Multiple Israeli airstrikes killed at least three dozen Palestinians in southern Gaza, health workers said Saturday, as officials including a Hamas delegation gathered for ceasefire talks in Egypt.

Among the dead were 11 members of a family, including two children, after an airstrike hit their home in Khan Younis, according to Nasser hospital.

The hospital received 33 bodies from three strikes in and around the city. Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said it received three bodies from another strike.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.

First responders also recovered 16 bodies from the Hamad City area of Khan Younis after a partial pullout of Israeli forces, 10 bodies from a residential block west of Khan Younis and two further south in Rafah. The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear, but the areas were repeatedly bombed by the Israeli military over the past week. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies.

Some residents returned to Hamad City, crunching on rubble as they walked between destroyed apartment buildings. One multi-story building’s entire wall was gone, its rooms framing residents picking through debris.

“There is nothing, no apartment, no furniture, no homes, only destruction,” said one woman, Neveen Kheder. “We are dying slowly. You know what, if they gave a mercy bullet it would be better than what is happening to us.”

The Israeli military announced on Saturday the deaths of three reserve officers killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip the previous day.

The officers, two major generals and a lieutenant colonel, were killed in central Gaza, the military said, without giving further details.

In recent weeks, Israeli forces have been engaged in fierce fighting with Palestinian militants in central Gaza, particularly in the Deir el-Balah area.

More than 100 of the hostages Hamas took during its surprise attack on Israel on 7 October were released during a ceasefire last year, but Hamas is still believed to be holding about 110. Israeli authorities estimate about a third of those are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry said on Saturday that 69 dead and 212 wounded had been brought to hospitals across the strip over the past 24 hours.

Experts were meeting on Saturday on technical issues before Sunday’s high-level talks in Cairo on a possible ceasefire mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar. CIA director William Burns, Qatar’s foreign minister and Egypt’s spy chief were meeting on Saturday evening in Cairo, according to an Egyptian official with direct knowledge of the talks.

A Hamas delegation arrived on Saturday in Cairo to meet Egyptian and Qatari officials, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawy told the AP. He stressed that Hamas will not take part directly in Sunday’s talks but will be briefed by Egypt and Qatar.

An Israeli delegation that arrived on Thursday included the heads of the Mossad foreign intelligence service and Shin Bet security service and tMaj Gen Eliezer Toledano.

The CIA director and Brett McGurk, a senior adviser to president Joe Biden on the Middle East, are leading the US side of negotiations amid major differences between Israel and Hamas over Israel’s insistence that it maintains forces in two strategic corridors in Gaza.

The US has been pushing a proposal that aims at closing the gaps between Israel and Hamas as fears grow over a wider regional war after the recent targeted killings of leaders of the militant Hamas and Hezbollah groups, both blamed on Israel.

The chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen CQ Brown Jr would be visiting Egypt, Jordan and Israel over the next few days to “stress the importance of deterring further escalation of hostilities,” a statement said.

Biden called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to stress the urgency of reaching a deal and discussed developments with the leaders of Qatar and Egypt on Friday.

A major impasse has been the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt and the Netzarim east-west corridor across the territory. Netanyahu has insisted that Israel retain control of the corridors to prevent smuggling and catch militants.

Merdawy said Hamas’s position had not changed from accepting an earlier draft that would include the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed more “retribution” against Russia while Kyiv and Moscow announced the exchange of 230 prisoners just over two weeks into Ukraine’s surprise offensive on the Kursk region. Zelenskiy published a video of him standing in a forested area said to be near where Ukraine launched its incursion into Russia on 6 August. “What the enemy brought to our land has now returned to its home,” he said, adding that Russia would “know what retribution is”. Russia and Ukraine exchanged 115 prisoners of war from each side after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) acted as an intermediary. It is the first such exchange since Ukraine launched its Kursk raid. Russia’s defence ministry said the Russian servicemen swapped were captured in the Kursk region.

• Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukraine’s operation in Kursk was a preventive strike to stop Russian attacks in the north and towards the regional city of Sumy. He told a news conference in Kyiv that the Kursk operation was difficult but he viewed its progress positively.

• Ukraine said five people were killed in a Russian strike on a residential area of the eastern city of Kostyantynivka, near the front line in the Donetsk region, on Saturday. Agence France-Presse reported seeing a young boy and his dog walk up to a body, covered by a sheet, on the side of the road and watch as rescuers rushed to remove it.Ukraine has also carried out some evacuations from the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk amid fears it will fall to advancing Russian forces.

• Five civilians were killed and 12 injured in Ukrainian shelling of the town of Rakitnoye in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, the regional governor said on Sunday. Among the injured were three children, Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram. The reports could not be independently verified. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Gladkov said earlier that two people were wounded in a drone attack in the region.

• Ukraine wants permission from the west to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles to destroy targets deep inside Russia, believing this could force Moscow into negotiating an end to the fighting. Senior figures in Kyiv have suggested that using the Anglo-French weapons in a “demonstration attack” will show the Kremlin that military sites near the capital itself could be vulnerable to direct strikes, reports Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv.

• Five drones were downed over the Voronezh region in Russia’s south-west, bordering Ukraine, wounding two people, regional governor Aleksandr Gusev said. In the Bryansk region, local authorities did not report any casualties after a drone was intercepted. In the Kursk region, regional governor Alexei Smirnov said on Saturday that three missiles were shot down overnight and another four on Saturday morning.

• Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate claimed to have blown up a warehouse storing 5,000 tonnes of ammunition in the Voronezh region’s Ostrogozhsky district. News outlet Astra published videos appearing to show explosions at the ammunition depot after being hit by a drone. The videos could not be independently verified. The Voronezh governor said a state of emergency was declared in the Ostrogozhsk district after drone strikes, with 200 people evacuated from one village.

• Ukraine marked its 33rd independence day, setting the usual fireworks, parades and concerts aside to commemorate thousands of civilians and soldiers killed in the war with Russia. Social media was flooded with messages of gratitude and support as Ukrainians greeted each other from around the country and thanked soldiers who are on the front lines. “Independence is the silence we experience when we lose our people,” Zelenskiy declared to the nation in a video posted on Telegram. “Independence descends into the shelter during an air raid, only to endure and rise again and again to tell the enemy: ‘You will achieve nothing.’” In the capital, Kyiv, people paraded in “vyshyvankas”, colourful festive shirts. Some posed for pictures in front of the country’s blue-and-yellow flag and an “I Love Ukraine” sign that had been placed near a makeshift memorial to fallen soldiers.

• Zelenskiy promoted his top army commander to a four-star general, his office said on Saturday, just weeks after Kyiv’s incursion into Kursk. Commander-in-Chief Oleksander Syrskyi, 59, who had held the rank of colonel general, was promoted to a general, the decree published on the presidential website said. Syrskyi, born in 1965 in Russia’s Vladimir region, has lived in Ukraine since the 1980s.

Ukraine wants permission from the west to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles to destroy targets deep inside Russia, believing this could force Moscow into negotiating an end to the fighting.

Senior figures in Kyiv have suggested that using the Anglo-French weapons in a “demonstration attack” will show the Kremlin that military sites near the capital itself could be vulnerable to direct strikes.

The thinking, according to a senior government official, is that Russia will consider negotiating only if it believes Ukraine had the ability “to threaten Moscow and St Petersburg”. This is a high-risk strategy, however, and does not so far have the support of the US.

Ukraine has been lobbying for months to be allowed to use Storm Shadow against targets inside Russia, but with little success. Nevertheless, as its army struggles on the eastern front, there is a growing belief that its best hope lies in counter-attack.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking on the country’s independence day, said Kyiv had no choice but to retaliate against Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched “913 days ago” in February 2022 – and in particular against Moscow’s use of aerial bombs and ballistic missiles against civilians.

“Our enemy will also know what the Ukrainian retaliation means,” the president said. “Worthy, symmetrical and long-range. They will know that, sooner or later, a Ukrainian response will reach any point in the Russian Federation that is a source of danger to the life of our state and our people.”

Kyiv and other major cities in Ukraine are routinely targeted by Russian missiles and drones. This week, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the chief of the country’s military, said that since the start of the year, Moscow had attacked Ukraine with 9,590 missiles and 13,997 drones, hitting 6,203 civilian targets and 5,676 military ones.

Earlier this month, Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into Kursk province and now claims control of 1,250 sq km (483 square miles) of Russian territory, though its pace of advance slowed last week. At the same time, Kyiv’s forces have been losing ground near Pokrovsk in the Donbas, where the Russian invaders are now within seven miles of the city, which is a key road and rail hub.

Storm Shadow missiles were developed primarily by an Anglo-French collaboration and are made by European joint venture MBDA, which also has an Italian partner. But because some of its components are supplied by the US, the White House also has to agree to its use inside Russia. It has so far refused to do so, fearing an escalation of the conflict.

Zelenskiy has argued that the aftermath of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia shows that Kremlin warnings about red lines are exaggerated. Moscow has largely downplayed the attack: leaders barely refer to it in public and describe their response as a “counter-terrorism operation”.

US officials told news website Politico that they believed Storm Shadow and other long-range missiles might not be accurate enough over great distances, and that the Russian jet fighters that launched glide bombs into Ukrainian frontline areas were largely based out of range of the missiles, as a precaution.

Ukraine also launched a daring series of drone attacks into Russia last week, including an attack on Moscow on Wednesday and on the Marinovka airbase near Volvograd on Thursday, where Su-34 and Su-35 jets that have bombed Ukraine have been based.

Sources in Kyiv said drone operations could cost “as little as $1m a time”, and hoped they could destroy some of Russia’s estimated 300 combat aircraft in an attempt to reduce the number of attacks from glide bombs. Estimates vary but a single Su-34 or Su-35 plane may cost as much as $50m.

Although it can be argued that the drone attacks are a substitute, one strand of thinking in Kyiv is that by showing Russia it can strike deep inside the country with missiles, it could prompt a reassessment in the Kremlin. However, few believe President Vladimir Putin is interested in calling a halt.

John Foreman, a former UK defence attache to Russia and Ukraine, said Kyiv “should not get sucked into a sideshow” by fixating on possible use of Storm Shadow and should instead focus on defending the Donbas.

Russia is considered to believe it can break Ukraine though attrition, and is estimated by Kyiv to have about 600,000 troops inside the country. Capturing Pokrovsk in the Donbas ahead of the US presidential election in November would be designed to demonstrate to a new occupant of the White House that Ukraine was fighting a losing battle.

Ukraine is believed to have been given the export version of Storm Shadow (known as Scalp in France) by London and Paris. These missiles have a range of about 190 miles, though both the UK and France have domestic versions with a range double that. Moscow lies about 300 miles from Ukraine’s northern border.

It is reported that the UK had not applied formally to the US for permission to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow inside Russia. The Ministry of Defence declined to comment on this, and instead repeated previous statements about the UK believing Ukraine has a “clear right of self-defence”.

Earlier, prime minister Keir Starmer said the UK would back Ukraine “today and always” as he marked the 33rd anniversary of the country’s independence from the former Soviet Union. “We are with you for as long as it takes,” he added.

Russia and Ukraine also exchanged more than 100 prisoners of war. Ukraine said on Saturday that the 115 servicemen who were freed were conscripts, many of whom were taken prisoner in the first months of the invasion. About 50 soldiers captured at the steelworks in Mariupol were also included. The Russian defence ministry said the 115 Russian soldiers had been captured in the Kursk region where Ukrainian forces launched their surprise offensive two weeks ago. The ministry said the soldiers were currently in Belarus, but would be taken to Russia for medical treatment.

A man suspected of a stabbing rampage in the western German city of Solingen has been taken into police custody, a state official told German television on Saturday, some 24 hours after the attack that killed three people.

North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister, Herbert Reul, told the ARD broadcaster that authorities spent the day following a “hot lead” that led to the arrest.

Police spent the day conducting a manhunt, making two arrests earlier that were likely not the perpetrator, Reul said.

“The real suspect is the one that we’ve arrested just now,” he said. The individual was being questioned and evidence was seized, he said.

Police declined to immediately comment.

Earlier, police in Germany had said they did not rule out a “terrorist motive” after the mass stabbing at a festival on Friday night.

At a press briefing on Saturday, police said they had detained a 15-year-old at his parents’ home in the early hours of Saturday that prosecutors said was on suspicion of failing to report a crime. Public prosecutor Markus Caspers said of the 15-year-old that he was alleged to have spoken to the perpetrator “shortly before the crime”.

A second arrest was made following a police operation at a home for refugees in Solingen, a police spokesperson said. They said they could not provide any more details on the individual or the connection to the alleged incident.

Caspers said that a “terrorist motive” could not be excluded, partly because the alleged assailant did not appear to know his victims.

A woman, 56, and two men, 56 and 67, all from the region, were killed in the attack on Friday night, authorities said. A further eight people were injured, four of them seriously.

Police found at least one weapon that may have been used in the alleged assault and are analysing it for DNA traces. They said they had had no indication in the run-up to the festival that there was a security threat.

People began leaving flower bouquets and candles in tribute to the victims at the site of the attack in the centre of Solingen.

Authorities set up a website for people to send in footage or information about the alleged attack as well as a telephone hotline, and urged witnesses not to post relevant videos directly to social media.

The alleged assailant used a knife to attack people apparently at random in a crowd of thousands gathered for a festival at the central square in Solingen on Friday night. The frenzied assault, which happened at a festival of diversity during celebrations to mark the city’s 650th anniversary, lasted only minutes, witnesses said.

Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who has been under pressure to fight a rise in knife violence in cities, said on Saturday that he was “shocked” by the “terrible event” and stood with the terrorised city in mourning the victims.

“I wish the injured a speedy recovery,” he said in a post on X. “The perpetrator must be caught quickly and punished to the full extent of the law.”

The authorities deployed a “large contingent”, including helicopters, to search for the male assailant who allegedly fled the scene, and established road checkpoints.

Reul, the interior minister of Germany’s most populous region, warned earlier against speculation about the alleged perpetrator’s background. “You don’t want to believe what you see here at the crime scene. It’s upsetting,” Reul said.

“Out of nowhere, someone stabs people indiscriminately. We can’t say anything about the person or the motive yet,” he said of the allegations.

The mass stabbing happened at a festival that was supposed to run through to Sunday, drawing up to 25,000 people each day with a programme including live bands, cabaret acts, acrobats and entertainment for children. The rest of the festival has now been cancelled, as were weekend festivities in nearby towns.

A large crowd had gathered around a stage with live music on the Fronhof market square in the city centre. Most of those injured are believed to have been attacked directly in front of the stage, the daily newspaper Bild reported, adding that the suspect appeared to target the throats of his victims.

The German DJ Topic, who is from Solingen, said in a post on Instagram he was performing on the stage when security personnel approached him and informed him of the attack.

He was asked to continue his set “to avoid causing a mass panic”, he said. “So I kept playing even though it was incredibly hard.” He said he was told to stop 10-15 minutes later, and “since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled above us,” he wrote.

“I still can’t believe it … this was supposed to be a free festival for everyone. Really close friends of mine were there with their small kids,” he said in a video recorded in his childhood bedroom. “What’s happening to this world … my thoughts are with all the victims.”

Sascha Mosig, who was on his first night on the job for a security firm at the festival, said he suddenly saw a group of people running in his direction, some of them covered in blood. One screamed, “Knife.”

The 37-year-old told weekly newspaper Die Zeit that he went to the main square to help and saw lifeless bodies on the ground and people in shock.

“Blood was everywhere,” he said. “You know these images from war. This was one.”

Another witness, Lars Breitzke, told the local newspaper Solinger Tageblatt that he was a few metres from the attack, not far from the stage, and “understood from the expression on the singer’s face that something was wrong”.

“And then, a metre away from me, a person fell,” said Breitzke, who at first thought it was someone who was drunk. But when he turned around, he saw other people lying on the ground and several pools of blood, he added.

Solingen has about 160,000 inhabitants and is located near the bigger cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf.

Germany has experienced a series of knife attacks over the past 12 months, with Faeser pledging earlier this month to crack down on knife crime with a reformed weapons law.

A man suspected of killing three and injuring eight more in the city of Solingen was arrested late on Saturday, according to regional interior minister Herbert Reul, following Friday night’s attack at a festival.

Here is what we know so far:

• North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister, Herbert Reul, told the ARD broadcaster that authorities spent the day following a “hot lead” that led to the latest arrest, the third police have made.

• Police had previously made two arrests that were likely not the perpetrator, Reul said. “The real suspect is the one that we’ve arrested just now,” he said. The individual was being questioned and evidence was seized, he said. Police declined to immediately comment.

• Terrorism has not been ruled out as a motive. The prosecutor Markus Caspers said police were looking at terror as a possibility, saying there was no other obvious motive and that the alleged attacker appeared to be unknown to the victims.

• The Islamic State (IS) group on Saturday claimed responsibility for the Solingen stabbings but did not immediately provide any evidence for its assertion. Accounts claiming to speak for IS have falsely claimed responsibility for atrocities in the past.

• Earlier, police detained a 15-year-old at his parents’ home in the early hours of Saturday, which prosecutors said was on suspicion of failing to report a crime. Public prosecutor Markus Caspers said of the 15-year-old that he was alleged to have spoken to the perpetrator “shortly before the crime”.

• A second arrest was made following a police operation at a home for refugees in Solingen, a police spokesperson said. They said they could not provide any more details on the individual or the connection to the alleged incident.

• Police have found at least one weapon that may have been used in the alleged assault and are analysing it for DNA traces. They said they had had no indication in the run-up to the festival that there was a security threat.

• Three people – two men, aged 67 and 56, and a woman, 56 – were killed on Friday night during a festival of diversity to mark the city of Solingen’s 650th anniversary, which began on Friday and was supposed to run through to Sunday. Eight others were injured, of whom four are fighting for their lives, police said.

Pavel Durov, billionaire co-founder and chief executive of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV said, citing an unnamed source.

Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France.

The 39-year-old is understood to have been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at about 8pm local time (6pm GMT).

Durov was expected to appear in court on Sunday.

The Russia-born entrepreneur lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates.

Durov, who is estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of $15.5bn (£12bn), left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Russia’s embassy in France is taking “immediate steps” to clarify the situation.

Citing a representative from the Russian embassy in France, TASS reported there had been no appeal from Durov’s team to the embassy, but that it was proactively taking “immediate” steps.

Durov and his brother Nikolai founded the messaging app in 2013 and it has about 900 million active users.

Telegram offers end-to-end encrypted messaging and users can also set up “channels” to disseminate information quickly to followers.

Pavel Durov, billionaire co-founder and chief executive of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV said, citing an unnamed source.

Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France.

The 39-year-old is understood to have been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at about 8pm local time (6pm GMT).

Durov was expected to appear in court on Sunday.

The Russia-born entrepreneur lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates.

Durov, who is estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of $15.5bn (£12bn), left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Russia’s embassy in France is taking “immediate steps” to clarify the situation.

Citing a representative from the Russian embassy in France, TASS reported there had been no appeal from Durov’s team to the embassy, but that it was proactively taking “immediate” steps.

Durov and his brother Nikolai founded the messaging app in 2013 and it has about 900 million active users.

Telegram offers end-to-end encrypted messaging and users can also set up “channels” to disseminate information quickly to followers.

Nasa has decided that the two astronauts currently stuck on the International Space Station will return next February on a SpaceX-crewed Dragon flight where two seats have been made available for Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore.

Space agency officials said there was “too much uncertainty” for the astronauts to return on the craft that brought them to the space station, Boeing’s Starliner, which has had problems after the capsule sprang small leaks and some of its thrusters failed.

The announcement comes after an “agency-level review” on Saturday that included Bill Nelson, the agency administrator.

“Nasa has decided that Butch and Suni will return with [SpaceX’s] Crew-9 next February, and that Starliner will return uncrewed,” Nelson said in a press conference on Saturday.

“I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with Nasa to get the necessary data to make this decision. We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS,” he added.

“Space flight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine, and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine, and so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety,” Nelson continued.

Williams and Wilmore, two veteran astronauts, arrived at the ISS on 6 June as part of a crucial test by Starliner before it can receive Nasa approval for routine flights. However, the planned eight-day mission turned into a months-long stay for Williams and Wilmore after technical issues emerged, including reaction control thrusters that failed during Starliner’s first docking attempt.

Four of the spacecraft’s five failed thrusters have since reactivated in orbit, the Associated Press reports, adding that the thrusters are crucial for the spacecraft to back away from the ISS after undocking and for maintaining the capsule in proper position for the deorbit.

On 2 August, Boeing said in a blog post that it had conducted “extensive testing of its propulsion system in space and on the ground”. The embattled manufacturer, which has struggled to compete with SpaceX and has taken in $1.6bn in losses on the Starliner program, added: “The testing has confirmed 27 of 28 RCS [reaction control system] thrusters are healthy and back to full operational capability. Starliner’s propulsion system also maintains redundancy and the helium levels remain stable.”

Describing the decision to bring the Starliner back uncrewed in September, Steve Stich, program manager for Nasa’s commercial crew program, said on Saturday: “The bottom line relative to bringing Starliner back is … there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters.

“If we had a model, if we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the de-orbit burn and through the separation sequence, I think we would have taken a different course of action, but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for thruster failures with a crew on board … it was just too much risk with the crew,” Stich added.

As they wait on the ISS to join the SpaceX crew next February, Williams and Wilmore will do science station maintenance, among other research duties, according to Dana Weigel, manager of Nasa’s ISS program.

“They’ll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo mission,” Weigel said on Saturday, referring to the commercial resupply service mission to the ISS.

“We may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition. Since they’ve been up there, they’ve been a welcome set of helping hands. They’ve already done about 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments, and they’ve helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we’ve had on board,” she added.

In response to a question on how Nasa plans to rebuild trust with Boeing, Nasa associate administrator Jim Free replied: “I don’t think it’s a trust issue at all. I don’t think we’re rebuilding trust. I think we’re looking at the data, and we view the data and the uncertainty that’s there differently than Boeing does. It’s not a matter of trust. It’s our technical expertise and our experience that we have to balance.”

Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of Nasa’s space operations mission directorate, acknowledged the “tense discussions” that Nasa has had with Boeing before going on to say: “People have emotional investment in either option and that gives you a healthy discourse. But after that, you have to do some work to to keep your team together, to keep your team restored and ready for the next issue and I’ll acknowledge that we have some work to do there.”

According to Nasa, SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission will launch no earlier than 24 September.

Currently, Nasa and SpaceX are working on several items prior to launch including seat reconfiguration on the Crew-9 Dragon, in addition to adjusting the manifest to carry additional cargo and personal effects, as well as Dragon-specific spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams.

Multiple Israeli airstrikes killed at least three dozen Palestinians in southern Gaza, health workers said Saturday, as officials including a Hamas delegation gathered for ceasefire talks in Egypt.

Among the dead were 11 members of a family, including two children, after an airstrike hit their home in Khan Younis, according to Nasser hospital.

The hospital received 33 bodies from three strikes in and around the city. Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said it received three bodies from another strike.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.

First responders also recovered 16 bodies from the Hamad City area of Khan Younis after a partial pullout of Israeli forces, 10 bodies from a residential block west of Khan Younis and two further south in Rafah. The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear, but the areas were repeatedly bombed by the Israeli military over the past week. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies.

Some residents returned to Hamad City, crunching on rubble as they walked between destroyed apartment buildings. One multi-story building’s entire wall was gone, its rooms framing residents picking through debris.

“There is nothing, no apartment, no furniture, no homes, only destruction,” said one woman, Neveen Kheder. “We are dying slowly. You know what, if they gave a mercy bullet it would be better than what is happening to us.”

The Israeli military announced on Saturday the deaths of three reserve officers killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip the previous day.

The officers, two major generals and a lieutenant colonel, were killed in central Gaza, the military said, without giving further details.

In recent weeks, Israeli forces have been engaged in fierce fighting with Palestinian militants in central Gaza, particularly in the Deir el-Balah area.

More than 100 of the hostages Hamas took during its surprise attack on Israel on 7 October were released during a ceasefire last year, but Hamas is still believed to be holding about 110. Israeli authorities estimate about a third of those are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry said on Saturday that 69 dead and 212 wounded had been brought to hospitals across the strip over the past 24 hours.

Experts were meeting on Saturday on technical issues before Sunday’s high-level talks in Cairo on a possible ceasefire mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar. CIA director William Burns, Qatar’s foreign minister and Egypt’s spy chief were meeting on Saturday evening in Cairo, according to an Egyptian official with direct knowledge of the talks.

A Hamas delegation arrived on Saturday in Cairo to meet Egyptian and Qatari officials, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawy told the AP. He stressed that Hamas will not take part directly in Sunday’s talks but will be briefed by Egypt and Qatar.

An Israeli delegation that arrived on Thursday included the heads of the Mossad foreign intelligence service and Shin Bet security service and tMaj Gen Eliezer Toledano.

The CIA director and Brett McGurk, a senior adviser to president Joe Biden on the Middle East, are leading the US side of negotiations amid major differences between Israel and Hamas over Israel’s insistence that it maintains forces in two strategic corridors in Gaza.

The US has been pushing a proposal that aims at closing the gaps between Israel and Hamas as fears grow over a wider regional war after the recent targeted killings of leaders of the militant Hamas and Hezbollah groups, both blamed on Israel.

The chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen CQ Brown Jr would be visiting Egypt, Jordan and Israel over the next few days to “stress the importance of deterring further escalation of hostilities,” a statement said.

Biden called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to stress the urgency of reaching a deal and discussed developments with the leaders of Qatar and Egypt on Friday.

A major impasse has been the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt and the Netzarim east-west corridor across the territory. Netanyahu has insisted that Israel retain control of the corridors to prevent smuggling and catch militants.

Merdawy said Hamas’s position had not changed from accepting an earlier draft that would include the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Four people including a police officer have been injured after a driver involved in a Sydney car crash allegedly stabbed his passenger before lashing out at witnesses who tried to help and the attending officer.

Multiple calls were made to triple zero on Sunday after a two-vehicle crash at the intersection of the Princes Highway and Old Bush Road in Engadine at about 9am, New South Wales police said in a statement.

“Officers … arrived to find a man – who appeared to be suffering stab wounds – allegedly running from the crash scene. He was taken into custody with the deployment of a Taser,” a spokesperson said.

A male police officer suffered a serious laceration to his left wrist during the arrest, the force said.

A woman – understood to be a passenger in one of the crashed vehicles – was found suffering multiple wounds.

A fourth person was also injured, NSW police said. “It’s unclear at this time what that person’s involvement is in this incident.”

All four people were treated by NSW Ambulance paramedics.

The Cronulla Sharks chairman, Steve Mace, was driving his young son to football when they saw the crash.

Mace told News Corp Australia he ran to one of the cars to check if those inside were injured after he heard screams.

“I heard the guy screaming in the driver’s [seat] and then I heard his partner screaming even louder … I tried to open the [passenger] door and finally jammed it open,” he said.

“I saw him [allegedly] slashing her … I tried to drag her out of the car to stop the stabbing.”

Mace said he saw wounds to her neck, chest, stomach and legs.

He said he later attempted to protect the woman from the alleged attacker by putting her back into the car. Another onlooker who tried to help was also stabbed, Mace claimed.

The Sharks chairman said the alleged attacker shouted: “We’re all dead anyway.” The driver was also allegedly angry the woman had “changed the radio station on him”.

A video captured by another passerby published by the ABC showed the alleged attacker running along the footpath and being chased by the police officer.

The NSW police minister, Yasmin Catley, said there was no ongoing risk to the community.

“That investigation is under way [and] I’ve been advised that the person of interest has been arrested,” she told reporters.

“There is no threat to the community. I want the community to know there is no threat whatsoever.”

The Princes Highway was closed in both directions and drivers were urged to avoid the area.

Four people including a police officer have been injured after a driver involved in a Sydney car crash allegedly stabbed his passenger before lashing out at witnesses who tried to help and the attending officer.

Multiple calls were made to triple zero on Sunday after a two-vehicle crash at the intersection of the Princes Highway and Old Bush Road in Engadine at about 9am, New South Wales police said in a statement.

“Officers … arrived to find a man – who appeared to be suffering stab wounds – allegedly running from the crash scene. He was taken into custody with the deployment of a Taser,” a spokesperson said.

A male police officer suffered a serious laceration to his left wrist during the arrest, the force said.

A woman – understood to be a passenger in one of the crashed vehicles – was found suffering multiple wounds.

A fourth person was also injured, NSW police said. “It’s unclear at this time what that person’s involvement is in this incident.”

All four people were treated by NSW Ambulance paramedics.

The Cronulla Sharks chairman, Steve Mace, was driving his young son to football when they saw the crash.

Mace told News Corp Australia he ran to one of the cars to check if those inside were injured after he heard screams.

“I heard the guy screaming in the driver’s [seat] and then I heard his partner screaming even louder … I tried to open the [passenger] door and finally jammed it open,” he said.

“I saw him [allegedly] slashing her … I tried to drag her out of the car to stop the stabbing.”

Mace said he saw wounds to her neck, chest, stomach and legs.

He said he later attempted to protect the woman from the alleged attacker by putting her back into the car. Another onlooker who tried to help was also stabbed, Mace claimed.

The Sharks chairman said the alleged attacker shouted: “We’re all dead anyway.” The driver was also allegedly angry the woman had “changed the radio station on him”.

A video captured by another passerby published by the ABC showed the alleged attacker running along the footpath and being chased by the police officer.

The NSW police minister, Yasmin Catley, said there was no ongoing risk to the community.

“That investigation is under way [and] I’ve been advised that the person of interest has been arrested,” she told reporters.

“There is no threat to the community. I want the community to know there is no threat whatsoever.”

The Princes Highway was closed in both directions and drivers were urged to avoid the area.

The sinking of the superyacht Bayesian off the coast of Sicily that led to the deaths of seven people could be the result of human error, Italian prosecutors have suggested.

The Bayesian, carrying 22 passengers, sank off the coast of Sicily early on Monday morning after being struck by a powerful type of wind called a downburst.

Seven people died, including the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah. Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian, and the yacht’s captain..

Ambrogio Cartosio, the head of the prosecutor’s office in Termini Imerese, said in a press conference at the town’s court on Saturday that his office has opened an initial investigation into manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

“This tragedy would be even more heart-wrenching if our investigations were to prove that the sinking of the vessel was caused by actions not in accordance with the maritime code,” Cartosio said.

“We are only in the initial phase of the investigations … At this stage, precisely because the investigation could develop in any way, we are absolutely not ruling anything out,” Cartosio said, adding that the investigation was not aimed at any single person.

“For me, it is probable that offences were committed, that it could be a case of manslaughter, but we can only establish that if you give us the time to investigate,” he said, according to a BBC translation.

During the briefing, Bentivoglio Fiandra from the local fire rescue service, said “the bodies were found in the highest part of the ship, as it was clear people were trying to hide in cabins on the left-hand side”. The ship landed on its right-hand side after it sank.

“The first five bodies were found in the first cabin on left-hand side and the final body was found in the third cabin,” Fiandra said.

Italian officials said it would be difficult to fully investigate the sinking if the wreck is not recovered.

Fiandra said 123 dives were conducted by 30 divers for a total of 4,370 minutes.

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Raffaele Cammarano, said the yacht had been hit by a downburst, which are powerful winds that descend from a thunderstorm and spread out quickly once they hit the ground.

Experts are baffled by how the Bayesian sank within 60 seconds. Italian media, speaking with coastguard sources, reported that a hatch allegedly remained opened and that the keel was partially raised, leading to the vessel sinking rapidly.

Investigators declined to respond to a question about the hatch, stating that it would be premature to answer before the vessel had been recovered.

Pulling the Bayesian out of the sea may help investigators determine what happened, but the operation is likely to be complex and costly. The wreck is lying apparently intact on its side at a depth of 50 metres (164ft).

“It’s in the interests of the owners and managers of the ship to salvage it,” Cartosio said, adding “they have assured their full cooperation”.

Officials suggested that passengers who died were probably “asleep whereas the others who survived weren’t”.

Search efforts began immediately, with divers from the fire brigade working non-stop. Recovering the bodies was not simple.

The first body to be recovered was that of chef Recaldo Thomas on Monday afternoon. Four more bodies were recovered on Wednesday morning, those of Lynch’s attorney from Clifford Chance, Chris Morvillo, and Morgan Stanley International’s chair, Jonathan Bloomer, along with their respective spouses, Neda and Judy.

Mike Lynch’s body was found in the evening and his death was confirmed on Thursday. On Friday divers retrieved the body of his daughter, Hannah.

Once described as Britain’s Bill Gates, Lynch was beginning a new life, after being cleared in June of fraud charges in the US relating to the purchase of his company, Autonomy, by Hewlett-Packard in 2011. The tycoon opted to celebrate in style in Italy alongside his family. They were enjoying a lavish voyage around Sicily onboard the Bayesian, a magnificent 56-metre (184ft) yacht.

Prosecutors said the captain of the Bayesian, James Cutfield, 51, from New Zealand, would undergo more questioning, adding that he had been “extremely cooperative”.

Magistrates said British and American authorities were involved in the investigation.

The British ambassador to Italy, Ed Llewellyn, published a post on X on Saturday, thanking the Italian rescue teams and divers.

“I express my deep gratitude to the Italian authorities, rescue teams and divers for working tirelessly following the sinking of the Bayesian,” Llewellyn said.

Alain Delon had expressed the wish to be buried just like “anyone else”.

But as a crowd of journalists, television crews and fans gathered outside the wrought iron gates of his country home on Saturday, it was clear this was not the funeral of just anyone.

The family had insisted that the actor, who died last Sunday aged 88, wished for his funeral to be held in “the strictest privacy” with only a select group of family and friends. Hours before the ceremony was due to begin, local police and gendarmes had closed the main road.

At the gates of the estate known as La Brûlerie just outside the village of Douchy in the Loiret, 85 miles south east of Paris, only VIP mourners, most in black luxury SUVs with tinted windows, were allowed through.

“Who was that?” journalists asked as they swept past. “No idea,” others replied.

Culture minister Rachida Dati was among the invited mourners, as well as Paul Belmondo, son of Delon’s great rival Jean-Paul Belmondo, and actor Vincent Lindon, who gave a reading.

A wall of flowers had grown slowly up the tall gates by the gatehouse of Delon’s home throughout the week as locals and fans made the pilgrimage to the property. On Saturday afternoon, defying sunstroke and dehydration, they kept coming. Several people paying tribute were taken ill as temperatures rose to 30C.

While Delon had requested no national ceremony, people wanted to show their respect, and more than 100 walked several hundred yards from the village, many carrying bouquets to place at the entrance of La Brûlerie and signing a book of condolences set up near the gates.

A group of fans organised a minute’s silence before singing Paroles Paroles, the 1973 hit by Dalida and Delon, as the sun disappeared behind clouds and it began pouring with rain.

Mimi Decuypere had travelled almost 250 miles to pay homage to the actor. “It was very important to me to be here,” she said. “Alain Delon has been a figure in my life since I was a young girl. He was an idol. I have seen all his films many times. He was the great love of my life.”

Delon had requested that his “end of life” companion, a Belgian malinois called Loubo, be buried with him, but after protests from animal rights campaigners, the actor’s three children Anthony, 59, Anouchka, 33, and Alain-Fabien, 30, agreed to keep the dog in the family. It is unclear who will keep Loubo or where; the three have been involved in a bitter public squabble over their father in recent months.

Delon, who had planned his funeral to the last detail, had also specifically requested that it be conducted by Catholic priest Jean-Michel Di Falco, 82, the former bishop of Gap in south-east France and a longstanding friend of the actor.

Di Falco oversaw the 2017 funeral of actor Mireille Darc, Delon’s companion for 15 years and the woman he described as “the love of my life”, as well as the musician and singer Charles Trenet and French business tycoon Jean-Luc Lagardère. He also assisted at the funeral of former president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 2020.

Mourners were requested to put their mobile phones away during the ceremony so there were no pictures. The local prefecture had banned aircraft and drones from flying over the property.

After obtaining special permission from the local prefect, Delon was interred in the chapel he had built in the grounds of La Brûlerie, which he had owned since the 1970s and where he died. The chapel is in a cemetery on the almost 120 hectare (300 acre) estate where Delon buried at least 35 of his pet dogs.

Prefect Sophie Brocas told journalists outside the property that all precautions had been taken to ensure the funeral passed in the strict privacy the family had requested. “This is what the family wished and this is what we have done,” Brocas said.

Hours before the funeral, Delon’s sons Anthony and Alain-Fabien appeared and thanked those who had come to pay tribute to their father.

Delon was a totemic figure of French cinema’s renaissance in the 1960s. He starred in a string of classic films including Plein Soleil, Le Samouraî and Rocco and His Brothers.

Once a familiar face in Douchy, he had not been seen in the village for several years since he suffered a stroke in 2019 and was diagnosed with a slow-developing lymphoma in 2022.

He is one of the world’s most famous novelists, with more than 150m copies of his fantasy masterpieces sold across the globe, but JRR Tolkien always dreamed of finding recognition as a poet.

Tolkien struggled to publish his poetry collections during his career, although he included nearly 100 poems in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Now, half a century after his death, 70 previously unpublished poems are to be made available in a landmark publication. The Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien will be published by HarperCollins next month, featuring more than 195 of his poems.

His son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, had wanted his father’s poetic talent to be better known and, before his own death in 2020, worked on the project with two leading Tolkien experts, the husband-and-wife Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond.

Hammond told the Observer that there are “remarkably good” unpublished poems in the collection: “This will show even more Tolkien’s love of language, his love of words.”

Scull said: “The poems will add more to our view of Tolkien as a creative writer.”

They waded through a “great mass” of manuscripts and typescripts, some in Christopher’s possession and others in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, among other archives. The texts ranged from “beautiful calligraphy to the worst scrawl”, Hammond said.

During the first world war, Tolkien had been a signals officer with the Lancashire Fusiliers when he was posted to France and saw action on the Somme. In late 1916, he was invalided home with trench fever, a bacterial disease that almost certainly saved his life as his battalion was all but annihilated.

The unpublished material includes war poems, metaphorical works that are concerned with life, loss, faith and friendship rather than trenches and battles. Scull was particularly moved by an unfinished poem, The Empty Chapel, about a lone soldier hearing marching feet and drumming. “I found it very affecting,” she said.

In its extensive fragmentary drafts, Tolkien wrote: “I knelt in a silent empty chapel/ And a great wood lay around/ And a forest filled with a tramping noise/ And a mighty drumming sound/…

“O ye warriors of England that are marching dark/

“Can ye see no light before you but the courage in your heart.”

Tolkien’s humour emerges in a poem titled Monday Morning, where everything goes wrong for him, from slipping on soap to falling down stairs. It begins: “On Monday morning all agree/ that most annoying things can be./ Now I will tell you in this song/ of one when everything went wrong./ The sun was early shining bright,/ but not, of course, for my delight:/ it woke the birds who woke mama,/ who woke the boys, who woke papa;/ it came and hit me in the eye,/ though still I wished in bed to lie …”

Scull and Hammond struggled to make sense of a poem, titled Bealuwérig, that Tolkien had written in Old English. It features the name Bealuwearge, Old English for “malicious outlaw”, which recalls Tolkien’s fell creature in The Lord of the Rings, the Balrog, and the wolf-like beasts in The Hobbit called Wargs.

They were looking up words in Old English dictionaries, but could not find them – eventually discovering that Tolkien had been translating Lewis Carroll’s famous nonsense poem Jabberwocky into Old English, making up words to represent Carroll’s made-up words.

Hammond said: “Well, no wonder I couldn’t find the words in dictionaries.”

Each poem has an entry showing its development through various drafts, sometimes over decades.

In the introduction, the editors write: “Because his most commercially successful writings, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have had so many readers, and because they include between them nearly one 100 poems (depending on how one counts), Tolkien’s skill as a poet ought to be already well known …

“Many who enjoy his stories of Middle-earth pass over their poems very quickly or avoid them altogether, either in haste to get on with the prose narrative or because they dislike poetry in general, or think they do. It is their loss, for they are missing elements integral to the stories which help to drive their plots and contribute to character and mood.”

Olive oil – described as “liquid gold” in Homer’s Iliad – is renowned for its health benefits. Not only is it delicious, it is anti-inflammatory, good for the gut, beneficial for the heart, and may even help us feel happier and live longer.

Scientists are now turning their attention, however, to the murky, brown and previously discarded by-product of its production – olive mill wastewater (OMW) – and have discovered it may be an even more powerful superfood.

OMW is left over after olives have been ground and their oil separated – a watery residue squeezed out from the remaining mulch.

It was previously considered a bit of a nuisance as, if not properly managed, it can contaminate surrounding soil and water, but now it is being commended for its protective and anti-inflammatory potential.

After hearing reports of olive farmers who had taken to drinking it for health reasons, researchers became intrigued and started investigating the waste product.

They found that instead of being useless, this dark, bitter and cloudy liquid is just as – and maybe even more – nutritious as its source.

OMW is full of healthy plant-based compounds, or phytochemicals, particularly polyphenols, which contribute to gut health, among other benefits. In fact, OMW is thought to contain at least 10 times the amount of phytochemicals as extra virgin olive oil, which is already considered a rich source.

Italian scientist Adriana Albini, a pioneering professor of cancer research and the first Italian to be elected to the American Association for Cancer Research’s board of directors, has been studying OMW for the last 10 years.

She has run studies on OMW extract with her team and found that it may be helpful in both the prevention and treatment of certain cancers, including those of the lung, prostate, colon and breast.

Other research has shown that OMW may support exercise recovery, improve metabolic markers, and has the potential to help cardiovascular and neurological conditions.

“Plants can’t run,” said Albini. “Their only defence is to produce secondary or tertiary metabolites, which ward off parasites. Many of these metabolites are poisons and we know that in certain concentrations, poisons can be therapeutic.

“Arsenic, for example, can be helpful in treating leukaemia. So the idea is that these metabolites can help defend us from cancer. What plants use for their health, we can also use for ours.”

Eating foods rich in these beneficial plant-based chemicals, like those found in the Mediterranean diet, is linked to a decreased risk of developing diseases.

OMW contains at least 30 different types of polyphenols, among which hydroxytyrosol was the most abundant, said Albini. Also found in both olives and olive oil, hydroxytyrosol could, research has shown, help brain and heart health, as well as reducing inflammation, which is good for overall health.

This is what made Albini interested in studying the wastewater, along with its consistency. “You cannot drink oil,” she said. “But with this, because it’s liquid, consumption is easier.”

Albini added: “It’s important to remember that there’s no one miracle nutraceutical [a healthy product derived from food]. Overall lifestyle is very important: don’t smoke, do physical exercise, eat a good diet and drink moderate alcohol. It’s a complex web of things.”

Fattoria La Vialla, a family-run farm in Tuscany, sells OMW to customers in the UK. It comes in tiny “shot” jars and you can select sweetened or unsweetened.

Gianni Lo Franco, one of three brothers who now runs the farm, said: “You can think of it as freshly squeezed polyphenol juice.”

His great-grandmother, the matriarch of the family, would drink half a glass twice a day during pressing season of what she and the people of Tuscany call “acqua mora” or “dark water”.

She swore it was the reason for her good health into old age; she lived until she was 98 with no complaints. It made the Lo Franco family curious and led to them send the liquid off for testing and eventually cold filtering it so it was fit to sell to the public.

“Have you ever, as we have, had to reconsider certain habits of our ancestors and admit that those very habits, which we looked upon with perplexity, were actually the fruit of ancient wisdom?” said Lo Franco.

“Everyone would look at her in amazement because acqua mora is extremely bitter, but resolute as she was,she didn’t take any notice – and now it turns out Nonna Caterina was right. One tiny [25ml] jar contains more polyphenols than a whole litre of good extra virgin olive oil. It just shows how nature truly does not create waste.”