Services began to come back online on Friday evening after an IT failure that wreaked havoc worldwide. But full recovery could take weeks, experts have said, after airports, healthcare services and businesses were hit by the “largest outage in history”.

Flights and hospital appointments were cancelled, payroll systems seized up and TV channels went off air after a botched software upgrade hit Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

It came from the US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, and left workers facing a “blue screen of death” as their computers failed to start. Experts said every affected PC may have to be fixed manually, but as of Friday night some services started to recover.

As recovery continues, experts say the outage underscored concerns that many organizations are not well prepared to implement contingency plans when a single point of failure such as an IT system, or a piece of software within it, goes down. But these outages will happen again, experts say, until more contingencies are built into networks and organizations introduce better back-ups.

In the UK, Whitehall crisis officials were coordinating the response through the Cobra committee. Ministers were in touch with their sectors to tackle the fallout from the IT failure, and the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, said she was working “at pace with industry” after trains and flights were affected.

A Microsoft spokesperson said on Friday: “We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.”

Texas-based CrowdStrike confirmed the outage was due to a software update from one of its products and was not caused by a cyber-attack.

Its founder and chief executive, George Kurtz, said he was “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers”, adding there had been a “negative interaction” between the update and Microsoft’s operating system.

CrowdStrike’s stock price fell dramatically over the course of the day, dropping by as much as 13% at some points in trading.

Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, said the outage caused “a seizure to the automotive supply chain” while banks in Kenya and Ukraine reported issues with their digital services, and supermarkets in Australia had problems with payments.

Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) – the parent company of Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – warned passengers to expect delays.

According to the service status monitoring website Downdetector, users in the UK were reporting issues with the services of Visa, BT, big supermarket chains, banks, online gaming platforms and media outlets.

The Sky News and CBBC channels were also temporarily off-air in the UK before resuming broadcasting, while Australia’s ABC was also affected.

In financial services, Metro Bank reported problems with its phone lines in the UK and Santander said card payments “may be affected”. Monzo said some customers were reporting issues, while some bankers at JP Morgan were unable to log on to their systems and the London Stock Exchange said there were problems with its news service.

Troy Hunt, a leading cybersecurity consultant, said the scale of the IT failure was unprecedented.

“I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history,” he tweeted.

“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time,” he added, referring to the millennium bug that worried IT experts in the run-up to 2000 – but ultimately did not cause serious damage.

The UK’s chartered institute for IT, the BCS, said it could take days and weeks for systems to recover, although some fixes will be easier to implement.

“In some cases, the fix may be applied very quickly,” said Adam Leon Smith, a BCS fellow. “But if computers have reacted in a way that means they’re getting into blue screens and endless loops it may be difficult to restore and that could take days and weeks.”

Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey, said the fix required a manual reboot of affected machines and “most standard users would not know how to follow the instructions”. Organisations with thousands of PCs distributed in different locations face a tougher task, he added.

“It’s just sheer numbers. For some organisations it could certainly take weeks,” he said.

From Amsterdam to Zurich, Singapore to Hong Kong, airport operators flagged technical issues that were disrupting their services. While some airports halted all flights, in others airline staff had to check-in passengers manually.

Among the companies affected on Friday was Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, which said on its website: “Potential disruptions across the network due to a global third-party system outage … We advise passengers to arrive at the airport three hours in advance of their flight to avoid any disruptions.”

Heathrow, Europe’s biggest airport, said it was “working hard” to get passengers “on their way”.

A spokesperson for Heathrow said: “We continue to work with our airport colleagues to minimise the impact of the global IT outage on passenger journeys. Flights continue to be operational and passengers are advised to check with their airlines for the latest flight information.”

In the US, flights were grounded owing to communications problems that appear to be linked to the outage. American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines were among the carriers affected.

Berlin airport temporarily halted all flights on Friday. The aviation analytics company Cirium said 5,078 flights – 4.6% of those scheduled – were cancelled globally on Friday, including 167 UK departures and 171 arrivals.

GP practices in the UK said they were unable to access patient records or book appointments. Surgeries reported on social media that they could not access the EMIS Web system.

It is understood that 999 services were unaffected by the outage, but the Royal Surrey NHS Trust, in the south of England, declared a critical incident and cancelled radiotherapy appointments scheduled for Friday morning. The National Pharmacy Association confirmed that UK services could be affected.

A spokesperson for Keir Starmer said they were unaware of the problem having any impact on government services, but added they recognised the impact it was having more broadly. Reports from the Netherlands also suggested there may be problems within the health service.

The Israeli health ministry said “the global malfunction” had affected 16 hospitals, while in Germany the Schleswig-Holstein university hospital in the north of the country said it had cancelled all planned operations in Kiel and Lübeck.

Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, issued an emergency declaration stating that certain essential city services including emergency communications were affected by the outage.

The University of Surrey’s Alan Woodward said the outage was caused by an IT product called CrowdStrike Falcon which monitors the security of large networks of PCs and downloads a piece of monitoring software to every machine.

“The product is used by large organisations that have significant numbers of PCs to ensure everything is monitored. Sadly, if they lose all the PCs they can’t operate, or only at a much reduced service level,” said Woodward.

Steven Murdoch, a professor of security engineering at University College London, said many organisations could struggle to carry out the fix swiftly.

“The problem is occurring before the computer is connected to the internet so there is no way to fix the problem remotely, so that requires someone to come out … and fix the problem,” said Murdoch, adding that companies and organisations that have cut back on IT staff or outsourced their IT work would find their ability to address the problem hampered.

However, Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, said that unlike adversarial cyber-attacks, this problem had already been identified and a solution had been flagged.

“The recovery is not about getting on top of the situation but getting back up. I think it’s unlikely to be very newsworthy in terms of ongoing disruption this time next week,” he said.

The problems for businesses in the US were also compounded by problems with Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing business that occurred on Thursday.

Reuters contributed to this report

A global technology outage on Friday grounded flights, disrupted health services, crashed payment systems and blocked access to Microsoft services in what experts believe is one of the largest IT failures in history.

The cause of the disruptions originated from a cybersecurity firm called CrowdStrike, which provides software to a wide range of industries. An update to one of CrowdStrike’s pieces of software, Falcon Sensor, malfunctioned, throwing a wrench into computers running Windows, leading to major tech failures around the world, the company said.

Here’s what we know about the outage so far.

Saturday’s headlines are dominated by the fallout from an IT failure that grounded planes, took TV channels off air and played havoc with health services, banking and retail businesses around the world.

The outage was the result of a botched software upgrade by US firm CrowdStrike that hit Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and left workers with a “blue screen of death” as their computers failed to start.

“Recovery from global IT failure ‘could take weeks’,” the Guardian said, adding that airlines, healthcare and retailers were “in chaos after software upgrade glitch”.

The Daily Telegraph splashed on “Holidays in chaos after global IT meltdown”. “Thousands of tourists stranded at start of the summer break and NHS services hit,” it reported.

The Financial Times led its front page with “Global IT outage throws travel, payments and health into chaos”, adding “Microsoft users paralysed”,“Crowdstrike security update blamed” and “Fix likely to take days”.

The Times went with “IT company’s error could be terminal for getaways”, writing that “thousands of families face delays and cancellations after an IT failure grounded flights around the globe on what was set to be the busiest day for international travel in five years”.

“Day the world stood still”, the Daily Mirror headlined, adding that “transport, business, GPs and TV hit by global computer crash”.

The Daily Mail says “Global IT meltdown shows peril of going cashless”, calling the crisis a “digital pandemic”.

The Daily Express splashed on “How on earth did ‘digital pandemic’ paralyse the world?”, continuing: “Massive IT outage wreaks havoc for millions and may take days to fix”.

“Computer says no,” the i reported, adding “global IT crash hits GPs, hospitals, banks, planes and trains”.

The Independent went with “Massive Microsoft meltdown triggers worldwide havoc” and reported that it was the “world’s worst IT outage”, affecting some of its biggest companies.

Elsewhere, Spain’s El País said “Worldwide IT outage”, writing that a “simple anti-virus update blocked essential services around the world”.

In France, Libération headlined its weekend edition “Bug of the year 2024”, noting that the outage highlighted “our dependence on technology and our vulnerability”.

A nationalist former member of Ukraine’s parliament known for her vociferous campaigns to defend the Ukrainian language has died after being shot in Lviv.

Police launched a wide search for the gunman alleged to have shot Iryna Farion, 60, on a street in the western city.

The regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, said on Telegram that Farion had died after being taken to hospital. The interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, had earlier said that the shooting was being treated as an attempted assassination.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was receiving regular reports on efforts to capture the gunman. He said any act of violence was to be condemned.

Farion, a linguist, became a member of the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party in 2005 and was elected to parliament in 2012, but failed in subsequent attempts to win a seat. She had also served on Lviv regional council.

She gained notoriety for frequent campaigns to promote the Ukrainian language and discredit public officials who spoke Russian.

In 2018, when Ukraine was fighting Russian-financed separatists who had seized territory in the east, she called for a drive to “punch every Russian-speaking person in the jaw”.

In the early months of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Farion denounced Russian-speaking fighters of the Azov regiment who defended the port city of Mariupol for three months.

Although Ukrainian is the sole state language of Ukraine, many of its people speak Russian as a first language, a legacy of Soviet rule, when Ukrainian was under official pressure.

Promoting the language has long been an important issue, with parliament passing legislation to entrench its use in public life and in the services industry.

• Donald Trump said he had a “very good call” with Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday and pledged to end Ukraine’s war with Russia. The US Republican presidential nominee posted on Truth Social that as president he would “bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives”. “Both sides will be able to come together and negotiate a deal that ends the violence and paves a path forward to prosperity,” he said. Trump has repeatedly claimed he would end the war quickly, without offering details on how. Zelenskiy said on X that in their conversation he had congratulated Trump on securing the presidential nomination, condemned the assassination attempt on him and agreed to arrange a meeting in person to discuss “what steps can make peace fair and truly lasting”.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Ukraine was on its way to being able to “stand on its own feet” militarily and more than 20 other countries had pledged to maintain their own military and financial aid to the country even if the US were to withdraw its support under a different president. Blinken was for the first time directly addressing the possibility that Trump could win the November election and back away from commitments to Ukraine.

• A Russian missile hit a children’s playground in Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv on Friday, killing a child and two adults and injuring five others, officials said. The playground was “near an ordinary house”, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, calling on the world to help stop Russian “terror”. He posted photos to Telegram showing what appeared to be at least two dead bodies – one lying under rubble by the entrance to a building, and another in a courtyard – and part of a missile. Windows on a multi-storey residential building had been blown out. The regional governor hailed residents of the city who rushed to the site to help before medics arrived. Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram that another missile had landed elsewhere in the region.

• A nationalist former member of Ukraine’s parliament known for her vociferous campaigns to defend the Ukrainian language has died after being shot in Lviv. Police launched a wide search for the gunman alleged to have shot Iryna Farion, 60, on a street in the western city. The regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, said on Telegram that Farion died after being taken to hospital. The interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, earlier said the shooting was being treated as an attempted assassination.

• Russian forces have captured the village of Yurivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry said on Friday.

• A German national has been sentenced to death in Belarus, the German foreign ministry has said, hours after a Belarusian human rights group said a German combat medic had been sentenced to death by firing squad. The German ministry did not name its national but the Viasna Human Rights Centre said earlier on Friday that Rico Krieger, 30, had been convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code in a trial held at the end of June. The exact allegations against Krieger were not immediately clear. Viasna said the case might be linked to the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment, a group of Belarusian volunteer fighters fighting against Russia in Ukraine.

• The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer welcomed Volodymyr Zelenskiy at Downing Street on Friday, calling the visit a “real piece of history”. The Ukrainian president was greeted by the UK cabinet with a standing ovation as he became the first foreign leader to address the cabinet in person since 1997. Starmer said the UK would “double down” on backing for Ukraine, and confirmed he had accepted an invitation to visit Ukraine again in the future. Zelenskiy asked Starmer to “show your leadership” and help with Ukraine’s “long-range capability”.

• Russia has designated pianist Evgeny Kissin as a “foreign agent” because of his support for Ukraine and opposition to the war, state news agency Tass quoted the justice ministry as saying on Friday. Moscow-born Kissin, 52, has won some of Russia’s top artistic awards and is considered one of the world’s finest concert pianists. He has lived outside the country for years and has British and Israeli citizenship.

Len Blavatnik, the second-richest man in Britain, is facing a series of protests in the UK after his Israeli television channel was accused of cancelling programmes to please Benjamin Netanyahu.

Aviel Lewis, a London-based Israeli who is part of the anti-Netanyahu WeDemocracy group, said Blavatnik was known in the UK “as a patron of progressive culture and arts” and the British public was not aware that he was also involved in “something that is clearly taking Israeli media years back and corrupting it”.

Lewis is part of a group of Israeli citizens opposed to the Netanyahu government who are planning to hold protests on Sunday at the Tate Modern’s Blavatnik wing and the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of government.

Other cultural institutions featuring the Blavatnik name could later be targeted, with the protesters arguing that the billionaire’s media company is undermining freedom of the press in Israel.

Lewis said the oligarch should realise the potential risk to his reputation in the UK: “We want to make Mr Blavatnik feel uncomfortable.”

Blavatnik received a knighthood in recognition of his donations to British institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the National Portrait Gallery. He also controls a wide range of businesses including Warner Music – home to Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, and Megan Thee Stallion – as well as sports streaming company DAZN and London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.

In Israel he owns a majority stake in Channel 13 News, a broadcaster that was known for being a thorn in the side of the Netanyahu government. It had been one of the few Israeli media outlets to air commentary openly critical of Netanyahu and the conduct of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Channel 13 News’ board last month appointed Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich, a former politician seen as an ally of the Israeli prime minister, as its chief executive. Her arrival was swiftly followed by the cancellation of a popular investigative news programme hosted by the journalist Raviv Drucker, who had exposed a series of scandals about Netanyahu and a recent story about alleged corruption in the transport ministry.

The channel’s journalists are openly rebelling against the appointment, claiming it is a sign of Netanyahu’s growing influence over the media in their country. The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz used an editorial to condemn the decision to take the show off air, calling it “purely a political decision, contravening all financial and journalistic logic”.

“This means one thing: Channel 13 has been conquered. The Bibi-ism flag flies over it, and a clear message was delivered to the subjects still employed there: you serve the government here.”

Anat Saragusti, who leads the freedom of the press division at Israel’s journalists’ organisation, told the Times of Israel that “what is happening at the Channel 13 News is part of a master plan to destroy the freedom of the press”.

Blavatnik’s stake in Channel 13 is owned by the oligarch’s Access Entertainment business, which is led by former BBC director of television Danny Cohen. It has also made high-profile investments in the film production company A24, the interactive art space LightRoom, and successful West End productions such as Hamilton and Cabaret.

A spokesperson for Access Industries said: “Sir Leonard Blavatnik believes in the importance of press freedom in Israel and across the world. He has invested a significant amount of money in Israel’s Channel 13 to safeguard its existence and secure the future of free, impartial journalism. The Channel has never had a political agenda – as is the law in Israel – and he has never had editorial input.”

“It is categorically not the case that Sir Leonard appointed the CEO of News. The decision as to who runs Channel 13 News is a matter for its independent board on which Sir Leonard has no role. Freedom of expression and informed debate are core values of the channel, and this will always remain the case.”

Adidas has pulled images of the model Bella Hadid from adverts promoting a sports shoe first launched to coincide with the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

The German-based sportswear company said it was “revising” its campaign after criticism from Israel over Hadid’s involvement.

The SL72 trainers, described by Adidas as a timeless classic, were promoted by Hadid, an American whose family has its roots in Palestine.

The model, who previously drew the ire of the Israeli government for allegedly chanting the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, has been accused of antisemitism.

Israel’s official account on X said it objected to Hadid as “the face of [the Adidas] campaign” in a post that noted that “eleven Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the Munich Olympics”.

Hadid has repeatedly criticised the Israeli government and supported Palestinians over the years and on 23 October made a statement on Instagram lamenting the loss of innocent lives while calling on followers to pressure their leaders to protect civilians in Gaza.

Adidas said in a statement that the campaign for the SL72 shoe “unites a broad range of partners”. It said: “We are conscious that connections have been made to tragic historical events – though these are completely unintentional – and we apologise for any upset or distress caused.

“As a result, we are revising the remainder of the campaign.”

It did not set out what changes would be made. Other advertising images showing Adidas brand ambassadors including the French footballer Jules Koundé, the US rapper A$AP Nast and the Chinese model Sabrina Lan remain online.

Members of the Palestinian group Black September broke into the Olympic village on 5 September 1972. Eleven members of the Israeli team were taken hostage and killed.

It is not the first time that the sportswear company has cut ties with celebrity ambassadors after accusations of antisemitism.

Adidas ended its partnership with the rapper Kanye West in October 2022, saying it “does not tolerate antisemitism” after the rapper was suspended from Instagram and Twitter over offensive posts.

It said the comments and actions from West had been “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous and violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness”.

A beleaguered Joe Biden entered potentially the most decisive weekend of his 50-year political career on Friday as the growing list of Democratic members of Congress calling on him to step aside surpassed 30, with the latest being the Ohio senator Sherrod Brown.

Biden is recovering from Covid-19 in self-isolation at his home in Delaware and reportedly feeling “angry and betrayed” by allies and speculation mounted that he might be preparing to announce his withdrawal from the race.

Advisers were reported to be discussing the details, timing and setting of a possible withdrawal announcement, and a mood of resignation before Biden’s departure was said to be rampant among his campaign staff.

With six in 10 Democratic voters telling an AP-Norc Centre for Public Affairs Research poll released on Friday that Kamala Harris would make a good president, allies of the vice-president were making discreet preparations for her to assume the top of the presidential ticket, courting donors and crafting a new message to be used in the event she becomes the candidate.

A rare glimmer of light for Biden came in a letter on Thursday signed by more than 1,400 Black female supporters, who argued that he should remain the candidate, and that any attempt to change the ticket would “circumvent the will of millions of voters who participated in a democratic process” in the primaries. Another public statement of support on Thursday came from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman, who during an Instagram live stream on Thursday urged Democrats to reconsider their efforts to push Biden out.

On Friday, Bernie Sanders also urged support for Biden.

The Congressional Hispanic caucus’s campaign arm also announced on Friday that it was endorsing Biden, which is no surprise given the group’s opposition to Trump but noteworthy at a moment when the president is fighting for his political life. “Another Trump presidency would be disastrous to the Latino community across the country,” the group’s chairwoman, Linda Sánchez, said.

But with more than 30 Democrats in Congress, including the leading California representative Adam Schiff, having now called on Biden to step down, the president was said to be angry at senior figures in the party for encouraging the discontent. Chief among them is Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who has tried to persuade Biden of his declining poll numbers, as well as Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, who Biden reportedly feels have undermined him through their conspicuous silence.

Late on Friday evening, Senator Brown released a statement: “At this critical time, our full attention must return to these important issues. I think the president should end his campaign.”

After weeks of defiantly stating that he will remain the Democratic nominee, despite concerns about his age and mental acuity in the wake of last month’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump, some media outlets were reporting that Biden was reconsidering his position. “Reality is setting in,” a source close to Biden told the New York Times, adding that it would not be surprising if Biden announced his withdrawal soon to allow Harris to take the nomination.

“I don’t see how [Biden] can outmanoeuvre the sustained attacks,” Politico quoted a Democratic figure close to the White House as saying. “It feels like the ending is near.”

Biden’s resolve had reportedly been shaken by a combination of the intensive machinations of Pelosi, fresh poll data from swing states showing his path to an electoral college victory narrowing, and a boycott by key donors, the latest of whom reportedly was the Silicon Valley billionaire Michael Moritz.

Pelosi, long one of his most important allies, is said to have used her knowledge of polling data and the political map to persuade him that his position is weak.

Biden has repeatedly insisted that he has polling evidence showing he could win, relying on data from his aide Mike Donilon. But when he made the argument to Pelosi in a recent phone call, she told him to “put Donilon on the phone” so she could counter it with her own polling and implying that the president was not being kept informed, the New York Times reported.

Public pressure intensified further on Thursday when the Senate Democrats Jon Tester of Montana and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico publicly urged Biden to step aside. Many more than the 30-plus congressional Democrats who have publicly called for his withdrawal have done so in private.

Four House members – Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin – issued a plea jointly Friday.

“They wrote to Biden: “Mr President, you have always put our country and our values first. We call on you to do it once again, so that we can come together and save the country we love.”

Three further separate calls were made by Zoe Lofgren of California, a close Pelosi ally, Sean Casten of Illinois, and Greg Landsman of Ohio, whose seat is one of the Republicans’ top targets in November’s election.

Allies of Pelosi depicted her as exercising sensitivity towards Biden – by recognising his achievements as president, long record of political service and the fact that he has Covid – while subtly using gentle persuasion.

“She’s like a magician,” one source told the Hill. “She’s extraordinarily intentional. She’s trying hard to keep the balance and helping him reach a decision by gently pulling, never pushing.”

That cut little ice with Biden’s allies, one of whom compared his fate to Julius Caesar.

“People who have known this man for 30, 40 years are stabbing this man in the front and the back,” a senior campaign and administration aide told Politico. “They are JULIUS CAESAR-ing this man.”

Biden himself was reported to share such sentiments, telling aides that he feels “hurt and betrayed” at how the party’s leading figures – who he has previously derided as “elites” – have tried to push him out.

One Biden ally told NBC News that the party leaders now trying to force him from the ticket were to blame for Trump’s victory in the 2016 election.

“Can we all just remember for a minute that these same people who are trying to push Joe Biden out are the same people who literally gave us all Donald Trump? In 2015, Obama, Pelosi, [Chuck] Schumer [the Democratic Senate majority leader] pushed Biden aside in favour of Hillary; they were wrong then, and they are wrong now,” the source said.

“Perhaps we should learn a few lessons from 2016; one of them is polls are BS. And two, maybe, just maybe, Joe Biden is more in touch with actual Americans than Obama-Pelosi-Schumer?”

Biden’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, continued to stress that Biden had “work to do” but said the campaign did not have its “head in the sand”.

Emphasizing that Biden’s campaign trail appearances have been reassuring to the campaign, she said: “The more and more people that see Joe Biden out there post-debate they are reassured.”

Such defiance seemed increasingly rare inside the Biden campaign, however, with CNN reporting that some staff had undergone a “quiet quit” process. “I don’t think you can find a person who is off the record saying he should stay in,” one said. “There’s a growing sense that it’s game over.”

Lauren Gambino contributed reporting

A beleaguered Joe Biden entered potentially the most decisive weekend of his 50-year political career on Friday as the growing list of Democratic members of Congress calling on him to step aside surpassed 30, with the latest being the Ohio senator Sherrod Brown.

Biden is recovering from Covid-19 in self-isolation at his home in Delaware and reportedly feeling “angry and betrayed” by allies and speculation mounted that he might be preparing to announce his withdrawal from the race.

Advisers were reported to be discussing the details, timing and setting of a possible withdrawal announcement, and a mood of resignation before Biden’s departure was said to be rampant among his campaign staff.

With six in 10 Democratic voters telling an AP-Norc Centre for Public Affairs Research poll released on Friday that Kamala Harris would make a good president, allies of the vice-president were making discreet preparations for her to assume the top of the presidential ticket, courting donors and crafting a new message to be used in the event she becomes the candidate.

A rare glimmer of light for Biden came in a letter on Thursday signed by more than 1,400 Black female supporters, who argued that he should remain the candidate, and that any attempt to change the ticket would “circumvent the will of millions of voters who participated in a democratic process” in the primaries. Another public statement of support on Thursday came from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman, who during an Instagram live stream on Thursday urged Democrats to reconsider their efforts to push Biden out.

On Friday, Bernie Sanders also urged support for Biden.

The Congressional Hispanic caucus’s campaign arm also announced on Friday that it was endorsing Biden, which is no surprise given the group’s opposition to Trump but noteworthy at a moment when the president is fighting for his political life. “Another Trump presidency would be disastrous to the Latino community across the country,” the group’s chairwoman, Linda Sánchez, said.

But with more than 30 Democrats in Congress, including the leading California representative Adam Schiff, having now called on Biden to step down, the president was said to be angry at senior figures in the party for encouraging the discontent. Chief among them is Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who has tried to persuade Biden of his declining poll numbers, as well as Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, who Biden reportedly feels have undermined him through their conspicuous silence.

Late on Friday evening, Senator Brown released a statement: “At this critical time, our full attention must return to these important issues. I think the president should end his campaign.”

After weeks of defiantly stating that he will remain the Democratic nominee, despite concerns about his age and mental acuity in the wake of last month’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump, some media outlets were reporting that Biden was reconsidering his position. “Reality is setting in,” a source close to Biden told the New York Times, adding that it would not be surprising if Biden announced his withdrawal soon to allow Harris to take the nomination.

“I don’t see how [Biden] can outmanoeuvre the sustained attacks,” Politico quoted a Democratic figure close to the White House as saying. “It feels like the ending is near.”

Biden’s resolve had reportedly been shaken by a combination of the intensive machinations of Pelosi, fresh poll data from swing states showing his path to an electoral college victory narrowing, and a boycott by key donors, the latest of whom reportedly was the Silicon Valley billionaire Michael Moritz.

Pelosi, long one of his most important allies, is said to have used her knowledge of polling data and the political map to persuade him that his position is weak.

Biden has repeatedly insisted that he has polling evidence showing he could win, relying on data from his aide Mike Donilon. But when he made the argument to Pelosi in a recent phone call, she told him to “put Donilon on the phone” so she could counter it with her own polling and implying that the president was not being kept informed, the New York Times reported.

Public pressure intensified further on Thursday when the Senate Democrats Jon Tester of Montana and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico publicly urged Biden to step aside. Many more than the 30-plus congressional Democrats who have publicly called for his withdrawal have done so in private.

Four House members – Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin – issued a plea jointly Friday.

“They wrote to Biden: “Mr President, you have always put our country and our values first. We call on you to do it once again, so that we can come together and save the country we love.”

Three further separate calls were made by Zoe Lofgren of California, a close Pelosi ally, Sean Casten of Illinois, and Greg Landsman of Ohio, whose seat is one of the Republicans’ top targets in November’s election.

Allies of Pelosi depicted her as exercising sensitivity towards Biden – by recognising his achievements as president, long record of political service and the fact that he has Covid – while subtly using gentle persuasion.

“She’s like a magician,” one source told the Hill. “She’s extraordinarily intentional. She’s trying hard to keep the balance and helping him reach a decision by gently pulling, never pushing.”

That cut little ice with Biden’s allies, one of whom compared his fate to Julius Caesar.

“People who have known this man for 30, 40 years are stabbing this man in the front and the back,” a senior campaign and administration aide told Politico. “They are JULIUS CAESAR-ing this man.”

Biden himself was reported to share such sentiments, telling aides that he feels “hurt and betrayed” at how the party’s leading figures – who he has previously derided as “elites” – have tried to push him out.

One Biden ally told NBC News that the party leaders now trying to force him from the ticket were to blame for Trump’s victory in the 2016 election.

“Can we all just remember for a minute that these same people who are trying to push Joe Biden out are the same people who literally gave us all Donald Trump? In 2015, Obama, Pelosi, [Chuck] Schumer [the Democratic Senate majority leader] pushed Biden aside in favour of Hillary; they were wrong then, and they are wrong now,” the source said.

“Perhaps we should learn a few lessons from 2016; one of them is polls are BS. And two, maybe, just maybe, Joe Biden is more in touch with actual Americans than Obama-Pelosi-Schumer?”

Biden’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, continued to stress that Biden had “work to do” but said the campaign did not have its “head in the sand”.

Emphasizing that Biden’s campaign trail appearances have been reassuring to the campaign, she said: “The more and more people that see Joe Biden out there post-debate they are reassured.”

Such defiance seemed increasingly rare inside the Biden campaign, however, with CNN reporting that some staff had undergone a “quiet quit” process. “I don’t think you can find a person who is off the record saying he should stay in,” one said. “There’s a growing sense that it’s game over.”

Lauren Gambino contributed reporting

Airstrikes, arson, shelling and ground fighting between the military and armed rebel groups have damaged at least 174 schools and universities in Myanmar since a military coup in 2021, according to a new report.

Open source investigator, the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), said analysis of imagery from conflict zones showed burned and collapsed buildings.

The group said it had documented 64 deaths and 106 injuries from the attacks, although it was difficult to verify the full extent of casualties because of a lack of access to the sites.

The country was plunged into conflict after Myanmar’s military seized power three years ago, ousting the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and sparking armed resistance and protest across the country. According to Action on Armed Violence, a charity that investigates violence against civilians, at least 50,000 people have been killed.

Matt Lawrence, director of CIR’s Myanmar Witness project, said that in more than half of attacks it assessed, education centres had been destroyed or significantly damaged, which would have a lasting impact on youngsters living in these areas.

He said the destruction of schools would harm a generation growing up during the conflict without access to education, which he said was important to produce reasonable, progressive leaders.

“What worries me is, as this conflict goes on – and it’s likely to go on for a long time – the conflict will be inherited by that generation and instead of being informed by the reason and hope they get through the education system, they’re instead going to be informed by the factionalism and war they’ve grown up with,” said Lawrence.

CIR, which published its findings on Saturday, used reports and imagery uploaded on social media or directly sent to it, as well as drone footage from the grassroots people’s defence forces, which have emerged since 2021 to fight the junta.

Lawrence said that wherever there was intense fighting, schools would be damaged. Some of the worst destruction is in Sagaing region, where fighting has been fierce.

He said while it was not always possible to identify who was responsible for the damage, only the Myanmar military had access to the aircraft used for airstrikes.

“The junta’s key weapon in this conflict is airstrikes. They’re bombing villages, bombing schools. But they also use fire and burn down villages and schools,” he said.

“Both sides will say the schools they attacked were being used for a military purpose at the time. That’s often the excuse given for attacking these areas that should be protected, but often that is the only infrastructure for a community to teach its children … the removal of that place removes the opportunity for them to be educated.”

The report was released before Sunday’s meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

Commenting on the analysis, the UK Foreign Office said: “Schools are meant to be a place of safety and opportunity, not collateral in a conflict. Asean is critical to finding a path to peace in Myanmar. We again reiterate our call to all parties, particularly the Myanmar military, to refrain from airstrikes, safeguard civilians, and protect civilian infrastructure.”

Torrential rain has caused a bridge to collapse in northern China, killing 11 people and leaving more than 30 missing, state media has said.

The bridge over a river in Shangluo, Shaanxi province, buckled at about 8.40pm on Friday “due to a sudden downpour and flash floods”, the Xinhua agency said, citing the provincial public relations department.

The state broadcaster CCTV said nearly 20 vehicles and more than 30 people remained missing.

The 11 confirmed victims were found inside five vehicles that had been recovered from the water, CCTV said.

Images on state TV showed a partially submerged section of the bridge with the river rushing over it.

One witness told local media he had approached the bridge but other drivers started “yelling at me to brake and stop the car”.

“A truck in front of me didn’t stop” and fell into the water, said the witness whose surname was Meng.

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has called for “all-out efforts” to find those still missing, CCTV said.

Large portions of northern and central China have been battered since Tuesday by rains that have caused flooding and significant damage.

On Friday, state media reported at least five people dead and eight missing after rain sparked flooding and mudslides in Shaanxi’s Baoji city.

State television broadcast images of neighbourhoods flooded by muddy water, with excavators and residents attempting to clear the damage.

The semi-desert province of Gansu, which neighbours Shaanxi, and Henan in central China were also hit by heavy rain this week.

In Henan’s Nanyang city the equivalent of a year’s worth of rain fell at the start of the week, according to CCTV.

In south-western Sichuan province, two people were reported killed and seven missing on Friday after heavy rain triggered landslides, Xinhua said.

China is enduring a summer of extreme weather, with the east and south experiencing heavy rain while much of the north has sweltered in successive heatwaves.

The climate crisis is making these types of extreme weather more frequent and more intense.

In May, a highway in southern China collapsed after days of rain, leaving 48 dead.

Earlier this month, a tornado passed through a town in eastern China killing one, injuring 79 and causing significant damage.u

Christmas in July has finally arrived for ski resorts this weekend as the first widespread snowfall of the season blankets parts of Australia’s south-east, bringing more than 50cm falls in popular tourist destinations.

David Clark, destination marketing manager for Mt Buller and Mt Stirling ski lifts, said the snow “just keeps coming”.

“It’s been brilliant, it started snowing on Friday night and hasn’t stopped,” he said. “Now’s the time to come – it’s the best conditions we’ve seen so far.”

The resort town received 22cm of snow on Saturday morning, with an additional 15cm accumulating throughout the day – and more forecast.

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“It was a slow start in June but it’s such a relief to have these big snowfalls and proper cold fronts coming through, setting us up for rest of the season,” Clark said.

“We’re guaranteed to have snow now to October.”

Mount Hotham received 31cm of rainfall in the 24 hours to Saturday morning, with the resort at full capacity and closed to day visitors. Further north, Thredbo was blanketed in 27cm of snow overnight, taking its seven-day snowfall count to 43cm.

“The entire mountain and village have been covered in a thick blanket of fresh white snow, creating magical wintry scenes,” a spokesperson said.

“The snowstorm rolled in yesterday evening, bringing heavy snowfall, blizzard conditions and strong winds.

“Experts forecast that this low-pressure system could bring another 50cm over the next 10 days.”

Nearby, Perisher was hit with 25cm of snow overnight, with a further 80cm forecast on Saturday, with freezing temperatures recorded as low as 800m, according to Weatherzone.

A spokesperson from Vail Resorts said the quickly moving cold front was expected to bring the “most significant snowfall of the year”.

Falls Creek in north-east Victoria received a whopping 45cm of snowfall in just 24 hours, including 33cm of fresh snow on Friday evening. Its seven day total was well over 70cm.

The head of marketing and visitor experience at Falls Creek Alpine Resort, Sarah Watt, said car parking capacity had been increased this season but when a big storm hit, they filled quickly. She urged guests to pre-book before leaving home to avoid disappointment.

The cold front moving through South Australia into Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland had brought rain and record low temperatures along with snow and blizzard conditions, with more expected to come.

Forecasters Mountain Watch anticipated 82cm of snow over the next seven days, while Snowatch predicted 78cm for the next fortnight.

Angus Hines of the Bureau of Meteorology said it was a “very wintry outbreak” of weather across the south-east, attributed to snowfall and wind.

“There’s been another good top up [of snow] … given they had a nice dump three or four days ago,” he said.

Hines said there was about 30cm of snow in widespread higher parts of mountains in Victoria and New South Wales on Friday evening, with an additional 20cm expected on average over the next day, bringing high peaks of half a metre.

He said there hadn’t yet been snow reaching low levels as occurred last week in a number of places across NSW up to the Queensland border, but low lying communities in northern Victoria and southern New South Wales, including the tablelands, could receive some snowfall in coming days.

It came amid widespread damaging wind warnings across Australia, stretching from southern parts of South Australia through exposed parts of Victoria and alpine and eastern NSW.

A severe weather warning was in place for Sydney due to the strengthening winds, bringing blizzard-like conditions to areas with snowfall. At Mt Buller, gusts of up to 100km/h were reported on the upper mountain overnight, with conditions calming into Saturday.

Hines said some areas in Queensland had received record low temperatures overnight, including Winton, which was -0.6 on Saturday morning – a record in 22 years of data – and Longreach, which dropped to 0.7 – the coldest temperature in three years.

The cold front was expected to pass across the next two to three days, however with wind chill temperatures were expected to “feel cooler than it looks like”.

Meanwhile, Clark was spending Saturday watching ecstatic young children in Mt Buller’s “magic forest” learn to ski in “super thick fresh powder snow”.

“It’s a great vibe … they were all doing it with smiles and loving it,” he said.

“We’ve got eight lifts operating and just announced we’re opening another three tomorrow which is great news. I’m just looking forward to seeing ski and snowboarders back on the slopes.”

The thieves went for particular items. Day after day, they roamed the neighbourhood and returned home to dump their loot. Before long they had amassed an impressive haul: socks, underpants, a baby’s cardigan, gloves and yet more socks.

It’s not unusual for cats to bring in dead or petrified mice and birds, but turning up with random objects is harder to explain. Researchers suspect a number of causes, but tend to agree on one point: the pilfered items are not presents.

“We are not sure why cats behave like this,” says Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a museum in Leiden. “All around the world there are cats doing this, yet it has never been studied.” He now hopes that will change.

The clothing crime spree, perpetrated this year by a mother and her two offspring in the small town of Frigiliana in Spain, has made neighbourly interactions somewhat awkward for their keeper, Rachel Womack. But for scientists such as Hiemstra, it has provided fresh impetus to study the animals. “I want to know exactly why they do it,” he says. “And documenting cases like this could be the start of more research in the future.”

Hiemstra heard of the klepto-cats from the Dutch visual artist Anne Geene, a friend of Womack’s who mentioned the cats’ antics. Intrigued, Geene flew to Spain to photograph the haul for a book, Low Hanging Fruit. Hiemstra, who studies the contested ground where animals and humans collide, wrote an introduction, noting: “This is their collection, their criminal record. But why would a cat collect such trophies?”

More pressing for Womack is how to return the stolen stuff. Daisy, Dora and Manchita can bring in more than 100 items a month. One recent arrival was a little stuffed bear. Before that, a baby’s shoe. Returning the items, without knowing the rightful owners, isn’t proving easy. “She’s just annoyed,” says Geene. “There are so many, she doesn’t know how to give them back.”

The Frigiliana three are repeat offenders, but they are not the only cats to be rumbled. Charlie, a rescue cat from Bristol, was dubbed the most prolific cat burglar in Britain after bringing home plastic toys, clothes pegs, a rubber duck, glasses and cutlery. His owner, Alice Bigge, once woke to a plastic diplodocus, one of many nabbed from a nearby nursery, next to her head on the pillow. It reminded her of the infamous scene in The Godfather. She puts the items on a wall outside for owners to reclaim.

Another cat, Dusty from San Mateo in California, had more than 600 known thefts, once returning with 11 items on one night. His haul included Crocs, a baseball cap and a pair of swimming trunks. The bra found in the house was fortunately spotted on a video of Dusty coming in. In a feat of accidental social commentary, another cat, Cleo from Texas, came home with a computer mouse.

In a brainstorming session, Hiemstra and Dr Claudia Vinke, a behavioural biologist at Utrecht University, hit on a few drivers that might feed the cats’ antics. They could be seeking attention or wanting to play; extending their foraging and hunting behaviour, just as cats bring animals to the home; or want to remove particularly smelly items, such as well-worn socks, or freshly washed ones reeking of detergent, from patches of territory.

Cats have small stomachs and tend to bring prey to the centre of their territory to feed on when they are hungry. The same instinct might lead them to bring objects home where the reaction they receive encourages the habit. “When you pay attention to the cat, you are reinforcing the behaviour,” Vinke says.

Dennis Turner, a private faculty member at the University of Zurich, believes attention is key, but adds that cats are drawn to some woollen and plastic items because they contain lanolin. To break the habit, he recommends leaving the room silently when the cat drags something in, and throwing the object out when it has moved on.

“Animals, including humans, respond to very simple stimuli,” says Daniel Mills, a professor of veterinary behavioural medicine at the University of Lincoln. “Something blowing in the wind might trigger hunting behaviour. Having ‘caught’ some weird items, cats may well decide to bring them back. I don’t think they’re thinking of them as gifts. It’s the simple rules of life that the cat brain operates to.”

Jemma Forman, a doctoral researcher at the University of Sussex who has studied cats playing fetch, agrees that the pets do not come bearing gifts. She says: “When it comes to cats, normally the explanation is they’re doing it for themselves.”

Police in Florida are urging people to stop taking selfies with a “depressed” black bear spotted loitering morosely on a roadside.

The unhappy animal took up residence on the north side of Highway 98 in Santa Rosa Beach earlier this week and, according to a Facebook post by the Walton county sheriff’s office, quickly attracted unwanted attention from passing motorists.

“Onlookers were trying to take selfies with the bear and he’s clearly not in the mood for pictures. The bear has shown signs of severe stress,” the post said.

It described the large male bear as “stressed, depressed, lemon zest” and urged the public not to approach a black bear at any time, “especially those that are showing aggression like this big fella”.

Rangers from the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC) were dispatched to investigate after a call from the sheriff’s office reported “crowds of onlookers stopping to take photos of the bear”, which was sitting beside a telegraph pole.

An FWC spokesperson said in a statement that by the time its officers and biologists arrived, “the bear had dispersed and walked off into the adjacent woods”.

It said that, based on images shared with staff: “The bear did not appear to be injured. It may have just been overheated and was resting before moving on.”

Black bears are a common sight in many areas of Florida, especially in the spring and summer when juveniles begin to leave their mothers’ home ranges and seek out new habitats.

“Typically, bears will move along on their own. If you see a bear, give it space, don’t try to approach it, and never feed it,” the spokesperson said, pointing to the advice website bearwise.org.

“Crowding around any bear is never recommended, as bears can become defensive when threatened. Always give bears as much space as possible.”

In February, a homeowner in Santa Rosa Beach recorded a video of a black bear walking through her yard and knocking on the front door. Other recent encounters elsewhere in Florida have included a bear touring the campus of the University of Florida in June; and the capture and relocation of a black bear in May after it was spotted roaming Fort Myers downtown. Authorities said in every case the bear involved was looking for food.

There are an estimated 4,050 black bears living in the wild in Florida, according to FWC figures.

Last month Ron DeSantis, the state’s rightwing Republican governor, signed into law a controversial bill that allows the public to shoot and kill bears for a perceived threat to “a person, pet or dwelling”.

The legislation was drawn up by the Republican state congressman Jason Shoaf, a keen hunter according to his biography, who claimed in February that “bears high on crack” were breaking into people’s houses and “tearing them apart”.

At the time the Guardian was unable to find a single documented incident of any bear in Florida ingesting crack, and Shoaf did not return a request for clarification.