Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation after saboteurs attacked France’s high-speed railway network in a series of “malicious acts” that brought chaos to the country’s busiest rail lines hours before the Olympic opening ceremony.

The state-owned railway operator, SNCF, said arsonists targeted installations along high-speed TGV lines connecting Paris with the country’s west, north and east, and traffic would be severely disrupted across the country into the weekend.

“This is a massive attack on a large scale to paralyse the TGV network,” the SNCF said, adding that many services would have to be cancelled. The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said security forces were “hoping to swiftly make arrests” and he was not aware of any threat to the ceremony.

The Paris public prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said a formal investigation had been launched into “deliberate damage of property likely to harm the fundamental interests of the nation”, as well as criminal association.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but news agencies cited security sources as saying the same arson method had previously been used by extreme-left groups, though there was no evidence to suggest this was the case in Friday’s attacks.

In September, responsibility for near-identical attacks that caused travel disruption in northern Germany was claimed on an extreme-left website. A security expert, Jérôme Poirot, told RMC radio he thought the attacks were more likely “decided by Russia”.

The national train operator said it had been “the victim of several simultaneous malicious acts overnight” in which crucial fibre-optic cables running alongside the tracks had been cut and burned.

It urged all passengers who could to postpone their journeys. Services had resumed by mid-afternoon, although with significant delays on all affected lines. The worst affected route, to the south-west, was able to run one TGV in three.

SNCF’s chief executive, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the attackers had set fires in conduits carrying cables that carry safety information for drivers or control points mechanisms. “There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” requiring hundreds of workers, he said.

Farandou said five of the TGV network’s “strategic nerve centres” had been targeted on the main high-speed lines connecting Paris to big provincial cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the south-west, Strasbourg in the east and Marseille in the south-east.

All the attacks took place between 1am and 5.30am on Friday, French media reported. Four were successful, leaving only the south-eastern line running normally after a night railway maintenance team surprised several saboteurs who fled, France Info radio reported.

“Everything leads us to believe that these were criminal actions,” the transport minister, Patrice Vergriete, told reporters. “The coordinated timing, vans found where people had fled, arsonists who were discovered on the sites.”

He said there was “little beyond the date” to link the sabotage to the Games, and that given holidaymakers were by far the worst affected it seemed likely it was “more the huge getaway weekend” that was targeted.

Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Île-de-France region that includes Paris and its surrounding area, said: “Clearly this attack is not a coincidence, it aimed to destabilise France at the moment the Olympic and Paralympic Games are launched.”

The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, said he wanted to “say to the French people that I share their anger and sadness at a time when they wanted only one thing – to rejoin their families, their friends, and, for some, to attend the Olympic Games”.

Attal said a new timetable would be drawn up as soon as possible. “This operation was coordinated,” he added. “The sites that were targeted were nerve centres. That shows a knowledge of the network.”

The prefect in charge of Paris policing, Laurent Nuñez, said more officers were being diverted to stations on Friday. “The entirety of France’s security and intelligence services have been mobilised,” he told France Télévisions.

The sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, condemned the vandalism. “It’s completely appalling,” she told BFMTV. “To target the games is to target France.”

Several Olympic fixtures, including football matches, will be taking place in stadiums outside Paris, including Nantes and Bordeaux. The travel plans of about 800,000 French holidaymakers will be disrupted this weekend. Farandou said it was a “sad day” because families would be the worst affected by attacks by “irresponsible lunatics”.

On one of the busiest holiday departure weekends of the summer, large crowds of passengers were stranded at mainline TGV stations including the Gare Montparnasse in Paris, which serves Brittany and the south-west, after their trains were cancelled.

Eurostar trains from London to Paris have also been affected. “All high-speed trains going to and coming from Paris are being diverted via the classic line,” the company said. A quarter of Eurostars between London and Paris on Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been cancelled.

In an apparently unrelated incident, the Basel-Mulhouse airport in eastern France was closed briefly and evacuated after a security alert and a bomb disposal team was deployed, local authorities said. Flights resumed in the early afternoon.

The coordinated strikes on the rail network will raise apprehension before the Olympics opening ceremony on the Seine on Friday, when more than 300,000 spectators are expected to line the riverbanks as a flotilla of barges and riverboats sail through the heart of Paris.

About 45,000 police, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents have been deployed to secure the event, with snipers stationed on rooftops and drones patrolling from the air.

Eurostar passengers travelling from London to Paris on Friday were asked to postpone trips if possible as the rail operator cancelled one in four trains over the weekend after arson attacks caused widespread disruption to France’s high-speed rail network hours before the start of the Olympics.

Most cross-Channel services were leaving St Pancras International station on time but journeys were expected to be prolonged by at least an hour in France.

After initially cancelling two Friday afternoon departures from London, the operator warned that it would have to cancel 25% of its scheduled trains across its European network throughout the weekend.

The disruption, caused by what French authorities described as coordinated and malicious attacks on rail infrastructure between Paris and Lille, came hours before the Games’ opening ceremony, potentially stranding some passengers hoping to attend.

Among those affected was the prime minister. Keir Starmer was due to take the cross-Channel train to attend the opening ceremony but flew to Paris instead, according to a Downing Street spokesperson.

Eurostar said it would attempt to ensure passengers could reach their destinations, despite long diversions on to slower tracks. The rail operator said in a statement: “Due to coordinated acts of malice in France, affecting the high-speed line between Paris and Lille, all high-speed trains going to and coming from Paris are being diverted via the classic line today Friday 26 July.

“This extends the journey time by around an hour and a half. Eurostar expects this situation will last until Monday morning. Today, Eurostar will cancel 25% of its trains. It will also be the case on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28.

“Eurostar’s teams are fully mobilised in stations, in the call centres and onboard to ensure that all passengers are informed and can reach their destination. We encourage our customers to postpone their trip if possible.”

Passengers would be able to cancel or get a refund or change their journey free of charge, Eurostar said.

The disruption has left some passengers anxious about their chances of making the opening ceremony. Hadassa Goncalves, 24, who was due to travel via London from São Paulo, Brazil, told the PA news agency that her train would now not reach Paris Gare du Nord until nearly 5pm, adding: “We want to see the opening ceremony. This is bad for us. We don’t have tickets but we want to see the fireworks.”

Another Eurostar passenger, Kate Fisher, 37, from Louisiana, US, who was travelling to Paris with five friends to watch the Games, told PA: “We knew this is absolutely the worst time to go to Paris because of the Olympics so we’re prepared for it to take longer. When I saw the delay on the departure board, I was like: ‘whatever, as long as we’re there.’”

Most of Team GB’s athletes due in Paris for the opening ceremony had already arrived by Eurostar. The British Olympic Association said that only two athletes were scheduled to travel on Friday and had arrived with only minor delays.

The French state-owned railway company SNCF has also advised passengers to postpone journeys where possible.

Eurotunnel’s Le Shuttle service is unaffected.

France’s high-speed rail network has been hit by coordinated “malicious acts” including arson attacks that have brought major disruption to many of the country’s busiest rail lines hours before the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

Eurostar journeys are also affected, with eighteen Eurostar trains due to run between London and Paris, but an unknown number having been cancelled. Travellers from London to Paris face 90-minute delays and train cancellations on the day of the Olympic Games opening ceremony.

We’re interested to hear how people have been affected by the disruption, whether on the way to the Olympics in Paris or on other journeys or commutes.

The UK has dropped its opposition to an international arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, removing a key hurdle to one being issued and underlining the tougher stance being taken towards Israel by the new Labour government.

Downing Street confirmed on Friday that the government would not submit a challenge to the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, whose chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking a warrant against the Israeli prime minister.

The move, first reported by the Guardian, makes it more likely that the ICC will grant Khan’s request, in what would be a stunning international rebuke for Israel over the way it has conducted the war in Gaza and put Netanyahu at risk of arrest if he travels abroad.

The prime minister Keir Starmer’s deputy official spokesperson said: “On the submission, this was a proposal by the previous government that was not submitted before the election. I can confirm the government will not be pursuing that in line with our longstanding position that this is a matter for the court to decide on.”

She added: “The government feels very strongly about the rule of law internationally and domestically, and the separation of powers, and I would note the courts have already received a number of submissions on either side and they are well seized of the arguments to make their determination.”

She would not be drawn on whether the Labour government had a view on whether a warrant should be issued for Netanyahu’s arrest, saying it was a matter for the courts.

Khan announced in May he was applying for warrants against Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes committed during the country’s attack on Gaza. He is also pushing for ones against senior Hamas leaders including Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas chief in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, the commander of its military wing.

The former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak criticised Khan’s decision in May and then a month later his government notified the ICC it would lodge a legal challenge to the idea that the court has jurisdiction over Israeli citizens.

Israel and the US, neither of which is a signatory to the ICC, had put pressure on the UK to maintain its objection, warning that dropping it could upset peace negotiations being brokered by Washington.

However, senior Labour figures have long insisted they would respect the independence of the court. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, told the Commons in May: “Labour’s position is that the ICC chief prosecutor’s decision to apply for arrest warrants is an independent matter for the court and the prosecutor.”

The government’s decision does not necessarily mean Khan’s request will now be granted.

Dozens of other groups and countries have told the court they want to make submissions, from a pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian perspective. They include Germany, which has raised concerns that Khan’s case should not be heard while the conflict in Gaza is still raging.

The UK’s new position indicates it will be a stronger critic of Israel under the Labour government.

Last week Lammy announced the UK would join other countries in restoring funding to the Palestinian relief agency Unrwa, overturning the previous government’s suspension.

The foreign secretary is also preparing to announce a partial ban on the sale of weapons to Israel, sources have told the Guardian.

One source said Lammy was preparing to ban the sale of “offensive” weapons, but not “defensive” ones that could be used to defend Israel from attacks from abroad.

The foreign secretary told the Commons last week: “It would not be right to have a blanket ban between our countries and Israel. What is right is for me to consider in the normal way the issues in relation to offensive weapons in Gaza, following the quasi-judicial process that I have outlined.”

Members of Israel’s rightwing government have hit back at Kamala Harris over her demands for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after she met Benjamin Netanyahu during his US visit.

After a brief meeting with the Israeli prime minister, which Harris described as “frank and constructive”, the US vice-president and presidential candidate said it was “time for this war to end, and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination”.

An unnamed Israeli official accused Harris of endangering a potential deal to free Israeli and dual-national hostages in Gaza. “Hopefully the remarks Harris made in her press conference won’t be interpreted by Hamas as daylight between the US and Israel, thereby making a deal harder to secure,” the Israeli media reported the official as saying.

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who this week endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy, immediately joined the fray, tweeting: “There will be no truce, Madam Candidate.”

Ben-Gvir previously tweeted in support of Netanyahu’s fiery speech to Congress this week, where the prime minister avoided mention of a ceasefire, lashed out at the international criminal court and claimed “victory is in sight”.

Netanyahu’s visit, his first abroad since the 7 October attacks by Hamas and other militants that killed 1,200 people and 250 people were taken hostage, has been polarising in Washington and at home since his ministerial jet left the runway in Tel Aviv.

While his supporters lauded his speech to Congress, in particular his attacks on Iran, a growing chorus of critics as well as many of the hostages’ families expressed disappointment that Netanyahu had failed to declare a ceasefire and hostage deal while in Washington and also further delayed dispatching Israeli negotiators, due in Doha earlier this week.

Netanyahu is expected to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence on Friday, amid speculation in the Israeli media that he will remain in Florida to celebrate the birthday of his son Yair, who lives in Miami.

Xavier Abu Eid, a Palestinian political analyst, said Netanyahu’s speech only deepened animosity towards him. “I don’t think anyone believed a word of what Netanyahu said … he didn’t speak about policy, it was just a combination of slogans. It was insulting not only to the Palestinian victims of this war, but to American citizens demonstrating for Palestinian rights,” he said.

Yair Lapid, a former Israeli foreign minister, also criticised Netanyahu’s speech. “We heard Netanyahu talking about October 7 as if he had no idea who was the prime minister and who was responsible for the disaster,” he said on X. “Netanyahu had the opportunity to announce that he accepts the deal and returns the kidnapped before they all die in the tunnels. He didn’t do it.”

Families and supporters of some of the 114 hostages still held in Gaza expressed outrage at the lack of a ceasefire declaration.

Israel’s Hostages Families Forum demanded an urgent meeting with hostage negotiators, calling the delays in sending Israeli mediators to Doha “deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back”.

The group demanded that the Mossad, the intelligence agency in charge of negotiations, “provide an honest report to the Israeli public about who is obstructing the deal and why”.

Speaking at a rally in Tel Aviv this the week, the father of one hostage, Liri Elbag, addressed the prime minister. “Everyone knows the story with Mr Netanyahu … except for one thing, when there will be a deal … Even your negotiation team doesn’t know,” he said.

Einav Zanguaker, the mother of another hostage, Matan Zangauker, described Netanyahu’s visit to the US as a “public relations campaign”.

“Instead of declaring in Congress that he accepts the deal on the table, Netanyahu is preventing the implementation of the deal for personal reasons,” she told Haaretz.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator, said the families of the hostages were divided, with some backing a deal and others agreeing with Netanyahu’s approach that military pressure was the only way to force an agreement from Hamas.

“This reflects the split in Israel between the Netanyahu echo chamber and what is outside of it, which now includes most of the military leadership – who, unlike Bibi, want a deal,” he said.

The “true purpose” of Netanyahu’s visit, Levy said, was to assess whether the Biden-Harris administration would continue to blame Hamas if talks failed, despite indications that Harris would strike a different tone on the war in Gaza.

Trump, before his meeting with Netanyahu, also demanded an immediate ceasefire, although his remarks drew no response from Netanyahu’s rightwing backers.

The former president told Fox News he wanted Netanyahu to “finish up and get it done quickly … because they are getting decimated with this publicity”. He claimed the 7 October attacks would not have happened under his presidency, adding: “Israel is not very good at public relations.”

Abu Eid said: “It’s clear for Netanyahu and those around him that they would prefer a Trump presidency, not even Republican, but Trump. But what kind of answers he will get when they meet are unclear.”

Barack Obama has endorsed Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for US president, meaning the vice-president has now won the backing of all the party’s politically active high-profile figures for her White House bid.

The former president had conspicuously withheld his endorsement in the immediate aftermath of Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the campaign, and was initially believed to favour an open nominating contest at next month’s Democratic national convention in Chicago.

But after Harris earned the backing of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, a host of state governors and the most senior Democrats in Congress – as well as Biden himself – Obama has added his voice in what amounts to a major boost for the vice-president.

The 44th president was joined by wife Michelle, the former first lady, in a phone call with Harris that was filmed and released by her campaign on Friday. In the video, Harris is seen listening to the Obamas on an iPhone in her right hand.

“I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl Kamala: I am proud of you,” Michelle Obama says. “This is going to be historic.”

Barack Obama weighs in: “We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office.”

Smiling, standing near a vehicle, Harris replies: “Oh my goodness. Michelle, Barack, this means so much to me, I am looking forward to doing this with the two of you, Doug and I both. And getting out there, being on the road.”

She adds: “But most of all, I just wanna tell you that the words you have spoken and the friendship that you have given over all these years mean more than I can express. So thank you both! It means so much. And, and we’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?”

The endorsement comes as the Harris campaign, which has made a flying start, launches a “weekend of action” marking 100 days until the election with more than 170,000 volunteers and 2,300 events across battleground states.

Obama was the first Black US president and is endorsing a candidate who, if she wins against Donald Trump in November, will become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of south Asian descent to serve as president.

Harris has narrowed the gap with Trump in opinion polls, trailing him 48% to 47% among likely voters in a New York Times/ Siena College survey. Trump was leading Biden by six percentage points in this poll after their debate.

A German man sentenced to death in Belarus has appeared on state television in the country, in tears and begging the German government to intervene in his case.

“Mr Scholz, please, I am still alive … it is not yet too late,” said Rico Krieger, who was pictured handcuffed inside a cell, appealing to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

Authorities in Belarus, a dictatorial state where torture and politicised trials are rife, claim that Krieger, 30, travelled to the country last autumn on the orders of Ukrainian intelligence, with the goal of carrying out a terrorist attack on a railway line.

“This was the biggest mistake of my life. I admit my guilt, without a doubt,” said Krieger in a section of the interview where the original German was audible below a Russian-language voiceover translation. At several moments during the 17-minute television programme he broke down crying.

The KGB, as the Belarusian secret service is still known, has a record of falsifying evidence and extracting confessions under torture, casting doubt on the reliability of the claims made in the programme. No supporting evidence for Krieger’s supposed crimes was provided.

According to a LinkedIn profile, Krieger previously worked as a medical worker for the German Red Cross and as a security officer at the US embassy in Berlin. The German Red Cross confirmed he had worked there, and the German daily newspaper Tagesspiegel on Friday quoted a former colleague from the organisation saying Krieger had told them he had been recruited to travel to Ukraine. “We all assumed that he was going as a medic,” said the colleague.

Krieger said he had been motivated to work for Ukraine after reading about Russia’s war in the country on the news, and that his curators gave him a task to carry out in Belarus before he was due to travel to Ukraine. The programme claimed he took several photographs of sensitive locations and then planted a rucksack with explosives next to a railway track. The subsequent detonation did not hurt anyone, it was claimed.

Belarus is the only European country that retains capital punishment. Sentences are carried out by a single bullet to the back of the head; the remains are buried secretly in an unmarked grave.

It is possible that Belarus, a close ally of Russia, hopes to include Krieger in a prisoner exchange between Russia and the west that has been mooted for some months. The televised confession appeared to be designed to put pressure on the German government.

“Time is against me. At any moment they could carry out the sentence. Every second I regret what I did,” said Krieger, adding that he did not know why the German government was not making greater effort to intervene in his case.

Russia has jailed a number of US citizens, including the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, and President Vladimir Putin has signalled he is interested in a deal whereby Russian spies and assassins jailed abroad were returned to Moscow in exchange for western prisoners in Russia. However, Russia holds no high-profile German prisoners, and Putin has hinted that his prime target in an exchange is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who shot dead a Chechen exile in a Berlin park in 2019.

German officials have not commented on the swap rumours, but the German foreign ministry said earlier they were providing consular assistance to Krieger and “working intensively with Belarusian authorities on his behalf”.

On Friday, the German government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said Scholz was aware of the case. “Like the entire government, [he] is worried about these events, especially in connection with the death sentence,” she said at a press conference in Berlin.

Hasan still has the metal pellets Bangladesh police fired at him lodged deep in his bones. Fearful he will join the growing ranks of those thrown behind bars by the state for participating in protests that have swept Bangladesh this month, Hasan has been in hiding for a week and described his state as one of “constant panic and trauma”.

“Whenever I hear the sound of a car or a motorbike, I think it might be the police coming for me,” he said.

When the 33-year-old telecommunications graduate joined the protests in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, at the beginning of July, they were a peaceful affair. Students across the country had mobilised to oppose the reintroduction of quotas for all government jobs, meaning 30% would go to descendants of those who fought in the 1971 war of independence.

While it was a decision made by the courts, it was seen by many as a thinly veiled political manoeuvre by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has a tight grip over the judiciary. The reintroduction of the quotas was widely considered to be a move to appease those in her Awami League – a party born out of Bangladesh’s independence fight – who are much more likely to benefit and ensure Hasina could fill the government with allies.

The move prompted widespread outrage on campuses as students already grappling with an economic downturn and high youth unemployment saw one of their few chances of landing a stable job being stolen from them, with thousands of civil service placements to be appointed through patronage rather than merit. But as more support for the protests grew, a violent, state-led crackdown began in response and campuses descended into bloody battlefields, leaving about 200 people dead and thousands injured.

The Guardian witnessed the Rapid Action Battalion, the elite unit of Bangladesh’s police forces, fire teargas from a helicopter on crowds below and army forces fire at protesters with what appeared to be light machine guns. Analysis of footage from protest scenes by Amnesty International confirmed the use of teargas and lethal firearms – including shotguns, assault rifles and grenade launchers – by police and paramilitary forces against the unarmed protesters. On Thursday, the UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, called on the government of Bangladesh to carry out an independent investigation into the “horrific violence”.

The strength of the state-led crackdown has galvanised many on the ground to see the protest movement as no longer an issue of quotas, which were scaled back by the court on Sunday, but a growing civilian-led movement to bring down Hasina, who has ruled with an increasingly tyrannical grip since 2009.

“This has become a mass movement against a dictator,” said Hasan, who would only give his middle name to protect his identity. “The prime minister has been ruling for 15 years and has spent so much time strengthening her grip over state mechanisms that she thinks she has become invincible. She has become a monster.”

Hasan was among those who witnessed government-backed student groups and armed riot police, who were given “shoot to kill orders”, use violence and deadly weapons against the peaceful protesters, stirring up some of the worst clashes in Bangladesh in more than a decade.

He was participating in a protest at a university in Dhaka last week when armed men from the pro-government student groups Chhatra League and Youth League and riot police officers violently descended. “They launched a combined attack on us,” he said. “We tried to defend ourselves with whatever we could find, but we were mostly unarmed. At one point, the police and the thugs sandwiched us on a road. We were in the middle of a street and they attacked from both sides. The police fired stun grenades, teargas, rubber bullets and pellets from shotguns.”

Hasan described how protesters around him began to fall to the ground as they were hit with rubber bullets and metal pellets fired directly at them. He was hit on his face, back and neck and had to be rushed to hospital and needs surgery to remove the pellets that penetrated his bones.

Faria, 23, an economics student at a public university in Bangladesh, witnessed similar scenes as she took part in a protest in Dhaka. She alleged she was set upon by groups of men from Chhatra League, who began beating her with sticks and pulling her hair. Riot police then began to fire teargas and she could hear gunshots.

Faria said: “There were loud bangs from sound grenades and our eyes burned from the teargas. We heard continuous rifle shots and we started to pull back and run towards safety.

“Suddenly, a guy fell in front of me, clutching his throat with blood gushing out. He was hit by some type of bullet and was in shock, unable to scream. I don’t know what happened to him after that. I still wake up to the nightmares of that scene.”

In statements this week, widely derided by protesters, Hasina said the violence was stirred up by political opposition and Islamist groups who were against Bangladesh as a nation and that she had deployed paramilitary and police forces to “protect” the students. More than 2,500 members of the political opposition party have been arrested.

The exiled Bangladeshi political analyst Mubashar Hasan said, however, that “violent crackdowns on dissent have been the key trademark of Sheikh Hasina’s government for over a decade”, including thousands of killings and hundreds of enforced disappearances, allegedly by state forces, and mass incarceration of her critics.

He said that amid the growing authoritarianism of Hasina’s rule, including the past three elections widely documented as rigged, a civilian “outburst” had been brewing. “These protests are a sign of the struggle between democracy and Hasina’s move towards complete totalitarianism. There has been a huge trust deficit between Hasina and the people for a while but this is the first time we’re seeing defiant calls for her to go on this scale.”

He added that while it was difficult to predict what the outcome would be, the mass mobilisation had left Hasina in a weakened position and was the greatest challenge to her rule since she took power in 2009. “The strength of the crackdown displayed her nervousness. We are seeing a breakdown of the climate of fear and it’s difficult to see how she will continue with business as usual.”

An uneasy calm descended on Bangladesh after the court ruling on Sunday scaled back the quotas to just 5%. Student leaders temporarily called off all demonstrations, saying they wanted no more bloodshed, and presented Hasina with a set of demands, including an apology and justice for those killed in the violence.

But the ultimatum expired on Thursday night with no response from Hasina. Student activists said further action was planned but was hindered because many of the organisers were in hospital or had been detained by police, with some alleging torture. Others confirmed they had been put under de facto house arrest, with all forms of communication cut off, and under constant surveillance from a counter-terrorism police unit notorious for being involved in enforced disappearances.

Bangladesh, meanwhile, remains under an indefinite curfew, causing devastation to livelihoods. “The protest is not finished yet,” said Hasan the protester. “The government may think it has won, but they haven’t. It’s in a resting phase and it will only come back stronger. The prime minister is getting weaker day by day. Next time, a curfew or even the army won’t be able to suppress the people.”

Hasan still has the metal pellets Bangladesh police fired at him lodged deep in his bones. Fearful he will join the growing ranks of those thrown behind bars by the state for participating in protests that have swept Bangladesh this month, Hasan has been in hiding for a week and described his state as one of “constant panic and trauma”.

“Whenever I hear the sound of a car or a motorbike, I think it might be the police coming for me,” he said.

When the 33-year-old telecommunications graduate joined the protests in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, at the beginning of July, they were a peaceful affair. Students across the country had mobilised to oppose the reintroduction of quotas for all government jobs, meaning 30% would go to descendants of those who fought in the 1971 war of independence.

While it was a decision made by the courts, it was seen by many as a thinly veiled political manoeuvre by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has a tight grip over the judiciary. The reintroduction of the quotas was widely considered to be a move to appease those in her Awami League – a party born out of Bangladesh’s independence fight – who are much more likely to benefit and ensure Hasina could fill the government with allies.

The move prompted widespread outrage on campuses as students already grappling with an economic downturn and high youth unemployment saw one of their few chances of landing a stable job being stolen from them, with thousands of civil service placements to be appointed through patronage rather than merit. But as more support for the protests grew, a violent, state-led crackdown began in response and campuses descended into bloody battlefields, leaving about 200 people dead and thousands injured.

The Guardian witnessed the Rapid Action Battalion, the elite unit of Bangladesh’s police forces, fire teargas from a helicopter on crowds below and army forces fire at protesters with what appeared to be light machine guns. Analysis of footage from protest scenes by Amnesty International confirmed the use of teargas and lethal firearms – including shotguns, assault rifles and grenade launchers – by police and paramilitary forces against the unarmed protesters. On Thursday, the UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, called on the government of Bangladesh to carry out an independent investigation into the “horrific violence”.

The strength of the state-led crackdown has galvanised many on the ground to see the protest movement as no longer an issue of quotas, which were scaled back by the court on Sunday, but a growing civilian-led movement to bring down Hasina, who has ruled with an increasingly tyrannical grip since 2009.

“This has become a mass movement against a dictator,” said Hasan, who would only give his middle name to protect his identity. “The prime minister has been ruling for 15 years and has spent so much time strengthening her grip over state mechanisms that she thinks she has become invincible. She has become a monster.”

Hasan was among those who witnessed government-backed student groups and armed riot police, who were given “shoot to kill orders”, use violence and deadly weapons against the peaceful protesters, stirring up some of the worst clashes in Bangladesh in more than a decade.

He was participating in a protest at a university in Dhaka last week when armed men from the pro-government student groups Chhatra League and Youth League and riot police officers violently descended. “They launched a combined attack on us,” he said. “We tried to defend ourselves with whatever we could find, but we were mostly unarmed. At one point, the police and the thugs sandwiched us on a road. We were in the middle of a street and they attacked from both sides. The police fired stun grenades, teargas, rubber bullets and pellets from shotguns.”

Hasan described how protesters around him began to fall to the ground as they were hit with rubber bullets and metal pellets fired directly at them. He was hit on his face, back and neck and had to be rushed to hospital and needs surgery to remove the pellets that penetrated his bones.

Faria, 23, an economics student at a public university in Bangladesh, witnessed similar scenes as she took part in a protest in Dhaka. She alleged she was set upon by groups of men from Chhatra League, who began beating her with sticks and pulling her hair. Riot police then began to fire teargas and she could hear gunshots.

Faria said: “There were loud bangs from sound grenades and our eyes burned from the teargas. We heard continuous rifle shots and we started to pull back and run towards safety.

“Suddenly, a guy fell in front of me, clutching his throat with blood gushing out. He was hit by some type of bullet and was in shock, unable to scream. I don’t know what happened to him after that. I still wake up to the nightmares of that scene.”

In statements this week, widely derided by protesters, Hasina said the violence was stirred up by political opposition and Islamist groups who were against Bangladesh as a nation and that she had deployed paramilitary and police forces to “protect” the students. More than 2,500 members of the political opposition party have been arrested.

The exiled Bangladeshi political analyst Mubashar Hasan said, however, that “violent crackdowns on dissent have been the key trademark of Sheikh Hasina’s government for over a decade”, including thousands of killings and hundreds of enforced disappearances, allegedly by state forces, and mass incarceration of her critics.

He said that amid the growing authoritarianism of Hasina’s rule, including the past three elections widely documented as rigged, a civilian “outburst” had been brewing. “These protests are a sign of the struggle between democracy and Hasina’s move towards complete totalitarianism. There has been a huge trust deficit between Hasina and the people for a while but this is the first time we’re seeing defiant calls for her to go on this scale.”

He added that while it was difficult to predict what the outcome would be, the mass mobilisation had left Hasina in a weakened position and was the greatest challenge to her rule since she took power in 2009. “The strength of the crackdown displayed her nervousness. We are seeing a breakdown of the climate of fear and it’s difficult to see how she will continue with business as usual.”

An uneasy calm descended on Bangladesh after the court ruling on Sunday scaled back the quotas to just 5%. Student leaders temporarily called off all demonstrations, saying they wanted no more bloodshed, and presented Hasina with a set of demands, including an apology and justice for those killed in the violence.

But the ultimatum expired on Thursday night with no response from Hasina. Student activists said further action was planned but was hindered because many of the organisers were in hospital or had been detained by police, with some alleging torture. Others confirmed they had been put under de facto house arrest, with all forms of communication cut off, and under constant surveillance from a counter-terrorism police unit notorious for being involved in enforced disappearances.

Bangladesh, meanwhile, remains under an indefinite curfew, causing devastation to livelihoods. “The protest is not finished yet,” said Hasan the protester. “The government may think it has won, but they haven’t. It’s in a resting phase and it will only come back stronger. The prime minister is getting weaker day by day. Next time, a curfew or even the army won’t be able to suppress the people.”

An alternative healer who promoted a “slapping therapy” taken up by millions of people across the world has been found guilty of the gross negligence manslaughter of a British woman who died at one of his workshops.

Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, who had type 1 diabetes, fell fatally ill in 2016 after she stopped taking her insulin and fasted during a paida lajin therapy retreat run by Hongchi Xiao at a country house in Wiltshire.

The prosecution claimed Xiao, 61, who is addressed as “master” by his followers, was in charge of the workshop and had a duty of care towards Carr-Gomm.

They said he was grossly negligent by failing to take reasonable steps to encourage her to take insulin and to summon medical help when it was clearly required. When she became seriously ill, crying in pain and weakening, Xiao blamed her decline on a “healing crisis”.

The prosecution said Xiao should have been fully aware of the danger Carr-Gomm was in because the year before a six-year-old boy with type 1 diabetes had died at a workshop he ran in Australia after Xiao had told his mother to stop giving him insulin. Xiao was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the boy’s death in 2019 and jailed.

During the trial at Winchester crown court, Xiao described how he had learned paida lajin from kung fu masters and hermits in the mountains of China and had spread the “forgotten” method to “millions” of people around the world.

Xiao, who was born in China, said he had quit a lucrative career in finance to focus on paida lajin and was not in it to make money. He said the technique, which involves slapping and stretching, was easy to learn, helped tackle every disease known to humans, and reduced the need for patients to take “western” medicine with “poisonous” side-effects.

Xiao said he was not a medical doctor and it was up to participants in his workshops to continue to take the conventional medication they needed. He said Carr-Gomm, from East Sussex, was stubborn and had chosen not to take her medicine or listen to his advice. He said: “I’m not her protector. I was only her teacher.”

Xiao said the deaths of the boy in Australia and Carr-Gomm had led to paida lajin being “demonised” and he suggested it had deliberately been discredited by “western doctors” and alternative practitioners because it put them out of work.

The trial heard that Carr-Gomm, who had a longstanding interest in alternative medicine, had been keen to reduce or stop her insulin injections and considered Xiao a “messenger sent by God” to bring about a revolution in medicine. Family and friends of Carr-Gomm said she had turned to alternative therapies because she was afraid of needles and was a vegetarian. They told the Guardian they were shocked to hear during the trial how much she had suffered.

Her ex-husband, Philip Carr-Gomm, a psychotherapist and writer, said: “None of us knew the suffering she went through at the end. I thought she had just gone to sleep and hadn’t woken up.”

He said their younger son had dropped her off at the workshop at Cleeve House in Wiltshire. “The next thing police were turning up at his flat to tell him what had happened.”

Philip Carr-Gomm said Xiao should have known the danger she was in, given the death of the boy in Australia. “You would think any sane, responsible person would be aware of that risk to start with, but if there was an awful situation like that, you wouldn’t repeat it.”

Xiao will be sentenced on 1 October.

A former senior Russian defence official has been arrested and charged with corruption in the latest high-profile incident in an ongoing purge within the country’s military top brass.

Dmitry Bulgakov, who was a deputy defence minister in charge of military logistics for almost 15 years until he was dismissed in September 2022, was detained by the FSB security service on Friday and placed in the notorious Lefortovo prison in Moscow.

He was widely blamed for the Russian army’s logistical failures during the early months of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, which left troops severely undersupplied and stalled Moscow’s advances.

Bulgakov, who is the recipient of several top military and civilian awards, including the Hero of Russia award, the country’s highest honour, was one of the longest-serving defence officials.

The purge began on 23 April with the shock arrest of Timur Ivanov, another veteran deputy defence minister. Then, in the span of several weeks, four other top defence officials were arrested on corruption charges, marking the most significant crackdown in the defence ministry in decades.

Vladimir Putin in the process also dismissed his longtime defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, replacing him with the technocrat economist Andrei Belousov,

The shake-up is largely seen by observers as an attempt by Putin to reduce corruption in the defence ministry and streamline military production for a long war against Ukraine that could largely be decided by industrial output.

The arrests also highlight the growing influence of the FSB, which is largely responsible for the recent developments.

Moscow has previously played down suggestions of a crackdown within the defence ministry. “The fight against corruption is consistent work,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters in May. “It is not a campaign, it is constantly ongoing work.”

Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president and the architect of Project 2025, the conservative thinktank’s road map for a second Trump presidency, has close ties and receives regular spiritual guidance from an Opus Dei-led center in Washington DC, a hub of activity for the radical and secretive Catholic group.

Roberts acknowledged in a speech last September that – for years – he has visited the Catholic Information Center, a K Street institution headed by an Opus Dei priest and incorporated by the archdiocese of Washington, on a weekly basis for mass and “formation”, or religious guidance. Opus Dei also organizes monthly retreats at the CIC.

In the speech – which he delivered at the CIC and was recorded and is available online – Roberts spoke candidly about his strategy for achieving extreme policy goals that he supports but are out of step with the views of a majority of Americans.

Outlawing birth control is the “hardest” political battle facing conservatives in the future, the 50-year-old political strategist said, but he urged conservatives to pursue even small legislative victories – what he called “radical incrementalism” – to advance their most rightwing policy objectives.

Roberts gained notoriety this year as the leading force behind Project 2025, a foundation plan backed by more than 100 conservative groups that seeks to radically upend a broad range of policies if Trump gets elected again, from limiting abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights and dismantling the Department of Education, to ending diversity programs and increasing government support for “fertility awareness” programs, like ovulation tracking and practicing periodic abstinence, instead of more reliable contraception.

But Roberts’ personal ties to Opus Dei and the significance of his affiliation, has received far less attention.

Gareth Gore, the author of a forthcoming book on Opus Dei, called the Catholic organization “a political project shrouded in a veil of spirituality”. The group’s founder, Saint Josemaría Escrivá, saw his followers as part of a “rising militia”, Gore said, who were seeking to “enter battle against the enemies of Christ”.

“Like Project 2025, Opus Dei at its core is a reactionary stand against the progressive drift of society,” Gore said. “For decades now, the organization has thrown its resources at penetrating Washington’s political and legal elite – and finally seems to have succeeded through its close association with men like Kevin Roberts and Leonard Leo.”

Leo is a conservative activist who has led the Republican mission to install the rightwing majority in the supreme court and finances many of the groups signed on to Project 2025.

Like Roberts, Leo also has links to the Opus Dei-linked CIC. In a 2022 speech accepting the CIC’s highest honor, the John Paul II New Evangelization award, Leo praised the center while also referring to his political opponents as “vile and amoral current day barbarians, secularists and bigots” who were under the influence of the devil.

Democrats, including Kamala Harris, have been sounding the alarm on Project 2025 to warn voters of what a second Trump administration could do.

“[Trump] and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. We know we have to take this thing seriously. And can you believe they put that thing in writing?” Harris said this week in her first presidential campaign rally, to laughter. “Read it. It’s 900 pages.”

Trump, for his part, has sought to distance himself from the project, though the people behind it have close ties to the former president, and the policies it envisions often align with Trump’s ideas. Roberts has said he is “good friends” with JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, and Vance has praised Project 2025 as having “some good ideas”. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, also wrote the foreword for Roberts’ forthcoming book, praising the author for articulating a “genuinely new future for conservatism”.

“We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” Vance wrote.

Opus Dei does not disclose the names of its members. The group’s roots date back to a century ago, when the group was established in Spain in response to a clash between conservative Catholics and anti-Catholic socialism and communism in Spain. Decades later, the group was granted special status by the conservative pope John Paul II, who supported Opus Dei and saw it as a response to the rise of liberation theology in Latin America, a progressive church movement.

Some of Opus Dei’s special rights were revoked in recent years by Pope Francis, who is seen as a more progressive pontiff.

One of the core tenets of Opus Dei is that it does not believe in the traditional separation of church and state. Instead, said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, it believes the two ought to have a symbiotic relationship.

“They are secretive, so while they are not [outwardly] part of this [Project 2025] per se, it is not surprising at all that some of their members are part of it. They see this moment in politics – and the possibility of allowing ‘woke ideology’ to win – as fundamentally changing the nature of America, western civilization and Christianity,” Faggioli said.

He added: “Opus Dei is part of [a movement of] US conservative and traditionalist Catholicism that holds a view that the United States is the last bastion of Christendom, so that if the United States goes a certain way, so goes Christianity, and Catholicism.”

Indeed Roberts made it clear earlier this month that he believes the US is at a crossroads, and “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”.

Asked whether it had a view on Roberts’ remarks or Project 2025, a spokesperson for Opus Dei told the Guardian in a statement: “Opus Dei is an institution of the Catholic Church that tries to help people come closer to God in their work and everyday lives. Opus Dei’s aims are purely spiritual and it does not endorse or have any opinion on any political project of any kind.”

Opus Dei is controversial not only in the US. Dozens of women from Argentina and Paraguay filed a complaint to the Vatican over labor exploitation and abuses of power they say they experienced after joining the group at sites in multiple countries. And reporting in Australia gave insight into schools run by Opus Dei, where former students allege their education left them with “psychological damage”.

Roberts’ personal background suggests his ties to Opus Dei are not just limited to the CIC. A school founded by Roberts in Louisiana, called John Paul the Great Academy, considers Opus Dei-founder Escrivá its “patron”.

Roberts was also involved in an Opus Dei-affiliated high school leadership program in Austin, Texas. A website that tracks Opus Dei men’s activities called Where You Are included a profile of the high school program in Austin where Roberts appears to volunteer and “contributes significantly “ to the school’s career and leadership program.

Roberts was featured as a guest at another Opus Dei-linked school, the Camino Schools, in 2023. In introductory remarks before Roberts spoke, the school’s chairman, Bob Rose, praised schools that teach boys and girls they are “different”, they learn differently and are inspired by different things, and where boys are taught by “manly men” who serve as role models.

Roberts’ critics said concerns about his ties to Opus Dei were not connected to his identity or beliefs as a Roman Catholic.

“Kevin Roberts, like all Americans, has a guaranteed freedom to worship or not under our constitution,” said Lisa Graves, co-founder of Court Accountability, a non-partisan group that seeks to combat judicial corruption.” That is not at issue. What is of concern is how some powerful elites, like Roberts, who have failed to persuade the American people to embrace their agenda, seem eager to use the power of the executive branch to impose their personal religious views as binding law on other Americans – by barring abortion, using the government to endorse the rhythm method of contraception, even banning mention of ‘condoms’ in women’s preventative health, as well as assailing the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.”

Heritage did not respond to a request for comment. The CIC did not respond to a request for comment.

During Roberts’ September 2023 speech, which received little notice at the time but is posted on the center’s YouTube page, Roberts detailed how conservative Catholics and their allies could advance US policy to end access to abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception.

Knowing the unpopularity of banning birth control – a harder political battle to wage than advancing anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage policies – he encouraged an incremental approach to pursuing this long-term goal.

“Even in a politically conservative setting, that can be a very difficult thing to advance,” Roberts told attendees at the CIC event. “A majority of Roman Catholics don’t believe in that teaching, if public opinion surveys are the case. And so it makes it very difficult to advocate for that.”

The faithful should practice the “gift of discernment” to know when to bring it up: “Sometimes the right thing at the right time to the right person isn’t the full teaching of humanity, right? It isn’t the full teaching of contraception. And recognizing that that’s not the time is no way turning into Judas. In fact, it’s being apostolic. And the very definition of the word, which is in modern common parlance, meeting someone where they are.”

In espousing his theory of “radical incrementalism”, or what he called the “enchilada theory”, he said it was critical for conservatives to work first to achieve a small part of a larger policy goal based on what’s politically possible at the moment. Sometimes, he said, having even half an enchilada could be a victory.

On abortion, he noted that Roman Catholics believe “no abortion can be morally justified”, but that even in conservative circles in the US, this is not a majority opinion, and it’s an “even more difficult position to hold” after the Dobbs decision. Using the “same vocabulary of our faith” in the policy arena has a negative effect on electoral outcomes, he said.

Roberts advised listeners not to accept the “narrative framing of the other side” on these issues. He said conservatives who are anti-abortion should stop talking about it the way the left wants them to and instead “talk about the fact that many of them want abortion to be legal until birth”.

Strategies of incrementalism and narrative framing don’t always apply, he added, because sometimes you just have to fight.

“Right now, we have to fight on religious liberty and, in particular, religious liberty as it relates to protecting institutions of faith,” he said. “And that’s not a time for strategic retreat. It’s not a time to be savvy, it’s not a time to be sweet. It’s not a time to develop friendships with the other side. It is a time to take our fist – figuratively, Father Charles – and bust them in the nose because they hate what you and I believe.”

Jailed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was moved to a New York hospital on Thursday with multiple ailments including Covid, his representatives said in a statement.

New York City Department of Correction records showed on Thursday that Weinstein, 72, was at the Bellevue hospital prison ward.

Weinstein, convicted on rape charges in New York and California, suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, fluid on his heart and lungs, and recently tested positive for Covid and had contracted pneumonia, said the statement issued by publicist Juda Engelmayer, citing Craig Rothfeld, Weinstein’s authorised representative and “prison consultant”.

Jurors in Manhattan found Weinstein guilty of rape charges in February 2020, but the New York court of appeals threw out the conviction in April, finding Weinstein did not get a fair trial because a judge improperly allowed testimony by accusers he was not formally charged with assaulting.

Weinstein, who has been hospitalised at Bellevue multiple times, has denied wrongdoing and has denied having non-consensual sexual encounters with anyone.

He could be retried on rape charges in Manhattan as soon as September. Weinstein’s lawyers said they want to proceed as soon as possible.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office have said they intend to charge Weinstein for “additional violent sexual assaults” after more women agreed to testify.

Weinstein’s conviction was a milestone for the #MeToo movement, in which women accused hundreds of men in entertainment, media, politics and other fields of sexual misconduct.

A jury found the Miramax film studio co-founder sexually assaulted former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and raped aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Weinstein was also sentenced to 16 years following a separate rape trial in California.

A spotty, vein-filled rock found by a Nasa rover on Mars contains features that suggest it may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago.

The arrowhead-shaped rock, named Cheyava Falls, was discovered by Nasa’s Perseverance rover on 21 July as it trundled along the northern edge of Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley carved by water flowing into the red planet’s Jezero crater.

Analysis of the 3ft by 2ft rock revealed signs of organic material, intriguing surface spots similar to those associated with fossilised microbes on Earth and evidence that water once passed through the rock, the agency said.

Ken Farley, the project scientist on the mission at the California Institute of Technology, said Cheyava Falls was “the most puzzling, complex and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance”, though the team make clear that non-biological processes may have given rise to the features.

“On the one hand, we have our first compelling detection of organic material, distinctive colourful spots indicative of chemical reactions that microbial life could use as an energy source, and clear evidence that water, necessary for life, once passed through the rock,” Farley said.

“On the other hand, we have been unable to determine exactly how the rock formed and to what extent nearby rocks may have heated Cheyava Falls and contributed to these features.”

In the ancient past, Mars was a warmer, wetter planet. If life ever evolved there, researchers believe traces should remain within its rocks, in the form of organic material and potentially fossilised remnants.

Scans of the Cheyava Falls rock by Perseverance’s Sherloc instrument suggest it contains organic compounds. Such carbon-based molecules are regarded as the building blocks of life, but can also be produced by non-biological processes.

Large white veins of calcium phosphate run along the rock. Between them are bands of reddish material, likely haematite, one of the iron oxide compounds that gives Mars its rusty colour. Closer inspection of the bands revealed dozens of little leopard spot-like features. Each of the off-white spots is surrounded by a black ring containing iron and phosphate.

David Flannery, an astrobiologist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia and a member of the mission, called the spots “a big surprise”, because on Earth similar features “are often associated with the fossilised record of microbes”.

White spots can form on rocks through chemical reactions involving haematite, producing iron and phosphate, as well as energy that microbes could live on. While the features are intriguing, nothing seen yet appears to be an actual fossilised microbe.

Researchers are desperate to get their hands on samples for more thorough investigation, but Nasa’s plans to return the Mars rocks to Earth have run into difficulties.

The agency’s Mars sample return mission is over budget at $11bn (£8.5bn) and badly delayed with no prospect of bringing rocks back before 2040. Nasa is looking for companies to return Mars samples sooner and at lower cost.

“This is what Mars Sample Return is all about. We have never seen anything like this from Mars before, not in our Martian meteorite collections, not with Mars Science Laboratory or other landers,” said Prof John Bridges, a participating scientist on Nasa’s Mars Science Laboratory mission at the University of Leicester.

“The reality is we need to get these samples back on Earth to do the detailed electron microscopy and isotope analyses to check if these formed with ancient microbial action or abiotically,” Bridges said.

Prof Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist at the University of Edinburgh, said: “Although these features don’t provide unambiguous evidence of life, they do confirm that Mars was a very dynamic planet with all the ingredients for life, including organic carbon.

“We need to bring back samples, or in my view, even better, send humans, to find if we are seeing the signatures of life.”

Prof Monica Grady, a planetary and space scientist at The Open University, said: “This is a really amazing-looking rock. It makes my mouth water just to look at it. The combination of different types of minerals arranged the way they are reminds me of some of the textures found in ancient terrestrial rocks, where tracks of burrowing worms are preserved. Obviously, I’m not saying that there were burrowing worms on Mars – but I can’t wait to see what else Perseverance uncovers in this part of its exploration.”