Further violence between Israel and Iran’s allies Hezbollah and Hamas could ignite a devastating regional conflict, the United Nations has warned, after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed at least 14 people including a senior Hezbollah leader and wounded 66.

The strike killed Ibrahim Aqil, a figure on the group’s top military council who was wanted by the US for his alleged connection with the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut.

Israel said Aqil, the leader of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan special forces, was killed along with 10 other senior commanders of the unit. Hezbollah confirmed the death of Aqil, who it described as one of its top leaders, saying he had led a “blessed life of jihad”.

It was the latest in a series of attacks that rocked Lebanon this week, after an extraordinary two-stage operation that made thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies commonly carried by Hezbollah members explode simultaneously. The operation, presumed to have been carried out by Israel, left more than 3,000 people wounded and at least 42 dead.

Late on Friday, UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo said: “We risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering witnessed so far.”

Speaking at a meeting of the UN security council which had been convened to discuss Israel’s attacks, DiCarlo said: “It is not too late to avoid such folly. There is still room for diplomacy. I also strongly urge member states with influence over the parties to leverage it now.”

Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, repeated Washington’s assertions that the US had played no role in the attacks and called on all parties to “refrain from any actions which could plunge the region into a devastating war”.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, had earlier said Israel’s attacks would continue, writing on X: “The sequence of actions in the new phase will continue until our goal is achieved: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.”

Friday’s attack was the third time Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, has been hit by an Israeli airstrike since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel started on 8 October last year after the former launched rockets “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack the previous day.

Videos of the aftermath showed burnt cars and rubble thrown across the street from a building whose first two floors appeared to have been blown out. Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that four rockets had struck the building in Jamous, a residential area in southern Beirut, during rush hour.

The Lebanese Civil Defense asked citizens to remain indoors to keep roads clear for emergency workers transporting the wounded to hospitals. Lebanese people shared pictures of loved ones who had gone missing in the aftermath of the strike, attaching their phone numbers in case anyone had seen them.

On Thursday night there was the most intense series of Israeli airstrikes carried out in south Lebanon since October. Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes on border villages across the south, marking what the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said was the beginning of a new phase in the war.

Hassan Cheet, a first responder in the border village of Kafr Kila, said: “The destruction is as far as you can see. They brought down about 30 houses overnight. An entire neighbourhood was levelled.”

He shared pictures of flattened houses and rescue vehicles clearing rubble from the main road along the border fence with Israel, where emergency workers were accompanied by UN peacekeepers for their safety.

Cheet said: “Thank God there were no civilians or human losses. The rest can be dealt with.”

In response to the Israeli barrage, Hezbollah launched more than 100 rockets at northern Israel on Friday morning, hitting Israeli military bases in the occupied Golan Heights.

In Beirut, weary doctors braced themselves for another barrage of wounded after hearing the news of Friday’s attack.

“Truly, we’ve been working around the clock. We’ve done 50 surgeries in the past two-and-a-half days, and we only have three rooms because you need specialised microscopes to operate,” said Sami Rizk, the chief executive of LAU Medical Center-Rizk hospital.

The pager and walkie-talkie explosions that ripped through Lebanon brought thousands of patients to hospitals in just a few hours. Doctors described apocalyptic scenes in emergency rooms, where overwhelmed staff had to treat patients on the floor due to lack of available beds.

Many patients had lost hands and eyes. Most were reaching for their pagers or had brought them to their face when they exploded.

“This is to us is a new type of war where it is one specialty that is necessary: ophthalmology,” Rizk said. “In war cases, ophthalmologists are used 5 to 10% of the time; here it was over 90%.” He added that it was as if he was looking at “the same patient” over and over.

The resulting injuries would be long-lasting and require lifelong care, Rizk said. “No more fingers and no more eyes: this will be tough in the long term. It’s going to be a heavy burden on the society and these poor young guys.”

Volker Türk, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, on Friday denounced the attacks, saying that they violated international law and could constitute a war crime.

“International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-trap devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects,” Turk told the security council, adding: “It is a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians.”

For Lebanon’s health officials, the attacks functioned as a grim stress test of the healthcare sector, which had been preparing for mass-casualty events since the war began in October.

Firass Abiad, the Lebanese health minister, said: “The health sector in Lebanon has been tested and has always been found able to respond. The Lebanese health sector is really a resilient health system.”

He said that despite the country’s five-year-long economic crisis, it has been able to cope with successive crises such as Covid-19 and the 2020 Beirut port blast that wounded 7,000 and killed at least 218 people.

Despite successfully dealing with two massive attacks in one week, the health minister eyed the future warily, as Friday’s attack brought the possibility of a country-wide war with Israel ever closer.

“Does this mean that we need to keep putting it through the test? I hope not, and I hope we never find out which crisis will be sufficient to bring it to its knees,” Abiad said.

In the UK, the foreign secretary, David Lammy, discussed preparations to evacuate remaining Britons from Lebanon, having already urged UK nationals to leave the country given the hostilities with Israel.

He repeated the Foreign Office’s warning to British nationals, urging them to leave Lebanon “while commercial options remain”, as the situation “could deteriorate rapidly”.

Israel has submitted an “official challenge” to a request from the international criminal court prosecutor for an arrest warrant against its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

In May the ICC’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested the court issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

“The state of Israel submitted today its official challenge to the ICC’s jurisdiction, as well as the legality of the prosecutor’s requests for arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister and minister of defence,” the foreign ministry’s spokesperson, Oren Marmorstein, said on X.

Khan also sought warrants against top Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The prosecutor dropped the application for Haniyeh on 2 August “because of the changed circumstances caused by Mr Haniyeh’s death” in Tehran on 31 July, the ICC said in a statement this month.

According to Israel, Deif was killed by a strike on 13 July in southern Gaza, though Hamas denies he is dead.

The court is still weighing Khan’s application for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant.

In August, Khan’s office urged the court to take action “with utmost urgency”, saying that it was “settled law that the court has jurisdiction in this situation”.

Hamas’s 7 October attacks that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry. The UN has acknowledged the figures as reliable.

Unlike the international court of justice, which deals with disputes between countries, the ICC tries individuals suspected of the most heinous crimes.

It is the world’s only independent court set up to prosecute the gravest offences, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, it relies on its member states to carry out arrest warrants and has no police force of its own.

Khan’s charges against Netanyahu and Gallant include “starvation of civilians”, “extermination”, and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population”.

The US president, Joe Biden, has denounced Khan’s bid for arrest warrants for the Israeli officials as “outrageous”, saying: “There is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”

Neither the US nor Israel are members of the court, but accused parties can raise legal challenges even if they are not members.

The Israeli challenges were submitted to the court’s pre-trial judges, who will decide whether or not to issue arrest warrants, Israeli officials said on Friday.

Marmorstein said that Khan had failed “to provide Israel with the opportunity to exercise its right to investigate by itself the claims raised by the prosecutor, before proceeding”.

Ibrahim Aqil, who is reported to have been killed by an airstrike in Beirut on Friday, was one of the last founder members of Hezbollah’s military wing to have survived more than 40 years of conflict with Israel.

Aqil, who was in his early 60s, had risen through the ranks and reached a senior position in the organisation. Exact details of his role are unclear, but the Israel Defense Forces described him as “the head of the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s operations team, the acting commander of the Radwan [special forces] unit”.

“He was one of the really senior old-timers but was never really the face of anything. He was always a number two or number three, but had just been promoted in the last five to 10 years,” said Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington and an expert on extremism in Lebanon.

Aqil was one of a group of young Shia men originally from the south of Lebanon but living in Beirut who were energised by the 1979 Iranian revolution and recruited by the country’s Revolutionary Guards into a network known initially as Islamic Jihad and then later as Hezbollah.

Their military aim, guided by their Iranian mentors, was to fight the US, which had despatched a peacekeeping force to Beirut; and Israel, which had occupied much of Lebanon. Their political objective was to turn Lebanon into an Islamic state aligned with Tehran. Almost all have been killed since, probably by Israel.

Fuad Shukr was killed in an airstrike in July, almost certainly by Israeli security services working with the IDF. Shukr, who was 63 when he died, was Hezbollah’s chief of staff, and reportedly tasked with obtaining its most powerful weapons.

The most prominent member of the original group was Imad Mugniyeh, who was blamed for dozens of lethal attacks on US, Israeli and Jewish targets over 25 years and died in a car-bomb explosion in Damascus in 2008 that was attributed to the Mossad.

The US had accused Mugniyeh of playing a central role in the bombings of the US embassy in Beirut in April 1983, which killed 63 people, and the US Marine Corps barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 US personnel. A French barracks was also bombed at that time, killing 58 people.

Aqil was also accused of being involved in these operations. A US Justice Department notice describes him as “ a principal member of Hizballah’s terrorist cell the Islamic Jihad Organization”, which claimed responsibility for the two 1983 bombings in Beirut. The notice also says Aqil directed the taking of US and German hostages in Lebanon and held them there, also in the 80s.

Evidence that Mugniyeh masterminded the two 1983 bombings is thin, however, and it is more likely that he and Aqil played a more minor role, leveraging their deep network of contacts and knowledge of southern Lebanon and Beirut to provide crucial logistical support.

“Aqil was one of the nucleus of five people around Mugniyeh who were there at the start of the whole Hezbollah military enterprise,” said Abdul-Hussain.

Coming so soon after the extraordinary pager explosions which killed 37 people and injured thousands of ordinary Hezbollah operatives, the strike on Aqil suggests a concentrated and urgent Israeli effort to eliminate the organisation’s higher command.

Hezbollah will find it hard to replace men such as Shukr and Aqil, and their assassinations are likely to demoralise even committed senior members. Both men were reportedly close to the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

David Lammy chaired a Cobra meeting to discuss preparations to evacuate remaining Britons from Lebanon, having already urged UK nationals to leave the country amid hostilities with Israel.

The foreign secretary led meetings in Whitehall on Friday as officials try to avoid a repeat of the chaos in which British people scrambled to leave Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in 2021.

There is no order to evacuate citizens yet, but fears of an all-out war are growing after an escalation of Israeli air strikes and targeted attacks on Hezbollah militants with exploding devices.

Lammy expressed concern about “rising tensions and civilian casualties” in Lebanon after strikes on Hezbollah targets in the south of the country on Thursday.

He repeated the Foreign Office’s warning to British nationals, urging them to leave Lebanon “while commercial options remain”, as the situation “could deteriorate rapidly”.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed to retaliate after the attacks that targeted Lebanese militants with exploding pagers, killing and injuring many people.

On Thursday evening, Lammy said he had spoken to the Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, and “expressed my deep concern over rising tensions and civilian casualties in Lebanon”.

He said that they had discussed “the need for a negotiated solution to restore stability and security” across the border between Israel and Lebanon.

Ministry of Defence insiders said no order had been given to organise an evacuation of the 16,000 or so British nationals in Lebanon but they said that plans were being sharpened this week, in response to the deteriorating situation.

The decision not to do so indicates that Israel has not told the UK it is planning a significant intensification of military action against Hezbollah, even allowing for the exploding pager and walkie talkie attacks widely attributed to its security agencies.

Military personnel and Foreign Office officials were deployed in early August as as part of preparatory planning for a range of possible conflict scenarios. These were being revised and updated this week, defence sources added.

Several European operators suspended flights in and out of Beirut and Tel Aviv this week and the only direct flights available out of the country, according to the flight comparison site Skyscanner, are with the Lebanese carrier Middle East Airlines.

Military transport planes could be made available if there are no commercial flights, such as the A400M Atlas or the C17 Globemaster. Chinook twin engine helicopters could also be used to evacuate smaller numbers in a hurry. The RAF base at Akrotiri in Cyprus would be the hub of any air evacuation effort.

The first choice of evacuation point would be Beirut’s international airport given the quality of the facilities, although it could prove problematic if there is a major outbreak of fighting, rendering the facility unsafe. The 2021 evacuation of Afghanistan used Kabul’s main airport, although evacuations from Sudan in April 2023 were done via an airbase near Khartoum.

Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes across southern Lebanon late on Thursday, hours after Nasrallah threatened “tough retribution and just punishment” for the wave of attacks that targeted the organisation with explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies.

The Israeli military said it had hit hundreds of rocket launchers that it said were about to be used “in the immediate future”.

The bombardment included more than 52 strikes across southern Lebanon, the Lebanese state news agency NNA said. Three Lebanese security sources told the Reuters news agency that they were the heaviest aerial strikes since the conflict began in October.

The hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran.

A FCDO spokesperson said: “The foreign secretary has chaired a meeting of COBR this morning on the latest situation in Lebanon and to discuss ongoing preparedness work, with the risk of escalation remaining high.

“The safety of British nationals is our number one priority which is why we’re continuing to advise people to leave Lebanon now while commercial routes remain available.”

New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens has been freed after more than one-and-a-half years in captivity in Indonesia’s West Papua region, Indonesian police have said.

The move, reported by police in a statement on Saturday and confirmed by New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, follows an offer of terms made this week by rebels in the region

Mehrtens, a former Jetstar pilot, was taken hostage by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) in February 2023 as a bargaining chip for its push for independence from Indonesia. It came after he landed a small commercial passenger plane at Paro airport in Nduga, the centre of the growing Papuan insurgency.

On Tuesday, the TPNPB released a statement outlining the terms of his release, detailing a number of conditions to be followed by the Indonesian government, including allowing “open access” for media to be involved in the release process.

It also called for the Indonesian government to suspend military operations during Mehrten’s release, and for the New Zealand government to “provide space” for Mehrtens to convey “what he felt” during his year and seven months with the TPNPB.

Mehrtens’ kidnapping has renewed attention on the long-running and deadly conflict that has raged in West Papua, which makes up the western half of the island of New Guinea, since Indonesia took control of the former Dutch colony in 1969.

The TPNPB is the armed wing of the Free West Papua Movement, which has continued to demand a fair vote on self-determination.

Peaceful acts of civil disobedience by Indigenous West Papuans, such as raising the banned “Morning Star” flag, are met with police and military brutality and long jail sentences.

In 2022, UN human rights experts called for urgent and unrestricted humanitarian access to the region because of serious concerns about “shocking abuses against Indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people”.

South Carolina executed a man on death row on Friday, days after the key witness for the prosecution came forward to say he lied at trial and the state was putting to death an innocent man.

Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, was killed by lethal injection, pronounced dead at 6.55pm, according to the Associated Press, which was one of several media witnesses to the execution.

His lawyers had filed emergency motions for a delay this week, citing new testimony suggesting he was wrongfully convicted. But the state supreme court rejected the pleas and Henry McMaster, the Republican governor, announced just before the execution that he would not be granting clemency.

Allah, who was previously known as Freddie Owens, was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber when the curtain opened for media to view the proceeding, the AP reported. He appeared to mouth a goodbye to his lawyer, who smiled at him. Allah seemed to lose consciousness after roughly one minute.

His breathing became shallow and his face twitched for several minutes before he stopped moving. He was declared dead roughly 10 minutes later. Allah made no final statement.

Allah’s execution was the first in 13 years in South Carolina and could be the start of a rapid series of executions in the coming months.

The state gave Allah a choice of lethal injection, electrocution or firing squad, but Allah objected to signing off on a method, saying that amounted to suicide and violated his Muslim faith. His attorney chose lethal injection for him.

Allah was convicted of the armed robbery and murder of convenience store cashier Irene Graves in November 1997. He was 19 at the time. Graves, a 41-year-old mother of three, was shot in the head during the robbery. Allah has long asserted his innocence.

Prosecutors had no forensic evidence connecting Allah to the shooting. Surveillance footage at the store showed two masked men with guns, but they were not identifiable.

The state’s case rested on testimony from Allah’s friend and co-defendant, Steven Golden, who was also charged in the robbery and murder. As their joint trial was beginning, Golden pleaded guilty to murder, armed robbery and criminal conspiracy and agreed to testify against Allah. Golden, who was 18 at the time of the robbery, said Allah shot Graves.

But on Wednesday, two days before the scheduled execution, Golden signed a bombshell affidavit recanting his testimony, saying Allah “is not the person who shot Irene Graves” and “was not present” during the robbery. Golden’s declaration said he was high when police questioned him days after the robbery, and that he was pressured into writing a statement blaming Allah.

“I substituted [Allah] for the person who was really with me,” he wrote, saying he concealed the identity of the “real shooter” out of fear that “his associates might kill me”. He did not identify this person.

Golden said he agreed to plead guilty and testify when prosecutors assured him he would not face the death penalty or a life sentence – a deal that was not disclosed to the jury.

“I don’t want [Allah] to be executed for something he didn’t do,” he wrote in the new affidavit. “This has weighed heavily on my mind and I want to have a clear conscience.”

The state attorney general filed a response on Thursday suggesting Golden’s new statement was not credible and did not warrant a new trial. Lawyers for the state also argued that other evidence pointed to Allah’s guilt, alleging that Allah had confessed to the shooting to his mother and girlfriend. But Allah’s lawyers rejected the claims of the “jilted former girlfriend” and said his mother had “disavowed” a statement police had her sign suggesting her son had confessed.

The state supreme court sided with the attorney general, ruling the new evidence did not amount to “exceptional circumstances” warranting a reprieve and suggesting other evidence supported Allah’s guilt. The justices have also pointed to Allah’s reported confession to killing a man in jail in 1999, an issue raised during his original sentencing, but those charges were dropped.

The US supreme court also denied Allah’s last-ditch request for relief on Friday, but the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor indicated she supported temporarily halting the execution.

Dora Mason, Allah’s mother, condemned the “grave injustice that has been perpetrated against my son” and the state’s “unwillingness to consider new evidence” in a statement released through a local activist on Friday before the execution: “I urge the people of South Carolina to consider the value of human life, the fallibility of our justice system, and the irreversible nature of capital punishment. I implore you to question the morality of taking a life in the name of justice, especially when doubt exists.”

She offered condolences and prayers to the victim’s family, pleaded for the governor to intervene, and shared this message to her son: “I want you to know that I love you more than words can express. You have always been my guiding light, and your strength and resilience inspire me every day. I will stand by you until the very end.”

Allah’s lawyers have also argued that a death sentence was not appropriate for his conviction. He was found guilty of murder without a jury explicitly ruling that he pulled the trigger. Prosecutors told jurors they could convict him for murder simply if they believed he was present during the robbery. It is rare for people to be executed for murders they did not directly commit.

His lawyers have also noted that he endured a childhood of severe violence and was diagnosed with brain damage.

Allah is one of the youngest people at the time of the crime to be put to death by South Carolina in decades.

“[Allah] did not kill Ms Graves. His death tonight is a tragedy,” Gerald “Bo” King, his attorney, said in a statement. “[His] childhood was marked by suffering on a scale that is hard to comprehend. He spent his adulthood in prison for a crime that he did not commit. The legal errors, hidden deals and false evidence that made tonight possible should shame us all.”

The return of executions

South Carolina has not conducted an execution since 2011. Faced with growing backlash, pharmaceutical companies stopped selling lethal injection drugs to the state, but last year South Carolina passed a shield law to conceal the identity of suppliers and has since purchased pentobarbital, a sedative.

The state supreme court last month announced five executions it plans to schedule after Allah, saying they would be spaced at least 35 days apart.

After Allah’s execution, the ACLU of South Carolina urged the governor to grant clemency to those on death row “before the state kills in our name again”.

The Rev Hillary Taylor, executive director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the flaws in Allah’s case were a reminder that “the death penalty is not given to the ‘worst of the worst’, it is given to the people who are least able to represent themselves in court”

In a statement after the execution, Taylor said: “Khalil’s execution shows the inherent discrimination of the death penalty: our justice system does not care that the right person is executed. Any person is an adequate substitute, especially if that person is young, Black, poor, and disabled.”

Ensley Graves-Lee, Graves’s daughter, said in an interview on Thursday that it had taken a toll on her family to have their tragedy back in the news in recent weeks and that she was shocked to learn of new developments in the case.

“I understand that it is probably difficult for the other side, and I’m sure they would do anything to save someone they love,” said Graves-Lee, who was 10 years old when her mother was killed. “I have to remind myself that I have had no choice in any of the matter. I was 10 when she died and 12 when the verdict came … I had no choice in the death penalty at all.” She added: “I feel like I’m preparing for a funeral … I don’t know if there’s closure after it, but I’m just trying to get past this part that was already decided for me.”

Graves-Lee, a speech pathologist, said she wanted her mother remembered for how hard she worked for her three children, holding down three retail jobs at the time of her death: “She dedicated her life to her children.” She said her mother took extra jobs so she and her brother could pursue dancing and gymnastics. “I’m sure she had dreams for herself, but she always put us first, any sport or any activity we wanted to do, she allowed us to do.”

She also recalled her mom taking them to the mountains and looking at houses in the neighborhood they fantasized buying. She died on 1 November, but had already done Christmas shopping for her children, and her former co-workers at a Kmart sent the gifts she had purchased.

“I hate that my mother can’t be here. The circumstances took a lot away from the both of us. My children don’t have their grandmother. She didn’t get to see her children grow up. And it wasn’t fair to her,” Graves-Lee said. “I’m hoping that she’s at rest after tomorrow, too.”

For two months, a California couple was heartbroken, worrying about the whereabouts of their beloved cat after losing him in Yellowstone national park, a wilderness larger than some US states.

But as summer came to a close, so did their tragic story. Benny and Susanne Anguiano reunited with their lost feline Rayne Beau last month after an animal welfare group called to let them know their cat had been found in Roseville, California, about 800 miles (1,287km) from Yellowstone.

In June, the couple went camping in the national park, where their cat was startled by something in the wilderness. Rayne Beau ran into the trees, and they didn’t see him again for 60 days. During the trip, they searched every day, laying out treats and toys in hopes he’d return, but without success.

“We had to leave without him,” Susanne Anguiano told KSBW. “That was the hardest day because I felt like I was abandoning him.”

In early August, Rayne Beau’s microchip came in handy.

The couple received a message from Pet Watch, a pet-tracking service, indicating that their cat had been found in Roseville at the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A woman had discovered Rayne Beau alone in the street and brought him to the shelter.

“He was really depleted,” said Susanne. “He probably didn’t have much energy left to go any farther.”

Susanne first shared their rollercoaster story on Facebook, explaining that she hadn’t told it earlier because “it was too traumatic.”

Exactly how Rayne Beau travelled the 800 miles from Yellowstone to Roseville remains a mystery, but the couple said they hope sharing their story might prompt someone to come forward with any details. In their KSBW interview, the couple also urged other pet owners to install trackers to avoid losing their pets for good.

An estimated 10m dogs and cats are lost or stolen in the US every year, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Only one in 50 cats in shelters return to their owners, but with a microchip, nearly two out of five are reunited with their families.

• Ukraine has banned use of the Telegram messaging app on official devices used by government officials, military personnel and critical workers because it believes Russia can spy on both messages and users, a leading security body has said. The National Security and Defence Council announced the restrictions on Friday after Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, presented the council with evidence of Russian special services’ ability to snoop on the platform, it said in a statement. But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the security council’s centre on countering disinformation, posted on Telegram that the restrictions applied only to official devices, not personal phones. Telegram is heavily used in Ukraine and Russia and has become a critical source of information during the war, but Ukrainian security officials have repeatedly voiced concerns about its use. After the decision was announced, Telegram issued a statement saying it had never disclosed anyone’s data or the contents of any message.

• Russian forces launched three strikes on Friday on Kharkiv, injuring 15 people including three children, the mayor said. Ihor Terekhov said eight people were being treated in hospital. Police in Ukraine’s second-largest city, quoted by public broadcaster Suspilne, said the strikes hit three different city districts. One strike, caused by a guided bomb, hit an area outside a hospital. A second hit an area of private homes and the third an open area with grass. Four of the injured were hospital patients, said the Kharkiv regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, adding that building facades were damaged.

• Further south-east in Kharkiv region, a Russian strike killed two people and injured two in the village of Kivsharivka, regional police said. In the southern region of Kherson, partly controlled by Russian forces, a woman died in Russian shelling of an area outside the main Ukrainian-held city, also known as Kherson. The accounts could not be independently verified.

• The European Union chief announced plans for Brussels to lend Ukraine €35bn ($39bn/£29bn) backed by revenues of frozen Russian assets and promised to help Ukraine “keep warm” ahead of a third winter of war with Russia. Ursula von der Leyen was in Kyiv as fears grow for how Ukraine’s war-battered energy grid will cope this winter.

• Ukraine’s “victory plan” in the war against Russia depends on quick decisions being taken by allies this year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday during von der Leyen’s visit. Zelenskyy told a joint press conference with the European commission president that Ukraine planned to use a proposed multibillion-dollar EU loan for air defence, energy and domestic weapons purchases.

• The US is preparing a $375m military aid package for Ukraine, breaking a months-long trend towards smaller packages for Kyiv for its military operations against Russia, two US officials told Reuters. The package, expected to be announced next week, includes patrol boats, additional ammunition for high-mobility artillery rocket systems (Himars), 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, spare parts and other weapons, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

• Norway will increase civilian aid to Ukraine by 5bn kroner ($475m) this year and extend its aid package by three years to 2030, the prime minister said. The extension brings the aggregate aid package to 135bn kroner from a previous total of 75bn kroner up to 2027. The additional aid would be dedicated to “important civilian needs”, Jonas Gahr Store said. “We are living through a very dangerous situation in Europe.”

• Russia has charged four of its soldiers serving in occupied Ukraine with torturing a US citizen living in Russian-held Donetsk who had fought with pro-Moscow forces since 2014. It is rare instance for Russia to accuse active soldiers in Ukraine – who are glorified at home – of committing crimes, Agence France-Presse reported. The authorities did not say what had motivated the soldiers to kill 64-year-old Russell Bentley, known as “Texas”, who regularly appeared on pro-Kremlin social media channels, backing Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.

• Management at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in eastern Ukraine accused Ukrainian forces on Friday of launching a drone attack on a nearby electricity substation, damaging a transformer and posing a threat to the plant. Ukraine’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

• Nato concluded a major anti-drone exercise this week, with Ukraine taking part for the first time as the western alliance seeks to learn urgently from the rapid development and widespread use of unmanned systems in the war there. The drills at a Dutch military base, involving more than 20 countries and 50 companies, tested cutting-edge systems to detect and counter drones and assessed how they work together.

• Ukraine has banned use of the Telegram messaging app on official devices used by government officials, military personnel and critical workers because it believes Russia can spy on both messages and users, a leading security body has said. The National Security and Defence Council announced the restrictions on Friday after Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, presented the council with evidence of Russian special services’ ability to snoop on the platform, it said in a statement. But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the security council’s centre on countering disinformation, posted on Telegram that the restrictions applied only to official devices, not personal phones. Telegram is heavily used in Ukraine and Russia and has become a critical source of information during the war, but Ukrainian security officials have repeatedly voiced concerns about its use. After the decision was announced, Telegram issued a statement saying it had never disclosed anyone’s data or the contents of any message.

• Russian forces launched three strikes on Friday on Kharkiv, injuring 15 people including three children, the mayor said. Ihor Terekhov said eight people were being treated in hospital. Police in Ukraine’s second-largest city, quoted by public broadcaster Suspilne, said the strikes hit three different city districts. One strike, caused by a guided bomb, hit an area outside a hospital. A second hit an area of private homes and the third an open area with grass. Four of the injured were hospital patients, said the Kharkiv regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, adding that building facades were damaged.

• Further south-east in Kharkiv region, a Russian strike killed two people and injured two in the village of Kivsharivka, regional police said. In the southern region of Kherson, partly controlled by Russian forces, a woman died in Russian shelling of an area outside the main Ukrainian-held city, also known as Kherson. The accounts could not be independently verified.

• The European Union chief announced plans for Brussels to lend Ukraine €35bn ($39bn/£29bn) backed by revenues of frozen Russian assets and promised to help Ukraine “keep warm” ahead of a third winter of war with Russia. Ursula von der Leyen was in Kyiv as fears grow for how Ukraine’s war-battered energy grid will cope this winter.

• Ukraine’s “victory plan” in the war against Russia depends on quick decisions being taken by allies this year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday during von der Leyen’s visit. Zelenskyy told a joint press conference with the European commission president that Ukraine planned to use a proposed multibillion-dollar EU loan for air defence, energy and domestic weapons purchases.

• The US is preparing a $375m military aid package for Ukraine, breaking a months-long trend towards smaller packages for Kyiv for its military operations against Russia, two US officials told Reuters. The package, expected to be announced next week, includes patrol boats, additional ammunition for high-mobility artillery rocket systems (Himars), 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, spare parts and other weapons, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

• Norway will increase civilian aid to Ukraine by 5bn kroner ($475m) this year and extend its aid package by three years to 2030, the prime minister said. The extension brings the aggregate aid package to 135bn kroner from a previous total of 75bn kroner up to 2027. The additional aid would be dedicated to “important civilian needs”, Jonas Gahr Store said. “We are living through a very dangerous situation in Europe.”

• Russia has charged four of its soldiers serving in occupied Ukraine with torturing a US citizen living in Russian-held Donetsk who had fought with pro-Moscow forces since 2014. It is rare instance for Russia to accuse active soldiers in Ukraine – who are glorified at home – of committing crimes, Agence France-Presse reported. The authorities did not say what had motivated the soldiers to kill 64-year-old Russell Bentley, known as “Texas”, who regularly appeared on pro-Kremlin social media channels, backing Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.

• Management at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in eastern Ukraine accused Ukrainian forces on Friday of launching a drone attack on a nearby electricity substation, damaging a transformer and posing a threat to the plant. Ukraine’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

• Nato concluded a major anti-drone exercise this week, with Ukraine taking part for the first time as the western alliance seeks to learn urgently from the rapid development and widespread use of unmanned systems in the war there. The drills at a Dutch military base, involving more than 20 countries and 50 companies, tested cutting-edge systems to detect and counter drones and assessed how they work together.

A survivor of Mohamed Al Fayed’s sexual abuse has given a harrowing account of her suffering at his hands. Speaking at a press conference in London, the woman – named as Natacha – told reporters she “walked into a lion’s den” when she accepted a job with the former owner of Harrods department store in London.

She said working for him had involved a “layer of cover-ups, deceit, lies, manipulation, humiliation and gross sexual misconduct”.

Referring to Fayed, who died last year at 94, as “the chairman”, Natacha said he “preyed on the most vulnerable – those of us who needed to pay the rent and some of us who didn’t have parents to protect them”. She called him a “highly manipulative” figure who initially went out of his way to make her feel safe and comfortable at work.

“Mohamed Al Fayed, a sick predator, lured me in by using the same modus operandi he used time and time again. I was subjected to Aids and STD testing without consent, and now believe in hindsight I was checked for my purity.”

Once he had lured her in, Natacha said Fayed started to use private meetings to subject her to an escalating campaign of physical abuse. This culminated with her being summoned to his private apartment one night “on the pretext of a job review”.

She said: “The door was locked behind me … I saw his bedroom door partially open – there were sex toys on view. I felt petrified. I perched myself at the very end of the sofa and then … Mohamed Al Fayed, my boss, the person I worked for, pushed himself on to me.”

She said after she was able to fight to free herself from his attack, “he laughed at me. He then composed himself and he told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never to breathe a word of this to anyone. If I did, I would never work in London again, and he knew where my family lived. I felt scared and sick.”

Another survivor told the BBC she was raped after staying at one of Fayed’s apartments after a late shift at work. “I made it obvious that I didn’t want that to happen. I did not give consent. I just wanted it to be over,” she said.

“I remember feeling his body on me, the weight of him. Just hearing him make these noises. And just going somewhere else in my head.”

Another woman, who worked as one of Fayed’s personal assistants between 2007 and 2009, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she was “required” to have gynaecological tests to get the job and believed, looking back, the tests were checking for sexually transmitted infections.

She said Fayed raped her during a trip to Paris and she felt “terrified” afterwards. “In Paris, there were security guards patrolling the house, there were security guards outside the house. We were locked in a gated property. We’d been escorted there that day by the police, so I felt like I couldn’t even go to the police, even if I could make my way out of the property.”

Kamala Harris campaigned in Madison, Wisconsin, the deep blue capital of the state and college town that Democrats hope will turn out enough voters to turn the election in the presidential nominee’s favor.

“We know this is gonna be a tight race until the very end,” said Harris. “We are the underdog in this race, and we have some hard work ahead of us.”

Wisconsin voters delivered razor-thin margins during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Donald Trump won the state in 2016 by about 22,000 votes, and in 2020 Joe Biden scraped by with just 20,000 more than Trump.

Polling in Wisconsin so far shows Harris and Trump neck-and-neck. Three polls conducted this week underscore just how tight the race could be here: polling by AARP, Marist and Quinnipiac University suggest the race is virtually tied here, with Harris leading Trump by just one point in each.

On the trail, Harris has emphasized her support for abortion rights, a centerpiece of her campaign and a galvanizing issue for young voters.

“It is immoral,” said Harris of the numerous abortion bans that were implemented after Roe v Wade was overturned. “Let us agree one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do.”

Harris described meeting with the mother of a young woman who died of sepsis after being denied abortion care in Georgia.

“Amber Nicole Thurman,” said Harris. “I promised her mother I would say her name every time.”

Whoever wins Wisconsin’s popular vote earns the state’s full 10 electoral votes, giving the state a disproportionate say over the presidential election, and groups such as Madison’s large college-age population will play a critical role in deciding the result. Some of those students attended the Friday rally.

“It’s just so nice to see someone who’s actually joyful,” said Kaitlin Olson, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. During Biden’s painful debate performance against Trump, Olson said, “it was like, ‘This is scary.’ Now that Kamala is running, I’m like, ‘OK, a little more joy.’”

“I think we’re gonna turn out higher than expected,” said Jake Leismer, a college freshman who took the bus from campus, joining up with Olson and a group of students at the rally.

The Democratic-coordinated campaign, which campaigns for Democrats up and down the ballot, has hired seven full-time campus organizers across the state and a youth organizing coordinator, according to a source familiar with the Harris campaign’s staffing operations in Wisconsin. Kelly Connor, a campus organizer based in Madison, said the campaign has been met with enthusiasm – even hosting a bonfire to ceremonially burn copies of Wisconsin’s gerrymandered electoral maps, which the state abandoned this year after years of progressive and Democratic party organizing.

“We have lots of volunteers that have never volunteered before that want to get out and knock doors,” said Connor.

The young people effect in Wisconsin came to light fully in 2023, when college students turned out in droves to elect Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin supreme court, creating a liberal majority on the bench. At the heart of the race was abortion access, which has been caught in a legal snarl since the fall of Roe v Wade triggered a 175-year-old ban in the state.

“They know the stakes,” said Connor. “This election is about fascism versus democracy, and students are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump never sets foot in the White House again.”

A man has been arrested in Italy over the 1977 murders of two women, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett, who were found dead in their Melbourne home on Easey Street, Collingwood.

A 65-year-old man, a Greek-Australian dual citizen, was arrested at a Rome airport on Thursday evening, Australian eastern time.

Victoria police will seek an extradition order for his return to Melbourne.

Armstrong and Bartlett were killed in January 1977 in their rented Collingwood terrace house while Armstrong’s 16-month-old toddler slept in another room.

The women’s bodies were found in the house on 13 January, three days after they had last been seen alive, with the child distressed and dehydrated but otherwise unhurt.

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Both Armstrong, 27, and Susan, 28, had been stabbed multiple times, police said.

The Easey Street murders, as they became known, was one of Melbourne’s most high-profile cold cases, remaining unsolved for decades.

In 2017, a $1m reward was offered for anyone who had new information that might lead to the arrest and conviction of people responsible.

The case was the subject of a number of books and podcasts.

While the investigation is ongoing, the chief commissioner, Shane Patton, said in a statement on Saturday that the arrest of the man was “an important breakthrough”.

“For over 47 years, detectives from the homicide qquad have worked tirelessly to determine who was responsible for the deaths of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett,” Patton said.

“An enormous amount of work has been done by many, many people to bring us to the position we are in today … This was a crime that struck at the heart of our community – two women in their own home, where they should have felt their safest.”

Patton also recognised “the enduring resilience of both the Armstrong and Bartlett families, who have grieved for over four decades and no doubt this will be a very emotional time for them”.

The families of Armstrong and Bartlett requested privacy in a joint statement on Saturday afternoon.

“For two quiet families from country Victoria it has always been impossible to comprehend the needless and violent manner in which Suzanne and Susan died. The gravity of the circumstances surrounding their deaths changed our lives irrevocably,” the statement said.

“We will be forever grateful for the support and understanding shown to us by our friends and family over the past 47 years. It is difficult to sufficiently express our appreciation to Victoria police and the many investigators who have tirelessly pursued answers and justice for us over such a long period of time.

“The perseverance and dedication required to achieve the result today is something to truly behold. For always giving us hope and never giving up, we simply say, thank you.”

A US soldier who fled into North Korea last year has been sentenced to 12 months of confinement after pleading guilty to desertion as part of a plea agreement, his lawyer has said.

Because of good behaviour and time served, the soldier was released, the lawyer, Franklin Rosenblatt, said on Friday.

Travis King was facing 14 charges related to him fleeing across the border from South Korea into the North in July last year while on a sightseeing tour of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean Peninsula, and prior incidents.

He pleaded guilty to five charges – desertion, assault on a noncommissioned officer and three counts of disobeying an officer – as part of a deal that was accepted on Friday by a military judge.

In July 2023, King had been stationed in South Korea and was supposed to fly back to Texas to face disciplinary hearings after a drunken bar fight and a stay in a South Korean jail.

Instead, he walked out of the Seoul-area airport, joined a DMZ sightseeing trip and slipped over the fortified border, where he was detained by the communist North’s authorities.

Pyongyang had said King had defected to North Korea to escape “mistreatment and racial discrimination in the US Army”.

But after completing its investigation, North Korea “decided to expel” King in September for illegally intruding into its territory.

Lawyer Rosenblatt said in Friday’s statement: “The judge, under the terms of the plea deal, sentenced Travis to one year of confinement, reduction in rank to private (E-1), forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonourable discharge.

“With time already served and credit for good behaviour, Travis is now free and will return home,” the statement said.

“Travis King has faced significant challenges throughout his life, including a difficult upbringing, exposure to criminal environments and struggles with mental health,” Rosenblatt said. “All these factors have compounded the hardships he faced in the military.”

In a statement, the US Army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel confirmed King’s guilty plea as part of a deal and said that “pursuant to the terms of the plea agreement, all other charges and specifications were dismissed”.

“The outcome of today’s court martial is a fair and just result that reflects the seriousness of the offences committed by Pvt King,” prosecutor Major Allyson Montgomery said in the statement.

Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, on Friday criticized former US president Donald Trump and his election running mate, JD Vance, for repeating racist rightwing claims about Haitian immigrants eating other residents’ pets in the city of Springfield, Ohio.

The conspiracy theories have caused uproar and led to an onslaught of threats and harassment.

In a guest essay published in the New York Times on Friday, DeWine said it is “disappointing” that Springfield “has become the epicenter of vitriol over America’s immigration policy”, specifically calling out Trump and Vance for amplifying disinformation.

“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield,” DeWine wrote. “This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”

DeWine said Trump and Vance were raising important issues about the “Biden administration’s failure to control the southern border”.

But the governor, who said he was born in Springfield, added: “But their verbal attacks against these Haitians – who are legally present in the United States – dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.”

DeWine’s comments have received mixed reactions from top Ohio Democrats.

Some have supported DeWine’s essay amid vitriol aimed at Haitian immigrants in Springfield. Allison Russo, Ohio state representative and minority whip, celebrated DeWine’s essay in a post to X.

“I applaud [DeWine] for this fair and very thoughtful op-ed about [Springfield, Ohio] and the Haitian immigrants who are working hard to build a future there,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, Ohio state senate leader Nickie Antonio told the Guardian that she agreed with DeWine’s essay, but was “disappointed” that DeWine is still supporting Trump and Vance in the 2024 presidential election.

“What the governor left out with his entire [essay], which I think was beautiful, is that Trump and JD Vance started this whole thing to begin with and they continue it,” Antonio said.

“They are continuing to beat the drum, encouraging violence, hatred, discrimination of people who are legally in our country, in our state and in that community”.

Antonio added that DeWine is a “fine and decent person” who has done positive things for Ohio, but added: “I don’t know how any reasonable person at this moment could put their partisan affiliation in front of decency and some kind of sense of the common good, because there’s none of that with these kinds of statements.”

Trump said on Wednesday that he plans to visit Springfield “in the next two weeks”.

Both DeWine and the mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, also a Republican, spoke out against such a visit over security concerns.

“A visit from the former president will undoubtedly place additional demands on our safety infrastructure,” said Rue during a Thursday press conference. “Should he choose to change his plans, it would convey a significant message of peace to the city of Springfield.”

DeWine had previously questioned dehumanizing rumors targeting Haitian immigrants in Springfield.

In an interview with CBS News last week, DeWine said that the rumor began on the internet, which “can be quite crazy sometimes”.

DeWine added: “Mayor [Rob] Rue of Springfield says, ‘No, there’s no truth in that.’ They have no evidence of that at all. So, I think we go with what the mayor says. He knows his city.”

Meanwhile, schools in Springfield received more than 30 bomb threats after the inflammatory rumors became national news, despite there being no evidence to support them, and Trump brought up the topic in the presidential debate against his Democratic rival for the White House, Kamala Harris.

DeWine has since deployed Ohio state highway patrol to provide security.

“Bomb threats – all hoaxes – continue and temporarily closed at least two schools, put the hospital on lockdown and shuttered City Hall,” he wrote.