Donald Trump has ignited alarm among his critics after telling a crowd of supporters that they won’t “have to vote again” if they return him to the presidency in November’s election.

“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it any more,” the Republican former president said on Friday night at a rally hosted in West Palm Beach, Florida, by the far-right advocacy group Turning Point Action.

“You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”

At that point, with a slight shake of his head and his right hand pressed against the left side of his chest, Trump said, “I’m not Christian.” But he added: “I love you. Get out – you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”

Trump’s remarks were immediately met with consternation in some political quarters.

The constitutional and civil rights attorney Andrew Seidel, for instance, replied to video of Trump’s comments circulating on X by writing: “This is not subtle Christian nationalism. He’s talking about ending our democracy and installing a Christian nation.”

Actor Morgan Fairchild added in a separate X post: “But … what if I want to vote again?? I was always raised that we get to vote again! That is America.” And NBC legal commentator Katie Phang said: “In other words, Trump won’t ever leave the White House if he gets re-elected.”

Trump’s comments on Friday came months after he remarked that he would be “a dictator on day one” if given a second four-year term in the White House. He has repeatedly made known his admiration for authoritarian leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. And a former White House aide reported that Trump once said Adolf Hitler – whose Nazi regime murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust amid the second world war – “did some good things”.

Meanwhile, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has detailed plans to aim retribution at Trump’s actual and perceived enemies – whether politicians or bureaucrats – should he be re-elected.

Experts on authoritarianism warn the public to take Trump seriously when he speaks in that manner. And before Joe Biden halted his re-election campaign on 21 July and endorsed Kamala Harris to succeed him in the Oval Office, the Democratic president repeatedly sought to portray Trump as an existential threat to American democracy.

Trump’s supporters have tried to blame that rhetoric for the failed 13 July assassination attempt that targeted the former president at a political rally in Pennsylvania. The FBI said on Friday that a bullet – whether whole or fragmented – hit Trump in one of his ears during that day’s shooting, which also killed a rally-goer and wounded two other spectators before a Secret Service sniper shot the gunman to death.

Yet many pointed out how Trump’s remarks on Friday seemed to be an indication that the Republican nominee for president had no plans to stop making explicit threats against democratic norms, including elections themselves.

“Oh. Trump just cancelled the 2028 election,” liberal political commentator Keith Olbermann wrote on X in a post containing a video clip of the ex-president’s remarks on Friday.

Caty Payette, the communications director for Democratic US senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, added in a separate X post: “When we say Trump is a threat to democracy, this is exactly what we’re talking about.”

Trump easily clinched the Republican nomination for November’s election despite having been convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the New York state prosecution involving $130,000 paid to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. He has also been grappling with charges of illicitly trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden – efforts that were buoyed on 1 July when a US supreme court with three Trump appointees ruled that he enjoys immunity from being prosecuted for any acts deemed official.

And, among other legal issues, he has faced multimillion-dollar civil penalties for fraud and a rape allegation that a judge determined to be substantially true.

A poll released on Friday by the Republican-friendly Fox News network showed Trump in a tight race with vice-president Harris in key swing states that could decide November’s election. Before Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential election, polls generally showed Trump had built relatively comfortable leads in a number of key swing states.

He was supposed to be his master’s mini-me, his elevation as Republican vice-presidential nominee hailed as a virile celebration of Donald Trump’s near-total conquest of the GOP.

Now – days after receiving a rapturous response at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee – JD Vance is being lamented within party circles as a potentially fatal liability in Trump’s quest to recapture the White House.

Affirming the maxim – coined by the late British Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson – that a week is a long time in politics, Vance’s poll ratings have been dragged to record lows by a combination of his own past statements resurfacing on social media and embarrassingly awkward performances on the campaign trail.

The danger that Vance’s baggage will drag Trump down with him may already be giving the former president buyer’s remorse, commentators believe.

Far from being a yin-and-yang pick chosen to counter-balance the senior candidate’s weaknesses, Vance – the first-term senator for Ohio, a state already firmly in the Republican camp – was selected because he faithfully reflected the ideological gut instincts of Trump, despite having previously called him “America’s Hitler” and “cultural opioid”.

But there is ample reason to believe the choice was driven by a euphoric belief on Trump’s part that November’s election against an ageing, ailing and unpopular Joe Biden would be a shoo-in.

With Biden’s withdrawal – and almost certain replacement as Democratic nominee by the vice-president Kamala Harris – a very different electoral landscape looms. And Vance, with his hardline anti-abortion stance and sneering contempt for childless women, may be entirely the wrong partner to help Trump traverse it.

“Most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second-guessing of JD Vance – a selection, they acknowledged, that was borne of cockiness, meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter,” wrote Tim Alberta, a journalist with the Atlantic who has covered the Trump campaign, the day after Biden’s withdrawal last Sunday.  

Putting Vance on the ticket defies the basic laws of vice-presidential picks, experienced pollsters say.

“The first rule of choosing a running mate is to do no harm, because there’s very little gain that you will get from a running mate, but there’s a lot of harm that can be done,” said Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute at Monmouth University. “In effect, the JD Vance pick may be shaping up to possibly be that kind of harmful pick.

“He helps to focus much more on the negative aspects of Trump that turned voters off.

“One of the things that gets overstated by journalists is the appeal of a running mate to a bloc of voters – that you think, for example, of the JD Vance idea that he’s going to appeal to white working class voters outside of his home state of Ohio. That never happens … because voters are looking at the top of the ticket for that kind of message. What it does say is what kind of balance you’re going to bring to your office, what kind of strengths you’re looking for.”

What those might be have been scrutinised by a nascent Harris campaign eager to turn the spotlight on the very issues Trump wants to neutralise – namely abortion and women’s rights, and the threat to general freedoms believed to be represented by Project 2025, a radical blueprint drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing thinktank.

Exhibit A on Vance is a 2021 interview with then Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which he derided women without children as “childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives” – a designation he accorded to Harris and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary. Their supposedly childless status means they have a lesser stake in America’s wellbeing, he added.

In fact, Harris is mother to two stepchildren, while Buttigieg, who is gay and married, has two adopted children.

Critics say the comments betray a retrograde misogyny and a zealous intent to pursue an abortion ban, which Vance and other rightwing Republicans favour, despite Trump’s insistence that it should be left to the states.

Perhaps equally significant for the celebrity-sensitive Trump is a rare political rebuke the comments drew from the actor Jennifer Aniston, who is childless but has publicised her unsuccessful attempts to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), a procedure Vance opposed in a recent senate vote.

Also inconvenient for Trump is Vance’s link to Project 2025, the controversial conservative governing model the former president has lately tried to disavow as he seeks to build electoral support. That attempt has been undermined by Vance having written a foreword for an upcoming book by the project’s author, Kevin Roberts.

On the campaign trail, the Yale-educated Vance – despite being heralded, partly thanks to his acclaimed 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, for a supposedly umbilical connection to white working-classes voters – has proven to be no rabble-rousing orator of the Trump school.

An incident at a rally in Ohio last Sunday resembled an excruciating study in social gaucheness, when Vance suggested Democrats might think drinking Diet Mountain Dew, a popular soft beverage, was racist, before laughing at his own lame joke; as the audience remained largely silent, Vance laughed awkwardly, saying: “I love you guys.”

In another sign that his assent to running-mate status is going less than smoothly, Vance has been beset by bizarre rumours that he once had sex with a couch in his youth, an outlandish suggestion that even prompted an Associated Press fact check.

The unverified claim may pale in comparison with evidence – accepted as fact in court – that Trump had sex with an adult porn actor, leading to his conviction on 34 felony charges of document falsification to cover up hush-money payments. But its very presence illustrates and adds to the difficulty Vance is having gaining traction as a positive addition to the Republican ticket.

Exposure to the spotlight seems to be damaging Vance’s poll ratings.

“JD Vance is making history as the least liked VP nominee (non-incumbent) since 1980 following his/her party’s convention,” posted CNN polling expert, Harry Enten, noting that the candidate had recorded a favourability rating of minus six within a week of his nomination.

Vance’s tanking numbers were no real surprise, Enten told the network. “There’s this idea, that JD Vance is going to help out in Ohio, those Rust Belt battleground states,” he said. “He was the worse performing candidate among Republicans in 2022 up and down the ballot in of Ohio. He adds nothing there … JD Vance makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective.”

A reckoning may come whenever Trump, facing a resurgent Democrat opposition, reaches the same conclusion.

On Monday night, more than 53,000 Black men joined a virtual conference, Win With Black Men, to rally behind the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. During the four-hour call, organizers said the group raised more than $1.3m for the Harris campaign and grassroots voter organizations focused on Black men.

The success of the call, which was inspired by the Win With Black Women call the night before, runs counter to the narrative shaped by recent election polling indicating that 30% of Black men are planning on voting for Donald Trump. “Don’t let anybody slow us down asking the question: ‘Can a Black woman be elected president of the United States?’” Raphael Warnock, who represents Georgia in the US Senate, said on the call. “Kamala Harris can win. We just have to show up. History is watching us, and the future is waiting on us.”

Black voters have consistently been a key voting bloc for Democrats, but experts say inaccurate polling about Black men in particular could be creating false narratives about their leanings this election cycle, mainly the idea that there is a mass shift of Black voters to the Republican party. Win With Black Men, which was hosted by the journalist Roland Martin, said it’s working to dispel stereotypical notions about changes in Black male voting habits, their refusal to support a woman candidate and their unwillingness to mobilize politically.

“People are making a lot of conjectures without actually talking to a large enough sample of Black people to be able to say things with the precision that they’re making it,” Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, said. “You’re not going to be able to detect what is likely to be no more [than] a one- to three-point swing in favor of Donald Trump based on changes in surveys where you’re talking to 200 Black people at a time. I can’t say with any statistical certainty that that three-point shift is real or not.”

Unrepresentative polls can also have an adverse effect on voter habits. People tend to vote if they perceive that an election is close, Gillespie said. So polls that suggest that Trump is going to win easily and that even Black people will vote in droves for him may distort people’s understanding of reality. Ensuring that the public is aware of potential polling inaccuracies is key.

“These narratives are also used to kind of confuse Black voters themselves, which can in turn depress Black vote and drive down turnout,” said Christopher Towler, founder of the Black Voter Project (BVP), a national polling initiative. “It can be used as a mechanism of voter deterrence, knowing that Black voters will play a key role in this election.”

Though Gillespie said it will take a few days for new polling that specifically examines how Harris is performing with Black voters, recent mobilization around Harris suggests that narratives about a would-be exodus of this bloc from the Democratic party might have been premature.

The problem comes down to sample size. In surveys of 1,000 to 1,500 voters, sub-sample sizes of Black voters may be anywhere from 150 to 300. In some cases, all people of color are amalgamated into one demographic group. Surveys with such a small sample size create large margins of error.

“The issue is the level of precision with which we can make certain types of pronouncements when you’re talking to that few people,” Gillespie said. “The number that comes out in the survey is the midpoint of a range of possible numbers that we think is in the real population because of statistical analysis.”

If the sub-sample size is less than 100, she said, the margin of error is plus or minus 10. So if a survey says that 20% of Black voters are going for Trump, the real number based on the sub-sample is between 10% and 30%.

Towler, of the Black Voter Project, said that he began noticing the issue of unrepresentative polling years ago. He started BVP to “counteract the industry standard of taping on a couple hundred Black responses to a general survey” and using that small sample size as a full picture.

“It’s really unscientific,” Towler said. “So I’ve worked for years now to try and create data that is reliable, accurate and actually representative of the Black community.”

This year, BVP released a large, multiwave, national public opinion survey focused on collecting representative data of Black Americans. Fielded from 29 March to 18 April, with 2,004 Black Americans interviewed, the survey collected a nationally representative sample of respondents from all 50 states. The BVP study found that 15% of respondents would vote for Trump if the election had been held at the time of the survey, a figure much lower than reported by other polls with smaller sample sizes. A survey on the BVP scale is important to garner an idea of what the Black population and Black voting population of the US actually looks like, Gillespie said.

But mainstream beltway polling companies typically lack Black leadership, so accurate polling of Black communities is not a priority, said Towler. What’s more, some pollsters do not see the value in spending more money to survey a population that they estimate will already vote staunchly Democratic.

Black and brown communities exist on the margins in American politics, said Emmitt Riley, president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Mainstream political scientists’ biases result in pollsters who are not adequately capturing the political behaviors and views of excluded groups.

“Many people who study race aren’t considered to be mainstream political scholars,” he said. “This has profound consequences for the kind of reporting that’s happening, the kind of news stories that are coming out, how you describe what’s happening in these communities.”

Towler said that pollsters should create surveys that are culturally competent and that ask questions in ways that don’t manufacture misleading opinions. “It’s important when looking at polling of Black people to, one, not only make sure you have polls designed to accurately measure Black opinion, but to also have pollsters who study and understand the Black community,” he said.

While polls continue to try to parse out where Black men will place their political support, groups like Win With Black Men and Black Men for Harris are making their loyalties clear.

“Let’s protect Kamala. Let’s be with her like she was there for us,” Bakari Sellers, the former South Carolina representative, said on the call. “We are going to disagree a lot. But let’s put the petty bickering aside. Let’s stand up and be the Black men who change this country. We built this country. I’m rocking with Kamala.”

A wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting central and southern Gaza have killed at least 50 people and injured an estimated 200, with one strike hitting a school where thousands were seeking shelter.

Palestinian health ministry officials said at least 30 people were killed in an airstrike on the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

Wounded people poured into the nearby Aqsa hospital, while images from Deir al-Balah showed families carrying injured children for treatment.

The Associated Press reported that people searched the ruined classrooms for remains.

It said that close to the hospital where those killed in the strike were taken, its reporters witnessed people fleeing as an ambulance drove in the opposite direction. Inside the ambulance, it said, lay a dead toddler as well as another body shrouded in a blanket.

Israeli forces also conducted strikes outside Gaza, including a drone strike on the Balata refugee camp near Nablus in the West Bank, killing one, after an Israeli soldier was wounded at a nearby checkpoint.

Israeli airstrikes on the southern Lebanese town of Kafr Kila reportedly killed four people, as militants in Lebanon responded with a barrage of rocket fire into Israeli territory.

Mediators from the Israeli intelligence service are expected to hold talks on Sunday in Rome with the head of the CIA, members of the Egyptian intelligence services and Qatari officials in an effort to spur a deal to return Israeli hostages held in Gaza as well as agree a ceasefire. Militants in Lebanon and Yemen have said they will halt their attacks if a ceasefire deal on Gaza is put in place.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they targeted the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah in Gaza because the area was used as a “command and control complex” by Hamas militants.

They said “many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians”, including using precision weapons and intelligence. Tens of thousands of civilians have sought shelter in Deir al-Balah for months, crowding into every available piece of space after many were displaced several times from other parts of Gaza.

The strike in Deir al-Balah was accompanied by further strikes on Khan Younis, after a week of deadly fighting in Gaza’s second city. Strikes in Khan Younis killed at least 23 people and wounded 89, according to Palestinian health officials, as civilians were forcibly displaced from the city for the fourth day.

The IDF said a map demonstrating areas where civilians should seek shelter would be “adjusted” owing to the dangers associated with rockets fired towards Israeli territory as Hamas militants were present in a designated humanitarian area.

The IDF called on Palestinians in the south of Khan Younis to “temporarily evacuate” to a shrinking humanitarian zone in the coastal area of al-Mawasi, to where hundreds of thousands have fled in recent months after fighting in the southern city of Rafah as well as a renewed Israeli assault on Khan Younis.

“The early warning to civilians is being made in order to mitigate harm to the civilian population and keep civilians away from areas of combat,” it said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, estimates that more than 80% of the Gaza Strip “has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as a no-go zone”, while many seeking shelter there describe being displaced upwards of five times. Israeli airstrikes have also targeted areas previously designated as safe.

The UN’s office for humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said earlier this week that evacuation orders in Khan Younis had been “issued in the context of ongoing attacks by the Israeli military and gave no time for civilians to know from which areas they were required to leave or where they should go”.

OCHA labelled these mass evacuation orders “confusing” and said Israeli forces had issued demands for civilians to flee while increasing their attacks on the same areas, as well as potential escape routes.

Olympic triathletes in Paris are set to miss their first practice session in the River Seine on Sunday because of the deteriorating water quality.

Two days of practice are scheduled before the men’s event on Tuesday, with the women’s race taking place a day later. However, organisers admit the heavy rain over the past 24 hours means the water will likely fail its next test at 4am on Sunday morning.

A second “familarisation” – or training – event is due to take place on Monday, but organisers remain confident that the improvement in the forecast will see both races take place as scheduled.

“The rain that has fallen on Paris over the last 24 hours is likely to impact the quality of the water in the Seine over the next 24 to 36 hours,” a Paris spokesperson said. “Depending on current water quality levels and the conditions expected over the next 24 hours, it is possible that the familiarisation scheduled for Sunday 28 July at 8am may be cancelled. The decision will be taken at the daily situation meeting at 4am on 28 July.

“We are nonetheless confident in our ability to organise the events as planned from 30 July. Given the weather forecast for the next 48 hours, we expect the water quality to return to below limits within the next 24 to 36 hours.”

Swimming in the Seine has been banned for more than a century. Since 2015, organisers have invested about £1bn to prepare the Seine for the Olympics and to ensure Parisians have a cleaner river after the Games. The plan has included constructing a giant underground water storage basin in central Paris, renovating sewer infrastructure, and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.

British Triathlon’s performance director, Mike Cavendish, insisted his team were confident of doing well even if the practice session was cancelled. “While a reduction in familiarisation sessions would impact all competing nations, we have great confidence in the preparation we’ve done and know our athletes will be on the start line in the best possible shape to compete at their best,” he added.

A senior official with the Dutch Olympic committee has insisted that a convicted child rapist in its beach volleyball team is not a paedophile, in an email seen by the Guardian.

A concerned British man who has lived in the Netherlands for more than a decade, wrote to the Dutch Olympic committee and called the inclusion of Steven van de Velde in the team “a stain on the Dutch national side”. In a reply the Dutch Olympic committee spokesperson wrote: “Steven is NOT a peadophile [sic]; you really don’t think that de Dutch NOC would send someone to Paris who IS a real risk? No, he isn’t a risk.”

There has been mounting public anger at the presence of the beach volleyball player Van de Velde, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old British girl in 2016. Earlier this week the International Olympic Committee faced calls for an investigation into how a convicted child rapist has been allowed to compete at Paris 2024. The IOC has said the selection of athletes for the Games was the responsibility of individual committees.

Van de Velde, who is now 29, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to raping the girl in Milton Keynes. He had flown to England to meet her in 2014 with full knowledge of her age, having met her on Facebook. He served 12 months in a British prison, before being transferred to his home country where he was released after a further month.

The backlash has cast a shadow over one of the Olympics’ most eye-catching events, held in an outdoor stadium at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Van de Velde is slated to play on Sunday.

In a statement the Nederlands Olympisch Comité*Nederlandse Sport Federatie’ (NOC*NSF) said it had put in place “concrete measures” to ensure a safe sporting environment for all Olympics participants in light of Van de Velde’s participation. At his request he is not staying in the Olympic village and will do no media.

The NOC*NSF said: “Van de Velde has fully engaged with all requirements and has met all the stringent risk assessment thresholds, checks and due diligence. Experts have stated that there is no risk of recidivism. Van de Velde has consistently remained transparent about the case which he refers to as the most significant misstep of his life. He deeply regrets the consequences of his actions for those involved. He has been open about the personal transformation he has undergone as a result.”

The British man said he was “shocked” by the response he received after he wrote to the Dutch Olympic committee press team asking what the communications strategy would be if Van de Velde won a medal. The man – who does not want to be named – referred to Van de Velde as “a paedophile, and convicted child rapist” and asked what his victim and her parents said about his participation.

As well as disputing that he was a paedophile, the official urged him to read more about the case and not to “believe all the headlines”. The official added: “We are taking measures to make sure that everybody can focus on sports, on the Games. Not the story of the past of this beach volleyballer, who has played on all the international tournaments since 2018.”

The Dutch NOC continues to come under fire from groups representing survivors of sexual abuse, with one group accusing the committee of not thinking “at all about the potential impact on survivors of seeing a child rapist at the Olympics”.

The Brave Movement, a movement of survivors of child sexual violence which is part of Together for Girls, said it had not been consulted by Dutch Olympic committee. In an open letter it said the child Van de Velde raped would face “lifelong consequences”, adding: “Perpetrators move on. Those they abuse are left searching for healing and justice. We need a world centred around survivors, not perpetrators.”

The Brave Movement added that there was “still time” for Van de Velde to withdraw or for the Dutch Olympic committee to withdraw him. “We believe that is the only appropriate action,” it said.

Olympic Games organisers said they “deeply apologise” for introducing South Korea’s athletes as North Korean during the opening ceremony in Paris.

As the South Korean athletes waved their nation’s flag on a boat floating down the Seine on Friday evening, they were announced in both French and English as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. South Korea is the Republic of Korea.

“We deeply apologise for the mistake that occurred when introducing the Korean team during the opening ceremony broadcast,” the International Olympic Committee said in a post on X in Korean.

The IOC president, Thomas Bach, will also meet with South Korea’s leader, Yoon Suk-yeol, over the incident. The South Korean ministry of culture sports and tourism said it would file “a strong government-level complaint” with the French government.

The ministry’s statement said South Korea’s Olympic committee separately asked the organizers of the Paris Games to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents.

The IOC spokesperson Mark Adams on Saturday called the error “clearly deeply regrettable”. He added that “an operational mistake was made. We can only apologise, in an evening of so many moving parts, that this mistake was made”

A similar incident occurred at the 2012 Olympics in London. Organisers there apologised and blamed human error when South Korea’s flag appeared alongside North Korea’s women’s football team on stadium screens in Glasgow as players warmed up before their opening match.

South Korea and North Korea, established as separate entities in 1948, have a tense relationship. The Korean war, which tore the peninsula apart, killed millions of people, mostly civilians.

A heatwave blanketing Iran has forced authorities to cut operating hours at various facilities on Saturday and order all government and commercial institutions to close on Sunday, as hospitals received more than 200 people for heatstroke treatment.

Temperatures ranged from 37C (98.6F) to 42C (107F) in the capital, Tehran, according to weather reports.

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) said banks, offices and public institutions across the country would close on Sunday to protect people’s health and conserve energy and that only emergency services and medical agencies would be excluded.

Babak Yektaparast, a spokesperson for the country’s emergency department, told the semi-official Mehr news agency that 225 people had sought medical help for heatstroke and some had been admitted to hospital.

Sadegh Ziaian, an official at the National Meteorological Organisation, was quoted by Mehr as saying temperatures exceeded 45C (113F) in 10 Iranian provinces on Saturday, with the highest temperature of 49.7C (121F) recorded in Delgan, the south-eastern city in Sistan and Balochistan province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He said a drop in temperature was expected on Monday but warned that “this does not mean that the air will cool down”.

Authorities cut working hours on Saturday in many provinces because of the sweltering heat, the IRNA reported. Iranian media advised people to stay indoors until 5pm local time.

Authorities said electricity consumption reached record levels of 78,106MW on Tuesday as people tried to stay cool.

Nournews, which has close links to Iran’s supreme national security council, reported on Wednesday that temperatures in Iran are rising at twice the pace of global temperatures. Iran has become 2C warmer over the past 50 years, compared with 1C worldwide, the agency said.

Heatwaves are becoming more severe and prolonged owing to the global climate crisis, which has been caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

Last year, Iran ordered a two-day nationwide holiday because of increasing temperatures.

A heatwave blanketing Iran has forced authorities to cut operating hours at various facilities on Saturday and order all government and commercial institutions to close on Sunday, as hospitals received more than 200 people for heatstroke treatment.

Temperatures ranged from 37C (98.6F) to 42C (107F) in the capital, Tehran, according to weather reports.

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) said banks, offices and public institutions across the country would close on Sunday to protect people’s health and conserve energy and that only emergency services and medical agencies would be excluded.

Babak Yektaparast, a spokesperson for the country’s emergency department, told the semi-official Mehr news agency that 225 people had sought medical help for heatstroke and some had been admitted to hospital.

Sadegh Ziaian, an official at the National Meteorological Organisation, was quoted by Mehr as saying temperatures exceeded 45C (113F) in 10 Iranian provinces on Saturday, with the highest temperature of 49.7C (121F) recorded in Delgan, the south-eastern city in Sistan and Balochistan province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He said a drop in temperature was expected on Monday but warned that “this does not mean that the air will cool down”.

Authorities cut working hours on Saturday in many provinces because of the sweltering heat, the IRNA reported. Iranian media advised people to stay indoors until 5pm local time.

Authorities said electricity consumption reached record levels of 78,106MW on Tuesday as people tried to stay cool.

Nournews, which has close links to Iran’s supreme national security council, reported on Wednesday that temperatures in Iran are rising at twice the pace of global temperatures. Iran has become 2C warmer over the past 50 years, compared with 1C worldwide, the agency said.

Heatwaves are becoming more severe and prolonged owing to the global climate crisis, which has been caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

Last year, Iran ordered a two-day nationwide holiday because of increasing temperatures.

Multiple wildfires continued raging overnight in northern California amid dry conditions, high temperatures and wind, prompting the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, to declare a state of emergency in three counties.

Newsom’s emergency declaration for the counties of Plumas, Butte and Tehama came as thousands of residents were forced to flee their homes. Hundreds of houses and other buildings have also been destroyed, though no deaths have been reported.

“We are using every available tool to protect lives and property as our fire and emergency response teams work around the clock to combat these challenging fires,” Newsom said in a statement.

The Park fire, currently the largest of the year in California, was ravaging more than 307,000 acres (124,238 hectares) across Butte and Tehama counties as of early Saturday. Dry conditions had spurred the fire to increase at an alarmingly rapid pace overnight, according to California’s department of forestry and fire protection.

While lightning caused some of California’s ongoing wildfires, arson sparked the Park blaze, authorities said.

Investigators allege that the fire started when a man identified as Ronnie Dean Stout was seen pushing a burning car into a ravine near Chico on Wednesday, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Police said they arrested him Thursday after he fled the scene with others as the fire spread.

Stout remained in the Butte county jail on Saturday and was scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

The Park fire had destroyed more than 130 structures as of Saturday, when thousands more buildings remained in danger of being engulfed in flames.

The evolving threat forced many residents to flee their homes, including Carli Parker.

Parker told the Associated Press that she decided to leave her home in Forest Ranch with her family when the fire began burning across the street. “I think I felt like I was in danger because the police had come to our house because we had signed up for early evacuation warnings, and they were running to their vehicle after telling us that we need to self-evacuate, and they wouldn’t come back,” Parker, a mother of five, said to the AP.

She said she had little hope that her home would remain unscathed by the fire.

Another Forest Ranch evacuee, Sherry Alpers, told the AP that she had chosen to stay in her car outside a Red Cross shelter in Chico with her 12 small dogs when she learned animals were not allowed inside.

She added that she doesn’t know whether her home was still standing, but that as long as her dogs were safe, she didn’t care about the material things. “I’m kind of worried, but not that much,” she said to the AP. “If it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Nearby, Brian Bowles had also opted to stay with his dog Diamon in his car outside the shelter.

Bowles had received a $100 gift card from the United Way non-profit charity. “Now the question is, do I get a motel room and comfortable for one night? Or do I put gas in the car and sleep in here?” he said to the AP. “Tough choice.”

Meanwhile, the Gold Complex fires, caused by lightning, were burning across 3,000 acres in the Plumas national forest. Fire crews had made progress battling that cluster of fires, 50 miles (80km) north-west of Reno.

In fact, most of the 1,000 residents who had evacuated the area were returning to their homes Friday, according to the Associated Press.

A total of more than 110 fires covering 2,800 sq miles (7,250 sq kms) were burning in the US on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Oregon’s Durkee fire, which started on 17 July, has been the largest active fire in the US – it was about 20% contained on Friday, according to officials.

Parts of Canada are also grappling with wildfires.

Heatwaves and historic drought stemming from climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, have made wildfires in the US west more challenging to fight.

The climate emergency poses a “real risk” to Spain’s traditional mass tourist model as rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves hit the country’s most popular coastal destinations, a senior public health adviser has warned.

Héctor Tejero, the head of health and climate change at Spain’s health ministry, said the increasingly apparent physical impacts of the climate emergency had already led the ministry to begin talks with the British embassy on how best to educate “vulnerable” tourists about coping with the heat.

Asked whether the climate emergency could lead to tourism disappearing from parts of Spain in the future, Tejero said: “It’s a real risk because the big Spanish sol y playa tourist areas – the areas that are most dependent on tourism – are places where the impact of climate change is going to be greatest in Spain; places such as the south and the east of the peninsula – basically the Mediterranean coast. There’s a definite risk that the zones where there’s most tourism will become less habitable because of more heatwaves and much hotter nights.”

Such conditions, he added, could discourage tourists, or push up air-conditioning costs for hotels as the units would need to be on for longer periods of time.

“I’d say tourism is one of many sectors that’s at risk from climate change,” Tejero said. “Apart from the fact that it’s causing tensions in certain areas, it needs to adapt itself to the climatic reality that’s on the way. That’s why we need to adapt the tourist sector, consider reducing it, and try to mitigate the effects of climate change before they get worse. But Spain is the EU country that’s most vulnerable to climate change and that’s not going to change in the short term.”

Concerns about over-tourism in Spain – which received a record 85.1 million international visitors last year, a 19% increase on 2022 – have led to large demonstrations across the country in recent months. Protesters in the Canary islands have complained that the presence of so many tourists is exacerbating water shortages, while activists in the Balearic islands are seeking a limit on the number of cars coming on to the island by ferry.

A Spanish government report published eight years ago predicted that a changing climate could dramatically alter Spain’s tourist industry, eroding beaches, flooding transport systems, causing water shortages at the height of the season and forcing ski resorts to close down. The report forecast that, by 2080, tourism from northern Europe could fall by 20% from its 2004 level as rising temperatures induced people to holiday at home.

But, as Tejero pointed out, heatwaves and higher temperatures remain the most obvious and immediate symptoms of the emergency – and are especially hazardous for tourists who are unused to them.

“We’re in discussions, with the British embassy in particular – with whom we already collaborate on different aspects of climate change and decarbonisation – to start to think about how we can make the tourists who come a lot more aware of the climate crisis and to give them more advice so they can protect themselves,” he said.

“At the end of the day, tourists have a greater risk in the heat because they’re obviously not adapted to local temperatures, which is a very important factor. We can see that they’re not adapted; they don’t have a habit of protecting themselves from the heat – and everyone tends to relax on holidays and take things less seriously when it comes to staying out of the sun at the hottest times of the day.”

Tejero said visitors would do well to follow the government’s heat slogan – “protect yourself; hydrate yourself; refresh yourself” – and the cues of local people who know the importance of staying out of the sun between midday and 4pm.

“The few fatal cases of heatstroke we had last year were among tourists, aged over 50 or 60, who set out on hikes in high summer and got heatstroke,” he said.

“I was reading about a case the other day where a woman died because her husband didn’t speak enough Spanish to get help by phone after she collapsed. I think tourists need to remember that they’re a little more vulnerable than the local population – and that means they need to stick even more closely to the recommendations when it comes to staying hydrated and keeping out of the sun.”

The risks have been made clear in other parts of southern Europe grappling with extreme heat. In June, several foreign tourists, including the British television presenter Michael Mosley, died during a period of unseasonably high temperatures in Greece.

Tejero noted that recent epidemiological studies had shown that approximately 3,000 deaths are attributable to the heat each year in Spain, and that hot spells cause a 10% rise in urgent hospital admissions. He also said higher temperatures would also lead to an increase in vector-borne diseases, pointing out that a man was admitted to hospital in Madrid this week with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, an emerging disease spread by ticks.

For a psychiatrist, so the joke goes, any object that crops up within a dream must represent a phallus. But it seems even Sigmund Freud did not really think all our sleeping fantasies are suppressed erotica. It was just a basic misunderstanding of the pioneering psychoanalyst’s work, according to an eminent new version of his influential theories.

A revised English edition of Freud’s key work, The Interpretation of Dreams, by scholar Mark Solms will correct several errors of translation and aim to definitively challenge the common misconception that Freud believed the erotic drive was behind much of human behaviour.

“Freud had a very broad understanding of sexuality,” said Solms, a renowned South African psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist. “For him, any activity that was pleasure seeking in its own right – anything that one does for the purposes of pleasure alone, as opposed to practical purposes – was ‘sexual’.”

In this way behaviour such as a baby sucking a dummy, or a child kicking a football, or swinging on a swing, were described by Freud as “sexual”, meaning they were pure sources of enjoyment.

“This extended the word so far beyond common usage that it led to significant misunderstanding of his theories. Late in his life, Freud acknowledged as much,” said Solms.

James Strachey’s standard English translation of Freud was printed in the 1950s and 60s. Now Solms, a German speaker who was raised in Namibia, where an older form of the language is still spoken, has removed mistakes, and is setting the word “sexual” in context. “I’ve been correcting some errors: Strachey was elderly, and his sight was poor. I’ve also changed some technical terms that are outdated now, and I’ve added some essays, lectures and other writings that weren’t in Strachey’s version,” Solms explained.

One hundred years ago Freud’s theories about sexual urges, the meaning of dreams and the struggle for emotional freedom sparked the birth of surrealism, inspiring the unsettling art of Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico and the writings of the founder of the movement, André Breton, who wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. But these artists also got Freud’s theories wrong: “None of them understood that Freud was a rather conservative gentleman and shared none of their revolutionary social inclinations,” said Solms this weekend. “His taste in art, too, was really very conservative. Freud described Dalí as a fanatic.”

While visions of our unconscious desires fuelled an explosion of disruptive art, Freud’s technical terms were wrongly used in support of the radical ideas of surrealism, Solms argues. Far from promoting anarchy or sexual liberation, Freud was a socially conservative thinker who wanted to restore order, not challenge conventions.

“The surrealist movement was explicitly predicated on Freud’s discoveries,” said Solms. “Some of them, like Dalí and de Chirico, depicted directly the inner world of the mind as it is revealed in dreams, with uncanny juxtapositions and the like, while others, like Breton, were influenced by deeper aspects of his work, and employed automatic writing and automatic drawing on the model of Freud’s free-association method. Magritte, too, understood Freud on a more intellectual level.”

Solms’s entire revised standard edition, a 24-volume epic, was commissioned by the British Psychoanalytic Society to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of the last segment of Freud’s works, and is being released in Britain at the Freud Museum in London on 19 September, two days ahead of a special conference at University College London.

Solms has not replaced Strachey’s earlier translation, as he sees him as “master of the English language”, who knew Freud personally. So in the updated works “subtle underlining” shows revisions and additions. Solms hopes to put the great Viennese thinker back into our conversation about dreams, although, “there are some people who would rather see Freud forgotten than retranslated. They would prefer it if he was airbrushed out of history.”

Freud originally suggested that, since sleep is biologically necessary, dreams serve the function of keeping us asleep. The hallucinatory experience of satisfaction in a dream, he argued, stops us from waking up, since “a dream that shows a wish as fulfilled is believed during sleep, it does away with the wish and makes sleep possible”.

Discoveries about the rapid eye movement period of sleep in the early 1950s prompted attacks on Freud’s wish-fulfilling theory. Instead, it was argued that REM dreams were prompted by brain stem activation, which throws up bizarre content as our organising powers are bypassed, not because our hidden desires suddenly emerge. But more recent research has revealed that we can dream both in and out of REM states, so there is no such neat explanation for the strange creativity of the sleeping mind.

Aerospace giants have been accused of putting profits ahead of safety as officials consider cutting the minimum number of pilots required on commercial flight decks from two to one.

The move, which is currently being evaluated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), would weaken standards to the “lowest common denominator”, the world’s largest union of airline pilots has warned.

“This threat is not something that is 10, 15, 20 years away,” Capt James Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents more than 78,000 pilots in the US and Canada, said. “It’s something that, quietly, Airbus, has been working on. It’s not what they are marketing it to be.

“The US has the safest aviation record in the world. We need to improve the standard for everybody, not just go to the lowest common denominator.”

EASA is looking at the safety of extended minimum crew operations (eMCO), where one pilot would leave the flight deck to rest during long flights, leaving one pilot at the helm. While many long-haul flights currently staff three pilots on the flight deck, so that pilots can alternate rest, eMCO would eliminate this standard.

The reduction was proposed by aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Dassault. EASA is also investigating the safety of single-pilot operation for cargo flights.

“Technologically, it is feasible,” Christian Scherer, CEO of the commercial aircraft business at Airbus, said in a February interview with the Sunday Times of London. “And bear in mind, if you go to a one-man cockpit, you might as well go to a zero-man cockpit. Because it all needs to cater for the eventuality that this one guy just ate a bad oyster and is incapacitated and the aeroplane has to take over. So one pilot or zero pilot is effectively the same thing.”

The Air Line Pilots Association, which recently fended off efforts to raise the retirement age of pilots from 65 to 67, sees a potential reduction in the number of pilots on the flight deck as a big, emerging safety threat.

The union published a report in June on the concerns over efforts to reduce the number of pilots on the flight deck of commercial aircraft, cautioning that there is “no replacement” for the safety benefits of having “at least” two pilots on the flight deck at all times.

Workloads and fatigue would increase if single pilot flights were permitted, the report argues, adding that the risks posed by the incapacitation of a pilot would increase.

In a statement, the European safety agency said: “For EASA, the overriding consideration is that safety must not be compromised. Operations must therefore be demonstrably at least as safe as the current two-pilot operations are today to gain approval.”

The agency noted there is no firm timeline on introducing a pilot-reducing operation. The possibility of pilot reductions wouldn’t occur until at least 2027, but could have global implications and impact flights to and from Europe and the rest of the aviation industry.

Airbus and Dassault did not respond to requests for comment.

“Everything that’s being driven when you look at crew sizes and inspections, it’s really driven by profit motive, it is not driven by safety,” said Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s transportation trades department. “That’s been true in railroads. It’s true in aviation. It’s the reason why the oversight inspections of Boeing were so lacking. It was geared towards: ‘how do we maximize profit on this?’ And we’ve seen it go way too far.”

Labor unions continue to push back against efforts by the railroad industry – which was rocked last year by an explosive fire from a derailed train carrying hazardous chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio – to reduce crew members on freight trains from two to one.

The railroad industry is currently suing the US Department of Transportation after it finalized a rule in April 2024 first proposed under the Obama administration to mandate a minimum of two crew on railroad freight in the US.

Should Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election, the rule “is certainly something that could be subject to change”, added Regan, unless legislation is passed codifying the requirement into law.

Under the Trump administration in 2019, regulators withdrew the two-person crew rule and nullified all state laws that mandated the two-person crew minimum.

“East Palestine was a perfect example of why and how two crews are necessary because of how they worked together to make sure the disaster wasn’t worse,” said Regan. “There’s a reason why we have regulators and lawmakers who are putting safety legislation in place and there’s a reason why qualified and professional pilots, engineers, conductors are so vital to ensuring that we have safe operations of every transportation system in our country.

“To take the profit motives into account as seriously as you do the safety motives, I think, would be really foolish.”

Céline Dion has said she is “so full of joy” after making a triumphant return to the stage in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

The star, who has been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a neurological disorder, sang Édith Piaf’s Hymne à l’amour on the Eiffel Tower for a global audience of millions in her first live onstage performance since early 2020.

On Instagram, she wrote: “I’m honoured to have performed tonight, for the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, and so full of joy to be back in one of my very favourite cities! Most of all, I’m so happy to be celebrating these amazing athletes, with all their stories of sacrifice and determination, pain and perseverance.

“All of you have been so focused on your dream, and whether or not you take home a medal, I hope that being here means that it has come true for you! You should all be so proud, we know how hard you have worked to be the best of the best. Stay focused, keep going, my heart is with you!”

She posted an image of herself making a heart sign with her hands, and another of fans carrying a flag with the “o” in her name written using the Games’ rings.

On Friday night Dion delivered a stirring rendition of the 1950 song accompanied by a pianist, with the Olympics rings above her. The song was written by Piaf to her boxer lover Marcel Cerdan, who died in a plane crash after it was first performed.

In 2021 Dion cancelled her Las Vegas residency because of health concerns, and in December 2022 she disclosed her SPS diagnosis and cancelled her Courage world tour. Before Friday night she had not performed in public since.

In the 2024 documentary I Am: Céline Dion she spoke about her rare condition, which causes progressive muscular inflexibility. She discussed her desire to return to the stage, and the programme showed extended footage of her having an SPS attack before singing.

The Paris opening ceremony also featured Lady Gaga singing in French the classic Mon truc en plumes, and the heavy metal band Gojira performing from the former prison the Conciergerie while a headless Marie Antoinette appeared in the windows of the building where the executed French queen was once held.

Dion also performed at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

Céline Dion has said she is “so full of joy” after making a triumphant return to the stage in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

The star, who has been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a neurological disorder, sang Édith Piaf’s Hymne à l’amour on the Eiffel Tower for a global audience of millions in her first live onstage performance since early 2020.

On Instagram, she wrote: “I’m honoured to have performed tonight, for the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, and so full of joy to be back in one of my very favourite cities! Most of all, I’m so happy to be celebrating these amazing athletes, with all their stories of sacrifice and determination, pain and perseverance.

“All of you have been so focused on your dream, and whether or not you take home a medal, I hope that being here means that it has come true for you! You should all be so proud, we know how hard you have worked to be the best of the best. Stay focused, keep going, my heart is with you!”

She posted an image of herself making a heart sign with her hands, and another of fans carrying a flag with the “o” in her name written using the Games’ rings.

On Friday night Dion delivered a stirring rendition of the 1950 song accompanied by a pianist, with the Olympics rings above her. The song was written by Piaf to her boxer lover Marcel Cerdan, who died in a plane crash after it was first performed.

In 2021 Dion cancelled her Las Vegas residency because of health concerns, and in December 2022 she disclosed her SPS diagnosis and cancelled her Courage world tour. Before Friday night she had not performed in public since.

In the 2024 documentary I Am: Céline Dion she spoke about her rare condition, which causes progressive muscular inflexibility. She discussed her desire to return to the stage, and the programme showed extended footage of her having an SPS attack before singing.

The Paris opening ceremony also featured Lady Gaga singing in French the classic Mon truc en plumes, and the heavy metal band Gojira performing from the former prison the Conciergerie while a headless Marie Antoinette appeared in the windows of the building where the executed French queen was once held.

Dion also performed at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

Scientists have discovered that a common type of mouth bacteria can make certain cancers “melt”.

Researchers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College London said they had been “brutally surprised” to find that fusobacterium – a type of bacteria commonly found in the mouth – appears to have the ability to kill certain cancers.

People with head and neck cancers who were found to have this bacteria within their cancer have been found to have much better outcomes, according to a study.

Researchers are now looking into the exact biological mechanisms behind the link after the initial findings.

Dr Miguel Reis Ferreira, the study’s senior author and a consultant in head and neck cancers at Guy’s and St Thomas’, told the PA news agency: “In essence, we found that when you find these bacteria within head and neck cancers, they have much better outcomes. The other thing that we found is that in cell cultures this bacterium is capable of killing cancer.

“What we’re finding is that this little bug is causing a better outcome based on something that it’s doing inside the cancer. So we are looking for that mechanism at present, and it should be the theme for a new paper in the very short-term future.”

He added: “This research reveals that these bacteria play a more complex role than previously known in their relationship with cancer – that they essentially melt head and neck cancer cells. However, this finding should be balanced by their known role in making cancers such as those in the bowel get worse.”

Scientists used modelling to help identify which bacteria may be of interest to further investigate. Then they studied the effect of the bacteria on cancerous cells in a laboratory and also performed an analysis of data on 155 patients with head and neck cancer whose tumour information had been submitted to the Cancer Genome Atlas database.

Academics initially expected a different outcome as previous research has linked fusobacterium to the progression of bowel cancer.

In the lab studies, researchers put quantities of the bacteria in petri dishes and left them for a couple of days. When they returned to inspect the effect of the bacteria on the cancer, they found that the cancer had almost disappeared.

They found there was a 70%-99% reduction in the number of viable cancer cells in head and neck cancer cells after being infected with fusobacterium.

Analysis of the patient data found that those with fusobacterium within their cancer had better survival odds compared with those who did not. Fusobacterium detectability in head and neck cancers was associated with a 65% reduction in risk of death compared with patients whose cancers did not contain the bacteria.

Researchers hope the finding could help guide treatment for patients with head and neck cancer, which include cancers of the mouth, throat, voice box, nose and sinuses.

Experts said there had been few therapeutic advances in head and neck cancer in the last 20 years, so it was hoped the finding could lead to new treatments in the future.

Reis Ferreira said that before the lab work, the team had expected fusobacterium to encourage these cancers to grow or make them more resistant to radiotherapy. But they actually found that “at the end of a few days it just destroys the cancer completely”.

“You put it in the cancer at very low quantities and it just starts killing it very quickly,” he said.

Dr Anjali Chander, a senior clinical research fellow at King’s College London and the lead author, said: “Our findings are remarkable and very surprising. We had a eureka moment when we found that our international colleagues also found data that validated the discovery.”

Barbara Kasumu, the executive director of Guy’s Cancer Charity, which helped fund the study, said: “We are proud to support the groundbreaking research conducted by Miguel and Anjali, which aims to enhance our understanding of head and neck cancer and develop more compassionate and effective treatments.”

An “egregious” refusal by successive Canadian governments to honor a key treaty signed with Indigenous nations made a “mockery” of the deal and deprived generations of fair compensation for their resources, Canada’s top court has ruled.

But while the closely watched decision will likely yield billions in payouts, First Nation chiefs say the ruling adds yet another hurdle in the multi-decade battle for justice.

In a scathing and unanimous decision released on Friday, Canada’s supreme court sharply criticized both the federal and Ontario governments for their “dishonourable” conduct around a 174-year-old agreement, which left First Nations people to struggle in poverty while surrounding communities, industry and government exploited the abundant natural resources in order to enrich themselves.

“For almost a century and a half, the Anishinaabe have been left with an empty shell of a treaty promise,” the court wrote in the landmark ruling.

The stark language reflects the enduring legacy of the colonial project first envisioned by the British government and continued after Canada gained independence and offers yet another example of major cases tilting towards Indigenous peoples. The court decision to highlight “egregious” ways in which governments have treated their agreements with nations could have far-reaching consequences, both for the affected communities and the country.

The case centered on a treaty signed in 1850 between the British Crown and a group of Anishinaabe nations on the shores of Lakes Huron and Superior. Known as the Robinson Treaties, the agreements, covering 35,700 sq miles (92,400 sq km) of land, included a rare “augmentation clause” that promised to increase annual payments “from time to time” as the land generated more wealth – “if and when” that payment could be made without the Crown incurring a loss.

Over the next 174 years, the lands and waters covered by the deal generated immense profits for companies – and substantial revenues for the province of Ontario. But in 1874, the annuities were capped in at $4 a person and never increased.

“Today, in what can only be described as a mockery of the Crown’s treaty promise to the Anishinaabe of the upper Great Lakes, the annuities are distributed to individual treaty beneficiaries by giving them $4 each,” the court wrote, singling out the “shocking” figure paid to beneficiaries. “The Crown has severely undermined both the spirit and substance of the Robinson Treaties.”

Among the key issues the court tackled was the novel “augmentation clause” in the treaty. The justices said that even though the treaty does not promise to pay a certain sum of money, “no party doubts that the Crown was able to increase the annuities beyond $4 per person without incurring loss, and that it should have exercised its discretion to do so.”

Finding the nation-to-nation agreement was an alliance of equals, the court called on the Crown to return “to the foundations of the treaty” and to “engage the honour of the Crown”, by increasing the annual payments. Failing to do so would be “patently dishonourable”, wrote justice Mahmud Jamal.

Lawrence Wanakamik, chief of Whitesand First Nation, told reporters the decision had been a “long time coming”.

“We have suffered all those years [with] no economic benefits to our community. It’s been hard over the years trying to make a whole community for Whitesand,” he said, holding back tears. “We do have other struggles to contend with, but you know, with this settlement … we’ll have a better community from this point on.”

Crucially, the ruling does not award a settlement to Superior Anishinaabe First Nations, who had previously argued they are owed C$126bn in back payments. An Ontario court ruled on this claim last year, but the supreme court ordered the ruling be held in reserve pending Friday’s decsion. The court also said the settlement ruling must remain unreleased for another six months so that both parties could come to an agreement.

But Wilfred King, chief of Gull Bay First Nation, said he was “a bit disappointed” by key parts of the ruling, namely the way in which the Crown proposes the figure it feels is fair.

“How do you negotiate when one side says, ‘Well, we think this is a fair amount?’”

Ontario has previously argued in court that far from growing rich, it has spent nearly C$4.2bn in its efforts to settle the north and open it up to industry.

For nations that have waited decades for compensation, the prospect of more legal wrangling is “unfortunate”, said King.

“Both Crowns – Canada and Ontario – were admonished by the court for making a mockery of the treaty. And it’s important that both Crowns understand why they were being criticized,” he continued.

The supreme court has given Ontario a six-month timeline to propose a new settlement with the First Nations groups on Lake Superior. The justices warned that if governments couldn’t settle fair compensation, the court would step in.

“I’m hopeful that the Crown comes to the table with clean hands this time and try to come to an amicable agreement,” said King. “We knew we were never going to come close to the C$126bn we believe we’re owed. But it just showed you the vast amount of resources that have been extracted from our territory without fair compensation.”

Videos have emerged of director Francis Ford Coppola trying to kiss female extras on the set of his new film Megalopolis.

Variety obtained footage of the film-maker taken by a crew member during a nightclub scene on set last year. The Guardian had originally reported that the 85-year-old was seen as “old school” in his behaviour around women while shooting, pulling women to sit on his lap and kissing extras to get “them in the mood”.

New sources have now come forward to call the director’s conduct unprofessional with him “leaping up to hug and kiss several women, often inadvertently inserting himself into the shot and ruining it”.

“I’ve worked with really important directors and that behavior is uncommon – the most I’ve ever seen any director do is say something like, ‘high energy, guys,’” a source said. “I’ve never seen anyone on set, and this extends to a camera operator, so much as touch an actor.”

Reportedly after multiple takes, Coppola announced on a microphone: “Sorry, if I come up to you and kiss you. Just know it’s solely for my pleasure.”

“Because Coppola funded it there was no HR department to keep things in check,” a source told Variety. “Who were they supposed to talk to? Complain to Coppola and report Coppola to himself?”

The film’s executive producer, Darren Demetre, said in a statement, originally published by the Guardian, that it was “his way to help inspire and establish the club atmosphere”. He added: “I was never aware of any complaints of harassment or ill behaviour during the course of the project.”

The film’s first assistant director, Mariela Comitini, called it “a vibrant, professional and positive environment”.

A crew member said to the Guardian earlier this year: “It was like watching a train wreck unfold day after day, week after week, and knowing that everybody there had tried their hardest to help the train wreck be avoided.”

When asked about the allegations by the New York Times in June, Coppola said: “My mother told me that if you make an advance toward a woman, it means you disrespect her, and the girls I had crushes on, I certainly didn’t disrespect them.” He added: “I’m not touchy-feely. I’m too shy.”

The self-funded epic drama, which cost Coppola a reported $120m, stars Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza and Jon Voight and is described as “a Roman epic set in modern America”. It premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival to middling reviews, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calling it “a bloated, boring and bafflingly shallow film”.

The Guardian has reached out to Coppola’s representatives for comment.