Russia has received new deadly ballistic missiles from Iran for use in Ukraine and is likely to use them, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announced on Tuesday in London as he prepared to travel with the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, to Kyiv.

The news, confirmed by the US for the first time and seen as of huge significance to the battlefield balance ahead of Ukraine’s difficult winter, led the US and Europe to impose new sanctions on Iran, so apparently slamming the door on the prospect of a rapprochement between the new reformist Iranian government and the west.

The move may also add to the pressure on the US to end its restrictions on Ukraine using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia and not just in occupied parts of Ukraine.

Ukraine, with discreet UK backing, has been pressing for a change in US policy but Blinken, at a press conference in London, highlighted obstacles to backing the Ukrainian request, including doubts about Ukraine’s ability to maintain the missiles, training and their strategic purpose.

Officials ultimately said the debate turned on whether sanctioning Storm Shadow for use deep inside Russia would be seen as an dangerous escalatory step that crossed a red line set by Vladimir Putin.

Blinken insisted the US position remained to provide Ukraine with the weapons it wants at the time it wants, but the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said applying sanctions on Iran was not enough and Kyiv needed permission to strike deeper into Russia.

The US president, Joe Biden, has allowed Ukraine to fire US-provided missiles across the border into Russia in self-defence but largely limited the distance over concerns about further escalating the conflict.

The strategic decision hovering over the alliance for months is likely to be further raised in a deeper discussion due to be held between Keir Starmer and Biden in Washington on Friday, when the two leaders will assess the whole western strategy towards Ukraine, including how Kyiv can survive the winter and whether Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his new cabinet have a credible plan to defeat Russia.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, under domestic pressure, has called for a peace conference to be attended by Moscow, just one sign of wavering support for Ukraine in parts of Europe, but Blinken’s confirmation of Iran’s escalation may alter the debate.

Germany, in a joint statement with France and the UK, condemned the Iranian decision, saying it represented a direct threat to Europe’s security by Iran and Russia. The three countries announced sanctions including banning Iranair, Iran’s civilian airline, from Europe.

The missiles being provided to Russia are of the relatively new Fath-360 (BM-120) type, and not longer-range weapons. Ukraine has claimed that more than 200 Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles were sent to a Russian Caspian Sea port.

Blinken said the supply of Iranian missiles would enable Russia to use more of its arsenal for targets that were farther from the frontline in Ukraine.

“This development and the growing cooperation between Russia and Iran threatens European security and demonstrates how Iran’s destabilising influence reaches far beyond the Middle East,” he said. Russia was also sharing technology with Iran, including on nuclear issues, he added.

Blinken said dozens of Russian military personnel had trained in Iran in using the Fath-360 missile, which has a range of 19 to 75 miles, can carry a 150kg warhead and can be launched at a speed of Mach 3 (2,300mph – three times the speed of sound).

Blinken challenged any suggestion that the new Iranian government really wanted a new relationship with the west. He said: “We’ve warned Iran privately that taking this step would constitute a dramatic escalation. Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine against Ukrainians.

“Iran’s new president and foreign minister have repeatedly said that they want to restore engagement with Europe. They want to receive sanctions relief. Destabilising actions like these will achieve exactly the opposite.”

Faced by speculation that it had taken the decision to provide the ballistic missiles, Iran this week denied that it was providing the weapons, in a formal letter to the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

“Iran considers the provision of military assistance to the parties engaged in the conflict – which leads to increased human casualties, destruction of infrastructure and a distancing from ceasefire negotiations – to be inhumane,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations said. Iran has also denied that it supplied the Russians with Shahed-136 and 131 drones.

The provision of the ballistic missiles if used by Russia in Ukraine will be readily identifiable, the CIA director, William Burns, said at the weekend at an event in London.

Lammy declined to comment on any internal disagreements between the UK and the US over the use of Storm Shadow, saying this was the detail of operational issues.

Blinken concurred. “One of the purposes of the trip we will be taking together is to hear directly from the Ukrainian leadership including … President Zelenskiy about exactly how the Ukrainians see their needs in this moment, toward what objectives and what we can do to support those needs.”

At the weekend the former defence secretary Grant Shapps, reflecting UK defence ministry thinking, said: “With the exception of our giving permission to allow UK missiles to strike Crimea, we have remained cautious about allowing our Ukrainian allies to target the source of these attacks.

“The UK must issue a straightforward warning to Putin: if you continue to murder men, women and children with glide bombs launched from Russia, then we will lead the rest of the world to authorise our long-range missiles to take out your launchers.”

Ukraine has carried out one its biggest drone attacks on Russia since the beginning of the war, killing a woman in the Moscow region and forcing the closure of airports around the capital.

Russia’s defence ministry said overnight it had shot down 144 unmanned aerial vehicles, including 20 over Moscow. Others were intercepted in multiple other regions, it said.

Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, confirmed that a blaze had broken out on the runway at Zhukovsky airfield caused by falling debris from a drone. Videos circulating online showed a fire burning next to a plane and a passenger bus.

Three out of four Moscow airports were shut, including Domodedovo international airport, which was reportedly targeted for the first time. More than 30 domestic and international flights were suspended, Russian agencies reported.

A main road into Moscow, the Kashirskoye highway, was blocked because of falling drone wreckage.

On Monday night a drone struck a residential building in Moscow’s Ramenskoye district, about 30 miles south-east of the Kremlin. Moscow’s governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said a 46-year-old woman died and three people were injured as fire engulfed flats, and 43 people were evacuated to temporary accommodation centres.

Video filmed from nearby apartments showed an explosion on the 11th and 12th floors. “I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire,” Alexander Li, a resident of the district told Reuters. “The window got blown out by the shock wave.”

Other explosions were heard over Bryansk oblast at about 12.30am local time. Authorities in the Tula region said they had destroyed two drones and that the debris landed on an energy facility. Other UAVs were spotted in the Smolensk, Belgorod, Kursk and Oryol regions.

There was no immediate comment from Kyiv. In recent weeks Ukraine has stepped up its campaign of long-range attacks against military targets and power stations deep inside Russia. Several drones dispatched on Monday night flew more than 500 miles (800km).

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the attacks are an answer to the Kremlin’s repeated strikes on Ukrainian civilians and its own energy infrastructure. Ten days ago drones hit an oil refinery in south-east Moscow.

Since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, many Russians have considered the war as something far away that does not concern them. As Russia advances in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s strategy is to take the fight to Russia’s territory so that its citizens can no longer ignore it.

Just over a month ago Ukraine’s armed forces launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, seizing about 100 settlements and the border town of Sudzha. Tens of thousands of local residents have fled and the area has been the scene of intense clashes.

Israel’s military has said it was highly likely its troops fired the shot that killed Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the American-Turkish woman killed at a protest in the occupied West Bank.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said her death was unintentional and expressed deep regret.

The statement came as Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, called the killing of the 26-year-old last week “unprovoked and unjustified”.

Speaking on a diplomatic visit to London, Blinken told journalists that Eygi’s death showed the Israeli security forces needed to make fundamental changes to their rules of engagement.

“No one should be shot and killed for attending a protest,” he said, in one of his harshest comments to date against the IDF.

Turkish and Palestinian officials said Israeli troops shot Eygi, a volunteer with the activist group International Solidarity Movement (ISM), during a demonstration on Friday against settlement expansion in Beita, a village near Nablus.

On Tuesday, the IDF said commanders had conducted an investigation into the incident.

“The inquiry found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot,” the military said. “The incident took place during a violent riot in which dozens of Palestinian suspects burned tyres and hurled rocks towards security forces at the Beita junction.

“The IDF expresses its deepest regret over the death of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi,” it added.

Beita residents gave a different account, saying a group of demonstrators had gathered, as they had every Friday for midday prayers, to protest against Eyvatar, an Israeli settlement on the next hill built on land belonging to Palestinian farmers.

On this occasion, there were about 20 Palestinians from Beita, 10 foreign volunteers from the ISM, including Eygi, and about a dozen children from the district.

“The kids were throwing stones here at the junction, and the soldiers fired teargas at them,” Mahmud Abdullah, a 43-year-old resident said. “Everyone scattered and ran into the olive grove and then there were two shots.”

Neighbours pointed out the spot where Eygi was shot and a house on a ridge where they said the bullet came from.

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

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli participating in Friday’s protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after clashes broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing teargas and live ammunition.

The protesters and activists retreated and clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and fired. He said he saw Eygi “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death”.

At the University of Washington, where Eygi recently graduated with a degree in psychology, Aria Fani, a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures, said she had been active earlier in the year at a pro-Palestinian encampment.

Fani said he had tried to talk Eygi out of going to the West Bank but that she told him “she needed to bear witness for the sake of her own humanity”.

Human rights groups say Israeli soldiers who kill Palestinians, or their foreign supporters, are rarely held to account. The Israeli military says it investigates and acts if criminal wrongdoing is found.

Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under international law but Israel contests this.

Associated Press, Agence France Press and Reuters contributed reporting

Israeli airstrikes on al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone” in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 19 people and injured a further 60, according to witnesses and medical officials in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

At least four missiles hit the overcrowded supposed “safe zone” on the coast in the early hours of Tuesday, causing dozens of tents to catch fire and leaving craters as deep as 9 metres, the civil emergency service said. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are sheltering in Mawasi, where conditions are dire, after being ordered to move there by the Israeli military.

“Entire families disappeared in the Mawasi Khan Younis massacre, under the sand, in deep holes,” the Gaza civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told Agence France-Presse.

First responders had initially put the number of dead at 40, before the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory released updated figures, while warning the toll was likely to rise. The Israeli military disputed the earlier casualty figure.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control centre embedded inside the humanitarian area in Khan Younis”.

Among the targets were two men they said were involved in Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel that triggered the war: Samer Abu Daqqa, the head of Hamas’s aerial unit, and Osama Tabesh, the head of the observation and targets department in Hamas’s intelligence unit.

“The terrorists advanced and carried out terror attacks against IDF troops and the state of Israel”, they said. Hamas has denied that any fighters or commanders were present in the area.

Later on Tuesday morning, rescue workers and residents were still trying to find missing people and evacuate the wounded to hospital, sifting through the sand with garden tools and their bare hands, finding many body parts. Ambulances raced back and forth, while Israeli jets could still be heard overhead.

“We were sleeping and suddenly it was like a tornado,” Samar Moamer told the Associated Press at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, where she was being treated for injuries from the strike. She said one of her daughters was killed and the other was pulled alive from the rubble.

Almost all of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, with some forced to move from place to place after fresh Israeli evacuation orders upwards of 10 times. Ninety per cent of the strip is now covered by evacuation directives.

Despite being designated as a “safe zone”, Mawasi has been hit by the Israeli military several times. A strike there in July killed at least 90 people. The IDF said they had targeted and killed Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s shadowy military commander, in that attack. Hamas has denied Deif is dead.

Mawasi is severely overcrowded and aid agencies struggle to provide even the most basic services. By August, new evacuation orders had shrunk by a third the area designated as “safe”, but humanitarian officials said the overcrowding dissuaded many people from leaving, fearing they would not find a new place to shelter.

Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties in the 11-month-old conflict, claiming that its fighters are embedded among the civilian population and infrastructure. Hamas denies the allegation.

The latest war in Gaza began after Hamas’s 7 October assault on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

A total of 41,000 people have since been killed in Israel’s war on Hamas, according to the health ministry in the territory. The war has left much of the strip in ruins and created a devastating humanitarian crisis.

Internationally mediated talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire and hostage release deal have repeatedly stalled. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is under increasing pressure from allies to agree to a truce: he has insisted that Israeli troops cannot withdraw from the Gaza-Egypt border, which is a red line for Hamas. Netanyahu gave the measure the green light in a previous round of talks in July.

Also on Tuesday, Israel’s defence minister made the bold claim that Hamas as a “military formation no longer exists”. Yoav Gallant said Hamas’s military capabilities had been severely damaged after more than 11 months of war.

“Hamas is engaged in guerrilla warfare and we are still fighting Hamas terrorists and pursuing Hamas leadership,” he said.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off on Tuesday night in a presidential debate, the pair’s first – and possibly only – matchup before the November election. It’s widely seen as a crucial moment in the 2024 campaign, where both candidates are currently neck and neck in the polls.

The US vice-president is likely to use the 90-minute debate as an opportunity to provide more detail on her campaign promises, and further her pitch as a candidate separate from Joe Biden. Trump’s campaign is hoping the “happy” version of the former president will turn up.

In a tight race that could be decided by a tiny fraction of the country, even a marginal boost for either candidate could be significant. The debate comes just 55 days before the election on 5 November.

Here’s what else to know about tonight’s presidential debate.

When is the Harris-Trump debate?

The 90-minute debate is scheduled to begin at 9pm ET on Tuesday 10 September. It will take place at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, an institution dedicated to the study of the US constitution.

How to follow the Harris-Trump presidential debate in the US

The debate will air live on ABC channels beginning at 9pm ET. ABC will stream the debate for free live on their website, app and on Disney+ and Hulu. Major news networks are likely to carry the debate in prime time. PBS will have live coverage beginning at 9pm ET of the debate.

The Guardian has a team of reporters in Philadelphia and will be covering the debate in a live blog and through live analysis and news.

How to watch the debate outside the US

In the UK, BBC will carry the debate and Channel 4 will broadcast live coverage. (The debate kicks off at 2am in the UK.)

In Australia, the debate will be available on Channel 9 and 9Now and will be available on SBS. It begins at 11am Sydney time.

Who is moderating the debate?

The ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis will serve as moderators for the debate. Muir is the host of ABC World News Tonight, and Davis anchors World News Tonight on Sundays.

What are the debate rules?

The Trump and Harris campaigns had been in dispute over the debate guidelines. The Harris campaign had previously pushed for live, or “hot”, microphones, arguing that it would “fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates”. Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign had been pressing for them to be turned off, as was the case in the first debate with Biden.

A statement from ABC made clear that microphones for both candidates will be muted during the debate when their opponent is speaking.

The other rules ABC News said had been agreed upon with the two sides include:

• No opening statements, and closing statements will be two minutes per candidate

• Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate

• Props and prewritten notes are not allowed on stage

• No topics or questions will be shared in advance

• Candidates will not be permitted to ask questions of each other

Candidates will have two minutes to answer questions, two minutes for rebuttals and one extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications or responses. After winning a virtual coin toss, Trump opted to give the second closing remarks; Harris selected the right podium position on the screen, meaning Trump will be on the left.

What’s next on the election calendar?

JD Vance and Tim Walz, the nominees for vice-president, are scheduled to take part in a debate on 1 October. The vice-presidential debate will be hosted by CBS News and will take place in New York City.

It is unclear whether Harris and Trump will participate in a second debate.

It was the debate that was never meant to happen.

Donald Trump will take the stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night to face, not the familiar foe he expected when he agreed to the encounter in May, but an opponent he has never met and has struggled to define; Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, whose emergence as the Democratic nominee has changed the direction, and very nature, of the presidential election.

The Republican nominee anticipated that he would be keeping a date in the City of Brotherly Love for a second engagement with Joe Biden, the US president with whom he had an acrimonious debating history from the 2020 election.

Instead the unprecedented impact of June’s debate in Atlanta between the pair – in which Biden’s halting and incoherent performance led to him withdrawing his candidacy after mounting pressure from his own Democratic party – has left Trump confronting an opponent against whom he has still to decide a settled line of attack.

Harris, for her part, goes into the event having been prepared by aides who have aped Trump’s often vicious and insulting debating technique – especially towards women – and bolstered by her experience from a previous career as a courtroom prosecutor. She is also buoyed by being up against an adversary who was recently convicted of 34 felony charges.

The pair face off in the midst of a race that multiple polls show is neck-and-neck – both nationally and in key swing states – none more than in Pennsylvania, the site of Tuesday’s debate, with more electoral votes up for grabs than any other battleground state.

Tuesday’s event, hosted by ABC, will take place under the same rules that governed the Trump-Biden debate, with candidates’ microphones being muted when it is their opponent’s turn to speak. Harris’s campaign argued for mics to be kept live throughout – hoping to goad the former president into the undisciplined and unsavoury interruptions that have marred his previous performances.

While Trump was ready to agree, his entourage – determined to keep him focused and on-message – insisted on keeping the original rules.

But it is Trump’s difficulty in coming to terms with Biden’s departure from the race that could decide the contours of the debate, according to Steven Fein, a specialist in presidential debates and professor of psychology at Williams College in Massachusetts.

“I think, maybe the most interesting and potentially explosive element of it is the fact that he clearly was very upset that Biden dropped out and has been replaced by Harris,” said Fein, who suggested the debate had greater potential for mind games and psychological drama than any he had previously studied.

“It’s going to be a mighty task for him to control his tendencies. Whenever he’s baited … by a woman, he’s usually been very nasty. And a woman of colour is just like the nightmare scenario.

“There’s going to have to be some give and take in a way that there didn’t have to be in the first debate, when he didn’t have to say much but just let Biden flail. So the potential for all kinds of drama is great.”

The former president has been preparing for the debate with, among others, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress-turned Trump supporter who ran for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 and memorably tangled with Harris in a primary debate.

In an eve-of-debate call with journalists on Monday, Jason Miller, a Trump adviser, said that it would be Harris who would have difficulty preparing for Trump.

“The fact that Trump is out there every day doing unscripted questions [means] you can’t prepare for him,” he said, comparing it with training to prepare to fight Muhammad Ali. “You don’t know what his style is going to be. He has an amazing mix of humour and charm, as well as hard-hitting facts.”

With Hugo Lowell

Donald Trump sexual abuse accuser Jessica Leeds says she ruefully “laughed out loud” when the former president recently disputed her sworn testimony that he grabbed her, tried to kiss her and ran his hand up her skirt on a plane in the 1970s by insisting “she would not have been the chosen one”.

“He assaulted me 50 years ago and continues to attack me today,” Leeds said alongside her attorneys during a press conference in New York on Monday. “It was like he had 47 arms – like an octopus, but not a sound was spoken.”

Her remarks came after Trump appeared at an appeal hearing on the sexual abuse case brought by E Jean Carroll, which resulted in a jury finding Trump liable of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.

Leeds, 82, came forward in 2016 and later testified in the Carroll trial, which centered on Carroll’s testimony that the Republican nominee in November’s election had assaulted her at a department store in the 1990s. That set the stage for Trump to go into a lengthy rebuttal of both Carroll and Leeds.

With respect to Leeds, Trump said it was a “totally made-up story” that “never happened”, and he insinuated that she supported Democrats.

“And frankly – I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say – but it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen. And she would not have been the chosen one.”

Leeds has accused Trump of groping her in the first-class section of an airplane. She said she fought him off and moved to the back of the plane. At her press conference, she said she later ran into him, prompting him to exclaim, “I remember you,” before calling her a derogatory word.

Trump in turn said: “Think of the impracticality of this. I’m famous – I’m in a plane. People are coming into the plane, and I’m looking at a woman, and I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?”

Leeds’s claim first surfaced soon after Trump debated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton before he won the 2016 presidential election. During that campaign, hot-mic footage from Access Hollywood captured Trump saying: “I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet, just kiss, I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they just let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Leeds told the New York Times then that she believed “his behavior is deep-seated in his character”.

“To those who would vote for him, I would wish for them to reflect on this,” Leeds said.

Leeds on Monday said she and her lawyers were considering “a number of options” following Trump’s remarks on Friday, which she described as “bizarre”.

She added that Trump “has no respect for women” and he should not be re-elected president.

“The bottom line is that he does not understand that he is a sexual predator,” she said.

Trump is grappling with a number of other legal cases in addition to Carroll’s as he faces Kamala Harris in the 5 November election for the White House. Those include three pending indictments in connection with efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election to Joe Biden as well as his retention of classified documents after his presidency.

Meanwhile, in May, he was convicted of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him about a decade before he won the presidency.

Dickson Ndiema Marangach, the former partner of the Uganda runner Rebecca Cheptegei, who had been accused of killing her by dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire, died on Monday from burns sustained during the attack.

Cheptegei, who competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in the 1 September attack and died four days later. Her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died at 7.50pm local time on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya, where Cheptegei was also treated and died. “He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters.

Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Her death has put the spotlight on domestic violence in the country, particularly within its running community. Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.

“Justice really would have been for him to sit in jail and think about what he had done. This is not positive news whatsoever,” said Viola Cheptoo, co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, a support group for survivors of domestic violence in Kenya’s athletic community. “The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh.”

Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence.

Globally, a woman is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 UN Women study. “I don’t wish bad things on anyone, but of course I would have loved for him to face the law as an example for others so that these attacks on women can stop,” said Beatrice Ayikoru, the secretary-general of the Uganda Olympic Committee.

A French man being tried for recruiting strangers to rape his drugged wife has been hospitalised, his lawyer has said, in a development that could lead to the trial being adjourned.

Dominique Pélicot, 71, has been on trial since last week for repeatedly raping and enlisting dozens of strangers to abuse his heavily sedated wife in her own bed between 2011 and 2020.

Fifty other men, aged 26-74, are also on trial for alleged involvement in a case that has horrified France.

The main defendant, who has admitted to the charges against him, was to be questioned on Tuesday afternoon. But on Monday he appeared frail, leaning on a cane and the glass side of the dock, and was excused from court after experiencing what his lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, said was abdominal pain.

On Tuesday, he was hospitalised, Zavarro told the court, saying it would make “no sense to continue without him being present”.

The presiding judge, Roger Arata, ordered that the accused be examined, saying he could request a suspension of the trial “until his state of health improves”.

During a break on Tuesday, Zavarro said her client was in no way “evading” his trial. “Mr Pélicot will not evade his trial. He will be there, he will respond to all questions. But he has this medical issue that he did not plan,” she said. She said his pains had started on Friday. “He has always said he would be present and testify. It’s essential,” she added.

Experts on Monday had described Pélicot as a self-centred manipulator with no empathy and a split personality.

His former wife, Gisèle Pélicot, 71, says she was troubled by strange memory lapses for years until police uncovered the abuse by chance after he was caught filming up women’s skirts in a local supermarket.

The trial is open to the public at her request to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual assault.

The family’s attorney, Stéphane Babonneau, earlier on Tuesday said it was “absolutely necessary that Mr Pélicot be treated medically and be able to attend the debates”.

“Gisèle Pélicot and her children do not wish to testify without him being present,” he added.

Most of the alleged rapes took place in the couple’s home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people in the southern region of Provence. Pélicot kept meticulous records of the abuse of his wife, discovered after police seized his computer and other equipment.

An investigator, who waded through images and footage found on the main defendant’s computer, told the court on Tuesday that all of the co-accused must have known that Gisèle Pélicot was unconscious.

“Beyond the images, you need to listen to the sound. You immediately notice that she’s sleeping,” Stephan Gal said. “Some even came back on several occasions, and none could have been unaware that she was in a deep unconscious state.”

Eighteen of the 51 accused, including Dominique Pélicot, are in custody, while 32 other defendants are attending the trial as free men. The last, still at large, is being judged in absentia.

The investigator recounted the case of one of the co-defendants, Mathieu D, accused of sexually abusing Gisèle Pélicot, like many others without a condom. Police identified him thanks to a distinctive tattoo, Gal said. They found his contact on the Dominique Pélicot’s phone, and his phone data showed he was in Mazan on the same day.

When interrogated, Mathieu D “said he knew Dominique Pélicot was going to put his wife to sleep, but he thought it was part of a ‘sexual game’. He said it was presented as a scenario and he had naively, blindly gone for it,” Gal said.

The Pélicots’ daughter, Caroline Darian, 45, has said her life was “literally turned upside down” when she heard of the abuse. Naked photomontages of her had also been found on her father’s computer.

The couple’s two sons are expected to speak in the trial.

A French man being tried for recruiting strangers to rape his drugged wife has been hospitalised, his lawyer has said, in a development that could lead to the trial being adjourned.

Dominique Pélicot, 71, has been on trial since last week for repeatedly raping and enlisting dozens of strangers to abuse his heavily sedated wife in her own bed between 2011 and 2020.

Fifty other men, aged 26-74, are also on trial for alleged involvement in a case that has horrified France.

The main defendant, who has admitted to the charges against him, was to be questioned on Tuesday afternoon. But on Monday he appeared frail, leaning on a cane and the glass side of the dock, and was excused from court after experiencing what his lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, said was abdominal pain.

On Tuesday, he was hospitalised, Zavarro told the court, saying it would make “no sense to continue without him being present”.

The presiding judge, Roger Arata, ordered that the accused be examined, saying he could request a suspension of the trial “until his state of health improves”.

During a break on Tuesday, Zavarro said her client was in no way “evading” his trial. “Mr Pélicot will not evade his trial. He will be there, he will respond to all questions. But he has this medical issue that he did not plan,” she said. She said his pains had started on Friday. “He has always said he would be present and testify. It’s essential,” she added.

Experts on Monday had described Pélicot as a self-centred manipulator with no empathy and a split personality.

His former wife, Gisèle Pélicot, 71, says she was troubled by strange memory lapses for years until police uncovered the abuse by chance after he was caught filming up women’s skirts in a local supermarket.

The trial is open to the public at her request to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual assault.

The family’s attorney, Stéphane Babonneau, earlier on Tuesday said it was “absolutely necessary that Mr Pélicot be treated medically and be able to attend the debates”.

“Gisèle Pélicot and her children do not wish to testify without him being present,” he added.

Most of the alleged rapes took place in the couple’s home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people in the southern region of Provence. Pélicot kept meticulous records of the abuse of his wife, discovered after police seized his computer and other equipment.

An investigator, who waded through images and footage found on the main defendant’s computer, told the court on Tuesday that all of the co-accused must have known that Gisèle Pélicot was unconscious.

“Beyond the images, you need to listen to the sound. You immediately notice that she’s sleeping,” Stephan Gal said. “Some even came back on several occasions, and none could have been unaware that she was in a deep unconscious state.”

Eighteen of the 51 accused, including Dominique Pélicot, are in custody, while 32 other defendants are attending the trial as free men. The last, still at large, is being judged in absentia.

The investigator recounted the case of one of the co-defendants, Mathieu D, accused of sexually abusing Gisèle Pélicot, like many others without a condom. Police identified him thanks to a distinctive tattoo, Gal said. They found his contact on the Dominique Pélicot’s phone, and his phone data showed he was in Mazan on the same day.

When interrogated, Mathieu D “said he knew Dominique Pélicot was going to put his wife to sleep, but he thought it was part of a ‘sexual game’. He said it was presented as a scenario and he had naively, blindly gone for it,” Gal said.

The Pélicots’ daughter, Caroline Darian, 45, has said her life was “literally turned upside down” when she heard of the abuse. Naked photomontages of her had also been found on her father’s computer.

The couple’s two sons are expected to speak in the trial.

A South African farmer and two of his employees have been accused of killing two women and feeding their bodies to his pigs.

The killings of Maria Makgatho and Locadia Ndlovu, also named in local media as Kudzai Ndlovu, allegedly took place when the two women trespassed on a farm in the northern province of Limpopo in August. They were scavenging for expired dairy products, which local media reported had been left there to feed the pigs.

The farm owner, Zachariah Johannes Olivier, the superviser Andrian Rudolph de Wet and William Musora, an agricultural worker, face two charges of premeditated murder, one of attempted murder and one of possession of an unlicensed firearm. Musora, who is from Zimbabwe, has also been charged with being in South Africa illegally.

The two women were allegedly shot on Olivier’s farm. A third man, who local media reported was Ndlovu’s husband, was injured and crawled to a road where he screamed for help. Some days later, police discovered the women’s decomposing bodies in a pigsty on the farm.

The three accused men appeared in court on Tuesday to apply for bail. The hearing was postponed until October.

The case has caused outrage in a country with high rates of violent crime, where mistreatment and underpayment of farm workers is rife, farmers have been murdered and the majority black population is still mostly excluded from land ownership, as they were under apartheid.

Members of political parties protested outside the court, demanding the harshest possible sentences for the men and for them to be denied bail.

The South African Human Rights Commission, an independent official body, condemned the killings. It said it would “have anti-racism dialogues with the affected communities”, calling on people not to take the law into their own hands.

Associated Press contributed to this story.

Floods in northern Nigeria have killed more than 80% of the animals in a large zoo housing wildlife from lions and crocodiles to buffalo and ostriches, the facility has said.

“Some deadly animals have been washed away into our communities, like crocodiles and snakes,” the Sanda Kyarimi Park zoo added in a statement on the floods in the northern Borno state, urging residents to take precautions.

Floods began when a dam overflowed after heavy rains, uprooting thousands of people.

The disaster has affected other facilities in the state capital, Maiduguri, including a post office and a teaching hospital, said the office of the Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu, which told people to evacuate the worst-hit areas.

“President Tinubu extends his heartfelt condolences to the government and people of the state, especially to the families that have lost their means of livelihood due to the disaster triggered by the overflow of the Alau Dam,” the statement said, saying humanitarian needs would be addressed.

Floods in the north-east of Nigeria killed at least 49 people last month, while a flood in 2022 killed more than 600.

Borno state, the birthplace of the Boko Haram jihadist organisation, also continues to grapple with a 15-year insurgency that has killed and displaced many.

South Korea has found new evidence that mothers were forced to give up their children for adoption in countries including Australia, Denmark and the United States.

At least 200,000 South Korean children had been adopted abroad since the 1950s, but allegations have emerged that hospitals, maternity wards and adoption agencies systematically colluded to force parents – primarily single mothers – to give up their children.

Adoption workers in some cases insisted that adoptees were abandoned children and blamed the biological parents for not looking for them.

But a report from a government Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to investigate the claims has detailed some of the coercive methods used to force mothers living in welfare shelters to give up their sometimes day-old children.

In one case, a mother unwilling to be separated from her child was recorded as being “a problem” and “mentally ill”. The record was later updated to explain that the parental rights’ waiver had been secured and the baby transferred to an adoption agency.

International adoption was not well understood at the time, according to researchers who spoke to the Guardian last year, with parents told that it was like sending your child to study abroad and that they would come back.

Adoptees said they had grown up being told they were better off as an adoptee in Denmark than living as an impoverished South Korean child.

Among its recommendations, the commission urged the government to issue a formal apology and offer financial compensation to victims of the detention centres.

“Hearing [about these stories] is horrible. It’s inconceivable how violent and systemic it was, but there’s also redemption in the truth coming out,” said Peter Møller, an adoptee himself and founder of the Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG), which has campaigned for an inquiry into the adoption industry that sent them predominantly to white families in western countries. Hearing these stories, Møller said, is “horrible, because it’s inconceivable how violent and systemic it was. But there’s also redemption in the truth coming out.”

During the 1970s and 1980s, as the number of children sent abroad soared, the military dictatorship in South Korea pursued a “social purification” policy that saw thousands of people swept off the streets and forcibly admitted into government-funded, privately run welfare centres.

As well as confirming long-held suspicions that the country’s overseas adoption programme was riddled with egregious misconduct, the government commission has revealed rampant human rights abuses and atrocious treatment of inmates at four of these centres.

Inmates were forced into unpaid labour on construction projects, forcibly transferred to other detention facilities, restrained and subjected to beatings and solitary confinement. Some remained confined in these facilities for decades, the commission found.

Of the hundreds of inmates who died, some were buried in shallow graves or had their bodies donated to medical schools without any attempt made to locate and inform their families. When women gave birth at the facilities, the babies were often transferred to an adoption agency for the purposes of overseas adoption within a day.

Sussie Brynald, 51, another Danish adoptee whose case has been handled by the DKRG, said the news was deeply upsetting.

“It makes me angry and sad,” she said. “It only goes to show just how much [South Korea’s adoption system] was always about money, and how little it was about the children.”

A man who accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of sexually assaulting him has won a $100m judgment after the rapper, music producer and businessman failed to contest the allegations in a civil courthouse in Michigan.

An attorney for Combs issued a statement denying that his client knows the plaintiff, Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith. The lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said Cardello-Smith had committed “fraud on the court” and that Combs “looks forward to having this judgment swiftly dismissed”.

Lee Cardello-Smith, 51, secured the remarkably large judgment after filing a lawsuit that described how he encountered Combs while working in the restaurant and hospitality industry near Detroit.

According to the Detroit Metro Times, Cardello-Smith alleged that he was both drugged and sexually assaulted by Combs at a party in Detroit in 1997, just one claim amid a broader pattern of alleged sexual abuse and other misconduct by the three-time Grammy winner once also known as P Diddy, Puff Daddy and Love.

Cardello-Smith, who is incarcerated, eventually sued over the alleged attack and provided information showing Combs’s name in a prison visitation log. And at a preliminary 7 August court hearing conducted virtually, Cardello-Smith testified that Combs offered him $2.3m to drop his lawsuit, which would allow the music mogul to complete a property sale.

The plaintiff testified that Combs, 54, told him he would not acknowledge Cardello-Smith’s claims in court, saying: “You know how we get down.” Cardello-Smith said he told Combs, “Well, I disagree with how you get down,” and rejected the settlement offer.

Lenawee county circuit court judge Anna Marie Anzalone subsequently issued an order restraining Combs from selling off assets that could help him cover any damages possibly awarded to Cardello-Smith. Then, when Combs failed to appear at a virtual hearing in Cardello-Smith’s lawsuit on Monday, Anzalone awarded the plaintiff a default judgment of $100m, as the Metro Times first reported.

Plaintiffs receive default judgments in their favor when defendants fail to take action in response to cases brought against them.

Court records show that Cardello-Smith is incarcerated at the Earnest C Brooks correctional facility after multiple previous convictions of criminal sexual misconduct as well as one of kidnapping. The Metro Times reported that he taught himself criminal and civil law during his incarceration while also developing “a long history of challenging the judicial system” with lawsuits.

Combs is not the only prominent defendant named in one of those lawsuits. Another is the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Detroit, in a lawsuit alleging that two of the organization’s priests as well as one of its lay employees sexually abused Cardello-Smith between 1979 – when he was about seven years old – and 1993.

It was not immediately clear how easily Cardello-Smith may be able to collect his judgment against Combs, though the plaintiff told Metro Times he went “way back” with the defendant.

Agnifilo’s statement on Tuesday referred to Cardello-Smith as “a convicted felon and sexual predator.

“His resume now includes committing a fraud on the court from prison, as Mr Combs has never heard of him let alone been served with any lawsuit,” Agnifilo said.

Combs has faced several other lawsuits accusing him of rapes, sexual assaults, other instances of physical violence and distribution of “revenge porn”. He initially denied all allegations and pledged to “fight” to clear his name.

However, in May, CNN obtained and published hotel security camera video showing him battering the singer Cassie Ventura – his girlfriend at the time – in 2016. Ventura had sued Combs for damages several months earlier, accusing him of rape and severe physical abuse during the course of a relationship that by then had ended. Combs paid an undisclosed sum to settle Ventura’s claims out of court within one day of her having filed the lawsuit.

The video in May vividly contradicted Combs’s denials. And two days after it surfaced, Combs released a video apology.

Meanwhile, in March, federal authorities conducting a sex-trafficking investigation raided Combs’s properties in Los Angeles and Miami. Those investigators have not charged Combs with any crimes, though multiple media outlets on Monday reported that he had put up the raided Los Angeles home for sale at an asking price of $61.5m.