Ukrainian forces staged an overnight ambush on a Russian convoy 25 miles inside the international border in Russia’s Kursk province, as the Kremlin declared a federal emergency and said it was transferring extra forces to try to snuff out a four-day incursion that has badly damaged its credibility.

A video circulated by Russian military bloggers showed a destroyed convoy, with bodies just visible inside some trucks, on the E38 east-west highway at Oktyabrskoe, a location far deeper inside Russia than any previously confirmed fighting since Ukraine’s forces crossed the border on Tuesday.

Commentators said the attack, reminiscent of Ukrainian attacks on Russian troops besieging Kyiv in the first weeks of the war, demonstrated an effective hit-and-run strategy, but the incursion appeared likely to draw an escalating response from the Kremlin, and its overall outcome remains profoundly uncertain.

Russia’s defence ministry said at lunchtime that it was transferring military reserves to the Kursk region, according to the Interfax news agency, including Grad rockets, artillery and tanks. A video released by Zvezda, official Russian military media, showed a convoy of lorries carrying armoured vehicles down a highway.

Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of Kursk oblast, said Moscow had declared a state of federal emergency in the morning and he urged residents to “stay calm and keep up your fighting spirit, support each other, do not give in to panic and despondency”. So far 3,000 Russian civilians have been evacuated away from the fighting.

Meanwhile, 14 Ukrainians were reported killed and 43 injured after a Russian missile struck a supermarket during the day in the Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka, about 8 miles from the eastern frontline in Donetsk. “Russian terrorists hit an ordinary supermarket and a post office. There are people under the rubble,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said.

Ukraine was able to burst through a lightly defended Kursk border on Tuesday morning with several hundred troops, according to Russia. Ukraine’s forces have engaged in fast-moving manoeuvre warfare, a type of combat that has rarely been seen during the war in Ukraine, which has been largely dominated by fortified trenches and heavy mining, preventing breakthroughs.

The fast-moving fighting and limited sources of information mean it is hard to be sure where the frontlines are in the sector.

A video posted on Ukrainian media outlets on Friday showed Ukrainian soldiers at a gas measuring facility in the town of Sudzha, six miles from the border, which they said they controlled. It was not immediately possible to verify the video but the claims were echoed by Russia’s semi-independent military bloggers, the principal source of information about the incursion.

The Russian bloggers said that Ukraine had pushed up three roads to the north-east, north and north-west of the town, including where a railway and likely supply route runs to the Russian city of Belgorod in the east.

Rybar, a Russian military blogger, said Ukraine’s tactics were to use its armoured vehicles to head towards Russian positions and use a third of them to tie down the defenders while the rest were “bypassing it, entering nearby settlements and setting up ambushes”. As a result Kyiv’s control of the territory in which it was operating was limited, the blogger and commentator said.

Ukraine’s leaders have largely avoided commenting on the attack, the first time their country’s regular armed forces have broken through the international border, though on Thursday night Zelenskiy alluded to developments.

“Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done,” he said in his nightly address. But Ukraine’s intentions remain unclear as the battle develops.

Hanna Shelest, a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis, said that Ukraine had regained some of the initiative with the surprise attack and that it had “a psychological effect in that it has weakened the image of Vladimir Putin as a strongman president who protects his own people”.

Kyiv’s likely military hope, Shelest added, was likely to be that “Russian reserves would be moved to make Ukraine’s situation in the east easier”, though she acknowledged there had not been any confirmed movement of troops from the Donbas, where Russia’s larger army has been making slow but steady gains for weeks.

John Foreman, a former UK defence attache to Moscow and Kyiv, said he believed the Kursk operation was “not without strategic risk” because it could also divert scarcer Ukrainian resources from already lengthy frontlines. “We don’t know the Ukrainian units involved, their strength, logistics, or combat and aviation support. Zooming out territorial gains are so far modest,” he added.

Attacks inside Russia had been considered politically fraught for Ukraine. Its western allies, led by the US, have refused to allow highly valued western weapons to be used to strike into Russia’s internationally recognised borders for fear of wider escalation. However, this week the White House has been relatively supportive, which Shelest said would be a relief to Ukraine’s leaders.

In April, the US publicly criticised Ukraine for targeting Russian oil refineries, fearing the impact on energy prices and inflation. But on Thursday, Sabrina Singh, the press secretary for the Pentagon, said Ukraine’s incursion into Russia was “consistent with our policy”, though it also remained the case that “we don’t support long-range attacks” into Russia. Singh refused to define what was meant by long-range.

• A Russian missile hit a shopping centre in the eastern Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka in the frontline Donetsk region on Friday, killing at least 14 people and injuring 43 others, Ukrainian officials said. Heavy black smoke clouds rose from the destroyed building in images and videos posted by officials. The interior minister later said the blaze was put out. “Russian terrorists hit an ordinary supermarket and a post office,” said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “There are people under the rubble.” Emergency services continued working amid the rubble looking for survivors.

• “No situation on the battlefield can justify targeting civilians,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said in an update on Kostiantynivka, which lies about 13km (eight miles) from the active combat line in Ukraine’s east. There was no immediate comment from Moscow. The Ukrainian regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, said Russia used a Kh-38 air-to-surface missile in the attack. Houses, shops and more than a dozen cars were also damaged. Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s largest private postal company, said its cargo office in the supermarket was damaged.

• Ukrainian forces staged an overnight ambush on a Russian convoy 40km (25 miles) across the border in Russia’s Kursk province as the Kremlin declared a federal emergency over a four-day incursion that has badly damaged its credibility, Dan Sabbagh and Pjotr Sauer report. A video circulated by Russian military bloggers showed a destroyed convoy, with bodies visible inside some trucks, on the E38 east-west highway at Oktyabrskoe, a location far deeper inside Russia than any previously confirmed fighting since Ukraine’s forces crossed the border on Tuesday.

• Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday it was sending rocket launchers, artillery, tanks and heavy trucks to reinforce its defences in the Kursk region, state media reported. About 1,000 Ukrainian troops and more than two dozen armoured vehicles and tanks were involved in the initial attack, Moscow said, though it later claimed to have destroyed many more pieces of equipment.

• Moscow said it had struck Ukrainian positions on the western edge of Sudzha, a town about 8km from the border that appeared to be the focus of Kyiv’s offensive, Agence France-Presse reported. Russian media shared a video purporting to show Sudzha residents appealing to Vladimir Putin for help, warning that many were unable to evacuate. Thousands have been evacuated from the border region, with Russia putting on an extra train to Moscow from the regional capital, Kursk. At a train station in Moscow, AFP journalists saw families disembarking with children.

• The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, urged Ukraine and Russia on Friday to show “maximum restraint” in fighting in the Kursk region, site of one of Russia’s largest nuclear power stations. Russia’s diplomatic mission in Vienna, quoted by Russian news agencies, said it had told the International Agency for Atomic Energy that fragments had been found at the station, possibly from downed missiles, but there was no evidence of any direct attack.

• Ukraine expanded its own evacuation zone in the Sumy region, just across the border from Kursk, on Friday. “About 20,000 people need to be evacuated” from 28 settlements, Ukraine’s police force said. Ukraine also said it had carried out a major airstrike on a Russian military base in the Lipetsk region, about 280km from the Russia-Ukraine border. It struck “warehouses containing guided aerial bombs and a number of other facilities”, it said. Videos online showed huge explosions.

• Russia introduced anti-terrorism measures early on Saturday in three regions bordering Ukraine, Russian news agencies quoted officials as saying. The agencies quoted regional governors or the national anti-terrorism committee as saying the special regime would apply to the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions. The RIA news agency said the measures included possible displacement of residents, limits on transport in specific areas, beefed-up security around sensitive sites, and wire taps of telephone and other communications.

• Ukrainian special forces conducted an amphibious raid on the Russian-occupied Kinburn Spit in the Black Sea’s north-west on Friday, destroying six Russian armoured vehicles and about three dozen personnel, Ukrainian military intelligence agency said. Moscow’s military vantage point on the spit is seen as one of the reasons Ukraine cannot reopen its ports of Mykolaiv and Kherson and export goods from them via its Black Sea shipping corridor. Russia’s defence ministry claimed the raid was repelled, with some of the Ukrainian forces foundering on mines and the rest gunned down, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported. There was no independent confirmation.

• Russian forces had taken the village of Vesele near Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Russian agencies reported the defence ministry as saying on Friday. Pokrovsk lies on a main road that serves as an important supply route to other towns under Ukrainian government control such as Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka.

• Last month was the deadliest month for Ukraine’s civilians since October 2022, the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said, as Russia stepped up bombardments. “The high number of casualties in July continued an alarming trend of increasing civilian casualties since March 2024,” it said.

• The US announced a $125m military aid package for Ukraine that would include Stinger missiles, artillery ammunition and anti-armour systems. The military assistance would be the tenth tranche of equipment for Ukraine since Joe Biden signed a national security supplemental package in April, said the president’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby.

• The US, UK and Canada unveiled sweeping sanctions against Belarus on Friday to mark the fourth anniversary of a contested presidential election that returned Alexander Lukashenko as president. The US treasury said it had sanctioned 19 people, 14 companies and an aeroplane for evading existing sanctions and for supporting Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine. Earlier on Friday the UK announced fresh sanctions against four individuals and three businesses, while Canadian sanctions were against 10 individuals and six entities.

A passenger plane with 61 people on board has crashed in a fiery wreck in Brazil’s São Paulo state, killing all passengers and crew.

The airline Voepass initially reported 62 people had been on the plane but later revised the figure to 61, confirming the deaths of all 57 passengers and four crew members on board.

“At this time, Voepass is prioritizing provision of unrestricted assistance to the victims’ families and effectively collaborating with authorities to determine the causes of the accident,” the company said in a statement

“There are no survivors,” Col Emerson Massera of the Brazilian military police told reporters at the crash site in the city of Vinhedo late on Thursday.

Massera said the fire had been brought under control, but about 50 firefighters were still working to cool down the area. “It’s a very sad scene; our work now is focused on clearing the area so that the investigation and identification of the bodies can proceed,” he said.

The ATR-72 turboprop plane was en route from Cascavel, in the state of Paraná, to Guarulhos, in São Paulo, when it crashed in a residential neighbourhood about 76km away from the state capital.

No casualties were reported on the ground, according to Col Cassio Araújo de Freitas, the general commander of the military police, who said: “We have no reports of any other victims besides those on the aircraft.”

According to the Flight Radar website, the plane was traveling at 17,000ft before plunging 4,000ft in two minutes, and then its signal was lost.

Video shared on social media showed the plane spiraling out of control as it plunged down into a cluster of trees, followed by a large plume of black smoke.

Another clip showed flames and smoke coming from the plane fuselage where it had apparently plowed into the side of a house. Burning debris and at least one body could be seen strewn across the gardens of a residential area, while emergency vehicles arrived.

Ana Lúcia de Lima, who lives nearby, told the UOL news website that the noise was so loud it “sounded like it was falling into my house … The first blast was strong, there was already dark smoke coming out, and then there were several more explosions.”

Another resident, Daniel de Lima, said he heard a loud noise before looking outside and seeing the plane in a horizontal spiral.

“It was rotating, but it wasn’t moving forward,” he told Reuters. “Soon after, it fell out of the sky and exploded.”

The Brazilian air force and the federal police sent teams of investigators to the site.

The head of the air force’s Aeronautical Accident Investigation and Prevention Centre, Brigadier Marcelo Moreno, said that there was no timeline for the investigation to be completed. He said: “It is still very premature to say anything.”

But he said it was already clear that “there was no communication from the aircraft to the control authorities indicating an emergency”.

Voepass stated that the aircraft had taken off “without any flight restrictions, with all its systems functioning properly for the operation”.

Speaking at an event in southern Brazil on Friday afternoon, just minutes after the accident, the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called for a minute of silence for those lost in the crash.

The Oscar-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix has dropped out of a new gay drama, directed by Todd Haynes, just five days before filming was set to begin.

According to Indiewire, Variety and Deadline, the actor is alleged to have got “cold feet” and sources close to the film-makers have confirmed to the Guardian that the project is cancelled altogether with no plans to recast the role.

Phoenix was set to star opposite the Top Gun: Maverick actor Danny Ramirez in a 30s-set love story with “explicit sexual content”. The plan was for the film to carry the controversial NC-17 rating due to the sex scenes.

Last year Haynes, while promoting his Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore drama May December, said the film “challenges you with the sexual relationship” between the two men.

“What was so remarkable is that it all started with Joaquin having some ideas and some thoughts and just questions and images,” Haynes said to Variety. “And he came to me and said, “Does this connect to you at all?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is really interesting.’”

He added that Phoenix was the one “pushing it further into more dangerous territory, sexually”.

The film was set to be produced by Haynes’s long-time collaborator Christine Vachon. Reportedly crew members in Mexico are now waiting to be paid before the production is officially dead.

Haynes is now said to be focusing on an adaptation of Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel Trust for HBO. The project will be a reunion for Haynes and Kate Winslet, who previously starred in his 2011 miniseries adaptation of Mildred Pierce.

Phoenix, last seen in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, recently finished another film with the Beau Is Afraid director, Ari Aster, called Eddington alongside Emma Stone. His much-anticipated Joker sequel is set to premiere at next month’s Venice film festival.

The Guardian has reached out to Haynes, Vachon and Phoenix’s representatives for comment.

The Oscar-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix has dropped out of a new gay drama, directed by Todd Haynes, just five days before filming was set to begin.

According to Indiewire, Variety and Deadline, the actor is alleged to have got “cold feet” and sources close to the film-makers have confirmed to the Guardian that the project is cancelled altogether with no plans to recast the role.

Phoenix was set to star opposite the Top Gun: Maverick actor Danny Ramirez in a 30s-set love story with “explicit sexual content”. The plan was for the film to carry the controversial NC-17 rating due to the sex scenes.

Last year Haynes, while promoting his Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore drama May December, said the film “challenges you with the sexual relationship” between the two men.

“What was so remarkable is that it all started with Joaquin having some ideas and some thoughts and just questions and images,” Haynes said to Variety. “And he came to me and said, “Does this connect to you at all?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is really interesting.’”

He added that Phoenix was the one “pushing it further into more dangerous territory, sexually”.

The film was set to be produced by Haynes’s long-time collaborator Christine Vachon. Reportedly crew members in Mexico are now waiting to be paid before the production is officially dead.

Haynes is now said to be focusing on an adaptation of Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel Trust for HBO. The project will be a reunion for Haynes and Kate Winslet, who previously starred in his 2011 miniseries adaptation of Mildred Pierce.

Phoenix, last seen in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, recently finished another film with the Beau Is Afraid director, Ari Aster, called Eddington alongside Emma Stone. His much-anticipated Joker sequel is set to premiere at next month’s Venice film festival.

The Guardian has reached out to Haynes, Vachon and Phoenix’s representatives for comment.

Police investigating the riots led by the far right say they have made more than 700 arrests for alleged offences, and promised “hundreds” more to come.

Of the 741 arrests, 32 relate to online offences such as incitement, and the scale of the operation is shown by the fact the arrest took place in 36 of the 43 force areas across England and Wales.

Arrests include allegations of violent disorder, theft and antisocial behaviour, and police say the investigations across the country will probably last for months to come.

The figures come as communities and forces brace for more potential gatherings that could tip into violence, with police continuing with their biggest mobilisation to face down a public order threat since the 2011 riots across England.

Police said 302 people had been charged, with more to come, and said further cases should be expected against “rioters and those spreading online hate”. The new figures were issued by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC). The figures include Northern Ireland, where police have arrest 26 people and charged 21 in relation to rioting.

Detectives are using a variety of sources to identify suspects, including drone and body-worn video footage. BJ Harrington, a chief constable who is the national lead for public order, warned that facial recognition, which is being used retrospectively, can identify people even if they are wearing masks.

Police chiefs are convinced their constant public messages about swift and robust justice will continue to act as a deterrent to some who may be tempted to join in the violent disorder seen in England and Northern Ireland since last Tuesday. The latest police statement is part of that campaign.

The violence broke out after false information about the suspect of the stabbings in Southport that left three young girls dead was widely shared online.

The violence has in part been stoked by the extremist far right, and has involved a strong anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment. Some people arrested joined in spontaneously, police believe.

The past two nights have been quieter, but police said 6,000 riot officers would be deployed over the weekend as officers wait to see if the worst of the violence has passed.

Gavin Stephens, the NPCC chair, said: “While the previous two nights have been a welcome break from the appalling scenes of the last week, and may have reached a turning point, we are by no means complacent.

“Our message to those involved in violence is that we continue to comb through thousands of images, live streams and videos as well as body-worn footage to find you.

“We are grateful to those who are calling us to identify those in the images circulated by forces. We are also grateful for the many messages of support to the officers, staff and volunteers that have faced hatred, racial abuse and violence whilst doing their job.”

Police declined to say how many potential gatherings they expect this weekend. Police saysaid they expected 160 far right-led gatherings on Wednesday but only 30 happenedtook place with little or no incident, and with anti-racists taking to the streets to defend those under attack.

Stephens said: “The strong message that communities sent on Wednesday evening that they don’t tolerate hate and racism and violence, also, as potentially the start of a turning point in this whole thing.

“So, I think the mood is different as a consequence of all that.”

Harrington said: “I would not say we are not worried. But what we are is prepared … policing’s got a grip of this.”

Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, said: “More than 100 extra CPS prosecutors stand ready to respond rapidly to emerging requirements for charging decisions and advice.

“We understand the deterrence impact of a swift and robust response from law enforcement. Our aim is to make immediate charging decisions where we can, to enable courts to sentence within days.”

Kamala Harris continues to gain strength in the US presidential election, as polls nationally and in battleground states show her building leads or catching Donald Trump.

On Friday morning, FiveThirtyEight, a leading polling analysis site, puts Harris, the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee for president, up by 2.1 points over her Republican rival in its national average.

In averages for swing states, where control of the White House rests, Harris led in Michigan by two points, Pennsylvania by 1.1 point and Wisconsin by 1.8 points. Trump led in Arizona by less than half a point and in Georgia by half a point.

In battleground states without enough polls to calculate averages, Trump was ahead by about three points in North Carolina and the candidates were about level in Nevada. In the latter state, recent CBS and Bloomberg polls have given Harris two-point leads while on Friday the Nevada Independent reported a poll showing the Democrat six points up.

The US vice-president, 59, has changed the election race since mid-July, when Joe Biden, 81, finally heeded calls from his own party to step aside for a younger candidate to take on Trump, who is 78. He endorsed Harris to take over the top of the Democratic ticket for this November, while he serves out his single term.

On Thursday night, Amy Walter, of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, told PBS that before Harris entered the race, Biden “was behind by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in those … battleground states. You can see almost six points in a state like Georgia and Nevada.

“Now, just in the time that Harris has been in the race, you have seen those numbers move pretty significantly toward Harris, four- or five-point shifts in those battleground states, which is mirroring what we’re seeing in the national poll as well.

“It hasn’t turned those states, though, from ones that favored Trump to ones that now favor Harris. It just means now that the race is no longer as lopsided in Trump’s favor as it was, say, in late July … which is why we’re calling this race a toss-up.”

The same day, the Cook Political Report changed its ratings for three Sun belt swing states – Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – from “leans Republican” to “toss-up”.

Another analysis site, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, based at the University of Virginia, changed Georgia from leans Republican to toss-up. Looking north, the site changed Minnesota and New Hampshire, states where Trump made gains while Biden was top of the Democratic ticket, from leans Democratic to likely Democratic.

Harris’s choice for vice-president, Tim Walz, is governor of Minnesota. Any Walz effect on polling has not yet been felt but some observers expressed surprise that Harris passed over Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, a battleground state.

Others argued back. For Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Joel K Goldstein said that though Shapiro and Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator who was also closely considered, were “both from competitive states that were … important pieces of the 306 electoral votes Democrats won in 2020”, in choosing Walz, “Harris demonstrated yet again that vice-presidential selection turns on matters other than the over-hyped criterion of home-state advantage.

“Walz also had the most experience (17 and a half years) in traditional vice-presidential feeder positions (senator, governor, member of the House of Representatives, holder of high federal executive office) of her options, which contrasts with the very limited experience (one and a half years) of his Republican counterpart, Ohio senator JD Vance.”

Among widely noted individual polls, Harris led for a second week in the Economist/YouGov survey, maintaining a two-point advantage. Reuters/Ipsos found Harris up five points, 42%-37%, up two on the last such survey, taken just after Biden withdrew. Ipsos said it also found in a separate poll Harris leading Trump 42%-40% in the seven battleground states, though it “did not break out results for individual states”.

A national poll from Marquette University in Wisconsin showed Harris up six points, with 53% support among likely voters to 47% for Trump. Harris maintained that lead when other candidates were included. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the leading independent, took 6% support. In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Kennedy’s support had fallen six points to 4% since July.

The Marquette poll contained further good news for Harris, pointing to her energizing effect as the campaign heads for the home stretch: an 11-point rise in respondents saying they were very enthusiastic about voting in November.

“Enthusiasm has increased substantially among Democrats, with a small increase among Republicans,” the Marquette pollster Charles Franklin wrote. “Republicans had a consistent enthusiasm advantage over Democrats in previous polls, but this has been mostly erased now.”

It was not all good news for Harris and Democrats. In a poll released on Thursday, CNBC put Trump up two points and firmly ahead on who voters thought would make them financially better off.

Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican pollster who worked on the survey with a Democratic counterpart, said the election was “less now a referendum on Trump than it is a head-to-head competition between the two candidates”.

Harris, Roberts said, was “still carrying a lot of water for the [Biden] administration. She has to answer for that and define herself independently … That’s a lot of baggage to carry when you’ve got a compressed time frame against a mature campaign on Trump’s side.”

A California man with a history of political violence was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison for repeatedly attacking police with flagpoles and other makeshift weapons during the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.

David Nicholas Dempsey’s sentence is among the longest among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. Prosecutors described him as one of the most violent members of the mob of Donald Trump supporters that attacked the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.

Dempsey, who is from Van Nuys, stomped on police officers’ heads. He swung poles at officers defending a tunnel, struck an officer in the head with a metal crutch and attacked police with pepper spray and broken pieces of furniture, prosecutors said.

He climbed atop other rioters, using them like “human scaffolding” to reach officers guarding a tunnel entrance. He injured at least two police officers, prosecutors said.

“Your conduct on January 6 was exceptionally egregious,” the US district judge Royce Lamberth told Dempsey. “You did not get carried away in the moment.”

Dempsey pleaded guilty in January to two counts of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon.

Only the former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has received a longer sentence in the January 6 attack. Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years for orchestrating a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election.

Dempsey called his conduct “reprehensible” and apologized to the police officers whom he assaulted.

“You were performing your duties, and I responded with hostility and violence,” he said before learning his sentence.

Justice department prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 21 years and 10 months for Dempsey, a former construction worker and fast food restaurant employee. Dempsey’s violence was so extreme that he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him, prosecutors wrote.

“David Dempsey is political violence personified,” assistant US attorney Douglas Brasher told the judge.

The defense attorney Amy Collins, who sought a sentence of six years and six months, described the government’s sentencing recommendation as “ridiculous”.

“It makes him a statistic,” she said. “It doesn’t consider the person he is, how much he has grown.”

Dempsey was wearing a tactical vest, a helmet and an American flag gaiter covering his face when he attacked police at a tunnel leading to the lower west terrace doors. He shot pepper spray at the Metropolitan police department detective Phuson Nguyen just as another rioter yanked at the officer’s gas mask.

“The searing spray burned Detective Nguyen’s lungs, throat, eyes and face and left him gasping for breath, fearing he might lose consciousness and be overwhelmed by the mob,” prosecutors wrote.

Dempsey then struck the Metropolitan police sergeant Jason Mastony in the head with a metal crutch, cracking the shield on his gas mask and cutting his head.

“I collapsed and caught myself against the wall as my ears rang. I was able to stand again and hold the line for a few more minutes until another assault by rioters pushed the police line back away from the threshold of the tunnel,” Mastony said in a statement submitted to the court.

Dempsey has been jailed since his arrest in August 2021.

His criminal record in California includes convictions for burglary, theft and assault. The assault conviction stemmed from an October 2019 gathering near the Santa Monica pier, where Dempsey attacked people peacefully demonstrating against then president Trump, prosecutors said.

“The peaceful protest turned violent as Dempsey took a canister of bear spray from his pants and dispersed it at close range against several protesters,” they wrote, noting that Dempsey was sentenced to 200 days of jail time.

Dempsey engaged in at least three other acts of “vicious political violence” that didn’t lead to criminal charges “for various reasons”, according to prosecutors. They said Dempsey struck a counter-protester over the head with a skateboard at a June 2019 rally in Los Angeles; used the same skateboard to assault someone at an August 2020 protest in Tujunga, California; and attacked a protester with pepper spray and a metal bat during a August 2020 protest in Beverly Hills, California.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with January 6-related federal crimes. More than 900 of them have been convicted and sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to the 22 years that Tarrio received.

A California man with a history of political violence was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison for repeatedly attacking police with flagpoles and other makeshift weapons during the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.

David Nicholas Dempsey’s sentence is among the longest among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. Prosecutors described him as one of the most violent members of the mob of Donald Trump supporters that attacked the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.

Dempsey, who is from Van Nuys, stomped on police officers’ heads. He swung poles at officers defending a tunnel, struck an officer in the head with a metal crutch and attacked police with pepper spray and broken pieces of furniture, prosecutors said.

He climbed atop other rioters, using them like “human scaffolding” to reach officers guarding a tunnel entrance. He injured at least two police officers, prosecutors said.

“Your conduct on January 6 was exceptionally egregious,” the US district judge Royce Lamberth told Dempsey. “You did not get carried away in the moment.”

Dempsey pleaded guilty in January to two counts of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon.

Only the former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has received a longer sentence in the January 6 attack. Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years for orchestrating a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election.

Dempsey called his conduct “reprehensible” and apologized to the police officers whom he assaulted.

“You were performing your duties, and I responded with hostility and violence,” he said before learning his sentence.

Justice department prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 21 years and 10 months for Dempsey, a former construction worker and fast food restaurant employee. Dempsey’s violence was so extreme that he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him, prosecutors wrote.

“David Dempsey is political violence personified,” assistant US attorney Douglas Brasher told the judge.

The defense attorney Amy Collins, who sought a sentence of six years and six months, described the government’s sentencing recommendation as “ridiculous”.

“It makes him a statistic,” she said. “It doesn’t consider the person he is, how much he has grown.”

Dempsey was wearing a tactical vest, a helmet and an American flag gaiter covering his face when he attacked police at a tunnel leading to the lower west terrace doors. He shot pepper spray at the Metropolitan police department detective Phuson Nguyen just as another rioter yanked at the officer’s gas mask.

“The searing spray burned Detective Nguyen’s lungs, throat, eyes and face and left him gasping for breath, fearing he might lose consciousness and be overwhelmed by the mob,” prosecutors wrote.

Dempsey then struck the Metropolitan police sergeant Jason Mastony in the head with a metal crutch, cracking the shield on his gas mask and cutting his head.

“I collapsed and caught myself against the wall as my ears rang. I was able to stand again and hold the line for a few more minutes until another assault by rioters pushed the police line back away from the threshold of the tunnel,” Mastony said in a statement submitted to the court.

Dempsey has been jailed since his arrest in August 2021.

His criminal record in California includes convictions for burglary, theft and assault. The assault conviction stemmed from an October 2019 gathering near the Santa Monica pier, where Dempsey attacked people peacefully demonstrating against then president Trump, prosecutors said.

“The peaceful protest turned violent as Dempsey took a canister of bear spray from his pants and dispersed it at close range against several protesters,” they wrote, noting that Dempsey was sentenced to 200 days of jail time.

Dempsey engaged in at least three other acts of “vicious political violence” that didn’t lead to criminal charges “for various reasons”, according to prosecutors. They said Dempsey struck a counter-protester over the head with a skateboard at a June 2019 rally in Los Angeles; used the same skateboard to assault someone at an August 2020 protest in Tujunga, California; and attacked a protester with pepper spray and a metal bat during a August 2020 protest in Beverly Hills, California.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with January 6-related federal crimes. More than 900 of them have been convicted and sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to the 22 years that Tarrio received.

There will be no home gold medal for France’s footballers at Paris 2024. Instead it was Spain who ended up 5-3 winners of an astonishing men’s final after Sergio Camello scored twice in extra time at the Parc des Princes.

This was a genuinely wild game, an eight-goal, two-hour, see-saw thriller, decorated with brilliant goals, saves, comebacks and an added time VAR equaliser. France will feel unlucky not to have made a long spell of sustained pressure tell. The greatest compliment for Spain’s performance was that it was in its best moments just very Spanish.

At the end of which Spain’s male footballers have now achieved something genuinely rare, reeling off three titles in four weeks with three almost entirely separate teams. Olympic gold here follows victory in the final of the Uefa Under-19 tournament last month and victory at the European Championship in Germany two weeks before that.

Those three titles can now sit alongside the women’s World Cup win last year. It is a startling run of success for everyone involved in the development and coaching of Spanish football.

Part of the blueprint is the fact every one of those teams has played, if not the same way, then with similar attributes: high technique, tactical awareness and above all the ability to see and manage the game in front of them. Game intelligence has been the defining quality of Spain’s summer of love, as opposed to some oppressive one-size tactical system.

Deep in the second half here there was the fascinating sight of six Spanish substitutes, basically another bunch of hyper-skilled young guys, not so much warming up as watching, chatting and following every move. There is a great deal the English game could learn from all of this. Plus ça change.

The Parc des Princes was packed for this final. The pre-match ceremonials were an enjoyable Olympic rag-bag, capped by a live performance of Freed From Desire by the actual Gala, a moving moment for anyone who has witnessed this modern terrace classic sung by so many stands full of giddy people, like finally seeing an actual Warhol. Hopefully this will turbocharge her downloads, Céline Dion-style.

The game kicked off and nothing happened for 11 minutes. Then suddenly everything happened, four goals in 17 minutes, three of them to Spain. France scored first. Álex Baena scuffed his clearance. Enzo Millot took the ball and shot early, although Arnau Tenas, who plays here for Paris Saint-Germain, will be disappointed with his effort to keep it out of the net.

Six minutes later Spain were level via a brilliantly worked goal, Fermín López side-footing into the corner for his fifth of the tournament after an extended period of slick possession. And Spain were 2-1 up soon after with another well-made goal, this time created by a driven cross from the left by Juan Miranda with Fermín in the right place to tap it in.

Spain’s third on 28 minutes came from a free-kick on the left edge of the area. Baena stepped back and floated the most delightfully delicate right-footed shot into the corner, Guillaume Restes static on his line, the kind of misdirection that makes a free-kick goal look so much more lovely.

Thierry Henry brought on fresh legs after the break, replacing Alexandre Lacazette with Arnaud Kalimuendo, who hit the bar with a header just before the hour. France were more patient on the ball, slicker through midfield, with Manu Koné an orderly influence.

They began to make chances. Spain looked tired after an intense three weeks. Tenas made an astonishing right-handed save low down. And with 12 minutes to go France made it 3-2, as Michael Olise’s free-kick was deflected into his own goal by Miranda.

France’s hopes of gold were preserved at the death by a moment of incredible drama as they were awarded a stoppage-time penalty after a VAR check. Replays showed Miranda in a back-post wrestle with Kalimuendo at a corner.

The referee, Ramon Abatti, performed an extraordinary exhibitionist’s strut back from his monitor, paused, then pointed to the spot like a man identifying the killer at the end of a particularly dramatic murder mystery.

Mateta buried it to make it 3-3 in the 93rd minute. The Parc erupted. France deserved to take it deep. But it was Spain who produced the key moment of incision on 99 minutes. Again it came from a long spell of possession. Acceleration arrived with a wonderful nudged pass from Sergio Gómez into the run of Camello. The finish was delightful, dinked over the advancing goalkeeper.

France might have forced it to penalties. In the event the game ended in surreal fashion as Camello scored a second on the counter, awarded at the final whistle after a VAR check. Spain had scored five in a game where they spent more than an hour defending.

This was a first men’s Olympic gold for Spain since 1992, but it felt like completing a set.

In the chaotic aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last month, a local police officer told a fellow officer he had warned the Secret Service days earlier that the building where the 20-year-old gunman opened fire needed to be secured.

“I [bleep] told them they needed to post guys [bleep] over here,” the officer said in police body-camera footage released by the Butler township police department, with expletives bleeped out. “I told them that [bleeped expletive] Tuesday.”

When another officer asked who he told that to, he responded: “The Secret Service.”

Police body-camera videos, released in response to a public records request, show frustration among local law enforcement officers at how Thomas Matthew Crooks – whom police had flagged as suspicious before the shooting – managed to slip away from their view, scale a roof and open fire with an AR-style rifle at the former US president and Republican presidential nominee. CNN had submitted a public records request and published the footage.

They also show police expressing confusion and anger about why no law enforcement had been stationed on the roof.

“I wasn’t even concerned about it because I thought someone was on the roof,” one officer says. He asked how “the hell” they could have lost sight of Crooks after spotting him acting suspiciously if law enforcement had been on top of the building. The other officer responded: “They were inside.”

Trump was struck in the ear but avoided serious injury. One spectator was killed and two others were injured.

Several investigations are under way into the security failures that led to the shooting. The acting Secret Service director, Ronald Rowe Jr, who took over after the resignation of former chief Kimberly Cheatle, has said he “cannot defend why that roof was not better secured”.

The Secret Service controls the area after people pass through metal detectors, while local law enforcement is supposed to handle outside the perimeter. Rowe told lawmakers last month that the Secret Service had “assumed that the state and locals had it” covered.

A Secret Service spokesperson said on Friday the agency was reviewing the body-camera footage.

“The US Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners, who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day,” a spokesperson, Anthony Guglielmi, said in an email, adding: “The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump was a US Secret Service failure, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”

In one clip, law enforcement officers can be heard calling to each other after shots were fired, shouting about the shooter: “Who has got eyes on him?” At that point, government snipers had killed Crooks and his body was on the rooftop.

Associated Press contributed reporting

A draft law in Iraq that would allow the marriage of girls as young as nine has provoked protests across the country, with women’s rights activists saying it would “legalise child rape”.

The Shia religious groups that dominate the political system in Iraq have been pushing to erode women’s rights in the country for more than a decade.

Unlike neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Iraq does not have a system of male guardianship requiring women to have the permission of a husband, father or male guardian to make crucial life choices such as marriage.

However, a new proposal, which passed its first reading in the Iraqi parliament this week, would give religious authorities the power to decide on family affairs, including marriage, divorce and the care of children

“This is a catastrophe for women,” said Raya Faiq, who is the coordinator for a coalition of groups which are opposing the law change. The group includes some Iraqi MPs.

“My husband and my family oppose child marriage. But imagine if my daughter gets married and my daughter’s husband wants to marry off my granddaughter as a child. The new law would allow him to do so. I would not be allowed to object. This law legalises child rape.”

During protests organised by the coalition this week in the capital, Baghdad, and in several other cities in Iraq, supporters of the new law confronted opponents and accused them of “moral decadence” and “following western agendas”.

Although Iraq has outlawed marriage under the age of 18 since the 1950s, one survey by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, found that 28% of girls in Iraq had married before they reached the age of 18.

Since 2021, the Iraqi political system has been dominated by the Coordination Framework, a political coalition of Iran-aligned factions. They have passed several sharia-oriented laws, including one to adopt religious holidays and another criminalising gay and transgender people in Iraq.

“Following the mass youth protests which took place in Iraq in 2019, these political players saw that the role of women had begun to strengthen in society,” said Nadia Mahmood, co-founder of the Iraq-based Aman Women’s Alliance. “They felt that feminist, gender and women’s organisations, plus civil society and activist movements, posed a threat to their power and status … [and] began to restrict and suppress them.”

A bloc of 25 female MPs in parliament have been trying to stop the draft law being put to a second vote, but said they face strong opposition.

“Unfortunately, male MPs who support this law speak in a masculine way, asking what’s wrong with marrying a minor? Their thinking is narrow minded. They don’t take into consideration that they are the legislators that determine people’s fate … but rather follow their masculine thinking to authorise all this,” said Alia Nassif, an Iraqi MP.

Protesters said they feared their children would face a future even harsher than their own if the law changes were adopted. “I have one daughter, I don’t want her to be forced like me to marry as a child,” said Azhar Jassim, who had to leave school to be married aged 16.

• Produced in collaboration with Jummar, an independent Iraqi media platform

Poorer physical health across multiple organ systems has been significantly associated with depression because of the role the brain plays linking physical and mental health, new research has shown.

The study published in Nature Mental Health on Friday has identified for the first time the biological pathways through which poor organ health may lead to poor brain health, which may in turn lead to poor mental health.

The research led by the University of Melbourne, in collaboration with the University College London and the University of Cambridge, studied a subset of 18,083 people in the UK Biobank cohort.

Among these, 7,749 people had no clinically diagnosed major medical and mental conditions, while 10,334 had a lifetime diagnosis of one of the four common mental disorders including schizophrenia (67), bipolar disorder (592), depression (9,817) and generalised anxiety disorder (2,041).

They were aged between 40–70 years (with a mean age of 53.7 ) at the time of recruitment in 2006–2010 where researchers also separately assessed the health of their seven organ systems: the lungs, muscles and bones, kidneys, liver, heart, and the metabolic and immune systems. As well as physical assessments, the participants also undertook questionnaires for environmental and lifestyle factors.

For each of the seven organ systems, the researchers found that poorer organ health was significantly associated with higher depressive symptoms.

Similarly, poor organ health scores, except kidney and lung scores, were significantly associated with higher anxiety symptoms.

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Poorer health scores of all organs, except the kidneys, were significantly associated with higher neuroticism (participants with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder).

“The musculoskeletal system consistently showed the strongest associations with the three mental health measures, followed by the immune, metabolic and hepatic [liver] systems,” according to the research.

The researchers found a consistent relationship for each reduction in musculoskeletal health, a consistent worsening of mental health symptoms.

Physical–mental health associations were modest for heart and lung systems and the weakest for the kidney system, they found.

The researchers then investigated whether the association between organ and mental health is mediated by the brain by gathering brain imaging data through participants undergoing an MRI between 4–14 years later.

For each person, a score was calculated for the volume of each brain gray matter (GM) region and the brain’s white matter tract – the fiber pathways that connect different components of the neural system. The participants then undertook an online assessment for mental health outcomes.

The researchers found “multiple significant pathways through which poor organ health may lead to poor brain health.” Across the three mental health measures, they found the volume of brain gray matter had the largest impact on depressive symptom severity, while the influence was weakest on anxiety.

They found the extent to which brain structure mediates physical–mental health varies across organ systems. “In general, the brain showed a strong mediating effect on organs that had strong direct effects on mental health outcomes; namely, the musculoskeletal and immune systems.”

The lead author, Dr Ye Ella Tian, a research fellow in the University of Melbourne’s department of psychiatry, said “by integrating clinical data, brain imaging and a wide array of organ-specific biomarkers in a large population-based cohort, we were able to establish for the first time multiple pathways involving the brain as a mediating factor and through which poor physical health of body organ systems may lead to poor mental health.”

The authors also assessed 14 lifestyle factors commonly associated with physical and mental health, including smoking, alcohol use, physical inactivity, poor nutrition and sleep, finding most were significantly associated with all three mental health measures.

The authors noted several limitations of the study. They acknowledged brain imaging and mental health assessments not available at the first study wave of the UK Biobank, when physical health was assessed.

Because of the sequence of participant assessment, they were unable to assess pathways where poor mental health may lead to poor physical health via influencing brain structure, or other combinations. They noted the relationship between physical and mental health is likely bi-directional.

They also acknowledged the UK Biobank cohort was predominantly white British participants and further work is needed to assess the generalisability of findings across the adult lifespan and in a diversity of ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Dr. Matthew Ahmadi, a research fellow at the University of Sydney’s faculty of medicine and health who was not involved in the research, said “the authors’ thorough integration of several lifestyle and health factors, brain imaging, organ-specific biomarkers and analytical modelling allowed them to identify potentially key pathways that the brain, physical health, and organ function may directly and indirectly impact mental health through biological pathways”.