A Palestinian militant group said three of its leaders were killed in an Israeli attack on central Beirut early on Monday, in what would be the first time Israel’s military had struck the centre of Lebanon’s capital city since 2006, as it expanded hostilities against Iran’s regional allies with further attacks across Lebanon and Yemen.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a militant group taking part in the fight against Israel, said three senior figures were killed in the Beirut attack, with initial footage from the scene showing two storeys of an apartment building completely blown out, and onlookers running towards the building.

Two bodies could be seen lying on the street atop a car outside the building, seemingly ejected by the force of the blast. The sound of the explosion was heard around the city.

There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.

The Beirut strike, carried out using a drone, according to one source quoted by Agence France-Presse, hit near the Kola intersection, a popular reference point in the city, where taxis and buses gather to pick up passengers.

Israel had confined its strikes on Lebanon’s capital city to its southern suburbs. The airstrike threw into doubt which areas of Beirut were still safe from Israel’s expanding aerial campaign. Israeli drones hovered over Beirut for much of Sunday, with the loud blasts of new airstrikes echoing around the city.

Monday’s airstrike comes after Lebanon’s health ministry said 105 people had been killed and another 359 injured by Israeli strikes across the country on Sunday. More than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the past two weeks, it said, without saying how many were civilians. The government said a million people – a fifth of the population – have fled their homes.

On Sunday, Israel launched a wave of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, fuelling fears of a slide towards a devastating regional conflict on multiple fronts.

The attack on the port of Hodeidah in Yemen involved dozens of Israeli planes and appears to have targeted fuel facilities, power plants and docks at the Ras Issa and Hodeidah ports. It one of the biggest such operations yet seen in the near year-long crisis in the region.

Houthi media reported the strikes had killed four people and wounded 33. Residents said the strikes caused power cuts in most parts of Hodeidah.

Israeli military officials said the raid targeted the Houthis, who have fired at Israeli targets for months in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The Houthis have also targeted international shipping in the Red Sea. On Saturday, they launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel’s main international airport when Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was arriving.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah confirmed that Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of its central council, was killed on Saturday, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader slain in Israeli strikes in a little over a week. The group also confirmed that Ali Karaki, another senior commander, died in the airstrike on Friday that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Three days of mourning were announced, starting on Monday, after the killing of Nasrallah.

Hezbollah denied claims that Abu Ali Rida, the commander of the group’s Bader Unit in south Lebanon had been killed. Rida is the last remaining senior military commander of Hezbollah who remains alive.

Israel has vowed to keep up the assault and says it wants to make its northern areas secure again for residents who have been forced to flee Hezbollah rocket attacks.

US president Joe Biden, asked if an all-out war in the Middle East could be avoided, said “It has to be.” He said he will be talking to Netanyahu.

With Reuters

• Lebanon’s health ministry has said more than 100 people have been killed by Israeli strikes on Sunday. It said more than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the past two weeks, without saying how many were civilians. The government said a million people – a fifth of the population – have fled their homes.

• Israel carried out a strike in central Beirut in the early hours of Monday, the first time it has struck beyond the city’s southern suburbs since 2006. The strike hit an upper floor of an apartment building near the Kola intersection, and a security source told Reuters that at least two people were killed. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said in a statement early on Monday that three of its leaders were killed in the strike. Israel has not commented on the attack.

• Israel said it bombed Houthi targets in Yemen on Sunday. The airstrikes on Yemen’s port of Hodeidah were a response to Houthi missile attacks on Israel in recent days, Israel said. The Houthi-run health ministry said at least four people were killed and 29 wounded. Images from Hodeidah showed parts of the city covered in a massive pall of dust, and towering explosions in the distance. The Israeli military said dozens of its aircraft had attacked power plants and Ras Issa and Hodeidah ports, accusing the Houthis of operating under Iran’s direction and in cooperation with Iraqi militias.

• Hezbollah confirmed that Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of the militant group’s central council, was killed on Saturday, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader slain in Israeli strikes in a little over a week. The group also confirmed that Ali Karaki, another senior commander, died in the airstrike on Friday strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Three days of mourning were announced, starting on Monday, after the killing of Nasrallah.

• Hezbollah denied claims that Abu Ali Rida, the commander of the group’s Bader Unit in south Lebanon had been killed. Rida is the last remaining senior military commander of Hezbollah who remains alive.

• White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Israel’s airstrikes in Lebanon had “wiped out” Hezbollah’s command structure, but he warned the group would work quickly to rebuild it. President Joe Biden said on Sunday he would speak soon with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and believes that an all-out war in the Middle East must be avoided.

• Israel on Sunday vowed to keep up its assault in Lebanon. “We need to keep hitting Hezbollah hard,” Israel’s military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said. Israel’s military said it struck dozens of targets in Lebanon including launchers and weapons stores and had intercepted eight projectiles coming from the direction of Lebanon.

• The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has broken his silence on Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. On Sunday, Syria’s state-run outlet Sana quoted Assad as saying: “We are certain that the Lebanese national resistance will continue on the path of struggle and justice in the face of the occupation, and will continue to support the Palestinian people in their struggle for their just cause.”

• Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel should not be allowed to attack countries in the Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance” one after the other. Pezeshkian, in comments carried by state media, said Lebanon should be supported. An Iranian Revolutionary Guards deputy commander, Abbas Nilforoushan, was also killed in the attack that killed Nasrallah in Beirut. Pezeshkian said “we cannot accept such actions and they will not be left unanswered. A decisive reaction is necessary.”

• Saudi Arabia has stressed the “need to preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. In a statement released on Sunday amid Israel’s deadly airstrikes, the Saudi foreign ministry said it was “following with great concern the developments taking place in Lebanon”.

• Israeli opposition lawmaker Gideon Saar rejoined Netanyahu’s government on Sunday, a step that is likely to strengthen the Israeli prime minister politically. Saar, who has been one of Netanyahu’s most vocal critics in the past few years, is due to serve as a minister without a portfolio and have a seat in the prime minister’s security cabinet, Israeli media reported. Expanding the government to include Saar’s strengthens Netanyahu by making him less reliant on other members of his ruling coalition, which has been struggling in the polls.

Even before Sunday’s new attacks, Israel’s military had boasted that it had killed most senior leaders of Hezbollah. With the news that Nabil Qaouk, another major figure within the Shia Muslim militant Islamist organisation, has died in an airstrike in Beirut, the job of eliminating the top echelons of Hezbollah’s military command structure appears almost complete. The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran secretary general of Hezbollah on Friday, was only the most spectacular and high-profile killing in an unprecedented effort over many months.

Qaouk, like many of the 19 senior Hezbollah officials who have been killed, joined as a teenager in the very earliest years of the organisation’s 41-year history and went on to fill a series of military command positions. Recently, Qaouk had begun to operate in more political roles and was a frequent traveller to Iran, where he had a good relationship with some of the top officials in the regime.

Other Hezbollah veterans killed in recent days include Ibrahim Aqil, a second founder member of the organisation’s military wing. Aqil, who was in his early 60s, is believed to have been the acting commander of the Radwan [special forces] brigades.

Fuad Shukr, who died in July, had been involved in the massive suicide bombings launched against US, French and Israeli targets in 1983 by a coalition of Islamist Shia groups that was a precursor to Hezbollah. He went on to play a key role in developing Hezbollah’s military capabilities, took on a role as chief of staff within Hezbollah and was a senior military adviser to Nasrallah.

Another casualty of Israel’s campaign was Ali Karaki, who had responsibility for military operations along the contested border with Israel. Analysts say Karaki, who has fulfilled a number of clandestine international roles in his long militant career, was being groomed for a senior leadership role within Hezbollah. He died alongside Nasrallah in the massive Israel Defense Forces strike on Beirut on Friday.

So too did Ibrahim Jazini, who was responsible for internal security within Hezbollah. Though without any personal following and something of a loner within the organisation, Jazini was trusted and liked by Nasrallah.

The loss of such men leaves Hezbollah in total disarray, stripped of capable operators who possessed deep military and international experience.

“Hezbollah is facing a reality much worse than any worst-case scenario they might have war-gamed. The chain of command is obliterated,” said Naveed Ahmed, an independent Gulf-based security analyst and expert on Hezbollah.

The most obvious candidate to succeed Nasrallah is Hashem Safieddine, who chairs Hezbollah’s executive council. A cousin of Nasrallah, Safieddine was born in 1964 in southern Lebanon and is another founder member. He is thought to have spent many years in Qom, the Iranian religious city, and has been entrusted by Hezbollah with a variety of tasks over the decades, including managing the organisation’s extensive portfolio of legal and illegal businesses.

A powerful public speaker, Safieddine is popular within the organisation and among its sponsors in Tehran. Last year he said: “It may take one war, two wars, three wars, multiple confrontations, military confrontation, the sacrifice of martyrs, bearing the burden, dealing with the consequences, but ultimately, [Israel] must come to an end.”

Israel’s assassination campaign has so far targeted Hezbollah’s military commanders, leaving the top political echelons largely unscathed. Safieddine sits on the Jihad Council of the organisation however, so may soon be targeted too.

“It is impossible to predict who would be a successor right now as the Israeli targeted strikes continue to take out commanders. It’s in Hezbollah’s interest to not publicly declare a successor. Nasrallah’s funeral, if at all held, would be a rich source of intelligence and targets,” Ahmed said.

In 1992, Israeli media celebrated an assassination. The man killed then was Abbas al-Musawi, the secretary general of Hezbollah, whose convoy was struck by Israeli helicopters.

Then, as now, Israeli analysts speculated that Musawi’s death might possibly portend the end of Hezbollah, which had been founded 10 years before after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

The opposite would turn out to be true. Musawi was succeeded by his 31-year-old protege, Hassan Nasrallah, who went on to lead and build Hezbollah for three decades, right until his own assassination by Israel on Friday.

Nasrallah’s killing, in a subterranean Hezbollah headquarters in a southern suburb of Beirut, has inevitably focused attention on two questions: whether Israel’s long-term policy of assassinations is effective, and what the killing of Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah commanders means for the group.

The issue of the efficacy of assassinations is a moot point, even within the Israeli security and political establishment which have long debated the issue, including some current ministers who reportedly opposed Nasrallah’s killing.

Israel has also killed senior members of Hamas in the past, including key founders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, both in 2004, neither of which delivered it any long-term strategic advantage when it came to Gaza.

The reality is that it may take months to see what, if any, significant impact the campaign of assassinations of Hezbollah leaders will have dealt the group, not least because of Nasrallah’s decades-long efforts to embed it in Lebanese-Shia society as a social provider as well as an armed force.

While experts consider Hezbollah to have been significantly harmed by recent events, many are uncertain whether it is a fatal blow or indeed whether the advantage to Israel may turn out to have been overstated, on the ground and in terms of diplomatic fallout.

Sanam Vakil, the head of the Chatham House thinktank’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, unpacked some of these contradictions.

“Hezbollah is militarily and operationally degraded,” Vakil wrote on X, “and knows that any escalation will lead to a conflict they cannot win. But should it not respond, its morale and legitimacy will be further weakened.

She added: “What should be heeded though is that both Hezbollah and Hamas while down, are certainly not out. The continuation of fighting will undoubtedly mobilize if not radicalize another generation of fighters.”

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the veteran journalist Jack Khoury questioned whether the latest assassinations would benefit Israel. “This is not the first targeted killing of a Hezbollah leader that Israel has carried out … it quickly turned out that their replacements didn’t display a more moderate or less militant attitude.”

In the immediate term, it is also clear that Nasrallah’s assassination and the heavy strikes of recent days have not stopped rocket fire towards Israel, even if for now it is somewhat diminished.

The reality is that Hezbollah’s impact on Israel, from the beginning of the war on 8 October – with tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the north – was largely achieved with a relatively small-scale intervention, not with the use of Hezbollah’s heavy rocket arsenal.

Indeed most of the initial displacement followed small, lighter sporadic attacks with anti-tank weapons across the border before the emerging use of more sophisticated weapons such as kamikaze drones, a pattern that Israel has struggled to counter.

And while an ageing generation of Hezbollah’s top leadership – many of them personally connected to Nasrallah – has been removed, it is unclear whether those who replace them will share the same approach in trying to manage the conflict beneath the threshold of all-out war.

While Nasrallah ultimately failed in this ambition, not least by fatally underestimating the calculus in Israel, it is not yet clear whether Israel’s decision to kill him, in the longer term, is necessarily more sound.

Already it is clear that one aspect of the Iranian response is to rapidly reify the idea of Nasrallah as an indispensable “martyr” and “master of resistance” who can remain as a figurehead for the movement.

Other experts see Hezbollah as more resilient than its recent losses might suggest.

“Hezbollah is a robust institution with a strong chain of command that should ensure continuity at the leadership level,” wrote Nicholas Blanford, a longtime observer of the group, in an opinion for the Atlantic Council thinktank.

“An unknown factor, however, is who within the upper echelons of Hezbollah died alongside Nasrallah. If other significant leaders were killed, it could complicate – and perhaps delay for a while – the process of re-establishing command and control over the entire organisation, potentially leaving the party vulnerable to Israel’s next moves.

“Another pressing question is whether the death of Nasrallah will force Iran and Hezbollah to begin employing more advanced precision-guided missile systems that could potentially inflict far greater damage and casualties in Israel compared to the older, unguided rockets the group has been using until now.

“Or will cold rational logic continue to prevail, with Tehran ensuring a vengeful and angry Hezbollah does not fall into the trap of a full-force response against Israel? A response of that kind could lead to a major war, one that could erode Hezbollah’s capabilities and therefore reduce its deterrence effect for Iran. The coming days will tell.”

Writing in the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Anthony Samrani also warned against underestimating the group.

“We know nothing about what is happening inside the party, nor anything about the intentions of the Iranians,” he wrote. “Israel carried out thousands of strikes in a week, which likely destroyed part of Hezbollah’s arsenal. But neither the 150,000 missiles and rockets it holds, nor the tens of thousands of armed men who form the militia, have disappeared in the snap of a finger.

“Even if it seems more complicated every day, we cannot exclude the fact that Hezbollah still has the means to respond to its adversary and wage a total and longer-lasting war. The party is in shock. Can it rally?”

He added: “All scenarios are on the table. That of a total war, of a defeat that the [Shia] party will make Lebanon pay for, and of the most fragile opportunity, to finally learn the lessons of everything that led Lebanon, beyond Hezbollah, to find itself in this situation.”

Japan’s incoming prime minister Shigeru Ishiba is poised to call a snap election for the end of the month, according to media reports, days after he promised to lift his party’s dwindling fortunes and “put a smile” back on the faces of the public.

Ishiba, a moderate who saw off a rightwing challenge on Friday to become the new leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP), will be approved as prime minister in parliament on Tuesday and appoint his cabinet later the same day.

The 67-year-old former defence minister, who won the party leadership race at his fifth attempt, will try to seek an early public mandate on 27 October, the public broadcaster NHK and several newspapers said on Monday, more than a year before an election is due.

Ishiba has said only that he would call a lower house election “as soon as possible”, but observers believe he wants to go to voters quickly, possibly to capitalise on his recent party victory and to give the main opposition Constitutional Democratic party as little time as possible to prepare under its new leader, Yoshihiko Noda.

Ishiba could turn to one of his erstwhile leadership rivals in an attempt to revive the LDP’s fortunes after months of fallout from a fundraising scandal.

Shinjiro Koizumi, who was knocked out of the contest after finishing third in the first round of voting, is expected to be made head of the party’s election committee, effectively making him the face of the campaign.

Although the 43-year-old Koizumi, the son of the former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, struggled to mount a credible challenge for the LDP presidency, he is popular among voters.

Ishiba’s main rival for the LDP presidency, the ultra-conservative Sanae Takaichi, reportedly turned down the offer of a senior party post, the Kyodo news agency said, underlining the difficulties he faces in reuniting the party ahead of the rumoured general election.

Takaichi, who lost to Ishiba in the second and final round of voting, was vying to become Japan’s first female prime minister. Reports suggest that the most senior posts in Ishiba’s cabinet will go to party heavyweights, including the former prime minister Yoshihide Suga, who is believed to have backed him in the leadership race.

Ishiba is expected to unveil measures to help low-income households through the cost of living crisis and, on the foreign policy front, to pursue the creation of an “Asian Nato” to counter threats from China and North Korea.

Senior Republicans distanced themselves Sunday from comments made by Donald Trump at campaign stops over the weekend that opponent Kamala Harris was born “mentally disabled” and had compared her actions to that of “a mentally disabled person”.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, pushed back on Trump’s remarks, which came in what Trump himself admitted was a “dark” speech.

“I just think the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country,” Graham said on CNN. “I’m not saying she’s crazy, her policies are crazy.”

Graham’s comments came as immigration and border security remained the top domestic issue on Sunday’s political talk shows. Trump made his comments during a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday amid remarks on Harris’s actions on those issues as vice-president.

“Kamala is mentally impaired. If a Republican did what she did, that Republican would be impeached and removed from office, and rightfully so, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said.

Trump added: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Minnesota Republican representative Tom Emmer, a member of JD Vance’s debate preparation team, told ABC News: “I think we should stick on the issues. The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. That – those are the issues.”

But Maryland governor Larry Hogan struck back, telling CBS News that Trump’s comments were “insulting not only to the vice-president, but to people that actually do have mental disabilities.

“I’ve said for years that Trump’s divisive rhetoric is something we can do without,” Hogan added.

Steven Cheung, the communications director for the Trump campaign, did not directly address Trump’s comments, widely criticized as offensive, but said Harris’s record on immigration and border security made her “wholly unfit to serve as president”.

Trump’s comments joined a long list of personal attacks against opponents that supporters at his campaign eagerly lap up. Democrats have their own reductive articulations, calling Trump and Vance “weird”.

But the use of mental disability to describe Harris’s faculties has been widely seized upon. Democrat Illinois governor JB Pritzker told CNN that Trump’s remarks were “name-calling”.

“Whenever he says things like that, he’s talking about himself but trying to project it onto others,” Pritzker said. Eric Holder, the former Obama administration attorney general, said Trump’s comments indicated “cognitive decline”.

“Trump made a great deal of the cognitive abilities of Joe Biden,” he told MSNBC. “If this is where he is now, where is he going to be three and four years from now?”

Maria Town, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, pointed out that many presidents had disabilities.

Town said in a statement to the Washington Post that Trump’s comments “say far more about him and his inaccurate, hateful biases against disabled people than it does about Vice President Harris, or any person with a disability”.

Kamala Harris will hold a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as the state, with six electoral college votes, becomes increasingly important in a presidential race that polls show is barely moving to favor either candidate.

Both the vice-president and Donald Trump have been making frequent trips to Nevada, but Harris’s swing takes place two days after she visited the US-Mexico border, a vulnerable issue for Democrats that Harris is looking to defuse.

On Friday, Harris walked alongside a towering, rust-colored border wall fitted with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities to discuss illegal border crossing and fentanyl smuggling.

At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Sunday, the former president attempted to blame Harris for the opioid epidemic. “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” he said.

Six out of 10 Americans rate immigration as “very important”, according to the Pew Research Center, and other polling suggests voters trust Trump can handle the issue more effectively than Harris can.

In contrast, fewer than half of voters (40%) said abortion, the key Republican vulnerability, was a very important issue to their vote.

In a speech in San Francisco on Saturday, Harris said the “race is as close as it could possibly be” and described it “a margin-of-error race”. The Democrat candidate added that she felt she was running as the underdog.

Democrats have also begun testing a new strategy to appeal to younger voters, including visitors to Las Vegas with its long-crafted reputation for inebriation, with posts about what it calls “Trump’s tequila tax” that its says could come as a result of proposed import tariffs.

Harris’s campaign swing through Las Vegas comes as both candidates have said they plan to end taxes on tips. Trump presented his proposal in the city in June; Harris used her own rally in August to make the same pledge.

The issue resonates in Las Vegas, where there are approximately 60,000 hospitality workers. Nevada’s Culinary Union has endorsed Harris.

Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer, told the Associated Press that the union favored Harris’s proposal because she pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage”.

“That shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.

Trump was at the same Las Vegas venue that Harris is speaking at earlier this month. In that address, he called his opponent the “would-be the president of invasion”.

Kris Kristofferson, the country singer who ably balanced a prolific acting career alongside his music, has died aged 88.

Kristofferson’s family confirmed his death on Sunday night, saying he “passed away peacefully” at home on Saturday. “We’re all so blessed for our time with him,” read the statement, which was signed by his wife Lisa, his eight children and seven grandchildren. “Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”

Admired for the grit, emotional vulnerability and literary craft of his country songwriting, Kristofferson frequently topped the US country charts and cover versions of his songs were hits for artists including Janis Joplin, Gladys Knight and Johnny Cash. In the mid-70s, he worked with film directors including Martin Scorsese and Sam Peckinpah, and won a Golden Globe for his work opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 remake of A Star is Born.

Streisand paid tribute to her co-star on Instagram, writing that he was a “special” and “charming” performer. “It was a joy seeing him receive the recognition and love he so richly deserved,” she wrote.

Dolly Parton, who performed duets with Kristofferson such as From Here to the Moon and Back, wrote: “What a great loss. What a great writer. What a great actor. What a great friend. I will always love you, Dolly.”

Country singer Reba McEntire wrote: “What a gentleman, kind soul, and a lover of words. I am so glad I got to meet him and be around him. One of my favourite people.”

Born in Texas in 1936, Kristofferson attended high school in California and initially wanted to be a novelist, later studying literature at Pomona college in southern California and at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. Inspired by the nascent rock’n’roll scene, his first foray into music was in the UK as Kris Carson, though the songs he recorded were never released.

He continued performing music during a spell in the US army, where he became a helicopter pilot, a skill he continued (in the oil industry and National Guard) after he left the forces in 1965 – angering his military family. “I took pride in being the best labour or the guy that could dig the ditches the fastest,” he later said. “Something inside me made me want to do the tough stuff … Part of it was that I wanted to be a writer, and I figured that I had to get out and live.”

He relocated to the country music hub of Nashville, where he worked as a bartender and as a janitor for Columbia Recording Studios. In the late 60s he wrote songs for Jerry Lee Lewis and country singers including Ray Stevens, Faron Young and Billy Walker, but his solo career faltered.

A breakthrough came after he landed a National Guard helicopter at Johnny Cash’s home and handed him a tape of his songs, later describing the incident as “kind of an invasion of privacy that I wouldn’t recommend”. Cash admired Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down and his recording of Kristofferson’s song topped the country chart in 1970 and won song of the year at the Country Music Association awards.

That year, Kristofferson recorded the first of 18 studio albums he would release during his career. He briefly dated Janis Joplin, who recorded his song Me and Bobby McGee, and it became a No 1 hit after her death in 1970. Another Kristofferson song from that year, Help Me Make It Through the Night, became a hit single for Sammi Smith and was later covered by Elvis Presley, Gladys Knight, Mariah Carey and others.

By the time his fourth album Jesus Was a Capricorn topped the country chart in 1972, the strikingly handsome Kristofferson had begun an acting career, first appearing in Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie. Further notable films include playing the outlaw Billy the Kid in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), opposite Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) and with Burt Reynolds in sports comedy-drama Semi-Tough (1977). A Star Is Born cemented his Hollywood success, but it was later undermined by Heaven’s Gate (1980), famously a box-office flop.

In 1979, Willie Nelson made a hit album of Kristofferson covers, and in 1982 the pair collaborated with Dolly Parton and Brenda Lee on a compilation of their mid-60s songs. In 1985, Kristofferson and Nelson formed another supergroup, the Highwaymen, with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Their debut album, Highwayman, with its title track written by Jimmy Webb, returned Kristofferson to the top of the country charts.

In the 1980s, he was a vocal critic of US president Ronald Reagan and foreign policy in Central America, when the US funded combat against left-wing forces in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Kristofferson’s 1986 album Repossessed made reference to the conflicts.

His acting career, while consistent, was given a fillip in 1996 by playing villainous sheriff Charlie Wade in John Sayles’s acclaimed neo-western Lone Star alongside Chris Cooper and Matthew McConaughey. It led to prominent roles, including that of vampire hunter Abraham Whistler in three Blade movies, starring Wesley Snipes.

Kristofferson retired in 2021. His final film role was in the Ethan Hawke-directed drama Blaze (2018), and his most recent album was 2016’s The Cedar Creek Sessions.

He was married three times, first to Fran Beer in 1960. He married singer Rita Coolidge in 1973, and their duets album that year, Full Moon, became one of Kristofferson’s biggest hits, crossing over into the pop charts’ Top 30. They divorced in 1980. He is survived by his third wife, Lisa Meyers, whom he married in 1983 and had five children with, adding to three other children from his first two marriages.

The far right won the most votes in an Austrian election for the first time since the Nazi era on Sunday, as the Freedom party (FPÖ) rode a tide of public anger over migration and the cost of living to beat the centre-right People’s party (ÖVP).

The pro-Kremlin, anti-Islam FPÖ won 29.2% of votes, beating the ruling ÖVP of the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, into second place on 26.5%, according to near-complete results.

The opposition Social Democratic party scored its worst ever result – 21% – while the liberal NEOS drew about 9%. Despite devastating flooding this month from Storm Boris bringing the climate crisis to the fore, the Greens, junior partners in the government coalition, tallied 8.3% in a dismal fifth place.

The Communist party and the apolitical Beer party looked unlikely to clear the 4% hurdle to representation. Turnout was high at about 78%.

Profiting from a rightwing surge in many parts of Europe and taking Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as a model, the FPÖ capitalised on fears around migration, asylum and crime heightened by the August cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna over an alleged Islamist terror plot. Mounting inflation, tepid economic growth and lingering resentment over strict government measures during Covid dovetailed into a huge leap in support for the FPÖ since the last election in 2019.

Its polarising lead candidate, Herbert Kickl, who campaigned using the “people’s chancellor” moniker once used to describe the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, said he was ready to form a government with “each and every one” of the parties in parliament.

“We have written a piece of history together today,” he told cheering party supporters in Vienna. “We have opened a door to a new era.”

Nehammer called the result, which will send shock waves through Europe, “bitter” while his defence minister, Klaudia Tanner, admitted the debacle for the governing parties was a “wake-up call”.

Because it failed to win an absolute majority, the FPÖ will need a partner to govern. Unlike the other centrist parties, the ÖVP has not ruled out cooperating with the far right in the next government, as it has twice in the past in taboo-breaking alliances at the national level.

Nehammer, however, repeated on Sunday that a scenario in which Kickl, a former hardline interior minister, became chancellor was a non-starter, setting up a potential showdown in which the FPÖ would have to either jettison Kickl or take a backseat in government to win the ÖVP’s support.

“We’ll see in the coming weeks which is more important to FPÖ voters – claiming the chancellor’s seat or Herbert Kickl,” the political scientist Peter Filzmaier told ORF, adding that exit polling had shown it was issues and not personalities that had motivated voters.

Kickl, a bespectacled marathon runner, was a protege of Jörg Haider. The former firebrand FPÖ leader and Carinthia state premier, who died in 2008 in a drink-driving crash, transformed the party founded by ex-Nazi functionaries and SS officers into the ultra-nationalist force it is today.

Migrant groups have expressed fear for the future in Austria, which critics say has failed to fully own up to its Nazi past and role in the Holocaust. Rabbi Jacob Frenkel of Vienna’s Jewish Council called the election a “moment of truth”.

At his final rally in central Vienna on Friday, Kickl drew cheers from the crowd railing against anti-Russia EU sanctions, “the snobs, headteachers and know-it-alls”, climate activists and “drag queens in schools and the early sexualisation of our children”. He hailed a proposed constitutional amendment declaring the existence of only two genders. But the biggest applause line remained his call for “remigration”, or forced deportation of people “who think they don’t have to play by the rules” of Austrian society.

Nehammer actively sought during the campaign to co-opt the FPÖ’s tough stance on immigration, which the far right hopes to bring to bear at the EU level using Austria’s outsized influence in Brussels due to its geographical prominence and strong alliances. Congratulations to Kickl poured in from rightwing populist parties across Europe including Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland and Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party.

“The government has drastically reduced asylum applications,” the chancellor said on Thursday. “But we need more: asylum procedures in third countries before asylum seekers come through several European countries. And more: complete access to social welfare only after five years of residency in Austria.”

It was a remarkable comeback for the FPÖ, humiliated five years ago after the so-called Ibiza scandal in which Austria’s then deputy chancellor and party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, was caught on video at a Spanish luxury resort discussing a potential bribe from a woman purporting to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.

The disgraced Strache and his parliamentary leader, Johann Gudenus, who had initiated the meeting, were forced to resign, triggering snap elections in which the ÖVP, then led by “wunderkind” chancellor Sebastian Kurz, triumphed. Two years later Kurz quit politics amid a corruption investigation.

The last term has been marked by a stunning reversal for the government, an ÖVP coalition with the Greens, even by the baroque standards of politics in this Alpine country of 9 million. The conservatives shed 11 points in support in that time, with the FPÖ leading in the polls since late 2022 and coming first in European parliament elections in June.

Coalition negotiations are expected to take several weeks before a new government is in place. Regardless of the outcome, the ÖVP seems poised to hold on to power, either in an alliance with the far right or an unwieldy, unprecedented three-way coalition with smaller centrist parties, similar to Germany’s unpopular government. A two-way alliance with the Social Democrats could eke out a wafer-thin majority but analysts said such a pact was unlikely.

The far right won the most votes in an Austrian election for the first time since the Nazi era on Sunday, as the Freedom party (FPÖ) rode a tide of public anger over migration and the cost of living to beat the centre-right People’s party (ÖVP).

The pro-Kremlin, anti-Islam FPÖ won 29.2% of votes, beating the ruling ÖVP of the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, into second place on 26.5%, according to near-complete results.

The opposition Social Democratic party scored its worst ever result – 21% – while the liberal NEOS drew about 9%. Despite devastating flooding this month from Storm Boris bringing the climate crisis to the fore, the Greens, junior partners in the government coalition, tallied 8.3% in a dismal fifth place.

The Communist party and the apolitical Beer party looked unlikely to clear the 4% hurdle to representation. Turnout was high at about 78%.

Profiting from a rightwing surge in many parts of Europe and taking Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as a model, the FPÖ capitalised on fears around migration, asylum and crime heightened by the August cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna over an alleged Islamist terror plot. Mounting inflation, tepid economic growth and lingering resentment over strict government measures during Covid dovetailed into a huge leap in support for the FPÖ since the last election in 2019.

Its polarising lead candidate, Herbert Kickl, who campaigned using the “people’s chancellor” moniker once used to describe the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, said he was ready to form a government with “each and every one” of the parties in parliament.

“We have written a piece of history together today,” he told cheering party supporters in Vienna. “We have opened a door to a new era.”

Nehammer called the result, which will send shock waves through Europe, “bitter” while his defence minister, Klaudia Tanner, admitted the debacle for the governing parties was a “wake-up call”.

Because it failed to win an absolute majority, the FPÖ will need a partner to govern. Unlike the other centrist parties, the ÖVP has not ruled out cooperating with the far right in the next government, as it has twice in the past in taboo-breaking alliances at the national level.

Nehammer, however, repeated on Sunday that a scenario in which Kickl, a former hardline interior minister, became chancellor was a non-starter, setting up a potential showdown in which the FPÖ would have to either jettison Kickl or take a backseat in government to win the ÖVP’s support.

“We’ll see in the coming weeks which is more important to FPÖ voters – claiming the chancellor’s seat or Herbert Kickl,” the political scientist Peter Filzmaier told ORF, adding that exit polling had shown it was issues and not personalities that had motivated voters.

Kickl, a bespectacled marathon runner, was a protege of Jörg Haider. The former firebrand FPÖ leader and Carinthia state premier, who died in 2008 in a drink-driving crash, transformed the party founded by ex-Nazi functionaries and SS officers into the ultra-nationalist force it is today.

Migrant groups have expressed fear for the future in Austria, which critics say has failed to fully own up to its Nazi past and role in the Holocaust. Rabbi Jacob Frenkel of Vienna’s Jewish Council called the election a “moment of truth”.

At his final rally in central Vienna on Friday, Kickl drew cheers from the crowd railing against anti-Russia EU sanctions, “the snobs, headteachers and know-it-alls”, climate activists and “drag queens in schools and the early sexualisation of our children”. He hailed a proposed constitutional amendment declaring the existence of only two genders. But the biggest applause line remained his call for “remigration”, or forced deportation of people “who think they don’t have to play by the rules” of Austrian society.

Nehammer actively sought during the campaign to co-opt the FPÖ’s tough stance on immigration, which the far right hopes to bring to bear at the EU level using Austria’s outsized influence in Brussels due to its geographical prominence and strong alliances. Congratulations to Kickl poured in from rightwing populist parties across Europe including Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland and Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party.

“The government has drastically reduced asylum applications,” the chancellor said on Thursday. “But we need more: asylum procedures in third countries before asylum seekers come through several European countries. And more: complete access to social welfare only after five years of residency in Austria.”

It was a remarkable comeback for the FPÖ, humiliated five years ago after the so-called Ibiza scandal in which Austria’s then deputy chancellor and party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, was caught on video at a Spanish luxury resort discussing a potential bribe from a woman purporting to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.

The disgraced Strache and his parliamentary leader, Johann Gudenus, who had initiated the meeting, were forced to resign, triggering snap elections in which the ÖVP, then led by “wunderkind” chancellor Sebastian Kurz, triumphed. Two years later Kurz quit politics amid a corruption investigation.

The last term has been marked by a stunning reversal for the government, an ÖVP coalition with the Greens, even by the baroque standards of politics in this Alpine country of 9 million. The conservatives shed 11 points in support in that time, with the FPÖ leading in the polls since late 2022 and coming first in European parliament elections in June.

Coalition negotiations are expected to take several weeks before a new government is in place. Regardless of the outcome, the ÖVP seems poised to hold on to power, either in an alliance with the far right or an unwieldy, unprecedented three-way coalition with smaller centrist parties, similar to Germany’s unpopular government. A two-way alliance with the Social Democrats could eke out a wafer-thin majority but analysts said such a pact was unlikely.

• Russia hit the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia with multiple guided bombs on Sunday, wounding at least 16 people and damaging railways, infrastructure and residential and commercial buildings, Ukrainian officials said. Russian forces hit three districts in the south-eastern city with a total of 13 guided bombs between 5am and 7am, the governor of Zaporizhzhia region said. The strikes injured at least 16 people, including two children aged eight and 17, Ivan Fedorov said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app that several residential buildings, the city’s infrastructure and railways were damaged, and posting pictures from the attack sites showing charred cars, a hole blown through a residential building and rescuers battling fires. Local officials said trains were delayed and diverted while rescuers cleared the debris.

• The management of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station said Ukrainian forces had launched a new attack on a nearby electricity substation, destroying a transformer. The plant’s management said on Telegram on Sunday that an artillery strike had hit the transformer at the “Raduga” substation in the town of Enerhodar in south-eastern Ukraine. It described the incident as aimed at “destabilising the situation in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant’s satellite city”, posting a photograph showing smoke billowing from the top of a building. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the claim, but foreign minister Andriy Sybiha has previously accused Russia of planning strikes on Ukrainian nuclear facilities before the winter.

• Russia launched a drone attack on Kyiv early on Monday, with air defence units engaged in repelling the strikes, Ukraine’s military said. Witnesses told Reuters they heard several blasts that sounded like air defence systems in operation and saw objects being hit in the air. Kyiv, its surrounding region and all eastern parts of Ukraine were under air raid alerts, with Ukraine’s air force warning of Russia targeting the territory with attack drones.

• Ukraine said it sent more than 100 drones deep inside Russia to hit a major weapons depot on Sunday, as it stepped up attacks further inside Russian territory. “Defence forces struck the Kotluban military depot” in the Volgograd region, hundreds of kilometres from the Ukrainian border, a day after a shipment of Iranian weapons reportedly arrived at the site, Ukraine’s military general staff wrote on Telegram on Sunday. “A fire and ammunition detonation were observed on the depot’s territory,” the post said, adding that the facility was being used for storage and the modernisation of missiles and artillery. Russia did not confirm the strike, reporting only that it had destroyed 67 drones overnight in the Volgograd region. A Ukrainian defence sector source told media that 120 drones had flown more than 600km (370 miles) to target the depot early on Sunday. The governors in the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov reported some damage but no casualties from the attack.

• Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had repelled six new Ukrainian attempts to enter its western Kursk region and had also taken control of the settlement of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region. The ministry said on Telegram that its forces, with the support of aircraft and artillery, repelled attempts to enter the region near the village of Novy Put, about 80km (50 miles) west of Sudzha, a strategic crossing point for Russian natural gas exports to Europe via Ukraine. Ukrainian forces raided the Kursk region on 6 August and Zelenskyy said earlier this month that his forces controlled 100 settlements over an area of more than 1,300 sq km (500 sq miles). Russian sources dispute this figure and Moscow says it has since taken back some villages in a counterattack. The defence ministry said 50 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed and injured in the latest attempted Kursk incursion, and that a tank and four combat armoured vehicles as well as a car were destroyed. Ukraine has not commented. The battlefield reports could not be confirmed.

• Denmark said it was unlocking 1.3bn kroner ($194m) to help Ukraine bolster its arsenal against Russia’s invasion. The weapons and equipment would be produced in Ukraine but financed by Denmark and frozen Russian assets, the Danish defence ministry said on Sunday. The Scandinavian country also announced the creation of a joint defence hub in Kyiv designed to help develop of new partnerships. “Wars are not only won on the battlefield but also in industry,” the trade and industry minister, Morten Bodskov, said in a statement.

• Norway may put a fence along part or all of the 198km (123-mile) border it shares with Russia, a minister said, a move inspired by a similar project in its neighbour Finland. “A border fence is very interesting, not only because it can act as a deterrent but also because it contains sensors and technology that allow you to detect if people are moving close to the border,” the justice minister, Emilie Enger Mehl, told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK published late on Saturday. She said the Norwegian government was currently looking at “several measures” to beef up security on the border with Russia in the Arctic north, such as fencing, increasing the number of border staff or stepping up monitoring.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday marked the 83rd anniversary of a Nazi massacre of more than 30,000 Jewish people at the Babyn Yar ravine near Kyiv in 1941 – the largest massacre by the Germans and their local collaborators of Jewish people in Ukraine during the second world war. The Ukrainian president said on X: “Babyn Yar is a terrifying symbol, showing that the most heinous crimes occur when the world chooses to ignore, remain silent, stay indifferent, and lacks the determination to stand up against evil.”

California governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed a hotly contested artificial intelligence safety bill after the tech industry raised objections. Newsom said that requiring companies to stress test large AI models before releasing them could drive AI businesses from the state and hinder innovation.

“California is home to 32 of the world’s 50 leading AI companies,” the governor said in a statement accompanying the veto. “The bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions – so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”

The Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, officially known as SB 1047, would have targeted companies developing generative AI – which can respond to prompts with fully formed text, images or audio, as well as run repetitive tasks with minimal intervention. Companies building models costing more than $100m would have been required to implement “kill switches” for their AI as well as publish plans for the testing and mitigation of extreme risks.

Newsom said he had asked leading experts from the US AI Safety Institute on generative AI to help California “develop workable guardrails” that focus “on developing an empirical, science-based trajectory analysis”. He also ordered state agencies to expand their assessment of the risks from potential catastrophic events tied to AI use.

Despite the veto, the governor said: “We cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public … Safety protocols must be adopted.”

“While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data,” Newsom wrote. “For these reasons, I cannot sign this bill.”

SB 1047, written by Democratic state senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco, included a number of protections and oversight measures including requiring companies to implement the ability to shut down the model completely in the case of emergencies, to only use the AI model for the stated purpose as well as whistleblower protections for employees looking to disclose issues with an AI system.

In response to Newsom’s veto, Wiener said: “This veto leaves us with the troubling reality that companies aiming to create an extremely powerful technology face no binding restrictions from US policymakers … At the same time, the debate around SB 1047 has dramatically advanced the issue of AI safety on the international stage.”

AI companies and groups allied with Silicon Valley praised Newsom’s veto. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote: “Thank you @gavinnewsom for vetoing SB1047 – for siding with California dynamism, economic growth, and freedom to compute, over safetyism, doomerism, and decline.” Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann Lecun had likewise called the bill “extremely regressive”. California representatives Nancy Pelosi and Ro Khanna, both Democrats, had voiced their opposition to it in the weeks leading up to his decision.

Breaking with much of the tech industry, Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk had offered measured support for the legislation, tweeting in August that “California should probably pass the SB 1047 AI safety bill,” though he said coming out in favor of it was a “tough call”.

Critics of AI’s rapid growth decried the governor’s decision. Daniel Colson, the founder of AI thinktank the AI Policy Institution, called Newsom’s veto “reckless” and “out of step with the people he’s tasked with governing”.

SB 1047 had come under intense criticism for how some organizations say it would affect the open-source community. The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit that owns the developer of the Mozilla Firefox browser, previously urged Newsom to veto the bill.

“Today, we see parallels to the early Internet in the AI ecosystem, which has also become increasingly closed and consolidated in the hands of a few large, tech companies,” the foundation wrote in an earlier statement. “We are concerned that SB 1047 would further this trend, harming the open-source community and making AI less safe – not more.”

The bill received support from a roster of Hollywood artists, who urged Newsom to sign the bill in a letter published earlier this month.

Actor Mark Ruffalo wrote in a statement: “Is this bill perfect? Nothing is. Does it set the right tone of regulating an industry that has the possibility of doing great harm as well as good? It does. It will protect society and set the groundwork for a safe AI expansion into our lives.”

A US judge has ruled that that the woman accused of stalking Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd can pursue her defamation lawsuit against Netflix, noting that the show was wrongly billed as a “true story” when Netflix “made no effort” to fact check Gadd’s story or disguise Harvey as the inspiration for Martha.

Fiona Harvey, the woman whom the show’s character Martha is based on, has alleged the show falsely implied that she sexually assaulted Gadd and gouged his eyes, and that she had been sent to prison for stalking him. After viewers managed to identify her as the inspiration for Martha – against Gadd’s wishes – Harvey filed a US$170m lawsuit, arguing that the show had defamed her by depicting Martha as a convicted stalker as she had not been convicted of a crime.

In his ruling, handed down on Friday in California, US district judge Gary Klausner noted that because the show’s episodes begin with the line “This is a true story”, it invited viewers to take the story as fact. But while Harvey’s “purported actions are reprehensible”, Klausner found, Martha’s actions in the show are “worse” than what Harvey is accused of in reality.

“There is a major difference between stalking and being convicted of stalking in a court of law,” he wrote. “Likewise, there are major differences between inappropriate touching and sexual assault, as well as between shoving and gouging another’s eyes. While plaintiff’s purported actions are reprehensible, defendants’ statements are of a worse degree and could produce a different effect in the mind of a viewer.”

In his defence, Gadd alleged that Harvey stalked him for years while he worked at a London pub, would pinch his behind, and sent him thousands of disturbing emails and voicemail messages. He said that while he reported her to the police, she got a “harassment warning” and was not criminally prosecuted or sent to jail.

Gadd has said that the Netflix show and the stage play on which it was based, were both fictionalised and not intended as a “beat-for-beat recounting” of reality. In June, the Sunday Times reported that Gadd had reservations about the line “This is a true story,” but that it was included at Netflix’s request.

Klausner noted the Sunday Times article in his ruling, arguing that it could demonstrate “actual malice” if Netflix chose to represent the story as fact when they knew it was fictionalised.

Harvey was never named in Baby Reindeer, but members of the public quickly identified her through her social media posts. Harvey has said she has received death threats, with Klausner acknowledging that she had suffered “severe emotional distress” and felt fearful about going outside.

Klausner said Netflix “should have known the statements and portrayal of plaintiff through Martha were false, and that viewers would discover her identity and harass her based on these false statements and portrayals. Yet, defendants made no effort to investigate the accuracy of these statements and portrayals, or take further measures to hide her identity.”

Klausner denied Netflix’s motion to throw out the suit and dismissed Harvey’s claims for negligence, violation of her publicity rights, and for punitive damages. But, the judge allowed Harvey to pursue a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress, which applies to “extreme and outrageous” false statements.

“It appears that a reasonable viewer could understand the statements about Martha to be about plaintiff,” the judge wrote. “The series states that plaintiff is a convicted criminal who sexually and violently assaulted Gadd. These statements may rise to the level of extreme and outrageous conduct.”

Earlier this month, actor Jessica Gunning won an Emmy for her portrayal of Martha in Baby Reindeer, which won four Emmys overall.

The former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused the UK government of hypocrisy and concealment over the way it continues to block the release of secret files about the Spycatcher affair.

Before entering politics, Turnbull was a barrister for Peter Wright, a retired senior MI5 intelligence officer who revealed a series of illegal activities by the British security services in his memoir Spycatcher.

British officials have repeatedly refused to disclose 32 files concerning the Spycatcher affair. “There is something that they are still trying to hide,” Turnbull said. He added: “What’s the public interest in keeping them suppressed?”

Spycatcher detailed how MI5 bugged embassies, plotted against the former prime minister Harold Wilson, and was run for almost a decade by a suspected Soviet agent, Roger Hollis.

Turnbull represented Wright in a 1986 court battle in Australia that caused Margaret Thatcher global humiliation over her government’s failure to stop publication of the book.

During the trial Turnbull forced Thatcher’s cabinet secretary Robert Armstrong to admit he had been “economical with the truth”. Previously classified prime ministerial papers released last year revealed just how brazenly Armstrong had lied to the Australian court and how Thatcher had misled parliament.

The damning memos were released after a long campaign by the journalist and author Tim Tate for his book To Catch a Spy: how the Spycatcher affair brought MI5 in from the cold.

Speaking at an event to mark the book’s publication at the Chelsea history festival in London, Turnbull said: “Armstrong’s perjury was really extraordinary.”

Cross-examining Armstrong during the 1986 trial, Turnbull asked Armstrong whether No 10 and MI5 had agreed to cooperate with the right-leaning writer Chapman Pincher in a book about Hollis in the hope of securing a “safely conservative” account of Hollis’s suspected treachery. Armstrong dismissed this as “a very ingenious conspiracy theory” and “totally untrue”.

But the memos released last year showed Armstrong had in fact instructed how Pincher should be briefed because he believed he would write a “sympathetic presentation”. The memos were signed off with Thatcher’s initials. The former prime minister later told parliament that a secret investigation into Hollis found no evidence that he was a Soviet agent, when it fact it had warned there was a 20% chance that he was a traitor.

Turnbull said: “Armstrong’s perjury was really extraordinary. Since then I’ve obviously had a lot of experience as a prime minister in government. To me, it is still mind boggling that the cabinet secretary of the United Kingdom feels so entitled that he could go into a witness box and tell a dead set 100% lie.

“Not a fudge, a dead set lie, knowing that what he described as ‘totally untrue’ was, in fact, totally true, and evidenced by a memo signed by him sitting in a filing cabinet in Downing Street. The fact that he felt so invulnerable, really staggers me.”

Turnbull also pointed out that years before those memos were declassified they were made available to Thatcher’s biographer Charles Moore.

He said: “Interestingly Charles Moore was able to read them, for his official biography of Maggie Thatcher, and even Charles, who is a very sympathetic biographer, was unable to defend Armstrong.”

He said giving Moore access to secret memos had echoes of how Thatcher’s government tried to brief Pincher in the hope of securing a sympathetic account. He said: “Of course it’s hypocritical, it’s the same old thing all over again. If it has been made available to Charles Moore it should be made available to everyone.”

Turnbull said he had been discussing the Spycatcher affair recently, and Armstrong’s perjury, with the former Australian politician Kim Beazley. He said: “We could not imagine an Australian civil servant doing that. But maybe Armstrong was unique. It was a shocking act of perjury, Armstrong was bang to rights.”

Referring to the Spycatcher trial, Turnbull added: “I accused Armstrong of lying on several occasions, and it turns out I was right on several occasions.”

Most government documents are released after 30 years, but officials have cited various exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act to block publication of the 32 Spycatcher files.

Armstrong died in 2020. Wright died in 1995.

John Ashton, the veteran character actor who memorably played the gruff but lovable police detective John Taggart in the Beverly Hills Cop films, has died. He was 76.

Ashton died Thursday in Fort Collins, Colorado, his family announced in a statement released by Ashton’s manager, Alan Somers, on Sunday. No cause of death was immediately available.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Ashton was a regular face across TV series and films, including Midnight Run, Little Big League and Gone Baby Gone.

But in the Beverly Hills Cop films, Ashton played an essential part of an indelible trio. Though Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley, a Detroit detective following a case in Los Angeles, was the lead, the two local detectives, Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Ashton’s Taggart, were Axel’s sometimes reluctant, sometimes eager collaborators.

Of the three, Taggart – “Sarge” to Billy – was the more fearful, by-the-book detective. But he would regularly be coaxed into Axel’s plans. Ashton co-starred in all four of the films, beginning with the 1984 original and running through the Netflix reboot, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, released earlier this year.

Ashton played a more unscrupulous character in Martin Brest’s 1988 buddy comedy Midnight Run. He was the rival bounty hunter also pursuing Charles Grodin’s wanted accountant in The Duke while he’s in the custody of Robert De Niro’s Jack Walsh.

Speaking in July to Collider, Ashton recalled auditioning with De Niro.

“Bobby started handing me these matches, and I went to grab the matches, and he threw them on the floor and stared at me,” said Ashton. “I looked at the matches, and I looked up, and I said: ‘F–- you,’ and he said: ‘F–- you, too.’ I said: ‘Go –- yourself.’ I know every other actor picked those up and handed it to him, and I found out as soon as I left he went: ‘I want him,’ because he wanted somebody to stand up to him.”

Ashton is survived by his wife, Robin Hoye, of 24 years, two children, three stepchildren, a grandson, two sisters and a brother.