Hungary’s nationalist leader Viktor Orbán has said he will open “several bottles of champagne” if Donald Trump returns to the White House next month, underscoring his differences with mainstream European leaders.

The Hungarian prime minister is due to host fellow EU leaders for a summit in Budapest a few days after the US presidential election on 5 November.

“We will open several bottles of champagne if Trump is back,” Orbán said on Tuesday, describing the EU’s November summit as a moment for the bloc to come together “to try to find a common voice”.

Orbán said that Trump, if elected president, would not wait until his inauguration but would act immediately “to manage a peace” between Ukraine and Russia “so we don’t have as European leaders anytime to waste”. He added: “We have to react intellectually first, philosophically and then strategically.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed he could bring peace to Ukraine “very quickly”, without offering any details about how a durable settlement could be achieved. Orbán’s views on the Russian invasion closely mirror those of the former US president, who has been accused by the US vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, of echoing Vladimir Putin’s ideas.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels more than halfway through Hungary’s controversial EU presidency, Orbán was unrepentant about his so-called peace missions over the summer that included visits to Moscow, Beijing and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

The EU’s approach to Ukraine was “stupid”, he claimed, because the war could not be won on the battlefield and negotiations had to take place. “I am convinced personally, strongly that there is no solution on the battlefield and I think that the strategy what we follow as European Union is not good … what we are doing is just losing, losing, losing and losing,” he added.

Senior EU leaders have repeatedly said negotiations on Ukraine’s future can only take place with Kyiv’s participation.

Orbán has infuriated his EU counterparts by blocking EU military and financial aid for Ukraine, but on Tuesday he sidestepped a question on this point, claiming that his government had launched its “biggest ever humanitarian aid programme” and was sheltering tens of thousands of Ukrainians in Hungary.

The Hungarian leader is due to address MEPs in the Strasbourg parliament on Wednesday morning, when he can expect intense criticism from the pro-EU parliamentary groups over the widely documented decline in democratic standards and multiple reports of increased corruption since he returned to power in 2010.

Despite a litany of legal disputes with the EU institutions and clashes with EU leaders, Orbán rejected claims of being isolated and said he had “a very friendly attitude towards the European Union”.

The European People’s party in the European parliament, the group Orbán quit in 2021 before being pushed, led criticism of the Hungarian prime minister ahead of his appearance in the Strasbourg chamber. “Today the Hungarian presidency is a presidency without impact,” said EPP leader Manfred Weber. “Orbán isolated himself, he plays no role at all.”

Donald Trump took “British naval secrets” to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House, the former UK spy Christopher Steele says in a new book.

“I was reliably informed by impeccable sources that among the classified documents which Trump, apparently unauthorizedly, took with him to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his presidency were British naval secrets, some of the most sensitive ones in our governmental system,” Steele writes.

“It remains unclear to me, at least, why Trump would have wanted to retain such documents and what eventually happened to them.”

Steele does not say what the secrets concerned.

In a statement sent to the Guardian after this story was published on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the British Ministry of Defence said of Steele’s comments about naval secrets taken to Mar-a-Lago: “These claims are untrue.”

A former MI6 agent, Steele became famous as the author of a dossier of often unverified information on Trump and his links to Russia which caused a media sensation shortly after the 2016 election, in which Trump beat Hillary Clinton in a historic upset.

The dossier has been the subject of controversy ever since. But a US investigation under the special counsel Robert Mueller did establish that Russia interfered in the election to boost Trump, detail extensive links between the former president and Moscow, and produce numerous indictments and convictions.

Steele’s book, Unredacted: Russia, Trump and the Fight for Democracy, was published on Tuesday – a little over a month from election day as Trump runs to return to the Oval Office, against the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. The race unfolds amid warnings of further Russian efforts to help him, including from Mueller himself.

Trump’s retention of classified documents after leaving power in 2021 was the subject of an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago and 40 criminal charges brought by the special counsel Jack Smith. That case was thrown out in June by Aileen Cannon, a Florida judge appointed under Trump. Smith has appealed.

Trump was convicted on 34 criminal charges in New York, over hush-money payments to an adult film star. His attempts to overturn the 2020 election are the subject of four federal criminal charges and eight in Georgia.

Trump was previously reported to have discussed US nuclear submarines at Mar-a-Lago with an Australian billionaire who then shared the information. Reporting of that incident did not mention “British naval secrets”.

At the time of Trump’s 2016 win, Steele was running Orbis Business Intelligence. BuzzFeed published the Trump dossier. Sensational unverified allegations, including placing Trump with sex workers in a Moscow hotel, ensured blanket coverage.

Trump angrily rejected the dossier and sued Steele. The case was thrown out this year, and Trump was ordered to pay costs, an order Steele says has not been met.

Steele now writes that the day after the 2016 election, he felt “disturbed” and “afraid – for democracy, for the United States, for the world at large”, as he felt his warnings about Trump and Russia had fallen on deaf ears.

“We were no longer even on good terms with the FBI. We had tried to warn them, and the public, about Trump and Russia and we had failed. How long would it be before Trump himself found out about our reporting – and about us? How would he respond?

“‘Chaos is about to break out,’ I thought.”

He and his partner, he says, felt they had “a fresh duty: we needed to tell the British government [about our work] because Trump’s election could pose a direct threat to UK national interests … if Trump were compromised, the British government needed to know”.

Steele says he visited Charles Farr, chair of the British joint intelligence committee, who circulated a summary of Steele’s findings “among the key people in government including senior British officials and ministers”. But, Steele writes, repeating testimony to MPs, the Conservative government then led by Theresa May chose to “sit on the information and avoid alienating the incoming American president”.

Steele says he had briefed May before but “she was clearly worried about alienating Britain’s most powerful ally. It was cowardly behavior, in my opinion, and wrong. There is being close to the United States, and then there is being close to the United States to the extent that one’s own national security is jeopardized.”

Steele discusses the reported occasion in May 2017 when Trump shared “top secret intelligence”, allegedly about an Israeli asset working inside the terrorist group Isis, with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. Sources, Steele says, believe Russia told Iran, which tipped off Isis, leading to the death of the asset.

Steele then cites his “impeccable source” saying Trump took documents concerning British naval secrets to Mar-a-Lago. He also says the British government knew of links between Trump and Moscow before his intervention, as the Australian government reported activities involving a Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, in 2016.

A long-delayed British report on Russian influence was published in 2020, by which time May had been succeeded as prime minister by Boris Johnson. The Labour party, then in opposition, said the report authors, a cross-party group of MPs and peers, had shown “the scale of the shortcomings of the government’s response to maintaining our national security in the face of what is clearly a growing and significant threat from Russia”.

Steele calls May’s decision to stay close to Trump “at best, denial and at worst, irresponsible. The British government had decided to pretend that Trump was a normal president-elect, that he had not been helped in his victorious election campaign by Russia, and that he and his team could be trusted with the most sensitive, life-and-death information that governments hold. As we later saw, they could not.”

Speaking to the Washington Post, which interviewed Steele this week, Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said: “Any new information by this foreign agent who peddled the debunked Steele dossier should be wholly dismissed, and any media outlet that entertains anything he has to say is just the continuation of election interference intended to meddle in the campaign.”

Steele told the Post he had “weighed the risks – including the risk of harm to Trump” arising from publishing new unverified claims, such as that about British naval secrets allegedly taken to Mar-a-Lago.

But Steele added that he had decided it was in the public interest to do so, even “if the allegations I reference in the work are untrue”.

Donald Trump’s truthfulness as well as his knowledge of Middle East geography has come under fresh scrutiny after the former president claimed to have been to Gaza – although there is no evidence of him ever visiting the war-torn Palestinian territory.

Trump raised eyebrows after the Republican nominee in November’s presidential election told Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio host, that he had been in the tiny coastal strip where more than 41,000 people have been killed and the majority of buildings badly damaged or destroyed in blistering Israeli military attacks responding to last year’s 7 October attack by Hamas. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 about Israelis and took about 250 hostage.

Asked by Hewitt if Gaza could be transformed into Monaco if properly rebuilt, Trump replied:

“It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything. It’s got, it is the best, I’ve said it for years.

“I’ve been there, and it’s rough. It’s a rough place … before all of the attacks and before the back and forth what’s happened over the last couple of years.”

He went on: “I mean, they have the back of a plant facing the ocean, you know. There was no ocean as far as that was concerned. They never took advantage of it. You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place – the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East.”

Hewitt did not challenge Trump’s assertion to have visited the territory, which had suffered substantial infrastructural damage in repeated clashes between Hamas, the militant group that has dominated it for years, and Israel even before the current war.

However, the New York Times said there was no record of Trump ever having gone there – either when he was president or before.

The paper quoted a campaign official, who said: “Gaza is in Israel. President Trump has been to Israel.”

In fact, Gaza has never been part of Israel, although some far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current coalition government have called for its annexation.

The territory was home to several thousand Jewish settlers until 2005, when the Israeli prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, withdrew them under a disengagement plan.

Asked by Axios to provide further explanation, Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, responded in an emailed statement that the former president “has been to Gaza previously”, although she did not say when.

Trump visited Israel as president in 2017, when he also travelled to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president. Gaza and the West Bank are separate territories and about 25 miles apart at their closest point. They can only be reached from each other by travelling through Israel.

Trump’s comments on Gaza’s potential echo those made by his son-in-law Jared Kushner – a former adviser and Middle East envoy during his presidency – who was criticised for describing waterfront property in the territory as “very valuable” and suggesting that Israel remove civilians while cleaning it up.

Trump has made support for Israel a central plank of his campaign, although he has also drawn accusations of antisemitism by saying that Jewish voters “would have a lot to do with a loss” if he were to suffer defeat in next month’s election.

At an event in Florida on Monday commemorating the first anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack on Israel, he claimed antisemitism in US party politics was confined to the Democrats and did not exist in the Republican party.

His remarks overlooked the fact that he hosted Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who has engaged in Holocaust denial, at his Mar-a-Lago club in 2022, along with the rapper Kanye West, who has also been accused of antisemitism.

The questions over Trump’s Gaza claims come as he is already under fire for spreading disinformation over the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, which has caused widespread destruction to south-eastern states in the US.

Many of Earth’s “vital signs” have hit record extremes, indicating that “the future of humanity hangs in the balance”, a group of the world’s most senior climate experts have said.

More and more scientists are now looking into the possibility of societal collapse, says the report, which assessed 35 vital signs in 2023 and found that 25 were worse than ever recorded, including carbon dioxide levels and human population. This indicates a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”, it says.

The temperature of Earth’s surface and oceans hit an all-time high, driven by record burning of fossil fuels, the report found. Human population is increasing at a rate of approximately 200,000 people a day and the number of cattle and sheep by 170,000 a day, all adding to record greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientists identified 28 feedback loops, including increasing emissions from melting permafrost, which could help trigger multiple tipping points, such as the collapse of the massive Greenland icecap.

Global heating is driving increasingly deadly extreme weather across the world, they said, including hurricanes in the US and 50C heatwaves in India, with billions of people now exposed to extreme heat.

The scientists said their goal was “to provide clear, evidence-based insights that inspire informed and bold responses from citizens to researchers and world leaders – we just want to act truthfully and tell it like it is.” Decisive, fast action was imperative to limit human suffering, they said, including reducing fossil fuel burning and methane emissions, cutting overconsumption and waste by the rich, and encouraging a switch towards plant-based foods.

“We’re already in the midst of abrupt climate upheaval, which jeopardises life on Earth like nothing humans have ever seen,” said Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University (OSU), who co-led the group. “Ecological overshoot – taking more than the Earth can safely give – has pushed the planet into climatic conditions more threatening than anything witnessed even by our prehistoric relatives.

“Climate change has already displaced millions of people, with the potential to displace hundreds of millions or even billions. That would likely lead to greater geopolitical instability, possibly even partial societal collapse.”

The assessment, published in the journal Bioscience, says the concentrations of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere are at record levels. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 80 times more powerful than CO₂ over 20 years, and is emitted by fossil fuel operations, waste dumps, cattle and rice fields.

“The growth rate of methane emissions has been accelerating, which is extremely troubling,” said Dr Christopher Wolf, formerly of OSU, who co-led the team.

While wind and solar energy grew by 15% in 2023, the researchers said, coal, oil and gas still dominated. They said there was “stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel based system”.

The report includes the results of a Guardian survey of hundreds of senior climate experts in May, which found that only 6% believed that the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C of warming would be adhered to. “The fact is that avoiding every tenth of a degree of warming is critically important,” the researchers said. “Each tenth places an extra 100 million people into unprecedented hot average temperatures.”

The researchers said global heating was part of a wider crisis that included pollution, the destruction of nature and rising economic inequality. “Climate change is a glaring symptom of a deeper systemic issue: ecological overshoot, [which] is an inherently unstable state that cannot persist indefinitely. As the risk of Earth’s climate system switching to a catastrophic state rises, more and more scientists have begun to research the possibility of societal collapse. Even in the absence of global collapse, climate change could cause many millions of additional deaths by 2050. We need bold, transformative change.”

Among the policies the scientists recommend for rapid adoption are gradually reducing the human population through empowering education and rights for girls and women; protecting, restoring or rewilding ecosystems; and integrating climate change education into global curriculums to boost awareness and action.

The assessment concludes: “Only through decisive action can we safeguard the natural world, avert profound human suffering and ensure that future generations inherit the livable world they deserve. The future of humanity hangs in the balance.”

The world’s nations will meet at the UN’s Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in November. Ripple said: “It’s imperative that huge progress is made.”

Israel has said it is expanding its ground operation in Lebanon with the deployment of a fourth division after another night of intense airstrikes across the south and east of the country.

The reservist 146th division was sent to southern Lebanon overnight on Tuesday, hours after Israel announced the mobilisation of a third standing division, meaning the number of troops on the ground is now likely to number 15,000.

Launching what it has called Operation Northern Arrows last week, the Israeli army said the ground offensive would involve “limited, localised and targeted raids” to remove Hezbollah infrastructure along the disputed de facto border between the two countries, known as the blue line.

The rapid deployment of four divisions operating across south Lebanon, alongside evacuation orders for Lebanese villages on the coast upwards of 20 miles from the blue line and the intensive bombing of the country’s south and east and the capital, suggests however that Israel is preparing for a wider push north against the Lebanese militia.

In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Hezbollah’s acting secretary general, Naim Qassem, said the group’s military capabilities were still functional despite two weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes, including Beirut bombings that killed the group’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and much of the militia’s top command.

“You see that our daily accomplishments are great. Hundreds of rockets and dozens of aircraft [drones], a great number of [Israeli] settlements and cities have come under rocket fire … I would like to reassure you that our capabilities are fine,” he said.

Hezbollah had replaced all of its senior commanders, he said, and Israeli ground troops had not made any advances after a week of fighting.

The IDF said on Tuesday that it had killed Suhail Husseini, responsible for overseeing logistics, budget and management, the night before. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah, but about 85 projectiles were launched towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa from Lebanon on Tuesday morning. Most of the projectiles were intercepted by Israel’s air defence systems.

Two Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s Shia-majority southern suburbs almost immediately after Qassem’s speech.

At least 1,400 Lebanese people, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million – about a quarter of the population – have been driven from their homes since fighting escalated three weeks ago.

Israel says the operation’s goal is to allow approximately 60,000 displaced people to return to their homes across northern Israel after a year of simmering cross-border fighting.

Hezbollah began firing on Israel in solidarity with its Palestinian allies a day after Hamas’s 7 October attack last year that triggered the new war in Gaza and now threatens to drag in Iran and the US.

In a statement on Tuesday, the anniversary of Hezbollah’s involvement, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon, and Lt Gen Aroldo Lázaro of Unifil, the head of the peacekeeping force on the blue line, called for a “negotiated solution” to end the latest round of violence.

“Near-daily exchanges of fire have escalated into a relentless military campaign whose humanitarian impact is nothing short of catastrophic,” the statement said.

“A negotiated solution is the only pathway to restore the security and stability that civilians on both sides so desperately want and deserve … The time to act is now.”

The region is still waiting for Israel’s response to an unprecedented missile attack from Iran last week, launched in support of its Lebanese ally after Israel’s ground invasion.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said in an interview with CNN late on Monday: “Everything is on the table. Israel has capabilities to hit targets near and far – we have proved it.”

Israel is consulting with Washington, its most important ally, over how to retaliate against Tehran without triggering an even stronger response. The New York Times, citing US officials, said the US believed Israel would prioritise attacking military bases and intelligence sites before nuclear facilities.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, warned on Monday against a new Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic.

Fighting also continues to rage in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, medics said.

At least 15 people, including two women and four children, were killed on Tuesday in ground fighting in the Jabalia neighbourhood of Gaza City, the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital said, after new Israeli evacuation orders for the city were issued on Monday. The IDF has intensified bombing of the area and moved in tanks.

The Israeli military said it killed about 20 militants in Jabaliya and located a large quantity of weapons, including grenades and rifles.

Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, said in a speech on the anniversary of the 7 October attack that the group would “keep up the fight in a long war of attrition, one that is painful and costly for the enemy”.

Hamas fired a barrage of longer-range rockets at Tel Aviv on Monday’s anniversary, underscoring that the group’s military capabilities are eroded but not yet defunct after a year of war.

A total of 1,205 people were killed on 7 October and 251 taken hostage, of which 101 remain – two-thirds believed to be still alive – after a brief ceasefire and hostage deal in November. Another 41,965 people have been killed by Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza over the past year, which has also drawn in militia groups allied to Iran in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Israeli media outlets reported earlier this week that government officials have not met to discuss the stalled ceasefire and hostage swap negotiations aimed at ending the war in Gaza for more than two weeks.

Prosecutors in the Netherlands are considering a request to open a criminal case against senior Israeli intelligence officials for allegedly interfering with an investigation by the international criminal court (ICC).

The request was filed last week by a group of 20 complainants, most of whom are Palestinian, asking the Dutch prosecution service to examine allegations Israel tried to derail the ICC’s inquiry into alleged crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to lawyers for the group, the criminal complaint was filed in response to an investigation by the Guardian revealing how Israeli intelligence attempted over a nine-year period to undermine, influence and allegedly intimidate the ICC chief prosecutor’s office.

The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call prompted the Dutch government to raise concerns earlier this year with Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands.

As the host state of the ICC, which is in The Hague, the Netherlands is obliged under an agreement with the court to protect the safety and security of ICC staff, and must ensure it is “free from interference of any kind”.

The criminal complaint called on the Dutch authorities to honour its obligations to the ICC “as a matter of urgency”, according to extracts of the filing seen by the Guardian.

Lawyers for the complainants argued in the submission that “Israel’s many attempts to influence, sabotage and stop the investigation constitute a direct violation of their [clients’] right to justice.”

They said Israel’s espionage against the ICC may have included breaches of Dutch criminal law as well as offences against the administration of justice under article 70 of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC.

The lawyers urged prosecutors to focus a case on senior members of the Israeli security apparatus for their alleged involvement in potentially criminal acts in the Netherlands.

A spokesperson for the Dutch prosecution service said: “The complaint has been received … and will be studied.”

Israel’s embassy in the Netherlands did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister’s office previously said the Guardian’s reporting included “unfounded allegations meant to hurt the state of Israel”.

The ICC’s Palestine investigation dates back to 2015 when the court’s former chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, opened a preliminary inquiry into the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, a move that led Israel to launch its covert campaign against the court.

In May, the current prosecutor, Karim Khan, filed applications for arrest warrants against senior Hamas figures and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during Hamas’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.

A panel of judges at the ICC is considering applications filed by Khan against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar.

In the wake of the Guardian investigation into the Israeli espionage, the Dutch government has faced calls from Dutch MPs to open an independent inquiry and do more to protect the court.

A spokesperson for the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs did not comment on the criminal complaint, but said the government has “continuous and good contact with the ICC” and security concerns had been discussed.

“Let one thing be clear: the Netherlands is doing its utmost to allow the ICC to do its work safely, undisturbed and independently,” they said.

A spokesperson for the ICC prosecutor’s office said Khan had made clear in May that attempts to “impede, intimidate or improperly influence” ICC officials may constitute article 70 offences.

“The office remains deeply concerned by the ongoing attempts to improperly influence its activities through threats and intimidation of its officials,” they added.

Since 1978 a series of Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon, including a years-long occupation, have failed to bring security and calm to northern Israel.

As Israeli forces escalate their current campaign, how does this operation compare with previous incursions?

Operation Litani, 1978

In March 1978, after the “coastal road massacre”, when a group of Palestine Liberation Organisation members entered Israel from Lebanon and killed 35 civilians, Israel launched Operation Litani. Its target was PLO bases in southern Lebanon and its objective to restore security in northern Israel.

At its height, the operation involved about 25,000 Israeli troops, including the bulk of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) 36th Division and the Paratroopers Corps. During the fighting the scope was extended to include operations up to the Litani River, a key demarcation point in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli forces struggled to significantly engage PLO fighters who withdrew. About 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed in the operation, which lasted until June, when UN peacekeepers from the newly formed UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were deployed under UN security council resolutions that called for Israel’s withdrawal.

Lebanon war, 1982

Despite Operation Litani, security in northern Israel had not been restored and clashes between the PLO and Israeli forces around the border continued. When the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization shot and badly wounded the Israeli ambassador in London, the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, blamed the PLO instead and used it as a pretext to launch Operation Peace for Galilee.

The aim was to restore security in northern Israel, and destroy Palestinian forces and their infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

More than 40,000 Israeli troops with hundreds of tanks entered Lebanon, backed by Christian allies of Israel, who Israel hoped would form the basis of a more Israel-friendly regime, putting Beirut under siege for several months.

Amid the fighting 19,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian civilians and combatants died, of whom 5,500 were civilians from west Beirut.

While Israel succeeded in forcing the evacuation of the PLO from Lebanon under international supervision, the assassination of the Lebanese president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, triggered the Sabra and Shatila massacre, when Christian Phalangists killed 2,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Kahan commission later judged that Israel was “indirectly” responsible for the massacre.

Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, 1982–2000

Although Israeli forces withdrew from Beirut, Israel continued to occupy southern Lebanon for 18 years, operating largely south of the Awali River. From 1985 Israeli forces concentrated their operations in alliance with the Christian paramilitary South Lebanon Army [SLA], in the so-called security zone, which was between 5km and 20km deep and ran the length of the border.

The described purpose of the occupation and security zone was to ensure the safety of residents of northern Israel. However, with the PLO now gone, the zone became the focus of a new conflict between Israeli occupation forces and groups including the newly emerged Shia group Hezbollah, which would emerge at the forefront of a guerilla war against Israeli troops.

The occupation was much smaller in size than previous active incursions, but ultimately failed to restore security to northern Israel. It ended over two days in May 2000 when the prime minister, Ehud Barak, ordered the withdrawal of Israeli forces in compliance with UN resolution 425, triggering the collapse of the SLA.

The most obvious immediate beneficiary of the occupation and withdrawal was Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was credited in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world with driving out the IDF.

Second Lebanon war, 2006

After a complex operation by Hezbollah across the border to kidnap Israeli soldiers to swap for prisoners, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, launched the second Lebanon war “to change the equation”, by attempting to force Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon to restore security in Israel’s north.

As the Israeli academic Prof Efraim Inbar noted a year after the month-long war, the IDF “planned for small skirmishes, not for a large-scale, conventional military campaign” and was caught out by the intensity of Hezbollah’s resistance, describing “overreliance on airpower [as] another strategic folly”.

The war began with a massive air operation including the bombing of Beirut’s airport, Hezbollah headquarters and rocket stockpiles in Beirut, and militia positions and rocket launchers in the south. An initial ground incursion of 2,000 troops escalated quickly.

The conflict is now regarded as one of Israel’s most inconclusive wars. The fighting ended with the unanimous passage of UN security council resolution 1701, which envisaged the disarmament of armed groups including Hezbollah and no armed forces other than UNIFIL and the Lebanese armed forces south of the Litani River. However, 1701 was never enforced.

Third Lebanese war, 2023-?

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Hezbollah began firing missiles, mortars and anti-tank fire from its positions in southern Lebanon in support of Hamas, in a campaign that gathered pace and violence on both sides over a year.

In recent months there has been growing political pressure to allow the return of 60,000 displaced Israelis and to restore calm and security in northern Israel.

In what now appears to have been a complex and well-laid plan, Israel began targeting Hezbollah in recent weeks, first through the use of exploding communications devices supplied to the group surreptitiously, and then via the assassination of its leadership, including Nasrallah, in a series of airstrikes.

A week ago, following a now familiar pattern, Israel launched what it said were limited operations on the border to clear Hezbollah infrastructure. That, however, has rapidly expanded, with elements of four separate Israeli divisions operating in the ground campaign.

At the time of writing the scope of the operation, and whether it is more achievable than previous campaigns, remains unclear. Since last October at least 2,036 people in Lebanon have been killed and 9,535 wounded.

Mexico’s new government has been shaken by the murder of a city mayor who was attacked and beheaded days after taking office.

Alejandro Arcos Catalán was sworn in as the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero, on 30 September, a day before Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, took power herself.

On Monday, less than a week into her presidency, Sheinbaum confirmed reports that the 43-year-old city leader had been slain the previous day, telling reporters: “All the necessary investigations are taking place.”

Photographs of Arcos Catalán’s bloodied head, exhibited on the roof of a white vehicle while his body lay slumped inside, spread on social media – a terrible reminder of the violence that Mexico’s organised crime conflict has inflicted on the Latin American country.

The mayor’s murder came after two close allies were shot dead in the early days of his short-lived administration. A secretary, Francisco Tapia, was gunned down on 3 October, while Ulises Hernández Martínez, a former special forces police commander who was tipped to become Arcos Catalán’s security chief, was riddled with bullets on the eve of the mayor’s inauguration.

Shocked citizens shared footage of an interview with the mayor before his death in which he said he wished to be remembered as a champion of peace and happiness. “I’ve lived here all my life … and it’s here that I want to die – but I want to die fighting for my city,” Arcos Catalán said.

The murder sparked anger and disgust, with Alejandro Moreno, the president of Arcos Catalán’s party, the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), denouncing what he called a grotesque “act of terror”.

Ricardo Anaya, an opposition senator, lamented the “spine-chilling” security situation in Mexico, where more than 450,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderón launched his doomed “war” against the drug cartels in 2006.

“The fact that they have decapitated the mayor of such an important city should make us shudder. It is utterly unacceptable and we need to do something to ensure it stops happening,” Anaya told reporters, calling for an immediate change in tack in security policy.

But Sheinbaum has promised to continue the so-called “hugs, not bullets” security policy of her predecessor and mentor, the 70-year-old nationalist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during her six-year term.

“We will not return to Calderón’s reckless war on the narcos that did our country so much harm. It remains our conviction that security and peace are the fruits of justice,” she told thousands of supporters who packed Mexico City’s Zócalo Square for her historic inauguration last Tuesday.

Although López Obrador claimed to have achieved a modest reduction in Mexico’s murder rate in the later stages of his presidency, there is consensus among security analysts that his attempts to “pacify” the country failed. Last year Mexico suffered more than 30,000 murders. According to the Instituto Igarapé thinktank, Mexico was home to 11 of the world’s 50 most murderous cities in 2023, compared with three in 2015. Chilpancingo was one of them.

Despite that bleak reality, López Obrador, who most Mexicans know simply as Amlo, left office with approval ratings of 70%, largely as a result of his relentless focus on fighting inequality and positioning himself as a champion of the poor.

Aware that tackling violence represents one of her most daunting challenges – and under pressure after Arcos Catalán’s murder – Sheinbaum said she would set out her public security plans on Tuesday.

Another major security crisis is playing out in the north-western city of Culiacán, where an internal conflict within the Sinaloa cartel triggered by the capture of its co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García has led to scores of killings.

Sheinbaum’s security drive will be spearheaded by the security minister, Omar García Harfuch, who served as her police chief while she was mayor of Mexico City. García Harfuch has first-hand experience of the dangers of organised crime: in 2020 he came close to death when hitmen ambushed his car on the capital’s best-known street, firing more than 400 times with assault rifles and grenade launchers.

The identity of the killers of the mayor of Chilpancingo remained unclear but in recent years the city has witnessed a bloody squabble between two criminal groups called Los Ardillos (the Squirrels) and Los Tlacos. As often happens in Mexico, local politicians have been implicated in that underworld. Arcos Catalán’s predecessor Norma Otilia Hernández was removed from office after compromising footage emerged showing her talking with a Squirrels boss in a restaurant. Hernández, who was then a member of López Obrador and Sheinbaum’s political movement, Morena, claimed it was a “chance” encounter, but was later expelled from the party.

After his election earlier this year, Arcos Catalán reportedly said he would not do deals or negotiate with criminal groups.

Mexico’s new government has been shaken by the murder of a city mayor who was attacked and beheaded days after taking office.

Alejandro Arcos Catalán was sworn in as the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero, on 30 September, a day before Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, took power herself.

On Monday, less than a week into her presidency, Sheinbaum confirmed reports that the 43-year-old city leader had been slain the previous day, telling reporters: “All the necessary investigations are taking place.”

Photographs of Arcos Catalán’s bloodied head, exhibited on the roof of a white vehicle while his body lay slumped inside, spread on social media – a terrible reminder of the violence that Mexico’s organised crime conflict has inflicted on the Latin American country.

The mayor’s murder came after two close allies were shot dead in the early days of his short-lived administration. A secretary, Francisco Tapia, was gunned down on 3 October, while Ulises Hernández Martínez, a former special forces police commander who was tipped to become Arcos Catalán’s security chief, was riddled with bullets on the eve of the mayor’s inauguration.

Shocked citizens shared footage of an interview with the mayor before his death in which he said he wished to be remembered as a champion of peace and happiness. “I’ve lived here all my life … and it’s here that I want to die – but I want to die fighting for my city,” Arcos Catalán said.

The murder sparked anger and disgust, with Alejandro Moreno, the president of Arcos Catalán’s party, the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), denouncing what he called a grotesque “act of terror”.

Ricardo Anaya, an opposition senator, lamented the “spine-chilling” security situation in Mexico, where more than 450,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderón launched his doomed “war” against the drug cartels in 2006.

“The fact that they have decapitated the mayor of such an important city should make us shudder. It is utterly unacceptable and we need to do something to ensure it stops happening,” Anaya told reporters, calling for an immediate change in tack in security policy.

But Sheinbaum has promised to continue the so-called “hugs, not bullets” security policy of her predecessor and mentor, the 70-year-old nationalist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during her six-year term.

“We will not return to Calderón’s reckless war on the narcos that did our country so much harm. It remains our conviction that security and peace are the fruits of justice,” she told thousands of supporters who packed Mexico City’s Zócalo Square for her historic inauguration last Tuesday.

Although López Obrador claimed to have achieved a modest reduction in Mexico’s murder rate in the later stages of his presidency, there is consensus among security analysts that his attempts to “pacify” the country failed. Last year Mexico suffered more than 30,000 murders. According to the Instituto Igarapé thinktank, Mexico was home to 11 of the world’s 50 most murderous cities in 2023, compared with three in 2015. Chilpancingo was one of them.

Despite that bleak reality, López Obrador, who most Mexicans know simply as Amlo, left office with approval ratings of 70%, largely as a result of his relentless focus on fighting inequality and positioning himself as a champion of the poor.

Aware that tackling violence represents one of her most daunting challenges – and under pressure after Arcos Catalán’s murder – Sheinbaum said she would set out her public security plans on Tuesday.

Another major security crisis is playing out in the north-western city of Culiacán, where an internal conflict within the Sinaloa cartel triggered by the capture of its co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García has led to scores of killings.

Sheinbaum’s security drive will be spearheaded by the security minister, Omar García Harfuch, who served as her police chief while she was mayor of Mexico City. García Harfuch has first-hand experience of the dangers of organised crime: in 2020 he came close to death when hitmen ambushed his car on the capital’s best-known street, firing more than 400 times with assault rifles and grenade launchers.

The identity of the killers of the mayor of Chilpancingo remained unclear but in recent years the city has witnessed a bloody squabble between two criminal groups called Los Ardillos (the Squirrels) and Los Tlacos. As often happens in Mexico, local politicians have been implicated in that underworld. Arcos Catalán’s predecessor Norma Otilia Hernández was removed from office after compromising footage emerged showing her talking with a Squirrels boss in a restaurant. Hernández, who was then a member of López Obrador and Sheinbaum’s political movement, Morena, claimed it was a “chance” encounter, but was later expelled from the party.

After his election earlier this year, Arcos Catalán reportedly said he would not do deals or negotiate with criminal groups.

Healthcare technology designed to target a wide range of women’s issues is less likely to get funding if there is a woman on the founding team, according to research.

Female founders of femtech products – short for female technology – are also less likely to secure funding if they use “advocacy” words in their funding applications, including “women’s rights”, “take control” or “freedom”, the analysis showed.

Male femtech founders, however, can benefit from increased investment if they use the same words, found Ludovica Castiglia, a researcher working in partnership with FemHealth Insights, a consultancy firm specialising in women’s health and femtech.

“The depressing message is that even when you’re working in an area where 75% of companies are founded by women, and you’ve developed a product aimed specifically at women, having a woman on your founding team – even when she’s paired with a male counterpart – damages your chance of getting funding,” Castiglia said.

“Instead of regarding female entrepreneurs in one of the most female-dominated sectors in the startup world as a positive, potential investors frequently see them as a negative and withhold funding as a result,” she said.

The findings have been described as “deeply demoralising but not surprising” by funders who specialise in supporting female startups.

Sarah Turner, a co-founder and the chief executive of Angel Academe, the UK’s leading women’s “angel” network – investors who invest their own money in a small business in exchange for a minority stake – said there “must be some structural bias” in funding institutions because there was “nothing wrong with the women we see seeking funding for their fantastic business ideas”.

She said: “I despair of the victim-blaming attitude that says the problem lies with female founders and that they need more mentoring and training. The truth is that women are just less trusted than men by investors, most of whom are also men, even in an area where you think they have an inbuilt advantage.”

Turner pointed to Flo Health, a period tracking app that recently became Europe’s first femtech unicorn after raising a record $200m.

“Flo is founded by two men,” she said. “I see ideas just as good as theirs every day that are founded by women, but they can only get tiny bits of funding here and there, and so don’t have the chance to grow their business in the same way as Flo has.”

Kirsten Connell, who co-leads a team funding early-stage startups for Octopus Ventures, said: “Femtech might be for women, by women, but the funders are still largely men who don’t understand the scale of the problems femtech sets out to solve or the incredible financial returns on offer.

“These gendered assumptions feed into men getting more funding, even if they produce femtech products and use the same words.”

Castiglia’s research reveals that since 2010, on average, female-founded femtech companies in the UK, US and Canada have raised 23% less capital for each deal compared with similar, male-founded companies.

On average, femtech companies exclusively founded by women receive 28% of venture capital funding, compared with 38% of the funding won by femtech companies founded entirely by men. Just over one-third of funding went to companies funded by mixed-gender teams.

Until now, analysts had assumed that female entrepreneurs do not face gender bias from funders in sectors traditionally associated with women. But Castiglia suggested that funders looking at female founders of women-targeted companies tended to attribute them with ideological rather than economic motives.

Castiglia analysed 1,720 funding agreements made by 513 venture-backed femtech companies in UK, US and Canada for her study, The Cassandra Curse: The Liability of Identity-Issue Fit in Femtech. She found that a “shocking number” of cases of femtech companies run by women received less financing compared with similar companies run by men.

One of the most damaging things a female founder of a femtech company can do, Castiglia discovered, is to use words in their funding pitch or company publicity that suggest they champion their product’s cause. Examples of these words include “dignity”, “discrimination”, “empower”, “equality”, “feminism”, “gender gap”, “inclusive” and “social change”.

“This may happen because women advocating for women’s rights are seen as being emotional, upset and angry rather than businesspeople maximising profits,” she said. “Men, on the other hand, get more funding if they use the same words, perhaps because investors see it as self-interested advocacy, and so proof of their economic acuity.”

Castiglia also conducted an online experiment by submitting identical startups to participants with investment experience, with the pitch coming from fake founders of different sexes.

“When the femtech idea was pitched by a woman, the investor admitted they saw the founder more as a feminist who prioritised social impact at the expense of financial returns than the man. This perception may explain why investors tend to award less funding to female funders of femtech companies,” she said.

Dr Brittany Barreto, the founder of Femhealth Insights, said lack of funding was one of the most significant challenges that femtech companies faced.

“Gender bias in funding is a primary barrier to femtech innovation,” she said. “This research is really important. It proves that even when it comes to women’s bodies, investors trust men more than women to get the job done.”

Police have expanded a cold-case campaign aimed at identifying dozens of women who were murdered or who died in suspicious circumstances across Europe, taking in three new countries and more than doubling the number of cases.

The international policing organisation Interpol said on Tuesday that forces from France, Italy and Spain had joined those in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, which last year launched Operation Identify Me to help name 22 female victims.

The appeal has so far elicited more than 1,800 tips from the public, Interpol said, and led last November to the identification of the body of Rita Roberts, a British woman with a distinctive flower tattoo whose remains were found in Antwerp in 1992.

The inclusion of cold cases from the operation’s three new participating countries, and the addition of several more from its founding members, brought the number of victims whose identities were being actively sought to 46, the organisation said.

“Our goal is simple,” said Interpol’s secretary general, Jürgen Stock. “We want to identify the deceased women, bring answers to families, and deliver justice to the victims. But we can’t do it alone. That is why we are appealing to the public.”

The Identify Me website includes details of each case and facial reconstructions of some of the women, as well as images of individual items including jewellery and clothing discovered at the sites where the women’s remains were found.

Details include information from so-called black notices, normally available only to police, including location; biometric data such as DNA, fingerprints and facial images; dental charts; physical descriptions, and other potentially relevant details.

Each case has a distinctive name chosen by police. One of the oldest is “the girl with the 10-pence coin”, whose body was found in November 1982 in Le Cellier, France. Believed to be about 16 years old at the time of her death, she carried a British 10-pence coin and a metal keyring in the shape of Napoleon.

Others include “the woman who wasn’t alone”, whose body was found, hands tied, in a hotel room in Premià de Mar, Spain in early 1999, and “the woman with the panther and scorpion tattoos”, found in the Po River in Carbonara di Po, Italy, in 2008.

Interpol said the six countries were also sharing analytical capabilities and advanced forensic methods, such as DNA profiling, facial reconstruction, and isotopic analysis, which could help uncover clues about the victims’ origins, lifestyle and cause of death.

“Even the smallest piece of information can be vital,” Stock said. “A memory, a tip, or a shared story – the smallest detail could help uncover the truth. The public could be the key to unlocking a name, a past, and in delivering long-overdue justice.”

The Indian prime minister’s hopes of his party gaining power in Kashmir were dashed on Tuesday as it emerged that his BJP had lost the first election held since the national government stripped the region of its autonomy and statehood.

The elections instead delivered a resounding victory to India’s main opposition party, Congress, and its regional partner, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC), which had come together in a alliance to defeat Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which also rules at the national level.

According to results released on Tuesday afternoon, the alliance between Congress and the JKNC won 48 seats, giving them a comfortable majority, while the BJP won 29.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir has been disputed between India and Pakistan since independence, with three wars fought over the territory, and it is now partially controlled by both countries. Since the 1990s, it has also been home to a violent militant insurgency with an allegiance to, and backed by, Pakistan, which has left tens of thousands dead, and it remains a hotbed of conflict.

Indian-administered Kashmir had not held local assembly elections for a decade. The polls, which began in phases in September, were seen as particularly significant as they were the first since 2019, when the Modi government revoked article 370, which had given Jammu and Kashmir a special form of autonomy since independence.

The Modi government’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s autonomy had been a longstanding pledge of his Hindu nationalist party. The move was followed by a draconian crackdown and was met with anger by swathes of Kashmiris, who viewed it as an attack on Kashmiri identity and an attempt to change the demographics of the country’s only Muslim-majority region.

While local assembly elections in Kashmir have historically been marred by boycotts and low voter turnouts, many voters described this as the first opportunity to have a political voice since the removal of article 370 five years ago and to express their dissatisfaction with the Modi government’s actions. The polls were defined by boisterous campaigning and peaceful voting, with a turnout of 64%.

Waqar Ahmad Wani, a student from Srinagar, said: “In the last five years, the BJP has unleashed harsh treatment on Kashmiris. There was no liberty to speak out on anything; we hope that will change.”

Speaking to reporters after the results were announced, Omar Abdullah, the leader of the JKNC, who is poised to become chief minister, declared that “democracy has prevailed in Jammu and Kashmir after a long time” and called on Modi to restore statehood to the region.

“With this mandate, one thing is clear, that the BJP targeted and tried to weaken us, but their own existence has been wiped out,” said Abdullah, who was among the political leaders jailed by the Modi government in the 2019 crackdown.

The win is likely to be a boost for Congress and the opposition INDIA alliance, which already outperformed expectations in the general election in June that returned Modi and the BJP to power for a third term but with a reduced majority.

Despite the loss, the BJP leadership in Kashmir was positive about the results, particularly in the Hindu-majority areas of the region, where the party dominated.

“This has been the BJP’s best performance so far,” said Jitendra Singh, a senior BJP leader and a minister in the Modi government. “We contested this election purely on the issue of development and tried to rise above caste, creed and religion, giving a new culture to this election.”

The BJP also had reason to celebrate elsewhere as it managed to hold on to power in the state of Haryana, where local election results were also announced on Tuesday, ensuring the party’s continued dominance of the so-called north Indian “Hindi heartland”.

Thanks to the measures brought in by Modi after revoking article 370 in 2019, the central BJP government still has considerable powers over Kashmir, while the regional assembly has largely been stripped of its influence and holds more of a ceremonial role.

Abdul Majeed Malik, a Kashmiri voter, said he doubted the elections would bring any significant change but said there was “a relief that the BJP has been contained”.

“This government can work as a buffer between New Delhi and Kashmiri people,” he said. “They can at least stop further assault on our identity and rights.”

The Indian prime minister’s hopes of his party gaining power in Kashmir were dashed on Tuesday as it emerged that his BJP had lost the first election held since the national government stripped the region of its autonomy and statehood.

The elections instead delivered a resounding victory to India’s main opposition party, Congress, and its regional partner, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC), which had come together in a alliance to defeat Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which also rules at the national level.

According to results released on Tuesday afternoon, the alliance between Congress and the JKNC won 48 seats, giving them a comfortable majority, while the BJP won 29.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir has been disputed between India and Pakistan since independence, with three wars fought over the territory, and it is now partially controlled by both countries. Since the 1990s, it has also been home to a violent militant insurgency with an allegiance to, and backed by, Pakistan, which has left tens of thousands dead, and it remains a hotbed of conflict.

Indian-administered Kashmir had not held local assembly elections for a decade. The polls, which began in phases in September, were seen as particularly significant as they were the first since 2019, when the Modi government revoked article 370, which had given Jammu and Kashmir a special form of autonomy since independence.

The Modi government’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s autonomy had been a longstanding pledge of his Hindu nationalist party. The move was followed by a draconian crackdown and was met with anger by swathes of Kashmiris, who viewed it as an attack on Kashmiri identity and an attempt to change the demographics of the country’s only Muslim-majority region.

While local assembly elections in Kashmir have historically been marred by boycotts and low voter turnouts, many voters described this as the first opportunity to have a political voice since the removal of article 370 five years ago and to express their dissatisfaction with the Modi government’s actions. The polls were defined by boisterous campaigning and peaceful voting, with a turnout of 64%.

Waqar Ahmad Wani, a student from Srinagar, said: “In the last five years, the BJP has unleashed harsh treatment on Kashmiris. There was no liberty to speak out on anything; we hope that will change.”

Speaking to reporters after the results were announced, Omar Abdullah, the leader of the JKNC, who is poised to become chief minister, declared that “democracy has prevailed in Jammu and Kashmir after a long time” and called on Modi to restore statehood to the region.

“With this mandate, one thing is clear, that the BJP targeted and tried to weaken us, but their own existence has been wiped out,” said Abdullah, who was among the political leaders jailed by the Modi government in the 2019 crackdown.

The win is likely to be a boost for Congress and the opposition INDIA alliance, which already outperformed expectations in the general election in June that returned Modi and the BJP to power for a third term but with a reduced majority.

Despite the loss, the BJP leadership in Kashmir was positive about the results, particularly in the Hindu-majority areas of the region, where the party dominated.

“This has been the BJP’s best performance so far,” said Jitendra Singh, a senior BJP leader and a minister in the Modi government. “We contested this election purely on the issue of development and tried to rise above caste, creed and religion, giving a new culture to this election.”

The BJP also had reason to celebrate elsewhere as it managed to hold on to power in the state of Haryana, where local election results were also announced on Tuesday, ensuring the party’s continued dominance of the so-called north Indian “Hindi heartland”.

Thanks to the measures brought in by Modi after revoking article 370 in 2019, the central BJP government still has considerable powers over Kashmir, while the regional assembly has largely been stripped of its influence and holds more of a ceremonial role.

Abdul Majeed Malik, a Kashmiri voter, said he doubted the elections would bring any significant change but said there was “a relief that the BJP has been contained”.

“This government can work as a buffer between New Delhi and Kashmiri people,” he said. “They can at least stop further assault on our identity and rights.”

Hurricane Milton swept past Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula Tuesday, bringing sustained winds of nearly 155 mph (250km/h), as the category 4 storm heads towards Florida’s dangerously exposed Tampa Bay.

The storm’s trajectory suggested it would pass the Mexican city of Mérida, home to 1.2 million people, in the early hours of Tuesday morning before swerving north towards the US. Mexican officials have been bussing people out of low-lying coastal areas.

Milton is projected to hit the south-west coast of Florida by Wednesday evening local time, the US National Weather Service said in its latest update, and could cause destruction in areas already reeling from Hurricane Helene’s devastation nearly two weeks ago.

Almost all of Florida’s west coast was under a hurricane warning, with more than a million people told to evacuate, fleeing potentially catastrophic damage and power outages that could last days. With one day left for people to leave, local officials raised concerns about traffic jams and long queues at fuel stations.

“Now is the time where you have the ability to make the decisions necessary to keep yourself and your family safe,” Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said in an update early Tuesday. “We urge you to execute your plan.

“Let’s prepare for the worst and let’s pray that we get a weakening and hope for the least amount of damage is possible, but we must be prepared for a major, major impact to the west coast of Florida.”

US forecasters and officials fear Milton could make landfall in the Tampa Bay region, home to more than 3 million people. Tampa has not had a direct hit by a major hurricane since 1921 and could see waters rise by 15ft (4.5 metres).

Hurricane damage modellers have for years warned that the Tampa Bay area is particularly vulnerable to rising seas caused by storm surges, due to its wide and shallow seabed, which can push water upwards.

The mayor of Tampa, which is low-lying and has a population of 3.3 million, issued a stark warning to residents as Hurricane Milton dashed across the Gulf of Mexico.

“If you choose to stay … you are going to die,” said the mayor, Jane Castor.

Castor delivered the blunt assessment to CNN on Monday while also describing Milton as a “literally catastrophic” hurricane projected to push up to 15ft of Gulf water inland – an amount that officials say is deadly.

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in late September, caused more than 200 deaths and catastrophic damage stretching from Florida to the Appalachian mountains. There are fears that mounds of building rubble left in Helene’s wake could turn into dangerous debris if caught up in Milton’s floods and winds.

The National Weather Service downgraded Milton early on Tuesday to a category 4 hurricane but forecasters said it still posed an extremely serious threat.

“While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida,” the agency said.

The slight weakening from category 5 status attained Monday occurred after Milton’s barometric pressure rose slightly to 924mbar from 879mbar. That happened as Milton appeared to be undergoing an eye wall replacement, which can briefly raise barometric pressure and reduce its intensity.

However, the phenomenon tends to make a hurricane wider, increasing its windfield. Projections expect the hurricane to restrengthen to a category 5 then weaken as it approaches Florida, though the storm’s effects are still going to be potent.

Milton is due to become the 10th major hurricane – category 3 or higher – to make landfall along the US’s Gulf coast since 2017, gaining power from the warm seas in the gulf. Milton was the third fastest-intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the agency said.

Weather and climate experts attribute such a high rate of powerful, destructive storms to the climate crisis, spurred by the burning of fossil fuels.

Before Milton’s arrival, DeSantis, declared a state of emergency for 51 of its 67 counties. “What you don’t want to do is stay in an area where you have 10, 15ft of storm surge,” he told Fox News on Monday.

DeSantis also told Floridians to make sure they had a week’s food and water and were braced for more evacuation orders.

The governor is pro-fossil fuels and has criticised climate action as being led by “radical green zealots”.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to reporting

An influential Philippine pastor who is wanted by the FBI for sex trafficking children has registered to run in the senate election despite being in prison.

Apollo Quiboloy, who claims to be the “appointed son of God” and is an ally of the former president Rodrigo Duterte, was until recently one of the country’s most high-profile fugitives.

He was arrested last month after a 16-day manhunt across a sprawling compound belonging to his church, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KoJC), which he founded in 1985 after claiming to have heard the voice of God.

He isimprisoned in Pasig City jail and is facing charges of child abuse, sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Quiboloy, 74, is also wanted by the FBI after he was indicted in the US in 2021 on charges of sex trafficking, including of children, and bulk cash smuggling.

According to the FBI wanted list, victims were allegedly recruited to work as personal assistants or “pastorals” and required to have sex with Quiboloy in what was called “night duty”.

Quiboloy has denied the charges, saying they are fabricated by critics and disgruntled former members of his church.

The pastor, whose sect claims millions of followers, is politically influential, and was known for being the spiritual adviser to Duterte.

His candidacy paperwork was filed by his lawyer Mark Christopher Tolentino, who said: “He wants to be a part of the solution to the problems of our country. He is running because of God and our beloved Philippines.”

Under the election code, candidates can only be disqualified if they have been declared “insane or incompetent” or if they have exhausted all appeals “for subversion, insurrection, rebellion or for any offence for which he has been sentenced to a penalty of more than 18 months or for a crime involving moral turpitude”.

Politicians have previously run senate campaigns while facing criminal charges, and while detained in prison.

Leila de Lima, an outspoken critic of Duterte’s war on drugs, spent much of her six-year senate term in prison after she was arrested on drugs charges in 2017.

The cases against her were widely regarded as trumped up and have since been dropped. She campaigned for re-election from prison in 2022 but was unsuccessful.

Antonio Trillanes, who was imprisoned after he was accused of leading a coup attempt, was elected to the senate from behind bars in 2007.

In May 2022, Jose Estrada won a senate seat while on trial for corruption, of which he was later acquitted.

President Ferdinand Marcos has said Quiboloy will face charges pending in the Philippines before any possible extradition to the US is considered.

The head of MI5 has said his agency has “one hell of a job” to do as the threat from Islamic State has returned while Iran and Russia engage in intensifying efforts to undertake assassination and sabotage plots in the UK.

Ken McCallum said a revival of IS in Afghanistan in particular had brought a resumption of efforts by the Islamist group to export terrorism, and a “bit of an upswing” in Britons seeking to travel abroad to learn from the group.

McCallum said the “worsening threat” from IS and to a lesser extent al-Qaida was “the terrorist trend that concerns me most” and he noted that al-Qaida had “sought to capitalise on conflict in the Middle East” in its calls for violent action.

“Over the last month, more than a third of our top-priority investigations have had some form of connection, of varying strengths, to organised overseas terrorist groups,” he said as he gave a threat update.

Spy chiefs are focused on the revival of IS’s Afghan affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), which has grown in strength after the western withdrawal from Afghanistan. It claimed responsibility for the deadly attack in Moscow in March where militants opened fire at a concert, killing 133 people and wounding 140.

Two brothers from Birmingham were sentenced last November for trying to travel to Afghanistan to join ISKP, McCallum noted. They received jail terms of 10 years and eight years.

The spy chief said it was not the case that Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon had led directly to an increase in terrorist plotting in the UK, though he acknowledged there had been “rising public order, hate crime and community safety challenges” that police had had to deal with.

Terror threats tended to develop over a long period, he added. “The ripples from conflict in that region will not necessarily arrive at our shores in a straightforward fashion,” he said, but the UK terror threat remained unchanged at “substantial”, the third level on a five-point scale.

McCallum highlighted that Iran had been behind “plot after plot” in the UK in the past two years. Five new Iran-backed plots have been uncovered by MI5 and police this year, taking the total since January 2022 to 20.

McCallum said Iranian state actors made “extensive use of criminals as proxies”, to try to carry out threats and intimidation largely directed against dissidents and individuals perceived as a threat to the Tehran regime.

He said MI5 was alive to the possibility that Iran “could, in principle, try to repurpose” that effort to focus on other targets in the UK if Tehran felt that Britain had become a party to the conflict in the Middle East by supporting Israel in its anticipated retaliation to last week’s ballistic missile attack.

He also said Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency was engaged in “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”, noting that there had been arson and sabotage plots, also relying on criminal networks to carry out disruptive attacks because most or all of the country’s embassy-based spies had been kicked out.

Taken together, the number of MI5’s state-based investigations, including China as well as Russia, Iran and others, had risen by 48% in the past year. Russian activity had stepped up again after a chaotic period after the invasion of Ukraine, when 750 diplomats had been expelled across Europe.

McCallum said that meant the spy agency was dealing with terror threats alongside “state-backed sabotage and assassination plots”, and he observed that “MI5 has one hell of a job on its hands”.

The number of late-stage terror plots disrupted since March 2017 had increased to 43, McCallum said. The last time the spy chief gave a comparable figure it was 37 in November 2022, meaning six plots have been prevented in nearly two years.

The humble stitch plays a crucial role in surgery, holding a gash together while tissues repair. Now scientists have created a type of suture they say can help speed up wound healing and reduce the risk of infection.

Researchers in China have created a suture that when put under strain – as occurs during movement – electrically stimulates the wound.

Dr Chengyi Hou, a co-author of the research from Donghua University, said: “This electrical stimulation suture is a fully biodegradable and self-electrified material. It helps wound healing without any additional approaches, [such as] using external electric devices.”

Electrical stimulation is known to promote wound healing through a number of mechanisms, including by boosting migration of cells to the area.

Writing in the journal Nature Communications the team reports how the new sutures are made from a core filament of magnesium that is wrapped in a biodegradable polymer. This is contained inside a sheath made of another biodegradable material.

The team carried out a series of experiments with the suture, involving artificial muscle fibres, and rats with wounds.

The results reveal that when the sutures are stretched and the core moves within the sheath, its components become electrically charged – this is the same process that occurs when a balloon is rubbed on hair, for example.

“The suture generates electricity by creating opposite charges on the suture’s middle and outer shell when muscles relax and contract, based on the triboelectric effect,” Hou said. “This generates an electric field at the wound site to accelerate wound healing.”

While movement can strain and hinder how well traditional stitches work, it can be a benefit for the new sutures.

Through experiments in a petri dish, the team found the rates at which cells migrated to the area around the sutures, and proliferated, increased when an electrical field was present compared with when it was not, while electrical stimulation also reduced bacterial growth.

The researchers also carried out experiments in rats and found that cuts in their muscles that were held together with the new sutures healed faster than those stitched with ordinary bioabsorbable sutures, and had fewer bacteria – something the team notes is important in reducing the risk of postoperative infections.

After 10 days the wounds were almost completely healed – in contrast with when no sutures or other types of bioabsorbable suture were used. “Tests on rats show that this suture can help wounds heal faster by almost 50%, by creating electric field through the object’s natural movements,” Hou said.

The team is conducting clinical trials to test the sutures in humans, adding that the new type of suture has a similar cost to commercial absorbable sutures.

Dr Karen Wright of Lancaster University, who was not involved in the work, said the novelty of the new sutures was that a charge was generated by movement.

“In this way, the benefits are twofold, since there isn’t a need for external electrical application or battery-operated systems and the material is degradable in situ,” she said.