Benjamin Netanyahu has defied protests at home and criticism from Joe Biden by vowing that Israel would not relinquish control over a strategic corridor along the Gaza-Egyptian border.

In a combative press conference, the Israeli prime minister presented control of the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt as a primary war aim, entrenching a position that has emerged as a key obstacle to a ceasefire deal.

“Israel will not accept the massacre of six hostages, Hamas will pay a heavy price,” said Netanyahu, standing in front of a wall-sized map of the Gaza Strip that included clip art of bombs and missiles crossing the border. “Iran’s axis of evil needs the Philadelphi corridors … Israel must control it.”

The remarks came hours after the US president met with his top advisers on the Gaza conflict and told reporters that he did not believe Netanyahu was doing enough to secure a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Netanyahu’s remarks came after protests this weekend and a general strike on Monday prompted by the discovery of the bodies of six hostages in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated against the government’s handling of the war in Gaza and efforts to release dozens of hostages who remain in captivity.

Hamas’s armed wing said on Monday that hostages would return to Israel “inside coffins” if military pressure continued, warning that “new instructions” had been given to the militants guarding the captives if Israeli troops approached.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Biden said that his administration was “very close” to proposing a “final” hostage deal to both sides that has assumed new urgency since the discovery of the bodies, including that of Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

The Washington Post had previously reported that the Biden administration was preparing to propose a “take it or leave it” deal that, if it failed, could mark the end of US-led efforts to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Biden did not reveal details of the new proposal and, asked why he thought a new deal could prove successful after months of unsuccessful attempts, said: “Hope springs eternal.”

The White House said that Biden received a briefing from top-level advisers including the national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, where they discussed “next steps” in the ceasefire efforts in collaboration with co-mediators Egypt and Qatar.

Netanyahu has remained defiant over Israeli claims to strategic points in Gaza, despite significant internal and international pressure to secure at least a temporary ceasefire in the 11-month-old war.

During his remarks on Monday, the Israeli prime minister apologised to the families of the six hostages found dead in Gaza over the weekend, but then quickly pivoted to defend his government’s control over the Philadelphi corridor. That has been seen as a non-starter for a potential ceasefire deal with Hamas.

“In the war against the axis of evil, in this specific war against Hamas and also in the north, we have set four goals: defeat Hamas; return our hostages; ensure that Gaza does not pose a threat; and to return residents to the south,” he said. “Three of these goals pass through the Philadelphi route, Hamas’s oxygen pipe.”

The Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, derided Netanyahu’s presentation as “political spin” with “no relation to reality”.

“Not one professional buys this spin. Not the security personnel, not the international system, not the fighters who are actually in Gaza and know the reality there,” Lapid said, according to the Times of Israel.

The Philadelphi corridor has only emerged as an Israeli government talking point in recent weeks, and was not part of the plan that Biden presented in May, which the Israeli government said at the time it accepted.

The Hostage Families Forum vowed that their protests would continue, but the far-right members of Netanyahu’s government coalition declared victory after a labour court ruling that the strike had to end at 2.30pm local time (12.30pm BST).

Even before the court ruling, the strike, called by the Histadrut trade union federation, was not seen as a significant threat to the government. It had only been due to last a day, and only a few local authorities took part.

Banks and many private businesses closed or gave their employees the option of taking the day off, but it was not the prolonged stoppage that activists hoped would have an impact on the economy and force the coalition into a ceasefire-for-hostage deal with Hamas.

Public anger erupted after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) found the hostages’ bodies in a tunnel deep under the Palestinian city of Rafah over the weekend. According to Israel’s health ministry, they had been shot at close range about two days before their remains were discovered. Some of them – including Goldberg-Polin – would have been in the first batch of hostages to be released under the proposed ceasefire deal.

Goldberg-Polin’s funeral was held in Jerusalem on Monday. Addressing the family at the ceremony, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, apologised for his death on behalf of the state.

“We are sorry we failed to protect you in the terrible failure of 7 October,” Herzog said. “We are sorry we failed to bring you home safely. We are sorry that the country you immigrated to at the age of seven, wrapped in the Israeli flag, failed to keep you.”

About 250 hostages were seized by Hamas in its 7 October surprise attack on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians. In the Gaza war that followed, Israel forces have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, the large majority of them civilians.

Other countries have slightly increased pressure on Israel since the botched rescue of the hostages. The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, on Monday announced the suspension of 30 of 350 arms export licenses to Israel. Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said he was “deeply disheartened” by the decision at a time when “we fight a war on seven different fronts”.

The extreme right members of Netanyahu’s coalition welcomed the decision of the Bat Yam labour court to order Monday’s strike to end early. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the strike had been “political and illegal”, serving the interests of Hamas.

The Hostage Families Forum said that protests would still continue after the strike, in the interests of the 101 hostages still unaccounted for in Gaza, of whom Israeli intelligence believes about a third are already dead.

The forum said the surviving hostages had been “abandoned” on Thursday last week, when Netanyahu’s cabinet voted to stand behind the prime minister’s negotiating position insisting on Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor. Gallant was the only cabinet member to vote against the stance, and has called for the decision to be reversed.

About 100,000 protesters took part in demonstrations in Tel Aviv on Sunday night, temporarily blocking the north-south motorway that runs through the city. On Monday, there were sporadic protests blocking key road junctions around the country and another big demonstration was called for Monday night.

Among even the most determined demonstrators however was an acceptance that they did not yet have the strength to threaten Netanyahu’s hold on power and force him to change course.

“I’m not sure the strike was as powerful as people expected,” said Debbie Mason, a social worker for the Eshkol regional council, an area of southern Israel abutting Gaza, where many of the victims of the 7 October Hamas attack lived.

“Unfortunately, there are too many things that are going to obstruct a deal. Whether it’s on our side, whether it’s on Hamas’s side, it just doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interest that something should happen,” Mason said.

She was speaking in “Hostages Square”, a plaza between the national library and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where hostage families and their supporters gather every day.

Rayah Karmin, a vitamin supplement salesperson from Mabu’im, a village near Netivot near the Gaza frontier, agreed that a one-day strike would change little.

“Only a longer strike will make the people in government understand that the economy of Israel is going to go down,” Karmin said.

She pointed out that all the protests faced an immovable political reality: that if a ceasefire were agreed, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich would lead a far-right walk-out from the cabinet and the coalition would fall, removing Netanyahu’s immunity against corruption charges he faces in Israeli courts.

“Smotrich and Ben-Gvir will leave Netanyahu, and then he will be without a coalition, and he will have to go home,” Karmin said. “And he knows that next time he won’t be elected, so he wants to stay as long as he can.”

The UK has broken with the Biden administration on a significant part of their tightly coordinated policy towards Israel by announcing it is suspending some arms export licences to Israel because of a “clear risk” they may be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

The Foreign Office said a two-month internal review had raised concerns about the way Israel had conducted itself in the conflict in Gaza and that the decision specifically related to concerns around the treatment of Palestinian detainees and the supply of aid to Gaza.

No definitive conclusion has been reached about whether UK arms export licences have contributed to the destruction in the territory. But the scale of the devastation and the number of civilian deaths caused great concern, the Foreign Office said.

The suspension, which is likely to cause tensions with the US government, covers components for military aircraft, helicopters, drones and targeting equipment.

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said it applied to 30 of the 350 existing arms licences, but would almost entirely exclude all UK components for the F-35 fighter jet programme, seen as a significant loophole by pro-Palestinian groups.

F-35 components have been exempted, officials say, because they are part of a global programme and the UK does not have unilateral control of these components, which are sent to the US. They will, however, not be exempt on the rare occasion where the part is being sent directly to Israel.

Lammy, aware of the sensitivity of the issue in Israel and the US, stressed his decision was taken more in sorrow than anger, adding the conclusion did not amount to a full arms embargo, and did not even go as far as the suspension of licences made by Margaret Thatcher in 1982.

But the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said he was deeply disheartened by the decision, adding: “This comes at a time when we fight a war on seven different fronts – a war that was launched by a savage terrorist organisation, unprovoked. At a time when we mourn six hostages who were executed in cold blood by Hamas inside tunnels in Gaza. At a time when we fight to bring 101 hostages home.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said he was “disappointed” by the British decision, adding it sent “a very problematic message to the terrorist organisation Hamas and its sponsors in Iran”. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is already under political siege after a general strike and fury that his stance over the Gaza ceasefire terms may have contributed to the Hamas killing of six Israeli hostages last week.

Lammy told the House of Commons that the suspension decision was based primarily on evidence concerning the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and restrictions on the supply of humanitarian aid to Gaza. He said Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza including the wide-scale destruction of houses contributed to the assessment of a clear risk of a serious breach of international humanitarian law.

He appeared anxious for the decision not to lead to a collapse in Anglo-Israeli relations. Describing himself as a liberal progressive Zionist, he said: “We have not – and could not – arbitrate on whether or not Israel has breached international humanitarian law. This is a forward-looking evaluation, not a determination of innocence or guilt. And it does not prejudge any future determinations by the competent courts.”

In a brief summary of its legal advice the Foreign Office (FCDO) said it found “Israel could have done more reasonably to facilitate humanitarian access and distribution”.

It said for example Israel should establish a speedier and more effective system for protecting humanitarian aid from military operations.

The FCDO added: “It could also better resource security control procedures and adopt a less restrictive approach to dual-use items (those with both military and civilian uses).” The advice also said the amount of aid provided was not enough, even if it was sufficient to be essential to the population’s survival.

On the maltreatment of Palestinian detainees, the summary found “the volume and consistency of these allegations suggest at least some instances of mistreatment contrary to international humanitarian law. Israel has launched investigations into these allegations.”

It added that the sufficiency of those investigations was unclear, partly because Israel continues to deny access to places of detention for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). International humanitarian law requires such access “except for reasons of imperative military necessity, and then only as an exceptional and temporary measure”.

“Israel has not provided satisfactory reasons,” the FCDO said.

On the conduct of the war itself Lammy said: “Israel’s actions in Gaza continue to lead to immense loss of civilian life, widespread destruction to civilian infrastructure, and immense suffering,” but added: “In many cases, it has not been possible to reach a determinative conclusion on allegations regarding Israel’s conduct of hostilities, in part because there is insufficient information either from Israel or other reliable sources to verify such claims.”

Lammy’s statement was not condemned by opposition MPs, who described it as carefully calibrated, although Sammy Wilson of the Democratic Unionist party said the only people who would be overjoyed by this decision would be Hamas. MPs on the left saw the decision as a start or the bare minimum considering the loss of 40,000 civilian lives.

The move, which was coordinated between the FCDO, the business department and Richard Hermer, the attorney general, is likely to help Lammy overcome what may be a highly charged revolt on the floor of the Labour party annual conference. British companies sell a relatively small amount of weapons and components to Israel. Earlier this year, the government reported that military exports to Israel amounted to £42m in 2022.

But it will cause strains with the Biden administration in the US, and some Republicans close to Donald Trump. Both have repeatedly said they see no basis in international humanitarian law to suspend arms exports. Joe Biden is under pressure from the pro-Palestinian wing in the Democrats to use more leverage in the forms of arms sales to force Netanyahu to make concessions in the ceasefire talks.

In Europe only Belgium and Spain have taken the step of imposing an arms embargo, but Germany has refused.

The UK government is also facing a growing number of domestic court challenges, including proceedings due to start on Tuesday brought by Global Legal Action Network and the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq.

Officials said Lammy and his aides had been given no access to the decision-making process on arms sales made by the previous Conservative government. But the clear implication is that Labour ministers will have reached a different decision on the basis of similar evidence.

A Venezuelan judge on Monday issued an arrest warrant for Edmundo González, the opposition politician widely believed to have beaten President Nicolás Maduro in the recent election, for alleged crimes that could see him spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted.

González, a 75-year-old retired diplomat, was catapulted into the eye of Venezuela’s political storm earlier this year when he agreed to challenge Maduro in the 28 July presidential election in the place of the banned opposition leader María Corina Machado.

Maduro subsequently claimed victory, without providing proof and in spite of a growing body of evidence suggesting the unpopular authoritarian actually suffered a heavy defeat because of public anger over an economic collapse that has seen millions flee abroad.

Countries including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico have refused to accept Maduro’s claim without the publication of detailed evidence while the EU last week declared the Venezuelan strongman had “no democratic legitimacy as president.”

On Monday evening, the political crisis took another dramatic turn as it emerged that the public prosecutor’s office had asked for González to be arrested for alleged crimes including criminal association, which carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years, and conspiracy, which can be punished with a 16-year sentence.

The signed request, which was published on the public prosecutor’s Instagram account, was made to a judge from a special anti-terrorism court by the prosecutor Luis Ernesto Dueñez Reyes.

Machado, the well-known opposition leader in whose place González ran, denounced the decision, accusing Venezuela’s administration of having “lost all sense of reality”.

“By threatening the president-elect, all they do is unite us further and increase support for Edmundo González among Venezuelans and in the world,” she added on social media, calling for opposition supporters to remain serene.

In an interview with the Guardian on the eve of July’s election, González vowed to build a country of prosperity, democracy and peace if he won the election. Instead, the South American country has been plunged into a moment of profound uncertainty and apprehension.

More than 1,700 people have been detained in the wake of two days of street protests sparked by Maduro’s disputed claim to have won. Maduro has given no hint he is prepared to relinquish power in the lead up to the 10 January inauguration of Venezuela’s next president and has accused Machado and González of being part of a “fascist” foreign plot to topple him.

On Sunday, human rights groups said at least 86 teenagers who were arrested during the government crackdown had been released but hundreds of prisoners have reportedly been taken to high security prisons where they are facing terrorism charges. Several key allies of Machado and González, including one of her closest confidants, the lawyer Perkins Rocha, have been captured by secret police.

González, whom Maduro’s new hard-line interior minister has publicly called a terrorist “rat”, has not been seen in public in recent weeks and his whereabouts is unknown. Machado has also gone into hiding although she has continued to appear at occasional opposition protests.

US authorities have seized Nicolás Maduro’s plane in an apparent escalation of pressure on the Venezuelan president, more than a month after his widely contested claim of victory in the country’s national elections.

US authorities confirmed on Monday they had seized Maduro’s jet in the Dominican Republic after determining it was allegedly purchased in violation of US sanctions. The plane, described by US officials as Venezuela’s equivalent to Air Force One, has been flown to Fort Lauderdale in Florida.

“This morning, the justice department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13m [£10m] through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies,” the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said in a statement.

The assistant secretary for export enforcement, Matthew Axelrod, of the Department of Commerce, said: “Let this seizure send a clear message: aircraft illegally acquired from the United States for the benefit of sanctioned Venezuelan officials cannot just fly off into the sunset.

“It doesn’t matter how fancy the private jet or how powerful the officials, we will work relentlessly with our partners here and across the globe to identify and return any aircraft illegally smuggled outside of the United States.”

The plane, a French-built Dassault Falcon 900EX with blue and red stripes and a white body, is registered in the European republic of San Marino, according to the Miami Herald. It had been in the Dominican Republic in recent months but has previously been used by Maduro for trips to St Vincent and the Grenadines, Cuba and Brazil.

Venezuela’s government said the plane’s “illegal” confiscation “cannot be considered anything apart from piracy”.

Caracas accused the US of using its economic and military power to intimidate and pressure countries such as the Dominican Republic into being “accomplices in its criminal acts”.

The seizure comes four days after the US again called on Venezuelan authorities to produce evidence proving that Maduro was the winner over the opposition candidate Edmundo González in the 28 July vote.

Washington has said there is “overwhelming evidence” that González received the most votes but Venezuelan election authorities have declined to release polling numbers, prompting unrest and a government crackdown during which more than 1,600 people have been detained.

The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said on Thursday: “In spite of repeated calls from Venezuelans and the international community, the Maduro-controlled national electoral council has failed to substantiate its announced results by producing original tally sheets, as it did following the 2013 and 2018 elections.”

US authorities will pursue forfeiture of the plane, according to CNN. The move comes amid a broader effort to disrupt the flow of billions of dollars to the Maduro regime via judgments, seizures and the liquidation of bank accounts.

In March 2020, Maduro and 14 current or former Venezuelan officials were charged with narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. The US state department has also offered a reward of up to $15m for information leading to Maduro’s arrest or conviction.

The confiscation of the plane follows an incident earlier this year when a Venezuelan Boeing 747 cargo plane was seized in Argentina and flown to Florida. Maduro went on national television and claimed that the “evil capitalist empire” did not really want the plane, it just did not want Venezuela to have it. He said proof of that was that it was soon destroyed by “the vengeful perverse gringo empire”.

• Additional reporting Tom Phillips

On a recent morning deep in Ukrainian-occupied Russia, three soldiers from a Ukrainian special operations team jumped into their car, the back windscreen missing after being smashed out the previous day by explosives dropped from a Russian drone, and sped away in the direction of Ukraine.

Six hours later, they would be in Kyiv, together with a precious cargo of documents stashed in boxes piled on the back seat, the fruits of a four-day mission into enemy territory for the trio. The documents included Russian interior ministry papers and military orders, seized from official buildings in Sudzha, the town at the heart of Ukraine’s surprise Kursk operation, and from abandoned Russian trenches nearby.

“At the time it was all a blur, it’s only later when you come out that you realise where you’ve just been and what you’ve been doing,” said Artem, one of the three, talking at a roadside stop just hours after leaving Russian territory.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, now in its fourth week, was shocking in its audacity, and has laid down an unexpected challenge to the Kremlin. Suddenly, it is Russian flags that are being pulled down from administrative buildings, Russian civilians who are taking shelter as soldiers of a foreign army patrols their streets, and Russia which is scrambling to prove it has control of its own long-established borders.

Even as Ukrainian troops come under sustained pressure on other parts of the frontline, the dash into Russia has provided a much-needed morale boost inside Ukraine, after months of relentlessly bleak news.

“They’re in a desperate David versus Goliath battle and this appeals to their rebellious spirit,” said one western diplomat in Kyiv, adding that the Kursk operation had boosted the mood among the political elite immeasurably in recent weeks.

Part of the initial excitement came from sheer surprise. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and his top military commander discussed the plans in private and just a few people were brought into the circle. “Based on the experience of this war so far, the fewer people know about an operation, the more successful it will be,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a key Zelenskiy aide, in an interview in Kyiv. “An extremely limited number of people knew ahead of time,” he added.

In Sumy, the closest Ukrainian city to the border, locals noticed the city and surrounding areas filling up with military personnel in the weeks before the incursion, but did not know why. “There aren’t many rental options in Sumy, and people were asking around looking for anywhere free where soldiers could stay. It was only later, when the operation started, that the puzzle came together,” said Dmytro Tishchenko, the CEO of cukr.city, an online portal devoted to news and culture in Sumy.

The troops themselves were also given no warning of what was to come. “We thought we were being transferred here to carry out defensive work against a possible Russian incursion,” said one soldier who has been in the area since a week before the assault began.

Ukraine claimed last week to control nearly 1,300 sq km (500 sq miles) of Russian territory, comprising 100 settlements – mostly small villages, but including the town of Sudzha, home to 5,000 people before the assault. The road from Sumy to the border remains thick with military vehicles, with soldiers riding everything from motorcycles to tanks into Russia.

In Sudzha, say Ukrainian soldiers, the streets are mostly deserted and a putrid smell hangs in the air, the result of produce rotting in the late summer sunshine. Many people fled further into Russia at the start of the offensive, but those who remain are now cut off, with no way out, no power and no mobile reception. The Ukrainian soldiers patrolling the streets are their only source of information.

“We tell them Ukrainian forces have taken the city of Kursk and are marching on Moscow, and it’s time to learn Ukrainian,” laughed one soldier who had recently been in the city. Soldiers rotate out of Sudzha with trophies – ranging from Russian flags and posters seized from official buildings to T-shirts featuring Vladimir Putin taken from stalls at Sudzha market – but say they are not inflicting the same terror that Russian occupiers wrought on Ukrainian towns.

Sudzha has now been under total Ukrainian control for a fortnight, but Russian drones remain a constant threat, and operating at the margins of the offensive can be a scary business. On one occasion, when clearing out a deserted Russian trench, Artem caught sight of what he thought was a fleeing Russian soldier. He was about to shoot when he realised someone had left a mirror in the trench, and he was seeing his own reflection. “You’re crawling through forests in the dark, and you realise that you’re absolutely alone, right inside enemy territory,” said Serhii, another member of the team.

For now, Ukraine’s forward advance appears to have stalled, but Russia has not succeeded in retaking territory either. Kyiv says it has no interest in trying to annex Russian land, but for now wants to retain control of what it has taken.

“We are not Russia, we don’t want to rewrite our constitution to add these territories … Our tasks are to push Russian artillery and other systems further away, destroy the warehouses and other military infrastructure that is there, and also to affect public opinion in Russia,” said Podolyak.

Many in Kyiv also see the incursion as a message to Ukraine’s international partners, at a time when voices suggesting that some form of negotiations may be necessary in the medium-term future are growing louder.

“Ukraine is trying to create leverage on Russia to have real negotiations, not a capitulation packaged as a negotiation,” said Alyona Getmanchuk, the founder of the New Europe Center in Kyiv.

Podolyak first denied Kyiv had one eye on future negotiations, but then added: “Russia is not a rational country. It could be forced to negotiations, but for that you need [things like] the Kursk operation.”

Getmanchuk said the operation, details of which Kyiv did not share with western partners beforehand, was also born out of frustration at repeated warnings about the risks of escalation by Washington. “The Kursk operation was a signal to forget about the supposed ‘red lines’ that Ukraine should not cross,” she said.

Another goal of the operation was to capture Russian soldiers and use them as leverage to help free some of the thousands of Ukrainians held in Russian prisons. Ukraine claims to have captured nearly 600 Russian soldiers from inside Kursk region, many of them conscripts. A week ago, Ukraine swapped 115 of them for the same number of Ukrainians held in Russia.

At a holding facility in Sumy region, Russian prisoners spoke of their shock at the war arriving to Russian territory and their unpreparedness for combat. Some had arrived in Kursk region only days or weeks before being captured. The Guardian spoke with more than a dozen Russian prisoners, who gave their consent to talk and were not monitored by prison guards while speaking, but is not quoting them directly due to international conventions around prisoners of war.

“As a citizen of Ukraine I despise them, but I treat them how I want our prisoners to be treated in Russia,” said Volodymyr, the deputy head of the facility where they are held. “If we can use them to free our guys, then I am happy,” he added.

While the Kursk operation has created a feelgood moment, there remains an acute awareness among many Ukrainian soldiers that things in the east of the country are looking increasingly bleak, as Russia steadily closes in on the city of Pokrovsk. If that advance continues, the whispered questions about whether the Kursk adventure was worth it are likely to get louder.

For now, though, the operation remains a symbol of Ukrainian success on the battlefield. “We can use it to create a buffer zone alone the border to reduce attacks on us. And at minimum, we’ve got prisoners to exchange, and have given our population something to be happy about,” said Artem.

The new school year began this week in Hong Kong with a significant new addition to the curriculum for some students: the teachings of Xi Jinping Thought.

The changes come alongside more lessons about national security and pro-Beijing patriotism, as the influence and control of China’s ruling Communist party increases in the semi-autonomous city.

The teachings on the ideology of China’s leader are encased in a new subject now mandatory for secondary students, Citizenship, Economics and Society, first announced in 2022.

The new module instils “patriotic education” for all three years of secondary students, and its content is aimed at “cultivating students’ sense of nationhood, affection for our country and sense of national identity”, according to government-issued curriculum guidelines. Third form students are expected to learn about Xi Jinping Thought in a module on “our country’s political structure and participation in international affairs”. The guidelines recommend teachers spend 12 40-minute lessons on the module.

The guidelines said some schools had been urged to implement pilot programmes of the new subject in 2023, but that all 512 secondary schools should be running the new curriculum from Monday 2 September 2024.

Writing on social media, one Hong Kong resident likened the new curriculum to “brainwashing”.

“To say that education distorts minds is putting it mildly,” they added.

Another Hong Kong resident associated the new curriculum with concerns about the “mainlandisation” of Hong Kong.

“When I meet students on the street, I hear them chatting in Mandarin, and they also use Chinese terms, and even their eating habits have been China-cised,” said one.

“If we add the news media and the government’s patriotic education, we will probably see the disappearance of the real Hong Kong people in my lifetime.”

Changes to primary school education were announced in late 2023. The education bureau said general studies programs for primary students would be replaced by a new curriculum by 2025. New teachings would include national security, and the opium war and Japan’s invasion of China, two key events in Beijing’s narrative of a “century of humiliation”, a driver of China’s increasing nationalism.

Xi’s personal political philosophy, officially called “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, was enshrined in China’s constitution in 2018. In 2021 it was introduced into mainland Chinese schools. The Xi teachings in the mainland curriculum appear on available information to be far more comprehensive that those introduced to Hong Kong. However it has still sparked alarm among some parents and citizens.

Hong Kong school enrolments have declined sharply in recent years, driven by low birthrates and an exodus of residents and expats in the wake of the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement and the imposition of tighter, pro-CCP social controls.

The new school year began this week in Hong Kong with a significant new addition to the curriculum for some students: the teachings of Xi Jinping Thought.

The changes come alongside more lessons about national security and pro-Beijing patriotism, as the influence and control of China’s ruling Communist party increases in the semi-autonomous city.

The teachings on the ideology of China’s leader are encased in a new subject now mandatory for secondary students, Citizenship, Economics and Society, first announced in 2022.

The new module instils “patriotic education” for all three years of secondary students, and its content is aimed at “cultivating students’ sense of nationhood, affection for our country and sense of national identity”, according to government-issued curriculum guidelines. Third form students are expected to learn about Xi Jinping Thought in a module on “our country’s political structure and participation in international affairs”. The guidelines recommend teachers spend 12 40-minute lessons on the module.

The guidelines said some schools had been urged to implement pilot programmes of the new subject in 2023, but that all 512 secondary schools should be running the new curriculum from Monday 2 September 2024.

Writing on social media, one Hong Kong resident likened the new curriculum to “brainwashing”.

“To say that education distorts minds is putting it mildly,” they added.

Another Hong Kong resident associated the new curriculum with concerns about the “mainlandisation” of Hong Kong.

“When I meet students on the street, I hear them chatting in Mandarin, and they also use Chinese terms, and even their eating habits have been China-cised,” said one.

“If we add the news media and the government’s patriotic education, we will probably see the disappearance of the real Hong Kong people in my lifetime.”

Changes to primary school education were announced in late 2023. The education bureau said general studies programs for primary students would be replaced by a new curriculum by 2025. New teachings would include national security, and the opium war and Japan’s invasion of China, two key events in Beijing’s narrative of a “century of humiliation”, a driver of China’s increasing nationalism.

Xi’s personal political philosophy, officially called “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, was enshrined in China’s constitution in 2018. In 2021 it was introduced into mainland Chinese schools. The Xi teachings in the mainland curriculum appear on available information to be far more comprehensive that those introduced to Hong Kong. However it has still sparked alarm among some parents and citizens.

Hong Kong school enrolments have declined sharply in recent years, driven by low birthrates and an exodus of residents and expats in the wake of the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement and the imposition of tighter, pro-CCP social controls.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Monday made their first post-convention joint appearance on the presidential campaign trail, celebrating Labor Day with a tribute to union workers in Pittsburgh.

“We are so proud to be the most pro-union administration in American history,” Harris said. “I love Labor Day. I love celebrating Labor Day, and Pittsburgh is the cradle of the American labor movement.”

Between comments about the administration’s support for organized labor and Donald Trump’s attacks on labor organizing, Harris, the vice-president, spoke against the pending purchase of US Steel by Nippon Steel, arguing that the iconic Pennsylvania steel company should remain in the hands of American owners.

“US Steel is an historic American company and it is vital for our nation to maintain strong American steel companies. And I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: US Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated.”

The United Steelworkers union, representing about 10,000 US Steel employees, opposes the $14.9bn deal, taking issue with Nippon Steel’s alleged violations of the union’s rights concerning change of control under their four-year basic labor agreement signed in 2022. The union and the companies are in arbitration talks.

Harris again voiced support for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) act, a broad basket of labor reforms that would spur union organizing.

Kenny Cooper, president of the IBEW union, introduced Biden and Harris, noting that the passage of the Butch Lewis Act by Harris’s tie-breaking vote saved the benefits of two million union members. “They were only tied up for one reason,” he said. “We couldn’t find a Republican senator.”

Harris also cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which the USW International president, David McCall, said in comments had been “revolutionizing the cement, chemical, glass and steel sectors along with other traditional core industries”.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, also opposes the Nippon Steel deal and has said he will block it if president. Biden announced his opposition to the Nippon Steel deal in March.

Less crisply perhaps than Harris, Biden described the accomplishments of his administration in Pennsylvania, from investments in clean energy to infrastructure money. He noted that his administration required project labor agreements that respected labor rights and required American products, while reminding listeners that Donald Trump appointed union busting officials to the National Labor Relations Board.

“Wall Street didn’t build America,” Biden said. “The middle class built America and unions built the middle class.”

The appearance of Biden and Harris together provides an image of how the two may campaign in the waning days of the election. Biden described Harris as having “the backbone of a ramrod and the moral compass of a saint”.

Harris spent the morning in Detroit, hailing the virtues of union organizing – the five-day work week, sick leave, vacation time and other benefits – with labor leaders at Northwestern High School.

“We celebrate unions because unions helped build America, and unions helped build America’s middle class,” she said. “When union wages go up, everybody’s wages go up.”

Biden is the first sitting president to walk a union picket line, supporting the United Auto Workers in their dispute with major car manufacturers in September 2023. “You guys – the UAW – you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before,” Biden shouted through a bullhorn on the picket line in Michigan. “You made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot. The companies were in trouble. Now they are doing incredibly well and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”

Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, has been both a strident voice reinvigorating the American labor movement and a strident opponent of Trump. “Donald Trump is all talk, and Kamala Harris walks the walk,” Fain said at the Democratic national convention in August, while wearing a shirt that said “Trump is a scab”. Harris supporters chanted that phrase in Detroit this morning.

Though Trump called in his acceptance speech before the Republican national convention for Fain to be “fired immediately”, the Republican nominee has made overtures to labor voters during his run to return to office. The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and his proposed tariffs of 10-20% on foreign trade have been central to his outreach, arguing that this will bring manufacturing back from offshore plants.

But Project 2025 – a conservative playbook for a second Trump administration penned by the Heritage Foundation – aims to end merit-based employment for thousands of unionized federal workers; calls for changes to “protected concerted activity” which would allow employers to retaliate more easily against union organizing; and eliminate the “persuader rule” requiring company disclosures when hiring union-busting consultants.

Trump has also flip-flopped in public comments about the electric car industry, initially calling for an end to electric car mandates but recently walking that rhetoric back after the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, endorsed his candidacy. During an interview on Musk’s X/Twitter social media space, Trump gushed at Musk’s approach to labor relations.

“They go on strike,” said Trump. “I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone,’ and you are the greatest.”

That prompted the Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien – who spoke at the RNC convention to the surprise of many labor leaders – to walk his own overtures towards Trump back. “Firing workers for organizing, striking and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” O’Brien said.

• Mongolia’s failure to arrest Vladimir Putin on an international criminal court (ICC) warrant dealt a “heavy blow” to the international criminal law system, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Monday as the Russian president arrived for talks likely to focus on a new gas pipeline connecting Russia and China. Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhiy Tykhyi said: “Mongolia has allowed an accused criminal to evade justice, thereby sharing responsibility for the war crimes.”

• The ICC said last week all its members had an “obligation” to detain those sought by the court. In practice, though, there is little that can be done if Mongolia does not comply. “President Putin is a fugitive from justice,” said Altantuya Batdorj, executive director of Amnesty International Mongolia. “Any trip to an ICC member state that does not end in arrest will encourage President Putin’s current course of action and must be seen as part of a strategic effort to undermine the ICC’s work.”

• In Brussels, the European Commission urged Mongolia to meet its obligations undertaken when joining the Rome statute of the ICC in 2002. Human Rights Watch noted that Mongolia was among 94 countries that signed in June a joint statement declaring their “unwavering support” for the ICC. Erdenebalsuren Damdin, a Mongolian, is one of the judges on the ICC bench. Mongolia welcomed Putin with a guard of honour and gave no indication he was at risk of arrest, while there was no official Mongolian response to the calls for it to honour the warrant.

• Russian invaders advanced on 477 sq km (184 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in August, Moscow’s biggest monthly increase since October 2022, according to data supplied by the Institute for the Study of War and analysed by Agence France-Presse. Ukraine meanwhile made its own rapid gains in early August, advancing more than 1,100 square kilometres into Russia’s Kursk region in two weeks, though its progress has slowed recently as the situation there has stabilised.

• Russia claimed to have captured a string of villages and settlements in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, inching towards the city of Pokrovsk. The Russian defence ministry said on Monday that it had captured the Donetsk village of Skuchne, without providing further details. Volodymyr Zelenskiy insisted the frontline had not moved. “In the Pokrovsk direction, no matter how difficult it is, there has been no progress for two days. This is what the commander-in-chief told me.”

• Putin on Monday acknowledged the difficulties Ukraine’s Kursk invasion – the largest attack by a foreign army on Russia since the second world war – was putting on Russian border regions. “People are experiencing and undergoing severe hardship, especially in the Kursk region,” Putin said in a speech to schoolchildren at a televised event in Siberia. “But the enemy did not achieve the main task that they set themselves: to stop our offensive in the Donbas … We have not had such a pace of offensive in the Donbas for a long time.”

• Russian forces launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s central city of Dnipro on Monday, killing one person and injuring three while damaging homes, said the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, Serhiy Lysak. A Russian attack on Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Kharkiv on Monday hit a residential area and wounded at least 13 people, local officials said.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that Ukraine’s western allies should not only allow their weapons to be used for strikes deep inside Russia, but also supply Kyiv with more of them. After a meeting with the Dutch prime minister, Dick Schoof, in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday, Zelenskiy said Kyiv was “more positive” about the prospects of getting such permission.

• Schoof announced his government would give Ukraine €200m to help protect and repair the electricity infrastructure targeted almost daily by Russian bombs. He said the Netherlands would continue providing F-16 fighter jets and munitions to Ukraine and noted a plan floated last month by the US senator Lindsey Graham to let retired F-16 pilots from other countries join the fight in Ukraine. “But we have to look into those things, with all the countries involved with the F-16 coalition.”

• Schoof visited an underground school in Zaporizhzhia. “It must never be normal for children to have to go to school underground. It must never become normal for people’s homes to be cold because power plants have been bombed,” Schoof said. In Kyiv, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched an overnight barrage of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles as children prepared to return to school on Monday after summer vacation. Three people were wounded and two kindergartens were damaged.

• Children and parents gathered outside a damaged school in Kyiv as firefighters put out flames and removed rubble. One mother arrived with her seven-year-old daughter, Sophia, unaware it had been hit. It was Sophia’s first day at a new school, her mother said, after a frightening night. “We hid in the bathroom, where it was relatively safe,” said the mother, who gave only her first name, Olena.

• Large numbers of Ukrainian refugee children are expected to begin attending Polish schools this autumn for the first time. For many, Monday will be their first time back at school in years since the double disruptions of the pandemic and the war. Many have been continuing their online education with schools in Ukraine from Poland. But now the Polish government says if they don’t attend in person it will withhold a monthly benefit of 800 złotys, about US$200, that is paid to families.

• Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said he met his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu on Monday to discuss the situation on the frontline and air defences. Joint defence industries ventures were also discussed, he added.

• A senior Russian military commander, Maj Gen Valery Mumindzhanov, has been detained in a fraud case. He is the ninth top military figure to be arrested on charges of fraud, bribery or abuse of office in recent months. The Leningrad military district deputy commander was detained on suspicion of receiving a bribe of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Nasa astronaut Butch Wilmore has reported a “strange noise” coming from the stricken Boeing Starliner space capsule whose problems have left him and colleague Suni Williams stuck in orbit for six months longer than they anticipated when they blasted off from earth in June.

Wilmore radioed mission control in Houston on Saturday to report a pulsing sound from a speaker inside the capsule. “I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore said. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don’t know what’s making it.”

That set off a hunt for what is causing the noise in the spacecraft that has been dogged with helium leaks and propulsion issues and is now set to return on autopilot to a landing point in New Mexico, without Wilmore and Williams, on 6 September after Nasa decided it was too risky for astronauts to fly in.

The pair are now slated to return to Earth in a capsule built by Boeing competitor Space X, in February. In order to get Wilmore and Williams down, two Nasa astronauts set to join the international space station will be left behind from a mission later this month.

The source of the pulsing noise coming from Boeing spacecraft is believed to have come from a speaker feedback loop between the space station and Starliner.

But during the search for the audio culprit, Wilmore asked Houston flight controllers to see if they could listen but ultimately Wilmore, apparently floating in Starliner, had to put his microphone up to the speaker.

“Alright Butch, that one came through,” Mission control radioed Wilmore. “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.” Wilmore radioed back: “I’ll let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on … Call us if you figure it out.”

The strange ping was captured and shared by a Michigan-based meteorologist named Rob Dale and was first reported by Ars Technica. According to the outlet, audio oddities in spacecraft are not unusual. In 2003, Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei said he heard what sounded like an iron bucket being struck by a wooden hammer.

Nasa astronaut Butch Wilmore has reported a “strange noise” coming from the stricken Boeing Starliner space capsule whose problems have left him and colleague Suni Williams stuck in orbit for six months longer than they anticipated when they blasted off from earth in June.

Wilmore radioed mission control in Houston on Saturday to report a pulsing sound from a speaker inside the capsule. “I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore said. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don’t know what’s making it.”

That set off a hunt for what is causing the noise in the spacecraft that has been dogged with helium leaks and propulsion issues and is now set to return on autopilot to a landing point in New Mexico, without Wilmore and Williams, on 6 September after Nasa decided it was too risky for astronauts to fly in.

The pair are now slated to return to Earth in a capsule built by Boeing competitor Space X, in February. In order to get Wilmore and Williams down, two Nasa astronauts set to join the international space station will be left behind from a mission later this month.

The source of the pulsing noise coming from Boeing spacecraft is believed to have come from a speaker feedback loop between the space station and Starliner.

But during the search for the audio culprit, Wilmore asked Houston flight controllers to see if they could listen but ultimately Wilmore, apparently floating in Starliner, had to put his microphone up to the speaker.

“Alright Butch, that one came through,” Mission control radioed Wilmore. “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.” Wilmore radioed back: “I’ll let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on … Call us if you figure it out.”

The strange ping was captured and shared by a Michigan-based meteorologist named Rob Dale and was first reported by Ars Technica. According to the outlet, audio oddities in spacecraft are not unusual. In 2003, Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei said he heard what sounded like an iron bucket being struck by a wooden hammer.

Companies criticised by the Grenfell Tower inquiry are facing calls to be banned from public contracts as it emerged that about £250m in deals have been made in the past five years with corporations involved in the high-rise’s refurbishment.

A leading member of Grenfell United, which represents bereaved family members and survivors of the tower’s 2017 fire, said companies found to have been to blame should no longer receive public contracts.

Searches of public contracts by the outsourcing data firm Tussell for the Guardian found numerous deals between councils, health authorities and housing associations and the companies that were involved in the disastrous refurbishment as well as their subsidiaries.

They include companies currently or formerly owned by Saint-Gobain, which made the combustible Celotex insulation used on the tower, and Rydon, the main contractor for the works.

Speaking before Wednesday’s publication of the final public inquiry report on causes of the 2017 fire, Karim Mussilhy of Grenfell United said: “If we see that these companies behaved fraudulently and manipulated the system, it’s not unreasonable to remove them from any public contracts and frameworks in the UK.”

Mussilhy’s uncle, Hesham Rahman, was among 15 disabled people who died in the fire. Rahman had been allocated a 23rd-floor flat, could not use the stairs, and no fire crews were able to reach him.

Rahman, 57, was trapped by dense smoke that penetrated his flat while he lay on his living room floor holding a wet cloth over his nose, the inquiry heard.

Joe Powell, the Labour MP for Kensington and Bayswater, which includes Grenfell Tower, said that if he were in the government’s position he would suspend the ability of Rydon and Saint-Gobain to bid for public contracts “until they are able to properly account for what went wrong, and that includes properly contributing financially to solving the building safety crisis”.

He added: “I would absolutely not want to see anybody working with Arconic [the US firm that made the combustible panels that were the main cause of fire spread], and I think they should be held accountable, both through the Met [police] investigation and in this [inquiry] report, and they should be contributing to paying to solve the building safety crisis.”

Members of the Grenfell community believe Wednesday’s report should increase the likelihood of criminal prosecutions and will end what the counsel to the inquiry, Richard Millett KC, described as a “merry-go-round of buck-passing” by companies and public authorities.

A cross-party parliamentary housing group said it would rethink a sponsorship deal with Saint-Gobain.

The all-party parliamentary group on healthy homes and buildings includes members from the Labour and Conservative benches. Approached about the arrangement with Saint-Gobain by the Guardian, Jim Shannon, the group’s chair and Democratic Unionist party MP, said it would “reconsider” the deal.

The first phase of the inquiry found that the insulation contributed to the blaze and released toxic gas. “We want to ensure the wishes of those who lost loved ones are fully taken into account,” Shannon said.

The pressure for consequences for the companies involved comes amid anxiety among bereaved and survivors that any criminal trials are probably about three years away.

The inquiry has cost public authorities well over £200m, largely in legal fees, and there is frustration at the continued commercial success of several of the businesses involved.

Kingspan, which made a small amount of the insulation and was accused in the inquiry of “misleading the market about the safety and compliance” of its foam insulation on tall buildings, has achieved rising pre-tax profits in the years since the disaster, hitting €794m last year.

Arconic made a pre-tax profit of $706m in 2022.

By contrast, Studio E, the architecture practice involved in the refurbishment design, went into liquidation in 2020 and Rydon Group made a £15m pre-tax loss over the last two years as it paid millions to fix fire safety issues on other projects.

The bill for running the public inquiry has reached £173m, while the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the London fire brigade spent a further £15m each on their participation.

The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, which managed the block, racked up £6m in inquiry costs. Further millions spent on lawyers by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Home Office have yet to be disclosed.

Grenfell United has joined with the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group and families involved in the infected blood inquiry to call for a national oversight mechanism to ensure that recommendations that emerge from costly public inquiries are not ignored.

Powell said it was a good idea to have “a system that means future governments will also have to properly account for implementation”.

In a statement, Celotex said it and Saint-Gobain wished to “reaffirm their deepest sympathies to everyone affected by the devastating tragedy at Grenfell Tower”.

“Through the inquiry process and the internal review conducted, Celotex Limited has sought to understand and learn from the issues raised by the fire,” it said. “Independent safety tests commissioned after the review showed the system described in Celotex RS5000 marketing literature met relevant safety criteria.

“Celotex Limited does not design or install cladding systems and did not do so at Grenfell Tower. The design, construction and component selection for the Grenfell Tower facade were decisions made by construction industry professionals.”

A spokesperson for Arconic said: “The fire was a terrible tragedy and as Arconic remembers the 72 people who died, our thoughts remain with the families, friends and all of those affected.

“Arconic Architectural Products SAS [a subsidiary of Arconic that supplied the sheets of aluminium composite cladding] was a core participant in the inquiry and has acknowledged its role as one of the material suppliers involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower. The company respects the inquiry process.

“AAP cooperated fully with the work of the inquiry and will continue to engage with further legal processes. Together with other parties, AAP has made financial contributions to settlements for those affected, as well as to the restorative justice fund.”

Rydon was also contacted for comment.

Two US military service members were “physically attacked” in the port city of Izmir in western Turkey on Monday by members of an anti-American youth group, authorities said.

Fifteen suspected assailants were detained in the attack on the two service members, who were dressed in civilian clothing at the time of the incident. Five other US service members joined in the incident after seeing the violent encounter, officials said.

Those detained were members of the Turkey Youth Union (TGB), a youth offshoot of the nationalist opposition Vatan Party. Police intervened in the incident and authorities are conducting an investigation, officials said.

“We can confirm reports that US service members embarked aboard the USS Wasp were the victims of an assault in İzmir today, and are now safe,” the US embassy to Turkey said on X. “We thank Turkish authorities for their rapid response and ongoing investigation.”

An apparent TGB social media account posted a video on X that purported to show a group of men holding a US soldier and placing a white hood over his head.

“No one will be able to respond to the cries for help from U.S. soldiers. Your hands are stained with the blood of our brave soldiers and thousands of Palestinians,” @YouthUnionTR said in its X missive.

TGB posted a video on X in November 2021 where members boasted about putting a sack on a US soldier. “YANKEE GO HOME!” TGB said in a caption on the post.

The US embassy in Ankara said earlier Monday that the Wasp was on a port visit to Izmir, a coastal town. The ship arrived on Sunday following joint training with Turkish military ships in the Mediterranean.

The US has ramped up its military presence in the Middle East as the Israel-Gaza war continues. An aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, and its strike group are presently operating in the region’s waters of US Central Command, according to Navy Times.

• Reuters contributed to this report

Indigenous activists and lawyers in Brazil have voiced shock and dismay after the federal police chief leading the investigation into the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips was unexpectedly removed from the case.

Francisco Badenes, an experienced investigator, had been running the inquiry into the 2022 deaths of the Brazilian Indigenous expert and the British journalist since the second half of that year.

Pereira and Phillips were ambushed and killed near the Amazon town of Atalaia do Norte while returning from a reporting trip to the entrance of one of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territories.

Badenes was also responsible for investigating the 2019 murder of Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, an officer from the Indigenous protection agency Funai who had worked with Pereira and was killed in the nearby border city Tabatinga.

Late last month, for reasons that remain unclear, the Brasília-based investigator was taken off both cases, as well as a third scrutinising a 2020 massacre allegedly perpetrated by military police officers in another part of the Amazon.

Eliesio Marubo, a lawyer for Univaja, the Indigenous association where Pereira worked, said removing Badenes from those cases was “a big step backwards”. He feared it would hinder police investigations and efforts to combat the organised crime network suspected of committing those crimes and others.

“This is prejudicial [to the inquiry] … There needs to be a public interest justification for changing him – and I don’t see any kind of public interest justification here,” said Marubo, who was Pereira’s friend.

Thais Rego Monteiro, a lawyer who represents Santos’s family, said they were “dismayed, saddened and disheartened” by reports that Badenes – who has spent much of the last 30 years investigating murders and death squads – had been removed.

Monteiro, who did not know the reasons for the change, called Badenes a diligent, skilful and efficient investigator who had made significant breakthroughs in the Santos case after years of inaction. “[Relatives] feel downcast and really troubled at this change,” Monteiro said, calling it “an impediment to the advance and the conclusion of this investigation”.

The federal police declined to make an official comment on the changes. However, a federal police source confirmed a new investigator would take charge of the three inquiries and said they hoped the change would speed up the investigations into the murders of Phillips, Pereira and Santos.

In a statement, Univaja voiced “deep concern” over the situation and said there was “intense suspicion” over the unexplained move. The group, which is based in Atalaia do Norte, has asked the justice ministry for an urgent clarification.

Pereira and Phillips were killed while journeying along the Itaquaí River early on 5 June 2022. They had been visiting Indigenous patrol teams. These are trying to protect the Javari valley Indigenous territory, a vast expanse of rainforest reputedly containing the world’s largest concentration of isolated peoples.

The alleged murderers – a trio of fishers called Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, Oseney da Costa de Oliveira and Jeferson da Silva Lima (also known as Pelado da Dinha) – are being held in custody in high-security prisons and are expected to face trial next year. They are suspected of committing the crime on behalf of Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, whom police have accused of running a transnational illegal fishing network that preys on those protected Indigenous lands. Villar has also been arrested and charged.

Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira and Jeferson da Silva Lima confessed to the murders in the days after Pereira and Phillips disappeared but later claimed they had acted in “self-defence” after being shot at by the Indigenous expert. Their co-accused have denied involvement in the crime.

However, Indigenous activists suspect an even bigger conspiracy could lie behind the killings of Phillips, Pereira and Santos and say criminal groups continue to operate in the remote region where they were murdered.

Marubo, who hoped Badenes would be reinstated, said he feared replacing the investigator would hamper efforts to catch the criminals responsible for the murders and for illegal poaching, drug trafficking and mining in the Javari.

“This will really make the investigation take a different course to the course that we believe will lead to the true culprits – not just for the murders of Bruno and Dom, but Maxciel too,” he said.

The Cure keyboardist Roger O’Donnell has revealed he has been diagnosed with “a very rare and aggressive form of lymphoma”.

The musician shared his diagnosis on social media in time with Blood Cancer Awareness Month, which falls in September, a year after he was first diagnosed.

O’Donnell, who joined the Cure in 1987, advised his fans to get tested.

“Cancer CAN be beaten but if you are diagnosed early enough you stand a way better chance, so all I have to say is go GET TESTED, if you have the faintest thought you may have symptoms go and get checked out,” O’Donnell wrote.

“I’m fine and the prognosis is amazing. The mad axe murderer knocked on the door and we didn’t answer.”

He said he had “ignored the symptoms for a few months” and when he went for a biopsy, the result had been “devastating”.

“I’ve now completed 11 months of treatment under some of the finest specialists in the world and with second opinions and advice from the teams that had developed the drugs I was being given,” he said. “I had the benefit of the latest sci-fi immunotherapy and some drugs that were first used 100 years ago. The last phase of treatment was radiotherapy which also was one of the first treatments developed against cancer.”

He ended by thanking his doctors, friends and family, adding: “If you know someone who is ill or suffering talk to them, every single word helps, believe me I know.”

While lymphoma symptoms vary, common symptoms can include fever, swollen lymph nodes, night sweats, fatigue, itchy skin, loss of appetite, bruising or bleeding easily, unexplained weight loss, and pain in the chest, abdomen or bones.

O’Donnell joined the Cure in 1987 as a touring keyboardist to step in for Lol Tolhurst, who had become unreliable due to alcohol abuse. He had previously performed with the band’s then drummer Boris Williams as a touring musician for Thompson Twins, and also performed with Berlin and the Psychedelic Furs.

O’Donnell became an official member of the Cure later that year, but left in 1990 over disagreements with his bandmates. He rejoined in 1995, left again in 2005, and rejoined in 2011. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Cure in 2019.

In November, O’Donnell pulled out of the band’s Latin American tour for unspecified “health reasons”.