Businesses including banks, airlines, telecommunications companies, TV and radio broadcasters, and supermarkets have been taken offline after blue screen of death error screens were seen on Windows workstations across the globe.

Users on the subreddit for cyber security firm Crowdstrike reported issues in India, the United States and New Zealand.

Sky News in the United Kingdom reported being off air on Friday morning, with Sky News sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao posting on X: “We’re obviously not on air – we’re trying.”

Melbourne airport advised customers it was “experiencing a global technology issue which is impacting check-in procedures for some airlines”, and advised passengers to “allow a little extra time to check-in”.

A major UK train company warned passengers to expect disruption as it was suffering “widespread IT issues”. All four of Govia Thameslink Railway’s brands – Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – posted on social media: “We are currently experiencing widespread IT issues across our entire network.

“Our IT teams are actively investigating to determine the root cause of the problem. “We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice cancellations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks.

“Additionally, other key systems, including our real-time customer information platforms, are also affected.

“We will provide additional updates when we can. In the meantime, please regularly check your journey before you travel.”

Users in Australia began reporting issues early on Friday afternoon AEST, stating they’d been locked out of their workstations, while Australian banking apps and supermarket systems were also affected.

Australian broadcasters the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Sky News confirmed they were having broadcast difficulties as a result.

An email sent to staff at Australia’s national broadcaster, seen by Guardian Australia, said Windows terminals across the country are experiencing blue screens of death, causing issues with some TV studios and radio studios.

Crowdstrike has reported blue screens of death being observed in multiple locations and say the cause is currently under investigation. The company has said the issue is related to its Falcon Sensor product, and engineering teams are working to resolve the issue, according to a support notice.

The company later posted that engineers had identified the issue as a content deployment problem and had reverted the changes.

Australia’s national cyber security coordinator, Lt Gen Michelle McGuinness, confirmed government advice suggested it was a third-party software issue.

“I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,” she posted on X.

“Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies.”

The Guardian has contacted Crowdstrike and Microsoft.

Microsoft on Friday reported users may not be able to access its 365 cloud-based app services. It was a rough day for the tech giant with a cloud outage grounding airlines in the United States earlier in the day in what is believed to be an unrelated issue.

More to come.

Security services across the Middle East fear the conflict in Gaza will allow Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaida to rebuild across the region, leading to a wave of terrorist plots in coming months and years.

Officials and analysts say there is already evidence of increased Islamic militant extremism in many places, although multiple factors are combining to cause the surge.

In recent months, an IS branch in the Sinai desert has become more lethal, rising attacks by the group in Syria have caused concern, and plots in Jordan have been thwarted.

Turkey made dozens of arrests last month as authorities sought to combat an increased threat from an IS affiliate with a strong presence there, and al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen (al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP) has made a concerted new effort to inspire followers to strike western, Israeli, Jewish and other targets.

Analysts and officials say the new activity is linked to the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas, though widespread economic crisis, instability and continuing civil conflict are also playing an important role.

“Gaza is a source feeding terrorism and radicalisation across the Islamic world. There is a strong emotional reaction,” one informed regional source said. “We are just beginning to feel the heat.”

Tricia Bacon, a terrorism expert at the American University in Washington DC and a former US state department analyst, described the Gaza war as “a seminal cause that will radicalise the next generation of jihadis”.

“We may not see it immediately but we certainly will over the years to come. It has really heightened the terrorism threat,” she said.

The United Nations has published a series of reports drawing attention to efforts by major extremist groups to exploit the war in Gaza to attract new recruits and mobilise existing supporters – despite both al-Qaida and IS repeatedly condemning Hamas as “apostates” for decades.

In February, a UN report, drawing on contributions from intelligence agencies around the world, warned that at least one major al-Qaida affiliate was planning ambitious operations in the Middle East and elsewhere, and had “significantly reinvigorated its media strategy and content, capitalising on international events including … the 7 October attacks to incite lone actors globally”.

Regional officials underlined the effect of months of exposure, 24 hours a day, to images of suffering from Gaza on television and the internet, describing the conflict as a “push factor” encouraging extremist violence across the Middle East and elsewhere.

Mohammad Abu Rumman, an expert in jihadism at the Politics and Society institute in Amman, Jordan, said the region was facing a new wave of radicalisation “because of what is happening in Gaza”.

“This is a huge event and Arab countries are refusing to do anything and there is strong disappointment,” he said.

More than 38,000 people have died in the Israeli offensive launched into Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials. About half of those who have been fully identified are women and children. The offensive came after the attacks by Hamas into southern Israel in October in which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 250 people.

In Iraq, where ISsis launched its caliphate in 2014, the threat of violent Islamic militancy appears contained but in Syria, it has launched more than 100 attacks on government forces and Kurdish-led fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) over the past months, with violence peaking in March at levels not seen for several years.

“Daesh [IS] terrorist cells continue in their terrorist operations,” a SDF spokesman, Siamand Ali, said. “They are present on the ground and are working at levels higher than those of previous years.”

In one recent attack, seven Syrian soldiers died after being ambushed by IS in Raqqa province, in northern Syria, with 383 fighters from government forces and their proxy militias now killed since the beginning of the year, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Last month Jordanian security services were alerted to a plot in the country’s capital, Amman, when explosives detonated while being prepared by extremists in a poor neighbourhood of the city. Subsequent raids led to the detention of a network of predominantly young men apparently radicalised by IS propaganda.

Katrina Sammour, an independent analyst in Amman, said Islamic extremist groups were flooding the internet with material, including instructions for bomb-making. “They are capitalising on the anger in Jordan. It is mainly leaderless, but part of an attempt to destabilise the government, the leadership, the state,” she said.

Social and economic conditions in Jordan also play a role. Rumman said: “There is much precarity, a feeling that there is no political hope, very high inflation and a very high rate of youth unemployment. All this is very dangerous.”

The UN report described how “public communications by [IS] … since 7 October” had been focused on “capitalising on the situation in Gaza to mobilise potential lone actors to commit attacks”.

The media strategies followed by IS and al-Qaida differ, underlining continuing disagreement over priorities. IS has remained true to its belief that local regimes should be targeted first, while al-Qaida’s rhetoric still stresses a more global campaign against a “far enemy”, including the US and western powers.

Israel is geographically close and the Palestinian cause – along with the “liberation” of the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem – has long been central to the propaganda of both groups, although not a direct target of their attacks. Both groups have also repeatedly called for violence against Jewish communities around the world.

The UN report warned that that al-Qaida “could exploit the situation [in Gaza] to recover relevance and tap into popular dissent about the extent of civilian casualties, providing direction to those keen to act”.

Al-Qaida has suffered a series of setbacks over recent years, with its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed in 2022 and internal divisions over strategy.

Sammour said al-Qaida was targeting young people. One case in Jordan had involved a high achieving 17-year-old from a well-to-do, moderate Muslim family in Amman who was recruited by extremists in just three months; another involved a 13-year-old.

“They are too young to even grow a beard. They are encouraged not to show overt signs of religiosity. It’s like grooming. There is an intent to isolate and control,” she said.

Donald Trump recounted the attempt on his life in dramatic detail as he formally accepted the Republican nomination for president on Thursday evening in Milwaukee in a speech that began with a call for unity and then turned into meandering attacks on his political rivals.

“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump said to an electrified crowd at the Fiserv Forum. Speaking in a subdued, quiet tone, Trump called his survival a “providential moment” and said: “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God.”

“I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America,” he said at the start of his speech, which lasted around 91 minutes. He was interrupted by chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” from the audience.

Trump went on to kiss the helmet and embrace the uniform of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter who was killed as he shielded his family as Trump was shot at in Butler Township, Pennsylvania.

But that tone ended shortly after.

Trump went on to attack Democrats over the numerous criminal cases that he faces. “The Democrat party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponents as an enemy of democracy, especially since that is not true,” he said.

“If Democrats want to unify our country, they should drop these partisan witch-hunts.”

Improvising and moving away from prepared remarks, he went on to label Nancy Pelosi “crazy”. And he falsely accused Democrats of cheating in the 2020 election – a topic that speakers during the previous week nearly avoided entirely as they looked towards the next election. “The election result we’ll never let that happen again. They used Covid to cheat.”

At one point in his speech Trump declared: “I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.” Trump and allies unsuccessfully sought to overturn legitimate election results in several swing states in 2020 and stop congressional efforts to certify the vote. He faces criminal charges both in Georgia and the federal system for those efforts.

Trump promised to lower inflation and “end every single international crisis”, without mentioning anything specific about how he would do so other than drilling for oil and closing the border.

“If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it. The 10 worst. Added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done,” he said, pledging to only use the president’s name once in his speech.

Much of his convention speech resembled the freewheeling stump speeches Trump has become known for. He pledged “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” while reciting falsehoods about who was coming into the United States. Claiming that countries were emptying asylums to send people to the US, Trump veered into a bizarre segue about Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal villain from the film Silence of the Lambs.

“Has anyone seen Silence of the Lambs, the late great Hannibal Lecter, he’d love to have you for dinner,” Trump says.

He lied about crime levels – claiming crime was rising when it is actually falling.

Mark Boldger, a Texas delegate, told the Guardian he thought Trump was off his usual rhetorical track. “He was all over the place,” said Boldger. “I think he might’ve put a few people to sleep tonight and I don’t like that. I don’t think he worked the crowd into the fever he normally does.”

The shooting, Boldger speculated, “really shook him up”.

The speech capped off a four-day coronation of his candidacy that showcased the complete control he has over the Republican party. Thursday evening, like the rest of the convention, was an event in which Trump and his campaign tried at every turn to project machismo.

Trump entered the convention hall on Thursday to a thumping rendition of AC/DC’s Back in Black. He was preceded on the stage by the wrestler Hulk Hogan – whose real name is Terry Bollea – who tore open his shirt to reveal a Trump campaign shirt underneath. Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, introduced Trump.

Melania Trump, who has rarely been seen or heard from in public, received loud cheers as she entered the convention floor to classical musical. JD Vance, the Ohio senator who Trump tapped to be his running mate, watched the speech in a VIP box with his wife, Usha. Trump thanked several other people who spoke at the convention before acknowledging his new running mate.

At the end of his speech, Trump returned to the teleprompter script, and to the shooting in Butler in which he nearly lost his life. “If the events of last Saturday make anything clear, it is that every single moment we have on earth is a gift from God,” he said.

He ended on a central promise of Trumpism, pledging that it would be easy to improve America quickly.

“No one will ever stop us,” he said. “Quite simply put, we will very quickly make America great again.”

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign chair, said: “President Biden is running on a different vision. He’s running for an America where we defend democracy, not diminish it. Where we restore our rights and protect our freedoms, not take them away. One where we create opportunities for everyone, while making the super wealthy finally pay their fair share. That is the future President Biden believes in and is the future that millions of our fellow Americans believe in too. The stakes have never been higher.”

Alice Herman contributed reporting

For all the claims from his supporters that surviving an assassination attempt had left Donald Trump a “changed” man, one more softened and spiritual, the Trump who accepted his party’s nomination on Thursday night was deeply familiar: same divisive rhetoric, same divisive policies.

But the Republican crowd that surrounded Trump was certainly cheerful and energized. “I have never been to a more fun convention, or a convention with better vibes,” the ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson told them, and his unscripted comments seemed to capture a real mood. Biden and the Democrats are foundering, Trump narrowly survived a terrifying attack, and Republicans appear to believe that Trump has already won the election.

Here are five takeaways from the night:

Joe Biden has reportedly become more open in recent days to hearing arguments that he should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told Democratic colleagues that he could be convinced to leave the race soon.

The Washington Post reported that Pelosi has taken a prominent role in passing messages from House Democrats to the White House, relaying concerns that Biden is incapable of beating Donald Trump in November, and has said she thinks Biden is close to making a decision to end his campaign.

Pelosi has been widely reported as orchestrating the renewed pressure on Biden to give up his re-election bid, which has intensified in recent days after a brief pause following last Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Trump, to which the president responded with a series of authoritative statements calling for calm.

Though he continues to insist he will be the party’s nominee in November, Biden has reportedly started asking questions about negative polling data and whether the vice-president, Kamala Harris, considered the favourite to replace him if were to withdraw, fares better.

The indications of a possible rethink come after Biden tested positive on Wednesday for Covid-19, forcing him to isolate for several days while curtailing a campaign visit to Nevada that had been part of a drive to show his candidacy was very much alive.

It also coincides with fresh polling data showing that he now trails Trump by two points in Virginia, a state he won by 10 points in 2020, and signals that key Democrats, including Barack Obama, now believe he should stand down.

The Emerson College Polling/Hill survey showed Trump ahead by 45% to 43%, within the margin of error but consistent with a spate of other polls showing that Biden’s support has fallen in swing states since his disastrous showing at last month’s debate in Atlanta.

Biden’s newfound receptivity to at least the possibility of stepping aside represents a shift from the position he adopted at a press conference at last week’s Nato summit in Washington, when he told journalists he would only drop out if polling data showed him “there’s no way you can win”.

“No one’s saying that,” he added.

His willingness to listen to opposing arguments comes after Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, reportedly both told him that it would be in the country’s interest if he stepped aside, ABC reported.

Schumer described the report of his meeting with Biden at the president’s Delaware home last weekend as “idle speculation”, but, tellingly, did not deny its contents.

The Senate leader’s intervention has apparently been influential in delaying a move by the Democratic National Committee to stage an early electronic roll call of delegates that could have started next week and was aimed at locking in the nomination for Biden before next month’s party convention in Chicago. The roll call vote has been pushed by at least a week, giving forces opposed to him running more time to organise.

Pelosi also told Biden in a recent conversation that polls show he cannot beat Trump and that he could wreck the Democrats’ chances of recapturing the chamber in November, according to CNN.

Biden is said to have pushed back during the conversation, insisting – as he has in several Zoom sessions with other Democrats – that he had seen polling data showing he could win.

It is not known if Pelosi had called on the president to stand aside during the talk, which was said to have taken place in the past week.

Adam Schiff, the California congressman who on Tuesday became the latest elected Democrat to urge Biden to stand down, is known to be close to Pelosi.

“The speaker does not want to call on him to resign [as the Democratic nominee], but she will do everything in her power to make sure it happens,” Politico reported one Pelosi ally as saying.

A Washington Post report on Thursday suggested that Obama – for whom Biden served as vice-president – had told allies in recent days that Biden’s path to re-election had greatly diminished and that he needed to reconsider the viability of his campaign.

Obama has spoken to Biden just once since the 27 June debate but he and Pelosi have reportedly shared their concerns privately on the phone. The former president initially tweeted his support for Biden in the immediate aftermath of the debate.

Another key congressman, Jamie Raskin of Maryland – who played a leading role in the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol – added his voice to the pressure with a four-page letter to Biden sent on 6 July comparing him to a tired baseball pitcher and pleading with him to consult with fellow Democrats over whether to continue his campaign, the New York Times reported.

“There is no shame in taking a well-deserved bow to the overflowing appreciation of the crowd when your arm is tired out, and there is real danger for the team in ignoring the statistics,” wrote Raskin, drawing a comparison with a Boston Red Sox pitcher, Pedro Martinez, whose tired state cost his team a place in the World Series in 2003.

In another ominous sign for Biden, Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the president’s main advisers and a co-chairman of his campaign, has told him that donors have stopped giving money to his campaign.

A Biden adviser told the New York Times that the decision on whether to withdraw from the race boiled down to three factors – polling, money and which states were in play. All three were moving in the wrong direction for Biden, he said.

As renewed speculation about Biden’s thinking intensified on Thursday, his supporters continued to insist that the position was unchanged.

“When it comes to if he’s open or being receptive to any of that, look, the president has said it several times: he’s staying in this race,” Quentin Fulks, the Biden campaign deputy manager, told reporters on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee.

“Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not at the top of the ticket,” he added.

The poliovirus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza putting thousands of people living in crowded displaced persons’ camps at risk of contracting the highly infectious disease that can cause deformities and paralysis.

The Gaza ministry said tests carried out with the UN children’s agency, Unicef, “showed the presence of poliovirus” in the territory that has endured a devastating Israeli military offensive since the 7 October Hamas attacks.

The Israeli health ministry said poliovirus type 2 was detected in Gaza sewage samples tested in an Israeli laboratory. It said the World Health Organization had made similar findings.

“The presence of poliovirus in wastewater that collects and flows between displacement camp tents and in inhabited areas because of the destruction of infrastructure marks a new health disaster,” the Gaza ministry said.

It highlighted “severe overcrowding” and “scarce water” that is becoming contaminated with sewage and the accumulation of rubbish. The ministry said Israel’s refusal to let hygiene supplies into Gaza “creates a suitable environment for the spread of different diseases”.

“The detection of poliovirus in wastewater threatens a real health disaster and places thousands of people at risk of contracting polio.”

UN agencies have been campaigning for four decades to eradicate polio, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, but there has been a resurgence in recent years in Afghanistan and Pakistan and some isolated cases in Nigeria.

The ministry called for a halt to the Israeli offensive so that safe water can be brought in and sewage treatment can be restarted.

Authorities in the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah said this week that wastewater treatment stations had been shut down because of a lack of fuel. They warned that roads “will be flooded by wastewater” and that 700,000 civilians, most of them displaced, would be put at risk of catching sewage-borne diseases.

Israel’s health ministry said the samples “raise concerns about the presence of the virus in this region”. It added that Israeli health authorities were “monitoring and evaluating necessary steps to prevent the risk of disease in Israel”.

The poliovirus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza putting thousands of people living in crowded displaced persons’ camps at risk of contracting the highly infectious disease that can cause deformities and paralysis.

The Gaza ministry said tests carried out with the UN children’s agency, Unicef, “showed the presence of poliovirus” in the territory that has endured a devastating Israeli military offensive since the 7 October Hamas attacks.

The Israeli health ministry said poliovirus type 2 was detected in Gaza sewage samples tested in an Israeli laboratory. It said the World Health Organization had made similar findings.

“The presence of poliovirus in wastewater that collects and flows between displacement camp tents and in inhabited areas because of the destruction of infrastructure marks a new health disaster,” the Gaza ministry said.

It highlighted “severe overcrowding” and “scarce water” that is becoming contaminated with sewage and the accumulation of rubbish. The ministry said Israel’s refusal to let hygiene supplies into Gaza “creates a suitable environment for the spread of different diseases”.

“The detection of poliovirus in wastewater threatens a real health disaster and places thousands of people at risk of contracting polio.”

UN agencies have been campaigning for four decades to eradicate polio, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, but there has been a resurgence in recent years in Afghanistan and Pakistan and some isolated cases in Nigeria.

The ministry called for a halt to the Israeli offensive so that safe water can be brought in and sewage treatment can be restarted.

Authorities in the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah said this week that wastewater treatment stations had been shut down because of a lack of fuel. They warned that roads “will be flooded by wastewater” and that 700,000 civilians, most of them displaced, would be put at risk of catching sewage-borne diseases.

Israel’s health ministry said the samples “raise concerns about the presence of the virus in this region”. It added that Israeli health authorities were “monitoring and evaluating necessary steps to prevent the risk of disease in Israel”.

Bangladeshi students have set fire to the state broadcaster’s building a day after the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, appeared on the network seeking to calm escalating clashes that had killed at least 39 people.

Hundreds of protesters demanding reform of civil service hiring rules clashed with riot police who had shot at them with rubber bullets on Thursday, chasing the retreating officers to BTV’s headquarters in the capital, Dhaka.

The incensed crowd then set ablaze the network’s reception building and dozens of vehicles parked outside, a BTV official told AFP.

The broadcaster said “many people” were trapped inside as the fire spread. Another official from the station later told AFP they had safely evacuated the building. Bangladesh Television remains offline, according to the Reuters news agency.

A police statement issued after a near-total shutdown of the nation’s internet said protesters had torched, vandalised and carried out “destructive activities” on numerous police and government offices.

“About 100 policemen were injured in the clashes yesterday,” Faruk Hossain, a spokesperson for the capital’s police force, told AFP. “Around 50 police booths were burnt”.

The government of Hasina, 76, has ordered schools and universities to close indefinitely as police step up efforts to bring a deteriorating law and order situation under control.

The premier appeared on the broadcaster’s station on Wednesday night to condemn the “murder” of protesters and vow that those found responsible would be punished regardless of their political affiliation. But violence worsened on the streets despite her appeal for calm as police again attempted to break up demonstrations with rubber bullets and teargas volleys.

At least 32 people were killed on Thursday in addition to seven killed earlier in the week, according to a tally of casualty figures from hospitals compiled by AFP. Hundreds more people were wounded. Police weaponry was the cause of at least two-thirds of those deaths, based on descriptions given to AFP.

“We’ve got seven dead here,” said an official at Uttara Crescent hospital in Dhaka, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. “The first two were students with rubber bullet injuries. The other five had gunshot injuries.”

Nearly 1,000 others had been treated at the hospital for injuries sustained during clashes with police, the official said, adding that many of those people had rubber bullet wounds.

Didar Malekin, of the online news outlet Dhaka Times, said one of his reporters, Mehedi Hasan, had been killed while covering clashes in Dhaka.

There was violence in several cities across Bangladesh throughout the day as riot police marched on protesters, who had begun another round of human blockades on roads and highways.

Helicopters rescued 60 police officers trapped on the roof of a campus building at Canadian University, the scene of some of Dhaka’s fiercest clashes on Thursday, the elite Rapid Action Battalion police force said.

Almost every day this month, people on marches have demanded an end to the quota system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups that back Hasina, who has ruled the country since 2009. She won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition. Her administration is accused by rights groups of capturing state institutions and stamping out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Mubashar Hasan, a Bangladesh expert at the University of Oslo, said the protests had grown into a wider expression of discontent with Hasina’s autocratic rule. “They are protesting against the repressive nature of the state. Protesters are questioning Hasina’s leadership, accusing her of clinging on to power by force. The students are in fact calling her a dictator,” Hasan said.

Bangladeshis reported widespread mobile internet outages around the country on Thursday, two days after internet providers cut off access to Facebook, the protest campaign’s key organising platform.

Reuters reported that telecommunications were disrupted on Friday as well, with Telephone calls from overseas mostly not getting connected and calls through the internet unable to be completed. Websites of several Bangladesh-based newspapers were also not updating on Friday morning and their social media handles were not active.

The telecommunications minister, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, said the government had ordered the network to be cut off. He earlier said social media had been “weaponised as a tool to spread rumours, lies and disinformation”, forcing the government to restrict access.

Along with police crackdowns, demonstrators and students allied to the premier’s ruling Awami League party have also battled each other on the streets with bricks and bamboo rods.

With Agence France-Presse in Dhaka and Reuters

French lawmakers have re-elected a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc as president of parliament’s lower house, a possible breakthrough in attempts to form a majority amid deadlock.

French politics have been in gridlock after a snap election this month left the country without any clear path to forming a new government as Paris prepares to host the Olympic Games.

Lawmakers elected the president as parliament’s lower house, the national assembly, met for the first time since the elections.

With 220 votes in the third round, Yaël Braun-Pivet, 53, in a surprise move beat leftwing candidate André Chassaigne, who received 207 votes.

Seats in the 577-strong assembly are now divided between three similarly sized blocs.

A broad leftwing alliance called the New Popular Front (NFP), which unexpectedly topped the 7 July runoff but fell well short of an absolute majority, has more than 190 seats in the National Assembly. Macron’s camp has 164 lawmakers and the far-right National Rally 143.

Thursday’s election for speaker was a way to test the waters for possible alliances of convenience – although the secret ballot makes it impossible to say who exactly voted for which candidate in each of the three rounds.

The national assembly president mostly organises and moderates debate but has some key constitutional powers.

The fractious alliance of Socialists, Communists, Greens and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) wants to run the government, but has yet to agree on a prospective candidate for prime minister.

Anyone holding the executive job, second only to France’s president, must be able to survive a no confidence vote in parliament.

Inadequate climate protections mean at least 6 million lives are at risk from extreme heat in England, an analysis has found.

A report by the campaign group Friends of the Earth found older people and young children were the most high-risk groups for heatwaves, with 1.7 million under-5s and 4.3 million people over 65 living in the most heat-vulnerable neighbourhoods in England.

The analysis builds on previous research by the University of Manchester and Friends of the Earth which identified 15,662 heat-vulnerable neighbourhoods. Birmingham was found to be the city with the most such areas.

Heat-vulnerable neighbourhoods are defined as those exposed to prolonged periods of very hot weather, with an average of 27.5C (81.5F) or higher for five days or more, conditions which are becoming more common amid climate breakdown.

However, analysts say current figures for the number of people at risk are a conservative estimate, and that the true number is likely to increase once people of all ages living with disabilities and health conditions are considered.

Doug Paulley, a disability rights activist, said: “The disproportionate impacts that are already being felt by disabled people, and will continue to in the future without better plans for adapting to climate change, are a stain on the UK and show just how far we’ve still to go to ensure disabled lives are taken seriously and treated with the respect they deserve.”

Across the areas identified as high-risk for heatwaves there are 3.7 million people living with high blood pressure, 1.5 million living with asthma, and 1.6 million living with diabetes. All of these conditions are exacerbated by extreme heat, and in some cases can be life-threatening.

At a high court hearing next week, Friends of the Earth and two co-claimants including Paulley whose lives are already severely affected by the climate crisis will challenge the UK’s climate adaptation plans in a case thought to be the first of its kind in the UK.

The group argues that plans brought in by the previous government do not sufficiently protect people from the foreseeable impacts of climate breakdown and the new Labour government must come up with much stronger plans to ensure those most at risk from escalating weather extremes are adequately protected.

Mike Childs, the head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, said these plans “must include rolling out insulation programmes to keep our homes, care homes, schools and nurseries cool in summer, as well as warm in winter, planting street trees to help cool neighbourhoods during hot spells, and equipping community spaces such as libraries with air conditioning so people can shelter during heatwaves.

“Global temperature records are being broken year on year, but the UK’s plans to adapt to the climate crisis are falling far short of what’s needed to protect frontline communities. This failure is putting the lives and health of millions of people at risk.”

Bob Newhart, the revered US comedian and star of two classic sitcoms known for his deadpan delivery, died on Thursday at the age of 94.

The Chicago native and titular star of game-changing sitcoms The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart in the 1970s and 80s, died at his home in Los Angeles after a period of short illnesses, his publicist Jerry Digney confirmed in a statement.

A former accountant who began moonlighting in comedy venues, Newhart first rose to fame in the 1960s for his observational humor and droll delivery. His breakthrough album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, recorded over several days in Houston before Newhart had any stand-up experience, netted him Grammys for best new artist and album of the year in 1961.

“In 1959, I gave myself a year to make it in comedy; it was back to accounting if comedy didn’t work out,” he once said, according to Digney’s statement. Newhart was 30 years old and years into a career as a Chicago accountant when the album went No 1 on the sales charts, the first comedy album to do so.

The comic went on to dominate the sitcom landscape for nearly two decades with two beloved TV shows, first with The Bob Newhart Show, which aired on CBS from 1972 until 1978. The show, in which Newhart starred as a befuddled psychologist in Chicago, became one of the most popular sitcoms of all time.

The follow-up, Newhart, starred Newhart and Mary Frann as an author and his wife who open a rural inn in Vermont. It ran from 1982 until 1990 and featured one of the more admired finales in TV history, in which Newhart’s character wakes up next to his wife from the Bob Newhart Show, played by Suzanne Pleshette, suggesting the entire second series was a dream.

Newhart was nominated for several Emmys for his TV work, though he didn’t win one until 2013, for guest-starring as Arthur Jeffries on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory. He is also famous to younger audiences as Papa Elf, the adoptive father to Will Ferrell’s Buddy, in the 2003 holiday comedy Elf.

Mayim Bialik, who starred on The Big Bang Theory with Newhart said in a statement : “As a child, the Bob Newhart Show provided countless hours of enjoyment for me – it constituted some of my earliest training in the art of sitcom. When I got to work with alongside him on TBBT, it was absolutely a dream come true. He was effortlessly professional, poised, hilarious and incredibly approachable. Working with Bob was working in the presence of a true comedy legend.”

Born on 5 September 1929 in Oak Park, Illinois, George Robert Newhart ushered in a new style of comedy in the 1960s, breaking from the mold of vaudeville and Borscht Belt routines for bits based in observation and psychology. His performance style incorporated stammering, deadpan delivery and quietly subversive material that appealed widely; his debut was the first comedy album to top the Billboard charts, and his first two albums held the top two spots simultaneously, a feat not accomplished again until Guns N’ Roses in 1991.

In his later years, Newhart took on a number of feature film roles, including In & Out and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. He also continued performing standup into his 70s, giving about 30 shows a year as of 2006.

“Comedy has given me a wonderful life,” he said. “When I first started out in standup, I just remember the sound of laughter. It’s one of the great sounds of the world.”

The comedy great Carol Burnett posted on social media: “I had the great pleasure of working with Bob and being his friend. He was as kind and nice as he was funny. He will be missed.” The two worked together on The Carol Burnett Show.

Among others paying tribute to Newhart were Judd Apatow, Jamie Lee Curtis and Bill Prady. Apatow, who co-directed Bob and Don: A Love Story about the lifelong friendship of Newhart and Don Rickles, posted on social media: “I was so lucky to get to spend that time with my hero. His brilliant comedy and gentle spirit made everyone he encountered so happy.”

Prady reflected on his importance to comedy: “Hard to explain how important Bob Newhart was to every comedian and comedy writer who came after him.”

Curtis wrote in a tribute on her Instagram, “They will be laughing wherever people go when they leave us. God, he was funny! Bob Newhart. You will be missed!”

The comedian was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 1993, and won the second-ever Mark Twain prize for humor, presented by the Kennedy Center, in 2002. In 2007, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was chosen as one of 25 entries for the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.

Newhart’s wife, Ginnie, whom he married in 1963, died last year at the age of 82. He is survived by his four children, Robert, Timothy, Courtney and Jennifer, and 10 grandchildren.