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.”

For many in Middletown, Ohio, JD Vance is better-known as a bestselling author and hit Hollywood movie subject than a politician who on Monday was propelled into the political big-time as Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick.

Amanda Bailey moved into Vance’s grandmother’s house, the home in which Vance was mostly raised, 18 months ago. Since then, she’s been dealing with a steady stream of curious passersby inspired by Vance’s 2016 autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy, and the 2020 film of the same name, driving by and taking photos of the house.

Bailey, who works at a local hardware store, admits she’s not entirely up to speed with Vance’s policy positions.

“I hope he’ll do something good for us, and I think he will,” she says.

Her thoughts are echoed by Jerry Dobbins, who has lived three doors down the street for the past 31 years. Dobbins says his memories of Vance’s family are mainly of the vice-presidential candidate’s grandmother, Bonnie, who mostly raised JD and his sister, Lindsay.

“Bonnie was a tough bird. She was just a strong woman from Kentucky,” he says.

But there’s a reason Bailey, Dobbins and a number of other Middletown residents say they are not especially concerned by Vance being rocketed into the political mainstream without much in the way of experience – it’s because they have complete faith in the person who picked him: Donald Trump.

“I like Trump,” says Bailey. “And I think they’ll do a lot of good work together.”

“Trump’s not a politician. He’s a businessman,” says Dobbins, who worked as a fabricator at a nearby aerospace company before retiring. “When Trump got in [in 2016], things started looking better economy-wise, business-wise. I don’t think he can be beat [in November].”

The Middletown Vance was raised in is not unlike the dozens of other left-behind communities in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and beyond, where Trump’s particular brand of politics and rhetoric has found favor. In Butler county, which encompasses most of Middletown and several satellite towns of Cincinnati, Trump beat Biden by 24 points in the 2020 election.

Like thousands of others, Vance’s family were lured from Appalachia to Ohio by the promise of work at Middletown’s many paper and steel mills that for much of the 20th century dominated the region’s economy.

And as with dozens of other rust-belt towns, Middletown’s economy shrank due to industrial offshoring that began in the 1970s, giving rise to job losses and the ravages of the opioid epidemic that endure today.

It’s these ills, which the 39-year-old Vance has blamed on Joe Biden, immigrants and China, that he has used to craft a so-far successful political career. Despite these claims, the Biden administration has invested billions of dollars in the midwest, while immigrants have helped stem population decline in many towns and cities.

For longtime Middletown residents Bev and Tom Pressler, Vance’s lack of political experience may even be an advantage.

“I think the young blood is good. We need some younger politicians running the country,” says Tom. “Obama got in and he wasn’t all that old, and he didn’t have all that experience. Trump didn’t have all that experience and I think he did excellent.”

For Bev Pressler, a 62-year-old resident, Vance has worked hard to get where he is today.

“If you saw the movie and read the book, he was trying to get into these schools, he was trying to pull his mom out of drug addiction, his family depended on him,” she says.

But not everyone in Middletown thinks Vance’s meteoric rise to the forefront of US politics is a good thing.

“He has a legislative legacy of zero achievements, especially lacking any meaningful support for Ohioans,” says Kathy Wyenandt, the chair of the Butler county Democratic party.

“Vance is willing to change his beliefs at any time for the sake of amassing power … he is an out-of-touch millionaire and political shapeshifter who is wrong for Ohio, and wrong for our country.”

Although Vance launched his political career in the US Senate with a campaign rally at a steel manufacturer in Middletown in July 2021, locals say they haven’t seen much of him since then.

“What concerns me more than anything is that, at Senator Vance’s age, he is able to take the Maga agenda and to see it out far beyond even Trump’s time, if he were to get re-elected,” says Scotty Robertson, a pastor who’s lived in Middletown for seven years.

“Those policies are so destructive to our country and to Middletown. We’re talking about potentially ending social security and Medicare as we know it, continuing to roll back voting rights and ensuring that large segments of our population find it extremely hard to even vote. We’re talking about supporting policy that allows the president to essentially do whatever he or she chooses without any kind of accountability.”

Still, for Debbie Dranschak, who with her husband runs the White Dog Distilling Company on Middletown’s Central Avenue, that’s not enough of a reason not to vote for his running mate in November.

“I don’t know him, I don’t know his politics, but I’m glad Trump picked him,” she says. “Biden is just too old. He needs to get out. I grew up Democrat, but it’s about who is going to do the best for the country.”

For Chad Sebald, an audio engineer, Vance has been unfairly labeled by some locally as a ‘class traitor’ – someone who leaves behind the people they grew up with in search of better opportunities elsewhere.

“Knowing his history, he came from nothing. He did what just about anybody in Middletown would do – he got out. I can’t blame the guy for getting out of here,” says Sebald, who also plans to vote for Trump in November.

However, for a few minutes on the same street Vance was raised, the kind of dangerous, racist rhetoric that many say Trump has fueled over the years was in full view on Monday afternoon.

As a local TV news car pulled up to interview residents, a man wearing a T-shirt with the word “freedom” written on it emerges from a nearby home angrily asking the car and its occupants to leave.

“JD Vance is a race traitor,” he yells. Vance’s wife, Usha, is the daughter of immigrants from India. “Fuck that motherfucker.”

After Donald Trump survived a shooting at a campaign rally that officials were investigating as a domestic terror attack and an attempted assassination, the former president suggested he had been changed by the near-death experience and wanted to project a message of unity.

But two days after Trump said he would try to bring the country together, it was unclear whether the message would catch on – and how long it might last.

Trump told the New York Post in an interview on Sunday that he had intended to deliver biting remarks against Joe Biden in his speech at the Republican national convention until the shooting at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, prompted him to throw it out.

Trump is understood to have been reworking his remarks with his speechwriter Ross Worthington since the shooting, according to a person close to the former president, and has discussed making himself sound like he is still the president, as opposed to just a candidate.

The conventional political approach to a unity theme would revolve around calling to move past partisan divides or to tone down incendiary rhetoric, but whether Trump adopts or sustains such a message remains unclear.

It may yet be that Trump now considers himself as the unifier-in-chief – taking the mantle from Biden who campaigned on that message in the 2020 election to great effect – and will leave it to his surrogates pursue the more caustic and ad hominem attacks against Biden. This was on display to some extent in speeches from senators and allies at the convention on Tuesday night.

Still, at an event hosted by Georgetown University on the sidelines of the Republican nominating convention, Trump’s co-campaign chief Chris LaCivita suggested the unity messaging would not come at the expense of winning the election in November.

“This is obviously an opportunity to bring our country together. But let’s not forget we’re in the middle of a campaign,” LaCivita said. “Our focus is very much on putting everything back squarely on the issues that are hurting everyday Americans and providing them an answer to those.”

At a separate event on Tuesday hosted by Axios, Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, suggested that even if Trump shifted to a gentler tone, his core political attacks were likely to continue.

“You can be nicer on the margins but you still have to call out insanity when you see insanity,” Don Jr said when asked about more caustic language turning off potential voters, for instance on transgender issues. “That’s different, that’s not about tone.”

Don Jr also said that even though he believed that Trump’s unity tone would last until the vice-presidential debate, he expected Trump to counter-punch if attacked by Biden, who recently urged the country to tone down the political rhetoric in a televised address from the Oval Office.

“I think he’s going to be tough when he has to be,” Don Jr said when asked if Trump’s tone will be permanently changed. “That’s never going to change. He’s not going to just take an attack. My father will always be a fighter, that’s never going to change, but he’s going to do his best to moderate that.

“He’s never going to stop being Trump when attacked, that’s what makes him an effective leader because he doesn’t cower under fire – quite literally.”

Don Jr’s comments may be the rationalization that surrogates and top Republicans have been searching for, after struggling to balance the unity message with attacking Biden often using jarring language in front of a Republican party animated for years by Trump’s partisan grievances.

The test of whether Trump will lead the effort to promote a spirit of unity, or whether it was more of a directive aimed at his surrogates, will probably come on the final day of the convention when he delivers his speech on Thursday.

Police investigating the deaths by poisoning of six people found in the room of a luxury hotel in central Bangkok believe one member of the group took their own life and murdered the rest by lacing cups of tea with cyanide.

Tests detected the deadly chemical that interferes with the body’s ability to use oxygen in a tea flask and six cups, with the signs of its poisoning revealed in autopsies of the six bodies . Based on interviews with a relative, police 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.

Police said two members of the group, a married couple, had loaned 10m Thai baht ($278,000/£214,000) 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.

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.

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.

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.

It has been the dream and promise of Paris mayors for decades and a nightmare for Olympic organisers: could the Seine be cleaned up enough to swim in and hold triathlon and other events?

For the last 100 years and up until a few days ago, the answer seemed to be no.

On Wednesday, however, the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, kept her promise that it would be and she would be one of the first in. To cheers and applause, she led a group of about 100 officials, athletes and local people by donning a swimsuit and taking a dip in the river after a barrage of tests showed it was finally safe.

“It’s a dream day … and the sun is out,” Hidalgo said after performing a respectable crawl 100 metres downstream in water measured at 20C (68F). “It’s sweet and wonderful and the result of a lot of work. I remember at the very beginning in 2015 when we began our campaign for the Games, the international triathlon federation said why not a triathlon in the Seine? Will athletes be able to swim in the Seine? Today we can say they can.”

Tony Estanguet, the president of the Paris 2024 organising committee, congratulated city hall and the French authorities for making the river safe for swimming. “Today we have confirmation that the Seine is swimmable and that the triathlon and marathon swimming competitions can take place in it,” he said.

“As organisers we’re very happy to be able to offer athletes the best conditions … but over and above that what is at play is using the Games to speed up the transformation of the city and make it possible to swim in the Seine.”

He added that in the case of heavy rain, which could risk a spike in water pollution, contingency plans had been drawn up to postpone races for “a few days”.

Swimming in the Seine, which bisects Paris, has been banned since 1923 owing to health risks. In 1990, the then mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, promised to make it clean enough to swim in, but failed.

Hidalgo’s historic swim, which was postponed twice because of fluctuating pollution levels, came just 10 days before the opening of the Games on 26 July and after fears a large cleanup operation had failed. The work included the construction of a €1.4bn (£1.2bn) holding and treatment tank to contain bacteria-laden stormwater during heavy rains, which came into operation a month ago, and improvements to the city’s wastewater network.

Until very recently, the river was still failing water quality tests for E coli bacteria– an indicator of faecal matter – and showing levels above the upper limits imposed by sports federations.

Triathlon events will be held on 30, 31 July and 5 August, and a swimming marathon on 8 and 9 August. The paratriathlon will take place on 1 and 2 September.

Competitors in the open-water swimming events and triathlon will set off at Pont Alexandre III, a marvel of 19th-century engineering near the foot of the Champs-Élysées, with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

The water will be tested regularly at several points before each event and authorities are certain it will be clean with 75% of identified bacterial pollution eliminated.

Paris Olympic organisers have said that if heavy rain during the Games affects pollution levels in the river, the triathlon would no longer feature the swimming portion – and the marathon swimming competition would be relocated.

As another sign of hope, French experts have identified more than 30 species of fish in the Seine in Paris, compared with three in 1970.

After her swim, Hidalgo said making the Seine swimmable would also help the city adapt to the climate crisis and mitigate the pollution of the ocean into which the river flows.

Viktor Orbán’s efforts to style himself as a high-level peacemaker by meeting world leaders including Vladimir Putin are “wrong” and “not in the interest of Europe”, the Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, has said, recalling lessons from attempts to appease Adolf Hitler before the second world war.

The Hungarian prime minister has stoked controversy in recent weeks for embarking on what he has termed a “peace mission” while his country holds the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency. The international trips have involved meetings with Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.

In a wide-ranging interview in Prague, Fiala said Orbán’s efforts were helping only the Kremlin as it pursued its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“What Viktor Orbán makes, it’s not in the interest of Europe, it’s not in the interest of my country, it’s not in the interest of Ukrainian people,” the conservative Czech leader told the Guardian on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, it helps Vladimir Putin in this situation. And it’s wrong.”

His remarks came as the European parliament condemned Orbán’s Russia trip as “a blatant violation of the EU’s treaties and common foreign policy” and said Budapest should face repercussions.

Fiala, a political scientist who has been serving as the Czech Republic’s prime minister since 2021, stressed the importance of learning from history, pointing out that historical attempts to appease dangerous regimes had not worked.

“Many people believed that if we give some territory to Hitler or if we will discuss with Hitler it will prevent the war – the opposite was right,” he said, citing the 1938 Munich agreement that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland in what was then western Czechoslovakia.

“Peace is only possible if the aggressive state, aggressive regime, understands that we are so strong that it’s not good for this regime to be aggressive with military forces. So it’s very, very clear: the past is the teacher of all of us,” Fiala said.

The Czech Republic and Hungary used to be close partners as part of the “Visegrad four” together with Poland and Slovakia, but the regional grouping has grown apart over the past few years.

Under Fiala’s government the Czech Republic has been leading a drive – involving about 20 countries – to urgently procure ammunition for Ukraine from outside the European Union, while the bloc works to boost production.

The Czech prime minister said a first shipment was made in June and further help was in the pipeline.

“We want to send till the end of this year 500,000 pieces of ammunition, which is now realistic because we have everything that we need, financing and also we know where the ammunition is and we organised it,” he said.

Fiala said Europe needed to step up assistance to Ukraine and to boost its own defences.

Asked if he was concerned about the possible impact of the upcoming US election, including the choice of an isolationist, JD Vance, as the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate, Fiala recalled discussions he had had in Washington with American lawmakers.

“My feeling was that the people understand very well what happened in Europe,” he said, adding that he was sure the next administration would stand by Ukraine. But he also stressed: “It’s maybe the most important thing: I am sure, as a political scientist and also as a politician, that Europe must be more responsible for its own security.”

He continued: “In this question, it is not so important if the next president will be Joe Biden or Donald Trump, because the United States has different, other interests in the world, and it’s not possible and also it’s not OK if we in Europe always hope or believe that our security is guaranteed by the United States.

“The transatlantic cooperation is important for all the western world, for western democracies – it must be – but we must be more responsible, we must care more about our defence, we must increase our defence expenditure.”

Fiala, whose Civic Democratic party (ODS) sits with the European Conservatives and Reformists group together with Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, also warned of Russia’s efforts to weaken European societies.

“It’s a classical hybrid war,” he said, citing disinformation and attacks targeting infrastructure. He said the Russian regime wanted to make Europeans “unsatisfied with governments, with politics, with structures of democratic society”.

The Czech prime minister is an unusual figure among European leaders, with experience as a scholar of political science and as a politician. He has worked as a university rector and professor, with his research interests including European politics.

“It’s necessary in my mind to separate the political scientist approach and the activities of prime minister,” he said. “It’s always an advantage to understand things, to know things, to know the history, to understand the politics also theoretically – it’s not automatic that if you are successful scholars you will be successful politicians, but for me it’s an advantage.”

Viktor Orbán’s efforts to style himself as a high-level peacemaker by meeting world leaders including Vladimir Putin are “wrong” and “not in the interest of Europe”, the Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, has said, recalling lessons from attempts to appease Adolf Hitler before the second world war.

The Hungarian prime minister has stoked controversy in recent weeks for embarking on what he has termed a “peace mission” while his country holds the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency. The international trips have involved meetings with Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.

In a wide-ranging interview in Prague, Fiala said Orbán’s efforts were helping only the Kremlin as it pursued its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“What Viktor Orbán makes, it’s not in the interest of Europe, it’s not in the interest of my country, it’s not in the interest of Ukrainian people,” the conservative Czech leader told the Guardian on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, it helps Vladimir Putin in this situation. And it’s wrong.”

His remarks came as the European parliament condemned Orbán’s Russia trip as “a blatant violation of the EU’s treaties and common foreign policy” and said Budapest should face repercussions.

Fiala, a political scientist who has been serving as the Czech Republic’s prime minister since 2021, stressed the importance of learning from history, pointing out that historical attempts to appease dangerous regimes had not worked.

“Many people believed that if we give some territory to Hitler or if we will discuss with Hitler it will prevent the war – the opposite was right,” he said, citing the 1938 Munich agreement that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland in what was then western Czechoslovakia.

“Peace is only possible if the aggressive state, aggressive regime, understands that we are so strong that it’s not good for this regime to be aggressive with military forces. So it’s very, very clear: the past is the teacher of all of us,” Fiala said.

The Czech Republic and Hungary used to be close partners as part of the “Visegrad four” together with Poland and Slovakia, but the regional grouping has grown apart over the past few years.

Under Fiala’s government the Czech Republic has been leading a drive – involving about 20 countries – to urgently procure ammunition for Ukraine from outside the European Union, while the bloc works to boost production.

The Czech prime minister said a first shipment was made in June and further help was in the pipeline.

“We want to send till the end of this year 500,000 pieces of ammunition, which is now realistic because we have everything that we need, financing and also we know where the ammunition is and we organised it,” he said.

Fiala said Europe needed to step up assistance to Ukraine and to boost its own defences.

Asked if he was concerned about the possible impact of the upcoming US election, including the choice of an isolationist, JD Vance, as the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate, Fiala recalled discussions he had had in Washington with American lawmakers.

“My feeling was that the people understand very well what happened in Europe,” he said, adding that he was sure the next administration would stand by Ukraine. But he also stressed: “It’s maybe the most important thing: I am sure, as a political scientist and also as a politician, that Europe must be more responsible for its own security.”

He continued: “In this question, it is not so important if the next president will be Joe Biden or Donald Trump, because the United States has different, other interests in the world, and it’s not possible and also it’s not OK if we in Europe always hope or believe that our security is guaranteed by the United States.

“The transatlantic cooperation is important for all the western world, for western democracies – it must be – but we must be more responsible, we must care more about our defence, we must increase our defence expenditure.”

Fiala, whose Civic Democratic party (ODS) sits with the European Conservatives and Reformists group together with Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, also warned of Russia’s efforts to weaken European societies.

“It’s a classical hybrid war,” he said, citing disinformation and attacks targeting infrastructure. He said the Russian regime wanted to make Europeans “unsatisfied with governments, with politics, with structures of democratic society”.

The Czech prime minister is an unusual figure among European leaders, with experience as a scholar of political science and as a politician. He has worked as a university rector and professor, with his research interests including European politics.

“It’s necessary in my mind to separate the political scientist approach and the activities of prime minister,” he said. “It’s always an advantage to understand things, to know things, to know the history, to understand the politics also theoretically – it’s not automatic that if you are successful scholars you will be successful politicians, but for me it’s an advantage.”

People with knives and pipes have reportedly attacked 15 asylum seekers sheltering in tents in central Dublin, forcing them to flee.

The attack happened at about 11.30pm on Tuesday night, three hours after asylum seekers from Somalia and Palestine had erected a makeshift camp on City Quay in the Irish capital, local media reported on Wednesday.

Some tents were slashed and thrown in the River Liffey after the refugees ran to a police station, a local man, who declined to be named, told the Irish Times. “They were in shock, traumatised. One man had his documentation thrown in the river.”

There were no reported injuries. Police said they responded to reports of criminal damage and that an investigation was under way.

Roderic O’Gorman, the minister for integration, said any attack on vulnerable people was “deplorable” and that his officials would try to ensure that anyone targeted in the incident would be offered accommodation on Wednesday.

Tension over immigrants and asylum seekers flared this week during a protest against an accommodation site for 500 people in Coolock, north Dublin. Some demonstrators carried “Irish Lives Matter” placards and scuffled with police and security guards outside the former Crown Paints factory.

Violence escalated when agitators, some masked, set machinery on fire and hurled rocks, bottles and fireworks at police. A security guard was taken away on a stretcher and several police vehicles were damaged. At least 19 people were charged with public order offences.

Authorities erected large concrete blocks around the site on Tuesday. The taoiseach, Simon Harris, condemned the violence. “These actions are criminal and are designed to sow fear and division. We should not accept them being legitimised in any way by describing them as ‘protest’,” he said.

Since 2022 there has been a sharp increase in arson on properties across the country linked to accommodating asylum seekers, with a riot erupting in Dublin last November.

Dozens of independent and micro-party candidates ran on anti-immigrant platforms in Ireland’s local and European elections last month. A handful were elected.

Politicians from mainstream parties say far-right agitation has fuelled a toxic, menacing environment. On Wednesday Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, made a complaint to police about a threat made online by a man who said he would shoot and kill her, an escalation in what she said was “unacceptable” abuse.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? New Yorkers were puzzled by the sound of a loud boom and shaking sensations on Tuesday morning. The probable answer: an out-of-this-world visitor in the shape of a fiery meteor that exploded high over midtown Manhattan.

Nasa Meteor Watch estimates that the meteor – essentially a chunk of space debris – passed over the city in broad daylight and “was first sighted at an altitude of 49 miles above Upper Bay (east of Greenville Yard)”. But the group underscored this estimation is “crude and uncertain” since it was based on witness accounts and there was no camera or satellite data currently available.

Fireballs are “exceptionally bright meteors that are spectacular enough to to be seen over a very wide area”, Nasa says. Daylight fireballs are very rare.

Nasa said the meteor, traveling at 34,000mph, “descended at a steep angle of just 18 degrees from vertical, passing over the Statue of Liberty before disintegrating 29 miles above midtown Manhattan”.

Nasa said nearby military activity could also account for the shaking or boom that some residents reported.

Reports of the unusual sound and shaking also came from southern New Jersey and parts of Queens and Brooklyn, according to NYC Emergency Management (NYCEM).

NYCEM’s executive director of public information, Aries Dela Cruz, wrote on X: “Emergency Management has received no reports of damage or injuries related to this event. Monitoring of the situation and communication with our partner agencies continues. For life safety concerns please call 911, 311 for non-emergencies.”

The American meteor society receives hundreds of fireball reports each year.

Robert Lunsford, the American meteor society’s fireball report coordinator, said it suspected Tuesday’s fireball was “probably about the size of a beach ball”, according to the local New York outlet the City.

A critically endangered North Atlantic right whale has been spotted off the coast of Ireland for the first time in more than a century.

Holidaymaker Adrian Maguire, from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, glimpsed the large, dark body of the whale on the surface of the water while out fishing for mackerel.

“I just looked in amazement at the size of it,” said Maguire. “I’ve never experienced that in my life.” He described how he let his boat drift while he, his wife and two friends watched the whale for about an hour in McSwynes bay, County Donegal, off the north-west coast of Ireland.

“The sound of the blowing – it’s great to hear that in real life,” said Maguire.

It is the first sighting of a North Atlantic right whale off Ireland in 114 years, said Conor Ryan, honorary research fellow at the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

“I was very sceptical at first because it’s such an unbelievable occurrence,” he said. North Atlantic right whales are exceptionally rare – there are fewer than 400 left. The mammals, which can grow up to 16 metres in length, are usually found on the other side of the Atlantic, off the east coast of North America. Centuries ago they were common in Europe but their population there collapsed due to whaling.

Ryan and colleagues initially pored over pictures of the whale from Maguire and his companions, unsure of the species. But when they saw video footage that showed the animal’s large, crusty white markings – callosities, or skin damaged by whale lice – they knew what they were looking at.

“There’s no other whale in the North Atlantic with that,” explained Ryan, who has studied records of North Atlantic right whale sightings in Europe. Such events are extremely rare, he added, noting that the species appeared off Tromsø in Norway in the late 1990s and also off the Azores in the early 2000s.

The new Irish observation was “wonderful”, said Pádraig Whooley, sightings officer at the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG). His organisation has contacted the New England Aquarium, which keeps a catalogue of known North Atlantic right whale individuals. He said the aquarium was hoping to identify which whale was observed off Donegal by studying footage of its markings. “They are working on it,” said Whooley.

The IWDG has urged anyone who encounters the whale to “please give it space”.

In recent years, dozens of North Atlantic right whales have been lost to ship strikes and deadly entanglements with commercial fishing gear. The rate of these deaths, which are often reported off the east coasts of the US and Canada, is currently too high for the animals to make a recovery and, as such, their numbers have continued to decline, said Ryan.

While he didn’t expect North Atlantic right whales to “make a comeback” in the waters off Ireland any time soon, Ryan added that the sighting was, nonetheless, “a glimmer of hope”.

The psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms not only gives people a day trip – it can influence the brain for weeks, researchers have found.

Experts say the study helps explain why taking psilocybin – the active ingredient in the drug – can result in a distorted sense of space, time and self during a trip, as well as shed light on the mechanism by which it can help in the treatment of severe depression.

Dr Joshua Siegel, a co-author of the work from Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, said the research may also bring benefits to companies testing novel psychedelics and similar, but non-hallucinogenic, drugs.

“It could help to determine if a novel drug is hitting the right targets and to decide what is the optimal dose,” he said.

Writing in the journal Nature, Siegel and a team of colleagues report how they carried out a randomised control trial with seven healthy participants who agreed to take psilocybin in the name of science.

“It was also a requirement that they had taken a psychedelic at some point in their life, partly because they were taking a high dose, equivalent to 5g of magic mushrooms, and they were getting into a big, loud, banging, claustrophobic magnet [while] on psilocybin,” said Siegel, adding the team needed to be sure participants would be able to tolerate the situation.

“So we wanted to try to make sure that we knew that they would be able to tolerate that.”

The participants were randomly assigned either a 25mg dose of psilocybin, or a 40mg of methylphenidate – the generic form of Ritalin – but were kept in the dark about which they had been given. One to two weeks later the participants were given the drug they did not initially receive.

The participants underwent MRI scans before, during, between and after being given each drug, while after six to 12 months four of the participants returned to receive another dose of psilocybin and scans. Participants made, on average, 18 MRI visits each.

The results reveal taking psilocybin – but not methylphenidate – was associated with a loss of synchrony in what is known as the default mode network. This is an interconnected group of brain regions that is active when the mind is wandering and the brain isn’t working on a particular task. Crucially, says Siegel, this network is involved in creating a sense of self, as well as showing links to the perception of space and time.

“The interpretation is that [that disruption is] what creates this very out of the ordinary experience [when taking psilocybin],” said Siegel.

While participants’ brain scans largely returned to normal the day after taking psilocybin, Siegel noted a reduction in communication between the default mode network and the anterior hippocampus – a part of the brain critical for memory and perceptions of space and time – lasted for three weeks after the dose.

Siegel said the finding may help explain reports of an increase in flexibility in how people view themselves and their relationship to their environment after taking psilocybin. This plasticity is thought to underpin psychedelic-based interventions for conditions such as treatment-resistant depression by making the brain more open to therapy.

Siegel added while the research process was demanding, there seemed to be plenty of volunteers for studies into psychedelics. “We didn’t have trouble finding participants,” he said.

Adele has announced she intends to go on hiatus from music after a forthcoming concert residency in Munich.

The British singer told German broadcaster ZDF: “My tank is quite empty from being on stage every weekend in Las Vegas. I don’t have any plans for new music, at all.

“I want a big break after this and I think I want to do other creative things just for a little while.”

Adele has been performing her Weekends With Adele concert residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas since November 2022, and will conclude it on 23 November.

Prior to the final Vegas shows, she is spending the summer in Munich where she will play two concerts a week for five weeks, in a purpose-built stadium.

The Munich residency’s promoter Marek Lieberberg has said 95% of the tickets have been sold. The stage setup will feature the largest screen used for a concert, at 220m long and 30m tall.

Speaking to ZDF, Adele said: “The screen is enormous … [it will] make 80,000 people feel like it’s just me and one of them.”

The concert site meanwhile is 400,000 sq m, and includes a 13,000 seater “Adele World” food hall complete with English-style pub.

Adele said she anticipated a less feverish response than the Las Vegas crowd, however. European fans, she said, “are a bit quieter, so maybe that’s because they’re more polite, whereas Americans can be very, very loud.”

Weekends With Adele has been acclaimed by audiences and critics, with clips frequently going viral thanks to her frank, empathetic interactions with fans.

She is staying in Germany before the Munich residency, and attended the Euro 2024 championship where she created another inadvertent viral moment. During England’s semi-final against the Netherlands, she admonished the Dutch crowd to “shut up” before Harry Kane’s successful penalty kick.

Adele’s most recent album is 30, released in November 2021. It topped the UK and US charts and became the biggest-selling album that year in the US after just one day on sale. The lead single Easy on Me also reached No 1 in both countries.