Donald Trump says he would be willing to debate Kamala Harris on the friendly environs of Fox News in September – but the vice-president has not signed on to what would be a switch-up.

Trump had previously agreed to appear on ABC News and debate Joe Biden a second time this year before the president ended his re-election campaign.

In a statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the debate would be held on 4 September in Pennsylvania. The former president said that there was a conflict of interest at play after filing a defamation lawsuit against ABC and network host George Stephanopoulos over the anchor’s assertion that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in the E Jean Carroll case.

Trump earlier this year was ordered to pay $83m for defamatory statements he had made about the magazine columnist after an earlier case found him liable for defamation and sexual abuse.

“The Debate was previously scheduled against … Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant, and I am in litigation against ABC Network and George Slopadopoulos, thereby creating a conflict of interest,” Trump wrote.

The former Republican president added that the site of the debate on Fox News – which is generally welcoming to the GOP – had not been determined. But he said the moderators would be Fox News’ Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and the rules would be similar to his 27 June debate with Biden – except that this time there would be a studio audience.

But on Saturday, in a statement that invoked Trump’s previous challenge to debate Biden at any time or place, Harris’s campaign made clear she did not agree to the terms of the proposed Fox News debate. And she particularly rejected using that debate to replace the ABC one.

“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out,” Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said in a statement shared on X by NBC News political correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.

“He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on [10 September]. The vice-president will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime-time national audience. We’re happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to.

“Mr Anytime, anywhere, any place should have no problem with that unless he’s too scared to show up on the 10th.”

In a post on X, Harris herself added: “It’s interesting how any time, any place’ becomes ‘one specific time, one specific safe space.’”

The vice-president said in July that she was “ready” to debate Trump and accused him of stepping back from the previous agreement involving ABC.

In a post on Saturday, Trump alleged that Harris was “afraid” to “do a REAL debate” against him. He added: “I’ll see [Harris] on September 4th or I won’t see her at all.”

Democratic party alarm at Biden’s June debate performance on CNN set in motion his dramatic withdrawal from the race, with polls indicating he was likely headed for a blowout electoral defeat.

Trump and Harris are now polling neck-and-neck.

The political dance over presidential debates is now set to escalate. Earlier this year, Biden and Trump agreed to sidestep the typical arrangement of three debates, typically held in the fall and organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.

Democrats said reducing the number to two and moving them up to June and September reflected changes in the “structure of our elections and the interests of voters”.

Biden said he had won two debates with Trump in 2020 and challenged him to two this year. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” Biden said, referring to a weekly off-day during the New York criminal trial that saw Trump convicted of falsifying business records in connections with hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.

But that decision ultimately backfired for Biden.

The latest twist in the 2024 debate drama comes after Trump said he would not face Harris because she was not the party’s official candidate. On Friday, Harris secured enough Biden delegates to officially become her party’s nominee.

At a rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, Harris said she welcomed a debate against Trump, who days earlier had called her a “bum”.

“As the saying goes, you got something to say, say it to my face,” Harris said.

Donald Trump addressed a fully-packed venue in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, with thousands of people waiting in the Georgia heat outside to enter, or to protest his appearance in a city he has condemned repeatedly.

His remarks were consistent with the tenor and comportment of restraint and probity Atlantans are used to hearing at this point.

“She happens to be a really low IQ individual. We don’t need a low IQ individual,” Trump said of the vice-president Kamala Harris. “They love dealing with low IQ individuals … She’s Bernie Sanders but not as smart.”

Trump highlighted a handful of recent murders in the city, saying “Atlanta is like a killing field, and your governor should get off his ass and do something about it.”

Trump rattled off a set of crime statistics in Atlanta that bear no resemblance to the actual change in crime over the last two years. Crime spiked in Atlanta in the last year of Trump’s term and peaked in 2022. It has subsequently fallen back to 2019 levels.

But crime – and particularly crime involving immigrants – has been central to his appeal to Republican voters. Trump invoked the murder of Laken Riley, a college student murdered on the campus of the University of Georgia. Police have charged an undocumented immigrant with her murder.

“Laken’s blood is on Kamala Harris’s hands,” Trump said, “as though she was standing there watching it herself.” Trump is trying to tie this to Harris’s role as “border czar” early in the Biden administration. “Harris should not be asking for your votes. She should be begging Laken Riley’s family for forgiveness.”

Trump made a point of highlighting the work of three Republican appointees to Georgia’s board of elections, who have been entertaining changes to election rules that critics say are setting the stage for a legal contest in case of a Trump loss in November.

Of President Joe Biden and the debate that led to his withdrawal from the race, Trump said “He was choking like a dog! He was choking. And that was the end of him … they did a coup, but he doesn’t know it.”

Trump said, without any evidence, that “40 or 50 million illegal aliens” will enter the United States if Harris wins, he said, claiming that suburbs will be overrun with “savage foreign gangs”. He also claimed, falsely, that Harris wants to replace all gas cars with electric cars, to ban meat, to increase taxes by 70 to 80% and more claims that can only be taken as hyperbole because they are so far divorced from fact. He also reiterated claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump repeatedly called Harris a “lunatic”.

Trump’s appearance in Atlanta is at the same venue Harris filled on Tuesday in her first Georgia rally since Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from the race and her ascension as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

The contrast between Trump and Harris in the space was stark. Harris’s multiracial crowd Tuesday was peppered with the pink and green of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters. Red Maga hats and Trump mug shots – or the now-iconic shot of his fist in the air after the assassination attempt – dominated the mostly white sea of support for Trump.

Trump opened up his appearance in Atlanta lying about the Harris event in the same place, falsely claiming that people left the event early and that there were empty seats. Both events packed the room.

Notably, the upper stands began to empty out about an hour into Trump’s comments.

The refrain, repeated by speaker after speaker at the rally, was that Trump took a bullet for Republican voters, and they should return the favor with powerful turnout in Georgia.

“He took a bullet for you, and in that moment, we found out who Donald Trump is,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene, a representative, in a speech before 10,000 Trump supporters at the Georgia State Convocation Center. “He stood up, put his fist in the air and said ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ And that’s what we will do.”

JD Vance, Republican vice-presidential nominee, took note of the emerging Democratic labeling of Republicans as “weird” as he warmed up the crowd.

Weird is how “Kamala Harris comes to Atlanta and speaks with a fake southern accent even though she grew up in Canada”, Vance said. “Go watch the clips; she sounds like a southern belle.”

Vance also linked the people who tried to “bankrupt” and “impeach” Trump to the attempted assassination.

“America is never going to elect a San Francisco liberal who is so far out of the mainstream,” Vance said.

Despite this assertion, polls increasingly suggest that Harris may be ahead of Trump today, with the Democratic national convention coming in two weeks. Before Biden’s withdrawal, Trump had been consistently ahead of Biden, so much so that political discussion here had been about whether the Biden campaign would capitulate in Georgia in order to focus its resources on Rust Belt races.

Too few polls measuring Harris and Trump in Georgia have been conducted to read the race here, but both campaigns have begun treating Georgia as a battleground state once again.

“The road to the White House runs through Georgia,” Greene said, almost word for word what Rev Raphael Warnock, a Georgia senator, told Harris supporters five days earlier.

In long, rambling comments, Trump lambasted Brian Kemp, the governor, and Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, for disloyalty: “In my opinion, they want us to lose. If we lose Georgia, we lose the whole thing and our country goes to hell.”

Donald Trump is “doing great” after last month’s assassination attempt last month, his son said.

Eric Trump, 40, arrived at the Trump International golf resort in Aberdeenshire by helicopter on Saturday to view a half-finished new course on the North Sea coast, which will open next year.

The businessman and hotelier said the family’s investment in Scotland demonstrated why his father’s Republican candidacy for the US presidency would benefit Britain as he invited Sir Keir Starmer to visit the golf course.

Speaking about the assassination attempt on his father on 14 July, he said: “It should never have been allowed to happen.

“Somebody let him down – as his son I’m not very happy about it. In the west, you can’t have leaders assassinated.

“When you spend $3bn on an agency, it was a failure that day. Those 48 hours could have been very different. He’s doing great, he’s out campaigning.”

Trump described his father as “the best president his country has seen ever” and compared him to Winston Churchill due to his lack of political correctness.

Trump said: “You could probably draw a lot of parallels with Churchill – funny and un-politically correct, and effective. He says what everyone’s thinking.

“When he was shot with blood running down his face, chanting ‘fight, fight, fight’ – that’s what our country needs. There will never be a better ally for the UK and the west than Donald Trump.”

He also described the Gaza war as “insane” and said he believed his father would meet Palestinian leaders in an effort to end the war – as well as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

“I’m sure he would meet anybody, he doesn’t want wars,” he said.

He said “the world was laughing at the Biden administration” and pledged his belief that his father would win the presidency, adding: “He wants to see people living the American dream.”

Speaking about Kamala Harris, his father’s rival for the presidency, he said: “What’s she done? She’s been in charge of AI and immigration – she doesn’t even know how to spell AI.”

He vowed the new golf course would become “the best 36 holes in the world” when it opens in 2025.

He said: “What we have done on this side of the pond is incredible.”

Acquitted killer Kyle Rittenhouse announced he would not be supporting Donald Trump’s attempt to return to the White House – but ultimately ended up politically endorsing him anyway after being inundated with vitriolic messages from the former president’s followers.

The flip-flop by Rittenhouse – who has fashioned himself as a gun rights activist after shooting two people to death in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during racial justice protests there in 2020 – followed an initial pledge to write in former congressman Ron Paul as his choice on November’s presidential election ballot.

In a video posted on the social media platform X, Rittenhouse argued that Trump had a “bad” record with respect to gun rights and explained he would instead back Paul.

The 21-year-old then spent the next several hours grappling with ire directed at him by proponents of Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) movement, who embraced Rittenhouse as a hero after the shootings in Kenosha and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his successful criminal defense. Among other insults, they taunted him with prison rape jokes and accused him of betraying Trump less than three years after the Republican met with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort and declared Rittenhouse “really a nice young man”.

One of the more typical comments responding to Rittenhouse’s temporary endorsement of Paul was from political commentator Joey Mannarino, who wrote on X: “If not for Maga, you would be rotting in a prison bending over for Bubba … Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!”

Another X user added: “I wish they would’ve let you go to prison so you could be the bitch you actually are.”

By Friday afternoon, Rittenhouse had gone back on X and wrote that he was “100% behind Donald Trump and [would] encourage every gun owner to join me in helping send him back to the White House”.

“Over the past 12 hours, I’ve had a series of productive conversations with members of the Trump’s team, and I am confident he will be the strong ally gun owners need to defend our … rights,” Rittenhouse also said. “My comments made last night were ill-informed and unproductive.”

Some commentators met the quick about-face with equally swift mockery.

“You stand for absolutely nothing and have zero backbone,” read one reply. Another said: “This time try not to murder anyone while you’re backpedaling.”

Rittenhouse was 17 when he traveled 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, as protests erupted after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, who is Black.

Roaming Kenosha with other armed men claiming to be self-appointed security guards, Rittenhouse used a rifle to fatally shoot 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, then 26. He also injured Gage Grosskreutz, then 27, and was charged with five felonies, including first-degree intentional homicide.

Rittenhouse contended to the jury which heard his case that he carried out the shootings in self-defense and had acted justifiably. At the end of a tumultuous trial, jurors found him not guilty of all charges against him, a verdict hailed by far-right politicians and pundits but decried by civil rights activists.

Rioters will “pay the price” for the wave of violent clashes that has spread across the UK, ministers warned on Saturday, after a day in which police battled rival groups of demonstrators in the worst outbreak of civil disorder in Britain for more than a decade.

Home secretary Yvette Cooper said the police would have the government’s full support to take the strongest possible action. “Criminal violence and disorder have no place on Britain’s streets,” she said.

“Anyone who gets involved in criminal disorder and violent thuggery on our streets will have to pay the price and they should expect there to be arrests, prosecutions, penalties, and the full force of the law including imprisonment and travel bans. There are consequences for breaking the law.”

The widespread nature of the clashes poses the first major challenge to Keir Starmer’s new government, which is now facing demands to introduce emergency powers to stop further violence and to recall parliament.

In the protests that spread across the nation, bricks were hurled at police officers in Stoke-on-Trent, fireworks were thrown amid tense exchanges between an anti-Islamic group and an anti-racism rally in Belfast, and windows of a hotel which has been used to house migrants were smashed in Hull, where three police officers were injured and four people arrested. Several officers were also injured during “serious disorder” in Liverpool city centre, where bricks, bottles and a flare were thrown and one officer hit on the head with a chair. Greater Manchester police said a dispersal notice had been authorised for the city centre and scuffles broke out as opposing groups faced each other in Nottingham’s Old Market Square with bottles and other items thrown from both sides.

About 150 people carrying St George’s Cross flags, shouting “you’re not English any more” and “paedo Muslims off our street”, were greatly outnumbered in Leeds by hundreds of counter-protesters shouting “Nazi scum off our streets”. Skirmishes broke out between demonstrators and punks – in town for a festival – in Blackpool, with bottles and chairs being thrown.

The need for urgent political intervention was stressed by the government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, Lord Walney, who told the Observer that new emergency powers may be needed to deal with the outbreaks of violence. “The system isn’t set up to deal with this rolling rabble rousing being fuelled by far-right actors,” he said.

“I think home office ministers maywant to look urgently at a new emergency framework – perhaps temporary in nature – that enables police to use the full powers of arrest to prevent people gathering where there is clear intent to fuel violent disorder.”

Keir Starmer held a meeting of senior ministers on Saturday in which he said police had been given full support to tackle extremists who were attempting “to sow hate by intimidating communities”. He also made it clear that the right to freedom of expression and the violent scenes over recent days were “two very different things”.

Last week’s riots were set off in the wake of the killing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on Monday. Axel Rudakubana, 17, from Lancashire, is accused of the attack, but false claims were spread online that the suspect was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK by boat. In the wake of these messages, far-right protesters – guided by social media – gathered in cities across the country.

A key factor in this spread of online disinformation involved Elon Musk’s decision to allow rightwing activists such as Tommy Robinson back onto his social media platform X, said Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope not Hate, the anti-fascism organisation. “The initial disinformation and anger was being perpetrated by individuals on Twitter, for example, that have been previously deplatformed,” he said. “And now they’ve been replatformed.”

Robinson was permanently banned from the platform (then called Twitter) in March 2018, then reinstated in November last year, after Musk bought it. “We hadn’t seen any significant numbers at any demonstrations since 2018,” Mulhall added.

An example of the danger posed by the misuse of social media was revealed in Stoke-on-Trent, where police were forced to deny there had been a stabbing there, countering claims made on social media. “There is growing speculation that a stabbing has taken place as a result of the disorder today. We can confirm this information is false and no stabbings have been reported to police or emergency responders, despite videos fuelling speculation on social media,” police said.

The danger of such intervention was stressed by Ben-Julian “BJ” Harrington, the National Police Chiefs Council lead for public order, who condemned social media disinformation as a cause of last week’s disorder.

He said: “We had reports today that two people had been stabbed by Muslims in Stoke – it’s just not true. There’s people out there, not even in this country, circulating and stoking up hatred, division and concerns in communities that they don’t care about, don’t know and don’t understand.”

Harrington, who was also the NPCC’s gold commander in charge of national strategy for Saturday’s disorder, said that “yobs and thugs and criminals” were responsible. “This isn’t about protests,” he said. “This is about violent disorder. This is about people who are descending into communities and causing damage – throwing bricks and bottles and things at cops who work within those communities.”

Forces across England brought officers back from leave to deploy an extra 130 police support units – about 2,000 officers, he revealed. “Of course there is a limited number of officers, and every one that is taken from a community is not out there solving burglaries.

Echoing concerns about the dangers of social media, shadow home secretary James Cleverly called for tech companies to be hauled into Downing Street to ensure they were acting to stop the spread of disinformation on their platforms. However, he was criticised for issuing a statement in which he said Starmer taking the knee had sent “completely the wrong message” to protesters, adding that there was “never a justification for disorder like this”.

There was also further condemnation of Nigel Farage’s role in inciting the violence with his comments about the Southport killings, in which he questioned “whether the truth is being withheld from us” after the attack on Monday. Robert Jenrick, one of the favourites in the Tory leadership race, said that the Reform leader’s comments did not “make the situation better”.

Last week’s clashes spread four days ago, when more than 100 protesters were arrested on Whitehall, where bottles and cans were thrown at police, while violence also broke out in Hartlepool and in Manchester.

On Thursday, Starmer announced a new “national” response to the disorder linking police forces across the country through shared intelligence and the expanded use of facial recognition.

Then, on Friday, about 500 people, including some parents with their children, gathered in Sunderland city centre, responding to far-right social media posts to turn up and demonstrate. The gathering quickly descended into violence, with masked boys and men throwing missiles, including bricks, stones, beer barrels and scaffolding poles, at riot police.

Ten people were arrested and four policemen taken to hospital, one seriously injured. A police station was ransacked and a Citizens Advice Bureau set alight. By Saturday morning, the acrid smell of fire still hung in the air. Shoppers stopped to express their shock at what had happened, with hundreds of residents of all ages gathering on the city’s streets with brushes, litter pickers, buckets, bin bags and dust pans.

Sunderland Central Labour MP Lewis Atkinson said a link could be drawn between the disorder and the ashes of the English Defence League (EDL), which was founded by Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. The EDL has disbanded but its supporters remain active, and Atkinson said evidence suggested a Nazi offshoot of the group was involved in Friday’s violence.

A priest at Sunderland Minster said yobs tried to smash a gravestone to use as missiles during the disorder that gripped the city. “It’s an act of sacrilege to disturb someone’s gravestone,” said Rev Jacqui Tyson. “It’s also remarkably lacking in common sense – have you tried to pick up a gravestone?”

Julien Alfred made history as St Lucia’s first ever Olympic medallist by beating the US world champion Sha’carri Richardson to take gold in the women’s 100m in Paris, as Team GB clocked up its first medal on the track.

Under teeming rain in the Stade de France, the 23-year-old dominated the final and set a new national record of 10.72 seconds, leaving Richardson in silver and Melissa Jefferson, also of the US, to take bronze after a photo-finish with Team GB’s Daryll Neita in fourth.

Neita, 27, said: “It’s super tough – words can’t describe how I’m feeling right now. I was so close to that medal I was dreaming of for my whole life.”

No athlete from the Caribbean island of St Lucia, population 179,000, had ever won an Olympic medal before.

Alfred’s time made her the eighth fastest woman in history on her first appearance at a Games.

Earlier, Sam Reardon, Amber Anning, Laviai Nielsen and Alex Haydock-Wilson had claimed a first track medal for Team GB in Paris after holding on to win bronze in a tight 4x400m mixed relay that was won by the Netherlands on the home straight.

Reardon, 20, from Beckenham, said: “I think we all executed the gameplan perfectly and to come away with a bronze medal, I can’t really believe it.

“It was electric. When I went out to do my block set-up, the French were really hyping up the crowd, so I fed on that energy and it carried me through. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I went out there and did what I know I can do. I had that belief.”

It followed a Team GB gold in a blue-riband event of the Olympic regatta – the men’s eight – and a dazzling performance by sprinter Louie Hinchliffe who beat the world’s fastest man in the 100m heats, raising expectations of further success.

With medals in rowing, dressage, gymnastics and sailing, Britain had for a brief period on Saturday been ahead of the US in the Olympic medal table, something that has not been achieved at the end of any Games in which both nations have competed since 1908 in London.

An imperious display by Simone Biles, 27, in the women’s vault in the Bercy Arena put that to bed as the US gymnastics superstar notched up her third gold of the Games. Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade took silver and Biles’s teammate Jade Carey finished with bronze.

With three golds in five days, Biles’s overall Olympic medal count now stands at 10, including seven golds, with the finals of the balance beam and the floor exercise to come on Sunday and Monday, respectively.

“I love that the athletes push me to be my best,” she said.

Ryan Crouser, representing the US, became the first man to “three-peat” in the shot put by taking gold ahead of his compatriot Joe Kovacs and Jamaica’s Rajindra Campbell in bronze.

The British team remain on track to hit the upper end of UK Sport’s prediction of between 50 and 70 medals after the best first week of a Games in modern history.

The ambition of the British team was exemplified by the peformance of Hinchliffe in the first round of the 100m where he beat American star Noah Lyles, the world No 1, with a time of 9.98sec.

Asked whether he had been surprised by Hinchliffe, Lyles responded: “Yes and no. He is a talented kid.”

“It was a good feeling,” said Hinchliffe, 22, from Sheffield. “I wasn’t really thinking too much about him, he wasn’t really near me. I didn’t really think about who else was in the race. He said ‘well done’ and acknowledged me at the end.”

The eight day of the Games had begun with the cox in the British men’s eight, Harry Brightmore, leaping on to the stern of his boat to issue a roar of triumph after a perfectly paced race that allowed them to put down the hammer in the final stretch and ease ahead of the Netherlands’ crew.

In the past 100 years, the British eight had only won gold in 2016 and 2000. The win left Britain with eight rowing medals – the most of any nation – although the Dutch topped that table with four golds to the Britons’ three.

Charlie Elwes, 27, from Andover, who won bronze in the men’s eight in Tokyo, said: “I’d say 99.9% of it was perfect.”

Rory Gibbs, another of the world-beating eight, had to seek medical assistance after a heroic push in the last 850 metres while Morgan Bolding was helped from the boat.

Elwes, Gibbs, Bolding, Jacob Dawson, Sholto Carnegie and James Rudkin, Tom Digby and Tom Ford had competed straight after the women’s eight took bronze in a boat coxed by Henry Fieldman, who had coxed the men’s eight to their bronze in Tokyo.

“It was quite breathless, actually,” said Annie Campbell-Orde, 28, from Wells, of the women’s win.

Louise Kingsley, the director of performance for the GB rowing team, said the performances had drawn a line over the nadir of Tokyo in 2021 when the rowing team failed to win a single gold and only collected a silver and bronze.

She said: “An absolutely fantastic regatta, it’s good to be back from Tokyo.”

Britain’s Carl Hester, Charlotte Fry and Becky Moody won bronze in the dressage team Grand Prix Special in defiance of the pressure that came with a ban handed to star rider Charlotte Dujardin on the eve of the Games.

Hester, a mentor to Dujardin who left the Games after the publication of a video showing her repeatedly whipping a student’s horse, said: “It has been really difficult, very hard, and as I said before, we’ve had to put it out of our minds.”

Gymnast Jake Jarman also took bronze in the men’s floor, just behind silver medallist Artem Dolgopyat of Israel. Carlos Edriel Yulo of the Philippines took the gold.

Jarman, 22, from Peterborough, said: “I said to myself: just do the best you can. Especially after seeing there were two ridiculously high scores up first. I knew it was going to be insanely hard. I just wanted to enjoy it, do the best I can.”

Emma Wilson, 25, a favourite for gold in the sailing, was unhappy with her bronze medal off the coast of Marseille after a new winner-takes-all section at the end of the competition.

She said: “It’s not OK to put people in this position every time. I had a 60-point lead at the world championships, and a 30-point lead here.I don’t know how many times you can come back. I think I’m done with the sport.”

Team GB boxer Lewis Richardson is through to the Olympic semi-finals and guaranteed at least a bronze medal after beating Zeyad Eashash of Jordan by split decision 3-2 in the men’s 71kg category. The golf enters its final round on Sunday, with Tommy Fleetwood, from Southport, one shot off the lead in third position.

When Julien Alfred was a young girl in St Lucia, she was asked who she wanted to be when she grew up. “The next Usain Bolt,” she replied. It was the boldest of ambitions, given that her tiny country had never won an Olympic medal and barely had any facilities. Yet on a delirious night in Paris, the 23-year-old delivered in the manner of the greatest sprinter of all-time: by powering away from US superstar Sha’Carri Richardson to claim Olympic gold.

As Alfred crossed the line in 10.72sec, a time that made her the eighth fastest woman in history, she held her hands in disbelief before ripping her bib off and pointing to her name. No one, surely, will ever forget it now after this quiet destruction.

Trailing in her wake was Richardson, the pre-race favourite, Netflix star and current world champion, who took silver in 10.87, while another American, Melissa Jefferson, took bronze in 10.92. Britain’s Daryll Neita was fourth in 10.96. “It’s super tough,” admitted Neita. “I was so close to that medal that I have dreamed of my whole life.”

But this was a night all about Alfred – and her extraordinary journey from a small Caribbean island with a population of around 180,000 to track and field’s newest superstar.

“Growing up I used to be on the field struggling with no shoes, running barefoot, running in my school uniform, running all over the place,” she explained. “We barely have the right facilities. The stadium is not fixed. I hope this gold medal will help St Lucia build a new stadium, to help the sport grow.”

Asked about how people back home would be celebrating, she smiled. “I’m sure they are having a time,” she added. “Playing music, celebrating, drinking beers.”

Alfred’s track and field career began when was first spotted at the age of six or seven by her PE teacher, who told her to race the boys in her year. She was soon beating them and honing her talents at a local club. Yet there were several bumps on the way too, most notably when she quit the sport at 12 after her father died.

But she was encouraged to return by her coach, and such was her ambition that she left for Jamaica by herself at 14. And it was Bolt, the biggest track and field star of all, who provided her with inspiration on the morning of this greatest triumph as she watched videos of his Olympic victories and started to believe she could take Richardson down.

“This morning I woke up and wrote it down, ‘Julien Alfred, Olympic champion’,” she added. “So I think believing in myself really was important.”

A few minutes before the race the rain suddenly started lashing down but Alfred always looked cool. The Jamaican Tina Clayton was away quickest. But within 30 metres Alfred was already leading and slipping away.

At that stage Richardson, having struggled out the blocks, knew her face was already run. Soon Alfred was roaring through the line in triumph.

“You don’t ever see me celebrate like that,” she admitted. “I’m just happy it happened in the biggest race of my career. I’m going to be honest. I watched Usain Bolt’s races this morning. I watched how he executed. I grew up watching him too.

“It feels amazing to win gold. I’m going through the motions right now. It hasn’t sunk in yet. I had to go out there, trust myself, trust my coach and most importantly trust God.”

Some might have been surprised at the result but the world of track and field has known for a while that the St Lucian has a blue-chip pedigree. A string of NCAA indoor and outdoor titles last year showed that. Winning the world indoor 60m in Glasgow in March reinforced it. And now she proved it beyond all doubt.

And what of Richardson? When this night began, most people were already mentally placing gold around the 24-year-old’s neck. She was the world champion. The fastest women in 2024. The athlete with the highest ceiling. But the demands of the Olympics bring pressures that can swallow even the greatest talent.

That was obvious before the race. As the camera panned to her in lane seven, the American looked desperately nervous. She then got a poor start, and she would have known within 30 metres that gold was already out of reach.

In truth, she looked like she had stage fright. When Richardson won the 2023 world title in Budapest she had been out in lane nine, away from the main protagonists. But there was no hiding place in lane seven, with Alfred alongside her.

Seeing Richardson in full stride is one of the great sights. Other sprinters might be more powerful but no one has her fluidity or freedom, or ability to bounce so rapidly off the track. But here she just looked raggedy. It means the wait for an American female 100m Olympic Games winner, which stretches back to 1996, continues.

Alfred, meanwhile, has the women’s 200m to think about before she can truly celebrate. Afterwards she dedicated this win to her dad, who believed that she could fulfil her dreams. “He passed away in 2013, and now he couldn’t get to see me on the biggest stage of my career,” she said. “But he’ll always be so boastful of his daughter being an Olympian.”

It was a beautiful sentiment, on a thrilling night.

A boxer at the centre of the gender eligibility storm at the Paris Olympics wrote her name on the floor of the ring on Saturday, and burst into tears after securing an Olympic medal.

Algeria’s Imane Khelif was overwhelmed with emotion and repeatedly slammed the floor of the ring with her hands, having beaten the Hungarian fighter Luca Anna Hamori convincingly in the quarter-final of the 66kg category. After the fight, Hamori congratulated her opponent and wished her luck for the remainder of the competition. Asked about the controversy, she said: “I don’t care.”

The 25-year-old Khelif is now guaranteed Algeria’s first boxing medal since 2000, after winning the three-round bout 5-0 by unanimous decision, with the prospect of the gold medal in her sights. She faces Thailand’s Janjaem Suwannapheng in the semi-finals on 6 August.

Khelif and the Chinese Taipei fighter Lin Yu-ting have come under intense scrutiny at these Games. Both fighters competed without incident at Tokyo 2020, but were disqualified from last year’s world championships at a late stage by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing to meet its gender eligibility criteria. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has cast doubts on the tests taken, calling the disqualifications “arbitrary”, while the IOC president Thomas Bach said the boxers had been subjected to “hate speech”.

In Paris on Saturday, Khelif entered the ring to deafening cheers from a large Algerian contingent. She dominated the fight but, afterwards, was in tears as she walked past a scrum of international journalists.

Yacine Arab, the sport manager of the Algerian Olympic Committee, said Khelif had not had her phone with her in the last 24 hours, in a bid to shield her. “This controversy is a joke,” he said. “Everybody knows that Imane was born a girl. She [fought] all her time as a girl, all the competitions she was a girl. When she was losing, nobody talked about this.”

Before the fight, the father of the Algerian boxer said criticism of her was “immoral” and “not fair”. Amar Khelif told Reuters: “Having such a daughter is an honour because she is a champion, she honoured me and I encourage her and I hope she will get the medal in Paris. Imane is a little girl that has loved sport since she was six years old.”

The IBA, led by Umar Kremlev, a Russian national, and funded by the sanctioned company Gazprom, is not running the ­Olympic boxing competition after it was expelled from the Olympic movement for failing to reform judging and refereeing, and over financial stability and governance issues. Kremlev said of the fighters last year that DNA tests had “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded”.

However, the gender eligibility of the two boxers remains unclear. The IOC criticised the IBA for changing its gender rules in the middle of the 2023 world championships. It has said it is happy for both fighters to compete under the less strict gender eligibility rules, based on their passports that were in place for the Tokyo Games in 2021. The IOC stopped blanket sex testing in 1999.

Prior to the fight on Saturday, Bach said: “We are not talking about the transgender issue here. This is about a woman taking part in a woman’s category. But I repeat here this is not a DSD case.”

The IOC subsequently tweeted that Bach had meant to say that this was not a transgender case.

“Differences of sex development” (DSD) describes conditions that occur early in pregnancy in which sex development is not typical. It was previously known as “intersex”. The term transgender refers to people whose current gender identity differs from the sex they were registered with at birth.

Before Saturday’s bout, the Hungarian Boxing Association said it had protested to the International Olympic Committee and was investigating the possibility of legally challenging Khelif’s presence at the Games.

Speaking after the fight, Hungarian Olympic Committee member Balázs Fürjes was more conciliatory. “As loyal members of the International Olympic family we are 100% convinced that the International Committee will make the right decisions,” he said. He did not provide details about what a “right” decision would be.

Russia has pledged humanitarian assistance to North Korea after devastating floods damaged thousands of homes and caused an unknown number of casualties, with reports from South Korea that the number of dead or missing could be as high as 1,500.

President Vladimir Putin offered condolences and humanitarian aid after a record downpour on 27 July which submerged swathes of farmland in the north near China, the Kremlin and North Korean state media said.

“I ask you to convey words of sympathy and support to all those who lost their loved ones as a result of the storm,” Putin said in a telegram to Kim, adding “you can always count on our help and support”.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un thanked Putin for the offer but said since his government has already taken measures to conduct recovery work, he would ask for help “if aid is necessary”, KCNA state media said.

Heavy rains have pummelled North Korea’s north-western areas in recent days, flooding more than 4,000 homes and isolating 5,000 residents, KCNA has reported. State media said Kim had personally inspected the affected areas.

On Saturday, Kim accused South Korean media outlets of spreading rumours about damage and casualties from the floods, days after Seoul reached out to offer humanitarian aid.

South Korea’s government on Thursday said it was willing to “urgently provide” humanitarian assistance to “North Korean disaster victims” following reports in local media that the toll of dead and missing could number 1,500.

The report by South Korea’s TV Chosun, which was later picked up by other outlets, also reported on the possible death of rescue workers killed in helicopter crashes.

North Korea’s Kim slammed the reports for “spreading the false rumour that the human loss … is expected be over 1,000 or 1,500”, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.

The flooding reports constituted a South Korean “smear campaign to bring disgrace upon us and tarnish” the North’s image, he added.

North Korea and Russia have been allies since the North’s founding after the second world war, but Pyongyang and Moscow have ramped up diplomatic and security ties in recent months, with Kim and Putin exchanging visits and signing a “comprehensive strategic partnership” pact in June.

Reuters and Agence-France Presse contributed to this report.

Russia has pledged humanitarian assistance to North Korea after devastating floods damaged thousands of homes and caused an unknown number of casualties, with reports from South Korea that the number of dead or missing could be as high as 1,500.

President Vladimir Putin offered condolences and humanitarian aid after a record downpour on 27 July which submerged swathes of farmland in the north near China, the Kremlin and North Korean state media said.

“I ask you to convey words of sympathy and support to all those who lost their loved ones as a result of the storm,” Putin said in a telegram to Kim, adding “you can always count on our help and support”.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un thanked Putin for the offer but said since his government has already taken measures to conduct recovery work, he would ask for help “if aid is necessary”, KCNA state media said.

Heavy rains have pummelled North Korea’s north-western areas in recent days, flooding more than 4,000 homes and isolating 5,000 residents, KCNA has reported. State media said Kim had personally inspected the affected areas.

On Saturday, Kim accused South Korean media outlets of spreading rumours about damage and casualties from the floods, days after Seoul reached out to offer humanitarian aid.

South Korea’s government on Thursday said it was willing to “urgently provide” humanitarian assistance to “North Korean disaster victims” following reports in local media that the toll of dead and missing could number 1,500.

The report by South Korea’s TV Chosun, which was later picked up by other outlets, also reported on the possible death of rescue workers killed in helicopter crashes.

North Korea’s Kim slammed the reports for “spreading the false rumour that the human loss … is expected be over 1,000 or 1,500”, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.

The flooding reports constituted a South Korean “smear campaign to bring disgrace upon us and tarnish” the North’s image, he added.

North Korea and Russia have been allies since the North’s founding after the second world war, but Pyongyang and Moscow have ramped up diplomatic and security ties in recent months, with Kim and Putin exchanging visits and signing a “comprehensive strategic partnership” pact in June.

Reuters and Agence-France Presse contributed to this report.

Nearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care since February 2023, the former president Jimmy Carter reportedly has one goal: voting for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.

“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter told his son Chip this week, as his grandson Jason Carter recounted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Harris, Carter’s fellow Democrat, will face the Republican Trump for the presidency on 5 November. Carter’s 100th birthday will fall on 1 October.

A Democrat who was in the White House from 1977 to 1981, Carter is the oldest living president. In ill health for several years, his family announced that he entered hospice care on 18 February 2023. Many took that announcement to mean Carter was near the end of his life.

And the next month, the current president, Joe Biden, said he had been asked to deliver Carter’s eulogy.

Biden also said Carter’s doctors had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough”.

In October 2023, as the White House celebrated Carter’s 99th birthday, the former Democratic National Committee chairperson Donna Brazile said the former Georgia governor was “a towering, old southern oak … as good as they come and tough as they come”.

The following month, Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, died aged 96. The couple, who campaigned for human rights and mental health reform, were married for 77 years, through Jimmy Carter’s time in the US navy, in Georgia state politics, in the White House and in a post-presidency widely regarded as one of the most productive.

In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel peace prize, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.

In 2021, he told the Associated Press the secret to a long life was “to marry the right person”.

On Saturday, the Journal-Constitution said Jason Carter said his grandfather had in recent days been “more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza”, the latter a tricky issue for Harris to navigate, not least as she nears a decision on her vice-presidential pick.

Jason Carter said his grandfather a few days ago voiced his wish to vote for Harris, who has served as Biden’s vice-president. Jimmy Carter expressed his support for Harris when Chip Carter asked if he was trying to make it to 100.

As the Journal-Constitution noted, early voting in Georgia begins on 15 October – two weeks past the former president’s centenarian birthday.

The UK has stepped up preparations for a possible evacuation of British citizens from Lebanon in the aftermath of last week’s assassinations in Beirut and Tehran – killings blamed on Israel that threaten to transform the war in Gaza into a region-wide conflict.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Saturday that consular experts, border force officials and military personnel have been deployed to the region as part of planning for “a range of possible conflict scenarios”.

Landing ship RFA Cardigan Bay and HMS Duncan are already in the eastern Mediterranean, and the air force is putting transport helicopters on standby, the statement said.

The UK is not expecting an imminent need to evacuate citizens from Lebanon, the Observer understands, but the decision to put forces on standby comes after a meeting on Friday between defence secretary John Healey and his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, during a visit to the region by Healey and the foreign secretary, David Lammy.

On Saturday the government also repeated a call for British nationals in Lebanon to leave while “commercial options are still available”, joining the US and several other countries. Dozens of companies have suspended flights to Lebanon and Israel in the past week.

The US embassy in Beirut said: “We encourage those who wish to depart Lebanon to book any ticket available to them, even if that flight does not depart immediately or does not follow their first-choice route. US citizens who lack funds to return to the United States may contact the embassy for financial assistance via repatriation loans. We recommend that US citizens who choose not to depart Lebanon prepare contingency plans for emergency situations and be prepared to shelter in place for an extended period of time.”

Local people were conflicted. “I’m not feeling anxiety but feel confused about what I should do. What’s the best option, should I stay or should I leave and try to start over somewhere else?” said Lebanese-Brazilian Bruna Hassan al-Safawi, 23.

Safawi’s home is not far from Beirut airport: as the country is surrounded by Syrian and Israeli territory, it is effectively the one route in and out of the country for most people.

“If I’m still seeing planes landing, it’s OK, I’m safe. If I stop seeing planes, I’m gonna start packing my things,” she said.

In Haifa, Israel’s northernmost city, on Friday, bars and restaurants that would normally be packed on a summer evening were near empty. “I am trying not to think about it and doing things like normal, or you will go mad with worrying,” said resident Layla al-Nasser, 26.

Several airlines announced this week they would not be flying into Beirut’s Rafic Hariri international airport.

Insurance risks prompted by the growing fears of conflict spurred the Lufthansa group, Air France and the Polish airline LOT to suspend routes into the Lebanese capital.

A western ambassador told the Observer the disruptions were raising evacuation prospects “because people will not be able to leave naturally. About 70% of companies that would normally fly there have now cancelled,” they said. “We’re very much waiting and watching. An evacuation scenario could possibly involve Israel, too, and if it happens it will involve several agencies.”

Nearby Cyprus, the EU’s most easterly member state, is on standby to assist in the evacuation of civilians from the Middle East, with plans in place to act as a regional hub in the event of conflict expanding. Highlighting the role the Mediterranean island is likely to play, Sweden’s ambassador to Lebanon relocated to Nicosia, the Cyprus capital last week.

Fears that the war in Gaza is on the brink of morphing into a conflict that could consume more of the Middle East grew over the weekend after comments from Iran on Saturday in which the Islamic Republic said it expected its ally in Lebanon, the powerful Shia militia Hezbollah, would begin striking deeper inside Israel, and no longer be confined to hitting military targets.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded tit-for-tat attacks since the Lebanese militia began firing on Israel the day after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, ostensibly to aid its Palestinian allies. In parallel with the fighting in Gaza, the conflict on the blue line separating the two countries has steadily escalated over the past 10 months, with tens of thousands of people on both sides displaced from their homes.

Tensions reached unprecedented levels this week in the wake of the back-to-back assassinations of Fuad Shukur, Hezbollah’s second-in-command, and Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.

Israel has claimed responsibility for Shukur’s killing, a missile strike on an apartment building in Beirut on Tuesday evening that also killed four other people and injured about 70. Israel said he was to blame for a rocket attack on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights last weekend that killed 12 children and young people playing football. Hezbollah has denied it carried out the attack.

Just hours later, Shukur’s killing was overshadowed by the news that Haniyeh had been assassinated during a visit to Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. Conflicting reports have emerged about how the killing was carried out: on Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards released a statement saying that the Qatar-based official was killed by a short-range projectile with a warhead of about 7kg.

Both Hezbollah and Iran have vowed revenge for the killings. The Revolutionary Guards statement said that Tehran’s revenge for the attack would be “severe” and at an “appropriate time, place and manner”, blaming Israel for Haniyeh’s death. Israel has not commented on the Hamas leader’s death, but has carried out targeted assassinations on Iranian soil in the past.

In a speech at Shukur’s funeral on Thursday, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, delinked the Lebanese front from Gaza for the first time, saying “the issue has gone beyond the support front”, and that the conflict with Israel had “entered a new phase”.

The US, Israel’s most important ally, said on Friday it would move additional warships and fighter jets to the region to “protect US personnel and defend Israel” as the Iran-aligned “axis of resistance” readied its response to Haniyeh’s killing.

The fighting in the Gaza Strip has also drawn in militant groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which have fired drones and missiles at Israel and US assets in the region. Tehran directly attacked Israel for the first time in April, after a strike it blamed on Israel killed several senior Revolutionary Guards at the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The barrage of 300 missiles and drones was carefully telegraphed in advance, allowing Israel’s allies to mount an efficient air defence response. Iran’s course of action this time is expected to be stronger, possibly taking the form of a joint attack.

US president Joe Biden, who has pushed hard for a ceasefire in Gaza in recent months, said the killing was “not helpful”, in comments late on Thursday.

Lammy spoke to his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, on Saturday. A spokesperson said they “reaffirmed the need to deescalate rising tensions in the Middle East and prevent the conflict from spreading. They stressed the importance of finalising the ceasefire and hostage release deal under negotiation as soon as possible.”

Meanwhile, fighting continues to rage in Gaza, where health officials in the Hamas-ruled area said on Saturday the conflict had now killed almost 40,000 people. The UN said this week that nearly 40,000 cases of hepatitis A had now been confirmed in the besieged Palestinian enclave, and that health conditions “continue to deteriorate”.

Two Israeli airstrikes in the West Bank, the other Palestinian territory, killed nine Palestinian militants on Saturday, Israel’s army said, as violence flared again in the Israeli-occupied territory with tensions high over the war in Gaza and a potential regional escalation. Israel said it had targeted a group of militants in the town of Tulkarem who were planning an attack on Israelis.

The conflict broke out after Hamas’s 7 October attack in which approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed and another 250 taken hostage. An initial ceasefire in November broke down after a week, and protracted talks aimed at a truce and hostage release deal since have so far proved unsuccessful.

Huge crowds have gone back on to the streets of Venezuela’s cities to continue their campaign against President Nicolás Maduro’s alleged attempt to steal last week’s election and denounce his intensifying crackdown on opposition supporters.

Maduro said 2,000 people had been arrested and would face “maximum punishment”.

Tens of thousands of dissenters packed an avenue in the heart of the capital, Caracas, to hear María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who claims her candidate for the presidency, Edmundo González, was the true winner of the 28 July vote.

“Today is a very important day. After six days of brutal repression they thought they would silence us, frighten us and paralyse us … [But] we are going to go all the way,” Machado told a sea of supporters, many of them waving Venezuela’s tricolour flag or holding placards denouncing Maduro’s authoritarian regime.

“We are not afraid!” the crowd chanted back.

González’s claim to victory has been recognised by countries including the US, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru. Meanwhile the leftwing governments of Brazil and Colombia have yet to accept Maduro’s win despite their historical ties to the political movement he inherited after Hugo Chávez’s 2013 death. China and Russia have backed Maduro.

On Saturday lunchtime, caraqueños of all ages and from all walks of life hit the streets to demand an end to Maduro’s 11-year presidency, during which the oil-rich South American country has become increasingly authoritarian and slipped into a devastating economic and humanitarian crisis that forced millions to flee abroad.

They did so despite a crackdown by security forces in which hundreds of people have been arrested on terrorism charges and at least 11 killed.

“This morning I woke up to the news that they had taken my best friend because they went out to buy ice,” said one 28-year-old protester who asked not to be named for fear of suffering the same fate.

“Before I came out today my daughter threw herself on top of me and made me promise that I would come home,” added the woman, as thousands of people marched through the Las Mercedes district to see Machado speak.

Many protesters fretted about a round-up of targets being carried out by a widely feared counterintelligence unit that has been baptised Operation Tun Tun (Knock-Knock).

“It’s like a horror movie. It’s a nightmare,” said Andreina Canelón, a 24-year-old who was at Saturday’s march.

One demonstrator held a poster reading: “They are killing us.”

Canelón’s sister, Angélica, said opposition supporters would not be cowed. “The people are done – they are done with their bullshit – and they are ready to go until the very end,” the 28-year-old graduate vowed as Machado addressed the throng from the bonnet of a sound truck.

Maduro has called his opponents “terrorists” and “traitors” claiming they are part of a criminal far-right conspiracy against his supposedly leftist rule.

Angélica rejected that portrayal of the situation in Venezuela. “This is not about left and right. No. This is about a country and its right to be free. Nothing more,” she said.

For Tahyde Colmenares, who was also at the protest, the election was about seeing her family again. “All of my children and my grandchildren are out of the country,” the 78-year-old said, weeping as she described how they had fled Venezuela’s economic meltdown for the US and Brazil.

“I don’t know if they will come back to live here [if Maduro leaves power] but at least they will visit,” she said, claiming her tears were tears of joy prompted by the hope Machado’s campaign had instilled in her. “She represents freedom, progress and the happiness of so many Venezuelan men and women being able to come home.”

Maduro, who has refused to release proof of his supposed victory, organised his own protest on Saturday afternoon in an attempt to project strength, calling it “the mother of all marches”.

“There was no fraud. It’s a farce,” said one pro-Maduro marcher, 57-year-old Reinaldo Guevara, who manages a government-owned concrete plant.

Also among the thousands of government supporters was Albelys Gómez, 57, who said the opposition would have to accept Maduro’s win.

Addressing supporters at the presidential palace, Maduro said his forces had captured 2,000 people who would be sent to high-security jails and subjected to “maximum punishment”.

But as he spoke, Maduro faced fresh calls to release the vote tallies from the electronic voting machines used in the election, this time from Argentina’s former leftwing president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“I am asking – not just for the sake of the people of Venezuela, or the opposition, or democracy – but for the very legacy of Hugo Chávez – that the tallies be published,” Fernández de Kirchner said at an event in Mexico.

In the week since the election, Maduro has struck a defiant tone and offered no hint that he is prepared to step down leaving observers fearful that the standoff could lead to violence in the coming weeks. Opposition leaders have called on the military to abandon Maduro but so far there has been no hint of that happening or of any other challenge to the president emerging from within his administration.

“It’s been 25 years since Chávez was first elected [and] there’s now such a network of interests built around Chavismo’s control of the state, and effectively criminal activity, that people just aren’t prepared to walk away from power,” said Tom Shannon, a veteran US diplomat who has been involved in Venezuela since the 1990s and knows many of the movement’s key players.

“And it appears that they’re prepared to endure significant international pressure and isolation in order to protect themselves and what they consider to be their economic interests,” Shannon added, warning: “We’re in a tricky moment … there’s going to be significant repression, I think.”

Huge crowds have gone back on to the streets of Venezuela’s cities to continue their campaign against President Nicolás Maduro’s alleged attempt to steal last week’s election and denounce his intensifying crackdown on opposition supporters.

Maduro said 2,000 people had been arrested and would face “maximum punishment”.

Tens of thousands of dissenters packed an avenue in the heart of the capital, Caracas, to hear María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who claims her candidate for the presidency, Edmundo González, was the true winner of the 28 July vote.

“Today is a very important day. After six days of brutal repression they thought they would silence us, frighten us and paralyse us … [But] we are going to go all the way,” Machado told a sea of supporters, many of them waving Venezuela’s tricolour flag or holding placards denouncing Maduro’s authoritarian regime.

“We are not afraid!” the crowd chanted back.

González’s claim to victory has been recognised by countries including the US, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru. Meanwhile the leftwing governments of Brazil and Colombia have yet to accept Maduro’s win despite their historical ties to the political movement he inherited after Hugo Chávez’s 2013 death. China and Russia have backed Maduro.

On Saturday lunchtime, caraqueños of all ages and from all walks of life hit the streets to demand an end to Maduro’s 11-year presidency, during which the oil-rich South American country has become increasingly authoritarian and slipped into a devastating economic and humanitarian crisis that forced millions to flee abroad.

They did so despite a crackdown by security forces in which hundreds of people have been arrested on terrorism charges and at least 11 killed.

“This morning I woke up to the news that they had taken my best friend because they went out to buy ice,” said one 28-year-old protester who asked not to be named for fear of suffering the same fate.

“Before I came out today my daughter threw herself on top of me and made me promise that I would come home,” added the woman, as thousands of people marched through the Las Mercedes district to see Machado speak.

Many protesters fretted about a round-up of targets being carried out by a widely feared counterintelligence unit that has been baptised Operation Tun Tun (Knock-Knock).

“It’s like a horror movie. It’s a nightmare,” said Andreina Canelón, a 24-year-old who was at Saturday’s march.

One demonstrator held a poster reading: “They are killing us.”

Canelón’s sister, Angélica, said opposition supporters would not be cowed. “The people are done – they are done with their bullshit – and they are ready to go until the very end,” the 28-year-old graduate vowed as Machado addressed the throng from the bonnet of a sound truck.

Maduro has called his opponents “terrorists” and “traitors” claiming they are part of a criminal far-right conspiracy against his supposedly leftist rule.

Angélica rejected that portrayal of the situation in Venezuela. “This is not about left and right. No. This is about a country and its right to be free. Nothing more,” she said.

For Tahyde Colmenares, who was also at the protest, the election was about seeing her family again. “All of my children and my grandchildren are out of the country,” the 78-year-old said, weeping as she described how they had fled Venezuela’s economic meltdown for the US and Brazil.

“I don’t know if they will come back to live here [if Maduro leaves power] but at least they will visit,” she said, claiming her tears were tears of joy prompted by the hope Machado’s campaign had instilled in her. “She represents freedom, progress and the happiness of so many Venezuelan men and women being able to come home.”

Maduro, who has refused to release proof of his supposed victory, organised his own protest on Saturday afternoon in an attempt to project strength, calling it “the mother of all marches”.

“There was no fraud. It’s a farce,” said one pro-Maduro marcher, 57-year-old Reinaldo Guevara, who manages a government-owned concrete plant.

Also among the thousands of government supporters was Albelys Gómez, 57, who said the opposition would have to accept Maduro’s win.

Addressing supporters at the presidential palace, Maduro said his forces had captured 2,000 people who would be sent to high-security jails and subjected to “maximum punishment”.

But as he spoke, Maduro faced fresh calls to release the vote tallies from the electronic voting machines used in the election, this time from Argentina’s former leftwing president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“I am asking – not just for the sake of the people of Venezuela, or the opposition, or democracy – but for the very legacy of Hugo Chávez – that the tallies be published,” Fernández de Kirchner said at an event in Mexico.

In the week since the election, Maduro has struck a defiant tone and offered no hint that he is prepared to step down leaving observers fearful that the standoff could lead to violence in the coming weeks. Opposition leaders have called on the military to abandon Maduro but so far there has been no hint of that happening or of any other challenge to the president emerging from within his administration.

“It’s been 25 years since Chávez was first elected [and] there’s now such a network of interests built around Chavismo’s control of the state, and effectively criminal activity, that people just aren’t prepared to walk away from power,” said Tom Shannon, a veteran US diplomat who has been involved in Venezuela since the 1990s and knows many of the movement’s key players.

“And it appears that they’re prepared to endure significant international pressure and isolation in order to protect themselves and what they consider to be their economic interests,” Shannon added, warning: “We’re in a tricky moment … there’s going to be significant repression, I think.”

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, praised his forces on Saturday for hitting military targets inside Russia, after his army reported several strikes including on an airfield and an oil depot.

“I would like to thank each of our soldiers and all those who work in our defence industry for striking Russian airfields, oil refineries and logistics,” he said in his daily statement.

Kyiv has stepped up aerial attacks on Russian territory, saying it carries out the strikes in retaliation for the bombardments that Ukraine has faced since Russia invaded more than two years ago.

“Every strike that accurately responds to Russia’s bombs, that destroys Russian logistics, Russian bases, that makes it more difficult for the occupier to stay on our land. Every such strike brings the just end of the war closer,” he added.

Earlier, a Ukrainian defence source told AFP that drones had hit the Morozovsk airfield in the Rostov region, destroying an ammunition depot.

Russian officials did not address claims regarding the destroyed airfield, but local governor Vasily Golubev said on Telegram that authorities had introduced a state of emergency in the district of Morozovsk.

The source in the Ukrainian defence sector also said its forces had hit a fuel warehouse in the Kamensky district of the Rostov region, where Russian officials earlier reported that a drone attack had set fire to oil tanks.

Later the Ukrainian armed forces said they had sunk the B-237 Rostov-on-Don submarine in occupied Crimea the day before, and destroyed four missile launchers.

Kyiv has over the course of the war increasingly claimed responsibility for strikes on Russian-held territory. Zelenskiy has been asking allies to lift restrictions to allow Ukraine to use western weapons to strike on Russian-controlled territory.

Once again, Zelenskiy advocated for his army to be allowed to target places “where the occupier is, from which Russia strikes at Ukraine, launches missiles, Shahed drones, bombs”.

Nigerian security forces on Saturday fired bullets and teargas at protesters and journalists during demonstrations against the country’s economic crisis in the capital city, Abuja, according to journalists at the scene and videos reviewed by the Associated Press news agency.

It was not immediately confirmed whether the projectiles fired at journalists were rubber or live rounds. But the AP witnessed the aftermath of the attack, including bullet holes in a car belonging to one of the journalists as well as live bullets at the scene of the protests.

At least 50 journalists were arrested on Saturday during the protests in Abuja, Amnesty International Nigeria’s office said. Nearly 700 protesters have so far been arrested across the country while nine officers have been injured during the protests, now in their third day, the Nigerian police said.

The demonstrations are mainly against the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation and accusations of misgovernment and corruption in Africa’s most populous country. Nigeria is one of the continent’s top oil producers and its public officials are among the best-paid in Africa, yet has some of the world’s poorest and hungriest people.

At the Nigerian national stadium where dozens of protesters had gathered, police officers were seen firing teargas to disperse the demonstrations shortly before hooded operatives believed to be from the Nigerian secret service arrived, according to several protesters, journalists and videos shared with the AP.

The Nigerian Department of State Service, whose operatives are usually hooded, quickly dispersed the protesters and then fired gunshots at the journalists who were still at the venue, according to six journalists there who spoke to the AP on the record.

A video by one of the journalists showed the gun-wielding operatives chasing people in front of the stadium. Their vehicles, at least five in number, were parked alongside those of the Nigerian police.

“It was shocking because they saw us as journalists and we were telling them we were journalists,” said Abdulkareem Mojeed, one of those attacked. At least three bullet holes pierced his car.

The journalists said they were standing far away from the protesters. They were wearing vests identifying them as media and were next to vehicles with media branding when they were fired at, they said.

A spokesperson for the secret service did not respond to telephone and email inquiries from the AP. The service, which has a reputation for brutality, has frequently been accused of violent attacks and wrongful arrests.

Journalist Abdulqudus Ogundapo said he was scared for his safety when caught in the gunfire. “My first reaction was, ‘Let me just be safe,’” he said.

It is common for journalists to be targeted by security forces while in the line of duty in Nigeria, which is ranked 112th out of 180 countries in the latest World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders.

Protesters, too, have been shot at in the country, including during the deadly 2020 demonstrations against police brutality.

At least 31 cases of attacks on journalists, including 11 arrests, have so far been recorded since the cost-of-living protests started, according to the west Africa-focused Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development’s (CJID) press attack tracker.

“Rather than providing security for journalists … security officials have conducted themselves in a way that suggests they are deliberately attacking journalists,” said Adebayo Aare, a project officer on media freedom with CJID.

The Nigerian police, meanwhile, said seven people had so far died during the protests but that none was killed by security forces. Amnesty International has said at least nine protesters were killed by security forces.

A police officer earlier reported by the authorities as dead “miraculously survived”, police spokesperson Muyiwa Adejobi said in a statement, which went on to call for an end to the protests.

As many as 20 US citizens were left out of Thursday’s complex, multi-country prisoner swap with western American allies and Russia, leading those excluded from the deal and their families to express deep disappointment.

Among those left behind are Marc Fogel, a US high school teacher from Pennsylvania convicted of smuggling 17 grams of marijuana into Russia and sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2022.

Fogel’s name had been included in prisoner swap discussions but his family did not know if he was included by US state department officials. A call from Fogel himself informed them he was not a part of the deal.

Being excluded, he told his family, was “soul crushing”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Pennsylvania US senator Bob Casey said that while the prisoner swap was good news for Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, “Marc Fogel is still sitting in a Russian prison”.

Casey asked the Joe Biden White House to also prioritize Fogel’s release. “While Marc’s name may not be in the news every day, he is no less deserving of a reunion with his family,” the senator said. “This is a difficult day for Marc and his family.”

The choices of who to prioritize in prisoner swap deals is uniquely sensitive, at times depending on a US-determined designation of “wrongfully detained”, which Fogel is not. At other times, a sometimes brutal – but often unstated – calculus about political value to the US becomes a factor.

After Thursday’s releases, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, strode along the red carpet between two rows of rifle-toting honor guards to warmly greet intelligence operatives freed by the deal.

“The Motherland hasn’t forgotten about you for a minute,” Putin said, embracing each of them after they walked down the steps of the jetliner that ferried them home, according to the Associated Press.

In Washington, Biden and the vice-president Kamala Harris greeted the three freed US prisoners. To that point, the family of Paul Whelan has expressed disappointment that he had remained a Russian prisoner while Brittney Griner, the champion US basketball player, had returned home two years earlier in exchange for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

A US state department spokesperson said that American diplomats were “not going to stop working” to free citizens “that continue to be wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world”.

Those still held in Russia are believed to also include Andre Khachatoorian, arrested during a Moscow layover with a licensed, secured firearm in his checked luggage. Khachatoorian’s fiancée said she was “shocked” he was not freed.

Ksenia Karelina – a dual US-Russian citizen who worked at a beauty spa in Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills – was arrested and charged with treason while visiting her family in February. Karelina had allegedly made a small financial donation to a humanitarian organization that Russian authorities say is connected to Ukraine’s military.

Her boyfriend, Chris Van Heerden, told the Journal that he didn’t know if the 16-prisoner trade meant more exchanges would follow or “that her trial came too late and she was left behind”.

Another US citizen, David Barnes, travelled to Moscow while in a custody battle with his Russian ex-wife. He was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to 21 years on allegations that he molested the couple’s children while the family lived in Texas.

“I don’t really know what to tell him,” his sister Carol Barnes said to the Journal. “How do I explain that his government just left him behind?”

Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth, recorded its hottest month ever on record in July, the National Park Service (NPS) announced.

In a statement released on Friday, the NPS revealed that the park had an average 24-hour temperature of 108.5F (42.5C), in turn beating out its previous record of 108.1F (42.3C) set in 2018.

In July, the average high temperature in Death Valley was 121.9F (49.9C). According to the NPS, the park experienced nine days of temperatures at 125F (51.7C) or greater and only seven days that did not reach at least 120F (48.8C). The highest temperature last month was on 7 July, when the weather station at Furnace Creek recorded 129.2F (54C).

“We just experienced the hottest month in history in the hottest place on Earth! Six of the 10 hottest summers have come in the past 10 years, which should serve as a wake-up call,” park superintendent Mike Reynolds said in a statement.

“Record-breaking months like this one could become the norm as we continue to see global temperatures rise. Visitors to the park should plan ahead and come prepared to face extreme temperatures during the summer months,” Reynolds added.

The intense heat has resulted in multiple life-threatening heat-related incidents. On 7 July, a motorcyclist visiting the park died from heat exposure while another person was hospitalized for “severe heat illness” as temperatures reached 128F (53.3C). The visitors were part of a six-person motorcyclist group traveling through the park’s Badwater Basin area amid scorching weather, the park said at the time.

A few weeks later, a Belgian tourist suffered third-degree burns on his feet and was hospitalized in Las Vegas after losing his flip-flops in the park.

“Due to communication challenges, park rangers were not able to determine if his flip-flops broke or were lost in sand. The ground temperature would have been much hotter than air temperature, which was around 123F (50.5C),” the park said in a statement.

Park officials are urging travelers to Death Valley to stay within a 10-minute walk of an air-conditioned vehicle, drink plenty of water, eat salty snacks, and wear a hat and sunscreen.

The park’s advice comes just days after provisional data by the Copernicus Climate Change Service revealed that 22 July was the hottest recorded day on Earth, with the global surface air temperature reaching 62.87F (17.15C).