Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off for the first time in a televised debate on 10 September, ABC News has confirmed.

The event is expected to draw a huge viewership, and could be a make-or-break moment for both candidates in what polls indicate is an extremely close race.

“I am looking forward to debating Donald Trump and we have a date of September 10. I hear he’s finally committed to it and I’m looking forward to it,” the vice-president told reporters in Michigan on Thursday.

The former president had previously agreed to appear on ABC News to debate Joe Biden, but after the president stepped down from his re-election campaign, Trump suggested he would back out.

During a rambling press conference on Thursday, he backtracked, saying he was willing to debate Harris three times in September – on ABC, and on Fox News and NBC.

ABC News confirmed in a statement it will “host qualifying presidential candidates to debate on September 10 on ABC. Vice-President Harris and former President Trump have both confirmed they will attend the ABC debate.”

Harris had not committed to further debates on NBC or Fox, but told reporters: “I am happy to have that conversation about an additional debate, or after September 10, for sure.”

More than 51 million people tuned in to watch the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden in June. Biden’s faltering performance at the event marked the beginning of the end of his campaign. Over the next month, Trump survived an assassination attempt, Biden stepped down and Harris became the Democratic candidate, launching a campaign that is quickly gaining momentum.

Whereas Biden had been trailing Trump in key swing states, Harris has made gains – in some cases leading her rival in polls. An Ipsos poll published on Thursday found Harris ahead of Trump by 42% to 37%, compared to a 22 to 23 July Reuters/Ipsos survey, which showed her up 37% to 34% over Trump.

Harris’s swift ascent has left the Trump campaign scrambling and struggling to develop a coherent attack line against her. During his Thursday press conference, which was his first public appearance since Harris named the Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Trump repeatedly mispronounced Harris’s name, questioned her racial identity, and made a number of outlandish, false claims about the economy, the Biden administration’s record and his own.

Struggling in the polls and charged with running a lackluster presidential campaign, Donald Trump faced reporters on Thursday for an hour-long press conference that swiftly descended into a familiar mess of freewheeling invective, outlandish claims and outright lies.

“Nobody was killed on January 6,” the former president and Republican presidential nominee said, of the day in 2021 when he incited an attack on Congress now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides and the shooting by a police officer of Ashley Babbitt, who Trump voters widely claim as a martyr.

Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, Trump repeated his praise of rioters convicted and jailed in the hundreds, whom he has said he will pardon. Absurdly, he also said there was a “peaceful transfer” of power after he lost to Joe Biden.

But he seemed more exercised by the size of his audience.

“I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds,” Trump claimed, in just one complaint about the media supposedly exaggerating crowd sizes for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, at his expense.

“Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump said. “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not we had more.”

Trump was comparing his speech on the Ellipse on 6 January 2021, when he told supporters to “fight like hell” in service of his lie about electoral fraud in his 2020 defeat, to King’s imperishable speech at the Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963, a landmark of the civil rights era in which King outlined his dream of racial equality.

“They said I had 25,000 and he had a million people. And I’m OK with it, because I liked Dr Martin Luther King,” Trump said. It was an echo of Trump’s famous lies about the crowd size for his inauguration in 2017, compared to crowd sizes for Barack Obama. Analyses have found Trump’s crowd was not remarkable or comparable.

Trump did make news, saying he wanted to “do three debates” and had agreed or was close to agreeing terms with Fox, NBC and ABC. After he finished speaking, ABC said Harris and Trump had agreed to debate on 10 September.

But most of Trump’s answers trod familiar ground.

He accused Harris of running shy of speaking to the press; attacked her record as vice-president on border policy and immigration; ridiculed her performance in the 2020 Democratic primary; said Democrats were soft on crime; soft-pedaled the removal of the federal right to abortion by supreme court justices he installed; rehashed his hugely controversial questioning of Harris’s racial identity; claimed Harris and Biden projected weakness in the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and elsewhere, allowing Russia to invade Ukraine and Hamas to attack Israel and forfeiting the respect of authoritarian leaders; and claimed the US economy was on the brink of a “depression, not a recession” after Wall Street sell-offs but on a day of notable recovery.

That wasn’t the half of it. Trump even claimed to have been “very protective” of Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he beat in 2016, a campaign in which Trump’s supporters regularly chanted – with his encouragement – that Clinton should be locked up.

Clinton was “pretty evil”, Trump said, accusing her of various unsubstantiated misdoings, but “I thought it was a very bad thing take the wife of a president of the United States and put her in jail, and then I see the way they treat me. That’s the way it goes. But I was very protective of her. Nobody would understand that, but I was. I think my people understand it.”

Most Americans understand that Trump is the first former president to be criminally convicted, on 34 charges of falsification of business records, with sentencing due in New York on 16 September.

He faces as many as 54 other criminal charges, in cases concerning attempted election subversion and retention of classified information. On Thursday he praised as “brilliant” the Florida judge, his own appointee, who threw out the classified information case, a decision now on appeal.

Trump has also been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in civil suits concerning business fraud and defamation arising from a rape claim a judge called “substantially true”.

Trump has never been afraid to go low. At one point on Thursday, he said Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco whom Harris dated, “told me terrible things about her”. Given past form, including his recruitment in 2016 of women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct, Trump’s remarks seemed a likely preview of blows to come.

Despite it all, he remains the Republican nominee for president, running with JD Vance, the Ohio senator, against Harris and Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.

Amid polls showing Harris leading nationally and gaining or leading in battleground states, doubts about Trump’s prospects have spread. Earlier on Thursday, Karl Rove, a Republican operative once known as George W Bush’s “brain”, wrote for the Wall Street Journal under the headline “Trump Teeters, but Will He Fall?”

“This race will be decided by each party’s success in two fundamental tasks,” Rove wrote. “Turning out its base and persuading independent, swing voters.” Convincing independents would be “decisive”.

“The past six weeks have shown that the pendulum can swing rapidly and wildly,” Rove wrote. “The Trump campaign is floundering. Mr Trump seems rattled. He’s making plenty of unforced errors and wasting valuable, irreplaceable time on insults, side issues and trivia.”

Rove’s column was published before Trump’s press conference. Among Republicans, Rove’s message must have rung louder still after Trump was done.

“All this undermines his cause,” Rove wrote. “The Trump-Vance ticket needs to become much more disciplined and settle soon on an effective line of attack against Harris-Walz that wins over swing voters and then stick to it.

“If it can’t achieve both these goals, a race Mr Trump was on the verge of winning three weeks ago could be lost.”

Nancy Pelosi has “never been that impressed” with Joe Biden’s “political operation”, the former US House speaker said, discussing a judgment that helped her conclude the president could not beat Donald Trump and should step aside.

“They won the White House [in 2020]. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for [Biden’s withdrawal] to happen,” Pelosi told the New Yorker, in an interview published on Thursday.

On 21 July, in a historic moment, the 81-year-old president finally heeded those who said he was too old to beat Trump and serve a full second term.

Stepping aside as the Democratic nominee, Biden endorsed his 59-year-old vice-president, Kamala Harris, a move that transformed the election, placing Trump under pressure.

Pelosi was widely reported to have played a key role in the switch.

She told the New Yorker: “The president has to make the decision for that to happen. People were calling. I never called one person. I kept true to my word. Any conversation I had, it was just going to be with [Biden]. I never made one call. They said I was burning up the lines, I was talking to Chuck [Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader]. I didn’t talk to Chuck at all.

“I never called one person, but people were calling me saying that there was a challenge there. So there had to be a change in the leadership of the campaign, or what would come next.”

Pelosi said her goal was simple: “That Donald Trump would never set foot in the White House again.”

Now 84, Pelosi is in her 19th term in the House. Having been speaker between 2007 and 2011 and 2019 and 2023, she remains vastly influential.

Pelosi spoke to the New Yorker to promote her new memoir, The Art of Power. Last week, the Guardian first reported Pelosi’s descriptions of how she grew increasingly concerned about Trump’s mental fitness for office, even before his defeat by Biden and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.

Pelosi told the New Yorker she hoped her role in ending Biden’s presidency would not destroy her relationship with a man three years younger but elected as a senator in 1972, 14 years before Pelosi won her seat in the House.

“I hope so,” she said. “I pray so. I cry so.”

She said she had lost sleep over the situation. Asked if she thought Biden was angry with her, she said: “I don’t know. We haven’t had a conversation. But … ”

Pelosi said she thought Biden was “in a good state”, praising as “masterful” his handling of a large-scale prisoner swap with Russia which concluded last week.

But Biden’s legacy “will go right down the drain if what’s-his-name ever [returns to] the White House”, Pelosi said, adding: “One of the reasons I ran again [in 2022] was to make sure that Donald Trump never stepped foot in the White House again.

“He is a danger to our democracy … he’s a danger to the air our children breathe, the water they drink, their safety in terms of gun-violence prevention. Freedom of choice, the size, the timing of your family – all that.”

Asked if she had met Trump since her time as speaker, Pelosi said she had not.

“Oh, my God, what a horrible thought,” she said. “He knows he’s an impostor. He knows he shouldn’t be president of the United States.”

Donald Trump shared a private flight with the head of the rightwing thinktank behind Project 2025, the Washington Post reported, publishing evidence including a picture of the two men in airplane seats, grinning.

The flight was on its way to a conference organized by the thinktank, at which Trump told group members they would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do”.

Orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a 900-page plan initially presented for a second Trump administration that posits aggressive rightwing reform to every corner of the federal government.

Democratic attacks have particularly focused on its threats to reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights and other progressive concerns.

Appearing to fear that Kamala Harris was making Project 2025 an effective campaign issue, Trump and allies have since tried to disavow the effort, with Trump claiming last month he had “no idea who is in charge of” Project 2025.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for Trump told the Post that Project 2025 “has never and will never be an accurate reflection of President Trump’s policies”.

But the Post published plane-tracking data and the picture of Trump with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, in April 2022.

The two men were flying from Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, to Amelia Island in the same state for the annual Heritage conference.

At the conference, the Post said, Trump told attendees: “With Kevin and the staff, and I met so many of them now, I took pictures with among the most handsome, beautiful people I’ve ever seen.”

The Post also pointed out that in April of this year Roberts told the paper: “I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025 because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me.”

Democratic attacks on Project 2025 have inflicted appreciable damage. Last month, Project 2025 director Paul Dans stepped down amid “pressure from Trump campaign leadership”, the Daily Beast first reported.

Roberts has attracted attention, too. In July, he told the Trump ally Steve Bannon: “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Controversy over such comments drew attention to Roberts’ forthcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, which has an introduction by the Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential pick. Publication has now been delayed until after election day.

In his introduction, obtained by the New Republic, Vance calls the Heritage Foundation “the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump”. The group has indeed produced policy plans for Republican administrations since 1980. But none have proved remotely as controversial as Project 2025.

Earlier this week, two House Democrats told Roberts to publish plans for the first 180 days of a second Trump administration, which remain under wraps.

“It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025,” Jared Huffman of California and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said in an open letter.

On Thursday, the Post quoted an anonymous Project 2025 source as saying that some contributors saw controversy over their work, and Trump’s attempts to disavow it, as “a disaster, a catastrophe … the wishful-thinking school is that this will all blow over”.

The leaders of the US, Egypt and Qatar have called on Israel and Hamas to resume urgent negotiations in order to finalise a ceasefire and hostage release deal, saying there were no excuses “from any party for further delay”.

The three countries, which have been trying to mediate a deal, said in a joint statement the talks could take place in either Doha or Cairo on 15 August, adding that it was “time to bring immediate relief both to the longsuffering people of Gaza as well as the longsuffering hostages and their families.”

The leaders said a “framework agreement is now on the table with only the details of implementation left to conclude,” and offered to present “a final bridging proposal” resolving the remaining issues.

Moments after the release of the statement, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli negotiators would be there. The aim, he said, was “to finalise the details and implement the framework agreement.”

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

The statement came as the Israeli military renewed evacuation orders to Palestinian residents in several districts in eastern Khan Younis, saying it would act forcefully against militants who had unleashed rockets from those areas.

The army posted the evacuation order on X, and residents of the southern Gaza city said they had received text and audio messages.

Residents said dozens of families had begun to leave their homes and head west towards Al-Mawasi, a humanitarian-designated area but one that is overcrowded by displaced families from around the enclave.

Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis suffered widespread destruction during air and ground operations earlier this year.

Regional tensions have soared since Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed on 31 July in Iran, in an attack Tehran blames on Israel. Retaliation has been expected, raising fears of a possible broader conflict in the region.

A senior US official said the joint statement from US, Qatari and Egyptian leaders was not designed to influence Iran, but that any escalation would jeopardise hope of getting an Israel-Hamas deal done.

The official said there was no expectation that the ceasefire agreement would be signed by next week given serious issues that include the sequencing of the exchanges between Hamas and Israel. Movement was needed on both sides of the table, the person said.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Noah Lyles revealed he tested positive for Covid on Tuesday morning, in the aftermath of a men’s 200m final where the American was removed from the track in a wheelchair having finished third in 19.70sec.

Lyles appeared for media duties wearing a mask, flanked by members of the US team’s medical department, but claimed he never had any thought about withdrawing from the event. USA Track & Field had made clear it was Lyles’s decision to participate in Thursday night’s final.

Lyles, the freshly crowned Olympic 100m champion, was unable to keep pace with the gold medallist, Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo (19.46) or his US teammate Kenneth Bednarek (19.62), who took silver. Lyles’s appearance in a wheelchair immediately drew speculation about his medical condition.

The 27-year-old soon clarified his situation. “I do have Covid,” Lyles said. “I tested positive around 5am on Tuesday. I woke up feeling chills, aching, sore throat. Those were a lot of the symptoms I have had before getting Covid. I was like: ‘I need to test this one.’ It came back positive so we quickly quarantined in a hotel near the village and they got me on as much medication as they legally could to make sure my body was able to keep the momentum going.

“I still wanted to run, they said it was still possible so we stayed away from everybody and took it round by round. I have definitely had better days but I am walking around again. I was quite light headed after that race and the chest pain was definitely active. After a while I was able to catch my breath and get my wits about me. I am feeling a lot better now. It definitely affected my performance.”

In a statement, USA Track & Field said: “Our primary commitment is to ensure the safety of Team USA athletes while upholding their right to compete. After a thorough medical evaluation, Noah chose to compete tonight. We respect his decision and continue to monitor his condition closely.”

The Paris Olympics has no mandatory rules relating to Covid and participation, meaning Lyles was within his rights to take to the start line. Covid has been a lingering feature of the Games, having affected Australian water polo players and swimmers from various nations, including Britain’s Adam Peaty.

Lyles answered a firm “no” when asked whether withdrawing from the 200m was ever a consideration. “I was going to compete regardless,” he added. “If I didn’t make the final, that would have been the sign not to compete.”

Still, Lyles’s attitude will raise eyebrows. His girlfriend is the Jamaican athlete Junelle Bromfield, with whom he admitted sharing a bed while in the hotel. “Junelle said I was coughing through the night last night,” Lyles said. “I thought I had a good sleep but she said she had to keep moving me through the night to make sure I would stop coughing. I am more proud of myself than anything. Coming out and winning the bronze medal after three days with Covid … it has been a wild Olympics.”

No other members of the US team had been informed of Lyles’s diagnosis before the 200m final. “The only people who knew were the medical staff, my coach, my mom and my family,” said Lyles.

“We tried to keep this as close to the chest as possible. We didn’t want everybody going into a panic, we wanted them to be able to compete. You also never want to tell your competitors you are sick. Why would you give them an advantage over you?”

Bednarek, who hugged Lyles after the final, seemed to have no worries about any danger attached to that. “I don’t care,” said the silver medallist. “I don’t view those things as a big deal. I am healthy and do everything to ensure my body is healthy. It doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t get sick easily.”

Lyles still has to make a call over whether to compete in the 4x100m men’s relay. “I am going to talk to the 4×100 crew,” Lyles said. “I am going to be very honest and transparent with them, I will let them make the decision. I believe no matter what happens, they can handle anything.”

Lyles later posted on Instagram: “I believe this will be the end of my 2024 Olympics. It is not the Olympics I dreamed of but it has left me with so much joy in my heart.”

Coming into the final bend of the women’s 400m hurdles final, Femke Bol was exactly where she wanted to be. She was right behind Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, just like her coach, ­Laurent Meuwly, had planned. “The goal for Femke will be to stay as close as possible into the straight,” Meuwly said, and here she was, two-tenths off. Problem was, it was the last time Bol was in the right place all night. ­McLaughlin-Levrone, the ­greatest women’s hurdler in ­history, ran stronger, harder, and faster down the straight, and pulled right away from Bol, and everyone else, towards her second ­Olympic gold, and a rightful place as the ­greatest track athlete of her era.

By the time McLaughlin-Levrone reached the 10th hurdle, she was only racing her own world record, set at the US trials in June. She won that contest too. She finished in 50.37sec, which knocked 0.28sec off the old mark. McLaughlin-Levrone was already the first track athlete to break five world records in the same event. She has just become the first to break a sixth. In three years, she is single-handedly cut the best part of two seconds off the world record. Or to put it another way, she has taken a full 3.5% off the record set before she started running, which is ­double what Usain Bolt trimmed off the men’s 100m mark.

When McLaughlin-Levrone runs, the rest of us are watching someone expand the limits of athletic possibility in real time.

There had been an idea that this final would be one of the great races of the Games. The stadium was ­studded with bright orange because of all the Dutch fans who had come along to watch, which made it look like a big bag of pick ‘n’ mix with too many jelly tots in it. In the 50 years they have been running the women’s 400m hurdles, exactly 25 athletes have done it under 53 seconds, three have run it under 52 seconds, and just two have run it in under 51 seconds, Bol and McLaughlin-Levrone, who were drawn alongside each other in lanes five and six. Between them, they had already run 14 of the 15 fastest times in history.

McLaughlin-Levrone had won their only two head-to-head races before this one, in the Olympic final in 2021, and the world ­championship final a year later. But since then, she had been struggling with a ­couple of different injuries, and also ­experimenting with a couple of ­different disciplines. She had only competed fitfully. In the meantime, Bol had won just about everything going. But as Meuwly also said before the race, the one thing she had not had to deal with was what it was like to be in a race against someone who was even faster than she was. She did here, and it hurt.

Bol finished third. She was beaten to the silver by ­McLaughlin-Levrone’s US teammate Anna Cockrell, who ran a personal best of 51.87sec. Bol finished in 52.15sec. Which, though well down on the winning time, was still the 19th-quickest in history. She was utterly distraught afterwards, and walked away crying from the finish line. In another time, and another place, she would be the greatest herself. She has it in her. She proved it last Saturday when she won the Netherlands the gold medal in the 4x400m mixed relay with an ­astonishing anchor leg which swept the team from fourth place all the way up into first.

But McLaughlin-Levrone is greater again. In this race, Bol was only really there to put McLaughlin-Levrone’s achievements in scale, like one of those little diagrams of a man drawn to let you know exactly how big the building in the picture is in real life.

It is Bol’s bad luck that ­McLaughlin-Levrone chose to run the 400m hurdles. Truth is, she could have been almost anything she wanted to be on the track. Her personal best times in the 100m and 100m hurdles would have made her a contender for the final here in both events, her personal best in the 200m would have won her the silver medal behind Gabby Thomas, and in the 400m, it would have made her the fastest-qualifier for Friday night’s final. She has spoken about moving across the flat race, she is already the ­eleventh-quickest in history at it. And she can also juggle pretty much ­anything you ask her too.

Which tells you a little more than you about what makes her great than you might think. Because one of the reasons why McLaughlin-Levrone is so good at the 400m hurdles is that she can lead her jumps with either foot. While most hurdlers adjust their stride to make sure they have their favourite foot forward, ­McLaughlin-Levrone’s able to take them as they come to her, ­switching between her left and her right, ­without stuttering or stumbling or breaking stride. It takes a juggler’s sense of coordination to do it at speed. Her brain needs to move as fast as her feet as she makes the ­high-speed adjustments to her stride.

Between her sheer speed along the straight, her endurance around a single lap, and her impeccable technique, McLaughlin-Levrone is as good as unbeatable. Even for someone as brilliant as Bol. In the minutes after McLaughlin-Levrone had crossed the finish line, someone in the crowd handed her a crown to wear as well as the US flag. It fit perfectly.

The US men’s basketball team nearly suffered a huge shock on Thursday night as they narrowly escaped defeat at the hands of Serbia in the semi-final of the Paris Olympics.

The team, led by LeBron James, Stephen Curry and a host of NBA All-Stars, were expected to stroll to another Olympic title, even thought the rest of the world has been catching up with the Americans in recent years.

Instead, they almost fell to a team led by the best player in the world, three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić. At the start of the final quarter, Serbia led 76-63 and it took a huge effort from the US to recover.

The game revolved around a period of play in which the US scored six points in two seconds with Serbia leading 78-67 with just over seven minutes left. Kevin Durant scored a three-pointer as Anthony Davis was fouled meaning the US retained possession and Devin Booker duly scored another three to cut the lead to 78-73. The passage of play appeared to rattle Serbia and inspire the Americans, and two threes from Curry put the US up for good.

“I’ve seen a lot of Team USA basketball,” Curry said. “And that was a special one.”

Curry and James were the heroes for the US in their 95-91 victory. James recorded a triple-double while Curry scored 36 points. Serbia had led for 35:12, nearly 90% of the game.

“That was a godlike performance,” Durant said of Curry.

Bogdan Bogdanovic led Serbia with 20 points, while Jokić had 17 and 11 assists. Joel Embiid, who has been heartily booed through the tournament after choosing to play for the US over hosts France, had 19 points.

Coming into the Paris Games, the US had won gold in eight of the last 10 Olympics, with their last stumble coming in 2004 when they won bronze.

USA coach Steve Kerr was effusive in his praise for Serbia.

“I’m really humbled to have been a part of this game,” Kerr said. “It’s one of the greatest basketball games I’ve ever been a part of. They were perfect. They played a perfect game … and they forced us to reach the highest level of competition that we could find. And our guys were incredible in that fourth quarter, and they got it done.”

The US will play France in the final after the hosts beat Germany 73-69 in the other semi-final in front of a raucous home crowd. NBA rookie of the year Victor Wembanyama was bloodied at the end of the game after suffering a cut to his neck.

“In our national anthem, we talk about blood,” Wembanyama said after the game. “We’re willing to spill blood on the court. So, it’s no big deal. If it allows us to win gold, I’m offering. Take all of it.”

The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said the agency is likely to declare a continental public health emergency over the growing mpox outbreak.

The Africa CDC’s director general, Dr Jean Kaseya, said on Thursday that because of the increase in mpox cases and its continued spread across borders, he had resolved to start “active engagement” with African Union member states to prevent the outbreak from becoming “another pandemic”.

“We are committed to mobilising resources and providing technical assistance to affected countries to control the outbreak,” said Kaseya.

A total of 887 new confirmed and suspected cases of mpox have been reported on the continent this past week, pushing the year’s total to 15,132, according to data presented at the briefing. The cases have increased by 160% compared with the same time period last year.

Sixteen countries have reported cases of the disease so far, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has more than 90% of them, and 461 people have died from it this year.

Some countries – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda – have reported it for the first time ever, Kaseya said. “This new incident demonstrates the need for a collective and collaborative approach in curbing the spread of the disease,” he added.

Kaseya’s announcement came a day after the World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he would convene an emergency committee to determine whether the spread of mpox on the continent should be declared a global emergency.

The process of declaring a continental public health emergency entails technical and strategic consultation between the Africa CDC, which is an agency of the 55-member African Union, and affected member states. An extraordinary summit for heads of state follows to discuss a response.

Mpox is a viral disease that causes painful rashes and flu-like symptoms such as fever, headaches and body aches. The virus that causes it comes from the same family as that of smallpox. It spreads from person to person and from animals to people through direct contact.

In May, scientists reported a new strain of the virus in the DRC that they said was more virulent and might spread more easily. First recorded in a human in 1970 in what is now the DRC, mpox was declared a global emergency in 2022 when it spread to more than 70 countries.

While countries in the west have controlled the spread of the disease through vaccines, Kaseya cited their shortage in Africa as a major challenge in controlling its spread on the continent, saying there were only 200,000 doses available compared with a demand of at least 10m. He said Africa CDC was working with international partners to secure more vaccines.

Last week, the AU made an emergency approval of $10.4m (£8.2m) to Africa CDC to support efforts to combat the mpox outbreak.

The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said the agency is likely to declare a continental public health emergency over the growing mpox outbreak.

The Africa CDC’s director general, Dr Jean Kaseya, said on Thursday that because of the increase in mpox cases and its continued spread across borders, he had resolved to start “active engagement” with African Union member states to prevent the outbreak from becoming “another pandemic”.

“We are committed to mobilising resources and providing technical assistance to affected countries to control the outbreak,” said Kaseya.

A total of 887 new confirmed and suspected cases of mpox have been reported on the continent this past week, pushing the year’s total to 15,132, according to data presented at the briefing. The cases have increased by 160% compared with the same time period last year.

Sixteen countries have reported cases of the disease so far, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has more than 90% of them, and 461 people have died from it this year.

Some countries – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda – have reported it for the first time ever, Kaseya said. “This new incident demonstrates the need for a collective and collaborative approach in curbing the spread of the disease,” he added.

Kaseya’s announcement came a day after the World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he would convene an emergency committee to determine whether the spread of mpox on the continent should be declared a global emergency.

The process of declaring a continental public health emergency entails technical and strategic consultation between the Africa CDC, which is an agency of the 55-member African Union, and affected member states. An extraordinary summit for heads of state follows to discuss a response.

Mpox is a viral disease that causes painful rashes and flu-like symptoms such as fever, headaches and body aches. The virus that causes it comes from the same family as that of smallpox. It spreads from person to person and from animals to people through direct contact.

In May, scientists reported a new strain of the virus in the DRC that they said was more virulent and might spread more easily. First recorded in a human in 1970 in what is now the DRC, mpox was declared a global emergency in 2022 when it spread to more than 70 countries.

While countries in the west have controlled the spread of the disease through vaccines, Kaseya cited their shortage in Africa as a major challenge in controlling its spread on the continent, saying there were only 200,000 doses available compared with a demand of at least 10m. He said Africa CDC was working with international partners to secure more vaccines.

Last week, the AU made an emergency approval of $10.4m (£8.2m) to Africa CDC to support efforts to combat the mpox outbreak.

Many countries in Africa are experiencing more cases of mpox. The deadly virus is crossing national borders and there are fears it could cause a significant global outbreak. As world health leaders consider labelling this a public health emergency, here is what we know so far.

China’s government has called for people to denounce “diehard secessionists” and give information about their “criminal activities” as it intensifies its legal and rhetorical intimidation of Taiwan.

The Taiwan affairs office and ministry of public security this week launched new webpages with lists of 10 current and former officials in Taiwan who have been named as “diehard” separatists.

The site includes a prominently displayed email address and urges people to report “the clues and crimes” of those on the list, as well as “new ‘Taiwan independence’ diehards who commit serious crimes”.

China’s ruling Communist party (CCP) claims Taiwan is a province of China and has vowed to annex the territory, by force if necessary. Taiwan’s democratically elected government and a growing majority of its people reject the prospect of Chinese rule, and both sides have been preparing for a potential war in coming decades.

The 10 names – which had been previously announced in 2021 and 2022 – including Taiwan’s vice-president, Hsiao Bi-khim, the former foreign minister and now head of Taiwan’s security council, Joseph Wu, Wu’s deputy, Lin Fei-fan, and senior officials from the ruling Democratic Progressive party.

The new site and tipline are part of a broader escalation by Beijing against Taiwan and those who maintain that it is not and will not become a part of the People’s Republic of China. Official state media said the pages, which also included legal documents and government statements, “present the legal foundation for such actions”.

China’s hawkish state media tabloid, the Global Times, said the publication of the 10 names served as “both as a deterrent and as a clear message that the criminal justice measures are aimed at a small number of diehard individuals who engage in or incite secession activities, and do not target the majority of Taiwan compatriots”.

In June the CCP said “ringleaders” of independence efforts would face the death penalty under Chinese laws. It issued new guidelines for Chinese courts, prosecutors and public and state security bodies to “severely punish Taiwan independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession crimes in accordance with the law, and resolutely defend national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity”, according to state media.

“The sharp sword of legal action will always hang high,” Sun Ping, an official from China’s ministry of public security, told reporters in Beijing.

Taiwan’s leaders rejected Beijing’s claim that its laws had any jurisdiction over Taiwan, which has its own government, legal system, currency and military.

“The government appeals to our country’s people to feel at ease and not to be threatened or intimidated by the Chinese Communist party,” Taiwan’s mainland affairs council said at the time.

A 55-year-old woman has been arrested in relation to a social media post containing inaccurate information about the identity of the suspect in the Southport murders.

The woman, from near Chester, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred and false communications. She is being held in custody by Cheshire police.

Ch Supt Alison Ross said: “We have all seen the violent disorder that has taken place across the UK over the past week, much of which has been fuelled by malicious and inaccurate communications online.

“It’s a stark reminder of the dangers of posting information on social media platforms without checking the accuracy. It also acts as a warning that we are all accountable for our actions, whether that be online or in person.”

Police across the UK have issued warnings over the spreading online of an “incorrect” name for the Southport suspect – now named as 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana – and a false story around his background.

Sunder Katwala, director of the thinktank British Future, highlighted a number of high-profile online figures, including Laurence Fox and former kickboxer Andrew Tate, who were “sharing that false information” on X.

A number of experts said this misinformation had been used by a “vocal minority” to sow division and “fuel their own agenda and trigger a summer of thrill-seeking impulsive insurrection” after violent disorder in the days since the attack.

On Thursday evening a 39-year-old from Lancashire was arrested on suspicion of using social media to encourage others to take part in violent disorder, Merseyside police said.

The man from Rufford, Ormskirk, was held on suspicion of encouraging or assisting the commission of an indictable offence, believing one or more will be committed. He was also arrested on suspicion of engaging in violent disorder himself in Southport on 30 July.

DCI Tony Roberts said: “This arrest demonstrates our aim is not only to bring to justice those people who chose to engage in violence and destruction to Southport and elsewhere.

“We are also determined to arrest anyone we suspect tried to stir up hate online, and actively encouraged others to take the streets to cause violence and physical harm in our communities.”

Ukraine has publicly justified its attack into Russian territory for the first time, amid reports that its forces are advancing towards a village 13 miles (20km) inside the Kursk region on the third day of its incursion.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to the president’s office, said “the root cause of any escalation”, including into Kursk, was “unequivocal aggression” on the part of Russia in believing it could invade Ukraine with impunity.

The statement is the first acknowledgment by any leading Ukrainian official of the ongoing offensive amid silence from the country’s military on events in the Russian region. “War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes,” Podolyak added.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, appeared to allude to the incursion on Thursday, saying “everyone can see that the Ukrainian army knows how to surprise” in comments at an event to unveil a new military app.

Later on Thursday, Zelenskiy made another apparent allusion to the offensive in his nightly television address, saying: “Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done.”

Russian military bloggers, currently the most accurate sources of information, reported that fighting was taking place on the highway east of Korenevo, 13 miles north of the border, while the western part of Sudzha, about six miles into Russia, appeared to be under Ukrainian control.

Russia has declared a state of emergency in Kursk and local officials told the Tass news agency that 3,000 civilians had been evacuated following an attack that has clearly caught Moscow off guard.

Ukrainian forces, numbering several hundred according to Russia, burst across the border on the morning of Tuesday, reaching Sudzha on the first day, and since then appear to have pushed up roads to the north-west and north of the town.

Videos have also emerged showing a few dozen Russian troops, including border guards captured at the checkpoint west of Sudzha, being rounded up by Ukrainians on the first day of the raid, demonstrating the initial success.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday its forces “continue to eliminate” the Ukrainian attackers in the Sudzha and Korenevo districts, and that it was targeting the invaders with ground forces, artillery, air and missile strikes.

The same day, Gen Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces, became the first Russian-aligned military official to acknowledge losses in the country’s military following Ukraine’s surprise incursion.

“The situation is not irreversible, nothing supernatural has happened … Yes, our men have died, that’s a fact. The enemy has entered several settlements,” Alaudinov said in a video message on his Telegram channel.

Alaudinov added that the Ukrainian military had “advanced well into our territory, around 10km”.

A clearly angry Vladimir Putin convened a televised meeting of Russia’s security council on Wednesday, in which the military’s chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, told him the advance had been halted and that the Kursk operation would be concluded by “reaching the Russian state border”.

Previous incursions from Ukraine into Russia, near the city of Belgorod, have been led by anti-Kremlin Russian groups. But this time the incursion was conducted by Ukrainian forces, using a combination of infantry, armour, drones, electronic warfare and air defence in the attack.

Experts have largely been sceptical about the value of a Ukrainian incursion into Russia, although its progress on the ground has been better than many predicted two days ago, and it has come at a time when Kyiv has been under growing frontline pressure in central Donbas.

Jade McGlynn, a Ukraine expert and research fellow at King’s College London, said: “As a military strategy, I remain a bit puzzled, but as a political strategy, it has been very successful. It suggests yet again that Putin’s ‘red lines’ are only words and that Russia is not as strong as some make out.”

Fears that Russia could retaliate against the west have been behind decisions by the US president, Joe Biden, and others to restrict the use of high-value western weapons, such as F-16 fighters, to territory inside Ukraine’s borders. There has so far been no confirmed reports of their use in the Kursk offensive, although there have been some statements by Russia that Ukraine has been using Stryker and Bradley armoured vehicles.

The US has said it had had no prior knowledge of Ukraine’s plan to attack. John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said the administration had contacted Kyiv to “get a little better understanding” of the Kursk offensive.

Washington also said its restrictions regarding the use of high-value US weapons inside Russia’s internationally recognised borders had not changed, and the state department said the incursion was “not a violation of our policy”.

The main operational Russian gas pipeline into Europe runs near Sudzha, where a metering station – reportedly captured by Ukraine – monitors the reduced Russian supplies to countries such as Austria and Hungary. Kyiv has allowed gas to continue flowing through the pipeline as part of a contract that expires at the end of 2024.

Ukraine has publicly justified its attack into Russian territory for the first time, amid reports that its forces are advancing towards a village 13 miles (20km) inside the Kursk region on the third day of its incursion.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to the president’s office, said “the root cause of any escalation”, including into Kursk, was “unequivocal aggression” on the part of Russia in believing it could invade Ukraine with impunity.

The statement is the first acknowledgment by any leading Ukrainian official of the ongoing offensive amid silence from the country’s military on events in the Russian region. “War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes,” Podolyak added.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, appeared to allude to the incursion on Thursday, saying “everyone can see that the Ukrainian army knows how to surprise” in comments at an event to unveil a new military app.

Later on Thursday, Zelenskiy made another apparent allusion to the offensive in his nightly television address, saying: “Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done.”

Russian military bloggers, currently the most accurate sources of information, reported that fighting was taking place on the highway east of Korenevo, 13 miles north of the border, while the western part of Sudzha, about six miles into Russia, appeared to be under Ukrainian control.

Russia has declared a state of emergency in Kursk and local officials told the Tass news agency that 3,000 civilians had been evacuated following an attack that has clearly caught Moscow off guard.

Ukrainian forces, numbering several hundred according to Russia, burst across the border on the morning of Tuesday, reaching Sudzha on the first day, and since then appear to have pushed up roads to the north-west and north of the town.

Videos have also emerged showing a few dozen Russian troops, including border guards captured at the checkpoint west of Sudzha, being rounded up by Ukrainians on the first day of the raid, demonstrating the initial success.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday its forces “continue to eliminate” the Ukrainian attackers in the Sudzha and Korenevo districts, and that it was targeting the invaders with ground forces, artillery, air and missile strikes.

The same day, Gen Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces, became the first Russian-aligned military official to acknowledge losses in the country’s military following Ukraine’s surprise incursion.

“The situation is not irreversible, nothing supernatural has happened … Yes, our men have died, that’s a fact. The enemy has entered several settlements,” Alaudinov said in a video message on his Telegram channel.

Alaudinov added that the Ukrainian military had “advanced well into our territory, around 10km”.

A clearly angry Vladimir Putin convened a televised meeting of Russia’s security council on Wednesday, in which the military’s chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, told him the advance had been halted and that the Kursk operation would be concluded by “reaching the Russian state border”.

Previous incursions from Ukraine into Russia, near the city of Belgorod, have been led by anti-Kremlin Russian groups. But this time the incursion was conducted by Ukrainian forces, using a combination of infantry, armour, drones, electronic warfare and air defence in the attack.

Experts have largely been sceptical about the value of a Ukrainian incursion into Russia, although its progress on the ground has been better than many predicted two days ago, and it has come at a time when Kyiv has been under growing frontline pressure in central Donbas.

Jade McGlynn, a Ukraine expert and research fellow at King’s College London, said: “As a military strategy, I remain a bit puzzled, but as a political strategy, it has been very successful. It suggests yet again that Putin’s ‘red lines’ are only words and that Russia is not as strong as some make out.”

Fears that Russia could retaliate against the west have been behind decisions by the US president, Joe Biden, and others to restrict the use of high-value western weapons, such as F-16 fighters, to territory inside Ukraine’s borders. There has so far been no confirmed reports of their use in the Kursk offensive, although there have been some statements by Russia that Ukraine has been using Stryker and Bradley armoured vehicles.

The US has said it had had no prior knowledge of Ukraine’s plan to attack. John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said the administration had contacted Kyiv to “get a little better understanding” of the Kursk offensive.

Washington also said its restrictions regarding the use of high-value US weapons inside Russia’s internationally recognised borders had not changed, and the state department said the incursion was “not a violation of our policy”.

The main operational Russian gas pipeline into Europe runs near Sudzha, where a metering station – reportedly captured by Ukraine – monitors the reduced Russian supplies to countries such as Austria and Hungary. Kyiv has allowed gas to continue flowing through the pipeline as part of a contract that expires at the end of 2024.

A global advertiser alliance has discontinued its corporate responsibility program after a lawsuit from Elon Musk’s X accused the group of orchestrating a “massive advertiser boycott”.

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) told members on Thursday that it would shut down the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (Garm) following legal attacks from X, formerly Twitter, according to Business Insider, which first reported the news. Garm is a not-for-profit initiative within the WFA that helps brands avoid advertising alongside or monetizing harmful content.

The social media firm filed an antitrust lawsuit earlier this week claiming advertisers including Unilever, Mars and CVS Health, all members of the WFA, unlawfully conspired to withhold “billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from X.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted after the news broke: “No small group should be able to monopolize what gets monetized. This is an important acknowledgement and a necessary step in the right direction. I am hopeful that it means ecosystem-wide reform is coming.”

The online video platform Rumble, a favorite of the American right, also joined the action, filing its own lawsuit with similar claims against the WFA over Garm.

Advertising revenue at X saw a sharp decline after Musk bought the company in 2022 and quickly gutted the social network’s content moderation teams, leading to a sharp rise in antisemitic content on X, including ads running beside posts expressing pro-Nazi sentiments. X sued a watchdog organization over its reports on the proliferation of offensive content on the social network.

Musk claimed advertisers fleeing in light of such policy changes were engaging in “blackmail” and, in a profanity-laced rant, told them to stay away. X is now seeking unspecified damages and a court order against any continued efforts to conspire to withhold ad dollars.

The WFA responded to a request for comment by saying that it would issue a statement shortly. Unilever, Mars and CVS Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The ad tech watchdog Check My Ads said the suit was likely to make even more advertisers flee the platform.

“Everyone can see that advertising on X is a treacherous business relationship for advertisers,” said Claire Atkin, co-founder of Check My Ads. “The upside to today’s news is that advertisers will no longer rely on Garm and will now take more direct responsibility over where their ads appear.”

A committee within the US Congress held a hearing in July on “collusion in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media”, targeting advertising firms for “anticompetitive collusion in online advertising”.

In response to the news, the X account for Republicans on the House judiciary committee posted: “Big win for the First Amendment. Big win for oversight.”

Called to speak before Congress, Unilever USA’s president, Herrish Patel, defended his company’s right to advertise where it chooses.

“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending,” Patel said. “No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”

The crew onboard the Titan submersible that imploded last year while diving toward the wreck of the Titanic were probably aware during their final moments they were going to die, a newly filed wrongful death lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit was filed by the family of the French explorer who died in the implosion, Paul-Henri Nargeolet. Known as “Mr Titanic”, he had participated in 37 previous dives to the wreckage and was onboard the submersible when it failed catastrophically in June 2023 during a voyage to the Titanic wreckage site.

All five crew members died. The others were the British explorer Hamish Harding, the British Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and the CEO of Oceangate, Stockton Rush.

Nargeolet’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit earlier this week against OceanGate, which manufactured the submersible and ran the voyage and has since ceased operations, according to its website.

The lawsuit accuses OceanGate and Rush of negligence and alleges that many of the particulars about the vessel’s flaws and shortcomings were purposely concealed from Nargeolet.

“The catastrophic implosion that claimed Nargeolet’s life was due directly to the persistent carelessness, recklessness and negligence” of OceanGate, Rush and other defendants, the lawsuit states, seeking at least $50m.

It also alleges that it is likely that they would have known the submersible was about to implode.

“While the exact cause of failure may never be determined, experts agree that the Titan’s crew would have realized exactly what was happening,” the lawsuit states.

“The vaunted ‘acoustic safety system’ would have alerted the crew that the carbon-fiber hull was cracking under extreme pressure – prompting the pilot to release weight and attempt to abort,” it alleges.

“Common sense dictates that the crew were well aware they were going to die, before dying.”

As the safety mechanism to drop the weight in response to the hull cracking did not work, the lawsuit alleges that the crew “may well have heard the carbon fiber’s crackling noise grow more intense as the weight of the water pressed on Titan’s hull.

“By experts’ reckoning, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the vessel’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish prior to the Titan ultimately imploding.”

A spokesperson for OceanGate declined to comment to the Associated Press.

Last week, Rory Golden, who was onboard the support ship for the submersible when the disaster occurred, spoke out about the fear and atmosphere of false hope during the doomed rescue effort.

“We had this image in our heads of them being down there, running out of oxygen in the freezing cold, getting terribly frightened and scared,” Golden, who was a close friend of Nargeolet, told BBC News.

After the disaster the US Coast Guard opened a Marine Board of Investigation into the incident to determine its cause. A public hearing is scheduled for September.

A South African beauty pageant contestant has withdrawn from the competition after the government accused her mother of fraud and identity theft, following questions over the contestant’s citizenship.

Chidimma Adetshina, 23, said she had made the “difficult decision” to protect herself and her family before the Miss South Africa final on Saturday, and a day after the home affairs ministry said her mother may have stolen a South African woman’s identity.

The question of whether Adetshina is South African had gripped the country for weeks, with politicians, celebrities and talkshows wading in on both sides, while the law student experienced a vicious torrent of xenophobic abuse.

Adetshina said she had been born in Soweto to a Nigerian father and South African mother with “Mozambican roots”. However, this failed to stem the tide of questions, and the home affairs minister, Leon Schreiber, said on Monday that his department was investigating her citizenship at the request of the Miss SA organisation and with the consent of Adetshina and her mother.

Then, on Wednesday, the ministry said: “Prima facie reasons exist to believe that fraud and identity theft may have been committed by the person recorded in home affairs records as Chidimma Adetshina’s mother.”

“An innocent South African mother, whose identity may have been stolen as part of the alleged fraud committed by Adetshina’s mother, suffered as a result because she could not register her child,” the statement said, adding that Adetshina herself was not implicated as she had been an infant at the time, in 2001.

Adetshina did not directly respond to the allegations, saying in an Instagram post: “After much careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw myself from the competition for the safety and wellbeing of my family and I.

“With the full support of the Miss South Africa Organisation, I leave with a heart full of gratitude for this amazing experience.”

Miss SA, which shared Adetshina’s post in an Instagram story, did not respond to a request for comment.

South Africa has experienced numerous outbreaks of violence against African immigrants since the end of apartheid, with high unemployment and crime fuelling xenophobia.

A person can get South African citizenship by having a South African parent, being adopted by a citizen or being born to someone with permanent residency in the country. A person can also apply for citizenship if they have lived in the country legally for four of the previous eight years.

A dead woman was found entangled in machinery in a baggage-processing area at O’Hare international airport in Chicago on Thursday.

Larry Langford, a spokesperson for the Chicago fire department, said firefighters were called to the airport at about 7.45am for a report of a person pinned in machinery used to move baggage. He said they discovered the woman entangled in a conveyor belt system in a baggage room.

Police said she was 57 but have not released her name.

The baggage room was not publicly accessible, Langford said, and it was not clear how she found her way into it. Scott Allen, a spokesperson for the US Department of Labor, said an official with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) visited the scene and learned the woman was not an airport employee.

Firefighters turned the scene over to police investigators, and Langford had no more details. The Chicago police department’s communications office said in an email to the Associated Press that the woman was found unresponsive and pronounced dead on the scene. Detectives have opened an investigation, the office said.

The police communications office initially said the woman was discovered at 2.27am, creating confusion about why firefighters and paramedics did not arrive for more than five hours.

After checking with the police department about the timing, Langford said that he was told surveillance footage shows the woman walking in the baggage room at 2.27am. The communications office issued a second statement Thursday afternoon saying that surveillance video shows the woman entering the room at 2.27am. She was actually discovered at 7.30am, prompting a 911 call.

The footage only shows her walking and does not show what happened to her.

Nathaniel Blackman, a police spokesperson, clarified during a phone interview with the Associated Press that no one was watching the surveillance cameras in real time and investigators reviewed the footage after the woman’s body was discovered.