Israel began a third day of strikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, hours after Hezbollah confirmed the death of a senior commander in an airstrike on Beirut and a Lebanese minister said only Washington could help end the fighting.

Lebanese media reported that Israeli airstrikes had targeted several areas in the country’s south, beginning at around 5am, causing unspecified casualties.

Hezbollah meanwhile said it had launched a rocket targeting Mossad headquarters near Tel Aviv. Sirens had sounded in the Israeli city early on Wednesday, sending residents into bomb shelters, however the Israeli military later said it had intercepted the missile and no casualties or damage were reported.

Earlier on Wednesday, Hezbollah had confirmed that senior commander Ibrahim Qubaisi was among six people killed by an Israeli airstrike on an apartment block in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday, as Israel had claimed earlier. Israel said Qubaisi headed the group’s missile and rocket force.

Israel’s offensive since Monday morning has killed 569 people, including 50 children, and wounded 1,835 in Lebanon, health minister Firass Abiad told Al Jazeera Mubasher TV. Tuesday’s attacks came after Monday’s barrages racked up the highest death toll in any single day in Lebanon since the 15-year civil war that started in 1975.

Israel’s new offensive against Hezbollah has stoked fears that nearly a year of conflict between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza is escalating and could destabilise the Middle East. Britain urged its nationals to leave Lebanon and said it was moving 700 troops to Cyprus to help its citizens evacuate.

The UN security council said it would meet on Wednesday to discuss the conflict.

“Lebanon is at the brink. The people of Lebanon – the people of Israel – and the people of the world – cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza,” UN secretary general António Guterres said.

At the UN, which is holding its general assembly this week, US President Joe Biden made a plea for calm. “Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest. Even if a situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible,” he said.

Lebanon’s foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib criticised Biden’s address as “not strong, not promising” and said the US was the only country “that can really make a difference in the Middle East and with regard to Lebanon.” Washington is Israel’s longtime ally and biggest arms supplier.

The US “is the key … to our salvation,” he told an event in New York City hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Up to half a million people are estimated to have been displaced in Lebanon, said Bou Habib. He said Lebanon’s prime minister hoped to meet with US officials over the next two days.

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 UN’s high commissioner for refugees in Lebanon said one of its staffers and her young son were among those killed Monday in the Bekaa region, while a cleaner under contract was killed in a strike in the south.

Early on Wednesday, an Israeli strike hit the seaside town of Jiyyeh, 75km (46 miles) north of the border with Israel, two security sources said.

The US and fellow mediators Qatar and Egypt have so far been unsuccessful in their efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in the nearly year-old war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, a Hezbollah ally. Hezbollah has said it will cease firing rockets at Israel if it agrees a ceasefire in Gaza.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose country and Israel are arch-enemies, told the UN general assembly the international community must “secure a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and bring an end to the desperate barbarism of Israel in Lebanon, before it engulfs the region and the world.”

Israel’s military said its air force conducted “extensive strikes” on Tuesday on Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and dozens of launchers that were aimed at Israeli territory.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said the attacks had weakened Hezbollah and would continue. Hezbollah “has suffered a sequence of blows to its command and control, its fighters, and the means to fight. These are all severe blows,” he told Israeli troops.

He accused the UN of shirking its responsibility to prevent Hezbollah’s attacks into Israel.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to maintain the offensive against Hezbollah and said the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was leading Lebanon “to the edge of the abyss”.

Hezbollah said it launched rockets at the Dado military base in northern Israel and attacked the Atlit naval base south of Haifa with drones, among other targets. An Israeli military spokesperson said six soldiers and civilians had been injured, most not seriously.

Suspected Israeli missiles were also launched at the Syrian port city of Tartous and were intercepted by Syrian air defences, Syrian army sources said. The Israeli military declined to comment on the report.

Since the Gaza war started in October, Israel has intensified a years-long air campaign targeting Iran-aligned armed groups and their weapons transfers in Syria.

Funerals were held on Tuesday for people killed in Lebanon by Israel’s bombardment. In the coastal city of Saksakiyeh, Mohammed Helal was defiant as he mourned his daughter Jouri.

“We are not afraid. Even if they kill, dissect and destroy us,” he said.

Reuters contributed to this report

Hassan waited until the last minute to flee. As Israeli warplanes thundered overhead and bombs began to fall on the forests surrounding his home town of Deir al-Zahrani, south Lebanon, on Monday morning, he told himself he still had some time. For almost a year the town, 12 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border, had been mostly spared from the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that had engulfed much of south Lebanon.

The bombs grew closer. His neighbours began to get calls from unknown numbers with a recorded message, the voice speaking classical Arabic with a strange accent: “If you are in a building where there are Hezbollah weapons, distance yourself from the village.” Hassan had no idea if the homes around him contained weapons. Houses in the village began to get hit.

“Civilians, houses, they hit everything. When they started striking civilians, we had to flee. A few of my relatives were killed,” Hassan, 23, said, sitting in a school in Dekwaneh, a suburb north of Beirut, which had been converted into a shelter for displaced people less than 24 hours earlier.

Dier al-Zahrani was no longer safe as Israel carried out a devastating aerial barrage on swathes of south Lebanon and the Beqaa valley that killed 558 people, injured 1,835 and pushed tens of thousands to flee their homes.

It was Lebanon’s deadliest day in almost 50 years, bringing the death toll of the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in September to more than 1,200, exceeding that of the brutal 2006 war between the two.

Hassan and the six other members of his family grabbed a few possessions, crammed into a BMW sedan and headed towards Beirut.

“As we put the bags in the car, we were telling ourselves that maybe it would stop, that maybe there would be something that let us stay. But we found nothing that stopped us from leaving,” Hassan said.

As Hassan fled northwards, the fighting followed. Thousands crowded the potholed, narrow roads of the south as Israeli jets and drones circled above them, occasionally shooting off a missile.

“It was horrifying’; there was a strike here, there, we saw it all in front of us. We could see the smoke, hear the sounds of the missiles. Everyone was rushing, our car was hit [by other cars] twice,” Hassan said. A video showed drivers hastily pulling off to the side as an Israeli bomb falls just ahead of them on the Zahrani-Mslihiyeh road that Hassan was driving on.

It took Hassan seven hours to reach Beirut – a journey that usually takes an hour and a half. Others in his family had yet to reach the capital city, almost 24 hours after leaving. Messages circulated on WhatsApp groups, asking for anyone with a motorcycle to meet cars with wounded people stuck on the highway and take them to hospitals.

As displaced people arrived to Beirut, crisis cells, set up months before, sprang into action. Schools were converted into ad-hoc shelters and began to be fitted out with water, food and mattresses.

“We have 12 schools that are welcoming people, with a capacity for 2,500 people. Nine are already full, but we will open more,” Fadi Baghdadi, the official media officer for the Beirut disaster risk management cell, said on Monday night.

By Tuesday morning, lists were published of the dozens of schools across Beirut and the surrounding villages of Mount Lebanon that had been converted into shelters.

Official efforts were bolstered by a wave of donations and private initiatives to house the displaced. Individuals began to offer up their homes; hotels in Beirut offered steeply discounted rates and churches opened up their doors for weary travellers. A message from a Syrian man went viral after he invited Lebanese to come to stay with him and his neighbours in Homs, central Syria.

“We have tried our best to give them the basic needs such as mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits, water and food,” Rafka Rayees, an emergency use worker from Caritas Lebanon, said at the displacement shelter in Dekwaneh. She had come to the centre the previous afternoon and had worked through the night to get it up and running.

The centre was hosting 1,100 people, mostly older people, children and families. Children milled about the grounds of the converted school, moving shyly as they adjusted to their new environment. Cars were arriving steadily, packed with belongings and people whose fatigue was plain on their faces, having driven overnight.

“Here, the situation is OK. We don’t know where we’re sleeping yet,” Hassan said, shrugging.

A woman emerged from inside the school, waving her finger at administrators who had just arrived. “We shouldn’t be treated like this! There’s no electricity in the floor above, we shouldn’t have to be humiliated,” she yelled.

“The cases here in the centre are so severe because there’s a lot of kids and lots of elderly. They don’t want to do anything, they just want to go back home because of the trauma and the situation,” Rayees said. She rushed away to do an inspection tour of the facility with a team of volunteers in tow.

The brutality of Monday’s bombings was still fresh in the minds of many at the shelter. Entire families had been wiped out. Everyone knew someone who had been killed or injured. For some, it was the second time they had been displaced in less than a year.

“We left Majdal Zoun in February and we came to Dahieh [in the southern suburbs of Beirut]; it seemed safer than the south”, Fatima, 20, said. She left Majdal Zoun, in the south of Lebanon, after her cousin, a six-year-old girl, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in February.

Fatima said: “We started to hear the planes and everything in Dahieh as well. My daughter became scared of the planes and the sonic booms. When they hit Dahieh last night, we came here.”

Just two hours later, another airstrike would hit Dahieh – the second time in less than a day. Six people were killed and 15 were injured in the strike, which Israel said was a targeted assassination of a senior commander in Hezbollah’s rocket corps.

“There’s so much destruction and we haven’t even started, it’s just beginning. Maybe soon there will be no safe places for us to go to,” Hassan said.

It is now clear that last Tuesday’s exploding pager operation was just a first step. What is now unfolding is an Israeli strategy of military escalation against Hezbollah, premised on the risky belief that the militant group can be bombed into a ceasefire before fighting in Gaza ends.

Monday’s wave of airstrikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 558 people and displaced many thousands, and there is little sign of the campaign slowing. Israel’s air force has said it had dropped 2,000 bombs in 24 hours – and there can be little doubt that this is now a full-on war, though it is not yet an all-out conflict.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, is in some disarray. First, hundreds of its operatives were wounded in the pager and subsequent walkie-talkie attack; then, commanders in its elite Radwan military unit were killed in an Israeli strike in southern Beirut on Friday. On Tuesday, Israel claimed it had killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, the head of Hezbollah’s missile systems, again in an attack in the south of the Lebanese capital.

Nevertheless, Hezbollah is also escalating its attacks. As Yehoshua Kalisky of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies thinktank has observed, its rocket and drone attacks into northern Israel in support of Hamas had amounted to strikes against “targets and communities in the Upper Galilee”. Weapons used included “short-range rockets carrying approximately 20kg of explosives” – a modest amount.

Since Sunday, however, Hezbollah has begun using short-range missiles, the Fadi-1 and Fadi-2, with ranges of 50 and 65 miles respectively – targeting around the northern city of Haifa. Though not particularly accurate, the Fadi-2 carries an explosive payload of about 170kg, Kalisky writes, part of a short- and medium-range stockpile estimated to run into “the tens of thousands”.

But while Israel has killed hundreds of people, Hezbollah has only been able to wound small numbers in return. That does not amount to a deterrent to Israel, so it is no surprise that the country’s top military commander, Herzi Halevi, promised to “speed up the offensive operations today” – because Jerusalem knows it holds the military initiative.

Assaf Orion, a former brigadier-general in the Israel Defense Forces and its chief of strategy between 2010 and 2015, argues that the dynamic of the conflict is now “heading for more escalation”. He said: “I don’t see Hezbollah succumbing and yielding. It’s a question of image and power; they cannot be seen as bending the knee.”

The reality is that Hezbollah has to keep posing a threat to Israel’s north to keep the conflict running on the terms under which it is being played out. Last week, Israel’s security cabinet introduced a fresh war aim: the safe return of approximately 65,000 people displaced from the north – but, if anything, the immediate conflict risks displacing more Israelis from their homes as the range of attacks increases.

Israel, meanwhile, has been targeting missile launch sites in the south of Lebanon, but one four-year-old estimate by the Alma Centre, an Israeli thinktank, has suggested there are 28 more in Beirut in civilian areas. This means that a bombing campaign aimed at parts of the Lebanese capital cannot be ruled out in a further escalation, an uneasy prospect given Israel’s intense bombing of Gaza.

Hezbollah has many more missiles in reserve – 20,000-40,000 ballistic missiles with ranges of up to 300km, estimates the CSIS thinktank, and a small number of guided missiles, perhaps 150 to 400. Though Israel has confidence in its Iron Dome and other air defence systems, if a small number do get through, landing perhaps in built-up areas, there is a real risk to civilians – and then further escalation.

If the heightened conflict continues much longer, the question will become whether Israel will consider a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, through rough terrain to the line of the Litani River, where Hezbollah has built an extensive tunnel network. But it is a risky option, against a well-armed and experienced group with perhaps 30,000 fighters and similar numbers in reserve, and trying to demilitarise the area may not halt missile attacks from farther north.

The situation is evidently becoming more fraught. Hezbollah has allies in pro-Tehran militias in Syria and Iraq and, of course, Iran itself. Though few experts believe Iran wants to be drawn into a confrontation with Israel (notably, Tehran eschewed a reprisal after the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in August) there will be anxiety in Iran if Hezbollah continues to be hit hard.

Diplomatically, there appears to be “no off-ramp right now”, Orion added, while months of efforts to bring peace to Gaza, led by the US, Qatar and Egypt, have failed to bear fruit. Israel’s leaders – still smarting from the failure to predict Hamas’s surprise attack on 7 October – now believe they have the military superiority to force Hezbollah into a defeat, while Hezbollah only has to show it can still pose a threat to prevent Israelis from the north returning home. It is a toxic combination.

China has publicly acknowledged for the first time that it successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean, in a move likely to raise international concerns about the country’s nuclear buildup.

The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched by the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force at 8:44am Beijing time on Wednesday and “fell into expected sea areas,” the Chinese defence ministry said in a statement, adding it was a “routine arrangement in our annual training plan” and not directed at any country or target.

China “informed the countries concerned in advance,” according to a separate Xinhua report, which did not clarify the path of the missile or where exactly in the “high seas of the Pacific Ocean” it fell.

The launch “effectively tested the performance of weapons and equipment and the training level of the troops, and achieved the expected goal,” Xinhua reported.

An analyst told AFP that China has typically conducted such tests in its own airspace.

“This is extremely unusual and likely the first time in decades that we’ve seen a test like this,” Ankit Panda, Stanton Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said.

“(The test) likely speaks to China’s ongoing nuclear modernisation manifesting in new requirements for testing,” he added.

The PLA Rocket Force, which oversees the country’s conventional and nuclear missiles, has been tasked with modernising China’s nuclear forces to deter developments such as improved US missile defences, better surveillance capabilities, and strengthened alliances.

Some analysts, however, argue the speed of China’s nuclear buildup goes beyond a credible minimum deterrence.

Beijing says it adheres to a “no first use” policy.

The Chinese military has emphasised that the central military commission, headed by President Xi Jinping, is the only nuclear command authority.

China, which has been frequently criticised by the US for the opacity of its nuclear buildup, scrapped nuclear talks with Washington in July over US arms sales to Taiwan.

China has more than 500 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal, of which approximately 350 are ICBMs, and will probably have over 1,000 warheads by 2030, the Pentagon estimated last year. China’s military is constructing hundreds of secret silos for land-based ICBMs, the Pentagon said in the report.

That compares to 1,770 and 1,710 operational warheads deployed by the US and Russia, respectively. The Pentagon said that by 2030, much of Beijing’s weapons will probably be held at higher readiness levels.

The launch comes as democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained of increased Chinese military activities around the island in the past five years.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Wednesday it had detected 23 Chinese military aircraft, including J-16 fighters and drones, operating around Taiwan carrying out long-range missions to the south-east and east of the island.

The ministry added it had also recently detected “intensive” Chinese missile firing and other drills, though it did not give details of where that took place.

Taiwan has dispatched its own air and naval forces to keep watch, the ministry said.

A brief panic gripped parts of eastern Australia on Wednesday after the national weather bureau sent a tsunami warning to thousands of residents.

People along the New South Wales and Queensland coast received the Bureau of Meteorology warning, sent shortly after 11.30am, reading: “tsunami warning” and giving the location of the user. App users were informed that a tsunami was approaching, caused by an 8.2 magnitude earthquake off the west coast of New Zealand.

People living inland and as far west as Canberra – 125km from the closest beach – received the message.

Moments later, a second message followed, reading: “cancelled tsunami warning”. A notice in the app told users the previous message had been a test.

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The intervening moments were enough to send some app users into a state of alarm or confusion.

“Holy crap! Just a got a tsunami warning”, one X user wrote.

While the bureau had issued notice of the test via social media, app users said they were not notified that a test run was planned.

A bureau spokesperson said the test posts were issued as part of a transition to new tsunami early warning system software.

“There is NO tsunami threat to Australia,” they said.

“The Bureau acknowledges and apologises for any confusion that this test may have caused.

“Testing is important to help the Bureau and partners prepare and plan for real tsunami threats.”

The bureau is part of the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre (JATWC), which detects, monitors, verifies and warns of any tsunami threats to the coastline of Australia and its offshore territories.

The spokesperson said the bureau “provides the most accurate tsunami warning information for Australia”.

A brief panic gripped parts of eastern Australia on Wednesday after the national weather bureau sent a tsunami warning to thousands of residents.

People along the New South Wales and Queensland coast received the Bureau of Meteorology warning, sent shortly after 11.30am, reading: “tsunami warning” and giving the location of the user. App users were informed that a tsunami was approaching, caused by an 8.2 magnitude earthquake off the west coast of New Zealand.

People living inland and as far west as Canberra – 125km from the closest beach – received the message.

Moments later, a second message followed, reading: “cancelled tsunami warning”. A notice in the app told users the previous message had been a test.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

The intervening moments were enough to send some app users into a state of alarm or confusion.

“Holy crap! Just a got a tsunami warning”, one X user wrote.

While the bureau had issued notice of the test via social media, app users said they were not notified that a test run was planned.

A bureau spokesperson said the test posts were issued as part of a transition to new tsunami early warning system software.

“There is NO tsunami threat to Australia,” they said.

“The Bureau acknowledges and apologises for any confusion that this test may have caused.

“Testing is important to help the Bureau and partners prepare and plan for real tsunami threats.”

The bureau is part of the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre (JATWC), which detects, monitors, verifies and warns of any tsunami threats to the coastline of Australia and its offshore territories.

The spokesperson said the bureau “provides the most accurate tsunami warning information for Australia”.

In a forceful speech to the UN security council, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on a broad alliance of nations to “force Russia into peace”, saying that Vladimir Putin has violated the foundations of the United Nations and that the war “can’t be conquered by talks” alone.

Addressing the council, of which Russia is a permanent member, Zelenskyy accused Moscow of committing “international crimes” by targeting Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure, and claimed he had proof that Putin is plotting to target three Ukrainian nuclear power plants to further degrade the country’s energy grid.

After thanking Ukraine’s allies for their support, the Ukrainian leader appealed to countries further afield, calling on Brazil, India and countries across Africa and Latin America, to increase pressure on Russia to halt the war, saying “all [countries] are equally important for peace without exceptions”.

Many of those countries have economic or close diplomatic ties with Russia, and have given greater credence to Putin’s claims that Russia was provoked into the war by the west.

“We know some in the world want to talk to Putin,” Zelenskyy said. “To meet, to talk, to speak. But what could they possibly hear from him? That he’s upset because we are exercising our right to defend our people? Or that he wants to keep the war and terror going, just so no one thinks he was wrong?”

He added: “It’s insane.”

Zelenskyy later this week will travel to the White House to meet with Joe Biden and discuss his “victory plan” – a roadmap for Ukraine to end the war with greater western support. In his speech, he said that further pressure was needed to conclude a peace with Russia after it had been “doing things that cannot possibly be justified under the UN charter”.

“That’s why this war can’t be conquered by talks,” Zelenskyy said. “Action is needed … Putin has broken so many international laws and rules that he won’t stop. Russia can only be forced into peace, and that is exactly what’s needed, forcing Russia into peace as the soul aggressor in this war, the soul violator of the UN charter.”

In an interview that aired on ABC on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine needed greater support from the west to win the war, but conceded that the time for negotiations was nearing.

He has repeatedly called on the US and UK to drop their restrictions on the use of long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia, despite concerns in the Biden administration that those attacks could lead to further escalation of the war.

“I think that we are closer to the peace than we think,” Zelenskyy said in the interview. “We are closer to the end of the war. We just have to be very strong, very strong.

“The plan of victory is strengthening of Ukraine. That’s why we’re asking our friends, our allies, to strengthen us. It’s very important.”

At the security council meeting, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said the body’s priority must be halting Russia’s growing cooperation with Iran and North Korea. He accused both countries of providing arms that have allowed Russia to sustain its war in Ukraine, and called on members of the security council to support a “just peace” that “upholds the principles of the UN charter”.

In a likely reference to the proposal that Zelenskyy is set to discuss with Biden, Blinken said Ukraine is “prepared to engage in negotiations” to end the war.

Blinken said Iran had provided Russia with drones, ballistic missiles – including a shipment of hundreds of missiles earlier this month – and training, in exchange for which Russia is sharing nuclear technology and “space information”. He did not specify what nuclear technology Russia had provided Iran.

North Korea, Blinken said, had provided “trainloads of weapons and ammunition … including ballistic missiles and launchers, and millions of artillery rounds”.

He also accused China, another permanent member of the security council, of being a “top provider of machine tools, microelectronics and other items that Russia is using to rebuild, restock and ramp up its war machine and sustain its brutal war”.

But in calling the war a “textbook example” of the kind of security threat that the council had been developed to address, Blinken offered few insights into how the White House will amass a diplomatic coalition to stop the war, especially when two members accused of fueling it also sit on the security council.

Voting patterns and polling data from the past year suggest the EU is moving towards a more ethnic, closed-minded and xenophobic understanding of “Europeanness” that could ultimately challenge the European project, according to a major report.

The report, by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), identifies three key “blind spots” across the bloc and argues their intersection risks eroding or radically altering EU sentiment.

The report, shared exclusively with the Guardian, argues that the obvious “whiteness” of the EU’s politics, low engagement by young people and limited pro-Europeanism in central and eastern Europe could mould a European sentiment at odds with the bloc’s original core values.

“Mario Draghi has dominated the conversation in Brussels by focusing minds on the need to revive the bloc’s economy, which is losing its competitive edge,” said Pawel Zerka, the report’s author and a senior ECFR policy fellow.

“But if the economy is the EU’s engine, then ‘European sentiment’ should be seen as its fuel. And what is currently happening to European sentiment requires urgent attention – otherwise we risk running out of fuel, or running on dirty fuel.”

Zerka defines “European sentiment” as the sense of belonging to a common space, sharing a common future and subscribing to common values which he identifies as universalism, equality and secularism – and argues that these are being increasingly challenged.

Despite a year of wars and elections, the report – the third of its kind – said polling consistently showed large numbers of citizens in almost every EU member state continue to trust the bloc, are optimistic about its future and feel attached to it.

It said strong European sentiment was also evidenced by a comparatively high 51% turnout in this year’s European parliament elections, and the fact that a vast majority of the 27 national governments remain pro-European in outlook and policy.

However, it said growing numbers feel “excluded”, “disillusioned” or “uninterested” in the EU, in particular people of colour and Muslims, and people in central and eastern Europe, and young voters feeling it is “too white”, “too western” or “too boomer”.

Europeans of colour have been exposed to a huge surge in xenophobic narratives since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, the report said, with Muslims often feeling alienated by many governments’ support for Israel.

Far-right parties’ first-place finishes in the European elections in France, Italy, Belgium, Austria and Hungary, and strong showings in the Netherlands and Germany, had also fuelled a sharp increase in anti-immigration discourse.

The report cites debate in Germany about a far-right plan to deport asylum seekers and German citizens of foreign origin, the use of anti-Muslim tropes by the likes of AfD and Italy’s Lega, and the gradual mainstreaming of a “xenophobic worldview”.

It also noted the “limited diversity inside the European institutions”, pointing out that barely 3% of MEPs are from racial and ethnic minorities, against 10% in the EU population, and that many countries failed to field any candidates who were not white.

“The ‘whiteness’ of the European parliament stands out against … the European football championships, the summer Olympics or the Eurovision song contest” – despite far-right backlash against, for example, singer Aya Nakamura, Zerka wrote.

Lukewarm pro-Europeanism in central and eastern Europe was also a growing concern, the report said, with voter turnout in the European elections below 40% in seven out of the 11 countries in the region reflecting a cooled enthusiasm.

Data suggests some central and eastern Europeans are disappointed with the actual benefits of EU membership, while election results in countries such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Croatia showed increasing normalisation of Euroscepticism.

Similarly, although surveys consistently show younger voters to be more pro-EU and tolerant than older generations, young people showed limited interest in European elections and, when they did vote, often did so for the radical right or left.

The AfD came a close second among young German voters in this year’s European elections, while in Poland the radical right Confederation won the youth vote with about 30%, and in France, a third of the young voted for the National Rally (RN).

Zerka suggested this reflects a sense of not being represented by established political forces, which are often viewed as “boomer” parties, and warned a feeling of “voicelessness” risked young people disengaging from or even rejecting the EU.

The report said the threat to the European project was of a drift towards an “ethnic” understanding of Europeanness in which xenophobia – already popular in many capitals – flourishes unchecked in “the language, policies and outlook of EU politics”.

Zerka said that to counter the challenge, parties must urgently diversify their voting base and membership. Countries could follow Austria, Belgium and Germany by lowering the voting age, and politicians must discuss much more with young people.

Pro-European politicians must “resist the temptation of staying quiet on … migration and diversity for short-term electoral gain”, call out xenophobia and explain to voters that certain attitudes may undermine social peace in diverse societies.

And the EU’s civic identity must be reinforced by explaining the EU as “a force for positive change”, delivering on issues such as the economy, security and climate change but also on concerns around migration, Zerka argued.

If a growing number of Europeans conclude the EU is neither representing them nor reflecting their concerns and values, EU sentiment could collapse entirely, he warned. Alternatively, it could “flourish – but in a closed, xenophobic form”.

Planet-heating pollution doubled the chance of the extreme levels of rain that hammered central Europe in September, a study has found.

Researchers found global heating aggravated the four days of heavy rainfall that led to deadly floods in countries from Austria to Romania.

The rains were made at least 7% stronger by climate change, World Weather Attribution (WWA) found, which led to towns being hit with volumes of water that would have been half as likely to occur if humans had not heated the planet.

“The trend is clear,” said Bogdan Chojnicki, a climate scientist at Poznań University of Life Sciences, and co-author of the study. “If humans keep filling the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the situation will be more severe.”

Storm Boris stalled over central Europe in mid-September and unleashed record-breaking amounts of rain upon Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The heavy rains turned calm streams into wild rivers, triggering floods that wrecked homes and killed two dozen people.

The researchers said measures to adapt had lowered the death toll compared with similar floods that hit the region in 1997 and 2002. They called for better flood defences, warning systems and disaster-response plans, and warned against continuing to rebuild in flood-prone regions.

“These floods indicate just how costly climate change is becoming,” said Maja Vahlberg, technical adviser at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and co-author of the study. “Even with days of preparation, flood waters still devastated towns, destroyed thousands of homes and saw the European Union pledge €10bn in aid.”

Rapid attribution studies, which use established methods but are published before going through lengthy peer-review processes, examine how human influence affects extreme weather in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

The scientists compared the rainfall recorded in central Europe over four days in September with amounts simulated for a world that is 1.3C cooler – the level of warming caused to date by burning fossil fuels and destroying nature. They attributed a “doubling in likelihood and a 7% increase in intensity” to human influence.

But the results are “conservative”, the scientists wrote, because the models do not explicitly model convection and so may underestimate rainfall. “We emphasise that the direction of change is very clear, but the rate is not.”

Physicists have shown that every degree celsius of warming allows the air to hold 7% more moisture, but whether it does so depends on the availability of water. The rains in central Europe were unleashed when cold air from the Arctic met warm, wet air from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Warmer seas enhance the rainy part of the hydrological cycle, though the trend on parts of the land is towards drier conditions, said Miroslav Trnka, a climate scientist at the Global Change Research Institute, who was not involved in the study. When the conditions were right, he said, “you can have floods on steroids”.

Trnka compared the factors that result in extreme rainfall to playing the lottery. The increase in risk from global heating, he said, was like buying more lottery tickets, doing so over a longer period of time, and changing the rules so more combinations of numbers result in a win.

“If you bet long enough, you have a higher chance of a jackpot,” said Trnka.

The study found heavier four-day rainfall events would hit if the world heats 2C above preindustrial levels, with a further increase from today of about 5% in rainfall intensity and 50% in likelihood.

Other factors could increase this even more, such as the waviness of the jet stream, which some scientists suspect is increasingly trapping weather systems in one place as a result of global heating. A study published in Nature Scientific Reports on Monday projected that such blocking systems would increase under medium- and worst-case emissions scenarios.

Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University, who was not involved in the study, said: “These large storms, cut off from the jet stream, are able to stagnate in one place and produce huge amounts of rainfall, fuelled by increased moisture and energy from oceans that are record-shatteringly hot.”

“These ‘blocked’ slow-moving storms are becoming more frequent and are projected to increase further with additional warming,” she added. “The question is not whether we need to adapt for more of these types of storm but can we.”

WWA described the week following Storm Boris as “hyperactive” because 12 disasters around the world triggered its criteria for analysis, more than in any week in the organisation’s history.

The study did not try to work out how much global heating had increased the destruction wreaked by the rains but the researchers said even minor increases in rainfall disproportionately increased damages.

“Almost everywhere in the world it is the case that a small increase in the rainfall leads to a similar order-of-magnitude increase in flooding,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute and co-author of the study. “But that leads to a much larger increase in the damages.”

Planet-heating pollution doubled the chance of the extreme levels of rain that hammered central Europe in September, a study has found.

Researchers found global heating aggravated the four days of heavy rainfall that led to deadly floods in countries from Austria to Romania.

The rains were made at least 7% stronger by climate change, World Weather Attribution (WWA) found, which led to towns being hit with volumes of water that would have been half as likely to occur if humans had not heated the planet.

“The trend is clear,” said Bogdan Chojnicki, a climate scientist at Poznań University of Life Sciences, and co-author of the study. “If humans keep filling the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the situation will be more severe.”

Storm Boris stalled over central Europe in mid-September and unleashed record-breaking amounts of rain upon Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The heavy rains turned calm streams into wild rivers, triggering floods that wrecked homes and killed two dozen people.

The researchers said measures to adapt had lowered the death toll compared with similar floods that hit the region in 1997 and 2002. They called for better flood defences, warning systems and disaster-response plans, and warned against continuing to rebuild in flood-prone regions.

“These floods indicate just how costly climate change is becoming,” said Maja Vahlberg, technical adviser at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and co-author of the study. “Even with days of preparation, flood waters still devastated towns, destroyed thousands of homes and saw the European Union pledge €10bn in aid.”

Rapid attribution studies, which use established methods but are published before going through lengthy peer-review processes, examine how human influence affects extreme weather in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

The scientists compared the rainfall recorded in central Europe over four days in September with amounts simulated for a world that is 1.3C cooler – the level of warming caused to date by burning fossil fuels and destroying nature. They attributed a “doubling in likelihood and a 7% increase in intensity” to human influence.

But the results are “conservative”, the scientists wrote, because the models do not explicitly model convection and so may underestimate rainfall. “We emphasise that the direction of change is very clear, but the rate is not.”

Physicists have shown that every degree celsius of warming allows the air to hold 7% more moisture, but whether it does so depends on the availability of water. The rains in central Europe were unleashed when cold air from the Arctic met warm, wet air from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Warmer seas enhance the rainy part of the hydrological cycle, though the trend on parts of the land is towards drier conditions, said Miroslav Trnka, a climate scientist at the Global Change Research Institute, who was not involved in the study. When the conditions were right, he said, “you can have floods on steroids”.

Trnka compared the factors that result in extreme rainfall to playing the lottery. The increase in risk from global heating, he said, was like buying more lottery tickets, doing so over a longer period of time, and changing the rules so more combinations of numbers result in a win.

“If you bet long enough, you have a higher chance of a jackpot,” said Trnka.

The study found heavier four-day rainfall events would hit if the world heats 2C above preindustrial levels, with a further increase from today of about 5% in rainfall intensity and 50% in likelihood.

Other factors could increase this even more, such as the waviness of the jet stream, which some scientists suspect is increasingly trapping weather systems in one place as a result of global heating. A study published in Nature Scientific Reports on Monday projected that such blocking systems would increase under medium- and worst-case emissions scenarios.

Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University, who was not involved in the study, said: “These large storms, cut off from the jet stream, are able to stagnate in one place and produce huge amounts of rainfall, fuelled by increased moisture and energy from oceans that are record-shatteringly hot.”

“These ‘blocked’ slow-moving storms are becoming more frequent and are projected to increase further with additional warming,” she added. “The question is not whether we need to adapt for more of these types of storm but can we.”

WWA described the week following Storm Boris as “hyperactive” because 12 disasters around the world triggered its criteria for analysis, more than in any week in the organisation’s history.

The study did not try to work out how much global heating had increased the destruction wreaked by the rains but the researchers said even minor increases in rainfall disproportionately increased damages.

“Almost everywhere in the world it is the case that a small increase in the rainfall leads to a similar order-of-magnitude increase in flooding,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute and co-author of the study. “But that leads to a much larger increase in the damages.”

A man accused of lurking outside Donald Trump’s south Florida golf course on 15 September with a gun – and allegedly writing about his desire to kill him – was charged on Tuesday with attempting to kill the Republican presidential candidate.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was indicted on five counts in south Florida federal court: attempted assassination of a major political candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, assaulting a federal officer, felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He was first charged with federal firearms crimes after his arrest.

“Violence targeting public officials endangers everything our country stands for, and the Department of Justice will use every available tool to hold Ryan Routh accountable for the attempted assassination of former President Trump charged in the indictment,” the US attorney general Merrick Garland said in a statement.

“The justice department will not tolerate violence that strikes at the heart of our democracy, and we will find and hold accountable those who perpetrate it. This must stop.”

Prosecutors have laid out what they allege is evidence of a murder plot. Routh left behind a missive, addressed “Dear World”, in which he described his apparent intent to kill Trump. The note was put in a box, which had been left at the home of a person whom authorities have not identified, officials said.

The recipient did not open this box – in which there was also allegedly ammunition and a metal pipe – until after Routh’s arrest. This person contacted authorities.

“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 read, which prosecutors disclosed in a memorandum arguing for Routh’s detention.

Routh’s note appeared to suggest Trump’s foreign policy decisions played into the motive behind his alleged assassination attempt, as it said that the ex-president “ended relations with Iran, like a child, and now the Middle East has unraveled”.

Authorities believe Routh staked out the golf course for a month before the alleged attempt on Trump’s life; on that day, he hid outside the fence near the sixth hole of the grounds. A US Secret Service agent on site, who was monitoring a hole ahead of Trump’s party, said he saw “the barrel of a rifle aimed directly at him”.

As the agent started backing up, he saw the rifle barrel move and fired at Routh, prosecutors said. Routh ran across the road from the golf course and took off in his Nissan SUV; he was subsequently caught traveling north on I-95.

The prosecution said Routh planned to use a semi-automatic rifle, fitted with a scope, to open fire on Trump. There was a bullet in the rifle’s chamber, and 11 more in the gun, which Routh left behind when he tried to escape, prosecutors said.

“At approximately 1.30pm, the agent spotted the partially obscured face of a man in the brush along the fence line,” prosecutors’ detention memo stated, continuing that the face was “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 filing said, further noting: “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.”

When authorities searched Routh’s SUV upon his arrest, they claimed to have found “a handwritten list of dates in August, September and October, and venues where the former president had appeared or was expected to be present”, and six mobile phones. On one of these cellphones, there had been a Google search for how to travel from Palm Beach to Mexico City, prosecutors said.

In 2002, Routh was convicted of illegally possessing what a report described as a “fully automatic machine gun”. The Greensboro News & Record said Routh had barricaded himself at his roofing business in a three-hour standoff that turned into a car chase before his eventual surrender.

Routh also has a second felony conviction for multiple counts of possession of stolen goods, prosecutors said.

Missouri executed a man on death row on Tuesday, despite objections from prosecutors who sought to have his conviction overturned and have supported his claims of innocence.

Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams, 55, was killed by lethal injection, ending a legal battle that has sparked widespread outrage as the office that originally tried the case suggested he was wrongfully convicted.

In an extraordinary move condemned by civil rights advocates and lawmakers across the US, Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, pushed forward with the execution against the wishes of the St Louis county prosecuting attorney’s office.

Williams was convicted of the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. He was accused of breaking into Gayle’s home, stabbing her to death and stealing several of her belongings.

But no forensic evidence linked Williams to the murder weapon or crime scene, and as local prosecutors have renounced his conviction, the victim’s family and several trial jurors also said they opposed his execution.

“We must all question any system that would allow this to occur. The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with ‘finality’ over truth, justice, and humanity, at any cost,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Williams’s attorney, said in a statement just before the execution. “Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri’s grotesque exercise of state power. Let it not be in vain. This should never happen, and we must not let it continue.”

Williams’s son and two of his attorneys watched the execution from another room, the AP reported. Williams appeared to speak with a spiritual adviser by his side in his final moments. In a written “last statement” released by corrections officials, he said: “All Praise Be to Allah In Every Situation!!!”

Williams, who served as the imam in his prison and dedicated his time to poetry, twice had his execution halted at the last minute. He was days away from execution in January 2015 when the Missouri state supreme court granted his attorneys more time for DNA testing. In August 2017, Eric Greitens, the Republican governor at the time, granted a reprieve hours before the scheduled execution, citing DNA testing on the knife, which showed no trace of Williams’s DNA.

Greitens set up a panel to review the case but when Mike Parson, the current Republican governor, took over, he disbanded that board and pushed for the execution to proceed.

In January, Wesley Bell, the Democratic prosecuting attorney in St Louis who has championed criminal justice reforms, filed a motion to overturn Williams’s conviction. Bell cited repeated DNA testing finding that Williams’s fingerprints were not on the knife.

“Ms Gayle’s murderer left behind considerable physical evidence. None of that physical evidence can be tied to Mr Williams,” his office wrote, adding: “New evidence suggests that Mr Williams is actually innocent.” He also asserted that Williams’s counsel at the time was ineffective.

Additional testing on the knife, however, revealed that staff with the prosecutors’ office had mishandled the weapon after the killing – touching it without gloves before the trial, Bell’s office said. A forensic expert testified that the mishandling of the weapon made it impossible to determine if Williams’s fingerprints could have been on the knife earlier.

In August, Williams and prosecutors reached an agreement to halt his execution: he would plead no contest to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life without parole. His lawyers said the agreement was not an admission of guilt, and that it was meant to save his life while he pursued new evidence to prove his innocence. A judge signed off on the agreement, as did the victim’s family, but the attorney general challenged it, and the state supreme court blocked it.

Last-ditch efforts by both Williams’s lawyers and St Louis prosecutors were unsuccessful in recent days. In a plea over the weekend, Bell’s office said there were “constitutional errors” in Williams’s prosecution and pointed to recent testimony from the original prosecutor, who said he rejected a potential Black juror because he looked like he could be Williams’s “brother”. The jury that convicted him had 11 white members and one Black member.

The governor also rejected Williams’s clemency request on Monday, which noted that the victim’s family and three jurors supported calls to revoke his death sentence. The US supreme court denied a final request to halt the execution on Tuesday, with the three liberal justices dissenting.

The attorney general argued in court that the original prosecutor denied racial motivations for removing Black jurors and asserted there was nothing improper about touching the murder weapon without gloves at the time.

Bailey’s office has also suggested that other evidence points to Williams’s guilt, including testimony from a man who shared a cell with Williams and said he confessed, and testimony from a girlfriend who claimed she saw stolen items in Williams’s car. Williams’s attorneys, however, contended that both of those witnesses were not reliable, saying they had been convicted of felonies and were motivated to testify by a $10,000 reward offer.

Bailey and Parson have not commented on their decision to override the wishes of the victim’s family, but have pointed to the fact that the courts have repeatedly upheld Williams’s conviction throughout his years of appeals.

‘A kind and thoughtful man’

Williams’s execution was widely denounced Tuesday evening.

Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, said Missouri had “lynched another innocent Black man”. Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush said the state had failed Williams, adding: “We have a moral imperative to abolish this racist and inhumane practice.” And Bell said: “Marcellus Williams should be alive … This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”

Bushnell, Williams’s attorney from the Midwest Innocence Project, praised Williams’s “evocative poetry” and “service to his family and his community”, saying he had been a “kind and thoughtful man, who spent his last years supporting those around him in his role as imam”.

“While he yearned to return home, he … worked hard to move beyond the anger, frustration, and fear of wrongful execution, channeling his energy into his faith and finding meaning and connection through Islam. The world will be a worse place without him,” she said.

Williams’s public defenders said the governor had “utterly ignored” the victim’s family, adding in a statement: “Khaliifah was an inspiration. We aspire to his level of faith, to his integrity, and to his complete devotion to the people in his life.”

Michelle Smith, co-director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, who considered Williams a mentor, said in an interview before the execution that she hoped his case would help the public understand that “capital punishment doesn’t work”.

“I know people who say: ‘We shouldn’t kill innocent people, but other than that, I believe in the death penalty.’ But if you believe in the system at all, that means you’re OK with innocent people being killed, because the system isn’t perfect. It is going to kill innocent people.”

Since 1973, at least 200 people sentenced to death have been exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Robin Maher, the group’s executive director, said she was unaware of another case in which someone was executed after a sitting prosecutor objected and confessed to constitutional errors that undermined the conviction.

Williams’s execution is one of five scheduled across the US in a one-week period. On Friday, South Carolina executed a man days after the state’s main witness recanted his testimony. On Tuesday, the state of Texas executed Travis Mullis, 38, who waived his right to appeal his death sentence for killing his three-month-old son in 2008. His attorney said he suffered a lifetime of “profound mental illness”, but was a “redeemed man” who accepted responsibility for his crime.

A zoo in Finland has blamed rising inflation and upkeep costs for its decision to return two giant pandas to China, more than eight years ahead of the date they were set to go back.

The pandas, named Lumi and Pyry, were brought to Finland in January 2018, months after Chinese president Xi Jinping visited the Nordic country and signed a joint agreement on protecting the animals.

The Finnish agreement was for a stay of 15 years, but instead the pandas will soon go into a month-long quarantine before they are shipped back to China, according to Ahtari Zoo, the pandas’ current home.

The zoo, a private company, had invested over 8m euros ($8.92m) in the facility where the animals live and faced annual costs of 1.5m euros for their upkeep, including a preservation fee paid to China, Ahtari chair Risto Sivonen told the Reuters news agency.

Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has sent pandas to foreign zoos to strengthen trading ties, cement foreign relations and boost its international image.

The zoo had hoped the pandas would attract visitors to the central Finland location but last year said it had instead accumulated mounting debts as the pandemic curbed travel, and that it was discussing a return.

Rising inflation had added to the costs, the zoo said, and Finland’s government in 2023 rejected pleas for state funding. In all, negotiations to return the animals had lasted three years, Sivonen said.

“Now we reached a point where the Chinese said it could be done,” Sivonen said.

The return of the pandas was a business decision made by the zoo which did not involve Finland’s government and should not impact relations between the two countries, a spokesperson for Finland’s foreign ministry said.

Despite efforts by China to aid the zoo, the two countries in the end jointly concluded after friendly consultations to return the pandas, the Chinese embassy in Helsinki said in a statement to Reuters.

A new species of ghost shark, with an unusually long nose and a whip-like tail, has been discovered in the inky depths of New Zealand waters.

Scientists at New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmospherics (Niwa) initially believed the creature was part of an existing species found around the world, but further investigation revealed it was new, genetically distinct, species.

The newly described Australasian narrow-nosed spookfish is only found in New Zealand and Australian waters.

Ghost sharks – also known as chimaeras and spookfish – are a group of cartilaginous fish closely related to sharks and rays. They have smooth skin, beak-like teeth and feed off crustaceans such as shrimp and molluscs. They are sometimes referred to as the ocean’s butterflies for the way they glide through the water with their large pectoral fins.

The mysterious fish are typically found at great ocean depths – up to 2,600 metres – and little is known about their biology or the threats they face.

“Ghost sharks are incredibly under-studied, there is a lot we don’t know about them,” said Dr Brit Finucci, a fisheries scientist at Niwa who helped discover the new species.

“Chimaeras are quite cryptic in nature – they can be hard to find in the deep ocean … and they generally don’t get the same attention sharks do, when it comes to research.”

The new ghost shark was found in the Chathams Rise, roughly 750km east of New Zealand’s coast. It is distinctive for its very elongated snout that can make up half of its entire body length and has likely evolved to aid its hunt for prey. The chocolate-brown fish can grow up to a metre long, has large milky-coloured eyes and a serrated dorsal fin to deter predators.

Roughly 55 species of ghost shark have been discovered globally, with about 12 of those found in New Zealand and South Pacific waters.

Scientists suspected it was a new species based off of its morphology – how it looks – but further genetic research was needed to confirm the theory. Discovering that it was indeed a distinct species was an exciting moment for Finucci.

“It’s really neat to be able to contribute to science,” she said. “Understanding the animal itself can feed into further research and whether they need conservation management.”

In a touching homage to her grandmother, Finucci gave the ghost shark the scientific name Harriotta avia: Harriotta being her grandmother’s name, and avia meaning grandmother in Latin.

“I also liked the idea that … sharks and ghost sharks are the old, ancient, relatives of fish, and I was naming the animal after an ancient relative of mine.”