Holidaymakers have been warned that travel disruption may continue this weekend as airlines recover from being hit by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years.

Passengers had their travel plans ruined on Friday as thousands of flights were cancelled internationally after a botched software upgrade hit Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The incident caused havoc across a number of services, with hospital appointments cancelled, payroll systems seized up and TV channels going off air due to the outage.

More than 5,078 flights, 4.6% of those scheduled, were cancelled around the world on Friday. By the evening, 338 flights in and out of the UK – 167 departures and 171 arrivals – had been cancelled, according to the aviation analytics firm Cirium.

After crowds swelled at airports on Friday as operators struggled to keep services on track, travel chaos is expected to continue throughout the weekend. At least 45 flights in the UK had been cancelled on Saturday.

The travel association Abta urged holidaymakers to check with providers if there were “any extra steps” they may need to take.

A spokesperson said: “If you are heading off on holiday this weekend – by whatever means – it’s advisable to check with your travel provider if there are any extra steps you need to take, as some businesses are continuing to feel the impact of Friday’s IT outage.”

Multiple US airlines and airports across Asia said they were now resuming operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and mostly back to normal in India, Indonesia and at Singapore’s Changi airport as of Saturday afternoon.

“The check-in systems have come back to normal [at Thailand’s five major airports],” the Airports of Thailand president, Keerati Kitmanawat, told reporters at Don Mueang airport in Bangkok. “There are no long queues at the airports as we experienced yesterday.”

Atlanta airport, the busiest in the world by passenger traffic, said it had not been affected by the outage but was working with “airline partners” who were.

While some airports halted all flights, airline staff in others resorted to manual check-ins for passengers, leading to long lines and frustrated travellers.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initially ordered all flights grounded “regardless of destination”, although airlines later said they were re-establishing their services and working through the backlog.

India’s largest airline, IndiGo, said operations had been “resolved”, in a statement posted on X.

“While the outage has been resolved and our systems are back online, we are diligently working to resume normal operations, and we expect this process to extend into the weekend,” the carrier said on Saturday.

A passenger told Agence France-Presse that the situation was returning to normal at Delhi airport with only slight delays in international flights.

The low-cost carrier AirAsia said it was still trying to get back online, and had been “working around the clock towards recovering its departure control systems (DCS)” after the global outage. It recommended passengers arrive early at airports and be ready for “manual check-in” at airline counters.

Chinese state media said Beijing’s airports had not been affected.

In Europe, major airports including Berlin, which had suspended all flights earlier on Friday, said departures and arrivals were resuming.

The software update that caused global havoc came from the US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which left many workers facing a “blue screen of death” as their computers failed to start.

GP practices said they could not see patient records or book appointments, and pharmacy services were also affected.

But on Saturday, Nick Kaye, the chair of the National Pharmacy Association, which represents independent community pharmacies in the UK, said: “Systems are by and large back online and medicine deliveries have resumed in many community pharmacies today after the global IT outage.

“However, yesterday’s outage will have caused backlogs and we expect services to continue to be disrupted this weekend as pharmacies recover.

“We urge people to be patient when visiting their local pharmacy and some may be still prioritising those patients with emergency prescriptions from their GP surgery.”

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 US congressman has said he decided to join calls for Joe Biden to exit the presidential race after the 81-year-old appeared not to recognise him at a recent event.

Seth Moulton, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, was one of the first Democrats to call for Biden to drop out of the race shortly after his disastrous debate performance last month. On Friday, Moulton ramped up his efforts to oust the president from the 2024 ticket in a damning op-ed for the Boston Globe.

Moulton said he met Biden in a small group for the 80th anniversary of D-day in Normandy on 6 June. “For the first time, he didn’t seem to recognise me,” the Democrat wrote. “Of course, that can happen as anyone ages but, as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem.

“It was a crushing realisation, and not because a person I care about had a rough night but because everything is riding on Biden’s ability to beat Donald Trump in November.”

Last week Donald Trump, the former president and Republican nominee for the 2024 race, was the target of a failed assassination attempt. Moulton said the shooting had “shifted the national conversation for now [but] what hasn’t changed are these basic facts: Biden is trailing Trump in critical swing states, and he has yet to show us that he is willing or able to change his strategy”.

Adam Smith, a Democratic congressman from Washington, had harsher words for Biden on Saturday, saying the president’s campaign team was committing an “epic act of political malpractice” by allowing him to run.

Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, he said: “Democratic party leaders all across this country need to stop being coy, quiet and polite about it and they need to express firmly their opinion that the president should step aside and they need to go to President Biden’s campaign team and they need to tell him, ‘You are committing an epic act of political malpractice.’ Please stop and please put the interests of the party and the country ahead of the selfish interests of Joe Biden.”

Biden, who is recovering from Covid, has been under intense pressure to resign since his widely panned debate performance last month. While the president has tried to allay fears about his age and mental capacity for the job with a number of TV interviews and public appearances, he has continued to make gaffes and calls for him to go have persisted.

Last week, at a make-or-break Nato press conference, Biden mistakenly referred to Kamala Harris as “vice-president Trump” and, earlier in the day, accidentally introduced the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as “President Putin”.

On Friday, Biden said he was looking forward to “getting back on the campaign trail next week” as the number of Democratic members of Congress calling on him to step aside surpassed 30.

The multimillionaire and prominent election denier Patrick Byrne has been boosting his funding to the Maga-allied America Project and using it to steer six-figure checks to far-right groups that push voting conspiracies in Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere, according to tax records and voting experts.

Byrne, the former CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, said last fall that only $3m of the $30m the Florida-based project had raised at that point came from “the public”, with the rest coming from him.

In 2022, the America Project almost doubled its revenues to $14.3m versus some $7.7m the prior year, according to tax records first disclosed by Issue One, a bipartisan political reform group.

The America Project was launched in April 2021 by Byrne and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump when he was president; both Byrne and Flynn have been vocal purveyors of falsehoods that Trump lost the 2020 election due to fraud. They were also both at a meeting with Trump and others in late 2020 to brainstorm ways to overturn his loss.

The project’s website features bogus claims about election fraud stemming from early and mail voting, and styles itself as “an America First non-profit organization defending rights and freedoms, election victory, and border security to save America”.

The project also boasts that its goal is “to be a symphony conductor of the pro-freedom, pro-constitutional movement, synchronizing and magnifying the efforts of those who wish to ally with us through connecting, training, funding, and working together to save America”.

In practice, the America Project and Byrne have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Arizona-based We the People AZ Alliance, and Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc, triggering alarms by election watchdogs and some GOP veterans due to their incendiary election denialist stances and leaders.

The Arizona alliance was co-founded by Shelby Busch, a vice-chair of the Maricopa county Republican party, who in late June was caught on video threatening to kill the top county election official, Stephen Richer, the Maricopa county recorder.

Busch opined she would accept only “a good, Christian man that believes what we believe”.

Richer, who is Jewish, said in a tweet: “This isn’t healthy. And it’s not responsible. And we shouldn’t want it as part of the Republican party” – noting Busch’s key role as a conservative activist.

The Anti-Defamation League and some religious groups have condemned Busch, who is also the state chair to the Republican National Committee, for her remarks. Busch did not return calls seeking comment.

Busch, who has been an adviser to Arizona Republican Senate candidate and major election denier Kari Lake, told Politico in a statement in June that “everyone knows I don’t like Richer” but said her comments were just a “joke” and “she would never condone violence”.

The Arizona-based Republican consultant Tyler Montague told the Guardian “it takes a lot to make Maga world wince, but it happened when Shelby Busch said she would lynch Stephen Richer, and dog-whistled to Christian nationalists about needing someone with Christian values because Richer is Jewish”.

“She was at the heart of promoting election fraud conspiracies, and is connected to Patrick Byrne, who funds the big lie and her Arizona group,” he said.

Busch’s group has hauled in close to $400,000 from Byrne personally and the America project since the start of 2023, according to state campaign finance records. Of that total, Byrne has chipped in $280,000, while the America Project has given $120,000.

Joe Flynn, Mike Flynn’s brother, who was president of the group for most of 2022, told the Guardian that the project tapped Busch as its Arizona “coordinator” for its 2022 poll-watching training, canvassing and “election integrity” program, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings.

Unveiled in early 2022, Operation Eagles Wings was touted as an effort to “expose shenanigans at the ballot box” and to ensure “there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”. Byrne indicated early on that he was backing the operation with $3m.

Campaign finance watchdogs raised red flags about Byrne’s and the project’s hefty funding of Busch’s operation.

“This group has been bankrolled by deep-pocketed donors who are obsessed with fringe theories about election administration,” said Michael Beckel, Issue One’s research director.

Citing Byrne and the MyPillow chief Mike Lindell as key funders of Busch’s group, Beckel added: “At a time when people across the political spectrum should be standing up to defend the integrity of our safe and secure elections, election deniers have used the We the People AZ Alliance to further erode trust in elections.”

Neither Flynn is affiliated with the America Project any longer. Byrne did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Elsewhere, Byrne and the America Project have donated more than $1.1m to a law firm and a group tied to the election conspiracist and attorney Stefanie Lambert. Lambert has notably defended Byrne in a $1.6bn lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, who charged him with defamation for his claim the company helped rig the 2020 election.

The America Project’s largest single donation in 2022, $700,000, went to the Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc, a group that Lambert co-founded, as Detroit News first reported. Another $430,000 went to Lambert’s Michigan law firm, according to 2022 tax records.

Lambert was a central figure in the post-2020 election scramble by Trump allies to find non-existent fraud. Last August, she was indicted in Michigan for her alleged role in a scheme in 2021 to illegally access and tamper with voting machines.

In a timing twist, Lambert was arrested in March on the Michigan charges after she appeared in court to defend Byrne against the Dominion charges.

Other America Project largesse has gone to various groups and individuals who have track records for pushing voting conspiracies. In 2022 and 2021, for instance, the project paid $200,000 to 423 Catkins Maize LLC, which is tied to Jovan Pulitzer, known for his election denialist claims.

Likewise in 2022 and 2021 together, the project doled out about $330,000 to Pennsylvania-based OGC Law LLC, which employs lawyer Gregory Teufel – who has tried without success to overturn a state law that permitted all residents to ask for no-excuse mail-in ballots.

On a different Maga front, the America Project also gave $150,000 in 2022 to Brian Della Rocca, a Maryland-based lawyer who has done legal work for the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop at the center of the controversy about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

To expand the project’s mission and muscle, Byrne in 2023 tapped Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tom Homan, to be its CEO; a hardliner on border policies Trump has said Homan will have a key post if he wins again

At the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Homan on Wednesday gave a fiery talk blasting Biden border and immigration policies, charging darkly that “this isn’t mismanagement, this isn’t incompetence, this is by design – it is a choice”.

Besides his big checks to the America Project and allied groups, Byrne has tried to flex his muscles in other Maga efforts with election deniers.

In a tweet last month, for instance, Byrne touted that Michael Flynn, who now leads the Maga-allied America’s Future, should be Trump’s vice-president – and painted a conspiratorial scenario.

“FLYNN knows how to spring Trump from prison. The world is at war and we need a general,” Byrne tweeted.

Flynn’s ties to Byrne were cemented at a rowdy White House meeting with Trump and other key election deniers on 18 December 2020, where Flynn and Byrne floated the idea of using the national guard to seize voting machines to help overturn Trump’s loss.

When Byrne and Flynn, who Trump pardoned after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador in 2016, launched the America Project, an early priority was seeking ways to block Joe Biden’s win in Arizona by promoting falsehoods about fraud.

To that end, Byrne provided about $3.25m of $5.7m in funding raised by Cyber Ninjas, an obscure Florida firm with no experience in election audits that was tapped by Arizona’s Republican-led senate to review the Maricopa county election results. The firm’s final report found Biden actually got 99 more votes and Trump 261 fewer than originally counted.

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.

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 led to 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.

The British Museum boasts one of the biggest collections of Chinese antiquities in the west, but it has faced repeated calls to return them to China. Now historical documents reveal that many of the antiquities were acquired with the full cooperation of Chinese officials in the last century.

US historian Justin Jacobs has unearthed evidence that shows the Chinese government “willingly and enthusiastically helped them remove these treasures from their lands” because they wanted closer ties with the west and appreciated new scholarship.

He said: “These things did not have priceless valuations that we project on to them today… I have found new evidence that hasn’t been looked at before that will change our view of objects in the British Museum and other institutions.” There have been calls in recent years for the British Museum to return artefacts including the Parthenon marbles – also known as the Elgin marbles – the Rosetta Stone and the Benin bronzes.

Last year’s revelations of thefts of 1,500 museum items sparked renewed international repatriation requests, among them, by China’s state-run English-language newspaper Global Times.

In an editorial, the paper said: “Most Chinese collections were certainly looted or stolen by Britain … As long as Britain cannot prove which collection was acquired legally and honestly, then the mother country of these collections has the right to seek their repatriation.”

Jacobs, a professor of history at the American University in Washington, said he had unearthed evidence showing that, far from seeing the acquisition of antiquities by outsiders as morally dubious, the Chinese authorities believed that professional and social relationships with well-regarded foreigners were more valuable than what they were removing.

He said: “[I have seen] letters and recollections of Chinese officials, Chinese dealers, Chinese scholars talking about what they think of western archaeologists, who came into the country and removed tens of thousands of objects. It’s usually social and diplomatic capital – ‘If we help him out, then this will sweeten diplomatic negotiations with Great Britain the next time we have some sort of diplomatic issue to work out.’

“Or they see having a friendship and connections with a foreign scholar to be more valuable. The Chinese material should be categorised as a form of diplomatic gift.”

He added: “I conclude that most of today’s moral outrage over western museums and their collections is the result of projecting today’s values backward in time to an era in which our values today were not shared, either by westerners or nonwesterners.”

Jacobs’s research will feature in his book, Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures, which will be published next week.

The book, which covers objects ranging from ancient Egyptian antiquities to the Parthenon marbles, challenges the widely accepted assumption that many western museum treasures were acquired by imperialist plunder and theft, arguing for a nuanced understanding of how they reached western shores.

Jacobs believes that other objects such as the Benin bronzes – looted during the British military expedition to Benin City in 1897, – were military plunder and “have a case for restitution”.

But he said: “We should not jump from that to say that everything in a museum was acquired in the exact same immoral way that military loot was acquired. Military plunder actually represents a fairly small amount of the materials that you see in a museum.”

The British-Hungarian archaeologist Aurel Stein acquired thousands of Chinese antiquities that ended up in the British Museum and other collections.

Among artefacts that the Chinese officials knew he was removing at the time – “as they recorded their thoughts in Chinese about that removal”, Jacobs said – is a painted panel, believed by some experts to date from between the 7th and 8th century, depicting the legend of how silk-making technology left China. It is now in the British Museum.

Jacobs found unpublished material among Stein’s vast archive in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It includes a 1914 letter from a Chinese magistrate who said to Stein: “You practise archaeology with a stunning perseverance and thoroughness that is unheard of.”

Jacobs said: “This is awkward. After all, Stein has become something of a nationalist pinata among Chinese critics of western imperialism today.”

The evidence contradicts that image, he said, as it shows Chinese officials knew what Stein and other archaeologists were taking abroad. Those officials looked forward to hearing about new scholarly discoveries that would result from transporting these antiquities to a site for their preservation and study.

Jacobs said: “Just one century ago, the most highly educated and prosperous Chinese in the entire country saw in Stein’s expedition not a sinister imposition of foreign imperialism, but rather an altruistic and admirable display of the scientific keys to catching up with the leading western powers of the day.”

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”.

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”.

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.”

A Native American teen who was recently crowned as the teenaged boy with the world’s longest hair says he is proud that he can now represent his tribe and family to a global audience.

“Culturally, Lakota people have long hair,” Reuben Looks Twice Jr said on Friday in an interview published by the website of Guinness World Records, which sanctioned his mark on 7 June after his hair measure 161cm (5ft 3.3in). Invoking the Lakota word for “spirit”, the 17-year-old added: “It’s part of our Nagi. It’s who I am.

“I feel proud to represent my family and the Lakota Nation.”

Reuben told the organization, which is famous for curating a database of 40,000 world records, that he last had his hair cut when he was two years old. His parents initially let him begin skipping trims while growing up in Rapid City, South Dakota, because hair clippers frightened him.

But then, as he got older, he stuck with growing his hair out to honor the tradition of the Lakota. The Lakota, as is the case with many other Indigenous American peoples, consider hair to be a sacred cultural symbol representing the connection with one’s soul, family and community.

Reuben has since mainly worn his hair in a lengthy braid. He maintains the style by washing it every morning for 20 minutes with shampoo and conditioner, according to his interview with Guinness. Then, he dries it for an hour before spending another 10 minutes untangling, brushing and braiding it again.

The teen told Guinness he went to a hair salon to unbraid, wash and brush out his hair when he decided to go for the world record. The salon laid his hair out to find the longest strand, measured three times and the average of the measurements ended up being the official record achieved by Reuben.

He seized the title from India’s Sidakdeep Singh Chahal, whose hair in 2023 was measured to be 146cm (4ft 9.5in).

Reuben revealed his hair is so long that he sometimes gets it stuck in car doors or ensnared on shower knobs. Yet he said he plans to never cut it.

It’s not only because he hopes it leaves “my family and tribe proud” – upon turning 18, he also would qualify for the Guinness record recognizing the man with the longest hair in the world, which as of Friday was vacant.

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.”

A woman has been arrested after a car was “deliberately set alight” while two children were still inside.

The incident happened at 10.52pm on Thursday in Leeds.

West Yorkshire police said a woman reported her car had been deliberately set alight in Tong Way while her two children were still in the vehicle.

She and a neighbour took the children to safety and were checked over by ambulance staff with no concerns found, the force said.

A force spokesperson said: “A 19-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of arson in relation to the incident and remains in custody. Inquiries are ongoing.”

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.”