Donald Trump has privately expressed faith in his campaign leadership and no firings are currently expected, but senior advisers find themselves in the most vulnerable moment as they struggle to frame effective attacks against Kamala Harris, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The past month, starting with Joe Biden’s withdrawal and his endorsement of Harris to succeed him, which propelled her to draw roughly even in key swing state polls, has easily been the most unstable moment for the Trump campaign since its formal launch in late 2022.

In that period, Trump has often committed one unforced error after another as he tries to frame arguments against Harris, struggled to break through the news cycle hyping Democrats’ enthusiasm, and suddenly found himself on the defensive with a narrow window left until November.

The sudden difficulty for the Trump campaign to lay a glove on Harris has led to Trump’s allies seeing an opening for the first time to openly challenge decision-making by senior aides and privately challenge whether some advisers should remain in their positions or be sidelined.

And the past month has been bad enough for the Trump campaign that advisers have taken those challenges – whether from enemies real or perceived – as serious threats or slights that necessitate devoting time and effort to slap down.

In a statement referring to the campaign chiefs Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, a Trump spokesperson said: “As President Trump said, he thinks Ms Wiles and Mr LaCivita are doing a phenomenal job and any rumors to the contrary are false and not rooted in reality.

“This campaign is focused on winning, and anyone not focused on electing President Trump and defeating Kamala Harris is doing nothing but hurting every American. Detractors and lobbyists are waging a destructive battle of rumor and innuendo, and they are well known and will be remembered.”

The anxiety principally stems from Trump’s recent meeting on 2 August with Lara Trump, his daughter in law whom he installed as head of the Republican National Convention, and Kellyanne Conway, who ran his 2016 presidential campaign.

Reached by phone, Conway said the meeting was focused on strategy and she told Trump that he defeated a female candidate in 2016 and could do so again in November. She said she never mentioned any names or titles of senior advisers on the campaign.

But the meeting raised hackles internally when Trump later relayed what Conway had said, which was interpreted by senior advisers as an incursion into their territory and an attempt to pitch herself to run the campaign, the people said.

The roller-coaster of anxiety diminished after senior aides felt reassured that Conway was unlikely to come aboard, at least for now, with Trump questioning her new lobbying for Ukraine and her suggestion in 2023 that Trump endorse a 15-week federal abortion ban.

But an undercurrent of nervousness has persisted. At least one other faction in Trump world with ties to figures associated with the Trump 2016 campaign is weighing whether to appeal to the former president to shake up the leadership, according to a person involved in the discussions.

The summer months have historically been the time that Trump makes changes to his campaign chiefs, as he did in 2016 when he installed Conway and Steve Bannon and David Bossie to take the reins, as well as in 2020, when he replaced Brad Parscale with Bill Stepien.

The 2020 campaign in particular carries some scar tissue for advisers, who have privately recalled in recent weeks that criticism over decision-making led to Parscale’s ouster, even if in his case, it was over questionable spending rather than resetting attack lines against their opponent.

The anxiety over the palace intrigue comes as the Trump campaign continues to have a difficult time landing consistent attacks against Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, coming under fire for saying they intend to run the same playbook as against Biden.

The campaign’s bet is that the election will be defined on the same points as with Biden, the people said: the crisis on the US southern border, crime and inflation that has caused a rise in the cost of living.

Trump campaign advisers and external allies agree that Trump needs to attack Harris on her policy records, but the execution has often been poor.

At the heart of the problem is Trump’s annoyance at being managed, one of the people said. And even as Trump tries to keep on message – for instance, to focus on how Harris has shifted her positions to whatever she finds politically expedient – it can be unnatural or come out botched.

When Trump spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference this month, he falsely suggested Harris had only recently decided to identify as Black because it brought her political benefits, in remarks that were egregious even by Trump’s controversial standards.

Conway told Trump at their meeting, which came days after the NABJ conference, that he should stick to policy differences and not engage in personal attacks. Several campaign officials chafed at Conway’s advice when they learned of it, one of the people said, saying they had advised the same thing and saw her as stepping on their turf.

Donald Trump is asking the judge in his New York hush-money criminal case to delay his sentencing until after the November presidential election.

In a letter made public Thursday, a lawyer for the former US president and current Republican nominee suggested that sentencing Trump as scheduled on 18 September – about seven weeks before election day – would amount to election interference.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche wrote that a delay would also allow Trump time to weigh next steps after the trial judge, Juan M Merchan, is expected to rule 16 September on the defense’s request to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case because of the US supreme court’s July presidential immunity ruling.

“There is no basis for continuing to rush,” Blanche wrote.

Blanche sent the letter to Merchan on Wednesday after the judge rejected the defense’s latest request that he step aside from the case.

In the letter, Blanche reiterated the defense argument that the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a Democratic political consultant, including for Kamala Harris when she sought the 2020 presidential nomination. Harris is now running against Trump.

By adjourning the sentencing until after that election, “the Court would reduce, even if not eliminate, issues regarding the integrity of any future proceedings”, Blanche wrote.

Merchan, who has said he is confident in his ability to remain fair and impartial, did not immediately rule on the delay request.

A message seeking comment was left with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case.

Trump was convicted in May of falsifying his business’ records to conceal a 2016 deal to pay off adult film actor Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with him. Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first campaign.

Trump says all the stories were false, the business records were not and the case was a political maneuver meant to damage his current campaign. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat.

Trump’s defense argued that the payments were indeed for legal work and so were correctly categorized.

Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge, which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.

Trump has pledged to appeal, but that cannot happen until he is sentenced.

In a previous letter, Merchan set 18 September for “the imposition of sentence or other proceedings as appropriate”.

Blanche argued in his letter seeking a delay that the quick turnaround from the scheduled immunity ruling on 16 September to sentencing two days later is unfair to Trump.

To prepare for sentencing, Blanche argued, prosecutors will be submitting their punishment recommendation while Merchan is still weighing whether to dismiss the case on immunity grounds. If Merchan rules against Trump on the dismissal request, he will need “adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options”, Blanche said.

The supreme court’s immunity decision reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal. Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.

A Russian court on Thursday sentenced the US-Russian dual national Ksenia Khavana to 12 years in prison on a treason conviction for allegedly raising money for the Ukrainian military.

The rights group the First Department said the charges stemmed from a $51 (£40) donation to a US charity that helps Ukraine.

Khavana, whom Russian authorities identify by her birth name of Karelina, was arrested in Ekaterinburg in February. She pleaded guilty in her closed trial last week, news reports said.

Khavana reportedly obtained US citizenship after marrying an American and moving to Los Angeles. She had returned to Russia to visit her family.

Russia’s federal security service said she “proactively collected money in the interests of one of the Ukrainian organisations, which was subsequently used to purchase tactical medical supplies, equipment, weapons, and ammunition for the Ukrainian armed forces”.

Since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has cracked down on dissent and passed laws that criminalise criticism of the operation in Ukraine and remarks considered to discredit the Russian military. Concern has risen since then that Russia could be targeting US nationals for arrest.

In the largest Russia-West prisoner exchange since the end of the cold war, Russia this month released the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and American corporate security executive Paul Whelan, who were imprisoned on espionage convictions, and the US-Russian dual national Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe journalist sentenced to six-and-a-half years for spreading “false information” about the Russian military.

Russia also released several prominent opposition figures who were imprisoned for criticising the Ukraine military operation.

The Nord Stream gas pipeline was blown up by a small Ukrainian sabotage team in an operation that was initially approved by Volodymyr Zelenskiy and then called off, but which went ahead anyway, according to claims in a report in the Wall Street Journal.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian president has denied the claims.

The pipeline, consisting of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, carried natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. It was damaged by explosions in September 2022, seven months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, putting it out of action and worsening an energy crisis in Europe.

Initially, many assumed Russia was to blame. Later, others suggested the CIA could have been involved. Last year, the New York Times reported that US officials had seen intelligence suggesting a “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind the explosions, while last month, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, called the explosions “an act of terrorism carried out at the obvious direction of the Americans”.

According to the WSJ, the sabotage operation involved a small sailing boat and a team of six people, a combination of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians with relevant expertise. The operation used private funding but was directed by a serving army general, who reported to Ukraine’s then commander in chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Zelenskiy approved the plan, but later backtracked after the CIA found out about it and asked Kyiv to call it off, according to the WSJ’s sources.

Nonetheless, Zaluzhnyi pressed ahead with the mission, the report claims.

Zaluzhnyi, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, told the WSJ he knew nothing about the operation and called the allegations a “mere provocation”.

Ukraine has always denied involvement in the explosion and on Thursday a spokesperson for Zelenskiy again accused Russia of carrying out the sabotage. “Such an act can only be carried out with extensive technical and financial resources … and who possessed all this at the time of the bombing? Only Russia,” Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters.

Other Ukrainian agencies also denied governmental involvement. A senior official from the SBU, Ukraine’s security service, told the WSJ that Zelenskiy “did not approve the implementation of any such actions on the territory of third countries and did not issue relevant orders”.

However, German police and prosecutors are reportedly pressing on with an investigation that is now homing in on senior Ukrainian military officials and could prove embarrassing for Berlin, given that it involves an ally launching an act of sabotage against key infrastructure.

On Wednesday it emerged that German authorities had issued a European arrest warrant for a man identified as “Volodymyr Z”, a diving instructor who lived in Poland and is alleged to have dived down to the seabed to place the devices on the pipeline.

Polish prosecutors confirmed they had received a European arrest warrant for a man suspected of involvement in the Nord Stream attack. “Ultimately, Volodymyr Z was not detained, as he left the territory of Poland at the beginning of July this year, crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the opposition CDU who serves on the foreign affairs committee of the German parliament, urged caution about the allegations raised in the WSJ report. He told German radio there were “intensive interests” in “letting all the clues lead back to Ukraine”, warning that this could be “part of the disinformation”.

He said there continued to be an “extensive amount of murkiness” surrounding the case, and that it could not be ruled out that this was a “false flag” operation – an attempt to push the blame on to Ukraine. He added that the pipelines had only been destroyed “once it was … clear that gas would never flow through them again”.

An arrest has been made over the death of the actor Matthew Perry, law enforcement officials have said.

NBC News reported that a person was arrested in southern California on Thursday, after the Los Angeles police department said in May it was investigating how the Friends star obtained prescription medication.

The Los Angeles police department did not immediately respond to a request for more information.

Perry, who had openly discussed his issues with addiction, was found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home in October 2023.

The Los Angeles medical examiner’s office determined the cause of death to be “the acute effects of ketamine”. It said drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid use disorder, were contributing factors.

An autopsy found levels of ketamine in his blood similar to levels used during general anesthesia.

“At the high levels of ketamine found in his postmortem blood specimens, the main lethal effects would be from both cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression,” the autopsy report stated. Perry’s death was ruled an accident, with no evidence of foul play.

The Los Angeles police department and Drug Enforcement Administration said in May that they were working on a joint criminal investigation into how Perry, 54, got the prescription medication, and why there was so much of the drug in his system.

The medical examiner said Perry was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy for anxiety and depression at the time of his death, but said Perry’s last treatment, one and a half weeks before his death, would not explain the level of ketamine in his blood.

Perry, had discussed his history with substance abuse, which he said began at age 14 and intensified during his role on Friends.

The medical examiner said Perry was 19 months sober at the time of his death, and said there were no illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia found at his house.

At the stroke of midnight, thousands of women holding flaming torches and blowing conch shells began to march through dark streets across the state of West Bengal.

The processions in the early hours of the morning on Thursday 15 August, India’s Independence Day, were part of several days of protest against the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor inside a hospital in the state capital, Kolkata, last week.

The women marched to chants of “Reclaim the night”, a reference to the fact that the unnamed 31-year-old doctor was attacked at night on Friday while taking a break from a long shift at the government RG Kar hospital.

The call for women to come out emerged from the anger expressed on social media, and quickly created the largest protest movement the state has seen for a long time.

The anger on the streets was about the doctor’s horrific ordeal, but it was also about the daily struggle Indian women face to live freely. Organisers said they chose Independence Day to ask: when will women gain their independence?

As the marchers made their way past homes, gated communities and apartment blocks, many inside rushed out to join the throng, undeterred by the rain. The chants were about justice, safety and respect.

Anupama Chakraborty came out with her two granddaughters, aged 11 and 13. “This has rocked the country. The girl who was brutalised was an on-duty doctor. If the government cannot ensure the safety of women at a government-run institution, what hope is there?” she told the Telegraph.

On Monday, thousands of doctors halted most services by going on strike, severely disrupting patient services across India. They are demanding justice for the victim and better security at hospitals, such as stricter controls over who enters, more CCTV cameras and more guards.

The doctor who was killed had been watching the Olympics with colleagues, had dinner and chatted to her parents before going into a seminar room to rest.

The police investigation revealed that the 33-year-old man arrested for the crime was able to access every part of the hospital even though he appeared to be an unofficial tout helping patients to get admission faster in return for money.

The Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association union, which called the strike, had called it off after a meeting on Wednesday with the federal health minister, Jagat Prakash Nadda, but many doctors continued to strike.

Distrust with the police investigation has been mounting, after the hospital initially told the parents that their daughter had committed suicide.

“What’s clear from this is that the hospital staff, along with police, wanted to cover up the real culprits,” Nazrul Islam, the former director-general of police in West Bengal, told the NDTV news channel.

Protesters were also incensed that although the hospital’s principal, Dr Sandip Ghosh, resigned after the incident, he was reinstated as principal of another hospital 24 hours later.

Responding to petitions for the case to be investigated outside the state, the Kolkata high court raised concerns about destruction of evidence and handed over the case to the federal crimes agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The young doctor’s death has struck a chord with the public, highlighting yet again the vulnerability of Indian women to violence. The shock has been heightened by the fact that she was not out late in the dark on her own but was at her place of work, filled with light and people.

In 2022, an average of 86 rapes were reported in India every day. Ever since the savage gang-rape and death of a young woman in 2012 on a bus in New Delhi, Indians have wearied of an all-too-familiar cycle: rape, outrage, promises of change, return to “normal”.

This time, neither the women and child development minister, Annapurna Devi, nor the chair of the National Commission of Women, Rekha Sharma, made a statement.

Ranjana Kumari, the director of the Centre for Social Research, said: “It makes my blood boil when I see this silence, when I read how he butchered her, this total neglect of safety at the hospital. Nothing, nothing has changed since 2012. The room where it happened didn’t even have a CCTV camera.”

• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

At the stroke of midnight, thousands of women holding flaming torches and blowing conch shells began to march through dark streets across the state of West Bengal.

The processions in the early hours of the morning on Thursday 15 August, India’s Independence Day, were part of several days of protest against the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor inside a hospital in the state capital, Kolkata, last week.

The women marched to chants of “Reclaim the night”, a reference to the fact that the unnamed 31-year-old doctor was attacked at night on Friday while taking a break from a long shift at the government RG Kar hospital.

The call for women to come out emerged from the anger expressed on social media, and quickly created the largest protest movement the state has seen for a long time.

The anger on the streets was about the doctor’s horrific ordeal, but it was also about the daily struggle Indian women face to live freely. Organisers said they chose Independence Day to ask: when will women gain their independence?

As the marchers made their way past homes, gated communities and apartment blocks, many inside rushed out to join the throng, undeterred by the rain. The chants were about justice, safety and respect.

Anupama Chakraborty came out with her two granddaughters, aged 11 and 13. “This has rocked the country. The girl who was brutalised was an on-duty doctor. If the government cannot ensure the safety of women at a government-run institution, what hope is there?” she told the Telegraph.

On Monday, thousands of doctors halted most services by going on strike, severely disrupting patient services across India. They are demanding justice for the victim and better security at hospitals, such as stricter controls over who enters, more CCTV cameras and more guards.

The doctor who was killed had been watching the Olympics with colleagues, had dinner and chatted to her parents before going into a seminar room to rest.

The police investigation revealed that the 33-year-old man arrested for the crime was able to access every part of the hospital even though he appeared to be an unofficial tout helping patients to get admission faster in return for money.

The Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association union, which called the strike, had called it off after a meeting on Wednesday with the federal health minister, Jagat Prakash Nadda, but many doctors continued to strike.

Distrust with the police investigation has been mounting, after the hospital initially told the parents that their daughter had committed suicide.

“What’s clear from this is that the hospital staff, along with police, wanted to cover up the real culprits,” Nazrul Islam, the former director-general of police in West Bengal, told the NDTV news channel.

Protesters were also incensed that although the hospital’s principal, Dr Sandip Ghosh, resigned after the incident, he was reinstated as principal of another hospital 24 hours later.

Responding to petitions for the case to be investigated outside the state, the Kolkata high court raised concerns about destruction of evidence and handed over the case to the federal crimes agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The young doctor’s death has struck a chord with the public, highlighting yet again the vulnerability of Indian women to violence. The shock has been heightened by the fact that she was not out late in the dark on her own but was at her place of work, filled with light and people.

In 2022, an average of 86 rapes were reported in India every day. Ever since the savage gang-rape and death of a young woman in 2012 on a bus in New Delhi, Indians have wearied of an all-too-familiar cycle: rape, outrage, promises of change, return to “normal”.

This time, neither the women and child development minister, Annapurna Devi, nor the chair of the National Commission of Women, Rekha Sharma, made a statement.

Ranjana Kumari, the director of the Centre for Social Research, said: “It makes my blood boil when I see this silence, when I read how he butchered her, this total neglect of safety at the hospital. Nothing, nothing has changed since 2012. The room where it happened didn’t even have a CCTV camera.”

• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Joel Souza, the director of the movie Rust, has said that although he survived being shot in the shoulder in the same on-set incident involving Alec Baldwin that killed the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and shocked the industry, a part of him feels like it did not.

“When I tell someone it ruined me, I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think,” he told Vanity Fair in a lengthy interview, speaking publicly for the first time since the tragedy.

“I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away. That stopped.”

The incident occurred during filming in New Mexico on 21 October 2021 when a prop gun held by Baldwin went off during rehearsal, firing a live round of ammunition toward the crew behind the camera. Hutchins was shot in the chest, and remnants from the ammunition lodged in Souza’s shoulder, fracturing his scapula and settling near his spine.

A three-year web of investigations and legal proceedings followed, on which Souza has stayed publicly quiet. The prop armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison for loading a live round into Baldwin’s prop gun. An assistant director, Dave Halls, accepted a plea bargain and was convicted of negligent use of a firearm for failing to check what should have been dummy rounds in Baldwin’s gun before filming.

Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter in a highly publicized trial, though the case was dismissed in July for the prosecution’s mishandling of evidence. Following the dismissal of Baldwin’s case, Gutierrez-Reed is now seeking to have her conviction overturned.

In his first comments on the legal proceedings, Souza said the verdicts made him feel “just awful in general. Everything that bubbles up from this movie is just devastating.

“I have tried to remove myself from result thinking,” he added. “From should, from deserve, from fair. Nothing that happened in any of this was fair. No one deserved this, any of it, but it happened.”

Souza described Hutchins, a friend and a collaborator, as a positive, supportive voice on set. “As a cinematographer, Halyna should have been out of my reach if this business made any sense, but it doesn’t,” he said.

“She should have been doing big studio movies. She should have outgrown a movie the size of ours. She should have been doing $100m movies, not $7.5m movies. Anybody who worked with her knew what she had and what she was.”

Souza discussed the irony that Rust was about a boy who accidentally shoots someone. Baldwin plays the child’s grandfather, a former outlaw, who comes to his rescue.

The director told Vanity Fair about creative disputes over the character with Baldwin, who also served as a producer on the film and helped secure its funding. Both men returned a year and a half after the accident to finish the movie, a decision Souza attributes to the desire to preserve and showcase Hutchins’s final work.

“Getting through it was tough,” Souza said of working with Baldwin to complete the film. “We got through it. I got the performance I wanted. We’re not friends. We’re not enemies. There’s no relationship.”

He also disputed claims that the film’s small budget or busy schedule directly contributed to the accident.

“I think it would be disingenuous and lunacy to say that people didn’t screw up things. I don’t think anyone would ever allege that anything was intentional,” he said. “But when there are matters of things like ammunition and guns and safety, you don’t fuck around there. You just don’t. And so the armorer had to answer for her role in that. And then Dave [Halls] chose to answer for that.”

Souza appeared to agree with the interviewer, Anthony Breznican, that the cause of the accident was Gutierrez-Reed loading a live round into the prop gun. “The live bullet got put in the gun,” he said. “It was a horrible mistake to make, and she’s now living with the consequences of that mistake … Everything that happened was born out of that sin, out of that moment. That single act is what put the rest of this into motion.”

The film was completed in March, with the help of the cinematographer Bianca Cline. Souza said he worked to include as much of Hutchins’s work as possible in the final movie, excluding the scene they were filming during the accident, which has been cut.

“Her last work matters,” he said. “People seeing her last work matters.”

Police in Catalonia have arrested four people after Mounir Nasraoui, the father of the Barcelona and Spain winger Lamine Yamal, was stabbed in a car park in Rocafonda, near Barcelona.

Nasraoui was taken to a nearby hospital late on Wednesday after being stabbed multiple times, police told the Guardian. He remains in hospital in a serious but stable condition. On Thursday afternoon Nasraoui posted on social media for the first time since the incident, writing: “Thank you all for your encouragement, I’m better now, a big hug to everyone”.

Police said they made three arrests on Wednesday evening and one on Thursday. While they initially said those arrested would face charges of attempted homicide, on Thursday officials revealed the investigation remains open and that it was too early to confirm whether charges would be laid.

Police said the stabbing had followed an argument between Nasraoui and several others in Rocafonda. The Spanish newspaper El País reported that the roots of the altercation traced back to hours earlier, when Nasraoui was sprayed with water from a balcony above as he walked his dog. On Thursday several videos circulating on social media appeared to show Nasraoui arguing with several people before local police intervened.

The incident comes one month after Nasraoui, 35, made headlines across Spain as he cheered on his son’s dazzling turn at the recent Euro 2024.

While the 17-year-old was instrumental in helping Spain clinch their record fourth European Championship title, his father was responsible for one of the most viral moments of the tournament, after he posted a long-forgotten photo on social media showing Lionel Messi posing for photos with Lamine Yamal as a baby.

The tournament also thrust the neighbourhood of Rocafonda, located in the Catalan town of Mataró, into the spotlight. As Lamine Yamal became the youngest goalscorer in the tournament’s history, he celebrated by signalling 304 – the last three digits of the diverse, working-class neighbourhood’s postcode – with his hands.

Police said the stabbing had followed an argument between Nasraoui and several others in Rocafonda. The Spanish newspaper El País reported that the roots of the altercation traced back to hours earlier, when Nasraoui was sprayed with water from a balcony above as he walked his dog.

Spanish media were swift to point out this was not the first time Nasraoui had been embroiled in confrontation. Last year he was fined €546 by a court in Mataró after he insulted and threw eggs at a tent set up to rally votes for the far-right Vox party.

When the Guardian visited Rocafonda last month, however, several people defended Nasraoui’s actions, saying the anti-immigrant party had set up the tent with the aim of eliciting a reaction in a neighbourhood where approximately a third of residents were born abroad. “They had come here to get a rise out of people,” said Juan Carlos Serrano Muñoz, the owner of the small El Cordobés bar where Lamine Yamal and his father regularly stopped in for breakfast before making the 90-minute train journey to training in Barcelona. “And Nasraoui] got annoyed, asking: ‘What are you doing coming here? You’re just here to provoke.’”

An outbreak in Africa of mpox, the disease formerly known as monkeypox, resembles the early days of HIV, scientists have said, as the World Health Organization declared it a public health emergency.

The declaration must accelerate access to testing, vaccines and therapeutic drugs in the affected areas, medical experts urged, and kickstart campaigns to reduce stigma surrounding the virus.

More resources for research were also vital, they said, with “massive unknowns” about a new variant spreading between people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As of 4 August, there had been 38,465 cases of mpox and 1,456 deaths in Africa since January 2022, including more than 14,000 cases and 524 deaths in the DRC alone this year.

These included clades I and II of the virus, as well as a new type, clade Ib – an offshoot of clade I, which appears to be driving the outbreak in the DRC and neighbouring countries, and to which children appear particularly vulnerable.

The World Health Organization said the outbreak was serious enough to declare a “public health emergency of international concern”, the category used in the past for Ebola outbreaks, Covid-19 and a 2022 mpox surge in Europe.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, said the situation was “very worrying” and warranted the “highest level of alarm under international health law”. He highlighted the emergence of clade Ib in the east of the DRC and its detection in neighbouring countries.

The WHO has released $1.5m from its contingency fund and plans to release more, he said, calling for donors to step up to fund the rest of the $15m needed for its efforts in the region.

Trudie Lang, a professor of global health research at Oxford University, said: “I have heard so many people refer to this as being very similar to the early days of HIV.”

She said this was particularly the case because the virus appeared to be spreading via sexual networks, with “vulnerable, young, exploited sex workers” at high risk. A “high level of stigma” would require public health campaigns to ensure people understood and sought treatment.

While data has yet to be analysed and published, Lang said the frontline teams she spoke to reported a high number of pregnancy losses due to the virus, and babies being born with mpox lesions due to transmission in the womb. There were “massive unknowns”, she said, including the number of cases outside hospitals.

Lang said: “What I’m truly worried about is the amount of cases that are not severe. If people have got a more mild infection that is potentially hidden, especially if it’s a sexually transmitted genital infection, they can be walking around with it.

“The big question that we’ve got is when is it most infectious, and when is it being transmitted?”

Lang added that if the virus arrived in Europe or the US, it would probably be easily contained with vaccination, as in the 2022 mpox outbreak. “What worries me is that that will happen very fast in Europe, but not […] in these really impoverished areas in Africa.”

Dr Ayoade Alakija, the chair of Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance and of the diagnostics non-profit organisation Find, said if the outbreak was in Europe, mpox would have already been considered a major international health emergency. The declaration, she said, “should focus minds and loosen purse strings so that the response recovers from a sluggish start”.

“There is an urgent need for more in-depth investigation to better understand mpox transmission dynamics to guide controls and response plans, as well as enhanced surveillance and equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments for all affected populations. Most vaccines and treatments have been pre-ordered by rich countries and as yet only one diagnostic test exists,” said Alakija.

“Without fair access to testing, it is also unclear how viruses like HIV may impact the severity and transmission of mpox. Not focusing on tackling the virus in the DRC has led almost inevitably to spillover to neighbouring countries and the longer action is delayed, the more likely it will spread in Africa and beyond.”

The public health agency Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) had already announced on Tuesday that mpox was a public health emergency. Dr Jean Kaseya, the organisation’s director general, said the declaration was “not merely a formality” but “a clarion call to action” and warranted proactive and aggressive efforts to contain and eliminate the virus.

Responding to that announcement, Dr Boghuma Titanji, an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University in Atlanta in the US, said she hoped the declaration would prompt African governments to allocate funds to fight the outbreak.

The African Union approved $10.4m (£8m) for Africa CDC’s response at the beginning of August, but Kaseya has suggested the continent will need about $4bn.

A US foundation associated with oil company Shell has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to religious right and conservative organizations, many of which deny that climate change is a crisis, tax records reveal.

Fourteen of those groups are on the advisory board of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint proposing radical changes to the federal government, including severely limiting the Environment Protection Agency.

Shell USA Company Foundation sent $544,010 between 2013 and 2022 to organizations that broadly share an agenda of building conservative power, including advocating against LGBTQ+ rights, restricting access to abortions, creating school lesson plans that downplay climate change and drafting a suite of policies aimed at overhauling the federal government.

Donees include the Heartland Institute, a longtime purveyor of climate disinformation, which published a video on YouTube in May stating incorrectly that “the scientific data continue to show there is no climate crisis”. Other groups that have received donations include the American Family Association, which claims that the “climate change agenda is an attack on God’s creation”, as well as the Heritage Foundation, the lead organization behind Project 2025.

“Shell has every reason to want to maintain close relationships with organizations that wield outsize political influence and just happen to reliably support the interests of the fossil fuel industry,” said Adrian Bardon, a professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University who has studied the religious right and climate denialism.

The Shell USA Company Foundation helps employees boost their charitable giving to nonprofits. A Shell USA spokesperson wrote via email that the company’s workers make the initial decision to donate “to non-profit (tax exempt) organizations of their choice”.

According to the company’s online donation portal, Shell will match individual donations up to $7,500. The spokesperson confirmed that the foundation “matches employee gifts to such qualified 501(c)(3) nonprofit agencies”, but did not respond to specific inquiries about which organizations, if any, received matching donations from the foundation.

Tax records from 2022 show that the president of the foundation was Gretchen Watkins, the current president of Shell USA. But the foundation itself “does not endorse any organizations” and “giving is a personal decision not directed by the company”, the spokesperson added.

Shell is a multinational oil and gas producer headquartered in London that last year reported adjusted earnings of $28.25bn. Its American subsidiary, Shell USA, has for decades operated Shell USA Company Foundation, which makes grants to American non-profits.

Because the foundation itself is a registered non-profit, it must file public returns each year with the IRS, which contain detailed information about the organizations to which it donates. The vast majority of these non-profits have no explicit political focus. They include YMCAs, youth groups, local churches, schools and mainstream charities such as Oxfam and United Way.

But an analysis by the Guardian and DeSmog found at least 21 groups supported by Shell’s foundation that are aggressively opposed to progressive cultural and economic change, including addressing the crisis of global heating.

“They’re all certainly working in the rightwing policy and propaganda space,” said Peter Montgomery, research director at the progressive non-profit organization People for the American Way. “That includes the anti-regulation corporate right and the culture warriors of the religious right.”

Since 2013, the Shell foundation sent $59,264 to the American Family Association, another Project 2025 adviser and an organization designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center due in part to its long history of aggressive anti-gay activism. In a post from 2022, the conservative Christian organization referred to “the unproven hypothesis of man-made, catastrophic climate change”.

Shell’s foundation contributed $23,321 to the Heritage Foundation, which published the Project 2025 document known as Mandate for Leadership. The conservative thinktank has deep ties to Donald Trump and a long history of attacking the scientific consensus on climate change. Last year, it published a commentary on its website stating that “climate change models are poor predictors of warming”.

Shell’s foundation also donated $58,002 to Alliance Defending Freedom, another Project 2025 adviser. It’s a conservative Christian legal activist group that claims credit for helping overturn Roe v Wade, explaining that its “attorneys and staff were proud to be involved from the very beginning”.

Shell’s foundation also reported donations worth $105,748 to Hillsdale College, a private conservative Christian school in Michigan that’s listed as an advisory board member of Project 2025 and that has hosted prominent climate skeptics.

The American Family Association, the Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom and Hillsdale College did not respond to requests for comment.

Other donees associated with Project 2025 include the American Center for Law and Justice ($14,321), the Claremont Institute ($1,975), Discovery Institute ($3,300), the Family Research Council ($3,399), First Liberty Institute ($19,100), the Leadership Institute ($7,125), the Media Research Center ($2,528), Students for Life of America ($1,020), the Heartland Institute ($5,000) and the Texas Public Policy Foundation ($8,275).

The Shell USA Foundation also donated to religious right organizations that aren’t directly involved with Project 2025, including $79,874 to Focus on the Family, an anti-abortion group that’s called climate change “an unproven theory”. When reached for comment, Gary Schneeberger, a spokesperson for the organization, wrote: “We consider it a best practice for our ministry and, in fact, a promise to our donors that we never share information about their donations with anyone.”

Another anti-abortion group called Texas Right to Life, which has previously argued that climate change is “arguably, nonexistent”, received $65,103 from the foundation. A spokesperson for the group wrote in an email that “the gifts that came from Shell were matched gifts from its employees”.

Shell’s foundation also sent $8,541 to the Prager University Foundation, which is associated with the rightwing media outlet PragerU. Known for producing conservative videos targeting young people with messages downplaying the climate crisis, its content has been approved for classrooms in several states.

Other religious right donees include Judicial Watch ($32,894), the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention ($37,420), the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty ($2,100) and the Susan B Anthony List ($5,700).

“In the absence of real transparency, one can only speculate on the motives behind these donations,” Bardon said. But the contributions help Shell maintain its place within a broader conservative coalition, he argued. “So if something comes up that bothers me, it’s going to bother you, too, because we’re on the same team,” he said.

This article is co-published with DeSmog

The Australian Olympic Committee has condemned an anonymous online petition that repeats falsehoods about how B-girl Rachael “Raygun” Gunn was selected to compete at the Paris Games.

Matt Carroll, the chief executive of the AOC, said the petition – which also criticised Australia’s chef de mission, Anna Meares – was “disgraceful” and amounted to bullying and harassment.

Gunn, a 36-year-old university lecturer, saw her performance in the Olympic breaking event attract widespread attention on social media. She failed to receive a single point from the judges and was knocked out at the round-robin stage.

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The petition, which has amassed more than 45,000 signatures, alleged Gunn had “manipulated” the selection process to her own advantage, and questioned whether Gunn’s husband was part of the selection panel.

But Carroll said the petition contained numerous “disgraceful” falsehoods and was designed to “engender hatred” towards Gunn, who he said was selected in a transparent and independent process. He said he had written to change.org “demanding” the petition be withdrawn immediately.

“It is disgraceful that these falsehoods concocted by an anonymous person can be published in this way. It amounts to bullying and harassment and is defamatory,” Carroll said in a statement.

“It’s important that the community understands the facts and that people do not form opinions based on malicious untruths and misinformation.”

The committee’s statement debunked a number of claims made in the petition, outlining that the judging panel in the qualifying event that Gunn won consisted of nine independent international judges. It also stated that Gunn held no position with the bodies that conducted the event, AUSBreaking or DanceSport Australia.

Gunn’s husband, Samuel Free – who is a professional breakdancer and Gunn’s coach – also held no position with either body and was not a judge at the qualifying event, the statement said.

It also outlined that Gunn was legitimately nominated after winning the qualifying event and there were no appeals from the other competitors, and that Meares was not involved in the qualifying event nor the nomination of athletes.

“The AOC is particularly offended by the affront to our Chef de Mission, Anna Meares. The Australian Team Chef de Mission played no role in the qualification events nor the nomination of athletes to the AOC Selection Committee, of which the Chef and I are members.”

Earlier in the week, Meares issued an impassioned defence of Gunn, hitting out at “keyboard warriors” and saying Gunn was the “best [female breaking competitor] that we have for Australia”.

Members of Australia’s breaking community have described Gunn as a respected member of the local scene, but said her performance at the Olympics doesn’t represent the standard of breaking in Australia.

One member said there were a number of technical factors that stopped many of Australia’s best B-girls from attending the qualifying event for the Olympics.