At least 274 people have been killed and 1,024 injured, Lebanon’s health ministry has said, after a wave of Israeli airstrikes on alleged Hezbollah targets that left the country with its highest daily death toll since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.

Children, women and paramedics were among the casualties in the strikes on southern towns and villages, the ministry said, as thousands of people fled north along the main road towards the capital, Beirut, in Israel’s most intense barrage in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.

Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was changing the “security balance” along its northern border. “I promised we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north – and that is exactly what we are doing,” the Israeli prime minister told a security meeting on Monday.

Israel said it had hit 300 Hezbollah targets in its biggest strike against the militant group since the Gaza war began in October last year, when Hezbollah began strikes in Israel in support of Hamas. It also carried out airstrikes in the Bekaa valley, late in the afternoon.

The UN peacekeeping body in Lebanon (Unifil) asked its civilian staff to relocate from south Lebanon northwards, as a “precautionary measure” as fighting in south Lebanon escalated on Monday. UN peacekeepers and critical staff will remain in the south.

In response, about 35 rockets were fired from Lebanon towards the Safed area of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces said, with some coming down in open areas close to the community of Ami’ad.

Earlier in the day, the IDF had warned Lebanese people in the capital, Beirut, and other areas via a phone call to evacuate their residences and distance themselves from any buildings holding Hezbollah weapons.

“The actions will continue until we achieve our goal to return the northern [Israel] residents safely to their homes,”the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said in a video published by his office, setting the stage for a long conflict as Hezbollah has vowed to fight on until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. “These are days in which the Israeli public will have to show composure.”

Roads leading out of south Lebanon were jammed with traffic as people fled the relentless bombing. Areas that have served as safe zones for displaced people since last year are suddenly in the crosshairs of the Israeli military.

“The airstrikes have reached us, on the outskirts of [Tyre]. There was a strike just 100 metres behind the [displacement] centre, there were three of them,” said Bilal Kashmar, a coordinator in a displacement centre in the southern city of Tyre. He showed a video of a plume of smoke rising just across the street from the shelter that houses hundreds of families.

“The displaced have stopped coming to us, those that want to flee are leaving the south entirely,” Kashmar said.

Tyre has hosted thousands of individuals displaced by fighting, as the city had largely been spared by airstrikes until now. Before Monday’s fighting, more than 110,000 people had been displaced from south Lebanon.

“The airstrikes aren’t stopping, airstrike on airstrike. People are scared,” said Hassan Dabouk, the head of Tyre’s union of municipalities.

Videos of collapsed buildings and of bombs falling from the sky and the resulting explosions shaking the hands of those filming circulated on social media as people tried to track the extent of Israel’s campaign. In one video, a driver films as smoke fills the air on the road ahead of them after a strike. “Stop, stop, stop!” one of the passengers yells as the video cuts.

“An important thing to note is that the roads are not safe,” Dabouk said. “There is bombing from where we are [in Tyre] all the way to Saida. One needs to think before they leave in this situation.”

People with family and friends leaving the south made public appeals for any empty apartments or rooms that could host their loved ones. Spontaneous initiatives to provide housing emerged, with individuals marshalling calls for available rooms, and hostels offering discounted rates for displaced people.

“We are collecting numbers right now from people that have connections in safe areas, in Druze and Christian areas,” said Faten Jebai, a journalist from south Lebanon. Jebai has urged those without a place to reach out to her, as she and other volunteers work to connect displaced people with those who will open up their homes or rent at low prices.

“More than 80 members of my family are now leaving the south, so I am searching for them but also for my friends and friends of the family,” Jebai added.

The UN voiced alarm at the escalating violence. “We are extremely concerned, deeply worried about the escalation in Lebanon,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN human rights office, told Agence France-Presse. “It appears that both the actions and the rhetoric of the parties to the conflict is taking the conflict to another level.”

Unifil issued a statement on Monday afternoon expressing “grave concern for the safety of civilians in southern Lebanon amidst the most intense Israeli bombing campaign since last October” and urging de-escalation.

“Any further escalation of this dangerous situation could have far-reaching and devastating consequences, not only for those living on both sides of the Blue line, but also for the broader region,” the statement read.

Since the beginning of the war between Hamas and Israel, the Israeli military and Hezbollah have managed to avoid an all-out war, engaging instead in a limited conflict of attrition.

However, escalating strikes and counterstrikes have raised fears of an all-out conflict. Last week, walkie-talkies and pagers bought by Hezbollah for its members exploded, killing 42 people and wounding more than 3,000, and on Friday an Israeli strike on a Beirut suburb killed a top Hezbollah military commander and more than a dozen fighters, as well as dozens of civilians including children.

On Sunday, Hezbollah launched about 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for Friday’s strike.

Hezbollah has vowed to continue its strikes in solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas, a fellow Iran-backed militant group, while Israel says it is committed to returning calm to the border.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Sources quoted by Israeli media have said Benjamin Netanyahu is considering a plan to force Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza and put Hamas militants who remain in the area under siege in order to force the release of hostages.

The plan, published by retired military commanders and floated by some parliament members this month, calls for the area to be declared “a closed military zone” after civilians have been told to leave.

The Israeli national broadcaster, Kan, quoted the Israeli prime minister as saying the blueprint “makes sense” and that it was “one of the plans being considered”. An Israeli official quoted by CNN confirmed the veracity of the quote but said: “Seeing it positively does not mean adopting it.”

According to the UN, between 300,000 and 500,000 Palestinians, most of them displaced, are living in the northern part of Gaza.

The retired Israel Defense Forces major general Giora Eiland, a former IDF strategist and a previous head of Israel’s national security council, explained the main steps of the plan in a video published two weeks ago.

“The reality today in Gaza is that [the Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar is really not stressed,” he said in the video. “The right thing to do is to inform the approximately 300,000 residents who remained in the northern Gaza Strip, citizen residents, of the following: not that we are suggesting you leave the northern Gaza Strip; we are ordering you to leave the northern Gaza Strip.

“In a week, the entire territory of the northern Gaza Strip will become military territory. And this military territory, as far as we are concerned, no supplies will enter it. That is why 5,000 terrorists who are in this situation, they can either surrender or starve.”

Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced. An estimated 1 million people – half the population – are crammed into a designated humanitarian zone that comprises less than 15% of the territory and is lacking essential infrastructure and services, according to the UN. Humanitarian access to northern Gaza is especially difficult, it has said.

The plan does not tackle the question of what would happen to Palestinian civilians who are unable or unwilling to leave. The Likud MP Avichai Boaron, who has reportedly promoted the plan, did not respond to a request for a comment when contacted by the Guardian.

Prof Eyal Zisser, the vice-rector of Tel Aviv University and an expert on Lebanon and Arab-Israeli relations, said Netanyahu had so far refrained from detailing what his vision or plan was for the “day after” in Gaza or when the war would end.

“Since there is no chance in the near future for a deal or a ceasefire, this means that the current situation will continue as it is – limited military operations by Israel in the Gaza Strip, but not full occupation,” Zisser said.

“The fear in the Israeli army is that such a thing allows Hamas to restore its military capabilities and its ability to control the population, since a vacuum has been created which Hamas exploits. That is the reason behind the idea that some of the generals have had that in practice Israel will control and establish a kind of military government in the Gaza Strip.”

The man accused in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump at a golf course in Florida left behind a note saying that he intended to kill the former president and maintained in his car a handwritten list of dates and venues where the Republican White House nominee was to appear, the justice department said on Monday.

The new allegations were included in a detention memo filed ahead of a hearing on Monday at which the justice department was expected to argue that 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh should remain locked up while the case is pending.

The details are meant to buttress prosecutors’ assertions that Routh had set out to kill Trump before the plot was thwarted by a Secret Service agent who spotted a rifle poking out of shrubbery on the West Palm Beach golf course where the former president was playing on 15 September.

The note, addressed “Dear World”, was placed in a box that was dropped at the home of an unidentified person who contacted law enforcement officials after last Sunday’s arrest. It appears to have been based on the premise that the assassination attempt would ultimately be unsuccessful.

The box, which also contained ammunition, a metal pipe and other items, was not opened by the person until after Routh was taken into custody. The person who received the box and contacted law enforcement was not identified in the justice department’s detention memo.

“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job,” the note said, according to prosecutors.

An attorney for Routh did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Monday morning.

The letter gives further indications of Routh’s alleged motivation. The former president “ended relations with Iran like a child and now the Middle East has unraveled”, the note states, apparently alluding to the Trump White House’s decision to withdraw from a nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018.

Investigators believe that Routh, a pro-Ukraine activist, had staked out the grounds of Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course for a month before his arrest, the filing said. On the day of the apparent attempt on Trump’s life, he had secreted himself outside the fence at the 6th hole of the course.

A Secret Service agent patrolling one hole ahead of Trump’s group spotted Routh and the barrel of his gun, eventually leading to his arrest.

Prosecutors say Routh positioned himself near the 6th hole with the intention of using a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a scope to shoot Trump. Routh had a round in the rifle’s chamber and 11 additional bullets in the weapon, which he left at the scene after being spotted and trying to flee.

The memo states that “at approximately 1.30pm, the agent spotted the partially obscured face of a man in the brush along the fence line … directly in line with the sixth hole. The agent then observed a long black object protruding through the fence and realized the object was the barrel of a rifle aimed directly at him.”

The memo adds: “The agent jumped out of the golf cart, drew his weapon, and began backing away. The agent saw the rifle barrel move, and the agent fired at Routh.

“The agent took cover behind a tree and reloaded his weapon, then looked up and saw that Routh was gone. The agent called out over his radio that shots had been fired by the agent and that there was a subject with a rifle.”

Prosecutors submitted the note as part of a filing arguing for Routh to be detained in custody while he awaits trial on two gun charges.

During a search of Routh’s Nissan SUV after authorities caught him, the memo said, investigators also found “a handwritten list of dates in August, September and October 2024 and venues where the former president had appeared or was expected to be present”.

Agents also found six cellphones (including one that contained a Google search of how to travel from Palm Beach county to Mexico), 12 pairs of gloves, a Hawaii driver’s license in Routh’s name and a passport.

After he was arrested, Routh was charged with possessing a firearm despite a prior felony conviction prohibiting him from legally doing so as well as possession and receipt of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

The memo alleges that, in the area of the tree line where Routh was hiding, agents found a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a black plastic bag containing food. The serial number on the rifle was obliterated, which is against federal law.

Deputies with the nearby Martin county sheriff’s office later arrested Routh in coordination with the Palm Beach county sheriff’s office as he headed north.

Monday’s memo noted how Routh’s arrest was not his only brush with the law. The document made reference to a 2002 conviction of illegally possessing what a media report referred to at the time as a “fully automatic machine gun”. According to the Greensboro News & Record, in that case Routh barricaded himself at his roofing company during a three-hour standoff before he led police on a car chase and ultimately surrendered.

A second felony conviction mentioned in Monday’s memo dated back to 2010 and was for multiple counts of possession of stolen goods.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

A French court has begun hearing the cases against six new defendants as the mass rape trial that has sparked horror in the country entered its fourth week.

Dominique Pelicot, who has admitted to the allegations, is accused of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his drugged wife over nearly a decade.

The 71-year-old has been on trial since the start of the month along with 50 other men aged between 26 and 74, many of whom have denied the accusations, including one man who is alleged to have raped his own wife.

On Monday, Pelicot was in court in the south-eastern French city of Avignon but he was not due to speak until later this week.

His former wife, Gisèle Pelicot, 71, arrived in court to applause from the public, who again turned out in large numbers to watch the proceedings.

She listened impassively to details of the personality assessments of six of her alleged attackers.

Among them was Joan K, the youngest of the 50 co-defendants, who was 22 at the time of the alleged assaults. He is suspected of having visited the couple’s home in the town of Mazan to rape Gisèle Pelicot on two occasions.

Born in French Guiana, he joined his brother in Avignon when he was 16, before enlisting in the army.

Joan K was in a relationship with a woman he met on the internet, but their time together was marked by “numerous” conflicts and “extramarital relations”, the court heard. At the time of their separation, Joan K’s partner was pregnant.

In November 2019, on the date of one of the occasions he is accused of sexually assaulting Gisèle Pelicot, he was absent for the birth of his daughter.

The testimony of Joan K, described by investigators as a man with depressive tendencies, was expected to be heard at the end of the week. The court will also be considering the charges against Andy R, 37, Hugues M, 39, Husamettin D, 43, Mathieu D, 62, and Fabien S, 39, each of whom visited the Pelicots’ home once.

Gisèle Pelicot has become a feminist icon and received praise for demanding that the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse. Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to support her.

Scientists, as well as Hollywood movie producers, have long looked to nuclear bombs as a promising form of defence should a massive asteroid appear without warning on a collision course with Earth.

Now, researchers at a US government facility have put the idea on a firm footing, showing how such a blast might save the world in the first comprehensive demo of nuclear-assisted planetary defence.

Physicists at Sandia National Laboratories, whose primary mission is to ensure the safety and security of the US nuclear arsenal, recorded in nanosecond detail how an immense pulse of radiation unleashed by a nuclear blast could vaporise the side of a nearby asteroid.

The event is so violent that it heats the surface to tens of thousands of degrees, producing a rapidly expanding ball of gas capable of nudging the asteroid off course. Do the sums correctly and the shunt should be sufficient to put doomsday on hold.

“The vaporised material shoots off one side, pushing the asteroid in the opposite direction,” said Dr Nathan Moore, the first author on the study. “It’s like turning the asteroid into its own rocket.”

Devastating asteroid impacts are rare in Earth’s history, but humans have learned the lesson from 66m years ago that space rocks can spell catastrophe. The asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs was about 6 miles wide, but far smaller rocks are still dangerous. The 60-foot-wide meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 injured more than 1,200 people.

Given the existential nature of the threat, researchers are exploring strategies to shield Earth from massive impacts. In 2022, Nasa’s Dart probe intentionally slammed into Dimorphos, a moonlet of an asteroid called Didymos. The mission showed that a kinetic impact could protect Earth, but the nudge needed to be given years before impending impact.

The nuclear option is for larger asteroids, particularly when time is short. It does not involve shooting asteroids down, or taking Bruce Willis’s approach in the movie Armageddon of dropping a bomb down a drill hole. More effective is a standoff explosion, which vaporises part of the asteroid’s surface and leaves the rest to Newton’s third law of motion.

To test the idea, Moore and his colleagues constructed an unprecedented experiment that exposed pieces of mock asteroid to intense X-ray pulses similar to those released in nuclear blasts. The pulse first obliterates supports that hold the material in place and then swiftly vaporises the target surface, creating an expanding gas that sends it flying.

Writing in Nature Physics, the researchers describe how the mock asteroids were subject to gravity as soon as the supports were destroyed, but that they fell less than 2 millionths of a millimetre before the 20 microsecond experiment was over. The bits of mock asteroid were propelled to nearly 200mph.

The strategy should work for asteroids up to 2.5 miles wide, the scientists say, but that is not a hard upper limit. “If there is enough warning time, one can certainly deflect larger asteroids,” Moore said.

Prof Colin Snodgrass on the Dart mission science team at Edinburgh University said it was important to understand how to scale the results to full-size asteroids. The European Space Agency’s Hera mission, due to launch next month, should help by surveying the aftermath of Dart’s impact on Dimorphos.

Prof Gareth Collins, a planetary scientist at Imperial College, called Moore’s experiments “spectacular”. “I still have a strong preference for non-nuclear options, particularly single or multiple kinetic impactors, as we know they are technologically achievable,” he said. “But for a very large asteroid or a short warning time this type of approach may be our only option.”

Police in Tanzania have arrested three leaders of the main opposition party in a series of detentions to prevent a planned anti-government protest, the latest in a string of events that analysts and rights groups say erode hopes of a new style of politics under President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

Freeman Mbowe, the chair of the Chadema party, was arrested on Monday in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, while speaking with journalists. The party’s deputy chair, Tundu Lissu, was taken from his home in the city in a fleet of 11 vehicles, the party said. Godbless Lema, a central committee member, was also arrested, police said.

“Demonstration is our constitutional right,” Mbowe said before police took him away.

The arrests came on the day Chadema had planned to protest against the alleged disappearances and killings of its members and other government critics by security forces. The protest was banned by the police earlier this month.

Jumanne Muliro, the commander of the Dar es Salaam special police zone, said 14 people, including Mbowe and Lissu, were arrested on Monday for disobeying the ban.

Mbowe’s daughter was also taken into custody moments after her father, and the Citizen newspaper reported that police arrested two journalists from its parent company, Mwananchi Communications, although one was later released.

Riot police were positioned in different areas of the city to prevent the protest.

Chadema has accused Hassan’s administration of targeting critics. Numerous party members have gone missing recently. Earlier this month, Ali Mohamed Kibao, a member of the party’s national secretariat who had been abducted by armed men, was found dead, severely beaten and his face doused with acid, Mbowe said.

Hassan became president after the sudden death in 2021 of John Magufuli, whose rule was characterised by censorship and repression and whose administration used oppressive laws to clamp down on criticism and opposition.

Her assumption of the presidency raised expectations that she would usher in a new era for Tanzania. She reversed some of Magufuli’s policies, including lifting a ban on opposition rallies and that of four newspapers. But hopes have dimmed amid a wave of arrests, including of people planning protests against a port management deal last year, and last month’s detention of Mbowe, Lissu and about 400 Chadema supporters.

Analysts and rights groups say she is using the same authoritarian tactics as Magufuli, and that the situation is getting worse ahead of elections expected next year.

Oryem Nyeko, a Tanzania researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that while there were “positive signs” at the start of Hassan’s presidency, “it’s starting to look like more of the same”.

“The arrests of Mbowe and Lissu send a troubling message about how tolerant the president is of the opposition,” he said. “They’re raising legitimate concerns about important issues and she should be listening to them, and addressing them, instead of clamping down on them.”

Tito Magoti, a Tanzanian human rights lawyer, said Hassan had “taken a more radical stance” towards the opposition and civil liberties because she was feeling the pressure of more people wanting to participate in government and growing calls for respect for human rights.

Police in Tanzania have arrested three leaders of the main opposition party in a series of detentions to prevent a planned anti-government protest, the latest in a string of events that analysts and rights groups say erode hopes of a new style of politics under President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

Freeman Mbowe, the chair of the Chadema party, was arrested on Monday in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, while speaking with journalists. The party’s deputy chair, Tundu Lissu, was taken from his home in the city in a fleet of 11 vehicles, the party said. Godbless Lema, a central committee member, was also arrested, police said.

“Demonstration is our constitutional right,” Mbowe said before police took him away.

The arrests came on the day Chadema had planned to protest against the alleged disappearances and killings of its members and other government critics by security forces. The protest was banned by the police earlier this month.

Jumanne Muliro, the commander of the Dar es Salaam special police zone, said 14 people, including Mbowe and Lissu, were arrested on Monday for disobeying the ban.

Mbowe’s daughter was also taken into custody moments after her father, and the Citizen newspaper reported that police arrested two journalists from its parent company, Mwananchi Communications, although one was later released.

Riot police were positioned in different areas of the city to prevent the protest.

Chadema has accused Hassan’s administration of targeting critics. Numerous party members have gone missing recently. Earlier this month, Ali Mohamed Kibao, a member of the party’s national secretariat who had been abducted by armed men, was found dead, severely beaten and his face doused with acid, Mbowe said.

Hassan became president after the sudden death in 2021 of John Magufuli, whose rule was characterised by censorship and repression and whose administration used oppressive laws to clamp down on criticism and opposition.

Her assumption of the presidency raised expectations that she would usher in a new era for Tanzania. She reversed some of Magufuli’s policies, including lifting a ban on opposition rallies and that of four newspapers. But hopes have dimmed amid a wave of arrests, including of people planning protests against a port management deal last year, and last month’s detention of Mbowe, Lissu and about 400 Chadema supporters.

Analysts and rights groups say she is using the same authoritarian tactics as Magufuli, and that the situation is getting worse ahead of elections expected next year.

Oryem Nyeko, a Tanzania researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that while there were “positive signs” at the start of Hassan’s presidency, “it’s starting to look like more of the same”.

“The arrests of Mbowe and Lissu send a troubling message about how tolerant the president is of the opposition,” he said. “They’re raising legitimate concerns about important issues and she should be listening to them, and addressing them, instead of clamping down on them.”

Tito Magoti, a Tanzanian human rights lawyer, said Hassan had “taken a more radical stance” towards the opposition and civil liberties because she was feeling the pressure of more people wanting to participate in government and growing calls for respect for human rights.

Some of the world’s largest companies have been accused of undermining democracy across the world by financially backing far-right political movements, funding and exacerbating the climate crisis, and violating trade union rights and human rights in a report published on Monday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Amazon, Tesla, Meta, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, Vanguard and Glencore are the corporations included in the report. The companies’ lobbying arms are attempting to shape global policy at the United Nations Summit of the Future in New York City on 22 and 23 September.

At Amazon, the report notes the company’s size and role as the fifth largest employer in the world and the largest online retailer and cloud computing service, has had a profound impact on the industries and communities it operates within.

“The company has become notorious for its union busting and low wages on multiple continents, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS data centres, corporate tax evasion, and lobbying at national and international level,” states the report.

The report cites Amazon’s high injury rates in the US, the company challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), its efforts in Canada to overturn labor law, the banning of Amazon lobbyists from the European parliament for refusing to attend hearings on worker violations, and refusal to negotiate with unions in Germany, among other cases. Amazon has also funded far-right political groups’ efforts to undermine women’s rights and antitrust legislation, and its retail website has been used by hate groups to raise money and sell products.

At Tesla, the report cites anti-union opposition by the company in the US, Germany, and Sweden; human rights violations within its supply chains; and Elon Musk’s personal opposition to unions and democracy, challenges to the NLRB in the US, and his support for the political leaders Donald Trump, Javier Milei in Argentina and Narendra Modi in India.

The report cites Meta, the largest social media company in the world, for its vast role in permitting and enabling far-right propaganda and movements to use its platforms to grow members and garner support in the US and abroad. It also cited retaliation from the company for regulatory measures in Canada, and expensive lobbying efforts against laws to regulate data privacy.

Glencore, the largest mining company in the world by revenue, was included in the report for its role in financing campaigns globally against Indigenous communities and activists.

Blackstone, the private equity firm led by Stephen Schwarzman, a billionaire backer of Donald Trump, was cited in the report for its roles in funding far-right political movements, investments in fossil fuel projects and deforestation in the Amazon.

“Blackstone’s network has spent tens of millions of dollars supporting politicians and political forces who promise to prevent or eliminate regulations that might hold it to account,” the report noted.

The Vanguard Group was included in the report due to its role in financing some of the world’s most anti-democratic corporations. ExxonMobil was cited for funding anti-climate science research and aggressive lobbying against environmental regulations.

Even in “robust democracies” workers’ demands “are overwhelmed by corporate lobbying operations, either in policymaking or the election in itself”, said Todd Brogan, director of campaigns and organizing at the ITUC.

“This is about power, who has it, and who sets the agenda. We know as trade unionists that unless we’re organized, the boss sets the agenda in the workplace, and we know as citizens in our countries that unless we’re organized and demanding responsive governments that actually meet the needs of people, it’s corporate power that’s going to set the agenda.

“They’re playing the long game, and it’s a game about shifting power away from democracy at every level into one where they’re not concerned about the effects on workers – they’re concerned about maximizing their influence and their extractive power and their profit,” added Brogan. “Now is the time for international and multi-sectoral strategies, because these are, in many cases, multinational corporations that are more powerful than states, and they have no democratic accountability whatsoever, except for workers organized.”

The ITUC includes labor group affiliates from 169 nations and territories around the world representing 191 million workers, including the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, and the Trades Union Congress in the UK.

With 4 billion people around the world set to participate in elections in 2024, the federation is pushing for an international binding treaty being worked on by the Open-ended intergovernmental working group to hold transnational corporations accountable under international human rights laws.

The parents of an extremely vulnerable newborn girl have said they were disgusted to find her “covered in her own faeces” while under the care of the nurse Lucy Letby.

The inquiry into the murder of babies at the Countess of Chester hospital heard that one child had been fitted with a stoma as well as a catheter, known as a Broviac line, after her birth in October 2015.

The girl, known as Child J, was considered to have a high risk of catching an infection after bowel surgery and had a series of unexplained and unexpected collapses on the hospital’s neonatal unit, the Thirlwall inquiry was told on Monday.

The child’s mother described finding her six-week-old daughter in a cot with her stoma removed and her lower half covered loosely with a soiled towel.

“I just took one look at her and was just disgusted really to see her in that situation, and also incredibly saddened being a mum in that situation thinking ‘what’s happened here?’,” she said.

The mother said it showed a “lack of care and humanity towards a child who was recovering from surgery” and was at “high risk” of becoming infected because of her Broviac line.

Child J’s father said the couple made a complaint the same day about their daughter being left “covered in her own faeces” but were told by the ward manager, Eirian Powell, that they were “tired and stressed and we should consider going home”.

He said they found this “quite annoying” and “condescending”. His partner added: “They didn’t really own what had happened. That was quite frustrating really – that it got turned – that it was us that were the challenge.”

Child J’s parents said they were never told the result of this complaint and learned only recently, eight years later, that Letby had been their daughter’s designated nurse on that shift on 15 December 2015.

Letby, who is serving a whole-life prison term after being convicted of murdering seven babies and trying to murder another seven, was charged with attempting to kill Child J but a jury was unable to reach a verdict following a 10-month trial at Manchester crown court last year.

The couple told Lady Justice Thirlwall that they had a series of concerns about their daughter’s care on the neonatal unit. They praised the consultants Dr John Gibbs and Dr Stephen Brearey but also said they were “stretched in their roles” and that the couple’s concerns had been dismissed by nurses.

Child J was born at the Countess of Chester hospital and transferred to Alder Hey hospital, in Liverpool, for bowel surgery, after which she returned to the Countess, the inquiry was told.

The parents contrasted the “meticulous attention to detail” at Alder Hey with their experience at the Countess, where they felt that Child J was not monitored as closely and sometimes even missed feeds because nurses were so busy.

Child J had been recovering well when she had a series of sudden collapses that doctors could not initially explain.

Letby, now 34, was later charged with causing one set of these collapses but jurors were unable to reach a verdict over the incident on 27 November 2015.

The parents told the inquiry that they refused to allow Child J to be taken back to the Countess of Chester hospital after she was taken to St Mary’s hospital in Manchester following another unexpected collapse in December 2015.

They said they had lived for years with a fear that Child J had an undiagnosed condition causing her to have life-threatening seizures because they had not been told the results of any investigation into her collapses.

Child J’s father told the inquiry it was “ludicrous and inconceivable” that Letby was moved to a role focused on patient safety in July 2016 despite concerns raised by colleagues that she may be deliberately harming babies.

Later, the mother of another newborn girl attacked by Letby demanded “accountability” from executives at the hospital.

Letby was found guilty of attempting to murder Child K after a retrial this year because jurors in the original trial were unable to reach a verdict.

The infant was born 15 weeks premature when the former neonatal nurse allegedly tampered with her breathing tube, causing a life-threatening deterioration. She was resuscitated and transferred to Arrowe Park hospital, Wirral, where she died three days later. Letby was initially charged with her murder, but prosecutors later decided there was insufficient evidence.

Child K’s mother told the inquiry hospital executives should have acted sooner when doctors raised concerns about the nurse. “They need to personally be accountable for it,” she said, adding that senior managers in other organisations would be “fined or put into prison” if they had failed to protect vulnerable lives.

She added: “For nobody to take accountability or ownership of that is not right because this will happen again.”

More than 10,000 books were banned in US public schools from 2023 to 2024, according to a report, marking a stark increase over the year before as Republican-led states pass new censorship laws.

The survey from PEN America suggested that bans of books nearly tripled nationwide, from 3,362 the previous year.

At least 13 titles were banned for the first time, including Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which describes the journey of an enslaved person from Africa to the US, and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, the acclaimed semi-autographical work set in Harlem, New York.

PEN America, a non-profit organization dedicated to freedom of expression, said that approximately 8,000 instances of book bans took place in Florida and Iowa, as both states enforced sweeping laws targeting classroom material.

“State legislation was also particularly critical in accelerating book bans, making it easier to remove books from schools without due process, or in some cases, without any formal process whatsoever,” PEN America said.

Iowa’s law, signed in 2023, bans material about sexual orientation and gender identity before seventh grade. The legislation also explicitly bans books depicting sexual acts from K-12 libraries and classrooms.

In Florida, any book challenged for including “sexual conduct” is pulled while under review. Such guidelines have led to a sharp increase in book bans, PEN America reported.

Both states have faced lawsuits over the controversial laws.

Major publishers, LGBTQ+ teachers, students and parents sued to have Iowa’s law permanently overturned. But a federal appeals court overturned a temporary injunction on Iowa’s book bans, allowing the law to continue taking effect. Additional legal proceedings are expected.

Six prominent book publishers are also suing Florida over its “unconstitutional” book ban after hundreds of their titles were pulled from school libraries.

Utah, South Carolina and Tennessee have all recently enacted book bans as well. Utah, in particular, has one of the “most extreme” bills, PEN America said, referring to the law HB 29, which says a book must be pulled from all schools in the state if at least three districts have found the title to be “objectively sensitive material”.

Book bans have continued to overwhelmingly target stories focused on LGBTQ+ people and people of color, according to PEN America.

“In part due to the targeting of sexual content, the stark increase includes books featuring romance, books about women’s sexual experiences, and books about rape or sexual abuse as well as continued attacks on books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes, or books about race or racism and featuring characters of color,” it said.

It said it would release a final count on the number of banned books in the autumn.

Meanwhile, legal action has helped restore books in some municipalities. One Florida county brought back 36 books that were previously purged after settling a lawsuit from a coalition of parents, students and authors.

A purported sighting of a rat wouldn’t get much attention in many places around the world.

But it caused a stir earlier this year on Alaska’s Saint Paul Island.

Wildlife officials responded quickly, combing through grasses and setting up traps and cameras. And while they have so far not found any evidence of a rat, they are maintaining a heightened level of vigilance.

That’s because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate on remote islands, devastating bird populations and upending once-vibrant ecosystems.

Saint Paul Island is part of the Pribilofs, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galápagos of the north” for its diversity of life.

“We’ve seen this on other islands and in other locations in Alaska and across the world – that rats absolutely decimate seabird colonies, so the threat is never one that the community would take lightly,” said Lauren Divine, director of the Aleut community of Saint Paul Island’s ecosystem conservation office.

The anxiety on Saint Paul Island is the latest development amid longstanding efforts to get or keep non-native rats off some of the most remote, but ecologically diverse, islands in Alaska and around the world.

Rodents have been removed successfully from hundreds of islands worldwide – including one in Alaska’s Aleutian chain formerly known as “Rat Island”, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. But such efforts can take years and cost millions of dollars, so prevention is considered the best defense.

Around the developed areas of Saint Paul Island, officials have set out blocks of wax – “chew blocks” – designed to record any telltale incisor bites. Some of the blocks are made with ultraviolet material, which allow inspectors armed with black lights to search for glowing droppings.

They also have asked residents to be on the lookout for any rodents and are seeking permission to have the US agriculture department bring a dog to the island to sniff out any rats. Canines are otherwise banned from the Pribilofs to protect fur seals.

There have been no traces of any rats since the reported sighting this summer. But the hunt and heightened state of vigilance are likely to persist for months.

Divine likened the search to trying to find a needle in a haystack “and not knowing if a needle even exists”.

The community of about 350 people – clustered on the southern tip of a treeless island marked by rolling hills, rimmed by cliffs and battered by storms – has long had a rodent surveillance program that includes rat traps near the airport and at developed waterfront areas where vessels arrive, designed to detect or kill any rats that might show up.

Still, it took nearly a year to catch the last known rat on Saint Paul Island, which was believed to have hopped off a barge. It was found dead in 2019 after it evaded the community’s initial defenses. That underscores why even an unsubstantiated sighting is taken so seriously, Divine said.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is planning an environmental review to analyze eradicating the potentially tens of thousands of rats on four uninhabited islands in the far-flung, volcano-pocked Aleutian chain, hundreds of miles south-west of Saint Paul Island. More than 10 million seabirds of varying species nest in the Aleutians.

A big-wave specialist says he is lucky to be alive after escaping relatively unscathed from a massive wipeout at a notoriously dangerous surf spot in Tasmania.

Mikey Brennan was surfing at Shipstern Bluff, a remote slabbing wave that can only be accessed by a 30km jetski ride or a two-hour hike, when he was gobbled up by the giant waves off the Tasman Peninsula coastline.

The 38-year-old, who is no stranger to the location known as “Shippies” – or big wipeouts – was towed on to the wave by a jetski before he lost control and disappeared from view as the wave crashed over him.

“I’m amazed I’m still alive,” Brennan told the Mercury.

Brennan, who suffered bruised ribs and a minor concussion, was thankful for the safety protocols in place after he was pulled from the water on to a jetski.

“I kind of remember the wave, like coming into the wave and then hitting the big step, which just felt so big, like one of those monumental kind of moments,” he said. “I just sort of went down real hard. I just couldn’t control it to kind of stick that landing.”

He said he had little recollection of the moment he went under and was confused when he resurfaced and was rescued, before being taken to Royal Hobart hospital for scans.

“I pretty much just had bruised ribs. I didn’t break anything,” he said. “They put me through a CT scan and checked all that out, and then I was with the trauma team and they checked me all out. I just have had a massive headache, a minor concussion, so I am pretty lucky.”

It is not the first time Brennan has diced with death in the water – in 2010 he broke his back while surfing another dangerous Tasmanian wave at Governor Island.

“To be honest [the Shipstern wipeout] was the closest to death because even when I broke my back on the east coast at Governor I was conscious for the whole time. It was equally as dangerous, but like this was just being knocked out and going unconscious. I really can’t quite explain it.”

Despite his experience, Brennan vowed he would get back in the water. “I love the ocean,” he said. “I was pushing it. I knew that I was pushing it against my fear and I guess you have to be willing to go into that place, and that’s what I did.”