Joe Biden has lifted the ban on Ukraine using long-range missiles to fire into Russian territory by permitting them to be used against Russian and North Korean forces in the Kursk region.

The US president will allow Ukraine to use US-made Atacms rockets, which have a range of 190 miles (300km) – a decision being justified by the presence of North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine.

Though there was no public comment from the White House, the story first appeared in coordinated briefings to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the news agencies Reuters and Associated Press.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appeared to confirm the news, though he said any proof about the change in policy would emerge on the battlefield, if and when the missiles are used.

“Today, there’s a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves. They certainly will,” Zelenskyy said.

Poland’s foreign minister welcomed the news. “With the entry into the war of North Korea troops and the massive airstrike of Russian missiles, President Biden responded in a language that Putin understands,” Radosław Sikorski wrote on X.

But Vladimir Dzhabarov, the first deputy head of the Russian upper house’s international affairs committee, warned Moscow’s response would be immediate.

“This is a very big step towards the start of world war three,” the Tass state news agency quoted Dzhabarov as saying.

It is the first time Biden has given Kyiv permission to use long-range weapons inside Russia but their use will be limited to the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia in the summer.

Kyiv announced nationwide energy rationing from Monday after Moscow’s biggest drone and missile attack in months on Ukraine’s energy grid on Sunday.

US officials briefed that the weapons would be used against Russian and North Korean troops deployed against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region – and was intended to send a message to North Korea – though Biden may authorise their use elsewhere during his remaining two months in the White House.

The first strikes using US-supplied Atacms rockets could come within days. The decision is not thought to apply to UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles, the use of which on Russian territory has previously been blocked by the US.

Kyiv has indicated it wants to use Storm Shadows against airbases used to launch attacks on Ukraine, instead of in Kursk. The White House and Downing Street declined to comment.

It is not clear if Donald Trump, who has previously criticised the scale of US military aid to Ukraine, will seek to reverse the decision. Biden previously allowed Ukraine to use shorter-range US-supplied Himars against Russian forces attacking Kharkiv from over the border, but had refused permission for deep strike weapons Russia.

Last month, North Korea sent an estimated 10,000 troops to Russia to participate in the Ukraine war, the first time Pyongyang has been prepared to use ground forces since the end of the Korean war in 1953.

They have since been positioned in Kursk and preparing to join with Russian troops in a counterattack against in joint force whose strength is estimated at 50,000.

Other reports, based on Ukrainian intelligence briefings, have suggested that North Korea could be willing to send as many as 100,000 troops if the alliance between the two countries strengthens, at a time when Kyiv is struggling to mobilise more people to join the war.

Earlier on Sunday, the Ukrainian president said about 120 missiles and 90 drones were fired into Ukraine that morning in a nationwide attack he described as the work of “Russian terrorists”.

The attack was the largest missile and drone assault on Ukraine since August and the first big Russian assault since the US election, showing the Kremlin in little mood to compromise after Trump’s victory.

Poland and Nato allies scrambled jets to safeguard its airspace in border areas early on Sunday, the country’s operational military command said, returning to their bases about three hours later without incident. Moldova said Russian drones and missiles had violated its airspace.

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s principal energy supplier, said blackouts and consumption restrictions would be introduced “in all regions” as engineers tried to repair as much of the damage to power facilities as possible from the strikes in the early hours of Sunday.

Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, described the strike as Moscow’s “true response” to leaders who had interacted with Vladimir Putin, an apparent swipe at the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who made a phone call to the Russian leader on Friday for the first time since December 2022.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Sunday’s attack showed Putin “does not want peace and is not ready to negotiate”. He said the priority for France was to “equip, support and help Ukraine to resist”.

Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, echoed Sybiha’s remarks in his condemnation of the Russian barrage. “The attack last night, one of the biggest in this war, has proved that telephone diplomacy cannot replace real support from the whole west for Ukraine,” he said.

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, said he had no plans to speak to Putin. Starmer was speaking as he flew to Brazil for a G20 summit, where he said Ukraine would be his top priority for discussions with other world leaders.

He highlighted the presence of North Korean soldiers as reinforcements, saying this showed the “desperation of Russia” and meant the conflict now had an additional element, involving security in the Indo-Pacific. “That’s why I think we need to double down on shoring up our support for Ukraine and that’s top of my agenda for the G20,” he said.

• The US decision to lift a ban on Ukraine using long-range missiles to fire into Russian territory escalates the conflict in Ukraine and will spark an immediate response, senior Russian lawmakers said on Sunday. “The west has decided on such a level of escalation that it could end with the Ukrainian statehood in complete ruins by morning,” Andrei Klishas, a senior member of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, said on the Telegram messaging app. Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy head of the Russian upper house’s international affairs committee, was quoted by Tass news agency as saying: “This is a very big step towards the start of world war three.”

• The remarks came after US president Joe Biden reversed a ban on the firing of long-range missiles into Russian territory by permitting them to be used against Russian and North Korean forces in the Kursk region. The US president will allow Ukraine to use US-made Atacms rockets, which have a range of 190 miles (300km) – a decision being justified by the presence of North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine. Though there was no public comment from the White House, the story first appeared in coordinated briefings to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the news agencies Reuters and Associated Press.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appeared to confirm the news, though he said any proof about the change in policy would emerge on the battlefield, if and when the missiles are used. “Today, there’s a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves. They certainly will,” Zelenskyy said.

• Ten people, including two children, were killed and 52 were injured on Sunday night when a Russian missile hit a residential nine-storey building in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Sumy, Ukraine’s emergency services and military said. “Sunday evening for the city of Sumy became hell, a tragedy that Russia brought to our land,” Volodymyr Artyukh, the head of the Sumy military administration said in a post on the administration’s Telegram messaging channel.

• The attack on Sumy followed a morning of Russia pounding Ukraine’s power grid in what Kyiv said was a “massive” attack with 120 missiles and 90 drones that killed at least seven people. The attack was the largest missile and drone assault on Ukraine since August and the first big Russian assault since the US election, showing the Kremlin in little mood to compromise after Donald Trump’s victory.

• Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s principal energy supplier, said blackouts and consumption restrictions would be introduced “in all regions” from Monday as engineers tried to repair as much of the damage to power facilities as possible. With the harsh Ukrainian winter fast approaching, the country is already suffering from major energy shortfalls.

• Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said the attack showed that talking to Russian president Vladimir Putin on the phone would not stop the war, two days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rang him. “No one will stop Putin with phone calls. The attack last night, one of the biggest in this war, has proved that telephone diplomacy cannot replace real support from the whole west for Ukraine,” Donald Tusk wrote on X.

• Scholz defended his decision to phone the Kremlin, telling reporters on Sunday it was important to tell him [Putin] that he cannot count on support from Germany, Europe and many others in the world waning. He added: “The conversation was very detailed but contributed to a recognition that little has changed in the Russian president’s views of the war – and that’s not good news.”

• Ukraine will be “top of the agenda” this week at a meeting of leaders from the world’s most powerful economies, Keir Starmer pledged, though he said he had “no plans” to follow Scholz and speak directly to Putin. Starmer will meet world leaders on Monday at the G20 summit in Brazil, which the Russian president has declined to attend, sending his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in his place.

• Finland is hosting its first large-scale Nato artillery exercise since the Nordic nation joined the military alliance last year, with live fire drills starting on Sunday. The exercise conducted in the northern Lapland region in November is part of Dynamic Front 25, the largest Nato artillery exercise ever held in Europe, with fire drills in Finland as well as Estonia, Germany, Romania and Poland. The Nordic nation, which shares a border with Russia, joined Nato last year, dropping decades of military non-alignment after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

• About 1,500 supporters of Russia’s exiled opposition marched through central Berlin on Sunday – led by Yulia Navalnaya and chanting “No to war!” and “No to Putin” – in a demonstration against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The march saw a smaller turnout than expected and was seen as a credibility test for the movement – weakened by years of repression and thrown into disarray since the death of its main leader Alexei Navalny in prison earlier this year.

• The US decision to lift a ban on Ukraine using long-range missiles to fire into Russian territory escalates the conflict in Ukraine and will spark an immediate response, senior Russian lawmakers said on Sunday. “The west has decided on such a level of escalation that it could end with the Ukrainian statehood in complete ruins by morning,” Andrei Klishas, a senior member of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, said on the Telegram messaging app. Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy head of the Russian upper house’s international affairs committee, was quoted by Tass news agency as saying: “This is a very big step towards the start of world war three.”

• The remarks came after US president Joe Biden reversed a ban on the firing of long-range missiles into Russian territory by permitting them to be used against Russian and North Korean forces in the Kursk region. The US president will allow Ukraine to use US-made Atacms rockets, which have a range of 190 miles (300km) – a decision being justified by the presence of North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine. Though there was no public comment from the White House, the story first appeared in coordinated briefings to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the news agencies Reuters and Associated Press.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appeared to confirm the news, though he said any proof about the change in policy would emerge on the battlefield, if and when the missiles are used. “Today, there’s a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves. They certainly will,” Zelenskyy said.

• Ten people, including two children, were killed and 52 were injured on Sunday night when a Russian missile hit a residential nine-storey building in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Sumy, Ukraine’s emergency services and military said. “Sunday evening for the city of Sumy became hell, a tragedy that Russia brought to our land,” Volodymyr Artyukh, the head of the Sumy military administration said in a post on the administration’s Telegram messaging channel.

• The attack on Sumy followed a morning of Russia pounding Ukraine’s power grid in what Kyiv said was a “massive” attack with 120 missiles and 90 drones that killed at least seven people. The attack was the largest missile and drone assault on Ukraine since August and the first big Russian assault since the US election, showing the Kremlin in little mood to compromise after Donald Trump’s victory.

• Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s principal energy supplier, said blackouts and consumption restrictions would be introduced “in all regions” from Monday as engineers tried to repair as much of the damage to power facilities as possible. With the harsh Ukrainian winter fast approaching, the country is already suffering from major energy shortfalls.

• Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said the attack showed that talking to Russian president Vladimir Putin on the phone would not stop the war, two days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rang him. “No one will stop Putin with phone calls. The attack last night, one of the biggest in this war, has proved that telephone diplomacy cannot replace real support from the whole west for Ukraine,” Donald Tusk wrote on X.

• Scholz defended his decision to phone the Kremlin, telling reporters on Sunday it was important to tell him [Putin] that he cannot count on support from Germany, Europe and many others in the world waning. He added: “The conversation was very detailed but contributed to a recognition that little has changed in the Russian president’s views of the war – and that’s not good news.”

• Ukraine will be “top of the agenda” this week at a meeting of leaders from the world’s most powerful economies, Keir Starmer pledged, though he said he had “no plans” to follow Scholz and speak directly to Putin. Starmer will meet world leaders on Monday at the G20 summit in Brazil, which the Russian president has declined to attend, sending his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in his place.

• Finland is hosting its first large-scale Nato artillery exercise since the Nordic nation joined the military alliance last year, with live fire drills starting on Sunday. The exercise conducted in the northern Lapland region in November is part of Dynamic Front 25, the largest Nato artillery exercise ever held in Europe, with fire drills in Finland as well as Estonia, Germany, Romania and Poland. The Nordic nation, which shares a border with Russia, joined Nato last year, dropping decades of military non-alignment after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

• About 1,500 supporters of Russia’s exiled opposition marched through central Berlin on Sunday – led by Yulia Navalnaya and chanting “No to war!” and “No to Putin” – in a demonstration against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The march saw a smaller turnout than expected and was seen as a credibility test for the movement – weakened by years of repression and thrown into disarray since the death of its main leader Alexei Navalny in prison earlier this year.

Hezbollah’s chief spokesman has been killed by an Israeli airstrike on Beirut, as Israel intensifies its air offensive in Lebanon despite ongoing indirect negotiations for a ceasefire.

Mohammed Afif, who has been the public face of Hezbollah for months, was killed in a strike on offices of the Ba’ath party in Ras al-Nabaa, central Beirut. The attack in the busy residential area came without warning, and appeared to damage to neighbouring buildings.

The son of a prominent Shia cleric, Afif managed the Hezbollah-run TV network Al Manar before taking over as head of the militant Islamist group’s media relations. Since the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, on 28 September, Afif became one of the group’s most prominent officials, holding several press conferences in Beirut.

Analysts said Asif was the first official with such a role to be killed by Israel, as all previous targets had military or senior leadership posts. Until Sunday, there had been no Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut since mid-October.

Witnesses saw four bodies at the scene of the strike, which took place a day before Lebanon was expected to deliver its response to a US-delivered ceasefire proposal. There was no official word on the exact death toll.

“I was asleep and awoke from the sound of the strike, and people screaming, and cars and gunfire,” said Suheil Halabi, a local resident. “I was startled, honestly. This is the first time I experience it so close.”

Late on Sunday, Lebanon’s health ministry said another Israeli strike in central Beirut killed two people and wounded 13. Firefighters were battling a blaze triggered by the strike in the commercial-residential area.

The education minister later announced Beirut-area schools would close for two days. Lebanon’s army, which is not a party to the conflict, said Israel had “directly targeted” an army centre in south Lebanon on Sunday, killing two soldiers.

In Gaza, civil defence workers confirmed 34 deaths, including children, from an Israeli strike that hit a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. Dozens more were missing.

An Israeli military spokesperson said strikes were conducted on “terrorist targets”.

“We emphasise that there have been continued efforts to evacuate the civilian population from the active war zone in the area, in parallel with efforts to expand the humanitarian area in al-Mawasi … The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is precisely operating and is doing everything possible to avoid causing harm to civilians,” they said.

Evacuation orders on leaflets distributed on Sunday told civilians to leave northernmost parts of Gaza immediately.

“This is an early warning before the attack! You are in a dangerous battle zone. For your safety, go urgently,” the leaflets read.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge the militant Islamist group denies. There was no independent confirmation of the death toll.

The airstrikes in Gaza on Sunday came amid Israeli offensives in Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya. Witnesses said much of the area was obscured by smoke and shelling on Sunday.

The tight siege of the three towns and a series of evacuation orders has raised widespread concerns that Israel intends to force civilian populations to leave the northernmost parts of Gaza and will not permit their return. Humanitarian conditions there are described as “apocalyptic” by aid workers, with very limited food, water, medicine and communications.

In a statement, Médecins Sans Frontières accused Israel of following a plan proposed by former senior Israeli military officers to forcibly displace or kill Palestinians in northern Gaza.

“The way the ongoing offensive in the north is being waged … reinforces the idea that we are witnessing the execution of this plan,” the NGO said.

Israel denies any such intention and says the offensives, launched last month, are an effort to prevent Hamas from regrouping in areas that have been cleared in previous multiple rounds of combat.

In other deadly strikes on Sunday, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said attacks killed 15 people in central Gaza and five in the southern city of Rafah. Also in the south, in the Khan Younis area, civil defence said an Israeli drone targeted a group of unarmed people securing an aid delivery, killing six.

On Saturday evening, an Israeli airstrike on a UN-run school sheltering displaced people killed 10, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Israel’s military said it struck a command centre of the militant Islamist organisation in the compound.

The latest strikes in Lebanon came as Israel’s media reported that Israeli troops had advanced as far as three miles (5km) from the contested border.

Israeli media said the IDF were deliberately “blurring” the extent of its operations in Lebanon, even though most aims set out by the Israeli government had been achieved.

“The IDF won’t admit this, but the Northern Command completed the mission it was given by the political leadership two weeks ago, on schedule. That mission was to remove the threat of an … invasion of the Galilee,” wrote Yoav Zitun in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Israeli attacks also targeted buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, on Sunday after warnings for residents to evacuate.

There were also reports of strikes in several other areas of the country, including the port city of Tyre, where the Lebanese health ministry said 11 people were killed and 48 wounded.

In a statement, the Israeli military said the attacks were “intelligence-based” and targeted Hezbollah command centres and infrastructure.

Israel launched its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon to allow an estimated 60,000 Israelis to return to homes near the border evacuated in the first days of the war for fear of attack and bombardment by the militant Islamist group.

Although Hezbollah’s capabilities have been significantly reduced, it has continued to fire rockets and missiles into Israel since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza.

Israel’s military said on Saturday that Hezbollah had fired more than 80 projectiles across the border that day. Most were intercepted or did not cause injuries but a synagogue was struck and two civilians were wounded in a “heavy rocket barrage” by Hezbollah on Haifa, northern Israel’s largest city. Hezbollah said it fired missiles at five Israeli military facilities in Haifa and its suburbs.

More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire according to the Lebanese health ministry. Israel’s military said a soldier died in combat in southern Lebanon on Friday.

By the beginning of November, more than 60 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights by Hezbollah attacks in almost 13 months of the conflict.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has previously linked any ceasefire in the north to an end to the Israeli offensive in Gaza, though some analysts now believe the group may consider a separate deal.

A copy of a draft proposal presented by the US earlier this week was handed over to the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Nabih Berri, who has been negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah, according to a Lebanese official. The proposal is based on UN security council resolution 1701, which ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.

The multi-front conflict began after Palestinian militants from Hamas and other armed groups launched a surprise attack from Gaza into southern Israel in October last year, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and abducting 250 others.

About 100 hostages are thought to be still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israelis rallied again in Tel Aviv on Saturday night to demand a ceasefire deal to return the hostages.

The Gaza health ministry said 43,799 people have been confirmed dead in Gaza since the war began. More than half of identified casualties have been women or children.

Discussion on Donald Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who had been accused of sexual misconduct, for US attorney general continued on Sunday, with Republican senator Markwayne Mullin calling for an unreleased ethics report to be released to the Senate.

Mullin told NBC’s Meet the Press that the Senate, which will oversee Gaetz’s confirmation hearings to become attorney general, “should have access to that” but declined to say if it should be released publicly.

Gaetz resigned from his seat in Congress on Wednesday soon after the president-elect made his controversial pick, frustrating plans by a congressional ethics panel to release a review of claims against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct and illegal drug use. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.

Republican House speaker Mike Johnson repeated his position on Sunday that the survey should remain out of the public realm. Gaetz had faced a three-year justice department investigation into the same allegations that concluded without criminal charges being brought.

Johnson said the principle was that the ethics committee’s jurisdiction did not extend to non-members of the House. “There have been, I understand, I think, two exceptions to the rule over the whole history of Congress and the history of the ethics committee,” Johnson told CNN, adding that while he did not have the authority to stop it “we don’t want to go down that road.”

Trump’s selection of Gaetz, while successfully provoking Democrats’ outrage, is also seen as a test for Republicans to bend Trump’s force of will. Mullin has previously noted situations in which Gaetz had allegedly shown colleagues nude photographs of his sexual conquests and described him as “unprincipled”.

But the senator said he had not made a decision on whether to support Gaetz in a confirmation vote. “I’m going to give him a fair shot just like any individual,” Mullin said.

The pending report seems likely to emerge in some form after other senior Republicans, including senators Susan Collins, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis have all said they believe it should be shown to them.

Separately, Pennsylvania Democratic senator John Fetterman repeated his advice to members of his own party to not “freak out” over everything Trump does, pointing out that for at least the next two years, Republicans can “run the table”.

Fetterman, who won decisive re-election in the state this month, said he looked forward to reviewing some of Trump’s nominations but others “are just absolute trolls”, including Gaetz.

For Democrats, who are still trying to figure out reasons for their devastating loss at the ballot box this month, their outrage at Trump’s nominations “gets the kind of thing that he wanted, like the freak out”.

“It’s still not even Thanksgiving yet and if we’re having meltdowns at every tweet or every appointment.”

Democrats, Fetterman added, should be “more concerned” about Republicans being able “to run the table for the next two years. Those are the things you really want to be concerned about, not small tweets or, you know, random kinds of appointments.”

But Democratic senator-elect Adam Schiff told CNN that Gaetz was “not only unqualified, he is really disqualified” to become the country’s top lawyer.

“Are we really going to have an attorney general [with] … credible allegations he was involved in child sex-trafficking, potential illicit drug use, obstruction of an investigation? Who has no experience serving in the justice department, only being investigated by it,” Schiff said.

President-elect Donald Trump will tap Brendan Carr, a critic of the Biden administration’s telecom policies and big tech, as chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), he has said in a statement.

Carr, 45, is the top Republican on the FCC, the independent agency that regulates telecommunications.

He has been a harsh critic of the FCC’s decision not to finalize nearly $900m in broadband subsidies for Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite internet unit Starlink, as well as the commerce department’s $42bn broadband infrastructure program and President Joe Biden’s spectrum policy.

Last week, Carr wrote to Meta’s Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, Apple and Microsoft saying they had taken steps to censor Americans. Carr said on Sunday the FCC must “restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.“

The president-elect has scorned actions by Disney’s ABC, Comcast’s NBC and Paramount Global’s CBS and suggested they could lose their FCC licenses for various actions. Trump also sued CBS over its 60 Minutes interview with vice-president Kamala Harris.

Carr criticized NBC for letting Harris appear on Saturday Night Live just before the election.

Trump in his first term called on the FCC to revoke broadcast licenses, prompting then FCC Chair Ajit Pai to reject the idea, saying “the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a licence of a broadcast station based on the content.“

The FCC issues eight-year licenses to individual broadcast stations, not to broadcast networks.

In 2022, Carr, a strong critic of China, became the first FCC commissioner to visit Taiwan. He has been an advocate of the FCC’s hard line on Chinese telecom companies.

Carr was a strong opponent of the FCC’s decision in April to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules that were repealed during the first Trump administration. The Biden FCC rules were put on hold by a federal appeals court.

Trump nominated Carr to the FCC during in his first administration in January 2017, after he had served as the FCC’s general counsel.

The incoming administration will need to nominate a Republican to fill a seat on the five-member commission before it can take full control of the agency.

Carr “is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy,” Trump said in a statement on Sunday.

The former acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has criticized Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination by Donald Trump as secretary of the country’s health and human services (HHS), calling his false vaccine theories “cruel”.

In a new interview on ABC, Richard Besser, who led the CDC during Barack Obama’s administration, called Kennedy’s push to falsely link vaccines to autism a “cruel thing to do”, adding, “There are things we do for our own health, but there are things we do that are good for ourselves, our families and our communities and vaccination falls into that category.”

“Having someone who denies that in that role is extremely dangerous,” Besser said about Kennedy.

“We need to, as a nation, address chronic diseases in children and one of the dangerous things about RFK Jr is that there are bits of things he says that are true and they’re mixed in … It makes it really hard to sort out what things you should follow because they’re based on fact and which things are not,” he continued.

Besser went on to say that experts should address chronic diseases – including autism – but to “keep [on] lifting the idea [that] that has something to do with vaccinations is really a cruel thing to do”.

In a separate interview on Sunday, Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator under Trump’s administration, said that Kennedy will require a team that has “really come out of the industry” in order to manage the HHS.

“I think the most important thing is what team he would bring with him, because you’re talking about really a large … corporation with a highly diverse group, which you have to really bring together and, frankly, eliminate some of the duplication set between these agencies to really become more cost effective,” said Birx.

“Having a management person at his side, a chief of staff, perhaps that has really come out of industry that would know how to bring and look and bring those individuals together that are running the other agencies because … HHS is probably one of our most complicated departments,” she added.

Birx also agreed that there is no scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism, saying: “I’m actually excited that in a Senate hearing he would bring forward his data and the questions that come from the senators would bring forth their data.”

“That hearing would be a way for Americans to really see the data that you’re talking about, that we can’t see that causation right now,” she said.

Kennedy has previously said that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” However, following Trump’s re-election, Kennedy said that he “won’t take away anybody’s vaccines”.

His nomination has been widely criticized by health experts who condemned him as a “clear and present danger” to public health.

Donald Trump’s nomination for energy secretary has connections to fracking operations for gas in the Beetaloo basin in the Northern Territory.

Chris Wright is the chief executive of Liberty Energy, a company that provides services to the oil and gas industry across North America.

US gas company Tamboran Resources announced in 2023 it had struck a partnership with Liberty Energy for the delivery of fracking equipment to drill wells in the Beetaloo basin between Katherine and Tennant Creek.

Under the deal, Liberty Energy made a $15.2m equity investment for a “frac fleet” to support the largest fracking operations in the Beetaloo basin to date at Tamboran’s Shenandoah South pilot project.

Wright said at the time that significant Beetaloo gas production “could help energise Australia’s future and help meet Asia’s insatiable demand for natural gas to power economic growth, improve air quality and lower greenhouse gas emissions”.

“Beetaloo development perfectly aligns with our broader mission to better human lives,” he said.

If confirmed by the US Senate, Wright is expected to support Trump’s plan to maximise production of oil and gas in the US.

He is also likely to share Trump’s opposition to global cooperation on fighting the climate crisis. Wright has called climate activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global heating to Soviet-style communism.

“This appointment highlights how powerful US figures with deep connections to the Trump administration are driving fracking in the Northern Territory,” said Hannah Ekin from the Arid Lands Environment Centre.

“The opening up of the NT for fracking was never about Territorians – it’s always been about appeasing big American shale players.”

Ekin said US gas companies invested in the NT’s gas reserves “don’t understand the Territory beyond its petroleum reserves”.

“They don’t understand its people or culture,” she said.

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Market Forces oil and gas campaigner Rachel Deans said: “American companies Tamboran and Empire want energy dominance in global markets, but Australians want clean drinking water and a safe future free from floods and bushfires fuelled by fossil fuel pollution.”

In April, the former NT Labor government announced it had signed a nine-year sales agreement with Tamboran to buy fracked gas from the Shenandoah South pilot project.

The agreement was for the purchase of 40 terajoules of gas per day from 2026 from Tamboran’s Shenandoah South pilot project, with an option to extend for a further six years out to 2042.

Pressure has been mounting on the Albanese government to use its powers under the federal water trigger to assess the impacts of pilot fracking projects in the Beetaloo basin on groundwater resources.

In September, the environment and water minister Tanya Plibersek asked the government-appointed Independent Scientific Expert Committee to provide advice about the potential impact of gas exploration on water resources in the 28,000 sq km basin.

Comment has been sought from Tamboran Resources.

– with Reuters

Lidia Thorpe has ripped up a paper copy of the Senate motion censuring her protest against King Charles, promising “I’ll do it again” and that she was not concerned about the parliamentary rebuke.

The independent senator was censured by the Labor and Coalition on Monday, as was United Australia party senator Ralph Babet after he posted a tweet containing several offensive slurs.

Both senators blamed flight delays from Melbourne for them not being in the chamber or speaking in their defence at the time of the unexpected censure motions, which Thorpe said were brought on with little warning. She claimed she only received notice of the motion against her on Monday morning, as she was boarding a plane to Canberra.

“If the colonising king were to come to my country again, our country, then I’ll do it again,” Thorpe said.

“I was denied my right to be in that chamber whilst everybody else voted to shut me down.”

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The Senate passed a censure motion 46-12 against Thorpe for her interruption of a reception for King Charles, where she yelled “you committed genocide against our people” and “you are not our king.”

Babet last week celebrated the Trump US election victory with a social media post using racist and offensive terms.

The government Senate leader and foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said the government “reluctantly” moved both censure motions, accusing Thorpe and Babet of seeking attention with “actions and stunts designed to create storms on social media”.

“These are actions which seek to incite outrage and grievance, actually to boost their own profiles, and this is part of a trend that we do see internationally, but quite frankly we don’t need here in Australia,” Wong said.

She said both motions were about “standards of respect” expected of senators.

The text of the censure motions were critical of Thorpe’s “disrespectful and disruptive protest, and called on Babet to be censured “for his inflammatory use of hate speech, designed to drive division for his own political benefit”.

Thorpe’s censure motion also said the Senate “does not regard it as appropriate for Senator Thorpe to represent the Senate as a member of any delegation during the life of this parliament”.

The Coalition Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, said the opposition backed both motions. But Nationals senator Matt Canavan, who called Babet a “mate”, said he opposed both motions because neither senator had a chance to speak, calling it a “kangaroo court”.

Thorpe arrived after her censure motion had passed, interrupting the debate over Babet’s censure.

“Why wasn’t I allowed to be here?” Thorpe could be heard calling out.

In a press conference, Thorpe claimed she’d only been told of the looming censure on Monday morning, while en route to Canberra. She claimed she’d asked for the motion to be delayed until she could arrive.

Wong, addressing Canavan’s concerns earlier, said most senators had been able to make it to the chamber on time for parliament’s opening on Monday morning, and said Thorpe and Babet would have a chance to speak later in the day.

“They don’t mind what I said, it’s how I said it. They need to check themselves,” Thorpe said.

“I’m not one to be shut down … you’ve got three and a half years left of me.”

Thorpe ripped up a paper copy of the censure motion against her, saying she would “use it for kindling”.

In a statement to Guardian Australia, Babet was also critical of the motion against him.

“The radical authoritarian left has taken offence for a tweet which did not mention, target or reference any individual. Maybe they should have considered censuring my colleagues who regularly and consistently direct abuse and vitriol towards other people and our great nation,” Babet said.

“The selective outrage and hypocrisy from the far left is far more offensive to the general public than my simple tweet.”

Lidia Thorpe has ripped up a paper copy of the Senate motion censuring her protest against King Charles, promising “I’ll do it again” and that she was not concerned about the parliamentary rebuke.

The independent senator was censured by the Labor and Coalition on Monday, as was United Australia party senator Ralph Babet after he posted a tweet containing several offensive slurs.

Both senators blamed flight delays from Melbourne for them not being in the chamber or speaking in their defence at the time of the unexpected censure motions, which Thorpe said were brought on with little warning. She claimed she only received notice of the motion against her on Monday morning, as she was boarding a plane to Canberra.

“If the colonising king were to come to my country again, our country, then I’ll do it again,” Thorpe said.

“I was denied my right to be in that chamber whilst everybody else voted to shut me down.”

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The Senate passed a censure motion 46-12 against Thorpe for her interruption of a reception for King Charles, where she yelled “you committed genocide against our people” and “you are not our king.”

Babet last week celebrated the Trump US election victory with a social media post using racist and offensive terms.

The government Senate leader and foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said the government “reluctantly” moved both censure motions, accusing Thorpe and Babet of seeking attention with “actions and stunts designed to create storms on social media”.

“These are actions which seek to incite outrage and grievance, actually to boost their own profiles, and this is part of a trend that we do see internationally, but quite frankly we don’t need here in Australia,” Wong said.

She said both motions were about “standards of respect” expected of senators.

The text of the censure motions were critical of Thorpe’s “disrespectful and disruptive protest, and called on Babet to be censured “for his inflammatory use of hate speech, designed to drive division for his own political benefit”.

Thorpe’s censure motion also said the Senate “does not regard it as appropriate for Senator Thorpe to represent the Senate as a member of any delegation during the life of this parliament”.

The Coalition Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, said the opposition backed both motions. But Nationals senator Matt Canavan, who called Babet a “mate”, said he opposed both motions because neither senator had a chance to speak, calling it a “kangaroo court”.

Thorpe arrived after her censure motion had passed, interrupting the debate over Babet’s censure.

“Why wasn’t I allowed to be here?” Thorpe could be heard calling out.

In a press conference, Thorpe claimed she’d only been told of the looming censure on Monday morning, while en route to Canberra. She claimed she’d asked for the motion to be delayed until she could arrive.

Wong, addressing Canavan’s concerns earlier, said most senators had been able to make it to the chamber on time for parliament’s opening on Monday morning, and said Thorpe and Babet would have a chance to speak later in the day.

“They don’t mind what I said, it’s how I said it. They need to check themselves,” Thorpe said.

“I’m not one to be shut down … you’ve got three and a half years left of me.”

Thorpe ripped up a paper copy of the censure motion against her, saying she would “use it for kindling”.

In a statement to Guardian Australia, Babet was also critical of the motion against him.

“The radical authoritarian left has taken offence for a tweet which did not mention, target or reference any individual. Maybe they should have considered censuring my colleagues who regularly and consistently direct abuse and vitriol towards other people and our great nation,” Babet said.

“The selective outrage and hypocrisy from the far left is far more offensive to the general public than my simple tweet.”

Pacific governments at a UN climate summit are criticising Australia’s plans for a massive gas industry expansion in Western Australia, saying it could result in 125 times more greenhouse gas emissions than their island nations release in a year.

As the Cop29 summit in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku begins its second week, representatives from Vanuatu and Tuvalu have called on Australia to stop approving new fossil fuel developments, including a proposal to extend the life of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas facility until 2070.

Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change, said Australia was “not acting in good faith” when it stood alongside Pacific leaders on the global stage and promoted its climate credentials while continuing to approve coal and gas projects.

“As the world’s third largest fossil fuel exporter, the Australian government is exporting climate destruction overseas, including to Pacific nations like Vanuatu, who experience the most devastating impacts of the climate crisis, despite contributing the least,” he said. “This is climate injustice.”

Regenvanu urged Australia to do more to address accelerating climate impacts and back up an agreement at the Cop28 summit in Dubai last year that the world needed to transition away from fossil fuels.

Maina Talia, Tuvalu’s climate change minister, said pursuing efforts to limit global heating to an average 1.5C – a headline goal of the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal – was “not just a number” but a “lifeline for Pacific communities facing rising seas, accelerating extreme weather disasters and the erosion of our cultures”.

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“We will continue to keep industrialised countries accountable for their actions,” he said. “Our future lies solely in their hands.”

Australia’s climate change minister, Chris Bowen, arrived in Baku on Saturday for the ministerial section of the fortnight-long talks. He is co-leading what is considered the most important stream of negotiations, which aim to develop a new global climate finance goal to help developing countries. Analysis from a group of respected economists has found it should be US$1tn a year by 2030.

Bowen is also lobbying for Australia to co-host the Cop31 climate summit in 2026 in partnership with Pacific countries. Australia is competing with Turkey to host the event. Bowen detoured to the Turkish capital of Ankara en route to Azerbaijan for meetings to try to reach agreement in the consensus-based decision-making process on where the summit will be held. Turkey later said it planned to continue with its campaign.

Pacific leaders are largely supporting the Australia bid for what has been described as “the Pacific Cop”, and have argued it should focus on lifting commitments to cut emissions and support the most vulnerable in the region. Their comments, including by the leaders of Tonga and Palau last week, have highlighted the renewed pressure that will come on Australia to act on fossil fuel exports if it is successful.

Speaking in Azerbaijan, Maina said a partnership between Australia and Pacific nations to co-host Cop31 would be “an exciting opportunity to accelerate ambitious climate action in our region” but “a commitment to end new fossil fuels must lie at the heart of this”. “That means no new coal and gas, and a fair, fast phase-out of all fossil fuels,” Maina said.

Activists say emissions from the gas processed at the plant on the Burrup Hub, in WA’s north, could result in up to 6bn tonnes of emissions once it was exported and burned overseas. The Australian government also approved an expansion of three thermal coalmines that could lead to more than 1bn tonnes of emissions when the fuel is burned.

Bowen told Guardian Australia he agreed the biggest impact Australia could have on the climate was to replace fossil fuel exports with renewable energy exports, and argued the country was aiming to become a “renewable energy superpower”, but said it was a big task that would take time. He said cutting off fossil fuel supply before there were replacements and while others still exported coal and gas was “not the way you get this job done”.

On Friday, the Australia government said it was committing $125m to improving energy security and power grid transition in the Pacific. Bowen said: “Each step we take to fight climate change is a step back from the brink, and Australia is dedicated to working with our Pacific neighbours to make sure our next steps are the right ones.”

An assessment of Australia’s climate performance by Climate Action Tracker last week rated the country’s commitments as “insufficient” to live up to what it should be doing to play its part in responding to the climate crisis. It found Australia’s finance commitments were “critically insufficient”.

The analysis said Australia had introduced several measures aimed at stimulating investment in renewable energy and clean industries but also doubled down on fossil fuels. Bill Hare, from Climate Action Tracker, said emissions within the country from fossil fuels were “flatlining”, but this had been masked by changes in government estimates of emissions from forests.

Shiva Gounden, from Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said Australia would “be judged by its actions, not its words”.

“To be a true partner of the Pacific, we ask the government to genuinely respond to Pacific needs. This means a fair share of contributions to the Loss and Damage fund, ending fossil fuel approvals and subsidies, and accelerating much-needed climate finance,” he said.

The former Sydney radio host Alan Jones has been arrested by New South Wales police after a “long, thorough, protracted” investigation into alleged indecent assault and sexual touching offences spanning two decades.

Child abuse squad detectives arrested the veteran broadcaster and former Wallabies coach about 7.45am on Monday at a unit in Sydney’s Circular Quay.

Jones has previously denied all allegations against him. Police spent three-and-a-half hours searching Jones’s harbourside apartment at Macquarie Street, 300 metres from Sydney Opera House and a few floors up from fine dining restaurant Aria.

Jones remained in the building while half a dozen officers searched the flat, before being escorted out via the complex’s carpark, avoiding the assembled media camped out by the building’s green marble doorway.

He was taken to Day Street police station in the CBD in the back of an unmarked police car just after 11am.

Wearing a green jacket and holding what appeared to be a walking stick, Jones said nothing and looked straight ahead as he and three officers in the car drove past reporters into the station.

They were joined at the station before midday by lawyers Chris Murphy and Bryan Wrench.

The arrest came after months of investigation by NSW police, which began in March to investigate a number of alleged indecent assaults and sexual touching incidents between 2001 and 2019.

Police on Monday morning said no charges had been laid.

The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, told reporters on Monday police were anticipating more people may come forward and said the arrest was the result of “long, thorough, protracted investigation”.

“I did visit the strike force some weeks and months ago,” she said. “It is very complex and protracted and I know that those officers have been working tirelessly.”

The state premier, Chris Minns, declined to comment on what he described as a “major investigation”.

“We need to let police conduct this inquiry free of commentary from me and others,” he said.

Jones hosted breakfast radio in Sydney on 2GB for nearly 20 years. For much of that time he was one of the nation’s most influential media personalities.

His radio career was marked by controversies, including comments that the prime minister Julia Gillard had lied and that her late father had “died of shame” as a result. In 2019 he also made comments about the New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, saying someone should “shove a sock” down her throat.

Jones’s career also spanned teaching, politics and sport. After leaving school he trained as a teacher, and worked across different schools in Queensland and NSW for much of the 1960s and 70s.

Before his radio career Jones tried to enter politics. He launched several failed attempts at preselection for federal parliament and unsuccessfully ran for the NSW parliament.

Jones served as a speechwriter for Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal prime minister, until 1981.

In 1984 Jones became the coach of the Wallabies, the Australian men’s rugby union team. During his time at the helm the team enjoyed significant success.

The acclaimed Russian ballet dancer Vladimir Shklyarov has died aged 39.

Shklyarov died after falling from the fifth floor of a building on Saturday, a spokesperson for the Mariinsky Theatre told the news outlet Fontanka at the weekend.

The spokesperson, Anna Kasatkina, told Russian media that Shklyarov had been taking painkillers for a back injury and had been scheduled to undergo spinal surgery on Monday.

While a federal investigation has been launched to investigate the dancer’s death, “the preliminary cause” has been ruled an accident, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Born in St Petersburg in 1985, Shklyarov joined Mariinsky Theatre in 2003 and became its principal dancer – the highest-ranking position in a ballet company – in 2011.

The company called Shklyarov’s death “a huge loss”.

“Our condolences to the artist’s family, loved ones, friends and all the numerous admirers of his work and talent … he forever inscribed his name in the history of world ballet,” it said.

Throughout his 20-year career, Shklyarov starred in productions of Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote and Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice in Wonderland. He performed all over the world, including with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the Royal Opera House in London.

In 2013 he married a fellow Mariinsky Theatre dancer, Maria Shirinkina, with whom he had two children.

Russian dancers paid tribute to Shklyarov after the news broke, with Irina Baranovskaya calling his death “a stupid, unbearable accident” on Telegram.

Baranovskaya said Shklyarov “went out onto the balcony to get some air and smoke” and “lost his balance” on the “very narrow balcony”.

A Mariinsky dancer, Diana Vishneva, wrote: “This tragedy brings only tears and sadnesss … This is the tragedy for our theatre, our common grief, feeling of emptiness.”

“You were the favourite partner … My beautiful Romeo, my brave Prince in Cinderella.”

American Ballet Theater, where Shklyarov was a guest performer in 2014 and 2015, remembered him on Instagram as “an extraordinary artist whose grace and passion inspired audiences worldwide”.

“Rest in peace, Vladimir. Your light will continue to shine through the beauty you brought to this world,” the post ended.

The acclaimed Russian ballet dancer Vladimir Shklyarov has died aged 39.

Shklyarov died after falling from the fifth floor of a building on Saturday, a spokesperson for the Mariinsky Theatre told the news outlet Fontanka at the weekend.

The spokesperson, Anna Kasatkina, told Russian media that Shklyarov had been taking painkillers for a back injury and had been scheduled to undergo spinal surgery on Monday.

While a federal investigation has been launched to investigate the dancer’s death, “the preliminary cause” has been ruled an accident, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Born in St Petersburg in 1985, Shklyarov joined Mariinsky Theatre in 2003 and became its principal dancer – the highest-ranking position in a ballet company – in 2011.

The company called Shklyarov’s death “a huge loss”.

“Our condolences to the artist’s family, loved ones, friends and all the numerous admirers of his work and talent … he forever inscribed his name in the history of world ballet,” it said.

Throughout his 20-year career, Shklyarov starred in productions of Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote and Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice in Wonderland. He performed all over the world, including with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the Royal Opera House in London.

In 2013 he married a fellow Mariinsky Theatre dancer, Maria Shirinkina, with whom he had two children.

Russian dancers paid tribute to Shklyarov after the news broke, with Irina Baranovskaya calling his death “a stupid, unbearable accident” on Telegram.

Baranovskaya said Shklyarov “went out onto the balcony to get some air and smoke” and “lost his balance” on the “very narrow balcony”.

A Mariinsky dancer, Diana Vishneva, wrote: “This tragedy brings only tears and sadnesss … This is the tragedy for our theatre, our common grief, feeling of emptiness.”

“You were the favourite partner … My beautiful Romeo, my brave Prince in Cinderella.”

American Ballet Theater, where Shklyarov was a guest performer in 2014 and 2015, remembered him on Instagram as “an extraordinary artist whose grace and passion inspired audiences worldwide”.

“Rest in peace, Vladimir. Your light will continue to shine through the beauty you brought to this world,” the post ended.

Keir Starmer will become the first UK prime minister in six years to meet the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, promising to turn the page on UK-China relations by building “a pragmatic and serious relationship”.

Starmer and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been pursuing a thawing of relations with the world’s second-largest economy on pragmatic grounds, suggesting that the UK cannot achieve its growth ambitions without better terms with China.

But the move to deepen ties is likely to be controversial among human rights groups and backbenchers, and with several high-profile Conservative MPs who have had sanctions imposed on them by China.

Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns, both prominent Tory critics of China, called on Starmer to use the meeting to raise with Xi the plight of UK nationals including Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy media owner detained and tried in Hong Kong.

Starmer will meet the Chinese president on Monday in Rio de Janeiro at the G20 summit, a meeting of world leaders that is likely to be marked by divisions over the climate crisis and Ukraine.

No British prime minister has met Xi since Theresa May visited Beijing in 2018 in the midst of a trade push during Brexit negotiations, though Boris Johnson spoke to the Chinese president during the pandemic.

Since then, relations have significantly cooled because of cyber threats, a human rights crackdown in Hong Kong and the sanctions against British MPs.

Rishi Sunak attempted to renew relations at the G20 summit in 2022 where a bilateral was planned but cancelled due to Ukraine developments. But Conservative leaders have toyed with designating China a threat to British security – stronger language than the US had used.

Those to have had Chinese sanctions imposed upon them include Tugendhat, the former security minister; Nusrat Ghani, the Commons deputy speaker; and Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader.

Tugendhat said: “Jimmy Lai – a British citizen – is being put on a show trial in Hong Kong. Others are being threatened here in the UK.

“It is essential that Starmer raises Mr Lai’s case and the threats we are witnessing against other British nationals who have spoken out who are now here in the UK. Starmer must clearly defend Britain against Beijing’s authoritarian regime.”

Kearns, who is a shadow foreign minister, said: “The sham trial of British citizen Jimmy Lai recommences on Wednesday, yet it is glaringly absent from Starmer’s comments. British interests are achieved by being set out clearly, not as ‘by the ways’ cast to the sidelines of discussions. Starmer needs to call for Jimmy’s release now, and be unequivocal with Xi Jinping.”

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, visited China last month in the first signal that the new Labour government saw a renewal of better ties as a priority. Reeves, who is understood to be taking a leading role in pursuing new economic opportunities with China, will head to Beijing in January.

In remarks before his meeting with Xi, Starmer sought to head off gloomy predictions for the summit, at which there will be a number of world leaders who are facing election defeat. Additionally, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has said he will not attend the summit, but his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will be there.

“It is in the UK’s best interests to engage on the global stage – whether that’s building strong and fruitful partnerships with our closest allies or being frank with those whose values differ from our own,” Starmer said.

The prime minister expects to meet at least eight world leaders in one-to-one discussions in Rio.

Speaking to reporters en route to the summit, Starmer underlined the need for a realistic approach, saying it was important that he met Xi and stressing the potential economic benefits – without mentioning the potential security risks to better relations.

“We are both global players, global powers, both permanent members of the security council and of the G20. China’s economy is obviously the second biggest in the world,” he said.

“It’s one of our biggest trading partners and therefore I will be having serious, pragmatic discussions with the president when I meet him.”

Asked if the intention was to improve on the relations since the Conservative government, Starmer said: “I do think it’s important that we have serious engagement, which is what I will be pursuing in my bilateral at the G20.”

No 10 said that any change in relations would be “rooted at all times in the UK’s national interests” but said there were “clear areas of mutual cooperation – including on international stability, climate and growth”. It said Starmer would be “firm on the need to have honest conversations on areas of disagreement, while competing and challenging where we have to.”

Starmer has faced some criticism at home for the number of days he has spent abroad since taking office, and this trip amounts to another four days away from the UK.

Starmer defended the trip – the first visit by a British prime minister to Brazil in 12 years – as a chance to catalyse relations with rising economic powers in Latin America, suggesting common ground with Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on green energy and protecting workers’ rights.

Lula is said to be pressing for a strong message in the communique on fair taxation of the wealthiest, but the Argentinian president Javier Milei, a close ally of Trump who was the first world leader to visit the president-elect at his Florida residence, is reported to be mounting a number of obstacles to the final text. He also raised significant objections on climate targets at the UN climate summit in Baku.

Starmer denied the futility of a G20 meeting with such extreme division between the leaders in attendance – not just on Ukraine, taxation and the economy but on climate and gender equality. There is expected to be only a limited reference to Ukraine and Gaza.

“We’re meeting the biggest economies in the world in the next few days and my No 1 mission is to grow our economy and to get inward investment into our country,” Starmer said. “So I’m going to use that opportunity at the G20 to do exactly that.”

Significant “social ruptures” between people who think artificial intelligence systems are conscious and those who insist the technology feels nothing are looming, a leading philosopher has said.

The comments, from Jonathan Birch, a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics, come as governments prepare to gather this week in San Francisco to accelerate the creation of guardrails to tackle the most severe risks of AI.

Last week, a transatlantic group of academics predicted that the dawn of consciousness in AI systems is likely by 2035 and one has now said this could result in “subcultures that view each other as making huge mistakes” about whether computer programmes are owed similar welfare rights as humans or animals.

Birch said he was “worried about major societal splits”, as people differ over whether AI systems are actually capable of feelings such as pain and joy.

The debate about the consequence of sentience in AI has echoes of science fiction films, such as Steven Spielberg’s AI (2001) and Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), in which humans grapple with the feeling of AIs. AI safety bodies from the US, UK and other nations will meet tech companies this week to develop stronger safety frameworks as the technology rapidly advances.

There are already significant differences between how different countries and religions view animal sentience, such as between India, where hundreds of millions of people are vegetarian, and America which is one of the largest consumers of meat in the world. Views on the sentience of AI could break along similar lines, while the view of theocracies, like Saudi Arabia, which is positioning itself as an AI hub, could also differ from secular states. The issue could also cause tensions within families with people who develop close relationships with chatbots, or even AI avatars of deceased loved ones, clashing with relatives who believe that only flesh and blood creatures have consciousness.

Birch, an expert in animal sentience who has pioneered work leading to a growing number of bans on octopus farming, was a co-author of a study involving academics and AI experts from New York University, Oxford University, Stanford University and the Eleos and Anthropic AI companies that says the prospect of AI systems with their own interests and moral significance “is no longer an issue only for sci-fi or the distant future”.

They want the big tech firms developing AI to start taking it seriously by determining the sentience of their systems to assess if their models are capable of happiness and suffering, and whether they can be benefited or harmed.

“I’m quite worried about major societal splits over this,” Birch said. “We’re going to have subcultures that view each other as making huge mistakes … [there could be] huge social ruptures where one side sees the other as very cruelly exploiting AI while the other side sees the first as deluding itself into thinking there’s sentience there.”

But he said AI firms “want a really tight focus on the reliability and profitability … and they don’t want to get sidetracked by this debate about whether they might be creating more than a product but actually creating a new form of conscious being. That question, of supreme interest to philosophers, they have commercial reasons to downplay.”

One method of determining how conscious an AI is could be to follow the system of markers used to guide policy about animals. For example, an octopus is considered to have greater sentience than a snail or an oyster.

Any assessment would effectively ask if a chatbot on your phone could actually be happy or sad or if the robots programmed to do your domestic chores suffer if you do not treat them well. Consideration would even need to be given to whether an automated warehouse system had the capacity to feel thwarted.

Another author, Patrick Butlin, research fellow at Oxford University’s Global Priorities Institute, said: “We might identify a risk that an AI system would try to resist us in a way that would be dangerous for humans” and there might be an argument to “slow down AI development” until more work is done on consciousness.

“These kinds of assessments of potential consciousness aren’t happening at the moment,” he said.

Microsoft and Perplexity, two leading US companies involved in building AI systems, declined to comment on the academics’ call to assess their models for sentience. Meta, Open AI and Google also did not respond.

Not all experts agree on the looming consciousness of AI systems. Anil Seth, a leading neuroscientist and consciousness researcher, has said it “remains far away and might not be possible at all. But even if unlikely, it is unwise to dismiss the possibility altogether”.

He distinguishes between intelligence and consciousness. The former is the ability to do the right thing at the right time, the latter is a state in which we are not just processing information but “our minds are filled with light, colour, shade and shapes. Emotions, thoughts, beliefs, intentions – all feel a particular way to us.”

But AI large-language models, trained on billions of words of human writing, have already started to show they can be motivated at least by concepts of pleasure and pain. When AIs including Chat GPT-4o were tasked with maximising points in a game, researchers found that if there was a trade-off included between getting more points and “feeling” more pain, the AIs would make it, another study published last week showed.

Police and staff were initially flummoxed when shoes started disappearing from a kindergarten in south-west Japan, not least because the “thefts” were of single shoes, not pairs.

Unable to get to the bottom of two incidents reported earlier this month, police installed three security cameras in the hope the thief would strike again, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

Then, when a single shoe went missing from Gosho Kodomo-en kindergarten in Koga, Fukuoka prefecture, on the night of 11 November, investigators sifted through camera footage, believing they had finally caught their footwear-filching suspect in the act.

The culprit, however, turned out to have four legs, a coat of orangey-brown fur and sharp claws.

Camera footage revealed that a weasel had appeared from behind a wall the previous evening before approaching cubbyholes storing children’s indoor shoes and making off with a single white shoe in its mouth – all in the space of about 10 seconds.

The kindergarten’s head had contacted police in early November after 15 shoes belonging to 10 children had vanished. The following day, another three had gone, while other shoes, which the children wear only inside, were found scattered on the floor.

“We were very worried, but we’re relieved now that we know it was an animal,” a member of staff told the Mainichi.

The newspaper quoted a local police officer as saying that, to his knowledge, the mystery of the missing shoes was the first of its kind.

Prof Hiroshi Sasaki at Chikushi Jogakuen University said the shoe-stealing weasel had probably just given birth and, given the animal’s sensitivity to the cold, was using the shoes to line its nest for the winter.

The shoes’ whereabouts remain unknown, however, and the childcare centre is hoping to prevent a repeat of the incidents by covering the cubbyholes with nets at night in what it described as a “crime prevention measure”.

Japanese-language references to the weasel have similarly negative connotations to those found in English. According to the late Japan-based naturalist CW Nicol, the musky scent of the Japanese weasel gave rise to the saying itachi no saigo-pei. That literally translates as “the weasel’s final fart”, but is used to refer to the last word or act of an unpopular or dislikable person.