Kamala Harris introduced her running mate Tim Walz as “the kind of vice-president America deserves” at a raucous rally in Philadelphia that showcased Democratic unity and enthusiasm for the party’s presidential ticket ahead of the November election.

Casting their campaign as a “fight for the future”, Harris and Walz were repeatedly interrupted by applause and cheering as they addressed thousands of battleground-state voters wearing bracelets that twinkled red, white and blue at Temple University’s Liacouras Center – a crowd Harris’s team said was its largest to date.

“Thank you for bringing back the joy,” a beaming Walz told Harris after she debuted the little-known Minnesota governor as a former social studies teacher, high school football coach and a National Guard veteran.

“We’ve got 91 days,” he declared. “My God, that’s easy. We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”

Harris, who has served as vice-president to Joe Biden for three and a half years, said Walz would be “ready on day one”, and called the race between them and the Republican presidential ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance to a “matchup between the varsity team and the JV squad”.

Harris announced the 60-year-old governor as her running mate on Tuesday morning, hours after she formally secured the Democratic nomination, becoming the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket. With the governor’s selection, Democrats capped one of the wildest periods in American political life that led Biden to abandon his re-election bid and endorse his vice-president last month.

Arriving on stage to Beyoncé’s Freedom, the newly minted Democratic ticket rode a weeks-long wave of momentum from an unusually exuberant party happy to be looking forward.

“He’s the kind of person who makes people feel like they belong and then inspires them to dream big,” Harris said. “That’s the kind of vice-president he will be. And that’s the kind of president America deserves.”

Walz shared more of his biography, casting himself as a politician who learned to “compromise without compromising my values” and a midwesterner who lives by the “golden rule” when it comes to personal choice: “Mind your own damn business.” Drawing a personal connection to one of the most searing issues of the election cycle, Walz said he and his wife had two children through in vitro fertilization (IVF) after years of struggling with infertility. “When we welcomed our daughter into the world, we named her Hope,” he said.

Then he turned to his Republican opponents, who he has branded “weird” in a line of attack that has resonated widely, especially among Democrats. “These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell,” he said, setting of a new round of whoops and cheers.

“I gotta tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy,” he said of Vance, adding a joke about an unfortunate meme. “That is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.” It is now unclear if a vice-presidential debate will happen.

The positive reception for Walz built throughout the day as he earned warm endorsements that spanned the wide ideological expanse of the Democratic coalition, leading congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to quip that the notoriously factious party was exhibiting “disconcerting levels of array”.

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who served with Walz during his six terms in the House, praised him as a “heartland of America Democrat” while Joe Manchin, the Democrat turned independent senator from West Virginia, expressed confidence that Walz could “bring normality back to the most chaotic political environment that most of us have ever seen”.

As Walz spoke on Tuesday, the Democratic campaign said it had raised more than $20m from grassroots donations, another colossal sum since Harris’s ascent.

Diane Harris, 59, of Philadelphia, said at the rally she was among those small-dollar donors who had given to the campaign in recent days.

“It’s hope and change and newness,” she said, dancing with glee at the prospect of electing the first Black and south Asian woman president.

While Harris and Walz rallied supporters in Philadelphia, the new Democratic ticket was also beating back attacks from the right against the governor’s track record of supporting liberal economic policies. The Trump campaign immediately attacked Harris’s running mate as a “dangerously liberal extremist” who sought to remake Minnesota in California’s progressive image, pointing to his support for policies that would lower carbon emissions and expand voting rights for convicted felons.

“Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide,” said Trump campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt. “If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”

The selection of Walz concluded a lightening-fast vetting process that initially included nearly a dozen Democrats but narrowed in the final days to just three, among them the Arizona senator, Mark Kelly, and Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania seen as the most likely choice given the state’s importance.

Shapiro was greeted by thunderous applause from his constituents, several of whom said they would have loved to see him become the vice-president but were also happy to have him in the governor’s mansion. “I love you Philly !” he said, hand over his heart. “And you know what else I love? I love being your governor.”

His speech was a fiery denunciation of the Republican ticket, warning that the supreme court’s decision granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution would only embolden Trump further in a second term. Invoking Philadelphia’s legacy as the birthplace of American democracy, where the Continental Congress met to declare independence from the British crown, Shapiro thundered: “We’re not going back to a king.”

Cherelle Parker, the Philadelphia mayor who publicly advocated for Shapiro’s elevation to the Democratic ticket, had a stern message on Tuesday for any wistful Democrats who wanted to see Harris elevate the Pennsylvania governor instead of Walz.

“Our Democratic nominee has spoken,” she said at the rally. “That’s it. Period. End of story.”

In the eyes of Joseph Alston, a 69-year-old Democratic committee member in the town of King of Prussia who attended the rally, Walz was an excellent choice. Although he was previously unfamiliar with the Minnesota governor, Alston believe Harris was wise to choose a running mate from a midwestern state.

“I originally wanted Josh Shapiro, but it’s better for her to go outside of Pennsylvania because we got Pennsylvania on lock,” he said, expressing confidence the critical battleground that swung for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 would deliver again for Democrats in 2024.

Several speakers reprised the “weird” line popularized by Walz . Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said he worked with Vance in the Senate, and was “here to confirm he’s a seriously weird dude”. At one point during Shapiro’s speech, the crowd broke into a chant: “He’s a weirdo.”

Shapiro laughed and agreed: “Tim Walz, in his beautiful Midwestern plainspoken way, he summed up JD Vance the best. He’s a weirdo.”

Appearing in Philadelphia earlier on Tuesday, Vance had assailed the administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border, attempting to put the blame on Harris. He also suggested Harris might replace Walz as her running mate since the party had already shown a “willingness to pull a little switcheroo on us” – referring to Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid.

Asked if he had any common ground with the Democratic governor, Vance named one: “We’re white guys from the Midwest.”

The Republican vice-presidential nominee will follow Harris and Walz across the country, staging dueling events at several stops along their multi-day battleground state tour.

At the rally, Kathleen Little, a 77-year-old retired director of a housing organization, said that she was excited by Harris’s choice of Walz.

“I am so impressed, and he was the one I was hoping for,” said Little, who is based outside Scranton. “When I saw what he had accomplished in Minnesota, in the middle of the United States, with all of the things that our nation hopes to accomplish … he was right spot on for me.”

She lauded his investment in Head Start, and his passage of gun safety measures, including universal background checks, citing them as part of the ambitious agenda Harris might pursue as president: “Those kinds of things that are exactly what Kamala has been striving for.”

Melissa Hellmann contributed reporting

As Democrats weathered the upheaval caused by Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election campaign and hand the reins to his vice-president, Kamala Harris, a party stalwart piped up with a suggestion: start calling Donald Trump “weird”.

The pioneer of the attack, which was also deployed by Harris’s campaign, was the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, who insisted to CNN that “it’s not a name-calling or tagging him with it. It’s an observation.

“And I didn’t come up with it,” he added, noting that he had heard “relatives and Republicans” use the adjective to describe the former president.

Walz is now expected to spend the next three months telling the country all about the weirdness of Trump and his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, after Harris named the Minnesota governor as her pick for vice-president on Tuesday. Although the 60-year-old is one of the least nationally known of the options Harris was considering, and does not hail from a state viewed as crucial to deciding the election, he is expected to assist Harris in making the case for her policies, and convincing voters to reject the extreme remaking of the US government that Trump says is required.

Now in his second term as governor, the former congressman and high school teacher brings to the ticket a record of progressive policymaking, a somewhat sympathetic view towards pro-Palestine protesters, and a distinctly Minnesotan style of communication the campaign could use in its efforts to win the nearby swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“If Donald Trump and JD Vance are irritated that Kamala Harris smiles and laughs, they’re really going to be irritated by Tim Walz,” Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of Minnesota’s house of representatives, told the Guardian.

“He is a cheerful person, he’s a positive, upbeat person, he’s charismatic. He can get a crowd going.”

Walz emerged as Harris’s pick after a search lasting two weeks that saw the vice-president also consider a group that included the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, and Arizona senator Mark Kelly. The choice of Walz drew praise from across the Democratic party’s ideological spectrum.

The progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Harris made an “excellent decision”, while Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who recently left the party and is best known for hamstringing Biden’s proposals to fight child poverty and more aggressively combat climate change, said: “I can think of no one better than Governor Walz to help bring our country closer together and bring balance back to the Democratic party.”

Republicans responded to Walz’s selection by posting on social media images of the protests the rocked Minneapolis four years ago after George Floyd’s murder, reminders of the governor’s support for a law allowing undocumented migrants to obtain driver’s licenses, plus a massive Covid relief scandal that took place during his administration.

With Trump making fears of crime and unrest a centerpiece of his platform, Amy Koch, a Minnesota Republican strategist and former state senate majority leader, said the unrest that followed Floyd’s killing will probably form a plank of the party’s counter-attack to Walz’s candidacy.

“There’s a lot of video of five days of chaos in Minneapolis,” Koch told the Guardian. “There’s a lot of video of, like, literally, reporters covering it, saying: where is Governor Walz?” The governor did deploy the national guard, but Republicans say he did not do so soon enough.

Walz’s main competitor for the spot of running mate was Shapiro, who might have reignited tensions among Democrats over his policy positions on issues such as education, fracking and Israel-Gaza.

Biden’s support for Benjamin Netanyahu and the invasion of Gaza sparked a backlash that some of his allies feared could have cost him victory in swing states such as Michigan, home to a large Arab-American population. Some pro-Palestine activists have signaled a willingness to give Harris a chance to win back their votes, but were wary of Shapiro, who took a hardline stance against pro-Palestinian protests.

The backlash to his potential candidacy, which included the formation of a group called “No Genocide Josh”, itself attracted claims of antisemitism, with many pointing out that Shapiro, who is Jewish, has condemned Netanyahu and that Walz has a similar record of support for Israel and on campus protests.

Walz took a different rhetorical tack on other protests. When tens of thousands of Minnesotans voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary in protest against the Biden administration’s policies towards Gaza, his response was warm, with the governor calling them “civically engaged”.

“They are asking to be heard and that’s what they should be doing,” Walz said at the time. “Their message is clear that they think this is an intolerable situation and that we can do more. And I think the president is hearing that.”

After his selection, the progressive Jewish organization IfNotNow said it remained “concerned” by Walz’s past association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and votes in Congress to approve military aid to Israel.

Supporters of Shapiro had argued that putting him on the ticket would help Harris win Pennsylvania, perhaps the most crucial swing state this election. But Christopher J Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton, said his research showed there was no guarantee of that happening.

The choice of running mate was the last major piece of unfinished business before Harris, who quickly consolidated the support necessary to become the presumptive Democratic nominee after Biden withdrew last month.

As hotly anticipated as Harris’s decision was, Devine said it was unlikely to prove decisive in beating Trump and Vance.

“VPs can have an effect on the election. It’s not always in the way we expect, and the magnitude of that effect tends not to be very large,” said Devine, the author of Do Running Mates Matter? The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections.

If elected, Harris would be the first female president and the first south Asian president, and only the second African American, after Barack Obama. Her shortlist of running mates was composed entirely of white men after the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, said she was not interested in the job.

While Devine said that may have been a calculation on Harris’s part – besides Obama, every US president has been a white man – he said it did not mean she had no choice but to select a running mate from that demographic.

“Kamala Harris could have chosen Gretchen Whitmer if she believed that there was strength in that identity of being a woman running for the presidency,” he said. “But I suspect her calculation, or a lot of her team, they might have weighed on her to … say that it just can’t be done. It’s too much for people to handle.”

Trump has made dissatisfaction with both the Biden administration and the country’s entire direction a theme of his campaign, going so far as to say that the country is being “destroyed”. William G Howell, director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government, said Walz will be put in a position to articulate the case against that worldview.

“His is the language of us coming together and … setting to work on hard problems,” Howell said. “And so, both in tone and in substance, he’s going to be able to clearly distinguish himself from from the kind of rhetoric emanating from Trump.”

As Kamala Harris named Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, as her running mate, recent polls showed the vice-president moving ahead of Donald Trump in the race for the White House.

Among recent national head-to-head polls, SurveyUSA put Harris up three points ahead of Trump, 48%-45%; Morning Consult put her up four points, 48%-44%; YouGov and CBS News made it a one-point Harris lead, 50%-49%; and University of Massachusetts Amherst put Harris up three, 46%-43%.

Those results were mostly within the margin of error.

But Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of its poll, pointed to a key finding: a seven-point swing to the Democrat since January, when Trump led Joe Biden by four.

“For weeks after the first presidential debate in June,” Nteta said, “Democratic donors, prominent Democratic elected officials and members of the news media made the case that President Joe Biden faced long odds to defeat former President Donald Trump and called for Biden to step down.

“In the aftermath of Biden’s historic decision to forgo his re-election campaign, it seems as if Biden’s critics were indeed correct as his replacement, Vice-President Kamala Harris, has emerged as the frontrunner in the race for the White House.

“While there are still three months to go, the Harris campaign and the Democratic party must like their chances to maintain control of the White House and to send former President Trump to his second consecutive defeat in his quest to return to Pennsylvania Avenue.”

There was also good news for Harris from the Hill, as the site’s “ultimate hub for polls, predictions and election results” showed the Democrat with a positive favourability rating for the first time, after a steep climb since mid-July, when Biden stepped down.

As to be expected, August polls in the seven battleground states where the election is expected to be decided presented a more mixed picture.

In polls concluding in August, Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, found Harris up one in Georgia but down two on Trump in Arizona and down one in Pennsylvania. Trafalgar/Insider Advantage, a right-leaning operation, put Trump up two in Georgia.

According to battleground averages maintained by the polling site FiveThirtyEight, Trump led Harris by two points in Arizona and one in Georgia, with Harris up by two points Michigan, one in Pennsylvania and one and a half in Wisconsin.

North Carolina polls collected by FiveThirtyEight but not averaged showed Trump up but with a shrinking lead, down from nine points in mid-July to two points in early August.

There was also good news for Harris in a solidly Democratic state, New York, where Trump showed signs of progress while Biden led the blue ticket. With Harris in place, Siena College found her up 14 points, 53%-39%.

On Monday, Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight and an influential voice among polling analysts, said Harris “now has a real lead in national polls – about two points – and has also been ahead in most recent polls of” Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Concerns about economic conditions should not be counted out, Silver said, on a day of Wall Street sell-offs and reports of recession fears. “But the momentum in the polls outweighs it for now.”

• This article was amended on 6 August 2024 to clarify the FiveThirtyEight poll findings in Georgia.

Kamala Harris introduced her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, to supporters at a packed, energetic rally at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The event, which kicks off a week-long tour through the most politically competitive US states, marks a new chapter for the Harris campaign after securing enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee.

Here’s what you need to know:

Police officers are watching TikTok in an attempt to catch far-right demonstrators livestreaming self-incriminating footage of their illegal behaviour.

TikTok’s Live function has become one of the defining outlets for coverage of this summer’s riots, with hundreds of thousands of viewers watching live streams of rioting over the last week in cities such as Stoke, Leeds, Hull and Nottingham.

The streams, which can run for hours, are sometimes broadcast by people involved in the disorder. Many of the TikTok streams show the faces of people apparently committing illegal acts such as looting shops or setting property on fire. They are often made by people whose usernames are easily linked to their real-world identities.

A police source said: “Every force will have analysts monitoring social media, TikTok, for evidence-gathering purposes. Regional organised crime units are doing that as well, focusing on the higher end of offending, those who are inciting and the senior organisers.”

Many videos have been recorded and broadcast by members of the public taking part in the disorder or standing in crowds of people rioting. One riot in Middlesbrough on Sunday was simultaneously livestreamed by at least six different TikTok accounts. The footage showed cars being set on fire, bricks thrown through the windows of homes and shops being looted.

One of the streams had 14,000 people watching as it showed people looting an Iceland supermarket in the Teesside town. Another stream from Middlesbrough had 4,000 people watching footage of individuals asking car drivers whether they were white before allowing them to drive down a street – while an off-camera voice shouted “can’t do shit, can’t do nothing” at a line of riot police standing nearby.

During previous riots – such as during disorder that spread across England in 2011 – smartphone ownership was still relatively low and the mobile technology did not easily support livestreaming. As a result, many of the defining videos of that era were comparatively short clips recorded or obtained by professional news outlets or the police.

This time the police are benefiting from the public’s growing tendency to livestream anything of note, aided by improved technology and mobile network capacity enabling people to broadcast their potentially criminal activity.

TikTok’s Live function is a natural home for this coverage due to its ease of use and the popularity of the app. Livestreams of rioting can gain hundreds of viewers a minute as the app’s algorithm rapidly promotes attention-grabbing streams. This allows members of the public to rapidly build live audiences comparable with television news channels, even if the user doing the filming does not have an existing following on the platform.

One complication for police gathering evidence is that TikTok streams vanish from public view once a stream is ended by the user. But a copy remains accessible by the original streamer for up to 90 days, meaning they are accessible on TikTok’s servers.

The police source said other material being used as evidence included CCTV, officers’ bodycam footage, drone footage and video posted on other online platforms by those supporting the violence and those opposing fascism. They said retrospective facial recognition was also in use.

Online spaces that are being used to incite and organise the far-right-led riots contain messages encouraging followers to consider Jewish people as a target, community security experts have warned.

One forum, which was key to organising the first protest that turned into a riot last Tuesday in Southport, is allegedly jointly run by a suspected neo-Nazi. He is believed to be based overseas.

He is alleged to have called previously for attacks overseas on Jewish places of worship, according to research by the Community Security Trust (CST). Last year he was reported to the police for alleged encouragement of violent antisemitism.

One message in the forum insults “Gypsies” as well as Jews.

The CST monitors and investigates antisemitism in Britain and provides safety advice to Jewish communities. It works closely with the police and Muslim groups.

Generally, there is heightened fear and tension across communities that have already been attacked, as far-right organisers call for at least 30 sites around England to be targeted on Wednesday. Some are linked to immigration and asylum locations.

Those at the gatherings have directed their violence towards people perceived as not being white or British.

Organisers claim the gatherings are a protest over immigration, but the police are adamant that it is a “masquerade” for violent intent to physically harm minorities and asylum seekers, damage property and steal.

A CST spokesperson said: “There are some people in this movement and their online spaces encouraging others to consider Jews as a target, as well as everyone else they have identified so far, such as ethnic minorities, Muslims and asylum seekers.”

Some targets on the list for Wednesday are near Jewish community venues.

The spokesperson said: “We have been advising them about Wednesday night and about appropriate security measures.”

“We can not ignore the potential it might affect the Jewish community.”

The CST says security for places such as synagogues, Jewish schools and community halls is already high.

The CST recorded a large spike in antisemitic incidents after the current conflict in Gaza began last October. The number of antisemitic incidents recorded from October 2023 to December was up to five times higher than over the same period the previous year.

The British far right is using propaganda that spreads lies about Muslim people and asylum seekers to gain supporters. It is less vocal in its public rhetoric about its historic enmity towards Jewish people.

But the CST is now concerned that the antisemitic rhetoric now being seen on far-right forums is linked to the violence seen on Britain’s streets over the last week.

The CST spokesperson said: “We see this kind of antisemitic chat from the far right all the time in a variety of online forums. The difference is it is now in online spaces which are also being used by people who are going out and who are actually involved in violent disorder.”

On Sunday the Guardian revealed hate crime incidents against Muslims in Britain had increased threefold in the last week, as recorded by the charity Tell Mama which combats anti-Islamic hatred.

Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar as the new head of its political bureau, elevating the hardline militant to the group’s top post after the assassination in Tehran of its previous political leader.

Sinwar’s appointment was announced in a brief statement by Hamas on Tuesday that was aired on pro-Hamas Iranian state media channels.

Sinwar, the Hamas military leader who is seen as the mastermind behind the 7 October attack against Israel, is believed to be hiding in the series of tunnels underneath Gaza. He is the group’s chief decision-maker in Gaza, and is believed to hold control over the estimated 120 Israeli hostages who are still in Hamas’s custody.

Sinwar succeeds Ismail Haniyeh, the former Hamas political chief who was killed in a bombing attack last week that Hamas and Iranian officials blamed on Israel. The assassination came during the inauguration of Iran’s new president and has further stirred fears of a larger regional war involving Iran, which backs Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Iran has promised to retaliate against Israel for the attack on its soil.

Haniyeh was another key figure in the talks between Israel and Hamas over a ceasefire, and was seen as an intermediary between Israel and Sinwar. Haniyeh had little direct control over Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and was seen as a relative moderate, directing Hamas’s delegations in talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the US aimed at a ceasefire and hostage and prisoner release deal.

Sinwar is a founding member of Hamas and is seen as the group’s most powerful figure. A former head of the group’s intelligence service, Sinwar spent 23 years in Israeli prisons as he served four life sentences for attempted murder and sabotage. A former interrogator called him “1,000% committed and 1,000% violent, a very, very hard man”.

Sinwar was released as part of a swap in which Israel traded 1,000 prisoners in 2011 in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been captured five years earlier by Hamas. Sinwar quickly returned to militancy and said he had concluded that capturing Israeli soldiers was the key to freeing prisoners from Israel.

The move will further consolidate the group under Sinwar, whose elevation to the head of Hamas’s political wing will raise further doubts about the potential for any ceasefire deal to be struck in the conflict. Sinwar is believed to have launched the 7 October attack from Gaza without informing the political leadership, which was headquartered under Haniyeh in Qatar.

“In electing Sinwar to head Hamas, the organisation lays to rest any differences between external and internal leaders and whatever illusions of moderation existed to reveal its true face,” wrote Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.

Israel claims it killed Hamas’s military commander, Mohammed Deif, in a strike in July, among a number of assassinations of key members of Hamas’s leadership. Another top political leader, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed in January.

The policy of killing top Hamas leaders, including those from the more moderate political wing, has led to rising tensions between the US president, Joe Biden, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden last week told Netanyahu during a phone call that the Israeli PM was intentionally sabotaging efforts to conclude a ceasefire, according to the New York Times and other US media. Netanyahu argued that the assassination in Teheran would temporarily delay negotiations, but would ultimately lead to a ceasefire more quickly by putting pressure on Hamas.

In reaction to Sinwar’s appointment, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya televsion: “There is only one place for Yahya Sinwar, and it is beside Mohammed Deif and the rest of the October 7th terrorists. That is the only place we’re preparing and intending for him.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera television after the announcement, Hamas’s spokesperson Osama Hamdan said Sinwar would continue the ceasefire negotiations.

“The problem in negotiations is not the change in Hamas,” he said, blaming Israel and its ally the US for the failure to seal a deal.

Vladimir Putin has reportedly told Iran to avoid civilian casualties in any retaliatory attack on Israel for the assassination of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, an underlining of the constraints it faces as it frames its response.

It is a call for restraint that is likely to be echoed by many foreign ministers from the 57 countries inside the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at a meeting in Jeddah on Wednesday as tensions in the Middle East grow.

The meeting – jointly called by Iran and Pakistan – will produce unanimous condemnation of the killing of Haniyeh as an escalatory and illegal act by Israel, but Iranian diplomats will also be working to avoid being left isolated by the more cautious Arab Gulf states.

The warning by Putin, a close ally of Iran, was reportedly delivered by Sergei Shoigu, his former defence secretary and the secretary of the national security council of Russia, when he visited Tehran on Monday after the death of Haniyeh last week. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its role but is widely acknowledged to be responsible.

It is not a full reproach to Iran since most of Tehran’s leadership have been aiming to strike military targets, but it underlines Russia’s concern that the response to Haniyeh’s killing could get out of hand – especially if multiple members of Iran’s semi-state axis of resistance, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, launch their own less disciplined military responses at the same time. The Houthis have already hit residential buildings in Tel Aviv.

The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, on Tuesday vowed a “strong and effective” response to the killing of its military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut by Israel last week and said it would act either alone or with its regional allies. “Whatever the consequences, the resistance will not let these Israeli attacks pass by,” he said in a televised address to mark one week since the assassination.

Western officials say the chances of Iran being persuaded to pull back from any military action are now vanishingly small, and the focus in calls still going into Tehran and Oman is on trying to convince Iran to avoid steps that lead to an all-out war in the region. The west argues that such a war would benefit no one, and eventually lead to Iran’s isolation at the moment its new government under a reformist president is seeking improved links with the wider world.

The last major Iranian effort to enlist the support of the OIC came at a joint meeting of the group with the Arab League in November, the first time the then Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi had visited Saudi Arabia. In a 30-minute address, Raisi tried to persuade the Gulf states that the arena for words was over, and it was action that was required.

He brought a 10-point plan including freezing diplomatic relations with Israel, mounting trade boycotts, a ban on energy sales, a ban on arms transfers to Israel from US airbases and “sending a convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people from Islamic countries”.

But Iran’s action plan was largely missing from the eventual vast communique that instead focused on an utter condemnation of Israel for its behaviour in Gaza, behaviour that subsequently has been condemned further by the UN security council, the international court of justice, and led to a call for arrest warrants from the international criminal court prosecutor, Karim Khan.

It is no more likely that the foreign ministers will adopt any such bold action plan in Jeddah today than it was in November. Instead the meeting provides Iran with a platform to assert its sovereign right to respond to Haniyeh’s killing. It also gives Iran a chance to press states such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia not to do anything that diminishes the effectiveness of Iran’s response. When Iran launched an air attack on Israel in April, it was clear Saudi Arabia and Jordan either permitted the US to shoot down Iranian missiles crossing its sovereign territory, or its air force itself intervened to do so. It is less clear they will do so again.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia would also be the two nations that would normally be on the path of projectiles fired from Yemen to hit targets in Israel.

It is a matter of diplomatic judgment for the new Iranian leadership whether to call out what they may regard as the Gulf states’ weakness over Israel, a step that would run counter to the efforts to improve relations in the region with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Gulf leaders do not take kindly to Iran trying to stir anger among their people about the inadequacy of their efforts to protect the Palestinians.

The focus of the Iranian foreign ministry is now more on persuading fellow Muslim states of America’s duplicity, and building a coalition of support for its right to respond.

In an article published in Tehran, Iran’s former ambassador to the UK, Mohsen Baharvand, wrote that the new Iranian government is interested in dialogue with the west but said any contacts should be based on respect.

“How can the international community remain silent on an act of terrorism that undermines Iran’s sovereignty while simultaneously urging Iran not to defend its national interests? Is it reasonable to exclude the largest country in the Middle East from discussions regarding political, economic, and security issues, only to later expect its cooperation in maintaining regional stability?

“For years, serious diplomatic exchanges with Iran have been notably absent. Instead of fostering dialogue based on mutual respect and shared benefits, interactions with Iran have often been characterised by coercion and sanctions. Yet, when Iran considers actions to protect its sovereign rights, suddenly the language of diplomacy is invoked, despite years of diplomatic erosion,” he wrote.

But such comments cannot disguise the deeper disputes between Iran and the Arab states about how to approach Israel.

The Arab world’s hesitancy about military action against Israel is deeply entrenched in the Arab psyche because of the harrowing defeats in the 1967 and 1973 wars. The deeper trend is towards normalisation if only Israel had a different political leadership. Most Arab states support a two-state solution, but Iran, by contrast, supports a referendum on Israel’s future conducted among Israelis, Palestinians in the occupied territories and Palestinian refugees.

Romania’s prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, said he will boycott the Olympic closing ceremony after his country were denied a medal in the women’s gymnastics.

Ana Barbosu had already begun celebrating her bronze for the floor event on Monday when coaches for Jordan Chiles, of the United States, entered an appeal to judges over Chiles’s score. The inquiry resulted in a 0.1 boost for Chiles, enough to overtake Barbosu for the last spot on the podium.

“I decided not to attend the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics, following the scandalous situation in the gymnastics, where our athletes were treated in an absolutely dishonourable manner,” Ciolacu said on Facebook. “To withdraw a medal earned for honest work on the basis of an appeal … is totally unacceptable!”

Ciolacu promised Romania would honour Barbosu and her teammate Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, who finished fifth, as Olympic medallists. “You have with you an entire nation for which your work and tears are more precious than any medal, no matter what precious metal they are from,” he said.

Barbosu was holding a Romanian flag when she looked up and saw the scoring change on the board. She dropped the flag, brought her hands to her face and walked off in tears.

Inquiries are a standard part of gymnastics competitions, with athletes or coaches asking judges to review a routine to ensure elements are rated properly. Scores can be adjusted up or down.

Romania was a longtime superpower in gymnastics, but this was their return to the Olympics after a 12-year break. The Romanian great Nadia Comaneci made her feelings clear, writing on X: “I can’t believe we play with athletes mental health and emotions like this.”

Ciolacu said viewers worldwide were “shocked by this terrible scene” and said it highlights “somewhere in the system of organising this competition, something is wrong”.

Romania’s prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, said he will boycott the Olympic closing ceremony after his country were denied a medal in the women’s gymnastics.

Ana Barbosu had already begun celebrating her bronze for the floor event on Monday when coaches for Jordan Chiles, of the United States, entered an appeal to judges over Chiles’s score. The inquiry resulted in a 0.1 boost for Chiles, enough to overtake Barbosu for the last spot on the podium.

“I decided not to attend the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics, following the scandalous situation in the gymnastics, where our athletes were treated in an absolutely dishonourable manner,” Ciolacu said on Facebook. “To withdraw a medal earned for honest work on the basis of an appeal … is totally unacceptable!”

Ciolacu promised Romania would honour Barbosu and her teammate Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, who finished fifth, as Olympic medallists. “You have with you an entire nation for which your work and tears are more precious than any medal, no matter what precious metal they are from,” he said.

Barbosu was holding a Romanian flag when she looked up and saw the scoring change on the board. She dropped the flag, brought her hands to her face and walked off in tears.

Inquiries are a standard part of gymnastics competitions, with athletes or coaches asking judges to review a routine to ensure elements are rated properly. Scores can be adjusted up or down.

Romania was a longtime superpower in gymnastics, but this was their return to the Olympics after a 12-year break. The Romanian great Nadia Comaneci made her feelings clear, writing on X: “I can’t believe we play with athletes mental health and emotions like this.”

Ciolacu said viewers worldwide were “shocked by this terrible scene” and said it highlights “somewhere in the system of organising this competition, something is wrong”.

Out in front Gabby Thomas was already raising her hands to her head, overcome with the ­realisation that she had just this very moment become the Olympic 200m champion.

A couple of strides behind her, the new 100m champion Julien Alfred was striding smoothly through the line in second place, and there just a little further back still, came Dina Asher‑Smith, Daryll Neita, and the USA’s Brittany Brown, ­shoulder‑to‑shoulder-to-shoulder in lanes 4, 5, and 6, with just the three‑hundredths of a second between them. All three of them were struggling with everything they had for that last extra ­millimetre that would win them the bronze. It was Brown who got it.

So another Games has come and gone for this talented British pair without either winning an indivi­dual medal. Neita finished fourth in the 100m, and was fifth in the 200m, Asher-Smith didn’t make it through the semi-finals of the shorter sprint, and came fourth in the longer one. Asher-Smith is 28, Neita 27, and the truth is neither of them will necessarily have a better chance to win an individual Olympic medal than the one they let get away from them at the Stade de France.

Thomas had been destined to win this race since the Jamaican Shericka Jackson pulled out injured before the heats. Jackson is the second-fastest in history after Florence Griffith Joyner, and the only other woman around capable of turning in the kinds of times in which Thomas has been finishing this season. She won in 21.83sec, a way short of her personal best but only a little slower than her fastest this season.

If Asher-Smith had only been able to do likewise and get that close to the 22.07sec she ran in London just last month, let alone her personal best of 21.88sec, she would have been ­pushing Alfred for that silver medal.

Asher-Smith deserved it, given the career she has had. But in this sport, deserving it doesn’t matter much. She tried to front-run the final. She was fast through the bend, and in first place after 50m, but Thomas accele­rated hard coming into the straight, and as she swept ahead you could see Asher‑Smith start to strain to chase after her. She could see the race was getting away from her. Alfred overtook her with 50m to go, and then, finally, just 10m out from the finish, Brown caught her too.

“I was told to get out and just keep going,” Asher-Smith said afterwards, “and if you die, you die.” And she did. But she managed a smile, said she was proud of how she had performed, and happy for Alfred, who is her training partner.

She seemed oddly ebullient for someone who had just come fourth in one of the biggest races of her career. “I was really proud to have held my own,” she said.

Neita said similar things. “It has been a fantastic Games for me – a ­double finalist,” she said. Some ­athletes are happy to make finals. Others are happy to win them. It’s the difference between being good and being great.

Which Thomas is. Maybe a little too great, if anything. As well as her Olympic gold medal, the bronze she won in Tokyo three years ago, and her assortment of relay medals, she has a degree from Harvard in neuro­biology, a master’s in epidemiology from the University of Texas and, when she’s not competing, training, talking about black representation, or how to reform her sport, she is volun­teering at a not-for-profit medical facility that offers healthcare to patients who don’t have medical insurance. She is also, as everyone on the circuit knows, just about the friendliest person you could meet.

Which doesn’t mean you’d want to race her. She’s tough enough when she needs to be. You don’t win that many races if you don’t enjoy beating up on the people you’re competing against. After her victory in the semi-final, she tried to clap Asher-Smith on the shoulder in congratulations at qualifying in second place. Asher-Smith, who said later that she “ran angry”, shot a few short words which are maybe best left to the lip-readers, and marched straight past. Thomas’s response was to shoot a mischievous little side-eye grin at the camera that was fixed on the two of them.

The 200m runs is a very dif­ferent discipline to the 100m. It’s not just that it’s twice as long, or that it takes in a bend, it’s that the combination of the two means it demands more of a runner. You can brute force your way to victory in the 100m, charging straight ahead all the way, but the 200m requires more. It mixes power, speed, technique and ­endurance. You need to be tactically on‑point and technically precise, which is why some of the greatest at it have also been some of the most stylish over any distance: Wilma Rudolph, Marie-José Pérec, Frankie Fredericks, Allyson Felix.

Thomas fits right into the lineage. There was a time when you might have said Asher-Smith would do, too.

Over the hardest three laps of his life, Cole Hocker clung on with the stub­bornness of a mule. Then, in an ­Olympic 1500m final for the ages, he kicked like one.

It took the 23-year-old ­American past the fading Tokyo gold medallist Jakob Ingebrigtsen of ­Norway. Then, in an extraordinary last few yards, Britain’s world ­champion Josh Kerr. And suddenly, and without warning, a 37-1 underdog from Indianapolis had shaken up the world.

Marvin Hagler’s extraordinary fight with Tommy Hearns was dubbed “The War”. This men’s Olympic 1500m final was the track and field equivalent. It was a full-on slugfest almost from the gun, only with a twist that nobody expected.

As Hocker crossed the line in an Olympic record of 3min 27.65sec, Kerr clung on for silver in 3:27.79 – a time that also broke Mo Farah’s ­British record. Another American, Yared Nuguse, claimed bronze in 3:27.80. Ingebrigtsen, who had been a strong pre-race favourite, faded to fourth.

“I never thought I had won,” Kerr said. “It was electric in there so it was difficult to tell who was around. I told you guys we were going to put on an Olympic 1500m final that would last for generations and hopefully we did that today.”

The tale of the tape beforehand suggested that the 23-year-old ­Ingebrigtsen had the edge. He was the Olympic champion, the fastest man in the world this year, and last month set a personal best of 3:26.73 – more than two seconds quicker than Kerr and nearly three clear of Hocker.

But the Norwegian also had an achilles heel: his sprint finish which Kerr had exploited in beating him to world championship gold in Budapest last year.

Ingebrigtsen knew he had to change tactics. And there was no hanging about as he launched an attack after just 100m in an attempt to set his opponents’ legs and lungs on fire. The first 400m came and went in 54.82sec. The 800m mark was in 1min 51sec. The pace was so crazy it was quicker than when Hicham El Guerrouj set his world record in 1998.

“The big thing today was always going to be: weather the storm early,” said Kerr. “I thought: ‘He is going to try and pull us into deep waters early and see who could survive.’ I had to take a few punches.”

With 600m remaining ­Ingebrigtsen was about five metres clear of ­Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot in second, with Kerr a couple of metres back in third. But by the time the bell rang the Briton was closing. It led to a ­thrilling last lap, with Ingebrigtsen being stalked by Kerr, Hocker and Nuguse as Cheruiyot fell back.

First Hocker tried to strike on the inside, only for the Norwegian to block him off. Then Kerr attacked and took the lead. For a moment, a golden horizon awaited him. But Hocker had enough in his legs to deliver a final gut-punch. The numbers showed that the American had run the final 300m in 39.6sec – off a brutal pace.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Hocker said. “I just felt like I was getting carried by the stadium and God. My body just kind of did it for me. My mind was all there and I saw that finish line.

“Winning gold was my goal this entire year. I wrote that down and I repeated it to myself even if I didn’t believe it. My performances showed me that I was capable of running 3:27, whatever it took. I knew I was a medal contender, and I knew that if I got it right, it would be a gold medal.”

But you had to feel for Kerr too. Such was the determination to win ­Olympic gold in Paris that he ran twice on Christmas Day, eight miles in the morning followed by another three after a heavy dinner.

Over the past few months, the 26-year-old had also leaned out like a boxer making weight – with every meal and training session geared towards 8.50pm local time on 6 August 2024. He really could not have done any more.

“At 600m to go I felt I had quite a lot left and coming off that last bend I got pushed out a little bit,” he said. “I was able to come round Jakob but there is a lot of running left at that point. It is so difficult to keep track of everything that is going on in the last 100m.”

Afterwards Kerr denied he had spent too much time focusing on Ingebrigtsen, their bitter rivalry leading to so many eyeballs on this contest. And while he did question the Norwegian’s approach, he did so with respect. “It was a brave strategy and it didn’t quite work but it made for a great race,” he said.

Meanwhile Hocker admitted that all the talk before Ingebrigtsen versus Kerr had played into his hands. “I kind of told myself that I’m in this race too,” he said. “If they let me fly under the radar, then so be it. I think that might’ve just been the best.”

As for Ingebrigtsen, he conceded he may have pushed the pace too hard because he felt so good at halfway. “I can only blame myself. It’s a difficult game, balancing your energy. This was a risk I was going to take.”

It led to a thrilling and unpre­dictable ride. Just not the result either he or Kerr ultimately wanted.

Moscow has said about 300 soldiers from Ukraine launched a cross-border attack into a hitherto quiet part of the front on Tuesday, with reports of fighting at a town as deep as six miles (10km) inside Russia.

Moscow’s ministry of defence said late on Tuesday that up to “300 Ukrainian militants” from Ukraine’s 22nd mechanised brigade launched the attack at 8am, supported by “11 tanks and more than 20 armoured fighting vehicles”.

Fighting took place throughout the day between the border villages of Nikolayevo-Daryino and Oleshnya in the Kursk region, and as far inside Russia as the fringes of Sudzha, 10km from the frontline – where two strikes on Russian trailers loaded with tanks were photographed from overhead.

Though Russia said it had repelled the incursion, reports from Russian military bloggers and imagery on social media indicated that the Ukrainian attack was substantial, though it was unclear how far it could be sustained.

Rybar, a popular Russian military blogger, said that on Tuesday evening the situation in the Kursk region remained tense with battles taking place in border districts. “Judging by the latest footage, Ukrainian formations have managed to advance,” the blogger wrote.

That contrasted with the initial statement from Moscow’s defence ministry, which claimed to have repelled the attack. “After suffering losses, the Ukrainian sabotage group retreated to its territory, while some of the fighters tried to gain a foothold directly on the territory adjacent to the state border, where they were blocked by Russian army units,” the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine’s political leaders and the Ministry of Defence did not immediately comment on the situation, but one junior official did acknowledge the attack was taking place, and indicated it had not been defeated.

Andrii Kovalenko, the head of an anti-disinformation department at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that “Russian soldiers are lying about the controllability of the situation in the Kursk region. Russia does not control the border.”

The attack’s purpose could be an attempt by Ukraine, whose defences are stretched, to divert some Russian forces to defend a part of the frontline that has been largely inactive since spring 2022 – and also boost morale at home.

However, critics in Ukraine argue that such assaults serve no long-term military purpose. Anti-Kremlin Russian groups launched attacks from Ukraine into Belgorod and Kursk regions in March, but were repelled for no strategic gain.

Earlier on Tuesday, Alexei Smirnov, acting governor of the Kursk region, said Russian soldiers and FSB forces had repelled the Ukrainian attack and three Russian civilians had been killed and 18 others were wounded.

Russia said it had launched airstrikes on Ukrainian armour and reserve forces had been moved to shore up the frontline and it had destroyed 16 armoured units belonging to the invaders, including six tanks.

Losses on either side could not be verified and initial battlefield casualty reports often turn out to be exaggerations.

A court in Thailand is set to decide the fate of the progressive opposition party, Move Forward, which received the most votes in last year’s elections, in a case which kicks off a week of potential political upheaval in the country.

On Wednesday the constitutional court will rule on an electoral commission request to dissolve Move Forward, after the same court in January found its proposal to amend a law protecting the monarchy from criticism risked undermining Thailand’s system of governance with the king as head of state.

In 2023 Move Forward’s anti-establishment agenda won huge support among voters, but it was unable to form a government after clashing with Thailand’s powerful nexus of old money families, conservatives and the military, to which reforming the lese-majesty law is a step too far in a country where royalists regard the monarchy as sacrosanct.

Move Forward’s influential rivals blocked the party from forming a government last year but it remains the biggest force in parliament with an agenda that includes military reform and undoing big business monopolies.

The party denies wrongdoing and was ordered to drop its campaign on the royal insults law. It is hopeful it will escape dissolution, arguing the election commission’s complaint did not follow proper procedures, but analysts fear the case could reignite a power struggle.

If Move Forward is disbanded, 11 current and former party executives, including Pita Limjaroenrat, who led the party to victory in the election, could be banned from politics and prohibited from forming a new party. Its surviving lawmakers will keep their seats and are expected to re-organise into another party, as they did in 2020 when its predecessor, Future Forward, was dissolved.

Wednesday’s case comes as cracks appear in an uneasy truce between the royalist establishment and another longtime rival, the populist ruling party, Pheu Thai, with prime minister Srettha Thavisin facing possible dismissal by the same court next week over a cabinet appointment. He denies wrongdoing.

Conservative senators alleged he violated the constitution by appointing to cabinet a former lawyer who was once jailed, whom the senators said did not meet ethical requirements.

“Once again, political risk and uncertainty is reaching a crescendo,” said Nattabhorn Buamahakul, Managing Partner at government affairs consultancy, Vero Advocacy.

“These highly consequential decisions, the fate of parliament’s biggest party and the PM’s seat could lead to lawmakers switching parties, more bargaining and – as we have previously seen – street demonstrations,” she added.

With Reuters

The president of Bangladesh has dissolved the country’s parliament after an ultimatum issued by the coordinators of student protests that forced the resignation on Monday of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.

The office of the president, Mohammed Shahabuddin, also announced that the former prime minister and opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia had been officially released from prison and given a full presidential pardon.

The army chief, Gen Waker-Uz-Zaman, said the military would form an interim government after Hasina’s departure. Later on Tuesday evening, a 13-strong student delegation with two University of Dhaka professors went to Shahabuddin’s residence to meet Zaman and other military leaders. After almost two hours of discussions, Nahid Islam, one of the student leaders, emerged to tell waiting reporters that there had been an agreement between all parties that Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus would be chief adviser to the interim government and that talks would continue.

The president also issued a statement stressing the urgency to find agreement on the members of a new government and asked citizens to all cooperate in overcoming this “critical period” for Bangladesh. A curfew has been imposed in the region along the country’s border with India. Yunus, one of Bangladesh’s best-respected citizens, told Indian media that “today should be about celebration”. He played down any fears over instability in Bangladesh and called the ridding of Hasina “a revolution”.

“We got rid of a very authoritarian government,” he told NDTV. “We are enjoying it, we are enjoying our freedom and a new era is opening for Bangladesh.”

On Monday, Hasina resigned and fled the country after at least 300 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, and continued overnight. There was looting and several of the ruling party’s offices and some police stations were set alight.

Reports suggested calm had returned to the streets on Tuesday and many citizens were helping in the clear-up or congregating in peaceful gatherings around the capital, Dhaka, and other towns and cities. There was a “holiday-like” atmosphere around the recently vacated prime minister’s residence, according to one witness who said people were wandering around the house and grounds and were seen carrying off everything from furniture to the catfish and a duck from the pond in the grounds where Hasina had been keen on fishing.

Zaman also held talks with leaders of leading political parties – excluding Hasina’s long-ruling Awami League – to discuss the way ahead.

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

He said the release of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) chair and Hasina’s rival, Zia, 78, who was convicted in a graft case in 2018 but moved to a hospital a year later as her health deteriorated, was “unanimously decided”. She has denied the charges against her. Other opposition figures and journalists are also being released.

Early on Tuesday, there were international commendations for the Bangladesh army’s conduct. A US White House spokesperson said: “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.”

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.”

In the UK, the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, called for a full UN investigation into the killings.

Hasina won a fifth term in January in an election boycotted by the opposition and called out as not free and fair by international observers.

Her 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 and the disappearance and detention of journalists.

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

The resulting crackdown led to the worst violence since Bangladesh was founded. During a briefing at army headquarters, Zaman promised an investigation into the deaths.

Yunus, who was in Paris, planned to return to Bangladesh “immediately” after undergoing a minor medical procedure in the French capital.

The 84-year-old won the 2006 Nobel peace prize for the not-for-profit Grameen Bank he founded in 1983 and its work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans of under $100 to the rural poor of Bangladesh. In January, Yunus was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, along with three other people, for violating labour laws at Grameen Telecom. In June he was indicted by a court on charges of embezzlement that he denied.

In June, Yunus told the Guardian he had had 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.

The World Bank, among the first development partners to support Bangladesh after its independence and which has committed about $41bn (£31bn) in grants and interest-free credits, said it was assessing events but remained committed to supporting the “development aspirations of the people”.

The World Bank’s board in June approved two projects totalling $900m (£700) to help Bangladesh strengthen financial sector policies and improve infrastructure.

The president of Bangladesh has dissolved the country’s parliament after an ultimatum issued by the coordinators of student protests that forced the resignation on Monday of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.

The office of the president, Mohammed Shahabuddin, also announced that the former prime minister and opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia had been officially released from prison and given a full presidential pardon.

The army chief, Gen Waker-Uz-Zaman, said the military would form an interim government after Hasina’s departure. Later on Tuesday evening, a 13-strong student delegation with two University of Dhaka professors went to Shahabuddin’s residence to meet Zaman and other military leaders. After almost two hours of discussions, Nahid Islam, one of the student leaders, emerged to tell waiting reporters that there had been an agreement between all parties that Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus would be chief adviser to the interim government and that talks would continue.

The president also issued a statement stressing the urgency to find agreement on the members of a new government and asked citizens to all cooperate in overcoming this “critical period” for Bangladesh. A curfew has been imposed in the region along the country’s border with India. Yunus, one of Bangladesh’s best-respected citizens, told Indian media that “today should be about celebration”. He played down any fears over instability in Bangladesh and called the ridding of Hasina “a revolution”.

“We got rid of a very authoritarian government,” he told NDTV. “We are enjoying it, we are enjoying our freedom and a new era is opening for Bangladesh.”

On Monday, Hasina resigned and fled the country after at least 300 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, and continued overnight. There was looting and several of the ruling party’s offices and some police stations were set alight.

Reports suggested calm had returned to the streets on Tuesday and many citizens were helping in the clear-up or congregating in peaceful gatherings around the capital, Dhaka, and other towns and cities. There was a “holiday-like” atmosphere around the recently vacated prime minister’s residence, according to one witness who said people were wandering around the house and grounds and were seen carrying off everything from furniture to the catfish and a duck from the pond in the grounds where Hasina had been keen on fishing.

Zaman also held talks with leaders of leading political parties – excluding Hasina’s long-ruling Awami League – to discuss the way ahead.

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

He said the release of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) chair and Hasina’s rival, Zia, 78, who was convicted in a graft case in 2018 but moved to a hospital a year later as her health deteriorated, was “unanimously decided”. She has denied the charges against her. Other opposition figures and journalists are also being released.

Early on Tuesday, there were international commendations for the Bangladesh army’s conduct. A US White House spokesperson said: “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.”

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.”

In the UK, the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, called for a full UN investigation into the killings.

Hasina won a fifth term in January in an election boycotted by the opposition and called out as not free and fair by international observers.

Her 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 and the disappearance and detention of journalists.

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

The resulting crackdown led to the worst violence since Bangladesh was founded. During a briefing at army headquarters, Zaman promised an investigation into the deaths.

Yunus, who was in Paris, planned to return to Bangladesh “immediately” after undergoing a minor medical procedure in the French capital.

The 84-year-old won the 2006 Nobel peace prize for the not-for-profit Grameen Bank he founded in 1983 and its work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans of under $100 to the rural poor of Bangladesh. In January, Yunus was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, along with three other people, for violating labour laws at Grameen Telecom. In June he was indicted by a court on charges of embezzlement that he denied.

In June, Yunus told the Guardian he had had 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.

The World Bank, among the first development partners to support Bangladesh after its independence and which has committed about $41bn (£31bn) in grants and interest-free credits, said it was assessing events but remained committed to supporting the “development aspirations of the people”.

The World Bank’s board in June approved two projects totalling $900m (£700) to help Bangladesh strengthen financial sector policies and improve infrastructure.

• Russia’s defence ministry said about 300 soldiers from Ukraine backed by tanks and armoured vehicles launched a cross-border attack into the Kursk region on Tuesday, while fighting was reported as deep as six miles (10km) inside Russia, Dan Sabbagh writes. Fighting took place between the border villages of Nikolayevo-Daryino and Oleshnya, and as far inside Russia as the fringes of Sudzha. Two strikes on Russian trailers loaded with tanks were photographed from overhead, according to reports on social media which the Guardian could not verify.

• Ukraine’s political leaders and defence ministry did not immediately comment on the situation, but one junior official acknowledged the attack was taking place and indicated it had not been defeated. Andrii Kovalenko from Ukraine’s national security and defence council said: “Russian soldiers are lying about the controllability of the situation in the Kursk region. Russia does not control the border.” There have been previous raids into Russia by pro-Ukrainian groups of Russians such as the Russian Volunteer Corps and Freedom of Russia Legion.

• Ukraine is putting more funding towards its domestic missile programme, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president, said on Tuesday. Ukraine needs to compensate for western allies not letting it use the missiles they supply for long-range strikes on bases inside Russian territory. Ukraine is trying to build up its domestic output of, for example, the Neptune, a Ukrainian anti-ship missile that can also attack land targets.

• At least one person was killed and 12 others including an eight-month-old baby were injured when a Russian Iskander ballistic missile struck a residential area of Kharkiv in north-east Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said. A medical clinic was among many buildings damaged, said the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov.

• Maria Andreyeva, a leading Russian anti-mobilisation activist, has said she quit her campaigning after coming under pressure from the Kremlin. Putin’s regime has clamped down on a group of wives and mothers known as “Put Domoy” (Way Home) publicly calling on the Russian president to bring forcibly mobilised men back from the frontlines in Ukraine. Andreyeva said she had been fired from her work and labelled a “foreign agent”. “Unfortunately I have to go into the shadows,” Andreyeva told Agence France-Presse.

• In Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russian forces have advanced near Toretsk: in Pivnichne to its east, and to its south in Niu York where they raised a flag on a building, said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). In an unconfirmed development, Russia’s defence ministry said its units had “liberated the settlement of Timofeevka”, whose Ukrainian name is Timofiyivka, as the head of Russia’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, reportedly visited troop positions in occupied parts of Donetsk.

• The ISW said Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s security council secretary and former defence minister, had “heavily overexaggerated” Russian advances in Ukraine since mid-June 2024, claiming 420 sq km. “ISW has observed evidence confirming that Russian forces have seized approximately 290 square kilometres since June 14.” said the US-based thinktank.

• Niger’s military regime has cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine over remarks from officials it said showed Ukraine’s support for groups involved in fighting in neighbouring Mali that killed dozens of soldiers and Russian Wagner fighters. Mali on Sunday severed relations with Ukraine after comments from the Ukrainian military spy agency suggested its involvement.

The Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, claimed that calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies” was merely a “sarcastic remark”, as he attempted to deflect charges of misogyny and redirect fire at Harris’s own running mate, Tim Walz, on Tuesday.

“The media wants to get offended about a sarcastic remark I made before I even ran for the United States Senate,” the Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee told reporters in Philadelphia.

In response, a spokesperson for Harris said Vance and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, were “not pro-family, they are anti-women”, adding: “Women are paying attention – and will use their power at the polls.”

Vance was in Philadelphia in direct opposition to Harris and Walz, as the vice-president and the Minnesota governor prepared to host their first joint rally in the Pennsylvania city.

Calling Walz “a joke” and “one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States government at any level”, Vance accused the governor of “wanting to ship more manufacturing jobs to China” and of being weak in the face of protests for racial justice in Minneapolis in summer 2020.

Nonetheless, Vance continued to face questions about his “childless cat ladies” comment, in which he named Harris.

Speaking in 2021 to the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Vance called senior Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.

“It’s just a basic fact – you look at Kamala Harris, [transportation secretary] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Harris is stepmother to two children. In 2021, Buttigieg adopted two children with his husband, Chasten. Ocasio-Cortez does not have children.

Vance’s remarks – and other controversial statements – resurfaced after Trump picked him as his running mate last month.

Democrats, and outside voices including the actor Jennifer Aniston, have branded the “childless cat ladies” comments as offensive. Polling shows the public agrees. On Tuesday a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll showed 64% of respondents saying they disapproved of the statement that not having biological children hindered Harris’s ability to be president. Only 15% of Republicans approved.

Vance addressed the “childless cat ladies” controversy a day after his wife, Usha Vance, the mother of his three children, claimed the comment was merely a “quip”.

Usha Vance told Fox News her husband “was really saying … that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country and sometimes our policies … make it even harder”.

She did not mention that JD Vance recently helped block a bill to establish the right to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), treatment that helps millions who might otherwise not have children.

In Philadelphia, the “childless cat ladies” comment was brought up towards the end of an event in which Vance repeatedly disparaged the media.

He told a reporter: “Now, you asked about the remarks that I made that you said were offensive to millions of women. Well, here’s what I’d say – ”

A woman in the audience shouted: “This cat lady loves you.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Vance said, amid cheers, adding: “We love you too.”

He continued: “What I said is very simple. I think American families are good and government policy should be more pro-family. Now if the media wants to get offended about a sarcastic remark I made before I even ran for the United States Senate, then the media is entitled to get offended.”

He then reeled off reasons he said he was offended by Harris, from her role in immigration and border policy to her not having given any interviews since becoming the Democratic nominee.

Contacted for comment, Sarafina Chitika, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told the Guardian: “This might come as a surprise to Vance and Trump, but women don’t appreciate their personal choices and freedoms being attacked by politicians butting into their bedrooms and doctor’s offices, trying to tell them if and when to have kids.

“It’s particularly weird from the same man who voted against protections for IVF and called universal daycare ‘class war against normal people’.

“Vance’s comments make it clear: he and Donald Trump are not pro-family, they are anti-women. Women are paying attention – and will use their power at the polls to elect Vice-President Harris this November.”

The US says it plans “more frequent” deployments of bomber aircraft to Australia amid concerns over China’s “dangerous and escalatory behaviour” in the region.

The announcement after annual talks on Wednesday builds on a long-term trend of increased rotations of American forces to Australia, along with moves to upgrade Australian military bases and pre-position US army equipment in Australia.

Pushing back at criticism that this only increases tensions with Beijing and makes Australia a bigger target, the Australian government said the presence of American forces “provides an enormous opportunity to work with our neighbours”.

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, and the defence minister, Richard Marles, travelled to the US for annual talks with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin.

While China is always a significant topic on the agenda, the Australian and US representatives also used the meeting to share their fears of escalation in the Middle East and to ramp up their calls for a Gaza ceasefire.

“The ceasefire has been urgent for months. It’s never been more urgent than it is now,” Wong said at the beginning of the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, on Tuesday local time (Wednesday Australian time).

Blinken later told reporters that the US had been in constant contact with partners across the region and had “heard a clear consensus [that] no one should escalate this conflict”. He said this message had been communicated “directly” to Iran and Israel.

Blinken and Austin issued a joint statement with Wong and Marles reiterating their view “that terrorism, the large-scale loss of civilian lives, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza are all unacceptable”.

The Australian government describes the US as its “closest ally and principal security partner”. The yearly talks between the two allies are known as the Australia-US Ministerial Consultations, or Ausmin.

The two sides have frequently used the talks to expand rotational visits by US forces to Australia, known as “force posture initiatives”.

These include US marines deploying to Darwin under a plan first put in place by the Gillard government and Obama administration.

Austin told reporters the two countries agreed to “continue deepening our force posture cooperation”.

“We’re also increasing the presence of rotational US forces in Australia,” Austin said.

“All this will mean more maritime patrol aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft operating from bases across northern Australia. It will also mean more frequent rotational bomber deployments.”

Marles said the latest meeting had “built on the last two in seeing a deepening of American force posture in Australia”. They would increase “the complexity and duration of regular rotations of US army watercraft to Australia”.

“American force posture now in Australia involves every domain: land, sea, air, cyber and space,” Marles said.

“The presence of American force posture in our nation provides an enormous opportunity to work with our neighbours in the region.”

Marles said he and Wong had spoken with Australia’s neighbours and had heard “genuine appreciation for the contribution that America is making to the stability and the peace of the Indo-Pacific region by its presence in Australia”.

He said this had allowed Australia and the US to conduct “a much greater range of activities and operations and exercises with our partners” including Japan and the Philippines.

Wednesday’s agenda included taking stock of “substantial progress” on the plan for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines under the Aukus security pact.

A joint statement, issued after the meeting, criticised China’s “excessive maritime claims in the South China Sea that are inconsistent with international law and unilateral actions to change the status quo by force or coercion”.

Australia and the US specifically raised “grave concern about China’s dangerous and escalatory behaviour toward Philippine vessels lawfully operating within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone”.

But the statement also emphasised “the importance of maintaining open channels of communication with China to avoid miscommunication or miscalculation that could lead to unintended escalation or conflict”.

The US state department and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said they would launch a bilateral dialogue “on reducing the risk of conflict and upholding peace in the Indo-Pacific”.

Beijing has repeatedly argued that Aukus and other US-led groupings such as the Quad are only adding to regional tensions.

Some Australian analysts have also raised concerns about the combined effect of decisions, including plans to host up to six US B-52 bombers in the Northern Territory and to rotate US nuclear-powered submarines through HMAS Stirling in Western Australia from 2027.

Sam Roggeveen, the director of the Lowy Institute’s international security program and a former Australian intelligence analyst, has warned of the risks of bringing “US combat forces, and its military strategy to fight China, on to our shores”.

Blinken declined to comment on a potential move by the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to seek a pardon for his criminal conviction, or about the Australian government’s handling of Assange’s homecoming to Australia after a plea deal secured his release.

“We didn’t talk about this at all today – it didn’t come up in our conversations,” Blinken said.

“As far as I’m concerned, there’s a legal process, it’s been concluded, and I’ll leave it at that.”

Liza Minnelli is to release a memoir after she claimed previous screen depictions of her life “didn’t get it right”.

The 78-year-old US actor and singer will release the book in spring 2026, which will take readers through her career, struggles with substance abuse and love life.

Minnelli is one of just 25 performers to have won an Egot (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) and is the daughter of actor Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli.

She is best known for her performances in 1972’s Cabaret, her TV concert film Liza With A Z and Martin Scorsese’s 1977 musical-drama New York, New York.

Speaking to People magazine, Minnelli said: “Since I was old enough to put pencil to paper, people asked me to write books about my career, my life, my loves, my family.

“Absolutely not. Tell it when I’m gone was my philosophy. So, why did I change my mind?”

She went on to say that she felt documentaries about her career “didn’t get it right” and claimed they were made by people she said “didn’t know my family and don’t really know me”.

Minnelli added: “Finally, I was mad as hell. Over dinner one night, I decided, it’s my own damn story, I’m going to share it with you because of all the love you’ve given me.”

The book was written with the help of Great American Songbook ambassador Michael Feinstein, who has been friends with Minnelli for 40 years, and will be published by Grand Central Publishing.

Referencing the lyrics from the Cabaret song Maybe This Time, Minnelli said that “after incredible events and life-threatening battles … I am truly ‘Lady Peaceful, Lady Happy’”.

“Thank you all for loving me so much … being concerned about me,” she said. “I want you to know I’m still here, still kicking ass, still loving life and still creating. So, until this book arrives, know that I’m laughing, safe in every way, surrounded by loved ones and excited to see what’s right around the curve of life. Kids, wait ‘til you hear this.”