Donald Trump suggested vaccines could be banned if he becomes president, in the clearest sign yet of a radical shake-up in public health policy should he put his ally Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of it.

Trump on Sunday told NBC that Kennedy, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and former independent candidate who dropped out and endorsed Trump, would have a “big role in the administration” if wins Tuesday’s presidential election. Trump said he would talk to Kennedy about vaccinations.

Kennedy has repeatedly claimed that childhood vaccines cause autism, a theory scientists have debunked.

He has also said in recent days that Trump has promised him control over a broad range of public health agencies if he returns to the White House, potentially putting him in a position to implement his most radical theories.

Trump did not contradict that claim and held open the possibility of banning certain vaccines.

“Well, I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” the Republican nominee told NBC.

He also appeared to uphold Kennedy’s vow – made on social media last Friday – to ban fluoride in the water supply, a practice that public health experts support as useful in combatting dental disease. Kennedy called it “industrial waste” and claimed it is linked to cancer. Health groups insist it is safe.

Asked by NBC for his views about getting rid of water fluoridation, Trump said: “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me. You know, it’s possible.”

Kennedy, who sits on Trump’s transition team, claimed last week that he had been promised “control” over a range of public health and food safety agencies, including the department of health and human services, the centre for disease control and the food and drug administration.

Trump has not been specific on what responsibilities Kennedy might hold but told a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden last week that he would let him “go wild on food” and “go wild on medicines” if he wins the election.

Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s campaign, gave further credence to the weight Kennedy’s views might carry in an administration when he told CNN that he could be given access to federal data on vaccines safety. He also appeared to endorse Kennedy’s opinions on the supposed risks of vaccines.

“He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe,’” Lutnick said. “Let’s give him the data. I think it’ll be pretty cool to give him the data. Let’s see what he comes up with. I think it’s pretty fun.”

Elections offices in the US have hardened their security measures this year, anticipating potential violence based on experience since 2020 and during an ongoing rise in threats and harassment focused on election workers.

Many offices have now trained their workers on de-escalation tactics. They have run drills for active shooters or other disturbances. They have a process for flagging the threats that could be criminal and seeking law enforcement help when needed.

Hundreds of election offices have been reinforced with bulletproof glass and steel doors. Some have increased their security details or locked down their social media in case people come looking into their lives. And new laws and added enforcement of prohibitions on such harassment have added to the response to the increased hostility.

Authorities are concerned about the rise of the rightwing election denial movement, which originated in 2020 following Trump’s rejection of his defeat to Joe Biden. Trump’s propagation of unfounded theories regarding the election mobilized large crowds to participate in “Stop the Steal” protests, which reached a climax on 6 January 2021, when supporters stormed the US Capitol in an effort to impede Congress’s confirmation of the election outcomes.

Trump has not committed to accepting the outcome, claiming without evidence that Democrats will cheat to install his opponent, Kamala Harris.

Michigan’s secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said her concern for her personal safety increased after Elon Musk, the owner of X, attacked her online. Before she responded to his claims about Michigan voting and her office, she called her security team to “make sure my family was safe”, she said on NBC.

“Unfortunately for all of us, standing up to bullies and fighting back against misinformation in this moment means putting ourselves in the metaphorical line of fire,” she said. “And that’s quite unnerving. It’s created a state of hyper-vigilance for all of us, but it doesn’t deter us from speaking the truth and making sure citizens have the tools they need to cast their vote in this historical election.”

Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona, recently revealed he wears a bulletproof vest, which came up in testimony as his office sought to keep the names of voters private in a lawsuit over an error in proof of citizenship practices in the state, saying he feared for their safety if made public.

Some states have activated their national guard in preparation for election day. The Washington governor, Jay Inslee, noted an arson attack on a ballot drop box in his state when he called up the guard on Friday, saying their help could be needed to protect election infrastructure or respond to any unrest related to the election. The county sheriff in the area where the drop box fire occurred has increased patrols in response as well.

In Washington DC, the police chief, Pamela Smith, said at a news conference on Tuesday that more than 3,000 police officers would work 12-hour shifts.

Nevada’s governor, Joe Lombardo, announced a “precautionary activation” of the state’s guard for the election, though he added he did not think members would need to be deployed.

In several counties, panic buttons attached to lanyards have been provided for the primary poll worker to wear at every polling site.

Managing security around elections involves weighing competing factors to ensure that people can safely vote, safely protest and safely work at election facilities. A heavy law enforcement presence can in itself deter voters from going to the polls. Those who threaten and harass over elections in part want to create fear around the process, so officials are cognizant to not let them succeed in elevating worry.

“We shouldn’t see that planning and preparation as a guarantee that violence will happen,” said Shannon Hiller, executive director of the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University, which studies and tracks political violence. “You don’t do a fire drill because you’re sure a fire is happening next week, you do a fire drill in case a fire happens … We should understand that planning and preparation as helping us to feel more safe, not less.”

Maricopa county, Arizona, has some of the most visible security measures, spurred by a near-constant presence of threats. In 2020, large protests occurred outside the county’s central tabulation center as votes were counted, creating an unsettling environment for workers. Few protested at the center during the 2022 midterms, after the county installed a permanent fence around the facility and beefed up law enforcement presence, including officers on horseback who strode around as a show of force.

This year, the county’s security measures have grabbed apocalyptic headlines. The permanent fence is also surrounded by a temporary chain-link fence then again by concrete barriers. The county sheriff confirmed there would be drones, though it was not yet clear if they would need to use snipers on rooftops, as the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Across the state, election workers have gone through active-shooter drills and learned to barricade themselves or wield fire hoses to repel armed mobs,” the Journal wrote in October of Arizona. “At the ready are trauma kits containing tourniquets and bandages designed to pack chest wounds and stanch serious bleeding.”

Maricopa county officials held a press conference focused on security measures the week before the election, the mere fact of which had them lamenting attacks on elections that had made these measures necessary. County supervisor Bill Gates said it was a “sad commentary on what’s happened in this country in the last four years”.

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

The county’s elected officials who oversee voting, most of whom are Republicans, have stood up for the voting process and election results in the face of a pressure campaign from Trump and his allies, who are are pushing the idea that his victory is going to be a landslide. Their outspoken defense of the system has brought an avalanche of harassment and threats, which the officials have shared has taken a toll on them personally.

But, Gates noted: “People who create this chaos in our system had hoped to drive us apart, but in fact, if anything, it has brought us together here in Maricopa county. And I’m very proud of that. And I think that anyone who thinks they’re going to rattle the foundations of the democracy in this county been unsuccessful to this point, they’re going to continue to be unsuccessful.”

The Maricopa county sheriff, Russ Skinner, said his officers were ready to step in at a moment’s notice and work closely with elections officials, but that he was mindful not to intrude at polling places unless there is a public safety need to do so.

“We don’t want to disrupt the process, and certainly we don’t want to influence the process, but I can tell you that you will have enough law enforcement,” Skinner said. “Every agency is on board for the election and the days even following the election, to make sure that these locations are safe, that their communities are safe.”

The federal government has ramped up investigations and enforcement of threats against elections officials, creating a taskforce specifically focused on the issue that has brought charges in cases that cross state lines. Some state and local officials have also charged those who threaten election workers.

The taskforce announced four more cases in late October, including one man who had threatened officials in two states and at the federal level over the course of nearly three years. Another man pleaded guilty who had sent threats to Arizona officials after the 2022 primaries, including a picture of a toy, Woody, from Toy Story “lying face down with an unidentified projectile in its back”.

Many states have added laws that seek to protect election workers from threats, intimidation and harassment – 35 states and Washington DC now have laws aimed at election officials and poll workers after a wave of states enacted new laws since 2020, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

One of those states, Maryland, saw an incident during early voting in which a poll observer trailed an election worker, which the worker reported as intimidating and sought a peace order.

“I have an absolute ZERO tolerance for harassment or making threats against election officials. They have the highest level of integrity & need to do their mission in a safe environment,” Jared DeMarinis, Maryland’s elections administrator, said on X. “It’s shameful an incident has occurred.”

Hundreds of civil and military emergency workers are searching shopping centres, garages and underground car parks for more victims of floods in the Valencia region that have killed at least 214 people, as public anger mounts over Spanish authorities’ handling of the disaster.

Yellow and amber weather warnings were in place for parts of Valencia and neighbouring Catalonia on Monday, with people in the affected areas advised to stay off the roads and keep away from the coast and rivers.

Heavy rain pounded the Barcelona area on Monday morning, leading the regional government to issue civil protection alerts and cancel all local train services.

Over the weekend, personnel from the armed forces’ military emergencies unit (UME) focused their efforts on shopping malls and car parks where people could have been trapped by the floods, which were caused by torrential rains that experts have linked to the climate emergency.

On Sunday, UME workers managed to enter the underground car park of the huge Bonaire shopping complex in the Valencian town of Aldaia after pumping out the floodwater and clearing the mud.

The disaster, which has prompted the central government to deploy 10,000 troops and police officers, has killed 210 people in Valencia, three in Castilla-La Mancha and one in Málaga. There are fears the death toll could rise as the relief efforts reach previously inaccessible areas.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has described the floods as the worst natural disaster in Spain’s recent history and said all necessary resources would be mobilised to deal with its aftermath.

But anger over the response to the crisis – and, in particular, over the Valencian regional government’s delay in sending an emergency alert when the floods hit on Tuesday – has only risen.

On Sunday, a high-profile visit to the badly affected Valencian town of Paiporta was disrupted after a furious crowd threw mud at Sánchez, as well as the regional president, Carlos Mazón, King Felipe and Queen Letizia. There were also shouts of “Killers!” and “Get out!”

Speaking a few hours after he was swiftly escorted from the area, the prime minister acknowledged people’s pain but said a small minority of those in Paiporta were behind the angry scenes.

“We know what people need and our priorities are clear: saving lives, finding the bodies of the people who have died, and rebuilding the affected areas,” he said.

“The violence carried out by a few people won’t deflect the collective interest. It’s time to look ahead and to keep on working with all the means and coordination needed to get through this emergency together.”

Sources in Sánchez’s socialist administration were a little more forthright, describing the protests in Paiporta as “a far-right and anti-political show”.

Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, conceded the visit may have been mistimed.

“Maybe it wasn’t the best time,” he told the Spanish TV channel La Sexta. “There’s a lot of anger and people feel abandoned … and then you have the activities organised by some people who belong to the extreme right.”

King Felipe, who insisted on continuing the visit, said he appreciated the scale of people’s fury.

“One has to understand the anger and frustration of many people given all that they have gone through, as well as the difficulty in understanding how all the mechanisms work when it comes to the emergency operations,” he said on Sunday.

Mayors from the affected municipalities have been pleading with officials to send help as soon as possible.

“We’re very angry and we’re devastated,” said Guillermo Luján, the mayor of Aldaia. “We have a town in ruins. We need to start over and I’m begging for help. Please help us.”

A British couple missing in Valencia after floods hit the region have been found dead in their car, their daughter has told the BBC.

Don Turner, 78, and his wife Terry, 74, had not been seen since torrential downpours caused flash floods in eastern Spain.

Their daughter, Ruth O’Loughlin, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, confirmed to the BBC that her parents’ bodies had been found in their car on Saturday.

She had previously told the BBC her parents had moved to Spain a decade ago because they had “always wanted to live in the sunshine”.

She was told they were missing on Thursday after friends checked on them and found their pets at home but their vehicle gone. Terry had told friends they were popping out to get some gas, she said.

O’Loughlin told BBC Radio WM she had found out about the death of her parents, who lived near Pedralba, in a message from one of their friends.

O’Loughlin said: “He said ‘Ruth, get your husband’. I called my husband in and he just said ‘Martin, hold your wife’, and said that they’d been found and they’d been found in their car.

“We still don’t know exactly what happened to them. The only thing we’ve got from this is that they were together. It’s not the way you want your parents to go.”

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man and woman who have died in Spain, and are in contact with the local authorities.”

The flooding, which has prompted the central government to deploy 10,000 troops and police officers, has killed 210 people in Valencia, three in Castilla-La Mancha and one in Málaga. There are fears the death toll could rise as the relief efforts reach previously inaccessible areas.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has described the floods as the worst natural disaster in the country’s recent history and said all necessary resources would be mobilised to deal with its aftermath.

Yellow and amber weather warnings were in place for parts of Valencia and neighbouring Catalonia on Monday, with people in the affected areas advised to stay off the roads and keep away from the coast and rivers.

Heavy rain had fallen in the Barcelona area, leading the regional government to issue civil protection alerts and cancel all local train services.

Thousands of UK air passengers are experiencing disruption after Barcelona airport was hit by the storms.

Climate activists in Scotland have carried out a series of actions against SUV cars, saying they are acting in solidarity with the victims of the Valencia floods.

The Tyre Extinguishers have called on their supporters to take actions against SUV cars in their areas, after members of the group in Edinburgh stencilled the sides of targeted vehicles on Sunday night with the words: “These cars kill Valencians.”

At least 214 people have been reported killed in Valencia and surrounding areas after unprecedented rainfall last week caused flooding that swept away bridges, cars and streetlights. Global heating made the heavy rainfall about 12% heavier and twice as likely, according to an initial estimate carried out by scientists from World Weather Attribution.

The flooding has been described as the worst natural disaster in recent Spanish history.

Posting pictures of the Edinburgh actions on their account on X, the Tyre Extinguishers said: “SUVs targeted in solidarity with Valencia climate victims.

“Outraged Edinburgh residents took action last night highlighting SUV’s [sic] disproportionate role in causing catastrophic weather, like that which has killed over 200 in Spain.

“If SUVs were a country they’d be the 5th biggest world polluter. There were over 360m SUVs on world roads in 2023, producing 1bn tonnes of CO2, up 10% on 2022. As a result, global oil consumption rose by 600,000 barrels/day, more than a quarter of total oil demand growth.

“Protestors defaced SUVs throughout Edinburgh’s New Town, and left windscreens with images of victims like José Castillejo, 28, who died in the Valencia floods, and Nuria Sajjad and Selena Lau, who were killed last year when an out-of-control Land Rover hit their primary school.

“We call on all TX groups to take solidarity actions on behalf of climate victims. We won’t stop until these death machines are off our roads.”

An activist named as Priya, who took part in the Edinburgh actions, said: “We hit 16 cars last night, and more planned … Not enough is being done to highlight that disasters like Valencia have human causes. This is not a natural disaster, it’s a disaster fuelled by our governments being enslaved by the fossil fuel and car lobbies.

“We need emergency action now to bring an end to SUV emissions, and if governments don’t do it, then it’s up to citizens to do it for them.”

Police Scotland was unable to give any information about whether the incidents had been reported or an investigation was under way without more specific details of the locations of the targeted vehicles.

Water-soluble spray chalk was used to deface the cars, the Guardian has been told.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is at the centre of a new political storm related to a hostage deal in the Gaza war after the arrest of several people in connection with an alleged leak of classified documents from his office.

An Israeli court announced the arrests on Friday afternoon, before the beginning of Shabbat, saying that a joint investigation by the police, internal security services and the army suspected a “breach of national security caused by the unlawful provision of classified information”, which had also “harmed the achievement of Israel’s war aims”.

One of those arrested is believed to be spokesperson for the prime minister.

While most details are still subject to a partial gag order, Israeli media has reported that the war aim in question is the release of the 101 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas. The suspects are alleged to have selectively leaked Hamas strategy documents found by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, and manipulated or edited the material to make it seem as though the Palestinian militant group sought to smuggle hostages to Egypt, and then to Iran or Yemen.

In September, Netanyahu made this claim in interviews and news conferences in support of a fresh demand he had made in ceasefire and hostage release deal talks: the need for Israeli troops to remain on the Gaza-Egypt border. The demand was rejected by Hamas on the grounds it was not part of the terms both sides had already conditionally accepted, and was a major reason that months of negotiations failed.

Netanyahu has been accused repeatedly of stalling on a deal in order to avoid the collapse of his coalition government. Anything short of a total victory over Hamas is anathema to his far-right allies, and he is believed to see staying in office as the best way of avoiding prosecution in fraud, bribery and breach of trust cases filed in 2019. He denies any wrongdoing.

Shortly after the Israeli leader first mentioned the supposed Hamas plan, reports apparently based on the same doctored material appeared in the British outlet The Jewish Chronicle and the German tabloid Bild, which were picked up widely by the Israeli media.

Worried that the articles’ publication would jeopardise intelligence-gathering efforts in Gaza, the Israeli army launched an investigation into the leak, announcing that it was “unaware of any such document existing”. The Jewish Chronicle later retracted the story and fired the journalist who wrote it.

The prime minister’s office on Friday said no one who worked for Netanyahu has been questioned or detained, but on Saturday did not deny that the leak may have originated from his office. Dozens of other leaks related to ceasefire and hostage release negotiations have appeared in media reports, it pointed out, without triggering investigations.

The charges are understood to be related to the leaking of classified documents, negligence in handling the material, and using it to influence public opinion, as well as the improper hiring of an adviser without adequate security clearance.

News of the arrests has been met with fury by the prime minister’s detractors in the bitterly politically divided country. On Saturday night, thousands of people across Israel joined what are now weekly demonstrations in favour of a deal.

The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, wrote on X: “We have tough enemies abroad, but the danger from within and at the most sensitive decision-making centres shakes the foundations of the confidence of the citizens of Israel in the prosecution of the war, and in handling the most sensitive and explosive security issues.”

Federal police in Brazil have formally charged the alleged mastermind of the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, accusing him of arming and funding the criminal group responsible for the crime as well as plotting to hide the victims’ bodies.

In a statement released on Monday morning, police in the Amazon city of Manaus announced they had concluded the two-year investigation into the shootings of the British journalist and the Brazilian Indigenous expert in June 2022.

Police said their final report identified nine people who had played some role in killings that drew attention to the criminal assault on the world’s largest tropical rainforest and the Indigenous communities that call that region home.

Those alleged culprits included the main architect of the murders who police claimed “provided the rounds for the crime to be carried out, offered financial support to the criminal organisation’s activities, and was involved in coordinating the concealment of the corpses of the victims”.

The statement did not name the alleged mastermind but multiple Brazilian press reports identified him as Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, an alleged illegal fishing and poaching boss from the border region where Phillips and Pereira were ambushed and shot.

Silva Villar, whose nickname is Colombia, is in custody having been arrested in late 2022 for a different offence. He has denied involvement in the murders.

Until September, three fishers had been due to stand trial by jury next year for carrying out the murders along the Amazon’s Itaquaí River: Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, Jefferson da Silva Lima and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira. However, appeal judges ruled that only the first two should face trial given what they called a lack of evidence about Oseney’s involvement.

On Monday the federal police said their inquiries had “confirmed that the murders took place as a result of the monitoring activities carried out by Bruno Pereira” in the area around the Javari valley Indigenous territory. At the time of his murder, Pereira, a former government official from the Indigenous agency Funai, had been working with an Indigenous association called Univaja to help its activists defend their lands from illegal fishing and mining gangs.

The police statement contradicted claims from a prominent Amazon politician last week that the murders were the result of a personal squabble between Pereira and a fisher he had supposedly “humiliated” in front of his family.

During a hearing in the capital, Brasília, the senator Omar Aziz minimised widely held suspicions that drug trafficking and organised crime had played a role in the murders. Rather, Aziz claimed a river-dweller who was angry at Pereira had simply “waited for the right moment to take his revenge”.

Those comments sparked outrage among friends and relatives of the two victims. Speaking for both families, the Dom Phillips Institute – which was created earlier this year to honour the journalist’s legacy – criticised what it called Aziz’s “frivolous pronouncement”, which had no basis in fact and undermined the Brazilian state’s “arduous” efforts to solve the crime.

Quincy Jones, a titan of American entertainment who worked with stars from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson and Will Smith, has died aged 91.

Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, said he died on Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones was arguably the most versatile pop cultural figure of the 20th century, perhaps best known for producing the albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad for Michael Jackson in the 1980s, which made the singer the biggest pop star of all time. Jones also produced music for Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and many others.

He was also a successful composer of dozens of film scores, and had numerous chart hits under his own name. Jones was a bandleader in big band jazz, an arranger for jazz stars including Count Basie, and a multi-instrumentalist, most proficiently on trumpet and piano. His TV and film production company, founded in 1990, had major success with the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and other shows, and he continued to innovate well into his 80s, launching Qwest TV in 2017, an on-demand music TV service. Jones is third only to Beyoncé and Jay-Z for having the most Grammy award nominations of all time – 80 to their 88 each – and is the awards’ third most-garlanded winner, with 28.

Among the tributes to Jones was one from actor Michael Caine, who was born on the same day as Jones: 14 March 1933. “My celestial twin Quincy was a titan in the musical world,” Caine wrote. “He was a wonderful and unique human being, lucky to have known him.”

Playwright and actor Jeremy O Harris paid tribute to Jones’s “limitless” contributions to US culture, writing: “What couldn’t he do? Quincy Jones, literally born when the limits on how big a black boy could dream were unfathomably high, taught us that the limit does not exist.”

Jones was born in Chicago. His half-white father had been born to a Welsh slave owner and one of his female slaves, while his mother’s family were also descended from slave owners. His introduction to music came through the walls of his childhood home from a piano played by a neighbour, which he started learning aged seven, and via his mother’s singing.

His parents divorced and he moved with his father to Washington state, where Jones learned drums and a host of brass instruments in his high-school band. At 14, he started playing in a band with a 16-year-old Ray Charles in Seattle clubs, once, in 1948, backing Billie Holiday. He studied music at Seattle University, transferring east to continue in Boston, and then moved to New York after being rehired by the jazz bandleader Lionel Hampton, with whom he had toured as a high-schooler (a band for which Malcolm X was a heroin dealer when they played in Detroit).

In New York, one early gig was playing trumpet in Elvis Presley’s band for his first TV appearances, and he met the stars of the flourishing bebop movement including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. (Years later, in 1991, Jones conducted Davis’s last performance, two months before he died.)

Jones toured Europe with Hampton, and spent much time there in the 1950s, including a period furthering his studies in Paris, where he met luminaries including Pablo Picasso, James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. At the age of 23, he also toured South America and the Middle East as Dizzy Gillespie’s musical director and arranger. He convened a crack team for his own big band, touring Europe as a way to test Free and Easy, a jazz musical, but the disastrous run left Jones, by his own admission, close to suicide and with $100,000 of debt.

He secured a job at Mercury Records and slowly paid off the debt with plenty of work as a producer and arranger for artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan and Sammy Davis Jr. He also began scoring films, his credits eventually including The Italian Job, In the Heat of the Night, The Getaway and The Color Purple. (He produced the last of these, which was nominated for 11 Oscars, three for Jones himself.) In 1968, he became the first African American to be nominated for best original song at the Oscars, for The Eyes of Love from the film Banning (alongside songwriter Bob Russell); he had seven nominations in total. For TV, he scored programmes such as The Bill Cosby Show, Ironside and Roots.

His work with Sinatra began in 1958 when he was hired to conduct and arrange for Sinatra and his band by Grace Kelly, princess consort of Monaco, for a charity event. Jones and Sinatra continued working on projects until Sinatra’s final album, LA Is My Lady, in 1984. Jones’s solo musical career took off in the late 1950s, recording albums under his own name as bandleader for jazz ensembles that included luminaries such as Charles Mingus, Art Pepper and Freddie Hubbard.

Jones once said of his time in Seattle: “When people write about the music, jazz is in this box, R&B is in this box, pop is in this box, but we did everything,” and his catholic tastes served him well as modern pop mutated out of the swing era. He produced four million-selling hits for the New York singer Lesley Gore in the mid-60s, including the US No 1 It’s My Party, and later embraced funk and disco, producing hit singles including George Benson’s Give Me the Night and Patti Austin and James Ingram’s Baby Come to Me, along with records by the band Rufus and Chaka Khan, and the Brothers Johnson. Jones also released his own funk material, scoring US Top 10 albums with Body Heat (1974) and The Dude (1981).

His biggest success in this style was his work with Michael Jackson: Thriller remains the biggest selling album of all time, while Jones’s versatility between Off the Wall and Bad allowed Jackson to metamorphose from lithe disco to ultra-synthetic funk-rock. He and Jackson (along with Lionel Richie and producer Michael Omartian) also helmed We Are the World, a successful charity single that raised funds for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1985. “I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him,” Jones said when Jackson died in 2009. In 2017, Jones’s legal team successfully argued that he was owed $9.4m in unpaid Jackson royalties, though he lost on appeal in 2020 and had to return $6.8m.

After the success of The Color Purple in 1985, he formed the film and TV production company Quincy Jones Entertainment in 1990. His biggest screen hit was the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for 148 episodes and launched the career of Will Smith; other shows included the LL Cool J sitcom In the House and the long-running sketch comedy show MadTV.

He also created the media company Qwest Broadcasting and in 1993, the Black music magazine Vibe in partnership with Time Inc. Throughout his career he supported numerous charities and causes, including the , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Jazz Foundation of America and others, and mentored young musicians including the British multiple Grammy winner Jacob Collier.

Jones’ illustrious career was twice nearly cut short: he narrowly avoided being killed by Charles Manson’s cult in 1969, having planned to go to Sharon Tate’s house on the night of the murders there, but Jones forgot the appointment. He also survived a brain aneurysm in 1974 that prevented him from playing the trumpet again in case the exertion caused further harm.

Jones was married three times, first to his high-school girlfriend Jeri Caldwell, for nine years until 1966, fathering his daughter Jolie. In 1967, he married Ulla Andersson and had a son and daughter, divorcing in 1974 to marry actor Peggy Lipton, best known for roles in The Mod Squad and Twin Peaks. They had two daughters, including the actor Rashida Jones, before divorcing in 1989. He had two further children: Rachel, with a dancer, Carol Reynolds, and Kenya, his daughter with actor Nastassja Kinski.

He never remarried, but continued to date a string of younger women, raising eyebrows with his year-long partnership with 19-year-old Egyptian designer Heba Elawadi when he was 73. He has also claimed to have dated Ivanka Trump and Juliette Gréco. He is survived by his seven children.

Other artists paying tribute included LL Cool J, who wrote: “You were a father and example at a time when I truly needed a father and example. Mentor. Role model. King. You gave me opportunities and shared wisdom. Music would not be music without you.” Femi Koleoso, bandleader with Mercury prize-winning jazz group Ezra Collective, called Jones a “masterful musician and beautiful soul”.

Nile Rodgers of Chic wrote “rest in power”, describing Jones as a “leader, teacher, spirit, pioneer”.

Quincy Jones, a titan of American entertainment who worked with stars from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson and Will Smith, has died aged 91.

Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, said he died on Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones was arguably the most versatile pop cultural figure of the 20th century, perhaps best known for producing the albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad for Michael Jackson in the 1980s, which made the singer the biggest pop star of all time. Jones also produced music for Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and many others.

He was also a successful composer of dozens of film scores, and had numerous chart hits under his own name. Jones was a bandleader in big band jazz, an arranger for jazz stars including Count Basie, and a multi-instrumentalist, most proficiently on trumpet and piano. His TV and film production company, founded in 1990, had major success with the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and other shows, and he continued to innovate well into his 80s, launching Qwest TV in 2017, an on-demand music TV service. Jones is third only to Beyoncé and Jay-Z for having the most Grammy award nominations of all time – 80 to their 88 each – and is the awards’ third most-garlanded winner, with 28.

Among the tributes to Jones was one from actor Michael Caine, who was born on the same day as Jones: 14 March 1933. “My celestial twin Quincy was a titan in the musical world,” Caine wrote. “He was a wonderful and unique human being, lucky to have known him.”

Playwright and actor Jeremy O Harris paid tribute to Jones’s “limitless” contributions to US culture, writing: “What couldn’t he do? Quincy Jones, literally born when the limits on how big a black boy could dream were unfathomably high, taught us that the limit does not exist.”

Jones was born in Chicago. His half-white father had been born to a Welsh slave owner and one of his female slaves, while his mother’s family were also descended from slave owners. His introduction to music came through the walls of his childhood home from a piano played by a neighbour, which he started learning aged seven, and via his mother’s singing.

His parents divorced and he moved with his father to Washington state, where Jones learned drums and a host of brass instruments in his high-school band. At 14, he started playing in a band with a 16-year-old Ray Charles in Seattle clubs, once, in 1948, backing Billie Holiday. He studied music at Seattle University, transferring east to continue in Boston, and then moved to New York after being rehired by the jazz bandleader Lionel Hampton, with whom he had toured as a high-schooler (a band for which Malcolm X was a heroin dealer when they played in Detroit).

In New York, one early gig was playing trumpet in Elvis Presley’s band for his first TV appearances, and he met the stars of the flourishing bebop movement including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. (Years later, in 1991, Jones conducted Davis’s last performance, two months before he died.)

Jones toured Europe with Hampton, and spent much time there in the 1950s, including a period furthering his studies in Paris, where he met luminaries including Pablo Picasso, James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. At the age of 23, he also toured South America and the Middle East as Dizzy Gillespie’s musical director and arranger. He convened a crack team for his own big band, touring Europe as a way to test Free and Easy, a jazz musical, but the disastrous run left Jones, by his own admission, close to suicide and with $100,000 of debt.

He secured a job at Mercury Records and slowly paid off the debt with plenty of work as a producer and arranger for artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan and Sammy Davis Jr. He also began scoring films, his credits eventually including The Italian Job, In the Heat of the Night, The Getaway and The Color Purple. (He produced the last of these, which was nominated for 11 Oscars, three for Jones himself.) In 1968, he became the first African American to be nominated for best original song at the Oscars, for The Eyes of Love from the film Banning (alongside songwriter Bob Russell); he had seven nominations in total. For TV, he scored programmes such as The Bill Cosby Show, Ironside and Roots.

His work with Sinatra began in 1958 when he was hired to conduct and arrange for Sinatra and his band by Grace Kelly, princess consort of Monaco, for a charity event. Jones and Sinatra continued working on projects until Sinatra’s final album, LA Is My Lady, in 1984. Jones’s solo musical career took off in the late 1950s, recording albums under his own name as bandleader for jazz ensembles that included luminaries such as Charles Mingus, Art Pepper and Freddie Hubbard.

Jones once said of his time in Seattle: “When people write about the music, jazz is in this box, R&B is in this box, pop is in this box, but we did everything,” and his catholic tastes served him well as modern pop mutated out of the swing era. He produced four million-selling hits for the New York singer Lesley Gore in the mid-60s, including the US No 1 It’s My Party, and later embraced funk and disco, producing hit singles including George Benson’s Give Me the Night and Patti Austin and James Ingram’s Baby Come to Me, along with records by the band Rufus and Chaka Khan, and the Brothers Johnson. Jones also released his own funk material, scoring US Top 10 albums with Body Heat (1974) and The Dude (1981).

His biggest success in this style was his work with Michael Jackson: Thriller remains the biggest selling album of all time, while Jones’s versatility between Off the Wall and Bad allowed Jackson to metamorphose from lithe disco to ultra-synthetic funk-rock. He and Jackson (along with Lionel Richie and producer Michael Omartian) also helmed We Are the World, a successful charity single that raised funds for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1985. “I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him,” Jones said when Jackson died in 2009. In 2017, Jones’s legal team successfully argued that he was owed $9.4m in unpaid Jackson royalties, though he lost on appeal in 2020 and had to return $6.8m.

After the success of The Color Purple in 1985, he formed the film and TV production company Quincy Jones Entertainment in 1990. His biggest screen hit was the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for 148 episodes and launched the career of Will Smith; other shows included the LL Cool J sitcom In the House and the long-running sketch comedy show MadTV.

He also created the media company Qwest Broadcasting and in 1993, the Black music magazine Vibe in partnership with Time Inc. Throughout his career he supported numerous charities and causes, including the , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Jazz Foundation of America and others, and mentored young musicians including the British multiple Grammy winner Jacob Collier.

Jones’ illustrious career was twice nearly cut short: he narrowly avoided being killed by Charles Manson’s cult in 1969, having planned to go to Sharon Tate’s house on the night of the murders there, but Jones forgot the appointment. He also survived a brain aneurysm in 1974 that prevented him from playing the trumpet again in case the exertion caused further harm.

Jones was married three times, first to his high-school girlfriend Jeri Caldwell, for nine years until 1966, fathering his daughter Jolie. In 1967, he married Ulla Andersson and had a son and daughter, divorcing in 1974 to marry actor Peggy Lipton, best known for roles in The Mod Squad and Twin Peaks. They had two daughters, including the actor Rashida Jones, before divorcing in 1989. He had two further children: Rachel, with a dancer, Carol Reynolds, and Kenya, his daughter with actor Nastassja Kinski.

He never remarried, but continued to date a string of younger women, raising eyebrows with his year-long partnership with 19-year-old Egyptian designer Heba Elawadi when he was 73. He has also claimed to have dated Ivanka Trump and Juliette Gréco. He is survived by his seven children.

Other artists paying tribute included LL Cool J, who wrote: “You were a father and example at a time when I truly needed a father and example. Mentor. Role model. King. You gave me opportunities and shared wisdom. Music would not be music without you.” Femi Koleoso, bandleader with Mercury prize-winning jazz group Ezra Collective, called Jones a “masterful musician and beautiful soul”.

Nile Rodgers of Chic wrote “rest in power”, describing Jones as a “leader, teacher, spirit, pioneer”.

Sweden has vetoed plans for 13 offshore windfarms in the Baltic Sea, citing unacceptable security risks.

The country’s defence minister, Pål Jonson, said on Monday that the government had rejected plans for all but one of 14 windfarms planned along the east coast.

The decision comes after the Swedish armed forces concluded last week that the projects would make it more difficult to defend Nato’s newest member.

“The government believes that it would lead to unacceptable consequences for Sweden’s defence to build the current projects in the Baltic Sea area,” Jonson said at a press conference.

The proposed windfarms would have been located between Åland, the autonomous Finnish region between Sweden and Finland, and the Sound, the strait between southern Sweden and Denmark. The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is only about 310 miles (500km) from Stockholm.

Wind power could affect Sweden’s defence capabilities across sensors and radars and make it harder to detect submarines and possible attacks from the air if war broke out, Jonson said.

The only project to receive the green light to was Poseidon, which will include as many as 81 wind turbines to produce 5.5 terawatt hours a year off Stenungsund on Sweden’s west coast.

“Both ballistic robots and also cruise robots are a big problem if you have offshore wind power,” Jonson said. “If you have a strong signal detection capability and a radar system that is important, we use the Patriot system for example, there would be negative consequences if there were offshore wind power in the way of the sensors.”

A Nato maritime commander said earlier this year that the security of nearly a billion people across Europe and North America was under threat from Russian attempts to target the extensive vulnerabilities of underwater infrastructure, including windfarms, which he said had “system vulnerabilities”.

V Adm Didier Maleterre, the deputy commander of Nato’s allied maritime command (Marcom), told the Guardian in April: “We know the Russians have developed a lot of hybrid warfare under the sea to disrupt the European economy through cables, internet cables, pipelines. All of our economy under the sea is under threat.”

Sweden’s energy and industry minister, Ebba Busch, said it had been a tough announcement to make, but that security policy was paramount. While many Nato countries are rapidly expanding their wind power, Busch said they were “cleaning up an incredibly messy system”.

Nato recently established a centre dedicated to undersea security at Marcom’s UK-based headquarters in Northwood, north-west London.

The degradation of the world’s soils and landscapes is threatening human life, and must be addressed as a matter of urgency, the government of Saudi Arabia has said.

Neglect of the land is wiping trillions of dollars from global economies, hampering agricultural production, disrupting water supplies, threatening children with poor nutrition, and destroying vital ecosystems, according to the country’s deputy environment minister.

Land degradation, and ways to combat the problem, will come into sharp focus at a global summit to be held in the nation’s capital, Riyadh, in December.

The conference of the parties (Cop) to the UN convention on combating desertification (CCD), which takes place every two years, is often an overlooked international meeting, sparsely attended compared with the Cops on climate and on biodiversity.

But as this year’s host, Saudi Arabia is planning to put the issue of land management in the spotlight, inviting senior ministers and heads of government from around the world, in an attempt to bring in some financial muscle. In so doing, the country, often accused of obstructive behaviour at climate Cops, will offer an unusual glimpse of its own environmental priorities, in a world increasingly imperilled by global heating and related water shortages.

Osama Faqeeha, deputy environment minister in the kingdom’s government, said people should not be misled by the term desertification, which could appear a narrow concern limited to arid countries. In fact, the CCD should be understood to cover all of the globe’s vulnerable lands, and efforts to rescue and protect them.

“This Cop is about land degradation, land preservation and drought,” he told the Guardian, in a rare interview. “It’s very important for water security, food security, biodiversity, and human community. We need to go back to basics and remind the world of this connection we all have with the land.”

“Desertification tells us that we have not exercised good land management,” said Faqeeha, who will take a prominent role assisting the Cop president designate, the Saudi environment and water minister, Abdulrahman al-Fadley. “We need to take a comprehensive view. Land degradation is universal. More than 2bn hectares globally are degraded. Already, 55% of countries report land degradation, and there is not enough reporting … The cost of land degradation is a staggering $6tn a year.”

On current trends, he warned, the amount of land affected could triple by 2050, without strong action to restore fertility and prevent land from being over-exploited.

The impacts can be felt not just on the loss of species, but also on human nutrition, he added. Children eating the same amount of food now as a few decades ago are receiving far fewer of the vital nutrients they need, because degraded soils produce food with less nutritional value.

The UNCCD was forged in Rio in 1992, alongside the UN framework convention on climate change, and the UN convention on biodiversity, and each hold separate Cops – annually, in the case of the climate, and every other year for the other two. Cop29 on the climate will be held in Azerbaijan from 11 November, while Cop16 on biodiversity finishes in Colombia this week. Their findings will feed into CCD Cop16 in Riyadh. Of the three Cops, it has been “the least understood”, said Faqeeha.

Harjeet Singh, global engagement director at the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, said the Saudi government must address the climate at the Riyadh talks. “As droughts, land degradation, and desertification continue to intensify due to rising temperatures, particularly in vulnerable regions like the Middle East, aligning climate action with sustainable land management must be central to the discussions,” he said.

“Saudi Arabia will face significant international scrutiny over whether it will take bold action by committing to phase out fossil fuels or restrict its efforts to promoting tree-planting initiatives and land restoration practices.”

But Saudi is reluctant to link the CCD talks to the climate, despite the obvious interaction between desertification and the massive changes to the world’s hydrological cycles that are wreaked by the climate crisis, and that are becoming increasingly obvious in the form of extreme weather, heatwaves, droughts and floods. Saudi’s climate responsibilities, as holder of the world’s biggest oil reserves, will not form part of the discussion.

“This Cop is not about Saudi Arabia, it’s about the whole world and global challenges,” Faqeeha said. “Other countries have an equal voice – we are just a facilitator.”

Meanwhile at the climate summit this year, nations will discuss the need to raise trillions of dollars for developing countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather. Saudi, with its extraordinary oil wealth, is still classed as a developing country at the climate talks. But for the first time, Saudi and fellow petrostates will be asked by developed country leaders at Cop29 to contribute to funds for the poor world – a demand the government is likely to refuse.

Faqeeha insisted these questions were not connected to the UNCCD Cop. He said the key source of funds for protecting lands against degradation must be the private sector, which would be extensively represented by investors and business leaders at the Riyadh meeting.

Faqeeha said Saudi was a good place to hold a desertification Cop. “This region is highly impacted by desertification,” he said. “It makes sense to hold this Cop in an arid country.” He said the kingdom’s government had already embarked on a series of initiatives to restore land, protect water sources and conserve biodiversity.

For instance, the country is working to preserve a system of terraces on a mountain range parallel to the Red Sea, where rainfall is harvested. The Saudi Green Initiative has a target of restoring 40m hectares of degraded land by 2030.

Just as many countries agreed at the biodiversity Cop16 in Cali, Colombia, to conserve at least 30% of their land, Faqeeha hopes that countries will make commitments to restore their areas of highly degraded land at the CCD Cop. “Not all countries have targets yet on restoring lands,” he noted. “And we also need to prevent degradation, by better land management.”

Seven French families have filed a lawsuit against TikTok, accusing the platform of exposing their adolescent children to harmful content that led to two of them taking their own lives at 15, their lawyer said.

The lawsuit alleges TikTok’s algorithm exposed the seven teenagers to videos promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, lawyer Laure Boutron-Marmion told broadcaster Franceinfo on Monday.

The families are taking joint legal action in the Créteil judicial court in Paris. Boutron-Marmion said it was the first such grouped case in Europe.

“The parents want TikTok’s legal liability to be recognised in court,” she said, adding: “This is a commercial company offering a product to consumers who are, in addition, minors. They must, therefore, answer for the product’s shortcomings.”

TikTok, like other social media platforms, has long faced scrutiny over the policing of content on its app.

As with Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, it faces hundreds of lawsuits in the US accusing it of enticing and addicting millions of children to its platform, damaging their mental health.

Last month, more than a dozen states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against the Chinese-owned company, alleging it is damaging children’s mental health with a product designed to be used compulsively and excessively.

Responding to the lawsuits, a TikTok spokesperson said: “We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading.”

The company has said previously it took issues that were linked to children’s mental health seriously.

Its chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, this year told US lawmakers the company had invested in measures to protect young people who use the app.

Reuters contributed to this article

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Germany has condemned what it called “a massive, coordinated attempt” to prevent Moldovans abroad from voting in the second round of the country’s presidential election.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said vote-buying, manipulation and bomb threats against Moldovan polling stations – “even in Germany” – were aimed at “the heart of European democracy”, and showed that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “will stop at nothing”.

A German foreign ministry spokesperson said polling stations in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Kaiserslautern and Berlin had been targeted by bomb threats, describing the intimidation as “totally unacceptable”.

The remarks came as Europe’s most powerful leaders congratulated Moldova’s pro-western president, Maia Sandu, after she won a second term, cementing the country’s EU aspirations and dealing a setback to the Kremlin.

With nearly 98% of the vote counted in the second round of the presidential elections on Sunday, Sandu had 54% of the vote, ahead of Alexandr Stoianoglo, a Kremlin-friendly political newcomer, backed by the pro-Russia party of Socialists. The party described Sandu as an “illegitimate president” on Monday.

Moldovan authorities reported evidence of attempts to meddle in the electoral process before Sunday’s vote and during the first round of voting and a referendum on EU membership that was won by a wafer-thin margin two weeks earlier.

Allegations of Russian or pro-Russia interference, including cyber-attacks on polling stations, bussing in voters, vote-buying and intimidation, underscored the stakes for the small former Soviet republic that has pursued a decisively pro-western path under Sandu, seeking to join the EU.

Moldova’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that polling stations in Frankfurt, as well as Liverpool and Northampton in the UK, had been targeted by false bomb threats “intended only to stop the voting process”.

On Monday the US president, Joe Biden, hailed Sandu’s victory as a win for democracy and said Russia had failed to undermine the former Soviet republic.

“For months, Russia sought to undermine Moldova’s democratic institutions and election processes. But Russia failed,” Biden said.

“The Moldovan people have exercised their democratic right to choose their own future, and they have chosen to pursue a path aligned with Europe and democracies everywhere,” he added in a statement.

That sentiment was echoed by European leaders. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “It takes a rare kind of strength to overcome the challenges you [Sandu] have faced in this election. I’m glad to continue working with you towards a European future for Moldova and its people.”

In a joint statement, the commission and the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, praised the Moldovan authorities “for the successful conduct of the election, despite unprecedented interference by Russia, including with vote-buying schemes and disinformation”, adding that “these hybrid attempts have sought to undermine the country’s democratic institutions and its EU path”.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said democracy had triumphed over all interference and manoeuvring: “France will continue to remain at the side of Moldova in her European path,” he wrote on X.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, agreed. “@sandumaiamd has steered the Republic of Moldova safely through difficult times and set the country on a European course. We stand by Moldova’s side,” he said.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his country was ready to support Moldova’s European choice. “Moldovans have made a clear choice – they chose a path toward economic growth and social stability. Only true security and a peaceful, united Europe can guarantee each person and every family the confidence to face tomorrow with hope and certainty.”

Moldova filed its application to join the EU in March 2022 only days after Ukraine announced its intention to become an EU member state, following Russia’s full-scale invasion. Both countries were granted EU candidate status in June 2022 in an accelerated process.

In the run-up to the first round of voting in the presidential elections, the commission proposed a €1.8bn (£1.5bn) growth plan for Moldova, with the aim of doubling the size of the Moldovan economy over the next 10 years. The plan links financial aid (grants and cheap loans) to reforms, but still has to be agreed by EU member states and the European parliament, a five- or six-month process.

Siegfried Mureșan, a Romanian MEP who will lead talks for the European parliament on the Moldova growth plan, promised the EU would pass the legislation as quickly as possible “so we can enable the necessary investments needed to help the country modernise and be prepared for EU accession”.

He described the result as “a victory for the citizens of the Republic of Moldova and a defeat for the Russian Federation”.

The Kremlin has denied interfering in the vote. “We resolutely reject any accusations that we are somehow interfering in this. We are not doing this,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said.

A senior Russian senator and an ally of Putin said on Monday that votes were “brought in” to help Sandu win. “You count the votes, you see how many the ‘right’ candidate is missing and bring in the required number of votes from foreign polling stations,” said Andrei Klishas, a member of Russia’s Federation Council, referring to diaspora voting.

One EU leader conspicuous by his silence in the immediate aftermath of the vote was Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian prime minister angered EU officials last week when he flew to Georgia the day after parliamentary elections, having offered his congratulations to the pro-Russian ruling party before the final tally had been officially announced. In the first 12 hours after the results of Moldova’s election became clear, Orbán had not immediately commented to international media.

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, offered his congratulations in a message that appeared to point to the US presidential election on Tuesday, a race that has also been beset by allegations of Russian interference.

“Despite Russia’s aggressive and massive interference in the Moldovan presidential elections, Maia Sandu most likely defeated Moscow’s favourite,” Tusk wrote on X before the final election results were counted. “Let’s hope that this trend will continue in the coming days and months in other countries as well.”

Meredith Kercher “will always be remembered for her own fight for life”, the sister of the murdered British student has said as filming began in Italy on a controversial TV series co-produced by Amanda Knox about the case.

Filming of the eight-episode series, Blue Moon, has coincided with the 17th anniversary of the murder, for which Knox was twice convicted before being definitively acquitted in 2015.

The series is also being co-produced by Monica Lewinsky, who was at the centre of a 1990s media storm after an affair with the then US president, Bill Clinton, and focuses on Knox’s legal battle. It is being shot in the Umbrian hilltop town of Orvieto this week before moving to Perugia, the university town where Kercher, 21, was murdered in the house she shared with Knox. Kercher’s body was found in her bedroom, partly undressed and with multiple stab wounds. She had been sexually assaulted.

Her sister Stephanie Kercher said Meredith’s “strength and love remains strong after 17 years” and that she “will forever hold a lasting legacy in friendship and kindness that no media can change”.

Kercher said her family had been through a lot and found it “difficult to understand” how the series served any purpose. “Meredith will always be remembered for her own fight for life, and yet in her absence, her love and personality continues to shine,” she said. “We will forever feel this indescribable void but we live by Meredith’s standards with dignity.”

Knox was convicted of the murder along with her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. The pair spent four years in prison before being released in 2011.

They were convicted again in 2014 by an appeals court in Florence, which ruled that the multiple injuries inflicted on Kercher’s body proved that Rudy Guede, an Ivorian man who served 13 years for the murder, could not have acted alone. Italy’s highest court overturned the decision against Knox and Sollecito in a ruling in 2015, because of what it described as “stunning flaws” in the investigation that led to the convictions.

The Kercher family rarely respond to the publicity generated by Knox, who reportedly earned about £3.5m for her memoir, took part in a Netflix documentary about the case in 2016 and has been the subject of other books and films.

In June this year, a Florence court upheld a slander conviction against Knox for wrongly accusing Patrick Lumumba, who owned a bar in Perugia, of murdering Kercher. Knox, 37, had asked for the conviction to be dropped on the basis of a ruling by the European court of human rights in 2019 that found her defence rights had been violated during police questioning in 2007. She said she had returned to Italy in the hope of clearing her name “once and for all of the false charges” against her.

She had been handed a three-year jail term for wrongly accusing Lumumba, which she served during the four years she was imprisoned before being found not guilty of Kercher’s murder on appeal in 2011.

Lumumba spent two weeks in jail in 2007 and was released only after a witness came forward with an alibi for him.

Guede, the only person definitively convicted of the murder, was released from prison in November 2021 after completing 13 years of a 16-year sentence.