Kamala Harris’s Democratic national convention speech provoked a torrent of outrage from Donald Trump as the former US president fired off a volley of ripostes, rebuttals and angry calls to TV stations.

Trump posted 48 times on his Truth Social network during Harris’s 37-minute presidential acceptance speech, which was nearly an hour shorter than his own effort at the Republican convention last month.

Immediately afterwards, he called Fox News to deliver a rambling, live on-air tirade that was eventually cut off by the network’s hosts.

“Where’s Hunter,” Trump posted in all-capitals at the beginning of the speech in reference to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, whose business affairs and legal troubles were a favourite target of Republicans before the president withdrew from race last month.

As Harris paid tribute to those who nominated her, Trump wrote: “Too many thank yous too rapidly said. What’s going on with her?”

Later, as the vice-president went on the offensive against her opponent, Trump raised one of his favourite topics – himself. “Is she talking about me?” he wrote, again in block capitals.

Mostly, his focus was on Harris, repeatedly calling her a “Marxist” and writing: “Why doesn’t she do something about the things she complains about.”

“There will be no future under Comrade Kamala Harris, because she will take us into a Nuclear World War III,” he wrote. “She will never be respected by the Tyrants of the World!”

After Harris accused him of pressuring congressional Republicans to kill a bipartisan bill that would have cracked down on migrants at the southern border, Trump posted one of his longest screeds of the night.

“The Border Bill is one of the worst ever written, would have allowed millions of people into our Country, and it’s only a political ploy by her!,” he wrote. “It legalizes Illegal Immigration, and is a TOTAL DISASTER, WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE!”

At other times, his concerns seemed trite, such as when he targeted Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee who has been given the moniker “Coach Walz” over his high school football coaching activities. “Walz was an assistant coach, not a coach,” Trump wrote.

He also hit back angrily when Harris linked him to Project 2025, a far-right governing manifesto and blueprint for the next Republican presidency drawn up by some of Trump’s closest supporters and former officials, by claiming he had “absolutely nothing to do with” it, despite giving the keynote address to the annual conference of the group who created it.

Trump’s angry and often incoherent responses prompted the Washington Post commentator Dan Balz to observe that Harris’s rise to the top of the Democratic ticket in place of Joe Biden had left Trump “in a box” and unsure what to do after Harris outperformed him in the category about which he cares most – ratings.

“Harris has countered him, even bested him, at his own game,” Balz wrote. “Her crowds now match or exceed his. Her followers now are as enthusiastic as his … her convention’s ratings were better than his … He says he misses Biden, and it shows.”

Harris’s speech largely attracted positive reaction, even from some conservative corners. Scott Jennings, a former White House aide to George W Bush, told CNN her speech displayed presidential “plausibility”.

“She looks young, she looks coherent … so she’s the anti-Biden,” he said. “The Republican pushback … is that some of this is just substance-less patent, that there’s really no specificity in it, and that they ultimately think they are going to be able to fire her as the incumbent.

“The question we are going to be asking over the next couple of months is how far did she run away from Joe Biden to prevent the Republicans from portraying her as the incumbent? People are so upset with Biden-Harris on the economy, [that] if the Republicans tie her to it, all of the other stuff falls away.”

But with Republicans such as South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham urging Trump to do exactly that – focus on policy rather than attack Harris personally – Trump’s reaction to her speech confirms the trouble he has in maintaining discipline on the campaign trail. During his call with Fox News he became irked by presenter Martha MacCallum’s suggestion that Harris was having success in the polls, particularly with certain voting groups.

“She’s not having success; I’m having success,” he said. “I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters, doing great with Black men, I’m doing great with women.

“It’s only in your eyes that they have that, Martha. We are doing very well.”

Eventually he was cut-off in mid-sentence by MacCallum’s co-host, Bret Baier, who told him: “We appreciate that live feedback.”

The Democratic national convention has ended in Chicago, with vice-president Kamala Harris formally accepting the nomination and making her pitch to voters. Here are some key takeaways from the fourth night:

Democratic convention highlights:

• Tim Walz’s acceptance speech channeled grit and empathy

• Democrats issue warning over Project 2025

• What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

It was not a political address for the ages. It was not even the best of the convention (no one can compete with the Obamas). But Kamala Harris did enough in her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday to put an exclamation mark on one of the most dramatic turnarounds in modern political history.

And she made you reflect that you would not want to be Donald Trump facing her in next month’s televised debate. A speech that was short on policy and poetry was nevertheless devastating in skewering the menace from Mar-a-Lago. Trump can expect the same kind of interrogation when the two go head to head that would make most mortals tremble.

Just over a month after Joe Biden exited the race and passed her the baton, this was the most important speech of Harris’s career as she sought to build on the momentum of huge crowds, record fundraising and viral phenomena on social media. Long in Biden’s shadow as vice-president, the primary objective was to make the American public comfortable with the notion of a President Harris regularly appearing on their screens.

The Democratic national convention in Chicago had done fine work on that score with four days of high-energy speakers extolling Harris as an everywoman driven by service and combating injustice who gets the struggles of the middle class. Confident, graceful, forceful and charismatic, she put the icing on the cake, though perhaps not a substantial meal in its own right.

Every seat was taken in the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls basketball team, with some delegates turned away at the door. Inside: a sea of humanity from all 50 states, multiracial and multigenerational, from teenagers set to vote for the first time to elderly party stalwarts who thought they had seen it all, some wearing their best suit and tie, others casual in T-shirts and regalia. Dotted among them were TV crews and photographers, security guards and stewards. The mood: eager, expectant, ecstatic, determined to blow the roof off.

Wearing navy and smiling broadly, Harris emerged on the blue carpeted stage at 9.31pm to thunderous cheers. She could see thousands of tall, narrow “Kamala” signs bouncing up and down and wristbands glinting red, white and blue in the darkness. She could also see, in the front row, her husband, Doug Emhoff, and her stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, wiping tears from their eyes as the chants of “Kamala! Kamala!” and “USA! USA!” went on.

Harris followed the familiar playbook of so many nominees before her, sketching out a personal biography that is humanising and strikes a chord, embracing patriotism and the uniqueness of America, promising to be a president for all Americans whatever their affiliation.

But she moved up a gear in prosecuting the case against Trump. Recalling how Trump sent an armed mob to the US Capitol to overturn his election defeat, she warned: “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails. How he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States. Not to improve your life. Not to strengthen our national security. But to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.”

And in a section on foreign policy, Harris vowed: “I will not cosy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favours … In the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand – and where the United States of America belongs.”

The ascent of Harris has been startling. Some observers have been left wondering: how did a seemingly stumbling vice-president, who served up word salads and an even lower approval rating than Biden, explode on to the scene like no one since the heyday of Barack Obama?

There are three answers. First, there is Democratic relief that she is not 81-year-old Biden, whose miserable debate performance in June suggested that he was shuffling towards inevitable defeat.

Harris, 59, instantly neutralised Republicans’ age argument and weaponised it against them (Trump is 78, the oldest nominee in history). She is enjoying the best of both worlds, improbably both incumbent and change agent at the same time.

Second, it turns out that, like many women of colour before her, Harris had been underestimated and underrated this entire time. Yes, she had a rocky first year with staff departures and less than inspiring interviews about southern border security. But Biden allies now acknowledge that she was left exposed and they could have done more to help her.

Anita Dunn, a former senior adviser to Biden, told the Washington Post: “I did not feel that we served her as well as we could have at the beginning – and not through any malice, not because people didn’t want her to succeed. There wasn’t the level of understanding that she’s getting judged differently, she’s getting covered differently. Most vice presidents don’t get covered the way she did, with the same level of scrutiny.”

But when in 2022 the supreme court’s rightwing majority overturned Roe v Wade, which guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion, Harris found her calling – and her voice. She toured the country sharpening her message, often addressing students at universities under the radar of the national media. She steadily built alliances that are now coming into play. None of them was surprised when she hit the ground running with assured performances at campaign rallies.

Third, politics is all about timing and Harris looks like the right candidate at the right time. In 2016, Trump’s populism resonated with blue collar anxiety, grievance and resentment. In 2020, Biden’s empathy and first-hand experience of grief met the moment of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2024, Harris is offering a Trump-weary nation joy instead of fear, ebullience instead of darkness, a smile instead a scowl. She comes with the promise to make America fun again.

“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past,” Harris told the convention. “A chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”

These factors help explain why Harris has surged in the opinion polls in her first month. But that was the easy part. As both former presidents Obama and Bill Clinton warned during the convention, the election is far from over: energy must be converted into votes. A sugar high is not enough.

Pressure will grow on Harris to get more specific about policies, which could give Republicans a target, and explain her altered positions on many issues – what is Harris-ism? Can she bask in the Biden administration’s historic legislative achievements while jettisoning her boss’s negative baggage?

There are already signs of a shift: where Biden talked of jobs and GDP growth, Harris speaks of the cost of living; where Biden focused relentlessly on Trump’s threat to democracy, Harris emphasises “freedom”, even in her use of a Beyoncé song; where Biden painted Trump as a big, diabolical figure, this week’s convention has mocked his smallness, his ridiculousness and, yes, his weirdness.

Then there is the issue of Gaza, which has simmered throughout the convention. Harris carefully articulated staunch support for Israel’s right to defend itself but also a vision of the future in which the Palestinian people “can realise their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination”. The conventional hall erupted in prolonged cheering.

As a San Francisco lawyer, Harris will inevitably face charges of elitism from Republicans, just as Hillary Clinton did eight years ago, exacerbated by her dismissal of Trump supporters as “deplorables”. The convention has worked hard to neutralise that by emphasising Harris’s modest roots, including working shifts in McDonald’s, and her support from trade unions.

Harris said on Thursday: “It was mostly my mother who raised us. Before she could finally afford to buy a home, she rented a small apartment in the East Bay. In the Bay, you either live in the hills or the flatlands. We lived in the flats – a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride.”

Her midwestern running mate, Tim Walz, a former teacher whose students did not attend Yale, peppered his speech on Wednesday with references to his time as an American football coach.

And in an age when identity politics have become dirty words, Harris made no reference to the historic nature of her candidacy as the first Black woman and first Asian American person to become a major party nominee. It was very different from Clinton eight years ago and her vow to break “that highest, hardest glass ceiling”.

Harris’s speech lasted 37 minutes – just over a third of Trump’s at the Republican convention last month. It did not contain an especially memorable line, but that won’t matter. Stars and Stripes were waved in the crowd. A cascade of red, white and blue balloons and confetti descended. “Kamala” and “DNC 2024” flashed on digital screens.

Harris, who has still not put a foot wrong since Biden dropped out, was joined on stage by Emhoff, the Walzes and other family members. Whereas the Republican convention felt like a cult of personality, this felt like a collective effort.

“Now,” tweeted David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the Harris campaign, “let’s go win this fucking thing.”

Prosecutors in Italy are investigating potential manslaughter charges relating to the sinking of the superyacht Bayesian as the body of Mike Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, was recovered.

The Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily early on Monday morning when the area was hit by violent storms. Seven people died, including the British tech entrepreneur Lynch.

After four days of searching, the body of Hannah, the final person missing from the luxury yacht, was recovered on Friday, according to the Italian coastguard.

The PA Media news agency reported a green body bag was seen being brought to Porticello from the site of the sinking just before 1pm local time.

The public prosecutor of Termini Imerese is investigating charges of shipwreck, disaster and multiple homicides over the sinking, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos. These are similar to manslaughter charges in the UK and the specific charge of provoking or causing a shipwreck can carry a prison sentence of up to 12 years.

Prosecutors are expected to hold a press conference on the issue in Termini Imerse on Saturday afternoon.

Lynch, 59, the founder of Autonomy Corporation, had been celebrating his acquittal on fraud charges in the US when the 56-metre sailing boat capsized at about 5am local time on Monday.

Adnkronos also reported that investigators believed the yacht sank bow first and then slowly capsized on to its right side.

The news agency quoted sources among the authorities involved in the recovery operations saying that the victims were found outside their cabins. “The passengers sought escape routes, reaching the opposite side of the vessel they were in,” Adnkronos reported. “But the water had already reached the cabins and five of them were found in that direction.”

Five of the victims were reportedly found in different rooms from those indicated by survivors.

Searches to find Hannah, the last person unaccounted for on the boat, resumed on Friday morning. According to sources among the firefighters, the divers had also started inspecting the seabed around the wreck.

Vincenzo Zagarola, of the Italian coastguard, said the search for Hannah had not been “easy or quick”, comparing the sunken yacht to an “18-storey building full of water”.

Carlo Dall’Oppio, the national head of Italy’s firefighters, who arrived in Porticello on Thursday, said the search for the teenager was “complicated due to furniture obstructing the passage”.

The other people who died were the chair of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer, his wife, Judy, a lawyer for Clifford Chance, Chris Morvillo, his wife, Neda, and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas.

The 18-year-old daughter of the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, whose body was recovered on Friday from the wreck of her father’s yacht, was “fiercely intelligent and genuinely kind” and had a promising future, friends and teachers said in tributes.

Hannah Lynch was described as “one of the best English students in the country”. She was one of seven people, including her father, who died after his yacht Bayesian sank during a storm off the coast of Sicily on Monday.

In a statement released on Friday, the Lynch family said they were “devastated” and “in shock”.

Hannah had recently finished her A-levels and was looking forward to taking up a place studying English at the University of Oxford.

Jon Mitropoulos-Monk, the head of English at Latymer upper school in west London, where she studied, said: “I’ve never taught someone who combined sky-high intellectual ability with warmth and enthusiasm in the way Hannah did. She lit up the classroom with her energy, passion for learning and sheer intelligence (though never with a hint of arrogance).”

He said Hannah was “one of the best English students in the country”, scoring 100 per cent in her English literature GCSE.

“By age 16, she’d read Joyce, Faulkner and Nabokov … She loved literature, learning and life. She was so excited to start studying English at Oxford, a goal she had worked so hard towards. When she got her place, she sought out every single member of the Latymer upper English department to thank them individually and give them a hug!”

Her friend Katya Lewis said: “The love Hannah had for everything she held dear was passionate and pure. She had a warm and beautiful soul.”

Another friend, Gracie Lea, said: “When I think of Hannah, I think of poetry, sunshine and her beautiful eyes. She was easy to love: sincere, dedicated, fiercely intelligent and genuinely kind. I’ll always remember her smiling.”

Hannah was the last of the missing passengers from Monday’s yacht disaster who remained unaccounted for before her body was found on Friday.

Patrick Jacob, a family friend, said she had “an insatiable thirst for life and knowledge” and was “warm, loving and deeply considerate”. He added: “We have lost one of our brightest stars whose future held so much promise. Her loss is unbearable.”

Lynch, 59, the founder of Autonomy Corporation, had been celebrating his acquittal on fraud charges in the US when his super yacht capsized at about 5am on Monday.

In a statement, his family said: “The Lynch family is devastated, in shock and is being comforted and supported by family and friends.

“Their thoughts are with everyone affected by the tragedy. They would like to sincerely thank the Italian coastguard, emergency services and all those who helped in the rescue. Their one request now is that their privacy be respected at this time of unspeakable grief.”

Poppy Gustafsson, the chief executive of the cybersecurity company Darktrace, paid tribute to Lynch, who was a co-founder of the firm. “Without Mike, there would be no Darktrace. We owe him so much,” she said.

“Mike drove an unwavering focus in everything that he did. He was binary: there was no half Mike. His intelligence was, to me, what a galaxy is to a planet. That intelligence was intimidating.”

She said Lynch left “an enormous legacy with us, but also with the broader UK technology ecosystem”.

Referring to the recent case in the US in which Lynch and his co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain were cleared of charges of fraud and conspiracy, she said: “At a time when both Mike and Steve were so recently acquitted, it feels too cruel.

“But also, such a relief to know that they died with the world knowing their innocence.”

Alongside Hannah and Lynch, the others killed in the incident were the chair of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy; Chris Morvillo, a lawyer for Clifford Chance, and his wife, Neda, and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas.

Andrew Kanter, a close friend and colleague of Lynch, said: “Mike was the most brilliant mind and caring person I have ever known. Over nearly a quarter century I had the privilege of working beside someone unrivalled in their understanding of technology and business.

“There is simply no other UK technology entrepreneur of our generation who has had such an impact on so many people. His passion for life, knowledge and all those around him was instantly inspiring to everyone he met, and he will be sorely missed.”

Another friend and colleague, Sushovan Hussain, said he and his wife were “utterly devastated by the deaths of so many of our dear friends”.

Hussain said he had known Lynch since school. “I was thrilled when he was acquitted and now his departure leaves an unfillable hole in my life,” he said.

“We have known Hannah since her birth, and for her to be taken on the precipice of her life is cruel beyond belief. Our hearts bleed for Angela and her remaining daughter.”

Canada’s federal government has moved to end a nationwide rail strike that threatened to grind supply chains to a halt, less than a day after it began.

With the government saying it would force the union and rail companies into binding arbitration, picket lines came down and workers at Canadian National Railway (CN) were ordered to return to work on Friday, the Teamsters union said.

But the union also said a stoppage at Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) would continue as they waited for an order from the country’s industrial relations board.

Canada’s top two railways had locked out more than 9,000 unionised workers on Thursday, triggering a simultaneous rail stoppage that business groups said could inflict hundreds of millions of dollars in economic damage.

The Canadian government announced on Thursday that it would ask the country’s industrial relations board (CIRB) to issue a back-to-work order that should come soon. The CIRB, which is independent, will consult the companies and unions before issuing an order.

CN had said it would end its lockout on Thursday at 6pm ET. CPKC said it was preparing to restart operations in Canada and further details on timing would be provided once it received the CIRB’s order.

In a broadcast to CN employees, the company said any failure to report to work Friday “would be considered illegal job action” and could result in “discipline up to and including termination”.

In response, the union told members in a memo that the company was “again attempting to put profits and operational ease ahead of your personal safety and the safety of the public … we do not have faith [CN] will miraculously begin to care for your wellbeing.”

The federal labour minister, Steven MacKinnon, told reporters he assumed the trains would be running “within days” following the end of the strike.

As well as requesting a back-to-work order, MacKinnon asked the board to start a process of binding arbitration between the Teamsters union and the companies, and extend the terms of the current labour agreements until new agreements have been signed.

The sides blamed each other for the stoppage after multiple rounds of talks failed to yield a deal.

In a statement posted on X in the early hours on Friday, the Teamsters union said it had taken down picket lines at CN.

A CN spokesperson, Jonathan Abecassis, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp it could take the company a week or more to catch up on shipments.

MacKinnon’s decision marked a change of mind by the Liberal government of the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, which had said it wanted to see the matter settled at the bargaining table.

“We gave negotiations every possible opportunity to succeed … but we have an impasse here,” MacKinnon said. “And that is why we have come to this decision today.“

Business groups and companies had demanded action by the government.

Trudeau, in a post on X, said “collective bargaining is always the best way forward”, but added governments must act when faced with serious consequences to supply chains and the workers who depended on them.

Canada is the world’s second largest country by area and relies heavily on railways to transport a wide range of commodities and industrial goods. Its economy is heavily integrated with that of the US, meaning a stoppage could disrupt North American supply chains.

The Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, an industry group, said: “We are pleased the government has responded to our calls to intervene … A prolonged stoppage would have imposed enormous costs on Canadian business.”

The rail companies previously said they had been forced into the lockouts to avoid strikes at short notice. They said they had bargained in good faith and made multiple offers with better pay and working conditions.

Paul Boucher, the head of the Teamsters rail union, had accused CN and CPKC of being “willing to compromise rail safety and tear families apart to earn an extra buck”.

Unions typically do not want contracts decided through arbitration as it removes their leverage from withholding labour to secure better terms.

The left-leaning New Democratic party, which has traditionally received strong union support and props up Trudeau’s government, opposed the government’s decision.

“Justin Trudeau has just sent a message to CN, CPKC and all big corporations – being a bad boss pays off,” the party’s leader, Jagmeet Singh, said in a statement.

The stoppage has crippled shipments of grain, potash and coal while also slowing the transport of petroleum products, chemicals and vehicles.

Tens of thousands of people who depend on certain commuter rail lines into Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal were also affected by the lockouts, since all train movement on these CPKC-owned lines had halted indefinitely.

The stoppage was largely rooted in scheduling, availability of labour and demands for better work-life balance, according to the union and companies. Ottawa introduced new duty and rest-period rules in 2023.

Nasa is expected to announce as early as Saturday whether the US astronauts stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) can come home with the glitchy Boeing Starliner spacecraft that took them there or will need to wait for a SpaceX vehicle – which would be another embarrassment for the embattled rival plane-maker.

Then SpaceX plans next week to launch one of its riskiest missions yet, to attempt the first ever private-sector spacewalk, with innovative slim spacesuits and a cabin with no airlock.

“Nasa’s decision on whether to return Starliner to Earth with astronauts aboard is expected no earlier than Saturday, August 24, at the conclusion of an agency-level review,” the space agency said in a statement.

Starliner launched its first two astronauts into space in June as a crucial test before it can receive Nasa approval for routine flights. But what was supposed to be an eight-day mission docked to the ISS has been drawn out by months after the capsule sprang leaks and some of its thrusters failed.

The agency administrator, Bill Nelson, will attend the agency-level review, the statement said. Boeing for months has sought to quell fears about the Starliner issues with new test data the company has claimed validates the spacecraft’s safety for astronauts.

Nasa is weighing that data against its low appetite for risk in the mission, one of four Starliner flights since 2019 to suffer mishaps.

The agency has prepared a backup plan to make two seats available on an upcoming SpaceX Crew Dragon mission that the Starliner crew – the veteran Nasa astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore – could use.

If that option is chosen, Wilmore and Williams would not come home until that mission’s conclusion in February 2025, and Starliner would be brought back to Earth empty in the meantime.

Boeing has struggled to develop Starliner and compete with SpaceX’s similar but more experienced Crew Dragon.

Boeing has taken $1.6bn in losses on the Starliner program, securities filings show. The US jet company has been reeling in recent years after crashes involving its 737 Max model and, on a newer version of that plane, a terrifying incident in January where a door panel blew out mid-flight, which is still being investigated.

Boeing is under pressure from upstart SpaceX, the company created by the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who also founded Tesla, the terrestrial electric vehicle maker, and now owns the social media platform, X, formerly Twitter.

Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur, will join a retired military fighter pilot and two SpaceX employees in the launch for the mission that will include a spacewalk on Tuesday aboard a modified Crew Dragon craft.

The plan is for them to embark on a 20-minute spacewalk 434 miles (698km) into space two days later. Until now, walking into the empty expanse of space has only been attempted by government astronauts on the ISS, which is in orbit 250 miles above Earth.

SpaceX’s five-day mission, dubbed Polaris Dawn, will swing in an oval-shaped orbit, passing as close to Earth as 118 miles and as far as 870 miles – the farthest any humans will have ventured since the end of the US Apollo moon program in 1972.

The crew will wear slimline spacesuits in a craft modified so it can open its hatch door in the vacuum of space – an unusual process that removes the need for an airlock.

“They’re pushing the envelope in multiple ways,” the retired Nasa astronaut Garrett Reisman said in an interview with Reuters. “They’re also going to a much higher altitude, with a more severe radiation environment than we’ve been to since Apollo.” Isaacman bankrolled the mission with an estimated $100m.

Joining Isaacman will be the mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX senior engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.

“There’s not a lot of room for error,” said Reisman.

Leaders of France’s leftwing coalition declared they were “extremely satisfied” after Emmanuel Macron launched the first of a series of tense consultations aimed at pulling together a new government.

The New Popular Front (NFP) wants the president to name its candidate prime minister to break a six-week political deadlock.

Macron had already rejected the NFP’s proposed candidate, 37-year-old civil servant Lucie Castets, as prime minister, saying he wanted a government leader with “broad and stable” support to avoid a parliamentary vote of no confidence that would cause further political chaos.

After the hour-long meeting at the Elysée on Friday morning, NFP representatives suggested the talks, predicted to be tense, had been positive even if Macron has yet to name a PM.

“After two months, the president is beginning to understand he lost the election,” said Manuel Bompard, of the hard-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), a member of the coalition. However, he said Macron should act as “a referee … not a selecter”.

France has been in a political stalemate since the beginning of July after the legislative election failed to produce a majority. The vote divided the Assemblée Nationale, the lower house of parliament, into three roughly equal blocs – left, centre and far right – none of which has a working majority.

The centrist government, led by Gabriel Attal, resigned after the July election, but has remained to oversee a minimum service administration during the Olympic “truce” called by the president.

The parties have been invited to the Elysée based on the number of MPs they had elected for what the spokesperson said were hoped to be “loyal and sincere consultation with the aim of moving things forward in the interest of the country”.

The NFPwas the first into the Élysée on Friday morning. The uneasy coalition of the hard-left (La France Insoumise), the Socialist party and the Greens and Communist parties, which was created to see off the threat of a far-right National Rally victory, won the most number of seats, 193, but considerablly short of the 289 required for an absolute majority,

Macron then met members of centre and centre-right parties including the conservative Les Républicains. He will hold talks with National Rally representatives on Monday.

Centrists, conservative right and far-right parties have threatened a no-confidence motion if the next government is led by a member of France Unbowed.

France Unbowed has made the same threat if the new PM is not an NFP candidate.

Before the meetings, an Elysée spokesperson was unable to indicate when a new PM would be named.

“After six weeks which have been useful, the president wanted to gather together the political forces represented in parliament with a view to naming a prime minister,” he said.

“The president has fixed a clear goal: he has asked republican forces to work and listen to each other to form the largest majority, that’s to say with the most MPs and also one that is the most stable, meaning that it cannot be overturned.”

He added that the election had brought “three lessons”.

“The first is that the outgoing majority lost. The second is that the French didn’t want a government led by the far right, National Rally … the third is that no coalition is in a position to claim a majority – which is a first in the history of the Fifth Republic.”

Leaders of France’s leftwing coalition declared they were “extremely satisfied” after Emmanuel Macron launched the first of a series of tense consultations aimed at pulling together a new government.

The New Popular Front (NFP) wants the president to name its candidate prime minister to break a six-week political deadlock.

Macron had already rejected the NFP’s proposed candidate, 37-year-old civil servant Lucie Castets, as prime minister, saying he wanted a government leader with “broad and stable” support to avoid a parliamentary vote of no confidence that would cause further political chaos.

After the hour-long meeting at the Elysée on Friday morning, NFP representatives suggested the talks, predicted to be tense, had been positive even if Macron has yet to name a PM.

“After two months, the president is beginning to understand he lost the election,” said Manuel Bompard, of the hard-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), a member of the coalition. However, he said Macron should act as “a referee … not a selecter”.

France has been in a political stalemate since the beginning of July after the legislative election failed to produce a majority. The vote divided the Assemblée Nationale, the lower house of parliament, into three roughly equal blocs – left, centre and far right – none of which has a working majority.

The centrist government, led by Gabriel Attal, resigned after the July election, but has remained to oversee a minimum service administration during the Olympic “truce” called by the president.

The parties have been invited to the Elysée based on the number of MPs they had elected for what the spokesperson said were hoped to be “loyal and sincere consultation with the aim of moving things forward in the interest of the country”.

The NFPwas the first into the Élysée on Friday morning. The uneasy coalition of the hard-left (La France Insoumise), the Socialist party and the Greens and Communist parties, which was created to see off the threat of a far-right National Rally victory, won the most number of seats, 193, but considerablly short of the 289 required for an absolute majority,

Macron then met members of centre and centre-right parties including the conservative Les Républicains. He will hold talks with National Rally representatives on Monday.

Centrists, conservative right and far-right parties have threatened a no-confidence motion if the next government is led by a member of France Unbowed.

France Unbowed has made the same threat if the new PM is not an NFP candidate.

Before the meetings, an Elysée spokesperson was unable to indicate when a new PM would be named.

“After six weeks which have been useful, the president wanted to gather together the political forces represented in parliament with a view to naming a prime minister,” he said.

“The president has fixed a clear goal: he has asked republican forces to work and listen to each other to form the largest majority, that’s to say with the most MPs and also one that is the most stable, meaning that it cannot be overturned.”

He added that the election had brought “three lessons”.

“The first is that the outgoing majority lost. The second is that the French didn’t want a government led by the far right, National Rally … the third is that no coalition is in a position to claim a majority – which is a first in the history of the Fifth Republic.”

“The time has come” for the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, its chairman declared, hailing progress in the battle to bring down inflation from its highest level in a generation.

With price growth now on a “sustainable” path back to normal levels, Jerome Powell signaled that the central bank was ready to start reducing rates from next month.

The US labor market – which rapidly recovered from the damage inflicted during the early months of the Covid-19 crisis, adding millions of jobs – now faces greater “downside risks”, he acknowledged. Unemployment ticked up last month.

But Powell expressed confidence that there was “good reason” to believe inflation could retreat further without damaging the world’s largest economy – if the Fed now acts.

“The time has come for policy to adjust,” Powell told an annual symposium for central bankers at Jackson Hole in Wyoming on Friday. “The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”

Two years ago, when inflation was soaring during the pandemic, policymakers at the Fed scrambled to cool the US economy by raising rates to a two-decade high. Now price growth is falling back – it rose at an annual rate of 2.9% in July, having faded from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 – they are preparing to cut rates, but have yet to do so.

Officials hope to guide the US to a so-called “soft landing”, whereby inflation is normalized, and recession avoided. The Fed’s target of inflation is 2%.

The central bank’s next rate-setting meeting is due to take place in September, when it is widely expected to cut rates for the first time since Covid-19 took hold four years ago.

In contrast to Powell’s comments, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, warned the UK economy still faced risks from high inflation that may require interest rates to remain higher for longer.

“It is too early to declare victory,” he told the Jackson Hole summit on Friday. “We need to be cautious because the job is not completed – we are not yet back to target on a sustained basis.”

The UK central bank cut interest rates for the first time since the Covid pandemic earlier this month, with a quarter-point reduction in borrowing costs to 5%. The European Central Bank also cut interest rates in June, but has since held its main policy rates unchanged.

UK inflation rose above the Bank’s 2% target in July, hitting 2.2%. The Bank has warned UK inflation could peak at about 2.75%, before falling back below target within two years’ time.

However, Bailey warned there were risks of “permanent” inflationary pressures amid structural changes in the jobs market. The pound rose by about 1% against the US dollar on international currency markets to about $1.32 after the comments by both central bankers.

In recent months, critics of the Fed have accused the central bank of sitting on its hands and derailing the US economy, amid unease over its direction. An unexpectedly weak jobs report for July, which came a day after the Fed again chose to hold rates steady, sparked a fleeting global sell-off.

There has been an “unmistakable” cooling in conditions in the labour market, Powell observed at Jackson Hole on Friday, noting how job creation had slowed, vacancies fallen and wage gains moderated. “We do not seek or welcome further cooling in labor market conditions.”

The Fed would “do everything we can” to support the labor market as it cuts rates, he said. “With an appropriate dialing back of policy restraint, there is good reason to think that the economy will get back to 2% inflation while maintaining a strong labor market.”

Stocks rose as he spoke. The benchmark S&P 500 increased 0.8% and the technology-focused Nasdaq Composite gained 1%.

On Wall Street, analysts and economists have spent months attempting to predict how quickly, and how much, the Fed will end up cutting rates.

The Fed has “waited far too long”, according to Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, who described the shift in the central bank’s tone since its June meeting – when it also held rates – as “startling”.

“Today’s speech is welcome, but it would have been much better for the economy if the Fed had put rather less weight on a few disappointing inflation prints and had eased in June,” said Shepherdson. “March would have been even better, but policymakers have been so determined not to be caught out by unexpected inflation again that they have waited until the risk has become vanishingly small.”

During his speech on Friday, Powell harked back to 2021, when he – and many economists – argued that inflation was a “transitory” consequence of supply and demand fluctuations triggered by the pandemic, restrictions and lockdowns.

“The good ship Transitory was a crowded one, with most mainstream analysts and advanced-economy central bankers on board,” he recalled. Central banks including the Fed have faced criticism for their early analysis of inflation’s surge.

The head of Israel’s security agency, Shin Bet, has warned the country’s leaders that Jewish terrorism in the West Bank is out of control and has become a serious threat to national security.

Ronen Bar issued the warning in a letter to the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the attorney general and members of the Israeli cabinet, some of whom are outspoken backers of the extremist settlers responsible for the escalating violence.

Bar’s letter, sent last week but published by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Thursday night, has highlighted the wide, acrimonious gap between the far-right wing of Netanyahu’s coalition and Israel’s security apparatus.

The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of those criticised by Bar for inflammatory behaviour, called for the Shin Bet head to be fired, triggering a rebuke on Friday from the defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

Bar’s letter focused on Jewish extremists known as the “hilltop youth”, violent militants who have been conducting a campaign of murder, arson and intimidation against Palestinians on the West Bank, aimed at driving them from their land, furthering the far right’s pursuit of complete annexation.

Bar said their actions should not be described as criminality but as terrorism.

“It isn’t crime because it’s the use of violence to create intimidation, to spread fear. That is terror,” he wrote, describing how the campaign had “significantly expanded” in the absence of an adequate police response and with the connivance of some national leaders. The militants had gone from using “cigarette lighters to the weapons of war”, the security chief said, adding that some of those weapons had been provided by the state.

The terror campaign, the letter said, was “a large stain on Judaism and on all of us”.

Bar warned the hilltop youth had gone “from evading the security forces to attacking the security forces, from cutting themselves off from the establishment to receiving legitimacy from certain officials in the establishment”.

The Shin Bet director also referred to the “spectacle” of Ben-Gvir’s visit last month to the compound of al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, Islam’s holiest site in Jerusalem. The esplanade is also holy to Jews who know it as the Temple Mount, but the status quo for decades has been that while Jews could visit, only Muslims could pray there. During his 18 July visit, Ben-Gvir led prayers in front of the cameras and vowed to change the status quo permanently.

Such actions, Bar warned, could lead “to profuse bloodshed and change the face of the state out of all recognition”.

The security chief, who has been in the post since 2021, said he had reluctantly decided to send the letter “with pain and great fear, as a Jew, as an Israeli and as a security official, about the escalating phenomenon of Jewish terrorism from the ‘hilltop youth’”, which he felt was approaching a tipping point.

“We’re on the threshold of a significant, reality-changing process,” Bar wrote. “The damage to Israel, especially at this time, and to the majority of the settlers is indescribable: a loss of global legitimacy even among our best friends, deploying IDF forces at a time the army, which isn’t meant to deal with these missions, is finding it difficult to carry out all its tasks.”

The nationalist leadership, Bar concluded, was “willing to jeopardise the state’s security and its very existence” in the name of their ideology.

N12 reported that Ben-Gvir had walked out of a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet after Bar’s letter arrived, and called for his dismissal.

Netanyahu has not so far tried to oust Bar but has been critical of the Shin Bet chief and David Barnea, the director of the external spy agency, the Mossad, for their role as negotiators in Gaza peace talks, implying they were willing to sacrifice Israel’s security to reach a deal to release hostages being held by Hamas.

“I am facing the security establishment and the negotiating leaders alone,” Netanyahu said, in remarks quoted by N12. “They display weakness and are only trying to find ways to concede, whereas I insist on the state of Israel’s interests and am not willing to capitulate to demands that will undermine security.”

In the spat between Bar and Ben-Gvir however, Netanyahu’s defence minister sided with the security chief.

“In the face of Minister Ben-Gvir’s irresponsible actions that endanger the national security of the state of Israel and create an internal division in the nation, [the Shin Bet chief] and his people are doing their duty and warning against the serious consequences of these actions,” Gallant said on the X social media platform.

Ben-Gvir hit back on X, telling Gallant to stop attacking him and “to start attacking Hezbollah”, egging on the defence chief to start a preemptive war in Lebanon, a longstanding demand of the Israeli right.

A volcano in south-west Iceland has erupted for the sixth time since December, spewing lava through a new fissure on the Reykjanes peninsula.

Live video images showed orange lava bursting out of a long fissure, illuminating billowing smoke rising up into the night sky.

Unlike previous eruptions, the lava was not flowing towards the town of Grindavík, which was largely evacuated in December when the volcano came to life after being dormant for 800 years.

Benedikt Gunnar Ófeigsson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Met Office, said that although it had started in the same region to the previous two eruptions and with similar intensity, this time the lava was heading north rather than the south.

“It stopped propagating around 5am this morning and since mid-morning we have seen the fissure start the process of contracting the eruption in isolated fissures,” he told the Guardian. “At the same time we see the change in eruption behaviour we observe reduction in deformation and in seismicity.”

This, he added, probably means that the eruption is stabilising.

“Currently no infrastructure is at risk of being run over by lava.”

The eruption took place on the Sundhnúkur crater row east of Sýlingarfell mountain, partly overlapping the other recent activity on the Reykjanes peninsula. The volcanic system has no central crater but opens giant cracks in the ground when it erupts.

The Meteorological Office said a fissure had opened east of Sýlingarfell at 9.29pm local time (22.29 BST) after a series of earthquakes. In an update at 10am local time on Friday, the office said the strength of the eruption had decreased since its peak, with activity largely confined to two fissures, but that it was yet to reach equilibrium.

Iceland’s national airport and air navigation service provider, Isavia, said flights to and from Iceland were operating normally. The department for civil protection and emergency management said that activity was “much further north than has been seen before”. Iceland remained a safe destination and all services were operating as usual, it said. The eruption’s effects were localised and “do not threaten people”.

The eruption had been anticipated for some time. The most recent activity on the Reykjanes peninsula, which is home to 30,000 people or nearly 8% of the country’s population, ended on 22 June after spewing fountains of molten rock for 24 days.

The eruptions show the challenge the country of nearly 400,000 people faces. Scientists say the geological system could be active for decades or even centuries. There have been nine eruptions on the peninsula since 2021 after 800 years of dormancy.

In response, authorities have constructed barriers to redirect lava flows away from critical infrastructure, including the Svartsengi power plant, the Blue Lagoon outdoor spa and Grindavík.

The IMO had warned for weeks that another eruption was likely and said on Monday that seismic activity indicated a buildup of pressure and magma accumulation under the Svartsengi geothermal field, where the power plant is located.

The plant was evacuated and has largely been run remotely since the first eruption in December.

Iceland is home to 33 active volcano systems, the highest number in Europe. It straddles the Mid-Atlantic ridge, a crack in the ocean floor between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

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

Russian special forces have freed hostages taken by four men linked to the Islamic State who carried out an attack at a high-security prison in the southern Volgograd region, resulting in the deaths of several prison guards.

Russia’s national guard announced in a statement that special forces snipers “liquidated” all four hostage-takers before the colony was stormed and the hostages were freed.

Earlier on Friday four prisoners identifying themselves as Islamic State militants staged a deadly attack on guards at the penal colony and seized 12 hostages, most of whom were prison guards. Prison authorities later reported that the attackers had stabbed four prison guards to death and injured three others.

The incident happened during a meeting of the prison’s disciplinary commission, the prison service said.

A graphic video circulating on several Russian Telegram channels earlier showed the hostage-takers wielding knives and standing over what appeared to be injured or dead prison guards lying motionless in a pool of blood.

One of the hostage-takers says in the clip that the group are “mujahideen” of Islamic State (IS).

In another video, one of the hostage-takers says their actions are retaliation for the “mistreatment” of Muslims in “Russia and worldwide.”

Subsequent videos showed four attackers pacing about in a prison yard where one of the prisoners held a knife against the neck of the bloodied prison staffer. Another prisoner involved in the incident appeared to have an improvised explosive vest and the others were carrying knives and hammers.

News sites with security connections published the names of four alleged attackers, identifying them as citizens of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. There was no official confirmation of their identity and motives.

The Kremlin said president Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the attack.

Russia has experienced a series of Islamist terror attacks recently, prompting questions about whether its extensive security agencies have been distracted by the invasion of Ukraine and the internal crackdown on anti-war dissent.

In March, the Afghan branch of IS, known as Islamic State Khorasan Province, claimed responsibility for a mass shooting at a Moscow concert hall, the deadliest terror attack in years, which killed 139 people.

And in June, gunmen opened fire in two cities in Russia’s north Caucasus region of Dagestan, targeting a synagogue, two Orthodox churches and a police post, killing at least 15 police officers and a priest.

IS-Khorasan is known to recruit nationals from Tajikistan and other central Asian countries, many of whom migrate to Russia in search of work.

The latest hostage-taking incident is likely also to raise questions about security measures within Russian prisons. It follows a similar incident this summer, in which Russian special forces freed two guards and killed six men linked to IS who had taken them hostage at a detention centre in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

Friday’s attack comes amid rising ethnic tensions in Russian society following the IS-claimed Moscow concert hall attack, which was carried out by four Tajikistani citizens currently in pre-trial detention. Millions of people from Central Asia, a region that was once part of the Soviet Union, live in Russia, many of them working low-skilled jobs to send money back to their families.

More than 150 brown bears have been killed in the opening days of Sweden’s annual bear hunt, as controversy mounts over what conservationists have called “pure slaughter”.

The Swedish government issued 486 licences to shoot bears in this year’s hunt, equivalent to about 20% of the remaining brown bear population. This follows a record-breaking cull of 722 bears last year. By Thursday afternoon – the second day of the hunt – 152 bears had already been shot, according to Sweden’s Environmental Protection Agency.

The hunt has become the focus of growing controversy, and this year police accompanied hunters for the first time in anticipation of local protests.

Magnus Orrebrant, chair of the Swedish Carnivore Association, a pro-wildlife advocacy group, said: “Modern hunting methods make it extremely easy to kill a bear – one could liken it to pure slaughter.”

Police officers have been patrolling the forests on foot and with drones to ensure the “hunters’ peaceful progress” amid concerns that the increased licences could provoke protests.

“We have deemed it necessary to ensure that there is no interference with the hunters doing their job during this year’s bear hunt,” said Joacim Lundqvist, a police officer and wildlife coordinator for the north of Sweden. “This is because there has been an increase of protesters in the lynx and wolf hunts that occurred earlier this year.”

Magnus Jensen, a consultant at the Swedish Hunting Association in Falun, said: “In previous years there has been a sense of threat from protesters. This year, there is not the same sense of fear.”

Bears were hunted almost to extinction in Sweden a century ago, but numbers recovered to a peak of 3,300 in 2008. In the years since, the culls have cut bear numbers by 40% to about 2,400. If they continue at a similar rate, next year’s cull will bring numbers close to the minimum 1,400 bears considered necessary to maintain a viable population by the Swedish government.

Over the past two years, Sweden has culled hundreds of wolves, lynxes and bears, with last year’s hunts breaking modern records for the number of animals killed. In 2023, the country held the largest wolf hunt in modern times, aiming to cull 75 of an endangered population of just 460 wolves.

Ecologists are concerned that if they continue, the hunts may have repercussions across the region. Earlier this month, Norwegian environmental groups appealed to Swedish authorities in some border regions to turn down the licences to kill the bears, arguing that they threatened the brown bear population in both countries. Their appeal was denied.

Truls Gulowsen, head of the Norwegian Nature Conservation Organisation, said they were “very concerned with this culling”.

He said: “It’s a significant and quite dramatic reduction of the Scandinavian brown bear population. Now that Sweden is seriously decreasing its stock, it will impact the survivability of the entire Scandinavian population.”

Jonas Kindberg, of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and the lead scientist for the Scandinavian Bear Project, said: “If you want the population to remain stable at around the 2,400 animals as we estimate today, you can only shoot about 250 bears annually.”

Brown bears are a “strictly protected species” in Europe, and conservationists argue that the high hunting quotas could breach the EU habitat directive, which prohibits “deliberate hunting or killing of strictly protected species”. Under EU rules, this prohibition can only be lifted as a “last resort” to protect public safety, crops or natural flora and fauna.

Magnus Rydholm, communications director for the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management, said the brown bear was not typically dangerous to people. “No, it’s not,” he said. “It is mostly interested in blueberries. Of course, if it’s provoked it can become dangerous.”

Rydholm said hunting was part of Sweden’s cultural heritage: “I would argue that northern Sweden would never have become habitable had it not been for hunting with free-running dogs. It is a cultural heritage, and a right, which we must protect.”

As well as high numbers of licences, Sweden has relaxed its hunting regulations to allow the use of bait, cameras and dogs to kill the bears – practices that were previously illegal.

This year, local administrations in Sweden have seen 1,455 applications to use bait in the hunt – a 50% increase. Barrels of food attract the bears, and cameras send alerts when a bear appears. Hunters may then set their dogs on the animals, which are then shot. Hunters argue that the methods cause the bear less stress.

Wolves and bears have been a conservation success story across the EU, with numbers surging back from the brink of extinction thanks to strict protections and hunting bans. But now Sweden is among a number of European countries that have stepped up the hunting of large carnivores.

This year, Romania announced a cull of nearly 500 brown bears, despite their protected status. Germany is in the process of relaxing its rules on wolf hunting, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has been part of a wider push to loosen protections for wolves across the EU.