Israel is braced for its first nationwide general strike since the Hamas attacks of 7 October, amid widespread public anger at the government’s handling of the war in Gaza after the discovery of the bodies of six hostages at the weekend.

Israel’s largest trade union, Histadrut, ordered a nationwide general strike from 6am on Monday that is expected to bring large parts of the economy to a halt. Government and municipal offices were due to close, as well as schools and many private businesses. Israel’s international airport, Ben Gurion, is due to shut down at 8am local time (0600 BST) for an unknown period.

Histadrut chair Arnon Bar-David said in a statement: “I have come to the conclusion that only our intervention can shake those who need to be shaken.

“A deal is not progressing due to political considerations and this is unacceptable.”

The mayors of Tel Aviv and nearby Givatayim announced that the municipalities would be striking on Monday to demand the return of the hostages, and more are expected to follow suit.

The action comes after tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Sunday night, cutting off the Ayalon highway, the motorway running through the heart of Tel Aviv and lighting fires in the streets. A few dozen police officers tried to contain the protest but were unable to push it back.

The union called the strike after campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum backed the idea in order to force the government to reach a deal for the return of the remaining hostages taken during Hamas’ attacks on 7 October. Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, also supported the move.

“Were it not for the delays, sabotage and excuses” in months of mediation efforts, the six hostages “would likely still be alive”, a statement from the group said, referring to the discovery of Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino in tunnels “dozens of metres” underground during fighting in Rafah, southern Ga za.

The strike will mean Tel Aviv airport, the only major route in and out of the country, will be closed. It could also affect hospitals and other public services, costing the economy millions of shekels.

On Sunday, Israeli media reported the attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara had instructed prosecutors to seek an injunction against the strike. Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, wrote to the attorney general on Sunday seeking an injunction, arguing that it would harm the economy and had no legal basis as its main aim was to influence government policy on state security.

The Histadrut union has not taken such drastic action since March 2023, when Netanyahu tried to fire defence minister Yoav Gallant over his opposition to the government’s controversial judicial overhaul plans.

Military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said all six hostages “were abducted alive on the morning of 7 October” and “brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them”.

However, the findings pointing to Hamas executions did little to deflect widespread fury towards Benjamin Netanyahu and his rightwing coalition for failing to agree a US-backed hostages-for-peace deal with Hamas, which has been on the negotiating table since late May. The longtime Israeli leader has been repeatedly accused of stalling on a ceasefire deal for his own political gain.

On Sunday, Netanyahu asked hostage Lobanov’s parents for “forgiveness for not succeeding in bringing Sasha back alive”.

Some analysts said the public outcry over the six hostages who died could signal a new level of political pressure on Netanyahu. “I think this is an earthquake. This isn’t just one more step in the war,” said Nomi Bar-Yaacov, associate fellow in the International Security Program at Chatham House, shortly before Sunday’s protests.

US President Joe Biden said he was “devastated and outraged” by the hostage deaths, but told reporters he was “still optimistic” a deal could be reached.

With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press

Overnight, the rumours spread: the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had found bodies in Gaza. Everyone in Israel knew the corpses were likely to be hostages seized on 7 October. The grim details – how many, their identities, and how and when they died – slowly emerged during the early hours of Sunday, to mounting sorrow and fury across the country.

The bodies of six people kidnapped alive by Hamas – Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt Ori Danino – were found in a Rafah tunnel 20 metres underground, a kilometre away from where another hostage, Qaid Farhan Alkadi, was found in relatively decent health last week. Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American citizen, appeared in a Hamas video in April. It was clear from the footage that his left hand had been amputated.

Initial autopsies indicated that all six had died from shots to the head and had otherwise been in frail but stable condition, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported. The IDF said it believed the hostages were killed on Friday or Saturday, shortly before troops arrived at the location, to prevent their rescue.

It is too early to tell yet, but anger at their deaths could be the spark that reinvigorates the protest movement in Israel calling for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, as well as calls for new elections aimed at toppling the rightwing government of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The longtime Israeli leader has been repeatedly accused of stalling on a ceasefire deal for his own political gain.

After something of a summer lull, this Saturday night’s protests across Israel for a ceasefire and hostage deal drew larger numbers than recent weeks. Demonstrators were already galvanised by the recovery two weeks ago of the bodies of another six hostages, five of whom were previously known to be dead, and the stalling ceasefire talks. Public support for a deal remains high.

The last cabinet meeting on Thursday reportedly ended in a shouting match between the prime minister and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, after the assembled ministers doubled down on Netanyahu’s demand that Israel must retain control of the Gaza-Egypt border, a big sticking point in ceasefire talks.

Einav Zangauker, whose 24-year-old son, Matan, is being held captive, accused Netanyahu of “murdering” the hostages still in Gaza. “He’s decided to sentence them to death. He’s decided to give them up. He’s decided to bury them in the rubble of his politics. He is committing a crime against his own people,” she told the crowd in Tel Aviv before the news of the most recent deaths broke.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum issued a statement calling on the public to prepare for widespread protests on Sunday. “Starting tomorrow, the country will shake … The abandonment is over,” it said.

On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered outside the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, protesting in favour of a deal, and mass rallies are expected across the country in the evening. Strikes are also on the cards, the first such large-scale action so far of the 11-month-old war.

The mayors of Tel Aviv and nearby Givatayim announced that the municipalities would be striking on Monday to demand the return of the hostages, and more are expected to follow suit.

The Histadrut, Israel’s biggest trade union, has declared a general strike from 6am on Monday after calls from the families of hostages and Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid.

This action from the labour movement is decisive – it will mean Tel Aviv airport, the only major route in and out of the country, will be closed, and could also affect hospitals and other public services, costing the economy millions of shekels.

The Histadrut has not taken such drastic action since March 2023, when Netanyahu tried to fire Gallant over his opposition to the government’s controversial judicial overhaul plans. It worked: Netanyahu was forced to reverse his decision, and the proposed changes to the judiciary were delayed until the Knesset’s summer session.

Economic pressure was employed successfully against Netanyahu last year, but since 7 October the prime minister has become more desperate than ever to cling to power. If the protesters’ goal is to bring down his government, change will still need to come from within. Netanyahu’s coalition has a majority of four seats; five members of the government would have to desert their leader in order to force new elections.

A far-right party became the biggest force in a German state parliament for the first time since the second world war, preliminary results showed on Sunday, while a new populist force on the left established a firm foothold in the country’s political landscape.

Voters in two closely watched elections in the former communist east made their dissatisfaction with Germany’s mainstream political parties clear, putting the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in the top spot in Thuringia, with 32.8% of the vote, and second place in Saxony, with 30.6%, according to preliminary results.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the results “bitter” and urged mainstream parties in the states to form governments without “right-wing extremists”.

“The results for the AfD in Saxony and Thuringia are worrying,” Scholz said in a statement to Reuters, adding that he was talking as a lawmaker for his centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). “Our country cannot and must not get used to this. The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country’s reputation.”

But he noted that the most dire predictions, that the SPD might fall out of a state parliament for the first time, had not materialised.

Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader, said: “It is a historic success for us. It is the first time we have become the strongest force in a state election. It is a requiem for this coalition [in Berlin].”

The 11-year-old AfD clinched its first mayoral and district government posts last year, but has never joined a state government. The remaining, democratic parties have vowed to maintain a “firewall” of opposition to working with the AfD, keeping it out of power.

The results in Saxony and Thuringia proved disastrous for the three ruling parties in Scholz’s centre-left-led federal government, each scoring single-digit percentage shares of the vote in both states one year before Germany holds its next general election.

Although the outcome had been predicted for months, the centrist parties proved unable to reverse the trend and the results sent shockwaves through the political landscape. Turnout in both states was high, at about 74%.

The leftwing but socially conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), named after its firebrand leader, found that its calls for higher taxes on the rich, a tougher line on immigration and asylum and an end to military support for Ukraine struck a deep chord in the east.

As no party won an absolute majority, the eight-month-old BSW could prove key in talks on forming a government in both states, as it drew 11.8% in Saxony and 15.8% in Thuringia, according to the provisional results.

Wagenknecht told reporters it was the “first time in the history of the republic” that a party had performed so well in state elections on its first try. “That’s something one can be proud of,” she said.

The conservative opposition Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), which is leading in the national polls, appeared on course to win in Saxony as it did five years ago with about 32%, putting wind in the sails of its national leader, Friedrich Merz, who aims to challenge Scholz in the national election.

In Thuringia, it came in second behind the AfD, with 23.6%, and may be able to hammer out an ideologically awkward ruling alliance with smaller parties, including Wagenknecht’s.

Merz has said the CDU will never work with the extremists, but has moved his party steadily rightward, particularly in its rhetoric on immigration, since Angela Merkel left power in 2021.

Many eastern voters say they are increasingly disillusioned with mainstream politics more than three decades after national reunification, with the lingering impact of structural decline, depopulation and lagging economic performance compounding a sense that they are still second-class citizens.

“The AfD has built up a core base [in the east] that now votes for it out of conviction, not just owing to frustration with the other parties,” said Prof André Brodocz, a political scientist at the University of Erfurt in Thuringia.

The anti-migration, anti-Islam AfD spent the last week of its campaign hammering home the message that the government is “failing” its citizens, while harnessing shock and outrage over the deadly mass stabbing in the western city of Solingen, allegedly by a Syrian rejected asylum seeker.

The party, whose Saxony and Thuringia chapters have been classed as rightwing extremist by security authorities, could still come in first in Brandenburg, the rural state surrounding Berlin, which will vote on 22 September, polls suggest.

Its co-leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has repeatedly used banned Nazi slogans at his rallies and called for an “about-face” in Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance and atonement.

His aim was to achieve a blocking minority of one-third of the votes in Thuringia, where the Nazis first won power in a German state government in 1930 before consolidating control in Berlin three years later. Final results due by early Monday will show if he was successful.

At a rally in Erfurt days before the election, Höcke told a cheering crowd that he and the AfD were the only ones standing in the way of the “cartel parties” working to “replace the German people” with a “multicultural society” under a “totalitarian dictatorship”.

Given the fractured results handed back by voters, coalition-building in both states could prove tricky.

The BSW’s rise was described as a “gamechanger” by Brodocz, underlining the rejection of the established political parties while offering frustrated easterners an alternative to the AfD, which many see as too radical.

Wagenknecht, already gearing up for the 2025 federal elections, has suggested that she would drive up the price for joining any coalition, demanding “diplomacy” toward Russia while railing against a recent decision to allow the US to deploy long-range missiles in Germany from 2026.

Scholz’s coalition of the centre-left Social Democrats, the ecologist Greens and the liberal Free Democrats was already on the back foot and each of the parties had reason to dread Sunday’s election night results.

Riven by ideological differences and personal rivalries, the government has stumbled in recent months in realising its main policy initiatives, including kickstarting the moribund economy and getting more electric vehicles on German roads. The Greens’ co-leader, Omid Nouripour, recently described the coalition in Berlin as a “transitional government” in the period after Merkel’s 16 years in power.

On Sunday, Nouripour gave a sobering assessment of the election results, saying the breakthrough for the far right “causes many people very deep concern and fear”.

Late last year, Duan*, a university student in China, used a virtual private network to jump over China’s great firewall of internet censorship and download social media platform Discord.

Overnight he entered a community in which thousands of members with diverse views debated political ideas and staged mock elections. People could join the chat to discuss ideas such as democracy, anarchism and communism. “After all, it’s hard for us to do politics in reality, so we have to do it in a group chat,” Yang Minghao, a popular vlogger, said in a video on YouTube.

Duan’s interest in the community was piqued while watching one of Yang’s videos online. Yang, who vlogs under the nickname MHYYY, was talking about the chat on Discord, which like YouTube is blocked in China, and said that he “would like to see where this group will go, as far as possible without intervention”.

The answer to Yang’s question came after less than a year. In July, Duan and several other members of the Discord group, in cities thousands of miles apart, were called in for questioning by the police.

Duan says that he was detained for 24 hours and interrogated about his relationship to Yang, his use of a VPN and comments that he’d made on Discord. He was released without charge after 24 hours, but he – and other followers of Yang – remain concerned about the welfare of the vlogger, who hasn’t posted online since late July.

The incident is just one sign of the growing severity of China’s censorship regime, under which even private followers of unfavourable accounts can get into trouble.

“I don’t think I’ve seen followers of influencers being questioned to this extent in the past,” said Maya Wang, the associate China director at Human Rights Watch.

China’s ministry of public security and the local public security bureau handling Duan’s case could not be reached for comment, but both he and his fellow online idealists fell foul of one of the foundational principles of China’s internet: don’t form a community, especially not one related to politics, even in private.

Being punished for comments made online is common in China, where the internet is tightly regulated. As well as a digital firewall that blocks the majority of internet users from accessing foreign websites like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp, people who publish content on topics deemed sensitive or critical of the government often find themselves banned from websites, or worse.

Last year, a man called Ning Bin was sentenced to more than two years in prison for posting “inappropriate remarks” and “false information” on X and Pincong, a Chinese-language forum.

Even ardent nationalists are not immune. In recent weeks, the influential, pro-government commentator, Hu Xijin, appears to have been banned from social media after making comments about China’s political trajectory that didn’t align with Beijing’s view.

Duan said that the call from the police was not entirely unexpected. Still, he says, the intensity of the interrogation caught him by surprise. “Just complaining in a group chat on overseas software is not allowed”.

The net of online surveillance widens

In February, Li Ying, who runs a popular Chinese-language X account, posted an “urgent notice” saying that his followers in China were being called in to “drink tea” with the police, a euphemism for interrogations. He urged people to unfollow him and take care to make sure that their X accounts didn’t reveal their personal information.

Li, who is based in Italy, runs an account called “Teacher Li is not your teacher”, which posts a stream of unfiltered news about protests and repression in China, the likes of which would never be published in China’s domestic media.

“The police began to call all users who had registered with Chinese mobile phone numbers and asked them to unfollow me,” Li said. People living overseas had their relatives in China contacted by the police, Li said. They were put pressure on to persuade the person overseas to unfollow Li’s account.

Two other popular Chinese bloggers, including Wang Zhi’an, a Chinese journalist based in Japan, also said that their followers were questioned by police this year.

“Part of this has to do with deepening repression – police have gone from harassing activists and people ‘out there’ active in physical spaces to harassing those online because much of activism and dissent is now more deeply hidden,” says Wang.

In December, Li Tong, an official at the ministry of public security’s cybersecurity bureau said that the government had designated 2024 as “the year of a special campaign to combat and rectify online rumours”. Local authorities have taken on this mantle with gusto: in July, Guangdong province said that it had dealt with more than 1,000 cases of “online rumours” and “online trolls” this year.

William Farris, a lawyer who studies state prosecutions of speech in China, said that internet cleaning campaigns are “an annual, or semi-annual, tradition”. Similar campaigns have been announced every year dating back to at least 2013. He noted that in several judgements against people who had been punished for their online activity, the authorities also paid attention to who the people followed. In 2019, a man called Jiang Kun was sentenced to eight months in jail for posts on X, with the court noting that “he followed certain anti-Chinese forces” on the platform.

Still, Wang said that the ongoing cat and mouse game between the authorities and those who think differently from them indicated “an emerging set of shared values that cut across China’s borders. Despite the fact that the authorities have always sought to stamp out these ‘universal values’, they have nonetheless persisted among significant portions of people in and from China.”

The Discord crackdown has been widely discussed online, in forums blocked by China’s firewall. On Reddit, one user wrote: “I sincerely hope that all those who have lost contact can return to life safely. We will meet again, in a place where there is no darkness!”

* Names have been changed.

Pope Francis is to embark on the longest, farthest and perhaps most challenging trip of his pontificate as he begins a 12-day Asia-Pacific tour that is expected to highlight environmental threats, emphasise interfaith dialogue and reinforce the importance of Asia for the Catholic church.

The 87-year-old will set off on Monday on a tour taking in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, a trip that will clock up more than 20,000 miles by air.

Originally planned for 2020 but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the visit is being seen as a nod to the importance of Asia, one of the few places where the church is growing in terms of baptised faithful and religious vocations.

Francis is scheduled to headline more than 40 events during the ambitious tour. “It is a show of strength for Pope Francis,” Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic, told Reuters.

Shihoko Goto, the director of the Indo-Pacific Program at Washington’s Wilson Center, said the visit, coming as the pontiff struggles with health problems, “speaks volumes about the strategic importance of Asia for the church”.

Francis’s first stop will be Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Francis will visit Jakarta’s main mosque and is expected to tour a singular feature built in 2020 as a symbol of religious harmony: an underground “Tunnel of Friendship” that links the mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.

He will be accompanied by the grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, and both are scheduled to later take part in an interfaith gathering. Francis, who in 2019 became the first pope to visit the Arabian peninsula, has long signalled that Catholic-Muslim dialogue is a priority.

The pope is also scheduled to meet Indonesia’s outgoing president, Joko Widodo, and to hold a mass for an estimated 80,000 people at a Jakarta stadium, an Indonesian church official told the Associated Press.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis will meet missionaries from his native Argentina. It is believed he will use the stop to address the threat of climate change, citing challenges such as rising sea levels and increasingly severe heatwaves and typhoons.

He will then head to East Timor to celebrate mass on the same seaside esplanade where Pope John Paul II offered a liturgy in 1989. The former pontiff was later credited with helping to cast a global spotlight on Indonesia’s brutal occupation.

Home to an overwhelmingly Catholic population, East Timor may force Francis to confront the clergy sexual abuse scandal. In 2022, the Vatican confirmed that it had imposed sanctions on the bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, an East Timor independence hero, after allegations that he sexually abused young boys during the 1990s.

There is no word on whether Francis’s visit will include any reference to Belo, who remains revered for his efforts to win East Timor independence from Indonesian rule.

The pontiff’s last stop will be Singapore, where three-quarters of the population trace their roots to China. Analysts described the stop as part of the Vatican’s efforts to improve its ties with China, home to an estimated 12 million Catholics.

Last week the Vatican reported its “satisfaction” that China had officially recognised the Tianjin bishop, Melchior Shi Hongzhen, whom the Vatican installed in 2019. The Holy See described China’s official recognition of him under civil law as “a positive fruit of the dialogue established over the years between the Holy See and the Chinese government”.

With contributions from Associated Press and Reuters.

Pope Francis is to embark on the longest, farthest and perhaps most challenging trip of his pontificate as he begins a 12-day Asia-Pacific tour that is expected to highlight environmental threats, emphasise interfaith dialogue and reinforce the importance of Asia for the Catholic church.

The 87-year-old will set off on Monday on a tour taking in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, a trip that will clock up more than 20,000 miles by air.

Originally planned for 2020 but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the visit is being seen as a nod to the importance of Asia, one of the few places where the church is growing in terms of baptised faithful and religious vocations.

Francis is scheduled to headline more than 40 events during the ambitious tour. “It is a show of strength for Pope Francis,” Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic, told Reuters.

Shihoko Goto, the director of the Indo-Pacific Program at Washington’s Wilson Center, said the visit, coming as the pontiff struggles with health problems, “speaks volumes about the strategic importance of Asia for the church”.

Francis’s first stop will be Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Francis will visit Jakarta’s main mosque and is expected to tour a singular feature built in 2020 as a symbol of religious harmony: an underground “Tunnel of Friendship” that links the mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.

He will be accompanied by the grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, and both are scheduled to later take part in an interfaith gathering. Francis, who in 2019 became the first pope to visit the Arabian peninsula, has long signalled that Catholic-Muslim dialogue is a priority.

The pope is also scheduled to meet Indonesia’s outgoing president, Joko Widodo, and to hold a mass for an estimated 80,000 people at a Jakarta stadium, an Indonesian church official told the Associated Press.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis will meet missionaries from his native Argentina. It is believed he will use the stop to address the threat of climate change, citing challenges such as rising sea levels and increasingly severe heatwaves and typhoons.

He will then head to East Timor to celebrate mass on the same seaside esplanade where Pope John Paul II offered a liturgy in 1989. The former pontiff was later credited with helping to cast a global spotlight on Indonesia’s brutal occupation.

Home to an overwhelmingly Catholic population, East Timor may force Francis to confront the clergy sexual abuse scandal. In 2022, the Vatican confirmed that it had imposed sanctions on the bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, an East Timor independence hero, after allegations that he sexually abused young boys during the 1990s.

There is no word on whether Francis’s visit will include any reference to Belo, who remains revered for his efforts to win East Timor independence from Indonesian rule.

The pontiff’s last stop will be Singapore, where three-quarters of the population trace their roots to China. Analysts described the stop as part of the Vatican’s efforts to improve its ties with China, home to an estimated 12 million Catholics.

Last week the Vatican reported its “satisfaction” that China had officially recognised the Tianjin bishop, Melchior Shi Hongzhen, whom the Vatican installed in 2019. The Holy See described China’s official recognition of him under civil law as “a positive fruit of the dialogue established over the years between the Holy See and the Chinese government”.

With contributions from Associated Press and Reuters.

• Russia will make changes to its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it regards as western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state media quoted deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Sunday.
  The existing nuclear doctrine, set out in a decree by President Vladimir Putin in 2020, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state. Some hawks among Russia’s military analysts have urged Putin to lower the threshold for nuclear use in order to “sober up” Russia’s enemies in the west. Ryabkov’s comments on Sunday were the clearest statement yet that changes would indeed be made. “The work is at an advanced stage, and there is a clear intent to make corrections,” state news agency Tass cited Ryabkov as saying. The decision was “connected with the escalation course of our western adversaries” in connection with the Ukraine conflict.

• Polish and allied aircraft were activated early on Monday to ensure the safety of Polish airspace after Russia launched air strikes on Ukraine, the Operational Command of the Polish armed forces said. “In the southeastern part of the country there may be an increased noise level related to the commencement of operations in our airspace by Polish and allied aircraft,” the command said on X. South-east Poland borders Ukraine.

• Ukraine carried out one of its biggest ever drone attacks on Russia overnight to Sunday, with videos showing a series of explosions and fires at power stations and refineries including in Moscow. Russia’s defence ministry played down the overnight strikes. It said it had intercepted and destroyed 158 unmanned enemy aerial vehicles. These were shot down over 15 regions, it claimed.

• Footage posted on Telegram channels suggested some of the long-range Ukrainian drones damaged targets deep inside Russia. At least one struck an oil refinery in the Kapotnya district in south-east Moscow. More drones hit a thermal power station in the Tver region, north of Moscow. There was an explosion at the Konakovo station, one of the biggest in Russia. An orange fireball engulfed several transformers.

• In eastern Ukraine, where the heaviest fighting of the war is concentrated, Russian forces continued to advance towards Pokrovsk, which is a vital military hub and transport link to towns and cities further north. Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had captured two more settlements in Donetsk region and were “continuing to advance deep into the enemy defences”. One of them, Ptyche, is just 21km (13 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk.
  At least three people were killed and nine wounded in Russian shelling of Kurakhove, a town around 35 km south of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials said.

• At least 47 people, including five children, were injured on Sunday after Russian missiles struck a shopping mall and events complex in Ukraine‘s northeastern city of Kharkiv, officials said. The attack prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to renew calls on allies to allow Kyiv to fire western-supplied missiles deeper into enemy territory and reduce the military threat posed by Russia.

• A Ukrainian helicopter on a military training flight crashed on Sunday, killing its two-member crew, the Air Force’s university said. The Kharkiv Air Force University in a post on Facebook said investigators and officials from Ukraine’s defence ministry were working to determine the cause of the crash. No further details were immediately available.

• Ukrainian forces shelled Russia’s southern Belgorod region on Sunday, injuring 11 people, including two children who were seriously hurt, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Gladkov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the two boys were undergoing surgery after sustaining serious injuries, including one with extensive wounds on both legs.

Donald Trump shared statements from the relatives of 13 soldiers killed during the chaotic US evacuation from Kabul as they hit out at Kamala Harris after she criticized the former president’s involvement in a ceremony honoring the service members.

The dispute over the ceremony at Arlington national cemetery, during which Trump campaign aides allegedly shoved a cemetery worker so they could film Trump laying a wreath, contravening rules against political activity at the site, escalated after the vice-president said Saturday that Trump “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt”.

But eight members of the “Gold Star” families who lost relatives posted messages on Trump’s Truth Social platform Saturday saying they had invited Trump to the ceremony and criticized the Biden-Harris administration for the Afghanistan pull-out three years ago.

“Why did we want Trump there? It wasn’t to help his political campaign,” Mark Schmitz, father of Marine lance corporal Jared Schmitz, said in one video. “We wanted a leader. That explains why you and Joe didn’t get a call.”

Darren Hoover, the father of Marine staff Sgt Taylor Hoover, said Harris lacks “empathy and basic understanding” about the event, and emphasized that Trump’s appearance was respectful.

The army said this week that a cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” while interacting with Trump’s staff.

On Saturday, congressional Democrats called on the army to deliver a report on what had taken place at the cemetery on Monday. Harris later posted on Twitter/X that the military burial site is “not a place for politics”.

“Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris added, and said she would “never politicize” such an event.

The dispute continued on Sunday, when former Democratic congresswoman and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard, now a member of Trump’s transition team, told CNN’s State of the Union that she was at the ceremony and saw “a very grave and somber remembrance and honoring of those lives that were lost”.

Gabbard said she saw Trump “spending time at the invitation of these Gold Star families with them” and did “not see or hear about any kind of altercation until something came out in the news later on”.

Gabbard rejected Harris’s statement saying she stood with the veteran’s families. Gabbard told CNN: “President Biden and Harris, I heard, were invited by some of these family members. They not only didn’t come – they didn’t even respond to that invitation.”

Senator Tom Cotton continued the Republican pushback, telling NBC’s Meet the Press that the Gold Star families had invited Trump, but also Joe Biden and Harris, and he disputed that photos and video were meant for political purposes.

“Joe Biden was sitting on a beach. Kamala Harris was sitting in her mansion in DC … She was four miles away. Ten minutes. She could have gone to the cemetery and honored the sacrifice of those young men and women,” Cotton said.

A White House official and a Harris aide disputed Cotton and Gabbard’s account that the president and Harris had been invited to the ceremony, according to NBC News.

As the political fallout from the Arlington ceremony continues, it has drawn in Utah governor Spencer Cox, a moderate Republican who kept his political distance from the Republican presidential candidate until the attempted assassination on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.

Cox, a Latter-day Saint, later said he believes God had a hand in saving Trump’s life, even calling it a miracle.

Cox attended the controversial ceremony and published photos from the event on his official account. Cox’s re-election campaign later issued an apology.

“Honoring those who serve should never be ‘political’,” it read, adding that the campaign was committed “to ensure that we run the best campaign possible and we’ll accomplish that by not politicizing things that shouldn’t be politicized”.

Former childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith has confessed to committing 307 sexual offences against dozens of children under his care in Brisbane and Italy between 2007 and 2022.

Griffith, 46, from the Gold Coast, pleaded guilty to all charges at an arraignment at the Queensland district court on Monday morning.

A packed courtroom was silent as all 307 charges were read out this morning, a process that took more than two hours. Some in the audience stood during the entire hearing, due to a lack of space.

Several onlookers cried during the hearing before judge Anthony Rafter.

Griffith appeared in a striped polo shirt and jeans and stood while the charges were read. He said “guilty” in a calm voice as each of the charges were read out by a judge’s associate, and occasionally nodded.

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He was formally convicted of offences committed at childcare centres where he worked between January 2007 and August 2022.

They include 190 charges of unlawful and indecent dealing with a child under 12 under his care, 28 counts of rape, 67 counts of making child exploitation material, four counts of producing child exploitation material and a count of distributing child exploitation material. He was also charged with possessing child exploitation material between 2005 and 2022, using a carriage service for that purpose.

Asked if he had anything to say, Griffith mouthed no and shook his head.

Sixty victims were named in the court on Monday, but their identities cannot be reported for legal reasons.

The Australian federal police believes Griffith – who had the required childcare qualifications – recorded all his alleged offending on phones and cameras at work.

An additional 13 charges were dropped at the start of Monday’s hearing.

Griffith worked at a range of childcare centres in Brisbane, and others in Sydney and Pisa, Italy.

He was arrested in October 2022 by officers of the AFP and Queensland police.

All victims have been identified and their families informed, the AFP has previously said.

The AFP said Griffith worked at some childcare centres where he did not offend.

A sentencing date for Griffith has yet to be set, but he will appear again at the district court for a mention on 9 September.

On the request of crown prosecutor Stephanie Gallagher, the court ordered that a psychiatrist’s report be prepared as part of a pre-sentencing report.

Judge Rafter said the sentencing could take more than two days due to the large number of victims’ families who might choose to read out victim impact statements.

Defence barrister Sarah Cartledge said the defence had attempted to progress the matter as quickly as possible.

• In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. The crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, family or domestic violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit www.1800RESPECT.org.au. In an emergency, call 000. International helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.

Former childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith has confessed to committing 307 sexual offences against dozens of children under his care in Brisbane and Italy between 2007 and 2022.

Griffith, 46, from the Gold Coast, pleaded guilty to all charges at an arraignment at the Queensland district court on Monday morning.

A packed courtroom was silent as all 307 charges were read out this morning, a process that took more than two hours. Some in the audience stood during the entire hearing, due to a lack of space.

Several onlookers cried during the hearing before judge Anthony Rafter.

Griffith appeared in a striped polo shirt and jeans and stood while the charges were read. He said “guilty” in a calm voice as each of the charges were read out by a judge’s associate, and occasionally nodded.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

He was formally convicted of offences committed at childcare centres where he worked between January 2007 and August 2022.

They include 190 charges of unlawful and indecent dealing with a child under 12 under his care, 28 counts of rape, 67 counts of making child exploitation material, four counts of producing child exploitation material and a count of distributing child exploitation material. He was also charged with possessing child exploitation material between 2005 and 2022, using a carriage service for that purpose.

Asked if he had anything to say, Griffith mouthed no and shook his head.

Sixty victims were named in the court on Monday, but their identities cannot be reported for legal reasons.

The Australian federal police believes Griffith – who had the required childcare qualifications – recorded all his alleged offending on phones and cameras at work.

An additional 13 charges were dropped at the start of Monday’s hearing.

Griffith worked at a range of childcare centres in Brisbane, and others in Sydney and Pisa, Italy.

He was arrested in October 2022 by officers of the AFP and Queensland police.

All victims have been identified and their families informed, the AFP has previously said.

The AFP said Griffith worked at some childcare centres where he did not offend.

A sentencing date for Griffith has yet to be set, but he will appear again at the district court for a mention on 9 September.

On the request of crown prosecutor Stephanie Gallagher, the court ordered that a psychiatrist’s report be prepared as part of a pre-sentencing report.

Judge Rafter said the sentencing could take more than two days due to the large number of victims’ families who might choose to read out victim impact statements.

Defence barrister Sarah Cartledge said the defence had attempted to progress the matter as quickly as possible.

• In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. The crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, family or domestic violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit www.1800RESPECT.org.au. In an emergency, call 000. International helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.

A beluga whale nicknamed Hvaldimir, first spotted in Norway not far from Russian waters while wearing a harness that prompted rumours he might be a spy for Moscow, has been found dead.

The Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported that the whale’s body was found floating in the Risavika Bay in southern Norway on Saturday by a father and son who were fishing.

The beluga, whose nickname was a combination of the Norwegian word for whale – hval – and the first name of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was lifted out of the water by crane and taken to a nearby harbour, where experts will examine it.

The marine biologist Sebastian Strand told NRK: “Unfortunately, we found Hvaldimir floating in the sea. He has passed away, but it’s not immediately clear what the cause of death is.” He added that no major external injuries were visible on the animal.

Strand, who has monitored Hvaldimir’s adventures for the past three years on behalf of the Norway-based non-profit organisation Marine Mind, said he was deeply affected by the whale’s sudden death.

“It’s absolutely horrible,” Strand said. “He was apparently in good condition as of [Friday], so we just have to figure out what might have happened here.”

The 4.2-metre (14ft), 1,225kg (2,700lb) whale was first spotted in April 2019 by fishers near the northern island of Ingøya, not far from the Arctic city of Hammerfest. He was wearing a harness and what appeared to be a mount for a small camera and a buckle marked with the words “Equipment St Petersburg”.

That sparked allegations the beluga was a “spy whale”. Experts have said the Russian navy is known to have trained whales for military purposes.

Over the years, the beluga was seen in the waters off several Norwegian coastal towns and it quickly became clear that he was very tame and enjoyed playing with people, NRK said.

Marine Mind said on its site that Hvaldimir was very interested in people and responded to hand signals. “Based on these observations, it appeared as if Hvaldimir arrived in Norway by crossing over from Russian waters, where it is presumed he was held in captivity,” it said.

Because of this behaviour, Norwegian media have also speculated that Hvaldimir may have been used as “a therapy whale” of some sort in Russia.

The string of robberies, spanning years and all following a similar pattern, had left Spanish police perplexed.

Late at night as residents slept, the thieves – dressed in black and with their faces covered – would gain entry to some of Ibiza’s most exclusive homes, often making off with thousands of euros in stolen goods. The victims frequently reported the same groggy feeling when they woke up, leading police to suspect that the perpetrators were using some sort of gas to induce drowsiness.

On Sunday police said they had arrested two men and one woman accused of robbing at least 22 luxury homes in Ibiza during the span of five years.

The arrest comes one week after a villa rented by the former Radio 1 breakfast host, Nick Grimshaw, was reportedly targeted by thieves while he and his family and friends slept inside.

Police have not officially confirmed whether the three people who were arrested are believed to be connected to the robbery where Grimshaw was staying.

The thieves had been targeting homes since 2019, police said, making off with an estimated €548,500 (about £460,000) in stolen goods.

“The thieves entered the homes while the residents were asleep, always dressed in black to hide their faces,” they said in a statement. “Many of the victims reported to police that they felt groggy when they woke up, along with discomfort such as vomiting and dizziness, so it is believed that the alleged perpetrators used some kind of gas that caused drowsiness.”

Police said they located the alleged perpetrators after tracing several stolen vehicles. A police raid on a property had turned up numerous items that had been reported missing after the robberies, such as high-end watches, jewellery and designer sunglasses and handbags.

Video footage released by the police on Sunday appeared to show masked intruders combing through valuables and making their way through the grounds of a villa. The video also showed what appeared to be one of the victims confronting an alleged robber.

“If they happened to be caught during the robbery, they would leave the place in a hurry,” police noted.

Ministers will examine surge ticket pricing in a review after the cost of tickets for Oasis’s concerts more than doubled while on sale, the culture secretary has confirmed.

Lisa Nandy said she thought the inflated price of tickets was “incredibly depressing” as standard tickets were increased from £148 to £355 on the website Ticketmaster.

The prices rose under its “dynamic pricing” mechanism, which means that the cost of tickets deemed to be “in demand” can be higher than initially advertised.

The government had already planned to review the secondary ticket sales market, and pledged to bring in measures to stop fans being “ripped off” by touts.

On Sunday Nandy said: “After the incredible news of Oasis’s return, it’s depressing to see vastly inflated prices excluding ordinary fans from having a chance of enjoying their favourite band live.

“This government is committed to putting fans back at the heart of music. So we will include issues around the transparency and use of dynamic pricing, including the technology around queueing systems which incentivise it, in our forthcoming consultation on consumer protections for ticket resales.

“Working with artists, industry and fans we can create a fairer system that ends the scourge of touts, rip-off resales and ensures tickets at fair prices.”

Labour promised to introduce “new consumer protections” on ticket resales in its election manifesto earlier this year.

Oasis will play 17 dates across five cities in 2025, their first live performances since the band split acrimoniously in 2009. The tour was announced two days before the 30th anniversary of the release of their debut album, Definitely Maybe.

Ticketmaster has said that it does not set ticket prices. Its website said they are down to the “event organiser”, which “has priced these tickets according to their market value”.

It is believed the ticket prices for Oasis gigs were set by promoters, PA Media reported. The band’s promoters, SJM Concerts, MCD and DF Concerts & Events have all been approached for comment.

Fans have called for artists and bands to oppose the dynamic pricing model. Among those hit by dynamic pricing was Nandy’s government colleague, and fellow north-west England MP, Lucy Powell. She said she had paid double the price originally quoted for tickets.

She said she had paid £350 each for two tickets at Heaton Park in Manchester. She told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Eventually [I] got through and bought a couple of tickets for more than I was expecting to pay.”

She added that she does not “particularly like” surge pricing. However she said: “It is the market and how it operates.

“You’ve absolutely got to be transparent about that so that when people arrive after hours of waiting, they understand that the ticket is going to cost more.”

A tiger handler has been mauled by a big cat at a Gold Coast theme park, with emergency services saying she is in hospital with injuries to her arm.

A Queensland ambulance service (QAS) spokesperson said paramedics transported a woman from Dreamworld to the Gold Coast University hospital with “multiple lacerations to the arm” after “an incident involving a tiger” at about 9am Monday.

A Dreamworld spokesperson said an “incident occurred involving one of the park’s tigers and a trained tiger handler”.

“Dreamworld’s immediate focus is on the support of the team member,” the spokesperson said.

“This was an isolated and rare incident, and we will conduct a thorough review accordingly”.

The woman, in her 30s, was in a stable condition.

Dreamworld’s Tiger Island, opened almost 30 years ago as one of only two interactive tiger exhibits in the world, is home to Sumatran and Bengal tigers.

It hosts twice daily tiger presentations at which guests are invited to be “mesmerised” by the tigers “as [they] glide underwater” and “be amazed by their might and raw power during feeding time”.

The Courier Mail reported in 2022 that one of Tiger Island’s most senior handlers was injured in an incident.

Visitors to Australia Zoo, on the Sunshine Coast, have also witnessed tiger handler maulings. In 2013, a handler sustained a crushed carotid artery, nicked jugular, paralysis to the left larynx and nerve damage to the left eye after being bitten in the neck after a tiger got “over excited”. In 2016 another handler sustained injuries to his wrist and forehead after an incident with a tiger that was “hot and bothered”.