The UK Foreign Office has announced sanctions against seven organisations that support illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, but held back from penalising two extremist members of the Israeli government as the former foreign secretary David Cameron had been planning.

Cameron told the BBC on Tuesday that he had intended to impose sanctions on Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and said he was concerned that the Labour government had not adopted his proposal. He said he had only held back from taking the step in the spring because he had been advised that it would be too political during the general election.

The Foreign Office said its latest sanctions had been in preparation for weeks and were not a kneejerk response to Cameron’s disclosure.

The sanctions are against three illegal settler outposts and four organisations the Foreign Office said had “supported and sponsored violence against communities in the West Bank”. It said there had been an unprecedented rise in settler violence, with 1,400 attacks on Palestinians recorded by the UN since October 2023.

The current foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “When I went to the West Bank earlier this year I met Palestinians whose communities have suffered horrific violence at the hands of Israeli settlers.

“The inaction of the Israeli government has allowed an environment of impunity to flourish where settler violence has been allowed to increase unchecked. Settlers have shockingly even targeted schools and families with young children.”

He vowed further asset freezes would be imposed to stop “these heinous abuses of human rights”.

The outposts under sanctions are Tirzah Valley Farm, Meitarim and Shuvi Eretz. Among the organisations affected is Amana, considered a central arm of the Israeli settler movement and already under sanctions by the Canadian government.

Amana has been involved in the establishment of many settlements and unauthorised outposts through its Binyanei Bar Amana subsidiary. Its goal is to introduce 1 million settlers to the West Bank.

It is the third sanctions package against settlers that the Foreign Office has imposed, and it was announced an hour after the development minister, Anneliese Dodds, endured a torrid hour in the Commons faced with angry backbenchers, mainly from her own party, who demanded the government impose more sanctions on Israel for its repeated breaches of international humanitarian law.

Cameron earlier told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Smotrich and Gvir had said things like encouraging people to stop aid convoys getting into Gaza and encouraging extreme settlers in the West Bank with the appalling things they have been carrying out.”

He said it was necessary to tell the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “when ministers in your government who are extremists and behave in this way we are prepared to use our sanctions regime to say this is simply not good enough and simply has to stop”.

Cameron said the Labour government’s partial ban on arms sales was a mistake, arguing it made no sense at a time when Israel needed to protect itself from state-on-state attacks from Iran.

He said: “There were other things we could do to put pressure on Netanyahu and say: ‘Of course we respect your right to self-defence but we do want you to act within the law.’”

In December last year Cameron announced on social media that a travel ban was being imposed against a small group of illegal settlers, saying: “We are banning those responsible for settler violence from entering the UK to make sure our country cannot be a home for people who commit these intimidating acts.”

In his BBC interview Cameron continued to defend the thrust of Israel’s policy to eradicate the threat posed by Hamas and Hezbollah.

He said: “On 7 October Israel was not just attacked in the south by Hamas but then continually with rockets by Hezbollah in the north. We all want this conflict to end but it has to end in a way that is sustainable so that it does not restart. That is why it is right to back Israel’s right of self-defence. But it is not a blank cheque, it’s not unconditional. We do want to see aid get through to Gaza and we do want the role of the UN in Lebanon to be respected.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said that Israel will decide alone on the form of any retaliation to Iran’s barrage of 180 missiles fired at the country earlier this month, although it would listen to advice from Washington.

The comments came after US media reported that the Israeli prime minister had given an assurance to the US president, Joe Biden, that Israel would not attack sites associated with Iran’s nuclear programme or oilfields before the US presidential election.

On Tuesday, Israel continued to press its offensive in Lebanon and Gaza, with airstrikes in Gaza killing a further 50 Palestinians as Israeli forces fought Hamas and other militants in the north of the territory.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped in the densely populated northern Gaza neighbourhood of Jabaliya by a new Israeli military operation there. Most are suffering appalling conditions and mounting casualties from Israeli shelling, bombs and missiles.

In Lebanon, Israel’s military launched several strikes in eastern areas, a day after Netanyahu vowed to “mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut”.

Warplanes targeted the eastern Bekaa valley, putting a hospital in the city of Baalbek out of service, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported. “It was a violent night in Baalbek, we have not witnessed a similar one since” the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, 50-year-old resident Nidal al-Solh told Agence France-Presse.

Israeli strikes have targeted Hezbollah strongholds as well as other parts of Lebanon, including a northern Christian-majority village where at least 21 people were killed on Monday, according to the health ministry.

The UN human rights office said on Tuesday it had received reports that most of the 22 victims of an Israeli airstrike on a building in northern Lebanon were women and children.

At a briefing, the UN refugee agency’s Middle East director, Rema Jamous Imseis, said that new Israeli evacuation orders to 20 villages in southern Lebanon meant that over a quarter of the country was affected.

“Now we have over 25% of the country under a direct Israeli military evacuation order,” she said. “People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they’re fleeing with almost nothing.”

Israel says it wants to push back Hezbollah in order to secure its northern boundary and allow tens of thousands of people displaced by rocket fire since last year to return home safely.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for several attacks early on Tuesday, including one targeting Israeli troops in northern Israel with a barrage of rockets fired towards the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. Warning sirens sounded in Haifa, local media reported.

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

Hezbollah says its strikes are also in support of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and triggering the latest conflict.

The region remains on the brink of further escalation, with the multi-front war fought by Israel risking a regional conflagration.

On 1 October, Iran launched more than 180 missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli strike in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, that killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s veteran leader, and Abbas Nilforoushan, an Iranian general. Israel has vowed to respond to the attack.

Iran views Hezbollah as the keystone of its “axis of resistance”, a loose coalition of allied, Tehran-backed armed militant groups across the Middle East.

The US has warned Israel against striking Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities, fearing a broader war and turmoil on the world’s energy markets. A US air defence battery has now arrived in Israel to bolster its protection against Iranian ballistic missiles.

According to a Washington Post report on Monday, Netanyahu has told the White House that Israel was only contemplating targeting military sites. US officials told the newspaper that Netanyahu was in a “more moderated place” than during previous discussions with Biden.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday denied any such commitment. “We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest,” the statement said.

Analysts say there is no shortage of military targets that Israel could strike, including many linked to the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

In Iran on Tuesday, Esmail Qaani, a general who commands Iran’s Quds Force, made his first public appearance for several weeks when he attended the funeral for Nilforoushan. There have been recent rumours that Qaani had also been killed in an Israeli strike or even been detained by Iranian intelligence services hunting spies. The Quds Force is part of the Revolutionary Guards and specialises in overseas and clandestine activities.

At least 1,315 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel last month escalated its bombing there, according to Lebanese health ministry figures, although the real toll is most likely higher. The war in Lebanon has displaced at least 690,000 people, according to verified figures last week from the International Organization for Migration.

Israel has faced new criticism over injuries and damage sustained by the UN interim force in Lebanon (Unifil), the peacekeeping body deployed in the country since 1978, after a previous Israeli invasion.

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whose country is the second-biggest contributor of Unifil peacekeepers, criticised Israeli attacks, telling the Italian Senate that the attitude of the Israeli forces was “entirely unjustified”.

On Monday, the UN security council for the first time expressed “strong concerns” over peacekeepers being wounded in Lebanon.

Unifil has refused Netanyahu’s request for peacekeepers to “get out of harm’s way”.

The Hamas-led attack into Israel in October last year also resulted in the abduction of about 250 people, mostly civilians. Israeli officials say half of the 100 hostages who remain in Gaza may now be dead. Efforts to secure their release through a possible ceasefire deal now appear to be on hold.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed 42,344 people, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

At a school-turned-shelter hit by an Israeli strike in the central Nuseirat camp, Fatima al-Azab said “there is no safety anywhere” in Gaza. “They are all children, sleeping in the covers, all burned and cut up,” she said.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has said she plans to visit Lebanon and has demanded security guarantees for her country’s troops there, after a series of attacks by Israel on UN peacekeepers.

“It is already planned that I will go to Lebanon,” she told the Italian senate, without giving a date.

Five peacekeepers have been wounded in attacks since Israel began a ground campaign against Hezbollah, with most blamed on Israeli forces.

Italy has 1,000 troops deployed in the UN mission, known as Unifil, and in a separate mission known as Mibil, which trains local armed forces, making it the second-largest contributor after Indonesia.

“We believe that the attitude of the Israeli forces is completely unjustified,” Meloni told the senate, describing it as a “blatant violation” of a UN resolution on ending hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.

Israel has denied deliberately targeting UN peacekeepers, but in what is becoming a test of the lingering authority of the UN institutions to enforce its own resolutions, the UN security council on Monday expressed unanimous concern after several peacekeeping positions came under fire in southern Lebanon. It urged all parties – without naming them – to respect the safety and security of Unifil personnel and premises.

Meloni said Israel’s actions were not acceptable and that she had expressed this position to her Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a phone call. Meloni has been regarded as one of Israel’s strongest allies in Europe, alongside Germany, although she has repeatedly called for Israel to comply with humanitarian law.

Germany, France and the UK also issued a joint statement on Monday calling for the role of the UN peacekeepers to be respected. Recalling that any “deliberate attack” against the peacekeepers was contrary to international law, they called on “Israel and all parties to respect their obligation to ensure at all times the safety and security of Unifil personnel and to allow the latter to continue to carry out its mandate”.

The two sectors that comprise the UN mission – sector west and sector east – are led by Italy and Spain respectively. The biggest non-EU contributors are Indonesia, India, Ghana and Malaysia. Ireland contributes 370 troops.

Any contributing country can decide to withdraw troops, but in the absence of reinforcement such a move could lead to a re-evaluation of the mission’s ability to deploy, a development that would be another blow to the UN’s battered authority. The mission, established in 1978, remained in place through the Israeli invasions in 1982 and 2006, and it is not clear what security guarantees Meloni can extract from the Israelis.

Neytanyahu on Sunday urged the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to remove all its peacekeeping forces from Hezbollah strongholds and from combat areas, a retreat that would require the 10,000-strong UN force to abandon the complex mandate it has been provided by the security council since 2006 in UN resolution 1701. He claimed UN forces were making themselves hostages of Hezbollah and so putting themselves in danger.

On Monday he said: “Israel is not fighting Unifil. It is not fighting the Lebanese people. It is fighting Hezbollah, a supporter of Iran that is using Lebanese territory to attack Israel.”

Unifil has accused Israeli forces of twice breaking into a UN barracks. There are suspicions that Israel is trying to pressure the UN force out of the area so it can mount a no-holds-barred attack on Hezbollah positions.

Netanyahu ordered a ground operation in Lebanon after an intensified Israeli air campaign in the wake of shelling by Hezbollah that has forced 70,000 Israelis to leave their homes in the country’s north. Israel argues it is fulfilling some of the terms of the UN resolution that required the disarmament of Hezbollah and their withdrawal north of the Litani River.

The speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, has expressed his political support for the Unifil commander, Maj Gen Aroldo Lázaro, praising “his wise and courageous stance” in maintaining his troops in southern Lebanon.

Israel has also revived its complaints about the UN, pointing out that Hezbollah tunnels have been found close to UN barracks in Lebanon.

The UN rules of engagement do not allow international soldiers to search private facilities or seize weapons, partly since it would be seen to be intervening in a civil war against a militia, Hezbollah, that is also a political party and represents a large portion of the Shia population including in parliament.

The UN force is also not empowered to block the overflights that the IDF performs daily over Lebanon, even though they are prohibited by Resolution 1701. Unifil detected approximately 3,426 such violations between 8 October 2023 and 20 June 2024, alongside 868 air attacks.

Since the 7 October attacks last year the UN said restrictions on the troops freedom of movement had worsened, and up until late June, seven peacekeepers had been injured. Since 1978, Unifil has lost 337 peacekeepers, making Lebanon the most costly, in human terms, of all the UN peacekeeping operations. A total of 4,200 peacekeepers have died throughout the world, the UN says.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, on Tuesday expressed her concern about the violence in the region. “Amid the firing of missiles and rockets, dropping of bombs, and conduct of raids, the machinery of war fails to address the underlying issues,” she wrote on X. “And thus the risk of dooming another generation to the same fate is very real, yet again.”

The tensions between Israel and the UN reflect a decades-long running wider battle over Israel’s refusal to comply with security council resolutions concerning the formation of a Palestinian state, and Israel’s perception that the UN is riddled with antisemitism.

The Israeli foreign minister last month announced that Guterres was not welcome in Israel, while in his speech to the general assembly Netanyahu described the UN as a swamp of antisemitic bile.

An Air India plane bound for Chicago has made an abrupt landing in the Arctic city of Iqaluit, after a false bomb threat. The emergency stop before sunrise on Tuesday, came less than a day after Canada and India expelled senior diplomats in a widening feud between the two countries.

The flight’s 211 crew and passengers disembarked at the Iqaluit airport some 300km (186 miles) north of the Arctic circle, the Royal Canadian Mounted police said in a news release. According to local media in Iqaluit, an “unspecified bomb threat from a person in India to Air India” was relayed to the flight’s captain.

In a statement posted on X, the carrier said: “The aircraft and the passengers are being re-screened as per the laid down security protocols. Air India has activated agencies at the airport to assist the passengers until such time that their journey can resume.”

Tensions between Canada and India have remained high ever since prime minister, Justin Trudeau accused Delhi of assassinating the prominent Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in the province of British Columbia last year.

But India’s flagship carrier said it and other airlines have been subject to “a number of threats” in recent days. On Monday, an Air India flight from Mumbai to New York was diverted to Delhi after a false bomb threat. The country’s low-cost carrier IndiGo reported threats made against two flights that were bound for to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Muscat in Oman.

Nearly a year ago, Canadian officials and the Royal Canadian Mounted police investigated alleged “threats” against Air India after a prominent separatist leader warned Sikhs against flying with the airline on 19 November. The US-based activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun called for a boycott of India’s flagship carrier.

At the time, Canada’s transport minister said the government took threats to aviation “extremely seriously”, adding that officials were “investigating recent threats circulating online”.

Threats to Air India flights from Canada are likely to revive memories of the 1985 Air India bombing, which was orchestrated by Sikh extremists. Three hundred and twenty-nine people died when Air India flight 182 from Montreal exploded off the coast of Ireland. It was due to stop over at Heathrow before going on to Delhi and eventually Mumbai.

The victims included 280 Canadians and 86 children, and the attack is still the worst act of mass murder in Canadian history. A second bomb targeting another plane killed two baggage handlers after it detonated at Tokyo’s Narita airport before it was loaded on to an Air India plane.

In the years that followed, Canadian officials received significant criticism for ignoring or downplaying threats.

Canada’s RCMP is expected to provide more details about the threat later today.

Opposition outrage over Donald Trump’s rabble-rousing demagoguery turned to bewilderment after the Republican nominee spent 40 minutes swaying to his favourite songs at a rally near Philadelphia, prompting Kamala Harris to express apparent concern for his mental state.

“Hope he’s okay,” Harris, the US vice-president and Democratic nominee, posted on social media, accompanying footage of a performance that many observers agreed was bizarre, even by Trump’s standards.

The ad hoc music fest in the Pennsylvania suburb of Oaks happened after two members of the audience at an indoor rally fainted, apparently because of the heat.

When Trump requested air-conditioning, the event moderator, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, tried to keep things strictly political with a joke alluding to high inflation. “They probably can’t afford it, sir, in this economy,” she said.

Trump then decided to switch tack.

“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.

A nine-song playlist ensued, that included standard Trump rally favourites such as James Brown’s It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World, the Village People’s YMCA, Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor, and Luciano Pavarotti’s rendition of Ave Maria, all played as the candidate stood mid-stage swaying or gently bouncing on his heels, with Noem joining in to mimic his movements.

Eventually, Trump concluded: “Those two people who went down are patriots. We love them. And because of them, we ended up with some great music, right?”

The resort to music in place of angry, provocative rhetoric was not without its ironies. A long list of musical artists – including Celine Dion, Abba, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen – have denounced or taken legal steps to stop the Trump campaign playing their songs at rallies.

On Tuesday, Rufus Wainright responded to Trump’s use at the Philadelphia rally of Wainwight’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah by posting on Instagram that he was “mortified”, adding: “I’ve been supremely honored over the years to be connected with this ode to tolerance. Witnessing Trump and his supporters commune with this music last night was the height of blasphemy.” Wainwright said before the 2016 election that he would not sing the song again unless Trump lost.

He added on Tuesday that the Cohen estate had sent the Trump campaign a cease and desist letter.

Harris has called on the media and voters to play special attention to the much darker themes that are more frequently featured at Trump rallies to illustrate the threat to freedom she says he would pose if he was returned to the White House.

At a rally of her own in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Harris took the unusual step of playing footage from Trump’s rallies of him excoriating opponents as “the enemy within”, saying it showed him to be “unstable and unhinged”.

“He considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country,” Harris said after playing a clip of the comment on a giant screen. “This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous.”

Trump’s interlude recalled the days of his relative youth in the 1970s and 1980s, when he was a fixture at New York’s Studio 54 nightclub and rubbed shoulders with celebrities like Mick Jagger and Diana Ross. Despite the former president’s professed enthusiasm for vintage hits from the era, the venue’s founder told the Guardian in 2018 that he never saw Trump dance when he was in the club.

Trump’s staff depicted the episode as a joyful “lovefest” – perhaps subconsciously trying to imitate the theme of “joy” that Harris proclaimed in the early stages of her campaign.

“Total lovefest at the PA townhall! Everyone was so excited they were fainting so @realDonaldTrump turned to music,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, wrote on X. “Nobody wanted to leave and wanted to hear more songs from the famous DJT Spotify playlist!”

Karoline Leavitt, another spokesperson, posted simply: “DJ Trump.”

Other social media users were less impressed. “Donald Trump is not well,” wrote one. “He ended his town hall early and then stood on the stage awkwardly for nearly 30 minutes while random music played over the PA.” Another called it “absolutely INSANE. This was supposed to be a Town Hall.”

Donald Trump over the weekend told supporters of his campaign for a second presidency that his Democratic opponents want to ban cows and windows in buildings, inviting another round of questions about his mental fitness.

“They just come up, they want to do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings,” the Republican White House nominee said during a campaign event with Hispanic voters in Las Vegas on Saturday. “They have some wonderful plans for this country.

“Honestly, they’re crazy, and they’re really hurting out country, badly.”

Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign subsequently reacted to the remarks on social media by writing, “a confused Trump goes on a delusional rant”.

Other Trump critics echoed the Democratic vice-president’s observation, describing the rant as “stunningly senile” and “incoherent”.

Nevada’s Democratic party also criticized the former president, writing “Trump came to town and questioned Nevadans’ values and rambled about cows and windows”.

Saturday was not the first time that the former president has accused Democrats of wanting to get rid of cows.

During a rally earlier this summer, Trump said that Harris would pass laws to outlaw red meat if elected. He added: “You know what that means – that means no more cows.”

Trump has also said over the last several years that the Green New Deal, an expansive climate plan introduced and supported by progressive Democrats, would “take out the cows”.

The Green New Deal, he said in 2020, “would crush our farms, destroy our wonderful cows”

“I love cows. They want to kill our cows. You know why, right? You know why? Don’t say it. They want to kill our cows. That means you are next,” he said.

The Green New Deal, introduced in part by progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, outlines broad principles of a plan to fight inequity and tackle climate change while aiming to begin reducing the US’s reliance on fossil fuels that are fueling destructive global warming.

The resolution does not call for eliminating animal agriculture. But it calls for “working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible”.

Though it suggests reducing emissions from agriculture, that “doesn’t mean you end cows,” Ocasio-Cortez said in 2019.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, about 10% of total American greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, including cows, soils, and rice production.

Trump’s confusing comments about Democrats wanting to get rid of cows and windows on buildings on Saturday came just two days before another bizarre moment from this campaign cycle.

On Monday, at a town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, Trump stood on stage swaying and bobbing his head for about 30 minutes while music played after medical emergency-related interruptions.

At the same event, although his election against Harris is on 5 November, he told the crowd to get out and vote on “January 5 or before” – prompting critics online to again comment on Trump’s cognitive health.

Harris released a medical report which found that the most notable aspects of her health history were seasonal allergies and hives. “She possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency” if she is elected in November, the report said.

A senior aide to Harris, 59, stated that the vice-president’s advisers saw the release of her health report and medical history as a chance to call attention to questions about Trump’s physical fitness and mental acuity.

On Sunday, more than 230 doctors, nurses and healthcare providers, called on the 78-year-old Trump to release his medical records, arguing that he should be transparent about his health as he seeks to become the oldest president elected.

“With no recent disclosure of health information from Donald Trump, we are left to extrapolate from public appearances,” the doctors wrote in a public letter. “And on that front, Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.”

Trump has consistently declined to disclose detailed information about his health during his public life. On Tuesday, the former president went on his Truth social media platform and published a post claiming his health “IS PERFECT – NO PROBLEMS!!!”

They are slimy on the outside, firm and spongy on the inside and surprisingly combustible. And in recent months, they have been washing up on the shores of Newfoundland.

The depths of the Atlantic have long held mysteries, but the riddle of the mysterious white “blobs” spotted on the beaches of the eastern Canadian province has baffled both residents and marine scientists.

Broader attention was first drawn to the blobs by a post on the Beachcombers of Newfoundland and Labrador Facebook group, a 40,000-member page largely devoted to the collection of sea glass. A man named Philip Grace uploaded an image of a pale, gooey mass, which he compared to the dough used to make toutons, a Newfoundland fried delicacy.

Grace’s post about the blobs, which he said ranged in size from “dinner plate right down to a toonie [the Canadian two-dollar coin]”, prompted a frenzy of possible explanations – paraffin wax, sea sponges, mould and ambergris – none of which withstood closer scrutiny.

Dave McGrath, a resident of Patrick’s Cove, was on the beach when he spotted “hundreds, just hundreds of them” scattered in the sand.

“They looked just like a pancake before you flip it over, when it has those dimpled little bubbles. I poked a couple with a stick and they were spongy and firm inside,” he said. “I’ve lived here for 67 years and I’ve never seen anything like this, never.

“They sent the Coast Guard over and I asked them how bad it was. They told me they had 46km [28 miles] of coastline littered with this stuff and had no idea what it was,” said McGrath. “Is it toxic? It is safe for people to touch?”

The gooey shapes aren’t the first blobs to excite locals. In 2001, residents discovered the Fortune Bay “Blobster” sea monster that had washed ashore – a ragged and oozing white mass. Months later, however, researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland concluded it was part of a decomposing sperm whale corpse.

These new blobs don’t appear to be linked to whales, despite commenters in the Beachcombers group suggesting they could be “whale boogers”, “whale sperm” or “whale vomit” – all of which have been ruled out.

McGrath speculated that the substance could be discharge from ships travelling to and from the Come By Chance refinery, 80km north of Patrick’s Cove.

Federal scientists have also been on the case but have produced few leads.

So far, they know more about what it’s not than what it is. It’s not a petroleum hydrocarbon, a petroleum lubricant or a biofuel. A full battery of tests could take months.

“An answer would be nice. It’s not often you find something that stumps people who know this place and these waters,” said McGrath.

Until then, one local had a (possibly touton-inspired) suggestion to those curious about what the blob might be: “Fry it up, put some molasses on it, let us know how it was.”

They are slimy on the outside, firm and spongy on the inside and surprisingly combustible. And in recent months, they have been washing up on the shores of Newfoundland.

The depths of the Atlantic have long held mysteries, but the riddle of the mysterious white “blobs” spotted on the beaches of the eastern Canadian province has baffled both residents and marine scientists.

Broader attention was first drawn to the blobs by a post on the Beachcombers of Newfoundland and Labrador Facebook group, a 40,000-member page largely devoted to the collection of sea glass. A man named Philip Grace uploaded an image of a pale, gooey mass, which he compared to the dough used to make toutons, a Newfoundland fried delicacy.

Grace’s post about the blobs, which he said ranged in size from “dinner plate right down to a toonie [the Canadian two-dollar coin]”, prompted a frenzy of possible explanations – paraffin wax, sea sponges, mould and ambergris – none of which withstood closer scrutiny.

Dave McGrath, a resident of Patrick’s Cove, was on the beach when he spotted “hundreds, just hundreds of them” scattered in the sand.

“They looked just like a pancake before you flip it over, when it has those dimpled little bubbles. I poked a couple with a stick and they were spongy and firm inside,” he said. “I’ve lived here for 67 years and I’ve never seen anything like this, never.

“They sent the Coast Guard over and I asked them how bad it was. They told me they had 46km [28 miles] of coastline littered with this stuff and had no idea what it was,” said McGrath. “Is it toxic? It is safe for people to touch?”

The gooey shapes aren’t the first blobs to excite locals. In 2001, residents discovered the Fortune Bay “Blobster” sea monster that had washed ashore – a ragged and oozing white mass. Months later, however, researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland concluded it was part of a decomposing sperm whale corpse.

These new blobs don’t appear to be linked to whales, despite commenters in the Beachcombers group suggesting they could be “whale boogers”, “whale sperm” or “whale vomit” – all of which have been ruled out.

McGrath speculated that the substance could be discharge from ships travelling to and from the Come By Chance refinery, 80km north of Patrick’s Cove.

Federal scientists have also been on the case but have produced few leads.

So far, they know more about what it’s not than what it is. It’s not a petroleum hydrocarbon, a petroleum lubricant or a biofuel. A full battery of tests could take months.

“An answer would be nice. It’s not often you find something that stumps people who know this place and these waters,” said McGrath.

Until then, one local had a (possibly touton-inspired) suggestion to those curious about what the blob might be: “Fry it up, put some molasses on it, let us know how it was.”

Wars, debt, the climate crisis and the pandemic have combined to halt progress in the fight against poverty, the World Bank has warned.

The Washington-based institution said on current trends it would take more than three decades to lift the near-700 million people living on less than $2.15 (£1.64) a day above the widely accepted definition of extreme poverty.

In its Poverty, Prosperity and Planet report, the World Bank said the setbacks of recent years meant the goal set by the UN of ending extreme poverty by 2030 was already impossible to hit.

Largely because of rapid growth in China, the global poverty rate fell from 38% in 1990 to 8.5% in 2024, but the rate of progress has come to a halt since 2019, and the figure is expected to decline only modestly, to 7.3%, by 2030.

Extreme poverty remained concentrated in countries with historically low economic growth and high levels of fragility, many of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.

Axel van Trotsenburg, the World Bank senior managing director, said: “After decades of progress, the world is experiencing serious setbacks in the fight against global poverty, a result of intersecting challenges that include slow economic growth, the pandemic, high debt, conflict and fragility, and climate shocks.

“Amid these overlapping crises, a business-as-usual approach will no longer work. We need a fundamentally new development playbook if we are to truly improve people’s lives and livelihoods and protect our planet.”

The report said it would take even longer – more than a century – to meet a more ambitious objective of raising incomes above the $6.85 a day deemed to be the poverty threshold for upper middle-income countries.

The bank defines upper middle-income economies as those with income a head of between $4,466 and $13,845 a year – a group of countries that includes Argentina, Botswana and China.

Currently, 3.5 billion people – almost half the world’s population – live on less than $6.85 a day and the Bank said population growth meant the number of poor people on this measure of poverty had barely changed since 1990.

The report said there had also been little progress on another development goal – to reduce inequality. While the number of countries with especially large gaps between rich and poor had declined from 66 to 49 over the past decade, the percentage of people living in countries with high levels of inequality had remained unchanged at 22%. These countries were concentrated in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.

Max Lawson, the head of inequality policy at Oxfam, said: “With the richest 1% capturing more wealth than the bottom 95%, it is little wonder that it will take a century to end poverty. Rapidly and radically reducing inequality in every country should be the absolute top priority of the World Bank.

“We agree with the World Bank that ordinary people across the world are facing a lost decade, which will scar a whole generation, but at the same time the richest are looking at their best decade ever and these two things are closely linked.”

Nearly one in five people globally were likely to experience a severe weather shock in their lifetime from which they would struggle to recover, the World Bank said. Almost all those exposed to extreme weather events in sub-Saharan Africa were at risk of experiencing losses to human welfare because of their vulnerability.

Canadian police have accused the Indian government of working with a criminal network run by one of India’s most notorious gangsters, Lawrence Bishnoi, to carry out targeted killings of dissidents in Canada.

A diplomatic row broke out between India and Canada on Monday after Canadian police accused Indian diplomats of “criminal” activities in the country, including extortion, intimidation, coercion and harassment, and involvement in targeted killings of Canadian citizens.

Canadian police said they had uncovered evidence that implicated India’s top diplomat, Sanjay Verma, in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist who was gunned down outside a gurdwara in a suburb of Vancouver in June last year.

Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, also tied five other expelled Indian officials to Nijjar’s assassination and said Canada had gathered “ample, clear and concrete evidence that identified six individuals as persons of interest in the Nijjar case”.

India rejected the allegations as “ludicrous” and claimed they were part of a political agenda by the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau. As tensions between the two countries hit new lows, the two countries expelled each other’s top diplomats.

Among the allegations made by Canadian police is that Indian government agents had collaborated with a criminal syndicate run by India’s powerful mob boss Bishnoi to carry out assassinations. They alleged that the south Asian community, “specifically pro-Khalistani elements”, were being targeted by the Indian government.

Bishnoi has been in prison since 2014 but is accused of overseeing one of India’s largest criminal empires and has been implicated in several high-profile killings, including the shooting of a politician in Mumbai over the weekend.

“What we have seen is the use of organised crime elements,” said Brigitte Gauvin, a Canadian police assistant commissioner, at a press conference on Monday. “It’s been publicly attributed to one organised crime gang in particular. We believe the Bishnoi group is connected to the agents of the government of India.”

Bishnoi’s gang is said to have a growing presence in Canada, where there is a sizeable Indian Sikh diaspora. In September 2023, Bishnoi’s gang claimed to be behind the killing of Sukhdool Singh Gill, who allegedly had connections to Khalistani groups and was on a wanted list by the Indian government. Gill was gunned down in the Canadian city of Winnipeg and Canadian investigators said they now believed the killing was on the instructions of Indian agents.

The accusations by Canada have fuelled mounting allegations that the Indian government, under the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has orchestrated a campaign of transnational violence against those it considers to be dissidents or threats to the state.

In a statement on Monday, Trudeau said: “India has made a monumental mistake in choosing to use their diplomats and organised crime to attack Canadians.” In response, unnamed Indian officials told local media that it was “the same old Trudeau saying the same old things for the same old reasons”.

A report in the Washington Post cited Canadian officials who claimed to have evidence that the attacks and surveillance of Sikhs in Canada had been directly authorised by Indian’s home minister, Amit Shah, who is known as Modi’s right-hand man.

The report also claimed that the evidence of high-level Indian involvement in criminal activity in Canada had been presented to India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, at a secret meeting over the weekend, where Doval denied any involvement in violence.

Doval reportedly rebuffed allegations that India recruited the Bishnoi gang to carry out targeted killings, but did acknowledge that Bishnoi was “capable of orchestrating violence from wherever he is incarcerated”.

Canadian officials have accused India of refusing to cooperate with their investigation and said the Indian government had refused to waive diplomatic immunity for the six individuals implicated in the alleged violence. New Delhi has maintained that Canadian officials have yet to present any credible evidence to back up their allegations.

According to reports, the US government had also been part of recent discussions with India regarding allegations of the Indian government’s involvement in transnational attacks on Canadian and US soil.

Last year, US investigators said they had foiled the attempted murder of the Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun by an agent working for the Indian government. India said it had formed an inquiry into the incident and this week a statement by the US state department said Indian officials were due to travel to Washington DC on Tuesday to discuss the case.

Speaking on Monday night, the freshly expelled Canadian charge d’affairs in New Delhi, Stewart Wheeler, told reporters: “Canada has provided credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Now, it is time for India to live up to what it said it would do and look into all those allegations.”

Google has signed a “world first” deal to buy energy from a fleet of mini nuclear reactors to generate the power needed for the rise in use of artificial intelligence.

The US tech corporation has ordered six or seven small nuclear reactors (SMRs) from California’s Kairos Power, with the first due to be completed by 2030 and the remainder by 2035.

Google hopes the deal will provide a low-carbon solution to power datacentres, which require huge volumes of electricity. The company, owned by Alphabet, said nuclear provided “a clean, round-the-clock power source that can help us reliably meet electricity demands”.

The explosive growth of generative AI, as well as cloud storage, has increased tech companies’ electricity demands. Last month, Microsoft struck a deal to take energy from Three Mile Island, activating the nuclear plant for the first time in five years. The site, in Pennsylvania, was the location of the most serious reactor meltdown in US history, in March 1979.

Amazon bought a datacentre powered by nuclear energy in March, also in Pennsylvania, from Talen Energy.

The locations of the new Google plants and financial details of the agreement were not revealed. The tech company has agreed to buy a total of 500 megawatts of power from Kairos, which was founded in 2016 and is building a demonstration reactor in Tennessee, due to be completed in 2027.

Michael Terrell, the senior director for energy and climate at Google, said: “The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies that are powering major scientific advances, improving services for businesses and customers, and driving national competitiveness and economic growth.

“This agreement helps accelerate a new technology to meet energy needs cleanly and reliably, and unlock the full potential of AI for everyone.”

Mike Laufer, the chief executive and co-founder of Kairos, said: “We’re confident that this novel approach is going to improve the prospects of our projects being delivered on cost and on schedule.”

The deal, which is subject to regulatory permits, represents a vote of confidence in SMR technology. The smaller, factory-built power plants are designed to cut the cost overruns and delays often experienced in building bigger plants. However, critics argue that SMRs will be expensive because they may not be able to achieve the same economy of scale as larger plants.

SMRs are defined as reactors with a maximum output of 300 megawatts (MW) that can produce more than 7m kilowatt hours a day. However, some designs are larger than this and the term is often simply used to describe factory-built, modular plants.

Large nuclear power plants typically have an output of more than a gigawatt and the planned plant at Hinkley Point C in Somerset is expected to produce 3.2GW, enough electricity to power 6m homes.

In the UK, companies are bidding to be selected by the government to develop their SMR technologies as ministers aim to revive the country’s nuclear industry.

One of the bidders, Rolls-Royce SMR, received a significant boost last month when it was selected by the Czech government to build a fleet of reactors. Rolls has said one of its SMRs would be a tenth of the size of a large power plant and produce enough power for a million homes.

It has been argued that SMRs can complement output from large-scale reactors as countries attempt to move away from power generated by fossil fuels. Proponents argue that they provide a more flexible approach to constructing new nuclear plants, as they require less cooling water and a smaller footprint, opening up a greater variety of potential site locations.

However, environmental campaigners and academics have argued against the technology, claiming they have no proven UK track record and that resources would be better spent on renewables such as more offshore wind.

Google has signed a “world first” deal to buy energy from a fleet of mini nuclear reactors to generate the power needed for the rise in use of artificial intelligence.

The US tech corporation has ordered six or seven small nuclear reactors (SMRs) from California’s Kairos Power, with the first due to be completed by 2030 and the remainder by 2035.

Google hopes the deal will provide a low-carbon solution to power datacentres, which require huge volumes of electricity. The company, owned by Alphabet, said nuclear provided “a clean, round-the-clock power source that can help us reliably meet electricity demands”.

The explosive growth of generative AI, as well as cloud storage, has increased tech companies’ electricity demands. Last month, Microsoft struck a deal to take energy from Three Mile Island, activating the nuclear plant for the first time in five years. The site, in Pennsylvania, was the location of the most serious reactor meltdown in US history, in March 1979.

Amazon bought a datacentre powered by nuclear energy in March, also in Pennsylvania, from Talen Energy.

The locations of the new Google plants and financial details of the agreement were not revealed. The tech company has agreed to buy a total of 500 megawatts of power from Kairos, which was founded in 2016 and is building a demonstration reactor in Tennessee, due to be completed in 2027.

Michael Terrell, the senior director for energy and climate at Google, said: “The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies that are powering major scientific advances, improving services for businesses and customers, and driving national competitiveness and economic growth.

“This agreement helps accelerate a new technology to meet energy needs cleanly and reliably, and unlock the full potential of AI for everyone.”

Mike Laufer, the chief executive and co-founder of Kairos, said: “We’re confident that this novel approach is going to improve the prospects of our projects being delivered on cost and on schedule.”

The deal, which is subject to regulatory permits, represents a vote of confidence in SMR technology. The smaller, factory-built power plants are designed to cut the cost overruns and delays often experienced in building bigger plants. However, critics argue that SMRs will be expensive because they may not be able to achieve the same economy of scale as larger plants.

SMRs are defined as reactors with a maximum output of 300 megawatts (MW) that can produce more than 7m kilowatt hours a day. However, some designs are larger than this and the term is often simply used to describe factory-built, modular plants.

Large nuclear power plants typically have an output of more than a gigawatt and the planned plant at Hinkley Point C in Somerset is expected to produce 3.2GW, enough electricity to power 6m homes.

In the UK, companies are bidding to be selected by the government to develop their SMR technologies as ministers aim to revive the country’s nuclear industry.

One of the bidders, Rolls-Royce SMR, received a significant boost last month when it was selected by the Czech government to build a fleet of reactors. Rolls has said one of its SMRs would be a tenth of the size of a large power plant and produce enough power for a million homes.

It has been argued that SMRs can complement output from large-scale reactors as countries attempt to move away from power generated by fossil fuels. Proponents argue that they provide a more flexible approach to constructing new nuclear plants, as they require less cooling water and a smaller footprint, opening up a greater variety of potential site locations.

However, environmental campaigners and academics have argued against the technology, claiming they have no proven UK track record and that resources would be better spent on renewables such as more offshore wind.

A 23-year-old has become the youngest woman to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre-plus peaks.

Adriana Brownlee reached the 8,027-metre summit of Shishapangma in Tibet on 9 October, becoming the second British person to complete the gruelling feat. It came three years after Brownlee reached the top of Everest and resolved to climb all 14 of the world’s highest peaks, the Times reported.

As she neared the top of Shishapangma, she told the newspaper, “I started to cry. I hadn’t reached the summit yet, I couldn’t even see it, but I knew it was going to happen. It took another hour before we reached the incredible summit. By this time it was just sunrise and we had a beautiful clear sky.

“It was the most incredible moment. I cried again remembering that I had just summited all 14 8,000-metre peaks and made history.”

Brownlee, who grew up in south-west London and attended the University of Bath, is said to have laid out her ambition as an eight-year-old at primary school, writing: “I would like to be famous for climbing the highest mountain in the world … and be one of the youngest girls to do this.”

The 14 highest peaks are Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri I, Manaslu, Nanga Parbat, Annapurna I, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II and Shishapangma.

For her last climb, Brownlee climbed without the use of supplementary oxygen, making it an even tougher challenge.

“It’s all about intrinsic motivation for me and wanting to push my body and achieve my personal goals,” she said. “Mountaineering is my escape in life, it makes me feel free and truly connected with myself so it becomes an obsession to go back.

“I quit university and my degree to pursue a career in mountaineering and sacrificed friendships, regular teenage life and more, but it was all worth it.”

Looking ahead, she said she wants to work with others with an enthusiasm for mountaineering. “I will stay in the mountains, but now want to help others achieve their dream by creating a new generation of high-altitude mountaineering and trekking experiences which focuses on safety and clients’ past experiences.”

Fewer than 100 people have climbed all 14 peaks, all of which are in the Himalayas and Karakoram range. The first British climber to do so was Alan Hinkes in 2005.

Hinkes told the Times: “I have followed Adriana’s determined progress since first meeting her in 2021. It is great news to hear another Brit has climbed all 14 eight-thousanders.

“To climb all these mountains in less than four years is a remarkable achievement. It took me 17 years. None of these giant mountains are easy or safe and she has shown extreme dedication, as well as enduring a lot of suffering and risk to complete all the 8,000-metre peaks.”

Fan Bingbing, once one of China’s most famous film stars, is returning to the screen after a more than five-year hiatus following her alleged involvement in a massive tax evasion scandal.

Fan stars in Green Night, a Hong Kong-produced neo-noir thriller set in South Korea, which is released on US streaming services on 18 October. The film has been billed as Fan’s comeback from professional purgatory since she disappeared from public view for nearly a year in 2018. During her year of silence, she was hit with a bill of more than 880m yuan (£99m) by the Chinese tax authorities.

The fact that Fan, who once starred in blockbusters such as the X-Men and Iron Man franchises, is returning to cinema in an edgy, international production, which has received scant discussion in China, reflects the likelihood that her fame will never recover to its former heights, say experts.

“I don’t believe she can come back,” said Sabrina Qiong Yu, a professor of film and Chinese studies at Newcastle University. “Chinese film stars are very vulnerable … the fame they have, it’s something that the state never likes.”

Fan’s fall from grace sent shockwaves through China’s film industry. Her undoing started in May 2018, when a famous TV presenter posted pictures of two contracts online, which appeared to suggest that Fan had used a false contract to underreport her income to the Chinese tax authorities to the tune of several million dollars. Such a practice, known as “yin-yang” contracts, was allegedly widespread in the film industry.

Fan denied wrongdoing and the presenter retracted his claims. But the tax authorities launched an investigation and in October of that year she was ordered to pay 883m yuan in unpaid taxes and related fines. She apologised on social media and said: “Without the good policies of the party and the state, without the love and protection of the people, there would be no Fan Bingbing.”

Since then, Fan’s career has been muted, although she has maintained a presence on social media and developed her e-commerce beauty brand, Fan Beauty.

In recent months, Fan’s posts on Chinese social media feeds have been full of posts about her fashion endeavours and nationalist comments. There is no mention of Green Night in recent posts. On 2 September, the day before the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the second world war, Fan wrote on Weibo: “Remember history, love China, cherish peace, and forge ahead bravely!”

Celebrities in China have long been held to high moral standards and expected to be squeaky clean in their personal lives. But in recent years, as the Chinese Communist party (CCP) has deepened and strengthened its control over all parts of society, stars have been expected to be overtly loyal to the CCP as well.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has also tightened the party’s control over the mega-rich. After more than a decade of rapid growth and massive wealth accumulation, political leaders have become concerned about elites amassing influence outside the CCP’s control.

The sudden crackdown on a darling of China’s booming film industry shocked observers. But since then, several high-profile wealthy people have received similar treatment. In November 2020, Jack Ma, one of China’s most successful and well-known billionaires, disappeared for three months, after criticising China’s financial regulators. Last year, a billionaire Chinese dealmaker named Bao Fan disappeared.

For celebrities to thrive in China in today’s political environment, they have to be seen to “love the country, love the party”, Yu said. She added that in some instances fans themselves had taken to policing the nationalist credos of high profile figures, without the authorities needing to get involved. In March, the Nobel prize-winning author Mo Yan was attacked by internet users who declared him insufficiently patriotic.

In Green Night, Fan stars as a Chinese immigrant, Jin Xia, who works at South Korea’s Incheon airport. While on duty she encounters a mysterious green-haired girl, who pulls Xia into a world of drug trafficking and lesbian romance, and an escape from Xia’s abusive husband. Such racy themes would be highly unlikely to pass the censorship regime required for films to be released in China.

Child safety campaigners have urged the UK communications watchdog to make a “step-change” in its implementation of new online laws after a video game firm was accused of making its platform an “X-rated paedophile hellscape”.

Roblox, a gaming platform with 80 million daily users, was accused of lax safety controls last week by a US investment firm.

Hindenburg Research claimed Roblox’s games exposed children to grooming, pornography, violent content and abusive speech. The company, which has stated that it is seeking to profit from a fall in Roblox’s share price by taking out a so-called “short” position on the company’s stock, added it had found multiple accounts named using variations of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and child sexual abuser, and had been able to set up an account under the name of a notorious American paedophile.

“We found Roblox to be an X-rated paedophile hellscape, replete with users attempting to groom our avatars, groups openly trading child pornography, widely accessible sex games, violent content and extremely abusive speech – all of which is open to young children,” said Hindenburg.

Roblox rejected Hindenburg’s allegations, saying safety and civility was “foundational” to the company.

“Every day, tens of millions of users of all ages have safe and positive experiences on Roblox and abide by the company’s community standards. However, any safety incident is horrible. We take any content or behaviour on the platform that doesn’t abide by our standards extremely seriously,” said the company.

The company said it had reviewed the references to child safety in the report and found in “many cases” the highlighted content had already been taken down, while all other content referred to in the report was either being reviewed or had been removed.

“We continuously evolve and enhance our safety approach to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity. This includes text chat filters to block inappropriate words and phrases, and not allowing user-to-user image sharing on Roblox,” said the company.

One in five Roblox users are under nine years old and the majority are under 16. The platform offers a catalogue of games and allows players to socialise with each other including in chatrooms. There is no age limit, although the platform does advertise age recommendations for certain “experiences” and offers parental controls.

Roblox content is not authored by its developers, but instead by players. It provides the tools for children and teens to create their own simple gaming scenarios, and then play through them with friends. One popular Roblox “experience” has players working in a pizza parlour, and another involves a game of cops and robbers.

Child safety campaigners said the report underlined the need for Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, to implement the Online Safety Act as rigorously as possible and introduce strict codes of practice for tech companies.

The act requires platforms to protect children from harmful content, with these provisions underpinned by codes of practice being drawn up by Ofcom, which is charged with enforcing the legislation. The codes are voluntary but companies that adhere to them will be deemed to be in compliance with the act by Ofcom.

The Molly Rose Foundation, established by the parents of Molly Russell, the British teenager who took her own life after viewing harmful online content, said the watchdog would be judged on how quickly it addressed risks posed by platforms such as Roblox.

Andy Burrows, the foundation’s chief executive, said: “This report underscores the growing evidence that child safety shortcomings aren’t a glitch but rather a systemic failure in how online platforms are designed and run.

“The Online Safety Act remains the most effective route to keep children safe, but such preventable safety lapses will only be addressed if Ofcom delivers a step-change in its ambition and determination to act.”

Beeban Kidron, a child internet safety campaigner, said implementation of the act needed to “significantly up the game” on ensuring that tech platforms have in-built safety measures.

“Roblox is a consumer-facing product and in order to trade it has to be safe for children, and it has to have by-design mechanisms that mean it does not enable predators to convene or search for children,” she said.

Lady Kidron added: “We need political will and leadership to strengthen the provisions of the OSA and a regulator willing to implement them.”

An Ofcom spokesperson said the act would have a significant impact on online safety in the UK and the regulator would have a broad range of enforcement powers to protect users.

“Platforms – such as Roblox – will be required to protect children from pornography and violence, take action to prevent grooming, remove child abuse images, and introduce robust age-checks. We have set out clear recommended measures for how they can comply with these requirements in our draft codes.”

A Roblox spokesperson added that the company “fully” intended to comply with the OSA.

“Our internal teams have been assessing the obligations and have been engaging in the various consultations and calls for evidence Ofcom have published. We look forward to seeing Ofcom’s final codes of practice,” said the spokesperson.

Joker: Folie à Deux is on course for a catastrophic financial loss of up to $200m (£153m) as its dismal box office run continues amid a stream of critical brickbats and poor audience ratings.

According to a report in Variety, industry analysts say Joker: Folie à Deux is projected to earn a total of $65m at the North American box office, and around $215m elsewhere for a total of $280m – well below the estimated $300m the film cost to produce and promote. With revenue splits with cinemas factored in, Variety say that in fact the film needs to earn around $450m to break even, though producing studio Warner Bros say that the break-even figure is in fact $375m. In an effort to claw back revenue the film is headed for an early debut on home entertainment and streaming platforms on 29 October. Meanwhile the Rotten Tomatoes rating website has recorded an audience score of 32%.

As a result the estimate is the film could lose its producers between $125m and $200m. However a statement from Warner Bros disputed the accuracy of the figures, saying: “Any estimates suggested by anonymous ‘insiders’ or ‘rival executives’ are grossly wrong and continues a trend where rumour is reported as fact.”

All this is in stark contrast to the reception given the first Joker film. With the same star, Joaquin Phoenix, and director Todd Phillips, Joker won the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice film festival on its premiere in 2019 as well as winning the best actor Oscar for Phoenix; it was also a huge commercial success, earning $1.08bn at the global box office, including £335m in North America.

Blame for Folie à Deux’s failure has been apportioned to a number of factors. The surprise success of the first film put Phillips, its director and co-writer, in a powerful position, allowing him to reportedly ignore or bypass the demands made by DC Studios, custodian of the Batman/Joker intellectual property. In retrospect, his decision to make Folie à Deux into a musical co-starring Lady Gaga appears to have alienated the comic book fanbase, a vital section of the audience if a film is to be a major hit.

Charles Gant, box office editor of Screen International, says that Phillips may take the fall. “The mantra in Hollywood is always to offer audiences the same, but different. With Joker: Folie à Deux, it seems like Todd Phillips offered the wrong kind of different. The core audience received the message that not only is the film very different from the first film, but also that people liked the first Joker for the wrong reasons. In general, people are not rushing to pay money to be be scolded. Whether or not that’s a fair summary of what Folie À Deux actually delivers has become irrelevant – it’s the message fans have received.”

And although neither Joker film remotely resembles a conventional comic-book superhero movie, Hollywood is coming to terms with “superhero fatigue”, as follow-ups to seemingly invulnerable characters and brands record disappointing figures. Films such as Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ($434m worldwide) and The Marvels ($200m worldwide) have performed well below expectations – though conversely Deadpool and Wolverine (1.33bn) exceeded them.

The inflated cost of making the sequels also played a part, with Phoenix and Phillips earning a reported $20m each, and Lady Gaga $12m.

Gant adds: “The film seems now trapped in a doom spiral. Reports of its failure are scaring off the broader audiences needed to reduce the flow of red ink on the balance sheet. Actually, Folie à Deux has its fans, and among IMDb users who have rated it so far, 18% scored it 8, 9 or 10. Sure, it’s a minority, but those scores don’t quite gel with what has become a stigma of total failure.”