Seven people have drowned in Austria, Poland and Romania and four others are missing in the Czech Republic as Storm Boris continues to lash central and eastern Europe, bringing torrential rain and floods that have forced the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes.

Swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been battered by high winds and unusually fierce rains since Thursday.

Austria’s vice-chancellor, Werner Kogler, said on Sunday that a firefighter had died tackling flooding in Lower Austria, as authorities declared the province, which surrounds the capital, Vienna, a disaster area.

Some areas of the Tirol were blanketed by up to a metre (3ft) of snow – an exceptional situation for mid-September, which saw temperatures of up to 30C (86F) last week.

Rail services were suspended in the country’s east early on Sunday and several metro lines were shut down in Vienna, where the Wien River was threatening to overflow its banks, according to the APA news agency.

Emergency services made nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in Lower Austria where flooding had trapped many residents in their homes. Firefighters have intervened about 150 times in Vienna since Friday to clear roads blocked by storm debris and pump water from cellars, local media reported.

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said one person in the Kłodzko region had drowned. Tusk was travelling through the south-west of the country, which has been hit hardest by the floods. About 1,600 people have been evacuated in Kłodzko, and Polish authorities have called in the army to support firefighters on the scene.

“The situation is very dramatic,” Tusk said on Sunday after a meeting in Kłodzko, which was partly under water as the local river rose to 6.7 metres on Sunday morning – well above the alarm level of 2.4 metres – before receding slightly. That surpassed a record set during heavy flooding in 1997, which partly damaged the town and claimed 56 lives.

On Saturday, Polish authorities shut the Gołkowice border crossing with the Czech Republic after a river flooded its banks, as well as closing several roads and halting trains on the line linking the towns of Prudnik and Nysa.

In the nearby village of Głuchołazy, Zofia Owsiaka watched with fear as the fast-flowing waters of the swollen Biała river surged past. “Water is the most powerful force of nature. Everyone is scared,” said Owsiaka, 65.

In Budapest, officials raised forecasts for the Danube to rise in the second half of this week to above 8.5m, nearing a record 8.91m seen in 2013, as rain continued in Hungary, Slovakia and Austria.

“According to forecasts, one of the biggest floods of the past years is approaching Budapest but we are prepared to tackle it,” said Budapest’s mayor, Gergely Karácsony.

Meanwhile, police in the Czech Republic said four people were missing on Sunday. Three had been in a car that was swept into a river in the north-eastern town of Lipová-lázne, while another man was missing after being swept away by floods in the south-east.

A dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream. “What you see here is worse than in 1997 and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water and I don’t know if I will even return to it,” said Pavel Bily, a resident of Lipová-lázne.

In a message on X, Czech police urged people to heed evacuation warnings, adding: “Police and firefighters know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. The situation is changing quickly and we can’t be everywhere immediately. Within a few moments, the only way out could be by helicopter.”

Five people have died in floods in south-east Romania over the past two days. In the worst-affected region, Galati in the south-east, 5,000 homes were damaged.

Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, said: “We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences.”

Hundreds of people have been rescued across 19 parts of the country, emergency services said, releasing a video of flooded homes in a village by the Danube river.

“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” said Emil Dragomir, the mayor of Slobozia Conachi, a village in Galati where 700 homes had reportedly been flooded.

Slovakia has declared a state of emergency in the capital, Bratislava. Heavy rains are expected to continue until at least Monday in the Czech Republic and Poland.

In a stunning admission, Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance said he is willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.

Vance’s remarks came during an appearance Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he feels the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.

Asked by CNN host Dana Bash whether the false rumors centering on Springfield, Ohio, are “a story that you created”, Vance replied, “Yes!” He then said the claims were rooted in “accounts from … constituents” and that he as well as the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have spoken publicly about them to draw attention to Springfield’s relatively large Haitian population.

Vance’s remarks drew a quick rebuke from US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who supports his party’s White House nominee in November’s election, Kamala Harris.

“Remarkable confession by JD Vance when he said he will ‘create stories’ (that is, lie) to redirect the media,” Buttigieg wrote on X. “All this to change the subject away from abortion rights, manufacturing jobs, taxation of the rich, and the other things clearly at stake in this election.”

Vance furthermore insulted people in Springfield who are Haitian as “illegal”, though the vast majority of them are in the US legally through a temporary protected status (TPS) that’s been allocated to them due to the violence and unrest in their home country in the Caribbean. The status must be renewed after 18 months.

The rumors proliferating out of Springfield have led to bomb threats aimed at local hospitals and government offices. Vance on Sunday told Bash it was “disgusting” for the media to suggest any of his remarks had led to those threats. He also used the same term to refer to the people issuing those threats, though – in a separate appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press – he made it a point to blame the media for accurately reporting on them, saying it was “amplifying the worst people in the world”.

Vance ultimately defended his endorsement of the lies about Springfield as calling attention to the immigration policies at the White House while Harris has served as vice-president to Joe Biden.

“I’m not mad at Haitian migrants for wanting to have a better life,” Vance said. “We’re angry at Kamala Harris for letting this happen.”

Haitians in Springfield have been thrust under the US’s divisive political spotlight after Trump alleged that some of them were responsible for the abduction and consumption of pets during the former president’s debate with Harris on Tuesday.

Town officials have vociferously rejected the lies, and a woman who helped start the rumors on a widely circulated Facebook post acknowledged they were unfounded hearsay.

Nonetheless, Springfield has been subjected to far-right conspiracy theories.

About 15,000 immigrants began trickling into Springfield – a city of about 60,000 – in 2017 to work in local produce packaging and machining factories. They have been particularly in demand at a vegetable manufacturer and at automotive machining plants whose owners were subsumed by a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Republican Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week that Haitians in Springfield “are here legally”.

“What the employers tell you is, you know, we don’t know what we would do without them,” DeWine said. “They are working. And they are working very hard. And they’re fitting in.”

Nonetheless, while vulnerable with voters over their handling of reproductive rights, Republicans have helped spread the xenophobic rumors in Springfield in an attempt to capitalize on voters’ dissatisfaction with Democrats’ handling of immigration.

Vance on Sunday also sought to distance himself from a second controversy, telling Meet the Press host Kristen Welker that he doesn’t like remarks by far-right Trump campaign ally Laura Loomer that the White House “will smell like curry” if Harris wins the election.

Harris is of Indian and Jamaican heritage. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is of Indian heritage, too.

“I make a mean chicken curry,” he said, but “I don’t think that it’s insulting for anybody to talk about their dietary preferences or what they want to do in the White House.

“What Laura said about Kamala Harris is not what we should be focused on. We should be focused on the policy and on the issues.”

Vance has spent much of his vice-presidential run on the defensive, including over his stated belief that women who choose to pursue professional careers rather than roles as family matriarchs are miserable.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for a surface-to-surface ballistic missile that landed a few miles south-east of Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the group would pay a “heavy price”.

The missile triggered air sirens across the country at about 6.30am, and local media aired footage of people racing to shelters at the international airport. According to reports, the missile hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, sparking a fire near Kfar Daniel. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

The Israeli military is investigating whether the fire was the result of falling fragments due to the interceptor missiles launched at the projectile, or if the rocket actually penetrated Israeli air defences as the Houthis have claimed, saying the group had used a hypersonic missile for the first time. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they made several attempts to intercept the missile using their multi-tiered air defences but had not yet determined whether any had been successful.

“An initial inquiry indicates the missile most likely fragmented in mid-air,” the IDF said, after “several interception attempts made by the Arrow and Iron Dome aerial defence systems”. It added that “the entire incident is under review”.

The IDF confirmed to the Guardian that interceptors from Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow air defence systems were deployed.

A report on the Ynet news website said the missile was “detected at a very late stage … The warhead of this missile is separate from the body, and with the help of wings and jam-proof navigation systems it zigzags its way towards the target, which can make interception systems very difficult.”

Nasruddin Amer, the deputy head of the Houthi media office, said in a post on X on Sunday that a Yemeni missile had reached Israel after “20 missiles failed to intercept” it, describing it as the “beginning”.

A Houthi military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said they had launched a “new hypersonic ballistic missile” towards an Israeli military target, which crossed 1,270 miles in 11 minutes and which the IDF failed to intercept.

Hashim Sharaf al-Din, a spokesperson for the Houthi-run government, said Yemenis would celebrate the birthday of Islam’s prophet Muhammad while “the Israelis will have to be in shelters”. Another senior Houthi official, Hezam al-Asad, posted a taunting message in Hebrew on the social platform X.

Netanyahu hinted at a military response in a statement released at the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday. “This morning the Houthis launched a surface-to-surface missile from Yemen into our territory. They should have known by now that we charge a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” he said.

“Those who need a reminder in this matter are invited to visit the port of Hodeidah,” he added, referring to Yemen’s Red Sea city, which Israeli warplanes bombed in July after the Houthis claimed a drone strike that killed a civilian in Tel Aviv.

The Houthis, who like Hezbollah are aligned with Iran, have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel since the start of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, but nearly all of them have been intercepted over the Red Sea. They have also repeatedly attacked commercial shipping in what they portray as a blockade against Israel in support of the Palestinians, although most of the targeted vessels have no connection to Israel.

If confirmed, this would mark the first instance of a missile launched from Yemen landing on Israeli soil.

In July an Iranian-made drone sent by Yemen’s rebels struck Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding at least 10. At the time, the drone appeared to have crossed much of the country through the multilayered air defences that have intercepted almost all Houthi drones and rockets since the Gaza war began.

A senior Biden administration official told CNN in June that Israel’s air defences risked being overwhelmed by multiple attacks.

On Sunday morning the Israeli military also reported that approximately 40 projectiles had been launched from Lebanon, with the majority either being intercepted or landing in uninhabited regions.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border, and Netanyahu said on Sunday that the current situation was not sustainable.

“The existing situation will not continue. We will do everything necessary to return our residents safely to their homes,” he said. “We are in a multi-arena campaign against Iran’s evil axis that strives to destroy us.”

Tensions are also high in the West Bank, where Israeli military operations have been going on for weeks and violence has surged to unprecedented levels, posing a significant threat to local communities. A UN worker was fatally shot by a sniper while on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank on Saturday.

The incident came as mourners gathered in Turkey to lay to rest a US-Turkish activist who was killed by the Israeli military during a protest in the West Bank this month. The UN employee, Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who worked as a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, became the first Unrwa employee to be killed in the West Bank in more than a decade.

Ten months into Israel’s war on Gaza, the death toll has passed 41,000, according to health authorities there. Most of the dead are civilians and the total represents nearly 2% of Gaza’s prewar population, or one in every 50 residents. The conflict, which has gone on for nearly a year, was triggered by Hamas’s attack into Israel on 7 October in which 1,200 people died and about 250 were taken hostage.

The claimed acquisition by Yemen’s Houthi rebels of hypersonic missiles capable of penetrating Israeli air defences threatens to further heighten Middle East tensions, as Saudi Arabia calls for more than “pinprick bombings” to constrain the supply of weapons to the group.

Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemen government opposing the Houthis, believes Iran has been arming the group, including with the weapons used in the attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Those attacks have led to a halving of the traffic on the Red Sea route, pushing up the costs of maritime transport and damaging the Egyptian economy through disruption to the Suez canal.

But in the Houthi capital, Sana’a, from where the rebel group mastermind their attacks on shipping, the leadership celebrated Sunday’s claimed attack on Israel – which landed in an open area near Ben Gurion international airport – as a homegrown breakthrough and claimed the technology was created by the hard work of Yemeni technicians. It promised more strikes would come. Before the attack the Houthis had issued warnings of some kind of attack on Israel.

Previous Houthi missile attacks have not penetrated far into Israeli airspace, with the only one reported to have hit Israeli territory falling in an open area near the Red Sea port of Eilat in March. An attack with an Iranian-made drone on Tel Aviv in July killed one person and wounded 10 others.

Israel used its Arrow and Iron Dome defences against the Houthi missile on Sunday but has not yet determined if any of the multiple attempts to intercept it were successful.

The Houthis, a Shia group that have held Sana’a since 2014, may have employed the Qadr F variant of Iran’s 20-year-old Qadr-110 or Ghadr-110 medium-range ballistic missile.

Iran has repeatedly been accused, including by the UN, of supplying weapons to the Houthis initially for use in fighting the Saudi-backed Yemen government based in Aden. Despite an intensive bombing campaign by the Saudis in 2016, the Houthis have proved impossible to displace, even mounting drone attacks into Saudi Arabia.

A ceasefire exists inside Yemen but the UN special envoy for the country, Hans Grundberg, told the UN security council that the threat of a return to all-out civil war remained.

Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and diplomat, has expressed the kingdom’s disappointment at the way Iran has been helping the Houthis. Speaking at Chatham House in London on Friday, he called for more international action to block such assistance and said the “pinprick bombings” mounted on Houthi positions by US and UK naval forces in the Red Sea needed to be more effective.

“We have seen the deployment of European and US fleets along the Red Sea coast and more can be done there to interdict the supply of weaponry that comes to the Houthis from Iran,” he said. “Putting pressure on Iran by the world community can have a positive impact on what the Houthis can do in launching these missiles and drones to hit international commerce.”

Faisal claimed that by continuing to interfere in Arab states such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as in Palestine, Tehran had not fulfilled its side of the diplomatic bargain struck between Iran and Saudi Arabia in China two years ago.

“The Houthis now hold the world as hostage in the Bab al-Mandab entrance to the Red Sea, and yet Iran is not showing that it can do something there if it wanted to, and the kingdom would have expected Iran to be more forthcoming in showing not just to us but to others that it can be a positive factor in securing stability and removing differences not just with Saudi Arabia but the rest of us.”

He said it was unclear if the Iranians could control the Houthis, and the world was in trouble if it could not.

Saudi Arabia has not joined the US military attacks because it says it has been pursuing a diplomatic route to form a national government in Yemen.

The commander of the Middle East-based US 5th Fleet, V Adm George Wikoff, has said sporadic US and UK bombardments of the Houthi positions along the Yemen coast has not yet led to commercial shipping returning.

The attacks caused a 50% drop in ship traffic through the Red Sea, prompting shipping companies to begin routing vessels around Africa, adding 11,000 nautical miles and $1m in fuel costs to journeys.

The Houthi attacks have continued despite multiple strikes against positions on the Yemen coastline by the US and Israel in recent months.

The Israeli military has said there is a “high probability” that three hostages found dead in a tunnel at the end of last year were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’s northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed al-Ghandour, in November.

The families of Col Nik Beizer and Sgt Ron Sherman, both 19, and the French-Israeli civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed in the last week by officials from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that a comprehensive inquiry revealed their loved ones had lost their lives as a result of IDF actions.

Their bodies were recovered on 14 December from a tunnel in Jabaliya but the most likely cause of death was only recently determined, the military said.

“The findings of the investigation suggest that the three, with high probability, were killed by a byproduct of an IDF airstrike,” a statement said. “This is a highly probable estimate given all the data, but it is not possible to determine with certainty the circumstances of their death.”

The families were initially told the hostages had been killed by Hamas captors and, in January, the IDF rejected Hamas’s assertions that they were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The conclusions of the investigation could add to pressure on the government to strike a deal to bring home the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

The mothers of the two soldiers had pressed, since their bodies were discovered, for a full account of how their sons had died. “We have to find out the truth about everything,” Maayan Sherman, the mother of Sherman, told the Wall Street Journal in May. “Even if the truth is: ‘We had to kill them.’”

The November airstrike was aimed at al-Ghandour, who was taking cover in a tunnel. The IDF’s inquiry at the time concluded that the military was unaware of the presence of hostages in the area during the strike.

“At the time of the strike, the IDF did not have information about the presence of hostages in the targeted compound,” the military said. “Furthermore, there was information suggesting that they were located elsewhere, and thus the area was not designated as one with suspected presence of hostages.”

A contentious South African education law has drawn furious condemnation from politicians and campaigners who claim it is putting Afrikaans education under threat while evoking for others an enduring association of the language with white minority rule.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment Act was signed into law on Friday by the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who said he would give dissenting parties in his coalition government three months to suggest alternatives to two sections that give provincial officials the powers to override admission decisions and force schools to teach in more than one of South Africa’s 12 official languages.

The provisions have meanwhile been welcomed by those who say they are necessary in order to stop some government schools using language to racially exclude children.

The controversy has tapped into multiple sensitive political topics in South Africa: forcing children to learn in languages they don’t understand, the enduring association for some of the Afrikaans language with apartheid, persistent racial inequalities and the parlous state of many schools.

“We have seen cases of learners being denied admissions to schools because of their language policies,” Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress, the country’s largest party, said before signing the bill, which was passed before May’s elections. “The bill is part of the states’ ongoing effort to build an education system that is more effective and more equitable.”

The Democratic Alliance (DA), which gets the majority of its support from white voters and is the second largest party in South Africa’s coalition government, threatened legal action if mother-tongue schooling was not protected after the three-month negotiation period.

“Afrikaans-medium schools constitute less than 5% of the country’s schools,” said the DA’s leader and agriculture minister, John Steenhuisen, referring to schools that teach only in Afrikaans. “Their existence in no way contributes to the crisis in education, and turning them into dual-medium or English-medium schools will not help improve the quality of education for South Africa’s learners.”

Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch settlers around Cape Town, as well as African and south-east Asian enslaved people, local Indigenous people and their mixed-race Cape Coloured descendants. Some of the first texts in Afrikaans were written in Arabic script by Cape Malay Muslim scholars in the early 19th century.

Language and education have a tortuous history in South Africa. When the Boer war ended in 1902, Afrikaans became a form of resistance among white Afrikaners to British colonial rule and English education.

After Afrikaner nationalists took power in 1948, with policies including intentionally making segregated black schools worse, the language became identified with white minority rule. In 1976, hundreds of children were shot dead by police in the Soweto uprising when they marched peacefully against the imposition of Afrikaans tuition in schools.

According to census data, the number of South Africans speaking Afrikaans at home rose from 5.9 million in 1996 to 6.6 million in 2022, with the majority of speakers non-white. But by share of the population the figure has fallen from 14.5% to 10.6%, and some Afrikaner rights groups argue they are losing their language, culture and identity.

“For our cultural community it’s essential that we have schools where there is Afrikaans education, it’s used as the language of tuition and that it should be monolingual schools,” said Alana Bailey, the head of cultural affairs at Afriforum, which she said campaigns for minority rights, rejecting accusations of racism.

Since apartheid ended, many black parents living near the limited number of good historically white schools have tried to send their children there. In some cases this has resulted in officials trying to force Afrikaans-only schools to also teach in English, with legal battles reaching the constitutional court.

“There were historically quite a few Afrikaans schools that were not full to capacity and would use language provision as a way to create barriers to access,” said Brahm Fleisch, a professor of education at the University of the Witwatersrand, expressing his support for the new law as a safeguard. “When schools are full and there’s no evidence of discrimination on the basis of race … schools are not compelled to change their language policy.”

South Africa’s constitution guarantees the right to education in an official language of choice where “reasonably practicable”. But Marius Swart, a language policy expert at the University of Stellenbosch, said the lack of state capacity meant mother-tongue education in indigenous languages was still a distant dream for many children.

Meanwhile, most of South Africa’s children continue to struggle in school. In 2021, a survey found that 81% of 10-year-olds could not read for understanding.

“We still, to a very large extent, have a stratified school system with a relatively small elite of rich schools,” Swart said. “With relatively rich children from relatively rich families attending them and then many, many children who are in … poorly resourced schools and who really struggle.”

A contentious South African education law has drawn furious condemnation from politicians and campaigners who claim it is putting Afrikaans education under threat while evoking for others an enduring association of the language with white minority rule.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment Act was signed into law on Friday by the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who said he would give dissenting parties in his coalition government three months to suggest alternatives to two sections that give provincial officials the powers to override admission decisions and force schools to teach in more than one of South Africa’s 12 official languages.

The provisions have meanwhile been welcomed by those who say they are necessary in order to stop some government schools using language to racially exclude children.

The controversy has tapped into multiple sensitive political topics in South Africa: forcing children to learn in languages they don’t understand, the enduring association for some of the Afrikaans language with apartheid, persistent racial inequalities and the parlous state of many schools.

“We have seen cases of learners being denied admissions to schools because of their language policies,” Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress, the country’s largest party, said before signing the bill, which was passed before May’s elections. “The bill is part of the states’ ongoing effort to build an education system that is more effective and more equitable.”

The Democratic Alliance (DA), which gets the majority of its support from white voters and is the second largest party in South Africa’s coalition government, threatened legal action if mother-tongue schooling was not protected after the three-month negotiation period.

“Afrikaans-medium schools constitute less than 5% of the country’s schools,” said the DA’s leader and agriculture minister, John Steenhuisen, referring to schools that teach only in Afrikaans. “Their existence in no way contributes to the crisis in education, and turning them into dual-medium or English-medium schools will not help improve the quality of education for South Africa’s learners.”

Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch settlers around Cape Town, as well as African and south-east Asian enslaved people, local Indigenous people and their mixed-race Cape Coloured descendants. Some of the first texts in Afrikaans were written in Arabic script by Cape Malay Muslim scholars in the early 19th century.

Language and education have a tortuous history in South Africa. When the Boer war ended in 1902, Afrikaans became a form of resistance among white Afrikaners to British colonial rule and English education.

After Afrikaner nationalists took power in 1948, with policies including intentionally making segregated black schools worse, the language became identified with white minority rule. In 1976, hundreds of children were shot dead by police in the Soweto uprising when they marched peacefully against the imposition of Afrikaans tuition in schools.

According to census data, the number of South Africans speaking Afrikaans at home rose from 5.9 million in 1996 to 6.6 million in 2022, with the majority of speakers non-white. But by share of the population the figure has fallen from 14.5% to 10.6%, and some Afrikaner rights groups argue they are losing their language, culture and identity.

“For our cultural community it’s essential that we have schools where there is Afrikaans education, it’s used as the language of tuition and that it should be monolingual schools,” said Alana Bailey, the head of cultural affairs at Afriforum, which she said campaigns for minority rights, rejecting accusations of racism.

Since apartheid ended, many black parents living near the limited number of good historically white schools have tried to send their children there. In some cases this has resulted in officials trying to force Afrikaans-only schools to also teach in English, with legal battles reaching the constitutional court.

“There were historically quite a few Afrikaans schools that were not full to capacity and would use language provision as a way to create barriers to access,” said Brahm Fleisch, a professor of education at the University of the Witwatersrand, expressing his support for the new law as a safeguard. “When schools are full and there’s no evidence of discrimination on the basis of race … schools are not compelled to change their language policy.”

South Africa’s constitution guarantees the right to education in an official language of choice where “reasonably practicable”. But Marius Swart, a language policy expert at the University of Stellenbosch, said the lack of state capacity meant mother-tongue education in indigenous languages was still a distant dream for many children.

Meanwhile, most of South Africa’s children continue to struggle in school. In 2021, a survey found that 81% of 10-year-olds could not read for understanding.

“We still, to a very large extent, have a stratified school system with a relatively small elite of rich schools,” Swart said. “With relatively rich children from relatively rich families attending them and then many, many children who are in … poorly resourced schools and who really struggle.”

A number of prominent columnists have resigned in protest from the Jewish Chronicle after allegations it printed articles about the Gaza conflict that were based on “wild fabrications”.

The weekly title, the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, is facing calls for an investigation after it deleted nine articles by Elon Perry because of doubts over their accuracy and concerns he had misrepresented his CV.

The sensationalist articles by the former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier allegedly included fabricated claims about Israeli intelligence.

In a brief statement on Friday announcing the deletion of the articles, the paper said it was not satisfied by some of Perry’s claims.

“The Jewish Chronicle has concluded a thorough investigation into freelance journalist Elon Perry, which commenced after allegations were made about aspects of his record. While we understand he did serve in the Israel Defense Forces, we were not satisfied with some of his claims,” it said.

“We have therefore removed his stories from our website and ended any association with Mr Perry.

“The Jewish Chronicle maintains the highest journalistic standards in a highly contested information landscape and we deeply regret the chain of events that led to this point. We apologise to our loyal readers and have reviewed our internal processes so that this will not be repeated.”

On Sunday, four of the paper’s best-known columnists, David Baddiel, Jonathan Freedland, David Aaronovitch and Hadley Freeman, announced they had resigned in protest over the scandal.

In a letter to the editor, Jake Wallis Simons, posted on X, Freedland said he was quitting the paper to which he had contributed for 26 years, and which his father began writing for in 1951.

Freedland, who is also a columnist and podcaster for the Guardian, wrote: “The latest scandal brings great disgrace on the paper – publishing fabricated stories and showing only the thinnest form of contrition – but it is only the latest. Too often, the JC [Jewish Chronicle] reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgements political rather than journalistic.”

He added: “Of course, all newspapers make mistakes and run articles that writers on the paper dislike. The problem in this case is that there can be no real accountability because the JC is owned by a person or people who refuse to reveal themselves. As you know, I and others have long urged transparency, making that case to you privately – but nothing has happened.”

Freedland said he hoped to return to working for the paper but only when it “returns to its best traditions”.

Aaronovitch reposted Freedland’s comments, saying: “I have done the same”. Baddiel retweeted Freedland’s post. The writer and comedian’s spokesperson said: “David has no plans to write any more columns for the paper but there is no further comment at this stage.”

Freeman, a Sunday Times journalist, said in a separate post marking her departure that recent events at the Jewish Chronicle had “made it impossible for me to stay”.

Nazir Afzal, a former chief prosecutor for north-west England and a former member of the independent press regulator Ipso, said he had been following the saga with “great dismay”. Writing on X, he said: “I think a ‘standards investigation’ is overdue.”

Perry’s articles purported to describe detailed accounts of Israeli operations and Israeli intelligence on the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Last week Israeli press described his articles as “fabrications” and suggested they had been placed in the European media to support Benjamin’s Netanyahu’s negotiating position over Gaza.

Earlier in the month, the Israeli prime minister suggested that if the Gaza border area with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi corridor, was not under Israeli military control, then Sinwar could use it to escape, perhaps taking hostages with him.

The following day, an article by Perry in the JC claimed that intelligence existed showing Sinwar planned to escape to Iran with the hostages. The story was later dismissed as a “wild fabrication” by the IDF.

Perry’s claims about his background, including his supposed work as a journalist and academic, and parts of his military record, were also questioned in the Israeli press.

Wallis Simons and the JC have so far declined to describe how Perry came to write for the paper, and remained tight-lipped about its ownership.

Perry told the Observer that the JC had made a “huge mistake” in announcing the deletion of his articles. He described the criticism as a “witch-hunt … caused by jealousy from Israeli journalists and outlets who could not obtain the details that I managed to”.

On Sunday, Wallis Simons wrote on X that it was “every newspaper editor’s worst nightmare to be deceived by a journalist”.

“The @JewishChron has cut all ties with the freelancer in question and his work has now been removed from our website. Readers can be assured that stronger internal procedures are being implemented.

“I understand why some columnists have decided to step back from the paper. I am grateful for their contributions and hope that, in time, some of them will feel able to return. I take full responsibility for the mistakes that have been made and I will take equal responsibility for the task of making sure nothing like this can happen again.”

There have been questions over the ownership of the JC, with the Guardian’s former editor Alan Rusbridger suggesting in an article in Prospect magazine this year that it was ultimately backed by a billionaire American, who has denied the claim.

Real Madrid has cancelled or rescheduled all concerts at its Santiago Bernabéu stadium and is working to comply with council noise regulations after local people complained that a series of loud, late gigs had turned the arena into a “torture-drome”.

Although best known as the home of one of Spain’s greatest football teams, the Bernabéu – which has just undergone a five-year, €900m (£760m) refurbishment – has hosted a string of high-profile concerts over the spring and summer. Recent headliners have included Taylor Swift, Luis Miguel and the Colombian star Karol G.

But while the concerts delighted some music fans, they drove many local people to despair. Faced with decibels far exceeding legal levels, midnight finish times, fans camping out in local parks, drunk people urinating in doorways and the blocking off of residential roads, a group representing those living around the stadium began legal action against those responsible, including Madrid city council.

In a statement released on Saturday, the club said it had decided to rethink its concert schedule.

“Real Madrid FC is announcing that it has decided to provisionally reschedule its event and concert programme at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium,” it said. “This decision is part of a raft of measures that the club is taking to ensure that the concerts comply strictly with the relevant municipal regulations.”

Despite the introduction of soundproofing measures, “different organisers and promoters” had still found it difficult to comply with council noise regulations, the statement said.

It added: “Real Madrid will continue working to make sure that the necessary sound production and emission conditions are in place to allow concerts to be held in our stadium.”

The statement said concerts by the Spanish artists Dellafuente and Aitana, slated for November and December, would be rescheduled, as would concerts next March by Lola Índigo. A K-pop concert in October has been cancelled.

The club said it was still planning a large number of shows and events to make the most of the revamped stadium, but added: “Real Madrid will continue working with the Madrid regional government and Madrid city council when it comes to sustainability and coexistence, and its aim is always to ensure that the stadium’s activities live up to its commitment to the city of Madrid and are beneficial to the surrounding environment.”

José Manuel Paredes, a spokesperson for the association that was formed in response to the concert noise, said the announcement had come as a temporary relief to those around the stadium but stressed that the group had not abandoned its legal action.

“We’ve managed to stop things in the neighbourhood getting worse for at least six months, so things are better,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re giving up the fight. The problem is still the fact that the stadium isn’t equipped to be a concert venue, nor will it be.”

Paredes said the Bernabéu was only licensed by the council to hold sporting fixtures and the odd “extraordinary event”, and was not meant to be holding frequent concerts.

“We just need them to follow the law – no more, no less,” he said.

Women who were key to exposing the disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein have told of their frustration at the decision by UK prosecutors to discontinue two indecent assault charges against him.

Zelda Perkins, a former personal assistant to Weinstein who broke a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to help expose him as a rapist, said the decision called into question the justice system’s attitude towards sexual assault and rape.

“It’s about how the Crown Prosecution Service balances what it’s going to cost them in terms of resources and the likelihood of a conviction,” she said.

The CPS announced this month that it was discontinuing the charges of indecent assault against a woman in London in 1996 after a review of evidence found “there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”.

Perkins, who said she had asked the police to return pieces of evidence including diaries and tapes relating Weinstein, said she believed the UK developments were partly influenced by recent events in the US, where Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for sex crimes was overturned by a New York appeals court. He is due to be retried and now also faces new charges there.

“What happened in the US is not about his guilt,” she said. “There was a legal technicality and all that does is highlight, yet again, that this is about the disparity of power. If you are wealthy, you can afford lawyers, you will continue looking for smaller and smaller and smaller legal loopholes.

“I don’t think that was the sole reason but it fed into the decision here. There is a huge issue with the British justice system and the ability of the CPS to deal with rape and sexual assault and where they consider it’s worth spending money pursuing cases.”

Rowena Chiu, who was also an assistant to Weinstein and who publicly accused him of attempting to rape her in Venice in 1998, said it had been her understanding that British prosecutors were waiting to see how the trials in the US would go.

“But it does appear the case that the logistics and the cost and the barriers to getting very powerful, wealthy men convicted remains a deterrent,” she said.

“It is disheartening that the balance of power is so tipped against survivors, who have to jump through what seems to be an extraordinary set of hoops in order to get a conviction and to get a conviction to stick.

“Legal reform is needed to shift that balance. But I also take an optimistic view. [The New York case] is not over and there are other brave women willing to come forward. I’m constantly impressed by the conviction of people who will not give up and I hope that that is a signal to the world at large that this is a reckoning. This is a new moment. It’s an answer to everyone who said that #MeToo will be flash in the pan. It’s a decade later. We’re still here.”

The CPS decision would be “hugely disheartening” to victims of sexual assault, said Perkins, the co-founder of Can’t Buy My Silence, an organisation campaigning against the use of NDAs.

But she added: “The root of this issue is much broader than weak men’s proclivity for sexual assault. It has to do with the system that enables those in power to abuse and buy justice. That is far more problematic on a global scale in terms of the integrity of law. Weinstein is going to die in prison, and the headlines always follow how it’s about him not being brought to justice. But I think it’s also more about systemic weakness.”

Weinstein, 72 – who is recovering from emergency heart surgery – was indicted last week on additional sex crime charges before a retrial in New York.

He was convicted in 2020 after a jury found him guilty of a criminal sex act in the first degree and rape in the third degree. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

A Los Angeles jury in 2022 found him guilty in a separate case on three counts of rape and sexual assault and he was sentenced in 2023 to an additional 16 years. He denies wrongdoing.

Women who were key to exposing the disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein have told of their frustration at the decision by UK prosecutors to discontinue two indecent assault charges against him.

Zelda Perkins, a former personal assistant to Weinstein who broke a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to help expose him as a rapist, said the decision called into question the justice system’s attitude towards sexual assault and rape.

“It’s about how the Crown Prosecution Service balances what it’s going to cost them in terms of resources and the likelihood of a conviction,” she said.

The CPS announced this month that it was discontinuing the charges of indecent assault against a woman in London in 1996 after a review of evidence found “there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”.

Perkins, who said she had asked the police to return pieces of evidence including diaries and tapes relating Weinstein, said she believed the UK developments were partly influenced by recent events in the US, where Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for sex crimes was overturned by a New York appeals court. He is due to be retried and now also faces new charges there.

“What happened in the US is not about his guilt,” she said. “There was a legal technicality and all that does is highlight, yet again, that this is about the disparity of power. If you are wealthy, you can afford lawyers, you will continue looking for smaller and smaller and smaller legal loopholes.

“I don’t think that was the sole reason but it fed into the decision here. There is a huge issue with the British justice system and the ability of the CPS to deal with rape and sexual assault and where they consider it’s worth spending money pursuing cases.”

Rowena Chiu, who was also an assistant to Weinstein and who publicly accused him of attempting to rape her in Venice in 1998, said it had been her understanding that British prosecutors were waiting to see how the trials in the US would go.

“But it does appear the case that the logistics and the cost and the barriers to getting very powerful, wealthy men convicted remains a deterrent,” she said.

“It is disheartening that the balance of power is so tipped against survivors, who have to jump through what seems to be an extraordinary set of hoops in order to get a conviction and to get a conviction to stick.

“Legal reform is needed to shift that balance. But I also take an optimistic view. [The New York case] is not over and there are other brave women willing to come forward. I’m constantly impressed by the conviction of people who will not give up and I hope that that is a signal to the world at large that this is a reckoning. This is a new moment. It’s an answer to everyone who said that #MeToo will be flash in the pan. It’s a decade later. We’re still here.”

The CPS decision would be “hugely disheartening” to victims of sexual assault, said Perkins, the co-founder of Can’t Buy My Silence, an organisation campaigning against the use of NDAs.

But she added: “The root of this issue is much broader than weak men’s proclivity for sexual assault. It has to do with the system that enables those in power to abuse and buy justice. That is far more problematic on a global scale in terms of the integrity of law. Weinstein is going to die in prison, and the headlines always follow how it’s about him not being brought to justice. But I think it’s also more about systemic weakness.”

Weinstein, 72 – who is recovering from emergency heart surgery – was indicted last week on additional sex crime charges before a retrial in New York.

He was convicted in 2020 after a jury found him guilty of a criminal sex act in the first degree and rape in the third degree. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

A Los Angeles jury in 2022 found him guilty in a separate case on three counts of rape and sexual assault and he was sentenced in 2023 to an additional 16 years. He denies wrongdoing.

The Prince and Princess of Wales have delivered a small peace offering in their rift with the Duke of Sussex by wishing Prince Harry happy birthday for the first time in three years.

In a post on X, the royal family shared a photograph of a smiling Harry to mark his 40th birthday, complete with a cake emoji. The message said: “Wishing The Duke of Sussex a very happy 40th birthday today!”

Reposting the online greeting with almost identical wording, William and Kate’s X account said: “Wishing a Happy 40th Birthday to The Duke of Sussex!”

It is the first time the royal family have shared such a public birthday greeting to Harry since 2021, the year the Sussexes accused unnamed royals of animosity and racism in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Harry was celebrating his birthday on Sunday at his California home with Meghan and their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, before reportedly heading away for a gathering with close friends.

Harry, who stepped down as a working royal in 2020, remains estranged from William and has a strained relationship with their father, King Charles.

Last February Harry flew to the UK to see his father after the king’s cancer diagnosis. The meeting was kept to just 45 minutes and there was no meeting with his brother.

He travelled to London again in May to celebrate a decade of his Invictus Games and attended a service at St Paul’s Cathedral but did not meet up with his brother or father.

There was also a brief return to the UK in August for the funeral of his uncle Lord Fellowes, when he stayed at Althorp, the ancestral home of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. He reportedly had no interaction with William at the church service.

The duke continues to pursue legal cases against tabloid newspapers over allegations of phone hacking and unlawful information gathering, in a battle he believes has annoyed his family. In his memoir, Spare, he wrote of what he saw as the royal family’s connivance with the media through alleged leaking, believing himself to be collateral damage.

In July, Harry told an ITV documentary that his determination to fight the tabloids over allegations of phone hacking was a “central piece” in destroying his relationship with his family.

A separate legal battle with the Home Office over Harry’s security while in the UK is reported to have “frustrated” the king.

Harry lost a high court challenge against the Home Office in February over a decision to change the level of his personal security when he visits the UK, but he has been given leave to appeal.

During the case, the court was told that Harry believes his children cannot “feel at home” in the UK if it is “not possible to keep them safe” there and that he faces a greater risk than his late mother did, with “additional layers of racism and extremism”.

The civilian crew on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission returned to Earth on Sunday after a historic five days in orbit that took them higher than anyone since Nasa’s moon trips more than half a century ago.

The Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas shortly after 3.37am local time (8.37am BST), carrying onboard the billionaire tech entrepreneur and mission funder Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former air force Thunderbird pilot.

Moments after the landing in the predawn darkness, Elon Musk’s space firm celebrated on his social media platform, X, saying: “Splashdown of Dragon confirmed! Welcome back to Earth.”

The all-civilian crew performed the first private spacewalk while soaring nearly 460 miles (740km) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and the Hubble space telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 875 miles after Tuesday’s lift-off.

Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union achieved the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis became the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks had been done by professional astronauts.

“We are mission complete,” Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team.

Martin Barstow, a professor of astrophysics and space science at the University of Leicester, called the mission “a landmark” in commercial space exploration and a signal that conducting activities in space was no longer the preserve of government-backed agencies.

The Dragon capsule’s hatch was open for barely half an hour during Thursday’s commercial spacewalk.

Isaacman emerged up to his waist to briefly test SpaceX’s new spacesuit, followed by Gillis, who was knee-high as she flexed her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, performed Rey’s Theme from the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens in orbit earlier in the week.

Operations around the spacewalk lasted less than two hours, considerably shorter than those at the International Space Station. Most of that time was needed to depressurise the entire capsule and then restore the cabin air. Because there is no airlock on the Dragon capsule, SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits throughout.

SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for longer missions to Mars in the future.

This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more ahead under his personally financed space exploration programme called Polaris, after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a paediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250m for St Jude children’s research hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

Barstow said: “This is a real milestone in space exploration, with a commercial company demonstrating its ability to conduct human space operations beyond low Earth orbit and completely independently of a government space agency.

“It is a landmark in the development of commercial space capability. It also signals that conducting activities in space is no longer just the province of the cohort of highly trained astronauts and is becoming accessible to others who can deliver services in space without going through the traditional astronaut route.”

For the just completed Polaris Dawn mission, Isaacman, the founder and chief executive of the Shift4 credit card processing company, shared the cost with SpaceX. He has not divulged how much he spent.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, has suggested it is routine for political donors to pay for outfits for prime ministers and their spouses, in a row over the late declaration of funds for a personal shopper and clothes for Keir Starmer’s wife, Victoria.

The donations by the Labour donor Waheed Alli, which paid for clothing for Victoria Starmer, were not initially declared in the register of MPs’ interests, the Sunday Times reported. The gift was registered late, after Starmer approached the parliamentary authorities on Tuesday following advice.

In an interview for the BBC, Lammy said donations were accepted so the Labour leader and his wife could “look their best”.

Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Lammy noted the generous expense allowance available to US presidents.

He said: “I’ve just come back from the United States, where US presidents and first ladies have a huge budget paid for by the taxpayer so that they look their best on behalf of the US people. We don’t have that system over here.”

The US president receives a salary of about £305,000 ($400,000) and a £38,000 ($50,000) expense allowance, although there is no specific clothing budget for presidents or their spouses.

The Tories demanded a full investigation into the Starmers’ links with Lord Alli.

Lammy said Starmer’s actions had been transparent. He said: “The prime minister did declare funds that he received from Lord Alli, he’s then gone back to the parliamentary commissioner to further check details on some of those funds that have made their way to his wife.

“So he has done that, and he is seeking to comply with the rules. So this is not an issue of transparency. He is attempting to be transparent.”

Lammy added: “The truth is that successive prime ministers, unless you’re a billionaire like the last one, do rely on donations, political donations, so they can look their best, both in the hope of representing the country, if you’re in the opposition, or indeed as prime minister.”

Starmer had a high-profile legal career before entering politics. Lammy said he was “not suggesting the prime minister is broke”, but that “successive prime ministers want to look their best – and their partners – for the country. That is what lies behind this.”

The Sunday Times reported that the donations covered the cost of a personal shopper, clothes and alterations for Lady Starmer before and after Labour’s election win in July.

MPs are required to register gifts and donations within 28 days.

A No 10 spokesperson said: “We sought advice from the authorities on coming to office.

“We believed we had been compliant, however, following further interrogation this month, we have declared further items.”

Alli’s involvement with the Labour leader has already proved controversial after it emerged he had been given a Downing Street security pass, apparently without having a government role.

The row was called “passes for glasses” because Alli had donated tens of thousands of pounds for clothing, accommodation and “multiple pairs” of spectacles for the Labour leader.

A Conservative party spokesperson said: “It’s taken just 10 weeks for Keir Starmer to face an investigation for his conduct.

“After facing allegations of cronyism and now apparent serious breaches of parliamentary rules, there must be a full investigation into the passes for glasses scandal.”

Marine fossils dating back to as early as 8.7m years ago have been uncovered beneath a south Los Angeles high school.

On Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that researchers had discovered two sites on the campus of San Pedro high school under which fossils including those of a saber-toothed salmon and a megalodon, the gigantic prehistoric shark, were buried.

According to the outlet, the two sites where the fossils were found include an 8.7m-year-old bone bed from the Miocene era and a 120,000-year-old shell bed from the Pleistocene era.

The discoveries were made between June 2022 and July 2024, LAist reports.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Richard Behl, a California State University at Long Beach geologist, said that researchers are testing the chemical and mineral composition of the fossils.

“We got to find clues and piece those clues together,” Behl said, adding that fossils from the Miocene era were encased in diatomite, a sedimentary rock composed of the fossilized skeletal remains of single-cell aquatic algae. According to Behl, the diatomite indicates that the area was rich with algae, which helped foster a rich ecosystem that comprised various marine creatures.

Echoing Behl, Wayne Bischoff, the director of cultural resources at Envicom Corporation, told LAist: “It’s the entire ecosystem from an age that’s gone … We have all this evidence to help future researchers put together what an entire ecology looked like nine million years ago. That’s really rare.”

Photos published on LAist and in the Los Angeles Times feature a vertebrae fossil and rib bone of an extinct dolphin species, jawbone of an extinct saber-tooth salmon, which had extendable fangs from its mouth, and fossils of hundreds of small fish vertebrae.

Speaking to KABC, Austin Hendy, assistant curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, said that researchers believe “there was a submarine channel that was carrying material down from shallower water into deeper water and volcanism going on somewhere in the vicinity”.

“This was a big surprise to everybody when they started digging these trenches to unearth these fish fossils,” Hendy added.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the fossils have been distributed among research and educational institutions, including the Los Angeles unified school district, the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, California State University Channel Islands and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

In a statement to KABC, LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho said that the discovery of the fossils has “led to a new era of concentrative studies that will bring notoriety to this community and this high school”.