Donald Trump has expressed doubt that he will participate in a scheduled televised debate with Kamala Harris next month, hurling a trademark “fake news” slur at the network that had agreed to host it.

The former president and Republican nominee threatened to pull out of the 10 September meeting with Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee for November’s election, in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday night.

Referring to an interview on ABC’s This Week earlier in the day with the host Jonathan Karl and the Republican Arkansas US senator Tom Cotton, Trump questioned the network’s fairness for the only debate that both presidential candidates had already agreed on.

“I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” Trump wrote with his usual penchant for erroneous upper case letters.

He also alluded to his ongoing defamation lawsuit against the This Week host George Stephanopoulos and the ABC network over comments the anchor made in March stating Trump had been found “liable for rape” instead of sexual abuse in a case brought by the New York writer E Jean Carroll.

It is not the first time that Trump, who trails Harris by seven points nationally in a new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll published at the weekend, has sowed doubt over his debate appearance.

“Right now I say, why should I do a debate? I’m leading in the polls. And, everybody knows her, everybody knows me,” he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network earlier this month after Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

He stated he had pledged instead to take part in a 4 September debate on Fox News, to which the Harris campaign did not agree, saying he would see Harris there “or not at all”, before changing his mind again.

Harris, meanwhile, seized on Trump’s wavering commitment before a lively crowd at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, last month. “If you got something to say, say it to my face,” she said.

Trump’s latest hesitation comes amid a reported impasse between the two presidential campaigns over the conditions of next month’s debate. Politico cited four sources on Monday claiming that negotiations had broken down over the turning off of the participants’ microphones when it was not their turn to speak.

According to the report, the Harris campaign is demanding that the microphones be left “hot” at all times, in the apparent belief that the vice-president can make Trump lose his cool under questioning and utter something damaging or inappropriate.

“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Brian Fallon, senior adviser for communications for the Harris campaign, told Politico in a statement.

“Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself … without the benefit of a mute button.”

Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, insisted Harris was reneging on terms agreed for the debate by the Biden campaign when it accepted the 10 September date – and another meeting on CNN in June that never took place.

Conditions for those debates included the turning off of microphones between exchanges, as was traditional in debates during previous presidential campaigns.

“Enough with the games,” Jason Miller, a Trump senior adviser, told Politico in a statement on Sunday.

“We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate. The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules.”

Miller also claimed it was Harris seeking to withdraw from the debate – and not Trump.

“This seems to be a pattern for the Harris campaign. They won’t allow Harris to do interviews, they won’t allow her to do press conferences, and now they want to give her a cheat-sheet for the debate. My guess is that they’re looking for a way to get out of any debate with President Trump,” he said.

The dispute comes as the Trump campaign seeks ways to blunt significant momentum built by Harris since she became the Democratic nominee, including a surge in both polling and donations.

On Monday, the Guardian reported growing fears among the former president’s senior staff that “palace intrigue” over its leadership could distract from the urgency of regaining a solid footing in the race with little more than 10 weeks until the 5 November polling day.

Donald Trump’s campaign remains jittery about the prospect of a power struggle inside the inner circle that could become a major distraction just months until the 2024 election, even if​ the jockeying for influence by top officials has ended with a truce, according to people familiar with the matter.

The momentary power play among the senior advisers is widely seen to be over, for now, after the 2016 campaign chief, Corey Lewandowski, distanced himself from suggestions he was returning to the fold to run the campaign and the current leadership remained in their roles. (Lewandowski was brought on the current campaign as an adviser.)

But there has been trepidation that if the Trump campaign hits more rough patches in the race against Vice-President Kamala Harris, any disagreements for instance on strategy between Lewandowski and the current chiefs, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, could cause a blow-up, the people said.

The concern is apparently less to do with uncertainty about who would prevail – Trump has repeatedly expressed faith in Wiles and LaCivita, who come as a package deal – and more the distraction when Harris has drawn roughly level in key swing state polls with 70 days until the election.

The Trump campaign has had its hands full as it has endured its rockiest period since it launched, with Trump suddenly finding himself on the defensive as he tries to frame effective attack lines against Harris and break through the news cycle that has been dominated by positive coverage for the Democratic ticket.

While Joe Biden was still the Democratic nominee, Trump had carved out a clear lead, especially in the vital swing states that will decide the election. But since Biden stepped down just over a month ago after a disastrous debate performance, Harris has wiped that advantage.

Harris’s decision to pick the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate has been largely seen as successful, while Trump’s pick of the Ohio senator JD Vance has been widely panned and Vance has been the subject of mocking memes and Democratic attacks.

​The Trump campaign is also trying late in the election cycle​ to prepare a larger ground game​ in battleground states, run Trump through a slew of rallies ​and prepare him for a crunch presidential debate in September ​– while Harris’s honeymoon period continues with a vengeance.

What the campaign cannot afford, the people said, is a sapping power struggle like a clash between LaCivita, who is ensconced, and Lewandowski, who has remained close to Trump despite being ousted from a Trump-aligned Pac after a donor’s wife complained of unwanted sexual advances​.

“All of these fabricated stories about the campaign are nothing more than click bait. None of these palace intrigue stories have been remotely correct,” Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement about reporting for this story.

“The fact remains— President Trump has put together the best political team in campaign history from the very start when he announced and we are all committed to victory so he can return to the White House and save this country.”

​The jitters have calmed down for now because no one expects Lewandowski or anyone else to become the head of the Trump campaign, after the other senior advisers in effect revolted at the idea of Lewandowski taking over and privately complained to Trump, the people said.

The morning that Trump formally decided to add Lewandowski to the campaign leadership, Trump told his team to “find something for Corey to do”, according to two people in the room.

​And when word reached the other senior advisers that there had been chatter about Lewandowski​ supposedly coming in to run the campaign, Trump re-expressed faith in Wiles and LaCivita in private and in public at a press conference at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.

​Lewandowski, a veteran of Trumpworld, ultimately distanced himself from suggestions he would be joining the campaign above Wiles and LaCivita. But the entire episode was still viewed as a soft attempt at a coup and not appreciated, the two people in the room said.

​Unlike previous iterations in 2016 and 2020, when Trump replaced his campaign chiefs in the summer amid internal infighting, the 2024 campaign has been a closer-knit group that has eschewed factionalism and has desperately sought to avoid a culture of needing to look over their shoulder.

The Trump senior advisers have been increasingly concerned at the growing palace intrigue in recent weeks, which started after Trump met with his daughter-in-law and Republican National Committee co-chair, Lara Trump, and his former 2016 campaign chief Kellyanne Conway on 2 August.

The Guardian has previously reported that Conway said she never mentioned names or titles at the meeting, and principally spoke to Trump about strategy. But either way, the Conway meeting raised hackles internally and exacerbated concern about the Lewandowski saga, the people said.

In the run-up to the US presidential election, the Guardian will be spending at least a month in Saginaw, a pivotal county in the key swing state of Michigan where voters were almost evenly divided between Donald Trump and his Democratic opponents in the last two presidential elections.

We will be listening to how local people see a race that has already taken dramatic and unexpected turns. We are interested not only in how you might vote, if at all, but what you think the candidates should be talking about, whether or not they are doing so.

Help us understand the issues that matter most in Saginaw and how to explain them to the rest of the US and the world. Where should we go and who should we speak to?

A huge missile and drone attack launched by Russia across Ukrainian territory has left at least five people dead, officials have said.

Power cuts and water outages were reported in numerous parts of the country including in some districts of the capital, Kyiv, as a result of the strikes, which targeted mainly civilian energy infrastructure.

In a video address on Telegram, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, described the attack early on Monday as “one of the biggest combined strikes” on Ukraine over the course of the war.

“More than a hundred missiles of various types and about a hundred Shahed drones,” he said. “And like most previous Russian strikes, this one is just as base, targeting critical civilian infrastructure.”

In central Kyiv, air defences were audible during morning rush-hour, forcing many people to take shelter in underground metro stations. In the western city of Lutsk, a block of flats was damaged and there were reports of fatalities in five different regions.

The prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said 15 regions had sustained damage during the strikes, and Zelenskiy said the energy sector had suffered “a lot of damage”.

A senior Ukrainian official said Russia had also targeted a hydropower plant in the Kyiv region. “Today’s Russian attack … targeted Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including Kyiv HPP,” the Ukrainian first deputy foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said on X.

Russia’s defence ministry in a statement said it had launched a “massive precision-guided weapons strike on critical energy infrastructure facilities”.

Moscow has been targeting this infrastructure for months, leading to blackouts, rationing and a fear of power shortages over the coming winter.

The attack came two days after Ukraine celebrated its Independence Day. The US embassy in the country had warned of an elevated risk of a Russian attack around the date.

Zelenskiy responded to the attack with a familiar call to western allies to provide more by way of air defence support for Kyiv, and to lift restrictions on using western weapons to strike deep into Russian territory.

“We could do much more to protect lives if the aviation of our European neighbours worked together with our F-16s and together with our air defence,” he said.

In recent weeks, Kyiv’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region has changed the mood and dynamic in the conflict, although it still remains unclear what Kyiv’s long-term plan for the area of Russian territory it controls is.

A Kremlin spokesperson told reporters that Russia would make “an appropriate response” to the incursion. He also dismissed increasing chatter that some form of negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv may be on the cards in the near future.

“There are a lot of reports about various contacts in the media, and not all of them are correct … ”, the spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said. “The topic of negotiations at the moment has pretty much lost its relevance.”

Ukraine continues to deploy long-range drones to strike military facilities and oil refineries within Russia. Russia’s defence ministry said its air defence systems destroyed nine drones over the southern Saratov region, which lies 560 miles (900km) away from the border with Ukraine.

Ukraine has made significant investments in drone technology, developing advanced attack drones capable of flying long distances and hitting targets deep inside Russian territory.

On Saturday, Zelenskiy touted a newly developed Ukrainian missile-drone, the Palianytsia, that he said was designed to strike Russian military airfields and “destroy the enemy’s offensive potential”.

Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a political backlash in Israel for the limited nature of Sunday’s airstrikes against Hezbollah, amid calls for a broader offensive in Lebanon.

Some of the fiercest criticism came from the far-right wing of the prime minister’s own fractious coalition, which is also increasingly divided over the status of Jerusalem’s holiest site.

Israel’s airstrikes and Hezbollah’s rocket and drone launches that followed soon after was the biggest cross-border engagement since the two sides fought a war in 2006 in terms of the number of aircraft sorties and munitions launched, though not in terms of casualties. Three Hezbollah and allied fighters were killed and one Israeli sailor, killed by fragments of an Israeli interceptor.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, claimed the pre-emptive strikes on Sunday morning prevented Hezbollah from launching up to two-thirds of the rockets it had intended to fire at Israel. Israel also claimed to have shot down almost all the incoming Hezbollah drones.

Netanyahu issued a warning that the airstrikes would not be “the end of the story”, but reports in the Israeli press cited military sources as saying there was no planned follow-up.

The prime minister was widely blamed on Monday, from both the centre and right of the political spectrum, for the limited goal of Sunday’s air raids, which disrupted Hezbollah’s planned aerial assault, but had done nothing, the critics said, to allow up to 80,000 residents of northern border towns, displaced from northern Israel since October, to return home.

Representatives of the displaced population, forced from their homes by bombing by Hezbollah in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, have said they would boycott meetings with government representatives, accusing the coalition of prioritising the defence of central Israel but not the north.

Ben Caspit, a columnist in the centre-right Maariv newspaper, wrote: “For nearly a year, the Galilee has been pulverised, ravaged and set on fire; tens of thousands of Israelis have been torn from their homes; and the entire country, which not long ago was considered to be a regional superpower, has been humiliated.” He said Netanyahu had chosen the most cautious of the military options presented to him by his generals.

“He prevented and disrupted one of Hezbollah’s operational plans, but he didn’t change our strategic situation in the northern theatre,” Caspit added, arguing that a broader aerial campaign would begin “to create the conditions to allow the residents of the Upper Galilee to return to their homes and to allow Israel to restore its sovereignty over swaths of its own territory”.

Benny Gantz, a retired general, former minister in Netanyahu’s coalition and one of his main rivals, described the airstrikes as “too little, too late”.

In a video statement during a visit to northern communities, he said: “We must keep up the advantage of the initiative that was taken and increase the political and military pressure to push Hezbollah away, to return northern residents to their homes safely.”

Netanyahu’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, joined in the criticism.

“Israel must not be content with a single, pre-emptive sortie. We must bring a decisive war against Hezbollah that will remove the threat in the north and allow the residents to return home safely,” Ben-Gvir said.

He singled out Gallant for recrimination. The national security and defence ministers are locked in a bitter public row over government policy, particularly over the status of the holy compound around the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which Jews call the Temple Mount.

Ben-Gvir pressed ahead with his campaign to upend Israel’s policy on the site since it captured East Jerusalem in 1967, that only Muslims would be allowed to pray on the compound, while Jews would pray at the Western Wall.

Ben-Gvir violated that policy when he led Jewish prayers there last month and told army radio on Monday that Jews had equal status with Muslims.

“The policies on the Temple Mount allow prayer, period,” he said. “There is a directive that there should be equal law between Jews and Muslims.”

He added that if it were up to him, there would be an Israeli flag and a synagogue on Temple Mount.

The prime minister’s office issued a statement saying there had been no change in the status quo on the site, and other members of the coalition criticised Ben-Gvir for inflammatory rhetoric, which they warned was liable to trigger a revolt among Palestinians and outrage in the wider Arab world.

“Undermining the status quo on the Temple Mount is an unnecessary and irresponsible act,” Gallant said. “Ben-Gvir’s actions endanger Israel.”

The interior minister, Moshe Arbel, from the ultra-orthodox Shas party, called for Ben-Gvir to be stripped of his authority over the police, warning: “His lack of wisdom could cost lives.”

Sven-Göran Eriksson, England’s first overseas manager and winner of multiple honours at club level, has died at the age of 76.

Eriksson revealed in January 2024 that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and that he likely had “at best” about a year to live. He had stood down from his final job, as sporting director at Karlstad in his native Sweden, the previous February because of what he described at the time as “health issues which are under investigation”.

Eriksson’s death was confirmed by Bo Gustavsson, the former Lazio coach’s agent in Sweden, via his UK PR agent, Dean Eldredge of Oporto Sports. Gustavsson said Eriksson had died on Monday morning at home surrounded by family. “The family ask that their wish to be able to mourn in privacy is respected and that they are not contacted,” a statement said.

Eriksson’s managerial career spanned more than four decades, during which he won 18 trophies. It began in Sweden with Degerfors IF before he took charge of IFK Göteborg. Eriksson was 30 and barely known to the players of one of the country’s leading clubs, but he was unfazed and proved a huge success, leading Göteborg to the Swedish title and the Uefa Cup in 1982.

That led to Eriksson being appointed manager of Benfica and, again, he proved a success, winning two league titles and reaching another Uefa Cup final in 1983. This time he was on the wrong side of the result after a 2-1 aggregate defeat by Anderlecht.

Eriksson’s star was on the rise, however. He moved on to Roma and then Fiorentina before returning to Benfica in 1989, leading the Portuguese club to another league title and, in 1990, a European Cup final, where they lost to Milan. That led to a return to Italy with Sampdoria, whom he guided to a Coppa Italia triumph in 1994, before a move to Lazio where Eriksson was backed in the transfer market by the club’s wealthy president Sergio Cragnotti and repaid that faith with a Serie A title in 2000. It was only the second time the Rome club had won Italy’s biggest prize.

By that stage Eriksson was one of the most highly regarded managers in Europe and, as such, it was not a great surprise that the Football Association targeted him to be Kevin Keegan’s successor as England manager. His appointment in January 2001 still proved controversial within a section of the media, however, given his nationality. “We’ve sold our birth-right down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer throwers who spend half their life in the dark,” wrote the Daily Mail. The Sun described Eriksson’s appointment as a “terrible, pathetic, self-inflicted indictment”.

Eriksson dealt with the rage in typically cool, calm fashion and got off to a perfect start, leading England to a 3-0 victory over Spain at Villa Park in February 2001. Seven months later, came the high point of his England career – a 5-1 victory over Germany in Munich. Writing in the Guardian, David Lacey described the result as “ecstasy in spades”, and for Eriksson it well and truly represented lift-off. As Lacey also wrote that night: “The appointment has taken on the touch of genius.”

England would require another memorable result – a 2-2 draw with Greece at Old Trafford in October 2001 – to secure qualification for the following summer’s World Cup and it was at this point that the other aspect of Eriksson’s time in charge – controversy – came to the fore. Not long before the tournament in Japan and South Korea, it was revealed Eriksson had had an affair with television presenter, and fellow Swede, Ulrika Jonsson. It was not the last time his love life received such attention.

Eriksson was accused of not getting the most out of England’s so-called golden generation but he led the county to three major tournaments and, in each one, reached the quarter-finals. He departed from his post at the end of the 2006 World Cup having been caught up in a tabloid sting in the January of that year that saw him tell the ‘Fake Sheikh’ that he would be willing to manage Aston Villa were they to be the subject of a Middle Eastern takeover. That followed reported dalliances with Manchester United and Chelsea and, ultimately, his position had become untenable: it was announced prior to the World Cup that Eriksson would be leaving, regardless of how England performed in Germany.

“The unfair thing is not the football press,” Eriksson later said about the tumultuous nature of his five years in charge of England. “The unfair thing is the rest of the press, which can’t see the difference between your private life and your professional life. When that gets mixed up, one way or another, that’s bad, very bad.”

Eriksson went on to manage a host of clubs and countries, including Manchester City, Leicester, Mexico and, finally in 2019, the Philippines. In March 2024 he also realised a childhood dream by managing Liverpool at Anfield in a charity game. “It was a beautiful day,” Eriksson said afterwards.

A documentary about Eriksson’s life, simply entitled ‘Sven’, was shown on Amazon Prime before his death and contained a message from the man himself that poignantly summed up his good humour, grace and dignity. “Don’t be sorry, smile,” Eriksson said. “Thank you for everything, coaches, players, the crowds, it’s been fantastic. Take care of yourself and take care of your life. And live it. Bye.”

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

Women’s voices are also deemed to be potential instruments of vice and so will not be allowed to be heard in public under the new restrictions. Women must also not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their houses.

“Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body,” the new laws state.

Men will also be required to cover their bodies from their navels to their knees when they are outside their homes.

From now on, Afghan women are also not allowed to look directly at men they are not related to by blood or marriage, and taxi drivers will be punished if they agree to drive a woman who is without a suitable male escort.

Women or girls who fail to comply can be detained and punished in a manner deemed appropriate by Taliban officials charged with upholding the new laws.

The restrictions have been condemned by Roza Otunbayeva, the special UN’s representative for Afghanistan, who has said they extend the “intolerable restrictions” on the rights of women and girls already imposed by the Taliban since they took power in August 2021.

“It is a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions,” she said in a statement on Sunday. “It extends the already intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls, with even the sound of a female voice outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.”

Speaking to Rukhshana Media, Mir Abdul Wahid Sadat, the president of the Afghan Lawyers Association, said that the new laws contradicted Afghanistan’s domestic and international legal obligations.

“From a legal standpoint this document faces serious issues,” he said. “It contradicts the fundamental principles of Islam [where] the promotion of virtue has never been defined through force, coercion, or tyranny.

“This document not only violates Afghanistan’s domestic laws but also broadly contravenes all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

“The Taliban government does not have any sort of legitimacy and these new edicts designed to further erase and suppress woman are an indication of their hatred towards women,” says Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan human rights activist who was the first woman vice-president of the Afghan parliament.

“When they say women cannot speak in public as they regard women’s voices as a form of intimacy it is incredibly frightening yet the whole world acts like this is normal. There have been very few reactions of comments to what is happening and the Taliban are emboldened by this indifference. It is not only women but all human beings they are targeting. They must be held accountable.”

Shukria Barakzai, a former Afghan parliamentarian who was Afghanistan’s ambassador to Norway, agreed the international community’s silence on the Taliban’s oppression of Afghanistan’s 14 million women and girls had played its part in the criminalisation of women’s bodies and voices.

“It is concerning that international organisations, particularly the United Nations and the European Union, instead of standing against these inhumane practices, are trying to normalise relations with the Taliban,” she said. “They are, in a way, whitewashing this group, disregarding the fact that the Taliban are committing widespread human rights violations.”

In the three years since seizing power from the US-backed government, the Taliban have imposed what human rights groups are calling a “gender apartheid”, excluding women and girls from almost every aspect of public life and denying them access to the justice system.

Prior to the new “vice and virtue” laws, women and girls were already blocked from attending secondary school; banned from almost every form of paid employment; prevented from walking in public parks, attending gyms or beauty salons; and told to comply with a strict dress code.

Earlier this year, the Taliban also announced the reintroduction of the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.

The Taliban have been approached for comment.

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

Women’s voices are also deemed to be potential instruments of vice and so will not be allowed to be heard in public under the new restrictions. Women must also not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their houses.

“Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body,” the new laws state.

Men will also be required to cover their bodies from their navels to their knees when they are outside their homes.

From now on, Afghan women are also not allowed to look directly at men they are not related to by blood or marriage, and taxi drivers will be punished if they agree to drive a woman who is without a suitable male escort.

Women or girls who fail to comply can be detained and punished in a manner deemed appropriate by Taliban officials charged with upholding the new laws.

The restrictions have been condemned by Roza Otunbayeva, the special UN’s representative for Afghanistan, who has said they extend the “intolerable restrictions” on the rights of women and girls already imposed by the Taliban since they took power in August 2021.

“It is a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions,” she said in a statement on Sunday. “It extends the already intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls, with even the sound of a female voice outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.”

Speaking to Rukhshana Media, Mir Abdul Wahid Sadat, the president of the Afghan Lawyers Association, said that the new laws contradicted Afghanistan’s domestic and international legal obligations.

“From a legal standpoint this document faces serious issues,” he said. “It contradicts the fundamental principles of Islam [where] the promotion of virtue has never been defined through force, coercion, or tyranny.

“This document not only violates Afghanistan’s domestic laws but also broadly contravenes all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

“The Taliban government does not have any sort of legitimacy and these new edicts designed to further erase and suppress woman are an indication of their hatred towards women,” says Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan human rights activist who was the first woman vice-president of the Afghan parliament.

“When they say women cannot speak in public as they regard women’s voices as a form of intimacy it is incredibly frightening yet the whole world acts like this is normal. There have been very few reactions of comments to what is happening and the Taliban are emboldened by this indifference. It is not only women but all human beings they are targeting. They must be held accountable.”

Shukria Barakzai, a former Afghan parliamentarian who was Afghanistan’s ambassador to Norway, agreed the international community’s silence on the Taliban’s oppression of Afghanistan’s 14 million women and girls had played its part in the criminalisation of women’s bodies and voices.

“It is concerning that international organisations, particularly the United Nations and the European Union, instead of standing against these inhumane practices, are trying to normalise relations with the Taliban,” she said. “They are, in a way, whitewashing this group, disregarding the fact that the Taliban are committing widespread human rights violations.”

In the three years since seizing power from the US-backed government, the Taliban have imposed what human rights groups are calling a “gender apartheid”, excluding women and girls from almost every aspect of public life and denying them access to the justice system.

Prior to the new “vice and virtue” laws, women and girls were already blocked from attending secondary school; banned from almost every form of paid employment; prevented from walking in public parks, attending gyms or beauty salons; and told to comply with a strict dress code.

Earlier this year, the Taliban also announced the reintroduction of the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.

The Taliban have been approached for comment.

The captain of a luxury yacht which sank in a storm off the coast of Sicily last week, killing the British tech magnate Mike Lynch and six others, has been placed under investigation for charges of manslaughter and shipwreck.

The 56-metre (184ft) superyacht Bayesian, carrying 22 passengers, sank off the coast of Porticello, a fishing village near Palermo, in the early hours of 19 August. It is thought that it was struck by a downburst, a gusty wind associated with storms.

The victims included Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah. Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian.

On Sunday, prosecutors questioned James Cutfield, 51, from New Zealand, captain of the Bayesian, for a second time. At the conclusion of the interrogation, investigators asked him to appoint a lawyer.

Notices to people under investigation need to be sent out before authorities can carry out autopsies. The autopsies on the seven victims of the sinking will be done at the institute of forensic medicine of the Policlinico hospital in Palermo, sources said.

Being put under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow.

Cutfield might not be the only person who is put under investigation.

The surviving passengers, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, left Sicily on a private jet on Sunday. Members of the yacht’s crew remained on the island and could face further questioning by prosecutors in the coming days.

The prosecutor’s office has been examining videos and photographs taken by residents on the night of the storm, as well as surveillance camera footage. In recent days, the coast guard has visited all private homes and public places with surveillance cameras.

Experts are baffled by how the Bayesian sank within 60 seconds. Investigators suspect that the crew may have underestimated the storm’s severity and left a hatch open on the vessel. This oversight, compounded by the waves crashing overboard, led to the boat taking on water and sinking rapidly.

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

The wreckage sits at a depth of 50 metres in the bay of Porticello, which is under surveillance by Italian authorities. Work to recover it is not expected to start until October.

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

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

The dead, alongside Lynch and his daughter, were the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, Morgan Stanley International’s bank chair, Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy, and the Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda.

Four investigators from the UK government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch have arrived in Sicily to conduct an inquiry that could help support the gathering of information by insurance companies and victims’ lawyers.

Sarah Allan, yacht specialist and partner at Penningtons Manches Cooper, said: “We may well see recommendations from flag states after everything’s been looked at. It will be a reminder for many captains to review their safety protocols for impending storms, and the insurance market will be looking closely at any findings as part of their loss prevention and risk management.”

She added that the incident was unprecedented in terms of the suddenness of the storm, the size of the vessel and the speed of its sinking. “Nonetheless, as with any incident lessons will be learned.’’

Rescue operations have resumed in southern Iceland as dozens of members of the emergency services scramble to locate two people who remain missing after an ice cave partly collapsed, killing one person.

A group of 25 tourists, made up of people from several nationalities, were on a guided tour of Breiðamerkurjökull glacier on Sunday when part of the cave collapsed, police said on social media.

Four members of the group were trapped under the ice. Rescuers found two of them, one of whom died of their injuries at the scene. The other person found was taken to hospital and is reportedly in a stable condition.

Emergency services received a call about the collapse shortly before 3pm local time (1600 BST) on Sunday, setting in motion a rescue that involved more than 100 people. The rugged terrain complicated efforts to transport equipment up to the glacier, meaning rescuers were largely limited to breaking through the ice with chainsaws and ice picks, according to the public broadcaster RÚV.

One tourist who had visited the cave just before its collapse told RÚV that the cave was between three and five metres deep.

As darkness fell, rescuers were forced to pause. “A large number of rescuers and responders have taken part in the operation,” police said, adding that the conditions were difficult.

By 7am on Monday, dozens of rescuers were back on the site, according to RÚV. The site manager told the broadcaster that efforts were being made to protect the rescuers as the conditions had been deemed unsafe on the glacier.

The crystal-blue ice cave of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier tongue has long been an attraction for tourists from around the world. It flows from Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest glacier. Historical accounts suggest the glacier tongue advanced towards the Atlantic Ocean until around the turn of the 19th century. According to the US Geological Survey, it has been in full retreat since about 1930.

The collapse was not believed to be related to a volcanic eruption in south-west Iceland on Friday, about 185 miles (300km) from the glacier.

Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

A court in Seville in southern Spain has ruled that the city council is within its rights to cut off the water supply to illegal tourist apartments.

Over the past year the city has disconnected the supply to six illegal apartments. Three owners appealed but the judge, mindful of neighbours’ complaints about noise, accepted the council’s argument that the apartments were not the owners’ residences.

The council believes there are 5,000 illegal apartments in addition to the 10,000 that have been granted licences. Water supply will be restored once the apartments revert to being normal residences.

Since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, Seville (population 700,000) has been receiving about 3.5 million visitors a year, most of them in the small historic centre.

The council has now ruled that the agencies that manage the apartments will be held responsible, given that the owners often live as far away as the US and are difficult to trace.

Although cities with similar problems with tourist apartments such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia say they do not plan to follow Seville’s example, all are under pressure from local people to address a phenomenon that is driving up rents, shrinking the rental property market and forcing residents out.

A huge protest against mass tourism in the Canary Islands in April triggered a series of similar demonstrations in Mallorca, Granada, Málaga and Barcelona.

Faced with angry constituents, even conservative local councils that previously dismissed protests as “tourismphobia” have been forced to take action.

In the Balearic Islands, the ruling conservative People’s party (PP) has been pushed into setting up a cross-party group to rethink the tourism model for the islands, whose 1.2 million residents received nearly 18 million visitors last year.

Valencia, governed jointly by the PP and the far-right Vox party, has introduced a moratorium on new licences for tourist apartments and is planning a crackdown on illegal flats.

In the capital, Madrid, the PP government has done little to curb the rise of tourist flats even though it is estimated that 92% of the 13,502 apartments are illegal. The platform Inside Airbnb, which analyses the tourist apartment market, believes the true number of apartments is closer to 25,000.

Estate agent figures published in April show there were only 8,034 apartments available to rent in Madrid, compared with 14,133 tourist flats.

Jaume Collboni, the Barcelona mayor, announced in June that tourist apartments would be effectively banned as of 2028 when the 10,000 legal flats would not have their licences renewed.

He faces legal challenges from powerful landlords who control much of the market, while housing inspectors, who detect an average of 300 illegal flats a month, are fighting a losing battle.

The socialist-led Catalan government, sworn in earlier this month, says it will make the housing issue a priority.

Soil, plants and water along popular recreation spots near Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, are contaminated with “extreme concentrations” of plutonium, a new study has found, but calls for the federal government to act have been dismissed.

Michael Ketterer, a Northern Arizona University scientist and lead researcher on the project, said the plutonium levels in and around New Mexico’s Acid Canyon were among the highest he had ever seen in a publicly accessible area in the US during his decades-long career – comparable to what is found in Ukraine at the site of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

The radioactive isotopes are “hiding in plain sight”, Ketterer said.

“This is one of the most shocking things I’ve ever stumbled across in my life,” he said.

The paper comes on the heels of the US Department of Defense announcing it will ramp up production of plutonium pits, a core component of nuclear weapons, at Los Alamos. Meanwhile, the US Senate approved a defense bill with expanded funding for those exposed to the government’s radioactive waste. Local public health advocates say they are outraged by the exclusion of the Los Alamos region from the benefits.

Until 1963, the Los Alamos national laboratory spit radioactive waste into a nearby canyon as the Department of Defense developed the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The area became so saturated in toxic waste that it was dubbed Acid Canyon.

Several years later, the Atomic Energy Commission and the US Department of Energy undertook remediation efforts that cost at least $2bn, and by the 1980s brought the area into compliance with federal cleanup standards so that it is safe for use, the government claims.

The commission eventually released the land to Los Alamos county without any restrictions on uses, and it was developed into a dirt trail popular with bikers, hikers and runners.

The exposure level and immediate danger to those using the trails is low despite the high plutonium levels, Ketterer said, but he warned that the environmental risk is still worrying because plutonium can get into water supplies, which ultimately flow into the Rio Grande. The substance can be taken up by plants and enter the food chain, or can be dispersed widely in ash in the event of a wildfire.

Public health advocates also called for the government to post signage warning visitors so they can make an informed decision about using a trail contaminated with toxic waste.

The Department of Energy said in a media statement that the levels were “very low and well within the safe exposure range”.

The research supports recent mapping by the local public health advocacy group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, which used public records to show widespread and alarming levels of plutonium at sample sites throughout the region.

The research is “proof that New Mexico will forever be saddled with a radioactive isotope that has a 24,000-year half-life,” said Tina Cordova, with the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium advocacy group.

“It’s not at all surprising when you contemplate how inefficient the Trinity bomb was and how many pounds of plutonium did not fission,” she added. “What a terrible legacy.”

The official non-profit organization of the US national park service is set to receive the largest grant in its history, a $100m gift the fundraising group described as transformative for the country’s national parks.

The National Park Foundation, which Congress created in the 1960s to support national parks, will receive the donation from the Indianapolis-based foundation Lilly Endowment Inc. The park foundation described the gift on Monday as the largest grant in history benefiting US national parks.

The money will be used to address the needs of the country’s more than 400 national park sites, said Will Shafroth, president and chief executive officer of the National Park Foundation.

The foundation hopes to announce the first round of grants stemming from the donation later this year, Shafroth said.

Exactly how the money will be utilized remains to be seen. But one of the foundation’s priorities is restoring coral reefs at Biscayne national park in Florida, Shafroth said, while another priority is the restoration of trout species in western national parks. Those are among the foundation’s recent investments.

In addition to funding initiatives that protect fragile ecosystems and species, Shafroth said the money would also be used to create opportunities for young people to visit national parks.

“This grant will allow us to supercharge our efforts to ensure our national parks are for everyone, for generations to come,” he said.

The system’s hundreds of units include national parks, memorials, monuments, historic sites and other locations. It includes well-known national parks such as Yellowstone, mostly in Wyoming, and Yosemite in California, as well as beloved sites such as the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. It also includes preserved areas that are less accessible to many people, such as Buck Island Reef national monument in the US Virgin Islands.

The National Park Foundation is in the midst of its “Campaign for National Parks”, a $1bn fundraising effort to support parks. Lilly Endowment made the gift to support that effort, said N Clay Robbins, chair and CEO of Lilly.

“We believe the National Park Foundation’s campaign will enhance the programming in and promote the future vibrancy of our country’s marvelous system of parks, monuments and historic sites,” Robbins said.

• This article was amended on 26 August 2024. An earlier version referred to Yellowstone in Montana, but it is mostly in Wyoming.