The Israeli military said it had killed five Palestinian fighters inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, in the midst of one of the largest assaults on the occupied territory for months.

The overall toll of 16 Palestinians killed in less than two days would make it the deadliest Israeli operation in the West Bank since the 7 October Hamas attack in Israel which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and ignited the Gaza war.

The latest fighting came as the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Thursday he had formally asked the bloc’s members to consider imposing sanctions on some Israeli ministers for “hate messages” against Palestinians that he said broke international law.

Borrell did not name any of the Israeli ministers to whom he was referring, nor specify which messages he had in mind. But in recent weeks he has publicly criticised Israel’s security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, for statements he described as “sinister” and “an incitement to war crimes”.

The second day of the Israeli operation, in which as many as three brigades of troops have been deployed in several major West Bank cities backed by helicopters, drones and armoured personnel carriers, also included raids in the northern city of Jenin and in the Jordan valley.

Inside Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm, residents told the Guardian Israeli troops had gone house to house, detaining Palestinian men as they went.

Mohammed Aisha, a 42-year-old Nur Shams resident, speaking at a mosque just outside the camp, said: “The soldiers asked us to leave our house at 10am this morning and the Israelis made a big hole through the walls from one house to another. They handcuffed us with plastic strips and we were taken to a military base outside the city.”

Aisha described a scene of desolation left by the raid, adding: “All of our male neighbours were taken to the military base. The roads inside the camp were totally destroyed, sewerage pipes, water pipes were destroyed. The streets became hills of rubble, many houses are totally burned, this is not the camp we knew any more.”

On the outskirts of Nablus, 14 miles (23km) to the east, residents were told that some roads in and out of the city would be closed on Thursday, and the sound of drones – locally nicknamed “samiras” – could be heard overhead amid fears the operation would also target the city.

“People are saying that tonight it will be Nablus’s turn,” one resident called Ghassan said.

Fears are rising about the trajectory of the already serious violence in the West Bank, which has been fuelled by the actions of far-right settlers and their supporters in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

In recent weeks, Israeli defence officials have voiced their concerns that the situation in the West Bank could boil over, turning the territory into a major new front in Israel’s ongoing conflicts, even as the war in Gaza continues and tensions remain high with Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon.

Hamas repeated its calls for Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up, calling the raids part of a larger plan to expand the war in Gaza. The militant group urged security forces loyal to the western-backed Palestinian Authority to “join the sacred battle of our people”.

The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has condemned the Israeli raids, but his forces were not expected to get involved.

Referring to the latest West Bank assault, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said in a post on X overnight: “This is a war in every sense, and we must win it.” He accused Iran of working to destabilise Jordan and establish an eastern front against Israel via arms smuggling networks, as it has done in Gaza and in Lebanon.

To address the threat of an eastern front, Katz said Israel would have to use “all necessary means, including, in cases of intense combat, allowing the population to temporarily evacuate from one neighbourhood to another to prevent civilian harm”.

Among those killed on Thursday was a local Islamic Jihad commander named as Mohammed Jaber. According to Palestinian reports, troops dressed in civilian clothes entered the mosque where an exchange of fire occurred.

Thursday’s fatalities came a day after Palestinian health authorities said at least 12 Palestinians were killed in Wednesday’s operations.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called on Israel to halt its military operation in the northern West Bank immediately. “Latest developments in the occupied West Bank, including Israel’s launch of large-scale military operations, are deeply concerning,” Guterres wrote on X.

Families of Israeli hostages being held in the Gaza Strip protested near the border on Thursday, demanding a deal to secure their release. At one point they made a dash to try to cross into the coastal territory.

Carrying photographs and wearing shirts marked with red paint, relatives of some of the 107 hostages still held by militants in Gaza gathered at Nirim kibbutz in southern Israel, about a mile from the border. They began by shouting messages of love and support through a stack of speakers pointed towards the frontier.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has suggested there could be a partial suspension of military operations in Gaza to allow young children to be vaccinated against polio.

In a statement, Netanyahu’s office denied an Israeli television report that there would be a general truce during the vaccination campaign, which begins at the weekend, but said it had approved the “designation of specific places” in Gaza.

“This has been presented to the security cabinet and has received the support of the relevant professionals,” the statement said.

The terse statement may well have been deliberately vague. Far-right elements of the coalition are adamantly opposed to any form of truce or relief for Gaza’s Palestinian population, but aid agencies have made it clear that the polio outbreak, the first in Gaza for 25 years, would almost certainly spread to Israel if not contained immediately.

The Israeli media report said that a pause in operations was demanded by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, when he visited Israel last week.

The first of two rounds of vaccinations is due to begin on Saturday in an urgent effort to control the spread of the virus after it was found in a baby with paralysis in one leg earlier this month.

More than 25,000 vials of vaccine, enough for over 1m doses, have arrived in Gaza along with the equipment needed to keep them cool while they are being transported. But health experts have warned that it would be virtually impossible to carry out the vaccination drive successfully under bombardment.

To stop the spread of the disease, aid agencies must reach 90% of the estimated 640,000 children under the age of 10 in Gaza. That is already challenging as Palestinians have been subjected to an increasing number of evacuation orders by the Israeli military, crowding them into ever tighter, more remote spaces.

One possibility suggested by Netanyahu’s statement is that Israeli bombardment would be stopped in different areas of Gaza sequentially, to allow aid workers with the vaccines to move from one area to another.

The uncertainty over humanitarian pauses and evacuation orders made planning extremely difficult, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the UN relief agency Unrwa.

“Plans are the bread and butter of any successful humanitarian operation. You have got to know how many people you are going to reach: where are they located? How are you going to reach them?” Touma said. “Planning is such an important element of the success of any operation, but in Gaza planning is almost nonexistent.”

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.

Wildfires that swept Canada’s woodlands last year released more greenhouse gases than some of the largest emitting countries, a study found on Wednesday, calling into question national emissions budgets that rely on forests as carbon stores.

At 647 megatonnes, the carbon released in last year’s wildfires exceeded those of seven of the 10 largest national emitters in 2022, including Germany, Japan and Russia, the study published in the journal Nature found.

Only China, India and the United States released more carbon emissions during that period, meaning that if Canada’s wildfires were ranked alongside countries, they would have been the world’s fourth-largest emitter.

Typical emissions from Canadian forest fires over the last decade have ranged from 29 to 121 megatonnes. But the climate crisis, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is leading to drier and hotter conditions, driving extreme wildfires. The 2023 fires burned 15m hectares (37m acres) across Canada, or about 4% of its forests.

The findings add to concerns about dependence on the world’s forests to act as a long-term carbon sink for industrial emissions when instead they could be aggravating the problem as they catch fire.

The worry is that the global carbon budget, or the estimated amount of greenhouse gases the world can continue to emit while holding warming to 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels, is based on inaccurate calculations.

“If our goal is really to limit the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we need to make adaptations into how much carbon we are allowed to emit through our economy, corresponding to how much carbon is being absorbed or not absorbed by forests,” said the study author, Brendan Byrne, an atmospheric scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The abnormally hot temperatures Canada experienced in 2023 are projected to be common by the 2050s, the study said. This is likely to lead to severe fires across the 347m hectares (857m acres) of woodlands that Canada depends on to store carbon.

Worsening wildfires and the carbon they release are not accounted for in Canada’s annual greenhouse gas emissions inventory.

Carbon is counted when emitted from human sources, such as industrial activities, not natural disturbances in forests such as insect outbreaks or wildfires, according to the country’s 2021 Nationally Determined Contribution Strategy.

“The atmosphere sees this carbon increasing, no matter how we set up our accounting system,” Byrne said.

Donald Trump has reposted a crudely misogynistic comment about Kamala Harris on Truth Social in a move that reprised his past record of sexist behaviour and brazenly flouted pleas from members of his own party to emphasize issues over personal attacks.

With fresh polls showing Harris further improving her standing – and widening the gap with her opponent among women voters – Trump drew online opprobrium by sharing a vulgar post on his social media site implying that the Democratic nominee owed her political rise to sexual favours.

The post – originally posted by another user – featured photos of Harris and Hillary Clinton alongside the comment: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”

The comment was an oblique reference to innuendo surrounding Harris’s former relationship with Willie Brown, the San Francisco mayor. The mention of Clinton – Trump’s defeated opponent in the 2016 presidential election – alluded to the affair between Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, and her husband Bill Clinton in the 1990s, which came close to ending his presidency.

It was not the first time Trump had made lewd references to Harris. On 18 August, he shared a video by the Dilley Meme Team, a group of rightwing content creators, to the soundtrack of a parody of the Alanis Morrisette song Ironic that contained the lines, “She spent her whole damn life down on her knees”, as an image of Brown appeared behind a picture of the US vice-president and her husband, Doug Emhoff.

But the latest post appeared among a flurry of other extreme posts on Wednesday that also included tributes to the QAnon conspiracy theory that holds that Trump is waging war against an elite network of satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media.

He reposted: “WWG1WGA! RETRUTH IF YOU AGREE.” The acronym is short for the QAnon slogan: “where we go one, we go all.” He similarly reposted another QAnon phrase: “nothing can stop what is coming.”

The FBI has previously identified fringe theories like QAnon – which Trump has stopped short of endorsing while praising its supporters – as likely to fuel domestic terrorism.

In yet another incendiary communication, Trump posted manipulated images of some of his favourite targets – including the entrepreneur Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, who spearheaded the US vaccine effort against Covid-19, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi – imprisoned and wearing orange jumpsuits.

The Harris campaign made no immediate response to Trump’s latest burst of social media activity, which followed disclosures of an altercation between his campaign team and staff at Arlington Cemetery, the resting place of fallen US military heroes, during a visit on Monday.

However, the CNN host Anderson Cooper – in a lengthy segment – said the posts took Trump’s previous campaigning to a “whole other level”.

“This is the Republican candidate for president and the 45th president of the United States, talking about two women who, no matter what you think of their politics, are two of the most accomplished women in American political history,” Cooper said.

Wednesday’s online outbursts came as a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris with a four-point nationwide lead, 45% to 41%, over Trump. Among women, the survey showed the vice-president increasing her lead to 13%, compared with a average of 9% in polls for July.

A separate Fox News survey showed Harris leading or increasing her support in four southern Sun belt states, all considered vital battlegrounds in November.

In a two-way race, Harris was up by one point in Arizona and by two points in Georgia and Nevada, while Trump is ahead by one point in North Carolina, according to the poll.

Beyond the polls, there was irritation among Republicans strategists who had previously urged Trump to desist from attacking Harris personally and focus on issues of concern to voters, such as the economy, inflation and immigration.

“I think people are incredibly frustrated,” Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican party, told the Washington Post.

He said Harris’s campaign and policy stances gave “opportunities for the Trump campaign to talk about issues that actually will matter to swing voters. And rather than doing that, he’s delving into this nonsense.”

Stuart Stevens, a member of the anti-Trump Republican group, the Lincoln Project, and a strategist for Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential bid, challenged widespread predictions of a close election by suggesting that Trump’s approach would eventually alienate voters and enable Harris to win convincingly.

“There’s been a lot of talk – it’s sort of a universal truth – that this election is going to be close,” he told CNN. “I have a different opinion. I think it’ll be close till about October 20th, and then I think it’s going to be like Carter versus Reagan [in 1980, when Reagan won in a landslide], that the bottom is going to start to drop out [of Trump’s campaign].

“I think this is going to be a race that Democrats are going to win by more than Biden did,” he added.

Donald Trump has reposted a crudely misogynistic comment about Kamala Harris on Truth Social in a move that reprised his past record of sexist behaviour and brazenly flouted pleas from members of his own party to emphasize issues over personal attacks.

With fresh polls showing Harris further improving her standing – and widening the gap with her opponent among women voters – Trump drew online opprobrium by sharing a vulgar post on his social media site implying that the Democratic nominee owed her political rise to sexual favours.

The post – originally posted by another user – featured photos of Harris and Hillary Clinton alongside the comment: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”

The comment was an oblique reference to innuendo surrounding Harris’s former relationship with Willie Brown, the San Francisco mayor. The mention of Clinton – Trump’s defeated opponent in the 2016 presidential election – alluded to the affair between Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, and her husband Bill Clinton in the 1990s, which came close to ending his presidency.

It was not the first time Trump had made lewd references to Harris. On 18 August, he shared a video by the Dilley Meme Team, a group of rightwing content creators, to the soundtrack of a parody of the Alanis Morrisette song Ironic that contained the lines, “She spent her whole damn life down on her knees”, as an image of Brown appeared behind a picture of the US vice-president and her husband, Doug Emhoff.

But the latest post appeared among a flurry of other extreme posts on Wednesday that also included tributes to the QAnon conspiracy theory that holds that Trump is waging war against an elite network of satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media.

He reposted: “WWG1WGA! RETRUTH IF YOU AGREE.” The acronym is short for the QAnon slogan: “where we go one, we go all.” He similarly reposted another QAnon phrase: “nothing can stop what is coming.”

The FBI has previously identified fringe theories like QAnon – which Trump has stopped short of endorsing while praising its supporters – as likely to fuel domestic terrorism.

In yet another incendiary communication, Trump posted manipulated images of some of his favourite targets – including the entrepreneur Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, who spearheaded the US vaccine effort against Covid-19, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi – imprisoned and wearing orange jumpsuits.

The Harris campaign made no immediate response to Trump’s latest burst of social media activity, which followed disclosures of an altercation between his campaign team and staff at Arlington Cemetery, the resting place of fallen US military heroes, during a visit on Monday.

However, the CNN host Anderson Cooper – in a lengthy segment – said the posts took Trump’s previous campaigning to a “whole other level”.

“This is the Republican candidate for president and the 45th president of the United States, talking about two women who, no matter what you think of their politics, are two of the most accomplished women in American political history,” Cooper said.

Wednesday’s online outbursts came as a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris with a four-point nationwide lead, 45% to 41%, over Trump. Among women, the survey showed the vice-president increasing her lead to 13%, compared with a average of 9% in polls for July.

A separate Fox News survey showed Harris leading or increasing her support in four southern Sun belt states, all considered vital battlegrounds in November.

In a two-way race, Harris was up by one point in Arizona and by two points in Georgia and Nevada, while Trump is ahead by one point in North Carolina, according to the poll.

Beyond the polls, there was irritation among Republicans strategists who had previously urged Trump to desist from attacking Harris personally and focus on issues of concern to voters, such as the economy, inflation and immigration.

“I think people are incredibly frustrated,” Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican party, told the Washington Post.

He said Harris’s campaign and policy stances gave “opportunities for the Trump campaign to talk about issues that actually will matter to swing voters. And rather than doing that, he’s delving into this nonsense.”

Stuart Stevens, a member of the anti-Trump Republican group, the Lincoln Project, and a strategist for Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential bid, challenged widespread predictions of a close election by suggesting that Trump’s approach would eventually alienate voters and enable Harris to win convincingly.

“There’s been a lot of talk – it’s sort of a universal truth – that this election is going to be close,” he told CNN. “I have a different opinion. I think it’ll be close till about October 20th, and then I think it’s going to be like Carter versus Reagan [in 1980, when Reagan won in a landslide], that the bottom is going to start to drop out [of Trump’s campaign].

“I think this is going to be a race that Democrats are going to win by more than Biden did,” he added.

Kamala Harris on Thursday will give her first major interview since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee in what is being seen as a key test of her credibility after a prolonged honeymoon that has seen her surge ahead of Donald Trump in opinion polls.

She and her running mate, Tim Walz, will face CNN’s Dana Bash in a pre-recorded event that was scheduled following some criticism of Harris’s reluctance to expose herself to media scrutiny following her ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket last month in place of Joe Biden, who withdrew from the race on 21 July.

The US vice-president, who has had a variable performance in past televised one-on-ones, had previously pledged to hold a major interview before the end of August.

The CNN date sees her make good on that pledge with two days to spare.

The terms of her engagement have drawn mockery from Republicans, who have accused Harris of being unwilling to risk a high-profile grilling without the protective presence of Walz, the Minnesota governor who has cultivated a plain-speaking, everyman image.

“Kamala needs to do a live, unedited, solo press conference,” Abigail Jackson, communications director for Josh Hawley, the rightwing Missouri senator, posted on X. “She wants to be commander-in-chief and she’s too scared to do an interview without Tim Walz by her side? Girl power, amirite.”

Others have pointed out that it’s customary for presidential candidates to do interviews with their running mate.

The interview, to take place in the historic southern city of Savannah during a two-day campaign swing through Georgia – a vital swing state – is expected to focus in part on Harris’s policy positions, which have been criticised in some quarters as both vague and for representing a departure from the more liberal stances she assumed in her unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination in 2020.

The choice of CNN as the outlet and Bash as interviewer has also been criticised by Trump supporters, who claim both are sympathetic to Democrats and unlikely to pose hard questions. The network hosted the 27 June presidential debate – with Bash acting as a co-moderator with her colleague Jake Tapper – that prompted Biden’s eventual exit from the race following a dire performance.

Harris’s ability to cope with rigorous interviews was questioned following a bruising encounter with ABC’s Lester Holt in 2021, when she displayed annoyance over being asked why she had not visited the southern US border in her vice-presidential brief to discover the underlying causes of illegal migration.

Her delay in facing interviews has contrasted with Trump, who has staged a rash of recent media appearances, even calling up Fox News and Newsmax, two of his favourite outlets, to voice live, on-air criticisms of Harris’s acceptance speech at the Democratic national convention last week.

A court in Thailand has found Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a member of a famous Spanish acting family and a YouTube chef, guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced him to life in prison, in a lurid case that has gripped Spain.

The 30-year-old was convicted of the murder of Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, a 44-year-old plastic surgeon from Colombia, when both were vacationing on the Thai holiday island of Koh Pha-ngan in August 2023.

The case has generated enormous interest in Spain because the defendant’s father, Rodolfo Sancho, is a well-known actor, and scores of Spanish reporters have flown in for the trial.

At his trial on the island of Samui, Sancho claimed he got into a fight after Arrieta allegedly tried to sexually assault him. He said Arrieta fell as they scuffled and hit his head on a bathtub, losing consciousness and then dying.

Sancho acknowledged dismembering the victim’s body and disposing of the parts on land and at sea.

The Koh Samui provincial court issued an initial sentence of death for Sancho, but in its ruling commuted it to life imprisonment due to his cooperation during the trial, according to police.

Bussakorn Kaewleeled, a lawyer for the victim’s family, said they were happy with the outcome.

“The plaintiff is satisfied with the sentence because he will be put in prison for life and they receive some financial compensation,” Bussakorn told reporters outside the court.

When asked about Sancho’s reaction, she said: “He is sad, but we can’t forget the loss of the dead one.”

Sancho claimed he killed Arrieta, 44, in self-defence, and admitted hiding the body, but denied destroying the Colombian’s passport. The trial heard that Sancho chopped up Arrieta’s body and put the parts in plastic bags before distributing them around Koh Phangan.

While Thailand still has the death penalty for some crimes, including premeditated murder, it rarely carries out executions – the last being in 2018.

Arrieta’s family said before the verdict that they favoured a sentence of life imprisonment.

With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has plastered the city centre of Erfurt with eye-catching posters of a jet soaring through a clear blue sky, conjuring up many Germans’ dream of a tropical holiday. Only the tagline reveals a darker message: “Summer, Sun, Remigration.”

As it campaigns for votes in its east German heartland, the AfD has long since embraced the slogan that last winter sent hundreds of thousands of Germans on to the streets in protest against revelations of a rightwing “master plan” to deport unwanted foreigners and citizens alike.

Three state elections in the region in September will impose a stress test on the country’s democracy, with the AfD and a new populist leftist-conservative force expected to perform exceedingly well in the aftermath of a deadly stabbing attack, allegedly by a Syrian asylum seeker.

The anti-migration, anti-Islam AfD could take the most votes in all three regions one year before Germany is scheduled to hold its next general election, and claim up to a third of the vote in the states holding elections this Sunday: Saxony and Thuringia.

In both regions, the AfD chapter has been deemed “confirmed rightwing extremist” by domestic security authorities, and the remaining parties have vowed to keep it out of power with a democratic “firewall” by refusing cooperation.

The campaign has included the remarkable rise of an eight-month-old party built around a veteran far-left firebrand, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance).

Its blend of scepticism about migration, opposition to Nato, backing for high taxes on the rich and resistance to military aid for Ukraine has struck a chord with the electorate.

Given the complex maths of coalition-building in a fractured political landscape, polls indicate the BSW could find itself in the role of kingmaker in any of the three states. Brandenburg, the rural region surrounding Berlin, votes on 22 September.

None of the mainstream parties have ruled out working with the BSW, while Wagenknecht has revelled in the lip service many of the candidates are now paying to many of her once taboo views, such as calls for Ukraine to hold immediate peace talks with Russia.

The expected strong showing for the two populist parties is likely to sharpen the febrile political mood in Europe’s top economy, and underline the enduring disaffection in the ex-communist east more than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“But it would be a mistake to relegate the state votes to ‘elections in east Germany’,” said Alexander Moritz, a public radio correspondent in Saxony.

“They are a test case for the whole of German democracy. Inflation, fear of war and restrictions on freedom during the pandemic have left many people chronically distressed. For the first time since 1932, rightwing extremists could become the strongest party in a German legislature in a free election.”

The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and his centre-left-led coalition were already on the ropes with their dismal popularity ratings nationwide, bitter public infighting and catastrophic polling in the eastern states.

Last Friday’s knife attack in the city of Solingen, near Düsseldorf, which killed three and for which Islamic State claimed responsibility, amplified the sense that the government was failing on two issues high on actual and potential AfD voters’ lists of concerns: immigration and crime.

The AfD seized on the tragedy even before the main suspect, Issa al-Hasan, a 26-year-old Syrian who had been slated for deportation last year, surrendered to police.

By Sunday Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the party, which is polling at about 17% nationally, was calling for a “five-year stop to the entrance, registration and naturalisation of migrants”.

Pushing back against a perception that the conservative opposition and the far right had taken control of the debate, Scholz pledged stricter laws on carrying knives in public, swifter deportations of rejected asylum seekers and tighter controls on “irregular” migration, but only in accordance with international law.

Yet nine years after his predecessor, Angela Merkel, issued her rallying cry of “We can do it” in response to a historic refugee influx, hardliners appeared to have the upper hand.

“Germany is a bit of a latecomer when it comes to the rise of the far-right parties,” said Kai Arzheimer, a political scientist at the University of Mainz. He pointed to the national success of figures such as Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, Geert Wilders and Robert Fico in their respective countries while Germany’s “firewall” held.

“What’s unusual about the AfD is that, unlike Le Pen in France or Wilders in the Netherlands trying to present themselves as if they have nothing to do with rightwing extremism, the AfD has people in its ranks convicted of using Nazi slogans,” Arzheimer said.

“It appears not to hurt them that they present themselves as so extreme right and particularly in eastern Germany, it appears to be well received.”

The face of this trend is Björn Höcke, the co-leader of the Thuringia AfD chapter. A former history teacher, Höcke has repeatedly used banned Nazi rhetoric at his rallies while insisting he was unaware of its origins.

In a speech to an enthusiastic crowd in the state capital, Erfurt, last week, Höcke, who has often disparaged Germany’s culture of atonement for the Holocaust as a form of “shame” and “self-hatred”, said he wanted to free his compatriots to express pride.

“I believe in a new, honest, vital patriotism – a nationalism that is normal in any other country” but Germany, he said.

Petra Neumann, 68, of the pressure group Grandmothers Against the Right, helped lead a boisterous counter-demonstration against Höcke, along with young activists.

She said she remembered her grandfather waking up in the night screaming when she was a child.

“When I was 12, he took me to Buchenwald,” the former Nazi concentration camp 12 miles from Erfurt, “and explained how people there were tortured and murdered. He said he had been held at Dachau and that was where the nightmares came from,” she said.

“I have a daughter and a granddaughter now and we’re here to ensure they never have to experience fascism.”

Although the Solingen killings exposed failings on deportations at EU, federal and state levels, analysts raised doubts about whether they would do much to shift the race given the already strong positioning of the parties.

The Thuringia chapter of the AfD, however, was leaving little to chance. Last weekend it began using a simple slogan: “Höcke or Solingen.”

Two women in China have been accused of child abuse after they separated a crying toddler from her grandmother and locked her in the toilet of a plane, on a domestic flight.

In a video uploaded by one of the women to social media, the girl can been seen wailing and trying to get out of the locked lavatory door. One of the women can be heard saying “if you stop crying, you can go out” and “if you stop crying, auntie will take you back to grandma”. Neither of the women are thought to be related to the child.

The incident took place on a 24 August flight from Guiyang, a city in south-west China, to Shanghai. Juneyao Airlines, which operated the flight, confirmed what happened and said the child had been taken to the toilet to be “educated” with her grandmother’s consent. The airline said it had since spoken to the child’s mother, who was not on the flight, and who “expressed her understanding” of the women’s behaviour.

The incident went viral on social media after one of the women, Gou Tingting, uploaded a video to Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.

The grandmother was reportedly waiting outside the restroom door.

Gou was initially proud of her intervention. “Many passengers were using tissues to block their ears,” she reportedly wrote. “Some had moved to the back of the plane to escape the noise.” But the video has since been deleted after a backlash online. Local media reports said the grandmother was not aware that the incident was being filmed.

One Weibo user wrote: “The grandmother and the two aunts should be sued, and social services should intervene. If there are parents like this, children will suffer in the future.”

Another wrote: “When will these people understand that babies have the right to cry and the right to travel, they are part of society, and so are babies!!!!!!!”

The incident has tapped into a debate in China about xiong haizi, or “bear children”, a slang term for unruly little ones who are seen as being spoilt or naughty.

It is not the first time that plane behaviour has caused a ruckus in China. Earlier this month, a domestic flight departing from Chongqing was delayed by one hour after a child complained that his economy class seat was too cramped, and was allowed by his mother to install himself in a first class seat, despite objections from flight attendants.

In 2015, three Chinese passengers were removed from a flight that was about to depart from Siem Reap in Cambodia to Chengdu in China, after a scuffle broke out. The argument was about someone’s seat being tipped too far back.

Two women in China have been accused of child abuse after they separated a crying toddler from her grandmother and locked her in the toilet of a plane, on a domestic flight.

In a video uploaded by one of the women to social media, the girl can been seen wailing and trying to get out of the locked lavatory door. One of the women can be heard saying “if you stop crying, you can go out” and “if you stop crying, auntie will take you back to grandma”. Neither of the women are thought to be related to the child.

The incident took place on a 24 August flight from Guiyang, a city in south-west China, to Shanghai. Juneyao Airlines, which operated the flight, confirmed what happened and said the child had been taken to the toilet to be “educated” with her grandmother’s consent. The airline said it had since spoken to the child’s mother, who was not on the flight, and who “expressed her understanding” of the women’s behaviour.

The incident went viral on social media after one of the women, Gou Tingting, uploaded a video to Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.

The grandmother was reportedly waiting outside the restroom door.

Gou was initially proud of her intervention. “Many passengers were using tissues to block their ears,” she reportedly wrote. “Some had moved to the back of the plane to escape the noise.” But the video has since been deleted after a backlash online. Local media reports said the grandmother was not aware that the incident was being filmed.

One Weibo user wrote: “The grandmother and the two aunts should be sued, and social services should intervene. If there are parents like this, children will suffer in the future.”

Another wrote: “When will these people understand that babies have the right to cry and the right to travel, they are part of society, and so are babies!!!!!!!”

The incident has tapped into a debate in China about xiong haizi, or “bear children”, a slang term for unruly little ones who are seen as being spoilt or naughty.

It is not the first time that plane behaviour has caused a ruckus in China. Earlier this month, a domestic flight departing from Chongqing was delayed by one hour after a child complained that his economy class seat was too cramped, and was allowed by his mother to install himself in a first class seat, despite objections from flight attendants.

In 2015, three Chinese passengers were removed from a flight that was about to depart from Siem Reap in Cambodia to Chengdu in China, after a scuffle broke out. The argument was about someone’s seat being tipped too far back.

EU member states are working on a fresh proposal for a youth mobility scheme with the UK after an earlier paper by the European Commission was rejected out of hand by Labour in April, it has emerged.

EU sources say the 27 countries hope to come up with viable negotiating points for Brussels in coming weeks to feed into the expected negotiations on a reset of EU-UK relations being sought by the British prime minister, Keir Starmer.

It is thought new proposals would also allow Starmer’s team a fresh start on the issue, including a possible counter-proposal, and minimise any political pushback by Eurosceptics.

The conversation in EU capitals comes as the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, spoke of a lamentable decline in interaction with the UK’s young people across the EU.

“The contacts between our societies, between Germans and people in the UK, have declined massively after Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. We want to change that; if you know each other very well you understand each other better,” Scholz told reporters on Wednesday.

The German ambassador to the UK, Miguel Berger, said it was vital that people understood that youth mobility had nothing to do with migration or free movement. “We hear over and over the argument that [youth mobility] is freedom of movement when it is not, as it is based on visa requirements and limited time periods. People leave after a set time,” he said.

Berger said giving opportunities to young people to work as baristas or au pairs, learn languages or do short-term training in each other’s countries made important connections that acted as a “glue” between the countries in Europe.

He said: “What we want to promote is the contact between our societies, because in the end they are the backbone of our relationships: youth exchanges, sports events, town twinnings. We can’t have a relationship which is only based on politicians meeting.”

The European Commission made a youth mobility scheme proposal in April which would allow citizens to work or study for up to four years, catching many in London and the EU by surprise. Labour, nervous of its Brexit-related toxicity, rejected it within hours while Downing Street dismissed it the following day.

It was subsequently seen as a hasty attempt to quash talks the former British prime minister Rishi Sunak had opened with six EU countries, including France and Germany, for unilateral youth schemes.

Berger said youth mobility schemes were a bilateral competence but the 27 EU countries had agreed to go forward as a bloc, and were all keen to see opportunities resume for young people.

“I know that all the 27 in the European Union have this question of creating additional possibilities for young people very high on their agenda,” he said, adding that the idea was that the scheme would be for everyone, not just the “elite”.

Youth mobility programmes are already offered by many countries including the UK, which has reciprocal schemes that allow two-year stays by young people from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Korea, Andorra, Japan, Monaco, Iceland, Uruguay and San Marino.

University sources have said youth exchanges, including the Erasmus scheme, had a “return on investment” in the form of “soft power” that was never factored in to Brexit. However, they said the inclusion in the April proposal of a four-year scheme allowing students to study in each other’s countries while paying home fees was a non-starter – and a youth mobility scheme would have a better political chance if students were removed from the equation.

One source in the UK said it was just not viable because there had always been an “imbalance in the flow of students”, with more EU citizens studying in the UK than British students in the EU. This created a disproportionate financial burden on British institutions, something they could not countenance in a youth mobility scheme. And even if EU citizens were allowed to study in the UK, there were still other barriers including the high cost of visas and the high cost of the NHS surcharge.

One alternative to returning to Erasmus being considered at university level is an increase in funding for EU students who want to exchange with a university in a third country.

After talks with Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace in Paris, Starmer said they had discussed his plans to reset relations with France and the wider EU.

“We discussed the situation in Ukraine, as you would expect, the situation in the Middle East, bilateral issues in terms of trade and defence and security, but also the wider reset that I want in relation to our relations, not just with France, but with the EU in general,” he said.

“They were the topics that we discussed as part of the reset, rebuild[ing] and making sure that our number one mission, which is growing the economy, is absolutely central to everything that we do.”

Two journalists from the closed Hong Kong media outlet Stand News have been found guilty of conspiring to publish seditious materials – the first such convictions since Hong Kong’s return to Chinese control – after a trial that was closely observed as a bellwether for the city’s diminishing press freedom.

The former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam were arrested on 29 December 2021 after police raided the outlet’s newsroom.

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, said the verdicts marked “a dark day for press freedom” in Hong Kong.

The court found 11 articles published by Stand News to be seditious, from the 17 that prosecutors had said sought to promote “illegal ideologies” and to incite hatred against the governments in Hong Kong and China and the 2020 national security law.

The parent company of Stand News, Best Pencil Ltd, was also found guilty. “The line [Stand News] took was to support and promote Hong Kong local autonomy,” the judgment said. “It even became a tool to smear and vilify the Central Authorities [Beijing] and the [Hong Kong] SAR government.”

The district court judge Kwok Wai-kin said that in making a ruling on seditious intent, the court had considered “the potential danger to national security” and the actual situation at the time.

Stand News, launched in 2014, had been a significant source of news about the 2019 pro-democracy protests and the harsh crackdown by authorities. It became known for its livestreamed reports from the frontline of protests as police clashed with demonstrators.

Patten said: “The baseless allegations and verdict of this trial mark a further sinister turn for media freedom in Hong Kong, as it is clear that political commentary and opinion pieces may violate national security.”

Catherine West, the Foreign Office’s Minister for the Indo-Pacific, said on X: “The UK wants Hong Kong to succeed as a truly international city, with the free exchange of opinions and information. Hong Kong authorities should end politicised prosecutions of journalists”.

Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the US state department, said that the verdict “is a direct attack on media freedom and undermines Hong Kong’s once-proud international reputation for openness.”

Stand News faced criticism from authorities but was seen by the population as one of the most credible Hong Kong outlets in 2019, according to surveys.

As authorities clamped down on the pro-democracy movement, they also targeted outlets seen as supporting it, including Stand News and Apple Daily. In 2020 Beijing imposed the sweeping national security law (NSL), outlawing a swathe of vaguely defined acts of dissent.

In June 2021 police raided the Apple Daily offices and arrested several editors and executives and the paper’s founder, Jimmy Lai. Lai remains in jail on protest-related convictions and is on trial for NSL charges.

Six months later, authorities came for Stand News, raiding the newsroom and the home of its news editor, Ronson Chan, who led the Hong Kong journalists association. After the raid and arrests, the outlet was forced to shut down and remove all of its online content.

The raid on Stand News prompted the independent outlet Citizen News to announce within days that it would cease operations, citing the increasingly risky media environment.

The sedition law dates back to the British colonial era and had been little used until authorities began charging pro-democracy figures with its crimes after the 2019 protests. It was repealed in March after Hong Kong introduced its own domestic national security law.

Sarah Brooks, the China director for Amnesty International, called the verdicts “dismaying”.

Brooks said: “The journalists convicted today have committed no internationally recognised crime and their conviction should be quashed.”

In October 2022, Chung and Lam pleaded not guilty, Chung choosing to testify in court. He spent 36 of the trial’s 57 days in the witness box and defended Stand News and its commitment to press freedom.

“The media should not self-censor but report,” Chung said. “Freedom of speech should not be restricted on the grounds of eradicating dangerous ideas, but rather it should be used to eradicate dangerous ideas.”

The defence said Chung and Lam were legitimate journalists who covered the same stories as other Hong Kong outlets, and accused prosecutors of cherrypicking articles and introducing new evidence during the trial.

Closing arguments were delivered more than a year ago, and the verdict against Chung and Lam had been due in October but faced repeated delays, including courts wishing to wait for the outcome of a separate sedition case.

The pair now face up to two years in prison and a fine of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (about £485/US$640) for a first offence. They have the right to appeal against the ruling. Both men spent more than 300 days in pre-trial custody before being granted bail after the trial began. The judge granted the them bail until their sentencing, scheduled for 26 September.

Beh Lih Yi, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the use of the sedition law to target journalists “makes a mockery of justice”.

“Today’s oppressive ruling shows Hong Kong is descending further into authoritarianism, and that not toeing the official line can land anyone in jail,” Beh said.

In a separate case on Thursday, a Hong Kong jury convicted one person and acquitted six others over an alleged plan to detonate explosives and use firearms against police during a 2019 protest, in a landmark case under the UN anti-terrorism ordinance.

Lai Chun-pong, 30, was the only one found guilty. The prosecution alleged that the accused were members of a group known as the Dragon Slayers. The trial marked the first time the UN anti-terrorism measure was drawn upon in Hong Kong.

South Korea’s constitutional court has ruled that part of the country’s climate law does not conform with protecting the constitutional rights of future generations, an outcome local activists are calling a “landmark decision”.

The unanimous verdict concludes four years of legal battles and sets a significant precedent for future climate-related legal actions in the region.

The court found that the absence of legally binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions for the period from 2031-49 violated the constitutional rights of future generations and failed to uphold the government’s duty to protect those rights.

The court said this lack of long-term targets shifted an excessive burden to the future. It gave the national assembly and government until 28 February 2026 to amend the law to include these longer-term targets.

The decision echoes a similar ruling by Germany’s federal constitutional court in 2021, which found the country’s climate law lacked sufficient provisions for emission reductions beyond 2030, potentially infringing on the freedoms of future generations.

South Korea’s climate litigation began in March 2020 when Youth 4 Climate Action, a group leading the Korean arm of the global school climate strike movement, filed the first lawsuit, alleging that the government’s inadequate greenhouse gas reduction targets violated citizens’ fundamental rights, particularly those of future generations. Subsequently, three additional lawsuits were consolidated, bringing the number of plaintiffs to 255.

These plaintiffs represented a wide age range, including children, babies, and even a foetus at the time of filing, emphasising the long-term impact of climate policy on future generations.

Activists including Kim Seo-gyeong from Youth 4 Climate Action said they saw the court’s decision not as the end but as the beginning of a renewed push for more ambitious climate action.

“Responding to the climate crisis means reducing its risks, controlling factors that could exacerbate the crisis, and building safety nets to sustain life and society,” Kim said. “I look forward to seeing how this constitutional complaint will change the standards for climate response and what transformations it will bring.”

Jeah Han, a 12-year-old plaintiff who was part of the “baby climate litigation” consisting of young children and babies represented by their parents, expressed her feelings of joy.

“I have always believed that this complaint represented the wishes of many people. Today’s outcome feels like a wish has come true, and I am both happy and proud. Just as we have come together to fight for a better future amid the climate crisis, I hope more people will join us moving forward,” she said.

The court, however, rejected the plaintiffs’ claims that the government’s 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 2018 levels, as stipulated in the country’s carbon neutrality act, violated constitutional rights, saying this near-term goal was sufficient.

After the verdict, the plaintiffs said in a joint statement: “There is some disappointment regarding the parts that were not upheld today. However, it is clear that today’s ruling represents meaningful progress in protecting everyone’s rights beyond the climate crisis.

“The decision we face today is not just a victory for the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit; it is an achievement for all those who have been excluded from the national climate response process while confronting the climate crisis.”

Sejong Youn, a solicitor who has represented all four litigation cases, emphasised the core reason for the unconstitutionality was the regulation of reduction targets that would impose an excessive burden without considering the rights of future generations.

“Therefore, a new greenhouse gas reduction pathway that addresses this unconstitutionality must be presented within the timeframe set by the constitutional court,” he said.

The historic decision is expected to have consequences beyond South Korea, potentially influencing climate litigation and policy in other Asian countries, such as Japan and Taiwan, where similar cases are under way.

It was supposed to be a life on the ocean wave, a home on the rolling deep. Instead, cruise passengers who signed up for a three-year voyage around the world have been gazing at a rainswept quayside in Belfast for the past three months after a series of delays.

The Odyssey, operated by the US cruise line Villa Vie Residences, was scheduled to depart from Queen’s Island, Belfast – where the Titanic was built more than 100 years ago – on 30 May. But problems with the ship’s rudders and gearbox mean the Odyssey is still docked.

Passengers who had paid up to $899,000 (£683,730) to buy a cabin arrived in May expecting to set sail in days. For the past three months they have been permitted to spend their days onboard but must disembark overnight.

“We can have all of our meals and they even have movies and trivia entertainment, almost like cruising except we’re at the dock,” said Holly Hennessey, from Florida, who is travelling with her cat, Captain.

A big downside to the delay was the weather, she told the BBC. “I’ve never had so much use for my umbrella in my life, and I carry my raincoat everywhere I go.”

Villa Vie Residences said it was doing everything it could to “relieve the anxiety” of passengers by planning trips and other cruises or putting them up in hotels.

Earlier publicity material from the company claimed it was a “leading innovator in modern-day residential cruising”.

It offered prospective passengers the chance to buy a cabin for the 15-year life of the vessel, for between $99,999 and $899,000 plus monthly fees. In that time they would get unlimited cruises. Those unable or unwilling to make such a commitment could book shorter spells onboard, from 35 to 120 days.

Although its target market is retired people, the company stipulates no minimum age for its residents. The average age of residents is 58 and half the cabins are being occupied by one person, according to the company. Eighty per cent of owners come from the US, and about nine in 10 plan on staying onboard for the full world cruise.

The Odyssey was built in 1993 and has capacity for 929 passengers. Its eight decks have three restaurants, eight bars, four lounges, a library, a business centre and a gym and spa. It offers live music, lectures and film screenings, and a complimentary medical service during cruises.

Hennessey, who described herself as a “cruise addict”, said: “I have always wanted to live on a ship, and it will be a dream come true for me.”

Her cabin has a double bed, a small living area with room for her cat, and a balcony. “Villa Vie is a community, and a real community has pets,” she said.

Stephen Theriac, from Nicaragua, said he and his wife had “eaten in every [nearby] restaurant and had a Guinness in every pub”. The long delay was “just all part of our adventure”.

David Austin, from Georgia in the US, said he had “stopped counting down” the days until the ship launched. “The payoff of seeing the world in this fashion is too great to feel too disappointed with each delay announcement,” he said. “I was committed, having sold my house right before my arrival, and I’ve stayed committed to this adventure.”

Mike Petterson, the chief executive of Villa Vie Residences, said: “Despite having to do major works such as the rudder stocks, major steel work and engine overhauls, we have persevered and are now in the last stages of departure. We expect a successful launch next week [after which] we will head to Bremerhaven, Amsterdam, Lisbon, then across the Atlantic for our Caribbean segment.

“We are extremely grateful for our residents who have stood by our side through the tough times. It is great to see the relationships building and the community bonding as we are looking forward to the next 15 years of discovery.”