An American woman has died after witnesses said she was shot by Israeli soldiers while taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old born in Turkey, was a volunteer with the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement. She died in hospital on Friday after being shot in the head during a regular protest in Beita near Nablus, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Witnesses at the scene said she was shot by members of the Israel Defense Forces positioned in a nearby field. The IDF has said it is investigating the report. The US state department is “urgently” gathering more information about Eygi’s “tragic” death, its spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said, without immediately assigning responsibility.

The White House said in a statement it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and seeking an Israeli investigation.

A paramedic, Fayez Abdul Jabbar, told Al-Quds News Network: “We usually have weekly confrontations at Jabal Sabeeh. During these confrontations, the army fired two live bullets: one hit a foreigner, and the other hit another person, whose injury is less severe.” Eygi was treated in the car on the way to hospital, he added. Fouad Nafaa, the head of the Rafidia hospital in Nablus, said doctors tried to resuscitate her but the patient died on the operating table.

The rise in violent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank has caused growing anger among Western allies of Israel, including the United States, which has imposed sanctions on a number of individuals.

Friday’s incident comes a few weeks after around 100 settlers attacked the village of Jit, in the northern West Bank, drawing worldwide condemnation and a promise from the government of swift action against anyone found guilty of violence.

Palestinians and rights groups regularly accuse Israeli forces of standing by as attacks take place and even joining in themselves.

The UK’s decision to suspend some arms exports to Israel has bolstered the case for Congress to follow the example of the US’s ally, American campaigners for a ban on arms sales to Israel have said.

The campaigners are pressing the Senate and the House to pass a joint resolution of disapproval blocking authorisation for an unprecedented $20bn (£15.2bn) weapons sale. The massive transfer was notified to Congress last month when it was in recess.

The US state department has said the UK decision to suspend arms sales has no bearing on US policy since the two countries have separate arms exports control regimes. The degree of private anger with the US over the UK decision is contested, but one UK Foreign Office source said it was comparable to the US anger when David Cameron as foreign secretary said Israel should not have veto power on recognising Palestinian statehood.

The Biden administration’s anger is likely to rise if the UK decision becomes a potent talking point in the domestic US debates on suspension of arms sales.

Annie Shiel, the US advocacy director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, said both regimes were designed to implement international humanitarian law. “It is critical that the US considers the fact that one of its closest allies has found there is a clear risk that this equipment could be used to commit serious violations of international law,” she said.

“That risk speaks directly to US foreign policy since that policy prohibits the US from transferring arms when it finds ‘it is more likely than not’ that the arms could be used to commit serious violations of international law. That is the standard that the UK government clearly feels has been met, and that means that the US government is flagrantly ignoring the law.”

Amanda Klasing, the advocacy director of Amnesty International USA, said the tightly confined context in which Palestinians lived in Gaza meant the risk of a violation of proportionality and distinction central to humanitarian law was difficult to avoid. “It means there really is no question left for lawyers and that is where the UK lawyers have ended up,” she said.

Citing the use of 2,000lb bombs in densely populated areas, she said: “There are specific weapons in which there is just no feasible way to comply with international law. What the UK tells us, what the context tells us, is that at some point the lawyers are going to raise the real significant risks associated with the US continuing to transfer weapons.”

The campaigners hope the UK example will embolden more members of Congress to challenge the US policy, and at minimum want to attract support from many of the 50 representatives who called for the supply of weapons to be curtailed if Israel went ahead with a major invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza.

In the Senate only one senator is required to put the issue to a vote, but the procedure is more complex in Congress. A vote would be required by the final full week of September. The pressure would also be unwelcome to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign as it seeks to sidestep a divisive issue inside the Democrats.

The arms order includes $18.8bn worth of F-15 fighter jets, $774m of 120mm tank shells, medium-sized tactical vehicles totalling $583m, and $262m of joint direct attack munitions.

Josh Ruebner, the policy director at the US non-profit Institute for Middle East Understanding, said it was nonsensical to the point of “defying rational discussion” for the Biden administration “to urge Israel to accept a ceasefire and yet provide more weapons to commit this disgusting level of violence”.

He said polling by YouGov in the three swing states of Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia commissioned by IMEU broadly showed that for every voter lost to the Democrats due to a ban on arms sales, the Democrats would pick up seven extra votes.

The daughter of a French man on trial for enlisting strangers to rape his drugged wife has described him as probably “one of the worst sexual criminals in the past 20 years”.

Dominique Pélicot, a 71-year-old retiree, has admitted to abusing his wife without her knowledge between 2011 and 2020, drugging her with sleeping pills and then recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her in her own home.

“How are we supposed to rebuild ourselves when we know” what he did, said his daughter, 45-year-old Caroline Darian, who uses a pen name, speaking in court in the southern city of Avignon on the fifth day of a case that has horrified France.

Pélicot kept meticulous records of the abuse of his wife, which police discovered only by chance after he was caught filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket.

For years, his wife, Gisèle Pélicot, now aged 71 and with whom he is undergoing divorce proceedings, says she was troubled by strange memory lapses until she was contacted by police.

Speaking to the court on Friday morning, Darian recounted learning of the alleged abuse on 2 November 2020 from her mother after she had spoken to investigators.

“My life was literally turned upside down,” Darian said. “My mother said: ‘I spent most of the day at the police station. Your father drugged me to rape me with strangers. I was made to look at the photos.’

“It was what you call a tipping point, the start of a slow descent into hell where you have no idea how low you will sink,” she said, breaking down into tears. I called my brothers … We didn’t know what was happening to us.”

Darian had left the room in tears on Tuesday less than 20 minutes into the second day of the trial, as the presiding judge recounted how naked photomontages of her had also been found on Dominique Pélicot’s computer in a folder titled “Around my daughter, naked”.

Darian in 2022 wrote a book called Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler papa (“And I stopped calling you dad”) about the effect the discovery of the crimes had on the family.

Gisèle Pélicot has requested the trial of her husband be public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse. The case has shaken France, with many commenting and some even circulating purported lists of the accused online.

Gisèle Pélicot and her family through their lawyers on Friday thanked members of the public for their support but called for “the utmost restraint on social media” during the court case.

“Our clients understand perfectly that this case is a tragedy for all families,” including those of the defendants, said one of them, Antoine Camus.

Paul-Roger Gontard, the lawyer of two of the accused, praised the move as protecting the families of his clients and other suspects who could be found innocent.

At least one person has set up a crowdfunding campaign for the family.

Gisèle Pélicot “does not wish for any crowdfunding campaigns to be launched and requests any already existing be ended”, her attorneys, Camus and Stéphane Babonneau, also wrote in a statement.

The investigators counted about 200 instances of rape, most of them by Gisèle Pélicot’s husband and more than 90 by strangers. They drew up a list of 72 suspects besides the husband, and have so far managed to identify 50 of them, aged between 26 and 74, all on trial.

Gisèle Pélicot said on Thursday she had recognised only one of her alleged rapists, a man who had come to discuss cycling with her husband at their home, and whom he later used to greet at the bakery.

Most of the suspects face up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape if convicted.

Eighteen of the 51 accused are in custody, including Dominique Pélicot. Thirty-two other defendants are attending the trial as free men. The last is being tried in absentia.

The trial is to last until 20 December.

The Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes, who brought bossa nova to an international audience in the 1960s with his band Brasil ’66, has died aged 83 as a result of health challenges related to long-term Covid.

In a statement, Mendes’s family said that he “passed away peacefully” in his home town of Los Angeles. “His wife and musical partner for the past 54 years, Gracinha Leporace Mendes, was by his side, as were his loving children. Mendes last performed in November 2023 to sold out and wildly enthusiastic houses in Paris, London and Barcelona,” they said. “For the last several months, his health had been challenged by the effects of long term Covid.”

Born in Niterói on 11 February 1941, Mendes studied classical piano as a child. His father was a doctor, and encouraged Mendes to follow in his footsteps, but shifted view after seeing Mendes’s burgeoning interest in and talent for jazz. “When he saw me play and saw that I was doing well with bands, he’d kind of lay back and let me do my thing,” Mendes recalled in a 2005 interview.

Mendes began his musical career as a teenager in the late 1950s, playing in Rio nightclubs just as bossa nova was becoming an international sensation. Mentored by bossa nova pioneer Antônio Carlos Jobim, Mendes formed the band Sexteto Bossa Rio and released his instrumental debut album Dance Moderno in 1961. Mendes became a sought-after collaborator for American musicians, including Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Mann, with whom he recorded in the early 1960s.

In 1964, Mendes moved to Los Angeles, signed with Capitol Records, and formed the band Brasil ‘65. After releasing two albums that met with low sales, the group recruited two American singers, Lani Hall and Bibi Vogel, to sing in English, and renamed themselves Brasil ‘66. Produced by Herb Alpert, the album went platinum thanks in part to the success of single Mas que Nada, which he would re-record in 2006 with the Black Eyed Peas.

In 1968, Mendes reached a wider audience when he performed The Look of Love on the televised Academy Awards broadcast, and Brasil ‘66’s version of the song hit the US Top 10. It made Mendes a star who would perform for presidents and at the Japan World Expo in 1970, and an international ambassador for bossa nova. “You can relate to it in an organic way,” he said of the genre in 2005. “It makes you dream and it makes you feel good. It’s very rhythmical so you can dance to it, and it has haunting melodies that you take to bed with you, so you can hum and whistle them.”

Mendes continued recording throughout the 1970s and 80s, achieving another #4 hit in 1983 with his adult contemporary take on the Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil song Never Gonna Let You Go. In 2006, Mendes released the comeback album Timeless, produced by the Black Eyed Peas’s will.i.am. The album, featuring guest appearances from Erykah Badu, Q-Tip, Common, Stevie Wonder and Justin Timberlake, reflected the many underground rap records that sampled Mendes’s music.

Mendes helped produce music for the animated films Rio and Rio 2, and was nominated for an Oscar for best original song in 2012 for Real in Rio. He also won a Grammy for best world album for Brasileiro in 1992. Mendes kept performing until last year, and his most recent album, In the Key of Joy, was released in 2019.

He is survived by his wife, Leporace, and five children.

The first donation of mpox vaccines arrived in Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday, but officials say millions more doses will be needed.

The announcement came amid warnings that the geographical spread of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, was increasing, and swift action was needed across the continent to contain the outbreak.

Almost 100,000 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine were delivered to the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, as part of a European Union donation programme, with another 100,000 expected on Saturday.

Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the regional health authority, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), emphasised the need to curb the spread of the disease to neighbouring countries.

“The outbreak is really moving [fast],” said Kaseya. “We really need to stop it really quickly.”

Almost 25,000 cases of mpox have been reported across Africa this year, with 5,549 confirmed by testing, and 643 deaths, according to Africa CDC. Cases are up 104% compared with last year.

The DRC still accounts for the majority of cases, but Kaseya said numbers were rising elsewhere. He said he was “really concerned” by a reported case of mpox in a seven-year-old child in Guinea, which potentially represents the first case of the new clade Ib variant detected in west Africa. Sequencing tests are still in progress.

Clade Ib is a mutated form of the virus, newly detected in eastern DRC, which appears to be spreading via close contact between people and driving the large jump in case numbers.

The outbreak, which has spread to nearby countries, has been declared a public health emergency by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and African health officials. A response plan is estimated to require almost $600m (£455m) over the next six months, officials said.

About 380,000 doses of mpox vaccines have been pledged by western partners including the EU and US, according to Africa CDC. However, they said 3m doses would be needed to end outbreaks of the virus in the country.

Vaccination programmes are expected to focus on contacts of suspected cases as well as healthcare and frontline workers in areas with active transmission.

However, the programme is unlikely to get under way until October at the earliest, with local healthcare and logistical workers still being trained on how to store and administer the vaccine. A large public information campaign is also being rolled out to improve awareness of mpox and tackle vaccine hesitancy.

Most cases in the DRC are among children. Regulators are assessing information submitted by Bavarian Nordic that could see the vaccine authorised for 12 to 17-year-olds by the end of the month, but approval for younger children will take longer.

There are concerns about the affordability of vaccines for a wider programme, with the WHO putting the cost at $50 to $75 a dose.

“Most vaccines cost around £1 or less,” said Dr Andrew Hill, of Liverpool University. “If there are large orders for millions of vaccine doses for Africa, Bavarian Nordic should lower their prices. Otherwise, they should allow a generic company to mass produce their vaccine for a low price.”

A Bavarian Nordic spokesperson said: “While we are proud that our mpox vaccine has arrived to help people in Africa, it remains a concern for Bavarian Nordic that artificial prices are being mentioned, as there exists no published dose price range. And we have not started to discuss prices with relevant organisations.”

The company had previously suggested it would be open to a tiered pricing model, in which countries with fewer resources or those able to place larger, longer-term orders paid less.

Within the DRC, clade Ib was reported in Kinshasa for the first time this week. In a case report about one patient, Dr Eddy Lusamaki, of the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, wrote that it suggested the variant was spreading across the country.

Lusamaki said: “Its presence in Kinshasa, the capital city, with multiple international connections by air traffic and multiple exchanges with Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, illustrated the need for improved surveillance strategies to control the spread of the disease.”

Cases of the clade Ib variant were also reported in Thailand and Sweden last month.

The first donation of mpox vaccines arrived in Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday, but officials say millions more doses will be needed.

The announcement came amid warnings that the geographical spread of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, was increasing, and swift action was needed across the continent to contain the outbreak.

Almost 100,000 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine were delivered to the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, as part of a European Union donation programme, with another 100,000 expected on Saturday.

Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the regional health authority, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), emphasised the need to curb the spread of the disease to neighbouring countries.

“The outbreak is really moving [fast],” said Kaseya. “We really need to stop it really quickly.”

Almost 25,000 cases of mpox have been reported across Africa this year, with 5,549 confirmed by testing, and 643 deaths, according to Africa CDC. Cases are up 104% compared with last year.

The DRC still accounts for the majority of cases, but Kaseya said numbers were rising elsewhere. He said he was “really concerned” by a reported case of mpox in a seven-year-old child in Guinea, which potentially represents the first case of the new clade Ib variant detected in west Africa. Sequencing tests are still in progress.

Clade Ib is a mutated form of the virus, newly detected in eastern DRC, which appears to be spreading via close contact between people and driving the large jump in case numbers.

The outbreak, which has spread to nearby countries, has been declared a public health emergency by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and African health officials. A response plan is estimated to require almost $600m (£455m) over the next six months, officials said.

About 380,000 doses of mpox vaccines have been pledged by western partners including the EU and US, according to Africa CDC. However, they said 3m doses would be needed to end outbreaks of the virus in the country.

Vaccination programmes are expected to focus on contacts of suspected cases as well as healthcare and frontline workers in areas with active transmission.

However, the programme is unlikely to get under way until October at the earliest, with local healthcare and logistical workers still being trained on how to store and administer the vaccine. A large public information campaign is also being rolled out to improve awareness of mpox and tackle vaccine hesitancy.

Most cases in the DRC are among children. Regulators are assessing information submitted by Bavarian Nordic that could see the vaccine authorised for 12 to 17-year-olds by the end of the month, but approval for younger children will take longer.

There are concerns about the affordability of vaccines for a wider programme, with the WHO putting the cost at $50 to $75 a dose.

“Most vaccines cost around £1 or less,” said Dr Andrew Hill, of Liverpool University. “If there are large orders for millions of vaccine doses for Africa, Bavarian Nordic should lower their prices. Otherwise, they should allow a generic company to mass produce their vaccine for a low price.”

A Bavarian Nordic spokesperson said: “While we are proud that our mpox vaccine has arrived to help people in Africa, it remains a concern for Bavarian Nordic that artificial prices are being mentioned, as there exists no published dose price range. And we have not started to discuss prices with relevant organisations.”

The company had previously suggested it would be open to a tiered pricing model, in which countries with fewer resources or those able to place larger, longer-term orders paid less.

Within the DRC, clade Ib was reported in Kinshasa for the first time this week. In a case report about one patient, Dr Eddy Lusamaki, of the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, wrote that it suggested the variant was spreading across the country.

Lusamaki said: “Its presence in Kinshasa, the capital city, with multiple international connections by air traffic and multiple exchanges with Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, illustrated the need for improved surveillance strategies to control the spread of the disease.”

Cases of the clade Ib variant were also reported in Thailand and Sweden last month.

Summer 2024 sweltered to Earth’s hottest on record, making it even more likely that this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported on Friday.

And if this sounds familiar, that’s because the records the globe shattered were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Niño, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.

The northern meteorological summer – June, July and August – averaged 16.8C (62.24F), according to Copernicus. That’s 0.03C (0.05F) warmer than the old record in 2023.

Copernicus records go back to 1940, but American, British and Japanese records, which start in the mid-19th century, show the last decade has been the hottest since regular measurements were taken and probably in about 120,000 years, according to some scientists.

The Augusts of both 2024 and 2023 tied for the hottest Augusts globally at 16.82C. July was the first time in more than a year that the world did not set a record, a tad behind 2023, but because June 2024 was so much hotter than June 2023, this summer as a whole was the hottest, the Copernicus director, Carlo Buontempo, said.

“What those sober numbers indicate is how the climate crisis is tightening its grip on us,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, who was not part of the research.

It’s a sweaty grip because with the high temperatures, the dew point – one of several ways to measure the air’s humidity – probably was at or near record high this summer for much of the world, Buontempo said.

Until last month Buontempo, like some other climate scientists, was on the fence over whether 2024 would smash the hottest year record set last year, mostly because August 2023 was so enormously hotter than average. But then this August 2024 matched 2023, making Buontempo “pretty certain” that this year will end up hottest on record.

“In order for 2024 not to become the warmest on record, we need to see very significant landscape cooling for the remaining few months, which doesn’t look likely at this stage,” Buontempo said.

With a forecasted La Niña – a temporary natural cooling of parts of the central Pacific – the last four months of the year may no longer be record-setters like most of the past year and a half. But it is probably not cool enough to keep 2024 from breaking the annual record, Buontempo said.

These are not just numbers in a record book, but weather that hurts people, climate scientists said.

“This all translates to more misery around the world as places like Phoenix start to feel like a barbecue locked on high for longer and longer stretches of the year,” said the University of Michigan environment dean and climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck.

The Arizona city has had more than 100 days of 100F weather this year. “With longer and more severe heatwaves come more severe droughts in some places, and more intense rains and flooding in others. Climate change is becoming too obvious, and too costly, to ignore.”

Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Cape Cod, said there had been a deluge of extreme weather of heat, floods, wildfires and high winds that are violent and dangerous.

“Like people living in a war zone with the constant thumping of bombs and clatter of guns, we are becoming deaf to what should be alarm bells and air-raid sirens,” Francis said in an email.

While a portion of last year’s record heat was driven by an El Niño – a temporary natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide – that effect is gone, and it shows the main driver is long-term human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Buontempo said.

“It’s really not surprising that we see this, this heatwave, that we see these temperature extremes,” Buontempo said. “We are bound to see more.”

Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on the west on Friday to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles deep inside Russia and complained that a lack of supplies and cooperation prevented them being used effectively where they were permitted.

The Ukrainian president flew to Germany to lobby western defence leaders amid growing concern in Kyiv that assistance from key allies – the US, UK and France – is deteriorating, as the war approaches a third winter.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed to be able to threaten targets inside Russia’s internationally recognised borders with Anglo-French Storm Shadow/Scalp cruise missiles and US Atacms ballistic missiles to try to persuade the Kremlin to begin peace talks.

But he went further, and appeared to suggest that it was even becoming difficult in practice to strike Russian targets on occupied Ukrainian territory, which has been permitted by supplying countries for months.

“Now we hear that your long-range policy has not changed, but we see changes in the Atacms, Storm Shadows and Scalps – a shortage of missiles and cooperation,” Zelenskiy said on Friday at the start of a day-long summit of western defence ministers at Ramstein airbase in Germany.

“And this applies even to our territory, which is occupied by Russia, including Crimea. We think it is wrong that there are such steps. We need to have this long-range capability not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” he said.

Ukraine has been pressing for months to be allowed to use the two types of missile, which both have a range of at least 190 miles, to strike military targets well inside Russian territory.

At the meeting on Friday, multiple countries seemed to be persuaded that Ukraine should get the green light, which could add pressure on the US.

“Many countries are in favour,” said Laurynas Kasčiūnas, Lithuania’s defence minister. “Many, many. But the question is not the number of countries, but countries who give [those] missiles.” By announcing Lithuania’s support, Kasčiūnas said, he hoped to help convince other countries.

Canada’s defence minister, Bill Blair, said he hoped other western allies also got behind the push. Canada did not have long-range munitions it could provide on its own, he said.

There have been complaints from Ukraine – until now behind the scenes – that cooperation with the UK, in particular, has worsened, preventing the use of Storm Shadow in Crimea. British ministers and officials say this is not the case, and one senior source said there had “been definitely no change” on the permitted use of the missiles.

The UK announced at the meeting it would send an extra 650 air defence missiles to Ukraine at a cost of £162m.

Kyiv argues that it is locked in an unfair fight, in which Russia can bomb military and civilian sites anywhere inside Ukraine, while its own western allies do not allow it to strike back at airfields, military bases and significant infrastructure targets.

This week a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Poltava hit a military training institute, killing at least 51 people. A rare attack on the western city of Lviv killed seven, including four members of one family.

Last month, a senior Ukrainian official called on the west to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow in a “demonstration strike” on a target near Moscow, in hope that the threat of war spreading to the Russian heartlands could persuade the Kremlin to consider peace negotiations.

However, led by the White House, western countries including the UK and France have been reluctant to loosen restrictions on the use of the missiles, partly for fear that Moscow could consider it escalatory.

Ukraine says concerns about a Russian threat to the west are exaggerated, and that it has obtained and used other weapons, such as Leopard tanks and F-16 fighters, without triggering a wider crisis with Moscow.

Zelenskiy also argued that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, would only respond to a show of Ukrainian strength, and would otherwise continue to try to make further territorial conquests in the eastern Donbas region.

“It is Putin who doesn’t want peace,” Zelenskiy said. “He is obsessed with territorial conquests. He wants our cities or the ruins that remain of them. And that is why we need strength. We need to force Russia to seek peace. We need to make Russian cities and even Russian soldiers think about what they need – peace or Putin?”

Shortly after his speech, the Ramstein meeting went into private session, allowing Zelenskiy to personally address ministers led by Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary. Also present was Austin’s British counterpart, John Healey.

Ukraine’s overall military situation remains difficult, with Russia advancing towards the strategic town of Pokrovsk at the heart of the Donbas front. Last month, Kyiv tried to hit back by launching a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, and it now holds 1,300 sq km of territory, Zelenskiy said.

Austin, speaking immediately after Zelenskiy, thanked the Ukrainian president. “We hear your urgency. And we share it,” he said at the close of the public session. The US, he added, would unveil details of a further $250m military aid package for Ukraine later on Friday, and was working to help design and build a replacement for the Soviet standard S-300 air defence system.

Pentagon officials also confirmed that the US was considering whether to supply JASSM cruise missiles, which have a range of at least 230 miles. The air-launched JASSM can be carried by F-16s, now being used by Ukraine’s air force.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said there had been no change in the UK’s position on Storm Shadow or other weapons supplied to Kyiv. “We are clear that equipment provided by the UK is intended for the defence of Ukraine,” it said.

America’s ideological split over gun control has spilled over into the presidential campaign after JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, voiced regret that school shootings had “become a fact of life” in the US.

Vance’s comments – in the wake of the latest deadly shooting, at Apalachee high school in Georgia – ignited a political row after Democrats depicted them as evidence of a lack of empathy while Republicans claimed the remarks had been taken out of context.

Vance called for more security measures in schools without mentioning gun control, while Democrats including Kamala Harris and the US president, Joe Biden, want a ban on assault-style rifles, more background checks and other gun safety action.

Asked about the Georgia shooting while speaking at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday evening, Vance said: “I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realise that our schools are soft targets.”

The boy who is charged in the Georgia school shooting is 14 years old.

Vance continued: “We’ve got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door … and wants to kill a bunch of children – they’re not able to. As a parent, do I want my kids’ school to have additional security? No, of course I don’t. But that is increasingly the reality that we live in.”

The remarks, which were prefaced by an attack on the pro-gun control stance of Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in this November’s election, were immediately seized on by the Harris campaign.

“School shootings are not just a fact of life,” the Democratic nominee posted on X (formerly Twitter), linking to footage of Vance’s comments.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children – and we will.”

Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, had accused Harris of wanting to “take law-abiding citizens’ guns away from them”.

Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly polarised on gun control, with one party standing on the issue of gun owners’ rights and the other identifying with efforts to bring stricter controls.

But the row between the two presidential tickets was overshadowed by Republican anger at the Associated Press, which had been accused of misrepresenting Vance’s comments in a post on X.

“JD VANCE says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security,” read the post. It was subsequently taken down and replaced with a more nuanced version providing greater explanation.

“JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and says the US needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia,” the second iteration read. A second follow-up post said: “This post replaces an earlier post that was deleted to add context to the partial quote from Vance.”

The posts were greeted with derision on X, with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, writing: “AP stand for Associated Propaganda.”

Trump, responding to a question on the Georgia shootings at a Fox News town hall meeting from the Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday, said: “It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we’re going to make it better, and we’re going to heal our world.”

The former president has been accused of showing a lack of sympathy after previous shooting episodes. In response to a deadly assault in Perry, Iowa, last January that killed three people, he said: “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it – we have to move forward.”

A 14-year-old suspect, Colt Gray, is in police custody and is expected to be tried on four counts of murder over Wednesday’s shooting in Georgia, which left two pupils and two teachers dead. The authorities have pressed second-degree murder charges against his father, Colin Gray, for allowing his son to posses the gun.

The myth of cats having nine lives was tested to its limit when Nicci Knight’s beloved feline Ted walked through the catflap after being “cremated”.

Knight, from Newby, North Yorkshire, was on holiday in Turkey when she was told by neighbours that Ted had drowned in their pond, the BBC reported. She arranged for a funeral to take place in Thornaby while she and her family were away – but four days after the ceremony, Ted walked back into their home.

“I had to break the news to my husband and our four children and we were all absolutely devastated, because Ted is a huge personality and a beloved member of the family,” Knight told the BBC.

Knight arranged for Heavenly Pets Crematorium to collect the body and cremate it.

Four days after the cremation, Knight – still in Turkey – saw she had several missed calls from her cat sitter. “I was in the pool again, having a lovely time, having, you know, put it [Ted’s death] behind us,” she told the broadcaster.

The cat sitter told Knight that Ted had just walked through the catflap. “I didn’t believe it at first,” Knight said. “I had to get her to FaceTime me live so that I could see that Ted was actually alive.”

Knight soon realised she had paid £130 to cremate someone else’s cat. When she later went to collect the ashes, she saw the urn had been labelled “Not Dead Ted”.

Vicki Crallan, the director of Heavenly Pets Crematorium, told the BBC it was “bittersweet” and she was worried there was a family out there “missing somebody”.