The coordinators of Bangladesh’s student protest movement were scheduled to meet with the army chief, Gen Waker-Uz-Zaman, after the military announced it would form an interim government following the resignation of Sheikh Hasina as prime minister.

On Monday, Hasina resigned and fled Bangladesh after hundreds of people were killed in a crackdown on demonstrations that began as student protests against preferential job quotas and swelled into a movement demanding her downfall. Celebrations erupted on Monday after Hasina resigned.

Zaman plans to meet the protest organisers at noon local time (0600 GMT) on Tuesday, the army said in a statement, a day after Zaman announced Hasina’s resignation in a televised address and said an interim government would be formed.

Zaman said he had held talks with leaders of major political parties – excluding Hasina’s long-ruling Awami League – to discuss the way ahead and was due to hold talks with the president, Mohammed Shahabuddin.

An interim government will hold elections as soon as possible after consulting all parties and stakeholders, Shahabuddin said in a televised address late on Monday.

He also said that it was “unanimously decided” to immediately release the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson and Hasina’s nemesis, Begum Khaleda Zia, who was convicted in a graft case in 2018 but moved to a hospital a year later as her health deteriorated. She has denied the charges against her.

A BNP spokesperson said on Monday that Zia, 78, “will clear all charges legally and come out soon”.

Early on Tuesday, the US commended the Bangladesh army’s conduct. “The United States has long called for respecting democratic rights in Bangladesh, and we urge that the interim government formation be democratic and inclusive. We commend the army for the restraint they have showed today,” a White House spokesperson said.

The US Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the interim government must aim to set up swift democratic elections. “PM Hasina’s violent reaction to legitimate protests made her continued rule untenable. I applaud the brave protesters and demand justice for those killed.”

Hasina won a fourth straight term in January in an election boycotted by the opposition. The US state department said in January that the elections were not free and fair, adding that Washington was concerned by reports of polling irregularities and violence.

Hasina’s government was accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including through the killing of opposition activists.

The latest student-led protests began over a quota system they said disproportionately allocated government jobs to the descendants of freedom fighters from the 1971 independence war.

The recent protests and crackdown led to some of the worst violence since Bangladesh was founded more than five decades ago. During a briefing at army headquarters, Zaman promised an investigation into the deaths.

The coordinators of the student protests on Tuesday called for the formation of a new interim government with Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus as its chief adviser, according to a video released by on Facebook.

“Any government other than the one we recommended would not be accepted,” Nahid Islam, one of the key organisers of the student movement, said in a video with three other organisers. “We wouldn’t accept any army-supported or army-led government.”

“We have also had discussions with Muhammad Yunus and he has agreed to take on this responsibility at our invitation,” Islam added.

In January Yunus was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, along with three other people, for violating labour laws at Grameen Telecom, the not-for-profit company he founded in 1983. In June Yunus told the Guardian he had come under 20 years of pressure from the Bangladeshi government for his work, which is credited with improving the lives of millions of poor people, particularly women. Yunus did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reports.

Elsewhere, the World Bank said it was assessing the impact of events in Bangladesh on its loan programme, but that it remained committed to supporting the “development aspirations of the people of Bangladesh”.

The World Bank’s board in June approved two projects totalling $900m to help Bangladesh strengthen financial sector policies and improve urban infrastructure.

The World Bank was among the first development partners to support Bangladesh after its independence and since then has committed about $41bn in grants and interest-free credits.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

After 15 years in power, Bangladesh’s prime minister has suddenly resigned and fled the country. Sheikh Hasina’s departure came after weeks of student-led protests were met with deadly force, and has been greeted with jubilation on the streets of the capital, Dhaka.

Japanese stocks soared more than 10% early Tuesday, a day after plunging and setting markets tumbling in Europe and on Wall Street.

Other markets in Asia appeared to have settled somewhat after the rollercoaster ride that started the week.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo gained nearly 11% early Tuesday but then fell back, trading 8.7% higher at 34,211.83, as investors bought into bargains after the 12.4% rout the day before. South Korea’s Kospi index was up 3%, while Australia’s ASX200 added 0.3% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was steady in morning trading.

Markets on Monday started with a plunge reminiscent of 1987’s crash, that swept around the world and pummelled Wall Street with more steep losses, as fears worsened about a slowing US economy.

Wall Street suffered its worst day in almost two years, while European markets also fell, with Britain’s FTSE 100 suffering its steepest one-day decline in more than a year.

The drops on Monday were the first chance for traders in Tokyo to react to the global sell-off which began on Friday, after a US report showed employers slowed their hiring last month by much more than economists expected.

That was the latest piece of data on the US economy to come in weaker than expected, and it’s all raised fears the Federal Reserve has pressed the brakes on the economy by too much for too long through high interest rates in hopes of stifling inflation.

Professional investors also pointed to the Bank of Japan’s move last week to raise its main interest rate from nearly zero. Such a move helps boost the value of the Japanese yen, but it could also force traders to scramble out of deals where they borrowed money for virtually no cost in Japan and invested it elsewhere around the world.

Chris Weston, head of research at broker Pepperstone, said after “the breathtaking and historic moves seen across Asian markets” on Monday “we look for a solid counter rally on open today.”

Federal Reserve officials did their best to reassure markets with Fed San Francisco president Mary Daly saying it was “extremely important” to prevent the labor market tipping into a downturn.

Daly added that her mind was open to cutting interest rates as necessary and policy needed to be proactive.

The comments underpinned market expectations that the Fed would cut by 50 basis points at its September meeting, with futures implying an 87% chance of such an outsized move.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Kamala Harris is reportedly set to announce her choice of a running mate with a video released on Tuesday, before they appear together at an evening rally in Philadelphia to kick off a five-day tour of the swing states that are crucial to winning the presidential election.

Politico, which first reported the Harris campaign’s plan, noted that Joe Biden also prepared a video to reveal Harris as his running mate in 2020.

The culmination of what has been a lightning-fast vetting process – it is little more than two weeks since Biden, the 81-year-old president, made the historic decision to stand aside and Harris became the de facto nominee – has seen a round of interviews both in person and online.

On Monday, Reuters reported that the search had narrowed to two governors: Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota. Harris, 59, interviewed both men, as well as the Arizona senator Mark Kelly, over the weekend at the Naval Observatory, the Washington DC residence of the vice-president.

Three other men were reported to be on her shortlist: the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker; the Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear; and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is now the US secretary of transportation.

With polling showing her gaining on Donald Trump – CBS gave the Democrat a one-point edge nationally and put the candidates level in battleground states – and a rocky rollout for Trump’s own vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, speculation has been rife as to whom Harris will select, with reporters seizing on even the smallest clues.

Her choice of Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, for her first rally with her new running mate has fueled speculation that it will be Shapiro, while Kelly on Sunday tweeted then deleted the statement: “My mission is now serving Arizonans.” Reuters subsequently cited anonymous sources that Kelly was indeed out of the running.

In Kentucky, meanwhile, Beshear was corralled by reporters in Frankfort while out walking his labradoodle, Winnie, responding only: “Just walking the dog this morning.”

Each of the contenders was widely seen to bring strengths to the ticket. Kelly is a former combat pilot and astronaut from the border state of Arizona, which is is also an election battleground state.

Pennsylvania, too, is a swing state, and Shapiro is strikingly popular with Republican voters, whom Harris courted this weekend by rolling out a slate of endorsements from anti-Trump conservatives, including former Trump White House officials.

Although Minnesota is not a battleground state, Walz is more popular with young and progressive voters than Kelly or Shapiro, the latter having drawn heavy fire for his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza and pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.

Among anti-Trump campaigners, the identity of Harris’s actual pick is secondary to the simple need to beat the Republican ticket.

Reed Galen, a former Republican operative turned founder of Join the Union, a coalition of pro-democracy groups, said: “Regardless of who Harris picks, they will be more accomplished, more competent and more normal than Donald Trump and JD Vance combined.”

Whoever is chosen will then embark on a rapid-fire tour of battleground states with events in Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.

Vance, the US senator from Ohio attempting to improve his poor showing so far on the Trump ticket, has scheduled a Tuesday campaign stop in Philadelphia of his own.

The CBS poll showed Harris and Trump level in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona. Harris was ahead by two points in Nevada. Trump was up by three points in North Carolina and Georgia, and by one point in Wisconsin.

Donald Trump has for months denigrated electric vehicles, arguing their supporters should “rot in hell” and that assisting the nascent industry is “lunacy”. He now appears to have somewhat shifted his view thanks to the support of Elon Musk, the world’s richest person.

“I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump, the Republican nominee for US president, told supporters at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Saturday.

The transactional nature of this relationship with Musk was made clear by the former president and convicted business fraudster, however. “So I have no choice,” said Trump, who then went on to say that electric vehicles were suitable for a “small slice” of the population and that “you want every type of car imaginable” to be available.

Trump also claimed that $9tn would be needed to build a network of electric car chargers, which is not a figure that has been cited by the industry or White House. Joe Biden’s administration has vowed to build 500,000 chargers, far fewer than the approximately 28m needed, and secured several billion dollars for this, although progress on this buildout has been painfully slow.

Musk, the chief executive of Tesla who has pushed increasingly strident rightwing views via his ownership of Twitter/X, has backed Trump’s return to the White House despite the candidate’s repeated antipathy to electric cars on the campaign trail. Last month Musk denied reports he was planning to donate $45m a month to a Super Pac focused on getting Trump elected; he declined to clarify how much he planned to donate.

Trump has warned that the president’s embrace of electric cars will bring a “bloodbath” to the US automotive industry, falsely claimed that battery-powered cars don’t work in cold weather and that they aren’t able to travel long distances. “You’re not going to be able to sell those cars,” he has warned of Mexico-made EVs in the US market.

A new Trump administration will “immediately terminate Joe Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate”, Trump has said. There is no such mandate, although Biden has overseen a tightening of vehicle pollution rules that should help make EVs more attractive and has signed legislation providing a tax rebate for new EV buyers.

Last year, more than 1 million electric cars were sold in the US for the first time and analysts expect numbers to climb further this year, approaching a tipping point where even a withdrawal of government support for them will not slow the growth in sales.

Several barriers still remain, however, such as the comparatively high cost of electric cars compared with gasoline and diesel models, a lack of chargers and supply chain snags. Environmental advocates, who point out that transportation is the largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions as well as a nexus of deadly air pollution, argue that more needs to be done to shift Americans away from gas-guzzling cars, or out of cars altogether.

“The writing is on the wall: around the world, the future of personal transportation is electric, independent of whatever the United States decides to do,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator and owner of two Chevy Bolts, last week.

“And that’s great. They’re quieter, faster and more fun to drive. They don’t have tailpipe emissions stinking up highways and neighborhoods. Repair and maintenance costs are nearly nonexistent.”

The Democratic governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, withdrew from consideration for Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick in part because he feared his extremist Republican lieutenant governor could try to seize power – or at least the spotlight – in his absence.

“Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, is the most extreme statewide candidate in the country right now,” Cooper told Politico in an article published on Saturday, as Harris prepared to name her choice to take on Donald Trump and JD Vance. Harris’s decision is expected before a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

“If I were to be out of state at a campaign event, if I had been the vice-presidential nominee, he could claim he was acting governor,” Cooper said.

Robinson is a polarising figure who has wielded pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ and antisemitic rhetoric, including quoting the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, a choice he has defended.

Robinson is the first Black lieutenant governor of the battleground state, and if he beats Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, he will become only the sixth Black governor anywhere in the US.

Invoking the memory of the Black civil rights leader, Trump has called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids”. So relations between governor and lieutenant governor have been unsurprisingly strained.

Robinson recently complained that Cooper “has had several chances to congratulate me on the accomplishment of being the first Black lieutenant governor, and he has never taken it”.

North Carolina is among states with constitutions that say if the governor is out of state, the lieutenant governor assumes power in an acting capacity. Furthermore, unlike in presidential race, the lieutenant governor is elected separately rather than on the same ticket as governor.

As Cooper said, when the first North Carolina constitution was adopted, in 1776, “you had no way to communicate”, so such measures “made sense”.

The constitution was last revised in 1971, by which time telephones had existed for nearly 100 years. But the acting governor provision stayed in.

Cooper told Politico: “There have been a few cases across the country that have said, ‘Look, now with text and phone and email and Zoom and ways to communicate, this doesn’t make sense’ … and courts have ruled that it doesn’t literally mean that.

“North Carolina courts have not ruled that, however, and fairly recently, Republicans have taken over the North Carolina supreme court. They have made some extremely partisan decisions here lately, particularly regarding voting and redistricting.”

Cooper noted that Robinson has already used the constitutional provision.

“I was on a recruiting trip to Japan,” Cooper said, of events last October. “He did claim he was acting governor. He did a big proclamation and press conference while I was gone. It was something about support for the state of Israel. It was obviously to make up for all of his antisemitic comments that he’d made, his denial of the Holocaust that he’d made over the years.

“… Our concern was that in this race for governor, he likes attention. He likes to get extremist contributions from all over the country. If I were to be out of state … he could claim he was acting governor.

“The attention he would get would be times 10, and it would be a distraction to the presidential campaign. And plus, we don’t know for sure what the Republican supreme court would decide.

“We believe we’ve got good arguments on the issue,” Cooper said, but “it was more that he would use this as a real distraction, drawing attention to himself, drawing attention away from the presidential campaign and that was part of the calculation that I looked at in making the decision” not to remain in consideration for vice-president.

Some gymnasts and coaches said there was an awkward atmosphere in the Bercy Arena during the error-riddled Olympic balance beam final on Monday.

“The crowd was great except for the ‘shushing’ on the beam,” Simone Biles’ coach, Cecile Landi, said after the competition.

Some well-meaning audience members tried to silence the athletes as they were cheering each other on as well as quieting other spectators – and it did not have the intended effect.

After completing her beam performance, which featured a fall, Biles looked bewildered and could be heard asking her teammate Sunisa Lee: “Why are they shushing?”

“It was really weird and awkward, not our favorite. None of us liked it,” Biles told reporters after finishing fifth on the beam, despite having qualified in second place.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, gymnasts often prefer noisy arenas, even on an apparatus as precarious as the beam, as it helps the athlete to focus more on the task at hand.

“Honestly, we do better in environments when there’s noise going on because it feels most like practice,” Biles said.

The format of apparatus finals means only one gymnast competes at any given time. That adds to the pressure as each performer is keenly aware that every set of eyes in the arena are centered upon them.

“You could feel the tension in the room. I mean, the crowd shushing us for cheering like we were, we didn’t like that because it’s just so silent in there,” Lee, one of four finalists to fall off the beam, said after finishing sixth. “I love hearing my teammates cheer for me.”

The athletes said they had attempted to solve the problem themselves.

“We’ve asked several times if we could have some music or some background noise, so I am not really sure what happened there,” Biles said.

Bronze medal winner Manila Esposito, who along with her teammate and gold medallist Alice D’Amato produced Italy’s first ever Olympic balance beam medals, was able to find some silver lining.

“There was a lot of silence in the gym and it was a little bit more stressful because of this, but it was nice because when we finished the exercise, it was even louder than usual,” she said.

Some gymnasts and coaches said there was an awkward atmosphere in the Bercy Arena during the error-riddled Olympic balance beam final on Monday.

“The crowd was great except for the ‘shushing’ on the beam,” Simone Biles’ coach, Cecile Landi, said after the competition.

Some well-meaning audience members tried to silence the athletes as they were cheering each other on as well as quieting other spectators – and it did not have the intended effect.

After completing her beam performance, which featured a fall, Biles looked bewildered and could be heard asking her teammate Sunisa Lee: “Why are they shushing?”

“It was really weird and awkward, not our favorite. None of us liked it,” Biles told reporters after finishing fifth on the beam, despite having qualified in second place.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, gymnasts often prefer noisy arenas, even on an apparatus as precarious as the beam, as it helps the athlete to focus more on the task at hand.

“Honestly, we do better in environments when there’s noise going on because it feels most like practice,” Biles said.

The format of apparatus finals means only one gymnast competes at any given time. That adds to the pressure as each performer is keenly aware that every set of eyes in the arena are centered upon them.

“You could feel the tension in the room. I mean, the crowd shushing us for cheering like we were, we didn’t like that because it’s just so silent in there,” Lee, one of four finalists to fall off the beam, said after finishing sixth. “I love hearing my teammates cheer for me.”

The athletes said they had attempted to solve the problem themselves.

“We’ve asked several times if we could have some music or some background noise, so I am not really sure what happened there,” Biles said.

Bronze medal winner Manila Esposito, who along with her teammate and gold medallist Alice D’Amato produced Italy’s first ever Olympic balance beam medals, was able to find some silver lining.

“There was a lot of silence in the gym and it was a little bit more stressful because of this, but it was nice because when we finished the exercise, it was even louder than usual,” she said.

Keely Hodgkinson punched the air as she confirmed herself as the poster girl of British athletics with a stunning win in the women’s 800m final, as Team GB’s velodrome campaign kicked off with a world-record gold medal run.

Hodgkinson, at the age of 22 already the world No 1, took an early lead in the Stade de France but Kenya’s Mary Moraa and Ethiopia’s Tsige Duguma stubbornly stuck to her right shoulder throughout the first lap.

It was only in the final stretch of the last leg of the biggest race of Hodgkinson’s career that the British middle-distance runner pulled away, stretching her opponents’ ability to keep up with each long stride. Hodgkinson, from Atherton in Greater Manchester, punched the air as she flew through the finish line, posting a time of 1min 56.72sec.

Duguma ran a personal best of 1.57.15 but it was simply not good enough against Hodgkinson, whose Paris gold joins three European titles and silver medals at the Olympics, world championships and the Commonwealth Games. Moraa, the world champion, took bronze.

With her imperious run, Hodgkinson became the first British woman to win an Olympic 800m title since Kelly Holmes in Athens 20 years ago – when Hodgkinson was two years old.

“I’ve worked so hard over the last year and you could see how much it meant to me as I crossed the line,” Hodgkinson said. “I can’t believe I’ve finally done it. It means so much to me. And to do it here, where better? The audience was absolutely incredible, it felt like a home crowd to me. So I’m super happy.

“I trusted myself, I could feel Mary [Moraa] coming at me down the back straight. But I showed composure and I got to the line first this time. I had a cheeky look at the screen just to make sure but you can’t do anything until you cross that line.

“I’m now the Olympic champion for the next four years and nobody can take that away from me.”

The thrilling triumph followed an unimprovable start to the start of the women’s campaign in the track cycling. Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell and Emma Finucane twice broke the world record in the qualifying rounds at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome and went even faster in the final, posting a time of 45.186, to beat New Zealand by five-tenths of a second.

It was Britain’s first medal in an event in which they have failed to even qualify at the past two Games.

Finucane, who has been billed as a successor to Victoria Pendleton and Laura Kenny as the British queen of the velodrome, said: “We have been working really hard on this. Process for us is really key and we nailed that final.”

Triumph on the track had followed a glorious five-minute patch in the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium a few hours earlier when Joe Clarke and Kimberley Woods emerged from the chaos of the men’s and women’s canoe slalom with silver and bronze medals, respectively.

Woods said: “Two medals in Team GB in five or 10 minutes is pretty incredible. I’m really proud that I came away with another bronze medal.”

Clarke, an Olympic gold medallist in 2016, watched his dream of repeating past glories die when he was barged off the ramp in the men’s race by his German rival Noah Hegge but fought back to take second place behind New Zealand’s Finn Butcher.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Clarke said, “I came into this event wanting to win gold and that didn’t happen today but I’m not disappointed in any way.”

He said that Hugo, his one-year-old son, had been wearing a supporters T-shirt on every race day bearing his face. “He picks it up in the morning and says ‘dada’ and hugs it,” Clarke said. “It’s the cutest you’ll ever see. I’m very proud to have him here as he’s my absolute world and I can’t wait for some family time with my wife and son now.”

There was also a bronze in the mixed triathlon for Team GB’s Alex Yee, Georgia Taylor-Brown, Sam Dickinson and Beth Potter, although it had looked for a short while like it might be a silver. Three teams were slugging it out as they approached the finish line of the final run section on the Pont Alexandre III but Laura Lindemann of Germany sealed gold.

Taylor Knibb of the USA and Potter came in a second behind in a photo-finish, and organisers initially awarded Britain second place but it was reversed shortly before the medal ceremony. Potter said: “The run leg was tough, I think I was a bit tired from the bike. I thought we might have had the silver, but we got a bronze. Still a medal.”

There will be no British representation in the women’s final after the favourite for gold, Molly Caudery, 24, and the Tokyo bronze medallist, Holly Bradshaw, failed to hit their usual standards.

Bradshaw was devastated to miss out and had been consoled by Caudery as her fourth and final Olympics came to a close. “I’m just crushed,” she said. “I knew this was going to be my last champs. I’ve only got a few competitions left, so I am heartbroken.”

Caudery, the reigning world indoor champion, had been the only competitor to elect to skip the 4.40m height attempt, choosing to enter at 4.55m, but she was unable to clear the bar.

It emerged that 4.40m was all that it would take to advance leaving Caudery devastated but she defended the decision. “When I have been jumping 4.80 and 4.90 all year round, 4.55 shouldn’t have been a problem,” she said. “It is just a really unfortunate day.”

There was also a bittersweet afternoon in the Bercy Arena as the US superstar gymnast Simone Biles picked up the 11th Olympic medal of her career but not the gold that her Games story of redemption had demanded.

Biles, who had to pull out of events at Tokyo after suffering from the “twisties” – a condition where she felt unable to carry out moves she had once found easy – was pipped by her Brazilian rival Rebeca Andrade for the gold by 0.033 points in the floor exercise final.

The 27-year-old, the most decorated women’s gymnast and the oldest American woman to make an Olympic gymnastics team since the 1950s, said she felt no disappointment at taking her fourth medal in Paris following gold in the team event, the all-around and the vault. A fall on the balance beam had left Biles with a fifth-place finish in that event. “I can’t be more proud of how I’ve done,” she said.

Iran has called in foreign ambassadors based in Tehran to warn of the country’s moral duty to punish Israel for what it sees as its “adventurism” and law-breaking in assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, a week ago in the Iranian capital.

Iran has also secured an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday where it will try to press Arab states to back its right to take reprisal actions against Israel.

Many leaders in the Gulf are willing to condemn Israel’s actions but have also been calling for Iran to show restraint. The meeting will be held at the OIC headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Israeli leaders have said they are prepared for an Iranian-led attack. The defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said in response to mounting Iranian threats on Monday that the Israeli military was ready for a “swift transition to offence”, echoing comments by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who said on Sunday the country was already engaged in a multi-front war with Iran and its allies.

Previous efforts by the deceased Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi to win the support of Gulf states for military action or direct economic sanction failed. Raisi died in a helicopter crash in May.

President Joe Biden met his national security team in Washington, after which the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, repeated calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and urged all parties to refrain from escalating.

Blinken, who also spoke with Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty on Monday, was earlier reported to have indicated he was expecting Iran to launch a series of coordinated strikes as soon as Monday.

At a signing ceremony with his Australian counterpart in Washington he said the US was “engaged in intense diplomacy, pretty much around the clock” and called for parties to “break this cycle” of violence and agree a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict.

State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington had been urging countries to pass messages to Iran “that it is very much not in their interest to launch another attack on Israel.”

Tehran airport cancelled a number of incoming and outgoing flights on Sunday evening, suggesting it was fearful that civil aircraft may be caught up in military activity.

In a previous military exchange in January 2020 between the US and Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian civil flight from Tehran to Kyiv, killing all 176 occupants on board.

Russia’s security council secretary, Sergei Shoigu, held talks with the Iranian leadership, including the president, Masoud Pezeshkian and Rear Adm Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander who serves as secretary of the Supreme national security council in Tehran on Monday.

Shoigu, previously Russia’s defence minister, was removed from that post by Vladimir Putin but remains central to Russia’s defence cooperation with Iran. There is no sign that Russia is urging restraint.

Iranian state media reported that Pezeshkian called for expanded relations with its “strategic partner Russia” during his meeting with Shoigu and said that Israel’s “criminal actions” in Gaza and the assassination of Haniyeh were “clear examples of the violation of all international laws and regulations”.

Iran is trying to portray its planned missile strikes as necessary to try to re-establish regional deterrence after the US’s failure to control its ally Israel.

In a meeting with foreign diplomats, the acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri, said: “We all have a moral duty and responsibility not to remain silent in the face of the occupation, displacement and genocide of the Palestinian nation.” He added: “Indifference and appeasement in the face of evil and injustice is a kind of moral negligence and causes the spread of evil.”

Speaking at his weekly briefing, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani, said action from Tehran was inevitable.

“Iran seeks to establish stability in the region, but this will only come with punishing the aggressor and creating deterrence against the adventurism of the Zionist regime [Israel],” said Kanaani, as he called on the US to stop supporting Israel and added that the international community had failed in its duty to safeguard stability in the region and should support the “punishment of the aggressor”.

He added: “Terror is in the essence of the Zionist regime, and its survival depends on the continuation of the approach of state terrorism. The world should strongly condemn this crime, secondly, it should support the punishment of the aggressor and avoid any approach that means supporting the aggressor.”

His remarks were directed at Arab states, including Jordan, that cooperated with western powers on 13 April of this year to reduce the impact of the Iranian attack on Israel in April after the assassination of IRGC commanders in an Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II spoke by phone to Biden, while the country’s foreign minister Ayman al Safadi called his British counterpart, David Lammy, as part of the flurry of diplomacy.

Safadi warned that the crisis would not end until Israel is persuaded to cease its military operations in Gaza, and British officials came away with the impression that it is almost inconceivable that Jordan will succumb to US pressure and agree to help shoot down any Iranian missiles flying over Jordanian soil towards Israel.

Inside Iran, those who have counselled caution, or even suggested that the country could diplomatically exploit Israel’s overreach, seem to have lost out to those who have argued that there should be a coordinated attack on Israel mounted by Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi militant groups, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran itself.

In the April episode, it took Iran 12 days to decide and launch its response. It used that time not only to calibrate its response, but also to send out messages that it was not seeking a regional war, messages that in turn led the US to restrain Israel in its own response.

Some of this messaging about the scale of both sides’ reaction is absent, but the longer the pause between the assassination of Haniyeh and Iran’s response, the more time exists for diplomacy to reduce the scope for misunderstandings.

On Monday, the top IRGC commander, Hossein Salami, repeated the group’s threat that Israel “will receive punishment in due time”, adding that Israel was digging its own grave.

A base hosting US troops in Iraq came under rocket fire on Monday, after an American strike on 30 July killed four pro-Iran Iraqi fighters. Several US personnel were injured in the attack, three US officials told Reuters.

Meanwhile, fighting continued to rage on Monday in the Gaza Strip and on the blue line separating Israel and Lebanon.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it launched an early morning drone attack on northern Israel which the Israeli military said wounded two of its troops, while Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli drone strike near a cemetery in a southern village killed two people, including a paramedic.

In Gaza, Palestinian officials said an Israeli airstrike killed five members of Gaza’s Hamas-run police force, who were securing an aid convoy. The strike on a civilian target took place after Israeli attacks hit two schools and a hospital complex in Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 30 people.

Israel’s military said it had struck Hamas command centres at the schools, and that the hospital strike targeted a militant, without providing further details or evidence.

The ability of Hamas to launch rocket and mortar attacks at Israeli territory has dwindled over the last 10 months of fighting, but at least 15 projectiles were fired from Gaza on Monday, wounding one person, the Israeli military said.

Haniyeh’s assassination and its aftermath is widely expected to negatively impact internationally mediated talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire and hostage and prisoner release deal in the Gaza war.

There is mounting concern in Israel’s defence establishment that Netanyahu is avoiding taking decisions on the negotiations for political reasons, according to angry exchanges leaked over the weekend to the Israeli press.

Reuters contributed to this report

The worst of the far-right violence seen in England this weekend should be treated as terrorism, a prominent former police chief has said, amid warnings over a new wave of unrest targeting migration lawyers.

Police have made 378 arrests since the violence broke out last week, with rioters setting fire to a library, looting shops and storming hotels housing asylum seekers.

A far-right-led mob tried to set fire to the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham on Sunday while people were inside. Some masked rioters hurled pieces of wood, bottles and chairs, and sprayed fire extinguishers at police officers, 12 of whom were injured.

Neil Basu, Britain’s former head of counter-terrorism, said he believed the attack should be treated as an act of terrorism as he condemned the rioters as “bullies and cowards”.

“Trying to set ablaze a building with people inside, whom you have made clear you detest, is an act of violence against people and property with a racial cause designed to intimidate a section of the public – be it Muslims or asylum seekers,” he said.

“Not only does it fit the definition of terrorism, it is terrorism. It’s nothing short of an attempt at a modern-day lynching and the people who did it should be facing life imprisonment, not a five-year sentence for violent disorder.”

Basu’s comments came as:

• Australia, Nigeria, Malaysia and Indonesia issued travel alerts to their nationals living in or visiting the UK, warning them to stay away from demonstrations.

• Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, warned the riots have made many of the health service’s multicultural workforce feel “afraid and unwelcome” and the Royal College of Nursing called on ministers to ensure that anyone who targets nurses “pays a very heavy price”.

• Ministers announced plans to introduce more than 500 new prison places over the next month to help cope with an influx of accused rioters expected to be held on remand.

• The prime minister’s spokesperson criticised comments by Elon Musk after the X owner posted that “civil war is inevitable” in response to a video showing riots in Liverpool.

• MPs and 60 anti-racist and migrants’ rights organisations called for parliament to be recalled to address the violence and “to ensure that all people and communities of colour are protected”.

Keir Starmer has rejected the calls, while the Northern Ireland assembly will be recalled later this week to discuss violent scenes after several businesses were attacked at an anti-immigration protest in Belfast on Saturday.

The prime minister announced on Monday that a “standing army” of specialist police officers was being assembled to crack down on rioting as he called for the perpetrators to be named and shamed.

He vowed to “ramp up criminal justice” after an emergency Cobra meeting was called in the wake of the disorder that erupted after the killing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport last Monday.

Families gathered at a vigil in Southport a week on from the murders of Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Dasilva Aguiar as children placed flowers and heart-shaped balloons in front of the Atkinson arts centre. One child who was stabbed in the attack remained in hospital and all other patients had been discharged, a spokesperson for Merseyside police said.

Several suspects involved in the riots that followed the killings faced charges in court on Monday as the National Police Chiefs’ Council warned that the number of arrests was expected to rise each day.

There are fears that unrest could continue to spread after a list of solicitors’ firms and advice agencies were shared as targets for gatherings in the coming days.

A message believed to have been widely shared on chat groups lists addresses for immigration law specialists and advice organisations across England and invites people to “mask up” if they go.

Tell Mama, a group monitoring Islamophobia in the UK, said it had alerted counter-terrorism police to the “far-right threats on Telegram that seek to target immigration solicitors and refugee services” in more than 30 locations across the country on Wednesday. The Labour MP Stella Creasy said she was looking into a potential target in her east London constituency.

There was more unrest on Monday night, this time in Plymouth. Six people were arrested following disorder in the city centre, and several officers suffered minor injuries in the violence, Devon and Cornwall police said. The windows of a police van were also smashed.

Supt Russ Dawe said “several officers” had been injured in Plymouth and arrests had been made “for a range of public order offences and assaults”.

He said: “Specialist officers were deployed to the Guildhall in the city centre at around 3.30pm today. During the evening, we’ve seen levels of violence across the city, and several officers have sustained injuries.

“I would like to reassure the community that we are fully resourced at this time with a strong police presence. Violence will not be tolerated, hate will not be tolerated, and we continue to work with our partners to keep the people of Plymouth safe.”

The Law Society of England and Wales president, Nick Emmerson, condemned the violence that has already taken place, and said the organisation has “serious concerns about the safety and wellbeing of our members” after the list was shared giving “targets for further protest and violence this week”.

Basu, who was the head of counter-terrorism from 2018 to 2021, said the organisers of the protests should also face punishment.

“We overestimate the intelligence of thugs. They don’t think about the consequences of their actions until it’s too late, but jail a few and the others will run back under cover. They are bullies and cowards,” he said.

“Their criminal puppet masters, the organisers, those who encourage, have to be dealt with too. They are also bullies and cowards.”

Police believe that violence has been the primary aim of those organising the series of far-right led gatherings in the last week.

The chief constable of Essex police, BJ Harrington, who is the national lead for public order, said: “They are saying they are English patriots and protesting against immigration, but they are intent on thuggery and violence and they do not care about the communities they claim to care about.”

He said the groups “masquerade as protesters”, before adding: “What they say and do is quite to the contrary. They are attacking police and the fabric of communities. It’s not protest, it is thuggery.”

Harrington was a public order commander in the Metropolitan police when the 2011 riots erupted in London before spreading across England.

Asked if the violence this week was as serious as in 2011, Harrington said: “The implications of it, yes; we have communities across the country in fear and have seen property damage. The scale is not the same. Our response is faster and swifter.”

South Yorkshire police, who are leading the investigation into the Rotherham hotel attack, said the case was being dealt with as “mass violent disorder”.

A spokesperson for counter-terrorism policing said acts of violence, even if fuelled by hatred, do not necessarily meet the definition of terrorism. They added: “The racist and anti-immigration attitudes that we have seen both on our streets and online in recent days have no place in recognising the loss felt by families in Southport.

“We continue to bring our specialist capabilities to both the investigation of the incident in Southport and to supporting policing colleagues across the country as they respond to the violent disorder we have seen.”

Additional reporting by Rajeev Syal and Denis Campbell

A Tunisian court has sentenced a number of potential presidential election candidates to prison and banned them from running for office, according to local media, politicians, and a lawyer, in a move critics say is aimed at excluding serious competitors to President Kais Saied in October’s vote.

A court decision was issued on Monday against prominent politician Abdel Latif Mekki, activist Nizar Chaari, Judge Mourad Massoudi and another candidate, Adel Dou, according to lawyer Mokthar Jmai who spoke to Reuters. All four were sentenced to eight months in prison and banned from running for office on a charge of vote buying.

Another court late on Monday sentenced Abir Moussi – who is also a staunch critic of president Saied – to two years in prison, on a charge of insulting the election commission, local Mosaique radio reported.

Moussi, a key opposition figure, has been jailed since October, according to Agence France-Presse.

The ruling will reinforce the fears of opposition parties, candidates and human rights groups who have accused authorities of using arbitrary restrictions and intimidation in order to ensure the re-election of Saied in a vote set for 6 October.

Ahmed Nafatti, the manager of Mekki’s campaign, said they still planned to submit his candidacy papers on Tuesday.

“The decision is unfair and unjust, and aims to exclude a serious player from the race,” Nafatti said.

“It is a shocking rule, it aims to keep us away from running for the race after a series of restrictions,” Chaari told Reuters.

Head of the Free Destourian Party and a former parliament member, Moussi had submitted her candidacy on Saturday via her lawyers, two days before her reported sentence. Moussi was sentenced under Decree 54, a law enacted by Saied in 2022 to combat “false news”.

If the sentencing is upheld on appeal or later proceedings, Moussi will officially be barred from running for office as one of the candidacy criteria is that hopefuls must have a clean criminal record.

Last month, a court sentenced Lotfi Mraihi, a potential presidential election candidate and fierce critic of Saied, to eight months in prison on a charge of vote buying. It also banned him from running in presidential elections.

On Monday morning, Tunisian president, Kais Saied, submitted his official candidacy for the election October election.

Upon registering his candidacy, Saied, 66, told reporters in the capital Tunis that his candidacy was part of “a war of liberation and self-determination” aiming to “establish a new republic”.

Elected in 2019, Saied dissolved parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree in a move the opposition described as a coup. He has said he will not hand over power to what he calls “non-patriots”.

Opposition parties, many of whose leaders are in prison, have accused Saied’s government of exerting pressure on the judiciary to crack down on his rivals in the 2024 elections and pave the way for him to win a second term.

Saied has denied placing any restrictions on rivals.

“There are no restrictions on potential candidates for the presidential elections … this is nonsense and lies,” Saied told reporters on Monday after submitting his official candidacy file.

“Whoever talks about restrictions is delusional,” he said. “I did not oppress anyone, and the law applies to everyone equally.”

Earlier on Monday, at least four other prominent potential candidates said the election commission had imposed a new restriction by demanding they submit their police record in order to register, but that the interior ministry had refused to provide those records.

They accused authorities of seeking to return Tunisia to the years of dictatorship and farce elections that were the norm before the Tunisian revolution in 2011.

The interior ministry was not immediately available for comment.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

A Tunisian court has sentenced a number of potential presidential election candidates to prison and banned them from running for office, according to local media, politicians, and a lawyer, in a move critics say is aimed at excluding serious competitors to President Kais Saied in October’s vote.

A court decision was issued on Monday against prominent politician Abdel Latif Mekki, activist Nizar Chaari, Judge Mourad Massoudi and another candidate, Adel Dou, according to lawyer Mokthar Jmai who spoke to Reuters. All four were sentenced to eight months in prison and banned from running for office on a charge of vote buying.

Another court late on Monday sentenced Abir Moussi – who is also a staunch critic of president Saied – to two years in prison, on a charge of insulting the election commission, local Mosaique radio reported.

Moussi, a key opposition figure, has been jailed since October, according to Agence France-Presse.

The ruling will reinforce the fears of opposition parties, candidates and human rights groups who have accused authorities of using arbitrary restrictions and intimidation in order to ensure the re-election of Saied in a vote set for 6 October.

Ahmed Nafatti, the manager of Mekki’s campaign, said they still planned to submit his candidacy papers on Tuesday.

“The decision is unfair and unjust, and aims to exclude a serious player from the race,” Nafatti said.

“It is a shocking rule, it aims to keep us away from running for the race after a series of restrictions,” Chaari told Reuters.

Head of the Free Destourian Party and a former parliament member, Moussi had submitted her candidacy on Saturday via her lawyers, two days before her reported sentence. Moussi was sentenced under Decree 54, a law enacted by Saied in 2022 to combat “false news”.

If the sentencing is upheld on appeal or later proceedings, Moussi will officially be barred from running for office as one of the candidacy criteria is that hopefuls must have a clean criminal record.

Last month, a court sentenced Lotfi Mraihi, a potential presidential election candidate and fierce critic of Saied, to eight months in prison on a charge of vote buying. It also banned him from running in presidential elections.

On Monday morning, Tunisian president, Kais Saied, submitted his official candidacy for the election October election.

Upon registering his candidacy, Saied, 66, told reporters in the capital Tunis that his candidacy was part of “a war of liberation and self-determination” aiming to “establish a new republic”.

Elected in 2019, Saied dissolved parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree in a move the opposition described as a coup. He has said he will not hand over power to what he calls “non-patriots”.

Opposition parties, many of whose leaders are in prison, have accused Saied’s government of exerting pressure on the judiciary to crack down on his rivals in the 2024 elections and pave the way for him to win a second term.

Saied has denied placing any restrictions on rivals.

“There are no restrictions on potential candidates for the presidential elections … this is nonsense and lies,” Saied told reporters on Monday after submitting his official candidacy file.

“Whoever talks about restrictions is delusional,” he said. “I did not oppress anyone, and the law applies to everyone equally.”

Earlier on Monday, at least four other prominent potential candidates said the election commission had imposed a new restriction by demanding they submit their police record in order to register, but that the interior ministry had refused to provide those records.

They accused authorities of seeking to return Tunisia to the years of dictatorship and farce elections that were the norm before the Tunisian revolution in 2011.

The interior ministry was not immediately available for comment.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Google violated antitrust laws as it built an internet search empire, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a decision that could have major implications for the way people interact with the internet.

Judge Amit Mehta found that Google violated section 2 of the Sherman Act, a US antitrust law. His decision states that Google maintained a monopoly over search services and advertising.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” the ruling states.

The ruling is one of the largest antitrust decisions in decades, capping off a case that pitted the justice department against one of the world’s most valuable companies. It was also part of a broader push in recent years from the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, as well as European regulators, to scrutinize big tech companies for allegedly monopolistic practices.

There was no jury in the trial, which began in September of last year before taking a long hiatus for Mehta to consider a ruling. Closing arguments wrapped up in the first week of May, with Mehta concluding the trial by stating that he was aware of the gravity of the case for both Google and the public.

Google will appeal the decision, according to its president of global affairs, Kent Walker, who in a statement quoted parts of the ruling where Mehta described the company’s search engine as superior to its competitors.

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” Walker said.

Mehta on Monday called the proceedings “remarkable” and praised the quality of lawyers on both sides of the case in his ruling, noting that millions of pages and petabytes of data changed hands during the discovery phase of the case.

US attorney general Merrick Garland called the ruling “a historic win for the American people”, adding: “No company – no matter how large or influential – is above the law.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the “pro-competition ruling is a victory for the American people”, adding: “Americans deserve an internet that is free, fair, and open for competition.”

Government prosecutors had argued during the trial that Google illegally monopolized control over the internet search market, spending tens of billions of dollars each year on contracts to providers such as Apple and Samsung in order to become the default search engine on their devices. Justice department lawyers accused Google of using its dominant market position – they alleged the company controls about 90% of the US search market – to crowd out rivals and boost its own advertising revenues.

These default distribution agreements gave Google anticompetitive advantage over its rivals, Mehta’s ruling found, stating that the company did not give valid justifications for those deals. Google also spent vast sums of money to secure those agreements, the ruling noted, paying more than $26bn in 2021 alone to companies such as Apple in order to become the default search engine on devices.

Mehta’s ruling does not state what penalties Google will face for violating antitrust law, leaving major questions about the future of the company’s dominance over the search industry and how it will operate.

Google’s defense relied on the argument that the company simply provides a better service to consumers than other search engines. Attorneys for the company pointed to products such as Microsoft’s Bing as inferior to Google’s, and argued that contracts to make Google the default engine on devices did not constitute antitrust violations. They also argued that Mehta should take a broader definition of the search market, presenting Google as just one of a range services that people use to search the internet – one that includes other tech giants such as TikTok and Amazon.

Another point of contention during the trial was Google’s history of deleting internal communications and having its chats automatically set to not retain message history. The government alleged that Google was intentionally deleting messages that could be unfavorable to it during the trial, a charge that Google denied. Mehta chastised Google’s attorneys during the trial for the failure to retain messages and lax record-keeping policies.

“It’s shocking to me, or surprising to me, that a company would leave it to its employees to decide when to preserve documents,” Mehta said during closing arguments.

Mehta’s ruling ultimately chose not to sanction Google for failing to preserve the employees’ chat, but said the court was “taken aback by the lengths to which Google goes to avoid creating a paper trail for regulators and litigants”.

The justice department originally filed its suit against Google in 2020, but later joined in a wider legal action that included attorneys general from more than three dozen states and territories. During opening arguments, the government’s lawyer Kenneth Dintzer declared that the trial was about “the future of the internet”.

Much of the trial unfolded behind closed doors, leading to transparency advocates and tech critics to allege that Google was attempting to keep the case out of the public discourse and quell media coverage. Google successfully petitioned to block public access to evidence and testimony, arguing that it would potentially reveal trade secrets.

New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who was part of the legal action against Google, celebrated the decision on Monday. “This is a major victory to stop unchecked corporate power from stifling competition and controlling our data and privacy,” James posted on X.

The tech giantfaces another justice department antitrust lawsuit later this year, which will focus on its advertising practices and whether it illegally monopolized key advertising technology.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Venezuela’s opposition leaders, who are widely believed to have beaten Nicolás Maduro in last week’s disputed presidential election, have urged the police and armed forces to abandon the strongman leader and his “despicable interests”.

In an open letter to Venezuelan security forces, Edmundo González Urrutia and María Corina Machado claimed they had won an “avalanche” victory over Maduro in the 28 July vote – a conclusion supported by analyses of election data carried out by the Associated Press and the Washington Post and which a growing number of western governments have also reached.

Hours after the letter was posted on social media, attorney general Tarek Saab announced he was launching a criminal probe against González and Machado for inciting police and military officials to break the law.

In a statement posted on X, Tarek said the pair had “falsely announced a winner of the presidential election other than the one proclaimed by the National Electoral Council, the only body qualified to do so” and that they had openly incited “police and military officials to disobey the laws”.

After being declared the winner by Venezuela’s government-controlled electoral authority, Maduro has launched a harsh crackdown on political opponents since his claim to victory sparked two days of protests and turmoil. More than 2,000 people have been imprisoned, many on terrorism charges, while human rights groups say at least 22 people have been killed by security forces or pro-government gangs.

On Monday, González and Machado accused the incumbent of waging a “brutal offensive” against opposition leaders and supporters with the “ridiculous intention of hiding the truth” about González’s landslide and stealing the election to secure a third term.

“We appeal to the conscience of military and police officials to put themselves on the side of the people and of their own families. With this massive violation of human rights, the top brass is aligning itself with Maduro and his despicable interests,” they wrote, urging police and soldiers “to prevent the regime’s lack of restraint against the people”.

“Maduro has staged a coup … and he wants to make you his accomplices,” González and Machado added.

Their letter came less than 24 hours after Maduro appeared before the cameras with top military officials and heavily armed troops in a clear attempt to project military unity and strength. “Always loyal! Never traitors!” they shouted repeatedly during the ceremony, clutching riot shields and rifles.

Amid growing criticism of his post-election crackdown, Maduro vowed to “pulverise” the latest challenge to his rule and told troops he was “willing to do anything” to protect the “Bolivarian revolution” he inherited from Hugo Chávez after his premature 2013 death.

“We are confronting, defeating, containing and pulverising an attempted coup in Venezuela,” Venezuela’s president told members of the Bolivarian national guard, a branch of the military that has been involved in the clampdown. “I am willing to do anything and I am counting on you to ensure order, law and the constitution prevail.”

For all the opposition’s appeals to the military, Venezuela specialists say they have yet to detect any hint that troops or political rivals from within the chavista movement might be planning to turn on Maduro.

Carlos Lizarralde, the author of Venezuela’s Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart, said: “Right now there is a real deadlock. Two sides are staring at each other, but there will be no solution unless the military is involved.

“Every single regime change in Venezuela since 1830 has had the military involved as a protagonist or as a supporting actor. There has never been in the history of the country any kind of fundamental change without the military involved in some way … For better or for worse, they hold the keys to the next stage,” added Lizarralde, who, for now, saw no sign of the military top brass switching sides, despite widespread popular anger at Maduro’s perceived theft of the election.

“People are furious. A vast majority of the population across the country demands change. But somehow the government remains in power,” Lizarralde said.

“Many underestimate how empowered the chavista government feels it is,” he continued. “I’m afraid [the government] think that it is going to be tough. They know they are playing their weakest hand, but they still have military and governmental control over the country.”

A fast-moving wildfire burning in southern California’s San Bernardino county has burned at least 100 acres since it started this afternoon and destroyed several homes.

The Edgehill fire started about 3pm in the Shandin Hills area of San Bernardino and spread rapidly through the neighborhood, burning homes and forcing evacuations, according to San Bernardino county fire department. No injuries have been reported.

Triple-digit temperatures in the area worsened the situation. Eric Sherwin, fire department spokesperson, told news station KTLA that more than 200 firefighters were assigned to the blaze.

“Little Mountain is a community that is not unaccustomed to fire,” Sherwin said. “The residents here are aware of fire and the threat that exists in this community. As engines were pulling up, people were already evacuating out of this area.”

News outlets showed video of homes burned to the foundation as the fire spread.

As of Monday evening, the fire department reported that the blaze had been 25% contained.

In northern California, the Park fire, which started 24 July and has destroyed hundreds of homes in Tehama and Butte counties, has burned more than 400,000 acres as of Monday evening.

Fire crews are preparing for higher temperatures and decreased humidity this week as they continue to battle the north-east portion of the blaze.

Bloomberg News said it had taken “disciplinary action” against a number of its editorial staff after the outlet “prematurely” published news of the historic prisoner swap between Russia and the United States last week that it said could have endangered the safety of the Americans being released.

In an email to staff on Monday, editor-in-chief John Micklethwait wrote that a number of staff members had been disciplined, although the company did not say who, how many or what their punishment had been. At least one reporter on the story appears to have been fired in a rare case where a journalist was punished for a decision to publish a major news story that would likely have been reviewed by senior editors at the outlet.

“Last Thursday, we prematurely published a story on the release of Evan Gershkovich and the other prisoners, which could have endangered the negotiated swap that set them free,” Micklethwait, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, wrote in a letter to staff whose contents were confirmed by the Guardian. “Even if our story mercifully ended up making no difference, it was a clear violation of the editorial standards which have made this newsroom so trusted around the world.”

The news outlet published its scoop that Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich and a number of other American citizens were being released as part of the largest prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington since the cold war at 7.41am ET, while a plane from Moscow carrying them was still en route to Ankara for the exchange. Soon after, a Bloomberg editor wrote on X: “It is one of the greatest honors of my career to have helped break this news. I love my job and my colleagues.”

The report elicited outrage from other outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, who had been holding the news under embargo until the exchange was completed and the prisoners were safely out of Russian custody. (The editor’s tweet was later deleted.)

Micklethwait said that he had written apologies to the American hostages who had been involved in the swap, likely including Gershkovich, ex-marine Paul Whelan, and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. As of Monday, some of those apology letters still had not been delivered. The US traded 16 American, German and Russian citizens in exchange for eight Russians, including a number of spies and a convicted assassin in German custody.

“Following a full investigation over the past few days by our Standards editor, we have today taken disciplinary action against a number of those involved and we will be reviewing our processes to ensure that failures like this don’t happen again,” he added.

In a rare case, the publication also appeared to have fired at least one of the reporters bylined on the story. Jennifer Jacobs, a White House reporter for Bloomberg News, was no longer with the company, according to reports by New York Magazine and the Washington Post. An operator at Bloomberg News told the Guardian that today was Jacobs’s last day and an email to her account prompted an autoreply: “Your Bloomberg contact has changed.” Trying to reach Jacobs, a Guardian reporter was directed to reach out to another reporter covering the White House.

In a statement posted on X, Jacobs said she did not knowingly break any embargo regarding Gershkovich’s release and said she had worked closely with editors on the story.

“As a journalist, the idea that I would jeopardize the safety of a fellow reporter is deeply upsetting on a level that’s difficult to describe,” Jacobs wrote. “I am so happy Evan Gershkovich and the others are home.”

“In reporting the story about Evan’s release, I worked hand in hand with my editors to adhere to editorial standards and guidelines,” she wrote. “At no time did I do anything that was knowingly inconsistent with the administration’s embargo or that would put anyone involved at risk.”

A spokesperson for Bloomberg News declined to comment on a list of questions about the investigation, including which senior editors had reviewed the article and whether any of them had been dismissed as well.

“Reporters don’t have the final say over when a story is published or with what headline,” Jacobs wrote. “The chain of events here could happen to any reporter tasked with reporting the news. This is why checks and balances exist within the editorial processes.”