Keir Starmer has told Vladimir Putin that he started the war in Ukraine and could end it at any time after the Russian leader warned that any use of long-range British missiles into Russian territory would put Nato at war with his country.

The prime minister spoke en route to Washington to see US president Joe Biden as he sought to justify a western decision made behind closed doors that would allow Ukraine to attack inside Russia with partly British-made Storm Shadow missiles.

Responding directly to threats earlier by the Russian president, Starmer told reporters: “Russia started this conflict. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine. Russia can end this conflict straight away. Ukraine has the right to self-defence.”

The UK, he added, had provided “training and capability” – a reference to weapons – to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion and said that he was visiting the US president partly because “there are obviously further discussions to be had about the nature of that capability”.

A day earlier, the Guardian revealed that the US and UK had agreed, in conjunction with other allies, to allow Ukraine to strike military targets inside Russia with Storm Shadow missiles, which have a range of at least 190 miles, a longstanding demand of Kyiv’s.

On Thursday, Putin said any western move to let Kyiv use such longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean Nato would be “at war” with Moscow – a dramatic escalation of his rhetoric about the war which began with the Russian invasion in February 2022.

“This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict,” Putin told a state television reporter. “It would mean that Nato countries, the US, European countries, are at war with Russia,” he said, adding that Russia would take “appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face” as a result.

Starmer was speaking on a plane to Washington DC as he headed for a special foreign policy summit with Biden on Friday. The prime minister said that he would not comment on Storm Shadow directly, but added he wanted to ensure that “all the decisions we made are within the strategic context” by discussing the issues with his US counterpart at the White House on Friday afternoon.

“There are really important developments likely in the next few weeks and months, both in Ukraine and the Middle East, and therefore a number of tactical decisions ought to be taken,” the prime minister said.

David Lammy, the foreign secretary, appeared to go a step further on Thursday night, saying Britain and the US should give Ukraine the weapons it needs to defeat Russia. “This is a crucial period in the fight because you are setting things up to stop Russia getting the advantage over winter,” he told the Daily Telegraph while ­visiting Kyiv.

“We are here also, of course, at a time when it is crystal clear Russia is escalating with its friend Iran, taking a consignment of ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles that will be used in the winter, sadly, against the Ukrainian people and which will cost lives.

“So, of course, we’re here to strategise, to understand how we can put Ukrainians in a position to win and what is needed.”

Ukraine has been lobbying to use Storm Shadow and US-made Atacms missiles for many months, complaining that while Moscow has been able to repeatedly bomb targets across Ukraine since the start of the war, it has been prevented from hitting military targets inside Russia.

However, Biden had been reluctant to authorise a retaliation because of a fear of escalating the conflict with Russia. But the situation changed earlier this week when the US and UK said that Russia had taken delivery of the first shipment of Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles from Iran.

Nevertheless, the US and UK have emphasised to Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that any use of Storm Shadow missiles must be carefully coordinated as part of a wider plan to try to force Russia to end the conflict which is now heading towards its third winter.

No press conference involving Biden and Starmer is planned, and any first announcement of the use of Storm Shadow inside Russia is likely only if an attack with the missiles is made. Its impact would be too noticeable to be concealed.

Starmer emphasised the purpose of the trip, during which he will have about three hours of talks with the outgoing Biden on Friday, was to have “a strategic discussion” about Ukraine, Gaza and other foreign policy questions.

But he added it was not to try to force a peace agreement on Ukraine. “Ultimately that’s a discussion that has to be led by President Zelenskiy,” Starmer said. Instead, he said, “it’s very important for two key allies” to discuss foreign policy questions “among themselves and to have spaces to do that”.

The prime minister will first have a short one-to-one meeting with the president, who is due to step down in January, before switching to a wider meeting involving David Lammy, the foreign secretary, and other key officials, UK ambassador to the US Karen Pierce and Tim Barrow, the national security adviser.

But the prime minister will not meet Kamala Harris, the vice-president and Democrat nominee, because she was campaigning ahead of the November election. “She will be in other parts of the US,” he said. “Rather than Washington, she’ll be, as you’d expect, in swing states.”

• Ukraine accused Russia on Thursday of using strategic bombers to strike a civilian grain vessel in Black Sea waters near Nato member Romania, escalating tensions between Moscow and the military alliance. It was the first time a missile has struck a civilian vessel transporting grains at sea since the start of Moscow’s invasion in February 2022. Some vessels have been damaged during Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports where they were moored. Zelenskiy said the vessel carrying Ukrainian grain to Egypt was hit overnight by a Russian missile just after it left Ukrainian territorial waters. There were no casualties, he said. Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said the strike was “a brazen attack on freedom of navigation and global food security”. Ukraine’s navy said Russian Tupolev Tu-22 bombers had fired a number of cruise missiles at the vessel at 11.02pm local time on Wednesday.

• The US ambassador to Ukraine “strongly condemned” the attack and said Russia was responsible. A United Nations spokesperson said the incident was a “stark reminder” of the threats still faced in the Black Sea by civilian vessels. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

• UK PM Keir Starmer is heading to Washington for a “strategic discussion” with US president Joe Biden about Ukraine and the Middle East. The discussion is expected to include a decision to allow Ukraine to launch longer-range attacks inside Russia with partly British-made Storm Shadow missiles. Starmer added it was not to try to force a peace agreement on Ukraine. “Ultimately that’s a discussion that has to be led by President Zelenskiy,” Starmer said. Instead, he said, “it’s very important for two key allies” to discuss foreign policy questions “among themselves and to have spaces to do that”. Ukraine has been lobbying to use Storm Shadow and US-made Atacms missiles for many months.

• Starmer has told Vladimir Putin the Russian president started the war in Ukraine and could end it at any time after the Russian leader warned that any use of long-range British missiles into Russian territory would put Nato at war with his country. The prime minister spoke en route to Washington to meet Biden.

• Russia says its forces have recaptured 10 settlements after it launched a counteroffensive in the Kursk region to push out Ukrainian troops who stormed across the border five weeks ago. With fierce fighting continuing, Russia’s defence ministry listed the names of 10 settlements it said it had retaken, in a significant blow to Kyiv. Zelenskiy acknowledged a Russian counteroffensive had begun.

• More than $30m (£23m) worth of aircraft tyres made by western manufacturers were imported into Russia last year via intermediaries despite attempts to ban the trade, according to a Ukrainian government agency.

• Russian shelling on Thursday killed three people and injured nine in a village in north-eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, regional prosecutors said. A statement said one person died of his injuries in hospital after the attack on the village of Borova, south-east of Kharkiv. Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second-largest city and a frequent target of Russian strikes. The interior ministry had earlier reported emergency services were working at the site of the initial attack when Moscow’s troops shelled it again. Three rescuers were among the injured.

• A hundred people gathered on Thursday in the central synagogue in Kyiv to pay tribute to Matityahu Anton Samborskyi, the son of Ukraine’s chief rabbi who was killed fighting Russian forces. Mourners carried flowers, touched the coffin and shook hands with the deceased’s father chief rabbi Moshe Azman, who was holding back tears. “I want God to take revenge for him and for the other innocents, soldiers and civilians who are dying in this war,” Azman said.

• UK counter-terrorism police are providing support to the investigation into the death of a Daily Telegraph journalist in Gibraltar. David Knowles died while on holiday on Sunday after what his employers said was believed to be a cardiac arrest. The audio journalist, 32, had joined the Telegraph in 2020 and was behind its Ukraine: The Latest podcast.

Vladimir Putin has said that a western move to let Kyiv use longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean Nato would be “at war” with Moscow.

Putin spoke as US and UK top diplomats discussed easing rules on firing western weapons into Russia, which Kyiv has been pressing for, more than two and a half years into Moscow’s offensive.

“This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict,” Putin told a state television reporter.

“It would mean that Nato countries, the US, European countries, are at war with Russia,” he added. “If that’s the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face.”

Clearing Kyiv to strike deep into Russia “is a decision on whether Nato countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not”.

Putin’s comments came a day after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, gave his strongest hint yet that the White House is about to lift its restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons supplied by the west on key military targets inside Russia.

Speaking in Kyiv alongside the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, Blinken said the US had “from day one” been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine changed. “We will continue to do this,” he emphasised.

Blinken said he and Lammy would report back to their “bosses” – Joe Biden and Keir Starmer – after their talks on Wednesday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The foreign secretary suggested that Iran’s dispatch of ballistic missiles to Moscow – revealed this week – had changed strategic thinking in London and Washington. It was a “significant and dangerous escalation”, he said.

He added: “The escalator here is Putin. Putin has escalated with the shipment of missiles from Iran. We see a new axis of Russia, Iran and North Korea.” Lammy urged China “not to throw in its lot” with what he called “a group of renegades”.

British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia, although it is not expected to be publicly announced on Friday when Starmer meets Biden in Washington DC.

The two leaders are planning to discuss the war in Ukraine, and how it could be ended, as part of a wide-ranging foreign policy discussion, though they will avoid an intense focus on any individual weapons system, as the focus of the conversation is strategic.

With reporting by Agence France-Presse

Russia says its forces have recaptured 10 settlements after it launched a counteroffensive in the Kursk region to push out Ukrainian troops who stormed across the border five weeks ago.

With fierce fighting continuing, Russia’s defence ministry listed the names of 10 settlements it said it had retaken, in a significant blow to Kyiv. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, acknowledged a Russian counteroffensive had begun.

It follows Ukraine’s surprise cross-border attack last month into western Russia. Zelenskiy said his armed forces had anticipated Russia’s assault this week and the operation was still going to plan.

A mechanised raid began on Tuesday, according to Russian military bloggers. Russian forces pushed forward from the village of Korenevo and quickly advanced south into Snagost.

They have regained a number of villages, with two more – Krasnooktyabrskoe and Komarovka – reportedly having been captured on Thursday. One objective was to “bisect” Ukraine’s 1,000 sq km salient within Russia, cutting off its western flank, observers suggested.

The next step would be “a more organised and well-equipped effort to push Ukrainian forces” out of Russia completely, the Institute for the Study of War thinktank said. It acknowledged that the situation was fluid, with the size and scale of the counteroffensive unclear.

Zelenskiy told a news conference with the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nausėda, in Kyiv: “The Russians have begun counteroffensive actions. It is going according to our Ukrainian plan.”

Russia’s troops are also making rapid gains in the eastern Donetsk region. They reportedly captured another village on the outskirts of Pokrovsk – a key Ukrainian logistics hub – and were only 8km (5 miles) from the city.

A Russian missile demolished a road bridge connecting Pokrovsk with the neighbouring town of Mrynohrad and the water supply was knocked out. Officials described the situation as very difficult in the area, where thousands of civilians remain despite the bombardment.

Donetsk’s regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, said conditions in and around Pokrovsk would not improve. “I again call on you to evacuate!” he posted on the Telegram messaging app.

In the same province, three Ukrainian employees working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were killed and two injured when an artillery round hit their lorry in the village of Virolyubivka.

The ICRC’s president, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, said her staff had been distributing wood and coal briquettes to vulnerable households before winter. “I condemn attacks on Red Cross personnel in the strongest terms. It’s unconscionable that shelling would hit an aid distribution site,” she said.

Elsewhere, a Russian rocket hit an Egypt-bound cargo ship carrying wheat in the Black Sea. There were no casualties. Ukraine last year resumed the export of grain from the port of Odesa after driving out Russia’s naval fleet with sea drone attacks.

The Ukrainian military intelligence agency said it had shot down a Russian Su-30SM jet over the Black Sea. The warplane was hit with a portable surface-to-air missile, it said, releasing a video of the operation.

On Friday the US president, Joe Biden, will discuss the deteriorating military and humanitarian situation in Ukraine with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who is paying a brief visit to Washington. The meeting comes after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, travelled to Kyiv and held talks with Zelenskiy.

Blinken, speaking at a press conference afterwards, gave his strongest hint yet that the US will soon lift some restrictions on the use of US-supplied long-range weapons on key military targets within Russia. British government sources say approval will be given to allow similar strikes with UK Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

In Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claimed that a US-UK decision on targeting Russian territory “was taken long ago”. He said Russian forces were successfully pushing the Ukrainian military out of the Kursk area.

The Pentagon spokesperson Lt Col Charlie Dietz said US guided missiles, such as Atacms, would not be able to reach all the locations where Russia launched some of its assets. He added: “The supply of Atacms is finite, and we need to be judicious about where and when they are deployed.”

Early on Thursday, Russia launched another large-scale drone and missile attack, triggering air raid sirens across much of Ukraine. The city of Konotop, a rail hub in Sumy region that Kyiv used as a staging ground for its Kursk incursion, reported heavy damage.

Local officials said at least 14 people had been hurt. Rescuers were working to restore power in the town, which had a prewar population of about 83,000. Regional officials said there were 10 explosions during the attack and the mayor, Artem Semenikhin, said the power system was in a critical condition.

“At the moment, energy workers are doing everything they can to provide electricity to the hospital and the water supply system,” he said.

The year 2024 is already the deadliest since the coup for media operating in Myanmar, with three deaths recorded last month alone as the junta is accused of imposing a “terror campaign” on the press.

Htet Myat Thu, 28, and Win Htut Oo, 26, both freelance journalists, were shot dead during a raid on their home by the military junta on 21 August in the southern Mon state.

In the same week, on 19 August, Pe Maung Sein, 50, an award-winning documentary film-maker, died at a private hospital in Yangon just three days after he had been released from a junta prison. Hours of beatings at an interrogation centre had left him with five broken ribs and four prolapsed discs, which were untreated for almost two years in jail, where he also endured periods without adequate food.

His wife says he was left paralysed, and with such severe injuries he was unable to drink, eat or even talk.

In total, four journalists have been killed this year, making 2024 the deadliest for members of the press since the military seized power in February 2021, ousting the government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The coup was met by widespread opposition from the public, and an armed uprising against the junta. Journalists documenting the conflict and the frequent human rights abuses by the military, have faced immense dangers.

Hundreds of journalists have also been forced to flee into exile or fled to areas controlled by opposing armed groups, while others work underground.

Pe Maung Sein was arrested in May 2022 while filming in Loikaw, close to the border with Thailand. He wanted to document the conflict and plight of people forced to flee their homes, his wife, Khin Su Naing said. She told the Guardian he was kept at an interrogation centre where his hands and legs were tied, and he was kicked for hours by a group of soldiers, denied food and allowed only a few sips of water. His memories of what happened next were vague as he lost consciousness. The only thing he remembered was pain.

He was transferred to Loikaw prison, and charged with communicating with blacklisted organisations. He was denied proper medical treatment for his injuries, relying on medicine that his wife sent from Yangon. When conflict in Loikaw escalated in November 2023, Khin Su was unable to communicate with her husband, but learned he had received very little food as the prison had no regular supplies. He began collapsing from his injuries, and was left paralysed.

Pe Maung Sein was moved to Loikaw military hospital in April 2024, before being moved again to Yangon, after a request from Khin Su. Despite being paralysed, his legs were chained to the hospital bed and he was watched over by armed guards. MRI results showed that he had five broken ribs and four prolapsed discs, while an endoscopic test showed he had a lump in his trachea in addition to bone tuberculosis. He was released four days before his sentence was completed and Khin Su rushed him to a private hospital. He died three days later.

“I had already prepared for him with a wheelchair. I expected him to return home at least as a disabled person, but not like this,” Khin Su said.

The Guardian was not able to reach a military representative for comment.

Two days after Pe Maung Sein’s death, freelance journalists Htet Myat Thu and Win Htut Oo were shot dead in the country’s south.

On 21 August, Thiri Lwin, the girlfriend of Win Htut Oo, received a phone call telling her that gunshots had been heard near the home that her partner shared with Htet Myat Thu in a small town in Southern Myanmar.

Neighbours told her that about 30 military soldiers had raided the house, and both men had been shot.

The military reportedly targeted the house after learning members of a local anti-junta group had visited them. Htet Myat Thu was shot dead as he went outside to open the gates, according to eyewitnesses. Win Htut Oo was killed later.

It was the first time in post-coup Myanmar that a journalist has been shot dead in their home, according to the advocacy group Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF).

Pro-junta Telegram channels have said that the two men were part of the anti-junta group, Kyaikhto Revolution Force, a claim that Thiri, Win Htut Oo’s editor and independent media have contradicted.

“They [soldiers] don’t need to shoot and kill them. They could just arrest them,” Thiri said

Chan Chan, an editor who worked closely with Win Htut Oo, said he was hardworking, intelligent and their most prolific freelancer.

“It is very difficult to be a journalist at the moment in Myanmar,” she said, adding the country was in a “dark age”.

The deaths in August followed the killing of Myat Thu Tun, also known as Phoe Thiha in January. He was shot dead while in military custody in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State. Local media reported that his body, which showed signs of torture, was found buried at a Rakhine State military camp on 5 February. He had been arrested in 2022.

Myanmar is the second-worst jailer of journalists, behind China, with 64 journalists currently detained in prisons that are notorious for torture and grim conditions.

Arthur Rochereau, of RSF, said that 2024 had not only seen more journalists killed by Myanmar’s military, but also the harshest sentences since the coup, as the junta has increasingly targeted reporters under terrorism-related charges.

“Despite the intensifying crackdown, courageous journalists continue risking their lives to report on the country’s dire situation,” said Rochereau. “Now more than ever, the international community must increase pressure on the regime to end its terror campaign against the press.”

Kamala Harris held rallies Thursday in North Carolina, first in Charlotte and then in Greensboro, calling for another round of debate with Donald Trump, two days after her strong showing in Philadelphia against the former president.

“I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate,” she said to applause, “because this election and what is at stake could not be more important. On Tuesday night, I talked about issues that I know matter to families across America, like bringing down the cost of living … but that’s not what we heard from Donald Trump.”

Holding rallies in two of North Carolina’s largest cities highlights the importance of the state as a national battleground that the campaign now sees as winnable.

In Charlotte, Harris laughed and mocked Trump’s answer during the debate when he was asked about his plan to replace Obamacare. “He has no plan to replace it. He said ‘concepts of a plan’ – no actual plan. Concepts. And understand what’s at stake with that: 45 million Americans are insured under the Affordable Care Act, and he’s going to end it based on a concept.”

Harris touched on familiar themes in her campaign, calling for an “opportunity economy” with support for small businesses and first-time homebuyers, and a renewed child tax credit. She noted the support of the former Republican representative Liz Cheney and her father, the former vice-president Dick Cheney. “I will always put country above party and be a president for all Americans,” Harris said.

She also called on voters to look up on Google “Project 2025”, a transition plan for a second Trump administration created by former Trump advisers through the Heritage Foundation. “It is a detailed and dangerous blueprint for what he would do if he was elected president,” she said.

Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document. “I have nothing to do – as you know and as she knows better than anyone – I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said during Tuesday’s debate. “That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference.”

Harris has ignored Trump’s rejections. “Donald Trump will give billionaires and big corporations massive tax cuts and cut corporate taxes by a trillion dollars even as they pull in record profits,” she said in Charlotte. “He will add more than $5tn to the national debt.”

She said that one out of three women now live in states with abortion access restricted by the end of Roe v Wade protections, which she described as a “Trump abortion ban”.

Abortion is legal in North Carolina, but is banned after 12 weeks and six days of pregnancy. It is, however, the closest state with any meaningful abortion access for most women living in the American south.

Harris also talked about the potential increase in taxes on households implied by Trump’s proposals to shift to a national sales tax and the imposition of tariffs on imports, describing it as a “Trump sales tax” that “would cost the average family nearly $4,000 a year”.

The Harris campaign has been pressing that point in blanket advertising on television, cable and social media in North Carolina. The campaign had $50m in ad buys in the state reserved through the end of the race, according to ad tracker AdImpact.

In Greensboro, protesters intermittently shouted at the vice-president to call attention to the administration’s actions with regard to the war in Gaza. A man stood up near the end of Harris’s address to shout “war criminal” at Harris, while holding a sign that said “17,000 Children”. A rally staffer escorted him from the event, while another attendee tore the sign to pieces. The crowd booed the man as he shouted his protest.

Donald Trump delivered his first public remarks since his debate against Kamala Harris at a campaign event on Thursday in Arizona, a key swing state that both candidates are eager to secure.

An estimated 5,000 people braved the blazing temperatures – which hovered just above 100F (37.8C) through the afternoon – to wait in line outside the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in Tucson, an auditorium rented by the campaign that holds about 2,300 people. Meanwhile, city emergency crews responded to dozens of calls for heat injuries before Trump took the stage, according to local public radio reporter Alisa Zaira Reznick.

Trump stood before a backdrop etched with his campaign promises of “make housing affordable again” and “no tax on tips” – a signal that the speech would focus heavily on amplifying his economic platform. But instead, the former president used much of his time to reframe his debate performance – which even Trump’s own aides have admitted will not win him new voters – by casting it in a far more favorable light.

“We had a monumental victory over comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump said to cheers, using a deriding nickname and intentionally mispronouncing the vice-president’s first name. His depiction came in stark contrast to the widespread criticism over his subpar performance from conservatives and progressives alike.

Trump blamed the debate moderators, whom he called “low-life anchors”, complaining of mistreatment from the two veteran journalists who fact-checked his attempts at spreading misinformation during the debate.

But Trump made it clear: he has no desire for a do-over. “There will be no third debate,” he said.

Despite the advertised theme of the event, Trump did not spend much of the roughly hour-and-a-half speech sharing details of his economic plans. Instead, the Republican candidate dedicated the bulk of his time pandering to his base with meandering anecdotes, insulting his opponents, and reiterating many of his baseless talking points, including claims he won the last election.

He also focused heavily on immigration, a typical target for his rallies, stoking fears about waves of criminals crossing into the country and again accusing Haitian immigrants of eating animals in Springfield, Ohio.

“They take in the geese … and even walk off with their pets,” Trump said, repeating the unfounded and racist smear that has been challenged by the town’s officials and has inflamed tensions and attacks against members of the Haitian community.

Roughly an hour into his remarks, Trump shared some of his plans for the economy, promising no taxes on social security benefits and no taxes on tips, and announcing for the first time that he also wants to end taxes on overtime.

“We will defend the second amendment, restore free speech, and we will secure our elections. Everyone will prosper, every family will thrive, and every day will be filled with joy and opportunity and hope,” Trump said, asking his base to give him a landslide victory that’s “too big to rig”.

Arizona is a battleground state that the Trump and Harris campaigns have both devoted attention to this week. The second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, was also scheduled to visit Tucson, a Democratic-leaning enclave, on Thursday.

The Trump campaign was required to pay a $145,222.70 deposit for use of the auditorium and local police who would perform security duties at the event, a policy that was set by the city after the former president failed to settle an $80,000 bill for a rally held there in 2016.

“We learned our lesson,” Tucson city councilman Kevin Dahl told the Arizona Daily Star, adding that the city wrote off the debt.

Linda Ronstadt, the singer for whom the venue is named, issued a statement on Wednesday condemning the former president and declaring her support for Harris.

“I don’t just deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty, and ignorance,” she said, after expressing her sadness that he brought his “hate show” to Tucson. The final straw, Ronstadt said, was the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrant families seeking asylum.

“Family separation made orphans of thousands of little children and babies, and brutalized their desperate mothers and fathers,” she continued. “Trump first ran for president warning about rapists coming in from Mexico. I’m worried about keeping the rapist out of the White House.”

The US justice department is preparing criminal charges in connection with an Iranian hack that targeted Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in a bid to shape the outcome of the November election, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

It was not immediately clear when the charges might be announced or whom precisely they will target, but they are the result of an FBI investigation into an intrusion that investigators across multiple agencies quickly linked to an Iranian effort to influence American politics.

The prospect of criminal charges comes as the justice department has raised alarms about aggressive efforts by countries including Russia and Iran to meddle in the presidential election between Trump and Kamala Harris, including by hacking and covert social media campaigns designed to shape public opinion.

Iran “is making a greater effort to influence this year’s election than it has in prior election cycles, and that Iranian activity is growing increasingly aggressive as this election nears”, Matthew Olsen, the assistant attorney general and the justice department’s top national security official, said in a speech on Thursday in New York City.

“Iran perceives this year’s elections to be particularly consequential in impacting Iran’s national security interests, increasing Tehran’s inclination to try to shape the outcome,” he added.

The Trump campaign disclosed on 10 August that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets – Politico, the New York Times and the Washington Post – were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.

Politico reported that it began receiving emails on 22 July from an anonymous account. The source – an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” – passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. The document was dated 23 February, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.

The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency subsequently blamed that hack, as well as an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign, on Iran.

Those agencies issued a statement saying that the hacking and similar activities were meant to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and influence the outcome of elections.

The statement did not identify whether Iran has a preferred candidate, though Tehran has long appeared determined to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike Trump ordered as president that killed an Iranian general.

The two people who discussed the looming criminal charges spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press because they were not authorized to speak publicly about a case that had not yet been unsealed.

The Washington Post first reported that charges were being prepared.

Justice department officials have been working to publicly call out and counter election-interference efforts. The response is a contrast to 2016, when Obama administration officials were far more circumspect about Russian interference they were watching that was designed to boost Trump’s campaign.

“We have learned that transparency about what we are seeing is critical,” Olsen, the justice department official, said Thursday.

“It helps ensure that our citizens are aware of the attempts of foreign government to sow discord and spread falsehoods – all of which promotes resilience within our electorate,” he added. “It provides warnings to our private sector so they can better protect their networks. And it sends an unmistakable message to our adversaries – we’ve gained insight into your networks, we know what you’re doing, and we are determined to hold you accountable.”

Last week, in an effort to combat disinformation before the election, the justice department charged two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, with covertly funneling a Tennessee-based content-creation company nearly $10m to publish English-language videos on social media platforms with messages in favor of the Russian government’s interests and agenda.

Donald Trump had two counts tossed from his criminal case in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, after the presiding judge decided on Thursday they fell under the supremacy clause in the US constitution that bars state prosecutors from charging federal crimes.

“The Supremacy Clause declares that state law must yield to federal law when the two conflict,” the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee wrote in his order.

The judge decided that two charges against Trump and an additional count against several Trump allies, who were charged as co-defendants, should be struck. But he decided the remainder of the indictment – including the Rico racketeering charge – could remain.

Trump now faces eight charges, down from 13 charges. Trump pleaded not guilty to the sprawling 2020 election interference case in Fulton county last year along with 18 other co-defendants. Four have since taken plea deals and agreed to testify against the other defendants.

The charges that were dismissed against Trump – the filing of false documents and conspiring to file false documents – related to the Trump campaign’s gambit to submit fake elector certificates declaring Trump as the winner even though he had lost.

The fake elector certificates were then sent to the National Archives ahead of the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021, which the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis charged as criminal forgery counts.

“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again. The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed,” Trump’s lead lawyer, Steve Sadow, said in a statement.

The 22-page order issued by McAfee comes as the fate of the case hangs in the balance ahead of the Georgia appeals court deciding whether Willis can continue with the case, following her alleged relationship with her deputy, Nathan Wade.

McAfee declined to remove Willis from the case as long as Wade resigned to resolve the conflict of interest allegation, a decision that Trump’s lawyers have appealed.

Trump’s attorneys continue to argue that Willis has a conflict of interest, but also argued that she should have been disqualified for comments she made about the case at a speech at Big Bethel AME church in downtown Atlanta. In the wake of revelations about her relationship with Wade, Willis attributed the legal attack to racist motivations.

Separately on Thursday, McAfee rejected a motion from the former Trump lawyer John Eastman and Trump fake elector Shawn Still to toss the entire indictment on grounds that it relied on an overly broad interpretation of the Georgia state racketeering statute.

A landslide and mega-tsunami in Greenland in September 2023, triggered by the climate crisis, caused the entire Earth to vibrate for nine days, a scientific investigation has found.

The seismic event was detected by earthquake sensors around the world but was so completely unprecedented that the researchers initially had no idea what had caused it. Having now solved the mystery, the scientists said it showed how global heating was already having planetary-scale impacts and that major landslides were possible in places previously believed to be stable as temperatures rapidly rose.

The collapse of a 1,200-metre-high mountain peak into the remote Dickson fjord happened on 16 September 2023 after the melting glacier below was no longer able to hold up the rock face. It triggered an initial wave 200 metres high and the subsequent sloshing of water back and forth in the twisty fjord sent seismic waves through the planet for more than a week.

The landslide and mega-tsunami were the first recorded in eastern Greenland. Arctic regions are being affected by the most rapid global heating, and similar though seismically smaller events have been seen in western Greenland, Alaska, Canada, Norway and Chile.

Dr Kristian Svennevig from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, the lead author of the report, said: “When we set out on this scientific adventure, everybody was puzzled and no one had the faintest idea what caused this signal. It was far longer and simpler than earthquake signals, which usually last minutes or hours, and was labelled as a USO – an unidentified seismic object.

“It was also an extraordinary event because it is the first giant landslide and tsunami we have recorded in east Greenland at all. It definitely shows east Greenland is coming online when it comes to landslides. The waves destroyed an uninhabited Inuit site at sea level that was at least 200 years old, indicating nothing like this had happened for at least two centuries.

A large number of huts were destroyed at a research station on Ella Island, 70km (45 miles) from the landslide. The site was founded by fur hunters and explorers two centuries ago and is used by scientists and the Danish military, but was empty at the time of the tsunami.

The fjord is also on a route commonly used by tourist cruise ships and one carrying 200 people was stranded in mud in Alpefjord, close to Dickson fjord, last September. It was freed just two days before the tsunami struck, avoiding waves estimated at four to six metres.

“It was pure luck that nothing happened to any people here,” said Svennevig. “We are in uncharted waters scientifically, because we don’t really know what a tsunami does to a cruise ship.”

Dr Stephen Hicks at University College London, one of the research team leaders, said: “When I first saw the seismic signal, I was completely baffled. Never before has such a long-lasting, globally travelling seismic wave, containing only a single frequency of oscillation, been recorded.”

The signal looked completely different to multi-frequency rumbles and pings from earthquakes. It took 68 scientists from 40 institutions in 15 countries to solve the mystery by combining seismic data, field measurements, on-the-ground and satellite imagery, and high-resolution computer simulations of tsunami waves.

The analysis, published in the journal Science, estimated that 25m cubic metres of rock and ice crashed into the fjord and travelled at least 2,200 metres along it. The direction of the landslide, at 90 degrees to the length of the fjord, along with the inlet’s steep parallel walls and a 90-degree bend 10km down the line all helped to keep much of the landslide’s energy within the fjord and resonating for so long.

The tsunami wave reduced to seven metres within a few minutes, the researchers calculated, and would have fallen to a few centimetres in the days after, when the Danish military visited and photographed the fjord. But this sloshing of a vast body of water continued to send seismic waves across the world.

Coincidentally, sensors measuring water depth had been set up by scientists in the fjord two weeks before the landslide. “That was also pure luck,” said Svennevig. “They were sailing below this glacier and mountain that they didn’t know was about to collapse.”

A key part of determining the cause of the seismic event was modelling the tsunami and comparing it against the measurements. “Our model predicted an oscillation with exactly the same period – 90 seconds – which is an amazing result, as well as the height of the tsunami, and the waves decayed in exactly the same way as seismic signals. That was the eureka moment.”

Prof Anne Mangeney, a landslide modeller at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France, who was part of the team, said: “This unique long-duration tsunami challenged the classical models that we previously used to simulate just a few hours of tsunami propagation – we had to go to an unprecedentedly high numerical resolution. This opens up new avenues for tsunami modelling.”

Such events will become more common as global temperatures continue to rise. “Even more profoundly, for the first time, we can quite clearly see this event, triggered by climate change, caused a global vibration beneath all of our feet, everywhere around the world,” said Mangeney. “Those vibrations travelled from Greenland to Antarctica in less than an hour. So we’ve seen an impact from climate change impacting the entire world within just an hour.”

Humans’ impact on the planet was also demonstrated recently by studies showing that the reshaping of the Earth by the mass melting of polar ice was making the length of each day longer and causing the north and south poles to shift. Other work has shown that carbon emissions are shrinking the stratosphere.

A landslide and mega-tsunami in Greenland in September 2023, triggered by the climate crisis, caused the entire Earth to vibrate for nine days, a scientific investigation has found.

The seismic event was detected by earthquake sensors around the world but was so completely unprecedented that the researchers initially had no idea what had caused it. Having now solved the mystery, the scientists said it showed how global heating was already having planetary-scale impacts and that major landslides were possible in places previously believed to be stable as temperatures rapidly rose.

The collapse of a 1,200-metre-high mountain peak into the remote Dickson fjord happened on 16 September 2023 after the melting glacier below was no longer able to hold up the rock face. It triggered an initial wave 200 metres high and the subsequent sloshing of water back and forth in the twisty fjord sent seismic waves through the planet for more than a week.

The landslide and mega-tsunami were the first recorded in eastern Greenland. Arctic regions are being affected by the most rapid global heating, and similar though seismically smaller events have been seen in western Greenland, Alaska, Canada, Norway and Chile.

Dr Kristian Svennevig from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, the lead author of the report, said: “When we set out on this scientific adventure, everybody was puzzled and no one had the faintest idea what caused this signal. It was far longer and simpler than earthquake signals, which usually last minutes or hours, and was labelled as a USO – an unidentified seismic object.

“It was also an extraordinary event because it is the first giant landslide and tsunami we have recorded in east Greenland at all. It definitely shows east Greenland is coming online when it comes to landslides. The waves destroyed an uninhabited Inuit site at sea level that was at least 200 years old, indicating nothing like this had happened for at least two centuries.

A large number of huts were destroyed at a research station on Ella Island, 70km (45 miles) from the landslide. The site was founded by fur hunters and explorers two centuries ago and is used by scientists and the Danish military, but was empty at the time of the tsunami.

The fjord is also on a route commonly used by tourist cruise ships and one carrying 200 people was stranded in mud in Alpefjord, close to Dickson fjord, last September. It was freed just two days before the tsunami struck, avoiding waves estimated at four to six metres.

“It was pure luck that nothing happened to any people here,” said Svennevig. “We are in uncharted waters scientifically, because we don’t really know what a tsunami does to a cruise ship.”

Dr Stephen Hicks at University College London, one of the research team leaders, said: “When I first saw the seismic signal, I was completely baffled. Never before has such a long-lasting, globally travelling seismic wave, containing only a single frequency of oscillation, been recorded.”

The signal looked completely different to multi-frequency rumbles and pings from earthquakes. It took 68 scientists from 40 institutions in 15 countries to solve the mystery by combining seismic data, field measurements, on-the-ground and satellite imagery, and high-resolution computer simulations of tsunami waves.

The analysis, published in the journal Science, estimated that 25m cubic metres of rock and ice crashed into the fjord and travelled at least 2,200 metres along it. The direction of the landslide, at 90 degrees to the length of the fjord, along with the inlet’s steep parallel walls and a 90-degree bend 10km down the line all helped to keep much of the landslide’s energy within the fjord and resonating for so long.

The tsunami wave reduced to seven metres within a few minutes, the researchers calculated, and would have fallen to a few centimetres in the days after, when the Danish military visited and photographed the fjord. But this sloshing of a vast body of water continued to send seismic waves across the world.

Coincidentally, sensors measuring water depth had been set up by scientists in the fjord two weeks before the landslide. “That was also pure luck,” said Svennevig. “They were sailing below this glacier and mountain that they didn’t know was about to collapse.”

A key part of determining the cause of the seismic event was modelling the tsunami and comparing it against the measurements. “Our model predicted an oscillation with exactly the same period – 90 seconds – which is an amazing result, as well as the height of the tsunami, and the waves decayed in exactly the same way as seismic signals. That was the eureka moment.”

Prof Anne Mangeney, a landslide modeller at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France, who was part of the team, said: “This unique long-duration tsunami challenged the classical models that we previously used to simulate just a few hours of tsunami propagation – we had to go to an unprecedentedly high numerical resolution. This opens up new avenues for tsunami modelling.”

Such events will become more common as global temperatures continue to rise. “Even more profoundly, for the first time, we can quite clearly see this event, triggered by climate change, caused a global vibration beneath all of our feet, everywhere around the world,” said Mangeney. “Those vibrations travelled from Greenland to Antarctica in less than an hour. So we’ve seen an impact from climate change impacting the entire world within just an hour.”

Humans’ impact on the planet was also demonstrated recently by studies showing that the reshaping of the Earth by the mass melting of polar ice was making the length of each day longer and causing the north and south poles to shift. Other work has shown that carbon emissions are shrinking the stratosphere.

The commander of Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, has announced his resignation, publicly accepting responsibility for failings that contributed to the deadly 7 October attacks.

Yossi Sariel said on Tuesday that he had informed his superiors of his intention to step down after the completion of an initial investigation into Unit 8200’s role in failures surrounding the Hamas-led assault last year.

In an emotional four-page letter to staff, Sariel said: “I did not fulfil the task I expected of myself, as expected of me by my subordinates and commanders and as expected of me by the citizens of the country that I love so much.”

He added: “The responsibility for 8200’s part in the intelligence and operational failure falls squarely on me.”

Sariel is the latest Israeli senior defence and security official to announce their resignation over failures relating to the attacks last year on southern Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed nearly 1,200 people and kidnapped about 240.

After the assault, Unit 8200 – and Sariel’s leadership of the once vaunted military unit – came under intense scrutiny over its role in what is widely considered to have been one of the Israeli intelligence community’s biggest failures.

Sariel’s identity as the commander of Unit 8200 – which is comparable to the US National Security Agency or GCHQ in the UK – was previously a closely guarded secret in Israel. However, in April the Guardian revealed how the spy chief had left his identity exposed online for several years.

The security lapse was linked to a book Sariel published in 2021 using a pen name. The book, which articulated a radical vision for how artificial intelligence could transform intelligence and military operations, left a digital trail to a private Google account created in Sariel’s name.

The blunder prompted a wave of criticism and ridicule of Sariel in Israeli media and placed further pressure on the cyber-intelligence chief, who has also faced accusations that he presided of a culture of “technological hubris” at Unit 8200 at the expense of more old-fashioned intelligence methods.

Since 7 October, the large unit, which sits within the intelligence branch of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), has played a critical role in Israel’s 11-month offensive in Gaza, which according to health authorities in the territory has killed at least 41,000 people.

Under Sariel’s leadership, Unit 8200 appears to have embraced the vision articulated in his book, in which AI-based systems are used to fulfil increasingly complex tasks on the battlefield.

In one section of the book, Sariel heralded concepts such as AI-powered “targets machines”, descriptions of which closely resemble target recommendation systems that the IDF has relied upon in its bombardment of Gaza.

In his resignation letter, Sariel said the preliminary investigation of Unit 8200’s role in the failures behind the events of 7 October had found that its intelligence officers had compiled and circulated detailed reports on Hamas’s plans and preparations before the shock attack.

Despite this information, he said, the reports “did not succeed in overturning” basic Israeli intelligence and military assumptions about Hamas’s intentions. He said Unit 8200 did not provide critical intelligence about the date of the attack.

Although Sariel accepted personal responsibility for his unit’s failings, he pointed to wider failures across the Israeli security and political establishment.

“In the years before and months before, as well as on October 7 itself, we all failed as a political and operational system in being unable to connect the dots to see the full picture and prepare to face the threat,” he wrote.

Elon Musk has called the Australian government “fascists” over new legislation aimed at tackling deliberate lies spread on social media.

Social media companies could be fined up to 5% of their annual turnover under the commonwealth’s proposed laws.

Musk, the US billionaire who owns the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, responded to a post about Australia’s measures with one word.

“Fascists,” he wrote.

But the federal minister Bill Shorten said Musk was inconsistent on free speech.

“When it’s in his commercial interests, he is the champion of free speech; when he doesn’t like it, he’s going to shut it all down,” he said on Channel Nine’s breakfast show on Friday.

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The assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, said Musk’s comment was “crackpot stuff”. Jones told ABC TV that the government’s new bill on misinformation and disinformation was a matter of “sovereignty”.

“Whether it’s the Australian government or any other government around the world, we assert our right to pass laws which will keep Australians safe – safe from scammers, safe from criminals,” he said.

“For the life of me, I can’t see how Elon Musk or anyone else, in the name of free speech, thinks it is OK to have social media platforms publishing scam content, which is robbing Australians of billions of dollars every year. Publishing deepfake material, publishing child pornography. Livestreaming murder scenes. I mean, is this what he thinks free speech is all about?”

The federal aged care minister, Anika Wells, told ABC radio she had “yet to meet [a fascist] in the government”.

Australia’s misinformation legislation would give the communications watchdog powers to monitor and regulate content on digital platforms.

It would also allow it to approve an enforceable industry code of conduct or introduce standards for social media companies if self-regulation was deemed to fail.

This is not the first time Musk has battled Australian authorities.

In April the eSafety commissioner issued an edict to X to remove graphic content after clips of the Sydney bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel being stabbed remained on the platform.

During the months-long saga, Musk accused the government of suppressing free speech.

Several politicians hit back, with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, labelling him an “arrogant billionaire”.

In June the eSafety commissioner discontinued the federal court proceedings. A separate administrative appeals tribunal review of the notice issued to X is expected to be heard in October.

The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, told the ABC last month that X had seven ongoing legal matters with her office related to notices issued by the commissioner.

In the federal court this week X challenged a $610,500 fine issued last year, arguing the original notice was issued to what was then Twitter Inc, a company that ceased to exist in March 2023, and the legislation did not account for the merger. The court reserved its decision.

Separately, millions of users of X in Brazil were cut off from the platform this month after a dispute between the rightwing tech billionaire and Brazil’s top court over X refusing to purge anti-democratic and far-right voices from the site in the wake of the January 2023 uprising in the capital, Brasília, carried out by supporters of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

Israeli security forces mischaracterised the events that led up to the fatal shooting of a Turkish-American protester in the West Bank, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.

The Israel Defense Forces claimed that their soldiers were targeting the leader of a violent protest when they shot Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old member of the International Solidarity Movement who had come from her native Washington state to Israel to protest against settlements in the West Bank.

In a statement, Joe Biden cited evidence provided in the IDF’s initial inquiry, saying the “preliminary investigation has indicated that it was the result of a tragic error resulting from an unnecessary escalation”. The US president also told reporters that Eygi was killed probably as the result of a bullet ricochet, and “apparently it was an accident”.

But a Washington Post report said that protests had subsided before Israeli forces opened fire, indicating that there was no immediate threat to the soldiers and little justification to target Eygi or any other protesters with live fire.

According to the investigation, Eygi was “shot more than a half-hour after the height of confrontations in Beita, and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road – more than 200 yards (183 metres) away from Israeli forces”.

The potential target, a Palestinian teenager who was wounded by Israeli fire, was standing about 18 metres away from Eygi, witnesses told the Post.

The investigation was based on accounts from 13 witnesses and more than 50 videos and photos provided by the International Solidarity Movement, as well as Faz3a, another Palestinian advocacy group.

The IDF did not reply to the Post’s requests for comment about why live ammunition was used against the protesters or the identity of the “instigator” of the violent protest cited by the IDF in its initial inquiry.

As a rule, the IDF investigates itself in cases where protesters in the region are targeted with violence at the hands of its soldiers. Eygi’s family and other human rights advocates have publicly demanded that the US open an independent inquiry into her death, but a state department spokesperson said earlier this week that there were no plans at the moment to do so.

The Post report did describe a chaotic scene after Friday prayers in the town of Beita, where young Palestinians put up barricades and threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, who, in turn, opened fire with teargas and live ammunition. But the protests had died down and Eygi had retreated to an olive grove far from the soldiers, about 180 metres away, before she was hit by a bullet in the head, killing her.

After Biden’s remarks, Eygi’s family said in a statement: “President Biden is still calling her killing an accident based only on the Israeli military’s story. This is not only insensitive and false, it is complicit in the Israeli military’s agenda to take Palestinian land and whitewash the killing of an American.”

Biden, in his statement, did not order an independent inquiry and appeared to indicate that US officials were making their conclusions based entirely on evidence provided by the IDF.

Biden said the US has “had full access to Israel’s preliminary investigation, and expects continued access as the investigation continues, so that we can have confidence in the result”.

Israeli security forces mischaracterised the events that led up to the fatal shooting of a Turkish-American protester in the West Bank, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.

The Israel Defense Forces claimed that their soldiers were targeting the leader of a violent protest when they shot Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old member of the International Solidarity Movement who had come from her native Washington state to Israel to protest against settlements in the West Bank.

In a statement, Joe Biden cited evidence provided in the IDF’s initial inquiry, saying the “preliminary investigation has indicated that it was the result of a tragic error resulting from an unnecessary escalation”. The US president also told reporters that Eygi was killed probably as the result of a bullet ricochet, and “apparently it was an accident”.

But a Washington Post report said that protests had subsided before Israeli forces opened fire, indicating that there was no immediate threat to the soldiers and little justification to target Eygi or any other protesters with live fire.

According to the investigation, Eygi was “shot more than a half-hour after the height of confrontations in Beita, and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road – more than 200 yards (183 metres) away from Israeli forces”.

The potential target, a Palestinian teenager who was wounded by Israeli fire, was standing about 18 metres away from Eygi, witnesses told the Post.

The investigation was based on accounts from 13 witnesses and more than 50 videos and photos provided by the International Solidarity Movement, as well as Faz3a, another Palestinian advocacy group.

The IDF did not reply to the Post’s requests for comment about why live ammunition was used against the protesters or the identity of the “instigator” of the violent protest cited by the IDF in its initial inquiry.

As a rule, the IDF investigates itself in cases where protesters in the region are targeted with violence at the hands of its soldiers. Eygi’s family and other human rights advocates have publicly demanded that the US open an independent inquiry into her death, but a state department spokesperson said earlier this week that there were no plans at the moment to do so.

The Post report did describe a chaotic scene after Friday prayers in the town of Beita, where young Palestinians put up barricades and threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, who, in turn, opened fire with teargas and live ammunition. But the protests had died down and Eygi had retreated to an olive grove far from the soldiers, about 180 metres away, before she was hit by a bullet in the head, killing her.

After Biden’s remarks, Eygi’s family said in a statement: “President Biden is still calling her killing an accident based only on the Israeli military’s story. This is not only insensitive and false, it is complicit in the Israeli military’s agenda to take Palestinian land and whitewash the killing of an American.”

Biden, in his statement, did not order an independent inquiry and appeared to indicate that US officials were making their conclusions based entirely on evidence provided by the IDF.

Biden said the US has “had full access to Israel’s preliminary investigation, and expects continued access as the investigation continues, so that we can have confidence in the result”.

The trial of a French man accused of recruiting strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife has been adjourned until Monday after the suspect was excused from attending in light of his deteriorating health, the court has said.

Should Dominique Pélicot, 71, be unavailable to attend proceedings for a lengthy period of time, then the trial will be postponed to a later date, the presiding judge, Roger Arata, said on Thursday.

“If Pélicot appears (Monday), we’ll carry on,” Arata said. “If he is absent for one, two or three more days, we will extend the suspension.” But if the accused “is unavailable for a lengthy period of time, the trial will be postponed”, he said.

Pélicot, who is accused of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his drugged wife over almost a decade, was on Wednesday allowed to leave court after he arrived looking weak and leaning on a cane, and was ordered to undergo a medical examination.

Arata had at first decided that the extraordinary trial should continue even if the main defendant could not attend until Monday.

Pélicot, who has admitted the allegations, was initially due to testify on Tuesday afternoon, but was on Monday excused from court because he was experiencing abdominal pain.

He has been on trial since last week, along with 50 other men aged between 26 and 74, for alleged involvement in a case that has horrified France. Most face up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape.

Gisèle Pélicot, his ex-wife, who discovered the abuse only in 2020, has requested that the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

The cases of four co-defendants had been scheduled for this week, including that of Jean-Pierre M, 63, the only one not to be accused of abusing Gisèle Pélicot. Instead, he has been charged with repeatedly raping his own wife after drugging her, in the presence of Dominique Pélicot, who provided the medication.

Arata had already indicated that he did not want Jean-Pierre M to testify without Dominique Pélicot present.

The United States has issued new sanctions on 16 allies of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing them of obstructing the 28 July election and of aiding the crackdown that followed a vote widely seen to have been stolen.

Those targeted include members of the supreme court and the country’s electoral council – including their respective chiefs, Caryslia Rodríguez and Antonio Jose Meneses – “who impeded a transparent electoral process and the release of accurate election results”, the US treasury said on Thursday.

Others on the new sanctions list are military leaders, intelligence officials and government officers “responsible for intensifying repression through intimidation, indiscriminate detentions and censorship”, according to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Hours after polls closed on 28 July, Venezuela’s electoral authorities declared Maduro the victor, though they never released detailed vote tallies to back up their claim, while the opposition compiled concrete proof that the opposition candidate Edmundo González had won. Amid global condemnation over the lack of transparency, Venezuela’s high court, stacked with ruling party loyalists, reaffirmed Maduro’s victory.

In the ensuing crackdown, at least 2,000 people have been arrested, and González himself fled to Spain.

Among those sanctioned are the leaders of Operation Tun Tun – “Operation Knock Knock” – a string of raids in which perceived government opponents have been rounded up by heavily armed, black-clad captors from the intelligence services or police.

They include Asdrubal Jose Brito Hernandez, a director within the military counter-intelligence unit, who has been described as a torturer in a United Nations 2022 report. According to the OFAC, Hernandez’s unit “has led a coordinated ‘Operation Knock Knock’ campaign to harass, detain and arbitrarily arrest opposition and civil society members following the election”.

Announcing the new sanctions, the deputy secretary of the treasury, Wally Adeyemo, said: “Today, the United States is taking decisive action against Maduro and his representatives for their repression of the Venezuelan people and denial of their citizens’ rights to a free and fair election.”

Maduro himself has been under US sanctions since 2017.

Adeyemo added that the treasury department was “targeting key officials involved in Maduro’s fraudulent and illegitimate claims of victory and his brutal crackdown on free expression following the election, as the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans call for change”.

The new sanctions come just days after González was forced to leave Venezuela under the threat of arrest by the regime.

In a statement on Thursday, González wrote: “My commitment to the mandate I received from the sovereign people of Venezuela is irrevocable … The struggle continues until the end.”

A granddaughter of Italy’s wartime dictator Benito Mussolini said on Thursday she was leaving Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party because it was too rightwing.

Rachele Mussolini, a city councillor in Rome, said she was moving to the group of Forza Italia, which is part of Italy’s ruling coalition but seen as more liberal on civil rights.

“It is time to turn the page and join a party that I feel is closer to my moderate and centrist sensibilities,” the 50-year-old told the Ansa news agency.

Mussolini, who won the most votes of any candidate at the last council elections in Rome in 2021, recently took issue with the Brothers of Italy’s stance on minority rights. She is known for her support for LGBTQ+ rights and has said that she “never liked” the fascist salute, which some party members and supporters still perform during commemorative events.

Last month she took issue with Meloni, the prime minister, in a dispute over the gender of Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer who fought against Italian Angela Carini at the Olympic Games.

After Carini gave up during her bout against Khelif – who later won the gold medal – Meloni said it had not been a match between equals because the Algerian had failed a gender eligibility test at the World Championships last year. “Until proven otherwise Imane Khelif is a woman. And she has suffered an unworthy witch-hunt,” Mussolini said.

She took her name from her grandmother, Rachele Guidi, Benito Mussolini’s second wife. Guidi and Benito Mussolini had five children together, including Rachele Mussolini’s father, Romano, a jazz pianist who died in 2006.

The Brothers of Italy traces its roots to the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party formed in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini’s regime and former high-ranking members of his fascist party. Meloni’s party still shares its party logo with MSI, an Italian tricolour in the form of a flame.

Meloni has tried to present her party as a mainstream conservative group and declared in 2022 that the Italian right had “handed fascism over to history”. Since taking office that year, her government has pursued hardline policies on immigration, abortion and same-sex parenting.

Ansa and Reuters contributed to this report

In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses.

After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure.

The team is among 10 recognised in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”. They are not to be confused with the more lucrative and career-changing Nobel prizes to be handed out in Scandinavia next month.

The latest crop of Ig Nobel winners received their awards at a ceremony at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday. The event featured real Nobel laureates to distribute the prizes, “24/7” lectures in which experts first explained their subject in 24 seconds, then in seven words, and copious paper-plane throwing.

Other work honoured on the night included US research to house pigeons in missiles to help guide them to their targets; UK investigations which found that claims of extreme old age tend to come from areas that have short average lifespans and and a historical lack of birth certificates, and a French study which found that scalp hair tends to whorl in a clockwise direction, though less so in the southern hemisphere.

The Japanese researchers became interested in whether humans with breathing difficulties might benefit from having oxygen pumped up their backsides after noting that some animals, such as loaches, can use their intestines to breathe. They began the work in the Covid crisis when many hospitals were desperately short of mechanical ventilators to support breathing in people with severe infections.

The team’s experiments, which earned the Ig Nobel prize in physiology, showed that mice, rats and pigs could absorb oxygen into the bloodstream when it was delivered via the rectum, thus supporting normal breathing. Writing in the journal Med in 2021, Ryo Okabe at Tokyo Medical and Dental University and colleagues described how “enteral ventilation” offered “a new paradigm” to help patients in respiratory failure.

Dr Takanori Takebe, an author of the study at Cincinnati children’s hospital medical centre, confessed to “mixed feelings” on hearing of the award, but warmed to it on finding out it was recognised for making people laugh and then think. If it fuelled interest in enteral ventilation, he said, “I’d be so happy.” The team is running a phase 1 trial in human volunteers.

Dr Saul Newman at the University of Oxford bagged the demography prize for showing that many claims of people living extraordinarily long lives come from places with short life spans, no birth certificates, and where clerical errors and pension fraud abound. “Extreme old age records are a statistical basket case,” he said. “From the level of individual cases, up to broad population patterns, virtually none of our old-age data makes sense.”

Prof Roman Khonsari, a craniofacial surgeon at the Necker-Enfants Malades university hospital in Paris, and colleagues won the anatomy prize for their global study of hair whorls. While scalp hair spirals in a clockwise direction on most people, their research found, there is more counter-clockwise spiralling in the southern hemisphere.

“I was operating when I got the call,” Khonsari said. “I was extremely glad because, despite the undeniable irrelevance of this study, I am convinced that deciphering patterns in nature can lead to important discoveries on fundamental developmental mechanisms. Shapes carry interesting amounts of information.”

The discovery led to comparisons with tornadoes, which typically rotate in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres. Writing in the Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, the researchers theorised that the Coriolis effect, by which the Earth’s spin deflects winds to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere, could be at work. Not that Khonsari believes it. “Frankly, I don’t think it is a plausible hypothesis,” he said.

The other winners of the 2024 Ig Nobel prizes

Peace
Awarded to the late BF Skinner, a US psychologist, for exploring the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide them to their targets. The project, which Skinner himself described as “crackpot”, was dropped despite a perfect demonstration involving a pigeon trained to target features on the New Jersey coastline. “The spectacle of a living pigeon carrying out its assignment, no matter how beautifully, simply reminded the committee of how utterly fantastic our proposal was,” Skinner wrote.

Botany
Given to Jacob White in the US and Felipe Yamashita in Germany for reporting evidence that the South American plant Boquila trifoliolata can mimic the leaves of plastic plants it is placed alongside, leading them to conclude that “plant vision” is a plausible hypothesis.

Medicine
Won by a Swiss, German and Belgian group for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective in patients than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects.

Physics
Awarded to James Liao at the University of Florida for a comprehensive, multi–publication investigation into the swimming abilities of a dead trout.

Probability
Shared by a team of 50 researchers, mostly Dutch, who flipped 350,757 coins to test a hypothesis put forward by Persi Diaconis, a former magician and professor of statistics at Stanford University. Their work supported Diaconis’s prediction that tossed coins are (slightly) more likely to land the same way up as they started.

Chemistry
Another win for the Netherlands, with a team in Amsterdam using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms, all the in the name of polymer science.

Biology
Another posthumous award, the Ig Nobel in biology honoured the late Fordyce Ely and William Petersen for their 1940 investigation into factors affecting the production of milk in dairy herds. Writing in the Journal of Animal Science, the pair recounted placing a cat on the back of a cow and repeatedly exploding paper bags to see if milk-flow changed. The terrified cows appeared to release less milk. “Frightening at first consisted in placing a cat on the cow’s back and exploding paper bags every 10 seconds for two minutes,” the researchers wrote. “Later the cat was dispensed with as unnecessary.”