Israeli jets struck southern Lebanon overnight as diplomats worked frantically to prevent a regional war after a rocket strike that killed 12 children in the occupied Golan Heights.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, visited the scene of Saturday’s rocket attack in Majdal Shams, a predominantly Druze village, calling the strike “a terrible tragedy”.

The attack killed 12 children between the ages of 10 and 16 as they were playing football and wounded dozens more.

“Hezbollah is responsible for it and they will pay the price,” said Gallant on Sunday, as thousands of mourners gathered in the village for the victims’ funeral ceremonies.

The Israeli foreign ministry echoed his message, saying the Lebanese militant group had “crossed all red lines”, and accused them of having deliberately targeted civilians.

Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the strike, claiming that a projectile from Israel’s Iron Dome defence system had hit the town, countering a volley of rocket fire the group said had targeted Israeli military sites.

In an apparent initial retaliation for the attack, Israel conducted a series of airstrikes on towns in southern Lebanon overnight on Saturday, as well as one close to the Bekaa valley.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is due to convene his security cabinet on Sunday afternoon. The outcome of the meeting is expected to be decisive, as diplomats scramble to prevent any further escalation in fighting that they fear could spiral into a regional war.

Speaking in Tokyo, the US secretary of state said caution was necessary. “I emphasise [Israel’s] right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that,” Antony Blinken said. “But we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate. We don’t want to see it spread.”

Standing next to US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, Blinken added: “Every indication is that indeed the rocket was from Hezbollah.”

The UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon, as well as the UN’s peace-keeping force deployed along the line that demarcates Israeli from Lebanese territory, urged “maximum restraint” after the rocket attack.

Both sides, they said, must “put a stop to the ongoing intensified exchanges of fire”.

“It could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief,” they added.

The Golan Heights was taken from Syria by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981 in a move not recognised by most countries.

On Sunday, visiting the scene of the rocket attack in Majdal Shams, the IDF chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, said Israel was “greatly increasing our readiness for the next stage of fighting in the north, as we are simultaneously fighting in Gaza”.

Halevi reiterated the Israeli position that Hezbollah was responsible for firing the Iranian-made missile. “A Falaq-1 rocket struck here in the soccer field, it is an Iranian rocket, manufactured in Iran,” he told reporters.

Amid the funeral processions in Majdal Shams, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani, warned Israel against any “new adventure” in Lebanon.

The Lebanese foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, told Reuters that his government had asked the US to urge restraint from Israel. In response, he said, the US had asked Lebanon’s rulers to request that Hezbollah – a militia whose power far outstrips other political and military forces in Lebanon– also show restraint.

Since the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, Hezbollah and other militia groups have fired regular salvoes of rockets into Israeli territory in response to the assault on Gaza, although the group has said it will cease its attacks if a deal to halt the fighting in the territory is reached.

On Saturday, in the hours prior to the strike on Majdal Shams, an estimated 40 rockets were directed at Israel from Lebanese territory.

Israel has responded with airstrikes targeting towns deep in Lebanese territory as well as reported use of white phosphorus on farmland close to the Blue Line, which separates Israeli and Lebanese territory. The increase in rocket fire on Saturday followed an Israeli airstrike on a southern Lebanese town that killed multiple Hezbollah fighters.

Qatari and Egyptian officials were due to meet with the head of the CIA, William Burns, and Israeli officials in Rome to continue fraught negotiations over a deal to end the fighting, and return hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza.

US officials have also worked for months to try to cool tensions along the Blue Line and prevent any rising escalations in response to the fighting in Gaza, which has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians.

After the attack on Majdal Shams, the White House said it would “continue to support efforts to end these terrible attacks along the Blue Line, which must be a top priority”.

White House administrator Pete Buttigieg says it is “a bad look” for Republicans to call Kamala Harris a diversity hire in their attempts to slow down the momentum that has greeted her ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket for November’s presidential race.

On Saturday’s episode of the New York Times podcast The Interview, the Democratic transportation secretary said “you can tell” that is the case because of how even Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson has tried to distance himself from that line of attack against Harris.

“You got somebody like Mike Johnson, who is a very, very conservative figure … telling his own caucus, like, ‘Hey, cool it,’” Buttigieg remarked to podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “He’s basically saying that they are embarrassing the party, and I think acknowledging that they are diminishing the party’s chances by indulging in that kind of rhetoric.”

Buttigieg added: “And the fact that they can’t think of what else to do, besides go right to race and gender, isn’t just revealing about some of the ugliest undercurrents in today’s Republican party – it’s also profoundly unimaginative because it means that they can’t speak to how any of this is going to make people’s lives better.”

Harris, a former California attorney general and US senator who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, became the first woman to be elected vice-president when Joe Biden won the Oval Office in 2020. She is now poised to become the first woman of color to lead a major-party presidential ticket after Biden halted his re-election campaign on 21 July and endorsed her, setting the stage for Harris to reportedly raise $200m for her political warchest in a matter of days.

Supporters of the Republican nominee Donald Trump – who lost the presidency to Biden – have met those accomplishments by disparaging Harris as a hire resulting from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. While grappling with a criminal conviction for election-related fraud in a case involving an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him as well as other prosecutions pending against him, Trump has insulted Harris as “crazy”, “nuts”, “dumb as a rock” and – at a rally on Friday – “a bum”.

That approach prompted some Republican leaders to try to warn party members against aiming overt racism and sexism at Harris. Those included Johnson, who said at a Tuesday news briefing: “This election will be about policies and not personalities.”

The Louisiana congressman added: “This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris, and her ethnicity or her gender having nothing to do with this whatsoever.”

Buttigieg went on the Republican-friendly Fox News Sunday show and said Harris has proven herself in “one of the most visible leadership roles in the country”.

“The idea that somebody hasn’t been tested or vetted when they have been vice-president of the United States just doesn’t make any sense,” Buttigieg said.

Opinion polls show Harris is running a tight race with Trump after Biden had fallen several points behind, with the president’s support in vital swing states plummeting.

Buttigieg – the ex-mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 – is considered to be among a field of contenders to be Harris’s running mate. And in fact, a National Public Radio/PBS News/Marist poll showed him tied as the most popular Democratic vice-presidential candidate for the fall election.

He declined to tell Garcia-Navarro whether he believed he would make a good vice-president.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to talk like that knowing that the person who needs to make that decision is … her – not me,” Buttigieg said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to wander down that path with you right now.”

For John Akouri, whose father immigrated from Tripoli, Lebanon, in 1955, there is only one choice for president in November’s election: Donald Trump, despite the Muslim travel ban during his presidency, the felony falsifying business records conviction and the unadulterated drama constantly surrounding him.

“After almost two decades of wars and watching [the Islamic State] cause devastation in Syria and in Iraq we needed someone to come in and clean things up,” he said of his initial draw to Trump for the 2016 election. “So, I thought on a foreign policy and national level he was saying the right things. He was a breath of fresh air,” he continued, referencing Trump’s withdrawal of thousands of US troops from Syria in 2019.

The former president’s supporters are now looking for more voters like Akouri, increasingly reaching out to Arab Americans in a bid to secure their vote in November’s presidential election. What they are finding is a growing receptiveness, particularly with certain Arab Americans who find appeal in Republicans’ conservatism on social issues such as religion and LGBTQ+ rights – and despite the GOP’s widespread support for Israel in its war on the Gaza Strip.

In June, Akouri was among a group of Michigan Arab American leaders invited to a private gathering of national Republican figures including House speaker Mike Johnson, majority leader Steve Scalise, and the billionaire Lebanese US businessman Massad Boulos. Boulos, whose son, Michael, married Trump’s daughter, Tiffany, in 2022, is leading a new effort to win Trump votes among Arab Americans.

“We plan not only not to vote for [the Democratic candidate] again, as we did in 2020 – we are now bent on ‘punishing’ [Democrats for Joe Biden’s] unfettered support of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza,” said Bishara Bahbah, the founder and national chairman of Arab Americans for Trump.

In May, a group of prominent Arab Americans that included Boulos and Bahbah established a political action committee called Arab Americans for a Better America.

Bahbah has said that he and other members of the community have been reassured by Boulos, who he describes as Trump’s special envoy to the Arab and Muslim American communities, that a second Trump presidency would “put an immediate end to the war in Gaza”, though he offered no evidence.

While Trump has referred to himself as “the best friend that Israel has ever had”, and in March told Fox News that Israel had to “finish the problem”, without specifying what that would mean, Bahbah says that he is confident having the former president back in the White House would result in a quick end to the hostilities in Gaza. Those hostilities became a defining issue for Biden before he halted his re-election campaign on 21 July.

Trump has also said that – as president – he’d ban refugees from Gaza from entering the US. That’s a move with which Bahbah agrees – but for very different reasons.

“Israel would love to empty historic Palestine from its native Palestinians,” he said. “We will not give Israel the satisfaction of driving out our people from Palestine.”

While Arab Americans are often lumped together and viewed as a single voting bloc, that characterization is often rejected by those to whom the term is often apportioned.

“Arab Americans have common things with the Democrats and common things with Republicans,” said Dr Yahya Basha, a respected physician and leading member of metro Detroit’s Arab American community.

“We have a lot of Middle Eastern Christians, and Muslims,” Basha said. “For family issues, they lean with Republicans. It’s a very diverse community.”

In the 2000 presidential election, which took place before the 9/11 terrorist attacks by al-Qaida in 2001, Republican George Bush won an estimated 45% of the Arab American vote – and he beat Democratic party candidate Al Gore by a 2 to 1 margin in Dearborn. But the US’s disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 changed up those dynamics.

In 2020, only about a third of Arab American voters backed Trump nationwide. And Biden reportedly won nearly 70% of the vote in Michigan’s heavily Arab American counties.

Michigan is home to about 95,000 registered Chaldean Christian voters, a community of Assyrian Catholics that immigrated from Iraq and which does not always readily identify as Arab.

It’s a community that Trump has long courted. Trump lawyer Alina Habba, who scored a coveted spot at the Republican party convention in Milwaukee on Thursday night and spoke of being a “proud first-generation Arab American,” is the daughter of Iraqi Chaldean immigrants.

At a campaign rally in 2020, Trump name-checked Michigan’s Chaldeans. And the same year, the former president nominated Hala Jarbou, an Iraq-born Chaldean, to serve as a judge for the western district of Michigan, making Jarbou the first Chaldean American to reach the federal judicial district bench.

Despite his overtures to some Arab American groups, in October, Trump suggested that, should he win November’s presidential election, he would introduce “ideological screening” for all immigrants. He also said he would expand the controversial Muslim travel ban introduced under his previous administration, which temporarily restricted immigration from seven Muslim-majority states and other countries.

For Basha, who immigrated from Syria and today runs a major healthcare facility in Royal Oak, Michigan, the failure of Barack Obama’s White House – with Biden as vice-president – to support the Arab Awakenings that roiled the Arab world more than a decade earlier is one reason to now listen to the overtures of Trump’s supporters.

Another is that Basha believes the US would drive fear into the west’s enemies under Trump. Without offering evidence, he spoke of how, if Trump were president, he does not believe Russian president Vladimir Putin would have had his military invade Ukraine or become involved in the Syrian civil war as it did with Biden and Obama in the White House, respectively.

“If Putin feared the United States, he would not have done what he did in Syria or Ukraine,” Basha opined. He also said Trump demonstrated strength in Iran when he ordered the January 2020 US drone strike that killed general Qassem Suleimani, the former head of Iran’s Quds Force.

Akouri feels that in some ways, Arab Americans have been left out of politics under Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, whom Biden has endorsed to run for the White House in November. Akouri says that when Trump was president, two Arab Americans were chosen to serve in his cabinet – Mark Esper (former secretary of defense, whose paternal family immigrated from Lebanon) and Alex Azar (ex-secretary of health and human services, whose family also came from Lebanon).

Biden, in contrast, has none. Akouri also notes that Biden promised to reopen the Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem several years ago, but so far that hasn’t happened.

This year, Michigan Republicans have gone to extra effort to connect with the Arab American community in the state. For instance, during this past Ramadan, leading officials made a three-hour round trip from Grand Rapids to Detroit to be present at an iftar dinner. Arab American leaders say such an effort was unprecedented.

“Many of my friends who were solidly blue Democrats are approaching me asking, ‘How do we support Trump?’” Akouri said.

“People want change.”

A convicted child rapist competing for the Netherlands at the Paris 2024 Olympics was met with boos – and some applause – as he walked out for his first beach volleyball match on Sunday.

Steven van de Velde, who was convicted for raping a 12-year-old girl in 2016, lost his first game with partner Matthew Immers. The beach volleyball player has been at the centre of a storm in Paris after victims’ groups said his inclusion sent a dangerous message to rapists and would cause “collateral damage” to victims of sexual abuse.

Boos were audible when Van de Velde was introduced to the crowds at the Eiffel Tower Stadium in central Paris, but were replaced with cheers when his Dutch teammate Immers took to the field of play before the pair’s match against Italy.

There had been a mixture of boos and cheers as the players had entered the arena together, but when Van de Velde was introduced on his own, the jeers were more pronounced. While there was some muted applause for the player, there were no cheers. Van de Velde raised his arm as he walked on to the sandy court, which is directly next to the Eiffel Tower.

The Italians Alex Ranghieri and Adrian Ignacio Carambula Raurich took the first set 22-20, the Dutch won the second 21-19, and the deciding third set was 15-13 to the Italians.

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

The boos that greeted the player are unusual at the Games, and were incongruous in this most spectacular of venues where crowds had earlier performed several Mexican waves and cheered as dancers entertained them between matches.

Two Dutch fans said they had bought tickets for the event a year and a half ago before the scandal blew up. Anna from Utrecht, who did not want to give his surname, said: “I think he has had his penalty, so now he can start with a clean sheet.”

His friend Jesper, who also did not want to give his second name, said the case had sparked a lot of debate among Dutch people. “The crime he committed is, of course, a sensitive one,” he said. “That’s why people are also a little bit struggling, because we having conversations like, are we cheering him on, or not? It’s different – if it was any other Dutch person, we wouldn’t even have that discussion.” He added that he also thought Van de Velde had served his time and should be allowed to play: “You respond from emotion, which is completely correct. But we also have a legal system.”

Earlier this week the International Olympic Committee faced calls for an investigation into how the player had been allowed to compete at Paris 2024. In an email seen by the Guardian, a senior official with the Dutch Olympic Committee has insisted that Van de Velde was not a paedophile, in response to a concerned British man who lives in the Netherlands.

The man had called the inclusion of 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.”

Van de Velde is understood have requested not to stay in the Olympic Village, and has been allowed to absent himself from post-match mixed zone interviews.

The IOC has said that inclusion in competition is a matter for individual nation’s Olympic committees. Asked if the IOC was “comfortable and happy” with Van de Velde’s involvement, its spokesman Mark Adams said: “I think to characterise it as ‘comfortable and happy’ would not be correct.” He added: “I think a crime occurred some time ago, 10 years ago. A great deal of rehabilitation has taken place, and there’s very strong safeguarding in place also, and I believe … the athlete in question is not even staying in the village.”

In a statement the Dutch Olympic Committee 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.

It said Van de Velde had engaged with all requirements and had met stringent risk assessment thresholds, and stated that there is no risk of him reoffending. The committee said: “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.”

It said it “regretted” the “unforeseen renewed attention, on social media in particular, for those struggling with trauma from sexual offences and transgressive behaviour”.

The organising committee of Paris 2024 has apologised to Catholics and other Christian groups who were outraged by a scene during the opening ceremony that evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting with drag queens, a transgender model and a singer made up as the Greek god of wine.

The parody of the biblical scene, performed against the backdrop of the River Seine, was intended to interpret Dionysus and raise awareness “of the absurdity of violence between human beings”, organisers wrote on X.

The committee was forced to apologise after the performance caused outrage among Catholics, Christian groups and conservative politicians around the world.

“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. [The opening ceremony] tried to celebrate community tolerance,” the Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps told a press conference. “We believe this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offence we are really sorry.”

France has a rich Catholic heritage but also has a long tradition of secularism and anti-clericalism. Blasphemy is legal and considered by many to be an essential pillar of freedom of speech. Supporters of the tableau praised its message of inclusivity and tolerance.

The Catholic church in France said it deplored a ceremony that “included scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity”.

Monsignor Emmanuel Gobilliard, a delegate of the bishops of France for the Games, said some French athletes had had trouble sleeping because of the fallout from the controversy.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the highest-ranking Catholic official in Malta and an official for the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal office, said he had contacted France’s ambassador to Valletta to complain about the “gratuitous insult”.

The Italian bishops’ conference said that what should have been a celebration of French culture took an “unexpectedly negative turn, becoming a parade of banal errors, accompanied by trite and predictable ideologies”.

An article in Avvenire, the daily Italian newspaper affiliated with the Catholic church, said: “Don’t take us for moralistic bigots, but what’s the point of having to experience every single global event, even a sporting one, as if it were a Gay Pride?”

Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League, a party in Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government, described the segment as “squalid”. “Opening the Olympics by insulting billions of Christians around the world was a really bad start, dear French,” he added.

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, spoke of the “moral void of the west”.

Some commentators said the controversy was another example of 21st-century culture wars turbocharged by a 24-hour news cycle and social media.

Thomas Jolly, the artistic director behind the flamboyant opening ceremony, said religious subversion had never been his intention. “We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that,” he said on Saturday.

Iran’s new president has been formally inaugurated by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, opening up the slim hope of improved relations with the west, less internal censorship and a fresh approach to the economy.

In a ceremony on Sunday marking the start of his four-year presidency, Masoud Pezeshkian said the Iranian people had voted for change and promised constructive engagement with the west, a step he regards as a precondition for Tehran curbing inflation and securing growth.

Elected in a run-off on 5 July on a turnout of 49.7%, Pezeshkian, a reformist, is expected to make a raft of cabinet appointments in the next few days, including a new foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. In his first official act in office, Pezeshkian appointed Mohammad Reza Aref, 72, a reformist and close ally of the former president, as his first vice-president.

At the inauguration ceremony in Tehran attended by diplomats and Iran’s political elite, Khamenei, the man that sets the parameters of Iranian policy, said it would be a foreign policy priority to remain close to countries that had supported Iran during the period of sanctions. But he said he did not rule out closer relations with European powers if they modified their behaviour.

Khamenei, broadly an advocate of looking to the east for Iran’s partners, said many European powers had been “behaving badly to us” through the imposition of oil sales embargos and by launching fake attacks on human rights. He praised Pezeshkian as a deserving president, saying he was “wise, popular, honest and scholarly”.

Pezeshkian, a medical surgeon, parliamentarian and briefly a health minister, has no intention of differing with Khamenei in public, knowing the supreme Leader is ideologically closer to conservatives such as Pezeshkian’s predecessor as president, Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi’s death in a helicopter accident in May upended Iranian politics, but it remains unclear how far Pezeshkian will go in challenging some of the suppressive norms of Iranian society. He also faces a rightwing parliament that will be quick to pounce on his mistakes, and as a result is making every effort to emphasise political unity.

In two encouraging signs, the former reformist president Mohammad Khatami met with Pezeshkian to discuss appointments and the dissident Majid Tavakoli was released from jail pending a retrial after his six-year sentence. On the other hand, the revolutionary court has just issued a death sentence against Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish political prisoner held in Tehran’s Evin Prison.

The internal and external pressures facing the new government were well illustrated on Sunday. The climate crisis, and lack of internal electricity generation capacity, was underscored when government offices and banks closed due to extreme heat. Temperatures have soared over 40 degrees in many cities.

Externally the Iranian foreign ministry warned Israel not to launch a war against the Lebanese-based militia Hezbollah after a deadly strike on a town in the occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah denies it launched the attack, which killed 11 young people.

Pezeshkian sent a letter to the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, pledging further help.

Yet Pezeshkian, in the brief election campaign, also insisted Iran could not hope to achieve the economic growth it desired without obtaining relief from US sanctions and getting off the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global watchdog against terrorism financing and money laundering. Ties with Russia and China could not make up for the impact of sanctions, he argued.

That means Iran will have to reopen diplomacy with the west over its nuclear programme, after negotiations have been stalled for more than a year.

The tension between those that argue Iran can best maintain independence by resisting western sanctions and others who insist they enchain Iran will be one of the main controversies of the new presidency.

Ellie Geranmayeh, Middle East specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the election required a western response. She said Germany, France and the UK “should coordinate with Washington and their Arab allies to create viable pathways to concrete economic relief – but only if Iran is prepared to immediately roll back its nuclear programme”.

Iran’s new president has been formally inaugurated by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, opening up the slim hope of improved relations with the west, less internal censorship and a fresh approach to the economy.

In a ceremony on Sunday marking the start of his four-year presidency, Masoud Pezeshkian said the Iranian people had voted for change and promised constructive engagement with the west, a step he regards as a precondition for Tehran curbing inflation and securing growth.

Elected in a run-off on 5 July on a turnout of 49.7%, Pezeshkian, a reformist, is expected to make a raft of cabinet appointments in the next few days, including a new foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. In his first official act in office, Pezeshkian appointed Mohammad Reza Aref, 72, a reformist and close ally of the former president, as his first vice-president.

At the inauguration ceremony in Tehran attended by diplomats and Iran’s political elite, Khamenei, the man that sets the parameters of Iranian policy, said it would be a foreign policy priority to remain close to countries that had supported Iran during the period of sanctions. But he said he did not rule out closer relations with European powers if they modified their behaviour.

Khamenei, broadly an advocate of looking to the east for Iran’s partners, said many European powers had been “behaving badly to us” through the imposition of oil sales embargos and by launching fake attacks on human rights. He praised Pezeshkian as a deserving president, saying he was “wise, popular, honest and scholarly”.

Pezeshkian, a medical surgeon, parliamentarian and briefly a health minister, has no intention of differing with Khamenei in public, knowing the supreme Leader is ideologically closer to conservatives such as Pezeshkian’s predecessor as president, Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi’s death in a helicopter accident in May upended Iranian politics, but it remains unclear how far Pezeshkian will go in challenging some of the suppressive norms of Iranian society. He also faces a rightwing parliament that will be quick to pounce on his mistakes, and as a result is making every effort to emphasise political unity.

In two encouraging signs, the former reformist president Mohammad Khatami met with Pezeshkian to discuss appointments and the dissident Majid Tavakoli was released from jail pending a retrial after his six-year sentence. On the other hand, the revolutionary court has just issued a death sentence against Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish political prisoner held in Tehran’s Evin Prison.

The internal and external pressures facing the new government were well illustrated on Sunday. The climate crisis, and lack of internal electricity generation capacity, was underscored when government offices and banks closed due to extreme heat. Temperatures have soared over 40 degrees in many cities.

Externally the Iranian foreign ministry warned Israel not to launch a war against the Lebanese-based militia Hezbollah after a deadly strike on a town in the occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah denies it launched the attack, which killed 11 young people.

Pezeshkian sent a letter to the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, pledging further help.

Yet Pezeshkian, in the brief election campaign, also insisted Iran could not hope to achieve the economic growth it desired without obtaining relief from US sanctions and getting off the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global watchdog against terrorism financing and money laundering. Ties with Russia and China could not make up for the impact of sanctions, he argued.

That means Iran will have to reopen diplomacy with the west over its nuclear programme, after negotiations have been stalled for more than a year.

The tension between those that argue Iran can best maintain independence by resisting western sanctions and others who insist they enchain Iran will be one of the main controversies of the new presidency.

Ellie Geranmayeh, Middle East specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the election required a western response. She said Germany, France and the UK “should coordinate with Washington and their Arab allies to create viable pathways to concrete economic relief – but only if Iran is prepared to immediately roll back its nuclear programme”.

Vladimir Putin has warned the US that if Washington deploys long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, Russia will station similar missiles within striking distance of the west.

The US would start deploying long-range fire capabilities in Germany in 2026 in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to Nato and European defence, the Washington and Germany said earlier this month.

The US’s “episodic deployments” are in preparation for longer-term stationing of such capabilities that will include SM-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons that have a longer range than current capabilities in Europe, Washington and Berlin said.

In a speech on Sunday to sailors from Russia, China, Algeria and India to mark Russian navy day in the former imperial capital of St Petersburg, Putin told the US it risked triggering a cold war-style missile crisis with the move.

“The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said. “We will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”

Putin said the US was stoking tensions and had transferred Typhon missile systems to Denmark and the Philippines, and compared the US plans to the Nato decision to deploy Pershing II launchers in western Europe in 1979.

The Soviet leadership, including the general secretary, Yuri Andropov, feared Pershing II deployments were part of an elaborate US-led plan to decapitate the Soviet Union by taking out its political and military leadership.

“This situation is reminiscent of the events of the cold war related to the deployment of American medium-range Pershing missiles in Europe,” Putin said.

The Russian president repeated an earlier warning that Moscow could resume production of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles and then consider where to deploy them if the US brought similar missiles to Europe and Asia.

Local police officers on a special tactical team who were assigned to help protect Donald Trump on the day the former president was wounded during a 13 July assassination attempt in Butler county, Pennsylvania, have said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.

“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in nearby Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News.

Woods said that initial failure in planning and communications was likely the start of errors that would lead to the 20-year-old gunman killing one spectator, injuring two others and – according to the FBI – striking the tip of one of Trump’s ears.

“I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” Woods told the outlet. “We had no communication.”

Separately, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have questioned why they were not told that local police assigned to guard the outer perimeter of the fairgrounds on 13 July had spotted a suspicious person who turned out to be the would-be assassin.

According to the Washington Post, Trump’s top advisers were in a large white tent behind the stage where the former president was speaking at the time of the shooting. They thought the sounds of shots were fireworks and later could not understand why they had not been alerted of the suspicious person before Trump took the stage.

“Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” Trump told Fox News recently. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes,’ something. Nobody said – I think that was a mistake.”

According to Woods, the first communication between the Beaver Swat team and the Secret Service was “not until after the shooting”.

By then, Woods added, “it was too late”.

Local counter-snipers had seen Thomas Matthew Crooks loitering near the buildings that would later become his perch 20 to 25 minutes before he opened fire. They had sent a photograph to a command center staffed by state troopers and Secret Service agents, according to testimony by the head of the Pennsylvania state police.

Apparent failures in communication between different law enforcement agencies are now the subject of three separate investigations. After Secret Service director Kimberley Cheatle resigned from her post on 23 July, the FBI confirmed that Trump had been struck by a bullet – whether whole or fragmented.

The FBI director Christopher Wray has also said that would-be assassin Crooks, who does not appear to have any overriding ideological motive for the attempt on Trump’s life, had searched online for the distance that Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F Kennedy when shot the president to death in November 1963.

As agencies continue passing blame on for the shooting, Trump has said he plans to return to Butler for “FOR A BIG AND BEAUTIFUL RALLY” despite advice from the presidential protection service that he avoid holding outdoor rallies.

Trump has also dismissed criticism that hiring at the Secret Service, and the quality of the protection it provides, was negatively affected by diversity programs – something that had become a talking point among some Republicans.

At a rally in Minnesota on Saturday, he defended a “brave” female Secret Service agent who “shielded” him during the attempted assassination. He praised the agent and said she “wanted to take a bullet”.

“She was shielding me with everything she could and she got criticized by the fake news because she wasn’t tall enough,” he said. “She was so brave, she was shielding me with everything, she wanted to take a bullet.”

The Secret Service had not commented directly on the comments by Woods. But agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi has said the Secret Service “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again”.

Italy’s Via Appia Antica, or Appian Way, the earliest and most important road built by the ancient Romans, has been named a Unesco world heritage site, making Italy the country with the world’s highest number of locations on the coveted list.

Known as the Regina Viarum, or Queen of Roads, it connected Rome with the port of Brindisi in the south and marked a revolution in the construction of roads.

The first section of highway was built in 312BC by the Roman statesman Appius Claudius Caecus and served as a strategic corridor for military purposes. Until then, the only roads outside ancient Rome were Etruscan and went towards Etruria, which was a region of central Italy.

Today, the first 17km (10 miles) of the cobblestone path remains and is preserved within the Appia Antica archaeological park in the south of Rome. Popular with history buffs, walkers and cyclists, the perfectly intact road is flanked by what remains of ancient Roman aqueducts and villas. Beneath the path is a sprawling network of catacombs where Christian converts were buried.

The bid for the path to be added to the Unesco heritage list was made by Italy’s culture ministry and declared at a session of the World Heritage Committee in Delhi.

“It was originally conceived as a strategic road for military conquest, advancing towards the East and Asia Minor,” Unesco said. “The Via Appia later enabled the cities it connected to grow and new settlements emerged, facilitating agricultural production and trade.”

Unesco said the road illustrated “the advanced technical skill of Roman engineers in the construction of roads, civil-engineering projects, infrastructure and sweeping land-reclamation works, as well as a vast series of monumental structures including, for example, triumphal arches, baths, amphitheatres and basilicas, aqueducts, canals, bridges, and public fountains”.

Via Appia is the 60^th cultural heritage site in Italy to be added to the list, which includes the historic centres of Rome, Florence, Venice, Pisa and Naples, as well as the five villages of the Cinque Terre and the cave city of Matera in Basilicata.

The culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, said the inclusion “is a recognition of the value of our history and our identity”, while Roberto Gualtieri, the mayor of Rome, described the path as “the symbol of an entire civilisation”.

Unesco also added a series of outdoor sculptures by the Romanian modernist master Constantin Brâncuși to the world heritage list, celebrating their place as one of the most notable examples of 20th-century public art.

Brâncuși, who was born in the small village of Hobița, near the Carpathian mountains, but lived in Paris for most of his life, created the open-air collection that includes the Endless Column and the Gate of the Kiss in the small south-western Romanian town of Târgu Jiu in 1937-1938 as a tribute to fallen first world war soldiers.

The five sculptural installations aligned on a 1.5km-long axis along Târgu Jiu’s central Avenue of Heroes are one of the few Brâncuși works located in Romania.

“The granted recognition forces us to protect the monumental ensemble, to keep it intact for future generations and for humanity’s cultural memory,” Raluca Turcan, Romania’s culture minister, said.

Several brands of condoms and lubricants contain alarming levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, including styles of Trojan and K-Y Jelly, new research finds.

The testing conducted by the Mamavation consumer advocacy blog comes just as researchers found human skin absorbs the chemicals at much higher levels than previously thought.

Penis and vagina skin is thin and the organs have a high level of blood vessels, which makes them particularly dangerous organs to expose to PFAS, Linda Birnbaum, a science adviser for Mamavation who previously ran the Environmental Protection Agency’s toxicology program, wrote in the report.

“The vagina and penis are incredibly vascular areas and dermal exposure to these areas are often higher than other places of the body,” Birnbaum said.

PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and are linked to cancer, liver problems, thyroid issues, birth defects, kidney disease, decreased immunity and other serious health problems.

PFAS are also considered to be reproductive toxicants and endocrine disruptors linked to low birth weight, reduced sperm counts, pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, infertility and shorter duration of breastfeeding.

The chemicals are probably used in condoms to help latex repel moisture and liquid.

“It is chemically certain that the female reproductive tract will be contaminated by some of the chemicals in condoms,” Teresa Heinz, a Green Science Policy Institute researcher, said in the report.

The testing, conducted by an Environmental Protection Agency-certified lab and commissioned by Mamavation, checked for the presence of fluorine, a marker of PFAS, in 29 reproductive health products.

It was found in the Trojan Ultra Thin Condoms for Ultra Sensitivity, and at nearly double the level in the Union Standard Ultra Thin Lubricated Male Latex Condoms. Among lubricants were K-Y Jelly Classic Water-Based Personal Lubricant, Lola Tingling Mint Pleasure Gel for Spot-On Arousal and several others.

PFAS are used in thousands of consumer products from clothing to makeup to food packaging, but little regulations exist at the federal level. However, pressure from consumer advocates and some state level bans on specific uses are generating pressure on industry to stop using the chemicals.

“Because condoms are an exposure to the most sensitive areas on the human body for both men and women, I would strongly recommend the industry identify and remove these chemicals immediately,” Birnbaum wrote.

More than 4 million vaccine doses have been flown toPyongyang, raising hopes that North Korea could open up again to UN agencies and NGOs amid reports of a worsening health situation in the authoritarian state.

“The return of essential vaccines marks a significant milestone towards safeguarding children’s health and survival in this country,” Roland Kupka, Unicef’s acting representative for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, said in a statement.

The vaccines include those against hepatitis B, polio, measles and tetanus, and were provided by Unicef, the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Organisers say they are intended for 600,000 children and pregnant women who have missed out on vaccines since the Covid-19 pandemic. They are to be administered as part of a catch-up campaign in September by the North Korean ministry of public health.

It follows numerous calls from the US and human rights groups for North Korea, considered one of the poorest countries in the world, to reopen its borders so that vital aid can be delivered.

Almost all international aid workers had to leave during the Covid pandemic as the country shut its borders and tightened import controls. This diminished medicine and vaccine supplies as well as food imports, increasing malnutrition and leaving many – including newborns – vulnerable to deadly diseases such as tuberculosis and measles. Prior to the pandemic, almost half of the population was undernourished and since then several floods and typhoons have hit the country, further jeopardising health.

Earlier this month, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Qu Dongyu, visited North Korea in a bid to reactivate the agency’s relationship with the country and address food insecurity.

“The reopening of the border and the return of Unicef’s full team to DPR Korea will be critical to ensuring more essential support can be provided in 2024 and programmes can be scaled up as necessary to meet the needs of children and women,” said Kupka. In 2019, Unicef had about 13 international staff in the country.

“I’ve got a feeling they’re going to open again to UN agencies and NGOs,” said Nagi Shafik, who previously consulted for the UN on public health in North Korea, a country he described as “fussy about their security”.

Shafik said the North Korean government may have used the hiatus to consider how it would like to work with aid providers. It no longer wants to be looked at as a recipient of aid, Shafik said, but as more of a development partner. “They hate to be reliant on other people,” he said, but are open to ideas and want to be engaged on issues including health. North Korea was voted on to WHO’s executive board last year. “They are open more than people expect,” Shafik said.

In the meantime, Kupka urged the North Korean government to facilitate “the earliest possible return” of visiting agency workers.

Martin Phillipps, the founder of the New Zealand rock band the Chills, has died at the age of 61.

Phillipps’ death was announced on Sunday on the band’s’ social media channels.

“It is with broken hearts the family and friends of Martin Phillipps wish to advise Martin has died unexpectedly,” the post read. “The family ask for privacy at this time. Funeral arrangements will be advised in due course.”

The guitarist and lead singer founded the Chills in 1980 with his sister Rachel Phillipps on keyboards, Jane Dodd on bass, guitarist Peter Gutteridge and drummer Alan Haig.

The band soon built a devoted fanbase in New Zealand before garnering a cult following in Europe and the US. They released a number of hits, including Pink Frost, Heavenly Pop Hit, I Love My Leather Jacket and Kaleidoscope World.

Their 1990 album Submarine Bells was a commercial success, with the British music weekly Melody Maker calling it “a magical experience”. The band’s success stalled later in the decade and their US label folded.

Speaking to RNZ in 2019, Phillipps said: “No one foresaw the impact of the digital revolution, of massive changes in music, with Nirvana, with hip-hop, and all sorts of things, that we could so quickly become redundant and old-fashioned.”

During this period, Phillipps battled with drug addiction, alcoholism and hepatitis C. “It was after that, retreating to Dunedin, tail between my legs, everyone saying, ‘Oh you gave it a good go, time to get a real job,’ all sorts of things conspired, but there was some sort of breakdown, mental breakdown involved there,” he added.

The musician told the Guardian in 2014 that having hepatitis C meant he had to have a closer relationship to mortality. “I’m on the list for some of the new trial drugs, but in the meantime I’m up to stage four of the disease. Stage five is cancer. So it’s already cirrhosis of the liver, and that means I really don’t know long I’ve got,” he said.

The Chills released Silver Bullets, their first studio album in 19 years, in 2015. It was followed by their sixth studio album, Snow Bound, in 2018, and Scatterbrain, the last studio album, in 2021.

A documentary about the band, The Chills: The Triumph & Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, in 2019 shone a light on Philipps’ life, including being told he may only have months to live due to the hepatitis C he contracted in the 1990s. He had said the film forced him to look at himself closely, and open up old wounds.

The Chills’ remaining members are Callum Hampton, Todd Knudson, Erica Scally and Oli Wilson.

The band’s official website referred to Philllips as having a “single-minded determination to take quality, original NZ-sounding, melodic rock music global”.