Hezbollah has vowed to continue resisting Israel and is monitoring the Israeli army’s withdrawal from south Lebanon “with [our] hands on the trigger”, the militia said in its first comments since a ceasefire came into effect on Wednesday.

While a tense calm has descended on southern Lebanon, in the Gaza Strip Israel appears to have stepped up its campaign against the Palestinian group Hamas. At least 21 people were killed in airstrikes in the past 24 hours, hospital officials said, and Israeli ground forces are pushing deeper into the north and south of the enclave.

The Israeli military said its forces were continuing to “strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip”.

Hezbollah did not directly mention the truce but said its fighters “remain fully equipped to deal with the aspirations and assaults of the Israeli enemy”. It also remained committed to the Palestinian cause, the statement from its operations centre late on Wednesday said.

A 60-day staged withdrawal, in which Israel will pull out of Lebanon and Hezbollah will move its fighters and heavy weaponry out of a 16-mile-deep (25km) boundary buffer zone, went into effect at 4am local time on Wednesday.

The truce is designed to help broker a permanent end to 14 months of fighting, and violations will be monitored by a US-led supervisory mechanism, but the situation on the ground remains tense.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that the air force struck a facility used by Hezbollah to store mid-range rockets, the first such attack since the ceasefire started. Initial reports suggested the airstrike hit a location north of the Litani River, which is not included in the ceasefire agreement.

Israeli tank fire hit six areasalong the UN-demarcated blue line separating the two countries on Thursday morning, wounding two people, Lebanese security sources and state media said.

Israel’s military said in a statement: “Several suspects were identified arriving with vehicles to a number of areas in southern Lebanon, breaching the conditions of the ceasefire.” It said troops “opened fire toward them” and the army would “actively enforce violations of the ceasefire agreement”.

Thousands of displaced people in Lebanon have already packed up their belongings and attempted to return to their abandoned homes in the south amid contradictory statements from officials. The speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, said residents could return home, while Israel has warned them not to.

In another incident on Wednesday, Israeli forces opened fire on a number of cars that attempted to enter what it said was a restricted area.

“The Israeli enemy is attacking those returning to the border villages,” the Hezbollah politician Hassan Fadlallah told reporters on Thursday. “There are violations today by Israel, even in this form.”

The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million people in Lebanon and about 60,000 in Israel. Israelis are not yet allowed to return to homes near the border.

Earlier this week, the Lebanese health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths, said Israeli fire had killed 3,823 people and injured 15,859 others since October 2023. Hezbollah strikes have killed 45 Israeli civilians and 73 soldiers, according to Israeli figures.

Hezbollah, which started firing rockets, drones and missiles at its neighbour in solidarity with Hamas a day after the Palestinian group attacked on Israel on 7 October 2023, traded cross-border fire with Israel for a year before Israel stepped up its air campaign in late September and sent in ground troops.

Crucially, during truce talks, Hezbollah dropped its demand that a ceasefire was contingent on an end to the fighting in Gaza.

The Israeli military declared a curfew for southern Lebanon from 5pm on Wednesday until 7am on Thursday, and again on Thursday night. It has prohibited displaced Lebanese people from returning to their homes while its forces remain in several areas.

Its spokesperson Avichay Adraee said: “We do not want to harm you – but our forces will not hesitate to engage with any forbidden movements in this zone.”

The US-brokered ceasefire, the most significant development in the effort to calm regional tensions that have rocked the Middle East since 7 October 2023, is not directly linked to the fighting in Gaza.

Talks aimed at stemming the bloodshed in the Palestinian territory have repeatedly failed. Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, announced earlier this month it was quitting its role until both parties showed “willingness and seriousness”.

Announcing the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire on Tuesday, the US president, Joe Biden, said his administration would revive diplomatic efforts for a truce in Gaza, but the delinking of the fronts has strengthened Israel’s position against Hamas. There is little hope that the momentum generated by the Lebanon ceasefire will help stop the fighting: neither side has indicated any willingness to change their conditions for a ceasefire as a result of the Lebanon deal.

The Palestinian territory is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis. Israel has been accused of deliberately blocking aid and forcibly displacing the population, allegations it denies. It is widely believed by observers of the conflict that Israel’s government is seeking to annex parts of the territory.

About 44,300 Palestinians have been killed in more than a year of fighting according to the local health ministry, whose figures are considered by the UN to be accurate. A total of 1,200 Israelis were killed and another 250 taken captive on 7 October 2023. Israel says 63 hostages are still alive.

Russia has continued its assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as Vladimir Putin threatens to strike “decision-making centres” in Kyiv with Moscow’s new ballistic Oreshnik missile.

More than 200 missiles and drones were fired by Russia on Thursday morning, leaving more than a million households without power, according to reports from Ukrainian officials.

Moscow has frequently targeted Ukraine’s power grid and the country is expected to struggle to cope with demand during the winter, particularly if the attacks continue. About half of Ukraine’s energy capacity has been destroyed over the past three years and, in recent weeks, Ukrainian officials have suggested Russia may be stockpiling missiles in order to launch coordinated strikes on the power infrastructure and make winter miserable for millions.

The latest attack came as cold, wintry weather set in across the country, with a dusting of snow across Kyiv in recent days. “Once again, the energy sector is under massive enemy attack. Attacks on energy facilities are taking place across Ukraine,” the energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said in a Facebook post.

He said the national power grid had “urgently introduced emergency power cuts” and outages were reported in regions across Ukraine. These emergency outages are in addition to rolling scheduled power cuts in much of the country. Western Ukraine was worst affected on Thursday morning, with the head of Lviv region saying around half a million households there were without power.

Ukraine’s air force said in a statement that Russia had launched dozens of missiles from land, sea and air against Ukraine, focusing on energy infrastructure. The president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claimed Thursday’s attack had included Kalibr cruise missiles with cluster munitions, calling it an “insidious escalation”.

Explosions were audible in the capital and various other cities across the country. In Kyiv, an air raid alert was in place for most of the night, and missile debris fell in one neighbourhood, but there were no reports of casualties in the city.

“Each such attack proves that air defence systems are needed now in Ukraine, where they save lives, and not at storage bases,” Zelenskyy said in a message posted to Telegram.

Meanwhile, Putin warned that Russia was selecting targets to strike in Ukraine with the experimental Oreshnik missile in response to Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian territory with western weapons.

“At present, the Ministry of Defence and the general staff are selecting targets to hit on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defence and industrial enterprises or decision-making centres in Kyiv,” Putin told a meeting of a security alliance of ex-Soviet countries in Kazakhstan.

Russia’s first ever use of the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile on Dnipro last week captured global attention.

The Russian leader announced Moscow’s plans to further increase the production of Oreshnik missiles, which he claims are impossible to intercept.

The strikes in Ukraine came a day after the US president-elect, Donald Trump, named the retired army general Keith Kellogg as his envoy for Russia and Ukraine. Trump has promised to bring a negotiated end to the war and officials in Kyiv have been watching anxiously to see what appointments he makes.

There will be reassurance over the appointment of the 80-year-old Kellogg, who has not espoused some of the pro-Russian rhetoric common to some in Trump’s orbit, and has previously talked about a plan to leverage military aid by increasing it while pushing for peace talks.

During regular appearances on US television, Kellogg has criticised Russia’s invasion and warned of the conflict spiralling into a global conflagration. He has also made it clear that Ukraine will have little choice but to negotiate, even if it is not clear what security guarantees Kyiv could obtain that Russia would be held to any ceasefire deal.

“If Ukraine doesn’t want to negotiate, fine, but then accept the fact that you can have enormous losses in your cities and accept the fact that you will have your children killed, accept the fact that you don’t have 130,000 dead, you will have 230,000 [to] 250,000,” Kellogg told Voice of America at the Republican party convention in July.

There is a growing awareness in Kyiv that exhaustion after nearly three years of full-scale war combined with the arrival of the Trump administration means there will be pressure to begin some kind of talks with the Russians. But there is no sign that Russia is ready to negotiate yet or that it would be willing to discuss ceasefire terms that are not humiliating for Ukraine.

“Even people who say they are ready for negotiations understand that they are only possible if we force Russia to the table. Negotiations through strength, not through capitulation,” said Zelenskyy’s adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, in an interview in Kyiv.

Australia’s parliament has passed a law that will aim to do what no other government has, and many parents have tried to: stop children from using social media. The new law was drafted in response to what the Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, says is a “clear, causal link between the rise of social media and the harm [to] the mental health of young Australians.”

On Thursday, parliament’s upper house, the Senate, passed a bill by 34 votes to 19 banning children under 16 from social media platforms.

But academics, politicians and advocacy groups have warned that the ban – as envisioned by the government – could backfire, driving teenagers to the dark web, or making them feel more isolated. There are questions about how it will work in practice. Many worry that the process has been too rushed, and that, if users are asked to prove their age, it could lead to social media companies being handed valuable personal data. Even Elon Musk has weighed in.

The online safety amendment (social media minimum age) bill bans social media platforms from allowing users under 16 to access their services, threatening companies with fines of up to AU$50m (US$32m) if they fail to comply. However, it contains no details about how it will work, only that the companies will be expected to take reasonable steps to ensure users are aged 16 or over. The detail will come later, through the completion of a trial of age-assurance technology in mid-2025. The bill won’t come into force for another 12 months.

The bill also does not specify to which companies the legislation would apply, though communications minister Michelle Rowland has said that Snapchat, TikTok, X, Instagram, Reddit and Facebook are likely to be part of the ban. YouTube will not be included because of its “significant” educational purpose, she said.

The bill was introduced to parliament last week, with just three sitting days left on the parliamentary calendar. It received 15,000 submissions in a day. Among these was one from Amnesty International recommending that the bill not be passed because a “ban that isolates young people will not meet the government’s objective of improving young people’s lives”.

The number of responses increased dramatically, the Australian broadcaster ABC reported, after X owner Musk reposted a tweet by Albanese announcing that the bill would be introduced that day, writing, “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians.” Most of the submissions were a form response, the ABC reported, with fewer than 100 submissions made by interest groups.

Musk has clashed repeatedly with the Australian government this year over requests to remove graphic content and separate legislation aimed at tackling deliberate lies spread on social media platforms.

On Tuesday this week, the Senate’s environment and communications legislation Committee supported the bill but added the condition that social media platforms not force users to submit personal data, including passport information. It is unclear what methods social media companies would use to enforce age restrictions,

A YouGov survey released on Tuesday this week showed 77% of Australians backed the ban, up from 61% in an August survey. Each of Australia’s eight state and territory leaders supports the ban, though Tasmania’s leader suggested it end at 14. The federal opposition supports the bill, claiming it would have done it sooner – it has promised to have a ban in place within 100 days if it wins next year’s election.

But 140 experts have signed an open letter expressing their concern that the bill is “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively”. Among their concerns are that it “creates even more risks for children who may still use platforms” and that bans “affect rights to access and participation”. Australia’s human rights commission has “serious reservations” about the ban, “given the potential for these laws to significantly interfere with the rights of children and young people”.

One of the authors of a UK study of 17,400 young people cited by the government in support of the ban said that the Australian government had “misunderstood the purpose and findings” of the research, Crikey reported.

“The voices of children and young people have been conspicuously missing from most of the debate and commentary,” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie wrote, in a piece for Guardian Australia explaining why he changed his mind, from supporting the ban to disagreeing with it.

Christopher Stone, the executive director of Suicide Prevention Australia, said in a statement: “The government is running blindfolded into a brick wall.

“Complex issues like this require careful consultation and consideration, not shortcuts. We urge the government to slow down and engage with stakeholders to ensure we get this right for young people.”

The writer and director Richard Curtis has revealed that he had been planning a follow-up to romcom hit Notting Hill in which the lead characters split up.

Speaking to IndieWire to promote forthcoming animation That Christmas, Curtis – who has previously overseen short spin-offs of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually in aid of Comic Relief – said he had envisioned a similar “mini sequel” to Notting Hill.

The 1999 romcom starred Julia Roberts as a superstar actor and Hugh Grant as the bumbling bookshop owner with whom she falls in love. The ending shows that the pair have got married and are expecting a child.

“I tried doing one with Notting Hill,” said Curtis, “where they were going to get divorced.”

The project was halted by Roberts, he added, who “thought that was a very poor idea”.

In 2020, during a Q&A for HBO show The Undoing, Grant suggested a similar idea, saying: “I would like to do a sequel to one of my own romantic comedies that shows what happened after those films ended. Really, to prove the terrible lie that they all were, that it was a happy ending.”

The actor specifically cited Notting Hill in his proposal, adding: “I’d like to do me and Julia and the hideous divorce that’s ensued with really expensive lawyers, children involved in [a] tug of love, floods of tears. Psychologically scarred for ever. I’d love to do that film.”

Grant, who is currently promoting horror film Heretic and will be return as the dastardly Daniel Cleaver in next year’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, recently told Vanity Fair that he thinks his character in Notting Hill is “despicable”.

“Whenever I’m flicking the channels at home after a few drinks and this comes up, I just think, ‘Why doesn’t my character have any balls?’” Grant said.

“There’s a scene in this film where she’s in my house and the paps come to the front door and ring the bell and I think I just let her go past me and open the door. That’s awful. I’ve never had a girlfriend, or indeed now wife, who hasn’t said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you stop her? What’s wrong with you?’ And I don’t really have an answer to that – it’s how it was written. And I think he’s despicable, really.”

A former soldier whose prison escape led to a prolonged manhunt in 2023 has been convicted of spying for Iran but cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax.

Daniel Khalife was found guilty of two counts relating to his espionage on Thursday. Wearing a blue shirt and pale trousers in court, he calmly put his glasses back on as the verdicts were read out and did not show any emotion.

The 23-year-old had admitted partway through his trial to the escape from HMP Wandsworth, in south-west London. Khalife had strapped himself to the underside of a food delivery van while being held on remand over the spying charges.

Prosecutors accused Khalife of playing “a cynical game” in claiming he wanted a career working as a double agent to help British security services. In fact, he gathered “a very large body of restricted and classified material”, they said.

Khalife covertly gathered the names of serving soldiers, including those in special forces. Woolwich crown court was told that he took a photo of a handwritten list of 15 service personnel who included members of the SAS and Special Boat Service, having been sent an internal spreadsheet of promotions in June 2021.

He denied sending the list to the Iranians and claimed he mostly sent useless or made-up documents. In his defence, Khalife’s barrister, Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, said his double-agent plot had been amateurish.

Khalife’s trial heard that he could have endangered the life of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe by sending a fake intelligence document to Iran that said the British government was not willing to negotiate over her release. Jurors were told he sent a document to Iranian agents titled “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe intelligence options”, which he created in 2021.

Prosecutors said he acted recklessly in sending the document and could have caused “consequences” for Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was freed only after ministers agreed to settle a £400m debt dating back to the 1970s.

The former soldier’s bogus document read: “There will be no advances in the area of returning Nazanin to the UK without further procurement of the debt owed to the Islamic Republic. The UK will not be seen to pay ransoms to hostile nations … terrorists have long used kidnap for ransom.”

In a transcript of a police interview read to the jury, Khalife said he produced “fake documents” to help convince the Iranians to trust him.

When police arrested him and searched his room at MoD Stafford in January 2022, they found a number of “completely fake” documents in digital and paper form purporting to be from MPs, senior military officials and the security services. Prosecutors say Khalife made sure there was no record of what documents were sent.

After his conviction, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Khalife’s actions could have put military personnel’s lives at risk and prejudiced national security. “As a serving soldier of the British army, Daniel Khalife was employed and entrusted to uphold and protect the national security of this country. But, for purposes of his own, Daniel Khalife used his employment to undermine national security,” said Bethan David, the head of counter-terrorism at the CPS.

“He surreptitiously sought out and obtained copies of secret and sensitive information which he knew were protected and passed these on to individuals he believed to be acting on behalf of the Iranian state. The sharing of the information could have exposed military personnel to serious harm, or a risk to life, and prejudiced the safety and security of the United Kingdom.”

Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of the Met police’s counter-terrorism unit, said: “I hope this serves as a warning that the illegal sharing of information in this way will be treated extremely seriously by security services and police and we will use the full force of the law against those who put the UK’s security at risk.”

While on the run, Khalife made one last attempt to contact the Iranians before he was found, sending a Telegram message that said: “I wait.”

Concern that he would try to escape again during his trial was so high that when he gave evidence he was brought to and from the witness box in handcuffs.

Khalife has said he undertook his escape in the hope that after his recapture he would be kept in a high-security unit (HSU) at a different prison, away from “sex offenders” and “terrorists”.

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told jurors she had asked Khalife if he wanted the prison escape charge to be put to him again. He replied: “I’m guilty.”

The court heard he planned a fake escape attempt for 21 August in the hope he would be moved to the HSU, but he decided that a genuine escape was his only option after the incident was not reported to senior prison staff.

Khalife was convicted of charges under the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act.

A former soldier whose prison escape led to a prolonged manhunt in 2023 has been convicted of spying for Iran but cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax.

Daniel Khalife was found guilty of two counts relating to his espionage on Thursday. Wearing a blue shirt and pale trousers in court, he calmly put his glasses back on as the verdicts were read out and did not show any emotion.

The 23-year-old had admitted partway through his trial to the escape from HMP Wandsworth, in south-west London. Khalife had strapped himself to the underside of a food delivery van while being held on remand over the spying charges.

Prosecutors accused Khalife of playing “a cynical game” in claiming he wanted a career working as a double agent to help British security services. In fact, he gathered “a very large body of restricted and classified material”, they said.

Khalife covertly gathered the names of serving soldiers, including those in special forces. Woolwich crown court was told that he took a photo of a handwritten list of 15 service personnel who included members of the SAS and Special Boat Service, having been sent an internal spreadsheet of promotions in June 2021.

He denied sending the list to the Iranians and claimed he mostly sent useless or made-up documents. In his defence, Khalife’s barrister, Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, said his double-agent plot had been amateurish.

Khalife’s trial heard that he could have endangered the life of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe by sending a fake intelligence document to Iran that said the British government was not willing to negotiate over her release. Jurors were told he sent a document to Iranian agents titled “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe intelligence options”, which he created in 2021.

Prosecutors said he acted recklessly in sending the document and could have caused “consequences” for Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was freed only after ministers agreed to settle a £400m debt dating back to the 1970s.

The former soldier’s bogus document read: “There will be no advances in the area of returning Nazanin to the UK without further procurement of the debt owed to the Islamic Republic. The UK will not be seen to pay ransoms to hostile nations … terrorists have long used kidnap for ransom.”

In a transcript of a police interview read to the jury, Khalife said he produced “fake documents” to help convince the Iranians to trust him.

When police arrested him and searched his room at MoD Stafford in January 2022, they found a number of “completely fake” documents in digital and paper form purporting to be from MPs, senior military officials and the security services. Prosecutors say Khalife made sure there was no record of what documents were sent.

After his conviction, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Khalife’s actions could have put military personnel’s lives at risk and prejudiced national security. “As a serving soldier of the British army, Daniel Khalife was employed and entrusted to uphold and protect the national security of this country. But, for purposes of his own, Daniel Khalife used his employment to undermine national security,” said Bethan David, the head of counter-terrorism at the CPS.

“He surreptitiously sought out and obtained copies of secret and sensitive information which he knew were protected and passed these on to individuals he believed to be acting on behalf of the Iranian state. The sharing of the information could have exposed military personnel to serious harm, or a risk to life, and prejudiced the safety and security of the United Kingdom.”

Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of the Met police’s counter-terrorism unit, said: “I hope this serves as a warning that the illegal sharing of information in this way will be treated extremely seriously by security services and police and we will use the full force of the law against those who put the UK’s security at risk.”

While on the run, Khalife made one last attempt to contact the Iranians before he was found, sending a Telegram message that said: “I wait.”

Concern that he would try to escape again during his trial was so high that when he gave evidence he was brought to and from the witness box in handcuffs.

Khalife has said he undertook his escape in the hope that after his recapture he would be kept in a high-security unit (HSU) at a different prison, away from “sex offenders” and “terrorists”.

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told jurors she had asked Khalife if he wanted the prison escape charge to be put to him again. He replied: “I’m guilty.”

The court heard he planned a fake escape attempt for 21 August in the hope he would be moved to the HSU, but he decided that a genuine escape was his only option after the incident was not reported to senior prison staff.

Khalife was convicted of charges under the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act.

Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth, who has the crusader motto “deus vult” tattooed on his arm, has put bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric at the center of several of his published books, according to a Guardian review of the materials.

Hegseth, especially in 2020’s American Crusade, depicts Islam as a natural, historic enemy of the west; presents distorted versions of Muslim doctrine in “great replacement”-style racist conspiracy theories; treats leftists and Muslims as bound together in their efforts to subvert the US; and idolises medieval crusaders.

Experts say that Hegseth’s view of Islam is riven with falsehoods, misconceptions and far-right conspiracy theories. Yet Hegseth, if his nomination is successful, will head the world’s largest military force at a time of conflict and instability in the Middle East.

The Guardian emailed Hegseth and the Trump transition team for comment and received no response.

The Guardian has previously reported that in his 2020 book Hegseth calls for an “American Crusade”, targeting both “internal” or “domestic enemies” and the enemies of Israel. Hegseth also connected the two, writing: “We have domestic enemies, and we have international allies … it’s time to reach out to people who value the same principles, relearn lessons from them, and form stronger bonds.”

‘False, totally wrong’

In American Crusade, Hegseth presents the medieval crusades as a model for Christian-Muslim relations, but one historian of the period says his presentation of the history of that period is “just totally wrong”.

In a chapter entitled Make the Crusade Great Again, Hegseth writes: “By the eleventh century, Christianity in the Mediterranean region, including the holy sites in Jerusalem, was so besieged by Islam that Christians had a stark choice: to wage defensive war or continue to allow Islam’s expansion and face existential war at home in Europe,” adding: “The leftists of today would have argued for ‘diplomacy’ … We know how that would have turned out.”

Hegseth continues: “The pope, the Catholic Church, and European Christians chose to fight – and the crusades were born,” and “Pope Urban II urged the faithful to fight the Muslims with his famous battle cry on their lips: ‘Deus vult!,’ or ‘God wills it!’”

Hegseth has a tattoo of the same crusader slogan, which is also associated with Christian nationalism, white supremacist and other far-right tendencies.

For Hegseth, the crusaders’ short-lived victories in the Holy Land means they can be credited with safeguarding modern values. “Enjoy Western civilization? Freedom? Equal justice under the law? Thank a crusader,” having written the same thing again earlier in the chapter.

Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and the author, with David Perry, of Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.

In a telephone conversation, he said that Hegseth’s picture of Muslim encroachment in the 11th century was misplaced.

“There were absolutely no incursions into mainland Europe,” he said, adding “If anything, Islam was kind of on the retreat in Iberia and other places as well. So there was no large geopolitical shift or any kind of immediate threat of Islam taking over Europe.”

On Hegseth’s presentation of the crusades as a victory for the west against Islam, Gabriele said: “The Crusaders lost. They lost everything.

“The idea that they kind of like emerged victorious is absolutely false.

“This narrative of the crusades as a defensive war, where if the Christians didn’t launch this offensive towards Jerusalem that Europe would be overrun has been a bog-standard narrative on the right: it’s something that was espoused by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, in 2011 and by the Christchurch shooter a few years ago.”

On Hegseth drawing a direct line between the crusaders and the modern west, Gabriele said: “It’s the worst kind of simplistic thinking,” adding: “Anybody who tells you these simple stories is selling something.”

“The British were invaded, and they didn’t even know it”

Elsewhere in American Crusade, Hegseth repeatedly characterizes Muslim immigration to Europe as an “invasion” in a way that mimics racist “great replacement”-style conspiracy theories about immigrants displacing white populations.

At one point he tries to connect – an expert says falsely – an aspect of Islamic history with the purported “capture” of Europe.

Hegseth writes: “In Islamist circles, there’s a principle known as hegira,” and then claims: “This term refers to the nonviolent capture of a non-Muslim country.”

Hegseth writes: “Hegira is a cultural, physical, psychological, political, and eventually religious takeover. History is replete with examples of this; and because history is not over, it’s happening in the most inconceivable places right now.”

Hegseth posits the US as an example where, he claims: “Radical mosques and schools are allowed to operate. Religious police control certain sections of many towns. Sharia councils dot the underground landscape. Pervasive political correctness prevents dissent against disastrous policies such as open borders and nonassimilation.”

Adducing proof, Hegseth bizarrely writes: “Take the British cities of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton, Oldham, and Rochdale. What do they all have in common? They have all had Muslim mayors.”

For Hegseth, this shows: “The British were invaded, and they didn’t even know it. In one generation – absent radical policy change – the United Kingdom will be neither united nor a Western kingdom. The United Kingdom is done for.”

He adds: “The same can be said across Europe, especially following the disastrous open-borders, pro-migrant policies of the past few decades. Countries such as Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands threw open their doors to Muslim ‘refugees’ and will never be the same because of it.”

According to Hegseth, countries that do not restrict Muslim immigration ignore that “Islam itself is not compatible with Western forms of government. On the other hand, countries that want to stay free … are fighting like hell to block Islam’s spread.”

Jasmin Zine is professor of Sociology and Muslim Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the author of a book-length report, The Canadian Islamophobia Industry: Mapping Islamophobia’s Ecosystem in the Great White North.

Zine said Hegseth’s narrative appeared to be an “Islamophobic conspiracy theory distorting the practice of ‘hijra’ or the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and early Muslims from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD looking for safety from persecution”, which “is now being used to promote the xenophobic idea of a Muslim ‘takeover’ of the west”.

Zine added: “These ideas are also linked to white nationalist demographic replacement conspiracies about Muslim birth rates in the west (AKA ‘demographic jihad’) and scare stories about ‘creeping shariah’, which have spawned retaliatory ‘crusader’ narratives in far-right subcultures.”

‘Hard-core leftism provides the best gateway for Islamism’

At other points in American Crusade, Hegseth appears to try to scapegoat Muslims for familiar conservative grievances, in narratives that suggest Muslims and leftists are colluding to undermine the US.

In case of a Biden victory in 2020, Hegseth predicted that an “anti-Israel and pro-Islamist foreign policy” would be introduced along with “speech codes instead of free speech, bye-bye Second Amendment” and “naked socialism, government-run everything, Common Core education for everyone, a tiny military, and abortion on demand – even postbirth”.

Hegseth also tries to connect his narrative with gripes about supposed censorship on social media platforms. “Who are the first people being banned on social media?” he asks, answering: “Not intolerant jihadists or filthy leftists but outspoken conservatives.”

At times he seems to admire what he imagines to be the thoroughgoing religious zealotry of Muslims compared with an increasingly secular west.

“Almost every single Muslim child grows up listening to, and learning to read from, the Quran,” Hegseth writes. “Contrast this with our secular American schools – in which the Bible is nowhere to be found – and you’ll understand why Muslims’ worldview is more coherent than ours.”

At another point in the book he engages in a lengthy diatribe about the Council for American Islamic Relations (Cair), which has been a bugbear for US conservatives since the “war on terror”, and claims Democrats are helping the organization cement a radical “Islamist” agenda.

“Groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and [Cair] have advanced the radical mission of Islamism for decades,” Hegseth claims, adding: “In the past two years alone, more than one hundred members of Congress – including Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff, Rashida Tlaib, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar – have signed letters endorsing CAIR.”

Hegseth then singles out “Socialist Bernie Sanders”, who he claims is “a favorite among Muslim Americans due to his support for Palestinian causes and distaste for Israel”.

Sanders has repeatedly publicly supported Israel’s right to defend itself, even after the commencement of the current war in Gaza, while also saying: “Innocent Palestinians also have a right to life and security,” and calling for humanitarian pauses and ceasefires, and last week leading efforts to restrict the sale of offensive weapons to Israel on the grounds that it was in violation of the international laws of war.

Some of Sanders’s positions since 7 October 2023 have drawn criticism from the left, who have seen them as insufficiently critical of Israel and insufficiently supportive of Palestine.

Hegseth meanwhile, as previously reported in the Guardian, is unconditionally supportive of Israel, and has appeared to argue that the US military should ignore the Geneva conventions in favor of “winning our wars according to our own rules”.

According to Hegseth in American Crusade, though: “Leaders of CAIR speak very highly of Bernie because his hard-core leftism provides the best gateway for their Islamism.”

Footballers face a “very high risk of experiencing extreme heat stress” at 10 of the 16 stadiums that will host the next World Cup, researchers have warned, as they urge sports authorities to rethink the timing of sports events.

Hot weather and heavy exercise could force footballers to endure scorching temperatures that feel higher than 49.5C (121.1F) when they play in three North American countries in summer 2026, according to the study. It found they are most at risk of “unacceptable thermal stress” in the stadiums in Arlington and Houston, in the US, and in Monterrey, in Mexico.

The co-author Marek Konefał, from Wrocław University of Health and Sport Sciences in Poland, said World Cups would increasingly be played in conditions of strong heat stress as the climate got hotter. “It is worth rethinking the calendar of sporting events now.”

Football’s governing body, Fifa, recommends matches include cooling breaks if the “wet bulb” temperature exceeds 32C. But scientists are concerned that the metric underestimates the stress athletes experience on the pitch because it considers only external heat and humidity.

“During intense physical activity, huge amounts of heat is produced by the work of the player’s muscles,” said Katarzyna Lindner-Cendrowska, a climate scientist at the Polish Academy of Sciences and lead author of the study. “[This] will increase the overall heat load on the athlete’s body.”

To overcome this, the researchers simulated temperatures that account for the players’ speed and activity levels, as well as their clothing. They were only partly able to include the effects of exercise in the heat index.

The highest “work rate” that can be integrated into the heat index is roughly half that sustained by professional players during a competitive football match, said Julien Périard, the deputy director of the University of Canberra Research Institute for Sport and Exercise, who was not involved in the study. “Although the approach used in the study is a step forward, the results likely underestimate the risk of experiencing extreme heat stress conditions.”

The scientists found the greatest stress would strike between 2pm and 5pm at all but one of the stadiums. In Arlington and Houston, temperatures would rise above 50C during the mid to late afternoon and place a “heavy burden on the body” that could lead to heat exhaustion and even heatstroke, they found.

Heatwaves have grown hotter, longer and more common as fossil fuel pollution has warmed the Earth’s climate. The 2026 Fifa Men’s World Cup is sponsored by Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer, and the 2034 World Cup may even be hosted by its owner, Saudi Arabia.

Last year, a report by the Climate Social Science Network found Saudi Arabia had played an outsized role in undermining progress at climate negotiations. “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,” the authors wrote.

Saudi Aramco and Fifa did not respond to requests for comment. In April, the president of Fifa, Gianni Infantino, said he was “delighted” to welcome Aramco to Fifa’s family of global partners.

To keep people safe from heat scientists recommend cutting fossil fuel pollution and adapting to a hotter planet. The research did not model the effects of air-conditioning, which was used outdoors in the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar to keep players cool.

Périard, who has published research funded by Fifa on preventing heat stress, said the new study could help tournament organisers optimise the scheduling of matches but added that Fifa needed to “take action” on their current policy of using the wet bulb index to decide on cooling and hydration breaks.

He called for a football-specific heat stress policy that accounted for factors such as sweat and included actions such as extending half-time breaks and postponing matches.

Thessa Beck, a climate and health researcher at ISGlobal, who was not involved in the study, said it was also “essential” to keep fans safe. “Even though fans may not be as physically active as players, many are older adults, young children or individuals with pre-existing conditions.”

Romania’s constitutional court has ordered a recount of all first-round votes to rule out a suspicion of fraud in the country’s presidential election, which was won in a major upset by a little-known far-right candidate.

The court said on Thursday it had decided unanimously to order Romania’s central electoral bureau to “recheck and recount all valid and invalid ballots” cast in Sunday’s election, won by the Moscow-friendly ultranationalist Călin Georgescu.

The news website Digi24.ro reported that the decision related to an allegation of fraud over votes awarded to the centre-right candidate Elena Lasconi, who finished second and is scheduled to face Georgescu in the runoff on 8 December after parliamentary elections on Sunday.

That complaint also called for the court to annul the first-round result, something it will decide on at a meeting on Friday.

A separate complaint alleging electoral fraud made against Georgescu was rejected on the grounds that it was submitted too late.

The central election bureau was due to meet later on Thursday to discuss the court’s ruling, but its president, Toni Greblă, told Romanian media that once the official request had been received it could take days to recount the roughly 9.5m votes.

Observers have said the ruling risks diminishing the credibility of Romania’s state institutions in the run up to the parliamentary ballot and presidential runoff, viewed as critical to the future direction of a hitherto reliable EU and Nato ally.

It will also add to the turmoil surrounding the first round of voting, which Georgescu, who was polling at about 5% days before the vote, won comfortably after a campaign heavily based on viral TikTok videos reportedly boosted by bot-like activity.

On Wednesday, the deputy head of the country’s telecoms regulator, Ancom, said it was calling for the suspension of TikTok, a China-owned platform, from Thursday, pending an investigation into possible election manipulation.

Pavel Popescu said the call was based on evidence of “manipulation of the electoral process”. Romania’s national defence council is also analysing potential national security risks from “cyber state and non-state entities” in the electoral process.

In addition, the national audiovisual council, CNA, has called on the European Commission to investigate TikTok’s role, saying it suspected “manipulation of public opinion” and “algorithmic amplification” of posts favouring a particular candidate.

TikTok has dismissed the council’s allegations. A spokesperson on Wednesday described the reports as “inaccurate and misleading”, saying most candidates had established a TikTok presence and the winners also campaigned on other digital platforms.

In October, Romania’s constitutional court banned another far-right politician from running in the presidential election in a decision that many analysts, civil rights groups and some political parties said had overstepped its powers.

Georgescu has called for an end to the war in Ukraine, denied the existence of Covid-19, described two second world war-era Romanian fascists as “national heroes” and claimed that in foreign affairs Romania would benefit from “Russian wisdom”.

Towns in south-west France roasted in “completely extreme” heat in the early hours of Tuesday, with overnight temperatures hitting 26.9C (80.42F).

“It’s very exceptional temperatures – even for the summer, let alone late November,” said Matthieu Sorel, a climatologist at Météo France.

Climate scientists across the country described the night-time heat as “staggering” and “phenomenal” for reaching such highs so late in the year. Météo France could not confirm if it was the highest temperature recorded on a November night because its hourly data only stretches back to about 1990, said Sorel, adding “but still, it’s huge”.

“From what we can remember, [we have] never seen temperatures during the night for this time of year.”

Violently hot nights are felt on the French side of the Pyrenees when warm air from north Africa and the Mediterranean comes down the mountains and compresses, heating up even more. The natural phenomenon, known as the Föhn effect, adds to the impact of fossil fuel pollution, which has trapped sunlight and heated the planet 1.3C since preindustrial times.

In Europe, which has warmed about twice as fast as the global average, the shift has melted glaciers and dried out reservoirs. It has forced people to suffer through deadly heatwaves that reach catastrophic highs in the day and provide little respite at night.

Temperatures near Pau reached 26.9C at 4am on Tuesday, according to Météo France, and in Biarritz and Tarbes it hit 24Cs.

The weather agency said it was an exceptional temperature for the end of November, and was higher than the 26.2C recorded on 27 November 1970. It did not break records for the highest minimum temperature, which is measured over a 24-hour period, because a later shift in winds brought cold air from the oceans that pulled temperatures back down.

“What we can see is [that] with climate change, we have way higher temperatures than before for the same meteorological events,” said Sorel.

Media reports suggested that Denmark had experienced its warmest November night on Monday but the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) said no records had been broken.

“However, it was a very warm night,” said Herdis Preil Damberg from the DMI. “As a meteorologist, I would explain it by the deep storm low called Bert, located near the UK, which has been generating a strong wind.”

The North Atlantic is also warmer than normal, he added.

Hot nights stress the body and stop people from sleeping. The number of tropical nights with temperatures above 20C – which can prove deadly for older people and those fighting off illness – has doubled or even tripled in most parts of southern Europe.

The European Environment Agency estimates the region may experience up to 100 tropical nights a year by the end of the century under the most extreme global heating scenarios.

Baseball star Shohei Ohtani wants his former interpreter to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of baseball cards he says were fraudulently bought using his money.

The Los Angeles Dodgers star is also requesting Ippei Mizuhara, who previously pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud for stealing nearly $17m from the unsuspecting athlete, return signed collectible baseball cards depicting Ohtani that were in Mizuhara’s “unauthorized and wrongful possession”, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

The legal filing alleges Mizuhara accessed Ohtani’s bank account beginning around November 2021, changing his security protocols so that he could impersonate him to authorize wire transfers. By 2024, Mizuhara had used that money to buy about $325,000 worth of baseball cards at online resellers eBay and Whatnot, according to the court documents.

Mizuhara’s attorney, Michael G Freedman, declined to comment on the filing.

Mizuhara pleaded guilty in June to spending millions from Ohtani’s Arizona bank account to cover his growing gambling bets and debts with an illegal bookmaker, as well as his own medical bills and the $325,000 worth of baseball cards.

Mizuhara is due to be sentenced in January after pleading guilty to one count of bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return, crimes that carry a potential sentence of more than 30 years in federal prison. He also could be on the hook for restitution to Ohtani that could total nearly $17m, as well as more than $1m to the IRS. And as a legal permanent resident who has a green card, he might be deported to Japan.

Mizuhara stood by Ohtani’s side for many of the Japanese sensation’s career highlights, from serving as his catcher during the Home Run Derby at the 2021 All-Star Game, to being there for his two American League MVP wins and his record-shattering $700m, 10-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Off the field, Mizuhara became Ohtani’s friend and confidant. He famously resigned from the Los Angeles Angels during the 2021 MLB lockout so he could keep speaking to Ohtani – he was rehired after a deal was struck – and their wives reportedly socialized.

But Mizuhara gambled it all away, betting tens of millions of dollars that weren’t his to wager on international soccer, the NBA, the NFL and college football – though prosecutors said he never bet on baseball.

Earlier this year, Ohtani and the Dodgers won the World Series, and the baseball star won his third Most Valuable Player award.