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 Christian 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,” he said with a slight shake of his head and his right hand pressed against the left side of his chest.

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 – delivered not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort and home – 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.”

However, not everyone is turned off by the rhetoric to which Trump resorted on Friday. An Ipsos poll published in June and commissioned by the Earth4All non-profit and the Global Commons Alliance found that 41% of Americans believe “having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections” is a very good or fairly good way to govern.

Some younger people and higher earners in particular showed support for that sentiment, according to the poll, said Owen Gaffney, co-leader of Earth4All.

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 after she alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him. 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.

Even if Trump wins a second White House term in November, the 22nd amendment of the US constitution – which was enacted in 1951 – would prevent him from serving as president beyond early 2029.

Simply proposing to change that amendment would require approval from two-thirds of both congressional chambers. Then, three-fourths of the US states would need to approve the change.

Republican lawmakers for now have a narrow majority in the US House. The Democrat opponents have a slim majority in the Senate.

A poll released on Friday by the Republican-friendly Fox News network showed Trump in a tight race with Harris, the US vice-president, 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.

Donald Trump capped a tough week in which his Democratic opponents turned the tables, replacing aging Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as their top choice for president, by resorting to insults and extremism on the campaign trail.

A week ago, Trump was riding high on the iconic moment when he rose bloodied and with a defiantly raised fist from an assassination attempt, pulling away in the polls. Biden, meanwhile, was struggling to recover from his dire late June debate against the Republican nominee and an unconvincing performance in the days since.

Now, with the former president suddenly facing a vibrant, younger rival in Harris, who hit the ground running after Biden quit his re-election campaign last Sunday and quickly endorsed her for the top of the ticket, Trump called her “a bum” and said he “couldn’t care less” if he mispronounced her name.

At a rally in Florida on Friday night organized by the far-right Christian advocacy group Turning Point Action, Trump not only went personal against the US vice-president, but once again appeared to threaten American democracy.

“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it anymore. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” he said at the event in West Palm Beach, not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence.

Trump has been adopted by much of the US evangelical Christian right as a flawed champion, besmirched by losing in sexual misconduct and business fraud civil cases and convicted on criminal counts for election-related fraud in a case involving an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him. With other criminal cases ongoing, he is nevertheless the one-term president who tilted the US supreme court against abortion, gun control, government experts, voting rights and diversity efforts in higher education, delighting his white, ultra-conservative base.

At Friday’s rally, he also lit into Harris. She won the support not only of Biden but of the Obamas, the Clintons and the Democratic leaders in Congress last week, and if she is officially anointed at the party’s convention next month, she will be the first Black female nominee, the first south Asian nominee, and, if she beats Trump in November, America’s first female president.

On Friday, Trump called her “the most incompetent, unpopular and far-left vice-president in American history”. And in a seeming nod to how the campaign has been upended, he said: “She was a bum three weeks ago.”

He also pronounced her name Ka-MAH-la Harris, whereas the vice-president pronounces her name KAHM-a-la.

He insisted that he had been told there are numerous ways to say her name and added: “I said: ‘Don’t worry about it, doesn’t matter what I say, I couldn’t care less if I mispronounce it or not.’ Some people think I mispronounce it on purpose but actually I’ve heard it said about seven different ways.”

He has variously called Harris “crazy”, “nuts” and “dumb as a rock”. Some Republicans in Congress disparage her as a “diversity hire”, even though in her career before she became the first female US vice-president she had been elected as the district attorney of San Francisco, the attorney general of California and a US senator. Rightwing activists and trolls have smeared her online with racist, sexist and sexualized barbs, Reuters reported.

But opinion polls show that in just a few days, Harris, 59, has closed to within a point or two of Trump, whereas Biden had fallen around six points behind and was losing support in vital swing states.

Trump, 78, is now the oldest nominee to run for president. Earlier in the week, Trump also said Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people” after she did not attend Benjamin Netanyahu’s in-person visit and address to a joint session of Congress in Washington where the Israeli prime minister defended Israel’s war in Gaza. Harris spoke out strongly against the suffering of Palestinian civilians.

This despite her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, being Jewish and being involved in an antisemitism taskforce for the White House.

In the last week, Trump also experienced another wobble in his trajectory. After introducing his choice of running mate at the Republican national convention as young gun and US senator for Ohio JD Vance to great fanfare, some within Republican circles began to lament Vance as a liability rather than a boon to the Trump ticket, following awkward performances on the campaign trail.

Then, Jennifer Aniston went viral criticizing Vance’s past comments disparaging the likes of Harris, who is a stepmother but has not given birth, as unhappy “childless cat ladies”..

And on Saturday, the New York Times published excerpts from communications between Vance and a peer from Yale Law School who said their close friendship broke down in 2021 when Vance supported a ban by Arkansas on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. It was the first such ban in the country – later struck down in court.

Former friend Sofia Nelson is transgender and told the publication that the public should know what Vance has said, including more about his pivot from being a Trump opponent to an acolyte. This included Vance writing “I hate the police” after white officers killed a Black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and calling Trump a demagogue, a disaster and “morally reprehensible” while saying the greater his appeal to the white electorate, the worse it would be for Black voters. The Vance campaign called Nelson’s decision to disclose private conversations unfortunate.

On Saturday night, Trump and Vance are due to appear at a rally in Minnesota, hoping to get their campaign off the back foot.

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.”

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah would “pay a hefty price” after a strike on a football pitch in a remote town in the occupied Golan Heights killed 12 people and a daylong barrage of rocket fire from Lebanon targeted Israeli territory.

Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency services said “large numbers” of ambulances were dispatched to the scene to treat the casualties, all aged between 10 and 20 years old. Video and imagery showed young casualties strewn across the grass, some wearing sports shirts.

The attack struck the predominantly Druze town of Majdal Shams in the mountainous Golan Heights, close to the border with Syria. Israel has occupied the area since 1967, annexing it in 1981.

In a statement from Netanyahu’s office, the Israeli leader said he told the head of Israel’s Druze community that “Hezbollah will pay a heavy price, the kind it has thus far not paid.”

A spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping force operating in southern Lebanon told Reuters that it had made contact with the Lebanese and Israeli authorities “to understand the details of the Majdal Shams incident and to maintain calm”.

Hezbollah and other militias based in Lebanon have repeatedly struck Israeli territory in retaliation for Israel’s assault on Gaza, while Israeli airstrikes have targeted towns and cities deep into Lebanon. Lebanese officials and rights groups have claimed Israel has used white phosphorus in southern Lebanon.

Almost 200,000 people are displaced on either side of the blue line that separates the two nations, prompting growing anger within Israel amid demands the government prevent further attacks.

“The Hezbollah attack today crossed all red lines, and the response will be accordingly. We are approaching the moment of an all-out war against Hezbollah and Lebanon,” Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, told Axios.

The strike marked a grave escalation after a volley of rocket fire from southern Lebanon directed at several towns in the occupied Golan Heights, the majority of which were claimed by Hezbollah.

However, Mohammad Afif, a senior Hezbollah official, denied responsibility for the strike that hit Majdal Shams, speaking to Reuters. In a statement, the militant group said it had “absolutely nothing to do with the incident”, accusing hostile media outlets of “false allegations”.

The Lebanese government condemned the attack, amid fears of an escalating regional conflict. “Targeting civilians is a flagrant violation of international law and goes against the principles of humanity,” it said in a statement, demanding “an immediate cessation of hostilities”.

Netanyahu’s office said he would fly home early from a visit to the US, where he met the president, Joe Biden, vice-president and candidate, Kamala Harris, and former president Donald Trump.

“Immediately upon learning of the disaster, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed that his return to Israel be brought forward as quickly as possible,” they said.

The Israel Defense Forces as well as Israeli officials attributed the Majdal Shams strike to Hezbollah.

A spokesperson for the White House’s national security council, which has long attempted to help broker a ceasefire in Gaza, also condemned the strike. US negotiators have been working for months to cool tensions on Israel’s northern border.

“Israel continues to face severe threats to its security, as the world saw today, and the United States will continue to support efforts to end these terrible attacks along the blue line, which must be a top priority,” they said.

Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister and a member of Israel’s security cabinet, said: “For the death of small children, [Hezbollah secretary general Hassan] Nasrallah should pay with his head. Lebanon as a whole has to pay the price … It’s time for action!”

Isaac Herzog, the president, said: “The heart breaks in the face of the shocking and terrible disaster in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.” He accused Hezbollah of attacking “children whose only sin was going out to play football. And never returned.”

The barrage of rocket fire followed a strike by the Israeli air force on the town of Kafr Kila in southern Lebanon, close to the line that demarcates Lebanese and Israeli territory. The strike killed four, including several members of Hezbollah, according to Reuters and a statement from the group.

Israeli forces also said they intercepted a drone from Lebanon targeting an offshore gas rig, while Lebanon’s state-run news agency said an Israeli drone attack struck the border town of Odaisseh sparking a fire.

Artillery on the town of Meiss el-Jabal also started fires in southern Lebanon, while Israeli fighter jets broke the sound barrier over the southern city of Tyre.

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.

It was billed as the race of the century, a clash between three world record-holders and future hall of famers. But on this boisterous night in Paris, hype and reality never quite brushed cheeks. Once again the Australian they call the Terminator was left standing at the end, the immortal and the indestructible, as she defended her Olympic 400m freestyle title.

The first thing Ariarne Titmus did after her victory was to hug the brilliant 17-year-old Canadian Summer McIntosh, who always threatened but never quite delivered. Then it was the turn of the American Katie Ledecky, by common consent the greatest female swimmer of them all. There was respect there. Appreciation, too. But they knew Titmus had been too good again.

“I probably felt the pressure for this race more than anything in my life, to be honest,” Titmus said. “I’m definitely good at handling the ­pressure, but I’ve definitely felt it.”

How does she keep delivering? Her family put it down to the fact she was born with her umbilical cord around her neck, and believe her fight for survival made her who she is. As her father, Steve, puts it: “It’s almost as if from that point she was never going to give up.” There is a lot of talk these days about manifestation. Titmus could be the concept’s poster child.

In truth, it was a good race but not a great one. The big three quickly became the tenacious two, as Ledecky failed to keep up with the searing pace set by Titmus and McIntosh.

Until halfway there was almost nothing in it. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, Titmus applied the squeeze and pulled away to win in 3min 57.49sec, with McIntosh taking silver in 3:58.37 and Ledecky bronze in 4:00.86.

“But it’s fun racing the best in the world,” Titmus said. “It gets the best out of me; it gets the best out of them. I really hope all the hype lived up to the expectation. I really hope that I put on a good show tonight and ^­everyone enjoyed it.”

Thankfully, this gladiatorial contest had a venue fit for the occasion – a welcome relief after the necessarily empty swimming stadium at the Tokyo Games. Over the past few weeks, organisers have transformed this indoor rugby stadium at La Défense, where Racing 92 play their home games, into an extraordinary swimming arena.

It is a remarkable feat of engineering, with two pools, each filled with 2.5m litres of water, and 15,000 seats.

However, it is clearly missing one crucial ingredient: lightning speed. The reason, most experts suspect, is because the pools are only 2.30m deep. When it comes to fast times a simple logic tends to apply: the deeper the pool, the quicker they tend to be.

That probably explains why Titmus’s winning time was two seconds outside her world record. This night wasn’t about records, though, but legacy. As she put it: “The Olympics are different. It’s not like anything else. It’s not about how fast you go. It’s about getting your hand on the wall first. So I’m really happy to have done that tonight.”

She added: “I started to feel it in the last hundred. But I left everything out there. It’s probably not the time I was capable of, but living in the village makes it hard for high performance. It’s about who can keep it together in the mind.”

For Ledecky, this night had its compensations. This was her eighth individual medal, tying Carl Lewis and Ray Ewry. In fact Michael Phelps, with 16, is the only American with more individual Olympic medals in any sport.

There were no medals for Britain on the first day of the swimming ­competition but Team GB’s Adam Peaty and China’s Qin Haiyang both did their part in setting up a spicy 100m breaststroke showdown on Sunday by winning their respective semi-finals.

Peaty, who is trying to become the first swimmer to win three gold medals at the distance, will feel that he made a quiet statement of intent as he qualified fastest in 58.86sec, beating the American world champion, Nic Fink, by 0.30.

While Qin’s time of 58.93 was only a smidgeon behind, Peaty believes he can go faster. “There’s still a lot to work on technically,” he said. “It is really tough on that back end. I know this field has been a bit slower, all respect due.

This is the way the Olympics work. It ain’t about a time, here it is about the races.”

He added, pointing at the pool: “This sport is so testing, so testing, but you can’t beat that. I’m loving it again, so what else can you add except a chocolate cake?”

Earlier in the night, Lukas Märtens won the men’s 400m freestyle – and, in doing so, became the first German to claim an Olympic title since the Albatross, Michael Gross, in Seoul in 1988.

The first session closed with another gold medal for Australia in the penultimate event, the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay, in an Olympic record, with the US second and China third. Britain, however, finished sixth nearly seven seconds back.

Chants of “U–S-A! U–S-A!” then rang around the arena as the Americans won the men’s 4x100m freestyle gold in 3:09.28, ahead of Australia and Italy, with Team GB fifth.

The head coach of the Canada women’s football team, Bev Priestman, and two other officials have been banned by Fifa for a year after a spying scandal.

Analyst Joseph Lombardi and assistant coach Jasmine Mander were also banned after allegations they used drones to spy on the coaching sessions of their opponents New Zealand on 22 July, a day before they played in Paris. Fifa said they “were each found responsible for offensive behaviour and violation of the principles of fair play”.

Canada have been docked six points in Group A in the Olympic football tournament, and the association has also been fined 200,000 Swiss francs (£175,000).

The points deduction does not eliminate Canada from the tournament. It could mean the team must win their two remaining games in Group A and hope to advance with three points. Having beaten New Zealand 2-1 in their opener, they play group leaders France on Sunday in Saint-Étienne, then Colombia on Thursday in Nice.

Priestman, 38, from County Durham in England, became head coach in November 2020 and led Canada to the Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021, beating Sweden in the gold medal match. She is under contract until the 2027 Women’s World Cup.

On Wednesday, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) said a “non-accredited member of the Canada Soccer support team” had been detained by French authorities in Saint-Étienne for improperly using a drone.

Priestman was suspended by the national soccer federation and then removed from the Olympic tournament. Lombardi and Mander were also sent home. Priestman denied any involvement in the scheme – but said she would voluntarily “step aside” for the match against New Zealand. Canada won the match under the guidance of Andy Spence, the former Everton women’s manager.

Canada Soccer CEO and general secretary Kevin Blue said on Friday that “additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.”

The Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive, David Shoemaker, said that information showed Priestman was likely aware of the drone use and he was aware of reports it had happened at the previous Olympics. “There appears to be information that could tarnish that Olympic performance in Tokyo,” he said at a press conference.

“It makes me ill, it makes me sick to my stomach, to think that there could be something that calls into question … one of my favourite Olympic moments in history. I know Canada Soccer will investigate all of this fully, including Tokyo. [We will] make sure they get to the bottom of it.”

Fifa said in a statement: “The CSA [Canadian Soccer Association] was found responsible for failing to respect the applicable Fifa regulations in connection with its failure to ensure the compliance of its participating officials of the OFT [Olympic football tournament] with the prohibition on flying drones over any training sites.

“The officials were each found responsible for offensive behaviour and violation of the principles of fair play in connection with the CSA’s women’s representative team’s drones usage in the scope of the OFT.”

Fifa said the decision remains subject to a potential appeal before the court of arbitration for sport, which could happen at a special fast-track hearing during the ongoing Olympic Games.

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.

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.

Cooler temperatures brought some relief to the thousands of firefighters battling the Park fire in northern California after it exploded in size, becoming the largest in the state and prompting the governor to make an emergency declaration for three counties.

The intensity and dramatic spread of the wildfire led officials to make unwelcome comparisons to the disastrous Camp fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and destroying 11,000 homes.

Paradise again was near the danger zone. The entire town was under an evacuation warning, one affecting several communities in Butte county. Evacuation orders were also issued in Plumas, Tehama and Shasta counties. An evacuation warning calls for people to prepare to evacuate and await instructions, while an evacuation order means to leave immediately.

Newsom’s emergency declaration for the counties of Plumas, Butte and Tehama came as thousands of residents were fleeing their homes. The California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire) reported 134 buildings had been destroyed as of Saturday afternoon and thousands were still under threat, however 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 350,000 acres (124,238 hectares) – an area nearly the size of Los Angeles – 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 Cal Fire.

However, Jeremy Pierce, a Cal Fire operations section chief, said firefighters were taking advantage of the cooler weather: “We’re having great success today. Our crews are strong and going out there and getting this while the weather is in our favor.”

Temperatures are expected to be cooler than average through the middle of next week, but “that doesn’t mean that fires that are existing will go away”, said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Billy See, an incident commander with Cal Fire, said at a briefing that every hour since its inception, the blaze had been advancing 8 sq miles (21 sq kms). But there was cautious optimism as weather conditions slowed the fire in some areas, and firefighters were able to plan and deploy additional personnel. Nearly 2,500 firefighters were battling the blaze, aided by 16 helicopters and numerous air tankers.

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.

Amanda Brown, who lives in the community where Stout was arrested, said she was stunned that someone would set a fire in a region where memories of Paradise are still fresh.

“That anyone could deliberately put our community through that again is incredibly cruel. I don’t understand it,” said Brown, 61, who lives about a mile (1.6 kms) from the fire but had not been ordered to evacuate.

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.

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

Another Forest Ranch evacuee, Sherry Alpers, said 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. “If it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Smoke from the Park fire had begun to have an effect on air quality by early Saturday. The Tehama county air pollution control district said conditions would range from “moderate” to “very unhealthy” in the morning and evening hours as smoke drifted over the region.

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.

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.

Associated Press contributed to this report

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.

North Korea has vowed to “totally destroy” its enemies in case of war when leader Kim Jong-un gives an order, state media KCNA reported on Sunday, as the regime marked the end of hostilities in the Korean war.

Senior military officials including Col Ri Un-ryong and Lt Cdr Yu Kyong-song made the comments “out of surging hatred” towards the US and South Korea at a meeting on Saturday attended by Kim, marking the 71st anniversary of the Korean war armistice, according to KCNA.

North Korea and the US do not have diplomatic ties and talks over reducing tensions and denuclearising North Korea have been stalled since 2019. North Korea’s state media recently said it does not expect that to change no matter who is next elected in the White House.

Accusing the US and South Korea of “being hellbent on provoking a nuclear war”, the military officials vowed to strengthen war efficiency to stage an “overwhelming attack on the enemy anytime and without delay and totally destroy them once the respected supreme commander Kim Jong-un gives an order”.

North Korea signed an armistice agreement with the US and China on 27 July 1953, ending hostilities in the three-year war. US generals signed the agreement representing the UN forces that backed South Korea.

North Korea calls it “victory day” while South Korea does not mark the day with any major events. Hostilities ended with a truce, not a treaty, meaning the two sides are still technically at war.

On Sunday in Tokyo, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, and Japan’s defence minister, Minoru Kihara, met with their South Korean counterpart, Shin Won-sik, to signed an agreement on trilateral cooperation efforts, such as real-time sharing of North Korean missile warning data and joint military exercises. Tokyo is looking to establish a new joint headquarters to oversee its armed forces and coordinate better with Washington on growing regional threats from China and North Korea.

North Korea has vowed to “totally destroy” its enemies in case of war when leader Kim Jong-un gives an order, state media KCNA reported on Sunday, as the regime marked the end of hostilities in the Korean war.

Senior military officials including Col Ri Un-ryong and Lt Cdr Yu Kyong-song made the comments “out of surging hatred” towards the US and South Korea at a meeting on Saturday attended by Kim, marking the 71st anniversary of the Korean war armistice, according to KCNA.

North Korea and the US do not have diplomatic ties and talks over reducing tensions and denuclearising North Korea have been stalled since 2019. North Korea’s state media recently said it does not expect that to change no matter who is next elected in the White House.

Accusing the US and South Korea of “being hellbent on provoking a nuclear war”, the military officials vowed to strengthen war efficiency to stage an “overwhelming attack on the enemy anytime and without delay and totally destroy them once the respected supreme commander Kim Jong-un gives an order”.

North Korea signed an armistice agreement with the US and China on 27 July 1953, ending hostilities in the three-year war. US generals signed the agreement representing the UN forces that backed South Korea.

North Korea calls it “victory day” while South Korea does not mark the day with any major events. Hostilities ended with a truce, not a treaty, meaning the two sides are still technically at war.

On Sunday in Tokyo, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, and Japan’s defence minister, Minoru Kihara, met with their South Korean counterpart, Shin Won-sik, to signed an agreement on trilateral cooperation efforts, such as real-time sharing of North Korean missile warning data and joint military exercises. Tokyo is looking to establish a new joint headquarters to oversee its armed forces and coordinate better with Washington on growing regional threats from China and North Korea.

• China’s foreign minister told his US counterpart that Beijing denies charges that it is helping Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. Wang Yi met with Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, on Saturday on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Blinken discussed China’s support for Russia’s defence industrial base and warned of further US actions if China does not curtail that, according to a senior US state department official. “There was no commitment by the Chinese to take action,” the official told Reuters.

• An oil refinery was burning in Polevaya, Kursk oblast, Russia on Sunday morning after a reported Ukrainian drone strike. The Russian Telegram channel Baza said three tanks caught fire and posted video. Nasa’s satellite fire monitoring service, Firms, showed heat signatures from fires at the location of an oil refinery in Polevaya.

• Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Lozuvatske in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, Interfax news agency reported, as the Russians advanced towards the city of Pokrovsk. US-based thinktank the Instiute for the Study of War (ISW) said this claim was “consistent with ISW’s assessment of Russian advances in the area”. Ukraine’s general staff made no mention of the settlement in its reports, but noted that the area around it was gripped by heavy fighting. Unofficial military bloggers have reported the loss of at least two other localities in the sector. Russian forces have been slowly advancing through the Donetsk region in Ukraine’s east.

• The ISW said Ukrainian forces advanced on Saturday within Vovchansk, north-east of Kharkiv city, amid continued Russian ground attacks. In Donetsk oblast, geolocated footage indicated Ukraine regained lost positions in northern Pivdenne, south-east of Toretsk, the ISW said; while Russian forces advanced west and south-west of Donetsk city, and were filmed raising their flag in northern Krasnohorivka, west of the city. “Geolocated published on July 27 indicates that Russian forces advanced further south of Kostyantynivka (south-west of Donetsk city) during the roughly reinforced battalion-size mechanized assault that Russian forces conducted in the area on July 24,” the ISW added.

• Ukrainian attack drones damaged a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber at a military airfield in northern Russia, a military intelligence source told Reuters on Saturday. The source said a long-range TU-22M3 supersonic bomber was hit at the Olenya military airfield near Olenegorsk in northern Russia, about 1,800km (1,100 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that in further attacks on Russia, military airfield were hit in the city of Engels in the Saratov region and Dyagilevo in the Ryazan region. A drone also hit an oil refinery in Ryazan. Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.

• Ukrainian officials say Russian shelling killed at least five civilians on Saturday in separate regions of Ukraine. In the Kherson region, in Ukraine’s south, officials said three people were killed, while in the north-eastern Sumy region a 14-year-old boy was killed and 12 other people wounded in a rocket attack on the small town of Hlukhiv, the Ukraine prosecutor’s office said. The attack on the town near the Russian border hit apartment blocks, houses, an educational institution, a shop and vehicles just after noon. Six of the wounded were children. In Kharkiv region, the governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said one person was killed when a private home near the city of Chuhuiv came under fire.

• In southern Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks killed one person, injured two and damaged homes and other buildings. Russia’s defence ministry said air defence units had destroyed two drones over the region late on Saturday. Accounts from either side could not be independently confirmed. Ukraine denies attacking civilian targets inside Russia.

• The Ukrainian maritime corridor transported 60m tonnes of cargo, mainly from the Greater Odesa ports, in the last 11 months, the Ukrainian seaports authority said, despite attacks on port infrastructure. 40.6m tonnes of this total amount were grain exports delivered to 46 countries.

• India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is scheduled to travel to Kyiv in August, marking his first visit to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion two years ago.

• The air force of the armed forces of Ukraine said Russia has increased the number of “ballistic” strikes over the past few months, forcing Ukrainian forces to think more about “passive defence” tactics such as camouflage and using “false positions”.

• The governor of the Bryansk region in southern Russia, Alexander Bogomaz, reported a “massive” drone attack on the region. No casualties were reported. “22 unmanned aircraft-type aerial vehicles have been intercepted and destroyed,” Bogomaz wrote on Telegram.

Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said on Saturday that the EU was sliding toward oblivion, in a rambling anti-west speech in which he warned of a new, Asia-oriented “world order” while throwing his support behind Donald Trump’s US presidential bid.

“Europe has given up defending its own interests,” Orbán said in Băile Tuşnad, a majority ethnic Hungarian town in central Romania. “All Europe is doing today is following the US’s pro-Democrat foreign policy unconditionally … even at the cost of self-destruction.

“A change is coming that has not been seen for 500 years. What we are facing is in fact a world order change,” he added, naming China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as becoming the “dominant centre” of the world.

Orbán alleged that the US was behind the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines built to carry gas from Russia to Germany, calling it “an act of terrorism carried out at the obvious direction of the Americans”. He did not offer any evidence to back up the claim.

The far-right leader’s remarks come amid growing criticism from his European partners after he embarked on rogue “peace mission” trips to Moscow and Beijing this month aimed at brokering an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Orbán is widely considered to have the warmest relations with the Kremlin among all EU leaders.

On Ukraine, Orbán cast doubt on the war-torn country becoming a member of Nato or the EU. “We Europeans do not have the money for it. Ukraine will revert to the position of a buffer state,” he said, adding that international security guarantees “will be enshrined in an agreement between the US and Russia”.

Throughout Russia’s war in Ukraine, Orbán has broken with other EU leaders by refusing to provide Kyiv with weapons to defend against Russian forces and has routinely delayed, watered down or blocked efforts to send financial aid to the country and impose sanctions on Moscow.

Orbán typically uses the annual Tusványos Summer University platform in Romania to indicate the ideological direction of his national government and to deride the standards of the EU bloc, which Hungary joined in 2004.

Hungary currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, during which Orbán has vowed to “make Europe great again” and has endorsed Trump’s candidacy in this year’s US presidential election. Orbán visited Trump twice this year at the former president’s beachside compound in Mar-a-Lago.

Orbán said on Saturday that Trump’s bid for re-election aimed “to pull the American people back from a post-nationalist liberal state to a nation state” and he rehashed a slew of conservative tropes that Trump was being penalised unfairly to prevent his electoral bid.

“That is why they want to put him in prison. That’s why they want to take away his assets. And if that doesn’t work, that’s why they want to kill him,” Orbán said, referring to an assassination attempt on Trump at a Pennsylvania rally this month.

The US ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, responded to Orbán’s comments on Saturday in a post on X, saying such rhetoric “risks changing Hungary’s relationship with America”.

“We have no other ally or partner … that similarly, overtly and tirelessly campaigns for a specific candidate in an election in the United States of America, seemingly convinced that no matter, it only helps Hungary – or at least helps him personally,” Pressman said, and he went on to accuse Orbán of peddling “Kremlin conspiracy theories about the United States. Hardly what we expect from an ally.”

Orbán’s remarks on Saturday are not the first time he has used the festival in Transylvania to stir controversy. In 2014, Orban declared for the first time his intention to build an “illiberal state” in Hungary, and in 2022 he sparked international outrage after he railed against Europe becoming a “mixed-race” society.

He doubled down on his long-held anti-immigration stance on Saturday, saying it was not an answer to his country’s ageing population.

“There can be no question of a shrinking population supplemented by migration,” he said in his Saturday address. “The western experience is that if there are more guests than owners then home is no longer home. This is a risk that should not be taken.”

The EU’s longest-serving leader, Orbán has become an icon to some conservative populists for his firm opposition to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. He has also cracked down on the press and judiciary in Hungary and has been accused by the EU of violating rule of law and democracy standards.

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.

Keir Starmer has discussed the possibility of a youth mobility scheme with the Spanish prime minister, according to reports.

Pedro Sánchez is said to have put the proposal to Starmer in a private meeting during the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace earlier this month.

Starmer did not reject the idea and told Sánchez he would consider it, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

Recent years have seen growing calls for a scheme that would allow young people to live, study or work in the EU for a limited period.

In April, Rishi Sunak rejected an offer from the European Commission that would have granted people aged 18 to 30 free movement for up to four years.

At the time, Labour said it had no plans for such a scheme but that it would “seek to improve the UK’s working relationship with the EU within our red lines”.

The manifesto on which Labour won the election earlier this month said there would be “no return to … freedom of movement”. A bilateral deal with Spain would not in itself break that pledge.

The UK already has some form of youth mobility scheme with 13 non-EU countries, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand as well as Japan, Iceland and Uruguay.

The existing schemes differ from freedom of movement in that they typically still require applicants to get a visa, provide evidence of sufficient funds to support themselves and pay a health service surcharge.

A government spokesperson told the Telegraph: “We have been clear that we won’t rejoin the single market, customs union or reintroduce freedom of movement, and we are not considering a youth mobility scheme.”

In January, London mayor Sadiq Khan called for a deal that would allow young people to move freely to and from the EU, saying it would help lessen the economic and cultural damage caused by Brexit.

He said the current Brexit deal had “done damage right across London and it is young people who have been hardest hit in so many ways”.

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.