Donald Trump’s ground game in Arizona and Nevada may be undermined by canvassers working for America Pac using GPS spoofing to pretend they have knocked on doors when they haven’t, according to multiple people familiar with the practice and a leaked how-to-fake-location video.

The ramifications for Trump may be far reaching, given America Pac has taken on the bulk of the Trump campaign’s ground game in the battleground states, and the election increasingly appears set to be decided by turnout.

A bootleg how-to-spoof video, made by an America Pac canvasser in Nevada and obtained by the Guardian, shows the apparent ease with which locations can be changed to fake door – knocks.

It calls into question how many Trump voters have actually been reached by the field operation, which uses paid canvassers, not traditional volunteers or campaign staff​.

The video, shared with a few hundred canvassers, walks through the setup: a user downloads a GPS-spoofing app to falsely place themself at the door of a Trump voter, fakes responses to the survey and takes steps to cover up the fraud by varying the survey responses to make it believable.

The scope of the GPS-spoofing practice is unclear because it is difficult to catch cheaters without cross-referencing data with another tracker. It is also not a problem limited to America Pac; GPS spoofing has been a problem for years and it has become increasingly resource-intensive to catch cheaters.

In response to the reporting, America Pac issued to a joint statement by its vendors Blitz, Patriot Grassroots, Echo Canyon and the Synapse Group.

“Every door that is marked leaves unique fingerprints, and the fingerprints of a door marked with a spoofing app leave these fingerprints in neon colors. We have tech-enabled auditing and fraud prevention tools to identify and dismiss the bad apples, the Pac doesn’t pay a dime, and the door gets knocked by the next canvasser,” it said.

Blitz – the vendor in Arizona and Nevada – has its canvassers clock in and clock out using the QuickBooks Workforce app, which continually tracks locations and has some geofence features, according to two people directly familiar with the situation.

But the geolocation data stored on the Workforce app can be manipulated by turning off location services – and one former Blitz auditor said they would typically only review the secondary location data if something first appeared amiss on the canvassing app Campaign Sidekick itself.

• Don’t miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts

The video comes as America Pac has struggled to grapple with 24% of the door knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door knocks done in Nevada last week – by less sophisticated cheaters working for Blitz – being flagged internally as potentially faked or fraudulent, according to data obtained by the Guardian.

Faking surveys

In the how-to-spoof video, the canvasser opens up a door-knocking route for America Pac in Nevada – apparently for the benefit of his colleagues – and explains the method he uses to change his location so that it appears as though he is visiting every house he is supposed to.

The canvasser first pulls up the location changer app and zooms in so that the map there mirrors the map on the Campaign Sidekick app that shows the houses supposed to be knocked with orange dots.

He then memorizes the position of the target Trump voter’s house on the Campaign Sidekick app, navigates back to the location changer app, and taps the same house to spoof his location as supposedly being in the driveway.

“These houses down here look the same way on the app, so you know, you just move that shit over there – or you can type the address in but this is way faster – so I just change my location right there,” the canvasser explains.

The canvasser then explains how to falsify survey responses so that the activity does appear suspicious and invite an internal audit of the doors that could result in firing or being referred by the canvassing company for prosecution.

“So here’s the part that matters: you click the house, you want to do ‘not home’ for about five houses so you click the ‘not home’ shit, ‘left literature’, boom, and then you want to put a survey in,” the canvasser says.

“So this is the survey. You click available for survey. This is what I do. I click ‘definitely yes’, ‘Donald Trump’, ‘early vote’, ‘no’, ‘end survey’. So it’s pretty much that simple. So then you keep bouncing between houses. And you don’t want to go too fast, you want to make it look realistic.”

It remains unclear how often Blitz’s auditors are reviewing the roughly 400-450 canvassers. If audits are done every few days – a person familiar with the matter said it was at least every five days – and canvassers are together frauding several hundred doors a day, that could quickly add up.

The problem of suspicious doors in the America Pac field 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 traditional volunteers or campaign staff​.

Musk has so far donated $75m to America Pac in the three months of its existence. Roughly $30m has been spent on the ground-game operation to drive the Trump vote, with the rest put towards digital and mail advertising for the former president, as well as for down-ballot Republican candidates.

Arnold Palmer’s daughter says Donald Trump disrespected her late father’s memory by fawning over the size of the champion golfer’s penis at a campaign rally over the weekend.

“Hackneyed anecdotes from the locker room … seemed disrespectful and inappropriate to me,” Peg Palmer Wears told ABC News on Monday, two days after the former president publicly suggested her father was well endowed.

Wears added that “people coming to these rallies” hosted by Trump as he seeks a second presidency “deserve substance about plans [he] has as a candidate”. She specifically called on him to address “some of the threats he’s made to people”, an apparent reference to how he recently suggested sending the US military against his political adversaries when voters go to the polls during the 5 November presidential election.

“These are important issues that should be discussed for people when they’re getting ready to vote, and using my dad to cover over the important things just seems unacceptable to me,” Wears said.

Trump was speaking to his supporters in Palmer’s home town of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Saturday at a regional airport named after him when the former president suddenly invoked the genitals of the renowned golfer, an old acquaintance.

“Arnold Palmer was all man,” Trump remarked. “When he took showers with other pros, they came out of there – they said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable.’”

It was not the first time Trump had spoken of Palmer in that fashion. As Mediaite noted, some editions of the Trump book Confidence Man by New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman recount how the former president was in the Oval Office preparing to host a rally in Latrobe in 2020 and bragged to guests about having seen Palmer disrobe at the local country club there.

Trump made it a point to mention “the size of [Palmer’s] genitalia” that day, the book’s introduction said.

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, one of Trump’s most prominent allies, the US House speaker, Mike Johnson, repeatedly refused to defend the Republican presidential nominee’s most recent comments about Palmer.

But, appearing on the same news program, a vocal supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said Trump’s remarks Saturday in Latrobe demonstrated how unfocused he was on topics that mattered.

“Is this the kind of human being we want as president of the United States?” asked Bernie Sanders, the independent US senator.

Wears used her conversation with ABC on Monday to join those expressing their disapproval, explaining how she was unimpressed with the way Trump had appropriated “someone he admires to bolster his own image”.

Palmer – whose name also graces an iced tea and lemonade beverage – collected more than 60 pro golf tournament victories, including seven major titles. He died at age 87 in 2016, a little more than a month before Trump won the presidency.

Wears told ABC she is an unaffiliated voter in North Carolina, which is one of several swing states that are being closely contested and are expected to decide the race between Trump and Harris. She said to the network that she plans to vote in November’s election but declined to disclose for whom she would cast her ballot.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Kamala Harris continued to court conservative voters and disaffected Republicans as she was joined on the campaign trail by Liz Cheney. Cheney, a former Republican congressperson and abortion rights opponent, condemned Republican-imposed bans on the procedure as she appeared with the Democratic presidential nominee at three events in battleground states.

“I’m pro-life and I have been very troubled, deeply troubled by what I have watched happen in so many states since Dobbs,” said the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, visited hurricane-damaged North Carolina and spoke at a faith leaders meeting, where he told Christian voters to “stand up and save [their] country”.

With only 15 days to go until election day, the candidates are hammering home their areas of comparative advantage. A new poll found Trump may have lost his edge among voters when it comes to handling the economy, while Harris is viewed more favourably overall.

Here’s what else happened on Monday:

Kamala Harris election updates

• Harris started the day cheering the White House announcement of a push to allow women with private health insurance to receive birth control without a prescription under the Affordable Care Act. “Today, our Administration is proposing the largest expansion of contraception coverage in more than a decade,” Harris said in a statement. Joe Biden signalled the move aimed to pressure congressional Republicans ahead of 5 November, saying in a statement: “Republican elected officials have made clear they want to ban or restrict birth control … vice-president Harris and I are resolute in our commitment to expanding access to quality, affordable contraception.”

• Harris then visited three battleground states alongside longtime opponent of abortion rights Liz Cheney, speaking in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Cheney, an outspoken Republican critic of Trump, condemned members of her party for enforcing abortion bans and urged conservatives to support Harris.

• Tim Walz defended the Democratic campaign’s collaboration with Republicans, saying many conservatives want to “move off the Maga stuff.” Appearing on The Daily Show, Walz said Harris’ endorsements from Liz Cheney and former vice-president Dick Cheney “give permission to those folks who want to find a reason to do the right thing”. Earlier, he spoke about meeting voters who are searching for reasons to not vote for Donald Trump, adding: “We need to give them that.”

• Walz also appeared on daytime talkshow The View, where he said Elon Musk’s daily $1m voter giveaway was a sign Trump’s ticket had “no plan” while Trump’s comments about deploying the national guard against political enemies showed he would bend the country’s “constitutional guardrails”.

• Biden shouted out Harris while honoring winners at an arts and humanities medal ceremony, telling the crowd female medallists were “proving a woman can do anything a man can do, and then some – that includes being president of the United States of America”.

Donald Trump election updates

• Trump spent the day in North Carolina, first visiting the city of Asheville to survey the damage Hurricane Helene brought last month. He doubled down on debunked claims about the federal government’s hurricane recovery efforts and promoted baseless conspiracy theories about immigration. Trump has falsely accused the White House of deliberately diverting assistance away from Republican areas after the storm ravaged the region and killed about 100 people.

• Trump also held a rally in Greenville, before attending a faith leaders meeting in Concord, alongside his son Eric and Dr Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and former US housing secretary. At the Concord event, the former president leaned into religious messaging. “God saved me for a purpose,” he said of his assassination attempt, later adding: “I’m here tonight to deliver a simple message to Christians across America. It’s time to stand up and save your country.”

• The Central Park Five sued Trump for defamation after he falsely said during the presidential debate that they had pleaded guilty to a brutal rape 35 years ago, despite the fact that they had their convictions overturned.

• Key rightwing legal groups tied to Trump and his allies have banked millions of dollars from conservative foundations and filed multiple lawsuits challenging voting rules in swing states.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail

• Jill Biden acknowledged on Monday that her husband made “the right call” by stepping down from his run for re-election.

• A Republican county supervisor in Arizona who refused to certify the 2022 midterm election has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour.

• The politics writer Olivia Nuzzi and New York magazine have parted ways after she was placed on leave following the disclosure that she had engaged in a “personal” relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr.

• A Pennsylvania man was charged with threatening to kill an employee of a state political party who had been recruiting people to monitor polls on 5 November, according to court documents made public on Monday.

Read more about the 2024 US election:

• Presidential poll tracker

• Harris and Trump policies

• What to know about early voting

Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus, the actor Julianne Moore, the Radiohead singer Thom Yorke are among 10,500 signatories of a statement from the creative industries warning artificial intelligence companies that unlicensed use of their work is a “major, unjust threat” to artists’ livelihoods.

The statement comes amid legal battles between creative professionals and tech firms over the use of their work to train AI models such as ChatGPT and claims that using their intellectual property without permission is a breach of copyright.

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted,” reads the statement.

Thousands of creative professionals from the worlds of literature, music, film, theatre and television have given their backing to the statement, with authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Ann Patchett, and Kate Mosse, musicians including the Cure’s Robert Smith as well as the composer Max Richter and actors including Kevin Bacon, Rosario Dawson and F Murray Abraham.

The organiser of the letter, the British composer and former AI executive Ed Newton-Rex, said people who make a living from creative work are “very worried” about the situation.

“There are three key resources that generative AI companies need to build AI models: people, compute, and data. They spend vast sums on the first two – sometimes a million dollars per engineer, and up to a billion dollars per model. But they expect to take the third – training data – for free,” he said.

Newton-Rex is a former head of audio at tech firm Stability AI but resigned last year over the firm’s belief that taking copyrighted content to train AI models without a licence constitutes “fair use”, a term under US copyright law meaning permission from the copyright owner is not needed.

Newton-Rex added: “When AI companies call this ‘training data’, they dehumanise it. What we’re talking about is people’s work – their writing, their art, their music.”

In the US John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George RR Martin are among a group of authors suing ChatGPT developer OpenAI for alleged breach of copyright, while artists are also suing tech firms behind image generators and major record labels including Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Records are suing AI music creators Suno and Udio.

Newton-Rex also warned that an “opt-out” proposal for scraping content being considered by the UK government would be highly damaging. This month the Financial Times reported that ministers would consult on a scheme that would allow AI firms to scrape content from artists and publishers unless they “opt out” of the process. Last month Google, a major player in AI, called for the relaxation of restrictions on a practice in the UK known as text and data mining (TDM), where copying of copyrighted work is allowed for non-commercial purposes such as academic research.

Newton-Rex said the opt-out option was flawed because most people are unaware of such schemes.

“I have run opt-out schemes for AI companies,” said Newton-Rex. “Even the most well-run opt-out schemes get missed by most people who have the chance to opt out. You never hear about it, you miss the email. It’s totally unfair to put the burden of opting out of AI training on the creator whose work is being trained on. If a government really thought this was a good thing for creators then it would create an opt-in scheme.”

Newton-Rex said the number of signatories to the statement, and the breadth of creative talent they represent, made clear that an opt-out scheme would be considered “totally unfair” by creators. The statement is also signed by creative industry organisations and companies including the American Federation of Musicians, the US actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, the European Writers’ Council and Universal Music Group.

The FBI has launched an investigation into the unauthorized release of classified documents describing Israel’s preparation for a potential retaliatory attack on Iran.

The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said on Monday that the Biden administration was still not certain if the classified information was leaked or hacked but that officials did not have any indication at this point of “additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain”.

The FBI confirmed the investigation for the first time on Tuesday and said in a statement that it was “working closely with our partners in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community”. It did not comment further.

The documents are attributed to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency and note that Israel is 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 shareable within the “Five Eyes”, an intelligence alliance comprised of the US, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Marked top secret, the documents first appeared online on Friday on the Telegram messaging app and quickly spread among Telegram channels popular with Iranians.

The first document is titled “Israel: air force continues preparations for strike on Iran and conducts a second large-force employment exercise” and the second is “Israel: defense forces continue key munitions preparations and covert UAV activity almost certainly for a strike on Iran”.

Kirby said on Monday that the Biden administration remained “deeply disturbed” by the unauthorized release.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has arrived in Israel amid renewed efforts by Washington to revive stalled Gaza ceasefire negotiations after Israel’s killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, last week.

Blinken, who has made multiple fruitless trips to the region, arrived with little evidence that either Israel or Hamas were open to movement on their preconditions for a ceasefire in Gaza, where more than a year of an Israeli offensive has claimed more than 42,000 Palestinian lives.

With war raging in Gaza and also with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the prospect of a widening conflict with Iran, international diplomats have struggled not only with the specific issues involved in trying to bring the individual wars to an end but also how to sequence issues related to the connected conflicts.

The state department said before the visit that Blinken would focus on ending the war in Gaza, securing the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and alleviating the suffering of Palestinian civilians.

Blinken is expected to meet the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other top officials. After Israel, he is expected to visit a number of Arab countries, likely to include Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

According to a report on the Axios website, there has been a suggestion from Egypt, a key interlocutor with Hamas, of a much-truncated ceasefire-for-hostages deal under which living Israeli hostages would be released in exchange for a ceasefire lasting a few days, in the hope that it could help break the deadlock.

Israel and Hamas accused each other of making new and unacceptable demands over the summer and negotiations ground to a halt in August.

The conflicts began on 7 October 2023 when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. About 100 of the captives are still held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Blinken’s arrival follows hard on the heels of that of the US special envoy, Amos Hochstein, in Beirut, seeking to advance discussions on a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

The state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Blinken would underscore the need for a dramatic increase in the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, something that Blinken and the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, made clear in a letter to Israeli officials last week.

That letter reminded Israel that the Biden administration could be forced by US law to curtail some forms of military aid should the delivery of humanitarian aid continue to be hindered.

Blinken’s previous trips yielded little in the way of ending hostilities but he has managed to increase aid deliveries to Gaza in the past.

The US, Egypt and Qatar have brokered months of talks between Israel and Hamas, trying to strike a deal in which the militants would release dozens of hostages in return for an end to the war, a lasting ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

On top of the concerns over the continued Israeli offensives in Gaza and Lebanon is the expectation that Israel will soon launch its retaliation for last month’s substantial Iranian ballistic missile strike, which targeted a number of Israeli military sites in retaliation for Israel’s killing of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

With leaked US intelligence suggesting that a response might be imminent, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has been crisscrossing the region in recent days to try to build support. Speaking in Kuwait on Tuesday, he said Gulf Arab countries had assured him they would not allow their territory – including airspace – to be used for any Israeli attack.

“All the neighbours assured us that they will not allow their lands and air to be used against Iran,” Araghchi said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Gulf Arab nations such as the UAE and Qatar host major military installations, and there are concerns that an all-out regional war could draw them in. Iran has repeatedly vowed to respond to any Israeli strike.

Adding impetus to the calls for progress on a ceasefire on Tuesday was the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, which called for a temporary truce to allow people to leave areas of northern Gaza, as health officials said they were running out of supplies to treat patients hurt in a renewed three-week-old Israeli offensive in the north of the coastal strip.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of Unrwa, said the humanitarian situation had reached a dire point, with bodies abandoned by roadsides or buried under rubble.

“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die. They feel deserted, hopeless and alone,” he said in a statement on X. “I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places.”

The former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was arrested on Tuesday as part of a criminal sex trafficking investigation by federal prosecutors and the FBI in Brooklyn, according to news reports.

Jeffries was arrested with his British partner, Matthew Smith, and a third man, Jim Jacobson, as authorities investigate allegations that the men sexually exploited and abused young men at parties they hosted in the US and around the world. Jeffries and Smith are expected to appear in court later on Tuesday.

Eight men told a 2023 BBC investigation that they had been exploited and recruited for sex events by the former fashion boss. Federal prosecutors began and investigation in January 2024, following a civil suit filed by victims last year.

The attorney for the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Brad Edwards of the firm Edwards Henderson, told ABC News in a statement: “As we laid out in our lawsuit, this was an Abercrombie-run, sex trafficking organization that permeated throughout the company and allowed the three individuals arrested today to victimize dozens and dozens of young, aspiring male models.”

Jeffries was accused of exploiting young men for sex between 2009 to 2015 in cities around the world. Some men came forward alleging they were abused or injected with drugs. Jeffries and his partner denied all allegations in a court filing in response to the lawsuit.

He stepped down from his role as CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch in December 2014, retiring from the position and the company’s board of directors. At the time, the company was disappointed with financial results under his leadership. His tenure also drew scrutiny over its exclusionary marketing, focusing on thin, attractive customers.

“We will respond in detail to the allegations after the indictment is unsealed, and when appropriate, but plan to do so in the courthouse – not the media,” Brian Bieber, a lawyer for Jeffries, told the Wall Street Journal.

South Korea is considering directly supplying weapons to Ukraine as evidence increases that North Korean soldiers are preparing to assist Russia in its war against Ukraine.

South Korea’s spy agency (NIS) said last week that North Korea had shipped 1,500 special forces personnel to Russia’s far east for training and acclimatising at local military bases for future combat alongside Moscow’s troops in Ukraine.

Local media, citing the NIS, said Pyongyang had decided to dispatch 12,000 troops, formed into four brigades, to Russia.

A senior official at the office of South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, said on Tuesday that Seoul could consider providing defensive and lethal weapons to Ukraine depending on developments.

“We would consider supplying weapons for defensive purposes as part of the step-by-step scenarios, and if it seems they are going too far, we might also consider offensive use,” the presidential official told reporters, signalling Seoul’s most proactive position towards arming Ukraine to date.

The development underscores the potential for a divided Korean peninsula to become entangled in the conflict.

The president’s comment came after South Korea’s national security council held an emergency meeting to explore its responses over North Korea’s increasing military ties with Russia.

South Korea, home to some of the world’s largest stockpiles of artillery shells, has provided humanitarian aid and other support to Ukraine, while joining western-led economic sanctions against Moscow.

But it has not directly provided arms to Kyiv, citing a longstanding policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

Seoul’s policy shift would be welcomed by Kyiv, which is facing a desperate shortage of munitions. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, earlier called for a “strong response” from international partners to North Korea’s involvement in the ongoing war.

Meanwhile, a series of clips have surfaced over the past few days, reportedly showing North Korean soldiers training in Russia.

On Sunday, the Ukrainian strategic communication and information security centre circulated a video appearing to show North Korean soldiers receiving uniforms and equipment at the Sergeevka training ground in the far east of Russia.

Astra, an independent Russian outlet, published two clips on Tuesday of what appear to be North Korean soldiers standing outside a military base. The men are heard speaking in Korean, with an instructor telling soldiers to “come inside” the building.

Independent researchers have geolocated the clips to the Sergeevka training ground.

The Kremlin has declined to directly answer a question on whether or not North Korean troops were going to fight in Ukraine but said that it was Moscow’s sovereign right to develop ties with Pyongyang in all areas.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who first met in 2019, have been seeking greater military and economic cooperation to counter their growing international isolation prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes. In June, the two leaders signed a pact that includes a clause requiring the countries to come to each other’s aid if either is attacked.

The UK on Monday said that it “assesses that it is highly likely North Korea has agreed to send troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine”.

“It seems that the harder Putin finds it to recruit Russians to be cannon fodder, the more willing he is to rely on the DPRK [North Korea] in his illegal war,” Dame Barbara Woodward, the permanent UK representative to the United Nations, said while speaking in New York.

“Putin is clearly desperate. His desperation is a danger to us all.”

South Korea is considering directly supplying weapons to Ukraine as evidence increases that North Korean soldiers are preparing to assist Russia in its war against Ukraine.

South Korea’s spy agency (NIS) said last week that North Korea had shipped 1,500 special forces personnel to Russia’s far east for training and acclimatising at local military bases for future combat alongside Moscow’s troops in Ukraine.

Local media, citing the NIS, said Pyongyang had decided to dispatch 12,000 troops, formed into four brigades, to Russia.

A senior official at the office of South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, said on Tuesday that Seoul could consider providing defensive and lethal weapons to Ukraine depending on developments.

“We would consider supplying weapons for defensive purposes as part of the step-by-step scenarios, and if it seems they are going too far, we might also consider offensive use,” the presidential official told reporters, signalling Seoul’s most proactive position towards arming Ukraine to date.

The development underscores the potential for a divided Korean peninsula to become entangled in the conflict.

The president’s comment came after South Korea’s national security council held an emergency meeting to explore its responses over North Korea’s increasing military ties with Russia.

South Korea, home to some of the world’s largest stockpiles of artillery shells, has provided humanitarian aid and other support to Ukraine, while joining western-led economic sanctions against Moscow.

But it has not directly provided arms to Kyiv, citing a longstanding policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

Seoul’s policy shift would be welcomed by Kyiv, which is facing a desperate shortage of munitions. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, earlier called for a “strong response” from international partners to North Korea’s involvement in the ongoing war.

Meanwhile, a series of clips have surfaced over the past few days, reportedly showing North Korean soldiers training in Russia.

On Sunday, the Ukrainian strategic communication and information security centre circulated a video appearing to show North Korean soldiers receiving uniforms and equipment at the Sergeevka training ground in the far east of Russia.

Astra, an independent Russian outlet, published two clips on Tuesday of what appear to be North Korean soldiers standing outside a military base. The men are heard speaking in Korean, with an instructor telling soldiers to “come inside” the building.

Independent researchers have geolocated the clips to the Sergeevka training ground.

The Kremlin has declined to directly answer a question on whether or not North Korean troops were going to fight in Ukraine but said that it was Moscow’s sovereign right to develop ties with Pyongyang in all areas.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who first met in 2019, have been seeking greater military and economic cooperation to counter their growing international isolation prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes. In June, the two leaders signed a pact that includes a clause requiring the countries to come to each other’s aid if either is attacked.

The UK on Monday said that it “assesses that it is highly likely North Korea has agreed to send troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine”.

“It seems that the harder Putin finds it to recruit Russians to be cannon fodder, the more willing he is to rely on the DPRK [North Korea] in his illegal war,” Dame Barbara Woodward, the permanent UK representative to the United Nations, said while speaking in New York.

“Putin is clearly desperate. His desperation is a danger to us all.”

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ostracised by the west and labeled a potential war criminal by the International criminal court, has played host to 36 world leaders from nations including China, India and Iran as part of a summit of the Brics group designed to display Moscow as anything but isolated.

It was unclear if the UN secretary general is willing to defy the west and Ukraine by attending the summit, as Moscow claims he intends. António Guterres’s spokesman was equivocal about his plans on Monday.

The ICC has issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest over the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Moscow said the representatives from 36 countries would attend parts of the three-day meeting, making it the largest international gathering hosted by Putin since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Putin will meet one-on-one with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, as well as holding 15 other bilateral meetings.

Russia claims the group represents the global majority that can make up a substantial element of a coming new global order.

The Brics group has already expanded from its five members South Africa, Russia, China, Brazil and India to a broader group including Egypt, United Arab Emirates. Ethiopia and Iran. Argentina applied and then withdrew after its Presidential elections.

New applicants, often known as hedging states, that are in various stages of seeking membership include Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Others due to attend the event, apart from the wavering Guterres, include the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as well as leaders from Algeria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Indonesia and Mexico.

A key purpose of the group is to act as a counterweight to the main western economies, especially the dominance of the dollar, seen increasingly as a US weapon to impose its political will through sanctions. Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, said on the way to the summit in Kazan “Brics can be a way out of American totalitarianism and create a path of multilateralism. Brics can be a solution to deal with the dominance of the dollar and deal with the economic sanctions of countries.”

But with expansion of Brics membership comes the risk of a loss of clear ideological cohesion.

India and Brazil share some of the desire to be freed of the dollar’s dominance, but not to the same extent as China or Russia. Despite the anti-western language in summit communiques, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for instance has insisted that Brics is “not against anyone”.

Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin, said overall the Brics summit is already a gift to Putin.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, he said the message of the gathering will be: “Not only is [Russia] far from being an international pariah but also is now a pivotal member of a dynamic group that will shape the future of the international order. That message is not mere rhetorical posturing, nor is it simply a testament to the Kremlin’s skilful diplomacy with non-western countries or to those countries’ self-interested, pragmatic engagement with Russia”.

Putin was unable to risk attending the last Brics summit in Johannesburg because he did not want to embarrass his hosts, who would have been obliged to arrest him on the ICC warrant since South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Putin may be hoping more generally that world events are swinging in his direction, with the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House next month a and the possibility of favourable result in the elections in Georgia this weekend.

The future of the Ukraine conflict in the short term rests on Trump’s election, but even if he loses, a war fatigue in Europe is leading all sides to conclude that Ukraine will at least have to open talks with Putin while Russian troops still occupy a large part of eastern Ukraine. A decision by Guterres to attend the summit would have international consequences.

In 2014, Brazil, China, India and South Africa abstained from voting on a UN general assembly resolution in support of Ukraine’s territorial integrity following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Their unity was muffled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, where India, China and South Africa abstained, and Brazil condemned Russia’s actions.

But the Brics+ founding purpose is not security but a means to develop economic and tech platforms that are immune to US pressure and sanctions, in part by circumventing the dollar and pushing the internationalisation of the yuan.

Despite Brics+ group having a larger combined GDP than either the G7 or the EU, its capital share and subsequent voting influence within institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) remain significantly smaller, because each member country’s voting power is weighted on the basis of its financial contribution to the World Bank.

Austria’s president has tasked the incumbent chancellor with forming a new government, after the general election winner, the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), failed to find a coalition partner to allow it to take power.

Alexander Van der Bellen, the 80-year-old head of state, told reporters he had asked Karl Nehammer, head of the centre-right People’s party (ÖVP), to begin negotiations with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPÖ).

“Austria needs a stable government with integrity that is able to act,” Van der Bellen, who under the constitution formally names the chancellor, said, as he announced he had, unusually, selected the losing party to begin coalition talks.

Nehammer’s ÖVP has governed since 2021 in a coalition with the Greens, but both parties suffered heavy losses in the 29 September election in which the Eurosceptic, pro-Moscow, anti-Muslim FPÖ rode a wave of voter anger over immigration and inflation to a historic first-place finish.

The FPÖ’s leader, Herbert Kickl, had insisted that his party, which drew 29% of the vote, should have the first crack at forming a government. The ÖVP won 26% and the SPÖ sank to its worst-ever result of 21%.

But all the mainstream parties represented in parliament refused to work with Kickl as chancellor, creating an impasse in the small Alpine country, which has outsize influence in the EU owing to its strong alliances and role as a geographical crossroads.

“Herbert Kickl can’t find a coalition partner to make him chancellor,” said Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Greens, who has long vocally opposed the far right.

Nehammer, who during the campaign did not rule out cooperating with the FPÖ after several alliances at the regional and federal level, said this month he would not be Kickl’s “stirrup holder”. Kickl, who cites Hungary’s autocratic leader, Viktor Orbán, as a role model, said his party would only join a government if he were chancellor.

Kickl has long courted controversy and campaigned on a slogan to become “Volkskanzler” (people’s chancellor), a term once used for Adolf Hitler. The FPÖ, founded in the 1950s by former Nazis, calls for “remigration” – forced deportation – of immigrants and foreign-born citizens considered poorly integrated. It has also called for a stop to western support for Ukraine’s defence against Russia and to EU sanctions against Moscow.

Van der Bellen, in a short speech at Vienna’s Hofburg palace, said the leaders of the ÖVP and SPÖ had told him that concerns about Austria’s democracy and the rule of law under any government with the FPÖ had made cooperation impossible, as well its Kremlin-friendly stance and proximity to rightwing extremist groups.

Together, the ÖVP and the Social Democrats would have a wafer-thin majority in parliament. They will have to discuss whether to invite a third party, likely to be the liberal NEOS, which won 9%, to the talks in order to form a broader, more stable coalition.

Nehammer said he sought a government backed by a “broad parliamentary majority”.

He said on X: “Politics can only win back trust when we act responsibly and keep our word. The electoral result is certainly not a mandate for ‘business as usual’. Our country needs change and reforms to deal well with the future.”

He said he would enter the coalition negotiations with the aim of taking “the worries and fears of all people in Austria into account”.

However, the unpopularity of Germany’s first-ever three-way coalition under Olaf Scholz, which has been hobbled by infighting, serves as a cautionary tale for its smaller neighbour.

Van der Bellen is expected to name Austria’s next chancellor by January.

A key Saudi suspect in the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 has had his account reinstated on X, the social media company controlled by Elon Musk, after it was permanently suspended under the company’s previous owner.

Saud al-Qahtani, a onetime key adviser to Mohammed bin Salman, had “direct involvement” in the murder of Khashoggi, according to a US intelligence assessment released by the Biden administration in 2021.

It found that the crown prince had approved the grizzly operation in Turkey that killed the Washington Post columnist, who was dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. The US assessment also pointed out that the 15-member Saudi team that traveled to Istanbul to target Khashoggi included officials who worked for the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs (CSMARC), which Qahtani headed. In that role, he was referred to among Saudi dissidents as the “lord of the flies” – or Twitter bots.

Qahtani and his subordinate, Maher Mutreb, were sanctioned by the US treasury in 2018 for their involvement in Khashoggi’s murder. Qahtani seemed to disappear from public view after he was hit with the sanctions, but Saudi prosecutors ruled in December 2019 that there was no evidence linking Qahtani to the journalist’s murder.

It is unclear why Qahtani’s account is active again. Experts speculated that it could be part of a wider attempt by Musk to reinstate users who were previously suspended, or simply an unintended technical glitch.

Saudi Arabia is a key investor in X through its stake in Kingdom Holding, the investment vehicle controlled by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose investment in the platform dates back to 2011.

The company that was previously known as Twitter suspended Qahtani’s account in September 2019, about a year after he had allegedly been sacked from his role as an adviser to the crown prince. It announced in a blog post at the time that the “permanent” suspension was a result of violations of the platform’s manipulation policies. It was part of a broader move to shut down Saudi’s “state-run media apparatus”, which amplified pro-Saudi messages across social media networks.

After his suspension in 2019, Qahtani’s account – which had 1.2m followers – appeared blank, and the words “account suspended” appeared under his handle. Now the account is back online, though there are no new posts.

A review of previous tweets shows that the Saudi adviser was visiting New York in late September 2018, days before the Khashoggi killing.

It is not clear what role, if any, Musk had in reinstating Qahtani’s account. The move comes at a time when the billionaire has played a key role in supporting the candidacy of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

“It is a telling indictment of the current state of X that a man suspected of involvement in the killing of a Saudi journalist, who was also suspended for manipulating Twitter, and who personally created a black list of those critical of Saudi regime policy, is having his account reinstated,” said Marc Owen Jones.

Jones said it was possible that the account was reinstated due to a technical glitch, but said X was “such a black box” that it was hard to know. He said it was possible that Musk’s quest to reinstate previously banned users has gone “global” and that it was reinstated as part of an automated drive.

“But Saudi have a big stake in X so they could be using their leverage or there could be some pressure to bring back and rehabilitate [him]. Ultimately we don’t know for sure why he’s back, but it would be a weird mistake or glitch to happen,” he said.

An investigation by disinformation experts at DFRLab in 2023 found a network of 28 pro-Saudi X accounts appeared to be coordinating an attempt to get Musk to reinstate Qahtani’s account. The investigation found that the mostly anonymous accounts “displayed a pattern of using similar text and graphics to promote Qahtani and the kingdom”, as well as content promoting Saudi Arabia, tourism, its role in Ukraine mediation, and its hosting of the Expo 2030.

Musk has reinstated several controversial figures who have previously been banned, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, the US congresswoman, and Trump.

“Reinstating the accounts of individuals who violated the platform’s policies has allowed malicious actors to take advantage of the change in Twitter’s leadership to adapt their manipulation tactics, as seen in this case, without fear of consequences,” DFRLab concluded.

The X press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In his posthumously published memoir, Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, describes how the campaign for mayor of Moscow in 2013 that launched his political career was directly inspired by American grassroots politics as depicted in The Wire, David Simon’s seminal HBO series about crime and power in Baltimore.

“I was banned from appearing on television or in the papers, so I decided to communicate directly,” writes Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in February, a death seen to have been ordered by Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian president Navalny opposed.

“There is a reason why I wrote that our campaign was ‘like a movie’. I’m a big fan of The Wire. In one season there was a storyline about the hero running for mayor of Baltimore. I explained to our staff responsible for organizing meetings with the public that I wanted the same scenario: a stage, chairs for the elderly, groups of other people standing around. That is probably entirely typical in an American election campaign, but no one had done anything like it before in Russia.”

Navalny did not become mayor but he did remain defiant in his opposition to Putin, attempting to run for president in 2018. Since his death at 47, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has continued his work, including seeing his book to press. Patriot: A Memoir was released on Tuesday.

The Wire ran for six seasons between 2002 and 2008, becoming a contender for greatest TV series of all time. The storyline about the fictional mayor Tommy Carcetti, played by the Irish actor Aiden Gillen, featured from the third season. The former Baltimore mayor, Maryland governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley, now US social security commissioner, is widely seen to have been Simon’s inspiration for the Carcetti character, though Simon has rejected such claims.

Navalny has expressed his love for The Wire before. In March 2022, after being handed a lengthy sentence ostensibly on charges of fraud, he tweeted: “Nine years. Well, as the characters of my favorite TV series The Wire used to say: ‘You only do two days. That’s the day you go in and the day you come out[.]’ I even had a T-shirt with this slogan, but the prison authorities confiscated it, considering the print extremist.”

In response, Simon tweeted pictures of himself wearing a T-shirt with the quote on the front and “Fuck Putin” on the back.

The writer told Navalny: “Thanks for the loan of it … but the quote is yours now. You own it. And stay strong, brother. The whole world is watching.”

Navalny responded: “So technically, The Wire characters are now quoting me? Thank you so much, David, this present really means A LOT. All of us must stay strong so that you can donate another famous line from your series, ‘What the f[uck] did I do?’, to Putin one day – he’ll say it during his trial.”

On the page, Navalny also expresses affection for another giant of US popular culture: Hunter S Thompson, the pioneer of “gonzo” political journalism who died in 2005.

Last August, after being sentenced by a Moscow court to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Navalny published a lengthy statement entitled My Fear and Loathing – a reference to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Thompson’s 1971 novel.

“Loathing”, Navalny wrote. “People ask me a lot about it, and I started receiving letters again: do you hate the judge? Do you hate Putin even more? I have said many times before that hate is the main thing that must be overcome in prison. There are so many reasons for it, and your powerlessness is a strong catalyst for the process. So if you let it go, it will eat and end you up.”

In his memoir, Navalny says he regards his prison diary, now printed as part of the book, as “gonzo journalism”.

“Only, I venture to suggest, I have outgonzoed Hunter S Thompson, even with his convertible, his ‘seventy-five pellets of mescaline … a salt shaker half full of cocaine’, and who knows what else (I don’t remember exactly). But I just love that book and that film,” he added, referencing Terry Gilliam’s 1998 movie version.

Pizza No 40 was long one of the best-selling dishes at a restaurant in the German city of Düsseldorf, until police discovered the secret ingredient: a side of cocaine.

Authorities say uncovering the illicit narcotics delivery scheme allowed them to smash an organised crime ring in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. About 150 officers, including from elite units, last week searched 16 properties in nine cities, arrested three suspects and seized caches of weapons, the news agency DPA reported.

Ch Insp Michael Graf von Moltke said police had had the pizzeria, in a popular party district of the city, in their sights since March, when a routine food inspection uncovered the drug in the kitchen. Narcotics investigators put the business under surveillance and noticed that Pizza No 40 was a customer favourite.

“It was one of the most-sold pizzas,” Von Moltkesaid. A packet of cocaine was placed under each pie. “That was new to us and surprised us because the owner had never been accused of drug crimes.”

The pizzeria’s advertising slogan was “We deliver everything home to you.” It was not immediately clear what the business charged for No 40 or what its toppings were. “Even if we knew, we wouldn’t release it,” a police spokesperson said.

When officers arrived to question the 36-year-old shop owner, the Croatian national allegedly threw a bag stuffed with drugs out the window. “It fell into the arms of the officers,” police said.

Officers confiscated 1.6kg of cocaine, 400g of cannabis and €268,000 in cash as well as expensive watches and a handgun, an axe and long-bladed knives believed to be part of the gang’s arsenal.

Two days after being released from custody because he had no previous criminal record, the owner reopened the shop and began selling his blockbuster pizza again, allowing investigators to trace his supply chain.

They quickly came upon a “violent and unscrupulous” prime suspect, Von Moltke said, a 22-year-old Russian-born mixed martial arts fighter who was known to police and who authorities believe was dealing cocaine and large amounts of cannabis in violation of recently liberalised drug laws.

He is suspected of repeatedly attacking and robbing rival dealers, one of whom was allegedly held hostage for two nights before a large amount of hashish was stolen from his home.

Police said the 22-year-old, as well as a 30-year-old German alleged dealer from Cologne and a 28-year-old Moroccan captured in Haan near Düsseldorf, were in custody, while another 12 people were considered suspects. The pizzeria owner has been in custody since August and his shop is now closed.

Prosecutor Laura Neumann said the gang was accused of buying “kilos” of cannabis and cocaine and selling them to other dealers in addition to growing their own marijuana in private flats, one of which, in Mönchengladbach, had more than 300 plants. The wife of one of the suspects lived in the home along with their three children, who have been taken into foster care.

Neumann said the Russian national, who moved to Germany as a teenager, could face up to 15 years in prison for narcotics felonies and kidnapping.

German media noted the similarity of the case to the cult comedy Lammbock”from 2001, in which two pizzeria owners start delivering pies with cannabis wrapped in aluminium foil and hidden under the middle slice of salami.

Last week, Berlin police arrested a 24-year-old driver who was allegedly hiding cocaine deliveries in soft drinks cans.