At least three people have been killed and four are seriously wounded, German police have said, after an attack at a festival in the city of Solingen in the country’s west on Friday night.

Police said the weapon was believed to be a knife.

No one has been arrested and police said they had deployed a “large contingent” including a helicopter to search for the male assailant who fled the scene. Police declined to discuss a possible motive or speculate about the identity of the suspect.

Federal health minister Karl Lauterbach said he hoped “rescue teams can save the wounded who are still alive and that police can catch the cowardly and pathetic perpetrator”.

Regional premier Hendrik Wüst, who arrived at the scene early on Saturday, posted earlier on X that “All of North Rhine-Westphalia stands with the people in Solingen, above all with the victims and their families,” he said, expressing “huge thanks to the many rescue workers and our police who are in these minutes fighting for people’s lives”.

The attack happened at an event marking the city’s 650th anniversary and billed as a festival of diversity that began on Friday and was supposed to run through to Sunday. Around 10,000 people attended, many gathering around a stage with live music on the Fronhof market square in the city centre.

Most of those wounded are believed to have been attacked directly front of the stage, the daily Bild reported, adding that the man appeared to target the throats of his victims.

A police spokesperson said emergency services had received several calls at about 9.30pm with witnesses reporting that “an unknown person armed with a knife wounded several people at random”.

“Many witnesses are in a state of shock and are receiving care and giving their statements,” the spokesperson said. “We hope to receive information about the assailant, particularly his appearance, so that we can make the manhunt more targeted.”

He said the information compiled so far was “very thin”. Police set up a website for people to send in footage or information about the attack.

The local Solinger Tageblatt newspaper reported that authorities called on people to leave central Solingen and that one of the festival organisers, Philipp Müller, said on a stage that emergency workers were fighting for the lives of nine people.

Rolling news channel NTV showed a video of Müller asking the crowd not to panic and to be careful leaving the premises because the attacker was still at large.

Witnesses said that people remained calm as they left the scene and media images later showed that the premises were empty apart from police and emergency vehicles. Armed officers were controlling the perimeter.

Solingen has about 160,000 inhabitants and is located near the bigger cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf. Festival organiser Mueller later told the Tageblatt that the rest of the festival would be cancelled. “We’ve just informed all the artists and stand operators,” he said.

Mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach said the city was “in shock, horror and great sadness” at the attack.

“We all wanted to celebrate our city’s anniversary together and now we have to mourn the deaths and injuries.

“It breaks my heart that there was an attack on our city. I have tears in my eyes when I think of those we have lost. I pray for all those who are still fighting for their lives.

“I also have great sympathy with all the people who had to witness this; it must have been a terrible sight. I thank all the rescue and security forces for their efforts. I ask you, if you believe, to pray with me and if not, to hope with me.”

MP Serap Güler of the centre-right CDU party called it “terrible, horrible what happened in Solingen”.

“Above all I wish that the wounded victims of this terrible attack survive, and wish strength to their loved ones. Hopefully the perpetrator will be captured quickly. My thoughts are with all those who are on the scene,” she posted on X.

The attack occurred amid a heated political debate about rising knife violence in German cities.

In May, German police shot and wounded a man who injured six people in a knife attack on a rightwing demonstration in the south-western city of Mannheim. Among the victims was a 29-year-old policeman who intervened who was fatally stabbed.

A Palestinian baby in Gaza has been partly paralysed from polio in the first case there for 25 years, amid preparations for a difficult and dangerous vaccination campaign in the midst of war.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, confirmed that the affected infant had lost movement in his lower left leg, but was in a stable condition.

More than 1.6m doses of vaccine against poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2), the variant of the disease involved, are due to be delivered to Gaza for an immunisation campaign in two rounds. The first round is due to begin on 31 August and the second at the end of September or beginning of October.

The refrigeration equipment required to keep the vaccine at the right temperature (2-8C) entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom gate on Friday, according to the UN children’s humanitarian agency, Unicef.

Jonathan Crickx, a Unicef spokesperson in the region, said that the aim was to vaccinate more than 640,000 children under the age of 10 against poliovirus type 2 in both rounds of the campaign.

“For the vaccination coverage to be sufficient, 95% of the children must receive the two doses of vaccines,” Crickx said. The vials of vaccine are expected to arrive in the next few days by air to Tel Aviv and then be driven into the Gaza Strip through Kerem Shalom. They will be stored in a refrigerated warehouse in Deir el-Balah, halfway up the Strip.

The UN is appealing to Israel and Hamas for a humanitarian ceasefire to allow humanitarian workers to carry out the immunisation campaign.

“Polio will not make the distinction between Palestinian and Israeli children,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief agency, Unrwa, said. “Delaying a humanitarian pause will increase the risk of spread among children.”

Hamas has said it supports a humanitarian ceasefire. Israel has not committed to such a pause but has said it will “facilitate” the immunisation campaign.

“It is important to understand that you cannot implement a polio vaccination campaign without at least temporary pauses in fighting,” Crickx said. “The parents must be able to bring their children to health centres or to the mobile units safely. Also, the humanitarian and health workers that will provide the vaccines must be able to do so safely and to be able to access the children that need the vaccine.”

Unrwa has said it has been able to provide vaccinations to 80% of Gaza’s children since the current conflict began last October, but those were not specific to type 2 poliovirus, and the vaccination rate was significantly down from the prewar standard (99% in 2022 according to the WHO and Unicef), which had kept polio at bay in Gaza for 25 years.

The Israel Defense Forces section responsible for occupied Palestinian territories, Cogat, said on Friday that 43,250 vials of vaccine “specifically tailored to address the virus identified in environmental samples” were expected to arrive in Israel and subsequently enter the Gaza Strip.

Each vial contains multiple doses, and the total should be more than enough to provide more than 1 million children with two rounds of vaccination, Cogat added.

It said Israel would provide refrigerated trucks to keep the vaccines cool, but in a social media post, Lazzarini said: “It is not enough to bring the vaccines into Gaza and protect the cold chain.

“To have an impact, the vaccines must end up in the mouths of every child under the age of 10.”

The challenge of distributing the vaccine in Gaza will be substantial. Most families have been displaced by Israeli bombing several times over. In the absence of a ceasefire, the whole operation will be highly dangerous to healthcare workers, the children being vaccinated and their families.

“No one is safe, nowhere is safe,” Tedros said. “People have barely any options left, after being uprooted multiple times, to find shelter, health and other services in an already crammed and challenging environment.”

Writing on the X social media site, the WHO chief added: “The close proximity of evacuation orders to medical points and hospitals in the affected areas places these health facilities at risk of becoming non-functional due to insecurity and lack of safe access for patients, health workers, ambulances and partners to resupply them. This must be avoided at all costs.”

Hours after being endorsed by the third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump said he would release “all of the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of John F Kennedy” if he were elected president in November, as part of a proposed new commission on presidential assassination attempts, including the one that targeted him.

Speaking at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, Trump also pledged that, if elected, he would “establish a panel of top experts” that would work with Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, to investigate childhood health problems. The 13 July assassination attempt on Trump is already being officially investigated, including by the Secret Service and the FBI.

Kennedy, the scion of one of the country’s most famous Democratic political dynasties, got a roar of approval from Republicans when he joined Trump onstage at a Republican campaign rally in Glendale, Arizona. “Bobby! Bobby!” the crowd chanted.

Kennedy had announced earlier on Friday that he was suspending his third-party campaign for president and endorsing Trump. Kennedy’s vice-presidential pick, Nicole Shanahan, had previously spoken out about the campaign’s belief that staying in the race would result in a victory for Harris, because “we draw votes from Trump”. Kennedy said he would remove himself from the ballots in swing states, where he might siphon electoral college votes from Trump, while staying on the ballot in other states.

In a brief speech at the rally, Kennedy said Trump would “make America healthy again” and that he would be a president “who is going to protect us against totalitarianism”.

In praising Kennedy for his support, Trump referenced Kennedy’s father, a Democratic US senator and attorney general, and his uncle, a Democratic president. “I know they are looking down right now and they are very, very proud of Bobby. I’m proud of Bobby,” Trump said.

Kerry Kennedy, one of RFK’s sisters, told a Washington Post reporter earlier in the day that her brother’s embrace of Trump was “obscene”, and said: “I think if he were alive today my father would have detested almost everything about Donald Trump.”

Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, has recently been linked to a conservative group that advocates repealing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, an anti-discrimination law which was introduced by John F Kennedy and became law after his assassination.

In a joint statement before the Glendale Trump rally, five of Kennedy’s siblings – Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy and Rory Kennedy – called RFK’s endorsement of Trump “a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold” and “a sad ending to a sad story.” They said they were supporting the Democratic ticket of Harris and Walz.

As temperatures exceeded 100F (38C) in Arizona, local news outlets reported that more than 100 people had been treated for heat exhaustion as they waited to get inside the Trump rally, with some getting medical treatment on site, and some being transported to a hospital.

Kennedy joined Trump in Glendale less than 24 hours after Arizona’s secretary of state confirmed that Kennedy’s campaign had officially requested to be removed from ballots in Arizona.

Election officials in Arizona and Ohio confirmed that Kennedy’s name will not be on the ballot in their states, and he is also listed as withdrawn from the race on the Texas secretary of state’s website. Kennedy’s campaign has also reportedly filed paperwork to remove his name from the ballot in Pennsylvania.

But in key battleground states of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, election officials said it was too late for Kennedy to take his name off the ballot even if he wants to do so.

Trump’s suggestion that he would create a government panel of experts to work with Kennedy to investigate children’s health problems in the US is notable, given Kennedy’s track record.

In recent decades, Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has become “among the most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines” and “has traveled the world spreading false information about the pandemic,” the Associated Press reported. His Twitter account was named as “the top superspreader” of misinformation about Covid-19 by a medical journal article in 2022. The Associated Press has investigated the consequences of Kennedy’s advocacy on individual families and “how Kennedy had capitalized on the pandemic to build [Children’s Health Defense, his advocacy group] into a multimillion-dollar misinformation engine”.

Kennedy has for years falsely claimed that vaccines cause autism, and more recently he has made series of other lurid health claims, including that wifi causes “leaky brain”, school shootings might be linked to antidepressants, and that chemicals in water were making children transgender.

Some Kennedy supporters said they found his endorsement of Trump frustrating, because they had been drawn to RFK Jr as an alternative to the two-party system, and because some were not willing to vote for Trump.

Kennedy, like Trump’s own vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, has previously savaged Trump publicly and privately. He reportedly called Trump “probably a sociopath”, “barely human” and “the worse [sic] president ever” in text messages, according to the New Yorker.

In 2020, Kennedy publicly called Trump a “bully” and said he had “discredited the American experiment with self-governance,” and more recently he called Trump’s criticism of him “unhinged”.

It went both ways: in May, Trump had attacked Kennedy in a social media post, Truth Social, calling Kennedy “junior” and labeling him “one of the most Liberal Lunatics ever to run for office”.

Trump references their past differences at the Glendale rally, saying, “He also went after me a couple times. I didn’t like it.”

Trump had praised Kennedy and said, contrary to the available evidence, that Kennedy would have defeated Joe Biden if he had stayed in the Democratic presidential primary, rather than deciding in October 2023 to launch an independent bid for the presidency.

Sam T Levin and the Associated Press contributed reporting

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the scion of the Democratic Kennedy family whose independent presidential campaign threatened to draw votes from both Republicans and Democrats, has suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.

Kennedy said he would be removing his name from the ballot in critical swing states, but will remain on the ballot in other states and some voters could still cast ballots for him.

In a rambling statement that started three-quarters of a hour behind schedule, Kennedy said he would be giving his support to Trump following a series of conversations with him, the first of which took place days after the Republican nominee survived an assassination attempt on 13 July.

“I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues,” Kennedy said, explaining that he and Trump met several times. “In those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals. That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately and seriously, if need be, on issues over which we differ while working together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance.”

He also praised Trump’s call for an end to Russia’s war with Ukraine, which he blamed on the US and the Nato alliance.

Kennedy said the war was one of three “great causes” that drove him to enter the race and ultimately to give his support to Trump, with the others being free speech and what he called “the war on our children”, a phrase covering his well-known opposition to vaccines, about which he has peddled conspiracy theories.

Kennedy, whose uncle, John F Kennedy, and father, Robert F Kennedy, were both assassinated, announced that he was running against Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in April 2023.

He left that race last October, however, warning that under the two-party system the US was “cycling from despair to rage and back to despair”, and ran as an independent.

Kennedy’s campaign was seen as a threat to both Harris and Trump, but in the past few months Kennedy was dogged by controversies. He was accused of assaulting a former babysitter, it emerged that Kennedy believed that part of his brain had been eaten by a worm, and in early August he admitted to having staged a bizarre bicycle hit-and-run incident with a dead bear cub in a New York City park.

As his election bid floundered, Kennedy reportedly made overtures to the Harris campaign in August to discuss dropping out and endorsing her in exchange for a job in her administration, while he was also courted by Trump in July.

Having initially hovered at about 10% in national polling, Kennedy’s popularity dropped amid the scandals, with the 70-year-old averaging about half of that in August. The campaign struggled to raise money, with just $3.9m cash-on-hand at the end of July, and debts of $3.5m. Politico reported that Kennedy spent more than $7m in July – more than the $5.6m he raised.

Both Democrats and Republicans watched Kennedy’s campaign closely, however, mindful that his mix of vaccine skepticism, hardline policies on the border, and ties to the most famous Democratic family in politics, could draw votes in key swing states.

Kennedy, as a former Democrat, was initially seen as more of a threat to Democrats winning the presidential election, but in recent months he was seen to be drawing more votes from Trump, something his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, admitted on Tuesday.

“There’s two options that we’re looking at,” Shanahan told the Impact Theory podcast.

“One is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency, because we draw votes from Trump. Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump. We walk away from that and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”

There has been evidence that Trump did see Kennedy as a threat.

A video posted online on 16 July showed a phone call between Trump and Kennedy where Trump appeared to offer an opportunity for the pair to work together in the future. The video came after reports – denied by Kennedy – that he might drop out and endorse Trump.

At an event in Nevada, Trump thanked Kennedy for his decision to endorse him, and in a statement the campaign called the decision “good news”.

The Harris campaign responded less directly, with a statement apparently directed at Kennedy supporters: “for any American out there who is tired of Donald Trump and looking for a new way forward, ours is a campaign for you.”

Kennedy’s apparent efforts to meet with Harris to discuss endorsing her in exchange for a possible cabinet secretary position were snubbed by the Harris campaign.

His run for president has been controversial. Recently Kennedy responded to an allegation that he sexually assaulted an employee by stating: “I am not a church boy,” while in July 2023, a video surfaced of Kennedy making false claims that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack Black people and white people while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

Last year Kennedy claimed that wifi causes “leaky brain” and has linked antidepressants to school shootings. In 2023 he also claimed that chemicals in water were making children transgender, while Kennedy has longstanding, and wrong, beliefs about apparently any and all vaccines.

In a joint statement, five of Kennedy’s siblings – Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy and Rory Kennedy – denounced his endorsement of Trump as a betrayal of the values of their father, Robert F Kennedy, the former attorney general and Democratic senator.

“We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride,” they said. “We believe in Harris and Walz. Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”

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 the 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.”

Even some of Trump’s supporters on the Maga right grudgingly conceded that Harris’s convention messaging represented a dire threat to his prospects.

In a video posted on X, the conservative commentator and former Fox News and Newsmax host Eric Bolling, said the Harris campaign was dominating the media landscape and blamed Trump for ceding the initiative while failing to come up with new ideas.

“We’re losing, losing the race,” he said in a tone of clear frustration. “The enthusiasm level on the left right now is overwhelming … They’re trying to redefine the Democrat party. They’re trying to say that the Democrats are the patriots, the party that’s worried about the country.

“They’re wearing camo hats with Kamala Harris’s name on it. Camouflage – that’s ours! She was flanked in her speech last night with two American flags. There were no Pride flags there. They’re redefining it, they’re going after our independent voters. What’s going on with Fox News, by the way? … It’s Democrat, Democrat, Democrat … The media are kicking our ass, on the right.”

But with Republicans such as the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham urging Trump to 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 the 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.”

An Arizona man who was wanted after threatening over social media to kill Donald Trump was arrested on Thursday, the Cochise county sheriff’s office said.

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, was in Cochise county on Thursday when he visited the US border with Mexico as part of his campaign.

The man, Ronald Syvrud, 66, had multiple outstanding warrants from Wisconsin, the sheriff’s office said. He was taken into custody on Thursday afternoon, authorities said on Friday.

Syvrud was subsequently booked into the Cochise county jail on a felony warrant from Graham county in Arizona for “failure to register as a sex offender and two counts of threatening for this case”, the sheriff’s office added. He remained in custody pending further court adjudication.

“I am not that surprised [by the threat] and the reason is because I want to do things that are very bad for the bad guys,” Trump said on Thursday when asked about that threat against him in Arizona.

It was the latest in a series of threats against candidates ahead of the 5 November general election.

In early August, a Virginia man was charged with threatening Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic rival, and a New Hampshire man was arrested in December for threatening to kill Republican presidential candidates.

In July, Trump was shot in his ear in an attempted assassination that left two others injured and one man dead.

The US Secret Service came under widespread scrutiny following the shooting. It resulted in the resignation of the agency’s director.

Despite this and new threats, Trump said on Thursday he has “great respect” for the Secret Service and “the job they do”. He added they made mistakes from which they will learn.

An Alaska Airlines pilot who attempted to shut off the engines of a passenger plane mid-flight after ingesting magic mushrooms said his actions were “unfathomable”, in some of his first public remarks after he was indicted on 83 counts of reckless endangerment.

In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Joseph Emerson described the events of 22 October as “30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t”.

Emerson, who as an off-duty pilot was authorized to ride in the cockpit’s jump seat, tried to disable the plane’s engines by deploying the fire-suppression system, according to the federal complaint.

The plane, flight number 2059 operated by Horizon Air traveling from Everett, Washington, bound for San Francisco, was diverted to Portland, where it landed safely with more than 80 people on board.

After his arrest in Oregon on state counts of attempted murder, Emerson told police he believed he was having a nervous breakdown, thought he was dreaming when he pulled fire handles in the cockpit, and said he had experimented with psychedelic mushrooms recently as his mental health had worsened.

Emerson said he had taken psychedelic mushrooms two days earlier while commemorating the death of his best friend, thinking they might help with his depression.

He said he believes he was still hallucinating and that “nothing felt real” as he was sitting on the plane. “There was a feeling of being trapped, like: ‘Am I trapped in this airplane?’” he said. “This is not real, I need to wake up.”

Emerson said he reached up and grabbed two red handles in front of him that would have activated the plane’s fire-suppression system and cut off fuel to its engines at 30,000 feet.

“What I thought is: ‘This is going to wake me up,’” Emerson said. “I know what those levers do in a real airplane, and I need to wake up from this.”

The crew was able to able to subdue Emerson and remove him from the flight deck, but even as the plane descended he said he tried to grab another level operating the cabin door. According to an affidavit, Emerson warned a flight attendant: “You need to cuff me right now, or it’s going to be bad.”

In December, he was indicted on one count of endangering aircraft in the first degree and 83 counts of recklessly endangering another person – one for each person aboard the aircraft at the time of the incident. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is awaiting trial.

“I did something unfathomable to me, something I have to take responsibility for and I regret,” he said.

An Alaska Airlines pilot who attempted to shut off the engines of a passenger plane mid-flight after ingesting magic mushrooms said his actions were “unfathomable”, in some of his first public remarks after he was indicted on 83 counts of reckless endangerment.

In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Joseph Emerson described the events of 22 October as “30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t”.

Emerson, who as an off-duty pilot was authorized to ride in the cockpit’s jump seat, tried to disable the plane’s engines by deploying the fire-suppression system, according to the federal complaint.

The plane, flight number 2059 operated by Horizon Air traveling from Everett, Washington, bound for San Francisco, was diverted to Portland, where it landed safely with more than 80 people on board.

After his arrest in Oregon on state counts of attempted murder, Emerson told police he believed he was having a nervous breakdown, thought he was dreaming when he pulled fire handles in the cockpit, and said he had experimented with psychedelic mushrooms recently as his mental health had worsened.

Emerson said he had taken psychedelic mushrooms two days earlier while commemorating the death of his best friend, thinking they might help with his depression.

He said he believes he was still hallucinating and that “nothing felt real” as he was sitting on the plane. “There was a feeling of being trapped, like: ‘Am I trapped in this airplane?’” he said. “This is not real, I need to wake up.”

Emerson said he reached up and grabbed two red handles in front of him that would have activated the plane’s fire-suppression system and cut off fuel to its engines at 30,000 feet.

“What I thought is: ‘This is going to wake me up,’” Emerson said. “I know what those levers do in a real airplane, and I need to wake up from this.”

The crew was able to able to subdue Emerson and remove him from the flight deck, but even as the plane descended he said he tried to grab another level operating the cabin door. According to an affidavit, Emerson warned a flight attendant: “You need to cuff me right now, or it’s going to be bad.”

In December, he was indicted on one count of endangering aircraft in the first degree and 83 counts of recklessly endangering another person – one for each person aboard the aircraft at the time of the incident. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is awaiting trial.

“I did something unfathomable to me, something I have to take responsibility for and I regret,” he said.

A US government report expected to stir debate concluded that fluoride in drinking water at twice the recommended limit is linked with lower IQ in children.

The report, based on an analysis of previously published research, marks the first time a federal agency has determined – “with moderate confidence” – that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in children. While the report was not designed to evaluate the health effects of fluoride in drinking water alone, it is a striking acknowledgment of a potential neurological risk from high levels of fluoride.

Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

“I think this [report] is crucial in our understanding” of this risk, said Ashley Malin, a University of Florida researcher who has studied the effect of higher fluoride levels in pregnant women on their children. She called it the most rigorously conducted report of its kind.

The long-awaited report released this week comes from the National Toxicology Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It summarizes a review of studies, conducted in Canada, China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Mexico, and concludes that drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter is consistently associated with lower IQs in kids.

The report did not try to quantify exactly how many IQ points might be lost at different levels of fluoride exposure. But some of the studies reviewed in the report suggested IQ was two to five points lower in children who had had higher exposures.

Since 2015, federal health officials have recommended a fluoridation level of 0.7 milligrams per liter of water, and for five decades before the recommended upper range was 1.2. The World Health Organization has set a safe limit for fluoride in drinking water of 1.5.

The report said that about 0.6% of the US population – about 1.9 million people – are on water systems with naturally occurring fluoride levels of 1.5 milligrams or higher.

“The findings from this report raise the questions about how these people can be protected and what makes the most sense,” Malin said.

The 324-page report did not reach a conclusion about the risks of lower levels of fluoride, saying more study was needed. It also did not answer what high levels of fluoride might do to adults.

The American Dental Association, which champions water fluoridation, had been critical of earlier versions of the new analysis and Malin’s research. Asked for comment, a spokeswoman late on Wednesday afternoon emailed that the organization’s experts were still reviewing the report.

Fluoride is a mineral that exists naturally in water and soil. About 80 years ago, scientists discovered that people whose water supplies naturally had more fluoride also had fewer cavities, triggering a push to get more Americans to use fluoride for better dental health.

In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first US city to start adding fluoride to tap water. In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.

Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in US children.

Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has maintained a longstanding requirement that water systems cannot have more than 4 milligrams of fluoride per liter. That standard is designed to prevent skeletal fluorosis, a potentially crippling disorder which causes weaker bones, stiffness and pain.

But studies have increasingly pointed to a different problem, suggesting a link between higher levels of fluoride and brain development.

In 2006, the National Research Council, a private non-profit organization in Washington, said limited evidence from China pointed to neurological effects in people exposed to high levels of fluoride. It called for more research into the effect of fluoride on intelligence.

After more research continued to raise questions, the National Toxicology Program in 2016 started working on a review of the available studies that could provide guidance on whether new fluoride-limiting measures were needed.

There were earlier drafts but the final document has repeatedly been held up. At one point, a committee of experts said available research did not support an earlier draft’s conclusions.

“Since fluoride is such an important topic to the public and to public health officials, it was imperative that we made every effort to get the science right,” said Rick Woychik, director of the National Toxicology Program, in a statement.

Malin said it made sense for pregnant women to lower their fluoride intake, not only from water but also from certain types of tea. It might also make sense to have policy discussions about whether to require fluoride-content on beverage labels, she said.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, will attend a Pacific leaders’ summit this week in Tonga with a focus on climate change in the region, one of the world’s most vulnerable to rising sea levels and temperature changes.

The annual meeting of leaders is the top political decision-making body of the region. The week-long summit culminates in the leaders’ retreat, where key decisions are made, which may include an endorsement of a regional policing initiative promoted by Australia. The future for New Caledonia is among other big issues to be addressed at the Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) due to begin in Tonga on Monday.

Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon – leaders of the forum’s two largest economies – will attend along with most heads of government of the 18-member regional bloc.

As geopolitical tensions rise and competition for influence in the Pacific increases, more outside attention has been focused on some of the smallest countries in the world. The threats posed by climate change and sea level rise will be a central part of the summit, which Guterres will address. Pacific leadership will be looking for more financial support for its climate and disaster initiatives.

“The fate of the Pacific depends on limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” the UN secretary general said at a press conference in Samoa on Friday, ahead of the meeting in Tonga.

“This region, the Pacific, contributes 0.02% of global emissions. Yet you are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, dealing with extreme weather events from raging tropical cyclones to record ocean heatwaves.”

The situation in New Caledonia is also likely to be a focus of the meeting, after the French territory was rattled by deadly violence this year over plans from Paris to expand voting rights. This week, a much anticipated high-level visit to New Caledonia by Pacific leaders was postponed, at the request of Louis Mapou, president of the New Caledonia government.

The Cook Islands prime minister, Mark Brown, who is the outgoing Pif chair, said at a recent press conference it is challenging for Pif to navigate the impacts of New Caledonia’s dual status as both a full member of the forum and a territory of France. The unrest has seen the territory added as a “standing item” to the leaders’ agenda which reflects its importance to regional leaders.

In recent years the meeting has drawn increasing interest amid a geopolitical battle for influence in the region between the US and China. As Beijing has expanded its influence in the Pacific and increased its economic and security relationships, the US has boosted its engagement on numerous fronts. Washington has promised more aid, struck security partnerships and opened new embassies. Pacific countries have seen a series of ministerial visits from the US and China, as well as new initiatives across different sectors, and a rise in defence diplomacy.

Fiji’s prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, will travel to the Pif on the heels of a visit to Beijing, where he discussed economic development and other ways to deepen ties. The leaders of Vanuatu and Solomon Islands visited China in July.

While Pif members agree on many key priorities, maintaining regional solidarity can be challenging. Last year in Cook Islands, the political divide on deep-sea mining became clear. Since then, Vanuatu has led a charge at the most recent meeting of the International Seabed Authority to prevent licences for exploitation of seabed resources being issued before environmental regulations are in place. Last year, Pacific leaders asked the forum secretariat to convening a regional talanoa (discussion) on this issue. It has yet to take place.

Ten Latin American governments and the US have said they “categorically reject” the Venezuelan supreme court’s decision to confirm Nicolás Maduro’s widely contested claim to have won re-election, with Chile’s president declaring: “I have no doubt this election has been stolen.”

Thursday’s verdict from Venezuela’s top court, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, has been widely questioned internationally from across the political spectrum.

In a joint statement published on Friday, the governments of Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and the US called for an “impartial and independent audit” of the vote.

They also voiced “profound concern” over human rights violations committed during Maduro’s post-election crackdown, which activists say has resulted in more than 1,600 people being detained and at least 24 others killed.

Strikingly, the communique was endorsed not just by conservative governments that have long been hostile to Maduro’s purportedly socialist movement, but also by the administration of Chile’s progressive president, Gabriel Boric – now one of the Venezuelan’s most outspoken leftwing critics – and that of Guatemala’s centre-left leader, Bernardo Arévalo.

“We are dealing with a dictatorship that falsifies elections,” Boric said after the supreme court ruling, rejecting the idea that Maduro’s regime was leftwing.

“The Maduro regime is not democratic and we do not recognise its fraud,” tweeted Arévalo.

The US added its voice to the condemnation on Friday claiming the ruling lacked “all credibility, given the overwhelming evidence that [Maduro’s rival Edmundo] González received the most votes” in the 28 July election.

“Continued attempts to fraudulently claim victory for Maduro will only exacerbate the ongoing crisis,” Vedant Patel, a state department spokesperson, told reporters.

The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told reporters its 27 member states would not recognise Maduro’s re-election without seeing “a verifiable result”.

Brazil and Colombia – whose leftwing leaders both have warm, historical ties to the political movement Maduro inherited from Hugo Chávez – have also refused to recognise his re-election without seeing detailed voting tallies. Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, whose diplomats have been exploring possible ways of defusing the growing crisis, are expected to issue a joint statement later on Friday.

Earlier in the day another leading Latin American leftist, Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, told reporters he also wanted to see detailed voting tallies before recognising the official result.

Maduro and his allies have rejected international criticism, with Venezuela’s foreign minister, Yván Gil, calling Boric the “laughingstock” of Latin America and a “submissive pawn of North American imperialism”.

As things stand, Maduro, who retains the support of Venezuela’s military as well as the governments of Russia and China, will be sworn in for his third six-year term as president on 10 January.

Ten Latin American governments and the US have said they “categorically reject” the Venezuelan supreme court’s decision to confirm Nicolás Maduro’s widely contested claim to have won re-election, with Chile’s president declaring: “I have no doubt this election has been stolen.”

Thursday’s verdict from Venezuela’s top court, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, has been widely questioned internationally from across the political spectrum.

In a joint statement published on Friday, the governments of Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and the US called for an “impartial and independent audit” of the vote.

They also voiced “profound concern” over human rights violations committed during Maduro’s post-election crackdown, which activists say has resulted in more than 1,600 people being detained and at least 24 others killed.

Strikingly, the communique was endorsed not just by conservative governments that have long been hostile to Maduro’s purportedly socialist movement, but also by the administration of Chile’s progressive president, Gabriel Boric – now one of the Venezuelan’s most outspoken leftwing critics – and that of Guatemala’s centre-left leader, Bernardo Arévalo.

“We are dealing with a dictatorship that falsifies elections,” Boric said after the supreme court ruling, rejecting the idea that Maduro’s regime was leftwing.

“The Maduro regime is not democratic and we do not recognise its fraud,” tweeted Arévalo.

The US added its voice to the condemnation on Friday claiming the ruling lacked “all credibility, given the overwhelming evidence that [Maduro’s rival Edmundo] González received the most votes” in the 28 July election.

“Continued attempts to fraudulently claim victory for Maduro will only exacerbate the ongoing crisis,” Vedant Patel, a state department spokesperson, told reporters.

The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told reporters its 27 member states would not recognise Maduro’s re-election without seeing “a verifiable result”.

Brazil and Colombia – whose leftwing leaders both have warm, historical ties to the political movement Maduro inherited from Hugo Chávez – have also refused to recognise his re-election without seeing detailed voting tallies. Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, whose diplomats have been exploring possible ways of defusing the growing crisis, are expected to issue a joint statement later on Friday.

Earlier in the day another leading Latin American leftist, Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, told reporters he also wanted to see detailed voting tallies before recognising the official result.

Maduro and his allies have rejected international criticism, with Venezuela’s foreign minister, Yván Gil, calling Boric the “laughingstock” of Latin America and a “submissive pawn of North American imperialism”.

As things stand, Maduro, who retains the support of Venezuela’s military as well as the governments of Russia and China, will be sworn in for his third six-year term as president on 10 January.

Alain Delon will be buried in the grounds of his country home on Saturday in “the strictest privacy” according to the wishes of his three children.

A carefully selected group of 40 mourners have been invited to the ceremony and instructed not to take pictures.

The French actor, who died on Sunday at the age of 88, had specifically requested there be no national homage, insisting he wanted to be buried “like anyone else”.

After obtaining special permission from the local prefect, he will be interred in the chapel he had built at La Brûlerie, the property at Douchy in the Loiret, 85 miles south-east of Paris, which he bought in the 1970s and where he died. The chapel is in a cemetery on the almost 120 hectare (300 acre) estate, much of which is woodland, where Delon buried at least 35 of his pet dogs.

Delon had requested that his “end of life” companion, a Belgian malinois called Loubo, be buried with him. After protests from animal rights campaigners, the actor’s three children Anthony, 59, Anouchka, 33, and Alain-Fabien, 30, agreed to keep the dog in the family.

It is unclear who will keep Loubo or where; the three have been involved in a bitter public squabble over their father in recent months.

Delon had also requested a funeral mass conducted by the Catholic priest Monsignor Jean-Michel Di Falco, 82, the former bishop of Gap in south-east France and a longstanding friend of the actor. Di Falco oversaw the 2017 funeral of the actor Mireille Darc, Delon’s companion between 1968 and 1983 and the woman he described as “the love of my life”, as well as the musician and singer Charles Trenet and the French business tycoon Jean-Luc Lagardère. He also assisted at the funeral of the former president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 2020.

Mourners have reportedly been asked to seal their mobile phones in plastic bags during the ceremony and told there should be no pictures taken. The local prefecture has banned aircraft and drones from flying over the property.

Identified with French cinema’s resurgence in the 1960s, Delon starred in a string of classic films such as Plein Soleil, Le Samouraï and Rocco and His Brothers. Once a familiar face in Douchy, he had not been seen in the village for several years after he suffered a stroke in 2019 and was diagnosed with a slow-developing lymphoma in 2022.

Authorities have cleared a homeless encampment at a state beach in Los Angeles, as California’s crackdown on unhoused people sleeping in public spaces intensifies following a supreme court decision and a directive from the governor.

There had reportedly been a growing number of tents at Dockweiler state beach, which is located behind the Los Angeles international airport and maintained and patrolled by city and county officials.

Nearby residents had expressed frustration and fears about the encampment in recent months, and this week, city park rangers posted more than 30 notices of an upcoming sweep, ABC7 reported. On Thursday, yellow trash trucks rolled on to the beach along with county workers and police for an operation organized by Traci Park, an LA city council member, along with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

James Kingston, 63, was among those forced out of the encampment at Dockweiler. He said he had lived at the beach because of how many cans and bottles he could collect on the weekends for money.

In the six years he has been unhoused, Kingston has faced sweeps several times and was unfazed by this cleanup crew. Some people left as soon as police showed up, while others watched as officials cordoned off their tents.

“You just grab your important stuff and everything else has got to go,” Kingston said. “You just got to let it go because that’s how it is.”

The sweep at Dockweiler comes after Gavin Newsom, the California governor, issued an executive order for state agencies to remove homeless encampments on public land. His action followed a ruling from the supreme court in June that allows cities to criminalize unhoused people sleeping outside even when there is no shelter available.

Newsom has urged cities and counties to do the same – though they are not legally mandated to do so – and this month threatened to take away state funding from those he says are not doing enough to clear encampments.

Karen Bass, LA’s mayor, and LA county officials have pushed back against the governor’s approach, arguing that criminalizing homelessness or simply clearing encampments without offering services or shelter does not work.

Homelessness has risen dramatically across the US in recent years. In LA county, more than 75,000 people were homeless on any given night, according to a tally at the start of the year, while there are only about 23,000 emergency shelter beds in the county.

A woman has been charged with a domestic violence-related murder, after a man’s body was allegedly found in a surfboard bag at a rural property in Darkwood, west of Coffs Harbour.

A 35-year-old woman was arrested on Friday afternoon in Nambucca Heads and taken to Macksville police station where she was charged with the murder of a 62-year-old man.

Police will allege in court the woman and man were known to each other.

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Emergency services were called to the Darkwood property, about 67km west of Coffs Harbour, at 7pm on Thursday, after reports a body had been found. Officers allegedly found the body of the man inside a surfboard bag on the driveway of the property.

Police attached to Coffs/Clarence police district, with assistance of officers from State Crime Command’s homicide squad, established Strike Force Nome to investigate the death and after “extensive inquiries” arrested the woman on Friday.

The woman, who has not been named, has been refused bail and is scheduled to appear at Port Macquarie local court on Saturday.

Costa Brava resorts in Spain’s north-east are struggling to cope with an influx of jellyfish as rising sea temperatures facilitate reproduction and drive species farther north.

Between May and August almost 7,500 people on the Catalan coast sought medical attention for jellyfish stings – a 41% increase on last year. The stings are painful and can have unpleasant consequences for anyone with compromised immunity.

MedusApp (jellyfish are medusas in Spanish), a citizen science phone app set up to allow the public to record sightings and stings, has reported hundreds each day this summer. It publishes a map that is updated in real time to help people avoid beaches with large numbers of jellyfish.

The majority of jellyfish on the Catalan coast are the relatively harmless fried egg (Cotylorhiza tuberculata) and barrel (Rhizotoma pulmo) varieties.

However, two beaches in Tarragona in southern Catalonia were closed in July after Portuguese man o’war (Physalia physalis) were spotted in the water. The sting of this siphonophore (it is not technically a jellyfish, but they are closely related) is especially painful.

Climate change and rising sea temperatures appeared to be the crucial factors behind the increase, said Macarena Marambio, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Science in Barcelona, whose records of jellyfish activity in the area go back 20 years.

“The jellyfish are becoming more common and are increasing both their seasonal and regional distribution,” said Marambio, who leads the Jellyfish Alert project. “Warmer seas aid reproduction and as a result we’re seeing increasing numbers of the purple barrel jellyfish.”

“All the research shows that the numbers are cyclical and some years jellyfish are much more numerous than in others,” she said. “However, what we’re seeing in the Costa Brava is the cycles are getting shorter. The cycle of years with abundant jellyfish are shortening in some species from eight or 10 years to just two.”

While Marambio points to the climate crisis as the key element, overfishing – which reduces predators – and the construction of breakwaters, ports, artificial beaches and marinas also play a part. This is because human activity reduces water quality and jellyfish are among the few species that can thrive in areas such as the port of Barcelona.

She said the focus was on the Catalan coast because there was more data available but there were similar increases in jellyfish populations elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

She added that it is impossible to extrapolate from the data whether this increase in jellyfish numbers will continue or if it is temporary.

“What we know is that environmental conditions are changing and we can model what we think will happen but we can’t know how the rest of the ecosystem will adapt,” Marambio said.

“For example, new predators might emerge. For now, we know rising sea temperatures are favourable to jellyfish blooms but we won’t know what will happen if temperatures rise further.”

In the meantime, we are likely to encounter more of the creatures.

Josep Maria Gili, Marambio’s colleague at the institute, said: “There’s no short-term solution because it’s about climate. We’ll have to get used to sharing our beaches with jellyfish.”