A Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in central Israel killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others on Sunday, the Israeli military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.

Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It later said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defence systems during the assault by “squadrons” of drones.

Israel’s national rescue service said the attack wounded 61. With Israel’s advanced air-defence systems, it is rare for so many people to be hurt by drones or missiles. Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire almost daily in the year since the war in Gaza began, and fighting has escalated.

The attack followed news that the US is sending a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) missile defence battery to Israel, reportedly along with about 100 US troops, deepening American involvement in the crisis-hit region. The last time the US sent such a missile system to the Middle East was in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ attacks on Israel on 7 October last year. The Pentagon said a Thaad was deployed to southern Israel for drills in 2019, the last and only time it was known to be there.

When asked why he had decided to give permission for the deployment, US president Joe Biden said: “To defend Israel”, which is weighing an expected retaliation against Iran after Tehran fired more than 180 missiles at Israel on 1 October.

Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick Ryder described the deployment as part of “the broader adjustments the US military has made in recent months” to support Israel and defend US personnel from attacks by Iran and Iranian-backed groups.

US officials did not say how quickly the system would be deployed to Israel, and an Israeli army spokesperson declined to provide a timeline for the arrival of the system.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, warned earlier on Sunday that the US was putting the lives of its troops “at risk by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel”. “While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests,” Araqchi posted on X.

A Thaad battery usually requires about 100 troops to operate. It counts six truck mounted launchers, with eight interceptors on each launcher, and a powerful radar.

Early on Monday, Hezbollah threatened Israel with more attacks if its offensive in Lebanon continues.

In a statement, the group described the Binyamina attack as a “complex” operation, in which dozens of missiles were launched towards Nahariya and Acre north of Haifa “with the goal of keeping Israeli defence systems busy”.

At the same time, it launched “squadrons of various drones, some of which were being used for the first time”, which were were able to “get past Israeli air defence radars without being detected” and hit the training camp in Binyamina south of Haifa.

They “exploded in the rooms where dozens of officers and soldiers of the Israeli enemy were present”, the Hezbollah statement claimed.

In Lebanon, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres on Sunday denounced attacks that have injured several peacekeepers, his spokesman said, after a UN peacekeeping mission, Unifil, said two Israeli tanks destroyed a gate and forcibly entered a base in the south of the country. UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said: “Unifil peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly.

“The secretary general reiterates that Unifil personnel and its premises must never be targeted. Attacks against peacekeepers are in breach of international law, including international humanitarian law. They may constitute a war crime,” he said.

In a statement released late on Sunday, the Israeli military said a Merkava tank had been trying to evacuate injured soldiers and had backed into the Unifil post accidentally while under fire amid a smokescreen.

In a videoed statement addressed to Guterres on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reiterated Israeli calls for Unifil troops to evacuate. “The time has come for you to withdraw Unifil from Hezbollah strongholds and from the combat zones,” he said. “The IDF has requested this repeatedly and has met with repeated refusal, which has the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields.”

He later said on X: “Israel will make every effort to prevent Unifil casualties and will do what it takes to win the war.”

The incident in Ramyah on Sunday morning was the latest in a string of violations that Unifil, the UN force deployed since 1978 to southern Lebanon, has blamed on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Inside Gaza, Israeli tank shelling killed at least 20 people including children at a school on Sunday night, according to two local hospitals. The school in Nuseirat was sheltering some of the many Palestinians displaced by the war.

Meanwhile, explosions hit early on Monday outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah.

With Associated Press and Reuters

The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon has said two Israeli tanks destroyed a gate and forcibly entered a base in the south of the country as Israel’s ground operation against Hezbollah moved deeper into Lebanese territory.

The incident in Ramyah on Sunday morning was the latest in a string of violations that Unifil, the UN force deployed since 1978 to southern Lebanon, has blamed on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

After the tanks left, shells exploded about 100 metres from the base, and the ensuing smoke left 15 staffers needing medical treatment for unusual symptoms despite the use of gas masks. Unifil also accused the Israeli military of holding up a logistics convoy.

In a statement released late on Sunday, the Israeli military said a Merkava tank had been trying to evacuate injured soldiers and had backed into the Unifil post accidentally.

Five peacekeepers have been injured since Friday as Israeli ground troops have begun to advance farther north in Lebanon after two weeks of intense fighting and airstrikes. The death toll in the small Mediterranean country now stands at more than 1,400 since late September, after intense Israeli airstrikes overnight on the centre of the southern city of Nabatieh.

Unifil said it had requested an explanation from the IDF for what it called “shocking violations”.

In a videoed statement addressed to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reiterated Israeli calls for Unifil troops to evacuate.

“The time has come for you to withdraw Unifil from Hezbollah strongholds and from the combat zones,” he said. “The IDF has requested this repeatedly and has met with repeated refusal, which has the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields.”

He later said on X: “Israel will make every effort to prevent Unifil casualties and will do what it takes to win the war.”

Late on Sunday, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said: “Unifil peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly.

“The secretary-general reiterates that Unifil personnel and its premises must never be targeted. Attacks against peacekeepers are in breach of international law, including international humanitarian law. They may constitute a war crime,” he said.

Israel argues that Unifil has failed in its mission to uphold a UN resolution from two decades ago that was supposed to ensure that Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-allied Lebanese militia, withdrew from the border area.

In the three weeks since a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah escalated into all-out war, the 10,000-strong Unifil force from 50 different countries has refused to leave 29 positions across southern Lebanon, citing the same UN resolution, which ensures freedom of movement for its staff.

Israeli forces have repeatedly fired on medics and first responders as well as Unifil peacekeepers since Israel invaded Lebanon on 1 October, amid growing international opprobrium.

Hezbollah had begun firing on Israel the day after Hamas’s 7 October attack that triggered the new war, ostensibly in solidarity with the Palestinian group. The IDF accuses Hezbollah of using ambulances to carry fighters and weapons and says Hezbollah operates in the vicinity of the peacekeepers, but has not provided evidence.

Relations between Israel and the UN, frosty for decades, have reached a nadir since the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. In territory under its control, Israel is attempting to close down Unrwa, the world body’s agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing it of routinely employing Hamas operatives. The UN fired nine staff members implicated in the 7 October attack but an investigation stressed that Israel had not provided evidence for its main allegations.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, reiterated on Sunday that Guterres was barred from entering the country due to what Katz described as “antisemitic and anti-Israel conduct”.

Elsewhere in Lebanon, at least three people were killed and dozens wounded in Israeli airstrikes overnight in which mosques and residential buildings were targeted, after strikes on several villages on Saturday killed 15. The IDF said it had hit 200 Hezbollah sites over the past 24 hours.

Hezbollah responded with rocket barrages fired across northern and central Israel on Sunday, most of which were intercepted by Israel’s air defence systems. Israel’s N12 News television said at least 67 people were wounded after what Hezbollah said was its attack on a camp of the Israeli military’s Golani Brigade in Binyamina, northern Israel.

Also over the weekend, Israel ordered residents of another 23 villages across southern Lebanon to evacuate north. About 1.2 million people – a quarter of the population – have been driven from their homes since fighting escalated three weeks ago when Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership in airstrikes, including its secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli evacuation directives now cover a quarter of the country.

In the Gaza Strip, fierce fighting in the Jabaliya area of Gaza City that the UN estimates has left 400,000 people trapped with dwindling water and food supplies entered a second week. The World Food Programme, the UN food agency, reported on Saturday that no food aid had reached northern Gaza since 1 October, raising new fears of famine and extreme hunger.

An Israeli strike on the central town of Deir al-Balah on Sunday killed a family of eight, local medics said.

The region is still bracing for an anticipated Israeli response to an unprecedented missile attack by Iran two weeks ago, launched in support of its Lebanese ally after Israel’s ground invasion.

NBC reported on Saturday that US officials believed Israel had narrowed down targets to military and energy infrastructure. Miscalculation could propel Iran and Israel into a full-scale war. The US, Israel’s staunch ally, is wary of being drawn into the fighting and of negative impacts on the global oil industry.

In a social media post, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Sunday there were “no red lines” for Tehran on the issue of defending itself, and indirectly threatened US forces against operating in Israel.

“The US has been delivering record amount of arms to Israel,” he said on X. “It is now also putting lives of its troops at risk by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel.

“While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests.”

Later on Sunday, the Pentagon confirmed that the US would send a sophisticated anti-missile system known as Thaad and operator troops to Israel to protect from missile attacks such as those launched against the Jewish state by Iran in April and September.

Hunger and malnutrition rates could rise “exponentially” in Lebanon, if Israel follows through with threats to escalate the current military operation which has so far killed more than 2,000 and displaced as many as a million people, according to a leading UN expert.

“Israel has the ability to starve Lebanon – like it has starved Palestinians in Gaza,” said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. “If you look at the geography of Lebanon, Israel has the power to absolutely put a stranglehold on the food system. There is a huge risk of hunger and malnutrition rates skyrocketing very quickly in Lebanon.”

Acute hunger rates could rise very quickly because food security in Lebanon was precarious even before Israel launched its full-scale aerial bombardment in mid-September, as growing hostilities with Hezbollah since 7 October had already displaced 40% of local farmers, disrupting local production and interrupting trade flows and access to markets, according to the UN World Food Programme.

Access to adequate food is becoming increasingly challenging, as entire communities have been forced to abandon their homes and farmland in southern Lebanon and as civilian areas in Beirut come under heavy aerial attack.

In June, the UN added Lebanon to its list of hunger hotspots, warning that a quarter of the population faced acute levels of food insecurity amid the simmering conflict, soaring inflation, rising global wheat prices, and diminishing humanitarian aid for the country’s 1.5 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees.

On Friday, Fakhri will face questions at the UN general assembly over the findings of his latest report, which argues that starvation campaigns are always deliberate and that the state of Israel should be held criminally accountable for the mass starvation of Palestinians.

“Famines are human-made and are always the result of one group starving another, therefore should always be understood as a political problem,” said Fakhri.

“There is clear evidence that Israeli officials have used starvation both as a war crime and as a crime against humanity – which are fundamental violations of international law with no exceptions. Famine causes lasting physical and psychological harm to survivors, and may cause harm for generations to come. You cannot turn starvation on and off like a ceasefire.”

On 9 October 2023 – two days after the Hamas attack which killed more than 1,100 people – Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, declared a “complete siege” of Gaza and said he would halt the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel. By December, Gazans accounted for 80% of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger, according to UN and international aid agency figures.

Fakhri’s report published in July said that never in post-second world war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

Some aid has reached Gaza but humanitarian groups say just a fraction of what Palestinian civilians need to survive is getting through. Israel says that aid is arriving in Gaza but not being distributed.

In September, UN and Israeli government data showed that deliveries of food and aid to Gaza sank to their lowest in seven months due to new rules imposed by Israel.

Inside Gaza, aid distribution is complicated by fuel shortages, and Israeli checkpoints. More than 300 aid workers have been killed in the territory, according to the UN.

Fakhri was the first in the UN system to raise the alarm of the risk of genocide through starvation within weeks of the start of the conflict. He argues that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza did not start on 7 October.

“It takes years of political choices, and a significant degree of military and financial power to be able to starve another population. It also requires an international system that enables this to happen, so countries that continue to send money and weapons to Israel are also culpable.”

Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, blamed Hamas for the violence and suffering in Gaza and has said that more aid is being allowed to enter the enclave. The government did not respond to requests for reaction to Fakhri’s comments.

More than 42,100 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, with at least 98,100 others injured and an estimated 10,000 unaccounted for and presumed dead, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Fakhri’s report to the UN frames starvation as a violation of international law for which states and corporations could be held accountable by the international court of justice (ICJ) and domestic courts. Currently, starvation is understood strictly as a violation of humanitarian law, a war crime for which only individuals can be prosecuted.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defense minister Gallant are the first individuals to be formally accused by an international court of deliberate starvation.

“Framing starvation campaigns like the ones we see in Gaza and the Sudan as only a crime under the laws of war is problematic – and empirically impossible. Military supply chains are inherently connected to humanitarian supply chains which are inherently connected to civilian supply chains,” said Fakhri, a law professor at the University of Oregon.

“If you use starvation in any instance, whether it’s against armed combatants or otherwise, guaranteed you will starve a civilian population en masse,” Fakhri added.

The world produces enough food to feed 1.5 times the current population, and yet the prevalence of hunger, malnutrition and famine is on the rise. Food insecurity is concentrated in Africa and the Arab world because the food systems are fragile by design, according to Fakhri.

“Starvation is always used as a weapon to displace people from their land or weaken their relationship with their land. It is often connected to annexation, occupation and land acquisition, and that’s what’s playing out in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon,” said Fakhri.

“In geopolitical terms every major powerful and wealthy country either directly or indirectly supports starvation because it gives them a profound degree of control over populations and their land … and there are some who are interested in keeping the status quo.”

At least 22 people have been killed in airstrikes in northern Gaza, with Israeli forces stepping up their campaign on the besieged Palestinian territory even as fighting in the new war in Lebanon escalates.

On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) renewed its evacuation orders for Palestinians still living in the decimated northern half of Gaza, although many residents say the fighting and Israeli sniper fire make it impossible to leave.

Avichay Adraee, an IDF spokesperson, told people that the area includes parts of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood and sections around Jabalia, the urban refugee camp.

In a social media post, Adraee asked people living there to head south to al-Mawasi, a coastal area of southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of people are already displaced. A total of 84% of the territory is currently under evacuation orders, pushing civilians into ever-dwindling “humanitarian zones” which Israel has bombed regardless.

The UN says an estimated 400,000 people are trapped by the latest ground fighting and artillery fire centred in Jabalia, which has now entered a second week.

“It is getting tougher every day. The fear and the conditions are unspeakable,” said Badr Alzaharna, 25, from Gaza City. “I cannot leave. I want to travel but I can’t. Rafah crossing has been closed since May.”

Gaza’s ministry of health appealed on Friday for medical teams to be allowed access to the northern half of the strip to evacuate the wounded, and for fuel deliveries to the north’s struggling hospitals, warning that civilians caught up in the intense shelling and airstrikes are running out of food and water. Seven World Health Organization missions were impeded from access to northern Gaza by Israeli forces this week, the UN body said. Also on Saturday, the World Food Programme, the UN food agency, reported that no food aid has reached northern Gaza since 1 October, with a 35% drop in the supply of food to families around the rest of Gaza, raising new fears of extreme hunger and famine that have already plagued the strip for a year.

The last food supplies – canned food, flour, high-energy biscuits and nutrition supplements – have been distributed to shelters and health facilities in the north, and it is unclear how long they will last. Israel has consistently denied blocking aid and food to Gaza.

Airstrikes overnight on Friday on Jabalia destroyed an entire building and severely damaged several more, according to medics and first responders, who are still recovering missing people from under the rubble and ruins created by a 20-metre deep impact crater.

At least six women and seven children were among the dead, and a strike in another part of Jabalia in the early hours of Saturday killed two parents and injured their baby, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said. Hospitals across Gaza reported receiving a total of 49 bodies and 219 wounded people in the past 24 hours.

The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest strikes and civilian deaths in Gaza.

Israel has nominally controlled the northern half of Gaza since the beginning of the year, and has cut the territory in two by creating what it calls the Netzarim corridor, which separates what was once the densely populated Gaza City from the rest of the strip. However, it has since frequently re-entered Gaza City and other areas in the north of the strip where it says Hamas fighters are regrouping.

In Lebanon, the health authority said that 60 people were killed and another 168 wounded in the past 24 hours, and the United Nations peacekeeping force that operates on the blue line separating Israel and Lebanon said its headquarters in Naqoura had been targeted a second time. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the fire.

Israel stepped up its campaign against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah last month after a year of tit-for-tat fire triggered by Hamas’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.

The new war in Lebanon has heightened the risk of a region-wide escalation drawing in Iran and the US. Ceasefire talks on ending the fighting in Gaza have been stalled since July.

Muslims in India say they have been fired from their jobs and face the closure of their businesses after two states brought in a “discriminatory” policy making it mandatory for restaurants to publicly display the names of all their employees.

The policy was first introduced by Yogi Adityanath, the hardline Hindu monk who is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Last month the state of Himachal Pradesh, governed by the opposition Congress party, announced it would also make it compulsory for all names of workers and employees to be put on display.

Both state governments have said it is to ensure compliance with health and safety rules and vending regulations in the north Indian states. However, locals and activists have alleged that the new rules are instead a thinly veiled attack on Muslim workers and establishments.

Names in India widely signify religion and caste and there are growing fears among Muslim business owners in Uttar Pradesh that this will lead to targeted attacks or economic boycotts, particularly by hardline Hindu groups that are active in the state.

“This order is dangerous, it forces us to wear our religion on our sleeve,” said Tabish Aalam, 28, who comes from a long line of specialist chefs in the city of Lucknow. “I am sure the government knows this, and that is why it is being exploited.”

Uttar Pradesh is governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) that also rules at the centre under the prime minister, Narendra Modi, whose decade in power has been marked by growing anti-Muslim discrimination and attacks.

Adityanath is viewed as one of the most hardline leaders in the BJP. Since he became chief minister in 2017, he has introduced a flurry of policies that are accused of enabling the targeting of Muslims or fuelling anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.

Business owners in Uttar Pradesh said they had fired Muslim staff as a result of the new laws, fearing they would become a target. Other Muslim-run businesses said they had already been harassed as a result of the policy, with some considering closure.

Rafiq, 45, the Muslim owner of a highway restaurant in the Uttar Pradesh city of Muzaffarnagar, said he had fired his four Muslim employees in July after police demanded he put the names of all workers on a sign outside.

“I had to fire my Muslim staff because I was concerned for their safety following the order,” he said. “Displaying names makes us vulnerable and a very easy target. If, for instance, there is communal tension that keeps taking place, we will be easily identified as Muslims and targeted.”

Rafiq said he had little doubt as to why the Adityanath government was enforcing these new rules. “Displaying names will identify people’s religions, which I suspect is intended to discourage people from eating at Muslim-owned or Muslim-staffed restaurants,” he said. So far, Rafiq said, he had resisted police pressure to comply, but he said that if he was forced to, he would probably shut down his business altogether.

Calls for economic boycotts of Muslims have been prominent in the state and there have been rising incidents of attacks against Muslim vendors over the past five years. Last month, the state leader of Bajrang Dal, a rightwing Hindu vigilante group, was captured on video at a meeting calling for attenders to pledge: “I will not buy goods from any Muslim shopkeeper.”

Among the Muslims recently fired from a job as a cook was Idrees Ahmed, 31, who had held the position for seven years. He alleged he was among several Muslim members of staff let go as a result of the new policy.

“The owner of the restaurant is a Hindu, and most of the other staff members were also Hindu,” Ahmed said. “When the order was issued, the owner called me and other Muslim staff members and apologised before asking us to go home.”

Ahmed said he had been “emotionally shattered” by the ordeal and was struggling to support his family of five as no other restaurants would hire him. “I lost a job simply because of my religion,” he said. “I know so many Muslims who were working in different restaurants but were fired after the order.”

In Muzaffarnagar, some alleged that only Muslim-owned businesses were being forced to comply. Mohammad Azeem, 42, who runs a small roadside stall, said he was the only business owner harassed by police to display his name on a sign. “The administration is deliberately trying to create a divide,” he said. “Why did they ask me selectively?”

Praveen Garg, a BJP spokesperson in Uttar Pradesh, said the policy was to ensure restaurant hygiene, and he emphasised that “nobody is being denied permission to work”.

“The government was obligated to take this action after becoming aware of situations in which food was purposefully contaminated,” Garg said. “There have been instances where persons from a specific community have been caught polluting meals with dirty items that a Hindu cannot consume.”

Several incidents suggesting that vendors had mixed spit and urine with food and drink items recently went viral and led to arrests in the state. However, despite allegations by rightwing Hindu groups that there was a Muslim conspiracy to commit “spit jihad”, there was no evidence that the incidents were specifically targeted at Hindus.

In July, India’s supreme court blocked a separate order by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments – both BJP-ruled states – that had demanded restaurants along the route of an annual Hindu pilgrimage display the names of their owners and operators. A petition against the order brought by opposition politicians argued that it was “discriminatory on grounds of religion”.

Despite the controversy and allegations of stirring up religious division, in September the state government of Himachal Pradesh said it would soon be following Uttar Pradesh’s example.

It cited food hygiene as well as fears over an “influx of migrants” as the reasons behind bringing in the policy. Vikramaditya Singh, a Himachal Pradesh Congress leader and state minister, said the matter was still under deliberation.

“There will be no compromise with the internal security of the state. The law is applicable for everybody. Why should one particular community feel threatened or have apprehensions?” said Singh. However, he added that if there were widespread concerns about the display of names “then some other way will be explored”.

Business owners accused the local Congress party of going against its pledges of secularism and using the divisive policy to court the Hindu-majority vote in the state.

Sharik Ali, 27, who runs a small restaurant in Shimla, in Himachal Pradesh, said: “I will not feel safe after displaying my name on my stall. We have seen how Muslims across India have been attacked in the last 10 years of Modi’s rule, but I was not expecting this from the Congress government. They know what will fetch them votes.”

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump spent Sunday trying to shore up political support among what they perceived to be must-have voting blocs with polls showing them locked in a tight 5 November presidential race.

With election day less than a month away, the Democratic vice-president attended a Black church in Greenville, North Carolina, as part of her campaign’s “souls to the polls” push. She later exalted the way communities – especially in the western part of the state – were coming together after damage from Hurricane Helene in late September, especially the way “people who have the least give the most”.

Her Republican opponent, meanwhile, was in Arizona – looking for Black and Latino support as he seeks a second presidency, after a rally in California a day earlier.

Both candidates are attempting to get a decisive edge among votes who have not yet decided who to support. Surveys show that early voting, which tends to favor Democrats, is down 45% from previous election years – a sign that there may be millions of undecided voters.

Trump has now switched from condemning early voting as a Democrat plot to engineer his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020 to urging people to vote early and by mail.

A recent ABC News-Ipsos poll showed that support was split down gender lines, with women voting 60-40 to Harris and men breaking for Trump by a similar margin.

Trump needs white women, who supported him in a greater numbers in 2020 than in 2016 – but also Black men. On Sunday, he argued that his fellow former president Barack Obama’s call last week for Black men to support Harris based “solely on her skin color, rather than her policies” as “deeply insulting”.

Democratic Georgia senator Ralph Warnock on Sunday told CNN, “Black men are not going to vote for Donald Trump in any significant numbers.” But his fellow Black Democrat Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina congressman, told CNN, “Yes, I am concerned,” about Black men voting for Trump. Separately, former president Bill Clinton was urging voters in rural Georgia to get behind the Democratic ticket.

A New York Times poll published Sunday found that Harris is underperforming the last three Democratic candidates for the White House among Latino voters.

The election may come down to fractional increases in support for each. An NBC News poll released Sunday showed the candidates in a “dead heat” nationally at 48% support. The poll found that voters are reassessing Trump’s first term more favorably – but also that voters view reproductive rights as a top motivating issue, which could hurt the former president after three of his US supreme court appointees eliminated the federal right to abortion.

A CBS News poll, also released Sunday, found that the presidential race is more than just two conflicting ideologies – but about a fundamental disconnection.

For instance, most Trump supporters said relief for victims of Hurricanes Helene and Milton wasn’t reaching affected people – while Harris supporters indicated it was. Trump supporters said the economy was bad; Harris supporters said it was good. Trump’s voters said US-Mexico border crossings were increasing; Harris’s voters said they were down.

Trump’s voters, especially the men, said gender equality efforts had gone too far; Harris voters said not far enough. But both agreed that social media was untrustworthy and had made it harder to find things to agree on and to tell fact from fiction.

Each poll contained positive signs for Harris, including a five-point advantage on “looking out for middle class” (ABC); abortion being “#1 motivating issue” (NBC), with Democrat up 19 points on the issue over Trump (New York Times); Trump’s Latino support at the same level from 2020 (CBS), and also Harris matching Biden in 2020 with Black voters.

But the response to the two hurricanes that the south-eastern US recently continued to dominate Democrats’ campaign. On Sunday, Biden was scheduled to survey damage inflicted on Florida’s Gulf coast by Milton, where he would announce $600m in funding for damaged electrical grids.

Response to hurricanes remains Democrats’ political preoccupation. Harris’s rally Sunday came amid the intense politicization of the speed of federal disaster response to Helene.

In North Carolina, Harris appeared to be looking to defuse hurricane politics while also calling out false information that spread after Helene.

Crises, she said, “have a way of revealing the heroes among us, the angels among us, and of showing us all the best of who we are … heroes who do not ask the injured or stranded whether they are a Republican or a Democrat, but who simply ask: ‘Are you OK?’”

And yet, Harris said: “There are some who are not acting in the spirit of community, and I am speaking of these who have been literally not telling the truth, lying about people who are working hard to help the folks in need, spreading disinformation when the truth and facts are required.”

That came as the Wall Street Journal reported that some of the earlier response to Helene had come in the form of Patriot Front, an organization that the Anti-Defamation League has concluded is a white-supremacist group – and that was using misinformation as a recruiting tool.

With Arizona, Nevada and Georgia potentially leaning for Trump, and Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin potentially leaning for Harris, the loss of North Carolina would cost Trump 16 electoral college votes needed to reach the winning threshold of 270. The state narrowly voted for Trump in 2020.

The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that he would deny Harris and Biden’s call to bring Congress back to Washington to approve more disaster relief funding after the hurricane.

“It can wait,” Johnson said, pointing to $20bn in additional disaster funding that had recently been approved. He claimed only 2% of that funding had been distributed. As soon as states have assessed and calculate their “actual needs”, and submitted them, “Congress will meet and in bipartisan fashion, we will address those needs.”

Johnson accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) of being “slow to respond”. He said: “They did not do the job that we all expect and hope that they will do, and there’s going to be a lot of assessment about that as well in the days ahead.”

But with Harris’s support appearing to slip in recent weeks, including after a series of TV appearances, there are reports of growing tensions between her campaign and Biden’s White House. The president cancelled a trip to Germany to concentrate on the hurricane response. But he is now reported to have rescheduled the trip for Friday.

According to Axios, Biden aides remain wounded by the president being pushed out of his re-election bid amid questions about his age. He is 81 – only three years older than Trump.

Harris’s team believed Biden upstaged her by holding an impromptu press briefing while she held a rally in Michigan.

Biden on Sunday was expected to meet with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with whom Harris was feuding earlier in the week. An aide to Harris, 59, told the outlet that the president’s team are “too much in their feelings”.

A man armed with guns and false press and VIP passes was apprehended by authorities at a campaign rally in California on Saturday being held by Donald Trump.

The suspect, identified as Las Vegas resident Vem Miller, was intercepted by police at a checkpoint about a half-mile from an entrance to the rally in Coachella Valley, California, soon before the it began, police said Sunday.

Police said Miller was carrying a loaded shotgun, handgun and high-capacity magazine and is believed to be a member of a rightwing anti-government organization.

Miller was booked for possessing a loaded firearm and a high capacity magazine – and was released after posting $5,000 bail, police records show.

“The incident did not impact the safety of former president Trump or attendees of the event,” the Riverside county sheriff’s office said in a press release.

The Secret Service put out a statement saying it was apprised of the arrest: “The incident did not impact protective operations. The Secret Service extends its gratitude to the deputies and local partners who assisted in safeguarding last night’s events.”

The US Attorney’s Los Angeles office, in a statement on Sunday, also said Trump was not in danger, citing the US Secret Service. The statement added that while no federal arrest had been made, an investigation was ongoing.

Riverside county sheriff Chad Bianco said he believed at a press conference on Sunday that Miller was plotting to kill Trump, but acknowledged that was “speculation”. “What we do know is he showed up with multiple passports with different names, an unregistered vehicle with a fake license plate and loaded firearms,” the sheriff said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon.

The suspect later told US media that he was a Trump supporter who bought the guns for his own safety and notified police at a checkpoint that they were in the trunk of his car. “These accusations are complete bullshit,” Miller said. “I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

He said he was surprised by his arrest, and had been detained for about eight hours.

Miller holds a UCLA master’s degree, and in 2022 ran for Nevada state assembly. Bianco said Miller considers himself a so-called sovereign citizen, a group of people who do not believe they are subject to any government statutes unless they consent to them.

Bianco said Miller’s identity card was enough to raise suspicion with local rally security. “They were different enough to cause the deputies alarm,” he said, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July, when a gunman’s bullet grazed his ear during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In September, another man was charged with trying to assassinate Trump after Secret Service agents discovered him hiding with a rifle near Trump’s Palm Beach golf course. He has since pleaded not guilty.

Bianco said US Secret Service officials said his department went “above and beyond” in their efforts to protect Trump and others who attended the rally.

Bianco also said the FBI is questioning another man after bomb-detecting dogs “repeatedly” identified him as possibly dangerous. That man was not allowed in the rally, Bianco said.

Miller is scheduled to appear at the Indio Larson justice center on 2 January 2025, according to the Riverside county sheriff’s department inmate database.

Reuters contributed reporting

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, spent Sunday trying to shore up political support in battleground states across the country, with polls showing them locked in a tightening race.

In North Carolina, Harris attacked her rival for spreading misinformation related to hurricanes Helene and Milton. The vice-president attended a Black church in Greenville, telling the assembled crowd “there are some who are not acting in the spirit of community … lying about people who are working hard to help the folks in need, spreading disinformation when the truth and facts are required.”

From Arizona, Trump spoke to Fox News, telling them he could impose tariffs higher than 200% on vehicles imported from Mexico. The former president said his aim would be to prevent the selling of cars from Mexico into the US. “All I’m doing is saying ‘I’ll put 200 or 500, I don’t care.’ I’ll put a number where they can’t sell one car,” he said.

Here’s what else happened on Sunday:

• At his rally in Arizona, Donald Trump proposed hiring 10,000 additional Border Patrol agents and giving them a $10,000 retention and signing bonus, after he derailed a bipartisan bill earlier this year that included funding for more border personnel. In Prescott Valley, roughly 260 miles north of the state’s border with Mexico, he accepted an endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council.

• A New York Times poll published on Sunday found that Harris is underperforming among Latino voters, when compared with the past three Democratic candidates for the White House. An NBC News poll showed the candidates in a “dead heat” nationally at 48% support.

• A man armed with guns and false press and VIP passes was apprehended near a Trump campaign rally in California on Saturday, authorities have said. “The incident did not impact the safety of former president Trump or attendees of the event,” the Riverside county sheriff’s office said. Police said the suspect, Las Vegas resident Vem Miller was carrying a loaded shotgun, handgun and high-capacity magazine and is believed to be a member of a rightwing anti-government organization. He was released after posting $5,000 bail.

• President Joe Biden surveyed battered communities and debris-filled streets in Florida, vowing to continue supporting the state’s recovery from Hurricane Milton. The president reiterated his call for US lawmakers – who are on recess until after the 5 November presidential election – to return to Washington to approve more disaster funding.

• Republican House speaker Mike Johnson resisted White House and state lawmakers appeals to approve more disaster assistance, telling NBC News, “the states have to go and calculate and assess the need and then they submit that to Congress, and that takes some time.”

• Trump said he spoke to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “like two days ago”. Trump was asked when last he spoke to the Israeli leader during a Fox News interview. Joe Biden also spoke to Netanyahu last week, in what was the first known conversation between the two leaders since August. Trump called the lack of conversation between Biden and Netanyahu in nearly two months “pathetic”.

• Former president Bill Clinton urged churchgoers in Albany, Georgia, to rally behind Harris’ campaign. “Uniting people and building, being repairers of the breach, as Isaiah says, those are the things that work,” Clinton said. “Blaming, dividing, demeaning – they get you a bunch of votes at election time, but they don’t work.” Georgia is one of seven states seen as pivotal in this year’s presidential race, and turnout among Black voters could hold the key for Democrats to winning the state’s 16 electoral votes.

Joker: Folie à Deux is continuing its downward trajectory after flopping in its opening weekend, with historically low box office figures in its second week.

The sequel to the 2019 film Joker, which was both a hit with critics and fans, Joker: Folie à Deux grossed $38m at the US box office in its opening weekend, far beneath previous predictions in the $50-70m range.

But its second weekend was even worse, earning just $7m in the US across 4,102 theatres. The 81% drop is the steepest decline in history for a comic book movie, and among the steepest domestic declines for any movie.

An 81% drop places Joker: Folie à Deux in the top 20 biggest second weekend drops ever, according to charts by Box Office Mojo, which measures box office data gathered since 1982.

The record decline for a comic book movie was previously held by The Marvels, which bombed at the box office last year and suffered a 78% drop in its second weekend after being released in 4,030 cinemas.

Globally, Joker: Folie à Deux has grossed $165m to date, far from making back its $200m budget.

By comparison, Joker was made with a third of the budget of its sequel and opened to $96.2m in the US, making $248.4m globally in just one weekend. In total, it grossed more than $1bn globally, becoming the first R-rated film to do so, and remained the highest-grossing R-rated film until this year, when it was surpassed by another comic book film, Deadpool & Wolverine.

Joker was also a hit with critics, and won two Academy awards from 11 nominations, including best actor for Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role.

Phoenix reprises his role in the follow-up, while Lady Gaga joins the cast as love interest Lee Quinzel, based on the character Harley Quinn.

The sequel, which is a musical, has largely been dismissed by critics as “boring” and “startlingly dull”.

Both the Guardian and the Observer’s three-star reviews praised Lady Gaga’s performance, but deemed the film “laborious” and “indulgent”.

Joker: Folie à Deux is continuing its downward trajectory after flopping in its opening weekend, with historically low box office figures in its second week.

The sequel to the 2019 film Joker, which was both a hit with critics and fans, Joker: Folie à Deux grossed $38m at the US box office in its opening weekend, far beneath previous predictions in the $50-70m range.

But its second weekend was even worse, earning just $7m in the US across 4,102 theatres. The 81% drop is the steepest decline in history for a comic book movie, and among the steepest domestic declines for any movie.

An 81% drop places Joker: Folie à Deux in the top 20 biggest second weekend drops ever, according to charts by Box Office Mojo, which measures box office data gathered since 1982.

The record decline for a comic book movie was previously held by The Marvels, which bombed at the box office last year and suffered a 78% drop in its second weekend after being released in 4,030 cinemas.

Globally, Joker: Folie à Deux has grossed $165m to date, far from making back its $200m budget.

By comparison, Joker was made with a third of the budget of its sequel and opened to $96.2m in the US, making $248.4m globally in just one weekend. In total, it grossed more than $1bn globally, becoming the first R-rated film to do so, and remained the highest-grossing R-rated film until this year, when it was surpassed by another comic book film, Deadpool & Wolverine.

Joker was also a hit with critics, and won two Academy awards from 11 nominations, including best actor for Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role.

Phoenix reprises his role in the follow-up, while Lady Gaga joins the cast as love interest Lee Quinzel, based on the character Harley Quinn.

The sequel, which is a musical, has largely been dismissed by critics as “boring” and “startlingly dull”.

Both the Guardian and the Observer’s three-star reviews praised Lady Gaga’s performance, but deemed the film “laborious” and “indulgent”.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused North Korea on Sunday of sending military personnel to Russia’s army and once again appealed for more support to prevent “a bigger war”. “We see an increasing alliance between Russia and regimes like in North Korea,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “It is no longer just about transferring weapons. It is actually about the transfer of people from North Korea to the occupier’s military forces.” He added: “It is obvious that under such conditions our relationship with our partners needs to evolve. The front line needs more support. We are talking about more long-range capabilities for Ukraine and more sustained supplies for our forces rather than a simple list of military hardware.” Last week, South Korea’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, said “there was a high possibility” North Korea could deploy troops to help Russia in the war with Ukraine. Kim also told a parliamentary hearing that news reports of North Korean military officers having been killed in a Ukrainian strike on territory controlled by Russian forces were likely to be true.

• Joe Biden will visit Germany this week, government sources in Berlin said. German media said the US president would meet the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for talks in Berlin on Friday expected to cover Ukraine and the Middle East. Biden’s visit was originally slated to last four days but Hurricane Milton forced it to be delayed, and causing Zelenskyy to embark on tour of European capitals to make the case for their enduring support.

• Changes announced by Russia to its nuclear weapons policy were long overdue and will probably “cool the ardour” of its western enemies, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview released on Sunday. Lukashenko, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, said “hotheads” in the west had already heard the nuclear signals being sent by Moscow even before the Kremlin leader announced the changes last month. Putin said last month that Russia was extending the list of scenarios that could prompt it to consider launching a nuclear weapon. He said Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

• Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman has urged international organisations to respond to a claim that several Ukrainian prisoners of war were executed in Russia’s Kursk region where Kyiv had launched an incursion in August. Dmytro Lubinets said on Telegram that he sent letters to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding the claim. Ukrainian battlefield analysis site DeepState which is close to Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Sunday that Russian troops shot and killed nine Ukrainian “drone operators and contractors” on 10 October after they had surrendered. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General’s Office said Russian troops had killed 16 captured Ukrainian soldiers in the partially occupied Donetsk region.

• Russian glide bombs have struck a “concentration” of Ukrainian troops near the border of Russia’s western Kursk region, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. It said the attack was directed against “a strongpoint and concentration of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel”, and the bombs were delivered by a Russian Su-34 warplane. Ukraine caught Moscow by surprise on 6 August by bursting across the border into the Kursk region, in the first invasion of Russian sovereign territory since the second world war. Russia has been trying for more than two months to eject the Ukrainian forces.

• Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that its forces had taken control of the village of Mykhailivka in eastern Ukraine, where they have been advancing towards the important logistics hub of Pokrovsk. The Ukrainian military said in its daily report that its troops repelled 36 Russian assaults in the Pokrovsk area, including near Mykhailivka.

• Russia launched 68 drones and four missiles targeting Ukrainian territory overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday. Two Iskander-M ballistic missiles struck Poltava and Odesa regions and two Kh-59 guided air missiles targeted the Chernihiv and Sumy regions, the air forces said on the Telegram messaging app. Ukraine’s air defence units destroyed 31 of the drones, while 36 were unaccounted for, most likely intercepted by Ukraine’s electronic warfare, the air force said. The remaining drone was still in the air, it said.

• Russia’s air defence units destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones overnight over three regions bordering Ukraine, Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday. Six drones each were downed over the Belgorod and Kursk region, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app. One drone was destroyed over the Bryansk region.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX achieved a significant milestone on Sunday by catching the massive booster stage from its Starship rocket in a pair of robotic arms as it fell back to the company’s launchpad in southern Texas.

The historic feat, which drew praise from astronauts and space experts, topped a successful fifth test flight for the uncrewed Starship, which blasted off from the Boca Chica starbase at 7.25am local time (1325 BST) on Sunday.

As the rocket’s 71-metre (233ft) Super Heavy booster separated 40 miles (65km) above the Earth, the upper stage pushed on to an altitude of nearly 90 miles, looping around the planet at 17,000 mph before splashing down in the Indian Ocean as planned.

SpaceX staff erupted in cheers and applause as the falling booster reignited three of its Raptor engines, slowed its rapid descent and swung towards the “mechazilla” launch tower, where it was held fast by the mechanical arms, labelled “chopsticks”.

It is the first time SpaceX has attempted the bold manoeuvre, one it sees as crucial to its goal of developing fully reusable rockets capable of ferrying humans, scientific equipment and supplies to the moon and onwards to Mars.

“Are you kidding me?” said Dan Huot, SpaceX’s communications manager, who was left shaking at the spectacle. “What we just saw, that looked like magic.”

“This is a day for the engineering history books,” added Kate Tice, a quality systems engineer at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

The rest of Starship re-entered Earth’s atmosphere horizontally, with onboard cameras showing a smooth, pinkish-purple plasma covering the ship’s Earth-facing side. The ship’s hot side is coated with 18,000 heat-shielding tiles that were improved since SpaceX’s last test in June, when Starship completed its first full test flight to the Indian Ocean but suffered tile damage that made its re-entry difficult.

This time, Starship appeared more intact upon reigniting one of its six engines to position itself upright for the ocean landing. The SpaceX live stream showed the rocket splashing down in the night-time waters off Australia’s coast, then toppling on its side, concluding its test mission.

A separate camera view from a vessel near the splashdown site then showed the ship exploding into a vast fireball. It was unclear whether the explosion was a controlled detonation or the result of a fuel leak. Musk said the ship landed “precisely on target!”

Commenting on SpaceX’s successful capture of the Starship booster, Chris Hadfield, a Canadian former astronaut, wrote on X: “There was an enormous step forward in human capability today. Makes me even more excited for our collective future. Congratulations to all at SpaceX!”

Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich smashed the women’s world record by nearly two minutes at the Chicago Marathon on Sunday, winning in 2:09:56.

Chepngetich became the first woman to break 2 hours and 10 minutes in the marathon. The 30-year-old broke the previous record of 2:11:53, which was set by Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia at the 2023 Berlin Marathon.

Chepngetich has an impressive record at the Chicago Marathon: she also won the race in 2021 and 2022 and finished runner-up last year. Sutume Asefa Kebede of Ethiopia finished second on Sunday in 2:17:32.

“I feel so great. I’m proud of myself and I thank God for the victory and the world record,” Chepngetich told NBC Chicago after the race. “This is my dream that has come true. I fight a lot thinking about world record and I have fulfilled it and I’m much grateful.”

It was obvious from early on that Chepngetich’s race, in which she averaged 4:57.4 per mile, would be a special one. She ran the first five kilometres in just 15 minutes, and completed the first half of the course in 1:04:16, which would have been the fifth-fastest women’s half-marathon of all time. The victory earned her $100,000 and she won another $50,000 for breaking the course record.

Chepngetich’s compatriot, John Korir, won the men’s race in 2:02:44, ahead of Huseydin Mohamed Esa of Ethiopia, who finished in 2:04:39. Korir and Chepngetich ran in honor of the late Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, who broke the men’s world record at the 2023 Chicago Marathon.

“The world record has come back to Kenya,” Chepngetich said. “I dedicate this world record to Kelvin Kiptum.”

In February the 24-year-old Kiptum and his coach, Gervais Hakizimana, died in a car accident. Police said Kiptum lost control of his vehicle before hitting a tree near a training area in Kaptagat, Kenya.

Organizers held a moment of silence for Kiptum before the race and offered the nearly 50,000 runners a memorial sticker to add to their bibs.

Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich smashed the women’s world record by nearly two minutes at the Chicago Marathon on Sunday, winning in 2:09:56.

Chepngetich became the first woman to break 2 hours and 10 minutes in the marathon. The 30-year-old broke the previous record of 2:11:53, which was set by Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia at the 2023 Berlin Marathon.

Chepngetich has an impressive record at the Chicago Marathon: she also won the race in 2021 and 2022 and finished runner-up last year. Sutume Asefa Kebede of Ethiopia finished second on Sunday in 2:17:32.

“I feel so great. I’m proud of myself and I thank God for the victory and the world record,” Chepngetich told NBC Chicago after the race. “This is my dream that has come true. I fight a lot thinking about world record and I have fulfilled it and I’m much grateful.”

It was obvious from early on that Chepngetich’s race, in which she averaged 4:57.4 per mile, would be a special one. She ran the first five kilometres in just 15 minutes, and completed the first half of the course in 1:04:16, which would have been the fifth-fastest women’s half-marathon of all time. The victory earned her $100,000 and she won another $50,000 for breaking the course record.

Chepngetich’s compatriot, John Korir, won the men’s race in 2:02:44, ahead of Huseydin Mohamed Esa of Ethiopia, who finished in 2:04:39. Korir and Chepngetich ran in honor of the late Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, who broke the men’s world record at the 2023 Chicago Marathon.

“The world record has come back to Kenya,” Chepngetich said. “I dedicate this world record to Kelvin Kiptum.”

In February the 24-year-old Kiptum and his coach, Gervais Hakizimana, died in a car accident. Police said Kiptum lost control of his vehicle before hitting a tree near a training area in Kaptagat, Kenya.

Organizers held a moment of silence for Kiptum before the race and offered the nearly 50,000 runners a memorial sticker to add to their bibs.

The BBC director-general will warn that the retreat of its World Service because of funding cuts has helped Russia and China broadcast “unchallenged propaganda”.

In a speech at the Future Resilience Forum, a non-partisan meeting in London attended by international political figures, Tim Davie will discuss the global importance of the BBC World Service, which operates across more than 40 languages.

While addressing the war in Ukraine and unrest in the Middle East, Davie is expected to say: “Free and fair reporting has never been more essential – for global democracy and for audiences of most need around the world.”

He will add: “Perhaps most worrying from the BBC point of view is that we can now see clear evidence of the fact that, when the World Service retreats, state-funded media operators move in to take advantage.

“What we are facing is an all-out assault on truth worldwide – and with it security, stability and democracy. And no one should underestimate the impact the BBC has had in the global news landscape to this point – as an entirely independent force …”

During his Monday afternoon speech, Davie will also discuss the impact and growth of news outlets controlled by Russia and China, and how they are outspending BBC investment “by a multiple of thousands”.

“Together they are spending an estimated £6-8bn on expanding their global media activities – investing hard to grow their audiences in key markets in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America,” he will say.

“Across Africa in particular, Russian media is incredibly active in promoting its narratives, with social media influencers amplifying propaganda and so-called ‘activists’ live-streaming pro-Russia rallies.

“And this investment is seeing significant returns, not only in terms of the reach of Russian state broadcaster RT and China’s CGTN, but also in terms of trust.”

In his speech, Davie will discuss how other companies have filled the “gaps” the BBC left in Africa after its “retreat”.

“Kenya’s state broadcaster KBC has taken up Chinese output on TV and radio, as has Liberia’s state broadcaster LBS,” he will say. “Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Russian-backed media is now transmitting on the radio frequency previously occupied by BBC Arabic.

“Last month, our outstanding BBC Monitoring teams listened in to that Russian output on the day thousands of pagers and radio devices exploded. What they heard was unchallenged propaganda and narratives being delivered to local communities.

“Had the BBC been able to retain our impartial radio output, these messages would have been much harder for local audiences to find. In this context, the further retreat of the BBC World Service should be a cause for serious global concern.”

In 2022, the BBC announced the proposed closure of about 382 posts at the World Service as well as the closure of its Arabic and Persian radio services.

In April an inquiry was launched into the future funding of the service, focusing on the corporation’s influence as a soft power and establishing whether increased government support was needed.

The World Service is the BBC’s international broadcaster and is predominantly funded by the UK licence fee. It receives additional grant funding of £104.4m from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Under its current support package, the World Service has agreed not to close any language services, but this condition is set to be lifted in 2025.

Iceland’s prime minister, Bjarni Benediktsson, has announced the end of the country’s governing coalition and called for elections to be held on 30 November, Icelandic public broadcaster RUV reported.

In a press conference, Bjarni blamed growing disagreements between the three governing parties “on issues ranging from foreign policy to asylum seekers issues”.

He said he would hold a meeting with Icelandic president Halla Tómasdóttir on Monday regarding the decision to dissolve parliament.

Elections must take place at the latest 45 days after the dissolution of parliament is announced, according to the broadcaster.

Bjarni, head of the rightwing, pro-business Independence party, was elected in April as prime minister, replacing Katrín Jakobsdóttir after she announced she would resign and run for president.

The coalition government, consisting of the Independence party, the centre-right Progressive party and the Left Greens, has faced uncertainty after recent volcanic eruptions forced thousands to leave their homes, putting pressure on an economy already facing high inflation and soaring interest rates.

She’s not long on charisma or passion but keeps perfect rhythm and is never prone to temperamental outbursts against the musicians beneath her three batons. Meet MAiRA Pro S, the next-generation robot conductor who made her debut this weekend in Dresden.

Her two performances in the eastern German city are intended to show off the latest advances in machine maestros, as well as music written explicitly to harness 21st-century technology. The artistic director of Dresden’s Sinfoniker, Markus Rindt, said the intention was “not to replace human beings” but to perform complex music that human conductors would find impossible.

The Sinfoniker, long known for innovation and political statements, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with the Robotersinfonie at the Hellerau hall in a concert divided into two parts, one purely human and, after the interval, one that is robot-led.

In the second half, three-armed MAiRA clutches a trio of stubby lightsabers, each with a different colour, to mark time. The ensemble is divided into three parts, each responding to its own baton to create cross rhythms.

The composer Andreas Gundlach wrote the aptly named Semiconductor’s Masterpiece for 16 brass musicians and four percussionists playing wildly diverging time signatures. Some begin slowly and accelerate while the others slow down. Gundlach told the local public broadcaster MDR that MAiRA’s technical skills ensured the music sounded smooth, “like it came from a single source”.

To pull off a two-decade-long dream, Rindt worked with specialists from Technical University Dresden’s CeTI, which stands for Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop. It pursues innovation based on the principle that robots and people can cooperate rather than compete.

Rindt taught MAiRA conducting as he would a human, displaying arm movements up to 40 times so she could integrate and adopt them with ever-increasing complexity during two years in development.

Each “arm” has seven joints, allowing it to move and stretch in all directions. But if she gets a little too forceful, slamming down on a beat, a safety mechanism kicks in to prevent her from doing any damage to herself or the musicians.

Rindt told MDR he had the idea of stepping aside for a sophisticated robot 23 years ago while rehearsing an intricate composition. One of the bassoonists told the conductor: “You’re conducting the clarinets in 3/4 time and I have 5/8, a totally different tempo – what should I do, no one is conducting me?” And the conductor answered: “I’m not a robot.”

Local media reported an enthusiastic reception for the world premiere on Saturday night, which is to be followed by a livestreamed concert on Sunday.

MAiRA is perhaps the most technically advanced robot to conduct music but she is not the first. In 2008, a 1.2-metre-tall automaton with a baton conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Mitch Leigh’s The Impossible Dream from the Man from La Mancha. Nine years later, the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra performed in Pisa with YuMi, billed as a “collaborative” dual-arm robot conductor. And in South Korea in July 2023, an android robot took the conductor’s podium at Seoul’s National Theater of Korea.

During its quarter-century of existence, Dresden’s Sinfoniker has often pushed the envelope of contemporary music. In 2006, it played an arrangement of the soundtrack of the classic silent film Battleship Potemkin from the balconies of a communist-era housing development in central Dresden, while the British pop duo Pet Shop Boys played on the roof.

And in 2017, it staged a festival “against isolation and intolerance” during the Trump presidency close to the US-Mexican border wall near Tijuana and performed with Mexican and US musicians.

The mother of a seven-year-old boy who was torn from the arms of his grandmother and drowned in one of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters is among more than 620,000 claimants who will have their case heard this month in the largest group claim in English legal history.

Gelvana Aparecida Rodrigues da Silva, 37, lost her son Thiago on 5 November 2015 when the Fundão dam, near Mariana in eastern Brazil, collapsed, releasing about 50m cubic metres of toxic waste.

The avalanche of water reached the small community of Bento Rodrigues within minutes, killing 19 people, including Thiago, who had been staying with his grandmother at the time.

“His grandmother said that he asked for Jesus,” said Da Silva of her son’s final moments. “He called for Jesus to save him. But they got ripped apart.”

Thiago’s body was found a week later, 60 miles (100km) away. “That moment, my life ended,” she said. “Everything changed.”

The iron ore waste stored in the dam rapidly moved down various watercourses, spilling over their banks and into the neighbouring municipalities of Mariana, Barra Longa, Rio Doce and Santa Cruz do Escalvado.

It destroyed bridges, roads, houses, factories and other commercial premises, as well as farmland, wildlife and historic churches containing priceless artefacts.

About 620,000 individuals, 46 Brazilian municipalities, 2,000 businesses and 65 faith-based institutions are to claim damages from the Anglo-Australian mining company BHP at a high court trial in London scheduled to be heard over 12 weeks, from 21 October.

Tom Goodhead, the chief executive of the international law firm Pogust Goodhead, which is representing the claimants, said they will argue that BHP is liable as a 50% shareholder in Samarco, the joint venture company responsible for managing the Fundão tailings dam.

It is further claimed that BHP, who were in a joint venture with the Brazilian iron-ore mining company Vale, were negligent in that although “they were aware of the risks of the dam collapsing, they funded its expansion”, Goodhead said. The claimants are seeking up to $44bn (£33.6bn) in compensation.

BHP, along with Vale and Samarco, established the Renova Foundation to provide compensation for individuals and some small businesses for loss and damages, as well as mitigating environmental impacts. The company said it would defend the legal action.

A BHP spokesperson said: “The Fundão dam collapse was a tragedy and our deepest sympathies remain with the impacted families and communities.

“The Renova Foundation, established in 2016 as part of our agreement with the Brazilian authorities, has spent more than $7.7bn on emergency financial assistance, compensation and repair and rebuilding of environment and infrastructure to approximately 430,000 individuals, local businesses and Indigenous communities.

“BHP Brasil is working collectively with the Brazilian authorities and others to seek solutions to finalise a fair and comprehensive compensation and rehabilitation process that would keep funds in Brazil for the Brazilian people and environment affected, including impacted Indigenous communities.

“BHP continues to defend the legal action in the UK. We believe that the UK litigation, which, if successful, would not see claimants receive payment until 2028 at the earliest, duplicates – and harms – local remedial efforts in Brazil.

“As a non-operating joint-venture partner in Samarco, BHP Brasil does not have operational or day-to-day control of the business. BHP did not own or operate the dam or any related facilities.”

Thiago’s father, who died two years ago, received a small payment for compensation after the disaster, which he shared with Da Silva, but she said she had not had any personal contact with the companies involved.

She said: “The only thing that we are asking for is justice, for this to never happen to any other mother. No money in the world can bring my son back, but I want them to be responsible for this, for this crime.”

Goodhead said: “To our knowledge, this is the largest ever group action in the English courts and we believe, probably the largest anywhere in the world. And that’s likely by value as well as the number of claimants who are participating in it.”