The US has stepped up efforts to target violent Israeli settlers, adding new individuals and organisations to a growing sanctions list and warning banks to check transactions linked to all Israeli “outposts” in the occupied West Bank.

The new sanctions cover far-right group Lehava, already listed by the UK, and two founding members of Tsav9, a campaign group that blocked aid from reaching Gaza. The new measures also target outposts, suggesting the Biden administration is prepared to take at least some steps to confront Israel’s creeping land grab on the West Bank.

One of the outposts targeted was set up by a regional council, implying that branches of the Israeli state are potentially no longer off limits, when it comes to sanctions.

“It appears that they’ve not just targetted extremist settlers but have introduced a linkage to territoriality by citing illegal outposts,” Aaron David Miller, a former state department Middle East negotiator now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“It doesn’t take much imagination to conclude that the next target would be [Israeli] government financing for illegal outposts. And that would be a new departure to be sure.”

The G7 foreign ministers joined the UN and EU on Thursday in condemning the Israeli government’s decision last month to legalize five outposts in the West Bank, labelling the plan “inconsistent with international law”. The G7 statement comes at a time of rising concern that Israel’s rightist government is steadily moving towards annexation of the West Bank.

Matthew Miller, the state department spokesperson, said that the four West Bank outposts specifically targeted by Thursday’s sanctions, “are owned or controlled by US-designated individuals who have weaponized them as bases for violent actions to displace Palestinians”.

“Outposts like these have been used to disrupt grazing lands, limit access to wells, and launch violent attacks against neighboring Palestinians,” Miller said.

In a written statement, Miller reflected growing frustration in the Biden administration at the failure of the Israeli government to take its own measures against violent West Bank settlers, and warned that further US punitive measures could be in the pipeline.

“We strongly encourage the Government of Israel to take immediate steps to hold these individuals and entities accountable,” he said. “In the absence of such steps, we will continue to impose our own accountability measures.”

Potentially the most consequential element in the new US measures is the updated red flag alert from America’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen). It raises the risks of punitive fines for banks dealing with West Bank settlements.

The alert warns financial institutions about potential ‘suspicious activity’, that could indicate a sanctioned individual or organisation is trying to bypass controls. This now includes “payments involving entities, individuals, addresses on accounts, receiving addresses, or IP addresses linked to any West Bank ‘outpost’,” the warning says.

Human Rights Watch, who have long campaigned to highlight settler violence on the West Bank, welcomed the US measures as being the most far-reaching on the issue to date, but called for direct action against the Israeli government for its support for the extremists.

“In this case we’re pleased that the Biden administration is going farther than before with the alert,” Sarah Yager, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said. “Now it’s time for sanctions against the Israeli authorities that are approving and inciting. We want to see the US, UK, Canada and others focus on power behind all this in the West Bank.”

All settlements on the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under international law. Outposts are settlements considered illegal even under Israeli law. There are nearly 200 all across the West Bank, according to the activist group Peace Now.

Many of the small outposts have close links to over 140 larger settlements recognised by the Israeli state though deemed illegal under international law. The broad language used in the FinCEN alert could mean financial transactions with all West Bank settlements could be affected.

Richard Nephew, a former state department coordinator on global anti-corruption in the Biden administration, said the financial crimes alert combined with the newly announced sanctions and the G7 declaration “create a pretty toxic environment”.

“That is the goal,” Nephew, author of The Art of Sanctions and now a senior research scholar at Columbia University, said. “The goal is to make it so that financial institutions, companies and others say: ‘This just isn’t worth it’, because the risks of actually falling into a sanctions problem or to a compliance problem, if you’re a US entity, is just simply too great.”

Additional reporting by Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem

People in Gaza City are trapped in houses and bodies lie uncollected in the streets, Palestinian officials and emergency responders have said, a day after the Israeli army told residents to use two “safe routes” to leave the city and head south.

According to a Reuters report, the Gaza health ministry said it had heard about people trapped and others killed inside their houses in the Tel Al Hawa and Sabra districts of Gaza City. Rescuers could not reach them, the ministry said.

The civil emergency service said it estimated that at least 30 people had been killed in the Tel Al-Hawa and Rimal areas and it could not recover bodies from the streets there.

On Wednesday, the Israeli army dropped leaflets warning “everyone in Gaza City” – the focus of a heavy Israeli assault this week – that it would “remain a dangerous combat zone”. The leaflets urged residents to flee, and set out designated escape routes from the area where the UN humanitarian office said up to 350,000 people had been sheltering.

The UN said the latest evacuations “will only fuel mass suffering for Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced many times”, and who face “critical levels of need”.

Many civilians told the Guardian they have concluded that there was no refuge in war-stricken Gaza and that they lacked confidence in the safe corridors set by Israel. Residents said they also feared that if they left they would not be able to take belongings or return.

“We will die but not leave to the south. We have tolerated starvation and bombs for nine months and we are ready to die as martyrs here,” Mohammad Ali, 30, told Reuters in a text message.

Hamas said the heavy Israeli assault on Gaza City this week could wreck efforts to finally end the war just as negotiations have entered the home stretch. In a statement, the Palestinian Islamist militant group said mediators had yet to provide it with updates on the state of the talks since it made concessions last week in response to a US-backed Israeli peace offer.

“The occupation continues its policy of stalling to buy time to foil this round of negotiations, as it has done in previous rounds,” the statement said.

The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said the US was “cautiously optimistic” about talks taking place in Egypt and Qatar.

“There are still gaps remaining between the two sides,” Kirby told the CNN. “We believe those gaps can be narrowed, and that’s what US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and CIA director Bill Burns are trying to do right now.’’

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who faces opposition from within his coalition government to any deal that would halt the war without Hamas being vanquished, has said a deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until it meets all its objectives.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.

Israeli-made weapons designed to spray high levels of shrapnel are causing horrific injuries to civilians in Gaza and disproportionately harming children, foreign surgeons who worked in the territory in recent months have told the Guardian.

The doctors say many of the deaths, amputations and life changing wounds to children they have treated came from the firing of missiles and shells – in areas crowded with civilians – packed with additional metal designed to fragment into tiny pieces of shrapnel.

Volunteer doctors at two Gaza hospitals said that a majority of their operations were on children hit by small pieces of shrapnel that leave barely discernible entry wounds but create extensive destruction inside the body. Amnesty International has said that the weapons appear designed to maximise casualties.

Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California, worked at the European hospital in southern Gaza in April.

“About half of the injuries I took care of were in young kids. We saw a lot of so-called splinter injuries that were very, very small to the point that you easily missed them while examining a patient. Much, much smaller than anything I’ve seen before but they caused tremendous damage on the inside,” he said.

Weapons experts said the shrapnel and wounds are consistent with Israeli-made weapons designed to create large numbers of casualties unlike more conventional weapons used to destroy buildings. The experts question why they are being fired into areas packed with civilians.

The Guardian spoke to six foreign doctors who have worked at two hospitals in Gaza, the European and al-Aqsa, in the last three months. All of them described encountering extensive wounds caused by “fragmentation” weapons, which they said have contributed to alarming rates of amputations since the war began. They said the injuries were seen in adults and children but that the damage done was likely to be more severe to younger bodies.

“Children are more vulnerable to any penetrating injury because they have smaller bodies. Their vital parts are smaller and easier to disrupt. When children have lacerated blood vessels, their blood vessels are already so small it’s very hard to put them back together. The artery that feeds the leg, the femoral artery, is only the thickness of a noodle in a small child. It’s very, very small. So repairing it and keeping the kid’s limb attached to them is very difficult,” Sidhwa said.

Mark Perlmutter, an orthopaedic surgeon from North Carolina, worked at the same hospital as Sidhwa.

“By far the most common wounds are one or two millimetre entry and exit wounds,” he said.

“X-rays showed demolished bones with a pinhole wound on one side, a pinhole on the other, and a bone that looks like a tractor trailer drove over it. The children we operated on, most of them had these small entrance and exit points.”

Perlmutter said children hit by multiple pieces of tiny shards often died and many of those who survived lost limbs.

“Most of the kids that survived had neurologic injuries and vascular injuries, a major cause of amputation. The blood vessels or the nerves get hit, and they come in a day later and the leg is dead or the arm is dead,” he said.

Sanjay Adusumilli⁩, an Australian surgeon who worked at the al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza in April, recovered shrapnel made up of small metal cubes about three millimetres wide while operating on a young boy. He described wounds from fragmentation weapons distinguished by the shards of shrapnel destroying bone and organs while leaving just a scratch on the skin.

Explosives experts who reviewed pictures of the shrapnel and the doctors’ descriptions of the wounds said they were consistent with bombs and shells fitted with a “fragmentation sleeve” around the explosive warhead in order to maximise casualties. Their use has also been documented in past Israeli offensives in Gaza.

Trevor Ball, a former US army explosive ordnance disposal technician, said the explosive sprays out tungsten cubes and ball bearings that are far more lethal than the blast itself.

“These balls and cubes are the main fragmentation effect from these munitions, with the munition casing providing a much smaller portion of the fragmentation effect. Most traditional artillery rounds and bombs rely on the munition casing itself rather than added fragmentation liners,” he said.

Ball said the metal cubes recovered by Adusumilli are typically found in Israeli-made weapons such as certain types of Spike missiles fired from drones. He said the doctors’ accounts of tiny entry wounds are also consistent with glide bombs and tank rounds fitted with fragmentation sleeves such as the M329 APAM shell, which is designed to penetrate buildings, and the M339 round which its manufacturer, Elbit Systems of Haifa, describes as “highly lethal against dismounted infantry”.

Some of the weapons are designed to penetrate buildings and kill everyone within the walls. But when they are dropped onto streets or among tents, there is no such containment.

“The issue comes with how these small munitions are being employed,” said Ball. “Even a relatively small munition employed in a crowded space, especially a space with little to no protection against fragmentation, such as a refugee camp with tents, can lead to significant deaths and injuries.”

Amnesty International first identified ammunition packed with the metal cubes used in Spike missiles in Gaza in 2009.

“They appear designed to cause maximum injury and, in some respects, seem to be a more sophisticated version of the ball-bearings or nails and bolts which armed groups often pack into crude rockets and suicide bombs,” Amnesty said in a report at the time.

Ball said that weapons fitted with fragmentation sleeves are “relatively small munitions” compared with the bombs that have a wide blast area and have damaged or destroyed more than half the buildings in Gaza. But because they are packed with additional metal, they are very deadly in the immediate vicinity. The shrapnel from a Spike missile typically kills and severely wounds over a 20-metre (65-ft) radius.

Another weapons expert, who declined to be named because he sometimes works for the US government, questioned the use of such weapons in areas of Gaza crowded with civilians.

“The claim is that these weapons are more precise and limit casualties to a smaller area. But when they are fired into areas with high concentrations of civilians living in the open with nowhere to shelter, the military knows that most of the casualties will be those civilians,” he said.

In response to questions about the use of fragmentation weapons in areas with concentrations of civilians, the Israel Defense Forces said that military commanders are required “to consider the various means of warfare that are equally capable of achieving a defined military objective, and to choose the means that is expected to cause the least incidental damage under the circumstances.

“The IDF makes various efforts to reduce harm to civilians to the extent feasible in the operational circumstances ruling at the time of the strike,” it said.

“The IDF reviews targets before strikes and chooses the proper munition in accordance with operational and humanitarian considerations, taking into account an assessment of the relevant structural and geographical features of the target, the target’s environment, possible effects on nearby civilians, critical infrastructure in the vicinity, and more.”

The UN children’s agency, Unicef has said that “staggering” numbers of children have been wounded in Israel’s assault on Gaza. The United Nations estimates that Israel has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza in the present war of which at least 8,000 are confirmed to be children, although the actual figure is likely to be much higher. Tens of thousands have been wounded.

In June, the UN added Israel to a list of states committing violations against children during conflict, describing the scale of killing in Gaza as “an unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children”, principally by Israeli forces.

Many of the cases recalled by the surgeons involved children severely injured when missiles landed in or near areas where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are living in tents after being driven from their homes by the Israeli assault.

Perlmutter described repeatedly encountering similar wounds.

“Most of our patients were under 16,” he said. “The exit wound is only a couple millimetres big. The entrance wound is that big or smaller. But you can see it is extremely high velocity because of the damage it does on the inside. When you have multiple small fragments travelling at insane speeds, it does soft tissue damage that far outweighs the size of the fragment.”

Adusumilli⁩ described treating a six-year-old boy who arrived at the hospital after an Israeli missile strike close to the tent where his family was living after fleeing their home under Israeli bombardment. The surgeon said the child had pinhole wounds that gave no indication of the scale of the damage beneath the skin.

“I had to open his abdomen and chest. He had lacerations to his lung, to his heart, and holes throughout his intestine. We had to repair everything. He was lucky that there was a bed in the intensive care unit. But, despite that, that young boy died two days later,” he said.

An American emergency room doctor now working in central Gaza, who did not want to be named for fear of jeopardising his work there, said that medics continue to treat deeply penetrating wounds created by fragmentation shards. The doctor said he had just worked on a child who suffered wounds to his heart and major blood vessels, and a build up of blood between his ribs and lungs that made it difficult to breathe.

Sidhwa said that “about half of the patients that we took care of were children”. He kept notes on several, including a nine year-old girl, Jouri, who was severely injured by shards of shrapnel in an air strike on Rafah.

“We found Jouri dying of sepsis in a corner. We took her to the operating room and found that both of her buttocks had been completely flayed open. The lowest bone in her pelvis was actually exposed to the skin. These wounds were covered in maggots. Her left leg she was missing a big chunk of the the muscles on the front and back of the leg, and then about two inches of her femur. The bone in the leg was just gone,” he said.

Sidhwa said doctors were able to save Jouri’s life and treat septic shock. But in order to save what remained of her leg, the surgeons shortened it during repeated operations.

The problem, said Sidhwa, is that Jouri will need constant care for years to come and she’s unlikely to find it in Gaza.

“She needs advanced surgical intervention every one to two years years as she grows to bring her left femur back to the length it needs to be to match her right leg, otherwise walking will be impossible,” he said.

“If she does not get out of Gaza, if she survives at all, she will be permanently and completely crippled.”

Adusumilli⁩ said fragmentation weapons resulted in high numbers of amputations among children who survived.

“It was unbelievable the number of amputations we had to do, especially on children, he said. “The option you’ve got to save their life is to amputate their leg or their hands or their arms. It was a constant flow of amputations every day.”

Adusumilli operated on a seven year-old girl who was hit by shrapnel from a missile that landed near her family’s tent.

“She came in with her left arm completely blown off. Her family brought the arm in wrapped in a towel and in a bag. She had shrapnel injuries to her abdomen so I had to open up her abdomen and control the bleeding. She ended up having her left arm amputated,” he said.

“She survived but the reason I remember her is because as I was rushing into the operating theatre, she reminded me of my own daughter and it sort of it was very difficult to accept emotionally.”

Unicef estimated that in the first 10 weeks of the conflict alone about 1,000 children lost one or both of their legs to amputations.

The doctors said that many of the limbs could be saved in more normal circumstances but that shortages of medicines and operating theatres limited surgeons to carrying out emergency procedures to save lives. Some children endured amputations without anaesthetic or painkillers afterwards which hindered their recovery alongside the challenges of rampant infections because of unsanitary conditions and lack of antibiotics.

Adusumilli said that, as a result, some children saved on the operating table died later when they could have been saved in different conditions.

“The sad part is that you do what you can to try and help these kids. But at the end of the day, the fact that the hospital is so overcrowded and doesn’t have the resources in intensive care, they just end up dying later on.”

Europe is experiencing “a wave of antisemitism” caused partly by the conflict in the Middle East, the EU’s leading rights agency has said, as it published a survey finding that nearly all respondents reported recent anti-Jewish prejudice.

The survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights found that 96% of respondents had experienced antisemitism in the year before the survey, which was carried out between January and June 2023. A total of 84% considered antisemitism to be a “very big” or “fairly big problem” in their country, while fewer than one in five (18%) thought governments were handling it effectively.

Although the survey – of 8,000 Jewish people aged over 16 – was completed before the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel that led to ferocious reprisals on Gaza, the Vienna-based agency also collected data from 12 Jewish umbrella organisations. Some of these organisations have reported a 400% increase in antisemitic attacks since October 2023.

“Europe is witnessing a wave of antisemitism, partly driven by the conflict in the Middle East,” the agency’s director, Sirpa Rautio, said. “This severely limits Jewish people’s ability to live in safety and with dignity. We need to build on existing laws and strategies to protect communities from all forms of hate and intolerance, online as well as offline.”

The survey was the third of its kind carried out by the agency since 2013 and found only marginal signs of progress in some areas.

Four in five people (80%) told the agency that antisemitism had increased over the past five years in their country, while 64% of respondents who encountered antisemitism said they experienced it “all the time”. More than nine in 10 described antisemitism on the internet and social media as a “very big” problem.

Six in 10 people said they worried about their family’s safety, while a similar number (62%) said the Arab-Israeli conflict affected their feeling of safety.

The survey covered 13 EU countries, where 96% of the EU’s Jewish population live, including France, Germany, Poland and Spain.

In France – home to the largest Jewish population in Europe – Jewish communities reported feeling torn before Sunday’s second-round election.

In the first month after the 7 October attacks antisemitic acts “exploded” in France, the interior minister, Gérard Darmanin, said last year, reporting 1,000 such incidents.

Since 7 October, Germany has also seen an increase in anti-Jewish violence, with the country’s antisemitism commissioner warning that it risked transporting the country “back to its most horrific times”.

The EU agency is urging governments to fund the security and protection needs of Jewish communities, including schools, synagogues and community centres. It also calls for making full use of EU legislation regulating the internet, the Digital Services Act, to remove antisemitic content online, as well as intensifying efforts to prosecute antisemitic hate crimes.

On the face of it, it was a busy Nato summit, not short of outcomes: badly needed air defence systems and fighter jets for Ukraine and a commitment that Kyiv was on an “irreversible path” to membership – plus a cross-alliance warning to China for its discreet help to Russia as it continues its assault on Ukraine.

Yet, behind the activity lurks the cliff-edge of the US election. In the Washington heat, the worry is not so much about Joe Biden’s health, but the Democrats’ ability to defeat Donald Trump in the November election. The reality is that Nato will struggle if the US is sceptical, fitful or unengaged.

During the last Trump presidency, Nato survived by hunkering down, making minimal commitments during a period of less geopolitical uncertainty. This time, with a major war continuing on the edge of Europe, a dysfunctional Nato is not obviously an attractive option, but it nevertheless lingers.

Karin von Hippel, the director general of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said: “Everybody is worried about Trump, everybody is worried about US commitments to Nato. Last time around Trump couldn’t do much damage because he didn’t understand how the bureaucracy works. But now he does.”

The plan had been for Biden to promote Nato, to Americans and to the world, at a summit in the US capital to mark the 75th year of the alliance. Speaking in the Mellon auditorium, the very room Nato’s founding treaty was signed in 1949, Biden emphasised the alliance’s durability could not be taken for granted – a point aimed at Trump.

“Let’s remember: the fact that Nato remains the bulwark of global security did not happen by accident. It wasn’t inevitable. Again and again, at critical moments, we chose unity over disunion, progress over retreat, freedom over tyranny, and hope over fear,” the president said on Tuesday night.

Yet at the same time, US media was dominated by concerns about Biden’s health and fitness for the presidency, and while his speech was delivered forcefully enough, a lengthy struggle to tie a sash bearing the presidential medal of freedom on to the outgoing Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, was a graphic reminder of the problem.

In the same speech, Biden announced that Ukraine would receive four new Patriot missile defence systems. However, the reality is that Ukraine has been asking publicly for extra air defence since April – a need tragically underlined on Monday when 44 were killed in attacks by Moscow, including the strike on a children’s hospital in Kyiv.

A day later, Denmark, the Netherlands and the US declared that the first of about 85 F-16 fighters were in the process of being transferred to Ukraine – more than 18 months after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, began pressing for them.

Few believe F-16s, as they arrive, can be a gamechanger in isolation – and though the hope is they can suppress attacks from air-launched glide bombs, they may at first be used to pick off Russian drones as they fly over Ukrainian airspace, a necessary but relatively basic task.

Ukraine has received weapon systems from the west that nobody would have thought possible immediately after Russia first launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, but the political fanfare that greets each new arrival has so far been followed by relative disappointment on the battlefield.

That risks reinforcing the idea that no amount of military aid can help Kyiv recover its lost territories and somehow win the war, though it misses the more important argument that without US military aid, Ukraine risks starting to lose.

When fresh US aid was withheld by Trump allies in Congress for months in the spring, Ukraine first lost Avdiivka in February, then border territory near Kharkiv in May, before sufficient supplies started coming through.

Nato allies in Washington did agree some positive diplomatic language on Ukraine’s eventual membership, describing the country as on an “irreversible path” to joining in the summit communique. Artful though this was, however, in practical terms Kyiv is no nearer joining, and the reality is that Russia’s invasion is now preventing Ukraine becoming a member, because Nato does not want to join in the war.

A key tactic of the Biden White House has been to link concerns about China, one of the few bipartisan issues in the US, with Nato, traditionally focused on the Euro-Atlantic. That all 32 allies could agree on describing China’s discreet supply of military components and chemicals to Russia as a “decisive enabler” of the war in Ukraine was a success from the point of alliance unity, Von Hippel said.

Such statements are unlikely to persuade Beijing to change its mind – “This is a hard nut to crack,” Von Hippel said – but anything that puts off China from supplying weapons to Russia can be defined as a success for the west. Depending on the results of the US election, come the next summit in The Hague, a year from now, such moments of diplomatic unity may prove harder to coordinate.

Joe Biden’s position appeared shaky on Thursday, amid reports that his aides and advisers were discussing how to persuade him to leave the presidential race while his own campaign was secretly testing Kamala Harris’s popularity, suggesting it was preparing for that very scenario.

With the US president scheduled to face journalists at a potentially pivotal news conference marking the end of Nato’s 75th anniversary summit, two separate New York Times reports suggested his efforts to keep his candidacy afloat were close to foundering.

The Times reported on its website that his campaign’s analytics team was quietly testing the strength of Harris, the vice-president, among voters in a match-up against Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Biden has consistently argued that he has the best chance of beating Trump, citing polling evidence.

A separate report suggested that unnamed longtime aides and advisers to the president had become convinced in recent days that his campaign to beat Trump in the election was doomed and were trying to find ways of persuading him of their argument.

The story was met by denial by the White House and the Biden campaign, which respectively called it “unequivocally not true” and “patently false”.

But the picture of diminishing support for the president even within his own camp was further strengthened by an NBC report suggesting that three people involved in his re-election campaign had written off his chances.

“He needs to drop out,” the network’s website quoted one Biden campaign official as saying. “He will never recover from this.”

The glut of damaging stories followed a number of Democratic party members calling on him to step down and as senators from the party prepared to meet key members of Biden’s staff at the White House to air their concerns about his electability following last month’s disastrous debate performance with Trump.

The press conference, which will include questions from reporters, is certain to be scrutinised minutely for any signs of verbal slip-up or mental frailty resembling those Biden displayed in the debate.

The event is the kind of unscripted set piece that Biden’s staff stand accused of shielding him from, and any repeat of the calamitous debate display could turn the steady trickle of public calls for Biden to stand aside into a flood.

Some of Biden’s most loyal acolytes at the top of the Democratic party have issued less than full-throated statements of support in recent days.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, who has repeated the mantra “I’m for Joe” throughout the crisis, was reported to have signalled openness to having the president replaced at the top of the presidential ticket.

Axios reported that Schumer had been taking close account of the feelings of party donors and fellow senators in the 12 days since Biden’s meltdown in the 27 June debate, when he plunged the viability of his candidacy into doubt by abjectly failing to defend his own policies or counter Trump’s lies.

“As I have made clear repeatedly publicly and privately, I support President Biden and remain committed to ensuring Donald Trump is defeated in November,” Schumer said, in comments that fell short of a ringing endorsement. On Wednesday, Peter Welch of Vermont became the first Democratic senator to publicly tell Biden to step aside. Nine members of the House of Representatives have already done so.

“He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again. But he needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not,” Welch wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece.

The president retains the support of Democratic governors, senators in the vital swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, the Black Congressional caucus, key progressive House members including Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and many others.

But the meeting between senators and Biden staff on Thursday will take place against the backdrop of backstage manoeuvring. The former House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, added pressure on Biden on Wednesday by telling MSNBC that it was up to the president to decide and “we are encouraging him to make that decision”. Behind the scenes, Pelosi has reportedly told Democratic Congress members that Biden cannot win the election and should step aside, according to Politico.

She has also reportedly encouraged Democrats in swing districts threatened with losing their seats in November to do whatever is necessary to defend themselves, including calling on Biden to stand aside, while suggesting to others in safer districts that they should approach the White House directly with their concerns.

Crucially, she is also said to have advised members to wait until the end of today’s Nato gathering before going public. Some Congress members were understood to have drafted statements, ready to release as soon as the gathering of international leaders left Washington.

A fresh Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll showed 56% of Democratic voters agreeing that Biden should end his campaign, against 42% who said he should stay put – a finding that undermined the president’s assertion that the effort to oust him was led by “elites” in the party.

Biden has held fewer news conferences with journalists in his three and a half years in office than any president since Ronald Reagan.

A previous press conference at the White House in February to counter criticisms by Robert Hur, a special prosecutor who criticised the president’s “poor memory”, backfired somewhat when Biden referred to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as “the president of Mexico”.

Donald Trump’s running mate will be introduced at the Republican national convention next Wednesday by his eldest son, according to people familiar with the matter, raising speculation that Senator JD Vance will be named the vice-presidential pick after being endorsed by Don Jr.

The fact that Don Jr will speak immediately before the running mate delivers remarks, earlier reported by Axios, is seen as notable inside the Trump campaign because of Don Jr’s close ties to Vance.

Still, a person directly familiar with the matter cautioned that the speaking schedule was decided three to four weeks ago and they were uncertain how instructive Don Jr’s involvement was.

Trump has said he wants his running mate to be revealed at the convention next week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but due to convention rules that require the ticket to be nominated by the first day, the former president has been forced to make a decision before Wednesday.

For months, Trump has presided over a characteristically theatrical selection process in which he made dramatic pronouncements at rallies in an effort to drive media speculation before narrowing the list to a final three: the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, Senator Marco Rubio and Vance.

The leading contenders have run through an emotionally draining fight to be Trump’s running mate, defending the former president in cable news interviews, mingling with members at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, coalescing support from Trump allies and trying to appeal to Trump’s core Maga voters at rallies.

The Guardian has previously reported that Trump has told allies he wants a running mate who would be a “fighter” – someone who is media-savvy and will defend him on adversarial TV networks – and loyal to the extent that they would be “everything Mike Pence wasn’t”.

Trump’s former vice-president was a valuable asset during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns because of his Christian conservative credentials that shored up support among Republicans who were suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star.

But Pence’s refusal to do one final favor and comply with Trump’s demand to block the certification of the 2020 election results in Congress led to a falling-out, and made Pence the target of the January 6 Capitol attack rioters.

For his 2024 campaign, Trump is seeking a “Goldilocks” running mate: strong but loyal, in tune with Maga but not over-rehearsed, telegenic but not likely to outshine him. His choice will go up against Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to serve as vice-president.

Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, has increasingly fit that profile.

On Sunday, Vance said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he supported Trump’s vow to appoint a special counsel to prosecute Joe Biden, making apparent references to the House oversight committee’s search for evidence of impeachable conduct by Biden, which it has not found.

Vance also suggested it was reasonable for Trump to prosecute Biden on the grounds that Biden had supposedly weaponized the legal system against him, although there is no evidence Biden has been involved in prosecutorial decisions at the justice department or elsewhere.

The NBC anchor Kristen Welker pressed Vance on his support for a special counsel: “If it’s not OK for Joe Biden to weaponize the justice department – as you say, which there’s no evidence of that – why is it OK for Donald Trump to do that?” she asked.

Vance repeated the common complaint among Republicans that one former justice department official took a job as a prosecutor in the New York criminal case in which Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election with a hush-money scheme.

“If Donald Trump’s attorney general had his No 2 or his No 3 jump ship to a local prosecutor’s office in Ohio or Wisconsin, and that person then went after Donald Trump’s political opposition, that’s a different conversation,” he said, though the prosecutor at issue was not as senior as the hypothetical.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to prosecute his political enemies, sharing posts on his Truth Social website that advocated jailing top Democrats and Republicans who criticized him, including one that said the former House Republican Liz Cheney should face “televised military tribunals”.

Donald Trump and his campaign want Joe Biden to stay in the race, according to people familiar with the matter, and have discussed taking steps to ensure they don’t push the president to withdraw amid escalating panic among Democrats following his recent debate performance.

The latest thinking inside Trump’s campaign is for them not to pile on the concern about Biden’s age and mental acuity in case their attack ads push Biden to step aside.

If that happened, the campaign advisers think Trump would lose two lines of attack that have been central to his campaign: claiming that Biden is “sleepy” and lacks the fitness for another term in office, and falsely claiming that Biden is to blame for inflation and an uptick in illegal immigration.

The situation with Biden has flummoxed the Trump campaign as they now walk the tightrope of continuing to campaign against Biden in the likelihood that he remains the Democratic nominee for president, without hitting his age to the extent that it helps push him to withdraw.

Trump’s senior campaign advisers are also concerned that if Biden leaves the race, they would not be able to deploy their contingency plans until a replacement at the top of the ticket was confirmed.

A new opponent could open up new challenges for the Trump campaign. If Democrats coalesced behind a younger candidate, for instance, neither the lethargy portrayal nor the Biden administration record would work – and the campaign would need to come up with newly tailored attacks.

A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

To preserve the status quo – Trump is marginally ahead of Biden in battleground states in private and public polling – the Trump campaign has settled on the message that it is too late for Democrats to change their nominee and Biden cannot step down.

Trump himself has downplayed the idea that Biden would be replaced. “If you listen to the professionals that do this stuff, they say it’s very hard for anybody else to come into the race,” Trump said in an interview with John Reid, a Virginia-based talk radio host.

And the message being blasted by Trump-allied Super Pacs, two weeks after the debate, is that Biden has to stay in the race at least until the Democratic national convention in August if any potential successor wants to acquire Biden’s substantial war chest.

The Biden campaign and the White House have insisted that the president will be the nominee, and are planning a new round of campaign events and interviews. Biden faces an unscripted press-conference at the Nato summit in Washington on Thursday night, and an NBC interview next week Monday.

Biden’s campaign announced raising $127m in June, ending the month with $240m in cash on hand. Trump raised a comparatively smaller figure of $111.8m, with $285m in the bank.

Still, the Trump campaign has started to plan for contingencies, including if the vice-president, Kamala Harris, became the nominee, although they have been less concerned about a Harris-led ticket because they believe they can hit her with the Biden administration’s policy record, the people said.

The Trump campaign has started to use ads trying to start the narrative that Harris was always planning to depose Biden, using clips of Harris laughing against the Biden-Harris logo collapsing into just the Harris text. The campaign is also accusing Democratic candidates of covering up Biden’s decline.

A US announcement of a plan to station long-range missiles in Germany for the first time since the cold war has set off a diplomatic furore between Washington and Moscow and elicited comparisons to the European missile crises of the 1980s.

Russian and US officials both accused each other of provoking the escalation on Thursday, as arms control experts warned that the deployments of missiles on the European continent, after the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, could fuel a new arms race.

The decision to station non-nuclear Tomahawk cruise, SM-6 and hypersonic missiles in Germany from 2026 was welcomed by Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who said it “fitted exactly” into his government’s security strategy, even as the move attracted fierce criticism amid fears it would make Germany more vulnerable to attack.

Scholz said the decision had been long in the making and would come as “no surprise” to anyone who was knowledgable about security and peace policies.

But Moscow did not see it that way. Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov issued a stark warning to Berlin, insisting Moscow would respond militarily to the decision, which aimed to impair Russian security and could not go unanswered.

He said that Nato was now “fully involved in the conflict” and called the move “just another link in the chain of a course of escalation”.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for the Russian government, called the planned move “a very serious threat” to Russia, which would be closely analysed by Moscow, which would “take thoughtful, coordinated and effective measures to contain Nato”.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, shot back: “What we are deploying to Germany is a defensive capability. Like many other defensive capabilities we’ve deployed across the alliance across the decades.

“More Russian sabre-rattling is not going to deter us from doing what we think is necessary to keep the alliance as strong as possible.”

But some members of the arms control community sounded alarmed.

Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), wrote: “First Russia develops/fields an INF missile in violation of treaty. Then US withdraws from treaty and deploys INF missiles as well. Then Russia will respond by deploying more INF missiles. Then … Does anyone have a plan here or is everyone on autopilot?”

Support for the move in Germany – which will see Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are fireable from ships or submarines, SM-6 and hypersonic weapons stationed on German soil from 2026, as agreed at the Nato conference in Washington this week – was measured, with some welcoming it and others warning it would endanger German security.

Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said that to be taken seriously Germany needed to flesh out a longer-term vision that was not dependent on the US, arguing that the agreement was too temporary, even if in line with Nato’s attempts to protect Ukraine and deter Russia. Germany he said, needed a longer-term plan for investment in “appropriate long-range defence systems”, to protect itself and Europe.

Pistorius is pushing for an increase of several billion euros to his defence budget, this week calling the amount of €58bn promised to him inadequate. “Everything which we fail to invest in deterrence and defence capabilities now will come back to haunt us in future years,” he told German radio DLF on Thursday

The cruise missile agreement has met stiff opposition from many politicians in Germany, while some members of Scholz’s three-way government have called for more clarity over it.

Critics have argued it is a hugely backward step in attempts to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenals. Ground-based missiles with a range beyond 500km were forbidden until 2019 under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty between Moscow and Washington in 1987.

The German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht, of the newly founded far-left party BSW, said that the stationing of attack missiles on German soil would not increase the country’s security but rather “increase the risk that Germany itself will become a theatre of war, with terrible consequences for everyone living here”.

Dietmar Bartsch, defence spokesperson for the far-left Die Linke, warned of a new armaments war. “I find this decision highly problematic, because the spiral in military buildup is being turned further under the headline ‘deterrence’,” he said.

The far-right populist AfD leader, Tino Chrupalla, said the shift in policy could turn Germany into a target for Russia, criticising Scholz for “letting Germany’s relationship with Russia be permanently damaged”.

He praised Hungary’s president, Viktor Orbán – who recently visited Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, in an attempt, according to Orbán , to forge a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv – saying Scholz could learn from him.

“Orbán … showed at the Nato summit how sovereign peace policy works in Europe. He wants to prevent his country from being drawn into the US conflict with Russia,” Chrupalla said.

Meanwhile the Green party, part of Scholz’s government, demanded answers from him about details of the plan, including how it would be financed.

Sara Nanni, spokesperson for the party’s parliamentary group, told the Rheinische Post she found it irritating that Scholz had yet to provide such details, “even though a clear classification” was “urgently needed”.

Support for Scholz came in particular from the main opposition Christian Democrats, whose foreign policy spokesperson, Jürgen Hardt, said the stationing of Tomahawks in Germany was a service to German security.

Joachim Krause, a political scientist and international policy expert, told DLF the presence of the cruise missiles would act as an effective deterrent, which could “considerably increase the military balance in favour of Nato”.

In case of an attack by Russia, Krausesaid, the weapons would also have the capability of penetrating deep into Russian territory. The planned stationing of hypersonic missiles in Germany would have a similar effect in sending the right message to Moscow, he suggested.

A US announcement of a plan to station long-range missiles in Germany for the first time since the cold war has set off a diplomatic furore between Washington and Moscow and elicited comparisons to the European missile crises of the 1980s.

Russian and US officials both accused each other of provoking the escalation on Thursday, as arms control experts warned that the deployments of missiles on the European continent, after the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, could fuel a new arms race.

The decision to station non-nuclear Tomahawk cruise, SM-6 and hypersonic missiles in Germany from 2026 was welcomed by Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who said it “fitted exactly” into his government’s security strategy, even as the move attracted fierce criticism amid fears it would make Germany more vulnerable to attack.

Scholz said the decision had been long in the making and would come as “no surprise” to anyone who was knowledgable about security and peace policies.

But Moscow did not see it that way. Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov issued a stark warning to Berlin, insisting Moscow would respond militarily to the decision, which aimed to impair Russian security and could not go unanswered.

He said that Nato was now “fully involved in the conflict” and called the move “just another link in the chain of a course of escalation”.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for the Russian government, called the planned move “a very serious threat” to Russia, which would be closely analysed by Moscow, which would “take thoughtful, coordinated and effective measures to contain Nato”.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, shot back: “What we are deploying to Germany is a defensive capability. Like many other defensive capabilities we’ve deployed across the alliance across the decades.

“More Russian sabre-rattling is not going to deter us from doing what we think is necessary to keep the alliance as strong as possible.”

But some members of the arms control community sounded alarmed.

Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), wrote: “First Russia develops/fields an INF missile in violation of treaty. Then US withdraws from treaty and deploys INF missiles as well. Then Russia will respond by deploying more INF missiles. Then … Does anyone have a plan here or is everyone on autopilot?”

Support for the move in Germany – which will see Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are fireable from ships or submarines, SM-6 and hypersonic weapons stationed on German soil from 2026, as agreed at the Nato conference in Washington this week – was measured, with some welcoming it and others warning it would endanger German security.

Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said that to be taken seriously Germany needed to flesh out a longer-term vision that was not dependent on the US, arguing that the agreement was too temporary, even if in line with Nato’s attempts to protect Ukraine and deter Russia. Germany he said, needed a longer-term plan for investment in “appropriate long-range defence systems”, to protect itself and Europe.

Pistorius is pushing for an increase of several billion euros to his defence budget, this week calling the amount of €58bn promised to him inadequate. “Everything which we fail to invest in deterrence and defence capabilities now will come back to haunt us in future years,” he told German radio DLF on Thursday

The cruise missile agreement has met stiff opposition from many politicians in Germany, while some members of Scholz’s three-way government have called for more clarity over it.

Critics have argued it is a hugely backward step in attempts to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenals. Ground-based missiles with a range beyond 500km were forbidden until 2019 under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty between Moscow and Washington in 1987.

The German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht, of the newly founded far-left party BSW, said that the stationing of attack missiles on German soil would not increase the country’s security but rather “increase the risk that Germany itself will become a theatre of war, with terrible consequences for everyone living here”.

Dietmar Bartsch, defence spokesperson for the far-left Die Linke, warned of a new armaments war. “I find this decision highly problematic, because the spiral in military buildup is being turned further under the headline ‘deterrence’,” he said.

The far-right populist AfD leader, Tino Chrupalla, said the shift in policy could turn Germany into a target for Russia, criticising Scholz for “letting Germany’s relationship with Russia be permanently damaged”.

He praised Hungary’s president, Viktor Orbán – who recently visited Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, in an attempt, according to Orbán , to forge a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv – saying Scholz could learn from him.

“Orbán … showed at the Nato summit how sovereign peace policy works in Europe. He wants to prevent his country from being drawn into the US conflict with Russia,” Chrupalla said.

Meanwhile the Green party, part of Scholz’s government, demanded answers from him about details of the plan, including how it would be financed.

Sara Nanni, spokesperson for the party’s parliamentary group, told the Rheinische Post she found it irritating that Scholz had yet to provide such details, “even though a clear classification” was “urgently needed”.

Support for Scholz came in particular from the main opposition Christian Democrats, whose foreign policy spokesperson, Jürgen Hardt, said the stationing of Tomahawks in Germany was a service to German security.

Joachim Krause, a political scientist and international policy expert, told DLF the presence of the cruise missiles would act as an effective deterrent, which could “considerably increase the military balance in favour of Nato”.

In case of an attack by Russia, Krausesaid, the weapons would also have the capability of penetrating deep into Russian territory. The planned stationing of hypersonic missiles in Germany would have a similar effect in sending the right message to Moscow, he suggested.

US intelligence services have foiled a Russian plot to assassinate the chief executive of Germany’s leading arms manufacturer, which was an apparent attempt at retaliation over the company’s role in providing a large amount of armaments for Ukraine, according to reports on Thursday.

The plot to murder Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall, was one of several Russian government plans to kill defence industry executives in several countries in Europe who have been supporting Ukraine’s war effort, unidentified US and western officials told CNN.

The plans to kill Papperger were in the most advanced stages of any of the plots, the investigators reportedly said.

US authorities had immediately informed their German counterparts, according to the report, and security around Papperger and Rheinmetall had been stepped up accordingly.

Rheinmetall has declined to comment but said in a statement to media that “necessary measures are always taken” in regular consultation with security authorities.

German authorities have yet to respond to requests for comment but a government official confirmed that the US had warned Berlin about the plot.

Rheinmetall is one of the world’s biggest armaments’ producers, making artillery and tank shells as well as armoured vehicles. It considerably ramped up its production after Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In February, Rheinmetall announced plans to open an ammunition factory in Ukraine to produce and repair armoured vehicles.

Observers noted that a patrol car and several police officers carrying submachine guns had been parked in front of the Rheinmetall headquarters in the western German city of Düsseldorf every day for months, while Papperger has had visible personal protection for a similar time period.

In public settings such as football matches, cultural events and association meetings, he has been accompanied by security provided by the police from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia – one of only a handful of people to be afforded such protection.

He has not commented on the reported threats himself.

Rheinmetall has been described since the Russian full-blown invasion and Germany’s subsequent involvement as one of the biggest suppliers of weapons to Kyiv and a thorn in Moscow’s side.

The Ukrainian army is equipped with a range of weapons from the German manufacturer, including Leopard 1 main battle tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles. In addition the company has supplied Ukraine with 155mm artillery shells, which have been central to Ukraine’s unrelenting war of attrition, and provided a comprehensive service involving repair, delivery and replacement parts.

The assassination plot revelations come amid a flurry of incidents believed to be part of a systematic Russian sabotage campaign in revenge for support for Ukraine. It has reportedly recruited amateurs locally to carry out everything from arson attacks on warehouses and shopping centres to smaller actions, including acts of vandalism and graffiti, as well as espionage operations, all intended to undermine Ukraine’s war effort and to help dent public support for Ukraine. The actions have been described as a “shadow war” that Moscow is waging in western Europe.

On Thursday a senior Nato official told reporters attending the alliance’s conference in Washington that the sabotage campaign had been increasing in intensity and had to be taken extremely seriously.

“We’re seeing sabotage, we’re seeing assassination plots, we’re seeing arson. We’re seeing things that have cost in human lives,” he said. “I believe very much that we’re seeing a campaign of covert sabotage activities from Russia that have strategic consequences.”

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said at the Nato summit that Russia was waging a hybrid war of aggression, including cyberattacks and sabotage of infrastructure. “This underlines once again that we as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naive,” she told Reuters.

Neuralink CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that the company would soon test its pound-coin-sized implant and brain-computer interface on a second patient. The unnamed patient’s surgery is slated for “the next week or so”, Musk said.

Surgery on a different patient intended to be the second participant in Neuralink’s human trial had been scheduled for late June but was delayed when they experienced unspecified health issues contraindicating the procedure.

The same day, the company announced that the wires attaching the first Neuralink patient’s brain to the implant in his skull had become “more or less very stable” after detaching months ago.

“Once you do the brain surgery it takes some time for the tissues to come in and anchor the threads in place, and once that happens, everything has been stable,” said Neuralink executive Dongjin “DJ” Seo during a live stream late on Wednesday on Twitter/X.

Neuralink, founded by Musk, had said in May that a number of wires inside the head of Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down, had pulled out of position. The company did not specify why the detachment had occurred. Neuralink’s implant uses 64 wires to link to the brain; just 15% of them were working after the connection severed.

Air was trapped in Arbaugh’s head after the surgery, Neuralink executives said. In light of that and the detachment, the company would implement new risk mitigation measures such as skull sculpting and reducing the carbon dioxide concentration in the blood to normal levels in its future patients, the company’s executives said during the live stream.

“In upcoming implants, our plan is to sculpt the surface of the skull very intentionally to minimize the gap under the implant … that will put it closer to the brain and eliminate some of the tension on the threads,” Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s head of neurosurgery, said.

So far, Arbaugh, who lost the use of much of his body after a 2016 diving accident, is the only patient to have received the implant, but Musk said he hopes to have participants in the high single digits this year.

Neuralink is testing its implant to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone. The device works by using tiny wires, which are thinner than a human hair, to capture signals from the brain and translate those into actions. The company has published a video of Arbaugh using his implant to play online chess and move a computer mouse. After the detachment, he could no longer control the mouse, but the functionality has returned, executives said on the live stream.

Musk said during the live stream that the device doesn’t harm the brain. The US Food and Drug Administration, in initially considering the device years ago, had raised safety concerns but ultimately granted the company a green light last year to begin human trials.

Neuralink is also working on a new device that it believes will require half the number of electrodes to be implanted in the brain to make it more efficient and powerful, the executives said. Musk said the company was at work on another product named Blindsight that would allow the blind to see.

The family of Taylor Casey, a 42-year-old transgender woman who went missing in the Bahamas, said they initially shielded the media from her gender identity because they feared it would undermine efforts to find her.

Casey, who lives in Chicago, went missing on 19 June while on a month-long yoga retreat on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.

Her family has since worked to involve city, state and federal officials in the search for her – and said Bahamian officials left them with “more questions than answers”.

“The investigation would have been done properly” if Casey had been white and cisgender, Casey’s mother, Colette Seymore, told NBC News Chicago. “There would have been way more efforts” to find her, she said. “People would have been interviewed.”

Casey was reported missing on 20 June by staff at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, after she failed to come to the day’s workshops.

Family and friends called Casey “a fixture of Chicago’s transgender community and a beloved youth advocate” in a statement. They said they are “begging for support” to help bring her home.

“Taylor’s Blackness, Taylor’s transness and gender expansiveness, Taylor’s womanhood, all of these things are places where people experience disproportionate violence and being ignored,” Jacqueline Boyd, Casey’s close friend, told NBC News Chicago.

According to Transgender Europe’s Trans Murder Monitoring project, 321 transgender and gender diverse people were murdered between 2022 and 2023. Three-quarters (74%) were in Latin America or the Caribbean.

Seymore, Casey’s mother, traveled to the Bahamas about two weeks ago for answers. She said she was underwhelmed by officials’ response. Since then, she has worked to set up a GoFundMe page to help fund the costs of continuing the search. She has also enlisted help from the Chicago mayor’s office, and is seeking support from federal authorities.

“I share in his heartbreak for Taylor’s disappearance,” said Kennedy Bartley, a spokesperson for Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, at a press conference on Thursday, Casey’s birthday.

“We have the support of the mayor’s office and we will be calling on our federal delegation to do everything in our power to bring Taylor home,” she said. “Taylor’s family should be here today celebrating her birthday.”

A serial killer who preyed on Indigenous women in Canada will serve decades in prison after a judge determined he was criminally responsible for four “jarring and numbing” murders, in a verdict celebrated by family as “justice being served”.

Justice Glenn Joyal ruled on Thursday that Jeremy Skibicki was guilty of first-degree murder in the killings of Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran and an unidentified woman, who was named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe (Buffalo Woman) by Indigenous leaders. Joyal rejected an argument from the defence that Skibicki’s mental health had prevented him from understanding his actions.

Joyal said the “mercilessly graphic” nature of the case and Skibicki’s “purely expressed racist views” meant the killings had an “undeniable and profound impact” on the province of Manitoba, and laid bare the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.

The packed gallery in the Winnipeg courtroom erupted into cheers when the oral verdict was delivered.

“I just felt super happy. I wanted to cry,” Jorden Myran, Marcedes’s sister, told reporters after the verdict was read. “We fought for this for so long. He got what he deserved.”

On the eve of his trial, Skibicki admitted in May to killing the women. But his lawyers argued he should be found not criminally responsible for murders because he had schizophrenia at the time.

Prosecutors argued that Skibicki’s murders were racially motivated and that he deliberately targeted vulnerable women in the city’s shelter system.

The first-degree murder verdict means Skibicki will serve a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The murders were first uncovered in 2022, when the remains of Rebecca Contois, a member of Crane River First Nation, were found in a dumpster near Skibicki’s home. Police later found more remains in a city landfill.

During police interrogations, Skibicki admitted to killing Contois and the three other women, who were living in Winnipeg at the time. He cited white supremacist beliefs.

Dr Sohom Das, a forensic psychiatrist from the United Kingdom, testified for the defence, suggesting Skibicki suffered schizophrenia and was motivated by delusions, including a belief he was on a mission from God. But justice Joyal rejected Das’s conclusion and questioned the psychiatrist’s credibility.

Instead, he sided with Dr Gary Chaimowitz, the forensic psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution.

In graphic testimony, Chaimowitz told the court he believed Skibicki made up the alleged delusions, and was probably motivated by homicidal necrophilia.

Joyal told the court a full written decision, more than 150 pages long, would be released next week. The sentencing hearing for Skibicki will be held at a later date.

For families of the victims, the case has also been a grim reminder of government inaction: the remains of Harris and Myran are believed to be buried in the Prairie Green landfill, and police initially said they lacked the resources to search the privately owned facility, much of which is buried under tonnes of clay.

In March, Canada pledged tens of millions of dollars to search landfill for the remains of two Indigenous women, with work set to begin in the fall.

Donna Bartlett, Marcedes Myran’s grandmother, told reporters outside the court she was “happy” that Skibicki would serve a prison sentence.

“He got convicted of murder and I’m glad of that, I really am. Now the next step is to bring my girl home.”

A serial killer who preyed on Indigenous women in Canada will serve decades in prison after a judge determined he was criminally responsible for four “jarring and numbing” murders, in a verdict celebrated by family as “justice being served”.

Justice Glenn Joyal ruled on Thursday that Jeremy Skibicki was guilty of first-degree murder in the killings of Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran and an unidentified woman, who was named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe (Buffalo Woman) by Indigenous leaders. Joyal rejected an argument from the defence that Skibicki’s mental health had prevented him from understanding his actions.

Joyal said the “mercilessly graphic” nature of the case and Skibicki’s “purely expressed racist views” meant the killings had an “undeniable and profound impact” on the province of Manitoba, and laid bare the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.

The packed gallery in the Winnipeg courtroom erupted into cheers when the oral verdict was delivered.

“I just felt super happy. I wanted to cry,” Jorden Myran, Marcedes’s sister, told reporters after the verdict was read. “We fought for this for so long. He got what he deserved.”

On the eve of his trial, Skibicki admitted in May to killing the women. But his lawyers argued he should be found not criminally responsible for murders because he had schizophrenia at the time.

Prosecutors argued that Skibicki’s murders were racially motivated and that he deliberately targeted vulnerable women in the city’s shelter system.

The first-degree murder verdict means Skibicki will serve a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The murders were first uncovered in 2022, when the remains of Rebecca Contois, a member of Crane River First Nation, were found in a dumpster near Skibicki’s home. Police later found more remains in a city landfill.

During police interrogations, Skibicki admitted to killing Contois and the three other women, who were living in Winnipeg at the time. He cited white supremacist beliefs.

Dr Sohom Das, a forensic psychiatrist from the United Kingdom, testified for the defence, suggesting Skibicki suffered schizophrenia and was motivated by delusions, including a belief he was on a mission from God. But justice Joyal rejected Das’s conclusion and questioned the psychiatrist’s credibility.

Instead, he sided with Dr Gary Chaimowitz, the forensic psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution.

In graphic testimony, Chaimowitz told the court he believed Skibicki made up the alleged delusions, and was probably motivated by homicidal necrophilia.

Joyal told the court a full written decision, more than 150 pages long, would be released next week. The sentencing hearing for Skibicki will be held at a later date.

For families of the victims, the case has also been a grim reminder of government inaction: the remains of Harris and Myran are believed to be buried in the Prairie Green landfill, and police initially said they lacked the resources to search the privately owned facility, much of which is buried under tonnes of clay.

In March, Canada pledged tens of millions of dollars to search landfill for the remains of two Indigenous women, with work set to begin in the fall.

Donna Bartlett, Marcedes Myran’s grandmother, told reporters outside the court she was “happy” that Skibicki would serve a prison sentence.

“He got convicted of murder and I’m glad of that, I really am. Now the next step is to bring my girl home.”

Multiple Chinese military warships were spotted off the coast of Alaska over the weekend, the US Coast Guard announced.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the US Coast Guard said that it detected three vessels approximately 124 miles (200km) north of the Amchitka Pass in the Aleutian Islands, as well as another vessel approximately 84 miles (135km) north of the Amukta Pass, a strait between the Bering Sea and the north Pacific Ocean.

All four Chinese vessels were “transiting in international waters but still inside the US exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from the US shoreline”, according to the US Coast Guard.

“The Chinese naval presence operated in accordance with international rules and norms,” R Adm Megan Dean of the US Coast Guard said, adding: “We met presence with presence to ensure there were no disruptions to US interests in the maritime environment around Alaska.”

Responding to US Coast Guard radio communication, the Chinese vessels said their purpose was “freedom of navigation operations”.

“Coast guard cutter Kimball continued to monitor all ships until they transited south of the Aleutian Islands into the north Pacific Ocean. The Kimball continues to monitor activities in the US exclusive economic zone to ensure the safety of US vessels and international commerce in the area,” the US Coast Guard said.

Last August, the US dispatched four navy warships in addition to a reconnaissance airplane after multiple Chinese and Russian military vessels carried out a joint naval patrol near Alaska.

At the time, the flotilla, which experts said appeared to be the largest to approach US territory, was described as a “highly provocative” maneuver amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine as well as political tensions between the US and China over Taiwan.

Dozens of long-finned pilot whales have died after a 77-strong pod came ashore on an Orkney beach in what could be the biggest mass stranding in decades.

Twelve of the animals at Tresness beach, on the island of Sanday, were still alive, but according to rescuers from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), it was thought unlikely they could be saved.

It was unknown what triggered the stranding, but experts said it was possible one whale got into trouble and the others followed. The pod includes male whales up to seven metres (22ft) long, along with females, calves and juveniles.

Experts from the BDMLR, the Scottish SPCA and marine vets from the Scottish mainland, went to the scene.

The BDMLR said in a statement: “[Our] regional team was immediately mobilised with response equipment to make their way over to the island, whilst we waited for more information on the situation from the small number of medics already on Sanday that were on their way to the scene.

“On arrival the medics found there to be about 77 animals high up the beach, having evidently been stranded for several hours already. Sadly, only 12 of them still alive at this point.”

Rescuers faced difficulties righting the whales in an attempt to refloat them due to soft sand on Thursday.

It could be the largest stranding event in Scotland since 1995, when the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (Smass) was founded.

Last year a pod of 55 pilot whales died after a stranding on the Isle of Lewis. Only one was successfully refloated. Just 15 were still alive when they washed ashore but they were then euthanised. In 2011 about 60 of the animals got into trouble in shallow waters in Sutherland, with about 25 dying.

Emma Neave-Webb, from BDMLR, told BBC Scotland News: “There are whales everywhere. There’s a long line of them, some of them are still alive. I know from experience how difficult these incidents are and I think we need to be realistic.”

It was unlikely many would be saved, she said. She described the scene as “quite horrible” and “hugely emotional”.

Members of the public have been asked to stay away while assessments and rescue efforts take place.

The largest UK stranding is thought to have taken place in 1927 when 126 of more than 130 false killer whales died in the Dornoch Firth in the Highlands.

Shelley Duvall, the much-loved US character actor and star of films such as The Shining, Annie Hall and Popeye, has died four days after her 75th birthday.

Duvall died in her sleep of complications from diabetes at her home in Blanco, Texas, according to Dan Gilroy, who had been her life partner since 1989.

Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter: “My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”

Duvall made her name in a series of landmark 1970s classics, including seven films with the director Robert Altman, who first discovered her while she was in college in her hometown of Houston, Texas.

She made her debut in Brewster McCloud, as a teenage tour guide, before starring as a mail-order bride in McCabe & Mrs Miller in 1971. Other collaborations between the pair included Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians and 1977’s 3 Women as a fantasising health spa attendant, which many consider her finest work, and which won her the best actress prize at the Cannes film festival.

Duvall, said Altman, “was able to swing all sides of the pendulum: charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic, even beautiful.”

“I love him,” she told the New York Times in 1977, asked about the longevity of their relationship. “He offers me damn good roles. None of them have been alike. He has a great confidence in me, and a trust and respect for me, and he doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me.”

She added: “I remember the first advice he ever gave me: ‘Don’t take yourself seriously.’ Sometimes I find myself feeling self-centered, and then all of a sudden that bit of advice will pop into my head and I’ll laugh.”

Duvall remains perhaps best known for her role as the wife of Jack Nicholson’s axe-wielding author in The Shining (1980). The film had a famously gruelling 13-month shoot, with one scene in which Nicholson’s character torments Duvall’s with a baseball bat reportedly running to 127 takes.

Kubrick had her “crying 12 hours a day for weeks on end,” said Duvall in a 1981 interview with People magazine. “I will never give that much again. If you want to get into pain and call it art, go ahead, but not with me.”

She also appeared in two landmark comedies: 1977’s Annie Hall, as the vague Rolling Stone reporter who describes sex with Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer as “really a Kafkaesque experience … I mean that as a compliment” and in 1980 opposite Robin Williams in Altman’s live-action Popeye.

Her iconic rendition of the song He Needs Me was later repurposed by Paul Thomas Anderson for the 2002 romcom Punch-Drunk Love.

In 1981 she appeared in Terry Gilliam’s fantasy film Time Bandits; three years later she was in Tim Burton’s seminal comedy horror short Frankenweenie and in 1987, starred opposite Steve Martin in modern day Cyrano de Bergerac take, Roxanne.

As the decade progressed, Duvall increasingly devoted herself to producing children’s television, particularly focusing on new adaptations of classic fairytales, for which she was Emmy nominated and won a Peabody award.

She returned to acting only sporadically through the 1990s, most notably for supporting roles in Steven Soderbergh’s 1995 thriller The Underneath as well as Jane Campion’s Henry James adaptation The Portrait of a Lady the following year.

A 21-year break from the profession ended in 2022, when Duvall featured in low-budget horror The Forest Hills.

Duvall was open about her health struggles, appearing on US talk show Dr Phil 2016 to discuss her mental illness, saying: “I am very sick. I need help.” The episode was widely condemned for appearing to exploit a vulnerable older person.

In 2021, a fragile yet happy Duvall was interviewed in the Hollywood Reporter, and discussed the trauma she had felt working on The Shining, as well as in the aftermath of both the Dr Phil show and the 1994 earthquakes which destroyed much of her house.

Duvall met Gilroy, the former lead singer of Breakfast Club, in 1989, when they worked together on a children’s show. She had previously been married to the artist Bernard Sampson, and in a relationship with the musician Paul Simon, who she met while making Annie Hall.

A “sauna” treatment for frogs has been used by researchers in Australia to successfully fight a deadly fungal disease that has devastated amphibians around the world, according to a new study.

Scientists created refuges for the animals using painted masonry bricks inside greenhouses that they called “frog saunas”. They found that endangered Australian green and golden bell frogs were able to clear infections from the deadly Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungus, in the warmer conditions of the greenhouses, when they would otherwise have died. Many of the frogs that recovered in the refuges were then resistant to infection.

While the technique had previously been unsuccessful for other frog species, researchers found that the green and golden bell frog – once common in south-eastern Australia – responded well to the treatment, a discovery that offered hope for their future survival. Researchers said the rare amphibians were chosen after careful testing, which found they favoured the bricks as a habitat.

“Why we’re so excited about [the study’] is there just hasn’t been anything that works [to stop the infection],” said Dr Anthony Waddle, a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney who led the study. “The last line of defence is bringing the frogs into captivity where you can cure and protect them. We’re slowly watching species blink out.”

In glacial ponds and alpine lakes, rainforests and wetlands, the deadly fungus has been killing off the word’s amphibian populations. At least 90 species are known to have gone extinct and many more are expected to disappear in the coming years. Scientists say it is the greatest recorded loss of biodiversity attributable to a single disease.

The Tanzanian Kihansi spray toad, Honduran Cerro Búfalo streamside frog and Mexican claw-toothed salamander are among the species believed to have been wiped out by the infection in the wild.

Waddle said that while there were caveats to where the steam-room strategy could be used, it was a rare piece of good news for the green and golden bell frogs. “This species is really limited to the coastal area of its former range. Ninety per cent of its populations have gone and more and more go every year. They’re not doing well. They’re not coming back. They’re not showing that clear sign of recovery that some other species have done on their own. So we’re excited,” he said.

The fungus, which is often known as Bd, causes a disease called chytridiomycosis in amphibians. It was formally identified by researchers in 1998 after widespread frog deaths around the world. The infection attacks the amphibians’ skin, causing heart attacks and death. The most deadly strain of the disease appears to be about 100 years old and researchers think it was probably spread by humans.

Andrew Cunningham, the professor of wildlife epidemiology at the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology who first identified the fungal disease, said the technique had been tried with other species but there was no evidence it had worked for them.

“We’ve done this both through manipulating their natural environment to increase sun exposure and ground and water temperature, and by the installation of heated ponds (to a temperature above which the fungus cannot survive, but the frogs can). We have continued to have lethal outbreaks of chytridiomycosis and the only way to stop these has been to bring the frogs under human care to treat them with a fungicidal drug,” he said.

“Maybe the technique is species-specific, but unfortunately, I doubt it is a silver bullet for tackling the global threat of amphibian chytridiomycosis,” he added.

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