Almost 3,000 people have been wounded and at least eight killed after pagers used by Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon simultaneously, according to the country’s health minister.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the blasts killed eight people, including a girl. “About 2,750 people were injured … more than 200 of them critically,” with injuries mostly reported to the face, hands and stomach, he told a press conference.

Hezbollah said in a statement that two of its fighters and a 10-year-old girl were among the dead.

Lebanon’s information minister called the explosions an act of “Israeli aggression”.

A Hezbollah source told the Guardian they suspected Israel was behind Tuesday’s attack, but that the number of wounded was still unclear. They said they also believed the attack was in response to the alleged assassination attempt by the Shia militia on a former top Israeli defence official, revealed on Tuesday by the Israeli Shin Bet security agency.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was one of those injured in the explosions, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.

Some of the top Hezbollah leaders and their advisers were also injured, the Saudi-owned Al-Hadath news channel reported, quoting unnamed sources.

Abiad, said that while it was too early for an accurate tally, the number of wounded was in the “hundreds” and there were some fatalities from the explosions.

The attack was the third time Beirut has been targeted since the beginning of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on 8 October, after the latter launched rockets at Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel the day before, which began the current Gaza war.

Ambulances choked the streets of Beirut, the southern city of Tyre and villages across the Beqaa valley and south Lebanon, taking the wounded to hospitals. Pictures of the wounded with scorched hips and mangled hands circulated across local media.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel.

Lebanon’s health ministry put hospitals across the country on “maximum alert” and asked all healthcare workers to head to their stations. It instructed citizens to distance themselves from wireless communication devices.

Hezbollah maintains its own communication network separate from the rest of Lebanon. Suspicions that Israel has managed to penetrate the group’s telecommunications have been held since October, as several Hezbollah commanders have been assassinated in targeted strikes.

Israel has yet to comment on the attack.

Yossi Melman, a co-author of Spies Against Armageddon and other books on Israeli intelligence, said: “This absolutely has all the hallmarks of a Mossad operation. Somebody has planted minor explosives or malware from inside the pagers. I understand they were recently supplied as well.”

Melman said he understood that “a lot of people in Hezbollah carried these pagers, not just top echelon commanders”. They were used by the Lebanese group because they feared their mobile phones were being monitored by Israeli intelligence to surveil their communications and to pinpoint missile attacks.

The exercise showed, he said, that “Mossad is able to penetrate and infiltrate Hezbollah time and time again” but he questioned whether there was any strategic gain to the co-ordinated explosions. “It won’t change the situation on the ground, and I don’t see any advance in it.”

The incident came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was holding a series of high-level security consultations with the heads of the security forces as tensions with Hezbollah rise, according to Israeli media reports.

The Times of Israel and Ynet news described the meetings as “dramatic”.

The consultations were called a few hours after Israel, during an overnight meeting of the security cabinet on Tuesday, approved the decision to expand its war goals to include the return of tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from towns along the northern frontier that have been badly damaged by rockets fired by Hezbollah – a move that suggests a major military operation against the Lebanese militant group is likely.

On Tuesday, Israel’s internal security agency said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official, which was reportedly to be carried out in the coming days.

The Shin Bet said in a statement that it had found an explosive “device fitted with a camera and a mechanism that would allow it to be activated by Hezbollah from Lebanon”, although it did not provide evidence linking the device to the group.

Hezbollah officials have said in the past that the group would stand down if a Gaza ceasefire was reached, while Israel insists it cannot allow militants to remain in the border area in southern Lebanon.

The violence has killed hundreds – mostly fighters – in Lebanon, and dozens of civilians and soldiers on the Israeli side. The fighting has also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee their homes.

In recent days, according to media reports in the country, Netanyahu has been allegedly considering dismissing the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, in a move that would be the biggest leadership shake-up in the country since the 7 October attacks, and could pave the way to an all-out conflict against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Gallant is believed to have consistently opposed a major military operation in Lebanon while the fighting is continuing against Hamas in Gaza, West Bank violence and military activities is escalating, and Israel is fighting off Houthi missile attacks and dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and threats.

Additional reporting by Dan Sabbagh

Almost 3,000 people have been wounded and at least eight killed after pagers used by Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon simultaneously, according to the country’s health minister.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the blasts killed eight people, including a girl. “About 2,750 people were injured … more than 200 of them critically,” with injuries mostly reported to the face, hands and stomach, he told a press conference.

Hezbollah said in a statement that two of its fighters and a 10-year-old girl were among the dead.

Lebanon’s information minister called the explosions an act of “Israeli aggression”.

A Hezbollah source told the Guardian they suspected Israel was behind Tuesday’s attack, but that the number of wounded was still unclear. They said they also believed the attack was in response to the alleged assassination attempt by the Shia militia on a former top Israeli defence official, revealed on Tuesday by the Israeli Shin Bet security agency.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was one of those injured in the explosions, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.

Some of the top Hezbollah leaders and their advisers were also injured, the Saudi-owned Al-Hadath news channel reported, quoting unnamed sources.

Abiad, said that while it was too early for an accurate tally, the number of wounded was in the “hundreds” and there were some fatalities from the explosions.

The attack was the third time Beirut has been targeted since the beginning of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on 8 October, after the latter launched rockets at Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel the day before, which began the current Gaza war.

Ambulances choked the streets of Beirut, the southern city of Tyre and villages across the Beqaa valley and south Lebanon, taking the wounded to hospitals. Pictures of the wounded with scorched hips and mangled hands circulated across local media.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel.

Lebanon’s health ministry put hospitals across the country on “maximum alert” and asked all healthcare workers to head to their stations. It instructed citizens to distance themselves from wireless communication devices.

Hezbollah maintains its own communication network separate from the rest of Lebanon. Suspicions that Israel has managed to penetrate the group’s telecommunications have been held since October, as several Hezbollah commanders have been assassinated in targeted strikes.

Israel has yet to comment on the attack.

Yossi Melman, a co-author of Spies Against Armageddon and other books on Israeli intelligence, said: “This absolutely has all the hallmarks of a Mossad operation. Somebody has planted minor explosives or malware from inside the pagers. I understand they were recently supplied as well.”

Melman said he understood that “a lot of people in Hezbollah carried these pagers, not just top echelon commanders”. They were used by the Lebanese group because they feared their mobile phones were being monitored by Israeli intelligence to surveil their communications and to pinpoint missile attacks.

The exercise showed, he said, that “Mossad is able to penetrate and infiltrate Hezbollah time and time again” but he questioned whether there was any strategic gain to the co-ordinated explosions. “It won’t change the situation on the ground, and I don’t see any advance in it.”

The incident came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was holding a series of high-level security consultations with the heads of the security forces as tensions with Hezbollah rise, according to Israeli media reports.

The Times of Israel and Ynet news described the meetings as “dramatic”.

The consultations were called a few hours after Israel, during an overnight meeting of the security cabinet on Tuesday, approved the decision to expand its war goals to include the return of tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from towns along the northern frontier that have been badly damaged by rockets fired by Hezbollah – a move that suggests a major military operation against the Lebanese militant group is likely.

On Tuesday, Israel’s internal security agency said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official, which was reportedly to be carried out in the coming days.

The Shin Bet said in a statement that it had found an explosive “device fitted with a camera and a mechanism that would allow it to be activated by Hezbollah from Lebanon”, although it did not provide evidence linking the device to the group.

Hezbollah officials have said in the past that the group would stand down if a Gaza ceasefire was reached, while Israel insists it cannot allow militants to remain in the border area in southern Lebanon.

The violence has killed hundreds – mostly fighters – in Lebanon, and dozens of civilians and soldiers on the Israeli side. The fighting has also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee their homes.

In recent days, according to media reports in the country, Netanyahu has been allegedly considering dismissing the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, in a move that would be the biggest leadership shake-up in the country since the 7 October attacks, and could pave the way to an all-out conflict against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Gallant is believed to have consistently opposed a major military operation in Lebanon while the fighting is continuing against Hamas in Gaza, West Bank violence and military activities is escalating, and Israel is fighting off Houthi missile attacks and dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and threats.

Additional reporting by Dan Sabbagh

Canada’s ruling Liberal party has lost a once-safe seat in Montreal, a result that is likely to put more pressure on the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to quit.

Elections Canada said that with 100% of the votes counted in the parliamentary constituency of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, the separatist Bloc Québécois candidate, Louis-Philippe Sauvé, had beaten the Liberal candidate, Laura Palestini, by a whisker: 28% to 27.2%. The New Democratic party (NDP) candidate received 26.1%.

The election, which was held to replace a Liberal legislator who quit, will put more focus on the political future of Trudeau, who has become increasingly unpopular after almost nine years in office.

Trudeau insists he will lead the party into an election that must be held by the end of October 2025, but some Liberal legislators have broken ranks to call for change at the top.

Alexandra Mendès, a Liberal MP who represents a Québec constituency, said last week that many of her constituents wanted Trudeau to go.

In the 2021 general election, the Liberal party won the Montreal seat with 43% of the vote, ahead of the Bloc Québécois on 22% and the NDP on 19%.

Polls now suggest that the Liberals will lose badly in the next federal election to the right-of-centre Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre. A Leger poll last week put public support for the Conservatives at 45%, a level rarely seen nationally in Canada, with the Liberals in second place at 25%.

Trudeau’s popularity has sagged as voters struggle with a surge in the cost of living and a housing crisis.

Poilievre has promised to do away with a federal carbon tax that he claims is making life unaffordable and last week vowed to cap immigration limits until more homes could be built.

Liberals concede the polls look grim but say they will redouble efforts to portray Poilievre as a supporter of the Make America Great Again movement led by the former US president Donald Trump.

Poilievre, an acerbic career politician who often insults his opponents, also says he would defund the CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster. In April he was ejected from the House of Commons after he called Trudeau “a wacko”.

Donald Trump launched his family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, on a livestreamed interview on the social media platform X on Monday. The Republican presidential nominee gave few details about the venture but did offer his first public comments on the apparent assassination attempt against him a day earlier.

Trump did not discuss specifics about World Liberty Financial on Monday or how it would work, pivoting from questions about cryptocurrency to talking about artificial intelligence and other topics. Instead, he recounted his experience on Sunday, saying he and a friend playing golf “heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five.

“I would have loved to have sank that last putt,” Trump continued. He credited the Secret Service agent who spotted the barrel of a rifle and began firing toward it as well as law enforcement and a civilian who he said helped track down the suspect.

World Liberty Financial is expected to be a borrowing and lending service used to trade cryptocurrencies, which are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. Exchanges often charge fees for withdrawals of bitcoin and other currencies.

Other speakers after Trump, including his eldest son, Don Jr, talked about embracing cryptocurrency as an alternative to what they allege is a banking system tilted against conservatives.

Experts have said a presidential candidate launching a business venture in the midst of a campaign could create ethical conflicts.

“Taking a pro-crypto stance is not necessarily troubling, the troubling aspect is doing it while starting a way to personally benefit from it,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said earlier this month.

During his time in the White House, Trump said he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrency and tweeted in 2019: “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.” However, during this election cycle, he has reversed himself and taken on a favorable view of cryptocurrencies.

He announced in May that his campaign would begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency as part of an effort to build what it calls a “crypto army” leading up to election day. He attended a bitcoin conference in Nashville this year, promising to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and create a bitcoin “strategic reserve” using the currency that the government currently holds.

Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who has done research on cryptocurrencies, said she was skeptical of Trump’s change of heart on crypto.

“I think it’s fair to say that that reversal has been motivated in part by financial interests,” she said.

Crypto enthusiasts welcomed the shift, viewing the launch as a positive sign for investors if Trump retakes the White House.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s campaign has not offered policy proposals on how it would regulate digital assets like cryptocurrencies.

In an effort to appeal to crypto investors, a group of Democrats, including New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, participated in an online Crypto 4 Harris event in August. Neither Harris nor members of her campaign staff attended the event.

Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday that alleged he also engaged in kidnapping, forced labor, bribery and other crimes.

Combs was arrested in connection with the charges late on Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities conducting a sex-trafficking investigation raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami.

The three-count, 14-page indictment alleges racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The document contains remarkably graphic details, including that Combs would force sex trafficking victims to engage in group sex acts with associates of his that he referred to as “freak offs” – sometimes for days at a time – while he recorded video of the encounters and masturbated to them. The encounters would last for days and were so physically exerting on him and his victims – whom he would force to ingest drugs – that all “typically received IV fluids to recover” in the aftermath, the indictment said.

“For decades, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a ‘Puff Daddy,’ a/k/a ‘P Diddy,’ a/k/a ‘Diddy,’ a/k/a ‘PD,’ a/k/a ‘Love,’ the defendant, abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct,” the indictment reads.

Comb’s alleged criminal conspiracy, the indictment says, “relied on employees, resources, and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled – creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice”.

The indictment made it a point to say that Combs would also task his employees with providing everything from lubricant to drugs for the alleged freak offs.

“Freak Offs occurred regularly, sometimes lasted multiple days, and often involved multiple commercial sex workers,” the complaint says. Combs would direct the sex acts at the center of the freaks offs while he also “distributed a variety of controlled substances to victims, in part to keep the victims obedient and compliant”.

The attention to detail attributed to Combs for the freak offs is staggering. Not only would his supervisors, security, hotel staff and assistants stock up on drugs and lubricant, they would also procure baby oil, extra linens, specialized lighting as well as book hotel rooms and travel arrangements.

When investigators raided Comb’s homes in Miami and Los Angeles in March, the items they seized included drugs, more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant and three AR-15 rifles with a drum-style magazine.

Contained in the complaint are apparent references to singer Casandra Ventura, Combs’s former girlfriend who came forward with allegations of sexual abuse last year that Combs quickly settled out of court. He was recorded beating her in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, video of which surfaced only earlier this year.

The indictment suggests Combs “attempted to bribe [a hotel] staff member to ensure silence” after that assault, which the indictment describes without naming Ventura.

The government adds that – from at least 2009 – Combs “assaulted women by, among other things, striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them”. The video from Ventura’s assault had been the most publicly apparent evidence of that at the time of the indictment unsealed on Tuesday, which had actually been handed up in secret four days earlier.

Since last year, Combs has been sued by people who say he subjected them to physical or sexual abuse. He has denied many of those allegations, and his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said outside a federal courthouse in New York City on Tuesday morning that Combs would plead not guilty.

Agnifilo also said he personally would “fight like hell” to try to get his client released from custody.

Of Combs, Agnifilo said, “His spirits are good. He’s confident.”

Combs, 54, was recognized as one of the most influential figures in hip-hop before the flood of allegations against him turned him into an industry pariah.

That flood began in November, when Ventura – the R&B vocalist known as Cassie – filed a lawsuit saying he had beaten and raped her for years. She accused Combs of coercing her, and others, into unwanted sex in drug-fueled settings.

Combs settled the suit in a single day, an unusually fast out-of-court resolution that many interpreted as a sign that he was worried about his legal exposure.

Nonetheless, the settlement did not prevent CNN from airing hotel security footage in May that showed Combs punching and kicking Cassie and throwing her on a floor eight years earlier.

After the video aired, Combs apologized, saying, “I was disgusted when I did it.” His apology contradicted years of denials that he was abusive.

Combs and his attorneys, however, denied similar allegations made by others in a string of lawsuits.

Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Cassie, said in a statement on Tuesday that “neither Ms Ventura nor I have any comment”.

“We appreciate your understanding and if that changes, we will certainly let you know,” he added.

A woman said Combs raped her two decades ago when she was 17. A music producer sued, saying Combs forced him to have sex with prostitutes. Another woman, April Lampros, said Combs subjected her to “terrifying sexual encounters” starting when she was a college student in 1994.

More recently, the singer Dawn Richard – who formed part of the Combs-founded girl group Danity Kane – sued him for sexual assault and inhumane treatment. And Combs’s legal team also moved to overturn a $100m judgment awarded by default to an incarcerated man in Michigan after the plaintiff’s allegations were not contested in court by the music mogul.

Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, has gotten out of legal trouble in criminal court before.

In 2001, he was acquitted of charges related to a Manhattan nightclub shooting two years earlier that injured three people. His then protege, Shyne, was convicted of assault and other charges and served about eight years in prison.

Seven people have been killed and more than 50 injured in wildfires ravaging central and northern Portugal, authorities have said, after three firefighters died on Tuesday when their vehicle was trapped in flames.

Portugal’s civil protection service said 54 wildfires were burning nationwide, mainly in the north, with 5,300 firefighters mobilised. France, Greece, Italy and Spain sent eight water-bombing planes through the EU’s mutual assistance mechanism.

More than 1,000 firefighters battled through Monday night to control four separate blazes near the towns of Nelas and Aveiro, south of Porto, with TV footage showing residents frantically pouring buckets of water on rapidly advancing flames.

In Aveiro alone, the blazes have consumed more than 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of forest and scrubland in the last two days, the agency said – roughly the same area that has been burnt by fires so far this year across the country.

The national civil protection commander, Andre Fernandes, said the three firefighters – two women and a man – had been killed near Nelas. Four people, including a man retrieving tools from his shed, were reported dead on Monday.

Fernandes said late on Monday that the fires, which have forced the closure of two railway lines and several motorways, including part of the main road between Lisbon and Porto, could consume a further 20,000 hectares.

The weather conditions on Monday brought the highest risk of fire in northern Portugal since 2001, experts said. Fernandes said the situation was “very complex” and that Tuesday would be “very difficult”.

Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, who cancelled his Tuesday engagements in response to the fires, also said the country faced “some very difficult times over the next few days”. An extreme fire warning has been extended until Thursday night.

After a wet start to the year Portugal and Spain have recorded fewer wildfires than last year, but temperatures were above 30C across Portugal over the weekend amid exceptionally low humidity and strong winds, which have fanned the flames.

The government increased fire-prevention funding by a factor of 10 and doubled its firefighting budget after deadly blazes in 2017 claimed 64 lives.

Scientists have said human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters, from floods – as seen this week in central Europe – to heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.

Human-caused climate breakdown is making heatwaves more likely and more intense, with some – such as the extreme heatwave in western Canada and the US in 2021 – all but impossible without global heating.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed reporting

Seven people have been killed and more than 50 injured in wildfires ravaging central and northern Portugal, authorities have said, after three firefighters died on Tuesday when their vehicle was trapped in flames.

Portugal’s civil protection service said 54 wildfires were burning nationwide, mainly in the north, with 5,300 firefighters mobilised. France, Greece, Italy and Spain sent eight water-bombing planes through the EU’s mutual assistance mechanism.

More than 1,000 firefighters battled through Monday night to control four separate blazes near the towns of Nelas and Aveiro, south of Porto, with TV footage showing residents frantically pouring buckets of water on rapidly advancing flames.

In Aveiro alone, the blazes have consumed more than 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of forest and scrubland in the last two days, the agency said – roughly the same area that has been burnt by fires so far this year across the country.

The national civil protection commander, Andre Fernandes, said the three firefighters – two women and a man – had been killed near Nelas. Four people, including a man retrieving tools from his shed, were reported dead on Monday.

Fernandes said late on Monday that the fires, which have forced the closure of two railway lines and several motorways, including part of the main road between Lisbon and Porto, could consume a further 20,000 hectares.

The weather conditions on Monday brought the highest risk of fire in northern Portugal since 2001, experts said. Fernandes said the situation was “very complex” and that Tuesday would be “very difficult”.

Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, who cancelled his Tuesday engagements in response to the fires, also said the country faced “some very difficult times over the next few days”. An extreme fire warning has been extended until Thursday night.

After a wet start to the year Portugal and Spain have recorded fewer wildfires than last year, but temperatures were above 30C across Portugal over the weekend amid exceptionally low humidity and strong winds, which have fanned the flames.

The government increased fire-prevention funding by a factor of 10 and doubled its firefighting budget after deadly blazes in 2017 claimed 64 lives.

Scientists have said human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters, from floods – as seen this week in central Europe – to heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.

Human-caused climate breakdown is making heatwaves more likely and more intense, with some – such as the extreme heatwave in western Canada and the US in 2021 – all but impossible without global heating.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed reporting

Kamala Harris blamed Donald Trump’s policies and condemned state abortion bans on Tuesday after it was reported that a woman in Georgia died after being denied timely medical care due to the state’s restrictive abortion ban.

Harris’s comments came on the heels of an investigation published by ProPublica on Monday, recounting the circumstances surrounding the 2022 death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a medical assistant from Georgia. The outlet called the case the first “preventable” abortion-related death to be confirmed, and said it would name a second in coming days.

“These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions,” Harris said in a statement. Georgia’s six-week abortion ban went into effect shortly after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.

Thurman died after she developed a rare complication from abortion pills. Days after taking the pills, she was taken to an emergency room with heavy bleeding, as she had not yet expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. Doctors waffled on her treatment, according to the report, waiting 20 hours to perform a routine procedure. Thurman, who was 28 years old and the mother of a six-year-old boy, died in emergency surgery.

“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” said Harris, who has made abortion rights a prominent feature of her presidential campaign. “This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down.”

In Georgia, performing an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy is a felony. While the law allows for exceptions to save a pregnant person’s life, doctors say its wording is too vague to be workable in practice.

Since 2022, more than 20 states have enacted abortion bans and restrictions.

After Thurman’s death, a state medical review committee deemed that her death was “preventable”, and that there was a “good chance” she would have survived if she had received the procedure earlier, according to ProPublica.

ProPublica reported that Thurman became pregnant shortly after Georgia’s six-week abortion ban took effect and that her pregnancy had just passed that mark.

Thurman scheduled a procedure known as dilation and curettage, or D&C, in North Carolina for 13 August and journeyed there with her best friend, ProPublica reported, after finding a babysitter and scheduling a day off work.

However, they encountered heavy traffic on the drive, her best friend told ProPublica, and the clinic could not hold Thurman’s spot longer than 15 minutes.

As a result, Thurman was given a two-pill medication abortion regimen approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, which included mifepristone and misoprostol, as her pregnancy was well within the standard of care for that treatment.

Abortion using medication is the most common way to end a pregnancy in the US, and deaths from complications are extremely rare.

ProPublica reported that at the clinic in North Carolina, Thurman received instructions on how to safely take the pills and was told to go to the emergency room if complications developed.

She took the first pill at the clinic and drove home before any symptoms started and took the second pill the next day, as directed.

Initially, she only experienced cramping, but her condition worsened over several days with vomiting and heavy bleeding.

If she had lived near the North Carolina clinic, she would have received a D&C for free as soon as she followed up, the executive director there told ProPublica. But Thurman was about four hours away.

Thurman passed out and was taken to a hospital in suburban Atlanta with a severe infection. Thurman needed a D&C, but the operation was delayed for around 20 hours as her blood pressure sank and her organs started to fail, according to ProPublica.

The report states that she was diagnosed with “acute severe sepsis” the following morning. However, even then, a D&C was not performed.

Around 20 hours after she arrived at the hospital, the doctor conducted the D&C and discovered that a hysterectomy was also necessary. Thurman’s heart stopped during the procedure.

The maternal mortality review committee in Georgia determined that there was a “good chance” that Thurman’s death could likely have been prevented if the D&C had been provided earlier.

Before her death, Thurman had been planning to enroll in nursing school, her friend told ProPublica. She and her child had recently moved out of her family’s place and into their own apartment.

Thurman’s last words to her mother before she died were: “Promise me you’ll take care of my son,” the outlet reported.

Studies have shown that the availability of the D&C procedure for abortions and miscarriage care in the year after Roe v Wade was passed in 1973 reduced the rate of maternal deaths for women of color by up to 40%.

But since more than 20 states enacted abortion bans or restrictions in the last two years, women in with medical complications have been repeatedly turned away from emergency rooms.

“Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again,” Harris statement said. “Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying.”

As president, Trump appointed three conservative supreme court justices who were decisive in overturning Roe. And as a candidate, he has alternately bragged about his role in overturning Roe v Wade, and also complained that Republican extremism on the issue could cost them the election.

“If Donald Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban, and these horrific realities will multiply,” Harris said. “We must pass a law to restore reproductive freedom. When I am president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. Lives depend on it.”

Mini Timmaraju, the president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said in a press call on Monday that Thurman’s death “substantiated proof of something we already knew – that abortion bans kill people and it cannot go on”.

Regina Davis Moss, the CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, said in a statement that what happened to Thurman was “entirely preventable” adding that this is the “post-Dobbs reality for many Black women, girls, gender expansive people”.

Moss also noted a study that estimated that if abortions ban were in every state, there could be a “staggering” 39% increase in maternal deaths for Black women.

Lauren Gambino contributed to this report

The Scottish government has agreed a rescue deal for a scaled-down version of the 2026 Commonwealth Games to be hosted by Glasgow, after Australian authorities offered a “multimillion-pound commitment” to save the event.

The Australian state of Victoria abruptly withdrew as host of the 2026 Games in July 2023, blaming escalating costs. Since then, speculation has grown about whether Glasgow could build on its successful hosting of the event in 2014, amid concerns from the Scottish and UK governments about financing the event.

Last Friday, the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) offered Scotland almost $A200m (£100m) from the Victorian government’s $A380m compensation owed for pulling out of hosting the event.

The announcement was made after a meeting of the Scottish cabinet on Tuesday morning, and after Scotland’s health secretary, Neil Gray, met representatives of Commonwealth Games Australia and Commonwealth Games Scotland on Monday. The decision remains subject to formal approval from Commonwealth Games Scotland and the CGF.

Gray said: “The fact that Glasgow was asked to step in and host the 2026 Games is testament to Glasgow and Scotland’s fantastic reputation for hosting international events. That said, we have been clear that our financial resources are limited.”

Speaking before the announcement, Gray said it was “critically important” to make sure there was no financial risk to the government, adding that there was also concern about critical comparison with the “incredibly successful” 2014 Games.

Scottish secretary, Ian Murray, said the UK government had worked closely with their Scottish counterparts “to ensure a positive outcome”.

“This is good news for the Commonwealth Games and another opportunity for Glasgow to demonstrate yet again its ability to put on fantastic sporting events.”

Ian Reid, the chair of Commonwealth Games Scotland, said he welcomed the Scottish and UK governments’ backing for their proposal.

“We have been clear from the outset that our Games concept for Glasgow 2026 aligns with the CGF’s strategy to make the Games more accessible for future hosts, whilst ensuring that public funds are not required.”

Reid said Glasgow was “one of the few cities in the Commonwealth that can deliver on time given its world-class facilities, experienced workforce and strong supply chain”.

“This is a really exciting opportunity and we will be working hard over the coming days to bring the final pieces of the puzzle together,” he said.

The proposed event would be very different from the 2014 spectacular, which captivated the city in the run-up to the independence referendum and included lavish opening and closing ceremonies at Glasgow’s main stadiums. The 2026 model would feature fewer sports – 10 compared with 18 in 2014 – across fewer sites.

Responding to the Scottish government’s confirmation, the CGF president, Chris Jenkins, said: “At the heart of our discussions has been an investment of £100m from the CGF and the commitment that Glasgow 2026 would not require financial underwriting from either the Scottish or UK Governments. The additional generous contribution of around £2.3m from Commonwealth Games Australia to the Glasgow concept will further enhance the Games delivery.”

He suggested that this slimmed-down version could be “an important first step” towards a new model of Games that minimised cost and encouraged more countries to consider hosting in future.

The leader of Glasgow city council, Susan Aitken, said: “It should be no surprise that, in looking to reimagine competitive sport at a Commonwealth level, organisers feel Glasgow is a place where their plans can flourish.”

But the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, has warned that “it shouldn’t take big events for the council to do its job and clean up the city”. Local politicians are increasingly raising concerns about the state of Glasgow city centre, with dilapidated Victorian architecture, gap sites and the burned out art school yet to be rebuilt a decade after it was devastated by fire.

Sarwar, who hopes to become first minister in 2026 after the next Scottish parliament elections, hosted a summit of Glasgow business leaders to discuss the opportunities afforded by the Games.

He said that the city currently felt “let down, neglected, ignored” but that it was a “no-brainer” that it should host the Games. “It’s a chance for us to be a window to the rest of the world, to complete the legacy of 2014 and to demonstrate that Glasgow can do leadership by rescuing a Games that otherwise wouldn’t happen.”

A 71-year-old man accused of drugging his wife so he and scores of strangers could assault her has told a French court: “I am a rapist,” as he returned to the dock after illness.

Dominique Pélicot used a cane as he slowly entered the courtroom in the southern city of Avignon.

“I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” Pélicot said, referring to the 50 other defendants in the mass trial – men he allegedly recruited online to rape his then wife, Gisèle Pélicot.

He added: “I am guilty of what I did – I say to my wife, my children, my grandchildren … I regret what I’ve done and I ask for forgiveness, even if it’s unforgivable.” He added: “She [Gisèle Pélicot] did not deserve this.”

Alluding to the other accused men sitting on benches in court, he said “they all knew” he was inviting them to rape her. “I am guilty of what I did,” Pélicot said, saying he admitted “the facts in their entirety”.

Dominique Pélicot is accused of administering anti-anxiety drugs to Gisèle over a period of almost a decade, from 2011 to 2020. While she was unconscious, it is alleged he would rape her and recruit dozens of other men he met online to do the same.

He has admitted the charges, but Tuesday is the first time he has spoken at any length since the trial began on 2 September. The court may also hear more from Gisèle Pélicot, who was present in court alongside Dominique’s brother Joel.

She told the court: “For me, it’s difficult to listen to Mr Pélicot because in 50 years, I never imagined for a second that he could rape. It’s difficult for me to hear this today … the acts of violence and barbarity. I didn’t think for a second he could do it. I had full trust in that man.”

Dominique Pélicot described a childhood in which he suffered trauma, saying he was raped aged nine by a nurse when he was in hospital for a head injury. He described a violent father and a mother who was subjected to violent sex.

Aged 14, as an apprentice on a building site, he was forced to witness and take part in a group-rape of a woman, he said. “It was too heavy to bear,” he told the court.

He added: “You are not born a pervert, you become one.”

Beatrice Zavarro, the defendant’s lawyer, told AFP on Monday that Dominique Pélicot had “a clot in the bladder” and a kidney infection. But a medical exam ordered by the presiding judge found he was fit to appear in court, avoiding a potentially lengthy delay to proceedings.

Adjustments would be made to the “sequencing of the hearings” and Dominique Pélicot would get “regular rest”, Zavarro said, adding that the health complaints were not an attempt by her client to escape justice.

His testimony will be decisive for the 50 other men aged 26 to 74 who are on trial, four of whose cases are due to be heard in the coming days. Some of the accused have admitted he told them he was drugging his then wife, while others claim they believed they were participating in a swinger couple’s fantasy.

The case has prompted outrage across France, with thousands demonstrating at the weekend to demand an end to rape and in support of Gisèle Pélicot. She had requested that the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse. “Thanks to you I have the strength to see this fight through to the end,” she told demonstrators on Monday.

Meta is putting Instagram users under the age of 18 into new “teen accounts” to allow parents greater control over their activities, including the ability to block children from viewing the app at night.

In an announcement made a week after the Australian government proposed restricting children from accessing such platforms, Meta says it is launching teen accounts for Instagram that will apply to new users. The setting will then be extended to existing accounts held by teenagers over time.

Changes under the teen account setting include giving parents the ability to set daily time limits for using the app, block teens from using Instagram at certain times, see the accounts their child is messaging and viewing the content categories they are viewing.

Teenagers signing up to Instagram are already placed by default into the strictest privacy settings, which include barring adults from messaging teens who don’t follow them and muting notifications at night.

However, under the new “teen account” feature users under the age of 16 will now need parental permission to change those settings, while 16-18 year olds defaulted into the new features will be able to change them independently. Once an under-16 tries to change their settings, the parental supervision features will allow adults to set new time limits, block access at night and view who their child is exchanging messages with.

It came after the Australian government last week announced plans to introduce legislation to parliament by the end of the year to raise the age children can access social media up to an as-yet-undefined age between 14 and 16.

But unlike other actions the company has taken recently – including by allowing EU users to opt-out of having their data used to train its AI model but not offering a similar option in Australia – Meta’s move is global and will apply to the US, UK and Canada as well as Australia.

Meta’s director of global safety, Antigone Davis, said that the decision to introduce teen accounts was driven by parents and not by any government legislation or proposals.

“Parents everywhere are thinking about these issues,” Davis told Guardian Australia.

“The technology at this point is pretty much ubiquitous, and parents are thinking about it. From the perspective of youth safety, it really does make the most sense to be thinking about these kinds of things globally and addressing parents concerns globally.”

Davis did not rule out bringing the changes to Facebook in the future but said the company would examine what measures could make sense for different apps.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the key motivator for the policy to raise the age teenagers can access social media was to have them having “real experiences”.

“Well what we want to [do] is to get our kids off their devices and on to the footy fields or the netball courts, to get them interacting with real people, having real experiences,” he told Channel Seven’s Sunrise program. “And we know that social media is doing social harm.”

But Davis said teenagers would view social media as also providing “real” experiences for them.

“For the teen who plays soccer and is on the soccer team and is trying to perfect a particular kick or a particular pass, they’re going to use social media to figure that out, and in a way that we might not have done, and in some ways that’s the real value,” she said.

“I think they move much more fluidly through these apps and their online and offline world. I don’t think they make this that separation.”

If the Australian proposal goes ahead, the country could be one of the first to bring a ban into effect. The UK technology secretary, Peter Kyle, last week said he was keeping a close eye on how the Australian model may work and had an open mind about whether the UK may follow in the future.

Existing private accounts settings for teens that will be switched to the new teen account feature include u-18s needing to accept new followers, being placed into the most sensitive content restrictions and filtering out offensive words and phrases in posts and messages.

The changes also come after Nick Clegg, a senior executive at Instagram’s parent, Meta, said parents don’t use parental supervision features.

“One of the things we do find … is that even when we build these controls, parents don’t use them,” he said last week.

Users of Feeld, a dating app aimed at alternative relationships, could have had sensitive data including messages, private photos and details of their sexuality accessed or even edited, it has emerged, after cybersecurity experts exposed a string of security “vulnerabilities”.

Feeld, registered in the UK, reported soaring revenues and profits this month, thanks to millions of downloads from non-monogamous, queer and kinky users across the world.

But while the app has gone from strength to strength financially – and attracted plaudits for its approach to sexuality – a British cybersecurity company claims to have uncovered serious failings in Feeld’s systems earlier this year.

Feeld said it had dealt with the concerns “as a matter of urgency”, resolved them within two months and that it had not seen any evidence that user data had been breached.

It did not know how long the vulnerabilities had existed before it was told about them in March by the London-based cybersecurity firm Fortbridge.

Fortbridge discovered the issues after “pentesting”, an industry term for security assessments of websites and apps to identify weaknesses that attackers could exploit.

Its researchers found that it was possible to read other people’s messages exchanged in chats on Feeld and even see attachments, which can include sexually explicit pictures and videos.

This could be done without using a Feeld account, as long as a potential hacker had the user’s “stream user ID”, potentially visible to anyone who could see their profile.

Messages could be edited and deleted, the researchers found, and chats deleted by the users could be recovered. Time-limited photos and videos, commonly used to share explicit images that self-delete after one viewing, could be retrieved and seen indefinitely, by accessing a link available to the sender.

Fortbridge said the failings could also allow a hacker to change someone else’s profile information, including their name, age and sexuality. It was also possible to view other people’s matches and to manually force one profile to “like” another.

The cybersecurity company told the Guardian that the failings could have been exploited by someone with “basic technical knowledge”.

Adrian Tiron, a managing partner at Fortbridge, said: “Although these aren’t the most sophisticated bugs we’ve found or exploited, they are certainly some of the most impactful due to Feeld’s large user base, putting a significant number of users at risk.

“In the industry, it’s common practice for companies to share their best research with the community. We’ve learned a great deal from others by reading their reports, and now it’s our turn to give back.

“We’ve noticed that many companies claim to prioritise security, but often these are just words – more action is needed.”

Feeld said it had not shared information about the security flaws publicly, including with users, because it did not want to “invite bad actors” to manipulate private information.

It said members would be told directly about how it had fixed the issues and that it was looking at sharing more “proactive updates” in future via its website, email and the app.

Alex Lawrence-Archer, a solicitor at the data rights specialist law firm AWO, said Feeld could now face repercussions from the data regulator, the information commissioner’s office, or from any user whose information was found to have been accessed.

“If this is right, that personal data, including messages and private photos, was exposed in this way – or even capable of being accessed – there’s a strong argument that it’s in beach of the core GDPR principle that data must be processed in a secure fashion,” he said.

“It’s the kind of thing I’d expect the ICO to investigate, if accurate, to get to the bottom of what’s gone on and whether any remedial or enforcement action is warranted.

“We don’t know if anyone’s photos or messages have been accessed. If it turned out that they had, such an individual would have cause of action against Feeld, for instance if they had suffered distress.”

Lawrence-Archer said the security vulnerabilities also raised potential concerns about identification of LGBTQ+ people in countries where homosexuality is illegal.

The ICO said it had not received reports of a data breach at Feeld. Feeld said it had not informed the regulator because it had seen no evidence that anyone had accessed private data and a third-party organisation had approved its decision not to self-report.

The company said it had investigated the problems brought to its attention by Fortbridge on 3 March and fixed them by 28 May but had failed to communicate adequately to Fortbridge that the issues had been resolved and were being reviewed by a third party.

It said no issues were outstanding, except for one that allowed non-members to access premium features, adding that it welcomed further pentesting.

“Our members’ safety and security is our top priority, and we welcome ongoing collaboration with the ethical hacking community to identify vulnerabilities as this only strengthens our platform for the future,” said a spokesperson.

It added that it had previously been unable to run the kind of tests on its systems that Fortbridge had done but was now able to do so.