A New York author and journalist has released audio tapes that appear to detail how Donald Trump had a close social relationship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that he has long denied.

The tapes, released as part of the Fire and Fury podcast series by Michael Wolff, author of three books about Trump’s first term and 2020 bid for a second, and James Truman, former NME journalist and Condé Nast editorial director, include Epstein’s thoughts about the inner workings of the former US president’s inner circle.

Wolff says the recordings were made during a 2017 discussion with Epstein about writing his biography. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges two years later. Despite his crimes, the wealthy financier was at the heart of a social circle of the rich and powerful in the US and overseas that contained many famous names.

Wolff claims the excerpt tape is a mere fraction of some “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his longstanding, deep relationship with Donald Trump”.

Trump once praised Epstein in conversation with New York magazine in 2002, calling him “a terrific guy” and hinted at his interest in women “on the young side”. But he claimed the pair had fallen out 15 years before Epstein was convicted on a prostitution solicitation charge in Florida in 2008.

“I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” the president said after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.

The Fire and Fury tapes reveal Epstein recalling how then president Trump played his circle off against each other. “His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside,” he says.

The author names Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway as being among the acolytes and officials Trump played off each other like courtiers in a competitive court.

“He will tell 10 people ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kellyanne has a big mouth – what do you think?’

“‘[JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to [financier] Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson.’”

Epstein continues his exposition of Trump’s approach to management: “So Kelly[anne] – even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband – Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard. And then he tells Bannon: ‘You know I really want to keep you but Kellyanne hates you.’”

In response to the podcast, Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said, “Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics” and accused the author of making “outlandish false smears” and engaging in “blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris”.

Wolffs claims on the podcast that he became an “outlet” for Epstein “to express his incredulity about someone whose sins he knew so well, and then this person actually being elected president. Epstein was utterly preoccupied with Trump, and I think, frankly, afraid of him.”

In the broadest strokes, Wolff’s intention is to paint a picture of two wealthy men of the 1980s whose shared interests lie in money, women and status. He describes how they socialized together in New York.

The Guardian recently revealed that in 1993 Epstein had taken Stacey Williams, a Sports Illustrated model and his girlfriend of two months, to Trump’s Fifth Avenue penthouse and allowed or perhaps encouraged the former US president to grope her in what she described as a “twisted game”.

Speaking on the podcast, Wolff said: “Here are these two guys both driven by a need to do anything they wanted with women: dominance and submission and entertainment. And one of them ends up in the darkest prison in the country and the other in the White House.”

Supporters of Bolivia’s ex-president Evo Morales stormed a barracks in the central Chapare region and took about 20 soldiers hostage, military sources said on Friday, marking a dramatic escalation in their standoff with the state.

The hostage situation comes nearly three weeks after backers of Morales – the country’s first Indigenous leader – began blocking roads to prevent his arrest on what he calls trumped-up rape charges aimed at thwarting his political comeback.

Morales, 65, was in office from 2006 to 2019, when he resigned under pressure from the military after elections marked by allegations of fraud.

Bolivia’s armed forces said on Friday in a statement that “irregular armed groups” had “kidnapped military personnel” and seized weapons and ammunition in the Chapare.

A military source told AFP on condition of anonymity that “about 20” soldiers were taken hostage.

In a video broadcast by Bolivian media, 16 soldiers were seen surrounded by protesters holding pointed sticks aloft.

“The Cacique Maraza Regiment has been taken over by Tipnis activists. They have cut off our water, electricity and are keeping us hostage,” a uniformed man is heard saying in the video.

Tipnis is an Indigenous stronghold of Morales’s.

Despite being barred from running again, Morales wants to challenge his former ally turned rival President Luis Arce for the nomination of the leftwing Mas party in the country’s August 2025 presidential election.

Days after Morales led a march of thousands of mainly Indigenous Bolivians on the administrative capital La Paz to protest against Arce’s policies, prosecutors announced he was under investigation for rape, human trafficking and human smuggling over his alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl in 2015.

Morales, who is accused of fathering a daughter with the girl, has called the accusations “a lie”.

On Wednesday, Arce demanded an “immediate” end to the roadblocks and said the government would “exercise its constitutional powers to safeguard the interests of the Bolivian people” if the protesters did not comply.

His warning was interpreted by some Bolivians as a threat to use the military to end the blockade, which has caused widespread food and fuel shortages and prompted prices of basic goods to soar.

The Chapare is where Morales claimed he was the victim of an assassination attempt last week that he blamed on state agents.

In a video he shared on social media, he is seen travelling in a pickup truck riddled with bullet holes near the city of Cochabamba.

The government said police fired on the vehicle after coming under fire from Morales’s convoy at a checkpoint set up to combat drug trafficking in the Chapare, one of the country’s main coca-growing regions.

Morales, a former coca grower, was extremely popular until he tried to bypass the constitution and seek a fourth term.

His supporters initially demanded an end to what they called his “judicial persecution”, but the protest movement has snowballed into a wider anti-government revolt marked by calls for Arce to resign.

Morales’s supporters, who have vowed not to budge from the barricades, blame Arce for a sharp rise in food and fuel prices and shortages that pre-date the protests.

At least 61 police officers and nine civilians have been injured in clashes between the protesters and security forces in recent days.

Arce has estimated the economic cost of the blockades at more than $1.7bn (£1.3bn).

Donald Trump repeated his aggressive attack on Liz Cheney at a rally in Michigan on Friday, one day after he first said the former Republican US representative should be under fire with rifles “shooting at her”.

Trump’s comments came as the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, with both the former president and his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, battling to woo voters in Michigan and other key swing states.

Harris made several appearances in Wisconsin on Friday, including one that featured the musician Cardi B, while Trump visited both Michigan and Wisconsin.

At his rally in Warren, Michigan, on Friday afternoon, Trump tried to energize his voters, delivering an address replete with his characteristic fear-mongering about immigrants and tangents including musings about his hair.

Harris sought to draw a contrast, emphasizing at a rally in Wisconsin in the afternoon that she is looking to be a political consensus builder.

“Here is my pledge to you. Here is my pledge to you as president. I pledge to seek common ground and commonsense solutions to the challenges you face,” Harris said. “I pledge to listen to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make. I will listen to experts. I will listen to the people who disagree with me. Because, you see, unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy.”

“He wants to put them in jail,” Harris said, repeating a line she’s has frequently invoked of late. “I’ll give them a seat at the table.”

During his appearance in Warren, Trump repeatedly stoked fears about immigrants, saying “every state is a border state” and falsely claiming immigrants were being flown into the south-west.

He repeated some of his most racist tropes, saying: “All of our jobs are are being taken by the migrants that come into our country illegally and many of those migrants happen to be criminals, and some of them happen to be murderers.”

The former president tried to tie Harris to the most recent jobs report, which showed the US added just 12,000 jobs in October.

And he again attacked Cheney, one day after he called her a “radical war hawk” in a conversation with Tucker Carlson and said she should face being under fire with rifles “shooting at her”.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said.

On Friday, Trump’s comments were similar.

“She’s tough one. But if you gave Liz Cheney a gun, put her into battle facing the other side with guns pointing at her. she wouldn’t have the courage or the strength or the stamina to even look the enemy in the eye,” Trump said.

“That’s why I broke up with her,” Trump commented, prompting some laughs.

There was time for reflection, too. “We’re gonna miss these rallies, aren’t we?” Trump asked the crowd at one juncture.

At another point, he remarked: “I’m studying my hair. It looks not so good today … not a good hair day for me, ay ay ay.”

At a rally for Harris in the evening, Cardi B said the vice-president had inspired her to vote. “I’m not giving Donald Trump a second chance,” Cardi B said. “I am not taking any chances with my future, and I damn sure ain’t taking no chances with the future of my children.

“I’m with Kamala.”

Harris turned her attention to young voters. “Here’s what I love about you guys. You are rightly impatient for change. You are determined to live free from gun violence. You are going to take on the climate crisis. You are going to shape the world you inherit. I know that. I know that,” she said.

She added: “And here’s the thing about our young leaders. None of this is theoretical for them. None of this is political for them. It’s their lived experience. It’s your lived experience, and I see your power, I see your power, and I am so proud of you.”

Trump and Harris are neck-and-neck in swing state polling, and in Michigan, a Detroit Free Press survey shows her having a three-point lead.

Republicans and Democrats, as well as their unofficial boosters, have pounced on the tight split. Harris’s camp is pushing hard to convince young voters, who overwhelmingly support the Democrats, to go out and vote.

With mere days to go before the 5 November election, some Democrats in Michigan described being “freaked out” by the prospect of another Trump victory in this state. Biden won Michigan in 2020, but Trump defeated Hillary Clinton here in 2016. Relying on polls showing her far ahead, the Clinton campaign had prioritized campaigning in other states, neglecting key Democratic segments such as Black communities and auto workers in the state.

Harris has spent more time on the ground in Michigan than in any other state with the exception of Pennsylvania. Harris and her running-mate, Tim Walz, have bounced around the state in an effort to attract Black voters, white suburban women, college students and factory workers.

Last week, Barack Obama rapped with hip-hop legend Eminem at a rally in Detroit. Bernie Sanders, beloved by the Democratic left, tried to reassure young voters in the state that Harris is not just another corporate-minded Democrat.

Trump, too, has upped his efforts to woo Michigan voters. On Friday, the former president stopped in Dearborn to court Arab-American voters, many of whom have been left deeply disappointed by Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Many of the city’s Muslim leaders declined to meet with Trump, including Dearborn’s mayor, Abdullah H Hammoud.

“The architect of the Muslim Ban is making a campaign stop in Dearborn. People in this community know what Trump stands for – we suffered through it for years,” Hammoud, a Democrat, said on X. “I’ve refused a sit down with him although the requests keep pouring in. Trump will never be my president.”

Hammoud, who is neither supporting Harris nor Trump in the race for president, also called fellow members of his party. “To the Dems – your unwillingness to stop funding & enabling a genocide created the space for Trump to infiltrate our communities. Remember that.”

Meanwhile, Michigan residents have for months been bombarded by campaign ads, many of which feature exaggerated or blatantly false claims. With the state seeing $759m in political ad spending, Michigan ranks among the top for such disbursements in this election, per NPR.

A Pittsburgh-area Halloween parade’s depiction of Kamala Harris in chains and being dragged by a vehicle displaying Donald Trump’s name is being condemned as racist – and has prompted an apology from the event organizer.

Photos of Wednesday night’s parade in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, that circulated widely across social media show a person dressed as the Democratic vice-president shackled and walking behind a golf cart-like vehicle. The vehicle – a float in a Halloween parade organized by the Mount Pleasant volunteer fire department – is decorated with American flags and Trump campaign signs carrying people dressed in what appear to be Secret Service agent costumes, along with a mounted rifle.

Social media was quick to express disgust at the float’s display, which came less than a week before the presidential election between Harris and the Republican former president comes to a head on 5 November.

The NAACP was among those to say the float was racist. A statement from Daylon A Davis, the president of the NAACP’s Pittsburgh branch, said: “This appalling portrayal goes beyond the realm of Halloween satire or free expression; it is a harmful symbol that evokes a painful history of violence, oppression, and racism that Black and Brown communities have long endured here in America.”

Harris is of Jamaican and Indian descent.

Nearly 24 hours after the parade, the Mount Pleasant volunteer fire department issued a statement apologizing on Facebook for allowing the offensive float.

“We do not share in the values represented by those participants, and we understand how it may have hurt or offended members of our community,” the statement said.

The post did not elaborate on the process of getting approved for the parade, leaving questions about how the float was allowed to roll.

On a CBS News segment, Mount Pleasant’s mayor, Diane Bailey, denounced the portrayal of Harris.

“I was appalled, angered, upset,” the Democratic mayor said on Thursday. “This does not belong in this parade or in this town.”

Bailey added that the fire department must change its process for allowing floats.

“They’ve never taken applications in the past,” Bailey said. “They’ve never vetted anyone who wanted to come to the parade.”

Michelle Milan McFall, the chairperson of Westmoreland county’s Democratic party, added that the float in question rolled during what she said may be the US’s “most contentious election”.

On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly threatened to imprison his opponents. He has also been targeted by two assassination attempts, according to authorities.

“It’s vile. It’s heartbreaking. It’s concerning. And I think it’s also got an element of danger,” Milan McFall told ABC affiliate WTAE. “Again, we’re living in this climate where people aren’t just thinking about hatred and feeling it in their guts and bones. They’re acting on it.”

Pennsylvania voters will be able to cast a provisional vote if they make an error and forget to put their mail-in vote in a required secrecy envelope, the US supreme court ruled on Friday, a decision that could lead to thousands more votes being counted in a key battleground state where the presidential race is extremely tight.

The supreme court announced its decision on Friday on its emergency docket, giving no reasoning for its ruling, which is customary in emergency cases.

Republicans had asked the court to intervene after the Pennsylvania supreme court ruled 4-3 earlier this week that voters should not be disenfranchised if they forget the secrecy envelope. Voters in Pennsylvania must place their ballots in two envelopes: an inner envelope that ensures its secrecy, and an outer envelope that they mail.

Pennsylvania law does not allow for a voter to cast a provisional ballot – an emergency vote at the polls – if they have cast a timely mail-in vote. But a majority of justices on the state supreme court said that a ballot that was rejected because it lacked a secrecy envelope did not count as a cast ballot. “Because electors failed to comply with the mandatory secrecy envelope requirement, they failed to cast a ballot,” the state supreme court wrote.

The scope of the ruling is not immediately clear. As of Thursday, nearly 9,000 out of 1.6m mail-in ballots returned had arrived without a secrecy envelope, the Associated Press reported. The NBC News decision desk estimated that thousands of votes could be affected in a state that could come down to extremely fine margins.

“In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks. Today’s decision confirms that, for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted,” read a joint statement from Kamala Harris’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Pennsylvania adopted a law in 2019 that allows all voters to cast a mail-in ballot. But the law is not clear when it comes to whether officials should be required to notify the voter of technical errors on their ballots – a missing secrecy envelope, signature, or date – and help them fix them.

Thirty-eight counties in the state notify voters of errors and give them the opportunity to fix it, according to an analysis by Votebeat. But the court’s decision on Friday means that any voter in Pennsylvania who has a ballot rejected on a technicality will have the chance to cast a provisional ballot on election day to be counted.

The dispute stemmed from a special election earlier this year in which two voters in Butler county, near Pittsburgh, had their mail-in ballots rejected, were invited to cast a provisional ballot, and then had their provisional ballots rejected.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote on Friday that the case before the court was relatively narrow, and that the court’s intervention at this stage would not prohibit any other Pennsylvania county from prohibit provisional voting. Still, he expressed openness to the argument from Republicans that the state supreme court may have exceeded its authority.

Alito’s statement, joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, was significant because he seemed to suggest that the court could use the case to revisit the question of how far state supreme courts can go in policing election laws.

The supreme court said last year that state courts can police election rules, but that sometimes they can go too far. It has declined to clarify the ambiguity of its ruling.

Pennsylvania is the biggest presidential election battleground this year, with 19 electoral votes. Donald Trump won the state in 2016, then lost it in 2020.

A judge in Erie county, in Pennsylvania’s north-western corner, ruled on Friday in a lawsuit brought by the Democratic party that about 15,000 people who applied for a mail ballot but did not receive it may go to the county elections office and get a replacement through Monday.

The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot has passed in Pennsylvania, the biggest presidential battleground this year and a state that has hosted far more visits by Trump and Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival, than any other.

The ruling means that Erie county’s elections office will be open every day through Monday for voters to go in, cancel the mail-in ballot they did not receive in the mail, and get another one over the counter, said Cliff Levine, a lawyer for the state Democratic party.

In suburban Philadelphia’s Bucks county, a court set a deadline of 5pm for voters there to apply for and receive a mail-in ballot.

Lines outside the elections office in Doylestown were long throughout the day – snaking down the sidewalk – with the process taking about two hours by Friday afternoon.

A Bucks county judge had ordered the three-day extension in response to a Trump campaign lawsuit alleging voters faced disenfranchisement when they were turned away by county application-processing offices that had struggled to keep up with demand, leading to frustration and anger among voters.

The Trump campaign lawsuit said people who were in line by Tuesday’s 5pm deadline to apply in person for a mail ballot should have been allowed to get a ballot, even after the deadline. However, Bucks county’s election office denied voters that right and ordered them to leave, the lawsuit said.

Bucks county judge Jeffrey Trauger ruled that the board of elections violated the state election code and ordered an extension through Friday.

Unlike other states, Pennsylvania does not have true early in-person voting. Voters can apply early for mail ballots online or in person at county election buildings.

Doing so in person can take about 12 minutes and requires applying for a mail ballot, waiting for a bar-coded envelope to be printed and then, if voters wish, they can cast the ballot on the spot. Or they can put it in a drop box or a mailbox. Election offices must receive the ballots by 8pm on Tuesday.

The winds of typhoon Kong-rey howled through the streets of the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, on Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, inside a brick and glass building people similarly wailed down the corridors of a branch of the Partyworld karaoke chain.

Through the poorly soundproofed door of one room voices warbled a song by the Taiwanese rock band Mayday, and through another came the sounds of a song by Coldplay. In room 330, someone made an exasperated search through the song list – “where is Kylie? What the hell! ” – as friends screamed lyrics from a Linkin Park track.

In the street the winds that would later bring down thousands of trees grew stronger, driven by the typhoon’s central vortex hundreds of miles to the south. But the treacherous weather did not stop what has become a modern day tradition in Taiwan’s cities: typhoon karaoke.

Kong-rey was the largest-sized typhoon to hit Taiwan in decades when it made landfall on Thursday and wreaked havoc on the island’s south. County governments nationwide had announced a “typhoon day” late on Wednesday night, closing schools and most businesses for Thursday and giving people a day off, ostensibly to shelter at home.

But for city people without other commitments, a typhoon day has come to mean one thing: KTV, as karaoke is known in Taiwan. And the karaoke joints, which unlike most hospitality venues will stay open during a typhoon, often book out within minutes.

Taiwan loves to sing. Its cities have hundreds, if not thousands, of KTV options. There are hundreds of venues like those in the Partyworld chain, two-person karaoke booths in metro stations, and at least a couple of karaoke taxis driving around. In 2023, more than half of Taiwanese respondents told a survey they had been to KTV in the past year, according to Statista.

Jean, Mana, Jimmy and Sarah spent most of Thursday afternoon inside a room with other friends, eating drinking and singing their favourite songs. Jean, a lawyer, does not get many days off – few people do in Taiwan, where workers are entitled to a minimum of three annual leave days in their first year, rising progressively to 15 after five years in a job.

“Last night, maybe about 9pm, we decided to have KTV time today, because we just heard about the typhoon day off,” said Jean. “You have to spend quite a long time to find an available KTV room today.”

On Thursday afternoon staff at the Zhongxiao Dunhua branch of Partyworld rushed to keep up with endless orders for dumplings, beef noodle soup and beer for the dozens of fully booked rooms.

A-han, a waiter who has worked at Partyworld for three years, said: “People are more relaxed and they order much more food and alcohol because they’re supposed to be at work, but they aren’t today.” A-han says typhoon days are always packed and he is run off his feet. But his employers provide a meal and a taxi to and from home and, as a student, he is grateful for the work.

When typhoon days are declared, people are supposed to stay at home, but some recent “typhoon days” in Taiwan’s north have brought only mild weather, prompting accusations that local officials are chasing popularity. There is also concern that people in Taiwan may become complacent about the threat posed by typhoons.

Kong-rey was the real deal, as groups like Jean and her friends discovered when they left Partyworld on Thursday evening. As they descended the stairs and left the venue – some staggering a little – the warblers found that the weather had taken a dramatic turn, with fierce winds blowing debris dangerously along footpaths.

Additional reporting by Amy Hawkins and Chi-hui Lin

The winds of typhoon Kong-rey howled through the streets of the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, on Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, inside a brick and glass building people similarly wailed down the corridors of a branch of the Partyworld karaoke chain.

Through the poorly soundproofed door of one room voices warbled a song by the Taiwanese rock band Mayday, and through another came the sounds of a song by Coldplay. In room 330, someone made an exasperated search through the song list – “where is Kylie? What the hell! ” – as friends screamed lyrics from a Linkin Park track.

In the street the winds that would later bring down thousands of trees grew stronger, driven by the typhoon’s central vortex hundreds of miles to the south. But the treacherous weather did not stop what has become a modern day tradition in Taiwan’s cities: typhoon karaoke.

Kong-rey was the largest-sized typhoon to hit Taiwan in decades when it made landfall on Thursday and wreaked havoc on the island’s south. County governments nationwide had announced a “typhoon day” late on Wednesday night, closing schools and most businesses for Thursday and giving people a day off, ostensibly to shelter at home.

But for city people without other commitments, a typhoon day has come to mean one thing: KTV, as karaoke is known in Taiwan. And the karaoke joints, which unlike most hospitality venues will stay open during a typhoon, often book out within minutes.

Taiwan loves to sing. Its cities have hundreds, if not thousands, of KTV options. There are hundreds of venues like those in the Partyworld chain, two-person karaoke booths in metro stations, and at least a couple of karaoke taxis driving around. In 2023, more than half of Taiwanese respondents told a survey they had been to KTV in the past year, according to Statista.

Jean, Mana, Jimmy and Sarah spent most of Thursday afternoon inside a room with other friends, eating drinking and singing their favourite songs. Jean, a lawyer, does not get many days off – few people do in Taiwan, where workers are entitled to a minimum of three annual leave days in their first year, rising progressively to 15 after five years in a job.

“Last night, maybe about 9pm, we decided to have KTV time today, because we just heard about the typhoon day off,” said Jean. “You have to spend quite a long time to find an available KTV room today.”

On Thursday afternoon staff at the Zhongxiao Dunhua branch of Partyworld rushed to keep up with endless orders for dumplings, beef noodle soup and beer for the dozens of fully booked rooms.

A-han, a waiter who has worked at Partyworld for three years, said: “People are more relaxed and they order much more food and alcohol because they’re supposed to be at work, but they aren’t today.” A-han says typhoon days are always packed and he is run off his feet. But his employers provide a meal and a taxi to and from home and, as a student, he is grateful for the work.

When typhoon days are declared, people are supposed to stay at home, but some recent “typhoon days” in Taiwan’s north have brought only mild weather, prompting accusations that local officials are chasing popularity. There is also concern that people in Taiwan may become complacent about the threat posed by typhoons.

Kong-rey was the real deal, as groups like Jean and her friends discovered when they left Partyworld on Thursday evening. As they descended the stairs and left the venue – some staggering a little – the warblers found that the weather had taken a dramatic turn, with fierce winds blowing debris dangerously along footpaths.

Additional reporting by Amy Hawkins and Chi-hui Lin

A federal jury on Friday convicted a former Kentucky police detective of using excessive force on Breonna Taylor during a botched 2020 drug raid that left her dead.

The 12-member jury returned the late-night verdict after clearing Brett Hankison earlier in the evening on a charge that he used excessive force on Taylor’s neighbors.

It’s the first conviction of a Louisville police officer who was involved in the deadly raid.

Some members of the jury were in tears as the verdict was read around 9:30 pm Friday. They had earlier indicated to the judge in two separate messages that they were deadlocked on the charge of using excessive force on Taylor but chose to continue deliberating. The six man, six woman jury deliberated for more than 20 hours over three days.

Hankison fired 10 shots into Taylor’s glass door and windows during the raid, but didn’t hit anyone. Some shots flew into a next-door neighbor’s adjoining apartment.

A separate jury deadlocked on federal charges against Hankison last year, while in 2022, a jury acquitted Hankison on state charges of wanton endangerment.

The conviction against Hankison carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The death of Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, along with the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked racial injustice protests across the U US.

Neither of the officers who shot Taylor – former Sgt John Mattingly and former Det Myles Cosgrove – were charged in Taylor’s death. Federal and state prosecutors have said those officers were justified in returning fire, since Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot at them first.

Hankison, 48, argued throughout the trial that he was acting to protect his fellow officers after Taylor’s boyfriend fired on them when they broke down Taylor’s door with a battering ram.

This jury had sent a note on Thursday to the US district judge Rebecca Grady Jennings asking whether they needed to know if Taylor was alive as Hankison fired his shots.

That was a point of contention during closing arguments, when Hankison’s attorney Don Malarcik told the jury that prosecutors must “prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms Taylor was alive” when Hankison fired.

After the jury sent the question, Jennings urged them to keep deliberating.

Walker shot and wounded one of the officers. Hankison testified that when Walker fired, he moved away, rounded the corner of the apartment unit and fired into Taylor’s glass door and a window.

Meanwhile, officers at the door returned Walker’s fire, hitting and killing Taylor, who was in a hallway.

Hankison’s lawyers argued during closing statements on Wednesday that Hankison was acting properly “in a very tense, very chaotic environment” that lasted about 12 seconds. They emphasized that Hankison’s shots didn’t hit anyone.

Hankison was one of four officers charged by the US Department of Justice in 2022 with violating Taylor’s civil rights. Thus far, those charges have yielded just one conviction: a plea deal from a former officer who was not at the raid and became a cooperating witness in another case.

The situation in the northern Gaza Strip is “apocalyptic” as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants in the area, top United Nations officials have warned.

“The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” they said in a statement on Friday signed by the heads of UN agencies, including the UN children’s agency Unicef and the World Food Programme, and other aid groups.

Israel began a wide military push in northern Gaza last month. The United States has said it was watching to ensure that its ally’s actions on the ground show it does not have a “policy of starvation” in the north.

But on Friday, the UN officials said humanitarian efforts could not keep up with the scale of the needs in northern Gaza, due to constraints on access for aid workers.

“Basic, life-saving goods are not available. Humanitarians are not safe to do their work and are blocked by Israeli forces and by insecurity from reaching people in need,” they said.

They urged all parties fighting in Gaza to protect civilians and called on Israel to “ceases its assault on Gaza and on the humanitarians trying to help”.

Israel’s UN mission in New York declined to comment on the statement.

Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, last month told the security council that the issue in Gaza was not a lack of aid, saying more than a million tons had been delivered during the past year. He accused Hamas of hijacking the assistance.

Hamas has repeatedly denied Israeli allegations that it was stealing aid and says Israel is to blame for shortages.

On Monday, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said about 100,000 people were marooned in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza without medical or food supplies. Reuters could not verify the number independently.

The USAid administrator, Samantha Power, spoke with Israel’s ambassador to the United States on Friday as a deadline imposed by Washington looms for Israel to improve the situation or face potential restrictions on US military aid.

Power and Herzog “discussed the need to get more aid to the Palestinian people”, said a USAid spokesperson, Benjamin Suarato, adding: “Administrator Power raised serious concern on the humanitarian conditions in northern Gaza.”

The United States told Israel in a letter on 13 October that it must take steps within 30 days.

South Carolina has executed a man on death row, despite widespread calls for his life to be spared, including from the judge who originally condemned him to death.

Richard Moore, 59, was killed by lethal injection on Friday evening, minutes after the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, announced he would not be granting him clemency.

Moore was put to death after an extraordinary push to save his life, which included advocacy letters from the state’s former corrections department director, three trial jurors, the judge who presided over the case and a former state supreme court justice. Supporters argued that he had become a role model behind bars. His two children, who remained close to him during his incarceration, also pleaded for mercy.

The execution began at 6.01pm, the Associated Press reported. Moore’s breathing became shallow and stopped around 6.04pm, and he was pronounced dead at 6.24pm. Moore’s longtime lawyer, who was in the room, could not fight back tears.

A prison spokesperson shared Moore’s final words, which included a message to the relatives of the man he killed: “To the family of Mr James Mahoney, I am deeply sorry for the pain and sorrow I caused you all. To my children and granddaughters, I love you and am so proud of you. Thank you for the joy you have brought to my life. To all of my family and friends, new and old, thank you for your love and support.”

Justice 360, the non-profit that represented Moore, condemned the execution in a statement, saying it “underscores the flaws in South Carolina’s death penalty system”: “Who is executed versus who is allowed to live out their lives in prison appears to be based on no more than chance, race, or status. It is intolerable that our State metes out the ultimate punishment in such a haphazard way … By killing Richard, the State also created more victims. Richard’s children are now fatherless, and his grandchildren will have to grow up without their ‘Pa Pa’.”

Moore was the second person put to death this year in South Carolina, which recently revived executions and is pursuing a rapid spree of killings.

The case drew widespread scrutiny over racial bias and doubts about the validity of Moore’s sentence.

An all-white jury convicted Moore, who is Black, of an armed robbery and the murder of Mahoney, a white convenience store clerk, 25 years ago. Moore has said the killing was in self-defense.

On 16 September 1999, Moore was unarmed when he entered the store where Mahoney was working the counter. There was no footage, so the exact circumstances of the incident are unclear. Moore has said they got into an argument because he was short on change, prompting Mahoney to pull a gun on him.

In their scuffle, both men were shot – Moore in the arm and Mahoney fatally in the chest. Moore took cash from the store.

There is no dispute that Moore was unarmed when he arrived. Mahoney carried a gun, and there were two weapons behind the counter. A store witness said he overheard an argument, and then saw Moore with his hands on the clerk’s hands and that Moore fired in his direction. The witness wasn’t hit and said he played dead and didn’t see the rest of the encounter.

A forensic investigator hired by Moore’s lawyers reviewed crime scene evidence in 2017 and concluded the first shot had been fired while the two men were fighting over the gun.

Moore’s lawyers argued that, regardless of the details of the shootout, he shouldn’t be eligible for capital punishment, reserved for the “worst of the worst” murders, since he entered unarmed and had no premeditated plans for an armed robbery or homicide. In 2022, Kaye Hearn, a state supreme court justice, agreed, writing in a dissenting opinion that the death sentence was “invalid”, “disproportionate” and a “relic of a bygone era”.

Hearn said it was “stunning” prosecutors couldn’t identify a comparable death penalty case involving a robbery that began unarmed and noted that Spartanburg county, where Moore was prosecuted, had a history of “alarming” racial disparities in the death penalty; all but one of 21 cases from 1985 to 2001 involved white victims.

Moore’s team had also made a final appeal to the US supreme court, arguing that prosecutors had unlawfully removed two qualified Black jurors, but the court declined to stop the execution on Thursday.

In a clemency video submitted with Moore’s application this week, Jon Ozmint, former head of South Carolina’s corrections department, said he hoped the governor would “give Richard the rest of his life to continue to pour into the lives of others”. In an earlier letter, Ozmint said he was a proponent of capital punishment and had never recommended reversing a death sentence, but said staff “trusted” Moore as a “reliable and respected” man on death row.

“Commutation would have a positive influence on hundreds of offenders who would be impacted by Richard’s story of redemption and his positive example,” Ozmint wrote.

Gary Clary, the former circuit judge who imposed Moore’s death sentence, wrote to McMaster on Wednesday, saying he’d “studied the case of each person who resides on death row in South Carolina” and that Moore’s case was “unique”: “After years of thought and reflection, I humbly ask that you grant executive clemency to Mr Moore as an act of grace and mercy.”

Three jurors wrote that they supported commutation based on Moore’s rehabilitation. Thousands signed petitions to halt the execution.

Lindsey Vann, Moore’s attorney of ten years, said she wasn’t aware of any other South Carolina case under the modern death penalty in which a judge who imposed the sentence backed clemency. She said on Thursday that Moore had tried to remain optimistic: “He’s grateful for all of the support, so that brings him some hope … but there are obviously difficult conversations, talking to people for what might be the last time.”

Moore had remained close to his two children, who had been visiting him behind glass since they were young. His daughter, Alexandria Moore, 31, recalled him teaching Spanish and creating puzzles through letters when she was a kid and said he’d become a beloved grandfather to her two daughters, telling the Guardian last week: “I will always be a daddy’s girl … Even with the physical distance, he is very much here and a part of my girls’ lives and my life.”

During his incarceration, Moore had leaned into faith, focused on painting and become friends with penpals, his lawyers said. His clemency video included a clip of an earlier interview, in which Moore expressed remorse: “This is definitely a part of my life I wish I could change, because I took a life … I broke the family of the deceased. I pray for the forgiveness of that particular family.”

Protesters gathered outside the Broad River prison in Columbia, leading prayers and holding “Save Richard Moore” and “Execute justice not people” signs.

“South Carolina’s elected officials do not care about the racism in the death penalty. They are more interested in using the system to win elections,” the Rev Hillary Taylor, director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told the crowd after his execution.

South Carolina recently resumed executions after a 13-year pause due to a lack of lethal injection supplies and challenges to its other proposed methods: electrocution and firing squads. The state restocked pentobarbital, a sedative, after it passed a law to shield the identities of companies supplying the drug, which had feared public backlash.

The state supreme court has authorized the scheduling of executions roughly every five weeks, an extraordinary pace that lawyers have argued would strain attorneys representing multiple defendants and risk botched executions due to the rushed process.

The first defendant executed last month was Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, who was put to death days after a central witness came forward to say he had lied at trial and that Allah was innocent.

“It’s like an assembly line. The state is motivated to kill condemned people as quickly as possible, and they do that despite evidence that might change their minds,” said Paul Bowers of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina.

South Carolina has executed a man on death row, despite widespread calls for his life to be spared, including from the judge who originally condemned him to death.

Richard Moore, 59, was killed by lethal injection on Friday evening, minutes after the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, announced he would not be granting him clemency.

Moore was put to death after an extraordinary push to save his life, which included advocacy letters from the state’s former corrections department director, three trial jurors, the judge who presided over the case and a former state supreme court justice. Supporters argued that he had become a role model behind bars. His two children, who remained close to him during his incarceration, also pleaded for mercy.

The execution began at 6.01pm, the Associated Press reported. Moore’s breathing became shallow and stopped around 6.04pm, and he was pronounced dead at 6.24pm. Moore’s longtime lawyer, who was in the room, could not fight back tears.

A prison spokesperson shared Moore’s final words, which included a message to the relatives of the man he killed: “To the family of Mr James Mahoney, I am deeply sorry for the pain and sorrow I caused you all. To my children and granddaughters, I love you and am so proud of you. Thank you for the joy you have brought to my life. To all of my family and friends, new and old, thank you for your love and support.”

Justice 360, the non-profit that represented Moore, condemned the execution in a statement, saying it “underscores the flaws in South Carolina’s death penalty system”: “Who is executed versus who is allowed to live out their lives in prison appears to be based on no more than chance, race, or status. It is intolerable that our State metes out the ultimate punishment in such a haphazard way … By killing Richard, the State also created more victims. Richard’s children are now fatherless, and his grandchildren will have to grow up without their ‘Pa Pa’.”

Moore was the second person put to death this year in South Carolina, which recently revived executions and is pursuing a rapid spree of killings.

The case drew widespread scrutiny over racial bias and doubts about the validity of Moore’s sentence.

An all-white jury convicted Moore, who is Black, of an armed robbery and the murder of Mahoney, a white convenience store clerk, 25 years ago. Moore has said the killing was in self-defense.

On 16 September 1999, Moore was unarmed when he entered the store where Mahoney was working the counter. There was no footage, so the exact circumstances of the incident are unclear. Moore has said they got into an argument because he was short on change, prompting Mahoney to pull a gun on him.

In their scuffle, both men were shot – Moore in the arm and Mahoney fatally in the chest. Moore took cash from the store.

There is no dispute that Moore was unarmed when he arrived. Mahoney carried a gun, and there were two weapons behind the counter. A store witness said he overheard an argument, and then saw Moore with his hands on the clerk’s hands and that Moore fired in his direction. The witness wasn’t hit and said he played dead and didn’t see the rest of the encounter.

A forensic investigator hired by Moore’s lawyers reviewed crime scene evidence in 2017 and concluded the first shot had been fired while the two men were fighting over the gun.

Moore’s lawyers argued that, regardless of the details of the shootout, he shouldn’t be eligible for capital punishment, reserved for the “worst of the worst” murders, since he entered unarmed and had no premeditated plans for an armed robbery or homicide. In 2022, Kaye Hearn, a state supreme court justice, agreed, writing in a dissenting opinion that the death sentence was “invalid”, “disproportionate” and a “relic of a bygone era”.

Hearn said it was “stunning” prosecutors couldn’t identify a comparable death penalty case involving a robbery that began unarmed and noted that Spartanburg county, where Moore was prosecuted, had a history of “alarming” racial disparities in the death penalty; all but one of 21 cases from 1985 to 2001 involved white victims.

Moore’s team had also made a final appeal to the US supreme court, arguing that prosecutors had unlawfully removed two qualified Black jurors, but the court declined to stop the execution on Thursday.

In a clemency video submitted with Moore’s application this week, Jon Ozmint, former head of South Carolina’s corrections department, said he hoped the governor would “give Richard the rest of his life to continue to pour into the lives of others”. In an earlier letter, Ozmint said he was a proponent of capital punishment and had never recommended reversing a death sentence, but said staff “trusted” Moore as a “reliable and respected” man on death row.

“Commutation would have a positive influence on hundreds of offenders who would be impacted by Richard’s story of redemption and his positive example,” Ozmint wrote.

Gary Clary, the former circuit judge who imposed Moore’s death sentence, wrote to McMaster on Wednesday, saying he’d “studied the case of each person who resides on death row in South Carolina” and that Moore’s case was “unique”: “After years of thought and reflection, I humbly ask that you grant executive clemency to Mr Moore as an act of grace and mercy.”

Three jurors wrote that they supported commutation based on Moore’s rehabilitation. Thousands signed petitions to halt the execution.

Lindsey Vann, Moore’s attorney of ten years, said she wasn’t aware of any other South Carolina case under the modern death penalty in which a judge who imposed the sentence backed clemency. She said on Thursday that Moore had tried to remain optimistic: “He’s grateful for all of the support, so that brings him some hope … but there are obviously difficult conversations, talking to people for what might be the last time.”

Moore had remained close to his two children, who had been visiting him behind glass since they were young. His daughter, Alexandria Moore, 31, recalled him teaching Spanish and creating puzzles through letters when she was a kid and said he’d become a beloved grandfather to her two daughters, telling the Guardian last week: “I will always be a daddy’s girl … Even with the physical distance, he is very much here and a part of my girls’ lives and my life.”

During his incarceration, Moore had leaned into faith, focused on painting and become friends with penpals, his lawyers said. His clemency video included a clip of an earlier interview, in which Moore expressed remorse: “This is definitely a part of my life I wish I could change, because I took a life … I broke the family of the deceased. I pray for the forgiveness of that particular family.”

Protesters gathered outside the Broad River prison in Columbia, leading prayers and holding “Save Richard Moore” and “Execute justice not people” signs.

“South Carolina’s elected officials do not care about the racism in the death penalty. They are more interested in using the system to win elections,” the Rev Hillary Taylor, director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told the crowd after his execution.

South Carolina recently resumed executions after a 13-year pause due to a lack of lethal injection supplies and challenges to its other proposed methods: electrocution and firing squads. The state restocked pentobarbital, a sedative, after it passed a law to shield the identities of companies supplying the drug, which had feared public backlash.

The state supreme court has authorized the scheduling of executions roughly every five weeks, an extraordinary pace that lawyers have argued would strain attorneys representing multiple defendants and risk botched executions due to the rushed process.

The first defendant executed last month was Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, who was put to death days after a central witness came forward to say he had lied at trial and that Allah was innocent.

“It’s like an assembly line. The state is motivated to kill condemned people as quickly as possible, and they do that despite evidence that might change their minds,” said Paul Bowers of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina.

A US army soldier has been charged with murder in the death of a fellow service member at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, the military announced Thursday.

The army office of Special Trial Counsel charged the 21-year-old specialist Wooster Rancy on Wednesday with murder and obstructing justice in the death of 23-year-old Sgt Sarah Roque.

Originally from Ligonier, Indiana, Roque worked as a mine-detecting dog handler – was reported missing 20 October. Her body was discovered in a trash bin on the base two days later.

Roque is at least the third Hispanic female US army soldier to be murdered in a high-profile case since 2020.

Fort Leonard Wood officials said last week that they were investigating Roque’s death as a homicide and that they had taken a person of interest into custody last Thursday. Officials also stressed that there was no broader threat to base personnel or the community.

But army investigators have released few other details about what happened, including the cause of Roque’s death or a possible motive.

Roque enlisted in 2020. Her awards and decorations include the army commendation medal, national defense service medal, good conduct medal and the army service ribbon. She was a member of the fifth engineer battalion and enlisted in 2020.

Women in the US military are particularly vulnerable to violence because they are generally isolated from family and friends who would support them in disputes, according to a Futures without Violence fact sheet.

Notably, in May, Katia Dueñas Aguilar was found dead in her home outside of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, after she had been stabbed nearly 70 times. She also reportedly had traces of a date rape drug in her system.

Vanessa Guillén, meanwhile, was murdered at a military base in Killeen, Texas, after telling friends and family she had been sexually harassed on the base. Authorities said fellow soldier Aaron Robinson killed Guillén and then died by suicide when confronted by police.

Robinson’s girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, received a 30-year prison sentence in the case after pleading guilty to one count of accessory to murder and three counts of false statement or representation.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

A bail bondsman is facing criminal charges in Florida for allegedly approaching incarcerated women and offering to bond them out if they give him sex in return.

Russell Bruce Moncrief faces counts of human trafficking and racketeering – along with accusations that he used his authority within the criminal justice system to prey on particularly vulnerable women, said a recent news release from the office of the state’s attorney general, Ashley Moody.

Moody’s office said Moncrief, 75, would target women jailed on accusations involving sex work or drugs, including in Orange county, where Orlando is. He would propose posting their bonds to await the outcomes of their cases from out of custody if they agreed to have sex with him afterward, Moody’s office alleged.

The Moncrief Bail Bonds owner would also allegedly settle for “sex from someone outside of jail” as compensation for his scheme, prosecutors said. And he also purportedly would sexually proposition women whose bonds he posted to other buyers with whom he did business as part of what Moody’s office’s statement dismissed as a “sickening scheme”.

“After bailing his victims out of jail, he continued to use his power over them to sell the women for sex to others for his own financial gain,” the statement continued.

Moncrief would additionally threaten to revoke or pull the bonds of the women on whom he preyed – or to falsely accuse them of violations that would send them back into custody – to coerce their compliance, Moody’s office charged.

Moody’s office said authorities learned of Moncrief’s plot amid an investigation into a former defense attorney, John Gillespie, who was arrested on similar criminal allegations in 2020. Investigators alleged that victims of Gillespie had also been forced to engage in sex with Moncrief.

If convicted as charged, Moncrief could receive up to 125 years in prison, Moody’s office said. Investigators who built the case against Moncrief said his alleged bonds-for-sex ruse dated back at least a decade.

Moncrief was booked into the Orange county jail on Thursday, records show. According to Fox’s Orlando affiliate, at a preliminary court hearing, an attorney for him said: “It is Mr Moncrief’s position that he denies any and all allegations, and he looks forward to proving his innocence in court.”

Moncrief has reportedly been in the bail bond business since 1978. Beside Orange, his Moncrief Bail Bonds has offices in the Florida counties of Osceola, Brevard and Pinellas, as the Fox Orlando affiliate noted.

Columbia University has reached a $395,000 settlement with a student who was suspended in January after spraying student protesters with a foul-smelling substance at one of several campus demonstrations in support of Palestine.

The Israeli student who received the payout had been suspended until May.

The case was first described as a possible chemical attack involving the use of skunk spray, an agent developed in Israel and used as a crowd-control weapon, most commonly in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But Columbia has said the spray used was novelty, non-toxic fart spray, bought on Amazon for $26.11, and not a chemical agent.

A lawsuit that the student filed against Columbia in April had first asserted that he had deployed the fart spray in question on the demonstrators “as a harmless expression of his speech” relying on a product that is marketed as Liquid Ass – and is readily available for consumer purchase.

Several students targeted nonetheless reported symptoms such as nausea, abdominal pain, headaches and irritated eyes – and damage to their personal belongings, with some requiring medical treatment.

Shay, a Jewish undergraduate student at Columbia who prefers to use their first name, told the Guardian that they went to the emergency room at Mount Sinai Morningside for “appetite loss and severe nausea and a headache”.

In a medical visit summary seen by the Guardian, Shay’s official diagnosis was “chemical exposure”. They were put on an IV and given medication upon release.

The university and New York police launched an investigation into what they said appeared to be “possibly hate crimes” shortly after the fart-spray use.

In a letter to students and faculty sent in January after the incident, Columbia’s interim provost, Dennis Mitchell, wrote: “A deeply troubling incident occurred on the steps of Low Library on Friday. Numerous Columbia and Barnard students who attended a protest later reported being sprayed with a foul-smelling substance that required students to seek medical treatment.”

A report titled “Antisemitism on college campuses exposed”, written by Republican staff on the US House committee on education and workforce, called the punishment for the spraying “disproportionate discipline”.

The same committee’s members successfully called for a string of resignations of Ivy League presidents whose schools were grappling with pro-Palestine demonstrations and proposed withdrawing federal funding from universities that did not participate in plans to curb campus protests.

In the committee’s statement announcing the report, the far-right chairwoman, Virginia Foxx, said: “For over a year, the American people have watched antisemitic mobs rule over so-called elite universities, but what was happening behind the scenes is arguably worse.”

The statement condemned the administrators who “put the wants of terrorist sympathizers over the safety of Jewish students, faculty, and staff”.

Shay called the settlement a “slap in the face”.

“Assault is assault,” they said. “If multiple people have to go to the hospital and get diagnosed with chemical exposure, then, ‘Oh, it was just fart spray’ is not really a defense to me.”

The makers of Liquid Ass caution that eye irritation, nausea, vomiting and occasionally diarrhea are possible side-effects. If inhaled, Liquid Ass’s makers say it may cause “respiratory tract irritation”.

Shay said it was “disgusting” that the committee characterized campus protests for Palestinians as antisemitic.

“I think it’s disgusting to try to weaponize something with a very real history,” she added. “My family has been very deeply impacted by antisemitism in this country and beyond, and it is just deeply offensive to reduce it to a political ploy to silence activism against the genocide, which is what this is.”

Columbia and New York police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tucker Carlson, the former CNN and Fox News political chat host, has said he was “physically mauled” by a demon a year and a half ago, in an assault that he says left him bleeding and with scars from “claw marks”.

Carlson made the claim while speaking in an upcoming documentary, Christianities? In a preview clip on YouTube, Carlson is asked by John Heers of the non-profit First Things Foundation if he believed that “the presence of evil is kickstarting people to wonder about the good”.

“That’s what happened to me. I had a direct experience with it,” said Carlson.

Asked if he was referring to journalism, Carlson responded: “No, in my bed at night. I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs and mauled, physically mauled.”

Carlson, who said he still bears the scars, said his assailant was a “demon”. He added: “Or by something unseen that left claw marks on my sides.”

He said at the time of the attack, he was asleep in bed. I was “totally confused, I woke up, and I couldn’t breathe, and I thought I was going to suffocate”, he said.

“I walked around outside and then I walked in and my wife and dogs had not woken up. And they’re very light sleepers. And then I had these terrible pains on my rib cage and on my shoulder, and I was just in my boxer shorts and I went and flipped on the light in the bathroom, and I had four claw marks on either side underneath my arms and on my left shoulder. And they’re bleeding.”

He added that he explained the encounter to an assistant, an evangelical Christian, who told him: “That happens, people are attacked in their bed by demons.”

Carlson, who lives in the woods of Maine, did not say where the attack occurred, but called it a “transformative experience” that left him “seized with this very intense desire to read the Bible”.

Carlson, who was fired from Fox News after the company paid more than $787m to settle a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems over false statements and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, is stumping for Donald Trump on the campaign trial.

He addressed a rally in Georgia last week, telling Trump supporters that the candidate’s possible return to the White House was like a father returning home and Trump would give the country a “vigorous spanking”.

“He’s not vengeful. He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them. Because they’re his children. They live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in their behavior. And he’s going to have to let them know,” Carlson said.

“When Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.’”