Thousands of Lebanese fled continuing bombing in the country’s south on Tuesday as Israel said it was conducting “extensive strikes” on Hezbollah targets, including on the southern suburbs of Beirut, for the second day in a row and third time this week.

The new strike in Dahieh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in the Lebanese capital, was typical of those which have targeted leaders of the group over recent months. A missile hit the top floor of an apartment building in the Ghobeiri neighbourhood, with images of the strike showing a collapsed roof with a large smoke cloud billowing from it.

Videos posted to social media showed crowds of people gathered in a rubble-filled street and badly burned human remains.

“This is the aggression of Israel. This is Israel! Don’t you see what they are doing to us? Despite all of this, we will wipe them from the earth,” a man screamed in the video.

Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement that the “Israeli enemy raid on Ghobeiri in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed six people and injured 15”. Israel’s military said the attack had killed Ibrahim Muhammad Qubaisi, also known as Abu Issa, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile division.

Israel struck hundreds of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight and during Tuesday, with the death toll from the recent wave of attacks now nearing 560 people.

Hezbollah, which is sponsored by Iran, said it had targeted several Israeli military targets including an explosives factory about 35 miles (56km) into Israel and the Megiddo airfield near the town of Afula, which it attacked three separate times.

Officials in Israel said more than 50 missiles and rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern parts of the country on Tuesday morning, most of which were intercepted.

The fighting has raised fears that the US, Israel’s close ally, and Iran, which has proxies across the Middle East, will be drawn into a wider conflict.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, described the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah as almost a “full-fledged war”, as world leaders gathered in New York for the opening of the 79th UN general assembly.

Diplomatic efforts appear to have had little impact so far, with Lebanon recording more casualties on Monday than in any other single day since the 15-year civil war that started in 1975.

Israeli officials have said the recent rise in airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon is designed to force the group to agree to a diplomatic solution, cease its own attacks on Israel or unilaterally withdraw its forces from close to the contested border.

Many experts and officials question the assumption that air power or other military operations can achieve such strategic aims. Others point out that Hezbollah has repeatedly pledged to stop firing into Israel if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

About 60,000 people were evacuated from northern Israel in the days after the 7 October raid by Hamas into southern Israel that triggered the current conflict, and they have been prevented from returning by the ongoing exchanges of fire across the contested border with Lebanon. In Lebanon, approximately 100,000 people had been displaced even before the escalation of the conflict in recent days.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, has said the campaign of airstrikes will continue until the residents are back in their homes.

“This is the most difficult week for Hezbollah since its establishment – the results speak for themselves,” Gallant said. “Entire units were taken out of battle as a result of the activities conducted at the beginning of the week in which numerous terrorists were injured.”

The Israeli military said Israeli strikes had hit long-range cruise missiles, heavyweight rockets, short-range rockets and explosive drones.

Though Hezbollah has remained defiant, the groupwas already reeling from heavy losses last week when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.

That operation killed 42 and wounded several thousand. It was widely blamed on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

In Lebanon, displaced families slept in shelters hastily set up in schools in Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon. With hotels quickly booked to capacity or rooms priced beyond the means of many families, those who did not find shelter slept in their cars, in parks or along the seaside.

Fatima Chehab, who came with her three daughters from the area of Nabatieh, said her family had been displaced twice in quick succession.

“We first fled to stay with my brother in a nearby area, and then they bombed three places next to his house,” she said.

Some people waited for hours in gridlocked traffic to get to what they hoped would be safety.

Issa Baydoun fled the village of Shihine in southern Lebanon when it was bombed and came to Beirut in a convoy of cars with his extended family. They slept in the vehicles on the side of the road after discovering that the shelters were full.

He rejected Israel’s contention that it hit only military targets.

“We evacuated our homes because Israel is targeting civilians and attacking them,” Baytown said. “That’s why we left our homes, to protect our children.”

The Israeli military has warned residents in eastern and southern Lebanon to evacuate ahead of its widening air campaign against what it said were Hezbollah weapons sites.

Israel and some analysts have said that Hezbollah has deliberately stored missiles and other armaments in homes or other civilian buildings to use local communities as a “human shield”. Hezbollah has denied the accusation.

Well-wishers in Lebanon offered up empty apartments or rooms in their houses to those displaced in social media posts, while volunteers set up a kitchen at an empty petrol station in Beirut to cook meals for the displaced.

In the eastern city of Baalbek, the state-run National News Agency reported that queues formed at bakeries and petrol stations as residents rushed to stock up on essential supplies in anticipation of further airstrikes.

Meanwhile, the border crossing with Syria saw big traffic jams as a result of people escaping from Lebanon to the neighbouring country.

In northern Israel, Galilee Medical Center said two people arrived with minor head injuries from a rocket falling near their car. Several others were being treated for light wounds from running to shelters and traffic accidents when alarms sounded.

The Alma Centre, a security research centre in Israel, said Hezbollah had launched more than 300 rockets deep into northern and central parts of the country in the past 24 hours. New alarms warning of rockets sounded in the northern Israeli towns of Kiryat Shmona and Margaliot late on Tuesday afternoon.

World leaders gathered at the UN general assembly were warned by the UN secretary general that Lebanon is on the brink of becoming a second Gaza, adding the crisis has “become a non-stop nightmare that threatens to take the whole region down”.

António Guterres made his warning of a world edging towards a powder keg as diplomats meeting in New York battled to impose a ceasefire in Lebanon and to hold Israel back from a ground invasion.

The Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, flew to New York to make representations to the US to order Israel to end the bombardment while France, with support from Egypt and Jordan, called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council.

US officials insisted they had concrete proposals to lower the tension but there is no sign that Israel or Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia, are willing to dial down the fighting yet.

The new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, due to address the general assembly later on Tuesday, said his country could not allow Hezbollah to stay alone under attack from a fully armed Israel.

Among a whirlwind of meetings in New York and as the scale of the death toll of almost 560 people in Lebanon became clear, foreign ministers from the G7 group of leading industrialised nations issued a statement warning the destructive cycle of “actions and counter-reactions risk magnifying this dangerous spiral of violence and dragging the entire Middle East into a broader regional conflict with unimaginable consequences”.

The EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said the escalation between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah was already almost a full-fledged war. “If this is not a war situation, I don’t know what you would call it,” he said.

The Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, accused Israel of openly defying UN security council resolutions, and said the UN now needed to live up to its responsibilities.

Pezeskhkian, who had come to the UN hoping to issue an appeal for coexistence with the west, found himself propelled into warning he could not allow Hezbollah to “stand alone against a country that is being defended and supported and supplied by western countries, European countries, and the United States of America. The danger does exist that the fire of events that are taking place [in Lebanon] will expand to the entire region”.

When asked whether Iran will counsel Hezbollah to restrain itself in its response to Israeli strikes, Pezeshkian said Hezbollah is facing a country “armed to the teeth and has access to weapons systems that are far superior to anything else”.

He added: “We must not allow Lebanon to become another Gaza at the hands of Israel.”

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran would not fall into what he described as a “trap” set by Israel. “[The Israelis] think that they can get out of their deadlock by expanding the battlefield. We are fully alert and will not fall into their trap,” he said.

Pezeshskian also met with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has come closest among Muslim leaders to advocate practical countermeasures against Israel. Speaking in New York, Erdogan said the global system is losing “effectiveness and credibility”, with institutions that are supposed to maintain world peace and security in a “state of moral collapse”.

The difficulty for the Biden administration is that it has failed since a pause in the fighting last year to persuade Israel to agree a ceasefire in Gaza, and Hezbollah has pledged not to stop firing missiles into Israel unless Israel agrees to such a step.

US officials have been acknowledging for weeks that although most of the ceasefire terms are agreed between Israel and Hamas, the remaining gaps are large and unbridgeable.

Until a few days ago the US said it was confident that an Israeli land invasion of Lebanon was not imminent, but its confidence in that assessment is changing. It has claimed it has repeatedly not been given prior notice of Israel’s actions, including the sabotage of Hezbollah pagers and communications equipment, as well as the assassination of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran has rejected these claims as lies.

Guterres, as he opened the general assembly’s main debate, set the Middle East crisis in the context of a whirlwind set of crises engulfing the whole world that together represent “an era of epic transformation”.

On Israel, he said nothing could justify the abhorrent acts of terror committed by Hamas against Israelis on 7 October but added that “nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”.

Addressing those who go on undermining the goal of a two-state solution, he said: “What is the alternative? How could the world accept a one-state future that includes such a large number of Palestinians without any freedom, rights or dignity?”

Guterres addressed multiple crises in his speech, saying the “level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable”.

He added: “A growing number of governments and others feel entitled to a ‘get out of jail free’ card. They can trample international law. They can violate the United Nations charter. They can turn a blind eye to international human rights conventions or the decisions of international courts. They can thumb their nose at international humanitarian law.”

International airlines have suspended more flights to Lebanon amid an Israeli bombardment that authorities said had killed almost 560 people since Monday.

The United Arab Emirates-based airline Emirates announced the temporary suspension of its flights to Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday. Its sister airline flydubai also cancelled flights to Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Emirates said in a statement: “The safety of our crew and customers is of utmost importance and will not be compromised.”

Qatar Airways, which operates two flights a day to the Lebanese capital, also cancelled services for two days. “Due to the ongoing situation in Lebanon, Qatar Airways has temporarily suspended flights to and from Beirut Rafic Hariri international airport until September 25,” it said.

The Israeli military carried out airstrikes against the Lebanese Hezbollah militia on Monday in what Lebanese authorities described as the country’s deadliest day in decades.

Air France on Tuesday extended the suspension of its Beirut flights until 1 October, which a spokesperson told AFP was due to the “security situation”. Flights to and from the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, suspended by Air France last week, were operating normally after resuming at the weekend, the spokesperson added.

Germany’s Lufthansa had already suspended Beirut flights until 26 October and on Tuesday it extended the suspension of flights to and from Tel Aviv and the Iranian capital, Tehran, up to and including 14 October in response to the tensions.

It said it was continuing to “monitor the situation closely and will assess it further in the coming days”.

Egypt’s state-owned flag carrier Egyptair said it was suspending all of its flights to Beirut until the situation in Lebanon stabilised.

The Jordanian Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission said on Monday that Royal Jordanian Airlines flights to Beirut had been suspended until further notice.

Joe Biden has sought to defend his foreign policy achievements on the world stage with an address to the United Nations general assembly against a backdrop of three brutal, intractable wars that have stymied world diplomats seeking an end to the bloodshed.

Addressing the assembly hall in New York on Tuesday, Biden took on the mantle of elder statesman as he alternated between a message of hope and a full-throated defense of his record on foreign policy.

Without giving a clear vision of how the wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan might end, he drew on his five decades in government service to exhort leaders to serve their people and find ways to make peace.

“I’ve seen a remarkable sweep of history,” he said. “Things can get better, we should never forget that, I’ve seen that throughout my career.”

Biden first turned his attention to Ukraine, where he once again condemned Vladimir Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion and called for continued support for Kyiv.

“We cannot grow weary,” he said, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, looked on. “We cannot look away. We will not let up on our support for Ukraine. Not until Ukraine wins a just and durable peace.”

He condemned Hamas for its 7 October attack on Israel but also expressed sympathy for the millions of people in Gaza who were “going through hell” amid the ongoing Israeli operation there.

“Now is the time for the parties to finalize the terms, bring the hostages home and secure security for Israel and Gaza free of Hamas’s grip, ease the suffering in Gaza and end this war,” he said to applause.

But the speech was more about emotions and atmosphere, a kind of diplomatic elegy, than it was a policy brief for a path forward. At one point, he paraphrased the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who after the first world war wrote that “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.

“I see a critical distinction,” he said. “In our time, the center has held.”

“I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair, but I do not and I won’t,” Biden said. “As leaders we don’t have the luxury,”

Biden is said to recognize that he is running out of time to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, which he sees as the main goal for his final months in office.

On Monday, the New York Times reported that many members of Biden’s national security team were exasperated with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The report said that Biden had held “shouting matches” during phone calls with Netanyahu, and that the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had held “frustrating” visits to Jerusalem where he was given private assurances from Netanyahu, only to see him publicly contradict them hours later.

US officials have described frenetic efforts to find a way to de-escalate the growing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where a strike on Tuesday killed six and injured 15 in Dahieh in Beirut’s southern suburbs. That attack came one day after a heavy Israeli bombardment killed nearly 500 people in the country’s deadliest day of conflict since the war in 2006.

Israeli officials have told reporters that they are seeking “de-escalation through escalation”, driving Hezbollah and its backer Iran to the negotiating table by demonstrating Tel Aviv’s military superiority.

But in remarks on the sidelines of the summit, US officials have voiced doubt that this policy could work, and said they are focused on “reducing tensions … and breaking the cycle of strike-counterstrike”.

“I can’t recall, at least in recent memory, a period in which an escalation or intensification led to a fundamental de-escalation and led to profound stabilization of the situation,” a senior state department official said in a briefing.

The official did not say whether the administration believed Israel was planning to launch a ground invasion. “We obviously do not believe that a ground invasion of Lebanon is going to contribute to reducing tensions in the region,” he said.

At the same time, the official said, the US was constrained by diplomatic relations and protocol considerations with Hezbollah’s main backer, Iran.

“I don’t think we’re going to be talking to the Iranian government anytime soon,” the official said.

Biden also addressed his “difficult decision” not to seek another term in office but recast his own story as an exhortation against autocracy.

“As much as I love the job, I love my country more,” he said. “I decided after 50 years of public service it’s time for a new generation of leadership to take my nation forward. My fellow leaders, let us never forget some things are more important than staying in power.”

The broadcast of a TV interview in which a man confessed to a news reporter that he had murdered his mother has caused a row over media ethics in Italy.

Lorenzo Carbone, 50, made the confession outside his home in Spezzano di Fiorano, a town in the province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region, during the interview aired on the Mediaset talkshow Pomeriggio5 on Monday afternoon.

Visibly distressed, he replied to questions from the reporter Fabio Giuffrida. Carbone said his mother had been living with dementia and that he “couldn’t take it any longer”. “I strangled her, I don’t know why I did it. Every now and then she made me angry as she kept repeating herself.”

Police had been searching for him since Sunday, when the body of Loretta Levrini was found in her bed by her daughter. Carbone said he fled to Pavullo, a nearby town, where he walked the streets before returning to the home he had shared with his mother.

The journalist, whose crew had found the murder suspect outside his home by chance during their coverage of the story, immediately called the police. Tagged “Exclusive”, the interview, along with Carbone’s arrest on suspicion of murder, was broadcast a few minutes later on the show presented by Myrta Merlino.

Merlino came under fire for choosing to run the interview. “What happened today on Pomeriggio5 is very serious,” Gaia Tortora, the deputy director of the TV channel TG La7, wrote on X. “This is not our job. Tearing up the code of ethics, we are hitting rock bottom.”

Ermes Antonucci, a journalist with Il Foglio newspaper, questioned the need to broadcast an interview “with a man in an evident state of confusion”. “Wasn’t it enough to call the police, as was fortunately done, and then explain what happened, without airing the video? The media circus has reached a real low point.”

Merlino told Corriere della Sera she had “reasoned as a journalist” in choosing to air the video and would do the same again. “I received a call from the correspondent a few minutes before going live,” she added. “I had little time to decide. I only care about one thing: that it doesn’t damage the investigation. The man was wanted. The police were called and authorised me to broadcast the images of the interview.”

The interview was broadcast on the same day a high-profile femicide trial opened in Venice after the brutal murder of the university student Giulia Cecchettin, 22, in November last year. Her former partner, Filippo Turetta, has previously confessed before a judge to the murder. Official statistics show that a woman is killed every three days in Italy.

Police in northern Switzerland say several people have been detained and a criminal case opened in connection with the suspected death of a person in a new “suicide capsule”.

The “Sarco” capsule, which has never been used before, is designed to allow a person inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.

Prosecutors in Schaffhausen canton were informed by a law firm that an assisted suicide involving use of the Sarco capsule had taken place on Monday near a forest cabin in Merishausen, police said in a statement.

Police added that “several people” were taken into custody and prosecutors had opened an investigation on suspicion of incitement and accessory to suicide.

The Dutch newspaper Volkskrant reported on Tuesday that police had detained one of its photographers who wanted to take pictures of the use of the capsule. It said Schaffhausen police indicated the photographer was being held at a police station but gave no further explanation.

The newspaper declined to comment further when contacted by Associated Press.

Exit International, an assisted suicide group based in the Netherlands, has said it is behind the 3D-printed device that cost more than $1m to develop.

Swiss law allows assisted suicide as long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person die do not do so for “any self-serving motive”, according to a government website.

Dr Philip Nitschke, an Australian doctor who was behind Exit International, has told AP that his organisation had received advice from lawyers in Switzerland that use of the Sarco would be legal in the country.

In July, the Swiss newspaper Blick reported that Peter Sticher, a state prosecutor in Schaffhausen, wrote to Exit International’s lawyers saying that any operator of the capsule could face criminal proceedings if it was used there – and any conviction could bring up to five years in prison.

Prosecutors in other Swiss regions have also indicated that use of the capsule could lead to prosecution.

Over the summer, a 54-year-old woman from the US with multiple health ailments had planned to be the first person to use the device, but those plans were abandoned.

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

The American actor Meryl Streep has said that “a squirrel has more rights” than an Afghan girl under the current Taliban regime.

Streep, who attended an event on the situation facing women and girls in Afghanistan as part of the UN general assembly in New York, called the Taliban’s draconian restrictions on women’s lives a form of “suffocation”.

“A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban,” Streep said on Monday. “A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not, and a woman may not in public.”

In the three years since the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan, women have seen their rights and freedoms systematically stripped away. They have been barred from most forms of paid employment, prevented from walking in public parks and girls have been stopped from going to secondary school or university.

Last month, the Taliban published a new set of “vice and virtue” laws that said women must not leave the house without being fully covered and could not sing or raise their voices in public.

Streep spoke alongside Afghan activists and human rights defenders, who called on the UN to act to protect and restore the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Asila Wardak, a leader of the Women’s Forum on Afghanistan, said that the system of what has been described as “gender apartheid” being imposed on women and girls in Afghanistan, was not just an Afghan issue, but part of the “global fight against extremism”.

Streep’s comments have been widely shared on social media by human rights activists, who praised the actor for using her fame and platform to amplify the voices of Afghan women.

A campaign for the Taliban’s treatment of women to be recognised as gender apartheid and a crime against humanity was launched last year in an attempt to hold the group to account.

Activists hope that codifying gender apartheid in Afghanistan under international law will be discussed and agreed at the UN general assembly over the coming weeks.

The American actor Meryl Streep has said that “a squirrel has more rights” than an Afghan girl under the current Taliban regime.

Streep, who attended an event on the situation facing women and girls in Afghanistan as part of the UN general assembly in New York, called the Taliban’s draconian restrictions on women’s lives a form of “suffocation”.

“A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban,” Streep said on Monday. “A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not, and a woman may not in public.”

In the three years since the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan, women have seen their rights and freedoms systematically stripped away. They have been barred from most forms of paid employment, prevented from walking in public parks and girls have been stopped from going to secondary school or university.

Last month, the Taliban published a new set of “vice and virtue” laws that said women must not leave the house without being fully covered and could not sing or raise their voices in public.

Streep spoke alongside Afghan activists and human rights defenders, who called on the UN to act to protect and restore the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Asila Wardak, a leader of the Women’s Forum on Afghanistan, said that the system of what has been described as “gender apartheid” being imposed on women and girls in Afghanistan, was not just an Afghan issue, but part of the “global fight against extremism”.

Streep’s comments have been widely shared on social media by human rights activists, who praised the actor for using her fame and platform to amplify the voices of Afghan women.

A campaign for the Taliban’s treatment of women to be recognised as gender apartheid and a crime against humanity was launched last year in an attempt to hold the group to account.

Activists hope that codifying gender apartheid in Afghanistan under international law will be discussed and agreed at the UN general assembly over the coming weeks.

Egypt has sent a second arms shipment to Somalia’s federal government in the space of a month, drawing criticism from its longstanding rival Ethiopia, amid concern about rising tensions in the Horn of Africa.

Egypt’s foreign ministry confirmed that a shipment had been sent, which it said was intended to “build the capabilities of the Somali army” to “achieve security and stability, combat terrorism, and uphold its sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity”.

Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Taye Atske Selassie, said he was concerned that “external forces would further exacerbate a fragile security” situation and that the weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists.

In a post on X, Somalia’s state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Omar said: “Surprised to see Ethiopia raising concerns over Somalia receiving arms to defend its sovereignty and combat terror.”

Egypt has been locked in a long-running dispute with Ethiopia over the latter’s construction of a major dam on the Blue Nile, which provides 95% of its fresh water. Somalia has meanwhile fallen out with Ethiopia over a memorandum Ethiopia signed with the breakaway region of Somaliland to lease a portion of its coast, describing it as an attempt to “annex” its territory.

The two issues, previously separate, have bled into each other as Egypt and Somalia increasingly coordinate their efforts against Ethiopia over their respective water disputes.

“These are all states which are fiscally at their limit,” said Harry Verhoeven, an expert on infrastructure and energy in the Horn of Africa. He added that the posturing carried a risk that things could get out of hand in a region already struggling with multiple conflicts. “Politicians know the fires they start and they can’t always control them.”

More than 20 million people are already internally displaced across east Africa, according to the International Migration Organisation, owing to conflict and extreme weather.

In a statement posted on X, Somaliland, which has governed itself since it declared independence from Somalia in 1991, warned that the weapons deliveries risked triggering an “arms race” that could jeopardise regional security.

Somaliland and Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding in January that has upended the region’s fragile status quo. The full details of what was agreed remain murky, causing one western diplomat to dub it a “memorandum of misunderstanding”, but Somaliland has said Ethiopia would become the first country to recognise its independence, while Ethiopia would be granted sea access on its coast.

Ethiopia became landlocked in the early 1990s when Eritrean rebels declared independence in the north and has long sought alternative routes through other coastal neighbours.

The pact could set the stage for Addis Ababa to re-emerge as a maritime power in the future as Houthi attacks on Israeli and American ships in the Red Sea highlight the dangers of over-reliance on Djibouti, which carries virtually all of Ethiopia’s international trade.

The deal has infuriated officials in Mogadishu, who fear it could cut the country in two and provide Ethiopia a permanent naval base on its territory.

Speaking at a conference earlier this month, Ethiopia’s intelligence chief, Redwan Hussien, confirmed Somali fears when he said Ethiopia was not only seeking commercial access to ports and lamented previous episodes in Ethiopian history when the country failed to stake a claim to the Horn of Africa’s coast. “Now is the right time to fulfil it and have access to the sea,” he said.

Somalia initially opted for diplomatic means to thwart the deal but has dialled up the rhetoric and hardened its position over the summer.

In an audience Q&A on a local news channel this month, Somalia’s foreign minister, Ahmed Moalim Fiqi, said his government would consider supporting rebels fighting Ethiopia if it implemented the deal. “We have not reached that stage, there is a hope there will be a solution. But it is a path open to us,” Fiqi said.

Somalia has also drawn Egypt into the standoff. It fears that Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam (Gerd) along the Blue Nile, the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa, threatens its water security.

Attempts by Egypt and Ethiopia to reach an agreement have failed and in a letter to the UN security council, Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, said Ethiopia had used negotiations as a cover and that Egypt would take its own measures to preserve its interests.

The military pact agreed between Cairo and Mogadishu, signed in mid-August, has paved the way for Egypt to join the UN-backed African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia’s fight against the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabaab group. The mandate for the African Union transition mission in Somalia is set to expire at the end of this year, and Egypt has muscled in to create a role for itself in its successor, the AU support and stabilisation mission in Somalia.

The deepening cooperation between Cairo and Mogadishu has rattled officials in Ethiopia, who have been careful not to name Egypt in their public statements but have frequently referred to “external actors aiming to destabilise the region”.

In January, after the visit to Cairo of the Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, first visit of the year to Cairo, Redwan, Ethiopia’s intelligence director, appealed to his Somali counterparts, warning that Egypt’s motivation in Somalia was “not amity towards Somalia but animosity towards Ethiopia”.

Redwan added that Ethiopia had demonstrated its commitment to Somalia’s security through the “blood and sweat” of its troops, which have been deployed to Somalia on a bilateral basis and with AU peacekeeping forces for over a decade against al-Shabaab.

The memorandum between Ethiopia and Somaliland has been met with widespread international criticism, with the Arab League, the European Union and most recently the US expressing their objections.

Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, has addressed the issues of sea access and the use of the Nile in existential terms for his country and views both projects as linchpins of his plans to drive growth in Ethiopia and turn it into a manufacturing power.

External attempts to diffuse the situation have failed to deliver a breakthrough. In late August, Djibouti’s foreign minister, Mohamud Ali Youssouf, said in an interview with Voice of America that his country offered Ethiopia commercial access to another port along its coast but not military access and was still waiting for a response.

Two rounds of indirect talks in Ankara mediated by Turkey, which has strong ties to both governments, have also failed to bear fruit. Somalia has demanded that Ethiopia rescind the memorandum before direct talks can take place.

Canada’s Conservative party will make its first bid to unseat prime minister Justin Trudeau this week, the latest attempt in its decade-long aim of restoring the Tories to power.

Buoyed by favourable polls, a cost of living crisis and an increasingly unpopular prime minister, the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, will introduce a motion of non-confidence in the minority government: a long-shot bid to force the government to call an election.

The move, which lawmakers will debate on Wednesday, is doomed to fail, with smaller parties agreeing to temporarily support the incumbent Liberal party.

But the attack underscores the fragile state of Canada’s governing party and the raw political calculation leaders are making as they jockey for position before the next federal election, which must occur before the fall of 2025.

One polling aggregator has the Conservatives winning a strong majority, relegating all other parties to “also-ran” status. Another has Poilievre’s Tories at 42% support, with the Liberals at 24%.

When Trudeau eked out an electoral victory in 2021, his party was forced into its second consecutive minority government, meaning the Liberals lacked sufficient representation in parliament to pass legislation on their own. In order to implement their agenda, the Liberals were forced to make a “confidence and supply” pact with the leftwing New Democrats (NDP).

But earlier this month, the NDP withdrew from the agreement, saying the Liberals “don’t deserve another chance”. The move cast the country in political uncertainty and reflected a political landscape that has changed dramatically since the agreement was first made.

In his ninth year as prime minister, Trudeau is deeply unpopular and facing calls within his party to step down to avoid a deeply embarrassing electoral loss that could push the party to a distant third-place finish.

“I think you are only here for another year,” a steelworker told Trudeau in a recent exchange that captured the fatigue and frustration many Canadians feel towards the prime minister.

Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, has failed to convert his own political popularity into electoral success and also faces evergreen questions over the relevance of a party whose legislative aims seem indistinguishable from those of the Liberals.

“They don’t want to run to election anytime soon,” said Lori Turnbull, director of Dalhousie University’s school of public administration. “They still have to prove that they got something out of this deal and he needs to show that party has its own agenda, apart from what they’ve done for the Liberals for the past two and a half years.”

Poilievre, the combative Conservative leader, has found immense success in his laser-focused attack on Trudeau’s handling of a protracted cost-of-living crisis.

The chief target of Poilievre’s attacks has been Canada’s nationwide carbon tax, a levy once heralded as a global model that is now all but doomed by national politics.

Poilievre’s attacks on the tax have landed him unlikely allies: Singh recently backed away from the carbon levy, after supporting it for years, incorrectly suggesting the revenue-neutral tax put an unfair burden on “working people’s shoulders”. Economists and political scientists agree that lower-income Canadians come out ahead under the scheme, with nearly 80% of residents receiving more in quarterly payments than they pay in tax. Poilievre has also targeted Singh for propping up a Liberal government which Singh himself has suggested is captive to corporate interests.

“He is a fake, a phony and a fraud. How can anyone ever believe what this sellout NDP leader says in the future?” Poilievre said to Singh during a sitting of parliament last week.

Singh’s withdrawal of support for the Liberals might have harmed his own electoral prospects, but inadvertently benefited another leader: Yves-François Blanchet of the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois.

Blanchet has stepped in to fill the void left by the NDP’s exit from the confidence and supply agreement, but he has been open about the hardheaded political calculus behind the move.

“It’s not [about] supporting the government. It’s [about] not having them fall, soon,” Blanchet told CBC News. “First, I will let this vote instigated by the Conservatives go through. They will lose it, and by the way lose face, and this is what they deserve presently because they are not doing politics in a clean way … I ask for things and if I don’t get it, [the government] will fall. And that’s the end to it.”

The Bloc’s rise, in tandem with the renewed popularity of Quebec’s sovereigntist movement, has also come at a cost for the Liberals.

In a surprise byelection defeat last week, Trudeau’s party lost the riding of LaSalle–Émard–Verdun, a district that had been held almost exclusively by Liberals for more than 50 years. It followed another defeat in June, when the Liberals lost a safe seat in downtown Toronto.

The two losses reflect a souring public opinion of Trudeau’s government: the cost of living has surged alongside a housing shortage and policy failures and mismanagement have eroded strong support for immigration.

Despite such setbacks, Turnbull said that the Liberals were still in a position of comparative strength.

“As much as the Liberals look to be in a very weak position – because of the polling, because of the byelection losses, because ministers are leaving and staffers are leaving – even though it’s a complete mess, they still have a really significant minority in the House of Commons,” she said. “In order for there to be a loss of confidence, all three opposition parties would have to agree. And I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Heavy rains lashed the Cayman Islands on Tuesday as forecasters warned that a nearby cluster of thunderstorms could soon become a major hurricane en route to the south-east US.

Hurricane watches were in effect for Florida’s Tampa Bay and from Englewood to Indian Pass, as well as for eastern Mexico from Cabo Catoche to Tulum – and for Cuba’s Pinar del Río province. Hurricane conditions could be possible in parts of Cuba and Mexico early on Wednesday and in parts of Florida late on Wednesday and early on Thursday, according to the US’s National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The disturbance would then move “over extremely deep and warm waters” that would fuel its intensification.

“Conditions look quite favorable for strengthening over the eastern Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and Thursday,” the center said. “This system will become quite large and powerful before landfall.”

The disturbance is expected to become a category 3 before approaching the north-east Gulf coast. Since 2000, eight major hurricanes have made landfall in Florida, according to Philip Klotzbach, a Colorado State University hurricane researcher.

Given the anticipated large size, storm surge, wind and rain will extend far from the center of the expected storm, especially on the east side. The center warned of “inland penetration of strong winds over parts of the south-eastern United States after landfall”.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for Grand Cayman; for eastern Mexico from Río Lagartos to Tulum; and for Cuba’s Artemisa, Pinar del Río and Isla de la Juventud.

Meanwhile, a storm surge watch was in effect for Florida’s Tampa Bay, Charlotte Harbor and from Indian Pass south to Flamingo. A tropical storm watch was issued for Dry Tortugas, the Lower Keys west of the Seven Mile Bridge, Flamingo to the south of Englewood and from west of Indian Pass to the Walton-Bay county line.

The National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Florida, urged people to take potential evacuations seriously. Heavy rainfall is forecast for the south-east US starting o Wednesday, threatening flash- and river flooding, according to the NHC. Up to 6in (15cm) of rain was forecast for the region, with isolated totals of 10in (25cm).

A storm surge of up to 15ft (5 meters) was forecast from Ochlockonee River, Florida, to Chassahowitzka, and up to 10ft (3 meters) from Chassahowitzka to Anclote River and from Indian Pass to Ochlockonee River.

The NHC wrote on the social media network X: “10-15ft of surge is NOT survivable.”

On Monday, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, declared a state of emergency in 41 counties.

The disturbance was expected to strengthen into a tropical storm on Tuesday and then into a major hurricane as it approaches the north-east Gulf coast on Thursday. It was located about 150 miles (240km) west of Grand Cayman. It had maximum sustained winds of 35mph (55km/h) and was moving north-west at 9mph (15km/h).

Officials in the Cayman Islands shuttered schools and airports as forecasters warned of heavy wind and rain and waves of up to 10ft (3 meters).

“The current conditions present significant risk, and we must prioritize our safety,” said Ian Yearwood with the Royal Cayman Islands police service.

Meanwhile, many in Cuba worried about the disturbance, whose tentacles are expected to reach the capital of Havana, which is struggling with a severe shortage of water and piles of uncollected garbage.

Overall, roughly 600,000 people in Cuba are experiencing water shortages, including more than 130,000 in Havana alone. Chronic power outages also persist.

The disturbance is expected to slip through waters separating Cuba from Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula late on Tuesday and then head north to the Gulf coast.

Up to 8in of rain is forecast for western Cuba and the Cayman Islands with isolated total of some 12in (30cm). Up to 4in (10cm) of rain is expected for the eastern Yucatán peninsula, with isolated total of more than 6in (15cm).

Caroline Ellison, the former crypto executive and romantic partner of the disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, is slated to be sentenced in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday. Ellison was a central figure in the FTX bankruptcy saga and key witness for the prosecution in the $8bn fraud trial that ended with Bankman-Fried’s conviction.

Ellison served as the CEO of Alameda Research, which was the trading arm of the now defunct FTX crypto exchange. The collapse of FTX, once valued at $32bn, was directly linked to revelations that it was attempting to financially prop up Alameda with fraudulent accounting. Subsequent investigations and criminal charges found that both FTX and the hedge fund had used billions in customer funds for risky trades and lavish personal spending.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, the sentencing judge for Bankman-Fried and another FTX executive, is overseeing Ellison’s case. Kaplan gave Bankman-Fried 25 years, but Ellison is unlikely to receive such a stiff sentence. Prosecutors have called her cooperation “not only substantial, but exemplary” in court filings and have not requested a specific sentence, signalling an openness to leniency. Ellison’s attorneys have asked she be sentenced to three years supervised release with no prison time.

Ellison pleaded guilty to seven charges in late 2022, which included wire fraud and money laundering, taking a plea deal that led her to become a witness against Bankman-Fried. During Bankman-Fried’s trial last this year, she took the stand to testify in one of the most dramatic moments of the highly watched court proceedings, admitting that she committed fraud while running Alameda and telling a prosecutor that Bankman-Fried directed her to misuse FTX customers’ funds without their knowledge. Ellison’s testimony in the trial, along with that of other top executives, put the blame for FTX’s catastrophic collapse almost entirely on Bankman-Fried.

The prosecutors’ filing stated that Ellison provided extremely valuable information in the case against Bankman-Fried, while also arguing that she had persevered through intense public scrutiny and media humiliation.

“The Government cannot think of another cooperating witness in recent history who has received a greater level of attention and harassment,” prosecutors wrote.

Ellison’s relationship with Bankman-Fried and a digital footprint that included Tumblr posts musing on polyamory became fodder for a wave of tabloid coverage and online mockery after FTX’s dramatic implosion. While Bankman-Fried was awaiting trial last year, he also leaked Ellison’s personal writings to the New York Times in a move that resulted in Judge Kaplan revoking his bail. Diary entries showed Ellison feeling underqualified and unprepared to run Alameda, as well as struggling over feelings related to her romantic partnership with Bankman-Fried.

Numerous friends, colleagues and family members sent in letters to Judge Kaplan in support of Ellison. Her parents, both MIT professors, praised her charitable efforts and asked the court to forgive her actions. A former colleague at FTX meanwhile claimed that Ellison’s drive to make money was the result of her belief in utilitarian ethics and desire to use her wealth to stop artificial intelligence from causing humanity’s extinction.

The same ex-colleague also stated that Ellison had found a new and supportive romantic partner, writing: “I believe that this new and kind environment will be good for her.”

Bankman-Fried, meanwhile, is appealing his sentence. Though he said he was “sorry about what happened at every stage” of FTX’s rise and fall during his sentencing hearing, Judge Kaplan stated that he did not believe the former mogul showed any true remorse over his crimes.

Another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, pleaded guilty to charges that included making unlawful political contributions and received seven and a half years in prison for his part in the crimes related to the exchange. Judge Kaplan’s sentence for Salame exceeded prosecutors’ recommendation, despite him agreeing to a plea deal that forced him to forfeit real estate and millions in fines. Unlike Ellison and other executives, however, Salame did not act as a cooperating witness.

Two other FTX top executives, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, are scheduled to be sentenced in the coming weeks.

The man behind Project 2025, the rightwing policy manifesto that includes calls for a sharp increase in immigrant deportations if Donald Trump is elected, told university colleagues about two decades ago that he had killed a neighborhood dog with a shovel because it was barking and disturbing his family, according to former colleagues who spoke to the Guardian.

Kevin Roberts, now the president of the Heritage Foundation, is alleged to have told colleagues and dinner guests that he killed a neighbor’s pit bull around 2004 while he was working as a still relatively unknown history professor at New Mexico State University.

“My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, who was chair of the university’s history department at the time.

Two other people – a professor and her spouse – recall hearing a similar account directly from Roberts at a dinner at his home. Three other professors also said they heard the account at that time from the colleagues who said they had heard it directly from Roberts.

None recall Roberts – who worked at the university as an assistant professor from 2003 to 2005 – ever saying that the dog he allegedly said he killed was actively threatening him or his family.

In a statement to the Guardian, Roberts denied ever killing a dog with a shovel. He did not answer questions about why several people say he told them that he had.

“This is a patently untrue and baseless story backed by zero evidence. In 2004, a neighbor’s chained pit bull attempted to jump a fence into my backyard as I was gardening with my young daughter. Thankfully, the owner arrived in time to restrain the animal before it could get loose and attack us.”

The people who say they heard Roberts talk about killing a dog at the time said they found the apparent admission to be unsettling and said they did not ask Roberts – who as a conservative Republican was already seen as something of an outsider among the university’s mostly liberal academic staff – to provide any more detail about the incident.

“I think that probably people were not eager to engage with him over this. It sounded like a pretty crazy thing to do and people didn’t want to get into it at that point,” Hammond said.

News of Roberts’s alleged comments to colleagues comes as Trump, the Republican nominee for president, and his running mate, JD Vance, have engaged in a racist and false propaganda campaign to demonize Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio, by claiming that they have been killing and eating people’s pets. The xenophobic claims, which are probably meant to strengthen support among white, racist and anti-immigrant voters, have incited multiple bomb threats that have disrupted the Springfield community.

Project 2025, which was written by the Heritage Foundation under Roberts’s watch, has become a focal point of the 2024 presidential election as Democrats warn that its radical policy prescriptions – such as the eradication of the Department of Education and imposing further restrictions on abortion – will serve as a blueprint for Trump’s administration if he is elected. Both Trump and Vance have sought to distance themselves from the 900-page report, with Trump claiming he had not read it. But in a foreword to Roberts’s book written by Vance, the vice-presidential nominee praises Roberts’s “depth and stature within the American Right” and says that, “in the fights that [lie] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon”.

Roberts is one of the most prominent rightwing voices in Washington. He has close ties to Opus Dei, the Catholic group, and has spoken openly about how he considers the outlawing of birth control to be one of the “hardest” political battles facing conservatives in the future.

Twenty years ago, Roberts – now a staunch supporter of Trump – was an academic who may have been uneasy among fellow professors who were not politically aligned with him. Yet, Hammond said, colleagues treated him with respect and kindness – including bringing food to his home after his wife had a baby – and were happy to have him working at the university.

One former colleague remembers being reprimanded by Roberts after she used her university email account to tell colleagues she was going to help campaign for John Kerry, the then Democratic nominee for president, because she recalled him saying – rightly, she now admits – that it was inappropriate. But relations were generally good.

Marsha Weisiger, a colleague of Roberts at the time who is now an environmental history professor at the University of Oregon, recalled being invited to dinner at Roberts’s home with her husband, and Roberts telling both of them the story about how he had hit a neighbor’s pit bull with a shovel and killed it.

“My husband and I were stunned. First of all, that he would do such a thing. And second of all, that he would tell us about it. If I did something horrific, I would not be telling my colleagues about it,” she said.

To make matters worse, she recalled Roberts saying that the neighbor in question also had puppies and that he had considered killing them, too. Weisiger’s husband, who asked not to be named, recalled Roberts saying he had complained about the dog to the police, who were not responsive, and that the dog sometimes got into his yard.

Roberts, public records confirm, was living with his wife and young family in a modest and mostly immigrant community in Las Cruces at the time, in a historic neighborhood lined with traditional adobe homes and chain-link fences.

In his statement, Roberts claimed that the city later arrived and removed “more than ten dogs” from his neighbor’s property, citing animal abuse. He said he was “incredibly grateful” to animal control for rescuing the “abused animals” and was grateful that he and his daughter did not have physical contact with the dog.

Roberts also identified the man who he called the “animal owner”: a native of Las Cruces named Daniel Aran who, a spokesperson for Roberts pointed out in an email, was sentenced to 78 months in prison for cocaine trafficking in 2017, more than a decade after the alleged incident occurred.

Public records and the Guardian’s reporting confirm that Aran and his mother lived nextdoor to Roberts at the time that Roberts lived there.

The Guardian could not independently verify whether Roberts actually killed a dog or whether Roberts’s account of his interactions with his neighbor’s dog was accurate. The Guardian has repeatedly sought out public records to try to verify the alleged accounts. The city of Las Cruces, the police and animal control authorities said public records were not available for the time frame in which the alleged incident occurred.

But the Guardian did track down Daniel Aran, whose mother Norma Noriega still lives in the adobe home next to where Roberts previously lived in Las Cruces.

Noriega’s family moved into their home in about 2002 with her husband and children – Denise Aran, who was about seven at the time, and Daniel, who was about 16.

Daniel Aran, who has been released from prison and is now the owner of a small construction company, spoke to the Guardian from the front yard of the small stone house. Aran is lean and muscular, with a chiseled face and hardened stare.

“When I was younger, I was wild. But I gave respect to get respect. Now I’m more about work and family,” he said, dusting off his clothes from a day of construction. “And I’ve always been a dog lover, an animal lover, since I was a little kid. I’ve always had dogs.”

Aran said he was diligent about watching his dogs – small pit bulls – which he bred, selling the pups as a way of making money for his family’s household.

When asked if he had a dog disappear around 2004, he said: “Yes, definitely, my dog, Loca, my little female”. She had been his favorite, he said.

“I had one female, and that was her. She was a little, little thing like this,” he said, holding up his hands in an affectionate gesture. “She was a tiny, cute little thing.”

“She went missing, and we never could find her,” he said.

When he was asked by the Guardian about comments Roberts allegedly made to colleagues about killing a neighborhood pit bull with a shovel, he grimaced. “Man, you never know what’s inside someone’s head.”

“I’m not here to make up stories or to say he did it,” he said. “But it was right around 2004 when all that happened, that Loca was missing,” he said. “I wish I could say, yeah, I know this fool did that. But I can’t tell you that. But what I can tell you is that my dog went missing, and we never found her. She wasn’t at the dog catchers.”

Aran also denied Roberts’s claim that dogs had been taken away from the property.

“We had three dogs that we kept, and then there were puppies occasionally that I would sell,” he said.

His mother, 53-year-old Norma Noriega, sitting out in the front yard, also disputed Roberts’s account.

“That never happened,” she said in Spanish. “[Animal services] never came and took dogs. Sure, [the dogs] would get out on occasion, and we’d go find them and bring them back. But there was never an incident where our dogs were taken, for abuse or whatever, that is simply not true.

“It was only with Loca that we could never figure out what happened. She disappeared, and we always knew it was strange that we simply never saw her again. [Daniel] went out looking for her, but she was never found,” said Noriega.

The family has had a number of pit bulls over the years – Brownie and Casper were their longtime pets – but it was the disappearance of Loca that had always distressed the family.

“She’s the one that disappeared. We went out looking for her, we went out to the dog catchers, and we never found her,” Aran said quietly. “And I know the dog catchers never got her.”

Asked about his recollection of Roberts, Aran said: “Well, it’s been more than 20 years,” and he did acknowledge that his dogs could be noisy.

“I’m pretty sure he had to have some patience,” said Aran. “But, as far as I can remember, he never came across as disrespectful,” he said.

Additional reporting by Melissa Segura