Donald Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick has reignited fears in Europe that he would pursue a transactional “America first” foreign policy that could culminate in the US pushing for Ukraine to acquiesce to Vladimir Putin and sue for peace with Russia.

“It’s bad for us but it’s terrible news for [Ukraine],” said one senior European diplomat in Washington. “[Vance] is not our ally.”

Foreign diplomats and observers have frequently called Trump’s actual policies a “black box,” saying that was impossible to know for certain what the unpredictable leader would do when in power.

Some have soothed themselves by suggesting that names tipped for top positions, such as former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, would maintain a foreign policy status quo while Trump focuses on domestic affairs.

But a prospective Trump administration now has a much more energetic surrogate who will fuel Trump’s skepticism towards Ukraine and Europe, while urging on the party’s aggressive trade and foreign policy elsewhere around the globe.

“Senator Vance was one of the leading opponents of the new assistance package to Ukraine last spring and has expressed indifference to what happens in that war,” said Michael McFaul, director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a former ambassador to Russia. “By choosing Vance as his running mate, Trump has clarified a very clear choice for American voters in November on foreign policy.”

“President Biden’s foreign policy strategy radically contrasts with Mr Trump’s approach,” he said. “Biden and Harris have promoted democracy and stood up to autocrats. Trump and Vance have paid no attention to advancing democracy abroad and instead have embraced autocrats. The contrast in foreign approaches embraced by these two presidential candidates has never been clearer in my lifetime.”

In public, Vance has criticized US aid packages to Ukraine and pushed for negotiations with Russia, although Ukraine has said it did not wish to hold talks. He has accused the Biden administration of “micromanaging” Israel’s war in Gaza, and said that America should “enable Israel to actually finish the job”.

He has advocated containment of China, saying that America was “spread too thin” in Europe and pushing for aggressive trade restrictions and intellectual property protections against China.

And he has demanded that European countries pay a larger share of their GDP into Nato, writing this year: “The United States has provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long.”

“I think Vance was chosen at least in part for his foreign policy and for his trade policy,” said Emma Ashford, a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy programme at the Stimson Center Washington.

“Vance is very much representative of this new right wing has been growing in the Republican party. They’re much more nationalist, somewhat protectionist, anti-immigration … Trump was the one who largely initiated this back in 2016 and Vance has become one of the congressional leaders of it.”

Top donors reportedly engaged in a push to secure the nomination for Vance in the final hours. According to Axios, they include Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and David Sacks. All three have been skeptical of Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and Sacks on stage at the Republican national convention said Biden “provoked, yes provoked, the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of Nato expansion”.

They are also linked to a larger set of Silicon Valley tech billionaires, including the Vance booster Peter Thiel, who have been extremely hawkish on China.

Meanwhile, the choice has scandalized some traditional Republicans.

“He [Vance] would capitulate to Russia and sacrifice the freedom of our allies in Ukraine,” wrote the former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has become an outspoken critic of Trump. “The Trump GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln, Reagan or the constitution.”

Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, has presented himself as a modern success story from the American rust belt, and Trump is said to have chosen him for his backstory and stage presence as much as his policies. But he has also made a name for himself as a leading critic of aid to Ukraine.

“I think that it’s ridiculous that we’re focused on this border in Ukraine,” Vance said on an interview on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in 2022. “I gotta be honest with you: I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

At the Munich security conference in February, he delivered what his own staffers called a “wake-up call” to Europe, in which he played down the threat posed by Russia’s leader and said that the US could not manufacture the weapons needed to supply Ukraine to continue the war.

“I do not think that Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe, and to the extent that he is, again that suggests that Europe has to take a more aggressive role in its own security,” Vance said.

Vance also said he believed the Ukraine war “will end in a negotiated peace”, a view that appeared to be backed up on Tuesday by the Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, who has been traveling on a rogue “peace mission” to Moscow and Mar-a-Lago, wrote that Trump after the elections will begin acting as a “peace broker immediately”, even before his inauguration.

“Yes, Trump will be ultimately setting Ukraine policy,” wrote Serhiy Kudelia, a professor of political science at Baylor University, on X. “But the choice of Vance tells us all we need to know about how Trump wants to approach Ukraine once he becomes president: no Nato membership for Ukraine, cutting military and economic assistance and forcing Zelenskiy to a [negotiating] table with Putin.”

In that speech, Vance also said he did not believe the US should pull out of Nato or “abandon Europe,” but that Washington should “pivot” toward Asia, meaning toward a more aggressive policy to contain China.

“The United States has to focus more on East Asia,” he said. “That is going to be the future of American foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact.”

Joan E Greve and Alice Herman contributed reporting

Donald Trump has said Taiwan should pay the US for protection from China, calling into question Washington’s support for the island democracy should he win back the White House in November’s presidential election.

In response to Trump’s comments, premier Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan and the US have good relations despite the lack of formal ties, but added that Taiwan was increasing its capabilities to defend itself. .

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek on Tuesday, Trump was asked if he would defend Taiwan against China if he wins the US election in November. China’s ruling Communist party claims Taiwan as a province and has vowed to annex it, refusing to rule out the use of military force. The US does not formally recognise Taiwan but is it’s most important security partner.

In response to the question Trump said Taiwan should be paying the US to defend it, that the US was “no different than an insurance company” and that Taiwan “doesn’t give us anything”.

The US sells Taiwan billions of dollars in weapons under legislative obligations to provide it with the means to defend itself. These sales markedly increased under Trump’s presidency.

However, Trump’s comments on Tuesday suggest his support for Taiwan is not guaranteed. Trump noted China’s increased military aggression towards Taiwan, said he, “wouldn’t feel too secure if I was [Taiwan]”, and questioned why the US was acting as Taiwan’s “insurance” when, he claimed, they had taken American chip business.

Without evidence, Trump repeated accusations that Taiwan had taken “almost 100%” of the US’s semiconductor industry.

Taiwan produces more than 90% of the world’s most advanced chips, mostly through the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), the world’s largest producer and a major Apple and Nvidia supplier. TSMC is spending billions building new factories overseas, including $65bn on three plants in the US state of Arizona, though it says most manufacturing will remain in Taiwan. TSMC’s shares were down 2.4% on Wednesday’s close. The broader market ended down 1%.

Responding to Trump on Wednesday, Taiwan’s Premier, Cho Jung-tai, told a press briefing that Taiwan was grateful to the US for its support, and that Taiwan was “working hard” to maintain the relationship while also increasing their self-defence capabilities and “as a member of the international community”.

“Taiwan and the US share a common responsibility for the Indo-Pacific region of the Taiwan Strait, and we are willing to do more to defend ourselves and protect our security,” he said.

Cho also said the government hoped and expected that Taiwanese chip manufacturers would keep their R&D in Taiwan.

“R&D staying in Taiwan is the best option, and the government will maintain such an environment and continue to work with the industry,” he said, inviting other foreign companies to set up in Taiwan.

Trump’s comments added to signs that the US approach to China could be hawkish – but potentially unpredictable – should he win in November.

Elsewhere in the interview the former president pledged that he would impose tariffs on China of between 60 and 100%, but that he would back down on banning the China-owned app, TikTok. He also said China’s leader Xi Jinping was “a very good friend of mine” until the pandemic.

Trump’s newly announced running mate, JD Vance, told Fox News on Tuesday the US should be focused on China as its greatest security threat.

“You have to ask yourself, is China going to be more dissuaded by us thumping our chests and acting tough in Europe, or are they going to be more dissuaded by us having the weapons necessary to prevent them from invading Taiwan?” Vance said.

Official US policy towards Taiwan is “strategic ambiguity”, which refuses to state if they would come to its defence in the event of a Chinese attack, however Biden has said on several occasions he would defend Taiwan.

Additional reporting by Chi Hui Lin and Reuters

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, once Donald Trump’s biggest rivals in the Republican party, both gave full-throated endorsements to Trump’s presidential candidacy on Tuesday, a call for unity that served to underscore the former president’s control of the Republican party.

On the second night of the Republican national convention, Haley and DeSantis, who both unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination earlier this year, spoke back to back in the 8pm hour of the convention as Trump grinned and applauded from his box elevated above the floor of the Fiserv Forum, where the convention is taking place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” Haley said. She said her speech was aimed at those “who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time”.

“You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me. I haven’t always agreed with President Trump. But we agree more often than we disagree,” she said.

Haley, who served as the governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, rattled off what she saw as Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments.

“When Donald Trump was president, Putin did nothing. No invasions. No wars. That was no accident. Putin didn’t attack Ukraine because he knew Donald Trump was tough. A strong president doesn’t start wars. A strong president prevents wars,” she said, receiving loud applause.

DeSantis also immediately made it clear that he was backing Trump.

“Let’s send Joe Biden back to his basement and let’s send Donald Trump back to the White House,” he said.

Neither Haley nor DeSantis initially had speaking slots at the convention, but they were added after the attempt on Trump’s life on Saturday as Republicans sought to project unity.

“President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity. It was a gracious invitation and I was happy to accept,” Haley said.

Trump could be seen on the Jumbotron grinning widely as both gave their speeches. And he had reason to do so: just months ago, Haley and DeSantis were the most prominent Republicans critical of Trump.

“He’s made it chaotic. He’s made it self-absorbed. He’s made people dislike and judge each other. He’s left that a president should have moral clarity, and know the difference between right or wrong, and he’s just toxic,” Haley said of Trump during an interview on The Breakfast Club in January.

Haley, who has also called Trump “thin-skinned and easily distracted”, didn’t say she was voting for Trump until May.

Austin Weatherford, the Biden campaign’s national director for Republican engagement, highlighted Haley’s words in a statement after her speech Tuesday.

“Ambassador Haley said it best herself: someone who doesn’t respect our military, doesn’t know right from wrong, and ‘surrounds himself in chaos’ can’t be president,” he said.

“That’s why millions of Republicans cast their votes in protest of Donald Trump and his attacks on our institutions, our nation’s allies, and civility.”

DeSantis endorsed Trump shortly after dropping out of the presidential race in January, but reportedly continued to privately criticize him. He needled him on the campaign trail, saying America didn’t need a president who had “lost the zip on their fastball”.

DeSantis and Haley took slightly different tacks in their speeches on Tuesday, emphasizing their different approaches to campaigning.

Haley spoke about the need to expand the Republican party in comments that were met with tepid applause from the delegates on the convention floor – many of whom represent some of the party’s most loyal base.

“We must not only be a unified party, we must also expand our party,” she said. “We are so much better when we are bigger. We are stronger when we welcome people into our party who have different backgrounds and experiences.”

DeSantis, by contrast, leaned into attacking Biden. “America cannot afford four more years of a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency,” he said. He touted the success that Republicans have had in recent years, saying “the woke mind virus is dead and Florida is a solid Republican state”.

DeSantis went on to detail a rightwing policy wishlist, including severe restrictions on immigration and the destruction of the “administrative state”.

Even though DeSantis’s Trump-like appeal was not enough to win him the Republican nomination, his hard-right talking points triggered a much more boisterous response from the delegates than Haley’s talk of unity and party outreach.

At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, health officials have said, including in an attack on a school sheltering displaced people and another on an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone”, as ceasefire talks in the nearly 10-month-old conflict appeared to stall again.

The Red Crescent said on Tuesday that 17 people were killed in a bombing near a petrol station in Mawasi, an area on the Mediterranean shoreline packed with hundreds of thousands of displaced people that Israel had previously declared an evacuation zone. Another 16 were killed in a strike that targeted the UN-run al-Awda school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, medics at a nearby hospital said.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Hamas militants were present at the school. There was no immediate comment on the strike in Mawasi but the army said the air force had struck about 40 targets in Gaza on Tuesday, including sniping and observation posts, military structures and buildings rigged with explosives.

The armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally, said their fighters had attacked Israeli forces in several locations with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs. Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said it had fired missiles at Sderot in southern Israel, but no damage or casualties were reported.

Over the past two weeks, Israel has hit the besieged Palestinian territory with some of the fiercest bombardments in months, the deadliest of which targeted Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military commander, in a bombing in Mawasi on Saturday that killed more than 90 people. It is still unclear whether Deif, wanted by Israel for decades, was killed in the strike.

In a statement on Tuesday, the IDF said it had “eliminated” approximately half of the Hamas leadership in Gaza and 14,000 soldiers since the war broke out after the Palestinian militant group’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October in which 1,200 people were killed and another 250 taken hostage. More than 38,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory operation in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-administered territory, and the population of 2.3 million people is in dire need of food, water, medicine and shelter.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas on Israel’s claim. Killing Deif would be a much-needed morale boost for Israel, which in almost 10 months of fighting has so far failed to take out any of the top three Hamas leaders in Gaza.

The targeting of Deif and subsequent deadly attacks on Gaza appear to have contributed to an impasse in ceasefire and hostage-prisoner swap negotiations being held in Qatar and Egypt. The talks stalled on Saturday, Egyptian mediators told local media.

Hamas has sent conflicting messages over its future participation in the talks, which were the most promising of a series of failed negotiations since an initial ceasefire and hostage release deal brokered in November. That truce broke down after a week, following what the US said was Hamas’s inability or unwillingness to release more Israeli captives.

The latest statement from Hamas’s Qatar-based political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on Sunday stressed that the group was pulling out of the indirect talks in protest at the recent Israeli “massacres” but that the group was ready to return to the negotiation table if Israel “demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal”.

A Palestinian official close to the negotiations told Reuters that Hamas did not want to be seen as halting negotiations despite the stepped-up Israeli attacks. “Hamas wants the war to end, not at any price. It says it has shown the flexibility needed and is pushing the mediators to get Israel to reciprocate,” the official said.

The group has accused the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of seeking to derail a deal and an end to the war for his own political gain. On Tuesday, however, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, still appeared hopeful, telling the families of five female soldiers kidnapped during Hamas’s 7 October attack that “this is the closest we have ever been to a deal”, according to Israel’s Channel 12.

Disagreements over the identities and numbers of the Israeli hostages and Palestinians held in Israeli jails have repeatedly scuppered truce talks. The situation has been complicated by the fact that in May Israel seized control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, which Hamas and international delegations insist must be returned to Palestinian control.

The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told reporters that two senior advisers to Netanyahu had said Israel was still committed to reaching a ceasefire. He also criticised the “unacceptably high” civilian casualties of the last few days.

Washington, Israel’s most important ally, has provided significant military and diplomatic cover for Israel’s war in Gaza, despite domestic blowback.

Also on Monday, the EU added to a wave of international measures against extremist Israelis, announcing new sanctions on three well-known Israeli settler leaders in the occupied West Bank and a pro-settlement group, Regavim, which was founded by the current Israeli finance minister, the far-right Bezalel Smotrich.

Keir Starmer has set out a government agenda that he will claim can counter the “snake oil charm of populism”, in a king’s speech pledging change to people’s lives including rights at work, cheaper energy and secure housing.

Starmer said the “fight for trust is the battle that defines our political era”, and said the king’s speech – the first under a Labour government for 15 years – would end the performative and divisive politics of the last years and counter the rise of the populist hard right.

The king’s speech sets out 40 bills, including many focused on economic growth – such as the planning and infrastructure bill, which will give the government new top-down powers on building key infrastructure faster.

The employment rights bill, which is the start of implementing the “new deal for working people”, has been promised to take effect within 100 days. It will ban zero-hours contracts unless an employee requests one, and most “fire and rehire” practices – although unions have complained that some aspects have been watered down after lobbying from business.

It will grant workers rights such as maternity pay and sick pay from day one of their employment, making flexible working the default, and simplify the process of trade union recognition.

Another expected early bill will be the nationalisation of rail companies, designed to bring the franchises back into public ownership as the contracts expire, and a better buses bill to give new franchising rights to local leaders. This will grant them powers over bus routes and timetables, taking these back from private companies.

Several bills are designed to highlight useful political causes, such as the economic responsibility bill enshrining a duty to consult the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) before making major tax changes. This could particularly injure the Conservatives as it was a key criticism of Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget, which did not include an OBR forecast. The employment bill plans to revoke Tory restrictions placed on trade union organising.

A bill will be introduced to set up Great British Energy (GBE), another election pledge, defining for the first time in law that it will be an energy production company rather than solely an investment vehicle. There had been fears within the sector that Labour would row back on plans for GBE to develop and own assets. The company is expected to be headquartered in Scotland and will “own, manage and operate clean power projects”.

An English devolution bill, spearheaded by the deputy leader, Angela Rayner, will implement key aspects of the former prime minister Gordon Brown’s review of handing more powers to local decision-making.

It will make devolved powers for local leaders the default, rather than negotiated with central government, including for strategic planning, local transport networks, skills and employment support. Communities will get new “right to buy” powers over empty shops, pubs and community spaces.

New laws will also make some strong-arm public health and antisocial behaviour interventions. These include restrictions on the sale and flavours of vapes, a progressive total ban on tobacco smoking, bans on some junk food advertising, new “respect orders” aimed at persistent antisocial behaviour, and direct powers to tackle the use of noisy off-road bikes on streets.

There will be three key bills prompted by national tragedies. Awaab’s law, prompted by the two-year-old who died in December 2020 after prolonged exposure to mould at his family’s home, will set out a legally enforceable timeframe for landlords to make homes safe where they contain serious hazards. Martyn’s law, named after Martyn Hett who died in the Manchester Arena terror attack, is to improve security of public events.

And the Hillsborough law will put a legal duty of candour on public servants and authorities, which the government said would address the “unacceptable defensive culture prevalent across too much of the public sector”.

In his introduction to the speech, Starmer said the agenda would “fix the foundations of this nation for the long term” and that it was only the starting point for what he promised would be a transformation.

“The era of politics as performance and self-interest above service is over,” he said. “The challenges we face require determined, patient work and serious solutions, rather than the temptation of the easy answer.

Police investigating the deaths of six people found in the room of a luxury hotel in central Bangkok say they believe a member of the group poisoned themselves and others using cyanide.

Initial tests had detected cyanide, a deadly chemical that interferes with the body’s ability to use oxygen, in a tea flask, six cups and in the blood of one of the dead men, police said. Based on interviews with a relative, they believe the deaths could be related to a business dispute.

The deceased were Vietnamese, and two had American citizenship, according to the Thai authorities, who said the FBI was assisting with the investigation.

Thai police said they believed the poisonings occurred on Monday afternoon, after the group ordered food and English tea to their room on the fifth floor of the Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel in Bangkok’s commercial district.

When room service staff arrived, they saw only one of the six, a 56-year-old woman, police said. She received the food and drinks and told hotel staff there was no need to serve the tea, according to Noppasin Poonsawat, the deputy commander of the Metropolitan Police Bureau.

Shortly afterwards, CCTV showed all six members of the group gathering outside the room and then entering, the last time they were seen alive.

“It all started after 13:57 [on Monday], after the hotel staff brought six teacups, a milk pot and two flasks into the room. We found cyanide on the six cups. According to CCTV, there was no one else – apart from the six members of the group – going inside the room, and none of them were seen coming out, after 14:17,” Noppasin said.

The group of three women and three men were found dead the following day, late on Tuesday afternoon. They were discovered by a member of housekeeping staff, after they were late to check out.

The plates of food they had ordered appeared to have gone untouched, and were still sealed in clingfilm. Their luggage was packed. Police said no illegal materials had been found inside their luggage, which was searched overnight.

The group were named by media as Vietnamese nationals Thi Nguyen Phuong, 46, her husband, Hong Pham Thanh, 49, Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, 47, and Dinh Tran Phu, 37, and the US citizens Sherine Chong, 56, and Dang Hung Van.

Police are studying wider CCTV footage to piece together a timeline of their stay in Bangkok. The FBI was supporting the investigation as two of the individuals held American citizenship, the Thai prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, said.

Srettha said the case was not related to terrorism and that a meeting with the Russian energy minister due to be held at the same hotel on Wednesday was unlikely to be affected. “The incident is not related to terrorism or lack of security measurement, so I think everything will go as schedule,” he said.

Police had been searching for a seventh person who was included in the group’s booking but did not check in; however, they said on Wednesday the seventh individual was a younger sister of one of the women and she had returned home to Vietnam before the incident.

Police said two members of the group, the married couple, had loaned 10m baht ($278,025/£233,186) to another member of the group to invest in a business project to build a hospital in Japan, and there appeared to be a dispute over money. The couple ran a construction company in Vietnam.

Further information about the quantity of cyanide ingested is expected on Wednesday afternoon.

The US state department was “closely monitoring the situation and [we] stand ready to provide consular assistance”, a spokesperson said.

It is not the first high-profile killing to have involved cyanide in Thailand. Last year, a Thai woman accused of poisoning people with cyanide was charged with 14 counts of murder, in one of the country’s worst suspected serial-killing cases.

At least three Democrats in the US House of Representatives were preparing to sign a letter protesting against a plan to speed up the official party approval of Joe Biden’s re-election bid, the lawmakers’ offices said on Tuesday.

The three are among a growing number of Democrats upset by plans to hold a “virtual roll call” vote on Biden’s becoming the nominee as soon as 21 July, instead of waiting for the convention being held from 19 to 22 August in Chicago.

Democratic representatives Susan Wild, Mike Quigley and Jared Huffman plan to sign the letter, representatives of each lawmaker said when contacted by Reuters.

“Stifling debate and prematurely shutting down any possible change in the Democratic ticket through an unnecessary and unprecedented ‘virtual roll call’ in the days ahead is a terrible idea,” said a copy of the draft letter seen by Reuters.

“It could deeply undermine the morale and unity of Democrats.”

The virtual nomination was originally planned to beat an Ohio state deadline for placing candidates on the ballot for the 5 November election that fell before the Democrats’ August convention. But Ohio extended the deadline, negating that obstacle, the letter to the Democratic National Committee argued.

In response to criticism, DNC chair Jaime Harrison said on X that the Ohio extension would not take effect in time. He also disputed reports that he has said the virtual vote could happen as soon as next week. “The only thing you have heard us say is that we must get this done by August 5 to give us time to comply by August 7,” he said.

Pass the Torch, Joe, a group pressuring Biden to drop out of the presidential race, accused the DNC in a statement of potentially engaging in “an undemocratic, and perhaps even Trumpian, maneuver”, deepening the Democrats’ internal bickering.

The latest effort follows a call by 19 congressional Democrats for Biden, 81, to end his campaign after his halting 27 June debate performance against Donald Trump.

Adam Schiff, a California Democrat running for his state’s open senate seat, who was not one of the 19, warned donors in a private meeting that his party would likely suffer major losses if Biden continued his re-election bid, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Schiff’s campaign declined to comment.

Last month’s debate raised concerns in the party about both Biden’s ability to beat Trump and his fitness to hold the high-pressure job for another four years.

Thirty-nine percent of Democratic respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Tuesday said they believed that Biden should end his White House run, a slightly higher reading than the 32% who said the same in a Reuters/Ipsos poll days after the debate.

The letter from the three lawmakers has not yet been sent to the DNC and was being circulated widely among House Democrats, according to congressional sources.

Democrats fear that a poor performance by Biden in the election could cost their party not only control of the White House but both chambers of Congress, setting the stage for a second Trump administration that would be able to pursue its policy goals with almost no Democratic opposition.

Republicans followed their party’s standard procedure in officially nominating Trump at their convention in Milwaukee on Monday.

If Biden were to drop out of his re-election campaign, the Democrats’ top choice for presidential nominee would be Kamala Harris, multiple sources have said.

Some Democrats, however, could insist on a more open process that would allow other potential candidates to vie for the nomination, less than three months before the general election.

At least three Democrats in the US House of Representatives were preparing to sign a letter protesting against a plan to speed up the official party approval of Joe Biden’s re-election bid, the lawmakers’ offices said on Tuesday.

The three are among a growing number of Democrats upset by plans to hold a “virtual roll call” vote on Biden’s becoming the nominee as soon as 21 July, instead of waiting for the convention being held from 19 to 22 August in Chicago.

Democratic representatives Susan Wild, Mike Quigley and Jared Huffman plan to sign the letter, representatives of each lawmaker said when contacted by Reuters.

“Stifling debate and prematurely shutting down any possible change in the Democratic ticket through an unnecessary and unprecedented ‘virtual roll call’ in the days ahead is a terrible idea,” said a copy of the draft letter seen by Reuters.

“It could deeply undermine the morale and unity of Democrats.”

The virtual nomination was originally planned to beat an Ohio state deadline for placing candidates on the ballot for the 5 November election that fell before the Democrats’ August convention. But Ohio extended the deadline, negating that obstacle, the letter to the Democratic National Committee argued.

In response to criticism, DNC chair Jaime Harrison said on X that the Ohio extension would not take effect in time. He also disputed reports that he has said the virtual vote could happen as soon as next week. “The only thing you have heard us say is that we must get this done by August 5 to give us time to comply by August 7,” he said.

Pass the Torch, Joe, a group pressuring Biden to drop out of the presidential race, accused the DNC in a statement of potentially engaging in “an undemocratic, and perhaps even Trumpian, maneuver”, deepening the Democrats’ internal bickering.

The latest effort follows a call by 19 congressional Democrats for Biden, 81, to end his campaign after his halting 27 June debate performance against Donald Trump.

Adam Schiff, a California Democrat running for his state’s open senate seat, who was not one of the 19, warned donors in a private meeting that his party would likely suffer major losses if Biden continued his re-election bid, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Schiff’s campaign declined to comment.

Last month’s debate raised concerns in the party about both Biden’s ability to beat Trump and his fitness to hold the high-pressure job for another four years.

Thirty-nine percent of Democratic respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Tuesday said they believed that Biden should end his White House run, a slightly higher reading than the 32% who said the same in a Reuters/Ipsos poll days after the debate.

The letter from the three lawmakers has not yet been sent to the DNC and was being circulated widely among House Democrats, according to congressional sources.

Democrats fear that a poor performance by Biden in the election could cost their party not only control of the White House but both chambers of Congress, setting the stage for a second Trump administration that would be able to pursue its policy goals with almost no Democratic opposition.

Republicans followed their party’s standard procedure in officially nominating Trump at their convention in Milwaukee on Monday.

If Biden were to drop out of his re-election campaign, the Democrats’ top choice for presidential nominee would be Kamala Harris, multiple sources have said.

Some Democrats, however, could insist on a more open process that would allow other potential candidates to vie for the nomination, less than three months before the general election.

Scores of asylum-seeking children are still missing from the UK’s Home Office hotels as a new report reveals that many are likely to have been trafficked.

The most recent figures show that 118 unaccompanied children remain unaccounted for, some as young as 12. The study, released on Wednesday, is the first to conclude that children placed inside the hotels were at “increased risk of trafficking”, contradicting Home Office claims that the youngsters were not exploited.

Experts said the findings reinforced demands for an official inquiry into the “national scandal”.

The report, by the University College London (UCL) and Ecpat UK, was commissioned after it was revealed last year that dozens of asylum-seeking children were kidnapped by criminal gangs from hotels run by the Home Office. Basic checks to keep youngsters safe were not carried out in a scandal regarded among the most shameful of the last government.

The new report details interviews with professionals involved in the care of the children, including a former Home Office hotel worker who knew of three trafficking incidents from their hotel. Traffickers contacted the young people, they said, “via a fake [social media] account or Facebook … [It] is not that they are naive, but when in such a bad situation, they think: ‘OK, it’s the risk but this place is also bad.’”

Researchers found that Home Office attempts to protect the children actually drove them into the hands of criminals. Hotel staff were instructed to knock on the doors of children every hour throughout the night, especially for nationalities deemed to be of high risk of going missing, such as Albanians.

“Ironically, [this was] the reason that most kids went missing,” said the former Home Office hotel worker.

Seven hotels were run by the Home Office to accommodate minors who arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in small boats, many from Africa, including Eritrea and Sudan. Such hotels were in operation from 2021 until January 2024 after a high court ruling deemed them unlawful.

In total, 440 children went missing from them, with 144 not found by last November and 118 still unaccounted for in March, according the most recent update.

The report’s lead author and principal investigator, Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, of UCL’s department of risk and disaster reduction, said: “This is a national scandal which must not be repeated. It is still not clear what attempts have been made to find those who remain missing and make sure that they are safe.”

Patricia Durr, the chief executive of Ecpat UK, added: “This research confirms our fears and emphasises the need for urgent action to find the missing children, and for a statutory independent inquiry to ensure this child protection scandal never happens again.”

One social worker told researchers that boys from Albania were “very vulnerable, very frightened” due to a “targeted campaign” against them and concerns that they may be sent home imminently.

Although the hotels for children are now closed, researchers also found significant concern that youngsters seeking asylum were being incorrectly assessed as above 18 and placed in adult hotels, where they risked sexual abuse and exploitation. Several child-protection experts highlighted safeguarding risks from children forced to share rooms with traumatised adults.

Ayeb-Karlsson added: “Children who are incorrectly determined as adults are deprived of their rights to education, protection and safeguarding.”

Durr urged the new government to scrap the “catastrophic” Illegal Migration Act, which allows the Home Office to directly provide accommodation for unaccompanied children.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The allegations in this report are very serious. Unaccompanied children in the asylum system can be extremely vulnerable and their welfare and safety should be a central concern. We will consider these findings carefully.

“A new government is determined to restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly, and ensures the rules are properly enforced.”

Adolescents in the UK get nearly two-thirds of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, with consumption highest among those from deprived backgrounds, researchers say.

The findings emerged from an analysis of food diaries kept from 2008 to 2019 by nearly 3,000 participants aged 11 to 18 as part of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey.

While the authors found a slight decrease in UPF consumption, from 68% to 63%, over the course of the study, the findings suggest that adolescents in the UK are still eating more of the foods than other age groups.

Dr Yanaina Chavez-Ugalde, the first author of the study at the University of Cambridge, said the results highlighted the need to address the dominance of ultra-processed foods in adolescents’ diets.

“Adolescence is a unique stage in life where individuals gain a bit more independence and have more freedom of choice over what they eat. It’s also when health behaviours tend to solidify,” she said. “I think there’s a place for ultra-processed foods in our diets … but not as much as we’re consuming.”

Chavez-Ugalde said wholegrain cereals and breads could be an important source of fibre even when ultra-processed, but suggested that a reasonable intake was nearer to 20% than two-thirds. Comprehensive policy measures, including better food education, marketing regulations, and improved access to nutritious food, were needed to encourage adolescents to make healthier choices, she added.

UPFs are industrially manufactured foods containing preservatives, sweeteners, artificial flavourings, emulsifiers, and other additives. Typically high in sugars, saturated fats, and sodium, they are associated with a poor quality diet and have been linked to numerous health risks including obesity, type 2 diabetes and cancer.

In the latest study, the authors assessed more than 5,000 food items recorded in the food diaries using the formal NOVA criteria to define UPFs, which include most supermarket breads, breakfast cereals, crisps, and ready meals.

The study, a collaboration with the University of Bristol, found that while on average 66% of adolescents’ calories came from UPFs, there were differences across society. Those from more deprived backgrounds consumed more UPFs (68.4%) than those from less deprived backgrounds (63.8%). Consumption was higher in people from white v non-white backgrounds (67.3% compared with 59%), and in the north of England compared with the south, at 67.4% v 64.1%. Across the age ranges, 18-year-olds ate a slightly lower proportion of UPFs, at 63.4%, than 11-year-olds at 65.6%.

“If you ask a lot of people, they know how to eat healthily,” said Chavez-Ugalde. “UPFs replace or displace minimally processed food because they’re more convenient and cheaper.” Details are published in the European Journal of Nutrition.

Carmen Piernas-Sanchez, a nutrition scientist at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the study said: “The percentage of total daily energy intake from ultra-processed foods is very high, despite the declines observed over recent survey years. Similar figures have been reported in other countries, such as the US.”

“Future studies of this type should report the top food sources contributing the most to UPF consumption, which may further help inform policies aiming to improve dietary quality in the UK population,” she added.

Concerns over UPFs and their potential effect on health have led some countries to introduce new labelling for the foods. But Gunter Kuhnle, professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Reading, cautioned against such a move. “Putting another threshold on things to avoid is probably not the best idea. I think it’s much better to switch to a more positive side. It would also make a lot of sense, because there’s a lot of disagreement about what to avoid. Should we eat more healthily? Yes. But a recommendation ‘do not eat X’ needs strong evidence.”

Lab-grown pet food is to hit UK shelves as Britain becomes the first country in Europe to approve cultivated meat.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have approved the product from the company Meatly.

It is thought there will be demand for cultivated pet food, as animal lovers face a dilemma about feeding their pets meat from slaughtered livestock.

Research suggests the pet food industry has a climate impact similar to that of the Philippines, the 13th most populous country in the world. A study by the University of Winchester found that 50% of surveyed pet owners would feed their pets cultivated meat, while 32% would eat it themselves.

The Meatly product is cultivated chicken. It is made by taking a small sample from a chicken egg, cultivating it with vitamins and amino acids in a lab, then growing cells in a container similar to those in which beer is fermented. The result is a paté-like paste.

Meatly’s production facility has been approved by the government to handle its cultivated chicken, and it plans to launch the first samples of its commercially available pet food this year. The company says it will then focus on cost reduction and starting to scale production to reach industrial volumes within the next three years. The cost reductions could be done by mixing the meat with vegetables, as is done with other pet foods containing costly animal products.

It has raised £3.5m from investors so far and expects to raise £5m in its next fundraising round.

The previous UK government had been looking at fast-tracking the approval of cultivated meat for human consumption. The Food Standards Agency has said it is trying to find a way to bypass the long process of regulating a food product and bringing it to market, something the Conservative government was pushing for as a “Brexit benefit”.

Linus Pardoe, UK policy manager at the Good Food Institute Europe, said: “The UK is a world leader in developing cultivated meat and the approval of a cultivated pet food is an important milestone. It underscores the potential for new innovation to help reduce the negative impacts of intensive animal agriculture.

“The first UK applications for cultivated meat produced for humans remain under assessment with the Food Standards Agency. If we’re to realise the full potential benefits of cultivated meat – from enhancing food security to supporting the expansion of regenerative farming – the government must invest in the research and infrastructure needed to make it delicious, affordable and accessible for people across the UK.”

Other approaches vary significantly, and countries including Singapore and Israel have approved products for human consumption. However, in the US the states of Florida and Alabama have banned cultivated meat, with politicians having complained that the products threaten livestock farmers.

A foreign policy specialist who once worked for the CIA and on the White House national security council (NSC) has been indicted on US charges she worked as an unregistered agent of South Korea’s government in exchange for luxury goods and other gifts.

Sue Mi Terry advocated South Korean policy positions, disclosed nonpublic US government information to South Korean intelligence officers, and facilitated access for South Korean government officials to their US counterparts, according to an indictment made public on Tuesday in a Manhattan federal court.

In return, the South Korean intelligence officers allegedly provided Terry with Bottega Veneta and Louis Vuitton handbags, a Dolce & Gabbana coat, dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants, and more than $37,000 in “covert” funding for a public policy program on Korean affairs that she ran.

Terry’s alleged work as an agent began in 2013, two years after she left US government employment, and lasted a decade.

She is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, according to the thinktank’s website, and an expert on east Asia and the Korean Peninsula, including North Korea.

Terry did not immediately respond to a request for comment but her lawyer, Lee Wolosky, said in a statement: “These allegations are unfounded and distort the work of a scholar and news analyst known for her independence and years of service to the United States.”

“In fact, she was a harsh critic of the South Korean government during times this indictment alleges that she was acting on its behalf. Once the facts are made clear it will be evident the government made a significant mistake,” he added.

The Council on Foreign Relations put Terry on unpaid administrative leave, and will cooperate with any investigation, a spokesperson said.

South Korea is not a defendant. Its Washington embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The office of US Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan did not immediately respond to similar requests.

According to Terry’s online biography, she is a frequent guest on TV, radio and podcasts, and has testified multiple times before congressional panels.

Born in Seoul and raised in Virginia, Terry was a senior CIA analyst from 2001 to 2008, and director of Korean, Japan and Oceanic Affairs at the NSC from 2008 to 2009 under Republican president George W Bush and Democratic president Barack Obama.

She now lives in New York, her biography says.

The indictment charges Terry with failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and conspiring to violate that law.

It says she acknowledged in a voluntary June 2023 FBI interview that she was a “source” for South Korea’s intelligence service, “meaning that she provided valuable information.”

The Toronto mansion of rap superstar Drake has been seriously flooded following record-breaking storms in the city.

He shared footage on Instagram of ankle-deep muddy water rushing into an area of his home, with the caption “this better be espresso martini”.

Toronto experienced nearly 100mm (four inches) of rain on Tuesday, according to Environment Canada, surpassing a daily record that had stood since 1941. Some 167,000 customers were left without power according to the city’s electrical grid operator, Toronto Hydro.

Emergency services faced numerous callouts to people trapped in lifts thanks to the power cuts, while others had to be rescued from flooded motorways.

David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, told broadcaster CBC there had been multiple storms “lined up like a parade, like jumbo jets on the airport tarmac … This is the new reality. It used to be river flooding, now it is urban flooding.”

Drake’s mansion, which covers 50,000 sq ft and is located in the high-end Bridle Path area of Toronto, was recently targeted in a series of incidents in the wake of the rapper’s high-profile beef with rival Kendrick Lamar.

A security guard was shot and seriously injured in early May. The following day a man was arrested for attempting to break into the mansion, and two other trespassing incidents were reported that week.

No motive has been ascribed for each of those incidents, but they occurred in the wake of Lamar using an aerial image of Drake’s mansion as the artwork for his diss track Not Like Us. It went on to reach No 1 in the US charts, making it the most successful in a series of tracks in which the two rappers levelled serious allegations at the other, regarding underage sex, adultery and more.

In a 2020 interview with Architectural Digest, Drake describes the mansion, known as The Embassy, as “overwhelming high luxury … Because I was building it in my hometown, I wanted the structure to stand firm for 100 years. I wanted it to have a monumental scale and feel. It will be one of the things I leave behind, so it had to be timeless and strong.”