The head of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has been charged by the French judiciary for allegedly allowing criminal activity on the messaging app but avoided jail with a €5m bail.

The Russian-born multi-billionaire, who has French citizenship, was granted release on condition that he report to a police station twice a week and remain in France, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.

The charges against Durov include complicity in the spread of sexual images of children and a litany of other alleged violations on the messaging app.

Durov, 39, was detained at Le Bourget airport, just outside Paris, on Saturday on suspicion of failing to act against illicit content on the service, including the exchange of child sexual imagery, drug trafficking and fraud.

His surprise arrest has put a spotlight on the criminal liability of Telegram, the popular app with around 1 billion users, and has sparked debate over free speech and government censorship.

Specialist French cybercrime and fraud detectives announced earlier this week that Durov’s arrest was part of a wide-ranging investigation into a failure to moderate alleged criminal activity on the messaging app.

In a statement on Sunday, Telegram said it abided by European Union laws and that its moderation was “within industry standards and constantly improving”.

“Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe,” it said. “It is absurd to claim that a platform, or its owner, are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

Durov, a self-styled libertarian often cast as “Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg”, lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates.

He recently said he had tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before choosing Dubai, which he has praised for its business environment and “neutrality”.

Telegram has long been closely monitored by law enforcement agencies worldwide due to its alleged use by terrorist organisations, drug traffickers, arms dealers and far-right extremist groups for communication, recruitment, and coordination.

In a rare interview with the Financial Times in March, Durov, who is valued at more than $9bn (£6.8bn), said child abuse material and public calls for violence were “red lines” for Telegram.

But he has also repeatedly promoted the platform’s minimal moderation policies and commitment to free speech, boasting that his company employs only 30 full-time engineers.

Durov has mostly managed to avoid the public scrutiny faced by top executives of other tech companies, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. He has seldom given interviews, preferring to showcase his ascetic lifestyle to his followers on Instagram, where he occasionally shares shirtless photos of himself. Last month, he told his followers on social media that as a sperm donor he now had more than 100 biological children.

Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with Kremlin demands to shut down opposition groups on the VK social network that he founded when he was 22. He was forced to sell VK after a dispute with its Kremlin-linked owners and turned his focus to Telegram, the app he founded with his brother Nikolai in 2013.

Russia attempted to ban Telegram in 2018, but lifted all restrictions on the platform after Russian authorities stated that Durov was willing to cooperate in fighting terrorism and extremism.

While Durov has at times cast himself as a Russian exile, leaked border data seen by the Guardian showed that he visited the country more than 50 times between 2015 and 2021, leading to renewed speculation over his links to the Kremlin.

Russian officials have framed Durov’s arrest as politically motivated, a claim strongly denied by Emmanuel Macron, the French president.

Questions have also been raised about the timing and circumstances of Durov’s detention, in particular whether he knew that Paris had issued a warrant against him.

Le Monde newspaper reported that Durov had met Macron on several occasions prior to receiving French nationality in 2021 via a special procedure reserved for those deemed to have made a special contribution to France.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Macron suggested in 2018 that Durov should move Telegram’s headquarters to Paris, an offer Durov reportedly refused.

Japan’s strongest typhoon of the year has made landfall in the country’s south-west, bringing torrential rain and winds of up to 252 km/h (157 mph), strong enough to destroy homes.

The meteorological agency said Typhoon Shanshan, referred to in Japan as Typhoon No 10, made landfall on the island of Kyushu at around 8am. The power company said 254,610 houses were already without electricity.

The meteorological agency predicted 1,100mm (43in) of precipitation in southern Kyushu in the 48 hours to Friday morning, around half the annual average for the area, which comprises Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures.

Authorities issued a rare special typhoon warning for most parts of Kagoshima, a prefecture in southern Kyushu. Residents in at-risk areas have been urged to remain on high alert, with transport operators and airlines cancelling trains and flights.

The potential for major damage is high given Shanshan’s sluggish speed. The storm is moving northwards at just 15km/h, the meteorological agency said.

There have already been reports of deaths in landslides – a major hazard in mountainous areas – while tens of thousands of people have been advised to evacuate.

“Typhoon Shanshan is expected to approach southern Kyushu with extremely strong force through Thursday,” chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters earlier. “It is expected that violent winds, high waves and storm surges at levels that many people have never experienced before may occur.”

The approach of the storm prompted automaker Toyota to suspend production at all 14 of its factories. Other major car manufacturers have followed suit, according to the Kyodo news agency.

Three members of a family died after a landslide buried a house in the central city of Gamagori, Kyodo reported early on Thursday, citing local government officials.

The victims included a couple in their 70s and a son in his 30s, while two adult daughters in their 40s were injured, Kyodo added.

The agency also issued its highest “special warning” for violent storms, waves and high tides in parts of the Kagoshima region, with authorities there advising 56,000 people to evacuate.

Video footage on public broadcaster NHK TV showed roof tiles being blown off houses, broken windows and felled trees.

“Our carport roof was blown away in its entirety. I wasn’t at home when it happened, but my kids say they felt the shaking so strong they thought an earthquake happened,” one resident in Miyazaki told NHK. “I was surprised. It was completely beyond our imagination.”

The warnings indicate the “possibility that a major disaster prompted by [the typhoon] is extremely high,” Satoshi Sugimoto, chief forecaster of the meteorological agency, told a news conference.

Japan Airlines cancelled 172 domestic flights and six international flights scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, while ANA scrapped 219 domestic flights and four international ones across Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The cancellations affected about 25,000 people.

Kyushu Railway said it would suspend some bullet train services between Kumamoto and Kagoshima Chuo from Wednesday night and warned of further possible disruption. Trains between Tokyo and Fukuoka, the most populous city on Kyushu, may also be cancelled depending on weather conditions this week, other operators said.

Shanshan comes in the wake of Typhoon Ampil, which disrupted hundreds of flights and trains this month. Despite dumping heavy rain, it caused only minor injuries and damage.

Ampil came days after Tropical Storm Maria brought record rains to northern areas.

Japan has issued special typhoon warnings only three times in the past. The first came in July 2014, when a strong typhoon brought record-breaking waves to the southern prefecture of Okinawa before moving north, killing three people in landslides in Nagano prefecture.

In October 2016, authorities issued a similar warning for Okinawa’s main island. The typhoon moved north over the sea west of the southernmost main island of Kyushu.

The most recent special typhoon warning came in September 2022 – the first time the warning had been issued outside Okinawa prefecture, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Like the typhoon that made landfall in southwestern Japan on Thursday morning, the storm moved slowly, giving it time to cause extensive damage to homes. Five people died in the disaster.

Typhoons in the region have been forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to the climate crisis, according to a study released last month.

Human-caused climate breakdown has increased the occurrence of the most intense and destructive tropical cyclones (though the overall number per year has not changed globally). This is because warming oceans provide more energy, producing stronger storms.

Extreme rainfall from tropical cyclones has increased substantially, as warmer air holds more water vapour. For example, the amount of rainfall produced by Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017 would have been all but impossible without the record-warm ocean water in the Gulf of Mexico.

Coastal storm surges are also higher and more damaging due to the sea level rise driven by climate breakdown. For example, the devastating storm surge from Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013, was about 20% higher due to human-caused climate breakdown.

With Agence France-Presse

The US has announced new sanctions against extremist settlers in the West Bank who are funded by the Israeli government, as Washington steps up its attempt to rein in worsening settler violence.

The new measures drew a sharp response from the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office said it viewed them “with utmost severity” and that the issue was under “pointed discussion” with Washington.

The sanctions target one organisation and one individual with long involvement in the intimidation of Palestinians with the aim of seizing their land. The US Treasury has made them “specially designated nationals”, which means their assets are blocked and US citizens and companies are prohibited from dealing with them.

The targeted group was Hashomer Yosh, which provides security for illegal settler outposts, including some which have already been sanctioned by the US. The group has been particularly active in the south Hebron hills, at the southern end of the West Bank, which has been a focus of Israeli settler violence against local Bedouin inhabitants.

“After all 250 Palestinian residents of Khirbet Zanuta [a village at the centre of the struggle for land] were forced to leave in late January, Hashomer Yosh volunteers fenced off the village to prevent the residents from returning,” the US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said in a statement.

Hashomer Yosh is officially a non-government organisation, but it has been funded and supported in recent years by Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition.

The targeted individual in Wednesday’s sanctions was Yitzhak Levi Filant, the security coordinator at Yitzhar settlement, just south of Nablus. He, like other settler security coordinators, draws a salary directly from the Israeli defence ministry.

“Although Filant’s role is akin to a security or law enforcement officer, he has engaged in malign activities outside the scope of his authority,” Miller said.

“In February 2024, he led a group of armed settlers to set up roadblocks and conduct patrols to pursue and attack Palestinians in their lands and forcefully expel them from their lands.”

Netanyahu’s office issued a terse and critical response on Wednesday night, saying: “Israel views with utmost severity the imposition of sanctions on citizens of Israel. The issue is in a pointed discussion with the US.”

The sanctions will make it hard for the Israeli government to continue to pay Filant or fund Hashomer Yosh without violating US sanctions, and will cut off direct funding from rightwing supporters in the US.

The new sanctions reflect mounting frustration in the Biden administration about the Netanyahu government’s failure to contain settler violence, and the frustration is not confined to Washington.

In a letter published last week, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, Ronen Bar, wrote to Netanyahu and some of his ministers to warn them that violence by settlers’ “hilltop youth”, unrestrained by the state, constituted terrorism, and represented a severe national security threat because it was likely to drive a cycle of violence.

The US measures were announced a few hours after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out raids against Palestinian militants in the West Bank, where Bar argued one of the drivers of Palestinian radicalisation was the surge in settler violence since the start of the Gaza war in October last year.

The choice of targets brings US punitive measures a significant step closer to the members of the coalition closest to the extremist settlers: the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

“The United States will continue to take action to promote accountability for those who commit and support extremist violence affecting the West Bank,” the state department statement said.

The UN’s food agency has said it is pausing movement of its staff in Gaza “until further notice” after one of its vehicles was struck by gunfire at an Israeli military checkpoint.

Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said of Tuesday’s incident: “This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of WFP’s team in Gaza.

“As last night’s events show, the current deconfliction system is failing and this cannot go on any longer.”

The vehicle was hit at least 10 times as it approached the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) checkpoint at the Wadi Gaza Bridge after completing a mission in southern Gaza, the WFP said in a statement. No one was injured.

“Though this is not the first security incident to occur during the war it is the first time that a WFP vehicle has been directly shot at near a checkpoint, despite securing the necessary clearances,” the WFP said.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the incident.

The agency shared an image of a white, UN-branded truck with its windows apparently damaged by several bullets and said it was a “few metres” from the Israeli checkpoint when it was hit.

UN secretary general spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “A clearly marked UN humanitarian vehicle, part of a convoy that had been fully coordinated with the IDF was struck 10 times by IDF gunfire, including with bullets targeting front windows.

“We have no way to assess the mindset of those who are shooting at us,” Dujarric said, noting that it was not clear if information about the convoy’s movement shared with Israeli authorities was passed down.

In May, a UN staff member from India was killed when their vehicle was struck by what the United Nations said was tank fire in southern Gaza.

The most recent incident comes as the UN is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the World Health Organization said a 10-month-old baby had been paralysed by the type 2 poliovirus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

The current war began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing about 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, Israel’s military has levelled swathes of the Palestinian territory, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing at least 40,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The UN has long complained of obstacles to getting aid into Gaza during the war and distributing it amid “total lawlessness” in the territory.

With Agence France-Presse and Reuters

Yemen’s Houthi group has agreed to allow tugboats and rescue ships to access a damaged crude oil tanker in the Red Sea, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said, after the Iranian-aligned militants attacked the Greek-flagged vessel last week.

The Sounion tanker is carrying 150,000 tonnes, or 1m barrels, of crude oil and poses an environmental hazard, shipping officials said. Any spill has the potential to be among the largest from a ship in recorded history.

“Several countries have reached out to … request a temporary truce for the entry of tugboats and rescue ships into the incident area,” Iran’s UN mission in New York said, adding that the Houthis had consented to the request, in consideration of “humanitarian and environmental concerns”.

Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam denied on Wednesday there would be a temporary truce, telling Reuters that the group only agreed to allow the towing of oil tanker Sounion after several international parties contacted the group.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday a third party had tried to send two tugs to help salvage the Sounion, but the Houthis threatened to attack them.

In a statement on Wednesday, Iran’s UN mission said “the failure to provide aid and prevent an oil spill in the Red Sea stems from the negligence of certain countries, rather than concerns over the possibility of being targeted.”

The Sounion was targeted last week by multiple projectiles off Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah. There have been seemingly conflicting reports about oil escaping from the ship, but on Wednesday, the European Union’s mission in the Red Sea said there was no oil spill in the waters near the Greek-flagged tanker.

The EU mission, called Aspides, added that the Sounion was still anchored and not drifting.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the tanker was still on fire in the Red Sea and appeared to be leaking oil.

The Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous regions, began aerial drone and missile strikes on the Red Sea in November in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. In over 70 attacks, they have sunk two vessels, seized another and killed at least three seafarers.

Ukrainian authorities are scrambling to assess the damage caused by one of the biggest Russian airstrikes of the war earlier this week, which targeted energy infrastructure across the country, further crippling a sector targeted by Moscow multiple times in the spring.

While much of Ukraine is still experiencing the tail end of a very hot summer, this week’s strikes have brought into focus concerns about the hard colder months that lie ahead. “This winter is going to be tough, that’s for sure,” said Nataliia Shapoval, head of the Kyiv School of Economics Institute.

Monday’s attack, which came during morning rush hour, involved more than 100 missiles and more than 100 drones targeting energy infrastructure all across the country, from the east close to the frontlines all the way to the far west near the border with EU countries.

While the strikes in spring targeted generating capacity, Monday’s attacks were largely focused on distribution infrastructure, such as electricity substations. They led to emergency blackouts across the country, which have tapered into scheduled power cuts affecting Kyiv and many other cities.

Many estimates suggest that even before this week’s strikes, Russia had destroyed around half of Ukraine’s energy capacity. Repair work has been ongoing over the summer, but as Kyiv continues to call for increased air defence support from western allies, the fear is that further strikes could turn a difficult situation into a catastrophic one.

“It’s not easy to improve the situation but additional attacks can cause it to worsen,” said Andrian Prokip, a Kyiv-based energy expert with the Kennan Institute in Washington DC.

“Even in the best-case scenario there will be scheduled cutoffs. How they look will depend on the temperature. If we have -5 [degrees Celsius], a schedule of seven hours off, two hours on could be expected,” he said.

At a June conference in Berlin, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had destroyed 80% of Ukraine’s thermal energy generation and a third of its hydro generation. On Tuesday, he declined to elaborate on what further damage Monday’s strikes had caused.

“I don’t really like energy PR. It’s not very helpful when the enemy knows what damage they have done. Let the information about the condition of our energy facilities and what we are currently doing there be kept quiet,” he said.

“It was a major hit and the audit is ongoing,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Zelenskiy, told the Guardian in Kyiv. “We know what is needed: repair work, and in parallel, more support with air defence,” he said.

Shapoval’s institute estimates that since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russian strikes on energy infrastructure have caused $16bn of damage as well as $40bn of lost revenues.

The country is undoubtedly better prepared for the winter now than at the beginning of the war. Hospitals, critical infrastructure and many businesses have generator capacity. In Kyiv, life went on almost normally during the long power cuts this week, with small generators whirring outside cafes, restaurants and other businesses.

But the frequent electricity cuts expected over the winter will probably cause a range of knock-on effects, ranging from affecting elderly people and those with mobility issues who live in high-rise buildings, who will be unable to use elevators if the building has not bought a generator, to reduced functioning of businesses and, as a result, reduced taxes flowing into the budget. Sustained power outages could prove disastrous for heavy industry in the east of the country, which has so far proved remarkably resilient despite more than two years of full-scale war.

There were “lots of small and big stories” that come about as a result of power outages, said Shapoval. In much of the east, where the threat of strikes means schooling takes place online, lack of electricity makes it harder to power devices and have access to internet for lessons. In some high-rise buildings, blackouts means water cannot be pumped to the higher floors, and the “doomsday scenario” was that Russian strikes would also lead to major shortages of water as well as electricity, Shapoval said.

In June, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said Brussels planned to finance the development of small-scale generators across the country. “The aim is to help decentralise the power system and thus increase resilience,” she said.

The rules have been liberalised on electricity generation using gas turbines, leading to an increase in small-scale generation, which can be carried out anywhere with access to gas supplies and power cables, with the systems constructed inside shipping containers or small buildings. “Some companies are doing it to cover their own needs, some to connect to the grid and then sell it to the market,” said Prokip.

The renewed focus on energy comes after Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region earlier this month, with Kyiv now controlling a chunk of Russian territory and changing the dynamic on the battlefield, even as Ukraine’s forces remain on the back foot in the eastern Donbas region.

The goals of the operation, which Ukraine has said it did not reveal to allies in advance, are still not clear. On Wednesday, the CIA’s deputy director, David Cohen, said he expected Ukraine to try to hold the territory “for some period of time”. Kyiv has said it controls about 1,200sq km of territory and that it wants to create a “buffer zone” in the border area to prevent Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory.

“We can be certain that Putin will mount a counteroffensive to try to reclaim that territory,” Cohen said at a security summit in Maryland. “I think our expectation is that that will be a difficult fight for the Russians.”

The tremendous resources and global attention dedicated to the tragedy of the Bayesian superyacht hint at a double standard for shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, several NGOs dedicated to assisting asylum seekers have said, citing the barriers they regularly face as they attempt to save lives in the same waters.

The groups that spoke to the Guardian were swift to express their regret and extend their sympathies for the deaths of seven people after the luxury vessel was hit by violent storms off the coast of Italy.

“For us, every death in the Mediterranean is one too many, no matter where they come from or how much money they make,” the German humanitarian organisation Sea-Eye said in a statement to the Guardian.

The response to the Bayesian, however, laid bare a jarring contrast, said the NGO, whose most recent mission rescued 262 people in the Mediterranean. “Sadly, it makes a difference in the media, in our society and in politics, who is drowning. We have noticed that the coverage of the situation in the Mediterranean, of tragedies or of our rescues in recent months has not been nearly as extensive as in the case of the Sicilian shipwreck in recent days,” the organisation said.

The Bayesian sank off Porticello, plunging to a depth of about 50 metres. After it emerged that the British tech magnate Mike Lynch was among those onboard, media around the world stepped up their coverage, tracking every development.

Specialised cave divers were brought in, taking turns to dive in 12-minute shifts and assisted by a remote-controlled underwater vehicle. On Wednesday the British Marine Accident Investigation Branch said it had deployed four of its inspectors to the scene.

While the Bayesian received help within minutes of alerting authorities, days later the distress calls relating to a fast-sinking dinghy carrying 43 people in the central Mediterranean were steadily ignored, said another German NGO, Sea-Watch, on social media. In what was probably an attempt to reduce the weight of the vessel and protect the four children onboard, 12 people had jumped into the waters near the vessel and were struggling to stay afloat.

“For the Italian and European authorities, there are Shipwrecks and then there are shipwrecks, one capitalised and the other lowercase, one immediately rescued and the other abandoned to its fate,” Sea-Watch said.

After authorities left those on the dinghy to languish for more than 24 hours, an NGO rescue ship made it to the site and was able to rescue them “just in time”, it added. “There was no rescue effort by the authorities,” Sea-Watch said. “That’s no coincidence; it’s the EU’s double standard.”

The NGO posted photographs contrasting the shipwrecks on social media. “Yacht Bayesian, with white and wealthy people aboard, rescued within 20 minutes by the authorities,” read the caption on the first photo.

The second showed a rapidly deflating vessel with the caption: “A dinghy carrying 43 people, who are not white and not wealthy, ignored for over 24 hours and rescued by NGOs.”

NGOs whose life-saving efforts have at times left them facing lengthy court battles, escalating intimidation and threats such as being held at gunpoint described the Bayesian response as a glimpse of the kind of reaction that could be put in motion.

“It is not wrong to intervene to save rich individuals aboard yachts or tourists; what is wrong is the inconsistency in applying these rescue strategies to save migrants in need,” said Luca Casarini, one of the founders of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans.

Sea-Eye said those who aimed to save the lives of asylum seekers grappled with strikingly different conditions. “We are being criminalised by European governments like Italy and prevented from carrying out rescues, for example, by being assigned to extremely distant ports after rescues or being detained in harbours.”

The NGOs’ stance was seemingly backed by Pope Francis, who on Wednesday strongly decried the treatment of people crossing the Mediterranean to enter Europe, describing it as a “grave sin” to deny aid to vessels.

“There are those who work systematically and with every means to reject migrants,” the pontiff said during his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square. “And this, when done with conscience and responsibility, is a grave sin.”

A recent report calculated that Italy’s regular assignment of distant ports for humanitarian rescue ships had resulted in rescue vessels wasting 374 days at sea last year, a burden that creates additional costs for rescue vessels and actively prevents them from saving more lives.

Sea-Watch stressed it would always support large-scale rescue operations that sought to save lives at sea. “But we’re outraged about the political hypocrisy,” a spokesperson said in a statement, pointing to the more than 30,000 people who have died in the Mediterranean in the past decade. “We see active non-assistance for people fleeing to safety every day. Life-saving efforts must not depend on the colour of someone’s skin or the size of their wallet.”

For Òscar Camps, of the NGO Open Arms, the events in Sicily were reminiscent of the multimillion-dollar rescue efforts for the five men onboard the Titan submersible that had been diving to the wreck of the Titanic.

“The resources that are put towards searching for a luxury ship or a yacht, they’re not at all the same,” he said. “It’s as if we are responding to a lesser category of shipwreck.”

He pointed to the recovery of bodies as an example. “Authorities don’t want to you recover the bodies because it’s a lot of work for them. They have to identify them, take DNA samples, bury them,” he said. The result was that many of those who died in search of a better life ended up being left underwater, he said.

This disparity, along with the administrative and political hurdles that rescue ships often come up against, had left him battling a profound sense of discomfort. “I’m ashamed to belong to this society. And to be part of a European Union that has lost the principles and values that it was founded on,” he said. “This is not the kind of society I want to belong to.”

The “hyper-violent” Typhoon Gaemi was made fiercer and more likely to strike by the climate crisis, scientists have found. They said “Asia will become an increasingly dangerous place to live until fossil fuels are replaced”.

The typhoon hit the Philippines, Taiwan and Hunan province in China in late July, with floods and landslides destroying homes, killing at least 100 people and affecting millions. Winds reaching 145mph (233 km/h) sank two large ships, while floods in Manila were as deep as a one-storey building.

Analysis by researchers from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) found Typhoon Gaemi’s wind speeds were about 9mph (14km/h) faster due to human-caused global heating and that the burning of fossil fuels caused Gaemi’s rainfall to be up to 14% higher.

Tropical cyclones draw energy from warm ocean waters and the team found that the hot sea surface temperatures that fuelled Gaemi would have been virtually impossible without the climate crisis.

“Fossil fuel-driven warming is ushering in a new era of bigger, deadlier typhoons,” said Dr Ben Clarke, of Imperial College London and part of the WWA team. “The hard truth is we will see more devastating storms like Typhoon Gaemi as the climate warms [and] Asia will become an increasingly dangerous place to live until fossil fuels are replaced with renewable energy.”

Dr Friederike Otto, also an academic at Imperial College London, said: “Hyper-violent typhoons like Gaemi are bringing suffering to Asia. To lessen the impacts of typhoons, Asia needs to reduce inequality and protect the most vulnerable people.”

Since 1900 there has been a 30% increase in the number of typhoons as intense as Gaemi in the north-west Pacific Ocean. Carbon emissions from fossil fuels have continued to increase in recent years and each of the 13 months to June were the hottest recorded.

The researchers used weather data, climate models and peer-reviewed methods to compare how typhoons have changed between today’s climate, with about 1.2C of global heating, and the cooler preindustrial climate.

They also used Imperial College’s storm model to investigate the influence of climate change on Gaemi’s powerful winds. It is the first time such a study has looked at all aspects of a tropical cyclone. The team of 23 scientists included some from the Philippines and China.

Many hundreds of studies attributing climate change to extreme weather have been undertaken, covering heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods and storms. They include a growing number of otherwise impossible events and demonstrate how human-caused heating has supercharged extreme weather across the world.

Maja Vahlberg, a climate risk consultant for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said significant strides had been made in implementing flood protection and emergency response plans in the countries affected by Typhoon Gaemi.

She said: “However, as we continue to confront the realities of climate change, the challenge before us is becoming increasingly daunting. We’re now witnessing rainfall events so extreme that they surpass the capacities of some of our current systems.”

Critical areas requiring further work were dealing with increasing numbers of people living in vulnerable informal settlements – shantytowns – in low-lying areas, such as around Manila, Vahlberg said, adding: “We have the knowledge, and now we must muster the will to act. The future and safety of millions depends on the decisions that we make today.”

Chipmaker Nvidia reported its latest financial results on Wednesday, recording $30.04bn in revenue over the past three months – a 122% jump from the year prior – and showing that artificial intelligence investment mania shows no signs of cooling.

Analysts had anticipated about $28.7bn in revenue. Shares slid more than 3% in after-hours trading.

In an earnings call, founder and CEO Jensen Huang said he expected Nvidia to ship “a lot more” chips and hardware next year than the company had in its 31-year history.

“The reason why our velocity is so high is simultaneously because the complexity of the model is growing, and we want to drive its costs down, and we want to increase the scale of AI models so that it will reach a level of extraordinary usefulness and realize the next industrial revolution,” he said.

Analysts welcomed the results, despite signs that Nvidia’s extraordinary sales growth might ultimately slow. “The company continues to benefit from a market paradox: big tech’s aggressive AI investment strategies drive massive demand for Nvidia’s chips, even as these same companies invest in developing their own silicon,” said Jacob Bourne, a technology analyst with Emarketer.

Nvidia has told customers that its next-generation AI chips, code-named Blackwell, will be delayed several months from January, though early samples are shipping to a small group of customers now. However, its current line of graphics processing units, nicknamed Hopper, continues to sell well, chief executive officer Jensen Huang said in a press release.

“Hopper demand remains strong, and the anticipation for Blackwell is incredible,” Huang said. “Nvidia achieved record revenues as global data centers are in full throttle to modernize the entire computing stack with accelerated computing and generative AI.” The company’s data center revenue, its most closely watched financial metric, increased by 154% from a year ago to $26.3bn.

Recent earnings reports from Nvidia’s main big tech customers – Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google – which use the company’s chips to build and train their own AI models, indicated higher capital spending as AI demand continues to rise.

“As competitors like AMD intensify their efforts, the timely release of Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell chip will be essential for maintaining its dominant position in the increasingly competitive AI chip market,” said Bourne.

The importance of Nvidia’s earnings results to Wall Street can hardly be overestimated – the company represents 6% of the total value of the S&P 500, currently the third most valuable company in the world by market capitalization at $3.1tn.

The index has gained 27% over the past 12 months, but Nvidia is individually up 167% over the same period. But because big tech is driving US stocks to new record highs, and because spending on Nvidia is seen as a signal of future tech earnings, Nvidia’s results are a key barometer of the US stock market.

The company also reported $0.68 in earnings per share and announced a $50bn stock buy-back. Analysts expected $0.64 per share for the quarter, compared to $13.5bn in revenue a year earlier. Profits were seen at $15.1bn, up from about $6.2bn a year earlier.

The company’s last earnings, released in May, showed quarterly growth of 18% and annual revenue growth of 262%. Against that extraordinary precedent, anything less than a repeat could be seen as a disappointment.

The Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called Nvidia’s earnings call “the most important week for the stock market this year and potentially in years”. Ives estimates that for every $1 spent on an Nvidia GPU chip, there is a $8-$10 multiplier across the tech sector.

“In a nutshell, we expect another drop-the-mic performance from Nvidia, as right now Jensen & Co are the only game in town with $1tn of AI cap-ex [capital expenditure] on the way for the next few years with Nvidia’s GPUs the new oil and gold in this world,” he added.

The expectations are so high, in fact, that Ameriprise Financial’s Anthony Saglimbene told Bloomberg that the results could have more impact on the overall market than Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s speech last week at Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

But placing so much emphasis on a single stock itself rests on the concept that AI will boost global productivity over the coming decades.

The enormous $100bn annual investment into AI has yet to translate into profits for big tech, and its not yet clear when they will arrive. Conversely, a disappointing set of results could leads to doubts – and that we are at peak AI hype.

That’s led to comparisons to the late 1999 Internet bubble when the sector crashed but later recovered as the online world we know today on its skeletal remains.

In his market hand-holding mode, Ives said in a note that investors may worry about the huge spending, but the circumstances are more like 1995, when investment was pouring into the internet’s infrastructure, and not like 1999 when the bubble burst.

“Tech earnings season has only bolstered and validated this bullish view of tech stocks heading into year-end and 2025,” Ives says.

As with Microsoft in the early 2000s, regulators are hovering over Nvidia. Earlier this month, the US Department of Justice launched an antitrust investigation into the tech giant. Rival chipmakers have alleged the company has abused its market dominance to corner the market and coerce its customers into continuing to purchase its products.

More 15-year-olds are reporting low life satisfaction in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, amid what experts are describing as a “happiness recession” for British teenagers.

The group is at the bottom of European rankings in terms of life satisfaction across 27 nations, analysis by the Children’s Society reveals. In the UK 25% of 15-year-olds reported low life satisfaction, compared with 7% of Dutch children of the same age – the lowest level among any of the countries surveyed.

British girls are particularly affected, as are children from disadvantaged backgrounds, with food poverty highlighted as a key reason behind the poor wellbeing numbers.

“Alarm bells are ringing,” said Mark Russell, the chief executive of the Children’s Society. “UK teenagers are facing a happiness recession, with 15-year-olds recording the lowest life satisfaction on average across 27 European nations.”

In 2021-22, children aged 10 to 15 recorded mean scores for happiness with their life as a whole, as well as with their friends, appearance, school and schoolwork, that were all significantly lower than in 2009-10, the report found.

Levels of low life satisfaction are at least twice as high among UK 15-year-olds as among their peers in Finland, Denmark, Romania, Portugal, Croatia and Hungary. The study uses data from the UK Longitudinal Household Survey from 2021-22 and the OECD’s programme for international student assessment (Pisa) from 2022.

The findings come amid growing concern at school absences, long NHS waiting times to receive mental health support and increases in the cost of living in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis pushing more families into poverty.

“Children and young people deserve better,” the report says. “Decisive action and national leadership are needed to overturn the decline in children’s wellbeing. We know that these experiences are not lived in a vacuum … The pandemic, rising levels of poverty, concerns over young people’s safety, the climate emergency and other stresses have put a strain on young people’s lives and can prevent the experience of a happy and fulfilled childhood.”

Dutch teenagers have ranked as among the happiest in the world for several years, with supportive parents, low inequality, teachers who are not authoritarian but accept the feelings of pupils, and high levels of self-determination – for example cycling to school and being allowed to decide when to come home.

At the weekend the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp sparked a debate about whether parents who restrict teenagers’ freedom were “infantilising” them, after social services contacted her after she allowed her then 15-year-old to go Interrailing in Europe independently.

“Being trusted, being confident, makes you feel better about yourself and happy,” she said. “So are our kids anxious because we are fearful, we are holding them back, and this is leading them to be depressed?”

On Tuesday the Guardian revealed more than 500 children a day in England were being referred to NHS mental health services for anxiety, more than double the rate of before the pandemic began.

The Children’s Society study, published on Thursday, also revealed that the largest gap in life satisfaction between the most and least disadvantaged 15-year-olds was in the UK.

The charity found many parents were struggling to provide basic necessities for their children, with just over one in five parents and carers finding it difficult to afford a hot meal daily, almost a quarter unable to buy a warm winter coat and just over a quarter struggling to provide daily fresh fruit and vegetables.

The Australian prime minister has been caught on camera in Tonga joking with a senior US official about going “halvies” on the cost of a newly announced Pacific policing plan.

The deputy secretary of state, Kurt Campbell, appeared to suggest in the video that the US had been planning to pursue an unspecified security-related proposal but had been encouraged by Australia not to proceed.

The video was filmed on Wednesday after the Pacific Islands Forum announced support for the new Pacific policing initiative, which includes a training and coordination hub in Brisbane, Australia.

A multinational rapid-response police unit will be created and four police centres of excellence will be set up in Pacific Island countries, with Australia providing $400m over five years to establish the centres.

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The video, posted online by Radio New Zealand, began with Campbell telling Anthony Albanese that the US delegation was travelling to several locations in the Pacific, including Tonga.

The US and China are not Pif members but the two countries are jostling for influence in the region and routinely send high-level delegations to the event for side meetings.

Albanese replied to Campbell: “Well, we had a cracker today getting the Pacific policing initiative through. It is so important, it’ll make such a difference.”

Campbell said the Australia-backed initiative was “fantastic”. The senior US official recounted a conversation he had with “Kevin”, most likely a reference to the Australian ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd.

“I talked with Kevin about it – so you know, we were going to do something and he asked us not to so we did not. We’ve given you the lane, so take the lane!”

Albanese then joked: “Oh, you can go us halvies on the cost if you like.”

The pair shared a laugh. The Australian minister for the Pacific, Pat Conroy, who was standing nearby, then appeared to notice the conversation was being filmed and said: “Come on!”

At a media conference in Tonga on Thursday morning, Albanese was asked whether Campbell would “go you halvies on that policing plan”.

The prime minister laughed and replied: “No, he won’t, because this has come from the Pacific. I’m aware of the video of a private conversation. Kurt Campbell’s a mate of mine, it’s us having a chat.”

Albanese said he was not prepared to give any insight into what initiative Australia had asked the US not to pursue in the region.

“No,” Albanese told reporters. “It was a jovial conversation, a friendly one. You know, it is what it is. People try and read something into it – you must be pretty bored.”

The notion of the US giving Australia a “lane” in the region is sensitive because at least one Pif member raised concerns this week that the policing initiative was being framed as a geopolitical play to exclude China.

Hours before the deal was announced, the prime minister of Vanuatu, Charlot Salwai, said the region should ensure the plan was “framed to fit our purposes and not developed to suit the geostrategic interests and geostrategic denial security postures of our big partners”.

Asked by a journalist whether there was a sense he had “said the quiet bit out loud”, Albanese said: “What was the quiet bit? It’s a cracker of an announcement. That’s what I said. That’s what I stand by.”

He urged journalists to “chill out”.

Albanese said it was up to the individual who filmed the exchange “to think about their own ethics when it comes to journalism”. He added: “Journalists tend to identify themselves.”

But Mark Stevens, the chief news officer for Radio New Zealand, said the broadcaster “stands by its reporter and its reporting”.

“Having spoken to our reporter, there is nothing to suggest they acted unethically or outside of our rigorous editorial policies,” Stevens said.

Radio New Zealand, in its own report on the exchange, said an RNZ Pacific journalist “was filming cutaways” of Albanese and Campbell after the press conference in which Australia announced the $400m in funding for the policing plan.

“While filming, the pair started discussing policing,” the RNZ report said.

The discussion took place in the main auditorium where Pif talks were held. Journalists with accreditation to cover the event were allowed into the auditorium from time to time for reporting purposes.

Australia has repeatedly registered its concerns about China’s attempts to reach security and policing agreements with Pacific Island countries, including the 2022 deal with Solomon Islands.

But the Australian government has argued the new policing agreement “is about the Pacific family looking after Pacific security” and “isn’t about any other country”.