With the White House illuminated behind her, Kamala Harris asked the vanishing slice of undecided Americans to elect a “new generation of leadership”, likening Donald Trump to a “petty tyrant” who had stood in the very same spot nearly four years ago and, in a last-gasp effort to cling to power, helped incite the mob that stormed the US Capitol.

The choice between her and Trump in the deadlocked presidential contest was “about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division”, Harris said, from the Ellipse near the White House’s South Lawn, where tens of thousands of supporters gathered one week before the final votes of the 2024 election are cast.

“I ask for your vote,” she told the crowd, which spilled beyond the park, toward the Washington monument, and the many more watching at home.

In a speech her, campaign billed as the former prosecutor’s “closing argument” with the American people as her jury, Harris repeatedly gestured behind her as she described the progress she hoped to make as the 47th president of the United States on lowering prices, protecting abortion rights and addressing immigration.

“In less than 90 days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office,” she said as the crowd – which the campaign placed at 75,000 – erupted into chants of “Kamala! Kamala!” “On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list,” she continued. “When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”

The oval-shaped park also served as reminder of Trump’s actions on January 6, when he exhorted his followers to “fight like hell” and walk to the Capitol where Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Aggrieved and “obsessed with revenge”, Trump was “out for unchecked power” , Harris warned, charging that he would spend the next four years focused on his problems, not the country’s.

Although Harris framed the stakes of the 2024 election as nothing less than the preservation of US democracy, she sought to offer an optimistic and hopeful tone, in stark contrast to the dark, racist themes that animated Trump’s grievance-fueled rally at Madison Square Garden. Harris called on Americans to “turn the page” on the Trump era and “start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told”. Americans had forgotten, she said, that “it doesn’t have to be this way”.

From his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida earlier on Tuesday, Trump waved off criticism of the rally, calling it an “absolute love fest”.

The daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, Harris recalled attending civil rights marches with her parents as a toddler and the memory of her mother, “a cup of tea in hand”, poring over bills at the kitchen table.

“I’ve lived the promise of America,” Harris said, and without an explicit reference to the history-making nature of her candidacy, she grounded it in a fight for “freedom” that has propelled generations of “patriots” from Normandy to Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall.

“They did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms, only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant,” she said, her voice building as she declared: “The United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”

In recent days, Harris has amplified warnings of her opponent’s lurch toward authoritarianism and open xenophobia. Her campaign is running ads highlighting John Kelly, a marine general and Trump’s former chief of staff, saying that Trump met the definition of a fascist. Harris has said she agrees.

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In her remarks, Harris attempted to balance the existential and the economic – focusing on the threat Trump poses to US institutions while weaving in her plans to bring down prices and build up the middle class. She portrayed Trump as a tool of the billionaire class who would eliminate what is left of abortion access and stand in the way of bipartisan compromise when it does not suit him politically.

Responding to her Ellipse speech, a Trump campaign spokesperson accused the vice-president of “lying, name-calling, and clinging to the past”.

Polls show the contest between Trump and Harris virtually tied in the seven battleground states like to decide the presidential election.

Trump has sought to rewrite the history of January 6, the culmination of his attempt to cling to power that resulted in the first occupation of the US Capitol since British forces set it on fire during the war of 1812. Trump recently declared the attack a “day of love” and said he would pardon the January 6 rioters – whom he has called “patriots” and “hostages” – if he is elected president.

Hundreds of supporters have been convicted and imprisoned for their conduct at the Capitol, while federal prosecutors have accused Trump of coordinating an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Trump maintains that he played no role in stoking the violence that unfolded, and still claims baselessly that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

In a press call on Tuesday morning, Harris’s campaigned expressed a bullishness about her prospects. “We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support or whether to vote at all,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Harris’s campaign’s chair, told reporters before her remarks on Tuesday. She said many Americans were “exhausted” by the tribalism and polarization Trump has sharpened since his political rise in 2016.

In an abbreviated 100-day campaign that Harris inherited from Biden after he stepped aside in July, the Democratic nominee has unified her party, raised more than $1bn, blanketed the airwaves and blitzed the battleground states. And yet the race remains a dead heat nationally and in the seven swing states that will determine who wins the White House.

After her speech, Harris will return to the campaign trail, where she will keep a frenetic pace ahead of what her campaign has called a “margin-of-error election”.

“We see very good signs for us across the battleground states, in particular in the blue wall,” O’Malley Dillon said on the Tuesday morning call, referring to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Harris has barnstormed in recent weeks. “And we see that we’re on pace to win a very close election.”

Joe Biden put out a statement that he had “meant to say” earlier on Tuesday that a pro-Trump comedian’s “hateful rhetoric” about Puerto Rico was “garbage”. But in an edited video clip already widely circulating on social media Tuesday evening, a phrase that came out of Biden’s mouth was “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters”.

Republican politicians and rightwing media outlets quickly picked up the clip to argue that Biden had called Trump’s supporters garbage, comparing his remarks with Hillary Clinton’s labeling of half of Trump supporters as belonging in “a basket of deplorables” in 2016, a comment that is widely seen as undermining her campaign.

Biden’s full comments on Tuesday are somewhat garbled, and some journalists transcribing the remarks argued that Biden really did seem to be trying to be refer to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks, not all of Trump’s supporters, while others reported that the president had indeed suggested that Trump supporters themselves were garbage.

Biden’s comment came during a zoom call with Voto Latino, in which Biden refered to Hinchcliffe’s comments and said the Puerto Ricans he knows are “good, decent, honorable, people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of things is unconscionable, and it’s un-American, and it’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done.” But it wasn’t entirely clear whether he had said the singular “supporter’s” or the plural “supporters”, describing Trump’s base more broadly.

In the official transcript of Biden’s remarks released Tuesday night by the White House press office, the comment has an apostrophe: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

Speaking at a campaign event with Trump, Senator Marco Rubio picked up the remark as “breaking news” and told Trump supporters that Biden had dismissed a huge number of everyday Americans as “garbage”, while conservative outlets amplified the remark. Biden quickly tweeted that he had “meant to say” that the comedian’s remarks were “garbage”.

The furore over Biden’s “garbage” remarks comes on what was supposed to be a big night for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as she attempted to make her closing argument of the campaign, urging the country to “turn the page” on Trump. Harris spoke in front of tens of thousands of supporters in Washington DC. She made her case in the location where Trump addressed his supporters on January 6, before many of them went on to storm to US capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Biden’s slightly garbled original comments mark another gaffe for a gaffe-prone politician on the eve of a very tight election.

Polling averages show that Harris and Trump remain locked in what the Guardian’s poll tracker calls a nail-bitingly close presidential race.

On Tuesday evening, the polling expert Nate Silver tweeted that, if Harris loses, “you’re going to get a hot take … from me about Joe Biden”.

Hinchcliffe, the host of a podcast called Kill Tony, was the first speaker at a rally for Trump at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night. His racist comments have sparked broad condemnation, including from Republicans, and were even disavowed by the Trump campaign.

“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said. He also said that Latinos “love making babies … There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.”

NBC reported that Hinchcliffe had tested the same joke about Puerto Rico, and that the joke had bombed, at a comedy set in New York the night before the Trump rally.

Donald Trump praised Puerto Ricans on Tuesday during a Pennsylvania rally, days after a comedian made a racist joke and referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at one of his rallies.

“Nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do,” the former president said a little over an hour into a rally in Allentown, in the Lehigh Valley, which has a sizable Latino population.

More than 68,000 people – over half of the total population – in Allentown are Hispanic or Latino, according to US census data. A few blocks from the rally, a home had a Puerto Rican flag posted on the door.

He also claimed that he had done a lot for Puerto Rico as president. Trump drew ridicule for tossing paper towels into a crowd on the island after it was ravaged by a hurricane; blocked hurricane aid; and mused about selling the island.

He also again praised the rally at Madison Square Garden, saying “the love was unbelievable” and told a rambling story about watching a SpaceX rocket that lasted longer than his discussion of Puerto Ricans.

Many of the speakers on Tuesday, including the Puerto Rican official Zoraida Buxó, emphasized their Puerto Rican heritage, signaling the campaign’s effort to win Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania, the key battleground state in this election, where polls show a tight race.

“We won’t get rattled, we won’t yield to ignorance, foolishness, or irrational thoughtlessness,” she said.

Senator Marco Rubio, another speaker at the rally, also joined Trump onstage during the former presidents remarks to share with the crowd comments from Joe Biden Tuesday in which the president condemned the remarks about Puerto Ricans and said: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American”, according to a White House transcript. After Republicans circulated a clip of the statement, calling it an attack on Trump supporters, Biden put out a statement saying he meant to refer to the comedian who made the joke.

A small protest arrived outside the arena just before the rally began on Tuesday. Some of the protesters were carrying signs that said Latinos for Harris-Walz, while others wore the Puerto Rican flag.

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One of the people marching was Luis Gonzalez, a retired 65-year-old truck driver from Allentown. He wore a sweater with the Puerto Rican flag stitched on it.

“The guy has no idea what he’s talking about,” he said. “I was born in Puerto Rico. That island as well as all the other islands around it are beautiful.

“For anybody to say that it’s a garbage island – they’ve never been to the Caribbean.”

But inside the rally, few people thought the fallout from the comment would have much effect on Trump. Some had not heard it.

“It was made in poor taste, I have to admit. But Donald Trump is Donald Trump, ” said Mark Melendez, 55, who is Puerto Rican and traveled to the rally from New Jersey. “I don’t think it will affect him; it might.”

At least one audience member was holding a sign that said “Boricuas for Trump”, using a term that describes people of Puerto Rican descent.

Jackie Beller, 60, who lives near Allentown, thought the joke was funny.

“If you take a comedian out of context and you look at it as a serious thing, yes, you would be offended,” Beller said.

“It’s all a joke – I’ve spoken to some Puerto Rican people and they weren’t offended, so I don’t know,” said Mary Mendez, 65, a retired paramedic from New York.

Trump’s speech kicking off the final week of the presidential race mixed personal attacks, grievance, anti-immigrant rhetoric and a smattering of policies. He accused Democrats of having already cheated, misrepresenting an ongoing investigation in Lancaster county in an example of how he is priming his supporters to challenge the election results if he loses.

His remarks were less an appeal to undecided voters than a full-throated appeal to his base, pledging that he would be able to fix all of the US’s ills.

“This is gonna be a very special time. It’s going to be America’s new golden age. Every problem facing us can be solved,” he said.

As Kamala Harris made her closing argument in Washington and called Trump “unstable” and “obsessed with revenge”, Trump called Harris a “low-IQ individual” and mused about getting retribution against Michelle Obama for criticizing him on the campaign trial.

“Michelle Obama was very nasty,” he said. “I’ve gone out of my way to be nice to Michelle. Haven’t said a damn thing about her. She hit me.”

The supreme court on Tuesday rejected an emergency appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr from presidential ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Kennedy wanted to remove himself from the ballot in the two crucial swing states after dropping his independent bid and endorsing Donald Trump. He argued that keeping him on violated his first amendment rights by wrongly implying he still wanted to be elected president.

Michigan and Wisconsin said removing his name now, with early voting under way days before the election, would be impossible. More than 1.5 million people in Michigan have already returned absentee ballots, and another 264,000 have voted early, state attorneys wrote in court documents. In Wisconsin, more than 858,000 people have returned absentee ballots.

The justices did not detail their reason in an order rejecting the emergency appeal, as is typical. One justice, Neil Gorsuch, publicly dissented in the Michigan case.

In response, Kennedy accused the conservative-dominated court of ruling against him to help Democratic officials in the states “undermine election integrity” in a post on Twitter/X. “It is a purely political move in the hope that folks who would have otherwise voted for Trump will throw away their vote by voting for me instead,” Kennedy wrote. “Don’t let them undermine this election. Don’t be fooled. I am off the ballot in every other state I have sought to get of​f of other than Michigan and Wisconsin. So, if you are in Michigan or Wisconsin, please make sure to vote for ​Donald Trump – DO NOT VOTE FOR ME. Together we will ​Make America ​Healthy ​Again!”

Kennedy’s response came after leaked video was posted online showing him assuring supporters in an organizing call this week: “President Trump has promised me … control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH and a few others, and then also the USDA, which is … key to making America healthy.” CNN reported that the call took place on Monday.

The presence of independent and third-party candidates on the ballot in swing states could be a key factor in the close presidential race. The high court previously rejected Kennedy’s separate effort to stay on the ballot in New York, a state where his presence is unlikely to make a difference in the race between Trump and Kamala Harris.

Kennedy has been working to get off the ballot in the seven key swing states since endorsing Trump. Wisconsin and Michigan are the last two where his name is expected to appear.

In Michigan, he notched an appeals court win but courts ultimately found he could not withdraw as the candidate of the Natural Law party, which had wanted him to stay on.

In his dissent, Gorush pointed to lower court judges who wrote that the timing of Kennedy’s original request to be removed was not so unreasonable that it should be denied.

In Wisconsin, courts rejected Kennedy’s argument that major parties unfairly get more time to switch nominees. Judges there found candidates who miss deadlines to change nomination papers must remain on the ballot unless they die, and a plan to cover Kennedy’s name with stickers was unworkable.

Israel is not addressing the “catastrophic humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, the US envoy to the United Nations has said as a deadline imposed by Washington looms for the Israelis to improve the situation or face potential restrictions on military aid.

“Israel’s words must be matched by action on the ground,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the security council. “Right now, that is not happening. This must change – immediately.”

The US told Israel on 13 October that it must take steps within 30 days or face consequences including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers. “The US has stated clearly that Israel must allow food, medicine and other supplies into all of Gaza – especially the north, and especially as winter sets in – and protect the workers distributing it,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

Her remarks came as Norway said it would seek clarification from the international court of justice (ICJ) over Israel’s aid obligations after the Knesset vote banning any cooperation with the UN Palestinian relief agency Unrwa, as world leaders and international organisations voiced fears for aid deliveries to Gaza.

Israel will seek to impose the measures voted for by Israeli MPs on Monday – including a ban on new visas and work permits for foreign Unrwa staff who must enter via Israel – within 90 days. This means western diplomats have a brief window after the US elections to try to force it to step back.

Sanctions on Israeli government members and reviews of trade ties are also under consideration among some countries if the vote is implemented.

Thomas-Greenfield said there was no alternative to Unrwa for delivering aid to Gaza and Washington had “real concerns” about the laws. Unrwa is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians, including health and education services.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the decision by the Israeli parliament was “intolerable” and would have “devastating consequences”.

The Knesset decision was also set to be condemned by the UN security council, where there is a strong view that the UN collectively cannot afford for a member state to act unilaterally to destroy an agency set up by a general assembly resolution.

Norway said it would ask the ICJ to clarify Israel’s aid obligations to Palestinians as an occupying power to facilitate aid to the Palestinian people, saying it aimed to affirm that no country is exempt from its international obligations.

The prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, said in a statement that Norway was “requesting that the ICJ pronounces on Israel’s obligations to facilitate humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population, delivered by international organisations, including the UN and states”.

A reference to the ICJ is almost certainly likely to lead to fresh orders since the UN’s top court has already ruled that Israel has failed to meet its legal duty as the occupying power to provide humanitarian aid.

The Israeli parliament’s two laws ban the agency from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, including the areas of annexed East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. Unrwa is accused by Israel of being too close to Hamas, failing to act with neutrality and perpetuating the refugee issue.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the UN agency would be prevented from doing general assembly mandated work if Israel implemented the laws, and called on it “to act consistently with its obligations” under the UN charter and international law, saying: “National legislation cannot alter those obligations.”

Monday’s votes have also been widely criticised in Europe. The UK development minister, Anneliese Dodds, told MPs: “Unrwa is indispensable in the provision of aid for Palestinians. No other agency can get aid into Gaza at the scale needed.”

She said the UK was losing patience with Israel’s excuses for failing to get aid into Gaza at scale. A growing number of MPs are also questioning trade ties with Israel.

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, earlier on Monday suggested sanctions could be taken against Israeli politicians if Unrwa was “brought to its knees”.

Germany’s commissioner for human rights policy and humanitarian assistance, Luise Amtsberg, warned the move would “effectively make Unrwa’s work in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem impossible … jeopardising vital humanitarian aid for millions of people”.

The Republic of Ireland’s taoiseach, Simon Harris, called on the EU to review its ties with Israel. “What Israel and the Israeli Knesset did last night was despicable, disgraceful and shameful,” he said. “More people will die, more children will starve.”

Spain, Slovenia, Ireland and Norway released a joint statement condemning Israel’s ban and warned that it set a “very serious” precedent for the work of the UN and all organisations of the multilateral system.

The humanitarian groups Oxfam, ActionAid and the Australian Council for International Development (Acfid) all condemned Israel’s move. Polio vaccinations in Gaza would be almost impossible without Unrwa’s help, said Acfid’s humanitarian adviser, Naomi Brooks. “This bill undermines the international humanitarian operation in Gaza, where millions face dehydration, starvation and disease,” she said.

Martin Griffiths, the former head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said: “This is a test of the multilateral values that the security council is supposed to shield. We need a series of actions and not a series of statements.”

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “Unrwa workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable. Since avoiding a humanitarian crisis is also essential, sustained humanitarian aid must remain available in Gaza now and in the future.

“In the 90 days before this legislation takes effect – and after – we stand ready to work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security,” he said.

The UN fired nine Unrwa workers in August after an investigation into Israeli claims that staff members were involved in the Hamas-led 7 October attack.

In Lebanon, the health ministry said at least 60 people were killed on Monday in Israeli raids on several areas in Baalbek in the eastern Bekaa valley, where Iran-backed Hezbollah holds sway. The region’s governor, Bachir Khodr, decried what he called the “most violent” raids on the area since the Israel-Hezbollah war began about one month ago.

That followed a year of low-intensity exchanges and cross-border attacks that the Lebanese group said were in support of Hamas.

• With Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

Scores of Palestinians, including many women and children, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a crowded block of flats in the Gaza town of Beit Lahiya as Israel pressed on with its intense weeks long assault on the north of the coastal strip.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 93 people had been killed and 40 were still missing, with many of the victims members of the extended Abu Nasr family, as well as Palestinians displaced from elsewhere. The US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller called the strike “a horrifying incident with a horrifying result”.

Mohamed El-Azamy, 34, who has been displaced more than 15 times in the past year, was in a building close to the one targeted. “Last night was one of the worst nights I’ve been through during this war,” he told the Guardian. “There was bombing from all directions. We were awake and waiting for that shell or missile that would crush our lives until half past four in the morning, when our neighbours’ building was bombed.

“The scene was horrific. Most of the [victims I saw] were children. The corpses were mutilated. What hurt my heart the most was the sight of the children’s bodies that were collected and placed on the side of the road, their clothes were torn and grey because of the rubble.”

The latest incident involving large-scale civilian deaths came as the UN’s World Food Programme [WFP] called for immediate action to avert famine, warning that the situation in northern Gaza “continues to deteriorate, the likelihood of a larger group being impacted by famine will surely increase”.

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Washington rejected “any Israeli efforts to starve Palestinians in Jabaliya, or anywhere else” in the Gaza Strip. “Israel’s words must be matched by action [on humanitarian aid] on the ground. Right now, that is not happening. This must change – immediately,” she told the security council.

Tuesday morning’s strike was launched barely hours after Israel’s parliament passed two laws that could prevent the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest aid provider in Gaza, from operating in the Palestinian territories. It marks the culmination of a long-running campaign against Unrwa, which Israel contends has been infiltrated by Hamas, an allegation the agency denies.

In the immediate aftermath of the strike workers and neighbours were confronted by scenes of horror as they dug through concrete rubble. The remains of victims were wrapped in blankets and lowered by rope from a balcony to be laid on the bloodied ground. Limbs poked out through chunks of dusty masonry and twisted wire.

The dead included a mother and her five children, some of them adults, and a second mother with her six children, according to an initial casualty list provided by the emergency services.

Video footage of the strike posted on social media showed bodies wrapped in carpets and blankets on the ground outside the building, while the sound of Israeli drones was audible above the site.

Ramez Rizk, aged 45, was close to the building that was hit. “Where we were was filled with the smell of gunpowder and the last window of the house was broken from the force of the strike, but luckily none of my family was injured.

“The people of the neighbourhood gathered and began removing the bodies, collecting the remains, and transporting the wounded to Kamal Adwan hospital, even though it was besieged and had no services. There are still bodies buried under the rubble, the rest of the bodies that were removed were transported on donkeys and horse carts to be taken to cemeteries.”

Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, where a number of medics were detained during a raid by Israeli troops last week, said dozens of wounded people had arrived at the overwhelmed facility. “The healthcare system has completely collapsed,” he said, adding that people who arrived wounded died because there was no way to care for them.

The Israel Defense Forces said they were looking into the reports of what had happened at the building.

Israel’s latest major operation in northern Gaza, focused in and around the Jabaliya refugee camp, has killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes in another wave of mass displacement more than a year into the war.

Israel has sharply restricted aid to the north this month, prompting a warning from the US that failure to facilitate greater humanitarian efforts could lead to a reduction in military aid.

The continuing violence in northern Gaza has played out against a background of Palestinians’ fears that Israel is enacting a plan proposed by a group of former generals to order the civilian population of the north to evacuate, cut off aid supplies and consider anyone remaining as a militant.

The military has denied it is carrying out such a plan, while the government has not said whether it is carrying out all or part of it.

Thomas-Greenfield’s comments regarding “starvation” came after the US told Israel in a letter on 13 October that it must take steps within 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or it could face restrictions in US military aid.

Thomas-Greenfield said earlier this month that Washington was watching to ensure Israel’s actions on the ground did not show it had a policy of starvation in the north.

Several dead bodies have been recovered by emergency workers after torrential rain caused flash floods in southern and eastern Spain, shutting roads and high-speed train connections.

Raging mud-coloured flood waters swept through the town of Letur in the eastern province of Albacete on Tuesday, pushing cars through the streets, images broadcast on Spanish television showed.

The leader of the eastern Valencia region told reporters early on Wednesday that several dead bodies had been found in flood-affected areas, without specifying how many.

“Dead bodies have been found, but out of respect for the families, we are not going to provide any further data,” Carlos Mazon said.

Emergency services workers backed by drones were looking for six people who were missing in the wake of flash floods in the town, the central government’s representative in Castilla-La Mancha told Spanish public television TVE.

“The priority is to find these people,” she added.

Police in the town of L’Alcúdia in Valencia said they were looking for a truck driver who had been missing since early afternoon.

“I am closely following with concern the reports on missing persons and the damage caused by the storm in recent hours,” prime minister Pedro Sánchez wrote on X, urging people to follow the advice of the authorities.

“Be very careful and avoid unnecessary trips,” he added.

Twelve flights that were due to land at Valencia airport have been diverted to other cities in Spain due to the heavy rain and strong winds, Spanish airport operator Aena said.

Another 10 flights that were due to depart or arrive at the airport were cancelled.

National rail infrastructure operator ADIF said it had suspended high-speed trains between Madrid and the eastern port of Valencia due to the effects of the storm on main points of the rail network in the Valencia region.

A high-speed train with 276 passengers derailed in the southern region of Andalusia, although no one was injured, the regional government said in a statement.

Emergency services rescued scores of people in Álora in Andalusia, some by helicopter, after a river overflowed.

State weather agency AEMET declared a red alert in the Valencia region and the second-highest level of alert in parts of Andalusia. Several roads were shut in both regions due to flooding.

The intense rain has been attributed to a phenomenon known as the gota fría, or “cold drop”, which occurs when cold air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. This creates atmospheric instability, causing warm, saturated air to rise rapidly, leading to the formation of towering cumulonimbus clouds in a matter of hours and dumping heavy rain across eastern parts of Spain.

Scientists warn that extreme weather such as heatwaves and storms is becoming more intense as a result of the climate crisis.

Jaywalking – that time-honored practice of crossing the street outside of the crosswalk or against the traffic light – is now legal in New York City.

Legislation passed by the city council last month officially became law over the weekend after the city’s mayor, Eric Adams, declined to take action – either by signing or vetoing it – after 30 days.

Council member Mercedes Narcisse, a Brooklyn Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said on Tuesday that the new law ends racial disparities in enforcement, noting that more than 90% of the jaywalking tickets issued last year went to Black and Latino people.

“Let’s be real, every New Yorker jaywalks. People are simply trying to get where they need to go,” she said in an emailed statement. “Laws that penalize common behaviors for everyday movement shouldn’t exist, especially when they unfairly impact communities of color.”

The new law permits pedestrians to cross a roadway at any point, including outside of a crosswalk. It also allows for crossing against traffic signals and specifically states that doing so is no longer a violation of the city’s administrative code.

But the new law also warns that pedestrians crossing outside of a crosswalk do not have the right of way and that they should yield to other traffic that has the right of way.

Liz Garcia, an Adams spokesperson, declined to elaborate on the mayor’s decision to let the bill become law without his action.

But she noted the bill makes it clear that crossing against the light and mid-block is highly risky behavior. People may also still be liable in civil actions for accidents caused by jaywalking, Garcia added.

“All road users are safer when everyone follows traffic rules,” she said in a statement. “We continue to encourage pedestrians to take advantage of safety mechanisms in place – such as daylighting, pedestrian islands, and leading pedestrian intervals – by crossing in a crosswalk with the walk signal.”

Other cities and states, from Denver and Kansas City, Missouri, to California, Nevada and Virginia, have decriminalized jaywalking in recent years, according to America Walks, a Seattle-based group that’s been tracking the proposals.

“Cities that truly care about safety focus on street design, speeding and dangerously large vehicles,” Mike McGinn, the group’s executive director, said Tuesday. “Not jaywalking laws.”

The laws were pushed by the auto industry in the 1930s as a way to keep people off streets and make more room for vehicles, according to America Walks.

The term “jaywalking” dates to the early 20th century and has its roots in midwestern slang for a country bumpkin or rube, according to dictionary maker Merriam-Webster.

In New York City, where struggles between pedestrians and motorists are constant, the jaywalking law had been on the books since 1958 and carried a penalty of up to $250.

In the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, Dustin Hoffman famously yells: “I’m walking here!” as his character is almost hit by a cab while crossing the street in Manhattan.

The Legal Aid Society called the legislation long overdue. The non-profit organization, which provides free legal representation to New Yorkers who cannot afford a lawyer, said police for decades have used the violation as a pretext to stop, question and frisk residents – especially those of color.

“With this legislation now codified, we hope that both the Adams Administration and the City Council will continue to abolish relic laws that serve no public safety purpose and only ensnare people in the criminal legal system,” the organization said in a statement.

Police department spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment, and a spokesperson for its largest union declined to weigh in.

But Narcisse said officers she has spoken to say their time could be better spent on other police work, rather than issuing tickets for jaywalking.

“No one’s ever said: ‘I’m so glad they caught that jaywalker.’ By eliminating these penalties, we allow our police officers to focus on issues that truly matter,” she said.

Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media.

The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik.

A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet.

The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.

The Washington Post has not commented on the reported numbers.

The famed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said on Tuesday he disagreed with the paper’s decision, adding that the outlet was “an institution reporting about Donald Trump and what he’s done and supported by the editorial page”.

Bezos framed the decision as an effort to support journalists and journalism, noting that in “surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress”.

But in this election year, he noted, the press had fallen below Congress, according to a Gallup poll.

“We have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote.

A survey published by the New York Times over the weekend found that the mainstream media were trusted less than social media and 55% of poll respondents thought the media bad for democracy.

The Washington Post’s decision to forgo a presidential endorsement follows a growing trend in the newspaper business, which has mostly been hemorrhaging revenue and readership.

Gannett-owned USA Today, with the fifth-largest print and fourth-largest digital subscriber circulation, said on Tuesday that neither it nor more than 200 local papers under its umbrella would endorse a candidate.

“Why are we doing this? Because we believe America’s future is decided locally – one race at a time,” a USA Today spokesperson, Lark-Marie Antón, said in a statement to Politico. “Our public service is to provide readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.”

The non-endorsing papers have said they still plan to make political recommendations at local and state levels.

Bezos wrote in defense of the Post’s decision that “presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election … what presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media.

The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik.

A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet.

The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.

The Washington Post has not commented on the reported numbers.

The famed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said on Tuesday he disagreed with the paper’s decision, adding that the outlet was “an institution reporting about Donald Trump and what he’s done and supported by the editorial page”.

Bezos framed the decision as an effort to support journalists and journalism, noting that in “surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress”.

But in this election year, he noted, the press had fallen below Congress, according to a Gallup poll.

“We have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote.

A survey published by the New York Times over the weekend found that the mainstream media were trusted less than social media and 55% of poll respondents thought the media bad for democracy.

The Washington Post’s decision to forgo a presidential endorsement follows a growing trend in the newspaper business, which has mostly been hemorrhaging revenue and readership.

Gannett-owned USA Today, with the fifth-largest print and fourth-largest digital subscriber circulation, said on Tuesday that neither it nor more than 200 local papers under its umbrella would endorse a candidate.

“Why are we doing this? Because we believe America’s future is decided locally – one race at a time,” a USA Today spokesperson, Lark-Marie Antón, said in a statement to Politico. “Our public service is to provide readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.”

The non-endorsing papers have said they still plan to make political recommendations at local and state levels.

Bezos wrote in defense of the Post’s decision that “presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election … what presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

Japan’s Mount Fuji remained snowless on Tuesday, marking the latest date that its slopes have been bare since records began 130 years ago, the country’s weather agency said.

The volcano’s snowcap begins forming on 2 October on average, and last year snow was first detected there on 5 October.

But because of warm weather, this year no snowfall had yet been observed on Japan’s highest mountain, said Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at Kofu Local Meteorological Office.

That marked the latest date since comparative data became available in 1894, he said, beating the previous record of 26 October – which had been recorded twice, in 1955 and 2016.

“Temperatures were high this summer, and these high temperatures continued into September, deterring cold air” which brings snow, Katsuta told the AFP news agency.

He said climate change might have a degree of impact on the delay in the snowcap’s formation.

Japan’s summer this year was the joint hottest on record – equalling the level seen in 2023 – as extreme heatwaves fuelled by climate change engulfed many parts of the globe.

Mount Fuji is covered in snow for most of the year, but during the July-September hiking season more than 220,000 visitors trudge up its steep, rocky slopes. Many climb through the night to see the sunrise from the 3,776-metre summit.

Fewer climbers tackled Mount Fuji this year, however, after Japanese authorities introduced an entry fee and a daily cap on numbers to fight overtourism.

The symmetrical mountain has been immortalised in countless artworks, including Hokusai’s “Great Wave”.

It last erupted about 300 years ago.

Humans may have turned drinking into something of an art form but when it comes to animals putting alcohol away, Homo sapiens are not such an outlier, researchers say.

A review of published evidence shows that alcohol occurs naturally in nearly every ecosystem on Earth, making it likely that most animals that feast on sugary fruits and nectar regularly imbibe the intoxicating substance.

Although many creatures have evolved to tolerate a tipple and gain little more than calories from their consumption, some species have learned to protect themselves with alcohol. Others, however, seem less able to handle its effects.

“We’re moving away from this anthropocentric view that alcohol is used by just humans and that actually ethanol is quite abundant in the natural world,” said Anna Bowland, a researcher in the team at the University of Exeter.

After trawling research papers on animals and alcohol, the scientists arrived at a “diverse coterie” of species that have embraced and adapted to ethanol in their diets, normally arising through fermented fruits, sap and nectar.

Ethanol became plentiful on Earth about 100m years ago when flowering plants began to produce sugary fruits and nectar that yeast could ferment. The alcohol content is typically low, at around 1% to 2% alcohol by volume (ABV), but in over-ripe palm fruit the concentration can reach 10% ABV.

In one study, wild chimpanzees in south eastern Guinea were caught on camera bingeing on the alcoholic sap of raffia palms. Meanwhile, spider monkeys on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, are partial to ethanol-laden yellow mombin fruit, revealed to contain between 1% and 2.5% alcohol. “Evidence is growing that humans are not drinking alone,” the authors write in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Whether consumption leads to drunkenness is another question. Tales of inebriated animals are abound, from elephants and baboons drunk on marula fruit in Botswana, to a moose found with its head stuck in a tree in Sweden after chomping on fermented apples. But in none of these cases, at least, was alcohol measured in the animals or the fruit.

Many animals seem to have impressive alcohol tolerance. Despite the “prodigious ethanol consumption” of pen-tailed treeshrews, the scientists found no evidence that the animals became intoxicated, but concede it was “unclear how an inebriated treeshrew would behave”.

Animals that regularly eat fermented foods tend to metabolise alcohol rapidly, sparing them its worst effects. But some creatures encounter ethanol less often and can suffer the consequences. Tests on Cedar waxwings, which died from crashing into fences and other structures, found they had been flying under the influence after gorging themselves on the over-ripe berries of the Brazilian pepper tree. “Inebriation is not beneficial in an environment where you are fighting to survive,” Bowland said.

Perhaps the most striking effects of alcohol are seen in insects. Male fruit flies turn to alcohol when they are rejected as a mate, while females of a closely related species become less picky about their mates and have sex with more males after imbibing. Fruit flies lay their eggs in ethanol-rich foods, protecting them from parasites.

Earlier this month, researchers led by Eran Levin at Tel Aviv University found that oriental hornets may be the only animals capable of consuming an unlimited amount of alcohol without suffering ill effects. “They can ingest up to 80% ethanol solution without any negative effects on their mortality or behaviour,” said Dr Sophia Bouchebti, an author on the study.

“Aside from the fruit fly, aye aye and slow loris, it is unclear if animals prefer ethanol-containing food,” said Matthew Carrigan at the College of Central Florida, who worked on the review with Bowland. “One of our next steps is the test whether animals in the wild prefer ethanol-containing food or eat it only when ethanol levels are too low to detect or unfermented fruit is hard to find.”

Teri Garr, the actor known for roles in Tootsie, Young Frankenstein and Friends, has died at the age of 79.

Garr died of multiple sclerosis, “surrounded by family and friends”, as confirmed to Associated Press by her publicist. She had been diagnosed in 2002 and also had an operation in 2007 after a ruptured brain aneurysm.

She began her career as a background artist, appearing as a go-go dancer in films and variety shows in the 1960s. “I was always resenting the fact that I was an “extra”, because in those days, working on those musicals, you personally had to study for 10 years to be a dancer,” she said in a 2008 interview. “And when you finally got a part as a dancer in a movie, you were put in the extras union.”

She landed her first speaking role in the Monkees movie Head in 1968. She was in the same acting class as the film’s co-writer Jack Nicholson.

After becoming a regular on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in the early 70s, she broke through on the big screen with roles in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, Carl Reiner’s Oh, God! and Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein before playing Richard Dreyfuss’s wife in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977.

In the 1980s, she gained an Oscar nomination for her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie and also appeared in One From the Heart, The Sting II, Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and alongside Michael Keaton in Mr Mom.

In the 1990s, she starred in Prêt-à-Porter for Robert Altman and appeared in Dumb and Dumber, Michael and Dick, playing the mother of Michelle Williams’ character. She also had a recurring role on Friends as the estranged birth mother of Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe.

“Women are not taken seriously,” Garr said in a 2008 interview, speaking about the lack of roles available to her. She added: “If there’s ever a woman who’s smart, funny or witty, people are afraid of that, so they don’t write that.”

Tina Fey once told Entertainment Weekly: “There was a time when Teri Garr was in everything. She was adorable, but also very real. Her body was real, her teeth were real, and you thought that she could be your friend.”

In 2002, Garr confirmed that she had MS. “I’m telling my story for the first time so I can help people,” she said. “I can help people know they aren’t alone and tell them there are reasons to be optimistic because, today, treatment options are available.”

She went onto serve as a national ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Garr also published her autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, in 2006, which detailed her career and also her health problems.

Bridesmaids and The Heat director Paul Feig, who directed Garr in the 2006 comedy Unaccompanied Minors, paid tribute on social media: “Oh man, this is devastating. Teri was a legend. So funny, so beautiful, so kind. I had the honor of working with her in 2006 and she was everything I dreamed she would be. Truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more. This is such a loss.”

Adidas says it has reached an amicable agreement with rapper Kanye West to end all legal proceedings between them, without any money being exchanged.

The German sportswear giant had been locked in a dispute with the artist, who now goes by the name Ye, since they cut ties in 2022 after allegations of antisemitism against him.

“There [aren’t] any more open issues and there is no … money going either way,” the Adidas chief executive, Bjorn Gulden, told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday, without giving any details of the agreement.

“There were tensions on many issues [but] … both parties said we don’t need to fight any more.”

The drama with West “belongs to the past”, he added.

“When you have conflicts like this, you take provisions and you have legal opinions and there are negotiations and there are settlements being done, and this is the end to it.

“No one owes anything to anybody any more. Whatever was is history.”

Adidas and West launched a business deal in 2014 after the rapper ended his affiliation with Nike.

The partnership was one of the most successful sportswear tie-ups in history and the resulting Yeezy range went on to help make West a billionaire.

But when West made a series of antisemitic comments on social media in October 2022, Adidas announced it was ending the partnership, calling his remarks “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous”, adding that it would “not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech”.

West went on to repeat many of his claims in multiple interviews, and later said his wealth crashed by $2bn in a single day as a consequence as different companies dropped him.

Gulden defended West a year later, saying that the rapper’s comments were “very unfortunate, because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person – it just came across that way”.

“That meant we lost that business. One of the most successful collabs in history – very sad,” he told the podcast In Good Company. “But again, when you work with third parties, that could happen. It’s part of the game. That can happen with an athlete, it can happen with an entertainer. It’s part of the business.”

Ending the partnership in 2022 left Adidas with unwanted Yeezy stock worth some €1.2bn including shoes and other goods.

Adidas has been selling its huge inventory of Yeezy products in batches and donating the proceeds to NGOs, including a foundation launched by the company itself in March to support anti-discrimination initiatives.

The remaining Yeezy stocks will be sold by the end of 2024, the company said.

Gulden addressed the drama with West as he presented the company’s third-quarter results, already made public earlier in October.

Between July and September, Adidas sales totalled €6.4bn (US$7bn), a 7% increase on the same period last year.

Adidas said it had increased its financial guidance for the year “to reflect the better-than-expected performance during the quarter and the current brand momentum”.

Gulden said the company had managed to boost its sales with other lucrative shoe collections, such as the Samba, Gazelle and Campus ranges.

Agence-France Press contributed to this report

A routine doctor’s checkup saved the life of a Brisbane retiree after an aggressive and rare tumour weighing 2kg was found in his liver.

Father-of-three Barrie Tibbetts had no symptoms when he went to see his general practitioner but Dr Kerrie Hulett noticed his liver function test results were “slightly abnormal”.

Tibbetts had a liver condition many years ago which sparked alarm bells so Hulett organised an ultrasound which showed a major mass.

“I was non-symptomatic, I couldn’t believe it,” Tibbetts said.

The 67-year-old was rushed to Mater Private hospital in Brisbane to remove the 15cm aggressive hepatocellular carcinoma tumour.

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“I had more scans just before having surgery and the mass had become so large it was creeping up into my diaphragm,” Tibbetts said. Without surgery, he would have died.

Surgeon Joel Lewin said: “It is hard to know how long that would take but it was likely growing quite quickly, likely months.”

The delicate surgery took six hours in July with Lewin making a large incision in the abdomen instead of keyhole surgery due to the size of the tumour.

“The tumour occupied the majority of the right side of the liver, making surgical resection challenging,” Lewin said.

The type of cancer affects about five in every 100,000 people. Tibbett’s tumour was the largest Lewin had removed.

Tibbetts was making a full recovery after surgery with his three-monthly imaging revealing a positive prognosis.

He was looking forward to travelling around Australia with his wife, Leslie, in a new camper van.

“After getting the good news just a few weeks ago, we thought this would be a nice way to celebrate,” Tibbetts said this week.

A report from Movember in July warned that men were less likely to have a trusting relationship with a health professional and, as a result, may miss out on preventive health advice.