Amid chants of “Yes, she can!”, Barack Obama returned to the scene of past triumphs on Tuesday to pass the mantle of political history to Kamala Harris – and eviscerate her opponent Donald Trump.

The former US president delivered the closing speech on night two of the Democratic national convention in his home city of Chicago. Obama prompted raucous cheers as he delivered a withering critique of Trump, who succeeded him in the White House in 2017.

“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos,” he told delegates. “We have seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”

It was another night crackling with energy in the packed arena as America’s first Black president made the case for the nation to elect the first woman and first woman of colour to the Oval Office.

Obama was speaking 20 years after he first exploded on to the political stage at the Democratic convention in Boston. That summer, Harris helped host a fundraiser for Obama’s run for the US Senate in Illinois. Four years later, she backed him against Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, a campaign in which he coined the phrase “Yes, we can!”

The same chant greeted Obama when he took the stage in Chicago just after 10pm ET on Thursday and embraced his wife, Michelle. But halfway through his speech, Obama broke from his teleprompter remarks to ad lib: “Yes, she can!” The crowd instinctively chanted, “Yes, she can!” in response.

There was a symbolic echo for Democrats who had come to fear that Obama’s election might be a historic aberration but now sense that it might in fact be Trump who represents the last gasp of a dying order.

In a nod to his debut at the 2004 convention, Obama, now 63, quipped: “I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible.

“Because we have the chance to elect someone who’s spent her whole life trying to give people the same chances America gave her. Someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you: the next president of the United States of America, Kamala Harris.”

The crowd roared its approval. Obama went on to pay tribute to outgoing president Joe Biden, who was not present, having delivered a valedictory address on Monday. “History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger,” he said. “I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend.”

The torch has been passed, he continued, but “for all the rallies and the memes”, the race for the White House remains tight. He suggested the people who will decide the election are asking a simple question: who will fight for them.

Obama opined that Trump, the Republican nominee, is not losing sleep over that question and highlighted his successor’s age – a point he might not have made if 81-year-old Biden were still in the contest.

“This is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” he said. “It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala.

“The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories. This weird obsession with crowd sizes.” The crowd erupted. “It just goes on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbour who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. From a neighbour, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous.”

Trump sees power as nothing more than a means to his ends, Obama said, accusing the former president of wanting another tax cut that would help his rich friends and of killing a bipartisan immigration deal because trying to solve the problem would hurt his campaign.

When delegates began to boo, Obama offered an old refrain: “Do not boo. Vote!”

Obama, whose breakthrough speech in 2004 had argued that there is not a liberal America and conservative America, only a United States of America, then Trump took to task for deliberately trying to turn Americans against one another.

He went on: “Most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided between us and them; between the ‘real’ Americans who of course support him and the outsiders who don’t.

“And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you will just give him the power to put those ‘other’ people back in their place. It’s one of the oldest tricks in politics – from a guy whose act has gotten pretty stale.”

Notably, Obama did not dwell on a topic that was central to Biden’s candidacy: the notion that Trump poses an existential threat to democracy.

But he did draw a vivid contrast between Trump and Harris, describing her as “ready for the job” and “a person who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a champion.

“She had to work for what she’s got, and she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbour running the leaf blower – she’s the neighbour rushing over to help when you need a hand.”

He praised her plans to solve America’s housing crisis, limit out of pocket healthcare costs, make college more affordable and look out for essential workers.

Obama also urged Democrats to show empathy to political opponents. “We need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices; and that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidate, we need to listen to their concerns – and maybe learn something in the process.”

The former president had been introduced by Michelle, the former first lady who delivered the most famous line of the 2016 convention when she said: “When they go low, we go high.” This time she electrified the hall with a new willingness to go after Trump.

She said: “For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard working and highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.”

Michelle also taunted Trump for his reference on the campaign trail to “Black jobs”, which he claims are being taken from Black people by migrants crossing into the US. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” she asked, sending the crowd wild.

Tuesday night also witnessed a roll call of delegates confirming the nomination of Harris and running mate Tim Walz, both of whom held a rally in Milwaukee in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

In a speech to the convention Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, said he “just fell in love fast” with her, adding that she finds “joy in pursuing justice” and “stands up to bullies”.

Bernie Sanders, an independent senator for Vermont who ran for the Democratic nomination in 2016 and 2020, set out a policy wish list including getting big money out of the political process, guaranteeing healthcare to all as a human right and raising the minimum wage. “I look forward to working with Kamala and Tim to pass this agenda,” he said.

Democratic convention highlights:

• Six key takeaways from day two of the Democratic convention

• Michelle Obama lauds Kamala Harris and takes swipe at Trump

• Bernie Sanders urges Democrats to improve lives of ‘struggling’ Americans

• Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary

• Here are the rising stars and politicians to watch this week

• What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

Divers scouring the wreck of the luxury yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday have reportedly found four bodies as the search for those missing enters its third day.

The UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter Hannah Lynch, the Morgan Stanley International chair, Jonathan Bloomer, his wife, Judy, and the Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda, have been missing since the vessel went down Monday morning.

The 56-metre yacht, named Bayesian and sailing under a British flag, was carrying 22 people and had anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello when it was hit by what was believed to be a tornado or waterspout.

The body of the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, was located shortly after the vessel sank.

Citing a source, Reuters said four more bodies were found on Wednesday but did not immediately give the names or gender of the victims. Some UK media are reporting that two of the bodies are those of Lynch and his daughter. The Guardian has not been able to independently verify this and there has been no formal confirmation from the authorities.

Body bags were seen being brought into the harbour aboard a fire brigade boat and lifted up onto the quayside.

The search has been challenging for the rescue teams, who have struggled to get to the yacht’s hull. Once they breached the hull further investigation was obstructed by furniture and debris.

Investigators are questioning witnesses and survivors. The yacht’s captain, James Cutfield, 51, was reportedly interrogated for more than two hours.

The port authority has opened a separate investigation from that of the public prosecutor in the town of Termini Imerese, Sicily, to determine whether all adequate safety measures were taken by the crew.

It is understood four inspectors from the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch are in Sicily to do a preliminary assessment.

The former cabinet minister Lord Deben said Lynch, his friend, was at the “beginning of a new life” when his boat capsized in the violent storm off the coast of Sicily. Deben, the former Conservative MP John Gummer, said Lynch had been preparing for a fresh start after being cleared in June of fraud charges in the US relating to the purchase of his company, Autonomy, by Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

Deben told Times Radio: “He came back to be ready to start again. He made such a contribution to Britain. His companies have put British IT in the forefront, and he was going to do it again, and we pray that he can do it again.”

Thousands of people facing Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have been forced to abandon plans to comply with Israeli evacuation orders telling them to move to a designated “safe humanitarian zone” because there is no space for them there.

At the weekend the Israeli military told residents of multiple neighbourhoods in and around the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah to leave their homes before planned attacks and go to the narrow strip of coast around the small town of al-Mawasi that was designated earlier in the war to receive displaced people.

“My uncles and father tried to find a new safer place to move our family to but their efforts did not succeed yet as all spaces within the safe zone are occupied,” said a 34-year-old woman who has been living with 16 relatives on the edge of the designated safe area, who did not want to be named.

Humanitarian officials confirmed the overcrowding in the humanitarian zone was dissuading those given evacuation orders by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from leaving, despite the dangers of remaining.

“There’s just no space and people know that, so they stay where they are. You can’t get hold of tents, so even if you found somewhere, it would be difficult to get any shelter, and conditions there are terrible,” said a UN official based in Gaza. “Some people refuse to move [to al-Mawasi] because they just don’t want to leave their homes but most because they’ll have nowhere to live if they go there.”

The vast majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced, often multiple times, and 86% of the territory has been put under evacuation orders by the Israeli military, according to the UN. Israeli officials say the orders are aimed at reducing civilian casualties and blame Hamas for using people as human shields.

Several hundred thousand people have packed into al-Mawasi since the beginning of the conflict despite minimal provision there of even basic services. Water supply is inadequate, there is almost no sanitation, healthcare is rudimentary and infectious diseases are on the rise. Aid groups fear the outbreak of diseases such as polio.

“The situation there is just getting worse and worse,” the UN official said.

A UN bulletin published on Monday said that since the start of August the Israeli military had issued nine evacuation orders that were affecting an estimated 213,000 people across Gaza. The bulletin said the population of Gaza, which was 2.3 million before the war, was “increasingly concentrated” within the Israeli-designated zone in al-Mawasi, with 30,000 to 34,000 people crammed into each square kilometre, compared with an estimated 1,200 people per square kilometre before October 2023.

Since a reduction ordered by Israeli military last month, the area of the humanitarian zone has shrunk by a fifth, to 40 sq km – just 11% of the Gaza Strip.

“This reduction in space, combined with overcrowding, heightened insecurity, inadequate and overstretched infrastructure, ongoing hostilities, and limited services is exacerbating the dire humanitarian situation for the hundreds of thousands of people forced to live inside it,” the UN said.

The IDF said the reduction was because the eastern part of the zone had been used for “significant terrorist activity and rocket fire toward the state of Israel”. “The adjustment is being carried out in accordance with precise intelligence indicating that Hamas has embedded terrorist infrastructure in the area defined as the Humanitarian Area,” it said.

On Monday, the IDF retrieved the bodies of six hostages held in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict from a tunnel that it said was “under an area previously designated as part of the humanitarian area”.

A series of airstrikes within the humanitarian zone have also convinced many people in Gaza who receive evacuation orders that they are better off remaining where they are.

One airstrike in al-Mawasi in July may have killed Mohammed Deif, the most senior Hamas military commander in Gaza and one of the architects of the attacks into southern Israel that triggered the conflict, but also caused at least 92 deaths and wounded more than 300, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

“No place is safe,” said Yussef Abu Taimah, from the town of al-Qarara in Khan Younis, as he prepared to relocate his family for the fourth time after the Israeli order.

Some cannot move to al-Mawasi – or anywhere else – because they have no fuel. Siham Bahgat, 24, said her family of eight had tried to flee their tented camp on the edge of the humanitarian zone on Monday afternoon after they heard shooting nearby. “We loaded all our important stuff but we could not get very far because we ran out of petrol, which has been very difficult to get for months, so we decided to stay and sleep the night where we were,” she said.

The Hamas attacks in Israel on 7 October resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and 250 hostages being taken to Gaza by the militant Islamist organisation. Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has so far killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Vladimir Putin exploited Donald Trump’s “ego and insecurities” to exert an almost mesmeric hold over the former US president, who refused to entertain any negative evaluation of the autocratic Russian leader from his own staff, and ultimately fired his national security adviser, HR McMaster, over it.

The bold assessment of Trump’s fealty to Putin comes in McMaster’s book At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, published by HarperCollins and arriving on 27 August. The Guardian obtained a copy.

“After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump,” McMaster recalls saying in the memoir covering the turbulent 457 days the now retired general served as national security adviser from February 2017 until he was effectively fired by tweet in April 2018.

The comment, to McMaster’s wife, Katie, came in the aftermath of the poisoning in the UK by Putin’s agents of Sergei Skripal, a Russian former intelligence officer, and his daughter, in March 2018.

While other western leaders were beginning to formulate a strong response to the assassination attempt, McMaster says, Trump sat in the White House fawning over a New York Post article with the headline: “Putin heaps praise on Trump, pans US politics”. Trump, according to the book, wrote an appreciative note on the article with a black Sharpie and asked McMaster “to get the clipping to Putin”.

“I was certain that Putin would use Trump’s annotated clipping to embarrass him and provide cover for the attack,” McMaster writes.

He said he handed the note to the White House office of the staff secretary, which handles Oval Office communications.

“Later, as evidence mounted that the Kremlin, and very likely Putin himself had ordered the nerve agent attack on Skripal, I told them not to send it.”

In reality, McMaster says, Putin’s apparent simpering over Trump was a calculated effort by the Russian leader to exploit the president and drive a wedge between him and hawkish advisers in Washington DC such as McMaster urging the US to take a harder line with the Kremlin.

“Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery,” McMaster writes.

“Putin had described Trump as ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt’, and Trump had revealed his vulnerability to this approach, his affinity for strongmen, and his belief that he alone could forge a good relationship with Putin.

“Like his predecessors George W Bush and Barack Obama, Trump was overconfident in his ability to improve relations with the dictator in the Kremlin. The fact that most foreign policy experts in Washington advocated for a tough approach to the Kremlin seemed only to drive the president to the opposite approach.”

McMaster describes how Trump became obsessed by the Mueller report into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election to the point that “discussions of Putin and Russia were difficult to have”.

He says Trump “connected all topics involving Russia” to the report, and allegations by Democrats and other opponents that his campaign, and Trump personally, had colluded with “Russia’s disinformation campaign” to swing the election.

Although special counsel Mueller found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy, he found multiple incidents in which the Trump campaign tried to obscure its contact with Russian operatives, and that Trump himself tried to interfere with or block the inquiry.

When McMaster observed at a security conference in February 2018 in Munich that Mueller had indicted more than a dozen Russian agents for election interference, Trump tweeted a snarky response that the general had “failed” to point out that the election result had not been changed or affected by the Russian efforts.

It was one of a number of broadsides from Trump that signified an increasingly fractured relationship with McMaster, almost all over Russia, that resulted in his ouster barely a month later.

“On Putin and Russia, I had been swimming upstream with the president from the beginning,” writes McMaster, whose successor as national security adviser, John Bolton, also ended up falling out with the president and went on to become one of numerous former administration officials to condemn Trump’s re-election effort.

McMaster recalls another episode in which he was castigated by Trump, at a July 2017 summit in Hamburg, Germany, which became famous for what the Guardian described at the time as a “budding bromance” between the US and Russian leaders as they spent hours locked in private conversation.

“My basic message during the final prep meeting at the Hamburg Messe convention center was ‘do not be a chump’,” McMaster writes, noting that he told the president what Putin sought, including the US to abandon Ukraine, and withdraw US forces from Syria and Afghanistan, which Trump later ordered.

“I told Trump how Putin had duped Bush and Obama. ‘Mr President, he is the best liar in the world.’ I suggested that Putin was confident he could ‘play’ Trump and get what he wanted, sanctions relief and the US out of Syria and Afghanistan on the cheap, by manipulating Trump with ambiguous promises of a ‘better relationship’. He would offer cooperation on counterterrorism, cybersecurity and arms control.

“I could tell that Trump was getting impatient with my ‘negative vibe’. I said what I needed to say. If he was going to be contrary, I hoped he would be contrary to the Russian dictator, not to me.”

Despite the strained relationship with Trump chronicled in his book, and criticisms of the former president therein, McMaster never joined the ranks of other former administration officials eager to castigate him once he left office.

McMaster insists he remained apolitical during his service, looking out only for the interests of the US, and wrote the book to “get past the hyper-partisanship and explain what really happened”.

He recalls how family members joined him in his office on his last day in April 2018, and the then vice-president, Mike Pence, came by to ask them all to step briefly into the Oval Office.

“Trump was gracious,” McMaster writes.

“[He] pointed his finger at my four nieces and nephews: ‘Your uncle is a great guy, very tough, and he did a fantastic job for me. Make sure he only writes nice things about me.’”

Hezbollah has launched more than 50 rockets and a swarm of drones towards northern Israel, hitting a number of homes in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and wounding one person.

The strikes on Wednesday by the Lebanese militant group came the day after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met mediators from Egypt and Qatar, even as Hamas and Israel poured cold water on any prospect of any imminent pause in the fighting in Gaza.

As more details emerged on Wednesday of a proposal meant to bridge gaps between Hamas and Israel, Egypt expressed scepticism about the positive noises being made by the US.

“The Americans are offering promises [regarding the ceasefire], not guarantees,” a official told the Associated Press. “Hamas won’t accept this, because it virtually means Hamas will release the civilian hostages in return for a six-week pause of fighting with no guarantees for a negotiated permanent ceasefire.”

The official also said the proposal did not clearly say Israel would withdraw its forces from two strategic corridors in Gaza, the Philadelphi corridor alongside Egypt and the Netzarim corridor east to west across the territory. “This is not acceptable for us and of course for Hamas,” he said.

Blinken’s efforts and initially positive comments, in the midst of a Democratic party convention that has drawn pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Chicago, appeared designed in part to demonstrate to sceptical voters that the Biden administration was making efforts to end the violence.

Relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have continued to accuse Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of attempting to undermine a ceasefire-for-hostages deal through his insistence that Israeli troops should remain in the Philadelphi corridor.

That is one of several conditions that Hamas says Netanyahu has added to a previous draft agreement, making it unacceptable to it. He has denied the claim.

The left-leaning Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported comments by an anonymous official involved in the talks accusing Netanyahu of trying to “sabotage” any deal. The official said: “[Netanyahu’s] statements indicating that Israel would not withdraw from the Gaza-Egypt border, at a time when sensitive negotiations are under way for finding a solution there, only make it more difficult to find a solution, increasing suspicions, signalling to Hamas and the mediators that Netanyahu is uninterested in a deal”.

What is clear is that Blinken’s latest effort has replicated previous rounds of talks, with the secretary of state once again appearing to emerge from meetings with the Israeli prime minister making optimistic comments that have been quickly shot down. Hamas called the latest proposal presented to it a “reversal” of what it had agreed to previously and accused the US of acquiescing to “new conditions” from Israel.

The Israeli assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, has continued in tandem with a conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah considers an end to the conflict in Gaza a prerequisite to ceasing its own fighting.

Hezbollah said the attack on Wednesday was in response to an Israeli strike deep into Lebanon on Tuesday night that killed one person and injured 19. Also on Tuesday, Hezbollah launched more than 200 projectiles towards Israel after Israel had targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot about 50 miles (80km) from the border, a significant increase in the daily skirmishes.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it, saying it needed the strategic plateau for its security. The US is the only country to recognise the annexation, while the rest of the international community considers the area to be occupied Syrian territory.

Israel killed a senior member of the Palestinian Fatah movement in Lebanon on Wednesday, accusing him of having orchestrated attacks in the West Bank. In response, the Fatah party accused Israel of seeking to “ignite a regional war”. Khalil Maqdah was killed in a strike on his car in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, according to Fatah and a Lebanese security source.

The Israeli conflict with Hezbollah has killed nearly 600 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also at least 130 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.

A commercial ship travelling through the Red Sea came under repeated attack on Wednesday, leaving the vessel “not under command” and drifting ablaze after an assault suspected to have been carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the British military said.

Agencies contributed to this article

Hezbollah has launched more than 50 rockets and a swarm of drones towards northern Israel, hitting a number of homes in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and wounding one person.

The strikes on Wednesday by the Lebanese militant group came the day after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met mediators from Egypt and Qatar, even as Hamas and Israel poured cold water on any prospect of any imminent pause in the fighting in Gaza.

As more details emerged on Wednesday of a proposal meant to bridge gaps between Hamas and Israel, Egypt expressed scepticism about the positive noises being made by the US.

“The Americans are offering promises [regarding the ceasefire], not guarantees,” a official told the Associated Press. “Hamas won’t accept this, because it virtually means Hamas will release the civilian hostages in return for a six-week pause of fighting with no guarantees for a negotiated permanent ceasefire.”

The official also said the proposal did not clearly say Israel would withdraw its forces from two strategic corridors in Gaza, the Philadelphi corridor alongside Egypt and the Netzarim corridor east to west across the territory. “This is not acceptable for us and of course for Hamas,” he said.

Blinken’s efforts and initially positive comments, in the midst of a Democratic party convention that has drawn pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Chicago, appeared designed in part to demonstrate to sceptical voters that the Biden administration was making efforts to end the violence.

Relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have continued to accuse Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of attempting to undermine a ceasefire-for-hostages deal through his insistence that Israeli troops should remain in the Philadelphi corridor.

That is one of several conditions that Hamas says Netanyahu has added to a previous draft agreement, making it unacceptable to it. He has denied the claim.

The left-leaning Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported comments by an anonymous official involved in the talks accusing Netanyahu of trying to “sabotage” any deal. The official said: “[Netanyahu’s] statements indicating that Israel would not withdraw from the Gaza-Egypt border, at a time when sensitive negotiations are under way for finding a solution there, only make it more difficult to find a solution, increasing suspicions, signalling to Hamas and the mediators that Netanyahu is uninterested in a deal”.

What is clear is that Blinken’s latest effort has replicated previous rounds of talks, with the secretary of state once again appearing to emerge from meetings with the Israeli prime minister making optimistic comments that have been quickly shot down. Hamas called the latest proposal presented to it a “reversal” of what it had agreed to previously and accused the US of acquiescing to “new conditions” from Israel.

The Israeli assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, has continued in tandem with a conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah considers an end to the conflict in Gaza a prerequisite to ceasing its own fighting.

Hezbollah said the attack on Wednesday was in response to an Israeli strike deep into Lebanon on Tuesday night that killed one person and injured 19. Also on Tuesday, Hezbollah launched more than 200 projectiles towards Israel after Israel had targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot about 50 miles (80km) from the border, a significant increase in the daily skirmishes.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it, saying it needed the strategic plateau for its security. The US is the only country to recognise the annexation, while the rest of the international community considers the area to be occupied Syrian territory.

Israel killed a senior member of the Palestinian Fatah movement in Lebanon on Wednesday, accusing him of having orchestrated attacks in the West Bank. In response, the Fatah party accused Israel of seeking to “ignite a regional war”. Khalil Maqdah was killed in a strike on his car in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, according to Fatah and a Lebanese security source.

The Israeli conflict with Hezbollah has killed nearly 600 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also at least 130 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.

A commercial ship travelling through the Red Sea came under repeated attack on Wednesday, leaving the vessel “not under command” and drifting ablaze after an assault suspected to have been carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the British military said.

Agencies contributed to this article

The controversy surrounding wanted Filipino mayor Alice Guo has taken another dramatic turn, with government officials alleging that she fled the Philippines in July.

Guo was mayor of the town of Bamban in Tarlac province and is at the centre of a mystery that began in March when officials raided a compound in the town and found about 1,000 workers, including victims of human trafficking, along with luxury villas, high-end cars, and expensive cognac.

Investigators at the eight hectare (20 acre) compound said they also found a panic room and three underground tunnels – an escape route for those wanting to evade the authorities. The tunnels led to a vacant land plot owned by Guo, alleged the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC).

Guo had owned 50% of Baofu, the compound where the criminal operation was taking place, though she says she had sold it prior to becoming mayor. She has also said she had sold the vehicle that was found at the premises during the raid.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said in relation to Guo’s departure that “heads will roll”.

He said a full-scale investigation into how she could have left was already under way, and “those responsible will be suspended and will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law”.

The presidential office has also ordered her passport to be cancelled. Guo’s current whereabouts are uncertain.

Earlier, there was confusion over Guo’s birth certificate, which was not registered until she was 17 and displayed contradictory information to that of her siblings. A Filipina called Amelia Leal was listed as her mother but appeared not to exist, according to birth records. Her father was listed as Filipino, though Guo stated he was Chinese.

When Guo appeared before senators, she seemed unable to answer questions about her childhood, which she said she spent growing up on a farm in Bamban. Schooling records found by a senator also seemed to contradict her claims about where she was educated.

The mayor struggled to provide concrete information regarding her childhood, leading the president to say in May: “We’re puzzled – where did she come from?”

The election commission then found that the fingerprints on her election records matched those of a Chinese citizen.

Hontiveros, for her part, levied allegations during the hearings that Guo could be a Chinese spy or a criminal.

Guo has denied wrongdoing and dismissed the “malicious accusations”. She has said she was not a spy but a natural-born Philippine national who was born as “the lovechild” of a Chinese man and his wife’s helper, who was a Filipina. She was raised in Bamban on the family’s pig farm and homeschooled by a teacher named Rubilyn, she has said.

Guo has stopped attending senate hearings into the matter, with her lawyer saying she had been traumatised by the experience, including the reaction on social media, where her responses have been widely mocked.

Guo is now the subject of a senate arrest warrant due to her non-attendance at hearing. The PAOCC has filed human trafficking charges, now under consideration by the office of the prosecutor.

The president’s allegation that Guo had fled follows claims by Senator Risa Hontiveros on Monday that Guo had left the Philippines, a claim the Department of Justice had previously denied.

Hontiveros presented evidence including Guo’s alleged arrival at Kuala Lumpur international airport in Malaysia on 18 July, also raising questions about how someone facing so much scrutiny could have left the country.

Officials alleged Guo then flew onward to Singapore before taking a ferry to Riau, Indonesia, on 18 August. An Indonesian immigration official said that Guo had entered the country that day, Reuters reported, although the Guardian has not been able to independently corroborate that report.

The controversy comes at a time of heightened tensions between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, where vessels from the two countries have collided multiple times recently as China aims to assert its illegal claims in the key waterway.

With Rebecca Ratcliffe, Guill Ramos and Reuters

Chinese authorities have launched an anti-subsidy investigation into European dairy imports, in the latest sign of escalating trade tensions between Brussels and Beijing.

The announcement from China’s commerce ministry on Wednesday came a day after the European Commission revealed revised duties on Chinese electric vehicles as part of its examination into what it views as artificially cheap cars that pose a threat to jobs in Europe’s motor industry.

The China Chamber of Commerce to the EU said Beijing’s investigation was launched after a complaint from the country’s dairy industry on 29 July and said consultation with the EU had taken place on 14 August.

China will examine 20 subsidy programmes supporting the production of milk, cream and cheese from across the 27-member bloc, including those in countries with large farming sectors, such as Austria, Italy, Ireland and Romania.

Germany is the EU’s largest milk producer, followed by France, Italy and Poland. But Ireland is by far the biggest exporter to China among the EU countries listed by the commerce ministry, having provided $461m of goods last year, according to Reuters.

Beijing has already launched retaliatory competition inquiries into politically sensitive European imports of pork and Cognac.

The European Commission said it took note of China’s decision to launch the investigation on imports of certain dairy products.

“The Commission will now analyse the application and will follow the proceeding very closely, in coordination with EU industry and member states,” a spokesperson said.

“The Commission will firmly defend the interests of the EU dairy industry and the common agricultural policy, and intervene as appropriate to ensure that the investigation fully complies with relevant WTO rules.”

Earlier this week the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said the EU should avoid a “systemic confrontation” with China, but warned that it was possible that a trade war could be inevitable.

By the end of October Chinese carmakers that have failed to cooperate with the EU’s electric vehicles investigation could face a tariff of up to 36.3%, on top of the existing 10% EU duty on cars.

After an investigation, the European Commission said that Chinese authorities have provided lavish subsidies to electric vehicle manufacturers at every stage of the production process, making the cars so artificially cheap that European rivals could in future be forced to shutter factories and lay off workers.

EU officials have launched separate anti-dumping inquiries into Chinese-made solar panels and wind turbines.

Police in Pakistan have charged a man with cyberterrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation thought to have led to widespread rioting in the UK, a senior investigator has said.

The suspect was identified as Farhan Asif, 32, a freelance web developer, said Imran Kishwar, the deputy inspector general of investigations in Lahore.

Asif is accused of spreading misinformation from YouTube and Facebook after an attacker stabbed to death three girls and injured 10 other people on 29 July at a dance class in Southport. The false information claimed that the knifeman was an asylum seeker who had recently arrived in the UK and had a name that suggested he was Muslim.

After misinformation led to a violent mob attacking a mosque near the site of the stabbing the next day, police took the unusual step of clarifying that the suspect was born in the UK.

Channel3 Now, an account on the X social media platform that purports to be a news channel, was one of the first outlets to report a false name for the attacker. A Facebook account for the channel said it was managed by people in Pakistan and the US.

The site’s editor in chief posted an apology on 31 July for “the misleading information published in a recent article on our website, Channel3 Now”, adding: “We deeply regret any confusion or inconvenience this may have caused.”

But the false reports were widely disseminated and are blamed for fuelling more than a week of rioting that broke out across England and in Northern Ireland, leading to more than 1,000 arrests. Authorities have blamed far-right agitators for stoking the violent unrest by continuing to spread misinformation and promoting the violent demonstrations online.

At a news conference in Lahore, police said Asif was arrested at his house in the city for questioning. They said Asif had claimed that he was not the source of the misinformation but had reposted it from social media.

Police have handed over the case to the Federal Investigation Agency, which handles cases relating to cyberterrorism. It was unclear if Britain has requested Asif’s extradition.

Masked armed police raided the Bucharest home of the misogynist social media influencer Andrew Tate on Wednesday amid fresh claims about trafficking and underage sex.

Police said officers conducted four searches as part of an investigation into alleged crimes including human trafficking and sex with a minor.

Tate, 37, who describes himself as a misogynist, has gained millions of fans, particularly among boys and young men, by promoting an ultra-masculine lifestyle that frequently denigrates women.

Last year he and his brother Tristan were charged with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, allegations that they denied. The brothers and two Romanian women are awaiting trial and deny the charges against them.

On Wednesday Romania’s anti-organised crime prosecuting unit Diicot said its officers conducted four home searches in Ilfov county and the Bucharest municipality.

It said the investigation concerned “a criminal case regarding the commission of the crimes of setting up an organised criminal group, trafficking of minors, human trafficking, sexual intercourse with a minor, influencing statements and money laundering”.

Several armed police wearing black balaclavas were photographed at Tate’s property. Two appeared to be carrying a battering ram to force entry.

Tate’s representatives confirmed that officers had raided the brothers’ home. In a statement, a spokesperson said: “Although the allegations in the search warrant are not yet fully clarified, they include suspicions of human trafficking and money laundering. The brothers’ legal team is present to ensure that all formalities are carried out correctly.”

In July a Romanian court of appeal overturned a previous ruling that allowed Tate free movement within the European Union while awaiting trial.

Tate, a former kickboxer who has 9.9 million followers on X, has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him.

He was previously banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and for hate speech.

The America’s Cup sailing race, the ultimate sporting competition for the super-rich, starts in Barcelona on Thursday, marking the latest attempt by one of the cities on the frontline of Europe’s overtourism crisis to attract “quality rather than quantity” tourism.

The event, which runs until 27 October, is sponsored by the luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton, which held a fashion parade in the Antoni Gaudí-designed Park Güell in the Catalan capital in late May.

Emirates Team New Zealand is the defending champion and will be challenged by boats from the UK, Italy, Switzerland, France and the US. The teams began establishing their bases in Port Vell, the city’s old port, over a year ago.

Ada Colau, Barcelona’s former mayor, fought off competition from two other Spanish cities – Valencia, which hosted the cup in 2007 and 2010, and Málaga – to secure host city status in 2022. The radical leftwinger, who was deposed in 2023, has since been highly critical of high-profile events in Barcelona, such as a week-long Formula One festival in June, which she condemned as inappropriate in a city that was trying to reduce car use and struggles with high levels of air pollution.

Some people who live in Barcelona have voiced opposition to the boat race, including residents of Barceloneta, the neighbourhood adjacent to Port Vell. Last year a group of 60 residents and community organisations came together to form the Platform Against the America’s Cup.

“It will bring nothing but every sort of misery to the city,” said the group’s spokesperson, Esther Jorquera, when the platform was launched, adding that the event was “elitist and opaque”.

Local people say they have been bombarded with calls from estate agents and speculators wanting to buy their homes to cash in on the event, which they say is pushing up rents.

Barceloneta is already one of the areas of Barcelona most affected by mass tourism, which has driven out much of the local population.

Campaigners argue that rather than attracting a “better”, high-spending type of tourist, events such as the America’s Cup simply bring more people to a city already struggling to cope with the mass of visitors.

City authorities say they expect the event to bring benefits of up to €1bn to the local economy. But critics say the potential income will be enjoyed by few, and have questioned why such a lavish competition has called for volunteers to organise the event rather than offer paid, seasonal jobs.

The America’s Cup, first staged on the Isle of Wight in 1851, is claimed to be the oldest international sporting event in the world. It was last held in 2021 in Auckland, New Zealand, and was won by the hosts.