Israel launched an intense wave of air raids on southern Lebanon on Monday, with 100 aircraft targeting about 120 sites in the space of an hour, according to the country’s military.

An IDF Arabic spokesperson issued an urgent warning to Lebanese civilians to avoid being on the beach or on boats on the coast from the Awali River southward until further notice.

The wave of strikes came as Israelis marked the anniversary of last year’s 7 October attacks by Hamas, the trigger for a year of escalating war in the region.

The IDF also announced on Monday that it had designated a new closed military zone in northern Israel, the fourth closed area since the ground invasion started, running eastward from the Mediterranean coast.

“These targets belonged to various units of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation, including regional units of Hezbollah’s southern front, the Radwan Forces, the Missiles and Rockets Force, and the Intelligence Directorate,” the IDF said in a statement.

“This operation follows a series of strikes aimed at degrading Hezbollah’s command, control, and firing capabilities, as well as assisting ground forces in achieving their operational goals.”

As memorial events took place across Israel, violence continued to rage on multiple fronts, with Israel also expanding its ground operation into Lebanon with elements of a third division joining the fighting.

Amid clear evidence that Israel is rapidly ramping up its military operations against multiple Iran-allied proxies, Hamas fired rockets out of Gaza to coincide with memorial events, vowing to continue with a “long and painful war of attrition” against Israel.

Hamas’s ability to fire rockets, although massively constrained by 12 months of a devastating Israeli offensive that has claimed more than 41,000 Palestinian lives, comes despite periodic statements from the IDF declaring the group effectively beaten.

Despite the quickly increasing tempo of Israeli military operations, Hezbollah also fired scores of missiles at Israel throughout the day on Monday, while a ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthis was shot down as evening fell.

On Monday evening, sirens sounded in central Israel after several projectile launches were identified crossing from Lebanon. The Israeli military said some projectiles were intercepted, while the rest fell in open areas.

Fears of a wider regional escalation, not least from the anticipated “significant” retaliation that Israel has promised for Iran’s large-scale missile attack last week, were underlined by the UK’s announcement that it had withdrawn family members of diplomats in the country.

“As a precautionary measure following escalation in the region, family members of British embassy staff have been temporarily withdrawn,” the Foreign Office travel advice webpage for Israel reads. “Our staff members remain.”

With expectation high that Israel could launch a major retaliation against Iran at any moment, Tehran repeated its own insistence that it would respond to any Israeli attack on its soil.

In Lebanon, where Israel insisted its week-long ground operation was to be “limited” and “targeted”, elements of three divisions are now involved in the fighting, after the IDF said in a statement that its 91st division had joined the ground incursion overnight.

Night-vision images released on Monday showed a column of infantry moving into Lebanon with heavy rucksacks and sleeping pads, suggesting it was more than a short raid.

According to the statement, the division’s forces were redeployed to northern Israel over the last two weeks, joining units from the 36th and 83rd divisions already involved in the fighting in Lebanon.

The widening conflict risks further drawing in the US, which has provided crucial military and diplomatic support to Israel. Iran-allied militant groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have joined in with long-distance strikes on Israel.

A fresh round of airstrikes hit Beirut’s suburbs late on Sunday as Israel also intensified its bombardment of northern Gaza, calling for evacuations of the north of the territory amid renewed military operations.

In southern Lebanon an Israeli strike killed at least 10 firefighters, the latest in a series of strikes that have killed dozens of first responders, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

It said they were in a municipality building in the southern town of Baraachit that was hit as they prepared for a mission. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported more than 30 strikes overnight into Sunday, while Israel’s military said about 130 projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

Last week, Israel launched what it called a limited ground operation into southern Lebanon after it killed the longtime Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his top commanders in a series of attacks. The fighting is the worst since Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.

At least 1,400 Lebanese people, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million driven from their homes. Israel says it aims to drive the militant group from the blue line boundary between the two countries so tens of thousands of Israeli citizens can return home.

The Israeli military is setting up a forward operating base near a UN peacekeeping mission on the blue line in southern Lebanon. The base put peacekeepers at risk, said an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion, refused the Israeli military’s request to vacate some of its positions in advance of the ground incursion. Hezbollah said it would not target Israeli forces near the base, and accused Israel of using human shields.

In Gaza, where there has also been a sharp rise in Israeli military operations, Israeli tanks on Monday advanced into Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic urban refugee camps, after encircling it, residents said.

“We are in a new phase of the war,” the Israeli military said in leaflets dropped over the area. “These areas are considered dangerous combat zones.”

Keir Starmer has urged all sides to pull back from the brink in the Middle East as he addressed the House of Commons on the anniversary of the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.

With Israel yet to decide how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented missile strike last week, the prime minister said he supported “Israel’s right to defend herself against Iran’s aggression, in line with international law”.

But he added: “The region cannot endure another year of this. Civilians on all sides have suffered too much. All sides must now step back from the brink and find the courage of restraint.”

Starmer described the firing of 180 missiles at Israel as “not a defensive action by Iran, it was an act of aggression … in response to the death of a terrorist leader”. Iran’s attack was prompted by the Israeli killing of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut 10 days ago.

He said Hezbollah had fired a year-long barrage of attacks at Israel, forcing 60,000 people to flee from their homes, and said UN resolutions required Hezbollah to move back to north of the Litani River.

Starmer also indicated the UK would take no part in any retaliation by Israel against Iran.

Referring to the 7 October attack, he told MPs: “Nobody in this house can truly imagine what it feels like to cower under the bodies of your friends hoping a terrorist won’t find you, mere minutes after dancing at a music festival.

“Nobody in this house can truly imagine seeing your city, your homes, your schools, your hospitals, your businesses obliterated, with your neighbours and family buried underneath. It is beyond our comprehension, and with that should come a humility.”

He said the first anniversary of the 7 October attack was also a “day of grief” for the wider Middle East.

“Over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, tens of thousands orphaned, almost 2 million displaced, facing disease, starvation, desperation, without proper healthcare or shelter,” Starmer said. “It is a living nightmare and it must end.”

Although he admitted the chances of a ceasefire seemed remote, let alone a two-state solution, Starmer said diplomacy was slow and required the UK to work in unity with international partners. He added that Palestine deserved recognition as a state but said this should happen at the point of maximum impact.

Starmer denied suggestions that there had been any stepping back in the government’s support for Israel, and rejected repeated calls for a complete ban on UK arms exports to the country. He said “to do so would include a ban on arms for defensive purposes”, something he opposed. However, he issued stern words over the Israeli government’s approach to aid in Gaza.

“There are ongoing restrictions in aid that are impossible to justify. Israel must open more crossings,” Starmer said. “Crucially, they must provide a safe haven for aid workers. Too many have been killed, including three British citizens. Israel must act now so that, together with our allies, we can surge humanitarian support ahead of the winter.”

As the statement progressed, more MPs broke the call for unity, either demanding tougher action on Iran or decrying the death toll of children and calling for a ban on arms sales.

The US president, Joe Biden, has condemned the “unspeakable brutality” of the 7 October attacks launched by Hamas on Israel as world leaders, governments and individuals around the globe marked their first anniversary in commemorations ranging from official statements to formal ceremonies and small private vigils.

The attack killed nearly 1,200 people, according to Israeli government figures, including hundreds at a music festival near the Israel-Gaza border, and saw about 250 hostages taken to Gaza.

The Israeli offensive into Gaza it triggered has since killed nearly 42,000 people, most of them civilians, according to health authorities.

Biden paid tribute to the people – including American citizens – killed and kidnapped and said he remained committed to Israel’s right to defend itself a year on.

“I believe that history will also remember 7 October as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day,” Biden said, adding: “Far too many civilians have suffered far too much during this year of conflict.”

The conflict has over the last year widened into a regional crisis involving Lebanon – where Israel is conducting heavy airstrikes nearly a year after Hezbollah militants began an exchange of fire with Israeli forces – Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Iran, which last week fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of its allies and an Iranian general.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said Monday was “a day for the global community to repeat in the loudest voice our utter condemnation of the abhorrent acts of Hamas, including the taking of hostages”, who must be released immediately and unconditionally.

“The 7 October attack scarred souls,” he said. “On this day, we remember all those who were brutally killed and suffered unspeakable violence – including sexual violence – as they were simply living their lives.”

He added that the “wave of shocking violence and bloodshed” that has since erupted “continues to shatter lives and inflict profound human suffering for Palestinians in Gaza, and now the people of Lebanon” and it was “time to stop the suffering”.

Pope Francis said “the fuse of hatred” had been lit a year ago and “exploded in a spiral of violence – in the shameful inability of the international community and the most powerful countries to silence the weapons and put an end to the tragedy of war”.

The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said she was “heartbroken over the scale of death and destruction in Gaza over the past year” and said it was “far past time for a hostage and ceasefire deal to end the suffering of innocent people”.

The White House was scheduled to hold a vigil for the Israeli hostages, while the Republican presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, was due to mark the anniversary at a remembrance event in Miami organised by Jewish community leaders.

In Germany, the chancellery in Berlin was draped with a yellow ribbon commemorating the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas and the names of the people killed and kidnapped in the attack were read out in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said his country stood by Israel’s side. “We feel with you the horror, the pain, the uncertainty and the sadness … the Hamas terrorists must be fought”, he said.

Scholz, who was to attend a memorial event at a Hamburg synagogue, also drew attention to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, saying people “need hope and perspectives if they are to renounce terror”. Berlin “is calling for a ceasefire, for the hostages to be freed, and for a political process”, he said.

Emmanuel Macron said on social media that “the pain remains, as vivid as it was a year ago. The pain of the Israeli people. Ours. The pain of wounded humanity. We do not forget the victims, the hostages, or the families.”

More than 40 French citizens were killed in the 7 October attack. The French president met the families of French hostages being held in Gaza on Monday before an official evening ceremony to be attended by about 4,000 people, including the prime minister, Michel Barnier.

Keir Starmer said: “One year on from these horrific attacks, we must unequivocally stand with the Jewish community and unite as a country.”

Britain’s prime minister added: “On this day of pain and sorrow, we honour those we lost, and continue in our determination to return those still held hostage, help those who are suffering, and secure a better future for the Middle East.”

Giorgia Meloni paid tribute in a speech during a ceremony at the Great Synagogue in central Rome to the victims of the “inhumane aggression perpetrated a year ago by Hamas”.

Remembering and condemning the attack was “not a mere ritual, but the prerequisite for any political action to restore peace in the Middle East”, the Italian prime minister said, adding that the “reticence increasingly encountered in doing so betrays a latent and rampant antisemitism that must concern everyone”.

The Spanish government said in a statement that it “reiterates its most vehement condemnation of the atrocious Hamas terrorist attacks” and expresses its solidarity with the relatives of the hostages who remain in captivity”.

Madrid called for “a ceasefire, the release of hostages, access for humanitarian aid … and an end to violence”, pledging to continue working for “peace in the Middle East and advancing the solution of two states living side by side in peace and security”.

Commemorations were also planned in Belgium, Austria and Hungary, while in Brussels, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, was attending a ceremony at a central synagogue.

In Australia, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, attended a vigil in Melbourne, with members of the Jewish community and lawmakers from across party lines. The day carried “terrible pain”, Albanese said, condemning “all prejudice and hatred”.

Pro-Palestinian events also took place in many countries, with hundreds gathering amid a heavy police presence at Sydney town hall to attend a vigil for Palestinian lives lost, and a rally was held in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, to protest against Israeli airstrikes.

A verdict in the rape trial of a man who is the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is expected to be reached on Tuesday in a decision that could prove crucial to further investigations in the case of the toddler who went missing 17 years ago.

Christian Brückner, 47, has been on trial since February on charges that he raped three women and committed two child sexual abuse crimes, allegedly carried out in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

During closing arguments to the court, prosecutors recommended that Brückner should be jailed for 15 years, calling him a “sadistic psychopath”.

But Brückner’s lawyer, Friedrich Fülscher, said on Monday he should be acquitted, questioning the veracity of witness statements and telling the court: “The trial should never have taken place.”

He also argued the trial had been overshadowed by the unrelated McCann case, suggesting Brückner might not have been charged if he had not already been the main suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance.

In a move widely seen as a sign Brückner could be acquitted, the judge, Ute Engemann, ruled in July that the evidence against the defendant was “insufficient”, and lifted the arrest warrant against him due to “lack of urgent suspicion”.

Brückner would have been released from prison then, even as the trial continued, had it not been for the fact that he was serving a seven-year prison term for another rape.

That term is due to come to an end next spring, and if he is cleared on Tuesday he could be released. That could seriously affect German prosecutors’ attempts to pursue Brückner’s alleged involvement in the McCann case.

A decision is expected on Tuesday at around 10am local time at the district court in Braunschweig, northern Germany.

Asked on Monday if there was anything he wanted to say, Brückner, who has remained near-silent throughout the trial, said quietly: “No, I would not like to.”

A convicted rapist and paedophile, Brückner was named in June 2020 as the main suspect in the 2007 disappearance of Madeleine McCann from the resort of Praia da Luz on the Algarve where she was on holiday with her parents. No charges have ever been brought.

But Braunschweig’s chief prosecutor, Hans Christian Wolters, has repeatedly stated investigators’ belief in his involvement in that case and his responsibility for her death. However, despite citing supposed “concrete evidence”, prosecutors have yet to state what that evidence is.

Brückner’s connection to the McCann investigation has been repeatedly touched on throughout the trial. Fülscher said the McCann case had “hung like a fog” over Brückner’s current trial in which he is accused of raping Hazel Behan, an Irish administrator, in her Praia da Rocha apartment in 2004.

Brückner is also charged with the alleged rape of a teenage girl in his home in the same city and raping an elderly woman in her holiday apartment.

If convicted, Brückner could face 15 years in jail. He denies the charges.

Among those to have given evidence in the current case – as well as that of McCann’s disappearance – are two witnesses who had close contact with Brückner over a number of years, acting as accomplices with him in a range of thefts.

They told the court about finding videos in Brückner’s Portuguese home showing him raping two women, although these films have never been found.

Separately investigators found evidence in internet chats of Brückner apparently discussing the rape and abduction of women and children.

A former prison mate of Brückner’s told the court last month that Brückner had confessed to him that he had once abducted a child in Portugal. The man said Brückner had told him that one night he had seen an “open window” and had “found a kid and took the child”.

Brückner’s defence team have said the claims do not stand up.

They have claimed that witnesses who told the court Brückner had masturbated in front of them when they were minors had mistaken the act and that he had instead been urinating in public.

Kamala Harris defended her economic plans, refused to call Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a close ally and said she would not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for peace talks if Ukraine was not also represented, during a wide-ranging sit-down interview that aired on Monday.

With the presidential race between Harris and Donald Trump effectively dead-locked, Harris has launched an unusually robust media blitz, which includes popular podcasts, talk radio, a battleground state town hall, daytime television, late night shows and Monday’s network sit-down on CBS’s 60 Minutes prime-time election special.

Before the interview with Harris aired, CBS correspondent Scott Pelley detailed his attempts to secure a similar 60 Minutes sit-down with Trump.

“Unfortunately last week, Trump cancelled,” Pelley told the audience. He said the Trump campaign provided “shifting explanations” for why the Republican nominee declined to participate, including that he did not want to be factchecked.

Instead, the network broadcast an interview with Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who Pelley said was “paying the price for Trump’s claims of a stolen 2020 election.” The election official lost his primary in July to an opponent who called Maricopa county’s elections a “laughing stock.”

In the interview with CBS’s Bill Whitaker, Harris was pressed on how she would pay for her economic proposals, which include plans to build millions of new housing units, tax breaks for new parents and $25,000 down-payment assistance for new homebuyers. The vice-president vowed to raise taxes on the country’s billionaires and biggest corporations, a solution Whitaker found dubious.

“We’re dealing with the real world here,” he said, asking how she would persuade Congress to raise taxes on the country’s highest earners. Harris insisted there were lawmakers who would listen to her pitch if she were president.

An analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that seeks lower deficits, released a report on Monday that found Harris’s economic proposals could see the federal debt climb by as much as $8.1t through 2035, or have no impact at all. Trump’s plans on the other hand could add as much as $15.15t to the nation’s debt over the same period.

“I cannot afford to be myopic in terms of how I think about strengthening America’s economy,” Harris said in the interview. “Let me tell you something. I am a devout public servant. You know that I’m also a capitalist, and I know the limitations of government.”

Harris navigated around the thorny question of whether Netanyahu was “a real close ally,” saying that “The better question is: Do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.”

The excerpt was released on Sunday, ahead of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s deadly cross-border attack on Israel. In a sign Harris intends to hew closely to Biden’s approach to foreign policy, the vice-president said that Israel had a right to defend itself, while adding that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Israel’s war has levelled Gaza and killed almost 42,000 Palestinians.

In an exchange about the future of Ukraine, Harris categorically ruled out a bilateral meeting with Putin to discuss ending the war without involving the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “Without Ukraine? No,” Harris said.

She also again warned of what could happen if Trump were in office: “Donald Trump, if he were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. He talks about, ‘oh, he can end it on Day 1.’ You know what that is. It’s about surrender.”

During the interview, which was pre-taped and aired in full on Monday, Harris defended her ideological shift to the political center, insisting as she has in the past that her “values have not changed.”

She said that travelling the country as vice-president, and working to pass bipartisan legislation in Congress had emphasized the need to find “common ground.”

“I believe in building consensus,” she said.

Harris was also asked about the gun she talked about owning during an event held with Oprah Winfrey last month, in which she declared: “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot,” drawing laughs from the host and the audience. On 60 Minutes, Harris said she owns a Glock. Asked if she has ever fired it, she laughed: “Of course I have,” she said. “At a shooting range. Yes.”

Part of the interview included her running mate, Tim Walz, who was asked where he and Harris disagree.

With a bashful smile, Walz said Harris probably wished he was a “little more careful” with his public comments. Since becoming the vice-presidential nominee, Walz has had to clarify several past remarks, including his description of his military service and whether he was in Hong Kong “when Tiananmen happened”, a reference to the pro-democracy protests that culminated in the massacre of hundreds of people in June 1989.

Walz brushed off the remark during the vice-presidential debate last week, saying he had been a “knucklehead.” But Whitaker pressed him, asking if it was a misrepresentation and whether the American people could trust him.

Walz drew a sharp line between himself and Trump, who he called a “pathological liar” and said voters should feel confident trusting him.

“I will own up to being a knucklehead at times, but the folks closest to me know that I keep my word,” he said.

The 60 Minutes interview was part of a week-long media push by the Democratic ticket that began with Harris’s appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, which aired on Sunday. She is also scheduled to participate in a Univision town hall in Nevada on Thursday as well as an interview with Howard Stern on Sirius XM and appearances on The View and Late Night with Stephen Colbert. From Los Angeles, Walz was also making media appearances, including on the SmartLess podcast and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Taken together, it represents a sharp change of pace for the vice-president after two-and-a-half months in which she mostly resisted such exchanges.

Before boarding Air Force Two, en route to New York on Monday afternoon, Harris fielded a handful of questions from reporters.

Asked about a report that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, ignored the vice-president’s call to discuss recovery efforts as the state braces for Hurricane Milton to make landfall, Harris accused the Republican of “playing political games”.

“These are the height of emergency situations, it is utterly irresponsible and it is selfish,” she said.

She also assailed Trump as “incredibly irresponsible” for spreading falsehoods about the administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, which ripped across the southern Appalachians, killing more than 220 people in six states.

“There’s a lot of mis- and disinformation being pushed out there by the former president about what is available, particularly to the survivors of Helene,” she said. “It’s extraordinarily irresponsible. It’s about him. It’s not about you.”

Donald Trump marked the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas terrorist attacks, which he called “one of the darkest days in all of history”, with a commemoration for victims and hostages at his golf resort in Miami on Monday night, but swiftly turned the event into an attack on Kamala Harris.

He also repeated a previous claim that the attack on Israel would never have happened if he was still in the White House.

Blaming Harris and Joe Biden for the “weakness” he said gave Hamas the confidence to launch the attack, the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd of about 300 supporters, mostly from the Jewish community, that a wave of anti-Israel sentiment which he said was sweeping the US, and wider world, could be blamed on their administration.

“Almost as shocking as 7 October itself is the outbreak of antisemitism that we have all seen in its wake,” he said.

“The anti-Jewish hatred has returned … and within the ranks of the Democratic party in particular. The Republican party has not been infected by this horrible disease, and won’t be as long as I’m in charge.”

The attacks, which left 1,200 people dead and an additional 250 taken hostage by Hamas, provided “a moment in horrible history”, he said.

“It seemed as if the gates of hell had sprung open and unleashed their horrors unto the world. We never thought we’d see it … and a lot of that has to do with leadership of this country.”

After claiming the attacks would not have taken place had he been elected to a second term, Trump said he would restore the closeness with Israel he insisted the US had lost, despite Biden and Harris both expressing support for the country’s right to defend itself.

“If, and when, they say, when I’m president, the US will once again be stronger and closer [to Israel] than it ever was. But we have to win the election,” he said.

“What is needed is more than ever unwavering American leadership. The dawn of new, more harmonious Middle East is finally within our reach. I will not allow the Jewish state to be threatened with destruction. I will not allow another Holocaust of the Jewish people. I will not allow a jihad to be waged on America or our allies, and I will support Israel’s right to win its war.”

Trump’s fire and brimstone delivery was at odds with remarks earlier in the day from Harris, his Democratic opponent in November, who paid tribute to those who lost their lives, but also spoke of ensuring Israel had what it needed to defend itself.

Biden expressed sorrow for suffering on all sides of the conflict in the Middle East, and in a statement condemned a “vicious surge in antisemitism in America” since the attacks.

Trump’s address began more than two hours later than billed. He joked about a bumpy flight from New York, and his concern for Florida from Hurricane Milton, a category 5 storm predicted to slam into the state on Wednesday.

His supporters, some wearing yarmulkes with the former president’s name embroidered on them, cheered as he took the stage of the ballroom at Trump National in Doral.

He spoke against a backdrop of six American and Israeli flags, and images of the almost 1,200 victims, including 46 Americans, killed by Hamas one year ago. A succession of speakers and guests, including two Holocaust survivors, Jewish religious leaders and Republican politicians, lit remembrance candles as they took the stage.

Along one wall, rows of candles sat in front of photographs of the dozens of people taken hostage. Each name was marked by the word “kidnapped” in capital letters.

Trump has presented himself as Israel’s strongest, most outspoken defender, but has also drawn criticism for his previous comments. A year ago, in the days following the terrorist attack on the Nova music festival, he called Hezbollah, the Lebanese group closely allied to Hamas, “very smart”, and Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant “a jerk”.

Speaking at an event in Florida last October, Trump said Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not prepared, and that Israel’s enemies were “smart, and, boy, are they vicious”.

The White House condemned his comments as “dangerous and unhinged”.

Trump also raised eyebrows last month when he claimed he was “the most popular person in Israel”, and bemoaned a lack of support from Jewish voters after polls showed him below 40% with them.

Insisting he had been “the best president by far” for Israel, he said: “Based on what I did … I should be at 100%.” Trump did not repeat the boast on Monday.

Some supporters in the audience in Miami were pleased to hear Trump speaking forcefully in defense of Israel.

“Kamala Harris will stand for Hamas. She is no friend of Israel,” Ben Fisher, a Miami resident, said. “Donald Trump speaks the way a strong leader should. He knows if your country is attacked you cannot let that go, if it’s the attack on the festival or the missiles from Tehran.”

Harris spoke earlier in the day at the vice-presidential residence, promising that if elected next month she would “always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself”.

Unlike Trump, she resisted the opportunity to make political remarks, focusing instead on victims by telling the story of two Americans who died, and naming each of the seven Americans taken by Hamas to Gaza, four of whom are still believed to be alive.

A slew of falsehoods about Hurricane Helene, including claims of funds diverted from storm survivors to migrants and even that Democrats somehow directed the hurricane itself, have hampered the response to one of the deadliest hurricanes to ever hit the US, the nation’s top emergency official has warned.

Misinformation spread by Donald Trump, his supporters and others about the hurricane has shrouded the recovery effort for communities shattered by Helene, which tore through five states causing at least 230 deaths and tens of billions of dollars of damage. Many places, such as in western North Carolina, are still without a water supply, electricity, navigable roads or vital supplies.

“It’s frankly disappointing we are having to deal with this narrative, the fact there are a few leaders having a hard time telling the difference between fact and fiction is creating an impedance to our ability to actually get people the help they need,” Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), told MSNBC on Monday.

Trump has accused Joe Biden’s administration of “abandoning” people to the crisis and, baselessly, of being short of disaster relief funds due to money spent on undocumented migrants. Such claims are “frankly ridiculous” and creating a “truly dangerous narrative that is creating this fear” among affected people, Criswell said.

In multiple rallies in the past week, Trump has accused Biden and Kamala Harris of favoring migrants over disaster-hit areas. “They stole the Fema money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” Trump has said.

“Kamala spent all her Fema money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal immigrants.” Trump added the places worst hit are “largely a Republican area so some people say they did it for that reason”.

JD Vance, Trump’s Republican running mate, echoed this theme on Monday, telling Fox News that Fema’s focus on migrants is “going to distract focus from their core job of helping American citizens in their time of need”. Last week, Stephen Miller, a far-right Trump adviser, said that “Kamala Harris turned Fema into an illegal alien resettlement agency”.

Fema does, in fact, have a housing program that offers shelter to migrants leaving detention but this is separate from its disaster relief program. “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. None,” the White House has stated.

In remarks on Monday after speaking to Criswell by phone, Harris urged politicians to stop “playing games” with lives at stake. According to the White House pool, the vice-president said: “There’s a lot of misinformation being pushed out there by the former president about what is available, particularly for the survivors of Helene. First of all, it’s extraordinarily irresponsible. It’s about him, it’s not about you. The reality is Fema has so many resources that are available to those who desperately need them.”

Congress recently provided an extra $20bn for disaster relief but Biden has warned that more funding will be needed to help the long-term recovery of places increasingly assailed by powerful storms fueled by global heating.

Other conspiracy theories and erroneous claims have swirled online and in areas affected by Helene, such as the assertion that Fema will give only $750 to individuals as a loan (it is, in fact, a grant, and can be followed by further claims for more than $40,000) or that the agency is seizing people’s land.

Fema has, unusually, put up a web page to counter these claims, with a spokesman saying the misinformation is “extremely damaging” to response efforts as it deters people from seeking assistance. “We are going to continue to message aggressively so everyone understands what the facts are,” he said regarding the looming Hurricane Milton, which is set to hit Florida.

Some social media posts spreading misinformation about the hurricanes called for militias to be formed to confront Fema workers, while other posts contained antisemitic hatred aimed at figures such as Esther Manheimer, mayor of Asheville, North Carolina, a city badly affected by the storm.

“It’s surprising to me how this is developing but unfortunately it seems antisemitic hate speech is becoming more common in the United States today,” Manheimer said.

“I’ve tried to steer clear of X and other platforms but there is a lot of misinformation that people tend to believe. We’ve had people in the community reaching out to ask if false things are true because folks are intentionally misleading them.”

Manheimer said that Asheville, including her own home, still lacks running water but is being “overwhelmed” with support by Fema to clear roads and get power back on.

More than 130,000 customers in western North Carolina were still without electricity Monday, according to poweroutage.us.

“People have lost everything here and the last thing we need is for people to spread false information,” she said. “There are talking points being distributed throughout the Republican party that just aren’t correct. They seem to think spreading misinformation will help win this election.”

One of the more outlandish claims about the hurricane came from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Republican congresswoman who previously claimed that Jewish lasers from space caused forest fires. “Yes they can control the weather,” Greene posted on X about the hurricane last week. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said: “There is no mechanism to control a hurricane and no evidence that anyone was trying to modify it. This is just a crazy conspiracy theory.”

“While humans don’t ‘control’ the weather we are affecting the weather. Human activities, mainly the emission of greenhouse gases, did indeed make Helene more destructive.”

He added: “If she wants humans to stop affecting the weather she should support phasing out fossil fuels.”

So far, Biden has declared the federal government will pay for the entire cost of activities such as debris removal, search and rescue and food supplies for Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The president has also already approved disaster help for Florida ahead of Milton’s arrival.

This approach has garnered some rare praise for Biden from Republican governors of affected states, with some Republican lawmakers calling for the conspiracy theories to abate.

“Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods,” Kevin Corbin, a Republican state senator for western North Carolina, posted on Facebook last week. “Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you or have you continually contact your elected officials to see if they are true.”

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is reportedly refusing calls about storm recovery from Kamala Harris, more than a week after Hurricane Helene hit the state and two days before intensifying Hurricane Milton is expected to hit the south-west of the state.

Citing a DeSantis aide, NBC News reported on Monday that the Republican governor was dodging the Democratic presidential nominee’s calls because they “seemed political”.

“Kamala was trying to reach out, and we didn’t answer,” the DeSantis aide told the outlet. As of Monday afternoon, DeSantis had not appeared to have spoken to Joe Biden, either, to the aide’s knowledge.

However, a White House pool report on Monday evening said that the US president had separate calls with DeSantis and Tampa mayor Jane Castor to get a first-hand report on recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene, and to discuss preparations for Hurricane Milton.

Biden asked DeSantis and Castor to call him directly if there was anything that could be done to further support the response and recovery efforts.

The Florida governor has, however, been in touch with the Fema director, Deanne Criswell.

Last week, DeSantis said Biden had called him, but he was flying at the time so could not take the call. A source familiar with the planning for Biden’s trip to north Florida to survey Helene’s damage said that the Biden team had invited DeSantis to the event but their schedules conflicted.

The response to Hurricane Helene has become an intense political issue one month before the presidential election. The White House and local Democratic leaders have appealed for an end to misinformation about the storm and the response to it.

Both Trump and Vice-President Harris have made trips to some of the affected states. Republicans have linked the disaster relief effort to immigration, including false claims that Fema had spent disaster funds on immigration relief. The White House and the agency itself have disputed that characterization.

At a White House briefing on Monday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, reiterated that the government would mount “a robust federal response” to the oncoming storm.

“Anything else, I would have to leave it to the governor, to his actions, to how he wants to move forward. In this, that is for him,” Jean-Pierre added.

The White House press secretary added that “misinformation, disinformation, is a problem across the board … Whether it’s the election or what we’re seeing with Hurricane Helene or with Hurricane Milton on its way.”

After Helene hit, DeSantis told reporters that the federal government should focus on North Carolina.

“Florida, we have it handled,” DeSantis said. “We have what we need … Most of the effort should be in western North Carolina right now because you still have active rescues that need to take place.”

DeSantis also sent Florida resources to North Carolina, including members of the Florida national guard and officials from several state agencies.

The destruction of global forests increased in 2023, and is higher than when 140 countries promised three years ago to halt deforestation by the end of the decade, an analysis shows.

The rising demolition of the forests puts ambitions to halt the climate crisis and stem the huge worldwide losses of wildlife even further from reach, the researchers warn.

Almost 6.4m hectares (16m acres) of forest were razed in 2023, according to the report. Even more forest – 62.6m ha – was degraded as road building, logging and forest fires took their toll. There were spikes in deforestation in Indonesia and Bolivia, driven by political changes and continued demand for commodities including beef, soy, palm oil, paper and nickel in rich countries.

The researchers said attempts at voluntary cuts on deforestation were not working and strong regulation and more funding for forest protection were needed.

The report highlighted a bright spot in the Brazilian Amazon, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new government cut deforestation by 62% in its first year.

“The bottom line is that, globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade,” said Ivan Palmegiani, a consultant at the research group Climate Focus and lead author of the report.

“We’re only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be chopped down, degraded, and set ablaze at alarming rates,” he said. “Righting the course is possible if all countries make it a priority, and especially if industrialised countries seriously reconsider their excessive consumption levels and support forest countries.”

Erin D Matson, a senior consultant at Climate Focus and co-author of the report, said: “When the right conditions are in place, countries see major progress. The next year, if economic or political conditions change, forest loss can come roaring back. We’re seeing this effect in the spiking deforestation in Indonesia and Bolivia. Ultimately, to meet global forest protection targets, we must make forest protection immune to political and economic whims.”

Most countries backed the 2030 zero deforestation pledge at the UN Cop26 climate summit in 2021. The 2024 forest declaration assessment, produced by a coalition of research and civil society organisations, assessed progress towards the goal using a baseline of the average deforestation between 2018 and 2020. It found progress was significantly off track, with the level of deforestation in 2023 almost 50% higher than steady progress towards zero would require.

Matson said: “Indonesia’s deforestation alone spiked by 57% in one year. This was in large part attributable to surging global demand for things like paper and mined metals like nickel.

“But it’s also clear that the Indonesian government took its foot off the gas. It experienced the steepest drop in deforestation of any tropical country from 2015-17 and 2020-22, so we have to hope that this setback is only temporary.” In 2023, Indonesia produced half the world’s nickel, a metal used in many green technologies.

“Brazil gives us an example of positive progress [in the Amazon] but deforestation in the Cerrado [tropical savanna] increased 68% year over year,” she said.

The country has also been ravaged by forest fires that are being made more likely and intense by the climate crisis. The report found that about 45m ha have burned in the past five years.

Other countries that made progress towards the 2030 deforestation target included Australia, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela and Vietnam. Outside the tropics, temperate forests in North America and Latin America recorded the greatest absolute levels of deforestation.

The researchers said funding for forest protection, strengthening the land rights of Indigenous people and reducing demand for commodities produced via deforestation were needed.

The EU has proposed ambitious regulations that would ban the sales of products linked to deforestation, such as coffee, chocolate, leather and furniture. However, on 3 October, the European Commission proposed a one-year delay “to phase in the system” after protests from countries including Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Ivory Coast.

Matson said: “This pushback is largely driven by political pressures, and it’s a shame. We can’t rely on voluntary efforts – they have made very little progress over the last decade.”

The destruction of global forests increased in 2023, and is higher than when 140 countries promised three years ago to halt deforestation by the end of the decade, an analysis shows.

The rising demolition of the forests puts ambitions to halt the climate crisis and stem the huge worldwide losses of wildlife even further from reach, the researchers warn.

Almost 6.4m hectares (16m acres) of forest were razed in 2023, according to the report. Even more forest – 62.6m ha – was degraded as road building, logging and forest fires took their toll. There were spikes in deforestation in Indonesia and Bolivia, driven by political changes and continued demand for commodities including beef, soy, palm oil, paper and nickel in rich countries.

The researchers said attempts at voluntary cuts on deforestation were not working and strong regulation and more funding for forest protection were needed.

The report highlighted a bright spot in the Brazilian Amazon, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new government cut deforestation by 62% in its first year.

“The bottom line is that, globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade,” said Ivan Palmegiani, a consultant at the research group Climate Focus and lead author of the report.

“We’re only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be chopped down, degraded, and set ablaze at alarming rates,” he said. “Righting the course is possible if all countries make it a priority, and especially if industrialised countries seriously reconsider their excessive consumption levels and support forest countries.”

Erin D Matson, a senior consultant at Climate Focus and co-author of the report, said: “When the right conditions are in place, countries see major progress. The next year, if economic or political conditions change, forest loss can come roaring back. We’re seeing this effect in the spiking deforestation in Indonesia and Bolivia. Ultimately, to meet global forest protection targets, we must make forest protection immune to political and economic whims.”

Most countries backed the 2030 zero deforestation pledge at the UN Cop26 climate summit in 2021. The 2024 forest declaration assessment, produced by a coalition of research and civil society organisations, assessed progress towards the goal using a baseline of the average deforestation between 2018 and 2020. It found progress was significantly off track, with the level of deforestation in 2023 almost 50% higher than steady progress towards zero would require.

Matson said: “Indonesia’s deforestation alone spiked by 57% in one year. This was in large part attributable to surging global demand for things like paper and mined metals like nickel.

“But it’s also clear that the Indonesian government took its foot off the gas. It experienced the steepest drop in deforestation of any tropical country from 2015-17 and 2020-22, so we have to hope that this setback is only temporary.” In 2023, Indonesia produced half the world’s nickel, a metal used in many green technologies.

“Brazil gives us an example of positive progress [in the Amazon] but deforestation in the Cerrado [tropical savanna] increased 68% year over year,” she said.

The country has also been ravaged by forest fires that are being made more likely and intense by the climate crisis. The report found that about 45m ha have burned in the past five years.

Other countries that made progress towards the 2030 deforestation target included Australia, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela and Vietnam. Outside the tropics, temperate forests in North America and Latin America recorded the greatest absolute levels of deforestation.

The researchers said funding for forest protection, strengthening the land rights of Indigenous people and reducing demand for commodities produced via deforestation were needed.

The EU has proposed ambitious regulations that would ban the sales of products linked to deforestation, such as coffee, chocolate, leather and furniture. However, on 3 October, the European Commission proposed a one-year delay “to phase in the system” after protests from countries including Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Ivory Coast.

Matson said: “This pushback is largely driven by political pressures, and it’s a shame. We can’t rely on voluntary efforts – they have made very little progress over the last decade.”

A Dutch museum has recovered an artwork that looks like two empty beer cans after a staff member accidentally threw it in the rubbish bin thinking it was trash.

The work, entitled All The Good Times We Spent Together by French artist Alexandre Lavet, appears on first glance to be two discarded and dented beer tins.

However, a closer look shows they are in fact meticulously hand-painted with acrylics and “required a lot of time and effort to create”, according to the museum.

But their artistic value was lost on a mechanic, who saw them displayed in a lift and chucked them in the bin.

Froukje Budding, a spokesperson for the LAM museum in Lisse, western Netherlands, told AFP that artworks are often left in unusual places – hence the display in a lift.

“We try to surprise the visitor all the time,” she said.

Curator Elisah van den Bergh returned from a short break and noticed that the cans had vanished.

She recovered them from a bin bag just in the nick of time as they were about to be thrown out.

“We have now put the work in a more traditional place on a plinth so it can rest after its adventure,” Budding said.

She stressed there were “no hard feelings” towards the mechanic, who had just started at the museum. “He was just doing his job,” she said.

Sietske van Zanten, the museum’s director, said: “Our art encourages visitors to see everyday objects in a new light.”

“By displaying artworks in unexpected places, we amplify this experience and keep visitors on their toes,” added Van Zanten.

“With this in mind, the cans are unlikely to stay on their traditional plinth for long, said Budding. “We need to think hard about a careful place to put them next,” she said.

The incident is the latest in a long line of unfortunate things to happen to artworks in galleries and museums. In 2023 a man who said he was hungry ate a banana that had been taped to a wall as part of an installation by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan at a gallery in Seoul.

In 2011 an overzealous cleaner in Germany ruined a piece of modern art worth £690,000 after mistaking it for an eyesore that needed a good scrub.

The sculpture by the German artist Martin Kippenberger, widely regarded as one of the most talented artists of his generation until his death in 1997, had been on loan to the Ostwall Museum in Dortmund when it fell prey to the cleaner’s scouring pad.

A relaxation of official rules around the correct use of apostrophes in German has not only irritated grammar sticklers but triggered existential fears around the pervasive influence of English.

Establishments that feature their owners’ names, with signs like “Rosi’s Bar” or “Kati’s Kiosk” are a common sight around German towns and cities, but strictly speaking they are wrong: unlike English, German does not traditionally use apostrophes to indicate the genitive case or possession. The correct spelling, therefore, would be “Rosis Bar”, “Katis Kiosk”, or, as in the title of a recent viral hit, Barbaras Rhabarberbar.

However, guidelines issued by the body regulating the use of Standard High German orthography have clarified that the use of the punctuation mark colloquially known as the Deppenapostroph (“idiot’s apostrophe”) has become so widespread that it is permissible – as long as it separates the genitive ‘s’ within a proper name.

The new edition of the Council for German Orthography’s style guide, which prescribes grammar use at schools and public bodies in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, lists “Eva’s Blumenladen” (Eva’s Flower Shop) and “Peter’s Taverne” (Peter’s Tavern) as usable alternatives, though “Eva’s Brille” (“Eva’s glasses”) remains incorrect.

The Deppenapostroph is not to be confused with the English greengrocer’s apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an ‘s’ is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun (“a kilo of potato’s”).

The new set of rules came into effect in July, and the council said a loosening of the rules in 1996 meant that “Rosi’s Bar” had strictly speaking not been incorrect for almost three decades. Yet over the past few days, German newspapers and social media networks have seen a pedants’ revolt against the loosening of grammar rules.

A commentator in the tabloid Bild said seeing signs like “Harald’s Eck” (“Harald’s Corner”) made his “hair stand on end”, and that the proper use of the genitive form would be bemoaned by lovers of the German language.

A columnist in the venerable broadsheet the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung decried the council’s decision as further proof of the English language’s “victory march”, while one newspaper editor on LinkedIn complained that legalising the “idiot’s apostrophe” amounted to “genuflecting to English”.

Some linguists question whether the rise of the possessive apostrophe has much to do with the influence of English at all, however.

“The familiarity of English names may be a factor, but it could just as well stem from a desire to avoid confusion”, said Anatol Stefanowitsch, a linguist at Berlin’s Freie Universität. “What we tend to see when a language interacts with another prestige language is that it incorporates its vocabulary, and not grammar.”

Even before the rule clarification, the German orthographic council permitted the use of the possessive apostrophe for the sake of clarity, such as “Andrea’s Bar” to make clear that the owner is called Andrea and not Andreas.

“There is a long tradition of conservative circles fretting about international influences on the German languages,” said Stefanowitsch. “It used to be French, and now it’s mainly English”.

The Dortmund-based association Verein Deutsche Sprache tries to counteract the influence of English with an “anglicism index” that proposes alternative German words, such as Klapprechner instead of “laptop” or Puffmais instead of “popcorn”.

A US judge on Monday ordered Alphabet’s Google to overhaul its mobile app business to give Android users more options to download apps and to pay for transactions within them, following a jury verdict last year for the Fortnite game maker Epic Games. The injunction by US district judge James Donato in San Francisco outlined the changes Google must undertake to open up its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources.

Donato’s order said that for three years Google cannot prohibit the use of in-app payment methods and must allow users to download competing third-party Android app platforms or stores.

The order restricts Google from making payments to device makers to preinstall its app store and from sharing revenue generated from the Play store with other app distributors.

Alphabet shares were down 2.2% following the ruling. Donato said Epic and Google must establish a three-person technical committee to implement and monitor the injunction. Epic and Google each get a pick, and those two members will select the third person.

Google has said it plans to appeal the verdict that led to the injunction, and it could ask the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals to pause Donato’s order pending appeal.

Donato said his injunction would go into effect on 1 November, which he said would give Google time to “bring its current agreements and practices into compliance”.

Epic’s lawsuit, filed in 2020, accused Google of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and how they pay for in-app transactions. The Cary, North Carolina-based company persuaded a jury in December 2023 that Google unlawfully stifled competition through its controls over app distribution and payments, paving the way for Donato’s injunction. Google had urged Donato to reject Epic’s proposed reforms, arguing they were costly, overly restrictive and could harm consumer privacy and security. The judge mostly dismissed those arguments during an August hearing.

“You’re going to end up paying something to make the world right after having been found to be a monopolist,” he told Google’s lawyers.

In a separate antitrust case in Washington, US district judge Amit Mehta on 5 August ruled for the US justice department and said Google had illegally monopolized web search, spending billions to become the internet’s default search engine. Google also began a trial in September in Virginia federal court in a justice department lawsuit over its dominance in the market for advertising technology.

Google has denied the claims in all three cases.

A US judge on Monday ordered Alphabet’s Google to overhaul its mobile app business to give Android users more options to download apps and to pay for transactions within them, following a jury verdict last year for the Fortnite game maker Epic Games. The injunction by US district judge James Donato in San Francisco outlined the changes Google must undertake to open up its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources.

Donato’s order said that for three years Google cannot prohibit the use of in-app payment methods and must allow users to download competing third-party Android app platforms or stores.

The order restricts Google from making payments to device makers to preinstall its app store and from sharing revenue generated from the Play store with other app distributors.

Alphabet shares were down 2.2% following the ruling. Donato said Epic and Google must establish a three-person technical committee to implement and monitor the injunction. Epic and Google each get a pick, and those two members will select the third person.

Google has said it plans to appeal the verdict that led to the injunction, and it could ask the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals to pause Donato’s order pending appeal.

Donato said his injunction would go into effect on 1 November, which he said would give Google time to “bring its current agreements and practices into compliance”.

Epic’s lawsuit, filed in 2020, accused Google of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and how they pay for in-app transactions. The Cary, North Carolina-based company persuaded a jury in December 2023 that Google unlawfully stifled competition through its controls over app distribution and payments, paving the way for Donato’s injunction. Google had urged Donato to reject Epic’s proposed reforms, arguing they were costly, overly restrictive and could harm consumer privacy and security. The judge mostly dismissed those arguments during an August hearing.

“You’re going to end up paying something to make the world right after having been found to be a monopolist,” he told Google’s lawyers.

In a separate antitrust case in Washington, US district judge Amit Mehta on 5 August ruled for the US justice department and said Google had illegally monopolized web search, spending billions to become the internet’s default search engine. Google also began a trial in September in Virginia federal court in a justice department lawsuit over its dominance in the market for advertising technology.

Google has denied the claims in all three cases.

Severe Covid infections can drive inflammation in the brain’s “control centre”, researchers say, leading to damage that may explain the long-term breathlessness, fatigue and anxiety some patients experience.

High-resolution MRI scans of 30 people hospitalised with Covid early in the pandemic, before the introduction of vaccines, found signs of inflammation in the brainstem, a small but critical structure that governs life-sustaining bodily functions such as breathing, heart rate and blood pressure.

The scans suggest that severe Covid infections can provoke an immune reaction which inflames the brainstem, with the resulting damage producing symptoms that can last for months after patients have been discharged.

“The fact that we see abnormalities in the parts of the brain associated with breathing strongly suggests that long-lasting symptoms are an effect of inflammation in the brainstem following Covid-19 infection,” said Dr Catarina Rua, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge and first author on the study.

The project was launched before researchers and public health officials knew about long Covid, the chronic post-viral illness estimated to affect 2 million people in England and Scotland and tens of millions globally. But many people with long Covid report breathlessness and fatigue, raising the possibility that brain inflammation could be involved in their symptoms, too.

“We didn’t study people with long Covid, but they do often have long-lasting effects of breathlessness and fatigue, which are similar to the symptoms these very severely affected people had six months after they were hospitalised,” Rua said. “It does lead us to ask the question, do people with long Covid have any brainstem changes?”

Rua and her colleagues used powerful 7 Tesla MRI scanners to image the patients’ brains. These revealed enough detail to see inflammation and microstructural abnormalities in the brainstem tissue. All of the patients had been admitted to hospital with severe Covid near the start of the pandemic.

The scans highlighted abnormalities linked to inflammation in multiple parts of the brainstem, starting several weeks after patients were admitted to hospital. The damage was still evident in scans more than six months later.

Damage to the brainstem might also contribute to the mental health problems some patients face after Covid infection. Of the patients in the study, those with the highest levels of brainstem inflammation had the most severe physical symptoms and the highest levels of depression and anxiety, according to the study published in Brain.

“While this study does not conclusively prove the causes of long Covid, it does point a finger at one possible suspect for some of the symptoms experienced,” said Paul Mullins, a professor in neuroimaging at the University of Bangor. “It is not clear that this shows much in the way of possible treatments for long Covid once it has occurred, but it perhaps does point to the need to reduce inflammatory responses during initial Covid infection and response.”

A curious koala has been captured wandering perilously close to a Sydney train line before the native animal was corralled to safety into nearby bushland.

The marsupial was caught on video crawling beneath a fence on to a platform at Casula train station, in the city’s south-west, shortly after 4am on Friday.

It then wandered the platform’s edge – past the yellow line – before moving to the stairs to explore the bridge connecting the platforms.

A security guard on a passing train noticed the animal and put in a call warning trains to slow down when passing the station.

Police arrived about 4.30am to usher the marsupial back through the fence into the adjoining bushland, but not before a commuter was able to get a closeup video.

South-west Sydney is home to a large koala population, but they face mounting threats from urban development.

Vehicle strikes have increased in the region in recent years as new roads increasingly divide their natural habitat and force the animals into harm’s way.

The NSW government has invested $600,000 into the region as part of its koala strategy, appointing a dedicated koala officer, restoring habitats and tracking the animals to avoid vehicular deaths.

The strategy also targets 18 other koala populations across the state, backed by a total investment of $15.7m.

Sally Field has spoken about the “hideous” and “traumatic” illegal abortion she underwent as a 17-year-old in 1964, as she called on voters to get behind Kamala Harris in the upcoming US presidential election.

The Oscar-winning actor first revealed her abortion in her 2018 memoir In Pieces, but wrote in the caption of her video, shared on Instagram, that she had “been so hesitant to do this, to tell my horrific story”.

“It was during a time even worse than now,” she wrote. “A time when contraception was not readily available and only if you were married. But I feel that so many women of my generation went through similar, traumatic events and I feel stronger when I think of them. I believe, like me, they must want to fight for their grandchildren and all the young women of this country.”

In the video, Field said she still feels “very shamed” about the abortion “because I was raised in the 50s, and it’s ingrained in me.” She was 17 when she underwent the procedure in 1964 – nine years before Roe v Wade introduced a constitutional right to abortion, which was upheld until the US supreme court overturned federal-level abortion rights in June 2022.

The actor said she had “no choices in my life” and little family support when she discovered she was pregnant. A family friend who was a doctor drove her, her mother and his wife to Tijuana, Mexico so she could undergo the abortion.

“We parked on a really scroungy-looking street, it was scary and he parked about three blocks away and said, ‘See that building down there?’ And he gave me an envelope with cash and I was to walk into that building and give them the cash and then come right back to him,” Field said, saying she believed he’d travelled with her in case she died.

The procedure was “beyond hideous and life-altering” and she “had no anaesthetic”, she said.

“There was a technician giving me a few puffs of ether but he would then take it away, so it just made my arms and legs feel numb [and] weird, but I felt everything – how much pain I was in,” she said.

“Then the situation turned darker. I realized that the technician was actually molesting me, so I had to figure out, how can I make my arms move to push him away? So it was just this absolute pit of shame. And then, when it was finished, they said, ‘Go go go go go!’, like the building was on fire. And they didn’t want me there, you know, it was illegal.”

She thanked her doctor for his “generosity and bravery” in risking his licence by taking her to Mexico, and recalled that before the trip, she had never left her home state or been on an plane. But a few months after the illegal abortion, she began auditioning and booked her breakout role in Gidget soon after.

“These are the things that women are going through now – when they’re trying to get to another state, they don’t have the money, they don’t have the means, they don’t know where they’re going,” Field said. “And it’s beyond, and do that to our little girls and our young women, and not have respect and regard for their health and their own decisions about whether they feel they’re able to give birth to a child at that time.”

In her caption, the actor called on voters to support Harris and Tim Walz or “those with ballot initiatives that could protect reproductive freedom.”

““PLEASE. WE CAN’T GO BACK!!” she ended.

Field previously endorsed Harris for president when Joe Biden stepped down, telling Variety in July that she was “so grateful” to Biden and that she supported Harris “with my whole 77-year-old heart.”

Public polling has long held that most Americans favour access to abortion, but many Republican-led state legislatures have sought to restrict access, mainly citing conservative religious beliefs.

While Roe v Wade was overturned two years after Donald Trump’s presidency ended, three US supreme court justice appointed by him formed part of the conservative bloc that struck the landmark decision down, with fears a second Trump presidency would restrict women’s reproductive rights even more.

Trump’s wife, Melania, recently revealed she is a passionate supporter of women’s right to abortion, writing in her new memoir: “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.”

Girls and young women are seeing more unwanted sexual images and suffering more cyberstalking online, but still don’t want to take a break from social media because of a fear of missing out, a survey for Girlguiding has found.

“Fomo” is keeping more than half of 11- to 21-year-olds on apps such as TikTok, Snapchat and WhatsApp despite nearly one in five saying they have been being stalked online and more than a third saying they are seeing sexual images they didn’t wish to see, the survey of more than 2,000 girls and young women found.

The incidence of both online harms is up year on year, according to the findings, which also showed half of girls and young women aged between seven and 21 feel anxious about their futures, and only a quarter feel very confident in their life.

Despite the reluctance to take a break, only 37% of girls and young women aged 11 to 21 are reporting that they feel they have strong connections online, and this number has been falling over the last four years.

The findings came as thousands of parents and schools signed up to a pact for a “smartphone-free childhood” amid official figures showing that only one in 10 UK 12-year-olds does not have their own smartphone.

“In my daily life, I see how the constant pressure to meet unrealistic beauty standards and the normalisation of sexism leaves girls feeling vulnerable and unsupported,” said Jiya, 17, a Girlguiding advocate. “Being online all the time amplifies this. While we’re ‘more connected’, we’re also more exposed to judgment and comparison – through body shaming, sexist jokes, online harassment and objectification. This fuels loneliness and erodes our confidence, which only makes it harder to feel positive about the future.”

Eight-five per cent of those who responded to the survey said they experienced sexism in their daily lives, just over half from sexist comments in real life rising to almost three-quarters online.

Girlguiding said: “This appears to be having a knock-on effect on girls’ sense of safety, with almost half of girls (47%) aged 11 to 21 revealing sexism and misogyny makes them feel less safe, more than double the number of girls who reported feeling this way 10 years ago.”

Angela Salt, the chief executive of Girlguiding, said it was “devastating to see girls feel less confident about themselves and their futures”.

“Sexism continues to be pervasive, leaving many girls feeling vulnerable and unsafe,” she said. “We’re glad to see the government is taking rising levels of misogyny seriously. Now it’s been acknowledged as a problem, we are determined to make sure the voices of girls are heard as part of the solution.”

The Home Office has said that it intends to start treating extreme misogyny as a form of extremism and announced a rapid review of how best to crack down on this and other harmful ideologies in August. Girlguiding is calling for new relationships, sex and health education resources in schools, “to tackle sexism and misogyny and encourage better, healthier relationships”.

On the upside, 44% of girls and women between seven and 21 said they feel hopeful and a similar number are curious about the future.