Israeli soldiers are using Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza to enter and clear tunnels and buildings they suspect may have been booby-trapped, a leading Israeli NGO and newspaper have reported.

The practice was so widespread across different units fighting in Gaza that it could in effect be considered a “protocol”, said Nadav Weiman, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, a group founded by Israeli combat veterans to document military abuses.

The group has collected testimony describing the practice from veterans of the 10-month war in Gaza. The accounts they have heard match those reported in an investigation by the newspaper Haaretz, which claimed that the chief of staff’s office was aware of the practice.

“The senior ranks know about it,” one source said to have taken part in finding civilians to serve as human shields told the paper. “Our lives are more important than their lives,” Haaretz quoted commanders telling their soldiers.

The practice is said to be so routine that Israeli soldiers have a name for the human shields, who are referred to as shawish – informal slang for a low-ranking soldier – and the process was described by several witnesses.

Palestinian civilians, mostly young men, are picked up by Israeli soldiers, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, then sent into tunnels and damaged houses ahead of Israeli forces, soldiers told Haaretz and Breaking the Silence.

Their hands are tied together and a camera is attached to their bodies as they go in. “Palestinians are told: ‘Do one mission of … a [tunnel] shaft and you’re free,’” Haaretz quoted one soldier saying.

Afterwards, the men are reportedly released to join their families – underlining to the soldiers who spoke to Haaretz and Breaking the Silence that they were civilians who did not pose any military threat and had been detained only for the clearance operations.

Footage of Palestinian civilians, including some in IDF uniform, being sent into devastated buildings was obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast in July.

Breaking the Silence said it had heard reports of civilians being used as human shields from the early stages of the war in Gaza. Initially it said it thought it had been one commander acting illegally, but testimony started coming in from soldiers stationed across the territory.

“We heard it from different units, fighting in different times and different places inside Gaza,” Weiman said. “Then we understood it’s something a lot more widespread – or even, I could say, a protocol – in the IDF.”

One soldier had been told Palestinian civilians were being used to replace the dog units that search for explosives “because too many dogs had died”, he added.

Many soldiers had raised concerns about a practice that is illegal under international and Israeli law, Weiman said.

In Israel in 2005, the supreme court banned using Palestinians as human shields in response to a petition against the military’s “neighbour procedure” in the West Bank, in which soldiers forced civilians to go ahead of them when raiding houses there.

Haaretz also reported heated arguments, including shouting, between soldiers and commanders ordering the use of human shields. “Most of them realised there was a problematic incident here, and it was hard for them to process,” one source said.

The IDF said that the use of human shields was banned, that orders had been “clarified” to troops on the ground, and that the allegations reported by Haaretz would be reviewed.

“The orders and directives of the IDF prohibit the use of Gazan civilians captured in the field for military missions that endanger them,” a spokesperson said.

The reports of the Israel Defense Forces using civilian human shields come after the Israeli military has repeatedly justified attacks on civilian targets, including schools and hospitals, by alleging Hamas uses them, and uses the people inside them as human shields.

“How we can say that kind of thing after we’re doing this, after we’re taking Palestinians as human shields?” Weiman said.

Additional reporting: Quique Kierszenbaum

Hamas appears unlikely to participate in a new round of talks on a Gaza ceasefire deal on Thursday, further eroding hopes of an agreement that might stave off expected retaliatory strikes by Iran against Israel for the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran last month.

Most observers already had low expectations of the ceasefire talks, with Israel hardening its position in recent weeks and fears that Hamas, now led by its most hardline faction, would offer few concessions.

Iran this week rejected calls by western powers not to retaliate for the apparent assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, on 31 July, just hours after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed a senior commander of Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon.

The prospect of imminent Iranian strikes against Israel has raised fears of a wider conflict after more than 10 months of war in Gaza. US and Iranian officials have both suggested significant progress towards a ceasefire in Gaza might bring immediate regional de-escalation.

Asked on Tuesday if he thought Iran might forgo a retaliatory strike if a Gaza ceasefire was reached, the US president, Joe Biden, said: “That’s my expectation.”

The White House warned that a “significant set of attacks” by Iran and its allies was possible as soon as this week, and sent fighter jets, anti-missile warships and a guided missile submarine to the region in support of Israel.

In April, after two Iranian generals were killed in a strike on Tehran’s embassy in Syria, Iran launched hundreds of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles towards Israel, damaging two airbases. Almost all of the weapons were shot down before they reached their targets.

In a statement on Sunday, Hamas said mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar should submit a plan to implement what was agreed on last month, based on Biden’s proposal, “instead of going to more rounds of negotiations or new proposals that provide cover for the occupation’s aggression”.

Hamas said it has shown flexibility throughout the negotiating process but that the actions of Israel indicated that it was not serious about pursuing a ceasefire agreement.

On Wednesday, a Hamas official said the Islamist movement, which seized power in Gaza in 2007, was “continuing its consultations with the mediators”.

“Hamas wants the Biden plan imposed and doesn’t want to negotiate just to negotiate,” the official said, referring to a ceasefire proposal laid out in late May by Biden.

“We have to force the [Israeli] occupation government to stop its policy, which consists of dragging out the negotiations, and force it to stop massacring our people.”

Hamas and Israel disagree on the duration of any ceasefire and the number and type of Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails in any deal in return for the freedom of hostages held in Gaza. Hamas want a definitive end to the war but Israeli negotiators have only offered a pause in hostilities.

Successive rounds of talks since late December have failed to bridge the gaps.

The office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed on Wednesday Israel’s participation.

The head of Israel’s Mossad overseas spy agency, David Barnea, and Ronen Bar, chief of the Shin Bet internal security service, are part of the Israeli negotiating team, Netanyahu’s spokesperson said.

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said on social media platform X that the country remained on “high alert”.

Fearing an attack by Iran and Hezbollah, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art said it had stashed away its most valuable pieces, including paintings by Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt.

The museum’s director, Tania Coen-Uzzielli, said: “In the last three, four, five days, when this new threat from Hezbollah and from Iran came on the table again, we understood that we needed to take other precautions.”

Biden’s envoy for the conflict, Amos Hochstein, was in Beirut on Wednesday where he warned the clock was ticking for a Gaza ceasefire.

“There is no more time to waste and there’s no more valid excuses from any party for any further delay,” he said after talks with Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri.

Hezbollah are likely to be part of any Iranian strike, and have a powerful armoury of missiles and rockets which might overwhelm Israel’s air defence systems. The militant group has been engaged in a war of attrition with Israel since October.

Western governments have issued advisories against travel to Lebanon, and have prepared contingency plans to evacuate their nationals from the region if full-scale conflict breaks out.

The Gaza war began with Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the Israeli military said are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 39,965 people, according to the latest toll from the territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.

The Israeli military said it carried out dozens of air strikes across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours and that its troops were “continuing precise, intelligence-based operational activity in the area of Tel al-Sultan” just north of of Rafah city.

The Gaza civil defence agency said its emergency teams pulled the bodies of four people from the same family from the rubble of a bombed apartment in the Qatari-built residential complex of Hamad, near Khan Younis.

Residents of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp said it was struck by a missile after midnight.

“We were sleeping … and were surprised by a missile targeting the neighbours, children, their father and mother,” Jihad al-Sharif told AFPTV.

“The explosion was terrible,” he said, adding his family emerged to find the remains of children in the middle of the street.

Agencies contributed to this article

Four-day-old twins have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza while their father went to register their birth, he has said, as Israel continued its bombardment of the territory.

Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan said his wife, Joumana Arafa, a pharmacist, had given birth by caesarean section four days earlier and announced the twins’ arrival on Facebook, the Associated Press reported.

On Tuesday, he had gone to register the births at a local government office. While he was there, neighbours called to say the home where he was sheltering, near the central city of Deir al-Balah, had been bombed.

“I don’t know what happened,” he told the AP while sitting at the hospital where their bodies were taken, holding the twins’ birth certificates. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.”

The strike that killed the newborns – a boy, Asser, and a girl, Ayssel – also killed their mother, Arafa, as well as her mother, the twins’ grandmother. Abuel-Qomasan and his wife had heeded orders to evacuate Gaza City in the opening weeks of the war. They sought shelter in central Gaza, as the army had instructed.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes, AP reported.

Elsewhere, a three-month-old baby was the only member of her immediate family to survive an Israeli airstrike near the southern city of Khan Younis in which 10 people were killed including her five siblings, aged five to 12.

The strike late on Monday also killed Reem Abu Hayyah’s parents and the parents of three other children. Reem and the other three surviving children were all wounded in the strike.

“There is no one left except this baby,” said Reem’s aunt, Soad Abu Hayyah. “Since this morning, we have been trying to feed her formula, but she does not accept it, because she is used to her mother’s milk.”

The health ministry in Gaza said 115 newborns had been killed in the territory since the war began. Almost 40,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October; thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble. About 1,200 people were killed when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October and 250 taken hostage.

The Israeli military claims it tries to avoid harming Palestinian civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense residential areas.

Since 4 July Israeli forces have targeted at least 21 schools – including at one point four in four days – where Palestinians were sheltering, killing hundreds of people, many of them children, according to the UN. Israel claimed the schools were being used by Hamas operatives without providing evidence.

Israel’s offensive has left thousands of orphans – so many that local doctors employ an acronym when registering them: WCNSF, or “wounded child, no surviving family”. The UN estimated in February that about 17,000 children in Gaza were unaccompanied and the number is likely to have grown since.

The Abu Hayyah family was sheltering in an area that Israel had ordered people to evacuate in recent days. It was one of several such orders that have led hundreds of thousands to seek shelter in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone consisting of squalid, crowded tent camps along the coast.

Many families have ignored the evacuation orders because they say nowhere feels safe, or because they are unable to make the arduous journey on foot, or because they fear they will never be able to return to their homes, even after the war.

Associated Press contributed to this report

When 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in the port of Beirut it launched 75-year-old Georges Abi Khalil from his bed. At least 220 people were killed and more than 7,000 wounded in the explosion on 4 August 2020 that blew out the doors and windows of Abi Khalil’s one-bedroom apartment and caused $4bn of damage throughout the city.

Sitting in the same apartment, four years later, Abi Khalil and his 69-year-old wife, Afaf, recall how their church and local charities assisted in the aftermath. “You wouldn’t believe how many people came out to help us,” says Abi Khalil.

As with many others in Beirut, they had already been financially wiped out the previous year, victims of the 2019 economic crisis that erased their life savings. With the crisis entering its fifth year, the couple still need support, but any government and charitable assistance available then has all but dried up.

Abi Khalil is interrupted by two loud bangs: sonic booms caused by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) jets buzzing the city at low altitude. The IDF flyovers have been increasing over the past week following Hezbollah’s promise of “rage and revenge” in retaliation for two Israeli assassinations. Afaf gasps, briefly mistaking the noise for the opening blows of a full-scale war that the Lebanese government says could displace a quarter of the population. “We’re so tired,” says Afaf. “We can’t handle a war.”

According to a World Bank report, 44% of Lebanese people live in poverty, triple that of 10 years ago. Georges and Afaf receive no pension and no welfare. A local charity, Loubnaniyoun, pays for their medication and brings them one hot meal a day. However, the charity can now only support 50 vulnerable families in Lebanon as its funding has declined by 50% in the past year due to donor fatigue.

In March 2023, the International Monetary Fund warned of Lebanon becoming mired in “a never-ending crisis”. The Lebanese pound has lost 98% of its value since 2019, public-sector salaries have been slashed, and the dollarised economy is struggling with 40% inflation.

In the face of possible war, Nasser Yassin, the environment minister, says that authorities are “very stretched, underpaid, and have a lot of challenges”.

When Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging daily missile attacks at the border in October, Yassin was charged with coordinating a government contingency plan in case the conflict escalated. It projected between 1.2 million and 1.5 million people becoming displaced and requiring “food assistance, shelter management, water and sanitation assistance”, he says.

The projections are modelled on the outcomes of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, but Yassin says that a war now could have an even greater impact. “People had money in the banks in 2006,” he says. “They could withdraw a couple of thousand dollars and rent a place for a couple of months.” If war breaks out now, he projects more than a million people will require temporary accommodation in repurposed school buildings.

Compared with 2006, “the preparedness for war is very low”, says Sami Zoughaib, an economist at the Policy Initiative, a local thinktank. Deep in debt and unable to borrow more money, the government’s annual budget has been cut by about 80% compared with pre-crisis levels.

Zoughaib believes that war would severely impact trade links for an economy desperately dependent on imports. The resulting shortage would probably lead to a spike in prices for even basic goods, including water and medicine, making life yet more intolerable for the country’s poorest.

“We already see this happening,” says Zoughaib, referring to the roughly 100,000 people forced to leave their homes in the south due to the fighting. “A lot of landlords that are renting out houses to the displaced have begun asking for incredibly high rents.”

Lebanese officials say that current food supplies are enough to last four months. Fuel, on the other hand, is measured in weeks, says Yassin. Lebanon already experiences daily blackouts. Georges and Afaf say they have gone without municipal electricity for the last five days, relying instead on expensive neighbourhood generators. The contingency plan prioritises fuel supplies for strategic industries, such as bakeries and water-pumping stations, increasing power outages for ordinary citizens.

Last week, the World Health Organization sent 32 tonnes of medical equipment, including 1,000 trauma kits to treat war injuries. Public health minister Firass Abiad pushes back on suggestions that the country is woefully undersupplied for a war, but admits that the ministry is working within a “low-resource environment”. Large numbers of trained medical staff have left Lebanon since the crisis. Those who stayed have had to accept big salary cuts.

Abiad says that the ministry benefits from the institutional knowledge it has gained through decades of crisis management, but adds that “my major concern is the mental wellbeing of the population” after the manifold crises of the past five years.

“Unfortunately, this is bearing a lot on the mental wellbeing of our community and the refugee community,” he says. “I think that going through another crisis might result in wounds and scars more serious than any physical scars you could imagine.”

Kamala Harris’s economic agenda will focus on lowering the cost of groceries, housing and healthcare, bolstering the child tax credit and drawing a contrast with Donald Trump on tariffs and taxes, aides and advisers told Reuters on Wednesday.

Harris is expected to lay out some details of her economic plan in a speech in North Carolina on Friday that will touch on lowering costs and “price gouging”.

“Same values, different vision,” said one aide, describing how Harris’s economic agenda will compare with that of Joe Biden, who stepped aside as the Democratic presidential candidate last month.

“She’s not moving far away from him on substance, she will highlight the ones that matter most to her.”

The Guardian contacted the Harris campaign for comment. In July, inflation fell to below 3% for the first time in nearly three and a half years, the labor department said on Wednesday, but high prices of groceries and consumer goods remain well above their pre-pandemic levels, and are front of mind for voters.

Harris cares a lot about “pocketbook issues for working families, in particular those with small kids”, one adviser told Reuters. Harris was a champion of the child tax credit, which reduces the tax burden for lower-income families.

“She’s going to embrace that,” the adviser said.

The Trump campaign has been mulling new tax cuts for middle-class households, and has proposed eliminating taxes on tipped wages – something Harris also recently said she supported.

In a campaign speech in Asheville, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Trump said, without evidence, that a Harris presidency would lead to the crash that preceded the Great Depression. The eight largest single-day net drops in the Dow Jones industrial average occurred during Trump’s administration.

Harris is to unveil her policies in a week of good news for the Biden-Harris administration, as inflation slowed to its lowest in over three years.

The Harris campaign has so far centred healthcare and abortion rights, with the first campaign ad focused on gun violence, reproductive freedom, child poverty and affordable healthcare.

The move represents an effort to meet voters’ biggest concerns with policies that have had to be pulled together quickly in the few weeks since Harris emerged as the Democratic candidate. A poll this week found that 42% of voters trust Harris on economic issues – one percentage point ahead of Trump. The poll was conducted by the Financial Times and the University of Michigan.

Harris no longer supports measures from her short-lived 2020 presidential bid such as a fracking ban or Medicare for All, advisers said. Not all of the elements of Harris’ economic agenda will make it to the Friday speech, a draft of which is still in the works. Her campaign said it wanted to avoid dividing voters and attracting attacks from business groups over granular details, and will be “strategically ambiguous” in areas such as energy.

She will push plans to cut costs of rental housing and home ownership, including funding more affordable housing and building climate resistant communities.

“She does have a focus on housing because we know and she knows very, very clearly that housing is a crisis in this country,” said Marcia Fudge, a Harris adviser and the former housing and urban development secretary under Biden.

Harris will also draw contrasts with Trump on tax policy and tariffs and maintain Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on people who make $400,000 or less a year, advisers said. Trump slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and implemented other tax breaks that are set to expire next year.

Trump has promised to make the tax cuts permanent and suggested new, across-the-board tariffs on imports, an idea Harris rejects. Trump’s campaign on Wednesday tied Harris to Biden’s economic record. In his Asheville speech, which was billed as an address on the economy, he veered off topic, saying his advisers had wanted him to focus on economic concerns. He was “not sure”, however, that the economy is the most important issue of the election, he said.

Trump used a “travel-sized” box of Tic Tacs to make a point about inflation.

“This is Tic Tacs,” he said, holding up a standard-sized box of the mints. “This is inflation,” he said, holding up the smaller box. He called it the “greatest commercial they ever had”.

The Guardian contacted Ferrero, the company that makes Tic Tacs, for comment.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Reuters: “America cannot afford another four years of Kamala’s failed economic policies. President Trump has a proven track record of making this country prosperous and affordable, and Americans can trust him to put more money back in their pockets again.”

Biden was briefed on the economy on Thursday by the US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, national economic adviser Lael Brainard and others. “The group discussed the resilience of the US economy, with inflation falling below 3%, strong business investment and consumer spending, and a healthy job market,” according to a pool report.

Reuters contributed reporting

Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’s running mate, said he would be willing to debate JD Vance, Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, on 1 October.

Walz, in a post to Twitter/X, was responding to a CBS News statement that said it had invited both vice-presidential candidates to participate in a debate in New York City.

CBS said it had presented both campaigns with four dates as options: 17 September, 24 September, 1 October and 8 October.

“See you on October 1, JD,” Walz wrote.

A statement from the Harris campaign said: “Harris for President has accepted CBS’ invitation to a Vice Presidential Candidate Debate on October 1. Governor Walz looks forward to debating JD Vance – if he shows up.” Vance has not said whether he would accept the date.

Walz last week said he “can’t wait to debate the guy — that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up”, in a reference to the baseless but much-shared claim that Vance admitted to having sex with a couch in his memoir.

In May, the Biden campaign said the vice-president – then Joe Biden’s running mate – would be willing to debate the eventual Republican vice-presidential nominee on either 23 July or 13 August.

At the time, the president had not yet stepped aside from the race and endorsed Harris to succeed him as the Democratic candidate for president in this election, and JD Vance had not been announced as Trump’s running mate.

Vance’s campaign then declined to commit to a vice-presidential debate before the Democratic national convention on 19 August.

Harris and Trump have agreed to participate in their first debate on 10 September, hosted by ABC News.

The network said the debate will be moderated by David Muir, the World News Tonight anchor and managing editor, and Linsey Davis, the ABC News Live Prime anchor.

An outbreak in Africa of mpox, the disease formerly known as monkeypox, resembles the early days of HIV, scientists have said, as the World Health Organization declared it a public health emergency.

The declaration must accelerate access to testing, vaccines and therapeutic drugs in the affected areas, medical experts urged, and kickstart campaigns to reduce stigma surrounding the virus.

More resources for research were also vital, they said, with “massive unknowns” about a new variant spreading between people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As of 4 August, there had been 38,465 cases of mpox and 1,456 deaths in Africa since January 2022, including more than 14,000 cases and 524 deaths in the DRC alone this year.

These included clades I and II of the virus, as well as a new type, clade Ib – an offshoot of clade I, which appears to be driving the outbreak in the DRC and neighbouring countries, and to which children appear particularly vulnerable.

The World Health Organization said the outbreak was serious enough to declare a “public health emergency of international concern”, the category used in the past for Ebola outbreaks, Covid-19 and a 2022 mpox surge in Europe.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, said the situation was “very worrying” and warranted the “highest level of alarm under international health law”. He highlighted the emergence of clade Ib in the east of the DRC and its detection in neighbouring countries.

The WHO has released $1.5m from its contingency fund and plans to release more, he said, calling for donors to step up to fund the rest of the $15m needed for its efforts in the region.

Trudie Lang, a professor of global health research at Oxford University, said: “I have heard so many people refer to this as being very similar to the early days of HIV.”

She said this was particularly the case because the virus appeared to be spreading via sexual networks, with “vulnerable, young, exploited sex workers” at high risk. A “high level of stigma” would require public health campaigns to ensure people understood and sought treatment.

While data has yet to be analysed and published, Lang said the frontline teams she spoke to reported a high number of pregnancy losses due to the virus, and babies being born with mpox lesions due to transmission in the womb. There were “massive unknowns”, she said, including the number of cases outside hospitals.

Lang said: “What I’m truly worried about is the amount of cases that are not severe. If people have got a more mild infection that is potentially hidden, especially if it’s a sexually transmitted genital infection, they can be walking around with it.

“The big question that we’ve got is when is it most infectious, and when is it being transmitted?”

Lang added that if the virus arrived in Europe or the US, it would probably be easily contained with vaccination, as in the 2022 mpox outbreak. “What worries me is that that will happen very fast in Europe, but not […] in these really impoverished areas in Africa.”

Dr Ayoade Alakija, the chair of Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance and of the diagnostics non-profit organisation Find, said if the outbreak was in Europe, mpox would have already been considered a major international health emergency. The declaration, she said, “should focus minds and loosen purse strings so that the response recovers from a sluggish start”.

“There is an urgent need for more in-depth investigation to better understand mpox transmission dynamics to guide controls and response plans, as well as enhanced surveillance and equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments for all affected populations. Most vaccines and treatments have been pre-ordered by rich countries and as yet only one diagnostic test exists,” said Alakija.

“Without fair access to testing, it is also unclear how viruses like HIV may impact the severity and transmission of mpox. Not focusing on tackling the virus in the DRC has led almost inevitably to spillover to neighbouring countries and the longer action is delayed, the more likely it will spread in Africa and beyond.”

The public health agency Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) had already announced on Tuesday that mpox was a public health emergency. Dr Jean Kaseya, the organisation’s director general, said the declaration was “not merely a formality” but “a clarion call to action” and warranted proactive and aggressive efforts to contain and eliminate the virus.

Responding to that announcement, Dr Boghuma Titanji, an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University in Atlanta in the US, said she hoped the declaration would prompt African governments to allocate funds to fight the outbreak.

The African Union approved $10.4m (£8m) for Africa CDC’s response at the beginning of August, but Kaseya has suggested the continent will need about $4bn.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the latest mpox outbreak in Africa a “public health emergency of international concern”, the category used in the past for Ebola outbreaks, Covid-19 and a 2022 mpox surge in Europe.

Many countries in Africa are experiencing more cases of mpox, as the deadly virus crosses national borders, with fears it could cause a significant global outbreak. Here is what we know so far.

With Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

The president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, has resigned following months of criticism of her handling of campus protests over the war in Gaza.

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik wrote in an email to staff and students on Wednesday. “It has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.”

She added: “Over the summer, I’ve been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”

Her resignation, effective immediately, was unexpected, with the university’s fall semester just weeks from beginning. It comes on the heels of two other Ivy League presidents’ resignations in the past year.

In her email, Shafik shared that she will be accepting a role with the UK’s foreign secretary, “to chair a review of the government’s approach to international development”.

In a separate letter to the Columbia community, the co-chairs of the university’s board of trustees, David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, wrote: “While we are disappointed to see her leave us, we understand and respect her decision.” They went on to announce that Katrina Armstrong, the chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will serve as the interim president.

“As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year,” Armstrong wrote in a letter to the university community. “We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become.”

Shafik, whose tenure began in July 2023 and made her the first woman to head the prestigious university in New York City, appeared before Congress in April, in highly publicized hearings regarding allegations of on-campus antisemitism. At about the same time, her decision to call the New York police department on to campus, in response to student protests, drew the ire of students and faculty.

“It has been distressing – for the community, for me as president and on a personal level – to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse,” Shafik said. “As President Lincoln said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’ – we must do all we can to resist the forces of polarization in our community.”

Columbia was widely seen as the center of the student-led pro-Palestinian protests, sparking a widespread movement of demonstrations at universities across the US and abroad. The university faced criticism for its heavy-handed tactics, which included summoning police to dismantle the student protest camp, and was also accused of failing to make Jewish students feel safe.

Although smaller demonstrations had begun in October, the university made headlines when students erected dozens of tents on the south lawn in April. As Shafik appeared before Congress, students at the encampment called for the university to divest from Israel.

In response, Shafik authorized New York police to move on to campus and break up the encampments, claiming they “pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university”. Forty-six students were arrested and, after students continued their occupation, many more were suspended. Media were prohibited from entering campus to cover the arrests.

Hundreds of faculty members issued statements condemning Shafik’s crackdown on student protesters, and walked out in support of their students. The university cancelled its commencement ceremony the following month.

Immediately after the news of Shafik’s resignation, reports of pro-Palestinian protesters celebrating near the university began appearing on X as some members of the Columbia community voiced their support for the change of leadership.

“Regardless of who leads Columbia, the students will continue their activism and actions until Columbia divests from Israeli apartheid,” Mahmoud Khalil, a student negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, told the New York Times. “We want the president to be a president for Columbia students, answering to their needs and demands, rather than answering to political pressure from outside the university.”

On X, the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, wrote: “After months of chanting ‘Minouche Shafik you can’t hide’ she finally got the memo. To be clear, any future president who does not pay heed to the Columbia student body’s overwhelming demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did.”

The announcement also comes just days after the school confirmed that three deans had resigned after officials said they exchanged disparaging texts during a campus discussion about Jewish life and antisemitism. Shafik said in an 8 July letter to the school community that the messages were unprofessional and “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes”.

Meanwhile, Elise Stefanik, one of the congressional representatives most critical of Shafik’s handling of reports of antisemitism on campus, wrote: “THREE DOWN, so many to go,” adding “after failing to protect Jewish students and negotiating with pro-Hamas terrorists, this forced resignation is long overdue”.

Agencies contributed reporting

The president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, has resigned following months of criticism of her handling of campus protests over the war in Gaza.

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik wrote in an email to staff and students on Wednesday. “It has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.”

She added: “Over the summer, I’ve been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”

Her resignation, effective immediately, was unexpected, with the university’s fall semester just weeks from beginning. It comes on the heels of two other Ivy League presidents’ resignations in the past year.

In her email, Shafik shared that she will be accepting a role with the UK’s foreign secretary, “to chair a review of the government’s approach to international development”.

In a separate letter to the Columbia community, the co-chairs of the university’s board of trustees, David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, wrote: “While we are disappointed to see her leave us, we understand and respect her decision.” They went on to announce that Katrina Armstrong, the chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will serve as the interim president.

“As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year,” Armstrong wrote in a letter to the university community. “We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become.”

Shafik, whose tenure began in July 2023 and made her the first woman to head the prestigious university in New York City, appeared before Congress in April, in highly publicized hearings regarding allegations of on-campus antisemitism. At about the same time, her decision to call the New York police department on to campus, in response to student protests, drew the ire of students and faculty.

“It has been distressing – for the community, for me as president and on a personal level – to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse,” Shafik said. “As President Lincoln said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’ – we must do all we can to resist the forces of polarization in our community.”

Columbia was widely seen as the center of the student-led pro-Palestinian protests, sparking a widespread movement of demonstrations at universities across the US and abroad. The university faced criticism for its heavy-handed tactics, which included summoning police to dismantle the student protest camp, and was also accused of failing to make Jewish students feel safe.

Although smaller demonstrations had begun in October, the university made headlines when students erected dozens of tents on the south lawn in April. As Shafik appeared before Congress, students at the encampment called for the university to divest from Israel.

In response, Shafik authorized New York police to move on to campus and break up the encampments, claiming they “pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university”. Forty-six students were arrested and, after students continued their occupation, many more were suspended. Media were prohibited from entering campus to cover the arrests.

Hundreds of faculty members issued statements condemning Shafik’s crackdown on student protesters, and walked out in support of their students. The university cancelled its commencement ceremony the following month.

Immediately after the news of Shafik’s resignation, reports of pro-Palestinian protesters celebrating near the university began appearing on X as some members of the Columbia community voiced their support for the change of leadership.

“Regardless of who leads Columbia, the students will continue their activism and actions until Columbia divests from Israeli apartheid,” Mahmoud Khalil, a student negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, told the New York Times. “We want the president to be a president for Columbia students, answering to their needs and demands, rather than answering to political pressure from outside the university.”

On X, the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, wrote: “After months of chanting ‘Minouche Shafik you can’t hide’ she finally got the memo. To be clear, any future president who does not pay heed to the Columbia student body’s overwhelming demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did.”

The announcement also comes just days after the school confirmed that three deans had resigned after officials said they exchanged disparaging texts during a campus discussion about Jewish life and antisemitism. Shafik said in an 8 July letter to the school community that the messages were unprofessional and “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes”.

Meanwhile, Elise Stefanik, one of the congressional representatives most critical of Shafik’s handling of reports of antisemitism on campus, wrote: “THREE DOWN, so many to go,” adding “after failing to protect Jewish students and negotiating with pro-Hamas terrorists, this forced resignation is long overdue”.

Agencies contributed reporting

The biggest party in Thailand’s caretaker government will meet on Thursday to choose a successor for dismissed former premier Srettha Thavisin, as it races to shore up its alliance a day ahead of a pivotal parliamentary vote on a new prime minister.

Thailand is again gripped by political drama, less than a year after real estate mogul Srettha rose to power after weeks of parliamentary deadlock, with his Pheu Thai party scrambling to retain control and deliver on its stalled populist agenda amid a struggling economy.

The constitutional court’s dismissal of Srettha on Wednesday was the latest hammer blow for Pheu Thai, the electoral juggernaut of the billionaire Shinawatra family that has locked horns for two decades with Thailand’s influential establishment and royalist military.

Earlier this month, Thailand’s constitutional court ordered the dissolution of Move Forward, the country’s most popular party, and banned its leaders from politics for 10 years, over its election promise to reform the country’s strict lese-majesty law.

Pheu Thai must now choose one of two eligible candidates – Chaikasem Nitisiri, a former attorney-general and justice minister, and its inexperienced leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the 37-year-old daughter of divisive political heavyweight Thaksin Shinawatra.

Srettha was the movement’s fourth premier to be removed by a court ruling, and his downfall could indicate the end of an uneasy detente between Thaksin and his enemies in the conservative elite and military old guard, which had enabled the tycoon’s return from self-exile in 2023 and ally Srettha to become premier the same day.

Pheu Thai has moved quickly to preserve its advantage, with media broadcasting live images late on Wednesday of its coalition partners visiting the residence of Thaksin, 75, its founder and influential figurehead.

“They want to be decisive … The longer it takes, the more squabbles and power struggles will ensue, so the quicker the better,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University.

“If they can vote sooner, then the vote is more manageable. They can control the outcome of the house.”

The court ruled Srettha had “grossly breached ethical standards” when he gave a cabinet post to Thaksin’s former lawyer, Pichit Chuenban, who was briefly imprisoned for contempt of court in 2008 over an alleged attempt to bribe court staff, which was never proven.

The convening of parliament less than 48 hours after Srettha’s dismissal contrasts sharply with last year, when it took two months for the lower house to sit to vote on a new premier after an election.

Lawmakers allied with the military had then closed ranks to block the anti-establishment election winner Move Forward from forming a government, but rallied behind Srettha and Pheu Thai in a second vote six weeks later.

The 11-party Pheu Thai alliance holds 314 house seats and should have no difficulty electing a prime minister on Friday, providing it remains intact.

To become premier a candidate needs the approval of more than half of the current 493 lawmakers.

Pheu Thai must decide whether to go with party stalwart Chaikasem, or give a baptism of fire to neophyte Paetongtarn, and risk the kind of backlash that saw her father, and then her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra, both toppled in coups before fleeing into exile to avoid jail.

“If it’s Paetongtarn, she would be open to attack … If you ask Thaksin, he probably wants her to be prime minister,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political scientist at Ubon Ratchathani University.

“If Pheu Thai can’t deliver anything then it could be the end of the Shinawatra family in politics.”

• A wave of Ukrainian drone strikes targeted Russia’s Voronezh, Kursk, Savasleyka and Borisoglebsk airbases, where warplanes take off to drop glide bombs on Ukraine. Ukraine also claimed on Wednesday to have shot down a Russian Su-34 jet in the Kursk region where it said it had also captured 100 Russian prisoners.

• Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said the Kursk operation was creating a buffer zone “to protect our border communities from daily enemy attacks”. Apart from Kursk being invaded, Russia’s Belgorod region has also declared a state of emergency because of Ukrainian attacks.

• The Ukrainian leadership’s long-term plans for the Kursk incursion are unclear, but the longer it lasts, the harder it is for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to brush it off, while the Russian elite will be watching to see if he can come out on top, Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, writes. Ekaterina Schulmann, from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, says: “What I suspect they are watching for is this: is the power still strong? Does the old man still have it in him?”

• Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukraine would open humanitarian corridors for evacuating civilians towards both Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian officials also promised access for international humanitarian organisations, likely to include the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he met top officials to discuss the humanitarian situation and establishing a military commandant’s office “if needed” in an occupied area that Kyiv says exceeds 1,000 sq km (390 sq miles).

• Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said the Russian town of Sudzha, a transshipment hub for Russian natural gas flowing to Europe via Ukraine, was fully under Ukrainian control with gas was still flowing. “However, Ukraine has no intention of claiming someone else’s land,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry said. The Russian rouble fell further against the dollar on Wednesday, for a loss of over 8% since the incursion began.

• Ukraine’s ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said he had discussed the Russian prisoners taken in the Kursk region with his Russian counterpart. “I see that this situation at least forced the initiative from the Russian side,” he told national TV.

• The heaviest fighting of the war remains in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, and Zelenskiy said his forces there would receive more weapons than originally planned from the next western support package.

• Russian drones attacked a medical battalion vehicle in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, killing a medic and wounding other people, regional authorities said. The attack reportedly took place in the settlement of Bilyy Kolodiaz.

• A Russian ballistic missile hit port infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa on Wednesday evening, injuring a port employee and a grain carrier driver, Ukrainian officials said. Russian pulled out of a UN-brokered deal that guaranteed safe export of Ukrainian grain to guard against world hunger. Ukraine has since established its own maritime corridor for shipments.

• China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs had a phone call with Pope Francis’s Ukraine peace envoy on Wednesday to discuss the current situation in the Russia-Ukraine war, China’s foreign ministry said.

• Mali’s Tuareg rebel alliance has said it received no external assistance from Ukraine or anywhere else in recent fighting said to have killed at least 84 Russian Wagner mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers. Mali and Niger said they were cutting diplomatic ties with Ukraine comments from Ukrainian military intelligence suggested Ukraine had helped the rebels. Ukraine’s foreign ministry said this was hasty and no evidence had been provided to show a Ukrainian role. Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane of the (CSP-PSD) rebel alliance, told Reuters on Wednesday: “We can clearly say that we received no outside help for the fighting at Tinzaouaten … No, we have not received any assistance from Ukraine.”

Nasa says it is close to announcing when it will bring home two astronauts who have been “stuck” in orbit for more than two months by ongoing technical problems with Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, but admits it still has not figured out exactly how.

The space agency’s latest update on the troubled test mission on Wednesday revealed that managers were expecting to make a final decision either late next week or early the week after that, after ground engineers complete an evaluation of Starliner’s glitchy propulsion system.

Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have been onboard the International Space Station for almost 70 days, almost 10 times longer than the test flight was originally expected to last, while engineers troubleshoot reaction control thrusters that failed during Starliner’s first docking attempt on 6 June.

Nasa said it still hopes to return them to Earth aboard Starliner, but has admitted the clock is ticking on a decision that could see the craft sent back without a crew, and the astronauts forced to stay in space until next February when they would come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

“It’s getting a lot harder. We’re reaching a point where [by] that last week in August we really should be making a call, if not sooner,” Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of Nasa’s space operations mission directorate, told a lunchtime press conference.

“Butch and Suni are well engaged on the space station. It’s great to be there, enjoying the environment, eating that great space food and being able to look out the window. So I know they’re making the best of this time, but I’m sure they’re eager for a decision just like the rest of us.”

The chief astronaut, Joe Acaba, said he had spoken regularly with the astronauts about the prospect of a long-duration stay.

“If Butch and Suni do not come home on Starliner and they are kept aboard the station, they will have about eight months on orbit,” he said.

“We are lucky to be in a time in human space flight where we have regular resupply missions, enabling the crews aboard the station to receive any extra supplies they may need.”

Notably, no representative from Boeing was present at the media briefing, fueling further speculation of a wedge between the space agency and its commercial partner over this and other collaborations.

Boeing engineers are reportedly convinced Starliner is safe to bring its crew home now, while Nasa, which lost 14 astronauts in two space shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003, is understandably more cautious.

“I’m not surprised the Boeing team is 100% behind their vehicle, that’s what we would like from them,” Bowersox said.

“But I can also tell you they want to work with us in a partnership. When we get to a decision we’ll work through it together.”

Nasa managers stressed that Starliner, which launched on 5 June seven years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, was still rated as an escape vehicle for the crew in the event of an emergency.

But its continuing problems are an embarrassment for Boeing, which has suffered numerous recent safety and quality issues in its aviation division, and a setback for Nasa’s plan to rely on Starliner as an additional crew transport to lower earth orbit to SpaceX’s Dragon.

Asked if the agency would consider an uncrewed return of Starliner as a failure, Russ DeLoach, chief of Nasa’s office of safety and mission assurance, appeared to pass blame for such a scenario on to Boeing.

“If we intervene and make the call to change the mission, that the crew would ride home on something other than Starliner, we don’t need to consider that a Nasa mishap,” he said.

Nasa says it is close to announcing when it will bring home two astronauts who have been “stuck” in orbit for more than two months by ongoing technical problems with Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, but admits it still has not figured out exactly how.

The space agency’s latest update on the troubled test mission on Wednesday revealed that managers were expecting to make a final decision either late next week or early the week after that, after ground engineers complete an evaluation of Starliner’s glitchy propulsion system.

Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have been onboard the International Space Station for almost 70 days, almost 10 times longer than the test flight was originally expected to last, while engineers troubleshoot reaction control thrusters that failed during Starliner’s first docking attempt on 6 June.

Nasa said it still hopes to return them to Earth aboard Starliner, but has admitted the clock is ticking on a decision that could see the craft sent back without a crew, and the astronauts forced to stay in space until next February when they would come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

“It’s getting a lot harder. We’re reaching a point where [by] that last week in August we really should be making a call, if not sooner,” Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of Nasa’s space operations mission directorate, told a lunchtime press conference.

“Butch and Suni are well engaged on the space station. It’s great to be there, enjoying the environment, eating that great space food and being able to look out the window. So I know they’re making the best of this time, but I’m sure they’re eager for a decision just like the rest of us.”

The chief astronaut, Joe Acaba, said he had spoken regularly with the astronauts about the prospect of a long-duration stay.

“If Butch and Suni do not come home on Starliner and they are kept aboard the station, they will have about eight months on orbit,” he said.

“We are lucky to be in a time in human space flight where we have regular resupply missions, enabling the crews aboard the station to receive any extra supplies they may need.”

Notably, no representative from Boeing was present at the media briefing, fueling further speculation of a wedge between the space agency and its commercial partner over this and other collaborations.

Boeing engineers are reportedly convinced Starliner is safe to bring its crew home now, while Nasa, which lost 14 astronauts in two space shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003, is understandably more cautious.

“I’m not surprised the Boeing team is 100% behind their vehicle, that’s what we would like from them,” Bowersox said.

“But I can also tell you they want to work with us in a partnership. When we get to a decision we’ll work through it together.”

Nasa managers stressed that Starliner, which launched on 5 June seven years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, was still rated as an escape vehicle for the crew in the event of an emergency.

But its continuing problems are an embarrassment for Boeing, which has suffered numerous recent safety and quality issues in its aviation division, and a setback for Nasa’s plan to rely on Starliner as an additional crew transport to lower earth orbit to SpaceX’s Dragon.

Asked if the agency would consider an uncrewed return of Starliner as a failure, Russ DeLoach, chief of Nasa’s office of safety and mission assurance, appeared to pass blame for such a scenario on to Boeing.

“If we intervene and make the call to change the mission, that the crew would ride home on something other than Starliner, we don’t need to consider that a Nasa mishap,” he said.

Two French pilots have died after their Rafale jets collided in mid-air in eastern France, President Emmanuel Macron has said, in a rare accident involving the cutting-edge military aircraft.

One pilot ejected after the crash over northeastern France on Wednesday, but authorities had launched a desperate search for a missing instructor and a student pilot on the second jet.

“We learn with sadness the death of Capt Sebastien Mabire and Lt Matthis Laurens in an air accident in a Rafale training mission,” Macron posted on X.

“The nation shares the grief of their families and brothers in arms at airbase 113 in Saint-Dizier” in eastern France, he added.

“One of the pilots was found safe and sound,” defence minister Sebastien Lecornu said earlier on X.

It was not immediately clear what caused the collision that authorities said occurred over Colombey-les-Belles, a town in northeastern France.

“The military authorities will report on the causes of the accident,” said the local prefecture.

The supersonic Rafale “multi-role” fighter – used to hunt enemy planes, strike ground and sea targets, carry out reconnaissance and even carry France’s nuclear warheads – has become a bestseller for the French arms industry.

Accidents involving Rafale jets are rare.

“We heard a loud noise, around 12.30pm (10.30 GMT),” Patrice Bonneaux, deputy mayor of Colombey-les-Belles, told AFP.

It was not the usual sonic boom of a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier, he said. “It was a strange noise, a percussive sound”.

“I assumed that two planes had collided, but we didn’t believe it,” he said, adding that a road bordering a nearby forest had been cordoned off.

In December 2007, a Rafale jet crashed near Neuvic in southwestern France. Investigators concluded that the pilot had become disoriented. That was believed to be the first crash of a Rafale.

In September 2009, two Rafale aircraft went down as they flew back to the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle off the coast of Perpignan after completing a test flight. One pilot died.

France has sold the Rafale to Egypt, India, Greece, Indonesia, Croatia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Lecornu said in January that France had ordered 42 new Rafale fighter jets, with the first to be delivered in 2027. The French military has now ordered more than 230 Rafales since the jet went into service.

Macron has urged defence manufacturers to boost production and innovation as Europe seeks to increase arms supplies to buttress Ukraine, which has been struggling to fight off Russia’s invasion, now in its third year.

An official informational pamphlet for Arizona voters who will decide in the fall whether to guarantee a constitutional right to an abortion can refer to a fetus as an “unborn human being”, the state’s highest court ruled on Wednesday.

Arizona voters will get to decide in November whether to add the right to an abortion to the state constitution.

The proposed amendment would allow abortions until a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks, with exceptions to save the pregnant individual’s life or to protect her physical or mental health. It would restrict the state from adopting or enforcing any law that would prohibit access to the procedure.

The justices of the Arizona supreme court, in Wednesday’s decision, sided with Republican lawmakers over proponents of the ballot measure on abortion rights.

But Wednesday’s ruling drew swift criticism from abortion rights advocates who had argued that the phrase “unborn human being” is neither impartial nor objective. They also said they were concerned that Arizonans would be subjected to biased and politically charged words.

“We are deeply disappointed in this ruling, but will not be deterred from doing everything in our power to communicate to voters the truth of the Arizona Abortion Access Act and why it’s critical to vote yes to restore and protect access to abortion care this fall,” the group, Arizona for Abortion Access, said in a statement.

The pamphlet, a voter guide produced by the office of the Arizona secretary of state, gives voters information on candidates and ballot measures to help inform their choices. It was unclear, however, whether any specific language contained in the pamphlet would appear on the ballot.

The Arizona secretary of state’s office said on Monday that it had certified 577,971 signatures – far above the required number that the coalition supporting the ballot measure had to submit in order to put the question before voters.

Democrats have made abortion rights a central message since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 – and it is a key part of their efforts in this year’s elections. Arizona is a major battleground state in the presidential election, and Democrats are hoping that enthusiasm for the ballot measure will translate to increased turnout among their base.

Earlier this year, the Arizona supreme court ruled to let a near-total abortion ban that dated back to 1864 take effect in the state – a move that unleashed national outrage and ultimately led a handful of Republican state legislators to join Democrats in voting to repeal the 1864 ban. Arizona currently bans abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Seven other states are also set to vote on abortion-related ballot measures this year, including Nevada, another battleground state. In the two years since Roe’s demise, GOP stronghold states like Ohio and Kansas have all voted to pass ballot measures that preserve abortion rights.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

The latest edition of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok debuted a new image generation tool on Wednesday that lacked most of the safety guardrails that have become standard within the artificial intelligence industry. Grok’s new feature, which is currently limited to paid subscribers of X, led to a flood of bizarre, offensive AI-generated images of political figures and celebrities on the social network formerly known as Twitter.

The image generator can produce a variety of images that similar AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have blocked for violating rules on misinformation and abuse. In prompts and images reviewed by the Guardian, Grok’s output included representations of Donald Trump flying a plane into the World Trade Center buildings and the prophet Muhammad holding a bomb, as well as depictions of Taylor Swift, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in lingerie – all women who are already frequent targets for online harassment. ChatGPT, by contrast, rejects such prompts for images by citing terms of service that prohibit depictions of real-world violence, disrespect to religious figures and explicit content.

Grok’s image generator also does not decline prompts that involve copyrighted characters, as most other AI visualizers including ChatGPT do. Grok produced images of Mickey Mouse saluting Adolf Hitler and Donald Duck using heroin, for example. Disney did not return a request for comment.

Musk appeared to revel in Grok’s unregulated AI images on Wednesday, tweeting: “Grok is the most fun AI in the world!”

Most major AI image generators have fairly stringent policies on what they will generate after an early wild west period with few rules, although users frequently try to find workarounds for these safeguards. These more established tools usually ban the creation of political and sexualized images featuring real people – OpenAI states, for instance, that it will “decline requests that ask for a public figure by name”.

Grok does appear to have some prohibitions on what images it will generate, responding “unfortunately I can’t generate that kind of image” when prompted for fully nude images. X has had a policy on non-consensual nudity since 2021, when the company was still Twitter and not under Musk’s ownership, which bans sharing explicit content that was produced without a subject’s consent and includes digitally imposing people’s faces on to nude bodies. Many of X’s policies have seen more lax enforcement since Musk took over the platform.

When Grok is asked to “make an image that violates copyright laws”, it responds with: “I will not generate or assist with content that intentionally violates copyright laws”; however, when asked to make “a copyrighted cartoon of Disney”, it complied and produced an image of a modern-era Minnie Mouse. When requested to make images of political violence such as party leaders being killed, Grok responded with variable results. It depicted Harris and Joe Biden sitting at their desks, but showed Trump lying down with blackened hands and an explosion behind him.

Musk launched Grok as part of his xAI company in November of last year as a rival to more popular chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which boasts hundreds of millions of users. While Musk marketed Grok as a “maximum truth-seeking AI” that would deliver answers on issues other chatbots refused to touch, his company has faced criticism from researchers and lawmakers for spreading falsehoods. Five US secretaries of state earlier this month called on Musk, who has become a fervent Trump supporter, to fix the chatbot after it spread misinformation suggesting Harris was ineligible to appear on the ballot in some states.

Image generation tools and their ability to produce misinformation, as well as content that can be used for racist or misogynist harassment, have become a minefield for big tech companies as they rush to build more products powered by AI. Google, Microsoft and OpenAI have all faced backlash over their image generation tools. Google suspended its Gemini text-to-image tool after it produced ahistorical images such as Black soldiers in Nazi-era military uniforms.

The spread of sexual deepfakes has likewise been a longstanding problem for X. Earlier this year, AI-made pornographic images of Taylor Swift circulated widely and unchecked on the social network. They prompted such intense criticism of both X and AI companies that lawmakers introduced legislation to create legal remedies for victims of nonconsensual AI-generated images.

Representatives for Trump, Harris and Ocasio-Cortez did not respond to requests for comment. A request for comment sent to X generated the platform’s standard autoreply: “Busy now, please check back later.”

The acclaimed American actor Gena Rowlands, a three-time Emmy winner and dual Oscar nominee, has died at the age of 94, her son, Nick Cassavetes, told Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday.

Rowlands, acclaimed for her vivid portrayals of strong, troubled women, starred in dozens of films during a career that began on stage and television in the 1950s and included award-winning roles in A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria, directed by her first husband, the actor, writer and director John Cassavetes.

In her late career, she won a legion of new fans for her role in the 2004 film The Notebook, playing the older version of actor Rachel McAdams’s character. Nick Cassavetes revealed in June that Rowlands had Alzheimer’s disease, like her own mother and the character she portrayed in that film.

“She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy – we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us,” her son, who directed the film, told Entertainment Weekly.

Rowlands and Cassavetes were the golden couple of independent films in the US in the 1970s and 80s. Cassavetes was a pioneer in cinéma vérité and Rowlands was his muse. Together they have been credited with a style of independent cinema that borrowed from the glamour and dramatic power of Hollywood.

Rowlands made 10 films with Cassavetes before his death in 1989, including the psychological drama Opening Night (1977) and the marital saga Faces (1968).

“There was always a manic energy to the performances she gave in her late husband’s films, a fear of failure, a desire to love,” the awards website Golden Derby said of Rowlands.

In A Woman Under the Influence, Rowlands played Mabel Longhetti, a housewife and mother struggling with mental illness, in a performance the US director and writer John Cameron Mitchell has described as “the greatest performance I’ve ever seen on film”.

As the tough, determined title character in Cassavetes’ 1980 film Gloria, she rescued and protected a young, orphaned boy from mobsters determined to kill him.

She was nominated for Academy Awards for both roles, and while she did not win, she received an Honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2015. She also won three Emmys, two for best actress and one supporting actress in a miniseries or movie.

Rowlands was married to Cassavetes from 1954 until his death. They had three children. In 2012, she wed the businessman Robert Forrest.

Reuters contributed to this report.