Donald Trump’s criminal case on charges that he illegally retained classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club was dismissed on Monday after the presiding judge sided with the former president and ruled that the special counsel who brought the prosecution had been improperly appointed.

The stunning decision by Aileen Cannon, the US district judge appointed by Trump, found that the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel violated the US constitution as he had not been named to his post by the president or confirmed by the Senate.

Cannon effectively ruled that there was no statute that authorized a special counsel to bring charges in the Trump case, and previous court rulings – including by the US supreme court in the landmark Richard Nixon case – were not binding on her decision.

“Because Special Counsel Smith’s exercise of prosecutorial power has not been authorized by law, the court sees no way forward aside from dismissal of the superseding indictment,” Cannon wrote in the 93-page decision.

The ruling cast aside previous court decisions that upheld the use of special prosecutors stretching back to the Watergate era, and removed a major legal threat to Trump on the opening day of the Republican national convention, where he is set to accept the GOP nomination for president.

Prosecutors will almost certainly challenge the ruling at the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit, and could ask the appeals court to reassign the case to a different federal judge in Florida if Cannon’s decision is overturned.

Whether the 11th circuit overturns Cannon could be as significant as the ruling itself. If Cannon’s decision is reversed and a new federal judge takes control of the case, it could breathe new life into the case even if the case may not go to trial for years.

Trump was indicted last year with retaining national security documents at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing the government’s attempts to retrieve, including by partially defying a grand jury subpoena ordering him to return any classified documents to the justice department. Trump had pleaded not guilty.

At issue is Trump’s argument that the special counsel position was not a position created by statute by the constitution, and therefore any actions he took with that prosecutorial power were not authorized by law.

Prosecutors contended in response that the judge did not need to consider whether to toss the indictment since Smith was an “officer”, deputized by the attorney general to prosecute the case as allowed under the appointments clause of the constitution.

The judge sided with Trump’s position. Cannon found that the appointments clause did not allow Garland to appoint a prosecutor effectively working as something tantamount to a US attorney, a job that requires Senate confirmation, and the only remedy was to dismiss the indictment.

“All actions that flowed from his defective appointment including his seeking of the Superseding Indictment on which this proceeding currently hinges were unlawful exercises of executive power,” Cannon wrote.

“Because Special Counsel Smith ‘cannot wield executive power except as article II provides,’ his attempts to do so are void and must be unwound. Defendants advance this very argument: ‘any actions taken by Smith are ultra vires … And the court sees no alternative course to cure the unconstitutional problem.’”

Prosecutors had argued that they were funded by the justice department’s budget, through a mechanism called the “indefinite appropriation”, which was allowed because the special counsel was authorized under the appointments clause.

But Cannon took her reasoning to its logical end to find that if Smith’s appointment was invalid, then prosecutors could not rely on the appointment to justify using the “indefinite appropriation”.

“Both sides agree that ‘other law,’ for present purposes, is the collection of statutes cited in the Appointment Order. For all of the reasons the Court found no statutory authority for the appointment, Special Counsel Smith’s investigation has unlawfully drawn funds,” Cannon wrote.

The director of the US Secret Service said she had “reviewed and strengthened” security plans for the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, as the failed assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday put her agency under immense political pressure.

Amid demands for answers over how 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to carry an AR-15-style rifle to a rooftop close to Trump at the Butler Farm Show Grounds, and to fire multiple shots, the secretary of homeland security slammed “a failure” of security.

“A direct line of sight like that to the former president should not occur,” Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC News on Monday.

Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee, was shot in his right ear, saying later he “felt the bullet ripping through the skin”.

One rally-goer was killed and two wounded. Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper. On Monday, authorities were still searching for a motive.

Mayorkas told ABC: “We have to learn everything about the assailant who, of course, the Secret Service neutralised. We are going to really study the event independently and make recommendations to the Secret Service and to me so that we can assure the safety and security of our protectees, which is one of our most vital missions.”

Elsewhere, CNN reported that “one of two local counter-sniper teams” was supposed to cover the building from which Crooks fired. Pennsylvania state police said they were not responsible for the area. Butler county police did not immediately comment.

The Secret Service has highlighted the extent to which it relies on local-level law enforcement for support at campaign events.

It has also denied reports in rightwing media that it diverted resources from protecting Trump to protecting the first lady, Jill Biden, or that it rebuffed requests for additional security resources from the former president.

Mayorkas said: “We keep very close watch on a very dynamic threat environment. The president, the former president, are commonly consistently under threat. We take every single threat seriously. We make security adjustments as are warranted. We had enhanced security for the former president, beginning in June. We had not received any requests for additional security measures that were rebuffed. That is false.”

Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, said: “In addition to the additional security enhancements we provided former president Trump’s detail in June, we have also implemented changes to his security detail since Saturday to ensure his continued protection for the convention and the remainder of the campaign.”

Cheatle said she was “confident in the security plan” for the RNC, which began in Wisconsin on Monday, adding that it had been “reviewed and strengthened in the wake of Saturday’s shooting”. Security plans for major events “are designed to be flexible”, she added.

Cheatle also offered her “deepest condolences to the family and friends of Corey Comperatore”, the 50-year-old former fire chief killed in the shooting on Saturday, “as well as those who were injured during this senseless act of violence”.

A former agent who also directed global security for Pepsi, Cheatle was appointed by Joe Biden in 2022 as the 27th director of the Secret Service and the second woman to fill the role.

Rightwing calls for her resignation have included claims she was appointed under policies meant to increase diversity, which she has championed.

In her statement on Monday, Cheatle said “the tremendous responsibility of protecting the current and former leaders of our democracy” was something she took “incredibly seriously”.

“I am committed to fulfilling that mission,” she said.

Cheatle also said she was “coordinating with the protective detail for former president Trump and have briefed President Biden”.

On Sunday, Biden said he had directed Cheatle to review security for the Republican convention.

Regarding the attempted assassination, Cheatle said the Secret Service was “working with all involved federal, state and local agencies to understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again.

“We understand the importance of the independent review announced by President Biden yesterday and will participate fully. We will also work with the appropriate congressional committees on any oversight action.”

Nigel Farage and Liz Truss are among the UK politicians set to attend the US Republican national convention this week as the British right seeks to deepen ties with its American counterparts before a predicted victory for Donald Trump in the presidential race.

An assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday had prompted Farage, the Reform UK party leader, to make plans to fly to the US, he said, adding that he was doing it “not just as a friend but because we have to stand up for democracy”.

The convention, which runs from Monday to Thursday, also provides Farage with an opportunity to meet influential rightwing US figures as well as leveraging his personal brand in advance of his return as a presenter on Britain’s GB News channel.

The newly elected MP, who leads a five-strong group from the populist right party in parliament, will depart after the king’s speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday, when the new Labour government’s priorities for the months ahead are set out.

More than 50,000 people are due in Milwaukee for the convention, where Trump will officially accept his party’s nomination to contest this year’s US presidential election.

Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, is expected to speak at the event on Wednesday. Other speakers on the same day will include the oil magnate Harold Hamm, who has contributed $814,000 (£627,000) to Trump’s 2024 re-election bid.

Truss had already been seeking to build a profile in the US as a guiding force on the right after her brief stint in Downing Street, but has even more reason to try to carve out a new political career after losing her parliamentary seat in the 4 July general election.

In the hours after Trump was shot in his right ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, she was among those who had tweeted her support for him. Posting a picture on X of the former president with his fist in the air after the attack, she tweeted: “The strength the world needs. #PresidentTrump.”

However, one Anglo-American conservative figure said any focus on UK-US ties would take a backseat at the event, dedicated largely to Trump.

They added of Truss: “She gets no real traction here. People see right through it and everyone talks of how unimpressive she is.”

The former Tory leader has run into trouble in the past at US conservative events. She was criticised earlier this year when she appeared alongside Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, and failed to speak up when he called the British far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a “hero”.

A range of speakers drawn largely from the dominant “Make America Great Again (Maga)” wing of the US Republican party are expected to address the event, including members of Trump’s family.

Also expected to feature are the evangelical leader Franklin Graham, the broadcaster Tucker Carlson and Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. A former White House trade adviser, Peter Navarro, is also expected to address the convention hours after his release from jail on contempt of court charges.

Trump could also use the convention to reveal his pick to be his vice-presidential running mate, with the Ohio senator JD Vance thought to be among the frontrunners.

Kenyan police say they have arrested a suspected serial killer who has confessed to murdering 42 women including his wife and dumping their dismembered bodies in a Nairobi rubbish tip.

Since Friday, nine butchered bodies trussed up in plastic bags have been pulled from the dump site in the Mukuru slum area in the south of the capital.

The acting inspector general of police, Douglas Kanja, said the 33-year-old suspect, named as Collins Jumaisi Khalusha, was arrested at about 3am on Monday near a Nairobi bar where he had been watching the Euro 2024 final.

The head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), Mohamed Amin, told reporters: “We are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for human life. We are dealing with a vampire, a psychopath.”

He said Khalusha claimed the murders took place between 2022 and last Thursday.

“The suspect confessed to have lured, killed and disposed of 42 female bodies at the dumping site,” he said. “Unfortunately, and this is very sad, the suspect alleged that his first victim was his wife … who he strangled to death before dismembering her body and disposing it at the same site.”

The suspect was tracked down after analysis of a phone of one of the victims, Amin said, in a joint operation by the DCI and the national police. As officers swooped, “he was in the process of luring another victim”, Amin said.

Khalusha had confessed to having had “carnal knowledge” of some of his victims, he added.

Officers searched the suspect’s one-room house, located just 100 metres from where the bodies were found, and discovered a machete, nylon sacks, rope, a pair of industrial rubber gloves, a “pink female handbag” and female underwear.

Kanja said autopsies on the victims discovered to date would be carried out on Monday. Eight have been confirmed to be female.

Amin said a second suspect who was caught with a phone belonging to one of the victims had also been arrested.

The discoveries have thrown another spotlight on Kenyan police and put more pressure on the president, William Ruto, who is struggling to contain a crisis over widespread anti-government protests in which dozens of demonstrators were killed.

Kenya’s police watchdog, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), had said on Friday it was looking into whether there was any police connection to the bodies found in the tip, noting that the dump site was close to a police station. IPOA was also investigating whether there had been a “failure to act to prevent” the grisly killings.

Kanja, in office for only a week after the fallout over last month’s protest bloodshed, told reporters last week that all officers at the police post located near the rubbish tip had been transferred.

Tensions ran high at the crime scene over the weekend as volunteers combed through the vast piles of rubbish in the abandoned quarry in search of more victims. Trouble briefly erupted when people tried to take a bag they had hauled out of the pit to the police station and were met with volleys of teargas, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

Kenyan police are often accused by rights groups of using excessive force and carrying out unlawful killings or running hit squads, but few have faced justice.

The soft-spoken septuagenarian who could be on the brink of leading Venezuela into a new political era has promised to build a country of prosperity, democracy and peace if he is elected president, and vowed to govern for all citizens – including supporters of his authoritarian rival Nicolás Maduro.

Retired diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia is leading the polls ahead of the South American country’s 28 July presidential election, despite never having sought elected office and, until recently, being unknown to voters.

Speaking to the Guardian at his home overlooking the capital, Caracas, the 74-year-old admitted his late-life transformation from retired ambassador to the possible future leader of the country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves had come as a surprise.

“The truth is, I had absolutely no plans to be a presidential candidate … much less to be president,” said González, who retired after serving as Venezuela’s ambassador to Buenos Aires from 1998 to 2002.

That changed suddenly in April when González agreed to be the stand-in presidential candidate for the Venezuelan opposition after its standard-bearer, María Corina Machado, and her stopgap were both prevented from running by authorities. With the support of Machado, a charismatic and outspoken former congresswoman who has spent years building a reputation as a fierce critic of Maduro’s Socialist party, the ex-ambassador is now topping the polls.

“I haven’t the slightest doubt that triumph is assured on 28 July. I say this clearly, firmly and with all the joy of knowing that we’re going to win. Absolutely all of the polls we are seeing right now give us a major advantage over the government candidate,” González said over coffee at an apartment crammed with family portraits and Catholic imagery portraying figures such as the Virgin of the Valley and Venezuela’s ‘doctor of the poor’, José Gregorio Hernández.

Perhaps sensing the growing threat of González’s challenge, Maduro has in recent days stepped up his verbal attacks on the low-key career diplomat. “There’s a decrepit old man who wants to take power in Venezuela,” the 61-year-old incumbent, who has held power since 2013, bellowed during a recent rally in the city of Barquisimeto.

González, who has decades of experience in international relations and diplomacy, has avoided taking the bait. “We are going to build a country where the president doesn’t insult [people],” he said at a recent campaign event, a theme he returned to during this week’s early morning interview.

“[I want to build] a prosperous, democratic and peaceful country, where citizens respect each other, where we don’t need anyone shouting at us, insulting us – a country of and for everyone,” said González, who struck a conciliatory tone with supporters of Venezuela’s current leader and his predecessor Hugo Chávez.

Asked for his message to Chavistas who were frustrated with the economic turmoil of Maduro’s 11-year rule but were fearful of Machado’s fiery anti-leftwing rhetoric, he answered: “I am the candidate and my line has always been that we will be a government for everyone. Here, nobody will be excluded. Here, we will not view our opponent as an enemy but simply as a political adversary.”

González made clear, however, that Machado – who has vowed to rid Venezuela of socialism – would play a major role in any future administration. “She’s an essential leader in the process … She will have whatever role she desires in the government,” he said.

For all the opposition enthusiasm, much could still happen in the days before a vote many see as Venezuela’s last chance of rescuing its democracy and its economy from one of the most brutal peacetime depressions in decades.

Some fear Maduro – who claims he is confident of victory and blames US sanctions for his country’s economic collapse – could still scupper González’s candidacy or manufacture a security crisis to justify suspending the vote.

“[Venezuela is] fundamentally a dictatorship … [Maduro] controls the courts, he controls the electoral authorities, he controls the police, the secret police and the military. So he could do whatever he wants, practically speaking,” said Benjamin Gedan, a former South America director on the National Security Council at the White House who runs the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program. What Maduro will do “depends how terrified he is, and it depends how successful the international diplomacy is in trying to constrain him”.

Even if the election does happen and the opposition wins, many observers are skeptical Maduro will accept the result and relinquish power, for fear of ending up in prison or condemning his movement to political oblivion. Several top government figures, including the president, face drug trafficking charges in the US while the international criminal court (ICC) is investigating alleged human rights abuses committed by Maduro’s security forces.

Experts say the Venezuelan strongman will need concrete guarantees if he loses the election and there is to be a smooth transition before his successor’s swearing in in January 2025. “Guarantee is a technical term for a get out of jail free card,” said Gedan, arguing that Chavismo would also need assurances that it would be allowed to continue as an active political movement and contest an election six years from now.

González has avoided commenting on thorny issues such as whether Maduro could be offered an amnesty from prosecution as part of a handover deal. But the presidential front-runner hoped that the almost six-month gap between July’s election and January’s inauguration would throw up “new spaces and political scenarios, the realities of which we cannot yet see but which could provoke new realities and new circumstances for everyone”.

Addressing supporters this week, Machado said: “For his own good … I hope Nicolás Maduro accepts a negotiation process that allows an orderly and sustainable transition”.

Gedan said it was wishful thinking to imagine the election producing “overnight democratization”. But what was possible – and perhaps the best-case scenario – was “a very complex, uncertain, but still promising political transition”.

“Even if it takes years. Even if the Chavista elites remain in impunity. Even if corrupt actors and human rights abusers aren’t brought to justice. Even if some of the branches of government end up in the hands still of bad actors. That’s a great scenario for Venezuela given what it’s been living.”

MPs in the Gambia voted on Monday to retain a law outlawing female genital mutilation (FGM), sparking joy and relief among campaigners.

Thirty-four out of 53 lawmakers voted to maintain the ban, which was introduced in 2015, aid workers told the Guardian. The remainder voted to repeal it.

Jaha Dukureh, an FGM survivor and founder of Safe Hands for Girls, said: “Today we stood on the right side of history one more time. We have shown that even if they burn down this country, we will rebuild to protect our women and girls. Today, we won for Gambia.”

According to the UN, the country has the ninth-highest rate of FGM in the world. Almost three-quarters of Gambian women between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM, which involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia. Nearly two-thirds of them were cut before the age of five.

The bill was tabled in March by Almameh Gibba, who said he did so to “uphold religious loyalty and safeguard cultural norms and values” in the Muslim-majority state. It was initially approved by a majority of MPs, which forced human rights campaigners to intensify lobbying against the move.

The law’s repeal was backed by Muslim clerics, who hold much sway in the Gambia, a conservative country of 2.7 million people.

One imam, Abdoulie Fatty, helped pay the fines of three women in the northern village of Bakadagi who were found guilty of mutilating eight infant girls last year in the first major conviction under the law. Anyone convicted of carrying out FGM faces three years in prison or a fine of 50,000 dalasi (£570) or both.

The vote was taken following the bill’s second reading after being referred to a parliamentary committee for consultation. A third and final reading had been tabled for next week.

Fabakary Tombong Jatta, the speaker of parliament, said: “[We] cannot be engaged in such a futile exercise as to allow the bill to proceed to a third reading. The bill is rejected and the legislative process exhausted.”

Judy Gitau, coordinator for Equality Now’s Africa office, applauded Monday’s vote for setting a precedent. She said: “Repealing the FGM law was going to set a new low in the pushback against women’s rights.”

While welcoming the move to uphold the law, human rights campaigners warned that more needed to be done to improve the lives of women and girls in the west African country.

Binta Ceesay, women’s rights manager at ActionAid Gambia, said: “Since FGM was banned nearly a decade ago, we have made encouraging strides in ending the practice, but it has not been enough.

“After voting to uphold the ban, we encourage politicians to redouble their efforts in ending this form of violence against women and girls for ever.”

Dukureh said she remained alert to any further challenges to the anti-FGM law.

“We don’t know if it will come up again, but the majority of Gambians still believe in FGM and many believe it is a religious requirement,” Dukureh said. “If it comes up again, we will be here to fight.”

US journalist and author Masha Gessen has been convicted in absentia by a Moscow court on charges of spreading false information about the military and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The Moscow-born Gessen, a staff writer for the New Yorker and a columnist for the New York Times who lives in the US, is a prominent critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and an award-winning writer.

Russian police put Gessen on a wanted list in December, and Russian media reported the case was based on statements they made about atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha in an interview with a popular Russian online blogger.

In the interview, which has been viewed more than 6.5m times on YouTube since September 2022, Gessen and blogger Yury Dud discussed atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha earlier that year.

Ukrainian troops who retook Bucha from retreating Russian forces found at least 400 bodies of men, women and children on the streets, in homes, and in mass graves, with some showing signs of torture. Russian officials have vehemently denied their forces were responsible and have prosecuted a number of Russian public figures for speaking out about Bucha.

The prosecutions were carried out under a Russian law adopted days after the invasion of Ukraine began that effectively criminalized any public expression about the war deviating from the Kremlin narrative. Russia maintains that its troops in Ukraine only strike military targets, not civilians.

Gessen, a dual US-Russian citizen, lived in Russia until 2013, when the country passed legislation against the LGBTQ+ community.

Gessen is unlikely to face imprisonment in Russia on the conviction unless they travel to a country with an extradition treaty with Moscow.

Since the war began in February 2022, Russia has cracked down harshly on dissent and also has targeted Americans.

There have been 1,053 criminal cases in Russia against anti-war protesters, according to the OVD-Info rights group, which tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.

Also on Monday, Russian citizen Richard Rose was found guilty of spreading false information about the Russian military in Bucha, OVD-Info said. Rose also was sentenced to eight years in prison.

According to OVD-Info, he said on a video that “the massacre in Bucha will never be forgotten … Russian fascists will never be forgiven for this”.

In his final speech before the court, Rose said he considers himself to be a political prisoner and said he would not change his views, the monitoring group said.

US journalist and author Masha Gessen has been convicted in absentia by a Moscow court on charges of spreading false information about the military and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The Moscow-born Gessen, a staff writer for the New Yorker and a columnist for the New York Times who lives in the US, is a prominent critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and an award-winning writer.

Russian police put Gessen on a wanted list in December, and Russian media reported the case was based on statements they made about atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha in an interview with a popular Russian online blogger.

In the interview, which has been viewed more than 6.5m times on YouTube since September 2022, Gessen and blogger Yury Dud discussed atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha earlier that year.

Ukrainian troops who retook Bucha from retreating Russian forces found at least 400 bodies of men, women and children on the streets, in homes, and in mass graves, with some showing signs of torture. Russian officials have vehemently denied their forces were responsible and have prosecuted a number of Russian public figures for speaking out about Bucha.

The prosecutions were carried out under a Russian law adopted days after the invasion of Ukraine began that effectively criminalized any public expression about the war deviating from the Kremlin narrative. Russia maintains that its troops in Ukraine only strike military targets, not civilians.

Gessen, a dual US-Russian citizen, lived in Russia until 2013, when the country passed legislation against the LGBTQ+ community.

Gessen is unlikely to face imprisonment in Russia on the conviction unless they travel to a country with an extradition treaty with Moscow.

Since the war began in February 2022, Russia has cracked down harshly on dissent and also has targeted Americans.

There have been 1,053 criminal cases in Russia against anti-war protesters, according to the OVD-Info rights group, which tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.

Also on Monday, Russian citizen Richard Rose was found guilty of spreading false information about the Russian military in Bucha, OVD-Info said. Rose also was sentenced to eight years in prison.

According to OVD-Info, he said on a video that “the massacre in Bucha will never be forgotten … Russian fascists will never be forgiven for this”.

In his final speech before the court, Rose said he considers himself to be a political prisoner and said he would not change his views, the monitoring group said.

A fleet of more than one hundred lorries would take 15 years to clear Gaza of almost 40m tonnes of rubble in an operation costing between $500m (£394m) and $600m, a UN assessment has found.

The conclusions will underline the immense challenge of rebuilding the Palestinian territory after months of a grinding Israeli offensive that has led to massive destruction of homes and infrastructure.

According to the assessment, which was published last month by the UN Environment Programme, 137,297 buildings had been damaged in Gaza, more than half of the total. Of these, just over a quarter were destroyed, about a 10th severely damaged and a third moderately damaged.

Massive landfill sites covering between 250 and 500 hectares (618 to 1,235 acres) would be necessary to dump the rubble, depending on how much could be recycled, the assessment found.

In May, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said rebuilding homes in Gaza destroyed during the war could take until 2040 in the most optimistic scenario, with total reconstruction across the territory costing as much as $40bn. That assessment, which was published as part of a push to raise funds for early planning for the rehabilitation of Gaza, also found the conflict could reduce levels of health, education and wealth in the territory to those of 1980, wiping out 44 years of development.

“The damage to infrastructure is insane … In [the southern Gaza City] Khan Younis, there is not one building untouched,” one UN official based in Gaza told the Guardian last week.

“The actual topography has changed. There are hills where there were none. The 2,000lbs [907kg] bombs dropped [by Israel] are actually altering the landscape.”

Schools, health facilities, roads, sewers and all other critical infrastructure have all suffered massive damage.

Humanitarian officials welcomed a move by Israel to increase the capacity of a key desalination plant that serves Gaza but pointed out that with most pipes damaged, distribution of water within the territory remained extremely difficult.

The UNDP said the possible price tag of reconstruction of Gaza is now twice estimates made by UN and Palestinian officials in January and was rising every day.

The mountains of rubble are full of unexploded ordnance that leads to “more than 10 explosions every week”, causing more deaths and loss of limbs, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency has said.

In April, Pehr Lodhammar, a former United Nationals Mine Action Service chief for Iraq, said that on average about 10% of weapons failed to detonate when they were fired and had to be removed by demining teams.

Sixty-five per cent of the buildings destroyed in Gaza were residential, Lodhammar said, adding that clearing and rebuilding them would be slow and dangerous work because of the threat from shells, missiles or other weapons buried in collapsed or damaged buildings.

The war began when Hamas launched a surprise attack into southern Israel in October, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 250 others. More than 38,000 people have now been killed in Israel’s offensive in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials in the territory.

At least five undercover police officers spied on the anti-nuclear movement during a period when it was posing a significant challenge to government policies, a public inquiry has been told.

One was sent to infiltrate the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common after she was told by a superior that Margaret Thatcher, the then prime minister, wanted to know what the “Greenham women were doing”.

The judge-led inquiry also heard allegations that information gathered by the undercover officers was exploited by Thatcher’s government to undermine the anti-nuclear activists just before a general election.

The surveillance of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and allied groups was stepped up when they grew enormously in the 1980s. Membership of CND ballooned from the low thousands to more than 300,000. They used non-violent methods to pursue their objectives.

The activists feared the outbreak of nuclear war with the Soviet Union during a dangerous phase of the cold war. They opposed the Thatcher government’s plans to develop the UK’s arsenal of nuclear weapons and permit the stationing of US nuclear missiles in Britain.

The reports gathered by the undercover police officers were routinely passed to the Security Service, MI5, which was mounting extensive surveillance of the anti-nuclear campaigners.

The deployment of the undercover police officers was revealed in detail on Monday as a large cache of surveillance reports were disclosed at the inquiry. They spied on local groups in for example Hampstead and Hackney in London as well as national meetings.

A retired judge, Sir John Mitting, is heading the inquiry which is examining the activities of about 139 undercover officers who spied on more than 1,000 mainly leftwing political groups since 1968. This phase of the inquiry is concentrating on espionage which took place between 1983 and 1992.

One of the tasks of the inquiry is to look at why the anti-nuclear campaigners were spied on and whether the surveillance was justified.

Giving evidence, Kate Hudson, CND’s current general secretary, said the extent of the infiltration of CND was “truly shocking, completely unjustified and anti-democratic.”

During the 1980s, there was considerable controversy about the state’s surveillance of CND after Cathy Massiter, a whistleblower who worked for MI5, revealed that the Security Service had used telephone tapping and informants to spy on the movement.

Thatcher’s government argued that the surveillance was necessary as CND was allegedly controlled or influenced by communists and subversives – a claim that MI5 had by 1985 concluded was largely unfounded.

Hudson alleged that the Conservative party had used the undercover officers and MI5 to help their propaganda war against CND in the 1983 general election campaign.

She said that Thatcher’s government had set up a special unit within the Ministry of Defence to counter CND’s arguments. This unit, she said, drew on information that had been collected by MI5 and the undercover officers.

This information was in turn passed to the media to discredit CND, she added. One article alleged that CND was largely run by communists, Marxists or other leftwingers. She said the undercover police had spied on most of those named.

One of the most well-known anti-nuclear campaigns was run by women who camped outside the Greenham Common airbase in Berkshire to protest at plans to site American nuclear weapons there.

They were infiltrated between 1983 and 1986 by an undercover officer who used the fake name of Lee Bonser.

She has said that a police superintendent approached her to go undercover, telling her “the then prime minister wanted to know what the Greenham women were doing”. She added that “she was asked to help the police find out.”

People in Rwanda have gone to the polls for elections in which Paul Kagame is widely expected to extend his rule of the central African country.

This is the fourth presidential ballot since more than 800,000 people, mostly members of the Tutsi ethnic minority, were killed in a genocide in the country 30 years ago.

Kagame, who led the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebel group to defeat Hutu extremist forces and end the genocide, was elected president by parliament in 2000 after the resignation of Pasteur Bizimungu.

He has won more than 90% of the vote in the three previous elections since then – in 2003, 2010 and 2017.

Running on the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) ticket, Kagame is seeking a fourth term after a constitutional amendment in 2015 extended presidential term limits.

Kagame is credited with transforming Rwanda from ethnic division to being a united country and regional business hub. But critics accuse his administration of censorship and curtailing human rights in the country of 13 million people, more than 9 million of whom are eligible to vote in Monday’s ballot.

In this election, he faces the same opponents as in 2017: Frank Habineza, of the Democratic Green party of Rwanda, and Philippe Mpayimana, an independent candidate.

Rwanda’s national electoral commission disqualified six others, including vocal Kagame critics Victoire Ingabire, Diane Rwigara and Bernard Ntaganda, for various reasons.

Long lines of voters formed as early as 5am at the polling station at the Remera Catholic primary school in the capital, Kigali, one of five polling stations visited by the Guardian. Voting was taking place peacefully at all the sites. Observers from the African Union were present.

“Kagame has ruled us well and I am going to vote for him again,” said Frank Munyaneza, a driver. “He has brought development and we have security under his rule.”

Kagame’s campaign priorities have included security, stability, unity and economic development.

“We chose to rebuild ourselves and our country, which was destroyed by bad politics and irresponsible leaders,” he said at a rally in the northern Gakenke district on Thursday.

“As for you, you have rebuilt yourselves, you have built your skills, and you have competent leaders at all levels. Therefore, you must do everything possible to ensure that Rwanda continues its path towards sustainable progress.”

Habineza, a former RPF member, is advocating for changes to tax and land policies and for modernisation of agriculture. “We toured the entire country, and wherever we went, people welcomed us warmly. They gave us gifts and assured us they would vote for us,” Habineza said after voting. “We have to maintain this momentum and not regress.”

Mpayimana, a senior expert in the ministry of national unity and civic engagement and a former journalist, is pushing to downsize parliament, increase agricultural productivity, and improve education and student welfare. “We are confident, each of us is confident, it’s half and half,” Mpayimana told journalists after casting his vote.

In the last election, Habineza and Mpayimana each got less than 1% of votes. Analysts say they continue to lack sufficient name recognition, financial resources and organisational ability to significantly challenge Kagame.

RPF has been the ruling party since 1994, and its members occupy 75% of the seats in parliament.

David Kiwuwa, an associate professor of international studies at the University of Nottingham, said: “On the whole, Rwanda is a dominant party system, with RPF occupying a supersized political space and as such in the foreseeable future has no challenger.”

Rachel Nicholson, Rwanda researcher at Amnesty International, said the election could be an “opportune time for political leadership to choose to recommit to human rights” and investigate enforced disappearances, killings and other human rights cases to ensure that victims get justice.

“Regardless of whether leadership changes or not, it’s a moment of change,” she said. “It’s a moment that leaders can choose if they want to.”

Rwandans were also voting on Monday for members of the lower house of parliament.

Polls closed at 3.00 pm (1300 GMT) and counting began immediately, with partial results expected to be released as tallying progresses.

Rescue teams on the Spanish island of Tenerife have discovered the body of a young man in the area where the British teenager Jay Slater disappeared.

In a statement, Spain’s national police force, the Guardia Civil, said rescuers had found remains.

Slater, 19, an apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, went missing after attending a music festival on the island four weeks ago. He was last seen walking alone in the Rural de Teno national park, a rugged and remote area on the opposite side of the island to the holiday resort where he had been staying with friends.

The statement said: “Guardia Civil agents belonging to Mountain Rescue and Intervention Group located in this morning the lifeless body of a young man in the Masca area, belonging to the municipality of Buenavista del Norte.”

It went on to suggest the person “could have died due to [an] accidental fall on the cliff and inaccessible area where [the body] had been found”.

Spanish police said that for 29 days, different units of the Guardia Civil had run a “constant search … to look for the young man every day in the area of ​​Masca” and would await the results of an autopsy to confirm the cause of death.

A search and rescue operation was launched on the island after Slater was reported missing on 17 June. The police in Spain said they were scaling down the search two weeks later but the case remained open.

Volunteer rescuers had continued to look for the teenager, with some Britons flying out to help. Police had previously used helicopters, dogs and drones to look for Slater but rescue teams said the terrain had made the job particularly difficult.

“It’s so big [here] that it’s very difficult to search in such a steep area. But we’re doing everything we can,” one member of the rescue team told the Guardian. He said it was a “very difficult area to search”, with many areas covered in vegetation, as well as there being gaps and ravines.

In Slater’s last known contact with friends, he made a phone call saying he was lost, thirsty, and had only 1% left on his phone battery. After the music festival, he had gone with some men he had met that night and was last seen close to the holiday home they had rented on the island.

Ofelia Medina Hernandez, whose brother owns the Airbnb, said Slater had asked her about the times of buses back to Los Cristianos, and she had later seen him walking uphill in the opposite direction to the coastal resort.

“It’s dangerous walking around here, it’s easy to lose yourself,” she said. “He walked along the road when I saw him for the last time, up there … He was there alone. He was walking normally, though fast, a little fast.”

Slater’s mother, Debbie Duncan, described in a statement on Sunday the “heartache” her “normal family from Lancashire” continued to suffer, and criticised “the constant barrage of conspiracy theories and wild speculation” that had flourished online since his disappearance and compounded the family’s grief.

“As we approach four weeks of our beautiful Jay’s disappearance, we cannot put into words the heartache we are suffering as a family,. He is loved by everyone and has a close bond with his family and many, many friends,” she said.

“It’s important to consider how the family will feel when horrific things are being posted online,” she added, saying: “It must end.”

The statement was issued via LBT Global, a British overseas missing persons charity that has been working with the family.

According to Tenerife’s El Día newspaper, the terrain where the body was found was so inaccessible that a helicopter from the regional government’s emergency rescue service was used to help recover the remains.

A spokesperson for the Guardia Civil said one of its mountain rescue search teams had found the body while carrying out a search on the ground.

LBT Global said on Monday the body had been found close to the site of the last known location of Slater’s mobile phone.

“Although formal identification is yet to be carried out, the body was found with Mr Slater’s possessions and clothes,” it said. “A postmortem and forensic inquiries will follow.”

Researchers have found evidence for a substantial underground cave on the moon that is accessible from the surface, making the spot a prime location to build a future lunar base.

The cave appears to be reachable from an open pit in the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), the ancient lava plain where the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the moon more than half a century ago.

Analysis of radar data collected by Nasa’s lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO) revealed that the Mare Tranquillitatis pit, the deepest known pit on the moon, leads to a cave 45 metres wide and up to 80 metres long, an area equivalent to 14 tennis courts. The cave lies about 150 metres beneath the surface.

Lorenzo Bruzzone, of the University of Trento in Italy, said the cave was “probably an empty lava tube”, adding that such features could serve as human habitats for future explorers as they were “a natural shelter against the harsh lunar environment”.

Lunar orbiters first spotted pits on the moon more than a decade ago. Many are thought to be “skylights” that connect to underground caves such as lava tubes, giant underground tunnels that form through volcanic processes.

Such caves could form the basis for a moonbase or an emergency lunar shelter because the temperature is relatively stable inside and astronauts would be naturally shielded from harmful cosmic rays, solar radiation and micrometeorites.

Previous images taken from the LRO showed that the bottom of the Mare Tranquillitatis pit was strewn with boulders up to 10 metres wide. But it was unclear whether the pit was enclosed or served as an entry point to an underground cave, such as a lava tube whose roof had collapsed.

Writing in Nature Astronomy, the scientists describe how they used LRO data and computer simulations to show that the 100 metre-wide pit, which is bordered by vertical or overhanging walls, leads to a sloping floor and a cave that extends for tens of metres westwards.

Researchers are keen to study the rocks inside such caves as they are likely to hold clues to the moon’s formation and volcanic history. The caves may also contain water ice, a resource Bruzzone said was essential for long-term lunar missions and colonisation.

At least 200 pits have been spotted on the moon and many found on lava fields could be entrances to cavernous subterranean lava tubes. “The main advantage of caves is that they make available the main structural parts of a possible human base without requiring complex construction activities,” said Leonardo Carrer, the study’s first author.

In preparation for humans returning to the moon, space agencies are already wondering how to assess the structural stability of caves and reinforce their walls and ceilings. Habitats may also need monitoring systems to warn of movement or seismic activity and have separate areas for astronauts to retreat to should sections of their cave collapse.

“Lunar cave systems have been proposed as great places to site future crewed bases, as the thick cave ceiling of rock is ideal to protect people and infrastructure from the wildly varying day-night lunar surface temperature variations and to block high energy radiation which bathes the lunar surface,” said Katherine Joy, professor in earth sciences at the University of Manchester. “However, we currently know very little about the underground structures below these pit entrances.”

Robert Wagner, a researcher at Arizona State University, said one of the biggest challenges would be access. “Getting into that pit requires descending 125 metres before you reach the floor, and the rim is a steep slope of loose debris where any movement will send little avalanches down on to anyone below,” he said. “It’s certainly possible to get in and out, but it will take a significant amount of infrastructure.”