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.”

The UK is not the diplomatic powerhouse it once was, with Brexit leaving it looking inward and years of economic failures meaning the Conservatives and Labour are both sidelining foreign policy in their campaign messaging. Still, leaders around the world (some more than others) will be taking an interest in the 4 July election. Here are some of the key issues:

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.”

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

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

France’s prime minister has said nationwide efforts to prevent Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) winning an outright majority in parliament could succeed, after more than 200 candidates pulled out of Sunday’s legislative election runoff to avoid splitting the anti-far-right vote.

“We can avoid an absolute majority for the far right,” Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday, adding that 90% of candidates from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp had quit three-way races if they were in third with an RN candidate ahead of them.

RN and its potential future prime minister, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, finished a comfortable first in last Sunday’s first-round election with 33% of the vote, followed by the New Popular Front (NFP) alliance on 28% and the president’s Together alliance on 20%.

A historically high turnout dramatically boosted the number of second-round contests featuring three candidates to more than 300, increasing the anti-immigrant party’s chances of securing the 289 seats it would need for an absolute majority.

Although accurate seat projections are difficult before the shape of each constituency contest is known, pollsters’ initial estimates suggested RN could return as many as 300 deputies.

The high number of runoff withdrawals makes that less likely, and one poll released on Wednesday predicted the RN would fall short of a majority on Sunday, with between 190 and 220 seats. The Harris Interactive poll had the NPF in second place, with 159-183, and Macron’s centrist camp in third with 110-135.

Attal said centrist candidates were right to stand down even in favour of a rival from the radical-left France Unbowed (LFI), part of the NFP leftwing alliance. “Neither LFI or NFP can win an absolute majority,” he said. “RN can.”

He added: “What’s at stake is to do everything so that the extreme right does not have an absolute majority. It is not nice for some French to have to block … by voting in a way they did not want to. I say it’s our responsibility to do this.”

According to Le Monde, 221 candidates, including 132 from NFP and 83 from Macron’s camp and its allies, had withdrawn from potential three-way runoffs by the Tuesday evening deadline, leaving 94 so-called “triangular” contests.

The “republican front”, aimed at shutting the far right out of power, has long been a feature of French politics but had shown signs of fraying in recent elections as voters tired of having to vote against candidates they disliked rather than for those they backed.

While the parties have largely swung behind it, this time there is no guarantee centrist voters will be prepared to vote for candidates from the far-left LFI, or that leftwing voters angry with Macron will be happy to cast their ballots for candidates from his camp.

Asked about calls for the creation of a provisional cross-party government in the event of a hung parliament, Attal repeated his proposal for a range of mainstream parties to cooperate on individual pieces of legislation. “I hope the Together camp is as big as possible. After that, we will seek to secure majorities on a project-by-project basis,” he said.

The former prime minister Édouard Philippe called on Wednesday for a more formal broad-based coalition. He said such an alliance could run from “the conservative right to social democrats”, but would exclude the far left, saying there could be “no discussion about a coalition with LFI”. Many centrists argue the radical-left party, which believes traditional parties no longer serve democracy, does not share “republican values”.

Le Pen said on Tuesday that she could try to form a rightwing coalition with MPs from other parties if RN fell short of an absolute majority. Bardella had previously said he would only form a government with a sufficiently strong mandate.

She said her party would seek to form a government with “for example, 270 MPs”, which would require it to find support from a further 19 to govern. “If we then have a majority, then yes, of course, we’ll go and do what the voters elected us to do,” she said.

With RN already supporting dozens of dissident candidates from the divided centre-right Les Républicains party, however, most analysts believe the far-right party will have difficulty recruiting more than a handful more supporters in parliament.

The government spokesperson, Priscille Thevenot, on Wednesday dismissed claims by Le Pen of an “administrative coup d’état” by Macron after the president made a number of senior public sector appointments between the two rounds of voting.

“We knew that Marine Le Pen lies, now we know she also manipulates information,” Thevenot said after a cabinet meeting. She said a similar number of nominations were made every week and these had been “completely routine” and “nothing specific”.

The UN human rights chief on Wednesday warned of a hardening of rhetoric in recent months, including hate speech and dehumanising language against immigrants and other minorities, linked to elections in Europe and elsewhere.

“This is an alarm bell,” Volker Turk said. Turk refused to comment on specific elections but said: “Narratives that denigrate the other, that dehumanise, that make scapegoats of migrants or refugees or asylum seekers or minority groups” are on the rise.

Several RN candidates have been deselected or are the target of judicial investigations after media revelations of allegedly racist or discriminatory remarks and social media posts. Bardella said on Wednesday it “could happen” that there were “black sheep” among the party’s candidates but added that he was dealing with them firmly.

Analysts say the most likely outcome of the second-round vote is a hung parliament that could lead to months of political paralysis. The chaos also risks damaging the international credibility of Macron, who has not spoken in public since last week.

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.

Marbella city council has denied suggestions that anyone caught relieving themselves in the warm waters off one of the Costa del Sol’s best-known destinations could soon face a fine of up to €750 (£635).

At the end of May, the council approved a series of initiatives designed to improve the quality of the city’s famous beaches. Although the proposals also include sanctions for antisocial offences such as playing loud music or playing annoying ball games, the most eye-catching measure was the fine for those who carry out “physiological evacuations (bowel movements and urination) in the sea or on the beach”.

There was also bad news for repeat offenders: anyone caught getting caught short more than once in the space of a year could face a fine of up to €1,500.

The wording of the bylaw soon gave rise to bafflement, ridicule and ample media speculation.

When the Spanish TV programme Tiempo al tiempo sent a reporter to the beach to gauge public reaction, the proposal was met with incredulity.

“Who’s going to find out?” asked one man, who confessed to peeing in the sea more than once. “The jellyfish?” Another beachgoer was equally bemused: “Are there going to be police officers on the lookout? I just don’t get it.”

However, a spokesperson for the city council later clarified the proposals, saying they would not apply to open water.

“The bylaw does not impose a sanction for peeing in the sea,” they said in an email to the Guardian. “It will not be applicable. The bylaw regulates possible antisocial infractions on the beach, just as any such acts are regulated in any public space such as on the city’s streets.”

Asked about the wording of the bylaw, the spokesperson said it referred to the fact that people might pee into the sea from the shore or from breakwaters.

Marbella is not the first Spanish city to resort to such measures. In 2004, Málaga introduced a €300 fine for “physiological evacuation on the beach or in the sea”, while a similar, €750 sanction came into effect two years ago in the Galician city of Vigo.

The measure elicited confusion and amusement in both Spain and neighbouring Portugal.

“If you’re heading there for your summer holidays, be careful where you urinate,” warned Portuguese media at the time. “Peeing in the sea or on the beach will result in a fine.”

The rapper and business mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing another sexual assault lawsuit, the eighth in a series filed against him since November 2023.

Adria English, a former adult film actor, alleges that Combs groomed then coerced her into sexual intercourse with guests at parties he hosted, as well as making her consume alcohol and ecstasy.

Combs has denied the allegations. His lawyer Jonathan Davis said in a statement: “No matter how many lawsuits are filed it won’t change the fact that Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason and without any proof. Fortunately, a fair and impartial judicial process exists to find the truth and Mr Combs is confident he will prevail against these and other baseless claims in court.”

English’s lawsuit alleges that “Combs groomed Plaintiff into sex trafficking over time”, in events between 2004 and 2009.

She claims that she was employed to attend one of Combs’ “white parties” in 2004, an event which had “no sinister intent or requirements for physical sexual contact”, so she accepted invitations to further parties. But at the third event, Combs allegedly demanded she have sex with guests, “as they had learned about her past in adult entertainment and used it forcefully to coerce Plaintiff into sex work”. The lawsuit names a number of other individuals and companies as defendants.

Numerous other allegations of sexual assault have been made against Combs, beginning in November when his former girlfriend, R&B singer Cassie, accused him of rape and physical abuse. That lawsuit was settled the following day, though Combs was forced to apologise after footage of him physically assaulting Cassie in 2016 was leaked in May.

Plaintiffs Joi Dickerson-Neal, Rodney Jones Jr, April Lampros and Crystal McKinney have each since filed lawsuits alleging sexual assault, along with two others from unnamed women. Combs has denied all of those allegations. Combs is also named in a lawsuit against his son Christian “King” Combs, described as a “lewd and meritless claim” by a lawyer for both men.

Combs was once one of the most successful rappers in the US, with a string of hit tracks including US No 1 singles Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down, I’ll Be Missing You and Shake Ya Tailfeather. His label Bad Boy Records was home to popular artists including Notorious BIG and Mase, and he had success with other business ventures such as clothing brand Sean John and vodka brand Cîroc.

But his reputation has been damaged since the allegations. In recent weeks New York mayor Eric Adams has demanded Combs return the ceremonial key to the city he was awarded in September 2023, while Howard University rescinded Combs’ honorary degree, discontinued a scholarship programme in his name and returned a $1m donation.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

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.”

A nine-year-old boy is settling back into family life after becoming the youngest person in the UK to undergo a marathon, life-saving surgical procedure that involved removing the pancreas and injecting its insulin-producing cells into the liver.

Archie Routledge, from Workington, in Cumbria, has a rare genetic condition that causes hereditary pancreatitis. It inflames the pancreas causing debilitating abdominal pain and significantly increases the risk of pancreatic cancer in later life.

Archie’s mother, Emma Routledge, said he became ill when he was five. “He would roll around in pain and scream,” she said. There’s no cure or medicine to treat pancreatitis so the family had to give him morphine at home, “which was frightening”.

After a five-month stay at the Great North Children’s hospital in Newcastle surgeons found a “window of opportunity” to carry out a procedure called a total pancreatectomy and autologous islet cell transplant. It involves removing the pancreas and at the same time transplanting the patient’s own insulin-producing islet cells into the liver.

The challenging 15-hour surgery, involving a number of specialists in different areas, has never been carried out on anyone so young in the UK.

Archie’s parents, Emma and Mark, took time off work to stay with him in hospital, while his grandparents moved in to look after Archie’s sister, Halle, 11.

In hospital, Archie was unable to eat, receiving nutrition through a drip.

“Being away from home and our daughter with the stress of fighting for the operation was a really tough time for our family,” said Emma. “We are beyond relieved that we no longer need to fight the battle of pancreatitis and Archie can live his life pain-free.

“We hope that the breakthroughs in this surgery enable other children suffering from pancreatitis to recover and carry on with their lives.”

The transplant surgeon Prof Steve White was involved with the first operation of this kind when he was training in Leicester, and has since carried out the procedure on adults, but never anyone as young as Archie. “We are quite unique in Newcastle as we have the skills to do many different types of complex transplant operations,” he said.

White said that taking out the pancreas makes a patient diabetic, “so they must then take insulin to prevent them having complications, such as blindness and kidney failure”.

The hope is that re-infusing insulin-secreting islet cells from the pancreas into the liver will mean Archie can produce some of his own insulin.

“He still needs insulin, as his pancreas was extremely damaged,” said White. “Over time he’ll have better control of his diabetes because he has some of his own cells still producing insulin.”

Archie’s genetic condition affects just one in 375,000 children and meant he had a 40% higher chance of pancreatic cancer later in life.

His treatment was far from straightforward, as it could be done only when the pancreas and resulting inflammation had settled down. The hospital also needed funding and an agreement at national level for a procedure that is not routinely commissioned on the NHS for children.

His mother recalled the day of the operation. “On the morning, we held back our tears as we gave Archie kisses and said: ‘See you soon.’ This was at 8am and we had an anxious wait until we were able to see Archie in intensive care at 11pm – 15 hours later. He remained on life support until the next morning, when they brought him round.”

Archie is now recovering at home in Workington and making good progress.