arguing that much of his time in office had been spent struggling with outside events.

“There are lots of things that you’d like to do but the reality is that you’re dealing with the situation in front of you. That’s very much been the story of my political career in the last few years. That’s just reality. You’ve got to play the cards that you’ve been dealt,” he said.

Asked if he would take full responsibility for whatever the election result was, he replied: “Yes.”

The Tories experienced yet another blow on Wednesday night as the Sun newspaper made an abrupt volte-face, putting its support behind the Labour party for the first time since 2005.

After years of fiercely critical coverage of Labour and personal attacks on the leader it called “Sir Softie”, the Sun endorsed Starmer on Wednesday, saying: “It is time for a change … Which means that it is time for Labour.”

In Essex, where Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, is making an eighth attempt to enter parliament, the Tory candidate standing in his way made a last-ditch appeal to stop what he described as “the populist juggernaut”.

Farage led a rally in the centre of Clacton in chants of “we want our country back”, as he once again sought to make immigration the centrepiece of his campaign.

“How are you getting on for dentists in Clacton? Well then you should have come by dinghy,” he said, after arriving on a military-style vehicle to the sound of Without Me by Eminem.

Giles Watling, who is defending his Clacton seat, said the atmosphere in the constituency had changed since the arrival en masse of Farage supporters. He described the Reform leader’s rallies as “chilling” and alleged that people had been intimidated by canvassers for the populist party, including a shop owner who, he said, had been told “it wouldn’t be a good idea” if she put up a Tory placard in her window.

Farage was in a bullish mood as he appeared alongside the former boxer Derek Chisora, predicting that Labour would win as much as 37% of the vote and that his party would be “challenging for government” at the next election.

Labour strategists are tense about the prospect for shocks in some unpredictable constituencies, including those where the Reform vote is surging and where Labour is facing a challenge from the Greens or independent candidates campaigning on Gaza.

The party is braced for a number of upsets that go against the grain, including in the shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire’s Bristol Central seat to the Greens and in seats with large Muslim populations, including Birmingham Ladywood, Bethnal Green and Bow, and Dewsbury and Batley. Islington North, where the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is running as an independent, is said by party insiders to be too close to call.

On his final day of a gruelling campaign, Starmer spent time in Wales, Scotland and England, culminating in a rally in the Midlands – another area of the UK where Labour is hoping to take multiple seats from the Conservatives.

In Glasgow, he mocked the Scottish National party for urging voters to vote for them to “send a message” to Westminster. “I don’t want Scotland to send a message, I want Scotland to send a government,” he said. Labour is on course to regain dozens of seats in Scotland from the SNP.

On Wednesday night, the first minister, John Swinney, said it was a foregone conclusion Labour would win. “The only story left in this election is in Scotland, where seats across the country are on a knife-edge,” he said.

But Starmer also warned during the course of the day against paying too much attention to Tories downplaying their own prospects. “You can see what the Tories are up to – they are trying to invite people not to exercise their democratic right to go out and vote, trying to dissuade people from voting,” he said.

“A once-respected party is now saying with 24 hours to go nothing that is positive, everything is negative, effectively, to run a campaign to suppress the vote.”

Writing in the Guardian, Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, promised “change will begin immediately” if Starmer enters No 10 and called on voters to help deliver a significant majority. “We will need a clear mandate for change – don’t doubt that.”

The Liberal Democrats also look as if they will regain the party’s strength of the coalition years, capitalising on Tory decline and tactical voting.

The party’s leader, Ed Davey, whose campaign has been dominated by outlandish stunts, wrote in the Guardian on Wednesday that his mission was “beating as many Conservative MPs as possible … More and more people are focusing on how best to use their vote to bring an end to Conservative rule and start a more progressive, more positive era.”

Keir Starmer has insisted the UK will not rejoin either the EU, the single market or the customs union within his lifetime, in his firmest pledge yet that Labour will not seek much closer relations with Europe for as long as he is prime minister.

The Labour leader told reporters on Wednesday he did not think Britain would go back into any of the three blocs while he was alive, all but ruling out rejoining even if he wins a second term in office.

In recent days, the Labour leader has begun talking more freely about what his party would do in power, as polls continue to suggest it is heading for a landslide victory. He also said on Wednesday, for example, that he would seek to extend the parliamentary timetable immediately after the election to allow more time to legislate before the summer.

With less than 24 hours to go until polls open, Starmer has largely avoided talking about relations with the EU during the campaign, as Labour seeks to avoid the mistakes it made in 2019 when it alienated leave voters by promising a second referendum.

Some have suggested this reluctance to talk about the issue masked a desire to pursue re-entry to the customs union or single market during a second Labour term, something other senior figures in the party have failed to rule out. Starmer insisted on Wednesday, however, this was not the case.

Asked whether he could see any circumstances where the UK rejoined the single market or customs union within his lifetime, Starmer said: “No. I don’t think that that is going to happen. I’ve been really clear about not rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union – or [allowing a] return to freedom of movement.”

He repeated, however, his view that Labour could achieve better trading arrangements with the EU in certain industries. “I do think we could get a better deal than the botched deal we got under Boris Johnson on the trading front, in research and development and on security,” he said.

Starmer spent his final day on the campaign trail travelling around the UK, starting with a stop in south Wales attended by dozens of Labour activists and candidates.

On the subject of a legislative programme, he said: “How much legislation we will be through by the end of July I think is questionable, because the timetable is very tight, although it seems obvious to me that we’ll have to extend the timetable. We will be working very hard.”

Starmer’s first days in office are likely to be spent battling various crises, including one in Britain’s full-up prisons, which the Institute for Government suggested on Wednesday could be alleviated by cutting average sentences.

Starmer indicated he was open to such an idea, saying: “In terms of the specific things that we will do, we’ll have to wait and see what that is, but I can’t stand here and pretend to you or everybody else that we can build a prison in 24 hours after the election result is called.

“We have to get on with the hard yards of sorting this mess out, but it is one massive mess.”

As well as the immediate crises with which he will be grappling, Starmer has also begun to talk about the long-term challenges facing a Labour government, including taking on the threat of rightwing populism.

He told reporters he saw it as part of his job as a progressive leader to combat the appeal of parties such as Reform UK, and even suggested he would be willing to work across party lines to do so. Such a scenario is playing out in France, where candidates from centre-left and centre-right parties are dropping out of the legislative election to make sure they do not stand in the way of others defeating the hard-right National Rally.

Starmer said: “The very many challenges here in Europe and across the world will have to be met, in my view, by progressive answers. And it falls to us to make that argument – and to work with others to make that argument.”

The Sun newspaper has made an abrupt volte-face on the eve of the general election, putting its support behind the Labour party for the first election since 2005.

The Times, another News UK title, also offered cautious support for Starmer and his party, albeit seemingly as a result of the newspaper accepting Labour will win anyway.

After years of fiercely critical coverage of Labour and personal attacks on the leader it called “Sir Softie”, the Sun took the surprise move of endorsing the party on Wednesday with the simple message: “It is time for a change … Which means that it is time for Labour.”

The move was welcomed by the Labour leader who said: “I am delighted to have the support of the Sun. It shows just how much this is a changed party, back in the service of working people, and that is the change on offer tomorrow in this election.”

In an editorial, the Times told readers that “democracy requires change” and tellingly stopped short of urging people to vote Conservative to keep a potential Labour administration in check.

The newspaper said Starmer was “clearly a sensible man, flexible and pragmatic, a patriot committed to his country’s defence at a time of increasing geopolitical instability”, and also had praise for the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, for showing a “willingness to reject Labour orthodoxy and seek new solutions to the NHS’s forever crisis”.

While saying the paper “wants the next government to succeed”, however, it also said that Starmer’s party “has yet to earn the trust of the British people” and had been “sparing with the truth about what it will do in office”.

Speculation about who the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun would support has been rife since Rishi Sunak called the general election on 22 May, with an editorial that day calling the decision to call an early poll an “almighty punt”.

But less than 24 hours before polling stations open, the Sun changed the main story on its site to one displaying its newspaper front page, featuring a background picture of a football pitch, a small picture of the England manager, Gareth Southgate, and the headline: “As Britain goes to the polls it’s … time for a new manager (and we don’t mean sack Southgate).”

The editorial begins by praising Sunak, but says that while he has “many policies which we support … put bluntly, the Tories are exhausted”.

It goes on to argue that the Reform UK party is a “one-man band which at best can win only a handful of MPs”, while the Liberal Democrats are dismissed as “a joke”.

This, it adds, “means that it is time for Labour”. It praises Starmer for changing “his party for the better”, saying that he has rooted out antisemitism, been solid in support for Ukraine and Israel and promised to build the “new houses and infrastructure we need”.

There were doubts that the Murdoch-owned paper would endorse a Labour leader who had brought prosecutions against more than 20 journalists after the hacking scandal, including charges against News UK’s now chief executive, Rebekah Brooks. The former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie had said it would be an “outright outrage”.

The leader may obliquely refer to this stating: “Common sense values are what The Sun believes in … Freedom of speech, a free Press and freedom for our journalists to expose hypocrisy and wrongdoing.”

But while the Sun’s backing of Starmer may be lukewarm, it is undeniable. It warns that the “ex-remainer” wants “closer ties with Brussels” and says he has a “mountain to climb, with a disillusioned electorate and low approval ratings”. However, it adds: “But, by dragging his party back to the centre ground of British politics for the first time since Tony Blair was in No 10, Sir Keir has won the right to take charge.”

The endorsement of the Sun has traditionally been seen as a key moment of electoral significance in election campaigns. In 1995, Tony Blair flew to a News Corp conference on Hayman Island off the coast of Queensland, Australia to meet Murdoch and was duly endorsed by the Sun in the 1997 election.

After its monstering of the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, in the run-up to the 1992 election – and his subsequent defeat – the tabloid’s front-page headline declared: “It’s the Sun wot won it.”

The Sun’s endorsement of Labour, which will appear in its print edition on polling day, has come far later than in previous elections. In 2009 the tabloid switched its support from Labour to the Conservatives seven months before polling day, with the announcement timed to cause maximum damage to the then prime minister, Gordon Brown. In the 2017 election, it backed Theresa May’s Conservatives three weeks before polling day.

Labour has put substantial effort into winning over the Sun’s readers, including buying full-page adverts on the outlet’s website for the final week of the campaign – to the annoyance of some of the party’s politicians.

Among Britain’s other main newspapers, the Financial Times, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror have backed Labour. The Daily Telegraph and its Sunday edition, the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the Daily and Sunday Express have pledged their support to the Tories.

A group of leading Democratic governors offered words of support for Joe Biden on Wednesday as pressure mounted on the president to leave the race.

The governors, including Tim Walz of Minnesota, Wes Moore of Maryland, Gavin Newsom of California and Kathy Hochul of New York, held a closed-door meeting with Biden in Washington as he sought to reassure his party – and the public – that he is up to the job after a shaky debate performance.

Biden met for more than an hour at the White House in person and virtually with more than 20 governors from his party. The governors told reporters afterward that the conversation was “candid” and said they expressed concerns about Biden’s debate performance last week. They reiterated that defeating Donald Trump in November was the priority, but said they were still standing behind Biden and did not join other Democrats who have been urging him to withdraw his candidacy.

“We, like many Americans, are worried,” Walz of Minnesota said. “We are all looking for the path to win – all the governors agree with that. President Biden agrees with that. He has had our backs through Covid … the governors have his back. We’re working together just to make very, very clear that a path to victory in November is the No 1 priority and that’s the No 1 priority of the president … The feedback was good. The conversation was honest.”

“The president is our nominee. The president is our party leader,” added Moore of Maryland. He said Biden “was very clear that he’s in this to win it”.

“We were honest about the feedback we’re getting … and the concerns we’re hearing from people,” Moore said. “We’re going to have his back … the results we’ve been able to see under this administration have been undeniable.”

The meeting capped a tumultuous day for Biden as members of his own party, and a major democratic donor, urged him to step aside amid questions over his fitness for office. Two Democratic lawmakers have called on Biden to exit the race, and a third Congressman said he had “grave concerns” about Biden’s ability to beat Trump. The White House, meanwhile, was forced to deny reports that Biden is weighing whether his candidacy is still viable.

Biden, for his part, has forcefully insisted that he is staying in the race.

“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running … no one’s pushing me out,” Biden said on a call with staffers from his re-election campaign. “I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.”

Kamala Harris has also stood by his side, despite some insiders reportedly rallying around her as a possible replacement. “We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead,” the vice-president reportedly told staffers on Wednesday.

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer also threw her support behind Biden. “He is in it to win it and I support him,” she said on Twitter/X after the meeting.

Whitmer is one of several Democratic governors who have been cited as possible replacements if Biden were to withdraw his candidacy. Gavin Newsom, whose name has also been floated, flew in for the governors’ meeting on Wednesday, saying afterwards: “I heard three words from the president tonight – he’s all in. And so am I.”

Newsom has been a top surrogate for Biden’s re-election campaign, but has also garnered increasing buzz as a potential replacement if Biden were to withdraw. He was swarmed by reporters after the debate ended last week, some asking him if he’d replace Biden.

A Siena College/New York Times poll released Wednesday suggested Trump’s lead had increased since the debate, with him winning 49% of likely voters compared to 43% for Biden. Only 48% of Democrats in the poll said Biden should remain the nominee. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published Tuesday said that former first lady Michelle Obama is the only hypothetical candidate to definitively defeat Trump, but she has previously said she’s not running. That poll had Biden and Trump tied.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

The White House insisted on Wednesday that Joe Biden is staying in the election as the presumptive Democratic nominee, while the US president reportedly told his campaign team “I’m in this race to the end” amid mounting pressure for him to step down over concerns he is not up to the job, at 81.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary, told reporters “the president is not dropping out”, even while he “owns” his dire performance in the first debate of the campaign against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump last week.

She repeatedly blamed him having a cold, brought on by overly-arduous foreign travel, despite incredulous scoffs and skeptical questions from some reporters at the daily briefing.

Biden separately told staffers on a call, according to multiple reports: “No one is pushing me out” and “I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.”

He was joined on the call by his vice-president, Kamala Harris, reiterating to staffers that they are in this fight for re-election “together”, according to an Associated Press report. She is seen as a likely substitute if Biden drops out, although several Democratic governors are considered serious rivals in that scenario.

The White House earlier denied a report that Biden is weighing whether his candidacy is still viable, ahead of a key meeting with Democratic governors on Wednesday evening, radio interviews due to air on the Fourth of July holiday and a TV interview with ABC airing in parts on Friday evening and over the weekend as he tries to bolster plummeting confidence.

An ally of the president earlier told the New York Times that the president remained fully committed to his re-election effort, but that he knew his upcoming public appearances would have to be successful ones in order for his candidacy to remain viable.

“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place,” the source said, referring to Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last week.

The article was published under the headline “Biden told ally that he is weighing whether to continue in the race”.The senior deputy press secretary and deputy assistant to the president, Andrew Bates, posted that: “That claim is absolutely false.”

Democratic governors, meanwhile, rallied around Biden following their closed-door meeting on Wednesday but admitted they shared voters’ concerns about his performance.

“We, like many Americans, are worried,” said Tim Waltz of Minnesota. “We are looking for the path to win.” But, he said, he and other governors “have his back”.

The latest Siena College / NYT poll shows Trump has widened his lead on Biden since the TV debate, opening up a 6-point advantage, 49-43%, over Biden among likely voters. Only 48% of Democrats say Biden should remain the nominee.

Later on Wednesday Biden made his first public appearance of the day at a White House ceremony to award posthumous Medals of Honor to two Union soldiers for acts of bravery in the civil war. The president spoke mainly clearly, aided by a teleprompter.

Cracks in support among Democratic leaders had multiplied late Tuesday into Wednesday.

Barack Obama reportedly expressed concerns about Biden’s path to re-election and

House Democrat Jim Clyburn, known as a kingmaker of sorts within the Democratic party, told CNN that the party should hold a “mini-primary” if Biden steps aside, despite supporting his candidacy.

Almost all elected Democrats continue to back Biden in public.

On Tuesday congressman Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first House Democrat to publicly urge the president to step aside. A second one joined on Wednesday afternoon when Raúl Grijalva of Arizona told the New York Times: “If he’s the candidate, I’m going to support him but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere … What he really needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat – and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.”

At a Virginia campaign event on Tuesday evening, Biden blamed the debate debacle on his prior international trips, saying: “I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world a couple times, going through around 100 time zones … before … the debate. Didn’t listen to my staff and came back and nearly fell asleep on stage. That’s no excuse but it is an explanation.”

Obama, who served two terms with Biden as his vice president, has reportedly shared in private with Democratic allies who sought his counsel that Biden was already on a tough road to re-election and that road was now more rocky after the debate, the Washington Post reported late on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the former president’s remarks, despite his public support for Biden’s candidacy.

And dozens of House Democrats are considering signing a letter calling for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed ‘senior party official’.

A post-debate survey commissioned by Puck news showed that 40% of voters who backed Biden in 2020 now believe he should withdraw. It also showed him now under threat from Trump in states previously considered safe by Democrats, including Virginia, New Mexico and New Hampshire.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday also found that one in three Democrats said Biden should end his re-election campaign.

The former first lady, Michelle Obama, who has never held elected office, also led Trump 50% to 39% in a poll about a hypothetical match-up, Reuters reported.

Also, California congresswoman and former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told MSNBC of Biden’s debate performance – and Trump’s: “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it’s completely legitimate – of both candidates.”

Harris is the top alternative to replace Biden if he quits, according to seven senior sources at the Biden campaign, the White House and the Democratic National Committee with knowledge of current discussions on the topic, Reuters reported.

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday, Harris trailed Trump by one percentage point, a showing as strong as Biden’s, within polling margins.

Democrats have been privately scathing both about the White House’s lack of transparency about the president’s apparent recent decline, and about his failure to rebound fully from the debate. All eyes will now be on the ABC interview.

Two House Democrats, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, have predicted publicly since the debate that they believed Trump would win November’s election.

Anger has also been voiced at the White House and campaign aides for shielding Biden from public and covering up evidence of his supposedly fading powers amid reports that this has been visible for months.

The presidential physician, Kevin O’Connor, has previously said that Biden is in excellent condition.

Sam Levin and Reuters contributed reporting

Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix and a Democratic party megadonor, has called for Joe Biden to take himself out of the presidential race following his disastrous performance at last week’s debate against Donald Trump.

Hastings told the New York Times on Wednesday that the president “needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous”.

The statement makes Hastings one of the first major Democratic donors to speak out as pressure mounts on the president, 81, to step down over concerns he is not up to the job.

The White House has denied reports that donors and allies with in the Democratic party are urging him to drop out of the presidential race.

But by Wednesday, two House Democrats had publicly called for Biden to withdraw his candidacy and a third said he had “grave concerns” about Biden’s ability to beat Trump. Biden is facing escalating pressure as a post-debate poll found that one in three Democrats believes he should quit. At a campaign event earlier this week, Biden blamed his poor debate performance on his busy international travel leading up to the event, saying he “nearly fell asleep on stage”.

Some Democratic party officials have privately suggested that vice-president Kamala Harris should take his place, according to several reports.

Hastings, a billionaire entrepreneur credited with ushering in the streaming era, stepped down as Netflix CEO last year.

Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, were prolific supporters of the Democratic party during the Trump administration and have donated more than $20m in recent years, including roughly $1.5m to Biden during his 2020 campaign, according to the New York Times. The couple donated $100,000 last year toward Biden’s re-election efforts.

Hastings has also donated to historically Black colleges and universities and recently gave more than $1bn worth of his Netflix shares to a Silicon Valley charity.

Reid Hoffman, another influential billionaire donor, continued to throw his weight behind Biden after the debate, telling his donor network in an email that he felt it was counterproductive to be “musing on Biden’s flaws” and that they should be “organizing around Trump’s flaws”.

The Biden campaign said this week that it raised $38m after the debate.

About 90% of the population of the Gaza Strip have been displaced at least once since the war between Israel and Hamas began, according to the UN’s humanitarian agency.

Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN’s OCHA agency in the Palestinian territories, said on Wednesday that about 1.9 million people are thought to be displaced in Gaza.

“We estimate that nine in every 10 people in the Gaza Strip have been internally displaced at least once, if not up to 10 times, unfortunately, since October,” he told reporters.

“Before we were estimating 1.7 (million) but since that number, we had the operation in Rafah, and we had additional displacement from Rafah,” he said, explaining the increase.

“Then we had also operations in the north that [have] also moved people,” he added.

He said such military operations had forced people to reset their lives, over and over again.

“Behind these numbers, there are people … that have fears and grievances. And they had probably dreams and hopes; the less and less, I fear today, unfortunately,” De Domenico said.

“People who in the last nine months have been moved around like pawns in a board game.”

He said the Gaza Strip had been cut in two by Israel’s military operations, with OCHA estimating that there were 300,000-350,000 people living in the north of the besieged territory who were unable to go to the south.

Meanwhile, he added that since the war began, an estimated 110,000 people had managed to leave the Gaza Strip before the Rafah crossing into Egypt was closed in early May.

De Domenico said some had remained in Egypt while others had since moved onwards.

The bloodiest-ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive since then has killed at least 37,953 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Hurricane Beryl has hit Jamaica after leaving an “Armageddon-like” trail of devastation in Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and killing at least seven people across the region.

The category 4 storm hit the island’s southern coast on Wednesday afternoon with maximum sustained winds of 140mph (225km/h), pummeling communities and knocking out communications as emergency groups evacuated people in flood-prone communities.

“It’s terrible. Everything’s gone. I’m in my house and scared,” said Amoy Wellington, a 51-year-old cashier who lives in Top Hill, a rural farming community in Jamaica’s southern St. Elizabeth parish. “It’s a disaster.”

Almost 500 Jamaicans were in shelters by Wednesday afternoon, prime minister Andrew Holness told reporters, urging people in high-risk areas to move. “We have not seen the worst of what could happen,” Holness said. “We can do as much as we can do, as [is] humanly possible, and we leave the rest in the hands of God.”

“Life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides from heavy rainfall are expected over much of Jamaica and southern Haiti through today,” the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said online, adding that dangerous winds and storm surge were also expected in the Cayman Islands through early Thursday.

Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management warned of dangerous storm surges potentially raising water levels to as high as 2.75 metres (9ft).

At least three people have been reported dead amid floods in Venezuela, three in Grenada, and one in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

A hurricane warning was issued for Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. A hurricane watch was also in effect for Haiti’s southern coast and the Yucatan’s east coast. Belize issued a tropical storm watch stretching south from its border with Mexico to Belize City.

Earlier, the US NHC director, Michael Brennan, said Jamaica appeared to be in the direct path of Beryl.

“We are most concerned about Jamaica, where we are expecting the core of a major hurricane to pass near or over the island,” he said in an online briefing. “You want to be in a safe place where you can ride out the storm by nightfall [on Tuesday]. Be prepared to stay in that location through Wednesday.”

“This is a big hazard in the Caribbean, especially with the mountainous islands,” Brennan said. “This could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides in some of these areas.”

The storm has also affected South America: three people died and four were missing amid intense floods in Venezuela, where the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, was injured by a fallen tree as she inspected the Manzanares River, which overflowed in Sucre state.

Beryl became the earliest storm to develop into a category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, peaking on Tuesday with winds of 165 mph before weakening to a still-destructive category 4. It strengthened at a record pace, thanks in part to unseasonably warm sea temperatures which scientists ascribe to global heating.

In Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines where the monster hurricane has already demonstrated its destructive power, the focus is now on relief, recovery and rebuilding.

After visiting the island of Carriacou, the prime minister of Grenada, Dickon Mitchell, described “Armageddon-like” scenes of “almost total destruction”, with approximately 98% of building structures damaged or destroyed and an almost complete wipeout of the electrical grid and communications systems.

“Having seen it myself, there is really nothing that could prepare you to see this level of destruction. It is almost Armageddon-like. Almost total damage or destruction of all buildings, whether they be public buildings, homes or private facilities. Complete devastation and destruction of agriculture, complete and total destruction of the natural environment. There is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou,” he said.

People were also evacuated from Union Island, where about 90% of housing was destroyed, arriving in the St Vincent and the Grenadines capital, Kingstown, by ferry.

One evacuee, Sharon DeRoche, said she and her family had taken shelter in her bathroom during the hurricane. “It was a hard four hours battling with six of us in that little area,” she said.

The last strong hurricane to hit the south-east Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.

Roy O’Neale, a 77-year-old Grenadian resident who was forced to rebuild his home after Ivan, said: “I felt the wind whistling, and then for about two hours straight, it was really, really terrifying at times. Branches of trees were flying all over the place.”

Hundreds of people hunkered in shelters across the south-east Caribbean, including 50 adults and 20 children who huddled inside a school in Grenada.

“Maybe some of them thought they could have survived in their homes, but when they realised the severity of it … they came for cover,” said Urban Mason, a retired teacher who served as the shelter’s manager. “People tend to be complacent.”

Scientists say the human-caused climate crisis has increased the intensity, frequency and destructive powers of tropical storms, because hotter oceans provide more energy.

One of the homes that Beryl damaged belongs to the parents of the UN climate change executive secretary, Simon Stiell, who is from Carriacou. The storm also destroyed the home of his late grandmother.

In a statement, Stiell said the climate crisis was worsening faster than expected.

“Whether in my homeland of Carriacou … hammered by Hurricane Beryl, or in the heatwaves and floods crippling communities in some of the world’s largest economies, it’s clear that the climate crisis is pushing disasters to record-breaking new levels of destruction,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

It resembles an enormous, malevolent robot from 1980s sci-fi but West Japan Railway’s new humanoid employee was designed with nothing more sinister than a spot of painting and gardening in mind.

Starting this month, the large machine with enormous arms, a crude, disproportionately small Wall-E-like head and coke-bottle eyes mounted on a truck – which can drive on rails – will be put to use for maintenance work on the company’s network.

Its operator sits in a cockpit on the truck, “seeing” through the robot’s eyes via cameras and operating its powerful limbs and hands remotely.

With a vertical reach of 12 metres (40ft), the machine can use various attachments for its arms to carry objects as heavy as 40kg (88lb), hold a brush to paint or use a chainsaw.

For now, the robot’s primary task will focus on trimming tree branches along rails and painting metal frames that hold cables above trains, the company said.

The technology will help fill worker shortages in ageing Japan as well as reduce accidents such as workers falling from high places or suffering electric shocks, the company said.

“In the future, we hope to use machines for all kinds of maintenance operations of our infrastructure,” and this should provide a case study for how to deal with the labour shortage, company president Kazuaki Hasegawa told a recent press conference.

Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan widely spoken of as a possible Democratic candidate for president should Joe Biden cede to growing pressure and leave the race, wants to meet members of a far-right militia who plotted to kidnap and kill her.

“I asked whether I could meet with one of the handful of plotters who’d pleaded guilty and taken responsibility for their actions, just to talk,” Whitmer writes in a new book, of the plot motivated by resistance to Covid public health measures and revealed with 13 arrests in late 2020.

The attorney general of Michigan, Dana Nessel, said it might be possible to talk to the plotters, Whitmer writes, though it has not happened, due to “all the various trials and appeals.

“But I do look forward to being able to sit and talk, face-to-face. To ask the questions and really hear the answers. And hopefully to take some small step toward understanding.”

As described by Nessel’s office, the affair of the “Wolverine Watchmen” resulted in “20 state felonies against eight individuals alleged to have engaged in the planning and training for an operation to attack the state Capitol and kidnap government officials.” Five men were convicted.

Federal charges were filed against six more men, four of whom were convicted. Two pled guilty to conspiracy charges and co-operated with prosecutors.

Whitmer describes the plot, and how she coped with it and other threats from the armed pro-Trump far right, in True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between. The book will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Given Whitmer’s presence in the ranks of proposed replacements for Biden after the president’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump escalated Democratic panic last week, the governor’s book will be eagerly read.

Whitmer has said she does not want to replace Biden but that has not stopped speculation. On Wednesday, she was due to be among Democratic governors meeting Biden at the White House.

Though True Gretch is a standard campaign-oriented biography – perhaps intended as a marker for a run in 2028 – Whitmer does not shy from describing the violent plot against her.

Describing plotters’ threats such as “Grab the fuckin’ governor, just grab the bitch” and “Just cap her”, she considers the toll taken on her husband and daughters as well as on herself.

She describes how her husband was forced by threats to close his dental practice; how her two daughters have refused to go back to a family cottage the plotters were revealed to have “scoped out”; and her own disappointment when two men were acquitted.

Despite it all, showing willingness to bridge the sort of jagged partisan divide that affects the battleground state of Michigan, and the US as a whole, Whitmer insists she wants to talk to those who wanted to kill her.

Elsewhere in the book, the governor does shy away from one thing: open discussion of any ambitions for national office.

In fairness, True Gretch was written before Biden’s hold on the presidency began to be seriously questioned by Democratic politicians, pundits and strategists, concerned that at 81 the former senator and vice-president is proving himself too old to beat Trump and serve a second term.

Whitmer’s readers, however, may spot allusions to higher ambitions now thrown into sharp relief.

Chapter four, describing Whitmer’s first steps as governor of Michigan and the challenge of dealing with extreme cold weather, is titled “Surround Yourself with Great People – and Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help”.

In Chapter 10, Whitmer describes how she prepares for campaign debates, the sort of challenge Biden failed so starkly.

Whitmer’s chapter title is “Be a Happy Warrior” – a label defined by dictionary.com as “a person … undiscouraged by difficulties or opposition” and in US politics perennially linked to Alfred E Smith, Hubert Humphrey, Ronald Reagan and others who ran for president with a determinedly optimistic message.

In her epilogue, Whitmer moves from Reagan to another Republican: Theodore Roosevelt. In “every campaign, and during every term I serve”, she writes, she shares the 26th president’s “Man in the Arena” speech.

In that speech, given in Paris in April 1910, Roosevelt said: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Whitmer’s use of the quote may strike a chord with Democrats panicked by Biden and now looking the governor’s way. So might what Whitmer writes next.

“Though these words were written more than a hundred years ago, they’re just as true today – except for two things. The “man” may be a woman. And she may just be wearing fuchsia.”

The first African-born MP to enter the German parliament has announced he will not be standing in next year’s federal election, weeks after he revealed the hate mail, including racist slurs and death threats, he and his staff had received.

Karamba Diaby, 62, who entered the Bundestag in 2013 in a moment hailed as historic by equality campaigners, said he wanted to spend more time with his family and to make room for younger politicians.

But his announcement comes just weeks after he laid out a litany of hate messages he and his parliamentary staff had received.

Diaby said the racist slurs and death threats were “not the main reasons” for his decision, having frequently emphasised he would not be cowed by threats. But they are widely believed they have played a part.

In interviews, Diaby has emphasised an increasingly hostile mood in parliament and society, blaming the 2017 entry of the far-right populist AfD to the Bundestag.

“Since 2017, the tone in the German parliament has become harsher,” he told the Berlin Playbook podcast of the news magazine Politico. “We hear aggressive speeches from colleagues of the AfD.

“We hear derogatory and hurtful content in these contributions. That is truly a totally new situation compared to the period between 2013 and 2017. This aggressive style of talking is fertile breeding ground for the violence and aggression on the streets.”

Diaby, of the Social Democrats (SPD), entered parliament alongside Charles M Huber, who sat for the Christian Democrats for just one parliamentary term. They were the first black members of the Bundestag and their entry was hailed as groundbreaking and historic by equal rights campaigners.

Diaby, who has a PhD in chemistry, was born in Senegal and moved to the then East Germany in 1985.

He has increasingly faced racist abuse in recent years. His constituency office in Halle, Saxony Anhalt, has been an arson target, and has had bullets fired through the window. Some staff have faced blackmail attempts to stop them working for him and have been subjected to and threats, Diaby said.

“In the last few years I’ve faced several murder threats. This has now overstepped the mark,” he said. “The hatred that the AfD sows every day with its misanthropic narratives is reflected in concrete psychological and physical violence. This endangers the cohesion of our society. We cannot simply accept this.”

Writing to party colleagues on Tuesday, Diaby promised to remain active in the SPD, especially in the 15 months leading to the election, saying: “We face big challenges and hard work.”

He added: “At the same time, I’m looking forward to having more time for my family and friends and our allotment.”

The world’s oldest known picture story is a cave painting almost 6,000 years older than the previous record holder, found about 10km away on the same island in Indonesia, an international team of archaeologists has said.

The painting, believed to be at least 51,200 years old, was found at Leang Karampuang cave on the east Indonesian island of Sulawesi, researchers from Griffith University, Southern Cross University and the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency wrote in the journal Nature.

Samples were collected in 2017, but weren’t dated until earlier this year.

The previous record holder was a lifesize picture of a wild pig believed to be created at least 45,500 years ago in a cave at Leang Tedongnge.

The recently discovered painting is of three therianthropes – or human-animal hybrids – and a wild pig.

Adhi Agus Oktaviana, the lead author and a PhD student at Griffith University, said the findings were “very surprising … none of the famous European ice age art is anywhere near as old as this with the exception of some controversial finds in Spain”.

Spanish scientists have previously claimed art at three sites – in Cantabria, Andalusia and Extremadura – was more than 64,000 years old. However, according to Dr Tristen Jones, a rock art expert at the University of Sydney, those findings were “largely rejected by the international science community”.

Jones said it was unclear if the Spanish researchers dated limestone that had formed on top of the art, or if the limestone had formed elsewhere. The findings were also controversial because the researchers argued Neanderthals made the art. It had previously been believed that only modern humans made art.

Jones said the Spanish researchers had not clearly established the crusts that were sampled formed on top of the art. The findings were also controversial because the researchers argued Neanderthals made the art.

The finding contradicts the academic view that early figurative cave art consisted of single figure panels rather than scenes where figures interacted with each other.

The researchers used uranium series dating to date the layers of calcium carbonate that had formed on top of the art. It involved extracting limestone samples that were then vaporised with a laser. The age of the sample was calculated by measuring the ratio of thorium to uranium.

The researchers said this method allowed the layers to be dated more accurately by ensuring younger and older materials were not mixed together.

The researchers also dated art at a nearby cave – Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 – that was previously believed to be the oldest cave art in the world. They found that the artwork, once believed to be at least 44,000 years old, was at least 48,000 years old.

However, the site of the former oldest known cave painting at Leang Tedongnge could not be dated using the newer method, as there was no calcium carbonate material remaining.

Jones said the new method was “a major leap forward in tightening up the resolution and accuracy of dating”. Typically, she said, rock art is extremely difficult to date as the art is predominately made from minerals.

Adam Brumm, a professor from Griffith University who jointly led the study, said that in the hundreds of excavations he had conducted in the region, there were frequent depictions of the warty pig. “They were clearly economically important to these elite people,” he said. “We can see they were also important to them symbolically and perhaps even spiritually”.

However, the researchers said the events taking place in the artwork were “difficult to interpret”, and it was unclear what animals inspired the human-animal hybrids as they were drawn as “essentially stick figures”.

“For whatever reason … early humans … [are] rarely depicted any form that could be reasonably interpreted as a human,” Brumm said. “Animals were often drawn with incredible anatomical fidelity, but [early cave painters] put less effort into doing that.”

He said the researchers were fairly certain one of the human-animal hybrids was a human with the head of a bird, and another had a tail, believed to be that of a civet.

“Storytelling is a hugely important part of human evolution and possibly even helps to explain our success as a species, but finding evidence for it in art, especially in very early cave art, is exceptionally rare.”