The Biden administration has warned Israel that it faces possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers, if it does not take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, exhorts Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to ease humanitarian suffering in the territory by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.

The four-page missive, dated 13 October, was sent to Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, and Ron Dermer, the strategic affairs minister, and came to light after being posted on social media by Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist who works for Axios, after apparently being leaked.

Its authenticity was confirmed by a state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, at a news briefing on Tuesday.

Humanitarian groups have made repeated calls for increased deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza, but aid shipments to the embattled territory are currently at their lowest level in months, the UN said last week.

An Israeli official in Washington told Reuters that Israel was reviewing the letter.

“Israel takes this matter seriously and intends to address the concerns raised in this letter with our American counterparts,” the official said.

Miller said the US side had intended the letter to be a private diplomatic communication and said its timing was not influenced by next month’s presidential election, which features a knife-edge contest in the battleground state of Michigan, where many Arab American voters have voiced anger over the White House’s support for Israel’s conduct of the war.

Democrat strategists harbour fears that discontent over Gaza could result in Kamala Harris, the vice-president and party nominee, losing the state to Donald Trump in the 5 November poll.

The letter complains of delays to US-funded aid at crossing points into Gaza and says the flow of assistance into the war-devastated territory has dropped by more than 50% since Israel promised last March to allow more deliveries.

“We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government … are contributing to an accelerated deterioration in the conditions in Gaza,” it says.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that the letter was not intended as a threat, but “was simply meant to reiterate the sense of urgency we feel and the seriousness with which we feel it, about the need for an increase, a dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance”.

After an uptick in assistance after communications between the US and Israel in March and April, aid volumes entering the strip in September fell to their lowest level, Blinken and Austin wrote, since last October, when Israel launched a massive military offensive in retaliation for an attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200 Israelis, and led to more than 250 being taken hostage.

“To reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory and consistent with its assurances to us, Israel must, starting now and within 30 days, act” on a series of specific steps, including letting in at least 350 aid trucks daily and instituting humanitarian pauses to Israeli military activity.

The letter adds: “Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measure may have implications for US policy under NSM-20 and relevant US law.”

NSM-20 refers to a memorandum issued by the White House national security council, which allows for “appropriate next steps” if a country receiving US military aid is deemed by the state department or the Pentagon not to be meeting prior assurances of allowing the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

“Such remediation could include actions from refreshing the assurances to suspending any further transfers of defense articles or, as appropriate, defense services,” the memorandum states.

Congressional Republicans have called on the White House to revoke NSM-20 calling it “redundant” and dismissing it as aimed at “placat[ing] critics of security assistance to our vital ally Israel”.

Other relevant legislation that could be invoked include section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act and the Leahy Act, which preclude the US government from providing military assistance or selling arms to countries that restrict humanitarian aid or violate human rights.

Miller, the state department spokesperson, declined to go into specific when asked what consequences Israel might face for refusing to meet American demands for greater aid access.

He said that a previous letter Blinken had written in April had increased humanitarian aid flows. An Israeli official confirmed that the latest letter had been received but did not discuss the details, the Associated Press reported.

Miller also said that Blinken had seen footages showing at least one Palestinian burned alive after an Israeli strike set tents ablaze outside a Gaza hospital.

“We all saw that video, and all know that it’s horrifying to see people burned to death. We have made clear our serious concerns about the matter directly with the government of Israel.”

The US has made repeated exhortations to allow increased aid into the te, but Netanyahu has frequently ignored such entreaties to moderate its conduct of the war in Gaza.

Last week, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that the three hospitals still operating in northern Gaza face “dire shortages” of fuel, medicine and blood, while food supplies are dwindling.

Israeli authorities facilitated just one of 54 UN attempts to get aid to north Gaza this month, Dujarric said. Eighty-five percent of the requests were denied, with the rest impeded or canceled for logistical or security reasons.

Israel insists that much of the aid has dual-use capacity that could help Hamas fighters and also says it has been subject to looting.

More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and the majority of buildings in Gaza destroyed or badly damaged in Israel’s year-long offensive with the stated aim of rooting out Hamas.

The Pentagon described the letter as “private correspondence” and declined to discuss it in detail.

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.

Israeli military officials accuse Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge the militant Islamist organisation denies.

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,” 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. A quarter of the country is now subject to Israeli evacuation orders, aid officials say.

“People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they’re fleeing with almost nothing,” the UN refugee agency’s Middle East director, Rema Jamous Imseis, told reporters.

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.

But Israel’s strategy has prompted rare criticism from the US, according to state department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

He told reporters: “When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to.”

Separately, it emerged that US secretary of state Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin warned Israel that it faces possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for several attacks on Tuesday, including one targeting Israeli troops in northern Israel. Warning sirens sounded repeatedly in Israeli towns through the day.

A Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in central Israel killed four soldiers on Sunday in the deadliest such 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.

On Tuesday, Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s de facto leader, said the group would inflict “pain” on Israel but also called for a deal to end hostilities.

“The solution is a ceasefire. We are not speaking from a position of weakness; if the Israelis do not want that, we will continue,” Qassem said in a recorded speech.

The region remains on the brink of further escalation, with the multi-front war fought by Israel risking a regional conflagration. Qassem linked any potential ceasefire with an end to hostilities in Gaza, as Hezbollah has done throughout the conflict.

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.

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 al-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 al-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 there 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.

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.

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

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 will visit Lebanon on Friday as she demanded security guarantees from Israel for her country’s troops there just days after UN peacekeeper bases came under attack.

Italy’s government has been a strong supporter of Israel in the year since Hamas’s 7 October attacks but has sharply criticised attacks on the UN mission, known as Unifil, and Israeli calls for the peacekeepers to withdraw.

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

She later told the lower house of parliament: “I believe that a withdrawal on the basis of a unilateral request by Israel would be a big mistake. It would undermine the credibility of the mission itself, the credibility of the United Nations.”

The UN said Unifil positions had come under attack 20 times since the start of Israel’s ground operation in southern Lebanon on 1 October, including by direct fire and an incident on Sunday when two Israeli tanks burst through the gates of a Unifil base.

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

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, which 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 after 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 seven peacekeepers had been injured up to late June. Since 1978, Unifil has lost 337 peacekeepers, making Lebanon the most costly, in human terms, of all the its 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 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 Netanyahu, in his speech to the general assembly, described the UN as a swamp of antisemitic bile.

Singapore’s air force mobilised two fighter jets late on Tuesday in response to a bomb threat on an Air India Express flight bound for the city-state, its defence minister said.

Two Singapore air force F-15SG jets scrambled and escorted Air India flight AXB684 away from populated areas after the airline received an email that there was a bomb on board its plane, Ng Eng Hen said in a Facebook post.

It was the third confirmed incident in two days involving a threat against an Air India plane.

Ng said the plane was escorted and landed safely at Changi Airport at 10.04pm on Tuesday, adding that Singapore’s ground based air defence systems and explosive disposal team were also activated.

“Once on the ground, the plane was handed to the airport police,” Ng said.

The police said “no threat items were found” on board the plane after completing security checks, adding that investigations were ongoing.

“The police take security threats seriously and will not hesitate to take action against those who intentionally cause public alarm,” it said in an emailed statement.

Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But it said on social media that another of its flights bound for Chicago had landed in Canada as a precautionary measure on Tuesday after a security threat posted online.

India’s flagship carrier said it and other airlines had 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 Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Muscat in Oman.

Relations between India and Canada have sunk to historic lows after Canadian police accused Indian diplomats of carrying out “criminal” activities in Canada, including homicide, extortion, intimidation, coercion and harassment.

In response, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including India’s high commissioner to Canada, who it claimed had been involved in threatening behaviour. India retaliated by expelling six senior Canadian diplomats.

Canada’s statements have fuelled allegations by activists and western officials that the Indian government, under the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has carried out a campaign of transnational repression, namely in Canada and the US, that has targeted critics of the state.

India has rejected Canada’s allegations as “ludicrous” and accused the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, of a “political agenda” to win domestic votes.

How did the diplomatic spat begin?

India and Canada had enjoyed relatively close ties until last year, when a Sikh activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was born in India but had become a Canadian citizen, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia.

Nijjar had campaigned for an independent Sikh nation, known as Khalistan, to be carved out of India’s Punjab state. The movement is banned in India and its most vocal advocates are primarily among the Punjabi overseas diaspora. Nijjar was wanted by Indian authorities and had been designated a “terrorist” in July 2020 for alleged Khalistani-related violence.

In September, Trudeau took the unusual step of publicly stating that there was “credible” information linking Indian government agents to the murder of Nijjar. India vehemently rejected the allegations as “absurd” and accused Canada of harbouring terrorists and “anti-Indian elements” who were a threat to the Indian state.

India then expelled a senior Canadian diplomat and ordered Canada to remove 41 diplomats from its embassy in Delhi. It also suspended all visa applications for Canadians.

Earlier this year, Canadian police arrested three Indian nationals accused of being part of the hit squad that killed Nijjar and said they were were “investigating if there are any ties to the government of India”. India rejected the allegations, saying Canada had a “political compulsion” to blame it.

What new allegations have Canadian police made?

This week, in an explosive press conference, Canadian police officials claimed they had uncovered evidence that senior Indian diplomats and consular officials had been involved in a “criminal network” that had carried out homicides and harassed and threatened Canadian Sikhs.

Canadian police alleged that Indian diplomats and consular staff in Canada had been extorting, threatening and coercing people for information and had been gathering intelligence on individuals suspected of being involved with the Khalistan movement.

They also said they believed Indian agents had been working with a criminal network, run by India’s most notorious mob boss, Lawrence Bishnoi, to carry out targeted attacks and killings.

Canadian officials also said they had evidence that implicated India’s top diplomat in Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and other consular staff in the Nijjar’s killing.

In a subsequent press conference, Trudeau doubled down on the accusations, stating that Canada now had “clear and compelling evidence that agents of the government of India have engaged in, and continue to engage in, activities that pose a significant threat to public safety”.

Trudeau said he had spoken directly to Modi last week and that top national security officials from both countries had met in Singapore over the weekend, where Canadian officials shared the evidence they had collected, detailing Indian involvement in violence and attacks, which India had denied.

Trudeau added that India had “made a monumental mistake in choosing to use their diplomats and organised crime to attack Canadians”.

How has India responded?

After Canada informed the Indian government that Indian diplomats were “persons of interest” in the Nijjar murder investigation, India’s foreign ministry responded with outrage.

In a statement on Monday, the Indian government rejected the accusations as “preposterous imputations” and accused the Trudeau government of a “political agenda”.

Contrary to claims by the Canadian police and Trudeau, Delhi has maintained that Ottawa has not shared any credible evidence to back up its claims of an Indian link to the murder.

India has also repeatedly accused Trudeau of being sympathetic to Khalistani separatists, as his party enjoys substantial backing from the country’s sizeable Sikh community. Canada has the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab.

On Monday night, India announced it was “withdrawing” six senior diplomats from Canada over safety concerns. However, Canadian officials who briefed several news publications said Canada had expelled the Indian diplomats first.

Who else has been targeted?

Nijjar is not the only Khalistani activist living abroad believed to have been targeted by the Indian government.

Sikh activists and western officials have said that evidence increasingly points to the Modi government carrying out a campaign of transnational repression, which is when foreign governments take actions beyond their borders to intimidate, silence harass or harm members of their diaspora and exile communities.

Last November, US investigators said they had thwarted an attempt by an Indian government official to murder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a firebrand Sikh separatist and dual citizen of the US and Canada.

Other prominent Sikh Khalistani activists in the US, Canada and the UK also said they had also been given warnings of threats to their lives.

According to intelligence officials who spoke to the Guardian this year, India had also ordered the assassination of dozens of individuals in Pakistan, including Sikhs, as part of a wider strategy to eliminate terrorists living on foreign soil.

What happens now?

Bilateral relations between India and Canada have now completely broken down and show little sign of improving any time soon.

Canada has said that its investigation into the Nijjar killing and the alleged wider campaign of violence by India is continuing and it is collaborating with the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing alliance comprising the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

India has insisted that it has yet to see adequate evidence to back up Canada’s claims against Indian diplomats, and Canada will be under mounting pressure to go public with what it alleges to have uncovered and to officially press charges.

The US has said it took the allegations of India’s involvement in attempted killings on US soil “with utmost seriousness”. On Monday, the US state department said an Indian inquiry committee set up to investigate the plot would travel to Washington on Tuesday as part of its investigations.

Canada’s foreign minister noted on Monday that India was cooperating with US officials but said it had refused to cooperate in the Canadian investigation.

The saga could have significant geopolitical implications. India is seen as a growing superpower and has become an important security and economic ally for western countries such as the US, UK and France. However, those relationships could be complicated if evidence mounts that the Modi government has been complicit in transnational repression.

Elon Musk gave around $75m to his pro-Donald Trump spending group in the span of three months, federal disclosures show, underscoring how the billionaire has become crucial to the Republican candidate’s efforts to win the US presidential election.

America PAC, which is focused on turning out voters in the closely contested states battleground states that could decide the election, spent around $72m of that in the July-September period, according to disclosures filed to the Federal Election Commission.

That is more than any other pro-Trump Super Pac focused on turning out voters. The Trump campaign is broadly reliant on outside groups for canvassing voters, meaning the Super Pac founded by Musk – the world’s richest man – plays an outsized role in the razor-thin election between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.

Musk, the CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla, was the sole donor to the group in that period.

Musk, who has said he has voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the past, has taken a sharp turn to the right this election. He endorsed Trump in July and appeared with him at a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month.

Musk’s donations to America PAC propel him into the exclusive club of Republican mega donors, a list that also includes banking heir Timothy Mellon and casino billionaire Miriam Adelson.

However, it was reported earlier this month that Musk has secretly funded a conservative political group for years, well before his public embrace of Trump.

America PAC declined to comment on the Musk donations. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

America PAC is focused on encouraging Americans who like Trump but don’t always vote to cast ballots this cycle, a high-risk, labor-intensive strategy by the Trump campaign.

The group, which started its work later in the election than other Pacs, has encountered some problems with hiring and its contractors. Since July, it has fired two major contractors it has hired to knock on doors.

It has also struggled to hire door knockers in several battleground states in part because by the time the Pac became operational many other canvassing groups had already staffed up, a half-dozen sources briefed on the issues told Reuters.

The group had around $4m left on hand by the end of September, the filings show.

Separate filings earlier on Tuesday showed that Miriam Adelson, the casino magnate, donated $95m to another pro-Trump Super Pac, Preserve America PAC, in the same period.

Donald Trump doubled down on his promise to levy tariffs on all imports in a bid to boost American manufacturing, a proposal that economists say would probably mean higher prices for consumers while angering US allies.

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariffs’,” Trump said in an often-combative conversation with John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday. “It’s my favorite word.”

Trump was grilled on the potential impacts of tariffs, and often dodged questions about the tangible impacts of the levies on inflation and geopolitics. Trump is proposing an at least 10% blanket tariff on all imports, with tariffs as high as 60% on goods from China.

“You see these empty, old, beautiful steel mills and factories that are empty and falling down,” Trump said. “We’re going to bring the companies back. We’re going to lower taxes for companies that are going to make their products in the USA. And we’re going to protect those companies with strong tariffs.”

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Though speaking in Chicago, Trump repeated many of the claims he made at the Detroit Economic Club last week. At the time, Trump bashed the city, saying it has a high crime rate and few job opportunities.

“We’re a developing nation, too,” he said on Tuesday. “Take a look at Detroit.”

Trump centered the auto industry, claiming that tariffs would encourage car manufacturers to build plants in the US – an assertion some economists have suggested amounts to wishful thinking.

“The higher the tariff, the more you’re going to put on the value of those goods, the higher people are going to have to pay,” Micklethwait told Trump.

“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory,” Trump said in response, to applause from the audience.

Micklethwait pointed out that economists have estimated Trump’s economic proposals would add $7.5tn to the US deficit, twice the amount as Kamala Harris’s proposals. He also pointed out that the tariffs would also be targeting American allies.

“Our allies have taken advantage of us, more so than our enemies,” Trump said.

When asked whether he had talked to Vladimir Putin after the end of his presidency, Trump said that he doesn’t “comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing”.

“If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing,” he said.

Trump was also asked about his stance on the Federal Reserve, specifically on comments he has made against Fed chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump first appointed in 2018.

“I think if you’re a very good president with good sense, you should at least get to talk to [the Fed],” Trump said. “I think I have the right to say, as a very good businessman … I think you should go up or down a little bit.

“I don’t think I should be allowed to order it, but I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether or not interest rates should go up or down.”

Even a recommendation from the White House as to what the Fed should do with interest rates would amount to a significant step away from the central bank’s long-established independence.

Trump frequently made personal jabs at Micklethwait, saying “I know you’re an anti-tariff guy” and at one point: “This is a man who has not been a big Trump fan.”

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’s 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.

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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 the 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!!!”

A Chinese propaganda image dispersed during Monday’s military drills around Taiwan was supposed to send a positive message to the island’s people, but instead has been decried as weird, creepy, and akin to “sexual harassment”.

On Monday China targeted Taiwan with major military exercises, surrounding its main island and outer territories with planes and ships to practise a blockade and attack. Alongside a record number of warplanes, dozens of navy and coastguard vessels, and cyber-attacks, China also launched a torrent of propaganda.

Among video montages of soldiers rushing towards troop carriers, photos of captains staring through binoculars from the deck of a warship, and breathless editorials about “inevitable reunification”, one piece of media stood out: a love heart.

The illustration, widely shared online, depicted a satellite image of Taiwan’s main island, and a line of arrows tracking around it in the shape of a heart. Accompanying script – in the traditional Chinese characters used by Taiwan – read: “Hi my sweetheart” and “The patrol is in the shape of loving you.”

The image came from China’s coastguard, which ran what it called “law enforcement patrols” around Taiwan during Monday’s drills.

Taiwan’s coastguard officials decried the image as Chinese cognitive warfare and harassment. But it didn’t appear to have the desired impact on the Taiwanese population.

In local news the image prompted headlines. On social media it drew mostly ridicule and anger. People found the image “creepy”, and comment sections filled with vomit-emojis. Some likened the sentiment expressed to an abusive partner, while one newspaper called it “sexual harassment”.

Many were also perplexed by what appeared to be a reference to a 15-year-old Taiwanese TV drama, Hi My Sweetheart, long off the air. Some people surmised the reference was supposed to remind people of the show’s star, the local actor Rainie Yang, who has faced criticism in Taiwan for saying she is Chinese and for posting pro-China content online.

Past propaganda efforts have included crude animations of missiles striking major cities in Taiwan. In August 2022, during drills launched in retaliation for a visit by the US speaker, Nancy Pelosi, China was accused of hacking into monitors at Taiwanese train stations and convenience stores to display messages disparaging her.

A Chinese propaganda image dispersed during Monday’s military drills around Taiwan was supposed to send a positive message to the island’s people, but instead has been decried as weird, creepy, and akin to “sexual harassment”.

On Monday China targeted Taiwan with major military exercises, surrounding its main island and outer territories with planes and ships to practise a blockade and attack. Alongside a record number of warplanes, dozens of navy and coastguard vessels, and cyber-attacks, China also launched a torrent of propaganda.

Among video montages of soldiers rushing towards troop carriers, photos of captains staring through binoculars from the deck of a warship, and breathless editorials about “inevitable reunification”, one piece of media stood out: a love heart.

The illustration, widely shared online, depicted a satellite image of Taiwan’s main island, and a line of arrows tracking around it in the shape of a heart. Accompanying script – in the traditional Chinese characters used by Taiwan – read: “Hi my sweetheart” and “The patrol is in the shape of loving you.”

The image came from China’s coastguard, which ran what it called “law enforcement patrols” around Taiwan during Monday’s drills.

Taiwan’s coastguard officials decried the image as Chinese cognitive warfare and harassment. But it didn’t appear to have the desired impact on the Taiwanese population.

In local news the image prompted headlines. On social media it drew mostly ridicule and anger. People found the image “creepy”, and comment sections filled with vomit-emojis. Some likened the sentiment expressed to an abusive partner, while one newspaper called it “sexual harassment”.

Many were also perplexed by what appeared to be a reference to a 15-year-old Taiwanese TV drama, Hi My Sweetheart, long off the air. Some people surmised the reference was supposed to remind people of the show’s star, the local actor Rainie Yang, who has faced criticism in Taiwan for saying she is Chinese and for posting pro-China content online.

Past propaganda efforts have included crude animations of missiles striking major cities in Taiwan. In August 2022, during drills launched in retaliation for a visit by the US speaker, Nancy Pelosi, China was accused of hacking into monitors at Taiwanese train stations and convenience stores to display messages disparaging her.

Taiwan is expected to have access to low earth orbit satellite internet service by the end of the month, a step the government says is crucial in case a Chinese attack cripples the island’s communications.

The forthcoming service is via a contract between Taiwan’s main telecoms company, Chunghwa, and a UK-European company, Eutelsat OneWeb, signed last year, and marks a new milestone in Taiwan’s efforts to address technological vulnerabilities, particularly its internet access, after attempts to get access to Elon Musk’s Starlink service collapsed.

Chunghwa co-president Alex Chien said 24-hour coverage was expected by the end of the month, with commercial access as soon as sufficient bandwidth was reached.

Taiwan is under the threat of attack or invasion by China, which claims historical sovereignty over Taiwan and has vowed to annex it, by military force if necessary. In the meantime it is under a near constant barrage of cyber-attacks, and has had some of its 15 undersea cables connecting it and its outer islands to the world cut multiple times, usually by accidental anchor snags from passing ships.

In response, it has pledged to build its own satellite network, pointing to the crucial utility of reliable networks in conflicts like Ukraine, where the armed forces largely rely on Musk’s Starlink, the world’s dominant low earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet provider.

LEO satellites orbit between 200km and 2,000km above the Earth, often used for communications, sending signals to receiver terminals on the ground. More than half of the thousands of LEO satellites currently active are Starlink. OneWeb, initially a British company before it merged with Eurotel, has launched just a few hundred, the New York Times reported in March.

Starlink is not available in Taiwan after negotiations reportedly fell apart over Taiwan’s requirement that a local entity have a majority share of any joint venture established.

There are also concerns among Taiwanese officials that Musk’s business interests in China and his past remarks on Beijing’s claim over Taiwan could affect the reliability of Starlink supply in the event of a conflict.

Musk’s largest Tesla factory is in China, and in 2023 he drew reproach from Taiwanese officials after he said Taiwan was an integral part of China, akin to Hawaii and the US. It came a few months after he suggested the conflict between China and Taiwan could be resolved if Taiwan just ceded some control to Beijing.

“If the US Department of Defense requires it, Starlink should be able to support Taiwan,” said Dr Shen Ming-Shih, the director of the national security division at Taiwan’s government-backed thinktank, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.

“However, if Starlink is unwilling to provide it for considering the Chinese market, Taiwan must have a contingency plan.”

Shen said the provision of Eutelsat OneWeb services to Taiwan was significant, but not enough on its own.

“The low-orbit satellites assisted by the UK at least make up for Taiwan’s current needs, but they may still be interfered with or interrupted,” he said. “It is important to pursue additional systems, such as undersea cables, low-orbit satellites from other countries, etc.”

Taiwan’s last president, Tsai Ing-wen, pledged almost $10bn (£7.6bn) towards national space industry development, including a domestic satellite internet network. It plans to launch the first of two communications satellites by 2026.

The project is achievable, the chief operating officer of geospatial analysis company, IngeniSPACE, Jason Wang, told the Guardian.

“There’s no question that Taiwan can produce satellites. The question is whether they can do it at scale and send it up into space fast enough,” Wang said.

They also need to be able to replace them quickly, Wang added, in the event they are targeted during a conflict.

“That’s also a question for the commercial players, like OneWeb and others.”

Relations between India and Canada have sunk to historic lows after Canadian police accused Indian diplomats of carrying out “criminal” activities in Canada, including homicide, extortion, intimidation, coercion and harassment.

In response, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including India’s high commissioner to Canada, who it claimed had been involved in threatening behaviour. India retaliated by expelling six senior Canadian diplomats.

Canada’s statements have fuelled allegations by activists and western officials that the Indian government, under the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has carried out a campaign of transnational repression, namely in Canada and the US, that has targeted critics of the state.

India has rejected Canada’s allegations as “ludicrous” and accused the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, of a “political agenda” to win domestic votes.

How did the diplomatic spat begin?

India and Canada had enjoyed relatively close ties until last year, when a Sikh activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was born in India but had become a Canadian citizen, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia.

Nijjar had campaigned for an independent Sikh nation, known as Khalistan, to be carved out of India’s Punjab state. The movement is banned in India and its most vocal advocates are primarily among the Punjabi overseas diaspora. Nijjar was wanted by Indian authorities and had been designated a “terrorist” in July 2020 for alleged Khalistani-related violence.

In September, Trudeau took the unusual step of publicly stating that there was “credible” information linking Indian government agents to the murder of Nijjar. India vehemently rejected the allegations as “absurd” and accused Canada of harbouring terrorists and “anti-Indian elements” who were a threat to the Indian state.

India then expelled a senior Canadian diplomat and ordered Canada to remove 41 diplomats from its embassy in Delhi. It also suspended all visa applications for Canadians.

Earlier this year, Canadian police arrested three Indian nationals accused of being part of the hit squad that killed Nijjar and said they were were “investigating if there are any ties to the government of India”. India rejected the allegations, saying Canada had a “political compulsion” to blame it.

What new allegations have Canadian police made?

This week, in an explosive press conference, Canadian police officials claimed they had uncovered evidence that senior Indian diplomats and consular officials had been involved in a “criminal network” that had carried out homicides and harassed and threatened Canadian Sikhs.

Canadian police alleged that Indian diplomats and consular staff in Canada had been extorting, threatening and coercing people for information and had been gathering intelligence on individuals suspected of being involved with the Khalistan movement.

They also said they believed Indian agents had been working with a criminal network, run by India’s most notorious mob boss, Lawrence Bishnoi, to carry out targeted attacks and killings.

Canadian officials also said they had evidence that implicated India’s top diplomat in Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and other consular staff in the Nijjar’s killing.

In a subsequent press conference, Trudeau doubled down on the accusations, stating that Canada now had “clear and compelling evidence that agents of the government of India have engaged in, and continue to engage in, activities that pose a significant threat to public safety”.

Trudeau said he had spoken directly to Modi last week and that top national security officials from both countries had met in Singapore over the weekend, where Canadian officials shared the evidence they had collected, detailing Indian involvement in violence and attacks, which India had denied.

Trudeau added that India had “made a monumental mistake in choosing to use their diplomats and organised crime to attack Canadians”.

How has India responded?

After Canada informed the Indian government that Indian diplomats were “persons of interest” in the Nijjar murder investigation, India’s foreign ministry responded with outrage.

In a statement on Monday, the Indian government rejected the accusations as “preposterous imputations” and accused the Trudeau government of a “political agenda”.

Contrary to claims by the Canadian police and Trudeau, Delhi has maintained that Ottawa has not shared any credible evidence to back up its claims of an Indian link to the murder.

India has also repeatedly accused Trudeau of being sympathetic to Khalistani separatists, as his party enjoys substantial backing from the country’s sizeable Sikh community. Canada has the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab.

On Monday night, India announced it was “withdrawing” six senior diplomats from Canada over safety concerns. However, Canadian officials who briefed several news publications said Canada had expelled the Indian diplomats first.

Who else has been targeted?

Nijjar is not the only Khalistani activist living abroad believed to have been targeted by the Indian government.

Sikh activists and western officials have said that evidence increasingly points to the Modi government carrying out a campaign of transnational repression, which is when foreign governments take actions beyond their borders to intimidate, silence harass or harm members of their diaspora and exile communities.

Last November, US investigators said they had thwarted an attempt by an Indian government official to murder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a firebrand Sikh separatist and dual citizen of the US and Canada.

Other prominent Sikh Khalistani activists in the US, Canada and the UK also said they had also been given warnings of threats to their lives.

According to intelligence officials who spoke to the Guardian this year, India had also ordered the assassination of dozens of individuals in Pakistan, including Sikhs, as part of a wider strategy to eliminate terrorists living on foreign soil.

What happens now?

Bilateral relations between India and Canada have now completely broken down and show little sign of improving any time soon.

Canada has said that its investigation into the Nijjar killing and the alleged wider campaign of violence by India is continuing and it is collaborating with the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing alliance comprising the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

India has insisted that it has yet to see adequate evidence to back up Canada’s claims against Indian diplomats, and Canada will be under mounting pressure to go public with what it alleges to have uncovered and to officially press charges.

The US has said it took the allegations of India’s involvement in attempted killings on US soil “with utmost seriousness”. On Monday, the US state department said an Indian inquiry committee set up to investigate the plot would travel to Washington on Tuesday as part of its investigations.

Canada’s foreign minister noted on Monday that India was cooperating with US officials but said it had refused to cooperate in the Canadian investigation.

The saga could have significant geopolitical implications. India is seen as a growing superpower and has become an important security and economic ally for western countries such as the US, UK and France. However, those relationships could be complicated if evidence mounts that the Modi government has been complicit in transnational repression.

Sean “Diddy” Combs wants prosecutors in his sex-trafficking case to disclose the names of his accusers, Manhattan federal court documents show.

Combs, 54, needs to know the identities of his accusers so as to prepare for the 5 May trial, his legal team argued in a Tuesday letter to judge Arun Subramanian.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to the indictment. He remains jailed pending trial.

“This case is unique, in part because of the number of individuals levying allegations against Mr Combs due to his celebrity status, wealth” and extensive media coverage of lawsuits and other legal proceedings against him, they argued.

“This has had a pervasive ripple effect, resulting in a torrent of allegations by unidentified complainants, spanning from the false to outright absurd.”

They noted that six people filed civil complaints against Combs on Monday, all of them anonymous. The attorney helming these suits claimed at a recent press conference that he represented 120 accusers and that a toll-free number for his firm received thousands of calls within a day, Combs’s team also pointed out.

“These accusations came on the heels of more than a dozen lawsuits previously filed and currently pending, several of which have already been discredited but only after irreparably damaging Mr Combs’s character and reputation,” attorneys for the Bad Boy Records founds said. “These swirling allegations have created a hysterical media circus that, if left unchecked, will irreparably deprive Mr Combs of a fair trial, if they haven’t already.”

Combs’s lawyers said that they asked prosecutors to identify all of the government’s alleged victims because of the number, and anonymity, of accusers. But the prosecution “opposes disclosure of alleged victims’ names at this stage”, Combs’s team said.

Combs faces charges of racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution. The indictment alleges that Combs’ violence lasted decades and that the mega-star “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct”.

Combs, with the help of staff and associates, allegedly used his vast business empire to form a “criminal enterprise” rife with verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse against women and that he “manipulated women to participate in highly orchestrated performance of sexual activity with male commercial sex workers.”

Combs is alleged to have controlled these women with drugs and influence over their careers, as well as financially. Federal prosecutors alleged that much of this abuse unfolded at so-called “freak-offs,” which they described as “elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded”.

Sometimes, these alleged “freak-offs” lasted for days. After they ended, Combs and his accusers “typically received IV fluids to recover from the physical exertion and drug use”, prosecutors said.

The indictment apparently referred to Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s claims against Combs in a 16 November 2023 civil suit; she appears to be “Victim-1” in the document. Ventura, who said Combs sexually assaulted and abused her, during their relationship, settled the suit a day later.

Combs’s team points to prosecutors’ language in pushing for the identities of accusers. They said that it was so broad “this could be interpreted as treating Mr Combs’s entire sexual history over the past 16 years as part of the alleged criminal conspiracy”.

“Without clarity from the government, Mr Combs has no way of knowing which allegations the government is relying on for purposes of the indictment. Other than Victim-1, there is no way for Mr Combs to determine who the other unidentified alleged victims are,” they wrote.

“The number of potential alleged victims and the length of time alleged in the indictment both weigh in favor of” disclosing accusers, they also said.

“Moreover, to the extent Mr Combs is forced to mount a defense against criminal allegations that the government does not seek to prove at trial, he is entitled to know that,” they said. Without knowing the identities, “the government is forcing him, unfairly, to play a guessing a game – one made all the more challenging by the onslaught of baseless allegations that desperate plaintiffs are lodging at him (for the most part anonymously) in civil suits designed to exact a payoff from Mr Combs and others”.

Because there is so much evidence, and its provision is expected to take lots of time, Combs would not probably be able to figure out the identities of unnamed accusers.

“Mr Combs also anticipates that the discovery will contain voluminous evidence of consensual sexual activity – making it all the more difficult for Mr Combs to ascertain which of his prior sexual partners now claim, years later, that they felt coerced,” his lawyers argued.

The Manhattan US attorney’s office declined to comment. Combs’s legal team, when asked for comment, directed questions to the filing.

A Russian man survived more than two months drifting in icy seas on an inflatable boat in an ordeal that claimed the lives of his brother and teenage nephew, officials and reports said.

Mikhail Pichugin may have survived because of his 100kg (220lb) build, according to his wife. Media reports said he weighed just 50kg when found on Monday.

Pichugin, his brother and his 15-year-old nephew set off for Sakhalin island from the far eastern Khabarovsk region on 9 August on an inflatable catamaran, transport prosecutors said.

The boat was discovered at about 10pm on Monday as it floated past a fishing boat in the Sea of Okhotsk, about 1,000km (670 miles) from its starting point and 66 days after it had set off.

A video posted by prosecutors shows a bearded man in a lifejacket shouting at the fishermen: “I don’t have much strength.” He managed to catch a rope.

The survivor was named by RIA Novosti news agency. The bodies of his brother Sergei, 49, and nephew Ilya, 15, were still on the boat.

Rescuers had mounted a helicopter and plane search for the trio a few days after they disappeared, suspecting the boat had been carried by currents towards Kamchatka.

Pichugin’s wife, Yekaterina, told RIA Novosti: “It’s a kind of miracle.” She said the men had taken only enough food and water to last two weeks.

She said her husband’s bulk could have saved him, as “he weighed about 100kg”. Russian television reported that he had lost 50kg.

The fishing boat brought Pichugin to the city of Magadan, where he was taken off in a stretcher, apparently conscious.

His condition is “more or less stable”, the chief doctor of the regional hospital, Yury Lednev, told RIA Novosti, saying he was likely to have suffered from hypothermia.

The fishing boat also brought back the bodies and the inflatable boat, which was being examined by investigators.

Transport police have launched an investigation into possible breaches of safety rules, raising the prospect that Pichugin could face a criminal charge and risk a prison sentence of up to seven years.

The Baza Telegram channel, which is thought to have close links to law enforcement, cited sources as saying the group had about 20 litres of water and collected rainwater and ate dried noodles and peas.

The channel reported that Pichugin told the fishermen that his nephew had died in early September, after which the brothers spent about three weeks together on the boat.

They began to get bedsores from sitting so long and his brother tried to wash himself and fell in the icy water. Pichugin retrieved him but he died soon after, Baza reported.

Pichugin then tied his brother and nephew’s bodies to the boat to prevent them falling into the choppy waves. He hung their lifejackets on the side of the boat in a bid to attract attention.

The brothers were from Ulan-Ude in Siberia, but Mikhail Pichugin was working on Sakhalin as a driver.

He had invited his brother and nephew to visit and they planned a sea trip to see whales, the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid reported, citing relatives.

An expert questioned by RIA Novosti recalled that in 1960, four Soviet soldiers survived 49 days adrift on a small boat in the Pacific Ocean that was found by the US aircraft carrier Keersarge.

A Russian man survived more than two months drifting in icy seas on an inflatable boat in an ordeal that claimed the lives of his brother and teenage nephew, officials and reports said.

Mikhail Pichugin may have survived because of his 100kg (220lb) build, according to his wife. Media reports said he weighed just 50kg when found on Monday.

Pichugin, his brother and his 15-year-old nephew set off for Sakhalin island from the far eastern Khabarovsk region on 9 August on an inflatable catamaran, transport prosecutors said.

The boat was discovered at about 10pm on Monday as it floated past a fishing boat in the Sea of Okhotsk, about 1,000km (670 miles) from its starting point and 66 days after it had set off.

A video posted by prosecutors shows a bearded man in a lifejacket shouting at the fishermen: “I don’t have much strength.” He managed to catch a rope.

The survivor was named by RIA Novosti news agency. The bodies of his brother Sergei, 49, and nephew Ilya, 15, were still on the boat.

Rescuers had mounted a helicopter and plane search for the trio a few days after they disappeared, suspecting the boat had been carried by currents towards Kamchatka.

Pichugin’s wife, Yekaterina, told RIA Novosti: “It’s a kind of miracle.” She said the men had taken only enough food and water to last two weeks.

She said her husband’s bulk could have saved him, as “he weighed about 100kg”. Russian television reported that he had lost 50kg.

The fishing boat brought Pichugin to the city of Magadan, where he was taken off in a stretcher, apparently conscious.

His condition is “more or less stable”, the chief doctor of the regional hospital, Yury Lednev, told RIA Novosti, saying he was likely to have suffered from hypothermia.

The fishing boat also brought back the bodies and the inflatable boat, which was being examined by investigators.

Transport police have launched an investigation into possible breaches of safety rules, raising the prospect that Pichugin could face a criminal charge and risk a prison sentence of up to seven years.

The Baza Telegram channel, which is thought to have close links to law enforcement, cited sources as saying the group had about 20 litres of water and collected rainwater and ate dried noodles and peas.

The channel reported that Pichugin told the fishermen that his nephew had died in early September, after which the brothers spent about three weeks together on the boat.

They began to get bedsores from sitting so long and his brother tried to wash himself and fell in the icy water. Pichugin retrieved him but he died soon after, Baza reported.

Pichugin then tied his brother and nephew’s bodies to the boat to prevent them falling into the choppy waves. He hung their lifejackets on the side of the boat in a bid to attract attention.

The brothers were from Ulan-Ude in Siberia, but Mikhail Pichugin was working on Sakhalin as a driver.

He had invited his brother and nephew to visit and they planned a sea trip to see whales, the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid reported, citing relatives.

An expert questioned by RIA Novosti recalled that in 1960, four Soviet soldiers survived 49 days adrift on a small boat in the Pacific Ocean that was found by the US aircraft carrier Keersarge.

The British photojournalist Paul Lowe has been fatally stabbed on a hiking trail in California and his teenage son arrested for murder, according to police.

Lowe, who covered conflicts including the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, was found dead on 12 October in the San Gabriel mountains.

The 60-year-old had been stabbed in the neck, records at the Los Angeles medical examiner’s office said.

Lowe’s 19-year-old son Emir was charged with one count of murder and was due to appear on Wednesday at the West Covina courthouse, the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office told the PA news agency.

The Los Angeles county sheriff’s department told PA: “The homicide bureau presented the case to the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office for filing considerations today.

“The district attorney’s office filed one count of murder on suspect Emir Lowe for the murder of his father Christian Paul Lowe. There is no additional information at this time.”

According to police, the incident happened at about 3.28pm at Mount Baldy Road, near Stoddard Canyon Falls. A statement from the sheriff’s department said officers responding to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon found a “white male adult suffering trauma to his upper torso”.

“San Bernardino fire department personnel responded and pronounced the victim dead at the scene.

“A white male adult was seen driving away from the scene and was subsequently involved in a solo traffic collision a few miles away. The male was detained pending further investigation.

“The investigation is ongoing and there is no additional information at this time.”

King’s College London, where Lowe was a visiting professor in war studies, said the award-winning photojournalist would be “deeply missed”.

A statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, read: “It is with deep sadness that we received the news of Professor Paul Lowe’s passing.

“Paul was a visiting professor in the department of war studies, a professor of photojournalism at the University of the Arts London, and an award-winning photojournalist with VII Academy. A friend, colleague and collaborator whose work had a huge impact in shining a spotlight on the siege of Sarajevo and addressing its legacy, we were privileged to work with him on several projects related to art and reconciliation.

“His boundless energy, warmth, creativity, initiative and enthusiasm were contagious and uniquely inspiring. He will be deeply missed. We send our deepest condolences to his family at this difficult time.”

Lowe in August 2022 discussed his work in besieged Sarajevo for the Guardian photography series My best shot: “There was a sense of incredulity that this could be happening in a European capital city.”

With the Press Association

• Ukrainian authorities have ordered the mandatory evacuation of Kupiansk city in the north-eastern Kharkiv region as Russian forces press closer and officials face difficulty providing services through the winter. Kupiansk fell to Russian forces in the weeks after their February 2022 invasion, but was retaken by Ukrainian troops later that year. The Kharkiv regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said: “On the east bank of the Oskil River, which divides the city, we can no longer guarantee the restoration of electricity, heat and water supply due to constant shelling. All repair crews immediately come under Russian fire.” The order also applied to the town of Borova, further south and near the city of Izium.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been invited to present his “victory plan” to defeat Russia at a meeting of EU leaders on Thursday. The European Council president, Charles Michel, announced he had invited the Ukrainian president “to take stock of the latest developments of Russia’s war against Ukraine and present his victory plan”. Military support to Kyiv and strengthening Ukraine’s heavily damaged energy grid are on the table as leaders from the EU’s 27 countries meet in Brussels.

• The US is “concerned” by reports of North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia in Ukraine, the White House national security council spokesperson, Sean Savett, said on Tuesday. If those reports were true it would signal a “new level of desperation for Russia”, Savett said.

• Russia launched a drone attack on Kyiv late on Tuesday, top officials in the Ukrainian capital said. “Stay in shelters,” said Vitali Klitschko, mayor of the Ukrainian capital. Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said air defence was engaged in repelling the attack.

• Alexei Moskalyov, a Russian man jailed for two years because his daughter drew an anti-war picture, was released on Tuesday. Moskalyov was greeted by human rights defenders and his daughter, Masha, who was 12 when she drew a picture showing Russian missiles raining down on a Ukrainian mother and child and the head of her school called the police. Moskalyov told OVD-Info, a Russian human rights project, of being put in a cramped cell infested by rats. “We were on our feet for 16 hours every day because the beds were fastened to the wall and the metal bench was so cold that it was impossible to sit on it.”

• Spanish authorities said they arrested four people in Catalonia suspected of running a sanctions-busting commercial network after intercepting 13 tonnes of chemical products bound for Russia. Police and customs officials impounded the chemicals in a container in the port of Barcelona, Spanish national police said. Spanish authorities had in initial findings detected a company managed by “citizens of Russian origin” behind the scheme. The firm sent the goods to its Moscow-based subsidiary through shadow companies in countries such as Armenia or Kyrgyzstan, with the deliveries reaching Russia by land.

• Four-fifths of Ukrainians said they supported a law banning Russia-affiliated religious groups in a survey released on Tuesday. The Ukrainian Orthodox church, which counted 6% of the respondents as followers, has for years faced accusations that it is a tool of Moscow’s influence and intelligence services in Ukraine. The church insists it officially broke from the Russian Orthodox church in May 2022, three months after Russia invaded Ukraine.

• Russia will reduce its consular staff in Norway after a request from Oslo, the Russian embassy has said. The Russian mission said only two diplomats would remain in the consular section. The Russian consulates in Kirkenes, near the Russian-Norwegian border in the north, and in Barentsburg, a Russian mining community in the Arctic Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, announced they would be suspending their consular services. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Norway in April 2023 expelled 15 Russian embassy employees it suspected of spying. In response, Russia expelled 10 Norwegian diplomats from Moscow. Norway has closed its consulate in Murmansk in north-west Russia and now has a limited diplomatic presence, including a sharply reduced embassy staff in Moscow and a consulate in St Petersburg.

• Russia’s Olympic chief, Stanislav Pozdnyakov, said he was stepping down to make way for the election of a replacement, citing “geopolitical challenges” facing Russian sport. Russia was banned from competing as a team at the Paris Olympics because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A few Russians were authorised by the International Olympic Committee to compete as neutrals after attempts to screen out anyone who had publicly supported the war in Ukraine or had links with Russia’s military.

A potential oil slick has been spotted off the coast of Coogee in Sydney a day after hundreds of “mysterious black, ball-shaped debris” washed up along the beach.

Lifeguards discovered the golf ball-sized debris on the sand on Tuesday afternoon at the popular eastern suburbs beach.

Randwick city council environmental officers collected samples and sent them for testing. In the meantime, people were advised not to touch or go near them. The beach was closed until further notice.

The incident was also reported to the Environment Protection Authority and Beachwatch New South Wales.

The council said the unknown material could be “tar balls” formed when oil comes into contact with debris and water – usually as a result of oil spills or seepage.

Council jetskis spotted what may be an oil slick out at sea on Wednesday morning, the Randwick council mayor, Dylan Parker, said. However, it was not yet confirmed.

A dead seagull coated in black floated past Coogee local Jamie O’Donnell when he was surfing off Gordons Bay on Wednesday morning. “That was the only sign of the oil slick we saw,” he said.

The NSW Port Authority said no oil spills had been self-reported by vessels.

“It is the responsibility of all ships to report any spills to the relevant authorities including the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, Transport for NSW and Port Authority,” it said in a statement.

The state environment minister, Penny Sharpe, said the EPA was working with other government agencies and forensic scientists to identify exactly what the balls were, the source of the contamination and what risks it presented.

“The advice is that people shouldn’t be swimming and Coogee is closed,” she said on Wednesday.

“Other beaches are fine, but we hope to get to the bottom of what is a pretty unusual situation as quickly as possible.”

Parker said debris balls were still washing up on the beach on Wednesday morning. More were also spotted on Wedding Cake Island 1km off Coogee beach.

Coogee beach was closed with yellow barricades, orange flags and council signage reading “work in progress” on Wednesday morning.

About 20 staff in hi-vis were working along the length of the beach.

The debris balls were being picked up one at a time by staff. The balls were placed in mounds above the high-tide mark and covered with sand to avoid them being washed away.

Crews on jetskis were also checking for balls in the water and trying to determine where they had come from.

A local barista said the closed beach was different than a normal morning when “people do laps around the pool or are just out walking”. “Usually you see plenty of people,” he said.

Jennifer, who works at Coogee Express convenience store, said she anticipated business would be quieter so long as the beach was closed. “I think next week [it will] get better,” she said on Wednesday.

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Louise Morris, the oil and gas campaign manager at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said on Wednesday: “If it is oil, we’ve got a clean-up problem on our hands.”

Morris said she suspected “something has happened offshore” and marine life would be harmed.

“Tar balls are normally the result of some oil spill somewhere that has been combined with debris, plastic, whatever it may be,” Morris said.

“Small animals that live on the ocean floor, who are taking in sediment, are going to start ingesting it. We are looking at birds and other animals that get coated in oil [on the water’s surface]. It affects their ability to fly, to feed and to swim.”

Randwick council posted on social media on Tuesday evening: “Coogee beach is closed until further notice after council lifeguards this afternoon discovered mysterious black, ball-shaped debris washed along the length of the beach.

“Council is investigating the origin and composition of the material, which has the appearance of dark spheres.”

The council was arranging for the material to be safely removed from the beach and began inspections of other nearby beaches.

Beachgoers were advised to avoid Coogee until further notice and not touch the material while the clean-up and investigations continued.

The beach would be cleaned and opened again “hopefully in a matter of days”, Parker said on Wednesday.

An “amorous couple in a stairwell” has been blamed for causing a flood in Melbourne’s city rail loop last week, which forced the evacuation of two stations and significant delays for people travelling home from an Olivia Rodrigo concert.

Melbourne Central and Flagstaff stations had to be evacuated late on Thursday evening, causing delays across the metropolitan rail network.

While it was initially believed the incident was an act of vandalism, the Victorian transport infrastructure minister, Danny Pearson, said a review of CCTV by Metro Trains had proved otherwise.

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“It would appear that an amorous couple in a stairwell dislodged a sprinkler,” Pearson told reporters outside parliament on Wednesday.

“There was extensive flooding. Metro will be investigating these matters further and police are investigating.

“Perhaps a stairwell may not be an appropriate place to find yourself in after dinner.”

Police on Tuesday released images of a man and woman who they said may be able to assist with their investigation into the incident of “criminal damage”.

They said a duo had gained access to a stairwell connecting platforms at Melbourne Central train station about 10.40pm, and damaged a water pipe and fire sprinkler.

On Friday, police said the damage caused extensive flooding to several platforms, which resulted in an automated evacuation of both stations and significant delays, including for commuters returning home from Rodrigo’s concert at Rod Laver Arena.

“At this stage it is unclear if Miss Rodrigo planned to get home via train or limousine,” they said at the time.