Kamala Harris said on Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”.

“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

Trump appointed three of the justices to the US supreme court who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, Trump has taken to boasting at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and make sure they would not be “thinking about abortion”.

At a rally on Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate”.

He told the crowd that he told aides: “I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.’”

Harris said the remark was part of a pattern of troubling statements by Trump. “This is just the latest on a long series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said.

Trump and Republicans have struggled with how to talk about abortion rights, particularly as women nationwide face abortion restrictions that have gone far beyond the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Trump has given contradictory answers, saying that women should be punished for having abortions and bragging about appointing the justices. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters if elected he would appoint justices to the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade and said he was “pro-life”.

But in recent weeks he has promised to veto a national abortion ban, after repeatedly refusing to make such a pledge. He has said the states should regulate care and said some laws were “too tough”.

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White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two US government officials and an internal email obtained on Thursday by the Associated Press.

Biden created an uproar earlier this week with his remarks to Latino activists responding to racist comments at a Trump rally made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to the US island territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

Biden, according to a transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, told the Latino group on a Tuesday evening video call, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

The transcript released by the White House press office, however, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” which aides said pointed to Biden criticizing Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who are supporting Trump for president.

The change was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office that was obtained by the AP. The authenticity of the email was confirmed by two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The supervisor, in the email, called the press office’s handling of the matter “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”

“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor wrote, adding, “Our Stenography Office transcript – released to our distro, which includes the National Archives – is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”

The edit of the transcript came as the White House scrambled to respond to a wave of queries from reporters about Biden’s comments. The president’s remarks clashed with vice-president Kamala Harris’ near-simultaneous speech outside the White House in which she called for treating Americans of differing ideologies with respect.

The Trump campaign quickly moved to fundraise off the quote, and the next day, Trump himself held a photo op inside a garbage truck to try to capitalize on Biden’s criticism.

Harris on Wednesday distanced herself from Biden’s comments – making the clearest break from the president since she took over for him at the top of the Democratic ticket just over three months ago. “Let me be clear,” she told reporters, “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

According to the email, the press office had asked the stenographers to quickly produce a transcript of the call amid the firestorm. Biden himself took to social media to say that he was not calling all Trump supporters garbage and that he was referring specifically to the “hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally.”

The stenographers office is charged with preparing accurate transcripts of public and private remarks of the president for preservation by the National Archives and distribution to the public.

The two-person stenography team on duty that evening – a “typer” and “proofer” – said any edit to the transcript would have to be approved by their supervisor, the head of stenographers’ office.

The supervisor was not immediately available to review the audio, but the press office went ahead and published the altered transcript on the White House website and distributed it to press and on social media in an effort to tamp down the story.

White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates that evening also posted on X the edited version of the quote and wrote that Biden was referring ”to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage.’”

The supervisor, a career employee of the White House, raised the concerns about the press office action – but did not weigh in on the accuracy of the edit – in an email to White House communications director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other press and communications officials.

“Regardless of urgency, it is essential to our transcripts’ authenticity and legitimacy that we adhere to consistent protocol for requesting edits, approval, and release,” the supervisor wrote.

The supervisor declined to comment to the AP and referred questions about the matter to the White House press office.

Asked to comment, Bates did not address the alteration of the transcript and said: “The President confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. That was reflected in the transcript.”

House Republicans, meanwhile, were debating launching an investigation into the matter. House Republican Conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik, a Republican of New York, and House Oversight and Accountability chairman James Comer, a Republican of Kentucky, on Wednesday accused White House staff of “releasing a false transcript” of Biden’s remarks.

In a letter to White House counsel Ed Siskel on Wednesday, they called on the administration to retain documents and internal communications related to Biden’s remarks and the release of the transcript.

“White House staff cannot rewrite the words of the President of the United States to be more politically on message,” the lawmakers wrote to Siskel.

Stefanik and Comer said the action could be in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

The cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies have come out in support of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris less than a week before the US election.

In a video posted first on Vanity Fair on Thursday evening, actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany playfully riffed on their respective characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while encouraging viewers to vote for Harris.

The video, which runs for just over 90 seconds, opens with the actors taking an incoming video call from Johansson. On screen, they brainstorm ideas for a catchphrase for Harris, landing on the dubious “Down with Democracy”, which they spin into a brief Marvel-style Harris/Walz campaign video with dramatic music and comic-style graphics. The final frame of the video encourages viewers to vote on November 5.

Sharing the video on X, Ruffalo, a vocal Democrat supporter who is best known for his role as the Hulk, wrote: “Don’t sit this one out. It’s the one where we will lose big: Project 2025, women’s reproductive rights, climate change, LGBTQIA+ rights, public education, student debt relief, Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and as of today, life saving vaccines. This shit is real and it’s going to come for you.”

Speaking to Vanity Fair about the making of the video, Johansson, who played Black Widow in the Marvel films, said, “It just immediately turned into people trying to one-up each other with one-liners,” and joked that Downey Jr and Ruffalo were “bickering like two old ladies. And, of course, I’m the person that’s just trying to organise everybody. It’s very similar to what our dynamic is in the films. It was wonderful to feel everybody assemble around it, and hopefully it will engage our fans in the process of voting.”

Johansson initiated the project, reaching out to her fellow MCU alumni via their group chat and reminding them: “We’ve got a lot of powerful people on this thread, and it would be great to unite … in hopefully creating a bit of a viral moment for Kamala.”

The Avengers cast join a list of celebrities who have endorsed the Harris/Walz campaign, including Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and Oprah. In the last week alone, Beyoncé, Madonna, Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, LeBron James and the former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger have all come out in support of Harris.

• Ukraine’s western allies have not adequately responded to the involvement of North Korean troops in Russia’s war with Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview released on Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin is “testing the reaction of the west, of Nato states and the reaction of South Korea,” the Ukrainian leader said in an interview with the South Korean television channel KBS. “And if there is nothing – and I think that the reaction to this is nothing, it has been zero – then the number of North Korean troops on our border will be increased,” he added.

• The US and South Korea have called on China to use its influence over Russia and North Korea to prevent escalation after Pyongyang sent thousands of troops to Russia. Beijing has so far stayed quiet. In a rare meeting earlier this week, three top US diplomats met with China’s ambassador to the United States to emphasise US concerns and urge China to use its sway with North Korea to try to curtail the cooperation, according to a state department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

• About 8,000 North Korean soldiers are stationed in Russia on the border with Ukraine, the US secretary of state has said, warning that Moscow is preparing to deploy those troops into combat “in the coming days”. Antony Blinken said the US believed that North Korea had sent 10,000 troops to Russia in total, deploying them first to training bases in the far east before sending the vast majority to the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine.

• Ukraine’s foreign minister on Thursday called on western nations to lift restrictions on the use of long range missiles against Russia, after North Korean troops deployed to Russia’s border region with Ukraine. Speaking at a peace conference in Montreal, foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said the North Korean troop deployment marked a “true escalation of this war” and that Kyiv should be allowed to use missiles to strike Russian territory. “We need a strong reaction,” he said. “We need [a] strong decision of our allies to lift all the restrictions, to lift all the restrictions to use long-range missiles on the territory of Russia.”

• Russia’s defence ministry on Thursday claimed the capture of another village in eastern Ukraine as troops advance rapidly in the Donetsk region. The ministry said troops “as a result of active and decisive operations liberated the settlement of Yasnaya Polyana”, using the Russian name for Yasna Polyana, a small village north-west of the town of Vugledar that Moscow captured early this month.

• Russia’s systematic torture of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war is a crime against humanity, UN-backed human rights experts said on Thursday. Erik Møse, chair of the independent commission investigating human rights violations in Ukraine, told reporters: “Our recent findings demonstrate that Russian authorities have committed torture in all provinces of Ukraine that came under their control, as well as in the detention facilities that the commission has investigated in the Russian Federation,” he said.

• Rescue teams completed recovery operations on Thursday at a high-rise residence in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv hit by a Russian-guided bomb, with emergency services saying the death toll had risen to three. Emergency services said children aged 12 and 15 were among the dead in the Wednesday evening strike, and thirty-six people were injured.

• Finland’s Coast Guard said it has detected constant disturbances to satellite navigation signals in the Baltic Sea since April and in recent weeks has seen tankers spoofing their location data to cover up visits to Russia. Last week, Finland’s interior minister Lulu Ranne said Finland believes Russia is behind disturbances detected in Finland and the Baltic Sea region in the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) signals used in navigation. The coast guard said GNSS jamming, which it has detected increasingly since April in the Gulf of Finland, has led to ships getting lost at sea or losing their course.

• Latvia on Thursday sentenced a taxi driver to seven years’ jail for passing images and information about Nato troops to a ring accused of spying for Russia. According to the Latvian security services, Sergejs Sidorovs “used his discreet appearance and his profession as a taxi driver to move around and take photos of Nato ships and cargo unloaded in the port of Riga, as well as to spy on Nato bases and their multinational personnel”.

• South Africa and the Vatican joined Qatar at a conference in Montreal on Thursday in offering to mediate and facilitate the return of about 20,000 Ukrainian children from Russia. “Children, civilians and prisoners of war must be allowed to return home,” Canadian foreign minister Melanie Joly said in announcing an agreement by delegates on steps to “bring these people back home”. Qatar, South Africa and the Vatican, she said, would serve as intermediaries to support and negotiate the return of the children. Lithuania and Qatar would act as transit countries.

About 8,000 North Korean soldiers are stationed in Russia on the border with Ukraine, the US secretary of state has said, warning that Moscow is preparing to deploy those troops into combat “in the coming days”.

Antony Blinken said the US believed that North Korea had sent 10,000 troops to Russia in total, deploying them first to training bases in the far east before sending the vast majority to the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine.

Blinken told a press conference that the North Korean troops had received Russian training in “artillery, UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, indicating that they fully intend to use these forces in frontline operations”.

The announcement was the clearest statement yet from the US that it anticipated the first large-scale deployment of foreign troops into the Russia-Ukraine war since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The deployment could expand the largest land war in Europe since the second world war into a multi-region conflict, tying in the rising tensions in the Korean peninsula between North and South Korea.

“One of the reasons that Russia is turning to these North Korean troops is that it’s desperate,” Blinken said during the press conference as he met South Korea’s foreign and defence ministers in Washington. “Putin has been throwing more and more Russians into a meat grinder of his own making in Ukraine. Now he’s turning to North Korean troops, and that is a clear sign of weakness.”

Blinken noted that China had a role to play on the issue, saying US and Chinese diplomats had held a “robust conversation just this week” and that China knows US expectations that “they’ll use the influence that they have to work to curb these activities”.

Beijing has forged a “no limits” partnership with Moscow, and while it has been a major ally for Pyongyang, experts say Beijing might not approve of the closer military partnership between Russia and North Korea because it sees it as destabilising in east Asia.

Blinken’s comments came hours after North Korea test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, highlighting a potential advancement in its missile technology as questions continue over a potential agreement between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un for North Korea’s support in the war against Ukraine in exchange for Russian military or space technology.

North Korea last test-fired a ballistic missile in December 2023. Thursday’s launch flew for 86 minutes – the longest recorded flight time to date – and may indicate that the country was seeking to develop missiles that could carry larger payloads for a potential strike against its enemies in the west.

US officials from the White House, state department and Pentagon have all warned Russia and North Korea against deploying North Korean troops in battle. If they did, Blinken said, they would become a “legitimate military target”.

Speaking before a UN security council meeting this week, the US envoy to the UN said that if Pyongyang’s forces “enter Ukraine in support of Russia, they will surely return in body bags”.

Ukraine’s president had earlier warned that North Korean troops could join the fight against Ukraine “within days” and that the deployment was meant to be a test of the US’s and South Korea’s responses.

Speaking in an interview on Wednesday with the South Korean radio outlet KBS, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said North Korean troops had not yet engaged in direct combat with Ukrainian forces but were preparing to be deployed.

Zelenskyy said he believed Putin wanted to deploy foreign troops in order to minimise casualties among Russian troops and that Russia would “station North Korean troops on the frontlines, and will sacrifice them more than Russian troops”.

Asked when that may be, he said: “I believe this will occur not within months, but within days.”

He also suggested North Korea could send more troops to Russia based upon how the US and South Korea respond.

“With this deployment of North Korean troops, Putin is currently testing the response of South Korea and the Nato member nations,” Zelenskyy said in the interview from the city of Uzhhorod. “After gauging their response, he will determine whether to expand the deployment.”

The Pentagon and South Korea’s defence minister issued a warning to Pyongyang on Thursday to remove their troops from Russia, with the US warning that North Korean troops would become “legitimate military targets” if they fought against Ukraine directly.

North Korean troops would be “co-belligerents, and you have every reason to believe that … they will be killed and wounded as a result of battle,” the US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, said on Wednesday.

The death toll from devastating floods in eastern Spain has risen to 158, regional authorities and emergency services have said, as the country began three days of mourning and the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, urged people to stay at home.

With forecasts of more bad weather prompting storm alerts farther north, Sánchez urged residents on Thursday to “please, follow the calls of the emergency services … Right now the most important thing is to save as many lives as possible.”

Officials in the stricken eastern region of Valencia said 155 bodies had been recovered there, with three deaths also reported from the Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia regions. The toll makes the disaster the deadliest episode of flooding in Spain’s modern history.

Authorities have not disclosed how many people are still unaccounted for but the defence minister, Margarita Robles, earlier said the death toll was expected to rise further given some areas remain inaccessible to rescuers.

Flags flew at half-mast on government buildings and a minute of silence was observed nationwide after the flash floods battered Valencia’s infrastructure, sweeping away bridges, roads and railway tracks and submerging farmland.

Survivors told of walls of rushing water that turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned torrents that poured into the ground floors and garages of houses and apartment blocks.

Angry people in several towns said mobile phone alerts had not been sent out until 8pm on Tuesday, when serious flooding had already started in some areas – and several hours after the national weather service, Aemet, had issued a red alert for exceptionally heavy rains.

Laura Villaescusa, who lives in the Valencia suburb of La Torre, told Reuters: “Those people wouldn’t have died if they had been warned in time.”

One man told Eldiario.es that the alert came as he was already trapped in his car with flood waters up to his chest. “Just after 8pm, after an hour with water up to my neck and swallowing mud, the alert went off,” he said.

Conservative opposition politicians have accused the socialist-led federal government of acting too slowly to warn people to get to safety, but the interior ministry said responsibility for civil protection measures lay with regional authorities.

Valencia’s conservative regional president, Carlos Mazón, defended his administration’s management of the crisis, saying the region’s officials had “followed the standard protocol”.

Spain’s national weather agency had alerted officials and the public via its website and social media on Sunday, two days before the tragedy struck, that there was a 70% chance of torrential rain ahead.

The agency then issued a red alert, the highest level of warning, early on Tuesday.

Emergency service workers and more than 1,200 troops combed through thick silt in mud-caked towns and villages on Thursday to find survivors and clear roads, while rescuers used helicopters to winch survivors to safety in areas that were still flooded.

“Our priority is to find the victims and the missing so we can help end the suffering of their families,” Sánchez said after visiting a rescue coordination centre and meeting with regional officials and emergency services in Valencia.

“This storm front is still with us,” Sánchez added. “Stay home and heed the official recommendation and you will help save lives.”

Meteorologists said a year’s worth of rain had fallen in eight hours in parts of Valencia on Tuesday. Television footage showed diggers and tractors fitted with water pumps clearing debris from streets piled high with abandoned cars and vans.

The intense rain has been attributed to the gota fría or “cold drop” phenomenon, which occurs when cold air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean, creating atmospheric instability that causes warm, saturated air to rise rapidly, leading to heavy rain and thunderstorms.

Scientists say the human-driven climate crisis is increasing the length, frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe, experts have also said.

Valencia’s mayor, María José Catalá, said a male police officer was among the eight bodies found drowned in a garage in La Torre. In the same neighbourhood, she added, a 45-year-old woman was found dead in her home.

The transport minister, Óscar Puente, said about 80km (50 miles) of roads had been badly damaged or were impassable. He said many were blocked by abandoned cars, some “unfortunately with dead bodies inside”. It could take up to three weeks to reopen the high-speed rail line between Madrid and Valencia, he added.

King Felipe VI warned the emergency was “still not over”, and Aemet issued its highest level of alert for the province of Castellón, and amber alerts for the city of Tarragona, farther north in the Catalonia region, and the west coast of Cádiz, across the country in the south-west.

In the small Valencian town of Utiel, where six people died in the floods, people were trying to come to terms on Thursday with what had happened as they carted bucket-loads of sodden possessions from their homes and tried to sweep out the mud.

Around them, personnel from the army’s military emergencies unit supervised the cleanup and the pumps, aided by Guardia Civil officers, firefighters and civil protection units.

In the worst affected part of the town, where the Magro River had burst its banks and sent flood waters surging into people’s houses, the mud was still calf-deep in places and the streets littered with wrecked cars and other detritus.

“I can’t tell you what happened here,” one local resident, Carmen Aleixandre, told the Guardian. “I just don’t have the words to describe it.”

Utiel’s mayor, Ricardo Gabaldón, said the town was at the end of its tether and desperately needed help from the regional and national governments. “Six people died and we’re mourning them, but hundreds could have died here,” he said.

In some parts of the town, the flood waters had reached a height of 3 metres, trapping some people in their homes and leading to the deaths of the victims, who were older people or those with mobility issues.

The mayor said water and shelter were still major problems for many in the town, adding that some people were now homeless. “There’s no power in some places and we’re having to restrict water,” he said. “There are hundreds of people who’ve lost everything – their houses and their businesses.”

The death toll is the worst from floods in Spain since 1973, when at least 150 people were estimated to have died in the south-eastern provinces of Granada, Murcia and Almería. In 1996, 87 died after torrential rain hit a campsite in the Pyrenees.

Europe’s most catastrophic recent floods came in July 2021, killing 243 people in Germany, Belgium, Romania, Italy and Austria.

Reuters, Agence-France Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report

Two former police officers who confessed to the murder of Rio city councillor Marielle Franco have been sentenced to decades in prison for their part in a crime that shook Brazil and cast a harsh spotlight on the links between politics and organised crime.

Ronnie Lessa admitted to firing 14 shots in the 2018 drive-by shooting that killed Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes, 39, and was sentenced to 78 years and nine months. Élcio de Queiroz, who confessed to driving the getaway car, was sentenced to 59 years and eight months.

In addition to the double homicide, they were convicted for the attempted murder of Fernanda Chaves, Franco’s press officer at the time, who was in the car.

Lessa and de Queiroz, who were arrested in 2019, had previously signed plea bargains, but the jury in Rio de Janeiro had final word on their guilt.

Prosecutors at the two-day trial had argued each man should be sentenced to the maximum possible 84 years.

By signing plea bargains – which led to the May arrests of the masterminds: two politicians and a former police chief – the defendants will have their sentences reduced. However, prosecutors declined to specify by how much, citing confidentiality of the previously signed agreements.

The crime was one of the most shocking and high-profile murders in Rio’s history: Franco, a gay Black woman, was a rising political star, and an outspoken critic of police violence and corruption.

Thursday’s verdict offered a measure of solace to her family and supporters, but marked just the first step towards justice: a second trial is yet to come for the men accused of ordering Franco’s death.

The case against the masterminds – two influential Rio politicians, Domingos and Chiquinho Brazão, and Rivaldo Barbosa, a former police chief – is under way in the supreme court and no trial date has been set yet.

Announcing the sentences, Judge Glioche said: “The jury is a democracy – a democracy which Marielle Franco defended.”

Addressing the two defendants she said: “This sentence is directed at the defendants here, but also at the many Lessas and Queirozes who exist in Rio and remain at large.”

Members of the two victims’ families hugged each other as the sentence was declared.

At a press conference afterwards, Franco’s daughter, Luyara, said the trial outcome “is a victory for Brazil’s democracy”. She added: “There are still many steps ahead in this case, but today the first step toward justice for them has certainly been taken, and we will keep fighting.”

Marielle’s widow, Monica Benicio, said the convictions are “a message that politicians cannot use murder as a means to conduct politics”.

During the trial, Lessa – whom the federal police accuse of being a contract killer – again admitted to the crime, speaking coldly about the murder.

According to him, the Brazão brothers – long accused of involvement with paramilitary mafia groups known as militias – ordered the killing after becoming frustrated by Franco’s efforts to disrupt profitable housing development plans.

“The masterminds saw Franco as an obstacle and wanted to deal with her at any cost,” he said, at times referring to the councillor not by name, but as “the target.” Lessa claimed he would receive land plots valued at 25m reais (£3.3m) as payment.

The now-convicted men participated in the trial via video link from the prisons where they are held.

Before Marielle Franco’s mother, Marinete Silva, testified, prosecutors asked if she wanted Lessa and Queiroz removed from the broadcast. She declined, and during her statement, she called both men “cowards”.

“I’m not here to talk about Marielle as a councillor or as a symbol of resistance for Brazil and the world,” she said. “I’m here as a mother who has suffered all these years from the loss of her daughter.”

Also invited to testify, Franco’s widow, Benicio, said that she was living “the happiest moment of her life”, shortly after becoming Rio de Janeiro’s fifth-most-voted councillor in her first election.

Gomes’s widow, Ágatha Arnaus, recounted that her husband – who left behind a son who was one year and eight months old at the time of the crime – was in the final stages of a selection process to work as an aircraft mechanic, his childhood dream.

The sole survivor from that night, Fernanda Chaves, also testified by video call – she had to leave Brazil in the following months, and since returning has lived outside Rio.

She celebrated Franco’s legacy; Chaves had been Franco’s press officer and friend for 15 years. “These people took Marielle from us, but they couldn’t interrupt what Marielle stands for. They [the killers and masterminds] will spend the rest of their lives in misery, having to hear ‘Marielle lives’ … and seeing her face on walls around the world,” she said.

Lessa and Queiroz were tried by a jury made up entirely of men (seven in total), all middle-aged. During the preliminary selection, the defence used its veto to block the only two women who had been chosen.

Following the verdict, Franco’s sister and Brazil’s current minister for racial equality, Anielle Franco, said that “people need to stop normalising so many bodies falling across the country”. She added, “When they murdered my sister, with those four shots to the head, they could not have imagined the strength with which this country and the world would rise up.

“What happened today is just part of the response we expect. Justice began to be served today,” she said.

Two former police officers who confessed to the murder of Rio city councillor Marielle Franco have been sentenced to decades in prison for their part in a crime that shook Brazil and cast a harsh spotlight on the links between politics and organised crime.

Ronnie Lessa admitted to firing 14 shots in the 2018 drive-by shooting that killed Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes, 39, and was sentenced to 78 years and nine months. Élcio de Queiroz, who confessed to driving the getaway car, was sentenced to 59 years and eight months.

In addition to the double homicide, they were convicted for the attempted murder of Fernanda Chaves, Franco’s press officer at the time, who was in the car.

Lessa and de Queiroz, who were arrested in 2019, had previously signed plea bargains, but the jury in Rio de Janeiro had final word on their guilt.

Prosecutors at the two-day trial had argued each man should be sentenced to the maximum possible 84 years.

By signing plea bargains – which led to the May arrests of the masterminds: two politicians and a former police chief – the defendants will have their sentences reduced. However, prosecutors declined to specify by how much, citing confidentiality of the previously signed agreements.

The crime was one of the most shocking and high-profile murders in Rio’s history: Franco, a gay Black woman, was a rising political star, and an outspoken critic of police violence and corruption.

Thursday’s verdict offered a measure of solace to her family and supporters, but marked just the first step towards justice: a second trial is yet to come for the men accused of ordering Franco’s death.

The case against the masterminds – two influential Rio politicians, Domingos and Chiquinho Brazão, and Rivaldo Barbosa, a former police chief – is under way in the supreme court and no trial date has been set yet.

Announcing the sentences, Judge Glioche said: “The jury is a democracy – a democracy which Marielle Franco defended.”

Addressing the two defendants she said: “This sentence is directed at the defendants here, but also at the many Lessas and Queirozes who exist in Rio and remain at large.”

Members of the two victims’ families hugged each other as the sentence was declared.

At a press conference afterwards, Franco’s daughter, Luyara, said the trial outcome “is a victory for Brazil’s democracy”. She added: “There are still many steps ahead in this case, but today the first step toward justice for them has certainly been taken, and we will keep fighting.”

Marielle’s widow, Monica Benicio, said the convictions are “a message that politicians cannot use murder as a means to conduct politics”.

During the trial, Lessa – whom the federal police accuse of being a contract killer – again admitted to the crime, speaking coldly about the murder.

According to him, the Brazão brothers – long accused of involvement with paramilitary mafia groups known as militias – ordered the killing after becoming frustrated by Franco’s efforts to disrupt profitable housing development plans.

“The masterminds saw Franco as an obstacle and wanted to deal with her at any cost,” he said, at times referring to the councillor not by name, but as “the target.” Lessa claimed he would receive land plots valued at 25m reais (£3.3m) as payment.

The now-convicted men participated in the trial via video link from the prisons where they are held.

Before Marielle Franco’s mother, Marinete Silva, testified, prosecutors asked if she wanted Lessa and Queiroz removed from the broadcast. She declined, and during her statement, she called both men “cowards”.

“I’m not here to talk about Marielle as a councillor or as a symbol of resistance for Brazil and the world,” she said. “I’m here as a mother who has suffered all these years from the loss of her daughter.”

Also invited to testify, Franco’s widow, Benicio, said that she was living “the happiest moment of her life”, shortly after becoming Rio de Janeiro’s fifth-most-voted councillor in her first election.

Gomes’s widow, Ágatha Arnaus, recounted that her husband – who left behind a son who was one year and eight months old at the time of the crime – was in the final stages of a selection process to work as an aircraft mechanic, his childhood dream.

The sole survivor from that night, Fernanda Chaves, also testified by video call – she had to leave Brazil in the following months, and since returning has lived outside Rio.

She celebrated Franco’s legacy; Chaves had been Franco’s press officer and friend for 15 years. “These people took Marielle from us, but they couldn’t interrupt what Marielle stands for. They [the killers and masterminds] will spend the rest of their lives in misery, having to hear ‘Marielle lives’ … and seeing her face on walls around the world,” she said.

Lessa and Queiroz were tried by a jury made up entirely of men (seven in total), all middle-aged. During the preliminary selection, the defence used its veto to block the only two women who had been chosen.

Following the verdict, Franco’s sister and Brazil’s current minister for racial equality, Anielle Franco, said that “people need to stop normalising so many bodies falling across the country”. She added, “When they murdered my sister, with those four shots to the head, they could not have imagined the strength with which this country and the world would rise up.

“What happened today is just part of the response we expect. Justice began to be served today,” she said.

A New York man who turned a rescued squirrel into a social media star called Peanut is pleading with state authorities to return his beloved pet after they seized it during a raid that also yielded a raccoon named Fred.

Multiple anonymous complaints about Peanut – also spelled P’Nut or PNUT – brought at least six officers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to Mark Longo’s home on Wednesday, Longo said.

“The DEC came to my house and raided my house without a search warrant to find a squirrel!” said Longo,from Pine City. “I was treated as if I was a drug dealer and they were going for drugs and guns.”

The officers left with Peanut, who has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, TikTok and other platforms during his seven years with Longo. They also took Fred, a more recent addition to the family.

By Thursday night, Longo had gathered nearly 20,000 signatures urging the return of Peanut, and says he has hired a legal team to get Peanut back.

A spokesperson for the DEC said in a statement that the agency had started an investigation after receiving “multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets.”

Longo, who runs an animal refuge inspired by his squirrel buddy called P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary, took to Instagram to mourn Peanut’s loss and said he fears that Peanut has been euthanised. “I don’t know if Peanut is alive,” he said in a phone interview on Thursday. “I don’t know where he is.”

The DEC spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether Peanut had been euthanised.

Longo said he took in Peanut seven years ago after seeing Peanut’s mother get hit by a car in New York City. Longo brought Peanut home and cared for him for eight months before trying to release the squirrel. “A day and a half later I found him sitting on my porch missing half of his tail with his bone sticking out,” Longo said.

Longo decided that Peanut lacked the survival skills to live in the wild and would remain an indoor squirrel.

Internet fame followed, after Longo posted videos of Peanut playing with his cat.

An Instagram account dedicated to Peanut shows the animal leaping on to Longo’s shoulder, wearing a miniature cowboy hat, and eating a waffle while wearing crocheted bunny ears.

Over the years Peanut’s story has been featured on TV and newspapers including USA Today.

Longo, who works as a mechanical engineer, was living in Norwalk, Connecticut, until he decided to move to upstate New York last year to start an animal sanctuary. P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary opened in April 2023 and now houses about 300 animals including horses, goats and alpacas, said Longo, who runs the sanctuary with his wife, Daniela, and other family members.

Longo is aware that it’s against New York state law to own a wild animal without a licence. He said he was in the process of filing paperwork to get Peanut certified as an educational animal.

“If we’re not following the rules, guide us in the right direction to follow the rules, you know?” Longo said. “Let us know what we need to do to have Peanut in the house and not have to worry about him getting taken.”

As for Fred, Longo said he had had the raccoon for only a few months and was hoping to rehabilitate the injured creature and release him back into the woods.

Longo is not the first animal owner to protest against the confiscation of a pet by New York authorities. A Buffalo-area man whose alligator was seized by the DEC in March is suing the agency to get the 750lb (340kg) reptile back.

Senior US officials have held talks in Israel aimed at brokering a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, on a day when more civilians in both countries were killed in the year-long war.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, who had expressed optimism of a speedy settlement “in hours or days” earlier on Thursday, said that Israel’s “ongoing escalation” in his country “does not inspire optimism”.

The country’s health ministry said that Israeli attacks had killed 45 people in the previous 24 hours, amid bombing in the north-east Bekaa valley and infantry battles in the south. In one Bekaa village, eight people were killed from the same family.

In northern Israel, seven people were killed by rocket fire from Lebanon, including four Thai agricultural workers, in the worst civilian losses in Israel on a single day since Israel began its ground incursions into Lebanon on 1 October.

Israel issued its second evacuation order for the city of Baalbek and two surrounding villages in the Bekaa valley on Thursday afternoon, carrying out a series of airstrikes on the village of Durous a few hours later. The evacuation orders had prompted a mass exodus of residents from the city, which is home to a Unesco world heritage site.

Despite the evacuation order and danger from Israeli bombing, some residents remained. In Bednayel, a village on the outskirts of Baalbek, rescuers pulled a corpse out of the rubble of a collapsed building levelled in an Israeli airstrike the night before. Eight people from the same family were killed in the strike.

“The whole village shook. I came here and I pulled my brother out from the rubble. I pulled out pieces of him,” said Fadi, a 30-year-old owner of a gaming cafe, whose house was destroyed and family killed in the airstrike.

He dismissed talk of a pause in the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, saying: “We don’t want a ceasefire, we want to pray at al-Aqsa mosque [in Jerusalem]. I want to take revenge, from the person who dropped the missile to the one who gave the order, [Benjamin] Netanyahu.”

The bombing and evacuation order also affected the operations of the nearby Dar Al Amal hospital, which sits on the edge of Israel’s designated area of operations in Baalbek. Of the hospital’s usual 700 staff, only 350 remain, the rest being displaced, according to the hospital director, Ali Allam. Three nurses have been killed in Israeli airstrikes over the last month while they were off duty.

Two senior US envoys, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, met Netanyahu at his office on Thursday to talk about a ceasefire proposal for Lebanon. Later, Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister had “thanked our American friends for their efforts” but “made it clear that the main point is not this or that agreement on paper but Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon, in a manner that will return our residents securely to their homes”.

According to the Israeli state broadcaster, Kan, the US-proposed deal is similar to the agreement which ended the last Israeli-Hezbollah war in 2006. Israel would withdraw its forces from Lebanon within the first week of the agreement. The Lebanese army would be deployed along the border, while Hezbollah would end its armed presence in the south.

Israel would still have the right to target Hezbollah in self-defence and to take steps to ensure Hezbollah does not reconstitute in the south, while Israeli aircraft would continue to be able to carry out aerial reconnaissance over Lebanon. It is far from clear such conditions would be acceptable to either the Lebanese government or Hezbollah.

Thursday’s Hezbollah attack on Israel came in two main salvoes, the first in the morning when a rocket barrage fell on fields around the northern town of Metula close to the Lebanese border. The area has been evacuated but farmers are still allowed to cultivate their land during the day, mostly with migrant workers. Four of the five victims of the Metula barrage were Thai migrant workers and the fifth was an Israeli farmer.

A few hours later, a second salvo of 25 rockets hit an olive grove near Haifa where people had gathered for the harvest. The Israeli health authorities said a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman were killed.

In the West Bank, Palestinian authorities said three people had been killed in an Israeli raid. The Israeli army said it was targeting militants in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, and had killed a Hamas militant who was involved in planning attacks.

A senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse that the group rejected any proposal for a temporary truce with Israel, an idea reportedly floated at talks in Doha over the weekend. The group is insisting on a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Also on Thursday, Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UN Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa, accused Israel of severely damaging the organisation’s headquarters in the West Bank’s Nur Shams camp.

The Israeli military, however, denied responsibility for the damage, saying: “The claim that the Unrwa offices in Nur Shams were destroyed by IDF soldiers is false.

“Terrorists planted explosives in the proximity of the Unrwa offices that were then detonated in an attempt to harm IDF soldiers. The explosives likely caused damage to the structure.”

On Monday, Israel passed a law banning Unrwa from operating in the country, which could impair its work in wartorn Gaza.

A British Columbia judge has issued a rare, last-minute injunction barring a woman from accessing euthanasia after physicians in her home province refused to approve the request.

The injunction, granted to the woman’s common law partner, blocks the Vancouver physician Ellen Wiebe, or any other medical professional, from “causing the death” of an Alberta woman within the next 30 days.

The court order comes as the country remains in a fractious debate over the expansion of medical assistance in dying, or Maid. Earlier this week, Quebec became the first province to allow people to make the decision years in advance – a violation of federal law.

While official figures show the vast majority of people accessing Maid have terminal illnesses, critics worry that a small, but growing proportion of the cases reflect poverty and social inequality pushing people to end their lives.

In the British Columbia case, the injunction comes after the woman’s partner filed a notice of civil claim alleging Wiebe negligently approved the procedure for a patient who does not legally qualify, and if she were to administer Maid would “constitute a battery of (the patient), wrongful death and, potentially a criminal offence”, according to the Canadian Press.

According to court documents, the 53-year-old woman traveled from Alberta to BC to access Maid after doctors in her home province refused to grant approval.

The woman had applied for Maid citing akathisia, a movement disorder linked to changing doses of psychotropic or antipsychotic medication. The woman experienced
“distressing side-effects” after reducing her dosage of a medication used to treat bipolar disorder. Among the symptoms were “an inner sense of terror all day long, the inability to sleep at night, nightmares, the inability to lie down during the day due to a feeling of falling, the inability to sit or remain still, suicidal thoughts”.

The woman and her partner were told that the condition was treatable and that the symptoms could resolve within months, according to court documents. As a result, doctors did not approve her request for assisted death.

The woman found Wiebe and met with her via Zoom. “At the end of the first meeting, Dr Wiebe approved [the woman] for Maid,” the claim says.

Wiebe, a clinical professor at the University of British Columbia, has emerged as a fierce advocate for Maid, arguing the current laws are meant to acknowledge “basic human rights”.

The British Columbia lawsuit alleges that Wiebe did not consult with the woman’s doctors, nor did she request the patient’s full medical records. Instead, Wiebe is alleged to have only reviewed a portion of the woman’s medical records by email.

In Canada, the euthanasia framework has two “tracks” – one for terminal conditions and another where “natural death is not reasonably foreseeable”. Applicants whose medical condition is mental illness will remain ineligible until at least March 2027.

In cases where the applicant suffers from a chronic, irremediable physical condition, federal law requires that a second, independent doctor also approve the request. The lawsuit alleges that did not happen in the case of the Alberta woman.

Wiebe declined to comment.

In his ruling, Simon Coval, a BC supreme court justice, said the woman appeared to have a mental health condition with no physical ailment. He said he approved the request because the case was “clearly a situation of extreme irreparable harm” if she followed through on her plan to die on 27 October.

Coval acknowledged the injunction “is a severe intrusion” into the woman’s personal and medical autonomy.

“I can only imagine the pain she has been experiencing and I recognize that this injunction will likely make that worse,” he wrote. But he questioned whether the Maid standards were properly applied, given that her condition “may not only be remediable, but remediable relatively quickly”.

A British Columbia judge has issued a rare, last-minute injunction barring a woman from accessing euthanasia after physicians in her home province refused to approve the request.

The injunction, granted to the woman’s common law partner, blocks the Vancouver physician Ellen Wiebe, or any other medical professional, from “causing the death” of an Alberta woman within the next 30 days.

The court order comes as the country remains in a fractious debate over the expansion of medical assistance in dying, or Maid. Earlier this week, Quebec became the first province to allow people to make the decision years in advance – a violation of federal law.

While official figures show the vast majority of people accessing Maid have terminal illnesses, critics worry that a small, but growing proportion of the cases reflect poverty and social inequality pushing people to end their lives.

In the British Columbia case, the injunction comes after the woman’s partner filed a notice of civil claim alleging Wiebe negligently approved the procedure for a patient who does not legally qualify, and if she were to administer Maid would “constitute a battery of (the patient), wrongful death and, potentially a criminal offence”, according to the Canadian Press.

According to court documents, the 53-year-old woman traveled from Alberta to BC to access Maid after doctors in her home province refused to grant approval.

The woman had applied for Maid citing akathisia, a movement disorder linked to changing doses of psychotropic or antipsychotic medication. The woman experienced
“distressing side-effects” after reducing her dosage of a medication used to treat bipolar disorder. Among the symptoms were “an inner sense of terror all day long, the inability to sleep at night, nightmares, the inability to lie down during the day due to a feeling of falling, the inability to sit or remain still, suicidal thoughts”.

The woman and her partner were told that the condition was treatable and that the symptoms could resolve within months, according to court documents. As a result, doctors did not approve her request for assisted death.

The woman found Wiebe and met with her via Zoom. “At the end of the first meeting, Dr Wiebe approved [the woman] for Maid,” the claim says.

Wiebe, a clinical professor at the University of British Columbia, has emerged as a fierce advocate for Maid, arguing the current laws are meant to acknowledge “basic human rights”.

The British Columbia lawsuit alleges that Wiebe did not consult with the woman’s doctors, nor did she request the patient’s full medical records. Instead, Wiebe is alleged to have only reviewed a portion of the woman’s medical records by email.

In Canada, the euthanasia framework has two “tracks” – one for terminal conditions and another where “natural death is not reasonably foreseeable”. Applicants whose medical condition is mental illness will remain ineligible until at least March 2027.

In cases where the applicant suffers from a chronic, irremediable physical condition, federal law requires that a second, independent doctor also approve the request. The lawsuit alleges that did not happen in the case of the Alberta woman.

Wiebe declined to comment.

In his ruling, Simon Coval, a BC supreme court justice, said the woman appeared to have a mental health condition with no physical ailment. He said he approved the request because the case was “clearly a situation of extreme irreparable harm” if she followed through on her plan to die on 27 October.

Coval acknowledged the injunction “is a severe intrusion” into the woman’s personal and medical autonomy.

“I can only imagine the pain she has been experiencing and I recognize that this injunction will likely make that worse,” he wrote. But he questioned whether the Maid standards were properly applied, given that her condition “may not only be remediable, but remediable relatively quickly”.

Elon Musk failed to show up to a required hearing in a Philadelphia case challenging his $1m-a-day sweepstakes. His absence would have risked contempt of court had the case continued in Pennsylvania court, but it was moved to federal court in response to a motion filed by Musk’s attorneys, who did attend the hearing. No hearings were immediately scheduled in the federal case.

Judge Angelo Foglietta agreed that Musk, as a named defendant in the lawsuit filed by the district attorney, Larry Krasner, should have attended the hearing in person, but he declined to immediately sanction the tech mogul. Musk’s attorney said his client could not “materialize” in the courtroom with notice only given the night before.

Krasner’s team challenged the notion that the founder of SpaceX could not make it to Philadelphia, prompting a quick retort from the judge.

“Counsel, he’s not going to get in a rocket ship and land on the building,” Foglietta replied.

On Wednesday, the judge had ordered all parties to attend the Thursday morning hearing, including Musk. Musk’s attorneys had filed a motion to shift the suit from Pennsylvania state court to federal court in a filing late that day, which was granted shortly after Musk did not appear.

Lawyers for the Philadelphia district attorney’s office requested the case be returned to state court, calling the move to the higher court a “cowardly” delay tactic meant to “run the clock until election day”. The federal judge assigned to the case ordered Musk’s attorneys to respond by Friday morning. Musk’s counsel had argued that state court was not the proper venue and that the Philadelphia district attorney was engaging in thinly veiled electioneering.

“Rather, although disguised as state law claims, the complaint’s focus is to prevent defendants’ purported ‘interference’ with the forthcoming federal presidential election by any means,” the Tesla CEO’s attorneys wrote.

In the original suit, Krasner argued that Musk’s petition and associated contest were “indisputably violating” specific Pennsylvania laws against illegal lotteries. Musk’s attorneys said he was engaging in legally protected political speech and spending.

John Summers, an attorney for the DA’s office, told the judge on Thursday that Musk’s Pac had “brazenly” continued the sweepstakes despite the lawsuit, awarding about 13 checks of $1m since the contest began, including on the day of the hearing.

“They’re doing things in the dark. We don’t know the rules being followed. We don’t know how they’re supposedly picking people at random,” Summers said. “It’s an outrage.”

The cash giveaways come from Musk’s political organization, which aims to boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the vital swing state, which is seen as a key to victory by both Trump and his opponent, Kamala Harris.

Krasner, a Democrat, filed suit on Monday to stop the America Pac sweepstakes, which is set to run through election day and is open to registered voters in swing states who sign a petition supporting the constitution. Musk has been tweeting photographs of the winners holding novelty checks.

Krasner has said he could still consider criminal charges, saying he is tasked with protecting the public from both illegal lotteries and “interference with the integrity of elections”.

Election law experts have raised questions about whether Musk’s drawing violates a federal law barring someone from paying others to vote. Musk has cast the money as both a prize as well as earnings for work as a spokesperson for the group.

Rapper Young Thug pleaded guilty Thursday in Atlanta, Georgia, to gang, drug and gun charges.

The 33-year-old Grammy-winning artist, whose given name is Jeffery Williams, entered his pleas without reaching a deal with prosecutors after negotiations between the two sides broke down, lead prosecutor Adriane Love said. That leaves the sentence completely up to the judge.

Young Thug pleaded guilty to one gang charge, three drug charges and two gun charges. He also entered a no-contest plea to another gang charge and a racketeering conspiracy charge, meaning that he decided not to contest those charges and accepts punishment for them.

The judge was hearing from Love and from defense attorney Brian Steel before making a sentencing decision.

A tremendously successful rapper, Young Thug started his own record label, Young Stoner Life or YSL. Prosecutors have said he also co-founded a violent criminal street gang and that YSL stands for Young Slime Life.

He was charged two years ago in a sprawling indictment accusing him and more than two dozen other people of conspiring to violate Georgia’s anti-racketeering law. He also was charged with gang, drug and gun crimes.

Young Thug’s plea comes nearly a year after the prosecution began presenting evidence in the problem-plagued trial. Jury selection at the courthouse in Atlanta began in January 2023 and took nearly 10 months. The trial of six defendants began with opening statements last November, and prosecutors since then have called dozens of witnesses.

Three of his co-defendants had already pleaded guilty this week after reaching deals with prosecutors. The pleas leave the fates of two other co-defendants still undecided.

Nine people charged in the indictment accepted plea deals before the trial began. Twelve others are being tried separately. Prosecutors dropped charges against one defendant after he was convicted of murder in an unrelated case.

The Kremlin has said that Russia’s huge fines imposed on Google were largely symbolic and designed to spur the US tech company into lifting restrictions on Russian YouTube channels.

The total sum of legal claims against Google in Russia has reached two undecillion roubles ($20 decillion), according to the Russian news outlet RBK, a figure higher than all the money in the world combined.

“I can’t even pronounce this number, but it is more likely imbued with symbolism,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told Russian news agencies.

“Google should not restrict the actions of our broadcasters, but it does. This should be a reason for Google’s management to pay attention to this and correct the situation,” he added.

Since launching its Ukraine offensive in February 2022, Russia has levied huge fines on social media companies accused of hosting Kremlin-critical or pro-Ukraine content.

YouTube is still available in Russia but authorities have repeatedly threatened to take it offline over its bans on state-owned Russian content.

Russian courts have repeatedly fined YouTube’s owner, Google, in an attempt to force the tech company into compliance, with the legal costs multiplying each day it fails to carry out Moscow’s demands.

A company that rents “sleeping pods” in downtown San Francisco for $700 a month has had 300 people apply for its remaining 17 beds, the company’s CEO said.

Brownstone Shared Housing describes its mission as “providing low cost housing in the most expensive cities”. Its bunkbed-style “pods” measure approximately 3.5ft-by-4ft-by-6.5ft, large enough to fit a twin mattress. The pods come with privacy curtains, inside lighting and charging ports.

A year ago, Brownstone’s sleeping pod facility, located in a former bank in downtown San Francisco, was flagged by the city’s department of building inspection for violating city codes, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Thirteen residents continued to live in the building during the code-enforcement process, James Stallworth, the company’s CEO, said.

While the facility had its planning department application approved earlier this fall, as multiple local news outlets reported, that approval was later rescinded because of a misrepresentation Stallworth made on the application, Dan Sider, the planning department’s chief of staff, told the Guardian.

The approval was rescinded over a misrepresentation of how many of the beds in the facility were deed-restricted affordable housing, Sider said.

“The building remains in violation of the planning and building codes, and while we continue to work with the proprietor to move his applications forward, we expect him to honor his agreement not to have new tenants move in until the issue is resolved, which should happen very soon,” Sider said.

“We’re trying to bring him across the finish line,” he added.

In a region wracked by an affordable housing crisis, but also seeing the draw of an artificial intelligence company gold rush, the demand for the $700 sleeping pods has been intense, with nearly 20 people applying for each remaining pod.

“Since it is affordable housing, we have to use the city of San Francisco’s process to fill some of the spots, but the rest are going to be filled through our online application process,” Stallworth told the Guardian.

He said that the code-enforcement process, which involved transitioning the building in San Francisco’s struggling downtown from an office to a residential space, had been “really slow”, but that the company was working on opening a second, larger San Francisco pod location, with a total of 100 sleeping pods, “early next year”.

Sider, of the city’s planning department, pushed back on that characterization, saying that Stallworth had not submitted his application until the end of July this year.

The company also offers sleeping pods in Palo Alto, where a sleeping pod near Stanford University goes for $800 a month, including utilities. The rent also includes internet, utilities and access to shared bathrooms, storage and a shared kitchen.

• This article was amended on 31 October 2024 to clarify that the city rescinded its approval of Brownstone Shared Housing’s application and the facility is not yet permitted to house additional tenants.