Israeli strikes on a central Beirut medical centre have killed at least nine people, after Israel’s military suffered its deadliest day on the Lebanese front in a year of clashes with Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Residents in the capital heard a missile flying overhead before hearing the sound of the explosion in the district of Bachoura. Videos showed the floor of an apartment building burning. Residents living in nearby areas began to flee, driving away quickly in cars and on scooters.

The Israeli strike hit a medical centre belonging to the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Organisation in the early hours of Thursday. The attack was the second airstrike on central Beirut this week, with most strikes having previously been confined to suburbs in the southern suburbs.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was targeting Beirut and issued evacuation warnings for various locations throughout the night. Three missiles hit the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, where the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed last week, and loud explosions were heard, Lebanese security officials said.

At least nine people were killed and others were wounded, Lebanese health officials said, adding that a further 46 people had been killed in Israeli attacks on the city in the previous 24 hours.

A Hezbollah-linked civil defence group said seven of its staff, including two medics, had been killed in the Beirut attack, which Israel said was a “precise” airstrike.

Two days after Iran fired more than 180 missiles into Israel, the wider region awaited Israel’s response to the attack. The US president, Joe Biden, said he would not support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites, as he attempted to contain a rapidly escalating regional conflict.

On Wednesday, the IDF said eight soldiers were killed in ground combat in southern Lebanon. The large group of soldiers, from the commando brigade and including an officer, was involved in a clash with Hezbollah in a village north of the Israeli border community of Misgav Am, while two other soldiers from the Golani brigade were killed in a separate incident.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a condolence video: “We are at the height of a difficult war against Iran’s axis of evil, which wants to destroy us … This will not happen because we will stand together and with God’s help, we will win together.”

A separate strike on the Syrian capital, Damascus, reportedly killed Nasrallah’s son-in-law. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Hassan Jaafar Qasir was among three people killed in the attack, which flattened a building in the Mazzeh district, an area favoured by Hezbollah militants and officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly killed paramedics across Lebanon over the past two weeks, including 14 emergency health workers last weekend. On Monday, six paramedics were killed in the west Bekaa, all of them belonging to the Islamic Health Organisation.

Most of the paramedics killed by Israeli bombing since the beginning of the war were affiliated with Islamic health services, whether Hezbollah or other parties.

International human rights groups have stressed that the killing of any healthcare workers is unlawful, regardless of political affiliation, as long as they are not facilitating or taking part in combat.

Armed militant groups in the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” have welcomed Tehran’s launch of more than a hundred missiles against targets in Israel on Tuesday and called for further attacks.

The statements, from groups in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, underline the regional extent of the current crisis, though analysts says that many key members of the Iranian-backed coalition have been so weakened over the course of the last year that their ability to convert rhetorical threats to real danger to Israel is limited.

Tuesday’s attack on Israel followed a series of devastating Israeli strikes on Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the Shia Islamist militia’s leader and a towering figure in Iran’s network of fighters across the region.

Hamas, the Iran-backed militant group in Gaza whose surprise attack into Israel last October triggered the crisis, praised the Iranian missile strikes, saying they avenged Israeli assassinations of a series of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian commanders over the recent months.

“We congratulate the heroic rocket launch carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, on large areas of our occupied territories, in response to the occupation’s continuing crimes against the peoples of the region, and in retaliation for the blood of our nation’s heroic martyrs,” the group said.

Yahya Saree, a spokesperson for the Houthis, an Iran-backed group which controls much of Yemen, “commended” Iran and threatened to “widen its operations against the Israeli enemy or those backing them” unless there was a ceasefire in Gaza. The group has been responsible for dozens of rockets aimed at Israel and strikes on international shipping in the Red Sea.

Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior adviser to the Counter-Extremism Project, a transatlantic thinktank and advocacy group, said it was predictable that the Houthis and other groups would make such threats.

“We shouldn’t read too much into the rhetoric … the Palestinian groups do not have the capability to escalate outside the [occupied] West Bank, while the Israelis have been so successful in last couple of weeks that I don’t think Lebanese Hezbollah can come to Iran’s defence.”

Hezbollah, the most powerful of Iran’s proxies and the keystone of the coalition, is reeling from the Israeli assassination campaign.

The group has lost nearly 500 fighters since it started firing into Israel in support of its ally, Hamas, last October and was then drawn into a prolonged war of attrition.

More than a thousand members were injured by exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, an attack presumed to be the work of the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, and hundreds more are thought to have died in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon over the past week. Casualties include much of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, including Nasrallah, who is considered irreplaceable.

Iran had long hoped Hezbollah’s massive rocket armoury and tens of thousands of experienced fighters would deter Israel from a major strike against Iran, possibly targeting Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Alia Brahimi, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, said that Iran’s decades-long strategy of building a coalition of ideologically aligned proxies had been vindicated.

“Iran feels under attack now and these are expendable components of its arsenal. They have done what they were designed to do and have acted as a protective shield,” Brahimi said.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it fired toward the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, and toward an airbase in a Tel Aviv suburb. The group has used surface-to-air missiles and shot down or chased off Israeli drones on several occasions – including in the past week.

On Saturday, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel’s main airport as the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was arriving back from New York, where he had addressed the United Nations. The next day, Israel launched its biggest raid yet against the group, striking the port city of Hodeidah.

Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst at the Crisis Group, said that before the war in Gaza, the Houthis were seen as a marginal faction in the axis.

That changed when the Houthis began hitting ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden making their way to the Suez Canal.

“Over the past year, the Houthis have taken centre stage,” Nagi said.

According to Faozi al-Goidi, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, the Houthis are not likely to be deterred anytime soon and could also target vessels further out in the Indian Ocean.

They may also seek to “partner with other militias to build an alliance that would threaten security in the region,” al-Goidi said.

After the suspected Israel operation targeting Hezbollah pagers, observers noted that pagers exploded in Syria and in Yemen, where 40 people were injured according to reports, underlining the regional networks built up by the group and Iran.

There are also powerful Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq, which remain largely unscathed, and in Syria, where they have suffered some losses.

The coincidental timing of an emergency meeting of Gulf foreign ministers in Doha with a visit to the same city by the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, for talks with Qatar’s emir raises questions about how the Gulf states will react if Israel pushes ahead with its plan to use its recent military success not just to weaken Iran, but reorder the Middle East.

This Sunni coalition of six Gulf monarchs is not naturally well disposed to Iran or its Shia proxies, and only in 2016 labelled Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. But they also oppose further Israeli escalation, and believe it is ultimately only Washington that has the means to restrain the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

They insist the establishment of an independent Palestinian state is the only path to regional stability, integration and prosperity.

“Palestinian statehood is a prerequisite for peace, rather than its byproduct,” the Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan wrote in Wednesday’s Financial Times, without making any reference to the Israeli-Iran conflict, or the likelihood that Joe Biden, in the twilight of his presidency and a month out from an election, is going to put the thumbscrews on Israel.

The reality is that Gulf state leaders, despite popular support in their countries for the Palestinian cause, are unlikely to change their own collective year-long strategy of not providing Palestinians anything other than humanitarian aid and political support.

Events can change at speed, but at present they face the prospect of a resurgent Israel determined to break out of the stalemate in Gaza by destroying Hezbollah’s military leadership and rendering Iran so weak that it can never fire at Israel again.

Reports that Israel is considering hitting Iran’s oil installations, let alone its nuclear sites, will unnerve the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). One Arab diplomat, no friend of Iran, said he feared for the moral implications of an Israeli “total victory”. It would bequeath the Middle East with a grim lesson – that “justice” can be obtained through total war.

The argument of the GCC, chaired by Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister, remains that a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel is the solution to the crisis. But Israel’s killing of Qatar’s key interlocutor, the Hamas political bureau member Ismail Haniyeh, was a severe blow to Doha’s hopes of achieving this.

Equally, on the second front – Lebanon – the GCC states, including Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have already urged Israel to respect the country’s sovereignty and accept a ceasefire. But at the same time none have endorsed Iran’s attack on Israel.

If Israel’s resurgence continues, the Gulf and Arab states may face a dilemma. On the one hand, the long-term weakening of Iranian influence might create an unwelcome and destabilising vacuum, one in which only Israel’s Iron Wall holds sway in the region. On the other hand, it might represent an opportunity for regional states to exploit Iran’s weakness and push back Iranian-backed non-state actors.

Many regional states have reason to want to see Tehran diminished. A weakened Iran could give greater space for Iraq’s president, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, to rein in Iranian-backed factions. Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, conspicuously silent about the conflict despite the support Hezbollah has shown him, might recover influence in Lebanon.

Jordan is exercised by the Islamic Action Front, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot that topped the poll in recent parliamentary elections, taking 28% of the vote and becoming the largest single party. Jordan has sporadically blamed Iran for trying to stir up groups hostile to it.

Bahrain, which normalised relations with Israel in 2020 along with the United Arab Emirates, has to fend off regular pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The pro-Iran LuaLua TV claims there have been Shia demonstrations in mourning for the death of Hassan Nasrallah.

Kuwait is locked in a long contest with Iran to extract gas from a contested offshore natural gas field.

But the critical relationship for the region is that between Iran and Saudi Arabia – a relationship that was put on a better footing with the Beijing de-escalation roadmap agreed in 2023 between the two countries.

Saudi Arabia hosted the Iranian president for the first time in 11 years and allowed Iranian pilgrims to travel to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Riyadh has re-established relations with Iranian-backed Syria and hopes it has secured Iranian support to prevent the Houthis in Yemen from lobbing missiles over the border into Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh has also reiterated countless times in public to the US that it is simply not interested in normalisation with Israel so long as a credible path to a two-state solution is not included. The speech at the UN by Netanyahu last week urging Saudi Arabia to follow the UAE in normalising relations with Israel simply took no account of this, or the obstacle he personally represents to such an agreement.

In a paper just published by the European Council on Foreign Relations, the authors argue that the Saudi-Iranian relationship is critical to maintaining peace.

“A zero-sum approach that seeks to completely lock Tehran out of the regional security architecture,” they write, “will not enjoy regional support and will ultimately be counterproductive.”

The UK has agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending years of bitter dispute over Britain’s last African colony.

The UK expelled the Chagossians in the 1960s and 1970s, in what has been described as a crime against humanity, when it retained possession of what it called the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT, after Mauritius gained independence in 1968.

The agreement follows 13 rounds of negotiations that began in 2022 after Mauritian arguments for sovereignty were recognised by the international court of justice (ICJ), the UN general assembly and the international tribunal of the law of the sea (Itlos) in 2019 and 2021.

Britain was found to have unlawfully separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius before granting independence in 1968. The UK initially defied UN votes and court judgments that demanded it return the islands, emphasising that the ICJ ruling was only an “advisory opinion”.

Under the agreement, announced on Thursday, the UK will retain control of the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, one of the islands. The UK severed the Chagos Islands from the rest of Mauritius and expelled between 1,500 and 2,000 islanders so that it could lease Diego Garcia to the US for military use, and the two allies have since operated the base jointly.

The Guardian understands that in the treaty there will be a right to return to all of the islands in the Chagos archipelago except for Diego Garcia.

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said the UK government had secured the future of the military base “as well as guaranteeing our long-term relationship with Mauritius, a close Commonwealth partner”.

The US president, Joe Biden, welcomed the agreement as a “clear demonstration that … countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.

The campaign challenging British ownership of the Chagos archipelago included the Mauritian ambassador to the UN, Jagdish Koonjul, raising his country’s flag above the atoll of Peros Banhos in a ceremony in February 2022 to mark the first time Mauritius had led an expedition to the territory since the expulsions.

Chagossians have held various views about what justice would look like, including what the future status of the islands should be. While there are those determined to exercise their right to return, some believe only about 50 people would do so.

Many Chagossians wanted self-determination, fearing their identity would be lost in any transfer of ownership to Mauritius, which does not recognise the islands as an independent territory.

An attempt to halt the negotiations, on the basis that the Chagossians were not consulted or involved, failed.

Chagossian Voices, a community organisation for Chagossians based in the UK and in several other countries, condemned the UK government’s lack of consultation with them before Thursday’s announcement.

It said: “Chagossian Voices deplore the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland. Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland. The views of Chagossians, the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.”

Other Chagossians have been focused on their rights and status in the UK. In 2022, the Home Office said descendants of islanders forcibly evicted would soon be able to apply to become British citizens.

Human Rights Watch, in a report last year, said the UK should pay full and unconditional reparations to generations affected by its forcible displacement of Chagos Islands inhabitants in the 1960s and 70s, calling it “an appalling colonial crime” and a crime against humanity by the UK and the US.

Three of the four candidates in the Conservative leadership contest criticised the decision to return the islands to Mauritius, even though the negotiations began under the Tory government.

There were 11 rounds of negotiations with the previous government and two under the current Labour administration, with Jonathan Powell, who served as Tony Blair’s chief of staff, appointed last month to head up the talks.

The UK government said the political agreement was subject to a treaty and supporting legal instruments being finalised, which both sides had committed to do as quickly as possible.

The UK has agreed to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a historic deal. Here we detail the history of the archipelago.

Melania Trump doubled down in her first public response to news of her passionate support for abortion rights, a position starkly at odds with that of her husband, Donald Trump, and the Republican party he leads.

“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,” the former first lady said in a video released on Thursday. “Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth. Individual freedom. What does, ‘My body, my choice’ really mean?”

Set to classical music and posted to social media, Trump’s words were a paraphrase of those in her forthcoming memoir, Melania, which the Guardian revealed on Wednesday.

On the page, Trump says: “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.

“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.

“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

News of that stance created a stir, a little over a month from election day in a campaign shaped by attacks on abortion rights by Donald Trump, the Republican party and their donors and supporters.

In June 2022, in the supreme court case Dobbs v Jackson, three hardline justices appointed by Trump voted to remove the federal right to abortion, marking a successful end to a 50-year crusade by religious conservatives. Draconian state bans followed – as did reports of women dying after being denied abortion care.

Trump has claimed credit but also tried to lessen electoral damage, given clear majority support for abortion rights that has fueled a succession of Democratic electoral wins since the Dobbs decision.

A spokesperson for the Republican nominee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, told the Guardian: “Sadly for women across America, Mrs Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives.

“Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear: if he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women and restrict women’s access to reproductive healthcare.”

Melania Trump describes in her new memoir how she made her husband, then president Donald Trump, drop a signature hardline immigration policy under which migrant children were separated from their parents, stoking domestic and international uproar.

“This has to stop,” the former first lady says she told her husband, “emphasizing the trauma it was causing these families” and seeing him swiftly comply, ending the policy on 20 June 2018.

It is not the only spousal disagreement revealed in the memoir, Melania, which will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Melania Trump also delivers a passionate defence of abortion rights significantly weakened by a supreme court to which her husband appointed three hardline justices and under further attack as he runs for the White House again.

Like abortion and reproductive rights, immigration is a hot-button issue in the campaign that will culminate on 5 November when Americans choose Trump or Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, as president for the next four years.

“Occasional political disagreements between me and my husband were a part of our relationship,” Melania Trump writes, “but I believed in addressing them privately rather than publicly challenging him. I found our discussions more productive when we could have a quiet dialogue at home, out of the public eye.”

She writes of her immigration concerns: “Given my past experiences with unfair media narratives, I always approached the news with some skepticism. Before discussing the border crisis with him, I thoroughly educated myself on the situation.”

Reports of children “being held in overcrowded detention centers and in absolute squalor … raised serious questions about their health and well-being. The lack of a clear plan for reuniting families and the absence of a definitive policy on these separations only added to the public’s outrage. I felt strongly that the situation demanded urgent attention and action.”

Describing approaching a husband “whose hardline stance on immigration was well known”, Trump writes: “I am sympathetic to all who wish to find a better life in this country. As an immigrant myself, I intimately understand the necessary if arduous process of legally becoming an American.”

Born in Slovenia, Trump became a US citizen in July 2006, eight years after meeting Donald Trump and shortly after giving birth to their son, Barron. That same month, Donald Trump had the sexual encounter with the adult film star Stormy Daniels from which arose his 34 felony convictions regarding hush-money payments.

Melania does not address that scandal in her book. Regarding child separations, she continues: “While I support strong borders, what was going on at the border was simply unacceptable. I immediately addressed my deep concerns with Donald regarding the family separations, emphasizing the trauma it was causing these families. As a mother myself, I stressed: ‘The government should not be taking children away from their parents.’ I communicated with great clarity … ‘This has to stop.’

“Donald assured me that he would investigate the issue, and on 20 June, he announced the end of the family separation policy.”

The first lady’s intervention was reported at the time. Also widely reported was an incident that occurred when she visited the southern border herself.

A first visit made her think “the root cause” of family separations “was not the government but rather the dangerous influence of criminal cartels in their home countries”.

But when she made a second trip to meet desperate migrant children, she stirred controversy by travelling in a jacket emblazoned with a slogan, “I really don’t care, do U?” that many thought insensitive at best and callous at worst.

On the page, Trump says the message, which she calls “discreet yet impactful”, was meant as a protest against anonymously sourced reporting.

“I was determined … not to let the media’s false narratives affect my mission to help the children and families at the border,” she writes. “In fact, I decided to let them know that their criticism would never stop me from doing what I feel is right. To make the point, I wore a particular jacket as I boarded the plane, a jacket that quickly became famous.

“As the door on the plane closed, my press secretary’s inbox was flooded with urgent emails from top-tier media outlets regarding the jacket … ‘It’s a message for the media,’ I said, ‘to let them know I was unconcerned with their opinions of me’ [but] she told me I couldn’t say that. ‘Why not? It is the truth.’ I disagreed with her insistence that I couldn’t say that. Ignoring my comments, she told a CNN reporter she was friendly with that it was simply a jacket, a fashion choice with no underlying message.”

Trump says the subsequent fuss “overshadowed the importance of the children, the border, and the policy change” and was “just another example of the media’s irresponsible behavior”.

But the press secretary she blames for communicating “misinformation” about the jacket, Stephanie Grisham, wrote in her own book that when the two women got back to Washington DC, they were told off by the president. Contradicting Melania’s claim to have worn the jacket to target the media, Grisham says Donald Trump came up with the idea, shouting: “You just tell them you were talking to the fucking press.”

Recent reporting suggests a different motive on Melania’s behalf. According to Katie Rogers, a New York Times reporter, the episode was part of a four-year “internal power struggle” between Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter and senior adviser.

As described by Rogers, Melania and Ivanka were “locked in a quiet competition for press coverage”, prompting the first lady to scrutinize every “mention of her name in the press … often trawl[ing] Twitter to see what the press, her critics, and her supporters were saying about her” – and then to seek ways of boosting such coverage.

A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago has been freed from Gaza in an operation led by the US.

The operation this week also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.

The woman is a member of the Yazidi religious minority, which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in a 2014 campaign that the UN has said constituted genocide.

Silwan Sinjaree, the chief of staff of Iraq’s foreign minister, said she was freed after more than four months of efforts including several attempts that failed because of the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

She has been identified as Fawzia Sido. Reuters could not reach the woman directly for comment.

Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for months and passed on her information to US officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with the help of Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Officials did not provide details of how exactly she was freed, and Jordanian and US embassy officials in Baghdad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The director of the digital diplomacy bureau at Israel’s foreign ministry, David Saranga, posted on X: “Fawzia, a Yazidi girl kidnapped by Isis from Iraq and brought to Gaza at just 11 years old, has finally been rescued by the Israeli security forces.”

The Israeli military said it had coordinated with the US embassy in Jerusalem and “other international actors” in the operation.

It said in a statement her captor had been killed during the Gaza war, presumably by an Israeli strike, and she then fled to a hideout in the Gaza Strip.

A US state department spokesperson said the US on Tuesday had “helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yazidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq”.

The spokesperson said the woman was kidnapped from her home in Iraq when she was 11, then sold and trafficked to Gaza. Her captor was recently killed, enabling her to escape and seek repatriation, the spokesperson said.

Sinjaree said she was in good physical condition but was traumatised. She had been reunited with family in northern Iraq, he added.

More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by IS militants in Iraq’s Sinjar region in 2014, with many sold into sexual slavery or trained as child soldiers and taken across borders, including to Turkey and Syria.

Over the years, more than 3,500 have been rescued or freed, according to Iraqi authorities, with about 2,600 still missing.

When Leonid Volkov, a longtime associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was brutally attacked with a hammer outside his home in Lithuania in March, it initially seemed yet another case of the Kremlin hunting down its enemies abroad.

The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and struck him repeatedly with a hammer, breaking his left arm and damaging his left leg. Western officials and opposition figures assumed the attack, which took place a few weeks after Navalny’s mysterious death in prison, had been orchestrated by the Kremlin.

Then, last month, Navalny’s team released an explosive investigation that cast doubt on that version of events.

In the video, Maria Pevchikh, the head of Navalny’s investigation department, accused the wealthy businessman and outspoken Kremlin critic Leonid Nevzlin of hiring the men to beat up Volkov outside his home, claiming the attack was triggered by a personal dispute.

Nevzlin has denied any involvement in the attack. In a statement on X, he wrote: “I have nothing to do with any attacks on people, in any form whatsoever,” adding that “justice will confirm the absurdity and complete baselessness of the accusations against me”.

In their investigation, Navalny’s team published screenshots they said showed conversations on the messaging app Signal between Nevzlin and an alleged associate, Anatoly Blinov, apparently discussing the attack on Volkov. Navalny’s team handed their dossier of evidence to Polish authorities, where Blinov was arrested in September.

The allegations have caused shock and led to infighting among members of the exiled Russian opposition, as people come to terms with the implications of the revelations, if true.

Pevchikh, of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, told the Guardian: “There isn’t a rulebook on what you do when you find out that someone you know stabs you in the back.

“Volkov was attacked three weeks after Alexei was killed. We had barely buried him. In the lowest point of our lives, someone pushes you from behind so you fall even more and suffer even more.”

Nevzlin, a former executive and partner of the ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, gave up his Russian citizenship after the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is now based in Israel, where he owns a stake in the Haaretz newspaper.

From Israel, Nevzlin has funded several media projects that are critical of the Kremlin and voiced staunch support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. He has previously clashed with other opposition groups, including Navalny’s team, over disagreements regarding the best approach to challenge Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Nevzlin is known for his more radical political views, including calling for the dissolution of Russia as a country and referring to the majority of Russia’s population as “slave cattle”.

The Navalny team’s investigation is based partly on a cache of private Signal screenshots they have obtained, which, they say, reveal exchanges between Nevzlin and a fixer, allegedly Blinov, a Russian lawyer.

Pevchikh stated in the video investigation that the screenshots were provided by a middleman with ties to Russia’s FSB security service.

The Guardian was unable to verify the authenticity of the conversations, which also featured covertly shot photos of Volkov and other members of Navalny’s team living in Vilnius. “Time to do away with this moron,” reads one of the messages, which the Navalny team claims Nevzlin wrote.

They further allege that Nevzlin, in the messages, discusses plans to abduct Volkov in a way that would leave him “in a wheelchair” before handing him over to the FSB.

The Navalny team said in a statement it believed “stupid senseless hatred” combined with “political competition” may have driven the attack on Volkov.

The Polish law enforcement agency said Blinov was under investigation on three charges, “including the charge of orchestrating the assault on Russian opposition activist Leonid V due to his political identity and activities”.

So far, they have not made any comment on the allegation that Nevzlin was behind the attack. “Many different scenarios have to be investigated. We also know that in such cases, disinformation is often being shared,” said Stanisław Żaryn, a national security adviser to the Polish president, in an interview in Warsaw.

The arrest of Blinov came months after Polish authorities detained two men suspected of attacking Volkov, based on a European arrest warrant issued by Lithuania.

Prosecutors said they were investigating eight people in the case – six Poles, a Belarusian and the Russian who has been charged.

The Polish prosecutor’s office said it was looking at events “that took place both in Europe (including Vilnius) and in South and North America”.

It was not immediately clear what incident authorities were referring to, though Pevchikh in the investigation also claimed Nevzlin was behind an attack on the wife of a well-known Russian economist based in Argentina who has feuded with Nevzlin on social media.

Nevzlin in turn told Sota, an opposition media outlet he sponsors, that Blinov, the fixer, was seeking to implicate him in ordering the attack on Volkov, and denied involvement in organising any attack. He said he himself filed a report to the Lithuanian police on 5 August about what he described as a provocation.

The community of Russian dissidents living abroad has long been disposed to infighting, but the accusations against Nevzlin have provoked the biggest split in the opposition movement since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Navalny’s team has also accused Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man who spent 10 years in prison after falling out with Putin, of being aware of Nevzlin’s alleged crimes before they became public.

Khodorkovsky has defended his former business partner Nevzlin, claiming the screenshots were probably part of a scheme orchestrated by Russian security services.

“Either it is true, and Leonid Nevzlin has gone mad, or it is an FSB provocation and a fake on which a lot of money has been spent … For perfectly understandable reasons, I lean towards the second,” Khodorkovsky said last month.

Khodorkovsky flew into Warsaw on Monday and met Polish prosecutors to share his own information about the case. In an interview on Wednesday, Khodorkovsky said he still believed the evidence was probably faked by Russian authorities.

He also suggested the most implausible part of the allegations was not that Nevzlin could have theoretically ordered the attack, but that he would have been clumsy enough to leave a trail of evidence. “There are things you can believe in, although it would be idiotic and hard to see why. But then there are things that it is absolutely impossible to believe,” he said.

The scandal risks further splitting Russia’s already marginalised opposition, which has been scattered across European capitals since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Putin’s brutal crackdown on dissent. Without Navalny, regarded as a unifying figure and Putin’s most formidable opponent, the opposition finds itself lacking a clear leader.

The public quarrels have been eagerly picked up by Russian state media propagandists, who have been leveraging the scandal to further discredit the opposition.

Pevchikh said: “It is damaging to all the sides including us, and it’s probably a life-changing event in terms of the Russian opposition … But in these very difficult situations you just have to speak the truth, however sad and scary it is.”

When Leonid Volkov, a longtime associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was brutally attacked with a hammer outside his home in Lithuania in March, it initially seemed yet another case of the Kremlin hunting down its enemies abroad.

The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and struck him repeatedly with a hammer, breaking his left arm and damaging his left leg. Western officials and opposition figures assumed the attack, which took place a few weeks after Navalny’s mysterious death in prison, had been orchestrated by the Kremlin.

Then, last month, Navalny’s team released an explosive investigation that cast doubt on that version of events.

In the video, Maria Pevchikh, the head of Navalny’s investigation department, accused the wealthy businessman and outspoken Kremlin critic Leonid Nevzlin of hiring the men to beat up Volkov outside his home, claiming the attack was triggered by a personal dispute.

Nevzlin has denied any involvement in the attack. In a statement on X, he wrote: “I have nothing to do with any attacks on people, in any form whatsoever,” adding that “justice will confirm the absurdity and complete baselessness of the accusations against me”.

In their investigation, Navalny’s team published screenshots they said showed conversations on the messaging app Signal between Nevzlin and an alleged associate, Anatoly Blinov, apparently discussing the attack on Volkov. Navalny’s team handed their dossier of evidence to Polish authorities, where Blinov was arrested in September.

The allegations have caused shock and led to infighting among members of the exiled Russian opposition, as people come to terms with the implications of the revelations, if true.

Pevchikh, of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, told the Guardian: “There isn’t a rulebook on what you do when you find out that someone you know stabs you in the back.

“Volkov was attacked three weeks after Alexei was killed. We had barely buried him. In the lowest point of our lives, someone pushes you from behind so you fall even more and suffer even more.”

Nevzlin, a former executive and partner of the ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, gave up his Russian citizenship after the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is now based in Israel, where he owns a stake in the Haaretz newspaper.

From Israel, Nevzlin has funded several media projects that are critical of the Kremlin and voiced staunch support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. He has previously clashed with other opposition groups, including Navalny’s team, over disagreements regarding the best approach to challenge Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Nevzlin is known for his more radical political views, including calling for the dissolution of Russia as a country and referring to the majority of Russia’s population as “slave cattle”.

The Navalny team’s investigation is based partly on a cache of private Signal screenshots they have obtained, which, they say, reveal exchanges between Nevzlin and a fixer, allegedly Blinov, a Russian lawyer.

Pevchikh stated in the video investigation that the screenshots were provided by a middleman with ties to Russia’s FSB security service.

The Guardian was unable to verify the authenticity of the conversations, which also featured covertly shot photos of Volkov and other members of Navalny’s team living in Vilnius. “Time to do away with this moron,” reads one of the messages, which the Navalny team claims Nevzlin wrote.

They further allege that Nevzlin, in the messages, discusses plans to abduct Volkov in a way that would leave him “in a wheelchair” before handing him over to the FSB.

The Navalny team said in a statement it believed “stupid senseless hatred” combined with “political competition” may have driven the attack on Volkov.

The Polish law enforcement agency said Blinov was under investigation on three charges, “including the charge of orchestrating the assault on Russian opposition activist Leonid V due to his political identity and activities”.

So far, they have not made any comment on the allegation that Nevzlin was behind the attack. “Many different scenarios have to be investigated. We also know that in such cases, disinformation is often being shared,” said Stanisław Żaryn, a national security adviser to the Polish president, in an interview in Warsaw.

The arrest of Blinov came months after Polish authorities detained two men suspected of attacking Volkov, based on a European arrest warrant issued by Lithuania.

Prosecutors said they were investigating eight people in the case – six Poles, a Belarusian and the Russian who has been charged.

The Polish prosecutor’s office said it was looking at events “that took place both in Europe (including Vilnius) and in South and North America”.

It was not immediately clear what incident authorities were referring to, though Pevchikh in the investigation also claimed Nevzlin was behind an attack on the wife of a well-known Russian economist based in Argentina who has feuded with Nevzlin on social media.

Nevzlin in turn told Sota, an opposition media outlet he sponsors, that Blinov, the fixer, was seeking to implicate him in ordering the attack on Volkov, and denied involvement in organising any attack. He said he himself filed a report to the Lithuanian police on 5 August about what he described as a provocation.

The community of Russian dissidents living abroad has long been disposed to infighting, but the accusations against Nevzlin have provoked the biggest split in the opposition movement since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Navalny’s team has also accused Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man who spent 10 years in prison after falling out with Putin, of being aware of Nevzlin’s alleged crimes before they became public.

Khodorkovsky has defended his former business partner Nevzlin, claiming the screenshots were probably part of a scheme orchestrated by Russian security services.

“Either it is true, and Leonid Nevzlin has gone mad, or it is an FSB provocation and a fake on which a lot of money has been spent … For perfectly understandable reasons, I lean towards the second,” Khodorkovsky said last month.

Khodorkovsky flew into Warsaw on Monday and met Polish prosecutors to share his own information about the case. In an interview on Wednesday, Khodorkovsky said he still believed the evidence was probably faked by Russian authorities.

He also suggested the most implausible part of the allegations was not that Nevzlin could have theoretically ordered the attack, but that he would have been clumsy enough to leave a trail of evidence. “There are things you can believe in, although it would be idiotic and hard to see why. But then there are things that it is absolutely impossible to believe,” he said.

The scandal risks further splitting Russia’s already marginalised opposition, which has been scattered across European capitals since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Putin’s brutal crackdown on dissent. Without Navalny, regarded as a unifying figure and Putin’s most formidable opponent, the opposition finds itself lacking a clear leader.

The public quarrels have been eagerly picked up by Russian state media propagandists, who have been leveraging the scandal to further discredit the opposition.

Pevchikh said: “It is damaging to all the sides including us, and it’s probably a life-changing event in terms of the Russian opposition … But in these very difficult situations you just have to speak the truth, however sad and scary it is.”

Typhoon Krathon has made landfall in Taiwan, bringing destructive wind and rain to the island’s second biggest city.

The storm has killed at least two people, with several more reported missing and more than 120 injured.

After hovering off Taiwan’s south-west coast for several days, Krathon hit Kaohsiung at about 12.40pm local time on Thursday, with powerful storm surges and wind gusts of nearly 100mph that tore roofs from buildings, downed trees and tossed shipping containers around ports.

At least nine people also died in a hospital fire on Thursday morning, just a few kilometres from where Krathon made landfall. The fire is not believed to be linked to the typhoon, but authorities battled to evacuate hundreds of patients from the hospital amid the severe weather conditions.

Krathon had reached super typhoon status earlier in the week, after passing through the islands in the northern Philippines, but stalled in the open seas to Taiwan’s south-west and weakened before crossing the coastline as the equivalent of a category one typhoon.

Residents received texts early on Thursday warning them to stay inside, but the Kaohsiung mayor, Chen Chi-mai, said there were still too many people outside.

“Looking at surveillance cameras we can see there are a lot of people out riding scooters under such strong wind and rain, which is really very dangerous,” he said.

Several landslides were also reported around the island, including in the far north-east, as the outer bands of the slow-moving storm covered much of Taiwan’s main island, bringing more than 1.6 metres of rain to some areas far from the storm’s centre.

Authorities took extra precautions with this storm, after Taiwan was hit by the very strong Typhoon Gaemi, equivalent to a category 4 hurricane, in July. Gaemi killed 11 people in Taiwan, brought widespread flooding including to Kaohsiung’s city centre and grounded several ships.

Offices, classes and financial markets were shut across all of Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday, and hundreds of flights were grounded. More than 38,000 troops had been placed on standby and almost 10,000 people evacuated from some mountainous areas.

Two reported deaths occurred before the storm made landfall. Rescue authorities said on Wednesday afternoon that one man in his 70s had died after falling from a tree and two were missing – one having fallen into rough seas and another swept away by a river, according to government news services.

On Thursday morning, a truck driver was reported killed after a falling boulder struck his vehicle. At least 70 injuries have also been reported, mostly in the east coast county of Taitung, which has been battered by high winds and rain. One person was reported missing in the central county of Yunlin.

The storm’s impact zone mirrored a destructive 1977 storm that killed 37 people, with authorities citing this to urge extreme caution. While Taiwan is frequently hit by typhoons, it is rare for them to make landfall on the densely populated west coast.

The storm is expected to weaken as it travels up the western plain of Taiwan, reverting back to a tropical depression before hitting the capital, Taipei, on Friday.

Cheaper versions of the “gamechanger” HIV prevention drug lenacapavir are to be made available in 120 low- and middle-income countries, manufacturer Gilead Sciences has announced.

However, campaigners said the deal “abandons” many countries with a high HIV burden, particularly in Latin America, and urged transparency over exact pricing.

Lenacapavir, given as a twice-yearly injection, has shown strong results for HIV prevention. It stopped infection in a trial involving girls and women in South Africa and Uganda, and offered almost complete protection in a second trial that mainly involved men across Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and the US.

Gilead has faced pressure to make lenacapavir available as soon as possible and as cheaply as possible globally. Already approved as a treatment for HIV, it is sold for $42,250 a year under the name Sunleca in the US. Researchers say it could be profitably produced for just $40 (£30) a patient, a year.

The company said it had signed agreements with six manufacturers to make and sell generic lenacapavir in 120 “high-incidence, resource-limited” countries. These are mainly lower-income countries.

It said it would also bridge the gap until those manufacturers were up and running by providing Gilead-supplied product, prioritising registration in 18 countries with high HIV rates including Botswana, South Africa and Thailand.

However, Dr Mohga Kamal-Yanni, policy co-lead for the People’s Medicines Alliance, criticised the decision to arrange licences directly rather than through the UN-backed Medicine Patent Pool. The agreements came with “draconian conditions” that could make it harder for people in excluded countries to get hold of the drug, she said.

“Behind the seemingly large numbers of countries included in the licence, Gilead is largely abandoning upper middle-income countries, where new infections are highest, with nearly all of Latin America left out,” she said.

“The countries that have been excluded can use their legal rights to overcome intellectual property restrictions with a compulsory licence. However, Gilead’s agreement prevents the six licensee companies from selling to those countries. Moreover, this route is fraught with difficulties and can face legal challenges from industry. But it is a country’s right, and should be used if necessary.”

Winnie Byanyima, UNAids executive director, said: “Lenacapavir, which requires only two injections per year, could be gamechanging – if all who would benefit can access it.

“We applaud Gilead for licensing the medicine without waiting for registration, which should be the norm. We are battling a pandemic and the speed at which generic versions come to market will dictate whether this medicine can really be transformative.”

Byanyima warned that 41% of new infections were in upper middle-income countries, and excluding them from the licences “is deeply worrying and undermines the potential of this scientific breakthrough”.

She said UNAids was also still waiting for a specific price and full transparency on Gilead’s costs.

The generic manufacturers are India’s Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Emcure Pharmaceuticals and Hetero Labs, as well as US-based Viatris’ unit Mylan, Egypt’s Eva Pharma and Pakistan-based Ferozsons Laboratories. UNAids said it would also like to see agreements in countries with high HIV rates such as South Africa.

Gilead said it will start filing for global regulatory approval for lenacapavir as a prevention regimen for HIV by the end of this year.

The leader of the Quebec independence party propping up the government of Justin Trudeau has insisted that the political lifeline depends on the quick passage of two pieces of legislation, and warned Canada’s embattled prime minister that he remains “very vulnerable”.

The Bloc Québécois leader, Yves-François Blanchet, told the Guardian the Liberals must act swiftly to enshrine protections for dairy farmers and boost payments to seniors to stave off a fatal vote of non-confidence. He warned that unless both pieces of legislation are passed into law by 29 October, his party would begin discussions with other parties to trigger a federal election.

“We have not had a friendly relationship with the Liberals for the last five years,” said Blanchet. “But we saw an opportunity to pursue issues that were good for Quebecers and also good for Canadians.”

The Bloc’s newfound political power follows a tumultuous month in parliament, in which Jagmeet Singh, leader of the leftwing New Democratic party (NDP) – ended a pact with Trudeau’s Liberals. Since then the Conservatives have twice attempted to topple the government with no-confidence votes, both of which failed.

Amid the instability, Blanchet’s party sensed a rare political opening.

The Bloc carefully assessed which pieces of legislation might be able to drive a wedge between Liberals and the NDP in order to extract as much political benefit as he could for his constituents. They settled on a bill to enshrine protection for dairy farmers and another that hikes payouts for seniors – two key voting constituencies for the party.

The party only fields candidates in the province of Quebec, but despite its narrow geographic range it exerts a disproportionate electoral force, with 32 seats in the House of Commons.

Formed in 1990 with the aim of promoting Quebec sovereignty at the federal level, the Bloc was initially envisioned as a temporary stopgap to a successful referendum on secession from Canada. But separatists narrowly lost a 1995 plebiscite, transforming the party into a permanent fixture of federal politics..

On many cultural issues, including on climate and LGBTQ+ rights, the Bloc tacks left of centre. Blanchet has called the British monarchy “racist”, “humiliating” and “almost archeological” in repeated calls for it to be scrapped as the foundation of Canada’s political system. But the party has also frustrated federal politicians for defending discriminatory provincial laws that run afoul of the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including a contentious law that bans religious symbols and disproportionately affects Muslim women.

Of the two pieces of legislation Blanchet is wielding as a bargaining chip, the 10% increase to seniors’ retirement income would cost C$16bn (US$12bn) over the next five years, according to the parliamentary budget officer, a figure Liberals warned was too costly.

The federal labour minister, Steven MacKinnon, this week dismissed the Blocas “separatists”, agitating for an election “to usher in a Conservative government that … would bring in the winning conditions for their sovereignty project”.

Other Liberals have been more cautious in their criticism. The parliamentary secretary, Adam van Koeverden, told reporters “the Bloc’s heart is in the right place” but suggested there were other routes to addressing poverty among seniors.

A loss of the Bloc’s support would not immediately trigger an election, as the Liberal minority is strong enough that it requires only one additional party to back it to remain in power, and experts say the NDP would prefer to keep Trudeau in power, rather than face an election.

But Blanchet’s posturing reflects a shifting political landscape.

Recent polling suggests the Bloc will dominate Quebec in the next election, wiping out a Liberal grip on key ridings needed for Trudeau to remain in power. That popularity mirrors a similar surge in support for the Parti Québécois, a provincial party whose leader has revived the prospect of a push to separate from Canada.

Blanchet says voters in Quebec are drawn to the Bloc because they see other party leaders “behaving like bad kids in the schoolyards” while his party remain “serious, responsible, coherent” in parliament. “Quebecers preferred that to the style of [Conservative leader Pierre] Poilievre and they are very, very tired with Mr Trudeau.”

He also believes the appeal lies in a way federal leaders attempt to court both Quebec voters, as well as those across the country.

“In order to please Quebec and Canada, Canadian party leaders tend to say one thing in French and another one in English. And it’s not the same. And eventually it shows. What’s good for Canada is not always good for Quebec, and what’s good for Quebec is not always good for Canada,” he said.

“People in Quebec see that we have their interests in mind. It’s strange to say, but the party with the clearest vision in parliament is the Bloc Quebecois. And we have a distinct advantage. Why? Because unlike the other parties, the Bloc does not want to become the government of Canada.”

A GP worried about his inheritance disguised himself as a nurse and injected deadly poison into his victim, who thought he was getting a home-visit Covid booster, a court has heard.

Thomas Kwan was not injecting Covid vaccine into Patrick O’Hara, prosecutors allege, but a poison that gave O’Hara a rare and life-threatening flesh-eating disease.

“Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth really is stranger than fiction,” said Peter Makepeace KC as he opened the prosecution case against Kwan at Newcastle crown court on Thursday.

Kwan, 53, is accused of attempting to murder O’Hara, his mother’s long-term partner and a “potential impediment” to him inheriting her estate.

The court heard Kwan devised an intricate plan to kill 71-year-old O’Hara, who lived in Newcastle with Kwan’s mother, by disguising himself as a community nurse and injecting him with poison.

Makepeace said the plan involved Kwan forging NHS documentation, disguising himself, using false number plates, and booking in to a hotel using a false name.

Police recovered a photograph from Kwan’s computer of him in disguise with a wig, beard and moustache.

“It was an audacious plan,” Makepeace told the jury. “It was a plan to murder a man in plain sight, to murder a man right in front of his own mother’s eyes, that man’s life partner.”

The court heard Kwan was a successful GP and partner at a surgery in Sunderland. The plot to kill O’Hara involved Kwan concocting a fake but “utterly convincing” NHS letter, said Makepeace. It said O’Hara was a priority for a home-visit Covid injection because of his age.

A second fake letter offered an appointment on 22 January, between 9am and 1pm. A grateful O’Hara “fell for it hook, line and sinker”, Makepeace said.

The court heard Kwan booked himself into a Premier Inn under a false name, arriving at 2.45am on the day of the appointment, 22 January. Hotel CCTV captured Kwan leaving wearing a long coat, hat, blue surgical gloves and a clinical mask, the jury heard.

Makepeace said Kwan had clearly disguised himself “and of course he needed to. What he is about to do he is going to do in front of his own mother, to a man who knew him and he knows.”

O’Hara did not recognise Kwan behind surgical gloves, mask and tinted spectacles. He did not even ask for identification, shouting up to Kwan’s mother that “the man from the National Health Service had arrived”, Makepeace said.

After a questionnaire, blood pressure test and the taking of blood and urine samples, Kwan’s mother came downstairs, the jury heard, and asked if the “nurse” could take her blood pressure as she had come off tablets because of a rash.

He did this, with his mother oblivious to the fact it was her son, the court heard. The jab itself, the court heard, caused “terrible pain” and prompted O’Hara to shout “Bloody hell”, but the “nurse” reassured him the pain was not uncommon. As he left, Kwan’s mother remarked that the visitor was the same height as her son.

Later, Makepeace said, O’Hara started feeling increasing pain and eventually went to A&E, where staff assumed the booster had been applied clumsily. The next day, O’Hara’s arm was blistered and discoloured and his GP sent him back to hospital where doctors were baffled, the court heard.

It became clear O’Hara was suffering from a rare and life-threatening disease called necrotising fasciitis and specialists had to remove large portions of arm flesh in repeated procedures. He spent weeks in intensive care.

The court heard Kwan lived with his wife and young son in a detached house on an executive estate in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside.

Kwan had a “deeply disturbing, long-term, interest bordering on obsession” with poisons and chemical toxins and their use in killing human beings, Makepeace said.

When police searched his property they found various chemicals in the garage including liquid mercury, thallium, sulphuric acid and arsenic. There were also castor oil beans and coffee filters. In the house was a recipe for manufacturing ricin from castor beans.

At one stage ricin was thought to be the poison but a Ministry of Defence chemical expert thought a more likely candidate was iodomethane, predominantly used as fumigant pesticide, Makespeace said.

The court heard that there has, until now, been no recorded medical case of any human being injected with iodomethane.

Kwan has admitted a charge of administering a noxious substance but denies alternative charges of attempted murder, or causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Makepeace said Kwan would claim that he only intended to cause his victim “mild pain or discomfort” but the prosecution allege the defendant used “his encyclopaedic knowledge of, and research into, poisons” to attempt to murder O’Hara.

The trial continues.

Rudy Giuliani texted the wrong number as he tried to persuade Michigan legislators to help overthrow the 2020 election.

According to a document unsealed in federal court on Wednesday, on 7 December 2020, Giuliani tried to send a message urging someone unspecified to help in the plan to appoint a slate of fake electors.

“So I need you to pass a joint resolution from the legislature that states the election is in dispute, there’s an ongoing investigation by the legislature, and the Electors sent by Governor Whitmer are not the official electors of the state of Michigan and do not fall within the Safe Harbor deadline under Michigan law,” Giuliani wrote.

As Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election, his allies sought to appoint alternate slates of electors in states that he lost to send to Congress. These false slates of electors met in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona and signed certificates in which they represented that they were valid electors in their states. Trump allies then attempted to send those certificates to Congress for counting on 6 January 2021. The plan failed.

Some of the electors have since been charged criminally, while others have not. Some have said they were told that they were instructed they were acting as a backup in case Trump won court cases challenging the election results.

Prosecutors said Giuliani failed to send the message because “he put the wrong number into his phone,” prosecutors wrote.

The detail was included in a legal brief by the special counsel Jack Smith that was unsealed by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal election interference case against Trump.

The brief, which contains several new details about Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 race, argues why Trump should be held accountable – specifically, why he is not entitled to immunity after the US supreme court held that presidents cannot be charged for “official acts” while in office.

Giuliani is an unnamed co-conspirator in the case.

He also faces criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona over his efforts to overturn the election results.

He has had his law license suspended in New York and has been disbarred in Washington DC over his involvement in the scheme. He is also appealing a judgment that he owes two Georgia election workers nearly $150m for defaming them after the 2020 election.

Giuliani has a history of sloppy cellphone use. According to New York magazine, he once accidentally called an NBC reporter and left a message in which he could be heard discussing overseas business and said: “We need a few hundred thousand.”

He also once appeared to accidentally text a reporter one of his passwords.