The US government is investigating an unauthorized release of classified documents that assess Israel’s plans to attack Iran.

The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, confirmed the investigation in remarks to CNN’s State of the Union program on Sunday, saying “the leak is very concerning”.

“There’s some serious allegations being made there,” the Republican from Louisiana said. “The investigation’s underway, and I’ll get a briefing on that in a couple of hours.”

Three US officials had earlier told the Associated Press about the investigation into the leak. A fourth US official said the documents in question appear to be legitimate.

The documents are attributed to the US Geospatial Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and they note that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on 1 October. They were sharable within the “Five Eyes”, which are the US, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The documents, which are marked top secret, were posted to the Telegram messaging app and first reported by CNN and Axios. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The investigation is also examining how the documents were obtained – including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the US intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack – and whether any other intelligence information was compromised, one of the officials said. As part of that investigation, officials are working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, the official said.

The US has urged Israel to take advantage of its elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and press for a cease-fire in Gaza, and has likewise urgently cautioned Israel not to further expand military operations in the north in Lebanon and risk a wider regional war. However, Israel’s leadership has repeatedly stressed it will not let Iran’s missile attack go unanswered.

In a statement, the Pentagon said it was aware of the reports of the documents but did not have further comment.

Johnson on Sunday said he spoke with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – referring to him as “my friend” – and explained how he had made it a point “to encourage him”. He also said there would be “a classified level briefing, and then others, but we’re following it closely”.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the leak of the two documents.

The documents first appeared online Friday via a channel on Telegram, claiming they had been leaked by someone in the US intelligence community, then later the US Defense Department. The information appeared entirely gathered through the use of satellite image analysis.

One of the two documents resembled the style of other material from the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency leaked by Jack Teixeira, an air national guardsman who pleaded guilty in March to leaking highly classified military documents about Russia’s war on Ukraine and other national security secrets.

The Telegram channel involved in the leak identifies itself as being based in Tehran, Iran’s capital. It previously published memes featuring Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and material in support of Tehran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Middle East militant groups armed by the Islamic Republic.

• The Associated Press contributed reporting

At least 87 people have been killed or are missing and 40 injured after intense Israeli airstrikes overnight in the north of the Gaza Strip, part of the country’s ferocious renewed assault on the area, medics in the besieged Palestinian territory have said.

In the past 24 hours 108 people have been killed in bombings across the territory, according to local health officials. “The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying. Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern strip amidst relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis,” Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza … We owe it to the families suffering in Gaza and Israel. The war must stop now,” he added.

Bombings late on Saturday night in the town of Beit Lahia flattened several houses and an apartment block, killing members of several families, according to Raheem Kheder, a medic. Among the dead were two parents and their four children, and a woman, her son and her daughter-law and their four children, he said.

The internet and phone services have been down in parts of Gaza since Saturday evening, complicating the rescue operation.

In a post on X, Mounir al-Bursh, the director general of the health ministry, said the flood of wounded from the strikes compounded “an already catastrophic situation for the health care system” in northern Gaza.

There was no immediate comment on the strikes in Beit Lahia from the Israeli military, which said it was “continuing to operate across Gaza in both aerial strikes and ground operations”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has nominally held complete control of northern Gaza since January, but launched a new assault on the area two weeks ago that it said was aimed at stopping Hamas militants from regrouping.

Gaza’s civil defence service said it had recovered at least 500 bodies since the operation began on 6 October.

Sweeping evacuation orders for the estimated 400,000 people still living in the northern third of the territory, the blockage of aid and food deliveries and the targeting of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals have led rights groups to accuse Israel of the war crime of seeking to forcibly displace the remaining population.

Israel has denied it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area.

Several struggling hospitals have been unable to evacuate patients, and two people at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia have died from a lack of oxygen after electricity and fuel shortages, the health ministry in the territory said.

The tightening of the siege on northern Gaza comes as Israel’s new war with Hezbollah in Lebanon deepens.

Israel said its air force attacked Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut on Sunday, as well as an underground workshop for the production of weapons, and killed three commanders. Hezbollah made no immediate comment.

Meanwhile, world powers are awaiting Israel’s retaliation to Iranian strikes on the Jewish state on 1 October launched in support of Tehran’s Lebanese ally.

Late on Friday, it emerged that top-secret US documents that allegedly reveal details about Israel’s plans to attack Iran had been leaked and published online.

Washington has not denied that the files, which appear to be the US’s assessment of Israel’s preparations, are authentic. The papers supposedly date from 15 and 16 October, and allege that Israel has fortified underground warplane bunkers at the Hatzerim airbase, where there are signs of preparation for arming plane-launched ballistic missiles.

An Israeli source told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the US had apologised to Israel for the leak.

A discrepancy in the official Israeli account of Yahya Sinwar’s final moments has emerged since his death which appears likely to add fuel to the martyr’s cult fast developing around the Hamas leader.

The Israeli autopsy carried out on Sinwar concluded that he died from a gunshot wound to his head, at odds with the initial Israel Defense Forces (IDF) version which implied he was killed by a tank shell fired into the wrecked building where he made his last stand.

The IDF released footage of a tank firing at the building in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan refugee camp, and the military spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said: “We identified him as a terrorist inside a building, fired at the building and then went in to search.”

However, according to Chen Kugel, the director of Israel’s national forensic institute, who carried out the autopsy, the cause of death was a bullet wound to the head. In an interview with the New York Times, Kugel did not speculate on who fired the fatal shot, whether it was during a skirmish with Israeli soldiers before the tank round was fired, or after he was found in the rubble of the building, or by Sinwar himself so as not to be taken alive.

Sinwar had a pistol with him, which some Israeli reports said had previously belonged to an IDF military intelligence officer, Mahmoud Hir a-Din, a Druze from the Galilee region, who was killed during a secret mission in Gaza in 2018.

The intrigue surrounding Sinwar’s death has fuelled a martyr’s cult that spread explosively across social media from the moment the Hamas leader was confirmed dead.

The fact that he was killed in combat fatigues and a combat vest after firing and hurling grenades at Israeli soldiers, even lashing out at an IDF drone with a wooden baton thrown with his one remaining working arm in a final gesture of defiance, sets Sinwar apart from his predecessors who were assassinated while they were on the run.

When the long-serving Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was assassinated by missiles fired by an IDF helicopter gunship in 2004, he was being pushed along in a wheelchair after prayers in a Gaza mosque.

There was little of his body left to photograph, but imagined pictures of the fatal missile strike became part of the iconography which almost instantly appeared on walls across the occupied territories, along with images of the white-bearded leader ascending to heaven. Pictures of Yassin are still common in Gaza and the West Bank, often showing him in the company of more recent martyrs.

Sinwar left a war-ravaged fighter’s corpse behind, that some Palestinians may compare to the final image of Che Guevara, the Argentinian doctor who fought in Cuba’s revolution but who ultimately died at the hands of the Bolivian military in 1967, and became an icon for his cause. After Guevara was shot, his body was laid out on a table to be photographed, his open eyes staring vacantly at the camera.

Sinwar’s successors in the Hamas leadership celebrated the fact that he died in combat, in the words of his deputy, Khalil al-Hayya: “Facing and not retreating, engaging in the frontlines and moving between combat positions.”

An excerpt from a notable poem by the Palestinians’ most celebrated poet, Mahmoud Darwish, is circulating on the internet along with the claim that it foretold Sinwar’s end.

The lines from Praise for the High Shadow say: “Besiege your siege … there is no escape. Your arm has fallen, so pick it up and strike your enemy … There is no escape and I fell near you, so pick me up and strike your enemy with me … You are now free, free and free.”

Darwish wrote the poem at another low point for the Palestinian cause, in a boat taking him and other activists and militants from Beirut to Tunisia after Israel’s devastating war in Lebanon in 1982 aimed at destroying the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

Darwish’s poetry recalls the horror of the shelling of Beirut and the massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese Shia Muslims at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon at that time. The themes of mass death in the face of international indifference and inaction, combined with the longing for someone to strike back, resonate with Palestinians today after Gaza’s destruction.

Sinwar’s warrior’s death seems certain to guarantee him the top place in the Palestinian pantheon, obscuring the fact that, before 7 October last year, as a brutal enforcer of Hamas loyalty, he killed far more Palestinians than Israelis, killing suspected informants in the most gruesome manner. Last year’s murderous attack on Israeli civilians in southern Israel left Gaza open to ferocious Israeli reprisals and Palestinian civilians exposed, starving and vulnerable while Sinwar’s fighters hunkered in tunnels well stocked long before with food, water and medication.

To further help shape his desired narrative, the Hamas leader left behind a text, in the form of a 2004 autobiographical novel, The Thorn and the Carnation, written in Israeli prison and smuggled out in sections.

Sinwar’s alter ego in the book, Ibrahim, is a zealot committed to the cause who expects Palestinians to be “ready to sacrifice everything for their pride, dignity, and beliefs”. Why negotiate with Israel, Ibrahim asks, when Hamas could “impose other rules of the game”?

That is what Sinwar thought he was doing with the 7 October attack, and what he clearly hoped would be his legacy. The myth surrounding him, which he cultivated assiduously while still alive, seems certain to live on through thousands of posters and street murals.

His legacy has also been to “change the rules of the game” but it is far from clear yet whether the change favours the Palestinians.

Moscow’s ambassador to London has said the UK is waging a proxy war against Russia, while predicting the “end of Ukraine” as Russian invading forces make deeper advances into the country.

In an interview with the BBC, Andrei Kelin said Ukraine continued to fight but claimed “the resistance is more feeble and feeble”.

Russian troops, he said, were gaining more terrain every day, adding: “The end of this phase will mean the end of Ukraine.” Russia is thought to control about 18% of Ukraine and has been making slow but steady advances over the last year.

Kelin also described the conflict as “a proxy war led by the United Kingdom’s government” which by providing weapons is “killing Russian soldiers and civilians”.

The comments came as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, renewed his appeal to western countries for air-defence systems, after Russian missile strikes on the central city of Kryvyi Rih late on Saturday wounded 17 people, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine is losing its territory in its eastern Donbas region to Russia’s invading forces, while coming under sustained bombardment, but has yet to convince western allies to provide it with long-range missiles to strike Russian military targets.

In Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s home town, a police officer and rescue worker were among those injured in Russian attacks that damaged sites including an administrative building, a hotel and an educational facility, Ukraine’s national police reported on social media.

The regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, said later that 15 apartment buildings, stores, a cafe, a church, office spaces, a bank branch and a gas pipeline had been damaged in the city.

In a social media post on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that in the last week Russia had used more than 20 missiles of different types, about 800 guided aerial bombs, more than 500 varying strike drones against Ukraine. “Ukraine needs more air defence systems and long-range capabilities. I am grateful to all partners who understand this and support us,” he wrote on X.

His post was accompanied with a 47-second video showing numerous smashed-up cars, burning buildings and bombed out homes in seven Ukrainian regions, described as the result of a week of Russian attacks.

Meanwhile, the Russian defence ministry said that 110 drones were destroyed in an overnight barrage against seven Russian regions. Many targeted Russia’s border region of Kursk, where 43 drones were reportedly shot down, but others appeared to go much further

Gleb Nikitin, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, a city 250 miles (250km) east of Moscow, wrote on Telegram that four fighters had been lightly injured repelling a drone attack over an industrial zone, and were later discharged. He did not go into further details.

The Associated Press new agency reported that social media footage appeared to show air defences at work over the city of Dzerzhinsk in the Nizhny Novgorod region, close to a factory producing explosives.

In Kyiv, officials reported that about 10 drones were destroyed near the capital, with no known destruction or injuries.

Visiting Kyiv on Saturday, France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, pledged support for Ukraine’s plan for ending the war with Russia, telling reporters he would work to secure other nations’ backing for the proposals.

Outlining his “victory plan” this week, Zelenskyy called for an “immediate” invitation to join Nato to guarantee Ukraine’s security, but western allies have given a guarded response. Moscow claimed the plan amounted to an escalation, by “pushing Nato into direct conflict” with Russia.

Russia’s ambassador to the UK was speaking to the BBC after the opening of a public inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess. She died in 2018 after coming into contact with the nerve agent novichok, believed to have been in a perfume bottle discarded by Russian agents who had tried to assassinate the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury a few months earlier.

The inquest into Sturgess’s death was converted into a public inquiry in 2021 and opened last Monday.

The UK government told the inquiry this week in a statement that it considered the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had authorised the Salisbury novichok poisonings, which could have killed thousands of people.

The Russian government has denied any involved in the attempted assassination of the Skripals and poisoning of Sturgess and her partner, Charlie Rowley, who survived.

Asked in the BBC interview if he had any words for Sturgess’s grieving family, the ambassador said: “I don’t know. I have never met this family. I am not involved in discussions with them or anything else. If someone has died of course we are concerned about that.”

He also questioned the need for an inquiry: “Why drag this history so long?”

The Skripal poisonings are seen as a turning point in British perceptions of Russia, triggering what the then prime minister, Theresa May, described as “the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history”.

More than 100 Russian diplomats working in 20 western countries, who were alleged to be spies, were told to return to Moscow in a show of solidarity by western allies.

Elon Musk said his Trump-supporting political action committee – America Pac – will give $1m every day until election day to someone who signs his petition that effectively encourages Republicans in the key battleground states to register to vote.

The commitment, which started on Saturday as Musk handed a lottery-style check to the first winner of his contest at a town hall event, could mean Musk is on the hook for $17m if he remains the sole donor to his own Pac.

The America Pac petition is for any registered voter in Pennsylvania to pledge their support for the first and second amendments. The petition effectively encourages Trump voters to register to vote so they can be in the $1m draw. Attendees of Saturday’s town hall event had to sign the petition, which allows America Pac to garner contact details for more potential voters that it can work to get to the polls for Trump.

The petition does not require signers to be a Republican; any Democrat registered to vote in Pennsylvania could sign it too.

Musk’s event in Harrisburg on Saturday was the third in as many days in Pennsylvania, where Musk is painting November’s election in stark terms and encouraging supporters to vote early and get others to do the same.

Musk has so far donated $75m to America Pac, which is doing the bulk of Donald Trump’s ground game operation in the battleground states, according to FEC disclosures filed this week.

But the ground game operation appears to have issues. Earlier on Saturday, the Guardian reported that roughly 25% of the door-knocks done by America Pac in Arizona and Nevada were flagged internally as potentially fraudulent – when canvassers falsely claim to have visited a home.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, which is betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns.

But leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.

America Pac declined to comment. A person familiar with the Pac’s field operation denied there was actual door fraud to that extent in Arizona and Nevada and said they were doing their own auditing.

But the extent of the flagged doors in America Pac’s operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared with volunteers or campaign staff.

Tributes have poured in for the Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy after he revealed he had received a terminal cancer diagnosis.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Hoy, who won six golds and one silver medal for Team GB, said doctors had told him he had between two and four years to live.

While Hoy, 48, had said earlier this year he had been receiving treatment for cancer, he did not say which type, but he told the Sunday Times he had been diagnosed with primary cancer in his prostate, which had spread to his bones.

His wife, Sarra, has also been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease. The couple have two children, Chloe and Callum.

“As unnatural as it feels, this is nature,” Hoy told the Sunday Times. “You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process. You remind yourself, aren’t I lucky that there is medicine I can take that will fend this off for as long as possible.”

“Hand on heart, I’m pretty positive most of the time and I have genuine happiness,” he added. “This is bigger than the Olympics. It’s bigger than anything. This is about appreciating life and finding joy.”

Hoy made no reference to his personal news as he presented from the Track Cycling World Championships on the BBC on Sunday afternoon.

After the publication of the article, social media platforms have been full of tributes and support from friends and well-wishers.

“You’re incredible Chris, sending much love and strength,” the Olympic gold medallist Sally Gunnell said.

The television pundit and ex-footballer Ally McCoist wrote: “You, my friend are a superstar in every sense of the word. Love and strength from all of us.”

The Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish called Hoy a “hero of a human being”.

The Edinburgh-born athlete has been credited with playing a key role in making British Cycling a success.

Hoy shared a picture on Instagram from the World Track Cycling championships in Copenhagen, and wrote: “You may see in the news this weekend some articles about my health, so I just wanted to reassure you all that I’m feeling fit, strong and positive, and overwhelmed by all the love and support shown to my family and me. Onwards!”

“Such sad news,” the prime minister, Keir Starmer, wrote on X. “Chris is a British sporting legend. To face his diagnosis with such positivity is inspiring. The whole country is behind him and his family.”

The UK health secretary, Wes Streeting, said: “I’m in awe that Chris Hoy is meeting his cancer with the same positivity and resilience that has defined his life and career. The whole country will be cheering him on as we have done so many times before and sending him and his family so much love.”

“I send every good wish to Sir Chris Hoy and his family,” the Scottish first minister, John Swinney, wrote. “He has always inspired us by all that he has done. He is a person of incredible courage and that shines through today.”

“Chris Hoy is one of the finest to ever represent our country,” said the Olympic rower Matthew Pinsent. “Thoughts with him, Sarra and his immediate family.”

“An article to stop you in your tracks,” the football commentator Jacqui Oatley posted. “Devastating to read the diagnosis of Sir Chris Hoy as well as that of his wife, Sarra. Life can be so cruel. But the class and humility with which he tells this story is truly humbling.”

“Blown away by the resilience and determination of Sir Chris Hoy this morning,” the television presenter Dan Walker said. “Shortly after being told that he has between 2-4 years to live because of his terminal cancer … his lovely wife, Sarra, was diagnosed with MS. The man remains an incredible inspiration. Sending love to the whole family.”

King Charles III did not linger long at the luncheon put on in his honour, at the second scheduled event of his short Australian visit. And his gift to the gathering was a reminder of the fleeting passage of time.

There was a menu fit for a king, and very Sydney: chargrilled asparagus and olive dust; marinated octopus and squid ink wafer; barramundi and duck confit.

But the sovereign was gone before the first course. He addressed the gathering at NSW’s Parliament House, he offered an hourglass as a present, told lawmakers the “sands of time” would encourage “brevity”, and left within 10 minutes of his arrival in the hall, not to be seen again in public until Monday.

Earlier, King Charles and Queen Camilla began their day at St Thomas’ Anglican church in North Sydney.

It was technically the third day of their six-day tour of Australia – but apart from some handshakes on landing on Friday night, it was the public’s first chance to see the couple after a rest day on Saturday. The schedule has been designed not to overly tire the king, who is being treated for cancer.

Inside the church the bishop of North Sydney, Christopher Edwards, asked for world peace while protesters outside held aloft banners saying “Empire built on genocide” and “Decolonise”.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Hundreds of fans lined the street outside and waved Australian flags (the Australian Monarchist League had pledged to hand out thousands of them).

In an unplanned moment, the king and queen went to greet the crowds, with police scrambling to ensure they were protected.

Well-wishers thrust bunches of flowers into the queen’s hands, with the blooms then swiftly whisked away by aides. A supporter tootled on a flute, while chants of “Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land” floated on the spring breeze.

The royals’ motorcade moved from there to Parliament House, where the king was heralded by trumpets and a voice crying “Hooray”. NSW’s legislative council, the first government formed in Australia, celebrates its bicentenary this year.

Charles was given a tour by the legislative council’s president, Ben Franklin, and the usher of the Black Rod, representing another ancient tradition Australia inherited from the UK (the usher was traditionally from an order of knights called the Most Noble Order of the Garter and served the monarch in the British House of Lords).

The king stopped to admire the Gumbaynggirr/Bundjalung artist Kim Healey’s Ngurra Jagun (homeland or home country) artwork commissioned for the bicentenary before taking to the stage.

“Having been with you for your 150th anniversary, I am delighted and proud to be able to return to the parliament of NSW in order to celebrate the occasion of your bicentenary,” he said.

“It is fascinating, I think, to reflect back to 200 years ago, and thinking about those times makes me wonder what that inaugural handful of members of the NSW legislative council would make of this parliament today, and of how this great state has progressed.”

He described how the original council members (King George VI appointed just five of them before the council was later expanded) were “squeezed into the old government house”.

“From that vantage point, regardless of their optimism, it was no doubt impossible to imagine what is now the vast and vibrant state of NSW, which has grown and evolved alongside this legislature, to reflect on the story of this institution and this state is to see the promise and power of representative democracy,” he said, adding that democracy had an “extraordinary capacity for innovation, compromise and adaptability, as well as stability”.

The crowd chuckled when he said it was “slightly worrying” that he had first come to Australia nearly 60 years ago.

In the spirit of marking the “passage of time”, he presented the hourglass speech timer to the parliament to “bear witness” on its next chapter. It brought more laughs, with the king poetically opting to turn the hourglass himself, then departing as the sand slowly ran through the bulb.

“With the sands of time encouraging brevity, it just remains for me to say what a great joy it is to come to Australia for the first time as sovereign and to renew a love of this country and its people which I have cherished for so long,” he said.

“So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for making me feel so very welcome. Thank you.”

And he was away.

From there, the royal tour returned to Admiralty House, the grand official residence of the governor general perched on Sydney Harbour, to meet the NSW governor, Margaret Beazley, and the governor general, Sam Mostyn. Mostyn told SBS television last week she didn’t think they’d be having long conversations about the potential for Australia to become a republic but instead wanted to “show him a modern Australia”.

This is Charles’s 17th visit to Australia. The itineraries of previous visits highlight how pared back this one is, with the king suspending cancer treatment to be here. He will only visit Sydney and Canberra, and only attend a handful of events.

In 1983 he brought his new wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, with him. It was not her first visit to Australia – in 1981 she had come to visit her mother, Frances Ruth Shand Kydd, who was living on a sheep farm near Yass. But it was her first as Charles’s wife.

Australia embraced the “people’s princess” but Diana said later that her popularity had sparked Charles’ jealousy and increased the marital tension.

An article in the Canberra Times about the 1983 visit said: “Yes the princess, on her first official visit to Australia, is of far more interest than her consort who after all comes here almost as often as Michael Parkinson or Rolf Harris (although of course he is far more welcome than them).”

The flag-waving crowds on this trip appeared equally delighted with both Camilla and Charles.

The royal pair will now go to Canberra. There will be a welcome to country and smoking ceremony, after which the king will lay a wreath in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial. The couple will then greet the public on the way to the For our Country memorial, followed by a trip to Parliament House.

Later in the afternoon they will plant a tree each on the grounds of Yarralumla, then head to the Botanic Gardens where they will hear about the impacts of the climate emergency on flora.

On Tuesday they will return to the NSW capital for events including a barbecue in western Sydney and a public appearance at Sydney Opera House.

They will leave on Wednesday, when the king will fly to Samoa for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.

King Charles III did not linger long at the luncheon put on in his honour, at the second scheduled event of his short Australian visit. And his gift to the gathering was a reminder of the fleeting passage of time.

There was a menu fit for a king, and very Sydney: chargrilled asparagus and olive dust; marinated octopus and squid ink wafer; barramundi and duck confit.

But the sovereign was gone before the first course. He addressed the gathering at NSW’s Parliament House, he offered an hourglass as a present, told lawmakers the “sands of time” would encourage “brevity”, and left within 10 minutes of his arrival in the hall, not to be seen again in public until Monday.

Earlier, King Charles and Queen Camilla began their day at St Thomas’ Anglican church in North Sydney.

It was technically the third day of their six-day tour of Australia – but apart from some handshakes on landing on Friday night, it was the public’s first chance to see the couple after a rest day on Saturday. The schedule has been designed not to overly tire the king, who is being treated for cancer.

Inside the church the bishop of North Sydney, Christopher Edwards, asked for world peace while protesters outside held aloft banners saying “Empire built on genocide” and “Decolonise”.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Hundreds of fans lined the street outside and waved Australian flags (the Australian Monarchist League had pledged to hand out thousands of them).

In an unplanned moment, the king and queen went to greet the crowds, with police scrambling to ensure they were protected.

Well-wishers thrust bunches of flowers into the queen’s hands, with the blooms then swiftly whisked away by aides. A supporter tootled on a flute, while chants of “Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land” floated on the spring breeze.

The royals’ motorcade moved from there to Parliament House, where the king was heralded by trumpets and a voice crying “Hooray”. NSW’s legislative council, the first government formed in Australia, celebrates its bicentenary this year.

Charles was given a tour by the legislative council’s president, Ben Franklin, and the usher of the Black Rod, representing another ancient tradition Australia inherited from the UK (the usher was traditionally from an order of knights called the Most Noble Order of the Garter and served the monarch in the British House of Lords).

The king stopped to admire the Gumbaynggirr/Bundjalung artist Kim Healey’s Ngurra Jagun (homeland or home country) artwork commissioned for the bicentenary before taking to the stage.

“Having been with you for your 150th anniversary, I am delighted and proud to be able to return to the parliament of NSW in order to celebrate the occasion of your bicentenary,” he said.

“It is fascinating, I think, to reflect back to 200 years ago, and thinking about those times makes me wonder what that inaugural handful of members of the NSW legislative council would make of this parliament today, and of how this great state has progressed.”

He described how the original council members (King George VI appointed just five of them before the council was later expanded) were “squeezed into the old government house”.

“From that vantage point, regardless of their optimism, it was no doubt impossible to imagine what is now the vast and vibrant state of NSW, which has grown and evolved alongside this legislature, to reflect on the story of this institution and this state is to see the promise and power of representative democracy,” he said, adding that democracy had an “extraordinary capacity for innovation, compromise and adaptability, as well as stability”.

The crowd chuckled when he said it was “slightly worrying” that he had first come to Australia nearly 60 years ago.

In the spirit of marking the “passage of time”, he presented the hourglass speech timer to the parliament to “bear witness” on its next chapter. It brought more laughs, with the king poetically opting to turn the hourglass himself, then departing as the sand slowly ran through the bulb.

“With the sands of time encouraging brevity, it just remains for me to say what a great joy it is to come to Australia for the first time as sovereign and to renew a love of this country and its people which I have cherished for so long,” he said.

“So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for making me feel so very welcome. Thank you.”

And he was away.

From there, the royal tour returned to Admiralty House, the grand official residence of the governor general perched on Sydney Harbour, to meet the NSW governor, Margaret Beazley, and the governor general, Sam Mostyn. Mostyn told SBS television last week she didn’t think they’d be having long conversations about the potential for Australia to become a republic but instead wanted to “show him a modern Australia”.

This is Charles’s 17th visit to Australia. The itineraries of previous visits highlight how pared back this one is, with the king suspending cancer treatment to be here. He will only visit Sydney and Canberra, and only attend a handful of events.

In 1983 he brought his new wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, with him. It was not her first visit to Australia – in 1981 she had come to visit her mother, Frances Ruth Shand Kydd, who was living on a sheep farm near Yass. But it was her first as Charles’s wife.

Australia embraced the “people’s princess” but Diana said later that her popularity had sparked Charles’ jealousy and increased the marital tension.

An article in the Canberra Times about the 1983 visit said: “Yes the princess, on her first official visit to Australia, is of far more interest than her consort who after all comes here almost as often as Michael Parkinson or Rolf Harris (although of course he is far more welcome than them).”

The flag-waving crowds on this trip appeared equally delighted with both Camilla and Charles.

The royal pair will now go to Canberra. There will be a welcome to country and smoking ceremony, after which the king will lay a wreath in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial. The couple will then greet the public on the way to the For our Country memorial, followed by a trip to Parliament House.

Later in the afternoon they will plant a tree each on the grounds of Yarralumla, then head to the Botanic Gardens where they will hear about the impacts of the climate emergency on flora.

On Tuesday they will return to the NSW capital for events including a barbecue in western Sydney and a public appearance at Sydney Opera House.

They will leave on Wednesday, when the king will fly to Samoa for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.

Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he had a heart procedure after waking up feeling “clammy” with a tightness in his chest and pins and needles in left arm.

The 64-year-old former Top Gear host said he was taken to hospital by ambulance before having a stent fitted to open up a blocked artery, which left him thinking: “Crikey, that was close.”

Writing in his Sunday Times column, Clarkson detailed how he experienced a “sudden deterioration” in his health after a holiday on a small island in the Indian Ocean.

During the trip, he described having to “take a moment to make sure my limbs were working properly” before struggling to swim two lengths of a swimming pool.

“I was mostly dead. I’ve never struggled with swimming before, and now, suddenly, I can’t do it any more. Nor could I descend a flight of stairs, not without holding someone’s hand.” he said. “I’m not exaggerating. These problems all manifested themselves in one day.”

The Clarkson’s Farm presenter, who lives in Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, said his “sudden deterioration began to gather pace” when he returned home.

He said: “I woke on Wednesday morning not feeling too good. I was clammy and there was a tightness in my chest. Naturally, I ignored these things and, after loading 30 pigs into the slaughterhouse school bus, I noticed that I had pins and needles in my left arm.”

Clarkson said he went to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, where an electrocardiogram (ECG), blood tests and X-rays ruled out a heart attack. But he said that after further checks he went to an operating theatre with doctors saying Clarkson was perhaps “days away” from getting very ill.

Clarkson said: “It seems that of the arteries feeding my heart with nourishing blood, one was completely blocked and the second of three was heading that way.”

He said a stent, which can save lives and stop future heart attacks through improving blood flow to the heart, was fitted in about two hours. “It wasn’t especially painful. Just odd.”

He said he was “wondering what water tastes like and if it’s possible to make celery interesting” after the health scare.

In 2017, Clarkson said he had to quit smoking after contracting pneumonia on holiday in Spain.

Last month Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May ended their show The Grand Tour on Prime Video.

Clarkson, who recently opened a pub, the Farmer’s Dog, in Asthall, near Burford, has continued to make Clarkson’s Farm, which covers him running his Oxfordshire farm, on Prime Video, as well as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on ITV.

After the FBI arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma planning an election day shooting on behalf of the Islamic State, the terrorist organization re-entered what has become one of the most chaotic news cycles leading up to a November vote.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City admitted to investigators he and a co-conspirator expected to die as IS martyrs as they opened fire on crowds on election day, according to charging documents.

Warnings about IS-sponsored or -inspired attacks in the west have intensified in recent weeks.

In a statement on the Tawhedi case, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, remarked there was a continuing need to “combat the ongoing threat that [IS] and its supporters pose to America’s national security”. Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence service, described how his agency had “one hell of a job” managing the threat of the resurgent terrorist organization.

Despite the talk from top officials, public perception still remains that IS was defeated or has somehow disappeared.

But, experts say, before and after that incident, internal IS talk was anything but quiet: on chat boards and encrypted apps, both supporters and operatives alike have increasingly been discussing attacks on the west and the US homeland.

The online conversations are being led by IS-Khorasan (IS-K), the branch based in Afghanistan that was behind the Moscow attack that killed 145 people in March. Khorasan is a reference to an ancient region that includes parts of what is modern-day Iran, Afghanistan and other bordering countries.

IS-K has quickly become the most active international force of the terror group, having already carried out the deadly plot in Russia and another in Iran months before it. Days after Tawhedi’s arrest, US officials later confirmed it was an IS-K operative allegedly directing the plot.

In a propaganda poster it released in September, IS-K put American targets on notice as top of its hitlist.

“[IS-K] has recently reiterated its intent to target the US with a poster depicting one of its militants holding a grenade in front of the US Capitol building captioned ‘you are next,’” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, a watchdog organization working with government agencies around the world.

The Guardian obtained the same poster, which was released online through a known IS-K platform.

“This is additionally concerning given the branch’s mass casualty attacks on Russia and Iran, leaving the United States as the remaining adversary on this shortlist for a successful external operation,” said Webber.

Webber said the arrest of Tawhedi gave a glimpse into the “uptick” in attempted stateside plots emanating from IS. For example, earlier this week a Maryland man was charged for supporting IS with the criminal complaint describing his attempt at buying a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

Webber continued: “This follows a Tajik [IS suspect] arrested in Costa Rica; a central Asian network rolled up in New York City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia; as well as a Canada-based Pakistani national who was allegedly plotting an attack against a New York Jewish center.”

While IS-K has seized on the tumult in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over in the summer of 2021 and established a base of operations in that country, its broader movement has also been heavily recruiting since the 7 October attacks and the Israeli military operations that followed.

It’s part of an IS-K recruitment plan targeting young men in the west who can’t travel overseas easily. A relative of Tawhedi, who was an Afghan national who came to the US after the fall of Kabul, was charged in France for a similar plot.

In one spring issue of Voice of Khurasan, its English-language propaganda magazine, IS-K encourages “contacting the organization directly” through encrypted communications and being covertly recruited from western locales.

Riccardo Valle, the director of research at the Islamabad-based publication the Khorasan Diary, closely follows the movements of IS on everything from Facebook and Instagram to Telegram and the lesser-known encrypted chat app Rocket.Chat.

“Discussions online are very diverse,” he said. “However, there has been an increase in talks about either carrying out attacks or making hijra [migration] to tamkeen – lands where IS is present in force and controls.”

For years, a long-observed debate within IS channels is whether or not it’s more effective for followers to carry out attacks at home or travel to active war zones where IS operates and join in its ranks there.

On a Rocket.Chat forum, the choice communications platform among IS supporters and operatives, Valle said one user posted about lamenting Tawhedi’s arrest.

“I feel like if we had contact with these brothers before they bought the guns from the informants things would’ve turned differently,” they said, while another wrote: “I live in the west and we can do more damage here.”

In other chat dumps that Valle had access to and shared with the Guardian, users talked about “kitchen made bombs, commercial drones” and other potential simplistic tools for carrying out terrorism.

Another Rocket.Chat user, Valle showed the Guardian, directed an account to target Jewish people in an unnamed western country with knives.

“Now take a kitchen knife and drive it into the throat of a young Jew around your age when nobody is paying attention and then escape,” wrote the user.

Webber noted that a part of the problem in raising awareness surrounding the seriousness of the moment is the “common misconception that [IS] was defeated”.

But, he added, branches still remain in “Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere”.

The winner of the World Conker Championships has been cleared of any wrongdoing after he was found with a steel nut in his pocket.

David Jakins, known as King Conker, won the annual title in Southwick, Northamptonshire, on 13 October for the first time after competing in the competition since 1977.

But when organisers searched his pockets after the runner-up raised suspicions over the way his conker shattered on impact during the final, Jakins, 82, was found to have a metal replica conker, prompting an investigation.

After the scandal generated more media interest than England’s men’s and women’s cricket teams combined, King Conker has been cleared by the organisers, who found no evidence the steel nut was used in the competition.

Jakins, a retired engineer, told the Daily Star: “I’m so relieved to be cleared. It’s been a stressful week. We are gentlemen at the World Conker Championships and we don’t cheat. I’ve been playing and practising for decades. That’s how I won.

“I admit I had the steel conker in my pocket, but I didn’t play with it. I show it to people as a joke, but I won’t be bringing it again.”

Photos of the steel conker show that it had been painted to look almost identical to a real chestnut; however, it is much heavier.

A spokesperson for the World Conker Championships, which drew 256 players and 2,000 fans to Southwick, Northants, last Sunday, said: “We have studied photos and videos of matches, interviewed judges and examined the chestnuts used by King Conker.

“The investigation has found no evidence that the steel conker was used. King Conker has been cleared of suspicion, and his name is being engraved on the trophy.”

St John Burkett, a spokesperson for the championships, told the Guardian that the 3,500 conkers for this year’s tournament were collected two to three days beforehand and blind-picked from a bag by competitors from all over the world to prevent tampering.

He said you would need a “very good sleight of hand” to swap them given there were 14 judges plus a chief umpire, and 2,000 spectators.

WCC rules stipulate that there must be at least 8in (20cm) of shoelace between the nut and player’s knuckle, players take three alternating strikes, any knocked-off conker that doesn’t smash can be re-threaded, more than three snags or tangles leads to disqualification, and if no conker is smashed, players continue under the five-minute knockout rule until one misses.

Burkett said that winners typically have “excellent hand-eye coordination, strategy and skill” and that big conkers are not necessarily the best, since they provide a larger target.

Although the WCC takes a purist approach to the game, other competitions, such as the Peckham Conker Championships, opt for an “anything goes” approach to the rules, from oven-baked to vinegar-soaked conkers, or those coated with clear nail varnish.