Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has left the South American country after seeking asylum in Spain, according to the Spanish foreign minister.

“Edmundo González, at his own request, flew to Spain on a Spanish air force plane,” José Manuel Albares said in a statement online, adding that the “government of Spain is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans”.

Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodriguez also said González had left the country.

Gonzalez, who ran against president Nicolas Maduro in July, left after “voluntarily seeking refuge in the Spanish embassy in Caracas several days ago”, Rodriguez posted on Instagram.

She said the government Maduro, which had ordered the candidate’s arrest, decided to grant González safe passage out of the country to contribute to the country’s political peace.

Neither González or anyone from Venezuela’s opposition has yet to comment.

With Reuters and the Associated Press

Venezuela’s government has said that Brazil can no longer represent Argentina’s diplomatic interests in the country, putting several anti-government opponents holed up for months in the Argentine ambassador’s residence seeking asylum at risk, as reports emerge that the embassy has been surrounded by security forces.

Venezuela’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it had notified Brazil of its decision, which will take effect immediately. It said it was forced to take action based on what it called evidence – which it hasn’t shared – that those who sought refuge in Argentina’s diplomatic mission were conspiring to carry out “terrorist” acts.

Brazil said that it had received the communication “with surprise” and Argentina said shortly afterwards that it rejected the “unilateral” decision by Venezuela. Both countries urged the government of Nicolas Maduro to respect the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.

“Any attempt to invade or kidnap asylum seekers who remain in our official residence will be harshly condemned by the international community,” Argentina said in a statement. “Actions like these reinforce the conviction that in Maduro’s Venezuela, the fundamental human rights are not respected.“

In its statement, Brazil insisted that it would remain in custody and defence of Argentine interests until Argentina indicates another state acceptable to Venezuela to do so.

On Friday night, some opposition members in the Argentine residence reported on social media that the building was under surveillance and had no electricity. They posted videos showing men dressed in black and patrols from the government intelligence agency.

In March, six people sought asylum in the Argentine embassy in Caracas after a prosecutor ordered their arrest on charges including conspiracy. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has denied the allegations against her collaborators.

Saturday’s move from Venezuela is the latest burst of friction between the countries. Argentina’s president has been among those leading the charge against Maduro over alleged attempts to steal July’s presidential election. Electoral authorities pronounced Maduro the winner despite strong evidence collected at the ballot boxes by the opposition that it prevailed by a more than 2-to-1 margin. Since the election, thousands have been arrested in a brutal crackdown.

Magalli Meda, the former campaign chief Machado, was among a half-dozen government opponents who fled to the Argentina ambassador’s residence after Maduro’s chief prosecutor issued an order for her arrest in March for allegedly propagating destabilising political violence.

In retaliation, Maduro broke off diplomatic relations with Argentine president Javier Milei’s right-wing government, which tapped neighbour Brazil to represent its interests and safeguard the asylum seekers.

Meda has taken to social media to denounce what she fears is an impending raid to arrest her and the other government opponents by Venezuelan security forces.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Kentucky police reported an “active shooter situation” on Saturday evening near Interstate 75 in London, Kentucky, south of Lexington, where “numerous persons” had been shot in traffic.

In a video statement, London mayor Randall Weddle said seven people were hurt, but not all of those were wounded by gunfire. Some of the victims were injured in a vehicle accident, he said.

“There are no deceased at this time. No one was killed from this, thankfully, but we ask that you continue to pray,” Weddle said.

The sheriff’s office also announced that a “person of interest” has been identified in connection with the shooting, saying he should be considered armed and dangerous and people should not approach him.

The incident began just before 6pm local time about nine miles outside London, when officers were called for reports of multiple vehicles being fired at on the interstate in Laurel County, multiple media accounts said. The shots were reportedly coming from a wooded area or an overpass.

Kentucky state trooper Scottie Pennington wrote on Facebook: “The suspect has not been caught at this time and we are urging people to stay inside.”

Kentucky governor Andy Beshear wrote on X: “Kentucky, we are aware of a shooting on I-75 in Laurel County. Please avoid the area. We will provide more details once they are available.”

He also asked that residents, “Please pray for everyone involved.”

London is a small city of about 8,000 residents, about 100 miles north-west of the state capital Frankfort.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, amid a debate over whether Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles should be used inside Russia.

Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.

“Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time,” Burns said. “We cannot afford to be intimidated by that sabre rattling … we got to be mindful of it. The US has provided enormous support for Ukraine, and I’m sure the president will consider other ways in which we can support them.”

The CIA director also said the US was working very hard on fresh proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza with new “texts and creative formulas”. A new plan, being devised with the help of mediators from Qatar and Egypt, would emerge, he hoped, “in the next several days”.

However, it was unclear, Burns added, whether Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and the Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar were willing to strike a deal. It was a question of political will, he said: “Whether or not leaders on both sides recognise that enough is enough and that the time has come to finally make some hard choices.”

Israel had succeeded in “severely degrading” Hamas’s military capabilities over the past 11 months, Burns said, but had not eliminated the movement in a war that had created a severe humanitarian crisis. “It is also a movement and an idea,” the spy chief said, and you could only “kill an idea with a better idea”, meaning there needed to be some long-term hope for Palestinians.

On Ukraine, the veteran spy chief was asked whether there was too much nervousness in Washington and other western capitals about the risk of escalating the war by giving permission for Storm Shadow, a missile with a range of at least 190 miles, to be used inside Russia.

“None of us should take lightly the risks of escalation,” Burns told an audience at a Financial Times event in London – and said there had actually been a belief within the CIA that Russia might use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine in the first year of the war.

“There was a moment in the fall [autumn] of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of potential use of tactical nuclear weapons,” by Russia in Ukraine, Burns said, but he believed such concerns should not be taken too seriously. “I never thought … we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that,” he added.

At the time, Russian troops had been pushed back in northern Ukraine and had abandoned Kherson in the south, prompting a belief that Russia might seek to use a nuclear weapon if a rout developed. In any event, the frontline stabilised shortly afterwards.

Burns said that Joe Biden, the US president, had sent him to pass on a direct warning to Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service, at a meeting in Turkey in November 2022 “to make very clear what the consequences of that kind of escalation would be” – and that a similar approach was in place today.

So far, the White House has been notably hesitant about allowing the use of Storm Shadow and other long-range missiles inside Russia, such as the US-made Atacms, despite repeated pleas from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, including one made on Friday.

Burns voiced concern that Iran was considering whether to supply ballistic missiles to Russia, but would not confirm whether the CIA believed it had done so. It would be a “dramatic escalation” of the relationship between the two countries; Tehran so far has supplied only less effective drones for Russia to use in Ukraine.

Burns and his British counterpart, the MI6 chief, Sir Richard Moore, had never appeared in public together before the surprise appearance at the event at London’s Kenwood House in Hampstead. Tight security meant that audience members were told only 15 minutes in advance who would be appearing.

Moore said there were concerns that Russian spies were becoming increasingly reckless in the UK, Europe and elsewhere as the war in Ukraine continues. “I think Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral, frankly,” the British spy chief said, as shown by a spate of arson attacks in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

• Russian shelling has killed five people in Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, officials said. Region governor Vadym Filashkin said three people were killed and four injured in the town of Kostyantynivka, while two men in their 50s were reported killed in shelling near the town of Toretsk. The three killed in Kostyantynivka were men aged between 24 and 69, while a multi-storey block, administrative building and shop were also damaged in the attack, Filashkin said in a post on Telegram. Kostyantynivka been hit regularly by missiles, bombs and artillery.

• Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, amid a debate over whether Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles should be used inside Russia. William Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally. “Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time,” Burns said. “We cannot afford to be intimidated by that sabre rattling … we got to be mindful of it. The US has provided enormous support for Ukraine, and I’m sure the president will consider other ways in which we can support them.”

• Multiple Russian attack drones were intercepted by Kyiv’s air defences overnight according to the Ukrainian air force. Sixty-seven drones were launched over the country and 58 drones were shot down, with three more destroyed by electronic weapons systems, the air force said. No injuries or serious damage were reported. Debris from one drone was photographed on the street outside Ukraine’s parliament. Ukraine’s parliamentary press service confirmed that drone fragments had been found but said there were no casualties and no damage to the parliament building.

• Funeral services have been held in the eastern Ukrainian city of Poltava for the victims of one of the deadliest Russian airstrikes since the invasion began, which killed over 50 people at a military training facility. As grieving families and local residents mourned, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy pledged to boost domestic weapons production by creating underground facilities to withstand Russian missile and drone strikes. He also renewed calls for the lifting of restrictions on using western-supplied weapons against Russian territory, noting that Ukraine is also developing its own missiles to put pressure on Russia.

• US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will head to London next week to discuss the Middle East and Ukraine, the state department announced on Saturday. Blinken’s visit to London on Monday and Tuesday will be the most senior by a US official since the Labour party won the general election in July, ending 14 years of Conservative rule. Blinken will take part in a strategic dialogue to discuss Asia as well as the Middle East and “our collective efforts to support Ukraine”, the state department said in a statement.

• Three people were injured in Russia’s Belgorod region after Ukrainian shells hit the town of Shebekino, the regional governor said. “Ambulance crews brought a woman in serious condition with shrapnel wounds to the back and thigh and a man with a shrapnel wound to the chest to the regional clinical hospital,” Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a post on Telegram. A third person was taken to hospital with a shrapnel wound to the thigh, he said, adding that two houses and four outbuildings caught fire. The report could not be independently confirmed.

• Ukraine says it had hit a Russian ammunition depot in a border region according to the country’s security services on Saturday. A large fire and several explosions were reported overnight in the Russian region of Voronezh, which borders Ukraine, prompting officials to evacuate locals living near the blaze. Russian anti-air defence systems “detected and neutralised a drone” early on Saturday morning over the western part of the region, Voronezh governor Alexander Gusev wrote on Telegram. “No one was injured,” but when the drone fell it sparked a large fire “that spread to explosive devices and caused them to detonate”, he said, without providing details of which facility was hit. Ukraine’s SBU security services later claimed it had hit a Russian ammunition depot.

• The heads of the UK and US foreign intelligence agencies have praised Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia as an ‘audacious’ achievement that could change the narrative of the war. Richard Moore, the head of MI6, said Kyiv’s surprise August offensive to seize territory in Russia’s Kursk region was “typically audacious and bold on the part of the Ukrainians” and had “brought the war home to ordinary Russians”. CIA director William Burns, speaking alongside Moore at an event in London, said the offensive was a significant achievement that had exposed vulnerabilities in the Russian military.

As Aryna Sabalenka has cemented herself at the top of her sport over the past two seasons, in so many of the biggest grand slam matches her greatest opponent has been herself. Even when she has come in radiating with confidence, her game in full bloom, her head so often gets in the way. Recovering from so many painful collapses has required resilience beyond measure.

Nowhere have these struggles been more evident than in New York, a city that perfectly suits her electrifying game and outsized personality but where the positives from her two semi-finals and a final in the past three years had been blunted by brutal losses.

At long last, Sabalenka held her nerve until the bitter end in two intense, tempestuous sets that pushed her to her mental limits before closing out her first title in New York with a supreme 7-5, 7-5 win over a gritty Jessica Pegula.

With her third career grand slam title, Sabalenka, the second seed, has now won more major titles than any Belarusian tennis player, breaking her tie with Victoria Azarenka. She is just the fifth woman in the open era to win both hard-court grand slam titles in the same season after also winning the Australian Open this year.

Grand slams were once Sabalenka’s biggest weakness and she was well established as a top-10 player before even reaching her first quarter-final. She has now won three of the last four hard-court majors, her only loss coming in last year’s US Open final to Coco Gauff.

This matchup marked a battle between the two best players of the summer, with Pegula having won the Canadian Open in Toronto before Sabalenka defeated Pegula in the Cincinnati final. In their most recent match, Sabalenka simply overwhelmed Pegula with her power.

In what turned out to be a breathless tussle of the highest quality, the opening set initially moved in a similar direction. Pegula, the sixth seed, used her immaculate timing and hand skills to deflect Sabalenka’s pace as well as she could while maintaining excellent depth and consistency, but the second seed’s superior weight of shot decided the majority of the points. Sabalenka also showed her improved variety by continually closing out points at the net.

After recovering from an early break, Sabalenka served for the set at 5-3. Pegula responded with a brilliant return game while the crowd increasingly imposed itself in the match, their cheers amplified under the Arthur Ashe Stadium roof. Sabalenka blinked, spraying forehand errors as she lost her serve. She found herself down a break point at 5-5 after a double fault and lost her composure, repeatedly striking the ground with her racket, but recovered immediately. She saved break point with an 84mph serve and then drilled an incredible backhand down the line. After holding, it would take five set points on Pegula’s serve before Sabalenka finally put the set away.

Just as it seemed that the 26-year-old was running away with the match, Pegula sharpened her focus. From 0-3, 30-40 down, the American forced herself to take the first strike in rallies, redirecting the ball off both wings brilliantly and she gradually reeled in an increasingly errant Sabalenka. Pegula rolled through five games in a row to lead 5-3.

A year ago, Sabalenka had established a one-set lead over Gauff in the final before she spectacularly unravelled over the next two sets and a deafening US crowd that got into the Belarusian’s head. After her semi-final win over America’s Emma Navarro on Thursday, Sabalenka admitted that she had flashbacks to last year after failing to serve out the match and getting pulled into a tie-break.

For a moment, history seemed to be repeating itself again. But Sabalenka took a deep breath, drawing on the years of work that have gone into harnessing her emotions, steadied herself and marched through the final four games of the match to finally clinch the US Open title she had waited so patiently for.

A newly married couple from Michigan were arrested only hours after their wedding because the groom allegedly used a car to intentionally run over and kill one of his groomsmen, according to local police.

The groom, 22-year-old James Shirah of Flint, allegedly ran over his groomsman with an SUV, mortally wounding him, following an argument on 30 August, the Flint police department said on Facebook.

The victim, 29-year-old Terry Taylor Jr, died at a local hospital after being brought there to receive treatment for severe injuries.

“After the wedding, he was involved in an argument which led to him being intentionally struck by a large SUV that was traveling at a high rate of speed and driven by the groom,” police said.

Police did not disclose what Shirah and Taylor had argued about before the deadly incident.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” David Leyton, the Genesee county prosecutor, said to CBS News. “I’ve seen people running over other people but not so soon after a wedding.”

The couple reportedly held their wedding in a local pizzeria before heading to a house where the nuptial celebrations continued, CBS reported.

Taylor was outside of the house hosting the afterparty when Shirah allegedly struck him with his vehicle.

The newly wedded couple reportedly left the scene of the killing and did not report it to police until the next day, Leyton added to CBS. That decision made it “more difficult” for investigators “to unravel what happened”, he said.

Police said they arrested Shirah and booked him on a count of second-degree murder.

Shirah’s bride, 21-year-old Savahna Collier, was also arrested on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact to a felony.

The couple was tentatively scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.

A newly married couple from Michigan were arrested only hours after their wedding because the groom allegedly used a car to intentionally run over and kill one of his groomsmen, according to local police.

The groom, 22-year-old James Shirah of Flint, allegedly ran over his groomsman with an SUV, mortally wounding him, following an argument on 30 August, the Flint police department said on Facebook.

The victim, 29-year-old Terry Taylor Jr, died at a local hospital after being brought there to receive treatment for severe injuries.

“After the wedding, he was involved in an argument which led to him being intentionally struck by a large SUV that was traveling at a high rate of speed and driven by the groom,” police said.

Police did not disclose what Shirah and Taylor had argued about before the deadly incident.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” David Leyton, the Genesee county prosecutor, said to CBS News. “I’ve seen people running over other people but not so soon after a wedding.”

The couple reportedly held their wedding in a local pizzeria before heading to a house where the nuptial celebrations continued, CBS reported.

Taylor was outside of the house hosting the afterparty when Shirah allegedly struck him with his vehicle.

The newly wedded couple reportedly left the scene of the killing and did not report it to police until the next day, Leyton added to CBS. That decision made it “more difficult” for investigators “to unravel what happened”, he said.

Police said they arrested Shirah and booked him on a count of second-degree murder.

Shirah’s bride, 21-year-old Savahna Collier, was also arrested on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact to a felony.

The couple was tentatively scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.

Thousands of angry leftwing protesters took to French streets on Saturday two days after Emmanuel Macron appointed a conservative prime minister.

Demonstrators accused the president of a “denial of democracy” after his decision to name the former EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, 73, as leader of the government.

The appointment came two months after a snap general election left France with a hung parliament formed of three roughly equal blocs – the New Popular Front (NFP), a leftwing alliance; the centre, including Macron’s Renaissance party and the centre-right; and the far-right National Rally (RN) – none of which had a majority.

The mass protests had been called by the NFP’s dominant group, France Unbowed (LFI), and appeared to have widespread support on Saturday despite being shunned by some of its alliance partners and the country’s unions.

Barnier, a veteran politician and member of Les Républicains (LR), whose party emerged from the election with fewer than 50 MPs – the fourth largest block in the National Assembly – has yet to choose his ministers, but has said he is prepared to include representatives of the NFP, which emerged with the most MPs in the July election.

Before he was named, the NFP had threatened to lodge a motion of no confidence in any government if its chosen candidate, the 37-year-old civil servant Lucie Castets, was not named PM. The RN warned it would lodge a similar motion if she was.

“Democracy is not just the art of accepting you have won but the humility to accept you have lost,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the LFI leader, told the Paris demonstration on Saturday in a dig at Macron. He accused the president of “stealing the election”.

“I call you for what will be a long battle,” he urged protesters.

LFI had called for protests in 150 towns and cities across the country; marches were held in several large cities outside the capital including Nice and Nantes.

Barnier’s appointment on Thursday came after a two-month search for a PM during which Macron interviewed a number of potential candidates, including Castets. He ruled her out on the grounds that she would be unable to muster enough cross-party support to form a stable government.

Saturday’s peaceful protests were seen as an opening salvo in what could be weeks or months of demonstrations.

Barnier, who is in a precarious political situation, said on Saturday he did not want to get into a confrontation and hoped he could form a government taking into account all views.

In his first interview on Friday, Barnier said his administration would include conservatives, as well as members of Macron’s centrist party, and said he “did not exclude” having ministers from the left. While protesters marched, Barnier was meeting potential ministers to form a government that may withstand a potential vote of no confidence.

Among the PM’s first jobs will be to steer the 2025 budget bill through what is likely to be a truculent lower house.

The RN, which has kept a relatively low profile in recent weeks, has said it would not back an LFI motion of no confidence in any Barnier government under certain conditions, putting the far right in the position of kingmaker.

“He is a prime minister under surveillance,” Jordan Bardella, the RN leader, said on Saturday. “Nothing can be done without us.”

Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the Socialist party (PS), said Macron’s decision to name Barnier PM put him in the far right’s pocket.

“Macron and his friends could have chosen not to punish the NFP, to let it govern while accepting it would have to compromise because it would not have an absolute majority. Instead, he preferred to put himself under the control of the RN,” Faure posted on X.

A poll by Elabe on Friday suggested 74% of French people thought Macron had disregarded the election result with 55% saying they believed he had stolen the vote. At the same time, 40% said Barnier was a good choice for PM.

After meeting Barnier on Saturday, Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of the National Assembly, said parliament was “the place for the building of compromises among republican forces to bring concrete results for the French”.

US officials have insisted that a ceasefire in Gaza is close even as fighting rages unabated in the blockaded Palestinian territory and violence spirals in the occupied West Bank, where witnesses told the Observer an American-Turkish dual national was killed by Israeli forces on Friday.

William Burns, who is also the US’s chief negotiator in the indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, echoed secretary of state Antony Blinken during a speech in London on Saturday in which he said that “90% of the text had been agreed but the last 10% is always the hardest”.

But pressure from the US, Israel’s most important ally, and the two mediators speaking to Hamas, Qatar and Egypt, has done little to assuage the fighting in Gaza or rising tensions in the West Bank.

The US has also said it is urgently seeking more information about the killing of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who witnesses said was shot in the head by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops during an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank on Friday. Several of Israel’s western allies, including the US, have recently imposed sanctions on individuals and organisations associated with Israel’s settler movement, despite blowback from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ­government, which includes far-right supporters of Israeli extremism in the West Bank.

Eygi’s family have called for an independent investigation into her killing, adding to the pressure on the Biden administration to end what critics say is US complicity in the Israeli occupation.

On Saturday, IDF troops, some of whom appeared to be forensic investigators, visited the town of Beita, near Nablus, to examine the scene where Eygi was killed. For the residents, it was yet another case of the IDF investigating itself: about 1% of army inquiries result in prosecutions, according to rights groups.

All of the Beita residents the Observer spoke to gave very similar accounts of the shooting. A group of demonstrators had gathered on the hillside, as they have every Friday for midday prayers in recent years, to protest against Eyvatar, an Israeli settlement on the next hill built on land belonging to Palestinian farmers.

On this occasion, there were some 20 Palestinians from Beita, 10 foreign volunteers from the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement, including Eygi, and about a dozen children from the district.

“The kids were throwing stones here at the junction, and the soldiers fired tear gas at them,” Mahmud Abdullah, a 43-year-old resident said. “Everyone scattered and ran into the olive grove and then there were two shots.” One of the bullets hit something along the way and a fragment hit a protester in the stomach, wounding him slightly, the witnesses said. The other bullet hit Eygi in the head, passing through her skull. Neighbours pointed out both the spot where Eygi was shot and where the bullet came from: a house on a ridge.

The owner, Ali Mohali, said a group of soldiers, perhaps half a dozen, had gone on to his roof, 200m from where Eygi was shot. He said he heard one shot, but was not sure if there had been a second from that position.

The IDF statement on the incident said it was looking into the report that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them”.

Moneer Khdeir, Mohali’s 65-year-old neighbour, was derisive of the IDF account. “They said that the stones posed a threat to the soldiers. They were stones thrown by kids from all the way down there, yet they talk about it like it was a Yassin [rocket propelled grenade],” Khdeir scoffed.

Across the West Bank, army units on the ground are increasingly seen by Palestinians as a protective military wing of the settlers, taking their cues from the far right elements of Netanyahu’s government. Palestinian officials and rights groups have long accused the IDF of standing by during or even joining in settler attacks.

Hisham Dweikat, 57, a science professor from Beita, said Eygi was the 15th person to be killed protesting against Eyvatar over the three years since the settlement was reoccupied, but hers was the first killing the IDF has investigated. He did not put much faith in the result. “It is clear that the army is with the settlers,” he said.

Fifteen kilometres south of Beita in the village of Qaryut, Amjad Bakr and his family buried his 12 year-old daughter Bana on Saturday afternoon. She was shot dead while opening the window in her bedroom at about the same time on Friday that Eygi was killed in Beita.

“As usual on Friday, settlers came to raid the town and the people of the town went to defend themselves. There was a confrontation and the army came,” said Bakr, 47.

“We went back home, because we thought that if the army was here, maybe they could stop the settlers. But unfortunately the army did not stop the settlers. They stand with the settlers,” he said.

“The bullet that hit my daughter came through the window and hit her in the heart,” he said. “She was innocent, and shy, and clever. She had memorised three sections of the Holy Quran.”

As to what Bana had planned to do with her life, Bakr shrugged: “An Israeli bullet doesn’t care about the future of any Palestinian.”

In a statement, the IDF said that soldiers were dispatched to disperse violent confrontation between dozens of Palestinians and Israelis, and had fired shots in the air. “A report was received regarding a Palestinian girl who was killed by shots in the area. The incident is under review,” it said.

Since Hamas’s 7 October assault that triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry, which does not differentiate between militant and civilian deaths. The toll is almost five times higher than the 146 killed in 2022, which was already an almost 20-year record high.

At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials. Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, another 61 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes across the territory in the past 48 hours, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said, putting the death toll at 40,939 people. Around 1,200 Israelis and other nationals were killed in Hamas’s 7 October assault that triggered the war, according to Israeli tallies.

The latest round of ceasefire talks have stalled over Netanyahu’s insistence that Israeli troops will not withdraw from the Gaza-Egypt border – a dealbreaker for Hamas – despite agreeing to the measure in talks held in July.

Tensions between Israel and its regional foes – Iran and the powerful Lebanese militia Hezbollah – have brought the Middle East to the brink of regional war on several occasions in the past 11 months.

Keir Starmer’s former pollster, Deborah Mattinson, is to meet Kamala Harris’s campaign team in Washington this week to share details of how Labour pulled off its stunning election win by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change”.

The visit comes ahead of a separate trip by Starmer to Washington on Friday to meet US president Joe Biden, his second since becoming prime minister. It will also be his first since Biden stepped down and Harris became the Democratic nominee.

With the race for the White House on a knife-edge, Mattinson, who stepped down from Starmer’s office after the election, and the prime minister’s former director of policy, Claire Ainsley, who will also attend the briefings, believe the same strategy that delivered for Labour could play an important role in Harris defeating Donald Trump on 5 November.

Writing in the Observer, Mattinson and Ainsley say many of the concerns of crucial undecided voters will be similar on both of sides of the Atlantic.

“These voters – often past Labour voters – had rejected the party because they believed that it had rejected them. Often Tory voters in 2019, they made up nearly 20% of the electorate. Labour’s focus on economic concerns, from affordable housing to job security, won them back.

“For Harris, addressing core issues such as housing, prices and job creation could also win over undecided US middle-class voters, many of whom face similar economic pressures. Labour set about finding out as much as possible about these voters and applying that knowledge to all aspects of campaigning.

“They were patriotic, they were family oriented, they were struggling with the cost of living: squeezed working-class voters who wanted change.”

Mattinson coined the phrase “hero voters” to describe a group who were more often than not pro-Brexit and persuadable by political leaders if they felt they would address their fundamental core concerns.

The collaboration, they believe, could help tilt the balance by delivering voters in key US battlegrounds.

“Before November’s presidential election, Harris has turned on its head a contest that looked like a foregone conclusion in Trump’s favour. However, as the data shows clearly, it is still too close to call. We believe that adopting a similar hero-voter approach could make a vital difference, just as it did here in the UK.

“The start point is to identify and understand Harris’s hero voters – undecided voters who have considered Trump and live in the handful of the most crucial battleground states.”

Mattinson and Ainsley were invited by the Democratic thinktank the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), with which Ainsley has been working since leaving Starmer’s team in late 2022.

Recently, they have been polling among US voters and conducting focus groups to try to understand what will win them over and which groups matter most.

“The context is very different but the parallels are almost uncanny,” they write. “This group – who in the US self-define as middle class rather than working class, as the same group might in the UK – is struggling.

“Its members believe that the middle class is in jeopardy, out of reach for people like them, denied the dream of homeownership that previous generations took for granted, unable to cover the essentials, and hyper-aware of the cost of groceries, utilities and other bills. Many work multiple jobs just to keep afloat.”

Among those that the two former Starmer aides are likely to meet are Megan Jones, the senior political adviser to vice-president Harris, and Will Marshall, founder of the PPI, who had dealings with top New Labour figures, including Tony Blair, when the party was trying to learn from the electoral success of Bill Clinton’s Democrats in the early to mid-1990s, before the 1997 general election.

Mattinson and Ainsley say they had far more time to plan their strategy in detail than have members of the Harris campaign. But they suggest that fine-tuning the Democratic strategy could help sustain recent momentum and give the party a better chance of crossing the finishing line victorious.

“From the point where we defined our hero-voter focus, we had three years to mainline the thinking through party activity. Team Harris has less than three months. But looking at what they have achieved in the past few weeks, success now looks within reach. Hero voters may just help to close that gap.”

Boris Johnson failed to disclose that he met a uranium lobbyist while prime minister before entering into a new business with a controversial Iranian-Canadian uranium entrepreneur, the Observer can reveal.

Johnson’s new company Better Earth Limited also employs Charlotte Owen, a junior aide with just a few years work experience whom he elevated to the House of Lords last year at the age of 29, sparking intense controversy.

Transparency campaigners say there appear to be “serious public interest questions to be answered” over the nature and timeline of Johnson’s relationship with his co-director, Amir Adnani, the founder, president and CEO of Uranium Energy Corp, a US-based mining and exploration company, championed by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.

Amir Adnani, a Canadian citizen who is the director of a network of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, incorporated Better Earth in December last year. On 1 May, Companies House filings reveal, “The Rt Hon Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson” was added as a director and co-chairman. And this summer, Charlotte Owen – now Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge – joined the company to work alongside him as its vice president.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), which oversees ex-ministerial appointments, explicitly warned Johnson in April 2024 that the “broad overlap” between his roles in office and at Better Earth may entail “unknown risks” because of the lack of transparency over the firm’s clients. A statement from the Cabinet Office noted the potential for a conflict of interests particularly because of “the unknown nature of Better Earth’s clients – specifically that there is a risk of a client engaging in lobbying the UK government.” The committee also told the former prime minister it feared “that you could offer Better Earth unfair access and influence across government”.

Acoba was reassured that Johnson “did not meet with, nor did you make any decisions specific to Better Earth during your time in office”. But the Observer can reveal that Johnson met Scott Melbye, the executive vice-president of Uranium Energy Corp – Adnani’s company – in the House of Commons in May 2022 when he was still prime minister.

Adnani’s social media post about the event claimed that Melbye and Johnson spoke about “nuclear power and uranium”.

Neither Johnson or Adnani have responded to press inquiries about this encounter or when they first met. The encounter was not recorded in the prime minister’s official diary.

Uranium is the raw ingredient for the enriched uranium needed to fuel nuclear reactors. Just days before leaving office, Johnson announced a £700m investment in the controversial Sizewell C reactor stating the country needed to “Go nuclear, go large!”. At the time, Caroline Lucas, the then Green MP and former party leader, described Sizewell C as “massively costly, achingly slow and carries huge unnecessary risks”.

Among those who cheered the Sizewell C investment was Adnani. He excitedly posted the announcement on his Twitter account: “Boris Johnson plans to sign off on new £30bn nuclear plant in his final week in power! #uranium.”

Adnani has appeared at least twice on former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, and on one occasion told him that his ambition was to achieve “full spectrum energy dominance”.

Headquartered in a serviced office building in Sevenoaks, Better Earth describes itself as an “energy transition company”. Its website, which is currently under construction, says it will “work directly with national governments and regions that are seeking both inward investment and/or to reduce their emissions ahead of 2030”.

The apparent lack of transparency extends beyond the nature of the firm’s clients: the company no longer has a person of significant control registered at Companies House. The initial filing states that its single share is owned by another company called “Emissions Reduction Corp” registered in Carson City, Nevada.

US company searches reveal the firm was previously called Carbon Royalty Corporation, a Delaware-based company whose directors include Adnani and Nicole Shanahan, who was until recently Robert F Kennedy Jr’s running mate in his campaign for US president before he endorsed Trump. Delaware is a “dark” jurisdiction but sources suggest Carbon Royalty Corporation has raised $40m since it was incorporated in 2021 and its investors appear “undisclosed”, although this is not illegal.

Baroness Margaret Hodge, the former Labour MP who led parliament’s Public Accounts Committee from 2010-2015 said there were “at least four very serious public interest questions” to be answered about the appointment.

“What on earth is an ex-prime minister of the United Kingdom doing, working for a company with an opaque structure? In my experience those who choose to have a UK company owned by a foreign entity only do that because they may have something to hide. What is it in this case? Given the sensitivities around nuclear capabilities we should know who he is in business with, where the money is coming from and why he is using a financial structure that appears to hide the beneficial ownership of the company.”

Better Earth, Amir Adnani and Boris Johnson declined to respond to the Observer’s inquiries about Better Earth’s line of work, funding or any other matters.

The appointment also raises further question marks over Johnson’s relationship with Baroness Owen, a previously unknown junior political adviser who had worked for a matter of months with Johnson at Number 10. Her appointment to the Lords, where she took the title Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge in July last year, became the subject of intense speculation. With just a few years’ job experience under her belt, she now holds the position for life. In her maiden speech in November last year, she thanked Johnson for “putting a great deal of trust in me”.

That trust has now been extended to a senior role in his new company, Better Earth, though her role has also not been widely publicised. She recently updated her House of Lords page to note that she has a paid position as “Vice President, Better Earth Limited (energy transition company)” though she does not appear on the company’s website, X feed or LinkedIn page.

Owen mentioned climate only briefly in her maiden speech earlier this year, preferring to showcase her interest in technology, and has no previous employment experience in environmental, nuclear, or green issues. She declined to answer any of the Observer’s questions about her role.

Owen joins two other former Conservative ministers at the firm: Chris Skidmore, who resigned the whip and the party over Rishi Sunak’s oil and gas plan, is Better Earth’s COO, while Nigel Adams, a Johnson ally and former minister without portfolio, is CEO. There is no suggestion that either Skidmore or Adams were in breach of transparency rules.

Before Johnson became a director of Better Earth in May this year, he wrote to Acoba, the government watchdog, alerting them to the appointment. This came during the same period Acoba had accused him of refusing to answer its questions about whom he’d met as a consultant on behalf of a hedge fund, Merlyn Advisors, during a trip to Venezuela.

The incident led the committee’s chairman, Eric Pickles, to warn that Johnson’s behaviour had proved its rules were “unenforceable”.

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language movie, The Room Next Door, which tackles the hefty themes of euthanasia and the climate crisis, won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival on Saturday.

Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, the film received an 18-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Venice earlier in the week – one of the longest in recent memory.

Almodóvar is a darling of the festival circuit and was awarded a lifetime achievement award at Venice in 2019 for his bold, irreverent and often funny Spanish-language features.

He also won an Oscar in the best foreign language category for his 1999 film All About My Mother.

Now 74, he has decided to try his hand at film-making in English, telling reporters that it was like science fiction for him.

Speaking before the premiere, he said his movie highlighted the importance of cherishing life, but also made clear that people should be able to die with dignity at a time of their choosing.

“It’s a film in favour of euthanasia,” he said, criticising countries such as the US, where so-called “mercy killing” is illegal, unlike in his native Spain.

While The Room Next Door had been widely tipped to win, the runner-up Silver Lion award was a surprise, going to Italian director Maura Delpero for Vermiglio, her slow-paced drama set in the Italian Alps during the second world war.

Australia’s Nicole Kidman won the best actress award for her risque role in the erotic Babygirl, where she plays a hard-nosed CEO who jeopardises her career and her family by having a toxic affair with a young, manipulative intern.

Kidman was in Venice on Saturday, but did not attend the awards ceremony after learning that her mother had died unexpectedly.

France’s Vincent Lindon was named best actor for The Quiet Son, a topical French-language drama about a family torn apart by extreme-right radicalism.

The best director award went to the American film-maker Brady Corbet for his three-and-a-half-hour-long movie The Brutalist, the epic tale of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, played by Adrien Brody, who seeks to rebuild his life in the US.

The festival marks the start of the awards season and regularly throws up big favourites for the Oscars, with eight of the past 12 best director awards at the Oscars going to films that debuted at Venice.

The prize for best screenplay went to Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega for I’m Still Here, a film about Brazil’s military dictatorship, while the special jury award went to the abortion drama April, by the Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili.

Among the movies that left Venice’s Lido island empty-handed were Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, the sequel to his original The Joker, which claimed the top prize in Venice in 2019.

Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, with Daniel Craig playing a gay drug addict, and Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as the celebrated Greek soprano, also won plaudits from the critics but did not get any awards.

The Venice jury this year was headed by the French actor Isabelle Huppert.

Main award winners

Golden Lion for best picture The Room Next Door

Silver Lion (runner-up prize) Vermiglio

Best director Brady Corbet for The Brutalist

Best actressNicole Kidman for Babygirl

Best actor Vincent Lindon for The Quiet Son

Best screenplay Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega for I’m Still Here

Special jury award April by Dea Kulumbegashvili

Best young actor Paul Kircher for And Their Children After Them