Elon Musk should face “personal sanctions” and even the threat of an “arrest warrant” if found to be stirring up public disorder on his social media platform, a former Twitter executive has said.

It cannot be right that the billionaire owner of X, and other tech executives, be allowed to sow discord without personal risks, Bruce Daisley, formerly Twitter’s vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, writes in the Guardian.

He said the prime minister, Keir Starmer, should “beef up” online safety laws and reflect on whether the media regulator, Ofcom, “is fit to deal with the blurringly fast actions of the likes of Musk”.

“In my experience, that threat of personal sanction is much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines,” Daisley writes, arguing such sanctions could impact the jet-setting lifestyles of tech billionaires.

The UK government has called on social media platforms to act responsibly after violent unrest swept through the UK following the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday dance class in Southport last month. The prime minister has blamed social media companies for allowing the spread of false claims that the attacker was an asylum seeker and police are increasingly going after those suspected of using online posts to incite violence.

In one post, Musk wrote: “civil war is inevitable” in the UK, language that the justice minister, Heidi Alexander, described as “unacceptable”. Musk has called Starmer “two-tier Keir” and a “hypocrite” over his approach to policing. Musk also shared a false post suggesting Starmer was planning to set up “detainment camps” in the Falkland Islands, a post he later deleted.

Daisley, who worked at Twitter, now X, from 2012-2020, describes Musk as someone who “has taken on the aura of a teenager on the bus with no headphones, creating lots of noise”.

He adds: “Were Musk to continue stirring up unrest, an arrest warrant for him might produce fireworks from his fingertips, but as an international jet-setter it would have the effect of focusing his mind.”

“Musk’s actions should be a wake-up call for Starmer’s government to quietly legislate to take back control of what we collectively agree is permissible on social media,” he argues.

Daisley says: “The question we are presented with is whether we’re willing to allow a billionaire oligarch to camp off the UK coastline and take potshots at our society. The idea that a boycott – whether by high-profile users or advertisers – should be our only sanction is clearly not meaningful.”

He continues: “In the short term, Musk and fellow executives should be reminded of their criminal liability for their actions under existing laws. Britain’s Online Safety Act 2023 should be beefed up with immediate effect.”

Referring to X’s algorithm, which he said prioritised Musk’s own tweets, he writes: “Musk might force his angry tweets to the top of your timeline, but the will of a democratically elected government should mean more than the fury of a tech oligarch – even him.”

Ofcom should have the right to demand certain voices, “like Tommy Robinson’s, are deplatformed”, he argues.

He continues: “Despite the attempts to position ‘free speech’ as a philosophical conviction, the reason for its popularity among tech firms is pure and simple – it is cheap.

“The approach taken by tech firms is less about deeply held principles and more about money – as evidenced by the growing support for Trump in the San Francisco venture capital community.

“We’ve hesitated from labelling tech billionaires as oligarchs because the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey wielded their political power gently. Asking oligarchs to be accountable for what their platforms permit is straightforward and entirely possible.”

Doctors at government hospitals in several Indian states have gone on strike in a protest after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata on Friday.

The 31-year-old woman was attacked at the state-run RG Kar medical college, where she was a resident doctor, after she went to rest in a seminar room following dinner with colleagues. Her brutalised body was found with multiple injuries and an autopsy confirmed sexual assault and homicide.

On Saturday police arrested Sanjay Roy, a “civic volunteer” at the hospital, in connection with the attack. Roy’s duties were unclear but local media reports said he operated in part as a tout, helping to speed up admissions for patients in return for money.

Protests by doctors demanding justice and better workplace security that initially began in Kolkata, in West Bengal, have now spread to other parts of the country.

“This decision is not made lightly but is necessary to ensure that our voices are heard,” the doctors’ federation said in a statement. The federation said it was demanding not only a speedy trial but also an inquiry to pinpoint the factors that made the crime possible, and urgent measures to improve the safety of doctors, especially women, in hospitals.

Nisha Alum, a nurse at Holy Family hospital in Delhi, said: “We have learnt nothing from the 2012 gang-rape and murder. Forget being safe on the roads at night. Women are not even safe at their place of work.”

The victim’s father had bought her a car six months ago, worried about the late hours she worked and travelling at night. “I wanted her to be safe on the roads at night but she wasn’t even safe at the hospital as a doctor on duty,” he told reporters.

Dr Rajan Sharma, a former president of the Indian Medical Association, said urgent changes needed to be made to the way government hospitals operated, particularly with regards to access.

“Why can’t we post security guards?” Sharma said. “Why can’t we have proper screening, along with just one entrance and one exit? And strictly enforced visiting hours? These crimes don’t happen in private hospitals for a reason – they have systems in place. It’s as simple as that.”

Doctors in India say that on top of sexual violence they also face the threat of attacks from angry family members of patients, especially after delivering bad news. A survey by the Indian Medical Association found 75% of doctors in India had faced some form of violence.

The New York Times has confirmed it received the same or similar trove of Donald Trump presidential campaign documents as other media outlets did, after Microsoft confirmed that a “high-ranking official” at a presidential campaign was a hacking target.

For the third US election in a row, hacked campaign information by a foreign power is now likely to feature as potential disruption. The Trump campaign has said its email systems were breached by hackers working for Iran.

Politico reported getting emails from someone who identified themselves only as “Robert” and sent internal campaign communications and a 271-page-long research dossier on Trump’s running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, that was part of his vetting process. The news organisation said the Vance profile was “based on publicly available information”.

On Monday, two Democratic lawmakers with experience on intelligence and security committees called for information about the latest breach to be released publicly.

The California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell posted on social media that he was seeking a briefing on the breach, and that while he considered Trump “the most despicable person ever to seek office” – someone who had also called for hacking in the past – “that doesn’t mean America ever tolerates foreign interference.”

Adam Schiff, the Democrat of California, urged Department of Homeland Security officials to declassify information on the foreign nature of the hack.

Schiff said the US intelligence community “moved much too slow to properly identity the hacking and dumping scheme carried out by Russia” in 2016 and “should act quickly here”.

He also said that in that year: “The Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference, took advantage of it and then sought to deny it, much to the detriment of the country.”

The Trump campaign’s announcement that its systems had been breached came after news organizations asked questions about Vance when he was a candidate for vice-president that appeared to come from internal vetting documents.

The Washington Post said it had received a 271-page document marked “privileged & confidential” from an anonymous AOL customer known as Robert. Politico later said it had been receiving documents from someone who called themselves Robert since 22 July.

Trump has said that only publicly available information was taken from its systems. “They were only able to get publicly available information but, nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature,” he posted on Saturday evening. “Iran and others will stop at nothing.”

A Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said: “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”

While Microsoft has not confirmed that the Trump campaign was the target, it has said that an Iranian group run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was behind a June attack on a presidential campaign.

But the hack of the Trump campaign will serve as a warning that the last three months of the 2024 election could be as bumpy as the previous two elections. In 2016 the Hillary Clinton campaign was hacked, allegedly by Russian agents, and hundreds of emails were published by WikiLeaks. Twelve Russian military intelligence officers were later indicted for their alleged roles in interfering in the US election.

In 2020, the contents of a laptop later confirmed as belonging to Hunter Biden were released and became subject of a controversy, not only for its salacious leaked content but for a letter signed by former intelligence officials claiming that the leak had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.

On Saturday, a spokesman for the national security council said Joe Biden’s administration “strongly condemns any foreign government or entity who attempts to interfere in our electoral process or seeks to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions”. The FBI has yet to comment.

Hot weather inflamed by carbon pollution killed nearly 50,000 people in Europe last year, with the continent warming at a much faster rate than other parts of the world, research has found.

The findings come as wildfires tore through forests outside Athens, as France issued excessive heat warnings for large swathes of the country, and the UK baked through what the Met Office expects will be its hottest day of the year.

Doctors call heat a “silent killer” because it claims far more lives than most people realise. The devastating mortality rate in 2023 would have been 80% higher if people had not adapted to rising temperatures over the past two decades, according to the study published in Nature Medicine.

Elisa Gallo, an environmental epidemiologist at ISGlobal and lead author of the study, said the results showed that efforts taken to adapt societies to heatwaves had been effective.

“But the number of heat-related deaths is still too high,” she warned. “Europe is warming at twice the rate of the global average – we can’t rest on our laurels.”

Heatwaves have grown hotter, longer and more common as people have burned fossil fuels and destroyed nature – clogging the atmosphere with gases that act like a greenhouse and heat the planet. Globally, 2023 was the hottest year on record, and scientists expect 2024 to soon take its place.

Researchers have found that cooler countries in Europe such as the UK, Norway and Switzerland will face the greatest relative rise in the number of uncomfortably hot days. But the absolute death toll will continue to be greatest in southern Europe, which is better adapted to hot weather but more exposed to scorching temperatures.

The scientists found heat-related mortality in 2023 was highest in Greece, with 393 deaths per million people, followed by Italy with 209 deaths per million and Spain with 175 deaths per million.

On Monday firefighters in Greece battled wildfires outside Athens which forced authorities to evacuate several suburbs in the capital and a children’s hospital. Repeated heatwaves had dried out the surrounding forest and turned trees into tinder.

In 2003, a heatwave killed 70,000 people across the continent and sent officials scrambling to save lives by setting up early warning systems and prevention plans. But nearly two decades later, the death toll from the record-breaking heat in 2022, which claimed more than 60,000 lives, left researchers wondering how effective the measures had been.

The scientists modelled the effects of heat on health for different time periods since the turn of the century and estimated last year’s death toll to be 47,690. They found the mortality rate would have been 80% greater if the temperatures of 2023 had hit in the period 2000–2004 than in the pre-pandemic reference period 2015-2019. For people over the age of 80, the heat would have proven twice as deadly.

Dominic Royé, the head of data science at the Climate Research Foundation, who was not involved in the study, said the results were consistent with published studies. He added that there was a need to better monitor the effects of heat on groups most at risk, as well as the implementation of plans to prevent deaths.

“We monitor temperature very well, but not health impacts in the same way,” said Royé. “Social adaptation to rising temperatures has played a crucial role in preventing mortality in Europe but remains insufficient.”

Scientists say that governments can keep people safe from heatwaves by designing cool cities with more parks and less concrete, setting up early warning systems to alert people to imminent danger, and strengthening healthcare systems so doctors and nurses are not pushed into overdrive when temperatures soar.

But individual actions like staying indoors and drinking water also have powerful effects on death tolls. Checking in on older neighbours and relatives who live alone can spell the difference between life and death.

Dr Santi Di Pietro, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pavia, said his colleagues were treating more patients a day than they did in early January during the flu season.

Heatwaves must be tackled at all levels, he said, but people could take “simple measures” to protect themselves and their loved ones. These included avoiding the sun during the hottest hours of the day, seeking shade when outside and swapping alcohol for water.

“As obvious as it may sound, drinking water is paramount to prevent dehydration,” he said. “Elderly people often do not perceive thirst, so we should keep an extra eye on them.”

More work is needed to adapt to climate change and mitigate the rise in temperatures, said Gallo. “Climate change needs to be considered as a health issue.”

The number of people accessing emergency care for heat-related illnesses has risen sharply in some of Italy’s most popular tourist cities, as the country experiences an intense heatwave that is failing to deter visitors.

Italy has been engulfed in consecutive heatwaves since around the middle of June. Some central and southern areas are expected to record temperatures above 40C in the coming days.

On Monday the health ministry placed 17 cities on red alert, meaning it is expected even healthy people could be at risk from the heat. People living in or visiting places on red alert are advised to avoid direct sunlight between 11am and 6pm.

Fabio De Iaco, the president of the Italian society of emergency medicine, told Corriere della Sera that as the heat had intensified there had been a 20% rise in the number of people accessing emergency care for heat-related illnesses in cities including Rome, Florence, Venice and Naples.

In Rome there have been cases of people fainting in the heat in St Peter’s Square or while congregating at popular monuments such as the Trevi fountain.

Dr Pierpaolo Ciocchetti, the director of the emergency department at the Fatebenefratelli hospital in central Rome, said most of the people requiring care were elderly and suffering from other illnesses.

“But younger people should not underestimate the effects of the heat,” he told Corriere della Sera. He advised people not to go to emergency units with illnesses that could be managed at home, adding that hospital admissions for Covid had also been increasing.

Most of the cases of heat-related illnesses are resolved through rehydration. Just 1-2% have required hospitalisation.

Four people are reported to have died in Italy in July of illnesses related to the extreme heat. Last week a 26-year-old woman underwent an emergency liver transplant at a hospital in Turin after collapsing due to heatstroke while working on a farm.

The heat is not deterring tourists, with the number of foreign visitors to Italy estimated to be 2.5% higher than in 2023. In July and August, most major cities are filled with tourists while Italians escape to the beach or mountains. However, with sea temperatures also topping 30C, it is difficult to find respite from the heat even along the coast.

Iran has insisted on its right to an “appropriate and deterrent response” against Israel as the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, told his US counterpart that Tehran was making preparations for a large-scale military attack.

It comes as the US announced it had ordered the deployment of the USS Georgia, a nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine, to the Middle East, amid mounting concern over the determination by Iran and its proxies to retaliate for Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

With fears that an attack may be imminent, the Israel air force commander, Maj Gen Tomer Bar, issued an order forbidding career officers from travelling abroad for holidays, a day after it was reported that soldiers travelling in Georgia and Azerbaijan had been told to return to Israel immediately.

Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, made the comments to his Chinese counterpart on Monday, according to state media.

Earlier, the leaders of France, Germany and Britain called on Tehran to refrain from any retaliatory attacks that would further escalate regional tensions after the killing of Haniyeh, and of a Hezbollah leader in Beirut last month.

A joint statement signed by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, endorsed calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, the return of scores of hostages held by Hamas and the “unfettered” delivery of humanitarian aid.

“The fighting must end now, and all hostages still detained by Hamas must be released. The people of Gaza need urgent and unfettered delivery and distribution of aid,” the statement said.

Scholz also appealed directly to Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to do everything possible to prevent a further military escalation in the Middle East in a phone call on Monday, according to a German government spokesperson

The rapidly rising tensions have been driven by remarks by Iranian and Israeli officials that Tehran was on the brink of a large-scale retaliatory attack.

On Friday, an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps deputy commander told local news agencies the country was preparing to carry out an order by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to “harshly punish” Israel over the assassination of Haniyeh on 31 July.

Axios reported that the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, had told the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, in a conversation on Sunday that Iran was preparing for a large-scale military attack on Israel within days.

In a statement on Monday, Gallant’s ministry confirmed the call took place overnight. It said Gallant and Austin had discussed operational and strategic coordination and the Israeli military’s readiness in the face of Iranian threats.

In a statement after the conversation took place, the Pentagon said Austin had ordered the Abraham Lincoln strike group to accelerate its deployment to the region.

“Secretary Austin reiterated the United States’ commitment to take every possible step to defend Israel and noted the strengthening of US military force posture and capabilities throughout the Middle East in light of escalating regional tensions,” the statement said.

The US military had already said it would deploy additional fighter jets and navy warships to the Middle East as Washington seeks to bolster Israeli defences.

The growing fear of an Iranian attack has caused a number of international airlines to cancel flights to the region.

On Monday, the German airline Lufthansa said it was extending the suspension of flights to Tel Aviv, Tehran, Beirut, Amman and Erbil to 21 August, adding it would also avoid using Iranian and Iraqi airspace.

The mounting danger of a wider confrontation with Iran and its proxies comes amid a continuing Israeli assault on Gaza, where officials from the Hamas-run health ministry have said almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict broke out in October when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israeli communities.

On Sunday, the Israeli military ordered more evacuations in southern Gaza, a day after a deadly missile strike on a school turned shelter in the north killed at least 80 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. The strike was one of the deadliest attacks in the 10-month war.

Israel has repeatedly ordered mass evacuations as its troops return to heavily destroyed areas where they previously battled Palestinian militants. The vast majority of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people has been displaced, often multiple times, in the besieged territory 25 miles (40km) long by about 7 miles (11km) wide.

The latest evacuation orders apply to areas of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, including part of an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone from which the military said rockets had been fired. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians and launching attacks from residential areas.

The humanitarian zone has steadily shrunk during the war with the various evacuation orders. Hundreds of thousands of people have crammed into squalid tent camps with few public services, or sought shelter in schools, though the UN says hundreds of those have been directly hit or damaged.

The EU’s foreign policy chief said it should consider imposing sanctions in response to calls by Israel’s far-right national security minister to cut off aid to Gaza.

Josep Borrell said on X late on Sunday that the recent remarks by Itamar Ben-Gvir constituted “incitement to war crimes”, adding that “sanctions must be on our EU agenda”.

In his own post on X and in media interviews, Ben-Gvir said that instead of agreeing to a potential ceasefire deal, Israel should block the entry of humanitarian aid and fuel to Gaza until Hamas releases all of the hostages, saying that doing so would bring the militant group to its knees.

Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for Israel to permanently reoccupy Gaza, rebuild Jewish settlements there and encourage the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians from the territory. A key member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, he has threatened to bring the government down if it makes too many concessions in the ceasefire talks.

Borrell called on Israel’s government to “unequivocally distance itself from these incitements to commit war crimes”, and to engage “in good faith” with ceasefire negotiations mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt.

Agencies contributed to this article

Iran has insisted on its right to an “appropriate and deterrent response” against Israel as the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, told his US counterpart that Tehran was making preparations for a large-scale military attack.

It comes as the US announced it had ordered the deployment of the USS Georgia, a nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine, to the Middle East, amid mounting concern over the determination by Iran and its proxies to retaliate for Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

With fears that an attack may be imminent, the Israel air force commander, Maj Gen Tomer Bar, issued an order forbidding career officers from travelling abroad for holidays, a day after it was reported that soldiers travelling in Georgia and Azerbaijan had been told to return to Israel immediately.

Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, made the comments to his Chinese counterpart on Monday, according to state media.

Earlier, the leaders of France, Germany and Britain called on Tehran to refrain from any retaliatory attacks that would further escalate regional tensions after the killing of Haniyeh, and of a Hezbollah leader in Beirut last month.

A joint statement signed by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, endorsed calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, the return of scores of hostages held by Hamas and the “unfettered” delivery of humanitarian aid.

“The fighting must end now, and all hostages still detained by Hamas must be released. The people of Gaza need urgent and unfettered delivery and distribution of aid,” the statement said.

Scholz also appealed directly to Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to do everything possible to prevent a further military escalation in the Middle East in a phone call on Monday, according to a German government spokesperson

The rapidly rising tensions have been driven by remarks by Iranian and Israeli officials that Tehran was on the brink of a large-scale retaliatory attack.

On Friday, an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps deputy commander told local news agencies the country was preparing to carry out an order by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to “harshly punish” Israel over the assassination of Haniyeh on 31 July.

Axios reported that the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, had told the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, in a conversation on Sunday that Iran was preparing for a large-scale military attack on Israel within days.

In a statement on Monday, Gallant’s ministry confirmed the call took place overnight. It said Gallant and Austin had discussed operational and strategic coordination and the Israeli military’s readiness in the face of Iranian threats.

In a statement after the conversation took place, the Pentagon said Austin had ordered the Abraham Lincoln strike group to accelerate its deployment to the region.

“Secretary Austin reiterated the United States’ commitment to take every possible step to defend Israel and noted the strengthening of US military force posture and capabilities throughout the Middle East in light of escalating regional tensions,” the statement said.

The US military had already said it would deploy additional fighter jets and navy warships to the Middle East as Washington seeks to bolster Israeli defences.

The growing fear of an Iranian attack has caused a number of international airlines to cancel flights to the region.

On Monday, the German airline Lufthansa said it was extending the suspension of flights to Tel Aviv, Tehran, Beirut, Amman and Erbil to 21 August, adding it would also avoid using Iranian and Iraqi airspace.

The mounting danger of a wider confrontation with Iran and its proxies comes amid a continuing Israeli assault on Gaza, where officials from the Hamas-run health ministry have said almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict broke out in October when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israeli communities.

On Sunday, the Israeli military ordered more evacuations in southern Gaza, a day after a deadly missile strike on a school turned shelter in the north killed at least 80 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. The strike was one of the deadliest attacks in the 10-month war.

Israel has repeatedly ordered mass evacuations as its troops return to heavily destroyed areas where they previously battled Palestinian militants. The vast majority of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people has been displaced, often multiple times, in the besieged territory 25 miles (40km) long by about 7 miles (11km) wide.

The latest evacuation orders apply to areas of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, including part of an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone from which the military said rockets had been fired. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians and launching attacks from residential areas.

The humanitarian zone has steadily shrunk during the war with the various evacuation orders. Hundreds of thousands of people have crammed into squalid tent camps with few public services, or sought shelter in schools, though the UN says hundreds of those have been directly hit or damaged.

The EU’s foreign policy chief said it should consider imposing sanctions in response to calls by Israel’s far-right national security minister to cut off aid to Gaza.

Josep Borrell said on X late on Sunday that the recent remarks by Itamar Ben-Gvir constituted “incitement to war crimes”, adding that “sanctions must be on our EU agenda”.

In his own post on X and in media interviews, Ben-Gvir said that instead of agreeing to a potential ceasefire deal, Israel should block the entry of humanitarian aid and fuel to Gaza until Hamas releases all of the hostages, saying that doing so would bring the militant group to its knees.

Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for Israel to permanently reoccupy Gaza, rebuild Jewish settlements there and encourage the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians from the territory. A key member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, he has threatened to bring the government down if it makes too many concessions in the ceasefire talks.

Borrell called on Israel’s government to “unequivocally distance itself from these incitements to commit war crimes”, and to engage “in good faith” with ceasefire negotiations mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt.

Agencies contributed to this article

It was a dreamlike, science fiction-inspired light-show spectacular that closed with Tom Cruise flying through the air from the stadium roof and whisking the Olympic flag off to Los Angeles.

Paris closed its record-breakingly successful Olympic Games on Sunday night with a stunt-filled final ceremony that began with a mysterious, golden intergalactic traveller wandering through a gloomy, barren futuristic landscape, tasked with resurrecting the Olympic spirit.

Ghostly dancers and acrobats – some of whom were fire-service gymnasts – descended from the Stade de France stadium roof and leaped on to giant Olympic rings while the Swiss musician Alain Roche performed Hymn to Apollo floating in the air playing a vertically suspended piano. The French singer Yseult gave a breathtaking performance of My Way, a nod to French-US relations as a French song that was rearranged in English for Frank Sinatra.

Paris said goodbye to its Olympics with a message about the importance of protecting the spirit of the games in an uncertain world riven by conflict.

The dramatic, pyrotechnic show was a fitting riposte to the epic, Technicolor riverside opening ceremony that broke with tradition by taking place along the Seine two weeks earlier. From that moment, the Paris Games had seen record ticket sales and TV viewing figures, and even a historic number of marriage proposals among athletes.

“Humanity is beautiful when it comes together,” said the theatre and opera director Thomas Jolly of his stadium show about celebrating “respect and tolerance” in a fragile world. He called the Games and the closing performance “a unique opportunity to share, reconcile and repair”.

The ceremony began before dusk beneath Paris’s groundbreaking Olympic cauldron suspended from a balloon, a dramatic ring of fire made up of electricity and LED spotlights to give the appearance of being ablaze.

The balloon-cauldron has become the city’s newest star attraction as thousands have gathered near the Louvre to watch it rise into the sky each night at sundown, and politicians are arguing that it should be kept in Paris permanently as a new landmark.

Beneath it, the award-winning young singer Zaho de Sagazan, whose voice and lyrics have transformed chanson française over the past two years, sang the classic 1950s ode to Paris Sous le Ciel de Paris, made famous by Édith Piaf. Suddenly, France’s star swimmer and gold-medal winner Léon Marchand, hailed in France as Le Roi Léon, appeared to whisk away the flame and the cauldron went out.

At that moment, more than 70,000 spectators in France’s biggest stadium began roaring and cheering as the action began. The Stade de France, which only days before had seen the high drama of the athletics relays and successes such as Armand Duplantis, the Swedish pole vaulter who broke his own world record, had now been transformed into a futuristic, glittering, undulating stage set.

Thousands of volunteers and athletes filled the stadium in a flag-waving moment of togetherness, not seen on this scale in these Games until now because the athletes had appeared in the opening ceremony in separate boats along the Seine.

Dancing, athletes, volunteers and spectators joined for one last time in belting out the dance anthem Freed from Desire, which had become an unofficial anthem at venues, followed by We are the Champions.

Paris had wanted its Games to be a giant open-air party, and the athletes’ final stadium appearance, dancing on the pitch, was no exception.

The ghostly gold traveller figure who landed from the sky was played by the French breakdancer Arthur Cadre, surrounded by hundreds of dancers and acrobats, as athletes stood around the stage looking on.

Flanked by athletes who had rushed on to the stage, the French electro-pop band Phoenix kicked off a music set that included the Belgian singer Angèle and the Cambodian rapper VannDa.

The Mission: Impossible star Cruise, abseiling in and then making off with the flag on a motorbike, set a Hollywood tone for the transfer to Los Angeles, the next host of the games in 2028.

Appearing on the Paris stage with the US gold-medallist gymnast Simone Biles, the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, was the first black female mayor to receive the Olympic flag. She had acknowledged before the closing ceremony that the French capital had set a high bar, but said her city was a worthy successor.

“It will be a challenge, but it will be a challenge we can step up to,” Bass had told reporters this week. “I think our Games will really show the diversity and the international character of our city.”

Every detail of the more than two weeks of Olympic events in Paris had been conceived as a visual extravaganza. Even the athletics track had been painted an unprecedented purple for athletic events – a break with tradition aimed at dazzling spectators and TV audiences. Venues such as the beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower and equestrian events at the Chateau of Versailles were chosen for their picturesque backdrops.

Paris had sought to reinvent the Games, aiming to breathe new life into the world’s biggest sporting event to attract a younger audience and inspire more cities to apply to host the games. With the motto Games Wide Open, Paris brought sport out of the stadium and into the city centre. It was aimed at drawing a line under the last Games in Tokyo, which were held largely without spectators during the Covid pandemic.

In a celebration of women in sport, the women’s marathon winners were awarded their medals at the closing ceremony – the Netherlands’s Sifan Hassan took gold – as thousands of athletes cheered. It was unprecedented for the women’s, rather than the men’s marathons, to close the Olympics. The marathon course had deliberately retraced the route of a French revolutionary march in 1789 led by women from Paris to Versailles to take grievances to the king.

The Stade de France closing ceremony was also a feat of logistics – rehearsals had taken place between 1am and 5am between athletics sessions at the stadium.

Some in the ceremony’s creative team, including the director Jolly, were under special protection because of online death threats after the opening ceremony. That opening extravaganza, which featured Celine Dion singing Piaf from the Eiffel Tower, was overwhelmingly loved in France; one poll showed 86% of French people deemed it a success.

But its displays of LGBTQ+ pride and French humour were too much for some. Donald Trump and French bishops were among those who took offence at one of the ceremony’s tableaux, titled Festivity, featured a cast of drag queens and, playing Dionysus, a semi-naked singer sitting in a bowl of fruit. Some Christian and conservative critics interpreted the scene as a parody of the Last Supper. The committee later apologised for any offence caused by parts of the ceremony.

At the closing ceremony, some of the loudest cheers came when Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, spoke of the importance of sport bringing peace in times of conflict.

Firefighters are battling to contain a massive blaze moving “like lightning” on the outskirts of Athens, with authorities evacuating people from towns, villages and hospitals as flames rip through trees, homes and cars.

Propelled by gale-force winds, the wildfire had formed a 12-mile (20km) front by Monday despite “superhuman” efforts by forest commandos and volunteers overnight.

Greece’s climate crisis and civil protection minister said firefighters were struggling in “dramatic conditions” that had been exacerbated by a prolonged drought.

On the frontline of the climate emergency, the Mediterranean nation has experienced an exceptionally hot and dry year. On Monday it called for help in tackling the fire from other European Union countries.

“Its an extremely dangerous fire that we’ve been battling for over 20 hours in dramatic conditions because of the very strong winds and prolonged dryness,” the minister, Vassilis Kikilias, told reporters.

More than 670 firefighters, backed by 17 waterbombing planes, 15 helicopters and trucks, were trying to bring the fire under control and forces were being “continually reinforced”, he said.

“Right now the battle is being waged on two fronts: one in the area of Kallitechnoupoli and the other in [the village of] Grammatiko,” Kikilias said. “We will continue with all our might until it is brought under control and the last front is put out.”

By mid-morning, orders had been issued for the evacuation of 11 villages and towns, including the ancient Marathon, as authorities rushed to move residents out of stricken areas. Large parts of Mount Penteli, north of Athens, had also been engulfed by flames.

The mayor of Marathon, Stergios Tsirkas, said the town, which gave its name to the long-distance race that was held at the weekend at the Paris Olympics, was facing a “biblical catastrophe”. “Our whole town is engulfed in flames and going through difficult times,” he told the Skai television channel.

The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, cut short his summer break on Crete to return to Athens and oversee the response in a nation where memories of the 104 people who died in wildfires at the seaside resort of Mati six years ago remain strong.

In a bid to boost its response, Athens activated the European civil protection mechanism and was expecting assistance in the form of aircraft and firefighters from France, Italy and the Czech Republic.

The fire began in the vicinity of Varnava, a village about 20 miles north-east of Athens, sending gigantic clouds of ash smoke billowing over the capital.

From the outset, firefighting efforts were hampered by winds that on Monday were predicted to build to near gales. At least half of the country was under a “red alert” – the highest level of extreme fire risk in the country’s five-tier system.

A fire brigade spokesperson, Vassileios Vathrakogiannis, said on Sunday that flames fanned by the gusts were up to 25 metres (80ft) high. The winds were constantly changing the course of the fires, hampering efforts to bring them under control.

With the strong winds showing no sign of abating, meteorologists predicted the days ahead would be critical.

Health officials urged residents in the region to limit their movements and stay inside, saying the thick smoke had seriously affected air quality across the Attica basin. By mid-afternoon on Sunday, within hours of the blaze erupting, the skies above the Greek parliament in central Syntagma Square had turned a yellowish brown as ash clouds were blown southward. Greek media reported people being taken to hospital with respiratory problems.

Unprecedented temperatures – June and July were the hottest on record – after the warmest winter on record have resulted in wildfires becoming increasingly common and intense in Greece. In a first, this summer the country registered a week-long heatwave before mid-June, a sign of the accelerated pace at which the climate is breaking down, environmentalists said.

Meteorologists believe 2024 will be the hottest Greek summer on record.

At least 10 tourists, including the British TV presenter Michael Mosley, died earlier this summer from heat exhaustion after walking in blistering temperatures. Mosley is believed to have succumbed to the heat two hours after he set off on a walk from a beach on the remote island of Symi in temperatures topping 40C.

Many dozens of Rohingya people, including children, were killed in an artillery and drone attack that targeted civilians as they tried to flee Myanmar last week.

Civilians were trying to escape violence in Maungdaw town, Rakhine state, by crossing the Naf River into Bangladesh when they were targeted last Monday. Videos shared on social media, which appeared to have been taken in the aftermath of the attack, showed bodies and bags strewn across the ground.

Nay San Lwin, the co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, who spoke to survivors, said the victims had travelled from villages including Maung Ni, Myoma Taung and Myoma Kayin Dan to try to cross the border. The drone attacks began at about 5pm the same day, he said.

“They told me several dozen, at least three to four dozen, drone bombs were dropped there. They are saying at least more than 200 were killed and around 300 injured. There is nobody to collect the dead bodies. Everyone is running to save their lives. Some are already in Bangladesh,” Nay San Lwin said.

Survivors who spoke to Reuters said they believed more than 200 people had been killed. A survivor who spoke to Associated Press said 150 people had been killed and many others wounded.

The Arakan Army, one of the armed groups seeking to overthrow the junta, has seized large areas of Rakhine state from the military in recent months.

The militia and Myanmar’s military blamed each other for the attack. Activists said they believed the Arakan Army was responsible, allegations the group denied. The activists said that for months the group had been targeting Rohingya people with killings, village torchings and forcible recruitment of young men.

The military has also been accused of atrocities against civilians. It already faces a genocide case in The Hague over its brutal crackdowns against Rohingya in 2016 and 2017. The minority group has long been persecuted in Myanmar, where people are denied citizenship and basic rights, such as freedom of movement.

“The Arakan Army is trying to finish the business of the Myanmar military,” said Nay San Lwin.

Rahim, a witness to the attack who asked not to give his real name, told the Guardian drones flew from a village that was under the control of the Arakan Army, and repeatedly struck civilians.

His family escaped the violence because they had been staying in a nearby village while he tried to arrange a boat to take them to Bangladesh. The family managed to cross the border at 4am on Tuesday.

“We decided we can’t stay in this town and in this country, we also will be killed. So we managed [to take] a boat and crossed the border that morning. The dead bodies were here and there, everywhere at that place,” he said. “No one could go to that place to help the injured people.

“When we are coming through that place, some people are still alive, but there was not any help. I am still hearing a voice, one person is telling [us]: ‘I am still not dead, please help me’, like this. But no one goes to help them because everyone is rushing to save their own lives and their own families.”

Survivors waited desperately for boats to try to flee to safety. Rahim said one of his friends boarded a small boat to try to escape but it became overloaded with people. His friend’s five children died when it sank.

“We have the right to live as a human being,” he said. “We just need to live simply as a human being in our own place, own country, own town.”

An Arakan Army spokesperson told Reuters: “According to our investigation, family members of terrorists tried to go to Bangladesh from Maungdaw and the junta dropped the bomb because they left without permission,” referring to Muslims who have joined Rohingya armed groups fighting against the Arakan Army.

Médecins Sans Frontières said that as of 10 August, its staff in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, had treated 50 patients who had fled Myanmar, including 18 children. Many of the patients had mortar shell injuries and gunshot wounds. The number of arrivals peaked on 6 August, MSF said, when it treated 21 people.

It said the patients had described a desperate situation in Rakhine state. “Some reported seeing people bombed while trying to find boats to cross the river into Bangladesh and escape the violence. Others described seeing hundreds of dead bodies on the riverbanks.

“Many patients spoke of being separated from their families en route to safer areas and of loved ones being killed in the violence. Many people said they were fearful that family members remaining in Myanmar would not survive.”

Irish parliamentarians have called on their government to investigate how an Irish passport was obtained by Tommy Robinson, who has been accused of inciting riots from abroad.

The Luton-born far-right leader travels on an Irish passport in his real name – Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – and was believed to have qualified for it via his mother, an Irish immigrant to Britain.

However, questions have been raised about the validity of the passport after an official form issued to Robinson when he was detained by Canadian immigration authorities in June stated that his place of birth was “Ireland”.

Charles Flanagan, a former justice minister who chairs the Irish parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee, said: “Any questions over the integrity of the Irish passport system must be taken most seriously.

“Eligibility for Irish citizenship and grounds for holding an Irish passport are clearly defined in law. Any alleged violation must not only be taken seriously but acted upon and subject to formal investigation by the appropriate authorities.”

Two other members of the Irish parliament also expressed concern. Duncan Smith, a Labour party Dáil member, said: “If there are any question marks over the integrity of someone’s passport then that must be investigated. Accurate country of birth information is integral to any passport application.”

He called on the UK Foreign Office and Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs to liaise in relation to the accuracy of information given. “We must take on all far-right activism when we see it. If someone is travelling on an Irish passport and fomenting far-right hate then we have a responsibility to explore all methods of pressure to stop it,” Smith added.

“It is concerning that someone who is inciting racist violence across Britain and Ireland appears to be travelling on an Irish passport,” said Paul Murphy, a socialist parliamentarian.

“It is doubly concerning that the Canadian documentation suggests that his place of birth was falsely given as Ireland. Is that what it says on his passport? If so, his passport would have been issued on a fraudulent basis and could be revoked.”

It is unclear why Robinson has chosen to travel on the Irish passport. One reason may be to avoid post-Brexit queues at airports, an irony given that the far-right leader was a committed supporter of leaving the European Union.

However, he also has a number of criminal convictions, ranging from assaulting an off-duty police officer to stalking, fraud and drug possession. In 2013, he was jailed for 10 months for using someone else’s passport to travel to the US.

He was arrested in June in Canada on suspicion of committing an immigration offence. The image of the immigration authority form was tweeted by Robinson after he was detained, having been ordered to stay in the country and hand over his passport.

Robinson has been cultivating links with the emerging Irish far right and visited the country in February last year, telling followers on social media that he had come to “report” on anti-immigrant sentiment.

While his presence was welcomed by some among the Irish far right, others were more hostile towards cooperation with British equivalents such as Robinson, who was a member of the British National party in the 2000s.

When staff at Dublin zoo discovered an orangutan named Mujur was pregnant they decided to stage maternal workshops.

The 19-year-old female had not sufficiently bonded with either of her previous infants, who died in 2019 and 2022, so when she became pregnant earlier this year the zoo enlisted breastfeeding human mothers to try to show her how it was done.

Lizzie Reeves, a midwife and lactation specialist who is part of the breastfeeding team at the National maternity hospital in Ireland’s capital, organised a roster of 30 mothers to take turns teaching the ape, whose species is critically endangered.

The orangutan house was closed off while the women breastfed their own infants. “Mujur was extremely interested in watching the women feed their babies through the glass, even mirroring some of their actions,” the zoo said in a statement on Monday.

“A lot of women said: ‘Look, an orangutan doesn’t wear a T-shirt.’ So they whipped off their T-shirts and their bras so Mujur could literally see everything,” Reeves told the Irish Times.

Nora Murphy, a first-time mother from Rathfarnham in Dublin, thought it would be a great story to eventually tell her now 10-month-old daughter, Elodi. “You are going from being a mother yourself to trying to help a mother to be. You would be talking to her saying: ‘Look this is what you are meant to do,’” she said.

Mujur was shown videos of other orangutans feeding their babies as part of the tuition. She gave birth on 31 July to a healthy male and showed “good maternal care”, suggesting the teaching had an effect, but did not hold the infant in quite the correct place for feeding, the zoo said.

The institution would normally have let nature take its course but given the infant’s genetic profile – his father was Sibu, a patriarch who died in February – it intervened. “The difficult decision was made to separate the infant from Mujur and commence bottle feeding him.”

The infant will be transferred in several weeks to Monkey World, a 65-acre centre in Dorset, England, with experience in raising orangutans. “The whole team has already fallen hopelessly in love with him, and it will be difficult to say goodbye, however we are confident that he is being sent to the best possible place for him to continue to develop and thrive,” said the zoo.