Ukraine’s top commander says his forces have captured 1,000 sq km (386 square miles) of Russia’s bordering Kursk region, while Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has vowed a “worthy response” to the attack and ordered his troops to “dislodge the enemy from our territories”.

With Russia still struggling to repel the surprise assault a week after it began, Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by video link and said the advance into Russian territory was ongoing.

“We continue to conduct an offensive operation in the Kursk region. Currently, we control about 1,000 square kilometres of the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said in a video published on Zelenskiy’s Telegram account.

He provided scant other detail, continuing Kyiv’s strategy of silence that contrasts starkly with last year’s counteroffensive which was known about for months in advance and which foundered on Russian defensive lines.

Syrskyi spoke a few hours after Alexei Smirnov, Russia’s acting regional governor of Kursk, estimated that Kyiv’s forces had taken control of 28 settlements in an incursion that was about 12km deep and 40km wide.

Though less than half Syrkyi’s estimate of the Ukrainian gains, Smirnov’s remarks were a striking public admission of a major Russian setback more than 29 months since it launched a full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour.

It was not possible to verify independently the claims made by either side.

In a televised meeting with government officials, Putin said that “one of the obvious goals of the enemy is to sow discord, strife, intimidate people, destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society”.

“The main task is, of course, for the defence ministry to dislodge the enemy from our territories,” he said, adding that Kyiv was attempting to gain a better negotiating position in potential talks to end the war and to halt Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine.

121,000 people have fled the Kursk region since the start of the fighting, which has killed at least 12 civilians and injured 121 more, regional governor Alexei Smirnov told the meeting.

Authorities in Kursk announced on Monday they were widening their evacuation area to include Belovsky district, home to 14,000 residents. The neighbouring Belgorod region also said it was evacuating its border district of Krasnoyaruzhsky.

Putin said Russia would respond by showing “unanimous support for all those in distress” and claimed there had been an increase in men signing up to fight. “The enemy will receive a worthy response,” he said.

Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in his nightly address on Monday that the operation was a matter of Ukrainian security and the Kursk region had been used by Russia to launch many strikes against Ukraine.

He said Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, which lies across the border from Kursk region, had been struck by Russia almost 2,100 times since 1 June.

“Russia must be forced to make peace if Putin wants to fight so badly,” Zelenskiy said. “Russia brought war to others, and now it is coming home,” he added.

The Ukrainian attack comes after months of slow but steady advances by Russian forces in the east that has forced Ukraine’s troops on to the back foot as they try to withstand Russia’s heavy use of gliding bombs and assault troops.

Former Ukrainian defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told Reuters the Kursk operation looked like it aimed to distract Russian forces and its leadership from the eastern fronts.

“The apparent goal is to create a problem area for Russia, which will distract its forces and its leadership’s attention and resources from where they’re trying to succeed right now,” he said.

It was not clear if that goal had immediately succeeded. Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday its troops had “accelerated the speed of advance” in the eastern Donetsk region and taken the hamlet of Lysychne in their push towards the city of Pokrovsk.

A Ukrainian security official meanwhile told AFP that Kyiv was “not pulling back troops from the [Donetsk] area,” while “the intensity of Russian attacks has gone down a little bit”.

The Ukrainian official said he expected Russia would “in the end” stop the Kursk incursion.

Visiting Kyiv on Monday, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged the US presidential administration to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs.

“What do I think about Kursk? Bold, brilliant, beautiful. Keep it up,” he told reporters.

The combat inside Russia has also rekindled questions about whether Ukraine is using weaponry supplied by Nato members. Some western countries have balked at allowing Ukraine to use their military aid to hit Russian soil, fearing it would fuel an escalation that might drag Russia and Nato into war.

Though it’s not clear what weapons Ukraine is using across the border, Russian media widely reported that American Bradley and German Marder armoured infantry vehicles were there. The claim can not be independently verified.

Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said late on Monday that its representatives had inspected a damaged cooling tower at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine but could not immediately determine the cause of a fire there at the weekend. Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of starting the fire at the vast dormant nuclear power plant in Ukraine, with Russia blaming a drone attack and Ukraine saying it was likely Russia’s negligence or arson.

• Ukraine said on Monday its biggest cross-border assault of the war had captured 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles) of Russia’s Kursk region and that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have to be forced into making peace. “We continue to conduct an offensive operation in the Kursk region. Currently, we control about 1,000 square kilometres of the territory of the Russian Federation,” Ukraine’s top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a video briefing that was posted on Zelenskiy’s Telegram account.

• Russia’s acting regional governor of Kursk, estimated that Kyiv’s forces had taken control of 28 settlements in an incursion that was about 12 km deep and 40 km wide. Though less than half Syrkyi’s estimate of the Ukrainian gains, Smirnov’s remarks were a striking public admission of a major Russian setback more than 29 months since it launched a full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour. It was not possible to verify either claim independently.

• In a meeting with his national security council Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said the attack was aimed at improving Kyiv’s negotiating position ahead of possible peace talks and at slowing the advance of Russian forces. “The main task, of course, is for the defence ministry to squeeze out, to knock out the enemy from our territories,” Putin said, adding: “The enemy will certainly receive a worthy response.”

• Zelenskiy said the Kursk attack was targeting areas from which Russia was launching assaults on Ukrainian territory. “It is only fair to destroy Russian terrorists where they are, where they launch their strikes from,” he said in his nightly address. “Russian military airfields, Russian logistics. We see how useful this can be for bringing peace closer. Russia must be forced into peace if Putin wants to continue waging war so badly. He added: “Russia brought war to others, and now it is coming home.”

• Ukrainian forces in Kursk were trying to encircle Sudzha, where Russian natural gas flows into Ukraine, Reuters reported. Major battles were also under way near Korenevo, about 22 km (14 miles) from the border, and Martynovka village.

• Putin said on Monday that, despite the attack, “our armed forces are moving forward along the entire line of contact” in Ukraine. Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday its troops had “accelerated the speed of advance” in the eastern Donetsk region and taken the hamlet of Lysychne in their push towards the city of Pokrovsk. It was not possible to verify the claim independently.

• Ukrainian prosecutors said on Monday that law enforcement authorities had detained one of the country’s four deputy energy ministers and three other people as they were receiving part of a $500,000 bribe. An investigation revealed that the suspects had organised a scheme to smuggle mining equipment belonging to a state-owned coal mining enterprise out of the combat zone in the Donetsk region, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine. The suspects were not named.

Many dozens of Rohingya people, including children, were killed in an artillery and drone attack that targeted civilians as they tried to flee Myanmar last week.

Civilians were trying to escape violence in Maungdaw town, Rakhine state, by crossing the Naf River into Bangladesh when they were targeted last Monday. Videos shared on social media, which appeared to have been taken in the aftermath of the attack, showed bodies and bags strewn across the ground.

Nay San Lwin, the co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, who spoke to survivors, said the victims had travelled from villages including Maung Ni, Myoma Taung and Myoma Kayin Dan to try to cross the border. The drone attacks began at about 5pm the same day, he said.

“They told me several dozen, at least three to four dozen, drone bombs were dropped there. They are saying at least more than 200 were killed and around 300 injured. There is nobody to collect the dead bodies. Everyone is running to save their lives. Some are already in Bangladesh,” Nay San Lwin said.

Survivors who spoke to Reuters said they believed more than 200 people had been killed. A survivor who spoke to Associated Press said 150 people had been killed and many others wounded.

The Arakan Army, one of the armed groups seeking to overthrow the junta, has seized large areas of Rakhine state from the military in recent months.

The militia and Myanmar’s military blamed each other for the attack. Activists said they believed the Arakan Army was responsible, allegations the group denied. The activists said that for months the group had been targeting Rohingya people with killings, village torchings and forcible recruitment of young men.

The military has also been accused of atrocities against civilians. It already faces a genocide case in The Hague over its brutal crackdowns against Rohingya in 2016 and 2017. The minority group has long been persecuted in Myanmar, where people are denied citizenship and basic rights, such as freedom of movement.

“The Arakan Army is trying to finish the business of the Myanmar military,” said Nay San Lwin.

Rahim, a witness to the attack who asked not to give his real name, told the Guardian drones flew from a village that was under the control of the Arakan Army, and repeatedly struck civilians.

His family escaped the violence because they had been staying in a nearby village while he tried to arrange a boat to take them to Bangladesh. The family managed to cross the border at 4am on Tuesday.

“We decided we can’t stay in this town and in this country, we also will be killed. So we managed [to take] a boat and crossed the border that morning. The dead bodies were here and there, everywhere at that place,” he said. “No one could go to that place to help the injured people.

“When we are coming through that place, some people are still alive, but there was not any help. I am still hearing a voice, one person is telling [us]: ‘I am still not dead, please help me’, like this. But no one goes to help them because everyone is rushing to save their own lives and their own families.”

Survivors waited desperately for boats to try to flee to safety. Rahim said one of his friends boarded a small boat to try to escape but it became overloaded with people. His friend’s five children died when it sank.

“We have the right to live as a human being,” he said. “We just need to live simply as a human being in our own place, own country, own town.”

An Arakan Army spokesperson told Reuters: “According to our investigation, family members of terrorists tried to go to Bangladesh from Maungdaw and the junta dropped the bomb because they left without permission,” referring to Muslims who have joined Rohingya armed groups fighting against the Arakan Army.

Médecins Sans Frontières said that as of 10 August, its staff in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, had treated 50 patients who had fled Myanmar, including 18 children. Many of the patients had mortar shell injuries and gunshot wounds. The number of arrivals peaked on 6 August, MSF said, when it treated 21 people.

It said the patients had described a desperate situation in Rakhine state. “Some reported seeing people bombed while trying to find boats to cross the river into Bangladesh and escape the violence. Others described seeing hundreds of dead bodies on the riverbanks.

“Many patients spoke of being separated from their families en route to safer areas and of loved ones being killed in the violence. Many people said they were fearful that family members remaining in Myanmar would not survive.”

Donald Trump sat down with billionaire Elon Musk on Monday for a rambling and vitriolic interview that revisited many of the former president’s most divisive talking points.

The interview on X, which is owned by Musk, got off to an inauspicious start, with technical issues that initially prevented many users from watching the conversation. Musk blamed the delay on a “massive” cyber-attack, but the cause of the glitch was not entirely clear.

After the interview started more than 40 minutes late, Trump began the conversation by recounting the failed assassination attempt against him last month at Musk’s request. Although Trump previously said he would only share the story once at the Republican convention last month, he again discussed in detail his brush with death at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which he said he would visit again in October.

“It was a miracle. If I hadn’t turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now, as much as I like you,” Trump told Musk.

Trump then pivoted to discussing his usual anti-immigration views, warning about the “rough people” attempting to enter the country through the US-Mexico border.

“These are people that are in jail for murder and all sorts of things, and they’re releasing them into our country,” Trump said. Extensive research has uncovered no link between immigration and higher levels of crime.

Trump proceeded to attack his opponent Kamala Harris as the “border tsar” of the Biden administration, even though Democratic officials and immigrant rights experts have contested that characterization of her policy portfolio. He repeatedly mocked Harris as a “radical” Democrat who had “destroyed” California when she served as the state’s attorney general and later its senator.

And he bizarrely complimented Harris for looking “beautiful” on the cover of Time magazine, comparing her to his wife, Melania, while noting that the image was a sketch.

The Harris campaign condemned the interview as an example of Trump’s “extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda”.

“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself – self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024,” said Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesperson.

The interview came as Harris has pulled ahead in polls following the launch of her campaign last month. The Decision Desk HQ and the Hill’s national polling average now shows Harris with a 0.3% lead over Trump, who had a 3.3% advantage over Biden before the president withdrew from the race.

Harris appears to be in an even stronger position in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which will likely determine the outcome of the election in November.

According to a recent set of surveys conducted last week by the New York Times and Siena College, Harris now leads by four points in those three states, while prior polls showed a virtual tie or a slight Trump advantage in those states.

Democrats’ momentum appears to have rattled Trump, and his campaign has struggled to define Harris as her favorability has climbed in the past month. On Monday, Trump seemed to be longing for a return to his contest against Biden, as he continued to ridicule the Democratic incumbent as “the worst president in history”.

Trump peppered his comments with insults directed at other Democrats as well, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (“a real loser”) and California congressman Adam “Shifty” Schiff. He also went on extended and often baffling tangents about topics such as the climate crisis and the war in Ukraine.

“The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years,” Trump said. “The biggest threat is nuclear warming.”

Trump said of the war in Ukraine: “Russia defeated Germany with us, and they defeated Napoleon. You know, they’ve been around a long time. They’re a big fighting force, and it’s very unfair … We’re in a very bad position. And I’m not going to blame, exclusively, but I can tell you, I could have stopped that.”

Musk remained unbothered and generally flattering toward Trump throughout the interview. Musk even suggested he could help in Trump’s future administration as a member of a “government efficiency commission”.

“I’d love it for you. You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump said, referring to Musk’s penchant for executing mass layoffs.

Trump and Musk have somewhat of a checkered history. Although Musk has said he voted for Biden in 2020, he endorsed Trump last month after the failed assassination attempt, and he has now launched a political action committee to assist Republicans’ electoral efforts. According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk has set a goal of turning out 800,000 Trump voters in battleground states.

Musk also reinstated Trump’s X account in 2022, two years after the former president was banned from the platform following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Trump has not made much use of his account since his reinstatement, as he has instead chosen to post on his own social media platform, Truth Social. But he shared a series of posts hours before the interview on Monday to promote his campaign and paint Harris as a “San Francisco Radical”.

“Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” Trump wrote in one post. “We’re a nation in decline.”

With less than three months left until election day, Trump indicated he would start posting to X more often. Given Trump’s record of upending news cycles with his tweets, his return to the platform could inject even more uncertainty into what has already been a historically tumultuous presidential race.

As a high-profile conversation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk was about to begin, users of X, formerly Twitter, were confronted with the message: “This Space is not available.”

Spaces, X’s livestreaming audio feature, was the chosen forum for the dialogue, but it wasn’t working. Clicking on the link to the broadcast, hosted by Trump’s dormant @RealDonaldTrump account, froze the site and rendered it unusable. Tweeters said they couldn’t dial in; some said their browsers had crashed.

Musk, who owns X, wrote: “There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down.” The rest of X appeared to be functioning normally.

The interview was due to begin at 8pm eastern US Time; Musk said he would work through the technical difficulties to start half an hour later. The issues seemed to resolve in the interim, and clicking the link allowed users to join the broadcast.

When X’s hold music finally stopped at 8.30ET, a rustling was heard from Trump’s microphone. Then silence overtook the livestream for another 10 minutes. Both the former president and Musk were muted. The interview started shortly after, with X eventually displaying more than 1 million concurrent listeners.

Musk said: “The attack saturated all of our data lines. We think we’ve overcome most of that. As this massive attack illustrates, there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say.”

Trump said he was happy with the mishap.

“You broke every record in the book with so many millions of people. We view that as an honor,” he told Musk.

The day before the event, Musk said he would “do some system scaling tests” in advance of the chat. On his feed, several of his tweets were labeled “streaming test”. However, an awkward silence descended on X when the interview was supposed to begin. One Washington Post reporter tweeted “So how’d they go” in reply to Musk’s disclaimer about the stress tests.

The failure to launch the Trump interview is bad advertising for Musk’s X as a technological innovator, and for the social network as a functional advertising vehicle. The company filed suit last week against its some of the world’s largest advertisers for taking their business elsewhere, alleging an illegal monopoly.

At times, Trump’s arguments also put Musk into a difficult corner, for example when the former president doubled down on his lies about climate change and Musk – the head of an electric carmaker – did little to correct him.

X has endured similar failures before. The snafu with Trump’s interview mirrors the launch of Ron DeSantis’ ill-fated presidential campaign on the platform in May 2023. That conversation, too, was mired in technical difficulties. The Florida governor was nearly inaudible at the startamid harsh feedback noise. X users said their apps crashed or logged them out as they tried to listen. The feed cut out repeatedly, then began half an hour late with less than a tenth of the original listeners. Musk admitted the event had “broken the Twitter system”.

The night of DeSantis’s floundering launch, Trump posted on his X competitor, Truth Social: “Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER!” Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign, which maintains its own Truth Social account, reposted Trump’s remarks the night of the former president’s delayed conversation with Musk.

After Musk purchased Twitter for $44bn in 2022 and renamed it X, he gutted the staff, leaving just 20% of employees, with skeleton crews in place in key areas such as site reliability. In November of that year, he reinstated Trump, who had been banned from Twitter after the January 6 Capitol attack. Advertisers have fled amid a documented rise in hate speech on the social network. The billionaire has touted X as riding the cutting edge of politics and freedom of speech.

Donald Trump returned to the social media platform that skyrocketed his career for a live discussion with Elon Musk. The former president unleashed familiar rambling, vitriolic talking points to a sympathetic Musk.

Here are key takeaways from the event.

Vast amounts of water could be trapped deep within the crust of Mars, scientists have said, raising fresh questions about the possibility of life on the red planet.

Scientists say that more than 3bn years ago, Mars not only had lakes and rivers but oceans on its surface – however, as the planet lost its atmosphere these bodies disappeared. All that is visible today is permafrost ice at the planet’s poles.

While it is thought some of the water was lost to space, research has suggested that is not the full story, and that water could have been incorporated into minerals, buried as ice, or even exist in liquid form deep within the planet’s crust.

Now scientists say their calculations suggest vast quantities of liquid water are to be found trapped within rocks about 11.5-20km below the Martian surface.

“Our liquid water estimate is more than the water volumes proposed to have filled possible ancient Martian oceans,” said Dr Vashan Wright, a co-author of the study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Wright and colleagues report how they made calculations based on gravity data for Mars and measurements recorded by Nasa’s InSight lander. The latter reveal how the speed of seismic waves – created by Marsquakes and meteorite impacts – change with depth inside the crust of the red planet.

“A mid-crust whose rocks are cracked and filled with liquid water best explains both seismic and gravity data,” Wright said.

Wright added that if the measurements at the Insight lander location were representative of the whole planet, the amount of water trapped in the rock fractures would fill a 1-2km-deep ocean on Mars.

“On Earth, groundwater underground infiltrated from the surface, and we expect this process to have occurred on Mars,” he said. “The infiltration must have happened during a time when the upper crust was warmer than it is today.”

While the results do not rule out the possibility that water has also been lost to space or trapped in minerals, Wright said the work allowed scientists to re-assess the relative contributions of these different mechanisms to the loss of past Martian surface water.

The study also raises a tantalising possibility.

“The presence of water does not signify that there is life, but water is thought to be an important ingredient for life,” said Wright. “We know that life can exist in the deep subsurface of the Earth, where there is water. The mid-crust of Mars at least contains a key ingredient for habitability and life as we know it.”

Bethany Ehlmann, a professor of planetary science at the Keck Institute for Space Studies, who was not involved in the work, said it was now necessary to make a definitive measurement that shows whether or not there is deep liquid water on Mars – and, if so, exactly where it is.

“On Earth, where there is liquid water, there is life, so if liquid water aquifers are present on Mars now, they are a prime target in the search for life,” she added.

Dr Jon Wade of the University of Oxford said he would not be surprised by life on Mars. “Early in its history, Mars would be as conducive to simple life as Earth, if not more so,” he said.

Dr Steven Banham of Imperial College London added that identifying liquid water in the mid-crust would also help geophysicists and geologists understand the internal structure of Mars and how it behaves.

However, Banham raised doubts such water could provide a resource for crewed missions to Mars.

“Yes the amount of water down in the crust is potentially vast, but it will be difficult to access or utilise,” he said. “It might not make much difference to human exploration, at least initially.”

Vast amounts of water could be trapped deep within the crust of Mars, scientists have said, raising fresh questions about the possibility of life on the red planet.

Scientists say that more than 3bn years ago, Mars not only had lakes and rivers but oceans on its surface – however, as the planet lost its atmosphere these bodies disappeared. All that is visible today is permafrost ice at the planet’s poles.

While it is thought some of the water was lost to space, research has suggested that is not the full story, and that water could have been incorporated into minerals, buried as ice, or even exist in liquid form deep within the planet’s crust.

Now scientists say their calculations suggest vast quantities of liquid water are to be found trapped within rocks about 11.5-20km below the Martian surface.

“Our liquid water estimate is more than the water volumes proposed to have filled possible ancient Martian oceans,” said Dr Vashan Wright, a co-author of the study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Wright and colleagues report how they made calculations based on gravity data for Mars and measurements recorded by Nasa’s InSight lander. The latter reveal how the speed of seismic waves – created by Marsquakes and meteorite impacts – change with depth inside the crust of the red planet.

“A mid-crust whose rocks are cracked and filled with liquid water best explains both seismic and gravity data,” Wright said.

Wright added that if the measurements at the Insight lander location were representative of the whole planet, the amount of water trapped in the rock fractures would fill a 1-2km-deep ocean on Mars.

“On Earth, groundwater underground infiltrated from the surface, and we expect this process to have occurred on Mars,” he said. “The infiltration must have happened during a time when the upper crust was warmer than it is today.”

While the results do not rule out the possibility that water has also been lost to space or trapped in minerals, Wright said the work allowed scientists to re-assess the relative contributions of these different mechanisms to the loss of past Martian surface water.

The study also raises a tantalising possibility.

“The presence of water does not signify that there is life, but water is thought to be an important ingredient for life,” said Wright. “We know that life can exist in the deep subsurface of the Earth, where there is water. The mid-crust of Mars at least contains a key ingredient for habitability and life as we know it.”

Bethany Ehlmann, a professor of planetary science at the Keck Institute for Space Studies, who was not involved in the work, said it was now necessary to make a definitive measurement that shows whether or not there is deep liquid water on Mars – and, if so, exactly where it is.

“On Earth, where there is liquid water, there is life, so if liquid water aquifers are present on Mars now, they are a prime target in the search for life,” she added.

Dr Jon Wade of the University of Oxford said he would not be surprised by life on Mars. “Early in its history, Mars would be as conducive to simple life as Earth, if not more so,” he said.

Dr Steven Banham of Imperial College London added that identifying liquid water in the mid-crust would also help geophysicists and geologists understand the internal structure of Mars and how it behaves.

However, Banham raised doubts such water could provide a resource for crewed missions to Mars.

“Yes the amount of water down in the crust is potentially vast, but it will be difficult to access or utilise,” he said. “It might not make much difference to human exploration, at least initially.”

The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas has said its militants shot and killed an Israeli hostage and wounded two others, both women, “in two separate incidents” in Gaza.

Palestinian militants seized 251 hostages during their 7 October attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing war, 111 of whom are still being held in Gaza, although the Israeli military says 39 are dead.

Abu Obeida, spokesperson for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement: “In two separate incidents, two [Hamas] soldiers assigned to guard enemy prisoners fired at a Zionist prisoner, killing him immediately, and also injured two female prisoners critically.”

The statement, posted on Telegram, did not identify the hostages or say when or where the incidents occurred.

Abu Obeida said Hamas had formed a committee to investigate the shootings.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in Arabic on X: “In the last few minutes, the terrorist Hamas published a written report claiming that in two separate incidents, Hamas activists killed an Israeli captive and wounded two women captives.

“At this stage, there is no intelligence document to confirm or refute Hamas’ allegations. We continue to investigate the credibility of the statement and will provide information where we have it.”

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, in a televised briefing earlier on Monday, said: “We do not forget for a moment the hostages being cruelly held by Hamas in Gaza.

“We are deeply concerned about their physical and mental condition, given the prolonged time that has passed and the harsh conditions of their captivity.”

The 7 October attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in the Gaza Strip since then has killed at least 39,897 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not provide separate details on civilian and militant deaths.

Authorities are evacuating people from towns, villages and hospitals on the outskirts of Athens as firefighters battle to contain a massive blaze that is moving “like lightning”, ripping through trees, homes and cars.

Propelled by gale-force winds, the wildfire tore towards residential areas of the Greek capital on Monday, leaving a trail of destruction behind it.

Late in the day, despite the “superhuman” efforts of forest commandos and an army of volunteers to bring the fires under control, the inferno had reached the city’s northern suburbs, threatening the premises of the national observatory on a hill in Penteli.

Residents, some wearing masks, could be seen with buckets, hoses and even olive branches desperately trying to douse flames as they encroached on homes. In a statement, the observatory’s meteorological service said the fast-moving blaze was “threatening important facilities, technologies and years of research efforts.”

In what would be the first loss of life since the fires erupted, authorities announced early on Tuesday that the charred remains of a woman had been found in a factory in the northern suburb of Vrillisia. The victim is believed to be an immigrant worker.

Greece’s climate crisis and civil protection minister said firefighters were struggling in “dramatic conditions” that had been exacerbated by a prolonged drought.

The Mediterranean nation has experienced an exceptionally hot and dry year. On Monday it called for help in tackling the fire from other EU countries, and assistance is expected from France, Italy, the Czech Republic and Romania.

“Its an extremely dangerous fire that we’ve been battling for over 20 hours in dramatic conditions because of the very strong winds and prolonged dryness,” the minister for climate crisis, Vassilis Kikilias, told reporters.

More than 670 firefighters, backed by 17 water bombing planes, 15 helicopters and trucks, were trying to bring the fire under control and forces were being “continually reinforced”, he said.

“Right now the battle is being waged on two fronts: one in the area of Kallitechnoupoli and the other in [the village of] Grammatiko,” Kikilias said. “We will continue with all our might until it is brought under control and the last front is put out.”

At least 25 areas across the stricken Attica region, including the ancient town of Marathon, were forced to evacuate residents.

The mayor of Marathon, Stergios Tsirkas, said the town, which gave its name to the long-distance race, was facing a “biblical catastrophe”. “Our whole town is engulfed in flames and going through difficult times,” he told the Skai television channel.

The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, cut short his summer break on Crete to return to Athens and oversee the response in a nation where memories of the 104 people who died in wildfires at the seaside resort of Mati six years ago remain vivid.

The fire began in the vicinity of Varnava, a village about 20 miles north-east of Athens, sending gigantic clouds of ash smoke billowing over the capital.

From the outset, firefighting efforts were hampered by strong winds. At least half of the country was under a “red alert” – the highest level of extreme fire risk in the country’s five-tier system.

A fire brigade spokesperson, Vassileios Vathrakogiannis, said on Sunday that flames fanned by the gusts were up to 25 metres (80ft) high. The winds were constantly changing the course of the fires, hampering efforts to bring them under control.

With the strong winds showing no sign of abating, meteorologists predicted that the days ahead would be critical.

Health officials urged residents in the region to limit their movements and stay inside, saying the thick smoke had seriously affected air quality across the Attica basin. By mid-afternoon on Sunday, within hours of the blaze erupting, the skies above the Greek parliament in central Syntagma Square had turned a yellowish brown as ash clouds were blown southward. Greek media reported people being taken to hospital with respiratory problems.

Unprecedented temperatures – June and July were the hottest on record – after the warmest winter on record have resulted in wildfires becoming increasingly common and intense in Greece. In a first, this summer the country registered a week-long heatwave before mid-June, a sign of the accelerated pace at which the climate is breaking down, environmentalists said.

Meteorologists believe 2024 will be the hottest Greek summer on record.

At least 10 tourists, including the British TV presenter Michael Mosley, died earlier this summer from heat exhaustion after walking in blistering temperatures. Mosley is believed to have succumbed to the heat two hours after he set off on a walk from a beach on the remote island of Symi in temperatures topping 40C.

Restoring and protecting the world’s forests is crucial if humanity is to stop the worst effects of climate breakdown and halt the extinction of rare species.

Researchers have been concerned, however, that actions to capture carbon, restore biodiversity and find ways to support the livelihoods of the people who live near and in the forests might be at odds.

This is a particular issue in many parts of the globe that have important forests, as the people living nearby often have precarious livelihoods that can be negatively affected if the land they use to survive is encroached on.

Now a new work led by Dr Trisha Gopalakrishna, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that, with careful thought, all three important outcomes can be delivered by setting up “integrated” plans, where all three goals are combined.

The research finds that the plans could deliver more than 80% of the benefits in all three areas at once and that socioeconomically disadvantaged groups would benefit disproportionately from this approach.

Gopalakrishna and her fellow researchers used a framework called Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP) to show how restoring nature and biodiversity can help communities to thrive if it is done carefully. They said it shows that there can be a holistic relationship between restoration and benefits to humanity that can include reducing socioeconomic inequality.

In India, where the mapping took place, 38%-41% of the people affected by integrated spatial plans for these forests belong to socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.

The researchers generated maps of 3.88m hectares of possible forest restoration area, and found that integrated plans aimed at multiple goals rather than just one delivered on average 83.3% of climate crisis mitigation NCP, 89.9% of biodiversity value NCP and 93.9% of societal NCP compared with those delivered by single-objective plans.

It is vital to keep humanity in mind when designing conservation projects, said Gopalakrishna, and it can make the work more efficient. “In my opinion, environment/biodiversity and the requirements of local communities are compatible and there are many examples of both thriving in many different regions of the world, including India, and through time.

“However, environmental projects that disregard or undermine the needs of local communities can be harmful and are often unsuccessful in meeting their environmental objectives.

“Restoration projects sometimes have a narrow focus, which can lead to trade-offs. “For example, if you focus on carbon storage, you might plant particular tree species and fence the forests off to protect them. If you focus on biodiversity, you might manage forests for particular species, like the emblematic Bengal tiger or Asiatic elephant. If you focus on human livelihoods, you might plant species that provide housing materials and fuelwood for cooking.

“Unsurprisingly, our study shows that plans with one NCP in mind tend not to deliver the others. However, we were surprised and pleased to find that an ‘integrated’ plan can deliver all three remarkably efficiently.”

She said it was important to create a “multifunctional landscape” with trees that can store carbon, plants that can help human survival, and space for wildlife, so that “people and animals can thrive”.

The method has been adopted by the UN Development Programme, which has written a report on how integrated spatial planning is important. European conservationists INSPIRE are also using the method to understand protected area networks in Europe.

The researcher added that equality needs to be taken more into account when planning conservation projects and that the next frontier should be considering gender outcomes: “Generally, I do think societal needs and especially equity needs to be accounted for in all conservation and development projects, which is the biggest leap that this study makes.

“We actually show that integrated spatial plans provide societal benefits to a greater number of Indians who are socioeconomically challenged than the plans focused only on biodiversity or carbon. Also, all plans including the integrated spatial plan we examined provided almost the same benefits to Indian men and women.

“Understanding who gains and loses (ie equity and gender) should be the next frontier of policy and decision-making and project development, which I would say is a main takeaway from this study.”

Restoring and protecting the world’s forests is crucial if humanity is to stop the worst effects of climate breakdown and halt the extinction of rare species.

Researchers have been concerned, however, that actions to capture carbon, restore biodiversity and find ways to support the livelihoods of the people who live near and in the forests might be at odds.

This is a particular issue in many parts of the globe that have important forests, as the people living nearby often have precarious livelihoods that can be negatively affected if the land they use to survive is encroached on.

Now a new work led by Dr Trisha Gopalakrishna, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that, with careful thought, all three important outcomes can be delivered by setting up “integrated” plans, where all three goals are combined.

The research finds that the plans could deliver more than 80% of the benefits in all three areas at once and that socioeconomically disadvantaged groups would benefit disproportionately from this approach.

Gopalakrishna and her fellow researchers used a framework called Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP) to show how restoring nature and biodiversity can help communities to thrive if it is done carefully. They said it shows that there can be a holistic relationship between restoration and benefits to humanity that can include reducing socioeconomic inequality.

In India, where the mapping took place, 38%-41% of the people affected by integrated spatial plans for these forests belong to socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.

The researchers generated maps of 3.88m hectares of possible forest restoration area, and found that integrated plans aimed at multiple goals rather than just one delivered on average 83.3% of climate crisis mitigation NCP, 89.9% of biodiversity value NCP and 93.9% of societal NCP compared with those delivered by single-objective plans.

It is vital to keep humanity in mind when designing conservation projects, said Gopalakrishna, and it can make the work more efficient. “In my opinion, environment/biodiversity and the requirements of local communities are compatible and there are many examples of both thriving in many different regions of the world, including India, and through time.

“However, environmental projects that disregard or undermine the needs of local communities can be harmful and are often unsuccessful in meeting their environmental objectives.

“Restoration projects sometimes have a narrow focus, which can lead to trade-offs. “For example, if you focus on carbon storage, you might plant particular tree species and fence the forests off to protect them. If you focus on biodiversity, you might manage forests for particular species, like the emblematic Bengal tiger or Asiatic elephant. If you focus on human livelihoods, you might plant species that provide housing materials and fuelwood for cooking.

“Unsurprisingly, our study shows that plans with one NCP in mind tend not to deliver the others. However, we were surprised and pleased to find that an ‘integrated’ plan can deliver all three remarkably efficiently.”

She said it was important to create a “multifunctional landscape” with trees that can store carbon, plants that can help human survival, and space for wildlife, so that “people and animals can thrive”.

The method has been adopted by the UN Development Programme, which has written a report on how integrated spatial planning is important. European conservationists INSPIRE are also using the method to understand protected area networks in Europe.

The researcher added that equality needs to be taken more into account when planning conservation projects and that the next frontier should be considering gender outcomes: “Generally, I do think societal needs and especially equity needs to be accounted for in all conservation and development projects, which is the biggest leap that this study makes.

“We actually show that integrated spatial plans provide societal benefits to a greater number of Indians who are socioeconomically challenged than the plans focused only on biodiversity or carbon. Also, all plans including the integrated spatial plan we examined provided almost the same benefits to Indian men and women.

“Understanding who gains and loses (ie equity and gender) should be the next frontier of policy and decision-making and project development, which I would say is a main takeaway from this study.”

The United States has confirmed it will resume sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, as concerns over human rights in the kingdom’s Yemen war give way to US hopes for it to play a role in resolving the conflict in Gaza.

More than three years after imposing limits on human rights grounds over Saudi strikes in Yemen, the state department said it would return to weapons sales “in regular order, with appropriate congressional notification and consultation”.

“Saudi Arabia has remained a close strategic partner of the United States, and we look forward to enhancing that partnership,” the state department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, told reporters.

Joe Biden took office in 2021 pledging a new approach to Saudi Arabia that emphasized human rights, and immediately announced that the administration would only send “defensive” weaponry to the longtime US arms customer.

The step came after thousands of civilians – including children – were estimated to be killed in Saudi-led airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have taken over much of Yemen.

Geopolitical considerations have, however, changed markedly since then. The United Nations, with US support, brokered a truce in Yemen in early 2022 that has largely held.

Since the truce, “there has not been a single Saudi airstrike into Yemen and cross-border fire from Yemen into Saudi Arabia has largely stopped”, Patel said.

“The Saudis since that time have met their end of the deal, and we are prepared to meet ours,” Patel said.

It is now the United States, Britain and recently Israel that have been striking Houthi targets in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia content to watch from the sidelines.

The Houthis have been firing missiles at commercial ships in the vital Red Sea in professed solidarity with Palestinians, who have been in the crosshairs of Israel since the 7 October attack by Hamas.

In an attempt to find a long-term solution, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has repeatedly traveled to Saudi Arabia to discuss a package of US incentives if the kingdom recognizes Israel.

Saudi Arabia has sought US security guarantees, a continued flow of weapons and potentially a civilian nuclear deal if it normalizes with Israel.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has made normalization with Arab states a top goal and no prize would be as big as Saudi Arabia, guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites.

But Saudi Arabia says it cannot act without progress on a Palestinian state, an idea pushed by the Biden administration as it seeks a diplomatic way out of the Gaza conflict, but bitterly opposed by Netanyahu and his far-right allies.

Representative Joaquin Castro, a progressive member of Biden’s Democratic party, said that Saudi Arabia still had a “troubling track record” on human rights.

“I supported the Biden administration’s initial decision to pause offensive arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and I hope to see compelling evidence that Saudi Arabia has changed its conduct,” he said.

Before 7 October, Gulf Arab states had been moving closer to Israel, in large part out of shared hostility to Iran.

Saudi Arabia cooperated with the United States, along with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, in repelling an Iranian missile and drone barrage against Israel in April in response to an Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria.

The United States is again hoping for support from Arab partners as Iran threatens another reprisal against Israel over the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.

Nick Cave has described how the deaths of two of his four sons have made him prioritise being “a father and a husband and a kind of person of the world” over “the concept of being an artist” in an interview conducted in May on the anniversary of his son Jethro’s death, and aired in a 30-minute Australian broadcast on Monday night.

“For most of my life I was just sort of in awe of my own genius, you know, and I had an office and would sit there and write every day and whatever else happened in my life was peripheral,” Cave told ABC’s Australian Story presenter Leigh Sales.

“This just collapsed completely and I just saw the folly of that, the kind of disgraceful self-indulgence of the whole thing.”

Grief has been a defining influence in Cave’s work and public persona since his 15-year-old son Arthur, one of his twin sons with wife Susie Cave, died after falling from a cliff near Brighton in July 2015. In 2022, Cave announced that his eldest son, Jethro Lazenby had also died, at the age of 31, not long after he was found guilty of unlawful assault for physically attacking his mother.

During the career-spanning interview, which ranged from Cave’s childhood in Wangaratta, Victoria, to his 1995 collaboration with Kylie Minogue, Cave revealed to Sales that the session was taking place on the second anniversary of Lazenby’s death.

“I had an understanding of the process, because I’d been through it already,” he said of grieving. “There is the initial cataclysmic event that we eventually absorb or rearrange ourselves so that we become creatures of loss as we get older.

“But this is part of our fundamental fabric of what we are as human beings. We are things of loss. And this is not a tragic element to our lives but rather a deepening element that brings incredible meaning into our life.”

A visibly surprised Sales apologised for the timing of the interview on the anniversary.

‘It’s not your fault,” Cave replied. “For me when I do interviews, it just very quickly lands back at this place.”

Cave also explained how his relationship with the public evolved after Arthur’s death. His website, the Red Hand Files, still receives “hundreds and hundreds of letters” each week, all of which Cave reads before posting answers to a select handful each month.

“It was also a kind of lifeline for me that reached out and collected up these people. It’s something that’s just allowed me to remain open to the world rather than shut down,” he said.

“There’s a great beauty in the Red Hand Files that, you know, it’s an extreme privilege to be receiving these letters from people. It’s this bizarre opportunity for people to indulge to some degree in their grief.”

Cave, who will release a new Bad Seeds album named Wild God later this month, revealed via the website in May that he had become a grandfather when his second son Luke, born to Cave’s first wife Viviane Carneiro, welcomed a son.

Cave told Sales he hopes to be the “grandfather that sits in the armchair and says inappropriate things and has a terrible influence over everybody but the child secretly loves.”

It is baking hot in Portofino, but the atmosphere has turned decidedly chilly among residents of the exclusive Italian coastal village since a crackdown was imposed on air-conditioning units.

With a year-round population of just 379, Portofino has emerged as Italy’s wealthiest municipality and is well known for being a magnet for the rich and famous.

Madonna arrived on Sunday, reportedly for a party hosted by the fashion designers Dolce & Gabbana, but the talk of the village has been the hunt by local police for air conditioners illegally installed by residents seeking respite from the stifling heat.

Portofino has been part of a regional national park since 1935, and up until a few years ago, the installation of AC units on its pastel-coloured buildings was entirely banned.

As summers became hotter, the rules were loosened to allow use of the appliances, so long as the homeowner asked permission and ensured that the units were discreetly placed and did not sully Portofino’s natural beauty.

Police have been scouring the narrow streets for unauthorised units poking out over the terraces of the village’s homes. There were reports of 22 illegally installed units spotted on various rooftops and terraces between January and May, and a further 15 since June as temperatures soared.

Matteo Viacava, the mayor of Portofino, denied reports in the Italian press that police had deployed drones as part of their investigation.

“It all began last winter when someone put in an air conditioning unit that covered a big part of a very narrow street,” he told the Guardian. “The summers have been getting much hotter and July and August have been sweltering and very humid. It’s not that we want people to suffer and have their sleep disrupted by the heat … We all depend on AC now. But Portofino is located in a regional park and there are rules that need to be respected.”

As the intrigue heated up along with the temperature, Corriere della Sera reported a “vendetta” among residents involving tit-for-tat denunciations between neighbours. Some culprits have attempted to hide their AC unit or disguise the appliance by painting it to blend in with the local surroundings.

In some cases, people have reportedly accepted an invitation into the home of a neighbour, only to secretly take a photo of a unit that they have then passed on to police.

Those who flout the rules risk fines of as much as €43,000 (£36,800) if prosecuted in court, although Viacava said most cases to date had been resolved and that the goal was not to fine people.

“We just want to ensure that the constraints are respected and beauty of Portofino is maintained,” he said. “They need to be put in places that are not visible. Slowly, slowly, we are getting it all in order.”

A police officer in Porfofino declined to reveal details of the ongoing checks.

Earlier this summer, Portofino was sealed off to host 800 guests at a pre-wedding party for the Indian billionaires Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, costing a reported €139m.

Italy has been engulfed by consecutive heatwaves since around the middle of June. Some central and southern areas are expected to record temperatures of above 40C in the coming days.

On Monday, the health ministry placed 17 cities on red alert, meaning it is expected that even healthy people could be at risk from the heat. People living in or visiting places on red alert are advised to avoid direct sunlight between 11am and 6pm.

The demand for AC in Italy has shot up in recent years. A report in 2022 by Istat, the national statistics agency, found that half of all Italian households had an AC unit.