Ukraine’s lightning offensive into several Russian border regions is designed to persuade Moscow to engage in “fair” talks about its war in Ukraine, an aide to Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, as Russian forces close in on the strategic city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region.

“We need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia,” the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “In the Kursk region, we clearly see how the military tool is objectively used to convince the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process.

“We have proven, effective means of coercion. In addition to economic and diplomatic ones … we need to inflict significant tactical defeats on Russia.”

Podolyak made his comments as it appeared that Ukraine had largely cut off a significant area of Glushovsky district of Kursk and Russian troops there after blowing up two important bridges on the Seim river.

As Ukraine appeared to be consolidating its gains in Russia’s Kursk region, Moscow’s forces were advancing rapidly towards Pokrovsk, which for months has been one of their key targets.

Ukrainian military authorities urged civilians living in the city to speed up their evacuation on Friday. Pokrovsk officials said in a Telegram post that Russian troops were “advancing at a fast pace. With every passing day there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions”.

Pokrovsk is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the eastern Donetsk region. Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes and bring Russia closer than ever to its stated aim of capturing the whole region.

In an update on Thursday, the Institute for the Study of War thinktank wrote: “Russian forces are maintaining their relatively high offensive tempo in Donetsk oblast, demonstrating that the Russian military command continues to prioritise advances in eastern Ukraine even as Ukraine is pressuring Russian forces within Kursk oblast.”

Russia has accused Nato and the west more widely of aiding the Ukrainian incursion, including by permitting the use of western-supplied equipment. But British officials said Ukraine was entitled under international law to use British-donated equipment in operations, including within Russia.

“There has been no change in UK government policy; under article 51 of the UN charter, Ukraine has a clear right of self-defence against Russia’s illegal attacks, [and] that does not preclude operations inside Russia,” the Ministry of Defence said.

It appears, however, there has been no change in the UK’s refusal to allow Ukraine to use British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles against targets inside Russia, suggesting a delicate balancing act.

The US so far has also deemed the incursion a protective move in which it is appropriate for Kyiv to use US equipment, officials in Washington said. But they expressed worries about complications as Ukrainian troops pushed further into enemy territory.

One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that if Ukraine started taking Russian villages and other non-military targets using US weapons and vehicles, it could be seen as stretching the limits Washington has imposed, precisely to avoid any perception of a direct Nato-Russia conflict.

Ukraine has said that one of the aims of its current incursion into Russia is to counter artillery and missile fire into Ukraine and create a buffer zone.

Footage posted on Russian social media has purported to show western-supplied equipment – including a British-supplied Challenger 2 main battle tank – destroyed or captured during the Kursk offensive, although the tank depicted in the footage appears to be a Soviet-era T-64. Unverified reports have said that Challengers may have been used during the operation.

Russia’s defence ministry has also published footage that it said showed a Russian drone destroying a US-made Stryker armoured combat vehicle in Kursk.

On Friday, Russian forces said they had destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage unit in Kursk that was armed with weapons from Nato countries, the state-run media agency RIA reported, citing unidentified security sources.

“Samples of small arms manufactured by the United States and Sweden have been seized at the liquidation site of a Ukrainian sabotage group near the village of Kremyanoe in the Kursk region,” RIA cited a Russian security official as saying.

Ukraine’s attack into Russia began on 6 August, when thousands of Ukrainian troops crossed Russia’s western border, in an embarrassment for the Russian military.

The US and other western powers, eager to avoid direct confrontation with Russia, said Ukraine had not given advance notice and that Washington was not involved.

So far Russia has mostly redeployed irregular units in its sluggish response.

Footage geolocated by the ISW placed Ukrainian troops just under 30km (18.6 miles) from the international border in Kursk. Although the Russian defence ministry claimed it had cleared some settlements of Ukrainian forces, Russian military bloggers suggested fighting was continuing.

On Thursday a number of Ukrainian news outlets identified several units of more than 100 recently captured Russian prisoners of war, suggesting a mix of regular and irregular forces, including Chechen fighters.

Fighting also appeared to be continuing at a border crossing into the Belgorod region – a second line of Kyiv’s advance – with conflicting reports over the status of the fighting.

While the Ukrainian attack has revealed weaknesses in Russia’s defences and changed the public narrative of the conflict, Russian officials said what they cast as a Ukrainian “terrorist invasion” would not change the course of the war. Russia has been advancing for most of the year in the key eastern sector of the 1,000km (620 mile) frontline and has vast numerical superiority.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Donald Trump made hundred of thousands from his branded Bible and millions from his properties – but also owes millions for defamation and fraud cases, according to his latest financial disclosures that shed little light on the perennial question of whether the Republican presidential nominee is, in fact, solvent.

Voluminous disclosure documents to the US Office of Government Ethics to comply with election campaign laws show that, in addition to his Trump’s US real estate holdings, he has global financial interests, including registered trademarks in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ukraine and Israel.

He also owns millions in cryptocurrency and has a six-figure investment in gold bars.

But the disclosures also hint at Trump’s substantial personal outgoings, including more than $500m owed to both the writer E Jean Carroll and the New York attorney general resulting from civil judgements involving defamation and accounting fraud.

Both judgments – $83m to Carroll and $454m to the New York state – are subject to bonds while Trump appeals the decisions, a process that could take years.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club in Florida, which formed part of a case against the Trump Organization involving inflated asset valuations, produced about $57m in income from the club, down about $8m from a previous disclosure.

The disclosures are not a profit and loss balance sheet – they only give broad ranges of income and assets – so alone they cannot determine whether Trump is in the red or the black. He has consistently resisted efforts to force the release of his tax returns, although two years ago a Democrat-controlled Congress released six years of Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.

Earlier this year, Trump joined Bloomberg Billionaires Index of 500 richest people, with a fortune of $6.5bn – a $4bn increase, resulting from a Spac merger of his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social site where the former president posts most of his public messages. But the value of the media group has declined significantly in recent months by as much as $1.3bn.

The disclosure comes as US voters are asked to weigh the relative fortunes of candidates and their running partners ahead of November’s presidential vote. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is estimated to be worth $8m, while her running mate and Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, made headlines for being worth a modest $330,000.

The net worth of Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who worked as a venture capitalist and wrote a successful memoir, is placed at $4m, including $250,000 in bitcoin. Joe Biden and Jill Biden’s wealth is placed at $10m, including the $400,000 annual salary he earns as president.

The particularities of Trump’s financial disclosures show that he earned $12m through licensing and royalty deals. Those include around $7m he earned from a NFT licensing deal that sells digital “trading cards”.

The former president also reported earning around $5m in royalties for his recent books Letters to Trump and Our Journey Together. A Bible, published in association with the country singer Lee Greenwood, earned $300,000.

There was no income reported from his gold high-top sneaker line.

Trump, who recently signaled his support for cryptocurrencies at a global crypto convention in Nashville, Tennessee, declares between $1 and $5m in Ethereum. His son Eric Trump, who currently runs the Trump Organization, recently posted on X that he had “truly fallen in love with Crypto” and alerted to an unspecified to “a big announcement”.

Alongside the former president’s disclosures, the former first lady Melania Trump said she had earned $237,500 from a booking to speak to Republicans in Florida, and around $330,000 from NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which have recently included digital portraits of her celebrating Women’s History Month.

The documents also hint at changes in direction at Trump’s real estate empire. Three Chinese companies that may be related to real estate deals were dissolved, though he still owns trademarks in the country. He also paid off a Deutsche Bank mortgage of between $25m to $50m on his Chicago Trump International Hotel.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said Venezuela is living under “a very unpleasant regime” with an “authoritarian slant”, as the political crisis engulfing the oil-rich South American country intensifies before fresh street protests on Saturday.

In an interview early on Friday, Lula – whose diplomats have been exploring possible solutions to Venezuela’s post-election drama – offered some of his sharpest criticism yet of Nicolás Maduro’s nominally socialist administration.

Maduro, who has governed since 2013, claims he won a third term in the 28 July vote but has yet to provide proof – while his opposition rival, Edmundo Gonzalez, has published election data suggesting he was the actual winner.

Speaking to Rádio Gaúcha, Brazil’s leftist leader – who has not recognized Maduro’s claim to victory despite his long relationship with his mentor, Hugo Chávez – said he had yet to see proof either side had won. Lula repeated Brazil’s demand that Maduro’s government publish the voting tally sheets before the result could be verified.

But in a sign that Lula’s patience with Maduro is wearing thin over his failure to publish that data, the Brazilian made some of his most disapproving comments about the nature of Venezuela’s current government.

“I think Venezuela is living under a very unpleasant regime,” Lula said, adding that he did not, however, consider it a dictatorship.

“It’s different to a dictatorship – it is a government with an authoritarian slant but it isn’t a dictatorship the likes of which we know so many in this world,” said Brazil’s president.

Those comments, which are likely to irk Venezuela’s strongman leader, represent a major departure from remarks made by Lula last year when he hosted Maduro in Brasília in an attempt to rescue him from international isolation. During that visit, Lula controversially dismissed claims that Maduro had turned Venezuela into an authoritarian and undemocratic place as “a narrative”.

Chile’s progressive president Gabriel Boric was among those who pushed back against Lula’s portrayal. “It’s not a constructed narrative: it is a reality, it is serious, and I have had the opportunity to see it in the eyes and the pain of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who now live in our country,” Boric said, referring to the exodus of about eight million Venezuelans who have fled Maduro’s increasingly authoritarian and economically devastated country.

During Friday’s interview, Lula said that on the eve of last month’s election, he had told Maduro it was essential for him to show the world Venezuela had held “a clean and democratic election”. “He said that was what he would do,” Lula recalled.

But this week, a group of UN election experts claimed the vote had lacked “basic transparency and integrity” and said the decision to announce a result without providing detailed data “has no precedent in contemporary democratic elections”.

Maduro’s claim to victory sparked two days of protests that saw many working-class communities take to the streets for the first time against a political movement they have traditionally backed. Those protests have been met with a severe government crackdown that has so far seen more than 1,400 people detained and more than 20 killed.

Some observers fear far greater bloodshed and violence if the repression continues but Lula downplayed the risk of a conflict. “I don’t believe there will be a civil war … because I think there are lots of countries who are willing to help us uphold peace in South America,” he said. “War leads to nothing, war brings only destruction. Peace brings economic growth and wealth distribution, which is what I wish for Venezuela.”

On Thursday, Lula floated two possible solutions to the crisis, fresh elections or a coalition government, with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, also backing the idea of a power-sharing agreement. However, both Maduro and the opposition were quick to reject those ideas.

The people who served as fake electors in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election have continued to donate to Donald Trump, JD Vance and other Republicans since then, campaign finance records show, underscoring the role they continue to play in US politics.

Some fake electors face criminal charges for their actions. Some continue to hold key government roles.

Meshawn Maddock, a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican party, has given more than $1,800 to Trump and allied fundraising groups this campaign cycle, according to federal campaign finance records. Maddock is one of the 16 fake electors in Michigan who were criminally charged by Dana Nessel, the Democratic Michigan attorney general, last summer and has pleaded not guilty. Tyler Bowyer, who has also pleaded not guilty for his role as a fake elector in Arizona, donated $645 this year to Trump.

“It is incredibly rare for politicians to accept campaign contributions from people under indictment,” said Michael Beckel, the research director at Issue One, an election watchdog group. “It’s generally not good optics for politicians to accept money from people accused of serious wrongdoing. Political candidates generally don’t want to be tied to convicted or accused felons. Yet in certain circles, association with the people who served as fake electors for Donald Trump in 2020 may be a badge of honor.”

“Former President Trump likely has fewer qualms about accepting campaign cash from people under indictment for serving as fake electors in 2020 than the typical politician,” he added.

David Hanna, a fake elector from Georgia who was not criminally charged, has given at least $25,000 to Trump this year.

In 2021 and 2023, Hanna also donated more than $6,000 combined to JD Vance’s senate campaign. Daryl Moody, another fake elector in Georgia who was not charged, donated $2,900 in 2022 to Vance. Vance, Trump’s running mate, has been supportive of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and has said that if he had been vice-president in 2020, he would have used his power overseeing the joint session of Congress to recognize fake slates of electors.

“It doesn’t take a lot of work to figure out that Donald Trump and JD Vance are keeping extremist election-deniers in the fold as reliable henchmen and women to challenge the results of the fall election,” said Brandon Weathersby, a spokesperson for American Bridge 21st Century, a Super Pac that supports Democrats and initially flagged the donations to the Guardian.

“They’ve taken thousands of dollars in donations from fake electors and welcomed them with open arms to the Republican national convention last month. Trump and Vance are actively selling out our democracy in exchange for the power to enact their Project 2025 agenda the day they step into the White House.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Several Republicans running for the US House have also received donations from fake electors. Eli Crane, a Republican representative from Arizona, in 2023 received $2,900 from Jim Lamon, a fake elector who faces criminal charges there. Yvette Herrell, a New Mexico representative, has accepted more than $3,000 from Rosie Tripp, who served as a fake elector in the state. In 2022, Herrell also received $2,900 from Deborah Maestas, a former New Mexico Republican party chair who served as a fake elector in 2020.

The campaigns of Crane and Herrell did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition to continuing to donate to candidates, fake electors continue to play key roles in the Republican party. Michael McDonald, a fake elector criminally charged in Nevada, is the chair of that state’s Republican party (a Nevada judge threw out the case against the Nevada electors last month, and the attorney general is appealing). At least 18 fake electors also served as party delegates at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee last month, according to CNN, NPR and a local news report.

In Wisconsin, Robert Spindell, a fake elector, continues to serve as one of three Republicans on the bipartisan Wisconsin elections commission, the body that oversees voting in the state. In Georgia, Burt Jones and Shawn Still, both of whom were fake electors, respectively serve as lieutenant governor and a state senator.

Full slates of fake electors in Nevada, Michigan and Arizona face criminal charges for their activities. A handful of fake electors were charged in Georgia, while those in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wisconsin have not faced charges. In Wisconsin, the fake electors reached a civil settlement agreeing that they would not serve as electors again in 2024.

Dozens of Israeli settlers have attacked a Palestinian village near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, killing at least one person, in the latest deadly incident of settler violence amid surging tensions in the Palestinian territory.

The Palestinian health ministry said one man was killed and another critically wounded by Israeli settlers who opened fire during the Thursday night attack in the village of Jit, in the north of the West Bank, which is surrounded by Israeli settlements.

Footage shared on social media showed buildings and vehicles on fire after the attacks. The Israeli rights group Yesh Din said on Friday four houses and six cars were torched.

Hassan, who lives in the village, told the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz: “There were about 100 settlers. They were masked, dressed in black, armed, and some had knives. It seemed planned. They didn’t look like children, they looked like adults.

“When I went outside to see what was happening, they attacked me with teargas. They torched my car and smashed another one, and then they continued into the village, after attacking more cars nearby. The army arrived about an hour later, they took their time and let them do whatever they wanted.”

Palestinians regularly accuse Israeli security forces of standing by and allowing groups of settlers to attack their houses and villages in assaults that have attracted increasing concern internationally.

Violence in the West Bank has surged since the Israel-Gaza war started after the Hamas attack of 7 October, and the number of Israeli settlements there – which are considered illegal under international law – have hit new records. On Friday, a herding community in Umm al-Jamal, in the Jordan valley, abandoned their village after increasing settler attacks.

The Israeli military said police and army units intervened and arrested one Israeli for interfering with the police during Friday’s violence in Jit. It condemned the attack, which it said diverted security forces from other responsibilities. It said it was examining reports about the death of the Palestinian and an investigation had been opened.

The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a statement saying he viewed the attack with “utmost severity”.

“Those responsible for any offence will be apprehended and tried,” it said.

Netanyahu governs with the support of far-right parties that advocate more Israeli settlements in the West Bank and outright annexation. In a rare statement, the rightwing finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, wrote on X that the attackers in Jit had “nothing to do with the settlement and the settlers”.

“They are criminals who must be dealt with by the law enforcement authorities with the full force of the law,” he said.

The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said citizens should not take the law into their own hands. However, he also appeared to accuse the army of being responsible for the attack, saying: “The fact that soldiers are not given backing to shoot stone-throwing terrorists leads to incidents like this evening’s.”

Yair Golan, the head of a new left-leaning alliance known as the Democrats, said Thursday’s violence “is not an extremist minority and a minor problem, but a violent group that enjoys enormous government support”.

Netanyahu had brought “representatives of the rioters in Jit into the Knesset and appointed them as ministers”, he said. “Without a change of government, this violent public will continue to run Israel and lead it to oblivion.”

The US and a number of European countries have imposed sanctions on violent settlers and called repeatedly on Israel to do more to curb the attacks.

Meanwhile, in Qatar, talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the Gaza war entered a second day on Friday. While Hamas and Israel agreed in principle last month to implement a three-phase plan publicly proposed by Joe Biden in May, both sides have since requested “amendments” and “clarifications”, leaving the negotiations at an impasse.

A big breakthrough is not expected, since Hamas is not directly participating, but the renewed push for talks is more vital than ever after the assassinations of a top Hezbollah commander and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief. The killings in Beirut and Tehran, which the Lebanese group and Iran have blamed on Israel, threaten to transform the war in Gaza into a region-wide conflict.

The Israeli army also ordered on Friday new evacuations in southern and central Gaza of areas previously designated as humanitarian “safe zones”, saying the areas had been used by Hamas as a base for firing mortars and rockets towards Israel.

Warning flyers and text messages had been sent out in the area north of the southern city of Khan Younis and in the eastern part of Deir al-Balah, where tens of thousands of people have sought shelter from fighting in other parts of Gaza.

Dozens of Israeli settlers have attacked a Palestinian village near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, killing at least one person, in the latest deadly incident of settler violence amid surging tensions in the Palestinian territory.

The Palestinian health ministry said one man was killed and another critically wounded by Israeli settlers who opened fire during the Thursday night attack in the village of Jit, in the north of the West Bank, which is surrounded by Israeli settlements.

Footage shared on social media showed buildings and vehicles on fire after the attacks. The Israeli rights group Yesh Din said on Friday four houses and six cars were torched.

Hassan, who lives in the village, told the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz: “There were about 100 settlers. They were masked, dressed in black, armed, and some had knives. It seemed planned. They didn’t look like children, they looked like adults.

“When I went outside to see what was happening, they attacked me with teargas. They torched my car and smashed another one, and then they continued into the village, after attacking more cars nearby. The army arrived about an hour later, they took their time and let them do whatever they wanted.”

Palestinians regularly accuse Israeli security forces of standing by and allowing groups of settlers to attack their houses and villages in assaults that have attracted increasing concern internationally.

Violence in the West Bank has surged since the Israel-Gaza war started after the Hamas attack of 7 October, and the number of Israeli settlements there – which are considered illegal under international law – have hit new records. On Friday, a herding community in Umm al-Jamal, in the Jordan valley, abandoned their village after increasing settler attacks.

The Israeli military said police and army units intervened and arrested one Israeli for interfering with the police during Friday’s violence in Jit. It condemned the attack, which it said diverted security forces from other responsibilities. It said it was examining reports about the death of the Palestinian and an investigation had been opened.

The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a statement saying he viewed the attack with “utmost severity”.

“Those responsible for any offence will be apprehended and tried,” it said.

Netanyahu governs with the support of far-right parties that advocate more Israeli settlements in the West Bank and outright annexation. In a rare statement, the rightwing finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, wrote on X that the attackers in Jit had “nothing to do with the settlement and the settlers”.

“They are criminals who must be dealt with by the law enforcement authorities with the full force of the law,” he said.

The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said citizens should not take the law into their own hands. However, he also appeared to accuse the army of being responsible for the attack, saying: “The fact that soldiers are not given backing to shoot stone-throwing terrorists leads to incidents like this evening’s.”

Yair Golan, the head of a new left-leaning alliance known as the Democrats, said Thursday’s violence “is not an extremist minority and a minor problem, but a violent group that enjoys enormous government support”.

Netanyahu had brought “representatives of the rioters in Jit into the Knesset and appointed them as ministers”, he said. “Without a change of government, this violent public will continue to run Israel and lead it to oblivion.”

The US and a number of European countries have imposed sanctions on violent settlers and called repeatedly on Israel to do more to curb the attacks.

Meanwhile, in Qatar, talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the Gaza war entered a second day on Friday. While Hamas and Israel agreed in principle last month to implement a three-phase plan publicly proposed by Joe Biden in May, both sides have since requested “amendments” and “clarifications”, leaving the negotiations at an impasse.

A big breakthrough is not expected, since Hamas is not directly participating, but the renewed push for talks is more vital than ever after the assassinations of a top Hezbollah commander and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief. The killings in Beirut and Tehran, which the Lebanese group and Iran have blamed on Israel, threaten to transform the war in Gaza into a region-wide conflict.

The Israeli army also ordered on Friday new evacuations in southern and central Gaza of areas previously designated as humanitarian “safe zones”, saying the areas had been used by Hamas as a base for firing mortars and rockets towards Israel.

Warning flyers and text messages had been sent out in the area north of the southern city of Khan Younis and in the eastern part of Deir al-Balah, where tens of thousands of people have sought shelter from fighting in other parts of Gaza.

A Chinese woman who filed a groundbreaking lawsuit to win the right to freeze her eggs has lost her final appeal, exhausting the legal avenues in her fight to widen access to fertility treatment in China.

Beijing No 3 intermediate people’s court ruled that Xu Zaozao’s rights had not been violated when Beijing obstetrics and gynaecology hospital refused to freeze her eggs in 2018. Chinese regulations stipulate that assisted reproductive technology is only for married couples with fertility issues. Xu, now 36, said the doctor gave her some friendly advice instead: hurry up, get married and have children now.

Instead, she sued the hospital. She argued that the denial of treatment violated her basic rights. On 6 August, nearly five years after she first filed her lawsuit, she lost her final appeal.

“Regardless of the outcome, I am proud of what we have been doing together,” Xu said in a video posted on social media last week.

Xu’s case has attracted widespread attention. Her lawsuit was the first of its kind in China, and she is seen by many as a feminist pioneer in a country that in recent years has closed down the avenues for legal advocacy.

The lawsuit has rumbled on at a time when China’s birthrate has been plummeting, with the government offering various incentives to women and families to have more babies. Several provinces have started subsidising IVF treatment for couples through basic medical insurance and the government has promised to increase the number of IVF facilities across the country.

But the incentives are so far limited to heterosexual, married couples. And some argue that the rules around gamete freezing are sexist: there are no restrictions on men freezing their sperm. Many single women in China spend tens of thousands of dollars travelling overseas to freeze their eggs.

“Although the authorities aim to encourage women to have more children, they also promote the concept of a nuclear family – married couples with children – as the foundation of society, believing it supports social stability,” said Lijia Zhang, a writer who focuses on women in China.

Last week’s court ruling left the door open for a different outcome in future. “With further adjustment of China’s birth policy, the relevant medical and health laws and regulations may also undergo corresponding changes and, when the conditions are ready, Xu and the relevant medical institutions may separately resolve the corresponding disputes,” the judgment said.

In her video, Xu said she had not given up her fight. “Losing in the second trial is not the end of the story. I will continue to keep an eye on the issue of single women’s right to freeze their eggs and will seek advice from a wide range of professionals, including academics and lawyers, in order to proactively formulate a strategy for the next step.”

Additional research by Chi Hui Lin

Surveillance efforts against mpox are being ramped up globally, as trials for a new treatment showed disappointing results against the variant driving the current outbreak.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on Friday raised its risk level assessment for mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, from low to moderate. The decision came after Sweden reported the first case of clade Ib outside Africa.

Pakistan has also reported its first case of mpox, and China has announced it would begin screening travellers for the virus. The UK Health Security Agency said there were no cases of the virus in the UK and the risk was considered low but that planning was under way to prepare for any cases in the future.

The Stockholm-based ECDC said more imported cases to Europe were “highly likely”.

“Due to the close links between Europe and Africa, we must be prepared for more imported clade I cases,” ECDC director Pamela Rendi-Wagner said in a statement.

The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the increase in mpox cases a public health emergency, after cases spread from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to neighbouring countries.

The virus has two main variants – clade II was responsible for the 2022 global outbreak that mainly affected the gay and bisexual communities. Clade I is endemic in parts of Africa and has had a historically higher death rate. In a mutated form, Ib, it appears to be spreading between people in a sustained way for the first time, through sexual and non-sexual contact.

There have been more than 14,000 cases of mpox and 524 deaths reported in Africa so far this year, a total which already exceeds last year’s figures. Most of them are in the DRC.

A randomised, placebo-controlled trial of antiviral drug tecovirimat did not reduce the duration of mpox lesions among children and adults with clade I mpox in the country, according to results announced by the US National Institutes of Health on Thursday.

However, the death rate in the study – 1.7 % of the 597 participants, regardless of whether they received the drug or not – was lower than the overall death rate of 3.6% or higher reported elsewhere in the DRC.

The research team said this was likely to show the value of supportive medical care, particularly in hospitals.

Siga Technologies, which makes tecovirimat, said the results suggested greater improvement in people receiving it early in the disease course or with severe disease, which warranted further investigation.

Global health experts have called for more research of this kind to take place in the DRC, to fill significant gaps in scientific understanding of mpox. Dr Jonas Albarnaz, a research fellow specialising in pox viruses at the Pirbright Institute, said a big unknown was around the transmission dynamics of clade Ib.

“Is it more transmissible than other clade I viruses? Does it transmit preferentially via the sexual route? There is no evidence that this variant transmits better or causes a more severe disease than clade Ia. However, this may change as we learn more about this new variant.”

Humanitarian officials have said far more diagnostic kits, treatments and vaccines need to be shipped to Africa urgently. “There is a critical shortage of testing, treatment and vaccines across the continent. These shortages are severely hampering the ability to contain the outbreak,” said Bronwyn Nichol of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Dr Sania Nishtar, chief executive of Gavi, the vaccines alliance, said that any doses newly manufactured and bought would take at least six months to reach the DRC.

Gavi has been speaking to countries with large domestic stockpiles of the vaccine, such as the US and Japan, she said, and is waiting for a formal request from the DRC to mobilise a dose donation programme. About 65,000 doses are likely to be available in the short term via this route.

Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic, which produces one of the existing mpox vaccines, said it was seeking European approval to use its mpox vaccine in children aged 12 to 17. It is only approved for adults, although US regulators issued emergency approval for its use in teenagers during the 2022 global mpox outbreak.

On Thursday, Bavarian Nordic said it was ready to produce 10m vaccine doses by 2025 but was waiting for countries to place orders. It said it has about 500,000 doses in stock.

• This article includes mention Gavi, of which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were founding partners. Support for the Guardian’s global development journalism comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation via theguardian.org. Read more about how the Guardian ensures its editorial independence here

All hospital services in India except for emergency care will shut down on Saturday as doctors escalate their protest over the rape and murder of a colleague by calling for a nationwide strike.

A strike that doctors started on Monday was more limited, affecting only government hospitals and elective surgeries. The one on Saturday, called by the Indian Medical Association, will cause massive disruption for 24 hours. All outpatient services and treatment in government and private hospitals will be cancelled.

Dr Johnrose Jayalal, the president of the association, said public anger was so high that the association felt compelled to intensify the strike – thought to be the biggest in a decade – to force the government to act. “Look, 50% of doctors are women, 90% of nursing staff are women. We want the government to take responsibility for ensuring their safety by declaring hospitals as protection zones [with security measures], just like airports and the courts,” he said.

Jayalal added that doctors were deeply concerned over the safety of female doctors and rising levels of violence generally against all doctors by patients’ families. There have been cases of doctors being beaten up when a patient has died.

A 31-year-old doctor was raped and murdered last week in a seminar room at RG Kar hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal, when she went to rest at night during a long shift. A man who worked informally at the hospital has been arrested and charged with the crime.

Just as the strike is about the Kolkata murder but also encompasses a wider demand for safety for all doctors, so, too, are the protests sweeping West Bengal and other towns an outcry about women’s safety across India. As one protester put it, “this is both about the Kolkata doctor who was brutalised and every woman who has faced sexual violence or harassment in the country”.

Adding to the anger, it was reported on Thursday that on 8 August police in Uttarakhand discovered the body of a young nurse who had been raped and murdered nine days earlier while walking home from work.

The sense of outrage among women in India about the Kolkata murder has been compounded by the insensitive response of prominent people, suggesting little has changed since the 2012 gang-rape of a student in a moving bus in Delhi that shook the country.

The RG Kar medical college principal, Dr Sandip Ghosh, far from expressing sorrow over the doctor’s death, asked why she had been resting in the seminar room alone at night. After resigning, he was appointed to a post in another medical college.

Politicians began a blame game. When the West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, was accused by rival parties of laxity on women’s safety, she asked: “What about sexual violence in your state?”

A Rome zoologist says the Italian capital has become “a proper jungle” amid a surge in the presence of snakes, oriental hornets, seagulls and rats owing to a combination of high temperatures and the city’s persistent problem with rubbish.

Andrea Lunerti, who is well known in Rome for capturing dangerous animals, said he had been inundated with calls this summer, especially reports of snake sightings.

“There are many more sightings of snakes than there used to be,” Lunerti said. “The snake population grew exponentially during the winter because the temperature was so warm. They wouldn’t have survived if it had been cold. Then they come to the city from their natural environment because there is a lot of food waste, and where there is food waste there are rats – their main prey.”

The most common type of snake found in Rome is the green whip snake, although Lunerti has captured four vipers too.

On Friday morning, he received a call from a traumatised woman after a green whip snake fell on to her terrace. He was also recently called overnight by police asking him to remove one found in the doctors’ changing room of a hospital in the Parioli district.

“You find them on terraces, in gardens, in school buildings,” he said. “There was even one hanging on the grille door of an elevator in a residential building, causing much panic. The snakes are very good at finding hiding spots in buildings, waiting for the right moment to leave and hunt their prey.”

Lunerti asks his callers to send him videos of the snakes, which allow him to decipher if they are poisonous or not. “But even the non-poisonous ones cause havoc because they send people into a panic, which makes them do dangerous things, like darting across the road without looking.”

Oriental hornets, a species of wasp that originates mostly from north Africa and south-east Asia, have also established a strong presence in Rome since 2021, when they were initially sighted in the Monteverde district before nests began to sprout in the nooks of window shutters, vents, air conditioning units and even the crevices of ancient monuments in the city centre.

Their proliferation is also a consequence of the higher temperatures and rubbish.

Lunerti said: “Rome really needs to get a grip of its waste management otherwise we will be seeing even more snakes and hornets, not to mention the rats and seagulls – there are more seagulls in Rome than there are in Fregene [a coastal town close to Rome].”

He said that at least the seagulls played the role of killing rats and snakes.

“A snake was captured by a seagull and dropped on to a terrace,” he said. “The city has become a proper jungle.”