Israeli forces say the Hamas military chief, Mohammed Deif, the mastermind of the 7 October attack, was the target of a strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, which, according to the territory’s emergency services, has killed 90 people and injured hundreds more.

Deif, 58, who has been on Israel’s most-wanted list since 1995 and escaped multiple Israeli assassination attempts, is believed to be the chief architect of the attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and triggered the Israel-Hamas war.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Rafa Salama, another top Hamas official, was also targeted in the strike. The IDF did not have details on whether the two were killed.

A military official later said they were “still checking and verifying the result of the strike”, and did not deny it took place inside an area the Israeli military had designated as safe for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

“The air force and the southern command attacked, based on accurate intelligence information, in the area where the two top targets of the Hamas terrorist organisation and other terrorists were hiding among civilians,” reads a joint statement released by IDF and Shin Bet intelligence agency. “The area that was attacked is an open and wooded area, with several buildings and sheds.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said: “There is still no conclusive certainty that the two have been foiled, but I want to assure you that one way or another we will reach the top of Hamas.”

Hamas’s deputy leader, Khalil al-Hayya, told Al Jazeera TV that Deif had not been killed in the strikes and, addressing Netanyahu, said: “Deif is listening to you right now and mocking your lies.”

Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday that Israel’s strike on a camp for displaced people in Khan Younis killed at least 90 Palestinians and injured 289 others. Residents said they witnessed at least five “big warplanes bombing in the middle of Al Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis”.

Most of the injured were sent to Nasser hospital. However, according to officials and medics, the facility is “no longer able to function” as doctors are “overwhelmed with large numbers of casualties”.

Hamas says that Israeli claims of targeting leaders of the Palestinian militant group are “false” and are aimed at “justifying” the attack.

The Israeli military said its strike on Deif was in a “fenced Hamas area” and that most people there were militants.

Earlier, a senior Hamas official called the Israeli allegations “nonsense”. “All the martyrs are civilians and what happened was a grave escalation of the war of genocide, backed by the American support and world silence,” Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters, adding that the strike showed Israel was not interested in reaching a ceasefire deal. He did not confirm whether Deif had been present.

The targeted area of Nus Street contains more than 80,000 displaced people from across Gaza.

Witnesses said ambulances and civil defence crews were targeted after the strike, with a number of hovering Israeli aircraft “shooting and targeting directly at the ambulances and rescue teams upon their arrival”.

The Gaza health ministry said: “The number of the victims is still increasing because bodies are still being recovered beneath the rubble”.

“Rescue teams are still recovering dozens of martyrs and wounded until this moment from the site of bombing and targeting,” reads a statement by the government information office in Gaza. “This massacre comes in conjunction with the lack of hospitals that can receive this large number of martyrs and wounded, and in conjunction with the occupation’s destruction of the health system in the Gaza Strip.”

Not seen in public for years, Deif, known as “guest”, has frequently changed locations to elude Israeli detection. Engaged with Hamas from a young age, the former science student orchestrated a series of suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians in the 1990s and then again a decade later.

Speculations suggest that Deif may have been disabled in one of the numerous Israeli attempts on his life, with his spouse and young children having died in a 2014 airstrike.

Referred to by Israeli authorities as “a dead man walking”, Deif’s actual name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri.

On 7 October, Hamas issued a rare voice recording of Deif announcing the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation.

The Saudi channel Al-Hadath reported that Salama, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, was killed in the strike and that Deif was seriously wounded.

The death of Deif could represent a significant victory for Israel and a devastating blow to Hamas. The operation could provide Netanyahuwith a potential advantage, as he has made clear his intention to continue the war until Hamas’s military capabilities are destroyed, with Deif’s death being a significant step in that direction.

Today’s strikes came as US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators were actively working to narrow the divide between Israel and Hamas in a proposed three-phase ceasefire and hostage release plan. The potential targeted killing or injury of any high-ranking Hamas figure poses a significant threat to the progress of these delicate negotiations.

Mohammed Deif is the head of the military wing of Hamas and one of the masterminds of the group’s bloody surprise attack on 7 October which triggered the latest war in Gaza.

Israeli officials said Deif – whose real name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri – was the target of Saturday’s airstrike, which levelled several buildings in Khan Younis and killed 90 people, according to local health authorities.

Experienced, capable and utterly committed to the militant Islamist organisation, Deif has survived at least seven Israeli assassination attempts. The question is whether the 58-year-old has survived an eighth. If Israel has killed such a significant figure, this will be chalked up as a major step towards an increasingly elusive victory.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have so far only said the attack was based on “precise intelligence” and “struck” Deif but not that he is dead.

Deif means “the guest” in Arabic, a nom de guerre he owes to his effort to evade Israeli assassination attempts by moving location almost every night and staying in the homes of supporters of Hamas.

He was born in 1965 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, the southern Gaza City, one of dozens set up to house some of those Palestinians forced to flee their homes in the wars surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. His family was poor but Deif did sufficiently well at school to study for a degree in sciences from the Islamic University in Gaza, an Islamist stronghold. Deif joined Hamas when it was founded in 1987 in the first months of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

Working closely with Yahya Sinwar, the current leader of Hamas in Gaza, Deif soon showed a talent for military operations and internal security. In 1989, he was arrested by Israel and spent about 16 months in detention. Through the 90s, Deif helped plan and execute suicide bombings in Israel designed to derail the ongoing peace process and avenge assassinations of Hamas leaders.

Deif and Hamas sources say he lost an eye and sustained serious injuries in one leg in one of Israel’s past efforts to kill him. Some say he is confined to a wheelchair; others say this is not true though he has a pronounced limp. His wife, seven-month-old son, and three-year-old daughter were killed by an Israeli airstrike during the war in Gaza of 2014.

In recent years, Deif has overseen Hamas’ efforts both to build more effective rockets in Gaza and the immense tunnel complex across the territory. He is also thought to have been tasked with training the militants who attacked Israel last year, particularly the elite Nukhba forces.

If Hamas’s ability to fire rockets into Israel has been battered during the conflict and many of the Nukhba are dead, the tunnels continue to protect Sinwar and other leaders of the organisation. Israel’s invasion of Gaza has so far killed more than 38,000 according to Palestinian officials and reduced much of the territory to rubble.

Deif is thought to have been directing military operations from the tunnels and, possibly, discreet locations above ground, though he has never been seen.

There are only four known images of Deif: one in his 20s, another of him masked, an image of his shadow, which was used when an audio tape of a speech he made was broadcast on 7 October, and one found by Israel in an intelligence haul of millions of computer files during the invasion.

Israeli security services will now be rushing to confirm Deif’s death. This may take some time, but his passing will be hailed in Israel as a very significant achievement for the Israeli military and will be a welcome boost for the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. It would mean two of the three most senior individuals in Hamas in Gaza – described as “dead men walking” by top Israeli officials last year – have now been eliminated. Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas’ military wing, was killed in March. Sinwar remains alive.

It started with a terrorist attack, which triggered massive military retaliation, the siege of a city, the deaths of thousands of civilians and devastation and global outrage. If the military operation was a success in tactical terms, it led to strategic failures that scarred the nation and the region for decades to come.

Sounds familiar? Forty-two years later, as a new conflict looms on Israel’s northern borders, historians, analysts and veterans of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon are looking to that now-distant war for lessons and warnings.

Inevitably, much was very different back on the summer’s day when a gunman sent to London by a Palestinian breakaway faction in the pay of Saddam Hussein narrowly failed to kill Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, as he left a dinner at the Dorchester hotel. The cold war was at its chilliest for decades; the main threat to Israel from across its northern frontier was the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), then led by Yasser Arafat and though the Iranian revolution of 1979 had made clear the new power of political Islamism, few thought resurgent religion could pose a real danger to Israel.

But if many differences are clear, there are some obvious parallels too, perhaps confirming the adage that if history doesn’t repeat itself, it can rhyme.

Israel in 1982 was led by Menachem Begin, a populist hardliner whose first electoral victory five years earlier had ended decades of leftist rule and signalled the country’s swing to the right. Begin’s defence minister in 1982 was the controversial general turned politician, Ariel Sharon. One of Israel’s most successful – some say gifted – and ruthless military commanders, Sharon had ambitious plans.

The PLO’s various factions had been responsible for very many terrorist attacks against Israeli and other targets around the world over the previous decade. Some were well known – such as the bloody attack on the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics in 1972, or that which led to Israeli special forces’ rescue operation at Entebbe, Uganda in 1976. But by 1982, such attacks were at an ebb well below the high tide of the mid-1970s.

This is one major difference with the current situation. Between 1980 and 1981, the total casualties from the actions of Palestinian armed factions in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza had been just 16 dead and 136 wounded. This could hardly be considered an existential danger. In contrast, the Hamas attack into Israel last October which triggered the current conflict in Gaza killed 1,200, mostly civilians. About 250 were abducted.

The shooting of Argov in June 1982, historians now largely agree, provided the pretext that Begin and Sharon were waiting for. When told by intelligence officials that the ambassador’s would-be assassin had been dispatched by a group that had enthusiastically killed many of Arafat’s closest aides and allies, Begin and top military officials were unimpressed. “Abu Nidal, Abu Schmidal, they are all PLO,” chief of staff Rafael Eitan said.

Within 10 days of invading Lebanon, the Israeli army had arrived outside Beirut, effectively surrounding Arafat and his PLO fighters. A fierce bombardment was directed at the city’s western neighbourhoods, the PLO stronghold.

“We did in Beirut exactly what we are doing in Gaza. We turned off the water, the electricity, everything. But there was no social media so people didn’t know so much,” said Dr Ahron Bregman, an expert at King’s College London who served as an Israeli soldier during the 1982 conflict.

The siege of Beirut lasted more than two months, and cost many thousands of civilian lives. The exact toll was, and is, disputed. So too, as with this current war, was the proportion of civilians killed. But even the highest estimates – 20,000 dead – are far lower than those for Gaza now, where the toll has passed 38,000, according to Palestinian officials. The physical destruction in Gaza is also on a totally different scale.

“Units today have so much more firepower. Then we just had machine guns, light anti-tank weapons and grenade launchers,” said Ariel O’Sullivan, a well-known Israeli journalist who fought as an infantryman.

One complaint from Israel about that earlier conflict is familiar. Arafat had sited his command bunkers under apartment blocks sometimes inhabited by those displaced by the fighting. “Beirut’s buildings were our barricades,” wrote one PLO official years later. Israeli spokespersons accused the organisation of using civilians as human shields, a charge it denied.

Arafat knew that Sharon would aim to reach Beirut and that his ramshackle forces would be swept aside by the juggernaut of the Israel military, which had been re-equipped with vast quantities of state-of-the-art US weapons and equipment since the 1973 war against Egypt and Syria. But he thought the UN would step in after just a few days as it had done in 1967 and 1979.

What transpired was rather different. Sharon had flown to Washington to seek prior approval for an invasion from Ronald Reagan’s administration well before Argov’s attempted assassination. But he received only a very half-hearted amber light from the hawkish secretary of state, Alexander Haig, a convinced anti-communist who believed much global terrorism was the work of the Soviet Union.

But once the war was under way, and this too is familiar, there were little more than weak calls for restraint from Reagan’s officials, and a continuing flow of ammunition. Protests that US-supplied weapons were being used illegally by Israel were brushed aside and the US vetoed UN resolutions that would have halted the Israeli advance.

Eventually, with networks broadcasting images of carnage into US living rooms ever night, Reagan called Begin, saying: “This is a holocaust.” Begin, much of whose family had been killed by the Germans during the second world war, demurred, but did as Reagan asked. These days, the US wields no such influence over Benjamin Netanyahu.

Roughly two weeks later, the PLO’s thousands of fighters left Lebanon for destinations across the Middle East, with Arafat departing to Tunis, some 2,000 miles away.

In an editorial in the New York Times published even before the PLO chairman had left Beirut, Sharon boasted of “the crushing defeat” inflicted on the PLO. “The kingdom of terror that the PLO had established on Lebanese soil” had been destroyed, “international terrorism dealt a mortal blow” and the “whole infrastructure of violence and revolution … broken,” he told readers. The language was carefully chosen to frame the Israeli campaign as a cold war battle – and a rare one that had been unequivocally won. Israel’s efforts were, “a victory for peace and freedom everywhere,” Sharon wrote.

But any celebrations were short-lived. A Syrian bomb killed Pierre Gemayel, a Christian warlord who had recently been elected president of Lebanon and whom Sharon had hoped would rule as an Israeli client. Forty-eight hours later, Gemayel’s militia massacred between 700 and 3,500 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila camps as Israeli troops fired flares which illuminated its bloody work.

What happened next in the region is instructive, veterans, analysts and historians say.

Within a year, the Israeli army had been drawn into a new brutal war against an insurgent force. Casualties had been relatively low during the initial offensive in Lebanon. Now they rose steadily as ill-equipped soldiers tried to quell a growing insurgency. Two suicide car-bombs, among the first ever deployed, would devastate bases in the southern town of Sidon. Hit-and-run attacks by an elusive enemy would kill more soldiers. An 18-year occupation would bleed Israel of its young men and resources, until an ignominious withdrawal in 2000. Many civilians died too.

“The lesson is the same then as it is today: If you can’t see what victory looks like, there can be no victory,” said Haim Har-Zahav, who served in Lebanon in the late 1990s and wrote a book about the forgotten later years of the conflict there.

The enemy Israel battled against for so long was Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist militant movement founded in the aftermath of the invasion of 1982. In 2006, Hezbollah fought Israel’s military to a stalemate. Now, after opening fire on Israel on the morning after the surprise Hamas attacks in October, it is engaged in an escalating war of attrition with Israel, and may well be the target of a new Israel offensive within weeks.

Around 30 Israelis have been killed, around half civilians, by the attacks in the north. Israel has evacuated 60,000 people from the border zone and retaliated with artillery and air strikes that have killed an estimated 450, including nearly 100 civilians.

Most analysts agree that neither side want a war, but that avoiding a devastating clash might be impossible.

The first Lebanon war changed Israel and the region. Now an Israel changed dramatically by the October attack faces a new conflict on an old battlefield.

Bernie Sanders has offered his backing to Joe Biden, dismissing calls for the man he described as the “most effective president in the modern history of our country” to stand down in the upcoming US presidential election.

Sanders, the totemic progressive US senator, used an opinion piece in the New York Times to endorse Biden, who has come under increasing fire from fellow Democrats over his ability to beat Donald Trump following a disastrous televised debate between the two.

“Despite my disagreements with him on particular issues, he has been the most effective president in the modern history of our country and is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump – a demagogue and pathological liar,” Sanders wrote.

“It’s time to learn a lesson from the progressive and centrist forces in France who, despite profound political differences, came together this week to soundly defeat rightwing extremism.”

Sanders joins Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another key figure on the left of the Democratic party, in voicing support for Biden, even as upwards of 20 elected Democrats have called for him to step down, citing his apparent frailty during the debate and his tough re-election prospects against Trump.

So far, the only Democratic senator to call for Biden to stand down is Peter Welch who, like Sanders, an independent who largely votes with the Democrats, represents Vermont.

Democrats that have joined a “circular firing squad” need to “stop the bickering and nit-picking” over Biden’s performance, Sanders wrote, and start focusing on Trump’s far greater problems, such as the former president’s felony convictions, him being found liable in a sexual abuse case, his bankruptcies, and what Sanders called “thousands of documented lies and falsehoods”.

“I know: Mr Biden is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr Trump,” Sanders wrote. “But this I also know: a presidential election is not an entertainment contest.

“Enough! Mr Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate.”

Biden has insisted he will not drop out of November’s presidential election, despite polls showing he is either trailing or level with Trump. Biden said he made a “stupid mistake” of being extremely busy prior to the debate, including tiring international trips.

“Where’s Trump been?” the president said of his rival. “Riding around on his golf cart? Filling out his scorecard before he hits the ball?”

The speculation over the future of the 81-year-old president’s future has prompted Trump, and his Republican allies, to turn their fire somewhat on Kamala Harris, the vice-president who is considered the most likely replacement for Biden. Trump unveiled a new, derisive nickname for the vice-president, “Laffin’ Kamala”, which he tested at a campaign rally in Florida this week.

A court in Pakistan has acquitted the former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife on charges of unlawful marriage, just a day after his party won the majority of reserved seats in the supreme court.

Syed Zulfi Bukhari, an adviser to Imran Khan on international affairs and media, said: “The court has not only thrown out the case but the judge has ordered for the immediate release of Imran Khan and his wife.”

Bukhari said there is not a single pending case against Khan to keep him in prison. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party asked for the immediate release of Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi.

Khan and Bibi were sentenced to seven years days before the general elections in February by a local court in Pakistan, which found them guilty of breaking Islamic law and failing to observe the required interval between Bibi’s divorce and their marriage.

Khan was sentenced in four big cases including the unlawful marriage and another involving allegations of leaking state secrets and has been imprisoned since last August. He has been acquitted in all cases or granted bail.

Khan’s supporters and close aides were celebrating the acquittal of the unlawful marriage allegations, known as the Iddat case, hoping it would pave the way for his release. But minutes after Khan’s acquittal order, local media reported that an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan had issued written orders for the arrest and questioning of Khan in cases related to 9 May violence during his arrest last year.

Soon after his arrest, violence erupted across Pakistan when Khan’s supporters attacked military installations and buildings in protest. Khan has been accused of being the mastermind of the unrest.

Bukhari said: “Now all of sudden we are just hearing that Khan has to be questioned in cases related to 9 May violence and also his wife in a corruption case. It is a mockery of justice but we know these fake cases won’t stand in the court of law.

“The courts are releasing Imran Khan but the administration and military establishment are putting fake cases one after another to put him in prison. Why were these cases not brought before?”

Khan had accused Pakistan’s powerful military and its chief of harbouring a personal grudge against him and ordering his arrest. For decades, Pakistan has been ruled by military dictators, and the powerful military still plays a huge role in politics.

Fawad Chaudhry, the former information minister and a former close aide of Khan, said he is behind bars because of politics not criminal activity.

“[The] arrest of Imran Khan is [a] continuation of [a] political vendetta against Pakistan’s most popular political leader,” Chaudhry said. “The authorities are too scared of freeing Imran Khan hence [a] series of fake criminal cases are put together to keep him in jail.”

Zahid Hussain, a political analyst and author, said Khan’s acquittal in the Iddat case was very much expected as it was frivolous and had no legal standing.

Hussain said: “It was also expected that the military establishment does not want Khan to be out of prison and he will be arrested in another concocted case. But it will not be easy for the military to keep Khan in the prison for quite long now as the judiciary is asserting itself, we have seen yesterday in the major reserved seats case, and the pressure from the military and government is not working.”

In the five months between the end of the Australian Open and the start of Wimbledon, Barbora Krejcikova won just three singles matches. She had fallen into a brutal cycle of illnesses, injuries and pitiful form and, at times, it seemed like there was no way out. She arrived in SW19 with low ­expectations, still just trying to find her feet again.

But things can change so quickly in tennis; just a few key wins can build enough confidence for a player’s game to suddenly flow as if nothing had ever been wrong. That process has played out in full for Krejcikova over the past fortnight and by the time she arrived in her first Wimbledon singles final, she was ready.

After seemingly heading towards being a one-sided rout, the final developed into a tense, brilliant tussle with so much heart before the Czech 31st seed steadied herself and held off a spirited comeback from Jasmine Paolini to close out a 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 win over the No 7 seed.

“I think nobody believes that I got to the final and I think nobody is going to believe that I won Wimbledon,” Krejcikova said. “I still cannot believe it.”

Three years after her shock run to the Roland Garros title, Krejcikova is now a two-time grand slam singles champion. She has already built one of the great doubles – including mixed – résumés of this generation and few active tennis players, male or female, can match her overall grand slam trophy cabinet: Krejcikova is now a 12-time grand slam champion and a three-time Wimbledon champion.

“It’s great that I’m a two-time major champion,” said Krejcikova. “It’s something unbelievable. On the other hand, I’m still the same person. I still love tennis very much. I still want to continue playing tennis well and fight for other tournaments.”

The only other meeting between these finalists had come in the first round of the 2018 Australian Open qualifying tournament, which was won comfortably by Krejcikova although she didn’t reach the main draw. It is a reflection of their late-blooming careers – they are both 28 and were born 17 days apart – that this occasion marked the first time that a grand slam qualifying match had been replicated in a major final.

This time, Krejcikova burst out of the blocks determined to take the first strike immediately and dominate with her forehand while serving brilliantly. Paolini mixed in drop shots, sharp forehand angles and she tried to disrupt Krejcikova’s game but each time she was under pressure, the Czech demonstrated her phenomenal hand skills, resetting countless exchanges with skidding defensive slices before working her way back on top of the point. She eased through the ­opening set.

Instead of crumbling under pressure, Paolini began the second set determined to impose her game on Krejcikova as the Centre Court crowd forcefully cheered her on throughout. She injected more pace into her ground strokes on both wings, found greater depth and began to throw herself into her forehand. The momentum shifted immediately and as the Italian took the initiative, nervous errors flowed from Krejcikova’s racket as a third set beckoned.

With both the momentum and crowd firmly behind her, Paolini opened the third set launching herself into forehands, dominating the neutral rallies and targeting the unravelling Krejcikova backhand. The Czech made up for her tense shot-making by serving immaculately and she built up her confidence by ­breezing through her service games.

By the middle of the third set, Krejcikova had regained enough ­confidence to make her move at 3-3 on Paolini’s vulnerable serve. She finally took back the initiative in the neutral rallies, dominating with her forehand again as she snatched the break.

The brilliant battle ended in a breathless final game as Krejcikova wrestled with her nerves and her backhand, while Paolini fought until the death. After nearly two hours, Krejcikova closed the door on a ­spectacular triumph.

Although Paolini was extremely disappointed, she recognised her undeniable progress. After spending most of her career outside the top 50, this year – which took off with her winning the Dubai 1000 in February – her performances have taken her to heights she could have never ­imagined, with back-to-back major finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. “It’s been an incredible year,” she said. “I’m ­enjoying. I hope to continue like that with this level of tennis. I’m going to try to work to keep this focus, this level.”

This is, of course, a poignant full-circle moment for Krejcikova. She was still hundreds of ranking spots from even competing at Wimbledon in 2014 when she knocked on the door of her compatriot Jana Novotna, the 1998 singles champion, in search of guidance from a home legend.

That meeting would spawn an instant friendship, as Novotna quickly decided to travel and work with her, coaching her until shortly before she died in November 2017. Twenty-six years after Novotna finally won Wimbledon, Krejcikova was tearful as she saw her name engraved on the All England Club’s honours board close to Novotna’s.

“The only thing that was going through my head was that I miss Jana a lot,” she said. “It was just very, very emotional. Very emotional moment to see me on a board right next to her. I think she would be proud. I think she would be really excited that I’m on the same board as she is because Wimbledon was super special for her.”

The Princess of Wales will award the Wimbledon men’s trophy to the winner of the final on Sunday, in a rare public appearance since her cancer diagnosis.

It will be the second time she has appeared in public after undergoing abdominal surgery in January, which led to the discovery of the cancer and the beginning of chemotherapy treatment in late February. Last month, she attended the trooping the colour ceremony for King Charles’s official birthday before which she released a statement saying she was “making good progress” but was “not out of the woods yet”.

Catherine has been a patron of the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club since 2016, and it is customary for her to present the trophy to the winners of the men’s and women’s final. Last year, she presented the men’s trophy to Carlos Alcaraz after his victory against Novak Djokovic. The two will play each other again in this year’s final.

Catherine will not attend the women’s final on Saturday. Instead, the Wimbledon chair, Debbie Jevans, will present the women’s trophy on her behalf to either Jasmine Paolini or Barbora Krejcikova.

In March, Catherine released a video in which she announced her cancer diagnosis, after months of speculation prompted by her admission to the London Clinic on 16 January for abdominal surgery.

The speculation was partly fuelled by an image released to the press by Catherine on Mother’s Day, which was recalled by some of the world’s biggest picture agencies over claims that it was doctored. The princess later apologised for the “confusion” and admitted to editing the photograph.

In the video released in March, she said: “In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery in London and at the time, it was thought that my condition was non-cancerous. The surgery was successful. However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present. My medical team therefore advised that I should undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy and I am now in the early stages of that treatment.”

Catherine said her focus was on reassuring her children. “As I have said to them, I am well and getting stronger every day by focusing on the things that will help me heal, in my mind, body and spirits. Having William by my side is a great source of comfort and reassurance too. As is the love, support and kindness that has been shown by so many of you. It means so much to us both.”

It has produced one of the most consistent sets of negative results in the history of science. For more than 60 years, researchers have tried to find a single convincing piece of evidence to support the idea that we share the universe with other intelligent beings. Despite these decades of effort, they have failed to make contact of any kind.

But the hunt for alien civilisations may be entering a new era, researchers believe. Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world’s largest scientific research programme dedicated to finding alien civilisations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos.

These innovations will be outlined at the group’s annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week. Several hundred scientists, from astronomers to zoologists, are expected to attend.

Astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen, said: “There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI. They are going to transform how we look for alien civilisations.”

Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometre Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world’s most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world’s largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars.

Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyse these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilisations, added Croft.

“Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters – things like that.”

The importance of being able to detect civilisations from the signatures of their everyday activities is supported by astrophysicist Prof Adam Frank of the University of Rochester in New York. “By searching for signatures of an alien society’s day-to-day activities – a technosignature – we are building entirely new toolkits to find intelligent, civilisation-building life,” he writes in his new book, The Little Book of Aliens.

All sorts of technosignatures have been suggested as indicators of the presence of alien civilisations, from artificial lighting to atmospheric pollution. Some scientists have even suggested that alien civilisations could be spotted from the solar panels they have built. Solar panels absorb visible light but strongly reflect ultraviolet and infrared radiation, which could be detected using a powerful telescope.

However, this would only be possible to spot if vast tracts of a planet’s surface had been covered in solar farms and hundreds of hours of observing time were committed to such a search, says astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, writing in the latest edition of the BBC’s Sky at Night magazine.

Other alien efforts to trap solar radiation could be even more elaborate and conspicuous, however. The US physicist Freeman Dyson once proposed that some civilisations might be advanced enough to build vast arrays of solar panels encircling their home stars. These great orbiting edifices – known as Dyson spheres – would be detectable from Earth, and several candidates have been proposed, including Boyajian’s star, in the constellation Cygnus, whose output of light is sporadic and unpredictable. Some suggested this could be being caused by a Dyson sphere, though recent observations have ruled out the possibility.

The hunt for alien civilisations has been a cornerstone of cinematic sci-fi spectaculars from E.T. to Contact, Arrival and District 9. However, extraterrestrial life forms have remained the stuff of fiction, despite efforts which began in earnest in 1960 when astronomer Frank Drake used a 26-metre radio telescope to search for possible signals from the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. None were detected – a state of affairs that has continued despite vast increases in the power and sophistication of modern telescopes.

Whether this stream of negative results continues remains to be seen. Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. “We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere.

“I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it’s possible.”

It has produced one of the most consistent sets of negative results in the history of science. For more than 60 years, researchers have tried to find a single convincing piece of evidence to support the idea that we share the universe with other intelligent beings. Despite these decades of effort, they have failed to make contact of any kind.

But the hunt for alien civilisations may be entering a new era, researchers believe. Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world’s largest scientific research programme dedicated to finding alien civilisations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos.

These innovations will be outlined at the group’s annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week. Several hundred scientists, from astronomers to zoologists, are expected to attend.

Astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen, said: “There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI. They are going to transform how we look for alien civilisations.”

Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometre Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world’s most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world’s largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars.

Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyse these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilisations, added Croft.

“Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters – things like that.”

The importance of being able to detect civilisations from the signatures of their everyday activities is supported by astrophysicist Prof Adam Frank of the University of Rochester in New York. “By searching for signatures of an alien society’s day-to-day activities – a technosignature – we are building entirely new toolkits to find intelligent, civilisation-building life,” he writes in his new book, The Little Book of Aliens.

All sorts of technosignatures have been suggested as indicators of the presence of alien civilisations, from artificial lighting to atmospheric pollution. Some scientists have even suggested that alien civilisations could be spotted from the solar panels they have built. Solar panels absorb visible light but strongly reflect ultraviolet and infrared radiation, which could be detected using a powerful telescope.

However, this would only be possible to spot if vast tracts of a planet’s surface had been covered in solar farms and hundreds of hours of observing time were committed to such a search, says astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, writing in the latest edition of the BBC’s Sky at Night magazine.

Other alien efforts to trap solar radiation could be even more elaborate and conspicuous, however. The US physicist Freeman Dyson once proposed that some civilisations might be advanced enough to build vast arrays of solar panels encircling their home stars. These great orbiting edifices – known as Dyson spheres – would be detectable from Earth, and several candidates have been proposed, including Boyajian’s star, in the constellation Cygnus, whose output of light is sporadic and unpredictable. Some suggested this could be being caused by a Dyson sphere, though recent observations have ruled out the possibility.

The hunt for alien civilisations has been a cornerstone of cinematic sci-fi spectaculars from E.T. to Contact, Arrival and District 9. However, extraterrestrial life forms have remained the stuff of fiction, despite efforts which began in earnest in 1960 when astronomer Frank Drake used a 26-metre radio telescope to search for possible signals from the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. None were detected – a state of affairs that has continued despite vast increases in the power and sophistication of modern telescopes.

Whether this stream of negative results continues remains to be seen. Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. “We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere.

“I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it’s possible.”

Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial came to a dramatic end on Friday, after a New Mexico judge dismissed the case against the actor and found that the state had improperly withheld evidence related to how live rounds of ammunition ended up on the film set where the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot.

Just days after courtroom proceedings had begun, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ruled in favor of the defense and agreed that the charges against Baldwin should be dropped, finding that the state had concealed evidence that would have been favorable to the actor. The dismissal, made with prejudice, puts an end to the involuntary manslaughter case against Baldwin.

“The state’s willful withholding of information was intentional and deliberate,” Sommer said. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong.”

The news was met with relief from Baldwin, 66, who appeared to weep and hugged his attorneys and his wife, as the judge issued her ruling. Baldwin swiftly left court without making a statement to media.

The evidence in question was live rounds of ammunition turned over to New Mexico police in March, following the conviction of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer. That evidence suggested the live ammunition that made its way on to the set came from the prop supplier, rather than the film’s armorer, Baldwin’s attorney Alex Spiro said.

A witness confirmed to the judge on Friday afternoon that a special prosecutor in the case, Kari Morrissey, was directly involved in the decision to file the evidence in an entirely different case file separate from the other Rust materials.

The day had the twists and turns of a Hollywood drama as Morrissey’s role was revealed, another special prosecutor in the case resigned mid-day, and Morrissey took the stand herself. During her testimony, Baldwin’s defense attorney asked her whether she had referred to the actor as an “arrogant prick” and “cocksucker” in a conversation with a witness.

The dismissal brings to a sudden end the criminal case against Baldwin over death of Hutchins on the Rust movie set. The 42-year-old cinematographer died after a gun Baldwin was holding during rehearsals fired a single live round of ammunition.

Prosecutors have long said evidence shows that Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March, was the source of the live round, but the defense said the state had received evidence that suggested otherwise and “buried” it. A “good samaritan” had come forward to police this year with a box of munitions that he claimed came from the prop supplier, Seth Kenney, and matched the ammunition that killed Hutchins, Spiro had said on Thursday.

A report of that interview was not included with the other Rust evidence nor shared with the lawyer of Gutierrez-Reed, Spiro said. Testimony from Alexandria Hancock, with the Santa Fe county sheriff’s office, revealed that she and other officials made the decision to file it separately from the other Rust evidence in an entirely different case file.

Baldwin’s attorneys said the the report was relevant to the entire case and relevant to the credibility of witnesses who testified in the trial.

“If this evidence wasn’t as important as we say it is, they would have turned it over,” Nikas said.

In the morning, Morrissey had described the motion as a “wild goose chase” and said she had never before seen the report about the ammunition brought to the sheriff’s office. But as the judge questioned Hancock, the corporal said that Morrissey had taken part in the decision to keep the evidence separate from the Rust case – which elicited gasps in the courtroom.

Troy Teske, the man who came forward with the ammunition, is a friend of Gutierrez-Reed’s father, Morrissey had said earlier. She denied the defense’s accusations and said Baldwin’s team was aware of the evidence brought forward.

In a highly unusual move, Morrissey called herself to the stand to defend her conduct – despite instruction from the judge that she did not have to do so. “I was not aware at that point in time that it would not be linked to the Rust case number,” she said.

On cross-examination, Spiro asked Morrissey if she disliked Baldwin – which she denied – and if she had ever referred to the actor as an “arrogant prick” and “cocksucker” in a conversation with a witness.

She said she did not recall doing so.

“I actually really appreciate Mr Baldwin’s movies,” she said. “I really appreciated the acting he did on Saturday Night Live. And I actually really appreciate his politics.”

The developments upended the prosecution’s case and it was revealed during Morrissey’s testimony that the special prosecutor Erlinda Johnson had resigned in the middle of the day.

Baldwin could have faced 18 months in prison if convicted.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to travel to the UK next week to address European leaders at Blenheim Palace who are meeting to discuss Ukraine, European security and democracy.

He will also make his first visit to Ireland on Saturday morning when he touches down in Shannon airport, Co Clare, for a meeting with the Irish taoiseach, Simon Harris.

Ireland, which has a longstanding policy of military neutrality but is contributing non-lethal aid such as clearance of landmines to Ukraine through the EU, is expected to offer more support to Ukraine’s efforts to return an estimated 20,000 children, who have been forcibly relocated to Russia and Belarus.

The Ukrainian president met Keir Starmer last week at the Nato summit in Washington, but this would be his first opportunity to meet a wider delegation of the Labour government, who will be eager to reiterate the UK’s continued support.

His travel arrangements are rarely confirmed but a source said it is “90% certain” Zelenskiy will be there.

Thursday’s conference is the fourth meeting of the European Political Community, a collective launched after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that was the brainchild of the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

It is being seen as a “very significant” opportunity for Starmer to not just host up to 50 European leaders but to restore confidence in the UK and show the world the country is back on the international stage after years of reputational damage caused by Brexit.

The EPC is designed to facilitate the strengthening of ties between EU and non-EU leaders in an informal setting, with previous conferences held in Spain, Moldova and the Czech Republic.

Apart from the UK, non-EU countries including Norway, Iceland, Georgia, Kosovo, Serbia, Albania and Turkey are invited, though it is understood that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president who did not attend previous summits, has not confirmed participation.

As host Starmer will address the opening plenary session, which will be held in one of the halls in Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill. He is expected to underline the UK’s commitment to Ukraine and Zelenskiy, and to resetting the country’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU.

The prime minister has already pledged to establish closer ties with the EU, and the new minister for European relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds, travelled to Brussels for an introductory meeting with the former Brexit negotiator Maroš Šefčovič on Monday.

Ahead of the meeting, Starmer said: “Europe is at the forefront of some of the greatest challenges of our time.

“Russia’s barbaric war continues to reverberate across our continent, while vile smuggling gangs traffic innocent people on perilous journeys that too often end in tragedy.

“I said I would change the way the UK engages with our European partners, working collaboratively to drive forward progress on these generational challenges, and that work starts at the European Political Community meeting on Thursday.”

Harris has pledged to support the UK at a European level and has instructed his ministers to increase contact with London counterparts.

Starmer will have a number of bilateral talks – he is meeting Harris the night before at Chequers and is expected to have a separate meeting with Macron on Thursday in addition to taking soundings from EU leaders on what a new security and defence pact with the UK could look like post-Brexit.

Ukraine will dominate the plenary discussion with leaders, who will then be invited to join three break-out working groups centring on defence and democracy, which will include sessions on the disinformation crisis, energy and migration.

Macron is also determined to use the occasion to send a strong message of support to Ukraine from the EU in face of renewed threats from Vladimir Putin and more ominous comments this week by the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who denounced Nato’s summit promise to eventually support Ukraine’s membership of the defence bloc.

Security around the summit is tight with airspace restrictions in place over the Oxfordshire palace between 14 and 18 July. Police drones and the police air service will enforce the restricted airspace, according to Thames Valley police.

The legendarily frank sex therapist and cultural icon Dr Ruth Westheimer, known simply as Dr Ruth, has died at the age of 96, according to her publicist.

Westheimer died on Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family.

Her training and expertise and her humorous, accepting manner contrasted with her high-pitched German accent and diminutive frame (she was 4ft 7in), a juxtaposition that helped to catapult her local radio program, Sexually Speaking, into the national spotlight in the early 1980s.

She later parlayed its success into a television career that was even more successful. The Dr Ruth Show attracted more than 2 million viewers a week by 1985. On the show, Westheimer used humor, warmth and occasional seriousness in her attempts to explore sex and to break various taboos, including on contraception and abortion.

She recalled her rise to the public spotlight in a 2016 interview with Harvard Business Review, explaining that simply asking her radio listeners to send in questions was the beginning of the spark.

“After a while we had thousands of letters, and the station gave me two hours, 10 PM to 12 AM every Sunday – and I did that for 10 years.”

“Get some” quickly became Westheimer’s catchphrase. She had a nonjudgmental attitude and advocated safe sexual practices. What she wanted was for audiences to talk about sex, particularly issues that were previously too embarrassing or politically risky to discuss.

“I still hold old-fashioned values and I’m a bit of a square,” she told students at Michigan City high school in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But still, it is a subject we must talk about.”

In addition to radio appearances, Westheimer appeared on various talk shows including the Howard Stern Radio Show, Nightline, The Tonight Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Late Night With David Letterman.

In 2019, a Hulu documentary called Ask Dr Ruth aired. The film, which has the same name as Westheimer’s 1987 late-night syndicated TV series, features Westheimer’s reflections on her life and career.

Throughout her life, Westheimer also published more than 40 books, including the bestsellers Sex for Dummies, Dr Ruth’s Encyclopedia of Sex and her memoir, All in a Lifetime.

Speaking to the Guardian in 2012, Westheimer said her introduction to sex was from a book called The Ideal Marriage by Theodor Hendrick van de Velde.

“My parents had hidden it in a bookcase and I knew where the key was. I was short – I’m only 4ft 7in now – so I climbed up and found the book, but at that point I didn’t know that I was going to end up working in family planning or make 450 television programmes talking about sex,” she said.

Born in 1928, Westheimer grew up as a German Jew in Frankfurt. In 1939, Westheimer was separated from her family at 10 years old when Nazis raided her home and took her father away. A few weeks later, Westheimer’s mother sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland.

“I will never know how come my name was on the list for Switzerland because if I had been sent to Holland, Belgium or France I would be one of the statistics of one and half million Jewish children who perished. Instead I was in Switzerland with all of the uncertainties of not knowing where my parents were and what was happening,” Westheimer told the Guardian.

Speaking about her time at the orphanage, Westheimer said: “I was left with a feeling that because I was not killed by the Nazis – because I survived – I had an obligation to make a dent in the world.

“What I didn’t know was that that dent would end up being me talking about sex from morning to night.”

Westheimer was 16 when she went on to join the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization, in Jerusalem. During her training, she said she learned to shoot by imagining Adolf Hitler as her target.

She was wounded in the legs during a bombing and was only able to walk and ski again through the work of a “superb” surgeon, the Associated Press reported.

“I learned to assemble a rifle in the dark and was trained as a sniper so that I could hit the center of the target time after time,” she wrote in a 2010 New York Times op-ed that advocated for women in combat.

In 1950, Westheimer met her first husband and together they moved to Paris, where she studied psychology at Sorbonne University. In 1955, the couple divorced and a year later Westheimer moved to New York with a French man with whom she had a daughter, Miriam.

Following her divorce from her second husband, Westheimer met her third husband, Manfred Westheimer, in 1961. Together, they had a son called Joel and stayed married for 36 years until he died in 1997 from heart failure.

Over the years, Westheimer taught at multiple universities including Lehman College in the Bronx, Columbia University’s Teachers College and Yale University.

At one point, Westheimer worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Harlem, where she collected data on 2,000 women’s histories surrounding contraception and abortion, the Wall Street Journal reported. She went on to use the research to write her dissertation at Columbia University in 1970.

Recalling her time at the clinic, Westheimer told the outlet: “I thought these people are crazy … They talk only about sex. They don’t talk about literature, not about the weather, not about philosophy – nothing! But very fast, I said ‘Oops! That’s a very interesting subject matter.’”

“People are not Siamese twins,” she told the Guardian in 2019. “They don’t want to have sex, or the same amount of sex, at the same time. The important thing is that a couple adjusts to it.”

When Dayle Dixon and Mark Lee bought an attractive new house on the outskirts of Ivybridge in Devon in 2018, they believed it would be their forever home. But less than six years later it has been valued at just £1, and the couple are desperate to move out.

Dixon, 53, and Lee, 59, had not owned a property before, and bought their home, in an estate called Lucerne Fields, using, in part, almost £55,000 borrowed through the government’s help-to-buy scheme.

The three-bedroom home looks pretty on the outside, with its cream-coloured exterior and long windows. There is a garage and space for two cars in the driveway.

But the property, which they bought from the Barratt Developments subsidiary David Wilson Homes for £274,995, was valued last year by independent chartered surveyors at  £1 after a catalogue of major defects emerged. The surveyors said that without the problems, it would have been worth £330,000.

After the then Conservative MP for South West Devon, Gary Streeter, visited the estate in 2018, he praised the development, writing on his website: “The quality of the new homes was evident, and the care taken to ensure the development fits into the surrounding locale was clear.”

Dixon and Lee say their experience of their home has been very different, however.

“We have had literally hundreds of problems with the house,” Dixon says. “And repairs that have been carried out have not been done correctly.”

Dixon and Lee’s problems with their “dream” home began even before they moved in. They visited the property as soon as they got the keys, two days before their moving date, and noticed a hairline crack in one of the floors. Barratt agreed to put a screed layer on top before they moved in but Dixon says this made no difference. The next problem that came to light, soon after they moved in, was a broken soil pipe.

Over time more problems emerged. The couple have an extensive paper trail of their complaints, including reports assessing the problem and emails from them to people at Barratt outlining failures to resolve the issues.

Since they moved in Dixon has had time signed off work suffering from stress and anxiety, which she blames on the problems.

“I have developed PTSD, suffer from nightmares and sweats and can’t function properly. A lot of the time I feel physically sick,” she says. “We are living in a house that is a complete mess.”

The chartered surveyors who last year valued the couple’s house at £1 listed numerous defects in their valuation report, including inadequate damp proofing, water ingress, inadequate floor screed (used to create an even floor surface), inadequate window design, and damaged and corroding structural floor beams.

The report stated: “The ground floor will have to be stripped back to shell stage, sections of structural walls and floors will have to be removed, and it is likely that further defects which will require repair will be identified as works progress.”

It added: “Numerous significant defects have been identified. There has been limited positive engagement from the developer in resolving these issues … There is consequently an ongoing and costly dispute arising between the parties which only appears to be escalating.”

Reports commissioned by Barratt have taken a more upbeat view of the problems than those commissioned by the couple, although one structural assessment commissioned by the developer conceded that there was damage to one of the floor beams and that cracks needed to be monitored. Another Barratt-commissioned report recommended remedial action for cracks across the floor.

The couple are taking the firm to the small claims court over damage to items when repairers were in their home. Barratt declined to answer Guardian Money’s questions about the house, citing this legal action as the reason.

Dixon says that the couple have given up on their hope that the problems can be fixed and they can belatedly start to enjoy their home.

“We’ve had enough of having our lives wasted and being treated like idiots,” she says.

“I want Barratt to buy our house back at the market value it would have if it was in a good state of repair – about £350,000.”

Others on the estate have also reported problems but no one else was willing to talk to the Guardian. One family said they were unable to speak to the media because they are involved in legal action against the company and do not want to jeopardise compensation settlements they are in the course of negotiating.

Elsewhere, Roberto and his husband bought what they thought was going to be a wonderful home in Wiltshire from Barratt last October.

They paid £400,000 for the three-bedroom detached house but say that a litany of problems soon emerged, including lack of insulation and a garage built 30cm lower than it was supposed to be, along with problems with a fence, brickwork, paving slabs and the door of their shower.

“It’s an absolute shambles,” Roberto says. “When we first purchased the house, we thought it was perfect, but we have had so many problems. The house is cold and we can feel the wind coming inside because of the lack of insulation. When they fix one thing they damage something else. I’m so depressed about the whole thing. Barratt has offered us financial compensation but some of the walls need to be stripped out completely and redone.”

The housebuilder has accepted that a range of identified defects need to be repaired, including the insulation problem, the replacement of external vents and checks to ensure ducting is adequately sealed. It has also agreed to remove and replace some of the skirting boards and some of the plasterboard and work to raise the height of the garage and the driveway. However, the couple are still living with problems.

“All of this is not fair,” Roberto says. “We want to make the house beautiful but there doesn’t seem to be any point. We paid to get a good home but it seems that we actually paid to get pain from Barratt.”

Barratt said it had carried out some work to the house but declined to give an on-the-record statement on the case.

Instead, a spokesperson said: “As a five-star housebuilder we are proud of the high quality of our homes and well over 90% of our customers would recommend us to their friends and family. We build thousands of homes every year and on occasion where things go wrong we work hard to put them right as quickly as possible.”

Dixon hopes that if Barratt buys back their home from them, they can buy another property.

Otherwise, she says, “We won’t be able to afford to rent … In the worst-case scenario, we’ll have to move in with my elderly parents.”

How warranties work

One of the big advantages of buying a newly built home is that it comes with a 10-year warranty – essentially an insurance policy.

If you discover problems with your new-build home, you have various rights and options when it comes to trying to get these sorted out.

The 10-year warranty

This is taken out by the builder or developer and is supposed to protect the homebuyer.

It is usually split into two periods: a builder warranty for the first two years, then insurance cover for the next eight years.

The consumer body Which? says that while the first bit covers structural problems and minor defects found within the first two years, which the builder is obliged to resolve, the second part of the warranty “only covers structural issues … It doesn’t cover cosmetic issues or minor defects”.

The HomeOwners Alliance agrees, saying the structural issues include foundations, the external render, roofs, ceilings, chimneys and load-bearing parts of the floors.

So buyers really only have two years to identify, report and resolve non-structural flaws that may take several months to come to light.

It is thought the vast majority of new homes are covered by the Buildmark policy from the National House Building Council, although there are several other warranty providers, including Buildsafe, Checkmate and LABC Warranty.

The consumer codes and complaints bodies

Hopefully the developer or builder will come round promptly to fix any problems. If you need to escalate a complaint, you will first need to go through the developer’s formal complaints process, Which? says.

If you are still getting the runaround, you have options. For example, the NHBC says it provides an independent resolution service should a builder not meet their obligations under Buildmark.

The next thing to do is to check if your builder or developer is signed up to a code of conduct. Almost all warranty providers require developers to sign up to a consumer code, which is there to protect consumers during the sales process and offers a dispute resolution service if things go wrong during the first two years, says the HomeOwners Alliance.

The two main ones are the New Homes Quality Code, run by the New Homes Quality Board (NHQB), and the Consumer Code for Home Builders (there is also the Consumer Code for New Homes). Your developer should let you know which one applies to you.

If a builder allegedly doesn’t meet the requirements of the NHQB code, consumers can go to the New Homes Ombudsman Service, which will investigate and provide compensation if necessary.

Meanwhile, if you think your developer has breached the Consumer Code for Home Builders, you can access its independent dispute resolution scheme, which may order the company to pay compensation or carry out remedial work.

Every day for the last two weeks, Johannes-Harm Hovinga has sat at a raised table in Museum Arnhem, using a two-hole page puncher to systematically perforate the 7,705-page sixth assessment report produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

He has printed it out on coloured paper and the result is a vibrant heap piling up at the artist’s feet.

Hovinga remains completely silent during each performance in the Netherlands-based museum. He drinks water, but doesn’t eat, with bathroom breaks his only intermission.

“We are at a crucial turning point in history,” says Hovinga, “where the consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly evident. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and microplastics are just some examples of what our planet faces.”

The artist calls his living piece The Elephant in the Room. It is an artistic protest, meant to illustrate the lack of urgency by policymakers and global leaders. Hovinga believes in the power of creative expression to help raise awareness and persuade people to take a stand.

“The changing political landscape in Europe makes the work more relevant than ever. As humans, we are exhausting the Earth. Our current system of consumption is not sustainable. We need change, especially in our western world.

“For me, art and activism are symbiotic. The performance challenges each of us to confront our role in the climate crisis and encourages a renewed commitment to meaningful change.”

Hovinga’s artistic protest will last 20 days in total. By the end of it, he will have punched holes for 120 hours, at a physical and mental cost. “It’s getting harder to sit in silence concentrating on the same repetitive motion. I didn’t expect it to be so intense. After two days, my back, neck, elbows and wrists all started to hurt. I’ve been taking painkillers daily since the second week.”

Even so, he remains committed, accepting that change often comes with discomfort and sacrifice. For Hovinga, the most rewarding part is seeing the public reaction.

“Visitors have left me notes thanking me,” he says. “One day, two students from the art school next door waited until the museum closed so they could speak with me. I didn’t expect the reaction to be so positive. People see the layers of pain and are touched by it.”

However, Hovinga has had the odd negative response: “I’ve been called a WEF [World Economic Forum] puppet. Online, someone threatened to come and disrupt the performance. But that’s also fine because it still makes people reflect.”

Saskia Bak, the director at Museum Arnhem, says: “It’s crucial to showcase different perspectives on current topics, so we team up with artists not typically seen in museums. We highlight issues that are relevant in society, such as climate change. Johannes-Harm Hovinga’s performance fits perfectly.”

Of the audience reception, she says: “It’s been overwhelmingly positive. Some viewers get quite emotional during the performance, while others have applauded Hovinga for tearing up the nonsense that is the IPCC report.”

The hole-punching part of Hovinga’s art will wrap up on 14 July, after which the confetti installation will remain dispersed for two weeks. “After that, I will come back and clean in silence,” says Hovinga.

Having already staged a pilot version of Elephant in the Room for 11 days in 2022, during which he invited viewers to join him in the hole punching, the artist next plans to recreate the act during Cop29 in November.

In the long run, he hopes to take the performance across Europe, presenting his live art in museums and public spaces.