Catalan police have launched an operation to find and arrest Carles Puigdemont and set up roadblocks on routes to the French border after the fugitive former regional president returned to Spain for the first time in seven years to address a crowd of a few thousand in Barcelona before promptly disappearing.

The owner of the car in which he escaped – an officer in the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police – was arrested amid serious questions for the force, which was at the rally in strength, as traffic in Barcelona was brought to a standstill in the search for the former president.

The case could also have political ramifications as the leader of Puigdemont’s party, Jordi Turull, is expected to be summoned by police as a witness who, a spokesperson said, were looking into “any potential offences” committed in relation to the former president’s escape.

Spain’s Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, depends on the support of Junts per Catalunya’s seven MPs in the Spanish parliament, leaving the separatist party with the power to torpedo key legislation.

Puigdemont, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium after fleeing Spain to avoid arrest for masterminding an illegal independence referendum in Catalonia in 2017, had declared earlier this week he would be at the Catalan parliament in Barcelona on Thursday as it swore in the region’s new leader.

Speaking on a stage at the Arc de Triomf, symbolically close to the law courts and the Catalan parliament, he told the crowd of mainly older supporters: “I’ve come here today to remind you that we’re still here. We don’t have the right to give in, the right to self-determination belongs to the people. Catalonia must be allowed to decide its future.

“I don’t know when I’ll see you again but, whatever happens, when we see each other again we can once again shout out, ‘Long Live Free Catalonia!’”

Puigdemont was then whisked away, surrounded by members of his Together for Catalonia party, apparently in the direction of the parliament building. However, when the group arrived at parliament, he was not among them.

Details emerged of how Puigdemont managed to get to the stage, and then escape, despite the presence of about 300 uniformed and plainclothes police officers. A crowd of a couple of dozen people was used to shield him from view as he walked from the narrow Passatge de Sant Benet to the Arc de Triomf; once his speech was over, the crowd again shielded him as he reached a hidden screen and entered a waiting car.

Unconfirmed reports on Catalan radio said Puigdemont had made a pact with the police that if officers allowed him to speak at the Arc de Triomf, he would then surrender to them.

Meanwhile, an hour after the ex-president’s dramatic appearance and escape, the investiture of the new Catalan president, Salvador Illa, began. Illa, a socialist and former health minister in the Madrid government, won the most seats in May’s regional election but failed to gain an overall majority.

Pro-independence parties have previously been able to put together an alliance to keep the socialists from power but lacked the support this time, however. Their options were to accept a socialist-led government, led by Illa, or go to the polls again, an option that was in no one’s interest.

Puigdemont’s party, which came second in the election, refused to support Illa’s candidacy but he won the support of the rival separatist Republican Left party in exchange for offering Catalonia greater fiscal autonomy.

If part of the aim of the Puigdemont escapade was to overshadow Illa’s investiture, it succeeded. But the latter’s coming to power meant that for the first time in 20 years, Catalonia will have a regional government for which social issues, rather than sovereignty, are top of the agenda.

At the investiture, Illa praised his predecessor, Pere Aragonès, saying he had left Catalonia in better shape than he had found it. Adding that his preferred associates were Aragonès’ Republican Left party and the leftwing Catalunya en Comú, he said: “I have come here to construct, not to dismantle, and to make the most of my predecessor’s achievements.”

Puigdemont fled to Belgium in October 2017 in the boot of a car to evade arrest for his part in the failed and illegal declaration of Catalan independence. Nine members of his government received jail sentences of up to 13 years for their part in the independence push and all were pardoned three years later in 2021.

A divisive amnesty law for those involved in the symbolic independence referendum in November 2014 and the illegal unilateral poll that followed three years later was passed by the Spanish parliament in May as Sánchez struck a deal with Catalan separatist MPs to help him return to power. However, Spain’s supreme court upheld arrest warrants for Puigdemont and others who were charged with misuse of public funds, ruling that the amnesty law did not apply to them. Puigdemont insists the vote was not illegal and that the charges linked to it therefore have no basis.

The Spanish government has not commented on Puigdemont’s reappearance and vanishing act, but the conservative People’s party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said Thursday’s events were “an unbearable humiliation”.

“It’s painful to watch this madness live – a madness for which Pedro Sánchez is chiefly responsible. Damaging Spain’s image like this is unforgivable,” he said.

The far-right Vox party’s Santiago Abascal described the events as “the destruction of the state beamed live on Spanish television”.

Muhammad Yunus has been sworn in as head of a new caretaker government in Bangladesh in a ceremony that began with a minute’s silence to remember those who were killed in the recent protests.

The swearing-in, led by President Mohammed Shahabuddin, was attended by more than 1,500 guests including politicians, students, protest coordinators and representatives from the military and civil society. Other members of the interim government also took their oaths.

Earlier, the entrepreneur and Nobel laureate had given an emotional speech to waiting reporters at Dhaka airport on his arrival in the country to take up his position.

Yunus said he hoped to restore calm and rebuild Bangladesh after the uprising that ended the 15-year, increasingly autocratic rule of the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

Yunus landed at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal international airport on Thursday afternoon after a trip to France for medical treatment. He was welcomed by Bangladesh’s military chief, Gen Waker-Uz-Zaman, who was flanked by leaders of the navy and air force. Some of the student leaders who led the uprising against Hasina were also there. They had proposed him as interim leader to President Shahabuddin, who is acting as chief executive under the constitution.

Security was tight at the airport as Bangladesh continues to experience unrest after Hasina resigned and left the country on Monday. Shahabuddin will preside over the oath-taking ceremony on Thursday night, when Yunus is expected to announce his cabinet. In his speech, he addressed the people of Bangladesh as “one big family” and said the young protesters had given them a “new birth” but he condemned the last two days of violence directed against the country’s religious minorities.

“My first word to you is to protect the country from disorder. Protect it from violence so we can follow the path our students have shown us,” he said, before paying an emotional tribute to Abu Sayeed, a 25-year-old student who was shot dead by police during a protest in Rangpur on 16 July. Yunus fought back tears as he described Sayeed as “an incredibly brave young man”.

Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who acts as an adviser to his mother, had vowed on Wednesday that his family and the Awami League party would continue to be engaged in Bangladesh’s politics – a reversal from what he had said earlier on Monday, when he called the students “very ungrateful”.

Yunus was named as interim leader after talks among military officials, civic leaders and the student activists who led the uprising against Hasina.

Zaman, the military chief, said in a televised address on Wednesday he expected Yunus to usher in a “beautiful democratic” process.

Yunus, who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for his work developing microcredit markets, told reporters in Paris: “I’m looking forward to going back home and seeing what’s happening there, and how we can organise ourselves to get out of the trouble that we are in.”

Asked when elections would be held, he put his hands up as if it were too early to say. “I’ll go and talk to them. I’m just fresh in this whole area,” he said.

A tribunal in Dhaka earlier on Wednesday acquitted Yunus in a labour law violation case involving a telecommunications company he founded, in which he was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail. He had been released on bail in the case.

Yunus has been a longtime opponent of Hasina, who has called him a “bloodsucker” allegedly for using force to extract loan repayments from rural poor, mainly women. Yunus has denied the allegations.

In the weeks since 15 July, more than 300 people have died in violence in Bangladesh. Rising tensions in the days surrounding Hasina’s resignation created chaos, with police leaving their posts after being attacked. Dozens of officers were killed, prompting police to stop working. They threatened not to return unless their safety was ensured. The looting of firearms was also reported in local media.

The chaos began in July with protests against a quota system for government jobs that critics said favoured people with connections to Hasina’s party. But the demonstrations soon grew into a broader challenge to Hasina’s 15-year rule, which was marked by human rights abuses, corruption, allegations of rigged elections and a brutal crackdown on her opponents.

Joy, Hasina’s son, said in a social media post on Wednesday that his family would return to politics and not give up after attacks on the Awami League party’s leaders and members. Many saw Joy as Hasina’s successor in Bangladesh’s dynastic political culture.

On Monday, Joy had said Hasina would be retiring to spend time with her grandchildren . But in a video message posted on his Facebook page on Wednesday, he urged party activists to rise up. “You are not alone. We are here. The family of Bangabandhu has not gone anywhere,” he said.

Hasina’s father, the independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, is fondly referred to in Bangladesh as Bangabandhu, which means “friend of Bengal”.

Joy said: “If we want to build a new Bangladesh, it is not possible without the Awami League. The Awami League is the oldest, democratic, and largest party in Bangladesh. The Awami League has not died … It is not possible to eliminate the Awami League. We had said that our family would not engage in politics any more. However, given the attacks on our leaders and activists, we cannot give up.”

Overnight into Thursday, people across Dhaka carried sticks, iron rods and sharp weapons to guard their neighbourhoods amid reports of robberies. Loudspeakers in mosques were used to alert people that robberies were occurring, and students formed volunteer groups to protect temples and businesses as police remained off duty. The military shared hotline numbers for those seeking help.

Many, including in neighbouring India, fear more instability in the densely populated country of 170 million people, which is already dealing with high unemployment, corruption and a complex strategic relationship with India, China and the US.

Hasina, 76, was elected to a fourth consecutive term in January, in an election boycotted by her main opponents. Thousands of opposition members were jailed before the vote, and the US and UK denounced the result as not credible.

Raven Saunders made a splash during the women’s shot put qualification at the Paris Olympics on Thursday as the American attempts to upgrade from their silver medal at the Tokyo Games.

Saunders – who uses they/them pronouns – wore a full-face black mask and sunglasses as they attempted to make the final. Their hair was also dyed green and purple, set off with gold grills over their teeth. “I’m in full form,” Saunders said of the outfit. “I had to remind the people, I am who I am.”

Saunders uses their “Hulk” alter ego when competing to deal with the stress that comes with elite-level sport. They say they identify with the superhero’s difficult road towards controlling his strength and power.

“Early on, similar to the Hulk, I had a tough time differentiating between the two; I had a tough time controlling when the Hulk came out or when the Hulk didn’t come out,” they told Yahoo Sports in 2021. “But through my journey, especially dealing with mental health and things like that, I learned how to compartmentalize, the same way that Bruce Banner learned to control the Hulk, learned how to let the Hulk come out during the right moments and that way it also gave him a sign of mental peace. But when the Hulk came out, the Hulk was smashing everything that needed to be smashed.”

The 28-year-old became used to wearing masks during Covid restrictions and has continued, saying it helps them focus and avoid talking to other competitors who may distract them during meets.

Saunders, who is Black and gay, formed an “X” with their wrists on the podium when they collected their silver in Tokyo. Saunders, who has been an advocate for LGBTQ rights and mental health awareness, said the gesture represented “the intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet”, adding that they hoped the medal would help “people all around the world who are fighting and don’t have the platform to speak up for themselves”.

The IOC launched an investigation into the gesture as it had banned athletes from protesting on the podium in Tokyo but Saunders was not punished.

Saunders, who enjoys playing the piano in their spare time, made their Olympic debut in Rio, finishing fifth before winning silver in Tokyo. The American was also a talented basketball player before focusing on track and field in college.

“I had hoop dreams. I first picked up the shot put as something to help with basketball,” Saunders said. “I did not think much of it, but I had been playing basketball since third grade. I was actually thinking of moving to Florida with a cousin before I started with the shot put. So it gave me a reason to stay back home and train.”

Saunders’s third attempt of 18.62m on Thursday qualified them for Friday’s final. Canada’s Sarah Mitton led the qualifiers with a throw of 19.77m. There was a shock elsewhere in the heats however as USA’s double Olympic champion, Chase Jackson, failed to make the final. She recorded fouls on her first two attempts and her third attempt of 17.60m was not good enough progress. “I do not really know what happened,” Jackson said. “I guess the pressure got to me. I don’t really have a lot to say about it. I just want to get to my family.”

Saunders was given an 18-month ban for missing three doping tests and missed the 2023 world championships. The suspension ended in February 2024, allowing them to compete at the Paris Games.

Saunders has said they have struggled with their mental health in the buildup to the Games but hopes to inspire others.

“I honestly said that If I made this team, when I made this team, that it was for the people,” Saunders said. “It was for the people that reminded me of who I was when I was down, when I was out, when I was suspended.”

As for their dress code in Friday’s final, Saunders says they have some ideas already. “I have something even better,” they said.

Team GB have made it into the finals of the 4x100m relays in the women’s and the men’s competition. But there were tense moments for the favourites in the women’s race after the USA came perilously close to being disqualified, after a mistake in their second handover.

There was a shock in the men’s competition as Jamaica failed to qualify for the final after a series of botched handovers.

In the first women’s heat, the USA’s Melissa Jefferson started well, handing to Twanisha Terry but Gabby Thomas charged out too early, with the runner changing the baton just in time. The 100m silver medallist, Sha’Carri Richardson, had a lot to do on the anchor leg, but put on the boosters to power her team over the line in first position with a time of 41.94sec. The USA women took gold in 2012 and 2016 but were second behind Jamaica in Tokyo.

The GB team – Bianca Williams, Imani-Lara Lansiquot, Amy Huntand Desiree Henry – took a comfortable win in the second heat. With smooth handovers that belied the trouble British quartets have had in this event, the team posted 42.03.

Hosts France fought hard for second place in 42.13, while the reigning champions, Jamaica, came in third in 42.35. The top three from each heat getting a guaranteed spot in Friday’s final.

Great Britain, who were bronze medallists in the past two Games, will be considerably strengthened by the return of Dina Asher-Smith and Daryll Neita for the final.

The USA took the first step towards ending their men’s 4x100m relay drought, qualifying fastest from Thursday’s heats.

The GB team of Jeremiah Azu, Louie Hinchliffe, Richard Kilty and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake finished third in the first heat. First place was taken by USA, as they hunt the title for the first time since Sydney 2000. Fred Kerley, who was involved in the botched changeover that ended their Tokyo hopes, ran a strong second leg, handing to the green-haired Kyree King, and Courtney Lindsey brought them home well clear in 37.47. Akani Simbine ran a fast last leg to take South Africa to second in 37.94, just ahead of Britain (38.04).

After qualifying, Kilty said he thought they would manage a quicker final. “We skip breakfast, to burn calories and prioritise sleep,” he said. “So we’re like vampires in the night-time.

“We’re going to come out and we’re ready for blood tomorrow night.”

The devastating wildfires that tore through the world’s biggest tropical wetland, Brazil’s Pantanal, in June were made at least four times more likely and 40% more intense by human-caused climate disruption, a study has found.

Charred corpses of monkeys, caimans and snakes have been left in the aftermath of the blaze, which burned 440,000 hectares (1.1m acres) and is thought to have killed millions of animals and countless more plants, insects and fungi.

The extent of the destruction exceeded the previous June record by more than 70%. This was driven by extreme fire weather that created a vast tinderbox. The month was the driest, hottest, and windiest June in the Brazilian Pantanal since observations began.

Such conditions are expected to occur once every 35 years at the current 1.2C level of global heating above pre-industrial levels, according to an international team of scientists at World Weather Attribution. If humans had not destabilised the climate by burning trees, gas, oil and coal, such extreme fire weather would have been far rarer, they said.

The once-unusual wind, heat and aridity made the fire weather conditions 40% more intense and four to five times more probable, revealed the analysis, which is based on observations of the weather as well as computer models.

The El Niño climate pattern, which faded before June, did not appear to have made a significant contribution.

These trends would grow worse in the future unless humanity stopped burning fossil fuels and forests, the scientists warned. And if global heating reached 2C, severe fire weather conditions would become about twice as likely and 17% more intense.

This is grim news for the human and non-human residents of this global centre of natural diversity. Located at the border with Bolivia and Paraguay, the Pantanal is home to many Indigenous groups and a huge range of unique species, and provides vital ecosystem services to the surrounding area, which is inhabited by tens of thousands of ranchers, farmers and fishers.

It is normally a vast carbon store, but like an increasing area of the Earth’s land, it is starting to create more emissions than in the past due to fires.

The origins of the fires are not always clear. Many start in and around areas that have been invaded or degraded by settlers. Others originate in accidents and from supposedly controlled burns that spread out of control.

Dr Clair Barnes, a researcher at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, said: “Climate change has supercharged the Pantanal wildfires. As fossil fuel emissions warm the climate, the wetland is heating up, drying out and turning into a tinderbox. This means small fires can rapidly accelerate into devastating ones, regardless of how they’re started.”

The team of 18 researchers said the local threat should be minimised by reducing deforestation and strengthening bans on controlled burns. But the risks remain severe because 9% of the biome has already burned this year, and the peak of the wildfire season is usually in August and September.

“This year’s Pantanal wildfires have the potential to become the worst ever,” said one of the collaborating scientists, Filippe LM Santos, a researcher at the University of Évora, Portugal, and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “Even hotter conditions are expected over this month and the months ahead, and there is a considerable threat that wildfires could burn more than 3m hectares.

“Unfortunately, massive wildfires are becoming a new normal in the Pantanal. The area of wetland submerged by floodwaters is decreasing as temperatures increase, making vegetation much drier and more flammable.” Yearly rainfall in the Pantanal has been decreasing for more than 40 years.

The authors said the study – one of dozens that show destructive weather events becoming more likely and more intense around the world – highlighted the urgent need to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

“Our study should be taken as a warning,” said Dr Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute. “If the world continues to burn fossil fuels, precious ecosystems like the Pantanal wetland and Amazon rainforest could pass tipping points where natural recovery from wildfires and drought becomes impossible.”

The devastating wildfires that tore through the world’s biggest tropical wetland, Brazil’s Pantanal, in June were made at least four times more likely and 40% more intense by human-caused climate disruption, a study has found.

Charred corpses of monkeys, caimans and snakes have been left in the aftermath of the blaze, which burned 440,000 hectares (1.1m acres) and is thought to have killed millions of animals and countless more plants, insects and fungi.

The extent of the destruction exceeded the previous June record by more than 70%. This was driven by extreme fire weather that created a vast tinderbox. The month was the driest, hottest, and windiest June in the Brazilian Pantanal since observations began.

Such conditions are expected to occur once every 35 years at the current 1.2C level of global heating above pre-industrial levels, according to an international team of scientists at World Weather Attribution. If humans had not destabilised the climate by burning trees, gas, oil and coal, such extreme fire weather would have been far rarer, they said.

The once-unusual wind, heat and aridity made the fire weather conditions 40% more intense and four to five times more probable, revealed the analysis, which is based on observations of the weather as well as computer models.

The El Niño climate pattern, which faded before June, did not appear to have made a significant contribution.

These trends would grow worse in the future unless humanity stopped burning fossil fuels and forests, the scientists warned. And if global heating reached 2C, severe fire weather conditions would become about twice as likely and 17% more intense.

This is grim news for the human and non-human residents of this global centre of natural diversity. Located at the border with Bolivia and Paraguay, the Pantanal is home to many Indigenous groups and a huge range of unique species, and provides vital ecosystem services to the surrounding area, which is inhabited by tens of thousands of ranchers, farmers and fishers.

It is normally a vast carbon store, but like an increasing area of the Earth’s land, it is starting to create more emissions than in the past due to fires.

The origins of the fires are not always clear. Many start in and around areas that have been invaded or degraded by settlers. Others originate in accidents and from supposedly controlled burns that spread out of control.

Dr Clair Barnes, a researcher at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, said: “Climate change has supercharged the Pantanal wildfires. As fossil fuel emissions warm the climate, the wetland is heating up, drying out and turning into a tinderbox. This means small fires can rapidly accelerate into devastating ones, regardless of how they’re started.”

The team of 18 researchers said the local threat should be minimised by reducing deforestation and strengthening bans on controlled burns. But the risks remain severe because 9% of the biome has already burned this year, and the peak of the wildfire season is usually in August and September.

“This year’s Pantanal wildfires have the potential to become the worst ever,” said one of the collaborating scientists, Filippe LM Santos, a researcher at the University of Évora, Portugal, and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “Even hotter conditions are expected over this month and the months ahead, and there is a considerable threat that wildfires could burn more than 3m hectares.

“Unfortunately, massive wildfires are becoming a new normal in the Pantanal. The area of wetland submerged by floodwaters is decreasing as temperatures increase, making vegetation much drier and more flammable.” Yearly rainfall in the Pantanal has been decreasing for more than 40 years.

The authors said the study – one of dozens that show destructive weather events becoming more likely and more intense around the world – highlighted the urgent need to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

“Our study should be taken as a warning,” said Dr Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute. “If the world continues to burn fossil fuels, precious ecosystems like the Pantanal wetland and Amazon rainforest could pass tipping points where natural recovery from wildfires and drought becomes impossible.”

Elon Musk shared a fake Telegraph article claiming Keir Starmer was considering sending far-right rioters to “emergency detainment camps” in the Falklands.

Musk deleted his post after about 30 minutes but a screenshot captured by Politics.co.uk suggests it had garnered nearly two million views before it was deleted.

In it, Musk shared the image posted by the co-leader of the far-right group Britain First, Ashlea Simon, which she captioned with, “we’re all being deported to the Falklands”.

The fake piece, purportedly written by a senior news reporter for the Telegraph and mocked up in the newspaper’s style, said camps in the Falklands “would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots as the British prison system is already at capacity”.

The Telegraph said on Thursday it had never published the article in question. In a statement, a spokesperson for the Telegraph Media Group said: “This is a fabricated headline for an article that does not exist. We notified relevant platforms and requested that the post be taken down.”

In a post on X, the newspaper said it was “aware of an image circulating on X which purports to be a Telegraph article about ‘emergency detainment camps’. No such article has ever been published by the Telegraph.”

Musk has not apologised for sharing the fake report, but has continued to share material criticising the UK government and law enforcement authorities’ responses to the riots.

The Guardian contacted X for comment but received an auto-response saying: “Busy now, please check back later.”

On Thursday, Musk shared a Sky News interview in which Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions in England and Wales, said police officers were scouring social media for material inciting racial hatred. “This is actually happening,” Musk said. In a separate post referring to the same clip, Musk called Parkinson “The Woke Stasi”.

Musk has been embroiled in a row with Keir Starmer and British enforcement authorities since he claimed in response to the anti-immigration protests in England and Northern Ireland that “civil war is inevitable” and that the police response had been “one-sided”.

The prime minister’s spokesperson said this week that there was “no justification” for those comments. In response, Musk has repeatedly targeted Starmer on his platform, including by branding him “two-tier Keir”.

Musk, who is the billionaire co-founder of Tesla, SpaceX and a payment platform called X.com that later became PayPal, bought Twitter in 2022 for $44bn. He rebranded it as X last year. There has been a string of controversies about the direction the platform has taken under his leadership, including accusations that he is not serious enough about removing harmful content.

The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS trust said in a post on Thursday that it was closing its account on X after 13 years because the platform is “no longer consistent with our Trust values”. It directed followers to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

This week, Musk announced he was suing a group of advertisers and major companies, claiming they had unlawfully agreed not to advertise on X.

Ukraine has publicly justified its attack into Russian territory for the first time, amid reports that its forces are advancing towards a village 13 miles (20km) inside the Kursk region.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said “the root cause of any escalation”, including into Kursk, was “unequivocal aggression” on the part of Russia in believing it could invade Ukraine with impunity.

The statement is the first acknowledgment by any leading Ukrainian official of the ongoing incursion, now into its third day. “War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes,” Podolyak added.

Russian military bloggers, currently the most accurate sources of information, reported that fighting was taking place on the highway east of Korenevo, 13 miles north of the border, while the western part of Sudzha, about six miles into Russia, appeared to be under Ukrainian control.

Russia has declared a state of emergency in Kursk and local officials told the Tass news agency that 3,000 civilians had been evacuated following an attack that has clearly caught Moscow off guard.

Ukrainian forces, numbering several hundred according to Russia, burst across the border on the morning of Tuesday, reaching Sudzha on the first day, and since then appear to have pushed up roads to the north-west and north of the town.

Videos have also emerged showing a few dozen Russian troops, including border guards captured at the checkpoint west of Sudzha, being rounded up by Ukrainians on the first day of the raid, demonstrating the initial success.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday its forces “continue to eliminate” the Ukrainian attackers in the Sudzha and Korenevo districts, and that it was targeting the invaders with ground forces, artillery, air and missile strikes.

The same day, Gen Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces, became the first Russian-aligned military official to acknowledge losses in the country’s military following Ukraine’s surprise incursion.

“The situation is not irreversible, nothing supernatural has happened … Yes, our men have died, that’s a fact. The enemy has entered several settlements,” Alaudinov said in a video message on his Telegram channel.

Alaudinov added that the Ukrainian military had “advanced well into our territory, around 10km”.

A clearly angry Vladimir Putin convened a televised meeting of Russia’s security council on Wednesday, in which the military’s chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, told him the advance had been halted and that the Kursk operation would be concluded by “reaching the Russian state border”.

Previous incursions from Ukraine into Russia, near the city of Belgorod, have been led by anti-Kremlin Russian groups. But this time the incursion was conducted by Ukrainian forces, using a combination of infantry, armour, drones, electronic warfare and air defence in the attack.

Experts have largely been sceptical about the value of a Ukrainian incursion into Russia, although its progress on the ground has been better than many predicted two days ago, and it has come at a time when Kyiv has been under growing frontline pressure in central Donbas.

Jade McGlynn, a Ukraine expert and research fellow at King’s College London, said: “As a military strategy, I remain a bit puzzled, but as a political strategy, it has been very successful. It suggests yet again that Putin’s ‘red lines’ are only words and that Russia is not as strong as some make out.”

Fears that Russia could retaliate against the west have been behind decisions by the US president, Joe Biden, and others to restrict the use of high-value western weapons, such as F-16 fighters, to territory inside Ukraine’s borders. There has so far been no confirmed reports of their use in the Kursk offensive, although there have been some statements by Russia that Ukraine has been using Stryker and Bradley armoured vehicles.

Zelenskiy is yet to directly comment on the attack, though in his regular nightly address he praised Ukrainian soldiers fighting in “all the places” where Kyiv’s defence against Russia’s full-scale invasion continues.

The Ukrainian president added: “It is important to continue destroying our enemy – as precisely as our warriors can, and as resiliently as it contributes to the overall defence of our country, and as effectively as it produces results.”

The US on Wednesday said it had had no prior knowledge of Ukraine’s plan to attack. John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said the presidency had contacted Kyiv to “get a little better understanding” of the Kursk offensive.

Washington also said its restrictions regarding the use of high-value US weapons inside Russia’s internationally recognised borders had not changed, and the state department said the incursion was “not a violation of our policy”.

The main operational Russian gas pipeline into Europe runs near Sudzha, where a metering station – reportedly captured by Ukraine – monitors the reduced Russian supplies to countries such as Austria and Hungary. Kyiv has allowed gas to continue flowing through the pipeline as part of a contract that expires at the end of 2024.

The 19-year-old prime suspect in an alleged plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert that led to the cancellation of the singer’s three-night run in Vienna had collected chemicals with the intention of building a bomb, senior Austrian security officials have said.

The Austrian suspect was arrested along with a 17-year-old who recently started working for a services company providing support for the concerts, on suspicion of planning an Islamist attack. A third person, 15, was taken into custody late on Wednesday in connection with the investigation.

Authorities said they had reason to believe one of the Swift concerts was a target. They dismissed media reports that there were still suspects at large.

The 19-year-old suspect intended “either today or tomorrow to kill himself and a large crowd of people”, the head of state protection and intelligence at the Austrian interior ministry, Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, told a news conference. He said the alleged plotter was part of an Islamist network known to police.

Swift, 34, has not yet commented on the cancellations. The Vienna leg of the star’s Eras tour at Ernst Happel stadium on Thursday, Friday and Saturday had been expected to draw more than 170,000 people, with another 20,000 fans gathered outside. Austrian media said there were no plans for the shows to be held at a later date. Fans would receive a refund for their tickets, organisers said.

Austria’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, told reporters that the 19-year-old, who did not have a Swift concert ticket, had confessed to planning a suicide attack targeting fans outside the stadium, a common sight at Swift’s sold-out shows. In Munich last month tens of thousands of people gathered during a Swift concert in a park near the arena where they could hear, if not see, the star.

“The situation was serious, the situation is serious,” Karner said. “But we can also attest: a tragedy was able to be prevented.”

Karner said chemical substances had been found in a search of the home of the 19-year-old, who had pledged his allegiance to the radical jihadist Islamic State group and posted it on the online messaging app Telegram in early July.

The 19-year-old allegedly stole the TATP chemicals from his former employer, a local metalworking firm, with the aim of building an explosive. He quit the job on 25 July, reportedly saying: “I’m planning something big.”

He also hoarded knives, machetes, blank cartridges, counterfeit money and a police blue flashing light, possibly to gain access to the scene of his planned attack, authorities said.

Karner said the suspect had recently begun wearing his beard long and watching jihadist propaganda videos, from which he also learned how to build a bomb.

“We are of course investigating their wider surroundings,” Austria’s top security chief, Franz Ruf, told ORF radio of the suspects, and confirmed the initial information had come from “foreign services”. He said the final decision to call off the concerts had been made by the organisers.

Ruf said evidence of “concrete preparatory actions” for a possible attack had been found in the home of the 19-year-old in the town of Ternitz near the Hungarian border, including the chemical substances and “technical contraptions”.

The arrest of the suspects “minimised the threat situation from this small group”, he said, but there was still “abstract danger” that security forces were taking seriously.

Police, whose special forces stormed the suspect’s home in the early hours of Wednesday morning, had briefly evacuated about 100 people in the area, including elderly residents of a care home.

The 17-year-old alleged accomplice, who had recently broken up with his girlfriend, was arrested directly near the Ernst Happel stadium. Material from the Islamic State group was found among his belongings and he also appeared ready to die for the plot, Ruf said. He has declined to cooperate with authorities.

The 15-year-old suspect, who is being questioned, confirmed that the 19-year-old had been very interested in detonators. When he asked him why, he was told: “You’ll know soon,” the German daily Bild reported.

US media, citing anonymous sources, reported that the initial tip had come from US intelligence and had been passed on to Austrian authorities and Europol.

The reports said that US investigators had had doubts whether the plan had been viable and whether the plotters had managed to build an explosive device. But the sources told ABC News that chemical substances found by Austrian police pointed to such an intent.

TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, was the explosive used in the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, the 2015 attacks in Paris and the 2016 Brussels attack carried out by Islamic State extremists.

Austria’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said in a post on X that the cancellation of the concerts was “a bitter disappointment for all fans in Austria”.

“The situation surrounding the apparently planned terror attack in Vienna was very serious,” he wrote, adding that thanks to intensive cooperation between police, Austrian and foreign intelligence, “the threat could be recognised early on, tackled and a tragedy prevented”.

Austria has been on high alert since the 7 October Hamas attacks in Israel, when it lifted its warning level to four, the second highest.

Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the governor of Lower Austria where the suspect lived, said Swift, as a global popstar and role model for young women and girls, “symbolises our western values, and these have been attacked”. She said the cancellation of the concerts was “understandable but also a success for radical Islamists”.

Swift is due to play five sold-out dates at London’s Wembley stadium from next Thursday. Diana Johnson, the UK’s policing minister, told LBC radio there had been no reports of “anything of note” regarding those shows and said Scotland Yard would be assessing any potential threats.

She said: “Clearly the police will be looking at all the intelligence and making decisions; they risk-assess every event that happens in this country.”

The tour is scheduled to run until December.

The 19-year-old prime suspect in an alleged plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert that led to the cancellation of the singer’s three-night run in Vienna had collected chemicals with the intention of building a bomb, senior Austrian security officials have said.

The Austrian suspect was arrested along with a 17-year-old who recently started working for a services company providing support for the concerts, on suspicion of planning an Islamist attack. A third person, 15, was taken into custody late on Wednesday in connection with the investigation.

Authorities said they had reason to believe one of the Swift concerts was a target. They dismissed media reports that there were still suspects at large.

The 19-year-old suspect intended “either today or tomorrow to kill himself and a large crowd of people”, the head of state protection and intelligence at the Austrian interior ministry, Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, told a news conference. He said the alleged plotter was part of an Islamist network known to police.

Swift, 34, has not yet commented on the cancellations. The Vienna leg of the star’s Eras tour at Ernst Happel stadium on Thursday, Friday and Saturday had been expected to draw more than 170,000 people, with another 20,000 fans gathered outside. Austrian media said there were no plans for the shows to be held at a later date. Fans would receive a refund for their tickets, organisers said.

Austria’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, told reporters that the 19-year-old, who did not have a Swift concert ticket, had confessed to planning a suicide attack targeting fans outside the stadium, a common sight at Swift’s sold-out shows. In Munich last month tens of thousands of people gathered during a Swift concert in a park near the arena where they could hear, if not see, the star.

“The situation was serious, the situation is serious,” Karner said. “But we can also attest: a tragedy was able to be prevented.”

Karner said chemical substances had been found in a search of the home of the 19-year-old, who had pledged his allegiance to the radical jihadist Islamic State group and posted it on the online messaging app Telegram in early July.

The 19-year-old allegedly stole the TATP chemicals from his former employer, a local metalworking firm, with the aim of building an explosive. He quit the job on 25 July, reportedly saying: “I’m planning something big.”

He also hoarded knives, machetes, blank cartridges, counterfeit money and a police blue flashing light, possibly to gain access to the scene of his planned attack, authorities said.

Karner said the suspect had recently begun wearing his beard long and watching jihadist propaganda videos, from which he also learned how to build a bomb.

“We are of course investigating their wider surroundings,” Austria’s top security chief, Franz Ruf, told ORF radio of the suspects, and confirmed the initial information had come from “foreign services”. He said the final decision to call off the concerts had been made by the organisers.

Ruf said evidence of “concrete preparatory actions” for a possible attack had been found in the home of the 19-year-old in the town of Ternitz near the Hungarian border, including the chemical substances and “technical contraptions”.

The arrest of the suspects “minimised the threat situation from this small group”, he said, but there was still “abstract danger” that security forces were taking seriously.

Police, whose special forces stormed the suspect’s home in the early hours of Wednesday morning, had briefly evacuated about 100 people in the area, including elderly residents of a care home.

The 17-year-old alleged accomplice, who had recently broken up with his girlfriend, was arrested directly near the Ernst Happel stadium. Material from the Islamic State group was found among his belongings and he also appeared ready to die for the plot, Ruf said. He has declined to cooperate with authorities.

The 15-year-old suspect, who is being questioned, confirmed that the 19-year-old had been very interested in detonators. When he asked him why, he was told: “You’ll know soon,” the German daily Bild reported.

US media, citing anonymous sources, reported that the initial tip had come from US intelligence and had been passed on to Austrian authorities and Europol.

The reports said that US investigators had had doubts whether the plan had been viable and whether the plotters had managed to build an explosive device. But the sources told ABC News that chemical substances found by Austrian police pointed to such an intent.

TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, was the explosive used in the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, the 2015 attacks in Paris and the 2016 Brussels attack carried out by Islamic State extremists.

Austria’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said in a post on X that the cancellation of the concerts was “a bitter disappointment for all fans in Austria”.

“The situation surrounding the apparently planned terror attack in Vienna was very serious,” he wrote, adding that thanks to intensive cooperation between police, Austrian and foreign intelligence, “the threat could be recognised early on, tackled and a tragedy prevented”.

Austria has been on high alert since the 7 October Hamas attacks in Israel, when it lifted its warning level to four, the second highest.

Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the governor of Lower Austria where the suspect lived, said Swift, as a global popstar and role model for young women and girls, “symbolises our western values, and these have been attacked”. She said the cancellation of the concerts was “understandable but also a success for radical Islamists”.

Swift is due to play five sold-out dates at London’s Wembley stadium from next Thursday. Diana Johnson, the UK’s policing minister, told LBC radio there had been no reports of “anything of note” regarding those shows and said Scotland Yard would be assessing any potential threats.

She said: “Clearly the police will be looking at all the intelligence and making decisions; they risk-assess every event that happens in this country.”

The tour is scheduled to run until December.

A powerful earthquake struck off Japan’s southern coast on Thursday, triggering a tsunami advisory, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said, but there were no immediate signs of major damage.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake registered a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 and was centred off the eastern coast of Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu at a depth of about 30km (18.6 miles).

The agency said tsunami waves of up 50 centimetres (1.6ft) were detected along parts of Kyushu’s southern coast and the nearby island of Shikoku about half an hour after the quake struck.

The quake most strongly shook Nichinan city and nearby areas in Miyazaki prefecture on Kyushu.

Seismologists were holding an emergency meeting to analyse whether the quake had affected the nearby Nankai trough, the source of past devastating earthquakes.

Operators of nuclear plants on Kyushu and Shikoku said they were checking to see if there was any damage to them. Earthquakes in areas with nuclear power plants have been a major concern since a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Japan’s NHK public television said there were reports of broken windows at the Miyazaki airport near the epicentre.

Japan sits on the Pacific “ring of fire,” the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean, and is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries. An earthquake on 1 January in Japan’s north-central region of Noto left more than 240 people dead.

A South African beauty pageant contestant has withdrawn from the competition after the government accused her mother of fraud and identity theft, following questions over the contestant’s citizenship.

Chidimma Adetshina, 23, said she had made the “difficult decision” to protect herself and her family before the Miss South Africa final on Saturday, and a day after the home affairs ministry said her mother may have stolen a South African woman’s identity.

The question of whether Adetshina is South African had gripped the country for weeks, with politicians, celebrities and talkshows wading in on both sides, while the law student experienced a vicious torrent of xenophobic abuse.

Adetshina said she had been born in Soweto to a Nigerian father and South African mother with “Mozambican roots”. However, this failed to stem the tide of questions, and the home affairs minister, Leon Schreiber, said on Monday that his department was investigating her citizenship at the request of the Miss SA organisation and with the consent of Adetshina and her mother.

Then, on Wednesday, the ministry said: “Prima facie reasons exist to believe that fraud and identity theft may have been committed by the person recorded in home affairs records as Chidimma Adetshina’s mother.”

“An innocent South African mother, whose identity may have been stolen as part of the alleged fraud committed by Adetshina’s mother, suffered as a result because she could not register her child,” the statement said, adding that Adetshina herself was not implicated as she had been an infant at the time, in 2001.

Adetshina did not directly respond to the allegations, saying in an Instagram post: “After much careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw myself from the competition for the safety and wellbeing of my family and I.

“With the full support of the Miss South Africa Organisation, I leave with a heart full of gratitude for this amazing experience.”

Miss SA, which shared Adetshina’s post in an Instagram story, did not respond to a request for comment.

South Africa has experienced numerous outbreaks of violence against African immigrants since the end of apartheid, with high unemployment and crime fuelling xenophobia.

A person can get South African citizenship by having a South African parent, being adopted by a citizen or being born to someone with permanent residency in the country. A person can also apply for citizenship if they have lived in the country legally for four of the previous eight years.

Banksy’s latest animal-themed artwork has been stolen from London just hours after it went on display.

The latest piece is a stencil of a wolf howling towards the sky, painted on what appears to be a satellite dish on top of a building on Rye Lane in Peckham, south-east London.

It was the fourth in his new collection of works, which have cropped up at different locations across the capital this week.

The Bristol-based street artist, whose identity remains unknown, has posted several photos of the new series on Instagram. The first in the series, which he revealed on Monday, is near Kew Bridge in south-west London and shows a goat perched on a ledge with rocks falling down below it, just above where a CCTV camera is pointed.

On Tuesday, the artist added another design to the collection: silhouettes of two elephants with their trunks reaching towards each other from blocked-out windows on the side of a house in Chelsea, south-west London.

The third animal-themed artwork in London showcased a trio of monkeys swinging across a bridge on Brick Lane and was revealed on Wednesday near Grimsby Street, not far from Shoreditch High Street.

Banksy’s social media posts appeared to confirm the pieces as genuine. He did not caption any of the photos, a decision which has fuelled online speculation about their meaning.

Some have called the collection the “London zoo” series and developed theories to explain their meaning. One popular idea circulating on social media is that Banksy could be comparing the recent far-right rioters to zoo animals.

This series is believed to be his first public work since a stunt at Glastonbury in June when a migrant boat created by the artist was crowd-surfed during performances by the Bristol band Idles and the rapper Little Simz.

The stunt was described by the then home secretary, James Cleverly, as “trivialising” small-boats crossings and “vile”, but the artist said Cleverly’s reaction had been “a bit over the top”.

In March, Banksy created a tree mural in north London, featuring a heavily pruned bare tree with green paint sprayed on the wall behind it to give the appearance of leaves. The mural was defaced with white paint days later.