A Saudi Arabian delegate has been accused of directly making changes to an official Cop29 negotiating text, it can be revealed.

Cop presidencies usually circulate negotiating texts as non-editable PDF documents to all countries simultaneously, and they are then discussed. Giving one party editing access “risks placing this entire Cop in jeopardy”, one expert said.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is regarded by many as a persistent obstructor of action at UN climate summits to cut the burning of fossil fuels and has been described as a “wrecking ball” at Cop29.

Earlier on Saturday, a document was circulated by the Azerbaijani presidency with updates to the negotiating text on the just transition work program (JTWP). This aims to help countries move to a cleaner and more resilient future, while reducing inequalities.

The document was sent with “tracked changes” from the previously circulated version. In two cases, the document showed edits were made directly by Basel Alsubaity, who is from the Saudi ministry of energy and the lead on the JTWP. It was not sent to other countries to edit, the Guardian was told.

One of the changes deletes a section of text reading “encourages parties to consider just transition pathways in developing and implementing NDCs, NAPs and LT-LEDSs that are aligned with the outcome of the first global stock take and relevant provisions of the Paris agreement”. (NDCs are nationally determined contributions, NAPs are national adaptation plans and LT-LEDs are long-term low emission development strategies.)

Catherine Abreu, the director of the International Climate Politics Hub and a Cop veteran, said: “All parties need to see presidency texts during this process as the negotiations proceed and this is generally done by circulating non-editable PDF documents to all parties simultaneously.

“Giving one party editing access to these documents, and a party known for its objective of rolling back the historic global agreement made last year to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and energy efficiency, suggests a worrying lack of independence and objectivity, and clearly contravenes both the spirit and the rules of this process,” she said. “This kind of behaviour from a presidency risks placing this entire Cop in jeopardy.”

Two groups – the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries – walked out of a key meeting on Saturday, saying they were not being consulted by the presidency.

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, speaking on Saturday before the editing revelation, said: “We are in the midst of a geopolitical power play by a few fossil fuel states. We will not allow the most vulnerable, especially the small island states, to be ripped off by the few rich fossil fuel emitters who have the backing, unfortunately, at this moment of the president [of Cop29].”

A 2023 report by the Climate Social Science Network concluded: “One nation has had an outsized role in undermining progress at global climate negotiations, year after year: Saudi Arabia. The fossil fuel giant has a 30-year record of obstruction and delay, protecting its national oil and gas sector and seeking to ensure UN climate talks achieve as little as possible, as slowly as possible.

“Riyadh’s envoys are among the most active across all tracks of UN climate talks, frequently pushing back on efforts to curb fossil fuels,” it said. “Despite increased temperatures across Saudi Arabia and falling groundwater supplies, Riyadh has shown little sign of shifting strategy.”

The Cop29 presidency, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Saudi delegation have been contacted for comment.

Major rich countries at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan have agreed to lift a global financial offer to help developing nations tackle the climate crisis to $300bn a year, as ministers met through the night in a bid to salvage a deal.

The Guardian understands the Azeri hosts brokered a lengthy closed-door meeting with a small group of ministers and delegation heads, including China, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the UK, US and Australia, on key areas of dispute on climate finance and the transition away from fossil fuels.

It came as the Cop29 summit in Baku, which had been due to finish at 6pm Friday, dragged into Saturday morning. A plenary session had been planned for 10am but did not eventuate.

The developing world reacted with anger to a draft $250bn climate finance target on Friday, dismissing it as a “joke” and far below the amount that is needed to help the poor shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather. It prompted a diplomatic effort behind the scenes to increase the offer from developed nations.

Multiple sources said the EU and several members of the umbrella group of countries including the UK, US and Australia had indicated they could go to $300bn in exchange for other changes to a draft text released on Friday.

The Guardian understands that the UN secretary general, António Guterres, was ringing round capitals to push for a higher figure. Japan, Switzerland and New Zealand were understood to be among the countries resistant to the $300bn figure late on Friday.

A $300bn offer would still fall well short of what developing countries say is necessary, and would likely draw sharp criticism if included in an updated text expected later on Saturday. But with some ministers booked to leave Baku in the hours ahead, countries face a decision on what they are prepared to accept.

Several ministers from rich nations have argued that a deal may be easier now than next year, when Donald Trump will be US president and right-wing governments could be returned at elections in several countries, including Germany and Canada, and they do not want to make a commitment they cannot meet.

Claudio Angelo, from Observatório do Clima in Brazil, said rich countries had “clearly arrived to ditch their obligations”. “After three years of negotiations the first time we ever saw quantum in the text was yesterday,” he said.

He said $300bn in grant funding was “way, way below” what developing countries needed. “Remember, many of them are already in deep debt,” he said. “To have climate finance as the current text proposes will only entrap those countries more.”

According to the draft text of a deal circulated on Friday, developing countries would receive at least $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035, which is in line with the demands most submitted in advance of this two-week conference.

But poor nations wanted much more of that headline finance to come directly from rich countries, preferably in the form of grants rather than loans. They said the offer of $250bn coming from rich countries, with few safeguards over how much would come without strings attached, was much too little.

The offer from developed countries is supposed to form the inner core of a “layered” finance settlement, accompanied by a middle layer of new forms of finance such as new taxes on fossil fuels and high-carbon activities, carbon trading and “innovative” forms of finance; and an outermost layer of investment from the private sector, into projects such as solar and windfarms.

These layers would add up to $1.3tn a year, which is the amount that leading economists have calculated is needed in external finance for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis. Many activists have demanded more – figures of $5tn or $7tn a year have been put forward by some groups, based on the historical responsibilities of developed countries for causing the climate crisis.

While climate finance is the major focus at Cop29, other issues also remain unresolved. Azerbaijan, which holds the presidency of the talks, has been criticised for playing down a key commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels” in draft texts.

That commitment was made a year ago at the Cop28 talks in Dubai, but some countries want to unpick it. Saudi Arabia has been widely accused of taking it out of drafts at every opportunity, sparking fury from countries that want to explicitly emphasise the need to move away from coal, oil and gas and towards renewable energy.

The Cop29 UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, scheduled to finish Friday local time, are dragging into the weekend as delegates from nearly 200 countries struggle to reach a consensus on the key issues being debated: a new global climate finance goal and what needs to be done about fossil fuels.

What is happening in Baku is significant, no matter how frustrating a process and inadequate an outcome it may seem. Here are five things worth knowing about it.

The unprecedented firing by Ukrainian forces of British-made long-range Storm Shadow missiles at military targets inside Russia last week means the UK, along with the US, is now viewed by Moscow as a legitimate target for punitive, possibly violent retaliation.

In a significant escalation in response to the missile launches, Vladimir Putin confirmed that, for the first time in the war, Russia had fired an intermediate-range ­ballistic missile, targeting the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Putin also said Russia now believed it had the “right” to attack “military facilities” in countries that supply Kyiv with long-range weapons. Though he did not say so specifically, he clearly meant attacks on the UK and US.

Yet in truth, Britain and its allies have been under constant Russian attack since the war began. Using sabotage, arson, deniable cyber-attacks and aggressive and passive forms of covert “hybrid” and “­cognitive” warfare, Putin has tried to impose a high cost for western support of Ukraine.

This largely silent struggle does not yet amount to a conventional military conflict between Nato and its former Soviet adversary. But in an echo of Cuba in 1962, the “Ukraine missile crisis” – fought on land, air and in the dark-web alleyways and byways of a digitised world – points ominously in that direction.

Concern that Russia’s illegal, full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine would trigger a wider war has preoccupied western politicians and military planners from the start. The US, UK and EU armed and bankrolled Kyiv and placed unprecedented, punitive sanctions on Moscow.

But US president Joe Biden remained cautious. His primary aim was to contain the conflict. So the convenient fiction developed that the west was not fighting Russia but, rather, helping a sovereign Ukraine defend itself. That illusion was never shared by Moscow.

From the outset, Putin portrayed the war as an existential battle against a hostile, expansionist Nato. Russia was already big on ­subversion. But as the conflict unfolded, it initiated and now appears to be accelerating a wide array of covert operations targeting western countries.

Biden’s decision on long-range missiles, and Moscow’s furious vow to hit back, has placed this secret campaign under a public spotlight. Russian retaliation may reach new heights. But in truth, Putin’s shadow war was already well under way.

Last week’s severing of Baltic Sea fibre-optic cables linking Finland to Germany and Sweden to Lithuania – all Nato members – is widely regarded as the latest manifestation of Russian hybrid warfare, and a sign of more to come.

Some suggest the damage was accidental. “Nobody believes that,” snarled Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister.

Such scepticism is based on hard experience. Last year, Finland said a damaged underwater natural gas pipeline to Estonia had probably been sabotaged. And an investigation in Nordic countries found evidence that Russia was running spy networks in the Baltic and North Sea, using fishing vessels equipped with underwater surveillance equipment. The aim, it said, was to map pipelines, communications cables and windfarms – vulnerable targets of possible future Russian attacks.

Earlier this month, a Russian ship, the Yantar – supposedly an “oceano­graphic research vessel” – had to be militarily escorted out of the Irish Sea. Its unexplained presence there, and previously off North Sea coasts and in the English Channel, where it was accompanied by the Russian navy, has been linked to the proxi­mity of unprotected seabed inter-connector cables carrying global internet traffic between Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America.

Suspected Russian hybrid warfare actions on land, in Europe and the UK, are multiplying in scope and seriousness. They range from large-scale cyber-attacks, as in Estonia, to the concealing of incendiary devices in parcels aboard aircraft in Germany, Poland and the UK.

Western spy agencies point the finger at the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency (which was responsible for the 2018 Salisbury poisonings). Naturally, all this is denied by the Kremlin.

It gets even more alarming. In the summer, US and German intelligence agencies reportedly foiled a plot to assassinate top European defence industry executives, in an apparent effort to obstruct arms supplies to Kyiv.

Putin’s agents have been blamed for a wide variety of crimes, from assassinations of regime critics on European soil, such as the 2019 murder in Berlin of a Chechen dissident, to arson – for instance, at a warehouse in east London this year – to the intimidation of journalists and civil rights groups, and the frequent harassment and beating of exiled opponents.

National infrastructure, elections, institutions and transport systems are all potential targets of hostile online malefactors, information warfare and fake news, as Britain’s NHS discovered in 2017 and the US in 2016 and 2020 during two presidential elections.

Some operations are random; others are carried out for profit by criminal gangs. But many appear to be Russian state-organised. Such provocations are intended to sow chaos, spread fear and division, exacerbate social tensions among Ukraine’s allies and disrupt military supplies.

In January, for example, a group called the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn caused significant damage to water utilities in Texas. Biden administration officials warned at the time that disabling cyber-attacks posed a threat to water supplies throughout the US. “These attacks have the potential to disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water,” state governors were told.

Alerts about Russia’s escalating activities have come thick and fast in recent months. Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister and newly nominated EU foreign policy chief, spoke earlier this year about what she called Putin’s “shadow war” waged on Europe. “How far do we let them go on our soil?” Kallas asked.

In May, Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, accused Moscow of repeated acts of sabotage. In October, Ken McCallum, head of MI5, said the GRU was engaged in “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”.

Nato’s new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, added his voice this month. Moscow, he said, was conducting “an intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks across our allied territories, interfering directly in our democracies, sabotaging industry and committing violence … the frontline in this war is no longer solely in Ukraine.”

It remains unclear, despite these warnings, how prepared Europe is to acknowledge, first, that it is now under sustained attack from Russia and is involved, de facto, in a limit­less, asymmetrical war; and second, what it is prepared to do about it at a moment when US support for Nato and Ukraine has been thrown into doubt by Donald Trump’s re-election.

When the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France – the so-called Weimar Triangle – plus the UK, Italy and Spain met in Warsaw last week, they tried to provide answers. “Moscow’s escalating hybrid activi­ties against Nato and EU countries are unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks,” they declared.

But their proposed solution – increased commitment to Europe’s shared security, higher defence spending, more joint capabilities, intelligence pooling, a stronger Nato, a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and a reinforced transatlantic alliance – was more familiar wishlist than convincing plan of action. Putin is unlikely to be deterred.

Far from it, in fact. Last week’s missiles-related escalation in verbal hostilities has highlighted the Russian leader’s flat refusal to rule out any type of retaliation, however extreme.

His mafioso-like menaces again included a threat to resort to nuclear weapons.

Putin’s very public loosening of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which now hypothetically allows Moscow to nuke a non-nuclear-armed state such as Ukraine, was a tired propa­ganda ploy designed to intimidate the west. Putin is evil but he’s not wholly mad. Mutual assured destruction remains a powerful counter-argument to such recklessness.

Putin has other weapons in his box of dirty tricks, including, for example, the seizing of blameless foreign citizens as hostages. This kind of blackmail worked recently when various Russian spies and thugs were released from jail in the west in return for the freeing of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and others.

Putin also has another nuclear card up his sleeve. Greenpeace warned last week that Ukraine’s power network is at “heightened risk of catastrophic failure”. Russian airstrikes aimed at electricity sub-stations were imperilling the safety of the country’s three operational nuclear power plants, the group said. If the reactors lost power, they could quickly become unstable.

And then there is the possibility, floated by analysts, that Russia, by way of retaliation for Biden’s missile green light, could increase support for anti-western, non-state actors, such as the Houthis in Yemen. In a way, this would merely be an extension of Putin’s current policy of befriending “outlaw” states such as Iran and North Korea, both of which are actively assisting his Ukraine war effort.

All of which, taken together, begs a huge question, so far unanswered by Britain and its allies – possibly because it has never arisen before. What is to be done when a major world power, a nuclear-armed state, a permanent member of the UN security council, a country sworn to uphold the UN charter, international human rights treaties and the laws of war, goes rogue?

Putin’s violently confrontational, lawless and dangerous behaviour – not only towards Ukraine but to the west and the international order in general – is unprecedented in modern times. How very ironic, how very chastening, therefore, is the thought that only another rogue – Trump – may have a chance of bringing him to heel.

Biden can do nothing now to halt the war. He had his chance in 2021-2022 and blew it. His missiles, landmines and extra cash have probably come too late. And in two months’ time, he will be gone.

On the other hand, Trump’s warped idea of peace – surrendering one quarter of Ukraine’s territory and barring it from Nato and the EU – may look increasingly attractive to European leaders with little idea how to curb both overt and covert Russian aggression or how to win an unwinnable war on their own.

Putin calculates that Europe, ­prospectively abandoned by the US, fears a no-longer-hybrid, only too real, all-out war with Russia more than it does the consequences of betraying Ukraine.

Cynical brute that he is, he will keep on clandestinely pushing, probing, provoking and punishing until someone or something breaks – or Trump bails him out.

A gang of masked men broke into the home of a woman who had taken a civil case against the mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor that accused him of raping her, it can now be revealed.

The incident was referred to at the start of the court case in Dublin but could not be reported until now as it emerged during legal discussion while the jury were not present.

On Friday, a jury in the high court of Ireland found that McGregor had in December 2018 assaulted Nikita Hand, who had accused him of raping her, and awarded damages of nearly €250,000 (£208,000) in her favour.

The court heard that unknown masked men had broken into her home, smashed the windows and stabbed her boyfriend on 14 June.

Hand’s counsel, John Gordon, told Judge Owens that he was not suggesting the fighter was behind the attack but that it went some way to explain her anxiety and why she relocated from her home.

“The plaintiff’s home was invaded by a group of men wearing balaclavas,” he said.

“The broke into the plaintiff’s bedroom, and were driven out by the plaintiff’s partner, who suffered a stab wound in the process. Her daughter was in the next room, sleeping.”

Gordon also told the court that the men broke windows in the front room before leaving.

“We are not laying that at the feet of the defendants or saying they have anything to do with that,” he added.

“We do make the claim that it was not an untargeted attack, [it] rose from supporters of the first named defendant [McGregor].

“It is related to the claim that she had to move out of the Drimnagh area.”

The judge asked whether the claim was being made that McGregor had anything to do with it, to which Gordon replied: “No, judge, it is an item of special damage.

“It related to her state of anxiety and her claim that she had to move from the Drimnagh area, as she has now done.”

McGregor’s barrister, Remy Farrell, said it seemed Hand was introducing a claim “which is nothing to do with us”, and complained it would be “an invitation to the jury to speculate”.

The judge ruled that he considered it to be “completely irrelevant and shouldn’t be referred to”.

A Garda spokesperson confirmed it had received a report of an incident of aggravated burglary and that investigations were ongoing. They added that a man had received hospital treatment for “non life-threatening injuries”.

On Friday, McGregor, who denied Hand’s claims as lies and fabrication designed to cover up cheating on her boyfriend, said he was appealing against the high court decision, noting that the damages award was “modest”.

He said: “The judge’s instruction and the modest award given was for assault, not for aggravated or exemplary damages. I am disappointed that the jury did not hear all the evidence that the DPP [Ireland’s director of public prosecutions] reviewed. I am with my family now, focused on my future. Thank you to all my support worldwide,” he said on X.

The DPP decided not to pursue the case in 2020 on the grounds that there was not a reasonable prospect of securing a conviction.

McGregor had faced an accusation that he “brutally raped and battered” Hand at a hotel in south Dublin in December 2018.

The Irish sports star previously told the court he had consensual sex with Hand in a penthouse at the Beacon hotel.

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said the case was an important moment in establishing what “consent” meant after the judge made it clear in his closing comments to the jury that “submission” was not consent, nor was risky behaviour. Drinking or taking drugs “does not mean they are up for sex”, Owens said.

Ireland’s justice minister, Helen McEntee, commended Hand for her “bravery and determination”.

She added: “Because of wonderful people like Nikita, I hope that it shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that there are supports available to people, and that there is justice at the end of the day.”

The boss of Jaguar has defended the company’s move away from “traditional automotive stereotypes” after a clip of its new advert was met with a barrage of “vile hatred and intolerance” online.

This week, Jaguar Land Rover, the luxury UK carmaker owned by India’s Tata Motors, posted a 30-second clip on X featuring models in brightly coloured clothing set against equally vibrant backdrops, without a car or the company’s traditional cat logo.

“If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand,” Jaguar’s managing director, Rawdon Glover told the Financial Times of the company’s “copy nothing” campaign.

The new ad and rebrand prompted a backlash online, including on X where the platform’s chief executive, Elon Musk, posted: “Do you sell cars?”

In response, Glover said, “Yes. We’d love to show you”, and invited Musk to Miami next month where the company is presenting a public installation for the rebrand at Miami art week.

Glover told the FT that while the response to the campaign, which drew more than 160m views on social media, had been “very positive” he said he was disappointed by the “vile hatred and intolerance” in the comments towards those featured in the video.

“This is a reimagining that recaptures the essence of Jaguar, returning it to the values that once made it so loved, but making it relevant for a contemporary audience,” said Jaguar’s chief creative officer, Gerry McGovern.

Britain’s largest automotive employer – officially known as JLR – while slower than its rivals to embrace electric vehicles, has made investments recently to build hybrid cars and prepare for electric vehicle production, starting with the first deliveries of the electric Range Rover, made in its main factory in Solihull, in the West Midlands, at the end of next year.

James Ramsden, the executive creative director at the London design agency Coley Porter Bell, said the rebrand was a “radical reinvention” of a business wanting to appeal to a new generation.

“It’s just a shame it walked away from some of the iconic, treasured, and beautiful icons that have occupied the brand’s DNA for generations,” Ramsden told Adweek. “If you’re going to ‘break the mould’, you’d better have one hell of a range of cars full of innovations and shape language, with a new buyer experience, ready to roll … this we wait to see.”

A sorority at Dartmouth College and two members of a fraternity are facing charges related to the death of a student who drowned after attending an off-campus party this summer.

Won Jang, 20, of Middletown, Delaware, had been reported missing in July after the party. State and local emergency responders searched the Connecticut River and found his body.

On Friday, police in Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth is located, announced that Alpha Phi has been charged with one count of facilitating an underage alcohol house. Two members of the Beta Alpha Omega were charged with providing alcohol to a person under 21.

The party was hosted by the Alpha Phi sorority and alcohol was provided by Beta Alpha Omega. Most of those at the party were under 21. At the end of the party, police said several attendees decided to swim in the river. While at the river, a heavy rainstorm hit and most people left. Jang, whose family told authorities he could not swim, was left behind.

At the time of the incident, Dartmouth suspended the sorority and fraternity and those suspensions remain in effect. Jang was a member of Beta Alpha Omega.

“Dartmouth has long valued the contributions that Greek organizations bring to the student experience, when they are operating within their stated values and standards,” the college said in a statement. “These organizations, as well as all Dartmouth students and community members, have a responsibility to ensure Dartmouth remains a safe, respectful, equitable and inclusive community for students, faculty and staff.”

No one from Alpha Phi could be reached for comment.

A sorority at Dartmouth College and two members of a fraternity are facing charges related to the death of a student who drowned after attending an off-campus party this summer.

Won Jang, 20, of Middletown, Delaware, had been reported missing in July after the party. State and local emergency responders searched the Connecticut River and found his body.

On Friday, police in Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth is located, announced that Alpha Phi has been charged with one count of facilitating an underage alcohol house. Two members of the Beta Alpha Omega were charged with providing alcohol to a person under 21.

The party was hosted by the Alpha Phi sorority and alcohol was provided by Beta Alpha Omega. Most of those at the party were under 21. At the end of the party, police said several attendees decided to swim in the river. While at the river, a heavy rainstorm hit and most people left. Jang, whose family told authorities he could not swim, was left behind.

At the time of the incident, Dartmouth suspended the sorority and fraternity and those suspensions remain in effect. Jang was a member of Beta Alpha Omega.

“Dartmouth has long valued the contributions that Greek organizations bring to the student experience, when they are operating within their stated values and standards,” the college said in a statement. “These organizations, as well as all Dartmouth students and community members, have a responsibility to ensure Dartmouth remains a safe, respectful, equitable and inclusive community for students, faculty and staff.”

No one from Alpha Phi could be reached for comment.

Higher usage of personal care products among pregnant or nursing women leads to higher levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in their blood and breast milk, new research shows, presenting a serious health threat to developing children.

The new study helps connect the dots among previous papers that have found concerning levels of PFAS in personal care products, umbilical cord blood, breast milk and shown health risks for developing children.

The analysis of data from 2,000 women is the largest to compare personal care product usage with PFAS levels, and the findings are “alarming” said Amber Hall, a Brown University researcher and study co-author.

“It’s not only getting in blood and breast milk, but it’s getting in there at high enough levels that we’re able to connect it with greater frequency of use,” Hall said.

PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds typically used to make products that resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and accumulate, and are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems.

The chemicals are widely used across the economy, and have been added to personal care products from dental floss to cosmetics, often to help spread active ingredients, or aid the skin in absorbing them. They also leach into the products from packaging or other points in the supply chain.

The authors found those with the highest blood or milk levels were linked to nail care products, fragrances, makeup, hair dyes and hair sprays.

Women who wore makeup daily in the first and third trimesters had 14% and 17% higher plasma and breast milk PFAS concentrations, respectively.

Women who dyed their hair at least twice during pregnancy showed levels of PFOS, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds, that were 36% higher than those who did not.

Meanwhile, women who used nail products after giving birth were found to have PFOS levels about 27% higher.

Previous research found PFAS in each of 30,000 umbilical cord blood samples taken across a five-year period in locations around the globe. Breast milk in 50 US samples were found to contain alarming levels of the chemicals.

Exposure is especially dangerous for developing children because they are more vulnerable and it can trigger lifelong health problems. Among other issues related to pregnancy and development, PFAS are linked to decreased birth weight, preterm birth, shorter lactation periods, a reduction in milk’s nutritional value, neuro-developmental disorders and diminished vaccine response in children.

Women can take some steps to protect themselves, like reducing non-essential personal care products while pregnant or nursing. They can also find products free from toxic chemicals, though it is difficult to identify PFAS on product labels, and sometimes their inclusion is not disclosed.

Some states have begun to ban or limit the use of PFAS in personal care products as an active ingredient. That may pressure companies to remove PFAS from their products across the nation so they do not have to produce different formulas for different states.

At least 11 people have been killed and 63 wounded in a series of Israeli airstrikes on an apartment block in the densely populated Basta neighbourhood of central Beirut.

At least four bombs hit an eight-storey apartment building at about 4am on Saturday, without warning, producing blasts heard around the Lebanese capital. The strike levelled the building and destroyed seven smaller residential buildings in the surroundings, leaving meters-deep craters of rubble where the structures once stood.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said the strikes used bunker busters, and the sound of the explosions were similar to those heard when Israeli used the penetrative munition to kill the former head of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, but the Guardian was unable to independently verify these reports.

The target of the Israeli strikes was unclear. Israeli media reports offered the name of several high-level Hezbollah officials as possible targets, but a Hezbollah MP denied any member of the group was in the building at the time and Israeli authorities had yet to comment on the reason for the strike.

Rescuers were continuing to search for survivors, but were not optimistic that the dozens of people who went missing in the blast would be recovered alive.

“We are still just at the beginning of the rescue operations. I’m not sure anyone is alive underneath the rubble – this is the strongest strike I’ve seen,” a rescue worker said.

Abu Omar al-Safaa, a 55-year-old who lives in a building adjacent to the strike, spent all morning digging through rubble to find his relatives who lived in the building.

“When I heard the strikes, I rushed here and tried to pull people out. Only one person, my cousin, was pulled out alive. The rest were dead,” al-Safaa said, sitting down to take a rest. He lost two cousins in the strike and more of his relatives were missing.

Nearby buildings were damaged, some of them rendered uninhabitable by the force of the explosion. Hassan, a 40-year-old resident of a building five metres away from the strike site, said he would be forced to live with his relatives elsewhere. He was still waiting for news of his neighbour, a Syrian couple with three children who were in the building at the time of the strike.

Aid workers from the local charity Banin had set up a table to register people who had lost their homes and provide them with temporary accommodations in a sports stadium on the outskirts of Beirut.

The strikes came as Israel intensified its aerial bombing campaign in Lebanon and advanced its troops in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military reached the hilltop town of Shamaa, 3.5 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border, where it is still engaged in fighting with Hezbollah. Shamaa is a strategic point that overlooks the coast and specifically the city of Tyre, the second-largest city in south Lebanon.

Hezbollah, in turn, continued to bomb northern Israel and target Israeli troops in south Lebanon. On Friday, Hezbollah said it shelled Israeli troops in the border village of Khiam, where fighting has been concentrated for the past three weeks.

Diplomatic efforts to produce a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel have intensified over the past two weeks. The US envoy Amos Hochstein visited Beirut and Tel Aviv this week, where he said progress was being made to reach a deal, but gaps still remained over how to enforce violations of any potential ceasefire.

Hezbollah and Israel said fighting would continue in parallel with ceasefire negotiations.

Since fighting began, after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on 8 October 2023 “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack the day before, more than 3,645 people have been killed in Lebanon – 80% of whom were killed since Israel launched its intensified aerial campaign and ground incursion in Lebanon at the end of September.

About 300 families have fled sectarian violence in north-west Pakistan as fresh clashes killed 32 people.

Sporadic fighting between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan has killed about 150 over the past months.

“Approximately 300 families have relocated to Hangu and Peshawar since this morning in search of safety,” a senior official said, adding that more families were preparing to leave the province’s Kurram district.

Another senior administrative official said on condition of anonymity that “fighting between Shia and Sunni communities continues at multiple locations”, with 32 people killed in clashes on Saturday – 14 Sunnis and 18 Shias.

The violence came two days after gunmen opened fire on two separate convoys of Shia Muslims travelling with a police escort in Kurram, killing 43 people and leaving 11 in critical condition, according to officials.

Shia Muslims also attacked several Sunni locations on Friday evening in Kurram, once a semi-autonomous region.

Rehan Muhammad, a 33-year-old journalist from the Sunni-majority area of Bagan in Kurram, said he had to flee his home as clashes worsened.

“Gunfire suddenly erupted on Friday after sunset … I realised it was an attack in retaliation for [Thursday’s] incident and immediately grabbed my children, despite the bitter cold, and told my family to flee our home towards the mountains on foot,” Muhammad said.

“The sight of houses in our village set ablaze was terrifying, I could see the entire village engulfed in flames.

“At dawn, someone shouted that the attackers had left. When I returned, nothing was left. All that remained of my house was a pile of charred debris.”

A senior administrative official in Kurram said the attacks destroyed 317 shops and more than 200 homes.

A senior Kurram police officer said that at about 7pm “a group of enraged Shia individuals attacked the Sunni-dominated Bagan bazaar”.

“After firing, they set the entire market ablaze and entered nearby homes, pouring petrol and setting them on fire,” he said.

Local Sunnis “also fired back at the attackers”, he added.

Tribal and family feuds are common in Sunni-majority Pakistan, where the Shia community has long suffered discrimination and violence.

Javedullah Mehsud, a senior official in Kurram, said there were “efforts to restore peace … [through] the deployment of security forces” and with the help of “local elders”.

However, another official said there were not enough police and administrative staff in the area, where the federal government and provincial authorities in Peshawar struggle to impose the law.

“We informed the provincial government that the situation was critical and that additional troops needed to be urgently deployed,” the official said under anonymity.

Last month, at least 16 people, including two children, were killed in a sectarian clash in Kurram.

Clashes in July and September killed dozens of people and ended only after a jirga, or tribal council, called a ceasefire. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said 79 people died between July and October in sectarian clashes.

Several hundred people demonstrated against the violence on Friday in Lahore and Karachi. In Parachinar, the main town of Kurram district, thousands held a sit-in, while hundreds attended funerals of Thursday’s victims, mainly Shia civilians.

The HRCP has urged authorities to pay “urgent attention” to the “alarming frequency of clashes”, saying the situation has escalated to “the proportions of a humanitarian crisis”.

“The fact that local rival groups clearly have access to heavy weaponry indicates that the state has been unable to control the flow of arms into the region,” the HRCP said.

The Lao government has said it is “profoundly saddened” by the deaths of foreign tourists in Vang Vieng and has promised justice, as tributes were paid to victims of a suspected mass methanol poisoning which has claimed six lives.

Two Danish citizens, two Australians, an American, and a Briton died after becoming ill following a night out in the small riverside town, a popular destination for backpackers.

The Lao government said it had been “conducting investigations to find causes of the incident and to bring the perpetrators to justice in accordance with the law”. Laos, a one-party communist state where the media is tightly controlled, has given virtually no information about the deaths or investigation.

On Saturday, tributes were paid to the Melbourne teenagers Holly Bowles and Bianca Jones, both aged 19, who were holidaying together in Laos. Bowles died at a Bangkok hospital on Friday, a day after the death of Jones, her best friend.

Beaumaris football club, the Australian rules team for which the two women played, said in a statement: “Two beautiful lives lost, both with so much potential, love and spirit, leaves us both numb and without words.

“In somewhat poignant circumstances, news of Holly’s passing came to light as our senior playing group came together in solidarity last night. As a club, we continue to be heartened by the countless messages of support we have received,” it said.

Teammates tied blue and yellow ribbons, the club’s colours, around the community in memory of the girls, and in support of their parents.

Thai authorities confirmed Jones had died of “brain swelling due to high levels of methanol found in her system”. The friends were taken to hospital after they were found unwell in their room at the Nana Backpacker Hostel.

British tourist Simone White, 28, from Orpington, south-east London, was also confirmed to have died on Friday. Her parents said they were “devastated by the loss of our beautiful, kind and loving daughter”. The Foreign Office in the UK said White had died of suspected of methanol poisoning. Details about the deaths of the American and two Danish tourists have not been released.

Vang Vieng, which is in central Laos and surrounded by limestone mountains, was once known as a raucous and hedonistic party spot, famous for “tubing”, where travellers ride tractor-tyre inner tubes down the Nam Song River, and stopping off at bars along the way.

A series of tourist deaths prompted a crackdown on riverside bars and a temporary ban on tubing in 2012, and the town has since rebranded and attracted a wider range of visitors, including tourists from China and South Korea.

It remains popular among western backpackers, however, and has plenty of hostels and bars offering cheap or free alcohol. The town was bustling with visitors on Saturday, according to reports.

Several governments have issued warnings to travellers visiting Laos over the past week. The UK said tourists should only consume alcoholic drinks from licensed liquor stores, and “take care if [drinks are] offered, particularly for free, or when buying spirit-based drinks”.

The manager and owner of the Nana Backpacker Hostel, where the tourists were staying, have been detained for questioning by police. The gates to the hostel were shut on Saturday, according to the Associated Press.

Methanol, which is tasteless and odourless, is sometimes added to liquor by unscrupulous producers as a cheaper alternative to ethanol. It can also be present in homemade spirit that has not been brewed correctly. It can quickly lead to serious illness.

In a statement on its website, Laos’s ministry of foreign affairs expressed “sincere sympathy and deepest condolences to the families of the deceased”.

Methanol poisoning affects thousands of people every year, according to data cited by Doctors Without Borders, and is most common in Asia, including south-east Asian countries such as Indonesian, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines, where it is caused by illegally or informally produced liquors such as rice wine brews or counterfeit spirits.

Associated Press contributed to this report

The fast food chain KFC has ditched its pledge in the UK to improve animal welfare by sourcing its chicken from slower-growing breeds by 2026.

Fast-growing meat chickens have been called “Frankenchickens” because of welfare concerns, including higher mortality rates, lameness and muscle disease. More than 1 billion chickens are slaughtered in the UK each year for meat.

KFC won plaudits in 2019 when it announced it was signing up to the Better Chicken Commitment but now says it will not meet the pledge. Its 2024 annual progress report on chicken welfare reported that just 1% of its chickens were from slower-growing breeds.

The firm’s ambition was to meet six key targets by 2026, including adoption of slower-growing breeds and a maximum stocking density of 30kg a square metre or less, which gives the birds significantly more space.

KFC restaurants in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden signed up to the commitment, but the company has made almost no progress in adopting slower-growing breeds.

Ruth Edge, head of sustainability at KFC UK and Ireland, told the Egg and Poultry Industry Conference in Wales last week that its ambition of using slower-growing breeds by 2026 was not achievable.

“We’re not saying we’re never going to,” she said. “But we’re saying for 2026, and the way the market has developed, or lack of, we’re not going to be able to do it.”

KFC says there is an inadequate supply to meet the commitment because farmers are not switching in big enough numbers to slower-growing breeds. The company says it is still working to source chickens from farms with lower stocking densities.

Campaigners say a move to slower-growing breeds would reduce mortality rates and improve welfare, but many retailers and restaurants have been reluctant to sign up to the Better Chicken Commitment because of the higher costs involved.

Food firms and retailers that have signed up to the commitment include Marks & Spencer, Burger King, Subway, Nando’s, Nestlé and Greggs. One of the commitments is third-party auditing to ensure compliance with the standard by 2026, with a longer timeframe for companies that have signed up this year.

The animal welfare group the Humane League UK said it would be protesting against KFC over the backtracking. Katie Ferneyhough from the charity said: “The use of Frankenchickens is the biggest animal welfare crisis of our time, and we will not tolerate companies breaking their promises to animals. We will not rest until KFC comes to the table and sets out a new timeline for adopting the [Better Chicken Commitment].”

Connor Jackson, co-founder of the charity Open Cages, said: “We are in touch with companies that can supply KFC with the slower-growing chickens it needs to fulfil its commitment. The fact that KFC has made less than 1% progress on removing Frankenchickens from its supply chain is very concerning.”

An RSPCA spokesperson said: “Faster-growing breeds of chicken can suffer severe health and welfare issues, and we urge KFC to do all they can to transition to using only slower-growing breeds as soon as possible.”

Rudi Van Schoor, the chief supply chain officer for KFC Europe, said: “The Better Chicken Commitment is an absolutely essential framework for tracking and improving welfare standards which we follow. When we signed up in 2019, we did so to support the direction of travel. We were very clear that we could only meet all the asks in the commitment if the wider poultry sector moved, as we make up less than 3% of the total UK chicken market.

“The reality, at the moment, is that the UK poultry industry is not yet in an operational and commercial position to deliver the Better Chicken Commitment by 2026. But we remain committed to the Better Chicken Commitment framework.”