An Israeli bombing of a school turned shelter in Gaza City has killed at least 27 people, rescuers said, and hundreds of thousands in the Rafah area are fleeing in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war amid Israel’s newly announced campaign to “divide up” the Gaza Strip.

Three missiles hit Dar al-Arqam school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood on Thursday afternoon, the civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal said, killing several children and wounding 100 people.

The building was being used as a shelter for Palestinians displaced from their homes. In a statement, the Israeli military said it had taken precautions to avoid civilian casualties in the bombing of what it described as a control centre for the militant group Hamas.

Another 20 people were killed in a dawn airstrike on the Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, bringing the total number of casualties reported by the local health ministry to 97 in the past 24 hours.

The intense wave of Israeli bombing comes amid a major expansion of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) aerial and ground operations in the besieged Palestinian territory following Israel’s decision to abandon a two-month-old ceasefire two weeks ago.

The Israeli military said on Thursday it had struck more than 600 “terror targets” across the strip since resuming large-scale airstrikes on 18 March. Gaza’s health ministry, which the UN relies on for casualty data, says 1,163 people have been killed in bombings since the ceasefire collapsed.

On Wednesday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the army was “seizing territory” and “dividing up” Gaza. Israel has cut off humanitarian aid, food and fuel to the strip for over a month in an effort to pressure Hamas.

He did not elaborate on how much Palestinian land Israel intended to capture in the renewed offensive, but according to Ocha, the UN humanitarian agency, the IDF has declared 64% of the territory military buffer zones and “no-go” zones for civilians.

Netanyahu’s latest announcement has renewed fears of permanent displacement for the strip’s 2.3 million residents. It is also likely to inflame worries that Israel intends to permanently take control of the territory.

On Thursday, local media footage showed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the southern city of Rafah and surrounding areas, as Israeli ground troops advanced to create Netanyahu’s newly announced security corridor. Movement was impeded, however, by at least three Israeli strikes on the two main roads leading north.

The “Morag route” is named for a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting the new military zone will separate the two southern cities in the same manner as Israel’s Netzarim corridor, just south of Gaza City.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which Israel says 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed and a further 250 taken captive. Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 50,357 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Efforts led by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to restart ceasefire talks have so far failed.

The inspector general of the Department of Defense (DOD) is launching an investigation into Pentagon secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the encrypted messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive information about military operations in Yemen.

The probe, announced on Thursday, follows a bipartisan request from the Senate armed services committee after allegations emerged that highly precise – and most likely classified – intelligence about impending US airstrikes in Yemen, including strike timing and aircraft models, had been shared in a Signal group chat that included a journalist.

Investigators will also review compliance with classification and records retention requirements – which appear to have been defied by a timer set on the channel.

The investigation will “determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DOD personnel complied with DOD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business”, the memo by acting Pentagon inspector general Steve Stebbins reads.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon declined to comment on ongoing investigations.

The Republican senate armed services committee chair, Roger Wicker, and Democrat ranking member Jack Reed requested the investigation after learning that Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, was included in a Signal group chat with national security council members discussing Yemen operations.

“This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen,” the senators wrote in their letter.

“If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know.”

The Atlantic published the messages shared by Hegseth on Signal, which included operational details about strikes against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, such as launch times of F-18 fighter jets, bomb drop timings and naval Tomahawk missile launches – sent before the operation had been carried out.

The White House and Hegseth himself have aggressively maintained that the Signal messages were merely “team updates” lacking classified sources or methods.

Yet the Pentagon’s own classification guidelines suggest the kind of detailed military plans in the Signal chat would typically be classified at least at the “secret” level, while some of the real-time updates could have risen to a higher level of classification. Hegseth’s messages even included the phrase “clean on OPSEC” – operational security – implying he recognized the sensitivity of the information being shared.

Former state department attorney Brian Finucane, who has extensive experience in counter-terrorism operations including strikes against Houthis, told the Guardian the specificity of aircraft information suggests it was classified, and that “in my experience, this kind of pre-operational detail would have been classified”.

The inspector general’s evaluation will be conducted in Washington and at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, with additional locations potentially coming as the investigation proceeds.

Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist and Islamophobic former Republican congressional candidate banned from Uber, Paypal and some social media platforms, has apparently been successful in pushing the White House to fire national security staffers for disloyalty.

The White House reportedly fired at least three national security council senior aides following a presentation from Loomer. Senior director of intelligence Brian Walsh, senior director for legislative affairs Thomas Boodry and a senior director overseeing tech and national security, David Feith, have all been let go post-meeting, CNN reports. But that number could be up to six staffers now, according to the New York Times.

The Times first reported that Loomer, notorious for promoting racism and 9/11 conspiracy theories, was spotted in a meeting on Wednesday during which she reportedly presented Trump with opposition research on national security council officials during a 30-minute Oval Office meeting.

Those sources told the Times that Trump may act on some of Loomer’s recommendations, with the activist reportedly criticising officials directly in front of their boss, the embattled national security adviser, Michael Waltz – who created a group chat on Signal with top officials ahead of impending deadly strikes in Yemen that led to a massive national security leak.

The meeting comes at a concerning time for Waltz, who has faced widespread criticism after the Atlantic broke the story that he inadvertently added the magazine’s editor-in-chief to a Signal messaging group discussing sensitive details of a military strike in Yemen.

Waltz and his team have created at least 20 different group chats on Signal to coordinate sensitive national security work, according to Politico, and the Washington Post reports that Waltz’s team has been conducting government business through personal Gmail accounts.

The vice-president, JD Vance; the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; and communications director Steven Cheung also reportedly attended the get-together ahead of the “liberation day” event at the Rose Garden. The Pennsylvania representative Scott Perry, a key Trump ally in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, joined with his own list of staffing concerns.

Loomer has recently targeted the deputy national security adviser, Alex Wong, on social media, questioning his loyalty because his wife worked as a justice department lawyer during Democratic administrations. She baselessly claimed Wong deliberately added the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the sensitive chat “as part of a foreign opp to embarrass the Trump administration on behalf of China”.

Additionally, Loomer has been very vocal on social media over the course of the Trump presidency, especially during the White House’s botched delivery of the Jeffrey Epstein files – a move that not only upset her for its contents but because she wasn’t invited to the ceremony.

During the 2024 campaign, Loomer made inroads with the Trump team and at one point was traveling on his plane, before Trump began to distance himself. In that period, Loomer made numerous inflammatory statements, including that “the White House will smell like curry” if Kamala Harris were elected – a racist reference to Harris’s Indian heritage.

She also spread unfounded claims that Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s wife had fabricated her breast cancer diagnosis.

Indian police said on Thursday they had arrested a US tourist who sneaked on to a highly restricted island carrying a coconut and a can of Diet Coke to a tribe untouched by the industrial world.

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel – part of India’s Andaman Islands – in an attempt to meet the Sentinelese people, who are believed to number only about 150.

All outsiders, Indians and foreigners alike, are banned from travelling within 3 miles (5km) of the island to protect the Indigenous people from outside diseases and to preserve their way of life.

“The American citizen was presented before the local court after his arrest and is now on a three-day remand for further interrogation,” the Andaman and Nicobar Islands police chief, HGS Dhaliwal, told AFP.

Satellite photographs show a coral reef-fringed island – stretching to some 6 miles at its widest point – with thick forest and white sand beaches.

The Sentinelese last made international headlines in 2018 after they killed John Allen Chau, 27, an American missionary who landed illegally on their beach.

Chau’s body was not recovered and there were no investigations over his death because of the Indian law prohibiting anyone from going to the island.

India sees the wider Andaman and Nicobar Islands as strategically sited on key global shipping lanes. They are closer to Myanmar than mainland India.

New Delhi plans to invest at least $9bn (£6.7bn) to expand naval and airbases, troop accommodation, the port and the main city in the region.

Dhaliwal said Polyakov kept blowing a whistle off the shore of North Sentinel Island for about an hour to attract the tribe’s attention before he went ashore.

“He landed briefly for about five minutes, left the offerings on the shore, collected sand samples, and recorded a video before returning to his boat,” Dhaliwal said. “A review of his GoPro camera footage showed his entry and landing into the restricted North Sentinel Island.”

Police said Polyakov was arrested late on Monday, about two days after he went ashore, and had visited the region twice in recent months.

He first used an inflatable kayak in October 2024 but was stopped by hotel staff, police said on Thursday. Polyakov made another unsuccessful attempt during a visit in January 2025.

This time Polyakov used another inflatable boat with a motor to travel the roughly 35 kilometres (22 miles) of open sea from the main archipelago.

The Sentinelese, whose language and customs remain a mystery to outsiders, shun all contact and have a record of hostility to anyone who tries to get close.

A photograph issued by the Indian coastguard and Survival International two decades ago showed a Sentinelese man aiming a bow and arrow at a passing helicopter.

Indian authorities have prosecuted any locals who have aided attempts to enter the island and are trying to identify anyone who may have helped Polyakov.

The Andamans are also home to the 400-strong Jarawa tribe, who activists say are also threatened by contact from outsiders. Tourists have previously bribed local officials in an attempt to spend time with the Jarawa.

JD Vance said on Thursday that Elon Musk would remain a “friend and an adviser” to the vice-president and Donald Trump after he leaves his current role with the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

In recent days, several news outlets, including Politico, reported that Trump had told members of his cabinet that the tech billionaire, who holds the position of “special government employee”, would soon be stepping back from his role in the administration, and would take on a supporting role and return to the private sector.

As a special government employee, Musk’s current service is capped at 130 days, which, if counted from the day of the inauguration, is set to expire sometime in late May.

But on Wednesday, Musk dismissed the report as “fake news” and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, criticized the Politico story, calling it “garbage”, and adding that Musk “will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at Doge is complete”.

And then, on Thursday morning, in an interview with Fox News, Vance stated: “Doge has got a lot of work to do, and yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president.

“Elon came in and we said, ‘We need you to make government more efficient, we need you to shrink the incredible fat bureaucracy that thwarts the will of the American people but also costs way too much money,” Vance added. “We said, ‘That’s going to take about six months’ – and that’s what Elon signed up for, but of course, he’s going to continue to be an adviser and by the way, the work of Doge is not even close to done, the work of Elon is not even close to done.”

Despite Musk’s 130-day cap, Doge is expected to continue until 2026, as a result of Trump’s executive order.

The reports regarding Musk’s future involvement with the Trump administration come as earlier this week, a liberal judge in Wisconsin, Susan Crawford, defeated a Musk-backed conservative judge in the race for a seat on the state’s supreme court, framed by Democrats as a referendum on the popularity of Musk and Trump.

Musk invested millions in the race, in what what became the most expensive judicial contest in US history, and also spent time campaigning in the state.

In her acceptance speech, Crawford said: “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin, and we won!”

JD Vance said on Thursday that Elon Musk would remain a “friend and an adviser” to the vice-president and Donald Trump after he leaves his current role with the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

In recent days, several news outlets, including Politico, reported that Trump had told members of his cabinet that the tech billionaire, who holds the position of “special government employee”, would soon be stepping back from his role in the administration, and would take on a supporting role and return to the private sector.

As a special government employee, Musk’s current service is capped at 130 days, which, if counted from the day of the inauguration, is set to expire sometime in late May.

But on Wednesday, Musk dismissed the report as “fake news” and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, criticized the Politico story, calling it “garbage”, and adding that Musk “will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at Doge is complete”.

And then, on Thursday morning, in an interview with Fox News, Vance stated: “Doge has got a lot of work to do, and yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president.

“Elon came in and we said, ‘We need you to make government more efficient, we need you to shrink the incredible fat bureaucracy that thwarts the will of the American people but also costs way too much money,” Vance added. “We said, ‘That’s going to take about six months’ – and that’s what Elon signed up for, but of course, he’s going to continue to be an adviser and by the way, the work of Doge is not even close to done, the work of Elon is not even close to done.”

Despite Musk’s 130-day cap, Doge is expected to continue until 2026, as a result of Trump’s executive order.

The reports regarding Musk’s future involvement with the Trump administration come as earlier this week, a liberal judge in Wisconsin, Susan Crawford, defeated a Musk-backed conservative judge in the race for a seat on the state’s supreme court, framed by Democrats as a referendum on the popularity of Musk and Trump.

Musk invested millions in the race, in what what became the most expensive judicial contest in US history, and also spent time campaigning in the state.

In her acceptance speech, Crawford said: “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin, and we won!”

Hungary will leave the international criminal court because it has become “political”, the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said as he welcomed his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanhayu – the subject of an ICC arrest warrant – to Budapest for an official visit.

Standing beside Netanyahu at the start of the four-day visit, Orbàn said Hungary was convinced the “otherwise very important court” had “diminished into a political forum”.

Netanyahu hailed “a bold and principled” decision. “I thank you, Viktor … It’s important for all democracies,” the Israeli prime minister said. “It’s important to stand up to this corrupt organisation.” Netanyahu has been under an international arrest warrant since November over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.

He also said he believed Israel and Hungary, both of which are led by rightwing nationalist governments, were “fighting a similar battle for the future of our common civilisation, our Judeo-Christian civilisation”.

Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, announced shortly after Netanyahu landed at Budapest airport that the government would “initiate the withdrawal procedure on Thursday in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework”.

Leaving the court, to which all 27 EU members belong, would entail first passing a bill through parliament, dominated by Orbán’s Fidesz party, then formally notifying the UN secretary general’s office. Withdrawal would come into effect one year later.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, welcomed what he termed an “important decision”, adding that the “so-called international criminal court” had “lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defence”.

The Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, however, told reporters on the sidelines of a Nato meeting in Brussels that as long as Hungary remained officially a member of the ICC, it should “fulfil all its obligations to the court”.

The ICC’s governing body voiced concern over Hungary’s decision, saying any departure “clouds our shared quest for justice and weakens our resolve to fight impunity”. It said the court was “at the centre of the global commitment to accountability” and the international community should “support it without reservation”.

Netanyahu was welcomed in Budapest in an official ceremony, standing alongside Orbán as a military band played and cavalry carrying swords and bayonets passed by. He is expected to tour Budapest’s Holocaust Museum and hold a number of political meetings before leaving on Sunday.

Orbán invited his Israeli counterpart to visit in November, the day after the ICC, which is based in the Hague and is the world’s only permanent global tribunal for war crimes and genocide, issued the warrant. The ICC’s move was described by Israel as politically motivated and fuelled by antisemitism.

Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly said the court has lost its legitimacy by issuing a warrant against a democratically elected leader exercising his country’s right to self-defence after the October 2023 attack by Hamas-led fighters on southern Israel.

Liz Evenson, the international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said Hungary’s withdrawal would “demonstrate how far Orbán’s government is willing to go to diminish protection of human rights globally and respect for the rule of law for people including in Hungary”.

The country’s ICC obligations “remain intact”, Evenson said. In principle, Hungary, a founding member of the ICC treaty, should be required to detain and extradite anyone subject to a warrant from the court.

Budapest, however, argues it never promulgated the law, so ICC measures cannot legally be carried out within Hungary. Many legal experts say that as a signatory and ratified state party, Hungary is nonetheless obliged to uphold the ICC’s Rome statute.

Orbán, in any case, has said he would not respect the court’s Israel ruling, which he has previously described as “brazen, cynical and completely unacceptable”.

The Hungarian prime minister has strongly supported Netanyahu for many years, embracing him as an ally who shares the same conservative, sovereignist and authoritarian views. Hungary has frequently blocked EU statements or sanctions against Israel.

The visit marks Netanyahu’s second trip abroad since ICC warrants were announced against him and his former defence chief Yoav Gallant, as well as for the Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. In February, he travelled to the US, which – like Israel, Russia and China – is not a member of the ICC.

For the Israeli prime minister, the visit is a chance to show – at a time of mounting criticism of his leadership and a lengthening list of domestic scandals – that despite widespread international opposition to Israel’s conduct of the war he remains a leader on the world stage. For Orbán, it is another act of attention-grabbing defiance.

ICC judges said when they issued the warrant that there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war.

EU members are divided over whether to enforce the warrants, with some, such as Spain, the Netherlands and Finland, saying they would enforce them and others, including Germany and Poland, suggesting they could find a way for Netanyahu to visit without being arrested. France has said Netanyahu should be immune from the warrant since Israel is not an ICC member.

The court, whose 124 members also include the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan and many African, Latin American and Asia-Pacific countries, aims to pursue people responsible for grave crimes when countries cannot or will not do so themselves.

It has opened more than 30 cases for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and offences against the administration of justice, but is hampered by a lack of recognition and enforcement. Only Burundi and the Philippines have so far left the ICC.

Donald Trump has been ordered by a judge in England to pay more than £620,000 in legal costs after unsuccessfully suing a company over denied allegations he took part in “perverted” sex acts.

The US president brought a data protection claim against Orbis Business Intelligence, a consultancy founded by a former MI6 officer, Christopher Steele, in 2022.

Steele authored the report known as the Steele dossier, which included allegations – all denied by Trump – that he had been “compromised” by the Russian security service, the FSB, and also included two memos that claimed he had taken part in “sex parties” while in St Petersburg and consorted with sex workers in Moscow.

Mrs Justice Steyn threw out the claim in February last year without ruling on the truth of the allegations, and ordered Trump to pay Orbis’s costs “of the entire claim” including an initial payment of £290,000, which a hearing in January was told Trump had “decided not to pay”.

That led to him being prevented from taking part in a three-day hearing to decide the size of the total legal bill, after which Judge Rowley on Thursday ordered the US president to pay £626,058.98.

The judge said the figure was “both reasonable and proportionate”, with interest accruing daily at 12%.

In a witness statement, Trump said he had brought the case to prove that claims in the Steele dossier, published by the BuzzFeed website in 2017, that he engaged in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia were false.

Many of the claims in the dossier were never substantiated and lawyers for Trump said the report was “egregiously inaccurate” and contained “numerous false, phoney or made-up allegations”.

Steele was paid by Democrats for research that included salacious allegations Russians could use to blackmail Trump. The dossier assembled in 2016 created a political storm just before Trump’s inauguration with rumours and uncorroborated allegations that have since been largely discredited.

Orbis had said the lawsuit should be thrown out because the report had never been meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or Orbis. It also said the claim had been filed too late.

Russian authorities on Thursday banned the Elton John Aids Foundation (EJAF), which focuses on HIV/Aids prevention, citing its support for LGBTQ+ rights as a reason for the move.

Founded by the British singer and songwriter in 1992, the organisation funds HIV treatment programmes in countries including Russia. It also advocates for LGBTQ+ people, who have faced years of brutal persecution in Russia.

In its statement, Russia’s prosecutor general’s office designated the EJAF as an “undesirable organisation”, a label that bans the group from operating in Russia and exposes its staff and partners to potential criminal prosecution.

The prosecutor general’s office accused the foundation of promoting “non-traditional sexual relationships, western family models, and gender reassignment”.

The prosecutor’s office alleged that EJAF held “negative attitudes” toward countries that “uphold traditional spiritual and moral values”. It accused the foundation of taking part in a campaign to “discredit Russia” since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“When a musician plays along with those trying to sow the seeds of democracy, it is propaganda. And when it’s Elton John calling the tune, then it’s more than just anti-Russian propaganda too,” the statement read.

“In our country, the British foundation works closely with non-profit organisations designated as foreign agents,” the Russian law enforcement agency added.

The ruling is the latest blow to human rights groups supporting Russians living with HIV and Aids. According to Rospotrebnadzor, the federal agency for public health and consumer rights, more than 1.2 million people in Russia have HIV, the highest per capita rate in Europe.

The country has faced chronic shortages of HIV medication since 2023, leaving many patients struggling to access tests and life-saving antiretroviral therapy.

Repression of Russia’s LGBTQ+ people has escalated since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Authorities recently labelled what they described as an “international LGBT public movement” as extremist – a designation that has already led to the arrest and jailing of LGBTQ+ individuals across the country.

John, who has a loyal fanbase in Russia, has long campaigned for LGBTQ+ rights there. In 2014, after a series of sold-out concerts in the country, he published an open letter condemning Russia’s “gay propaganda” law and offered to introduce Vladimir Putin to members of the LGBTQ+ community.

A year later, the Kremlin announced that the Russian president had personally called John and offered to meet – a move prompted by a prank after two comedians posing as Russian officials tricked the singer into a phone conversation that was later released online.

There have been calls in Italy for a “cultural rebellion” amid outrage and protests over the murders of two female students found within 48 hours of each other, bringing the number of femicides in the country since the start of the year to 11.

Sara Campanella, a 22-year-old biomedical student, was stabbed at a bus stop in the Sicilian city of Messina on Monday afternoon and died while being taken to hospital.

Stefano Argentino, a fellow student at the University of Messina, was later arrested in the town of Noto. His lawyer, Raffaele Leone, told the Italian press that Argentino, 27, had confessed to the murder.

The Messina prosecutor, Antonio D’Amato, claimed Argentino had “insistently and repeatedly” harassed Campanella since she started her university course two years ago.

In a separate killing, the body of 22-year-old Ilaria Sula, a statistics student at Sapienza University of Rome, was found in a suitcase in a forested area outside the Italian capital early on Wednesday morning. She had been missing since 23 March and was allegedly stabbed to death. Her former boyfriend, Mark Samson, 23, is being questioned by police on suspicion of her murder and of hiding a body.

The murders sparked protests in Messina, Rome and other Italian cities, including Bologna, on Wednesday night. Further events are planned on Thursday.

Antonella Polimeni, the rector of Sapienza University, said Sula’s death was an “atrocious and brutal femicide that leaves us speechless and heartbroken”. She added: “We must no longer stand by and watch femicide incidents.”

A minute of silence was held for Campanella at the University of Messina. Giovanna Spatari, the university’s rector, said students were “dismayed by this umpteenth episode of femicide”.

The killings have also renewed political debate on violence against women in Italy, where there were 113 femicides in 2024, of which 99 were committed by relatives, partners or ex-partners.

Mara Carfagna, party secretary for the centre-right Noi Moderati, called for a “cultural rebellion”. “From a regulatory point of view, Italy is more advanced than other countries, but culturally we haven’t managed to evolve at the same speed,” she told La Stampa newspaper. “For this we need a rebellion shared by everyone.”

In March, Giorgia Meloni’s government approved a draft law which for the first time introduced a legal definition of femicide in criminal law, punishing it with life in prison while increasing sentences for crimes including stalking, sexual violence and “revenge porn”.

The law followed the strong public reaction to the killing of Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old student who was murdered by her former boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, in November 2023. Turetta was sentenced to life in prison in December.

A group of MPs with the opposition Democratic party has argued that an “incisive action of prevention” is now needed to stop this “continuous slaughter of women”, starting with education in schools.

Bonobos use a combination of calls to encourage peace with their partner during mating rituals, research suggests.

The discovery is part of a study that suggests our close evolutionary cousins can string together vocalisations to produce phrases with meanings that go beyond the sum of their parts – something often considered unique to human language.

“Human language is not as unique as we thought,” said Dr Mélissa Berthet, the first author of the research from the University of Zürich.

Writing in the journal Science, Berthet and colleagues said that in the human language, words were often combined to produce phrases that either had a meaning that was simply the sum of its parts, or a meaning that was related to, but differed from, those of the constituent words.

“‘Blond dancer’ – it’s a person that is both blond and a dancer, you just have to add the meanings. But a ‘bad dancer’ is not a person that is bad and a dancer,” said Berthet. “So bad is really modifying the meaning of dancer here.”

It was previously thought animals such as birds and chimpanzees were only able to produce the former type of combination, but scientists have found bonobos can create both.

The team recorded 700 vocalisations from 30 adult bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, checking the context of each against a list of 300 possible situations or descriptions.

The results reveal bonobos have seven different types of call, used in 19 different combinations. Of these, 15 require further analysis, but four appear to follow the rules of human sentences.

Yelps – thought to mean “let’s do that” – followed by grunts – thought to mean “look at what I am doing”, were combined to make “yelp-grunt”, which appeared to mean “let’s do what I’m doing”. The combination, the team said, reflected the sum of its parts and was used by bonobos to encourage others to build their night nests.

The other three combinations had a meaning apparently related to, but different from, their constituent calls.

For example, the team found a peep – which roughly means “I would like to …” – followed by a whistle – appeared to mean “let’s stay together” – could be combined to create “peep-whistle”. This combination was used to smooth over tense social situations, such as during mating or displays of prowess. The team speculated its meaning was akin to “let’s find peace”.

The team said the findings in bonobos, together with the previous work in chimps, had implications for the evolution of language in humans, given all three species showed the ability to combine words or vocalisations to create phrases.

“The cognitive building blocks that facilitate this capacity is at least 7m years old,” said Dr Simon Townsend, another author of the research. “And I think that is a really cool finding.”