JD Vance refused to say whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and continued to sidestep questions over whether he would certify a Trump loss this fall during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday.

The exchange brought out some of the sharpest attacks from Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor, in what was otherwise a muted and civil back-and-forth with the Ohio senator.

Walz asked Vance directly whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance responded: “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” Walz then cut in with one of his most aggressive attack lines of the evening: “That is a damning non-answer.”

Vance has previously said that he would have asked states to submit alternative slates of electors to Congress to continue to debate allegations of election irregularities in 2020. By the time Congress met during the last election to consider electoral votes, courts, state officials and the US supreme court had all turned away efforts to block legitimate slates of electors from being sent to Congress.

Pressed by CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell on whether he would again refuse to certify the vote this year, Vance declined to answer.

“What President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square,” Vance said. “And that’s all I’ve said and that’s all that Donald Trump has said.” He later said that if Walz won the election with Harris, Walz would have his support.

Trump has warned of a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win the election. He has also said supporters won’t have to vote anymore if he wins in November. Both the Trump campaign and Republican allies are seeding the ground to contest a possible election loss in November.

Vance tried to pivot away from the issue by suggesting January 6 was not as much of a threat to democracy as limiting discussion of Covid on Facebook. He also equated January 6 with Democrats protesting the 2016 election because of Russian interference on Facebook.

Walz did not let those comments go unnoticed. “January 6 was not Facebook ads,” he said in one of his bluntest responses in the debate. “This is one that we are miles apart on. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say, he is still saying, he didn’t lose the election.”

A Harris campaign official said the moment stood out in a focus group of undecided voters in battleground states. Walz earned the group’s highest support of the evening while Vance saw some of his lowest ratings for defending Trump.

Tim Walz and JD Vance faced each other for the first and only vice-presidential debate of this election cycle – and clashed on issues including abortion, childcare, the cost of living and Trump’s 2020 election claims.

Here are the facts on some of the false or misleading claims offered during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate.

Vance on Harris’s record as ‘border tsar’

Vance attacked Harris’s record on the border. “The only thing that she did when she became the vice-president, when she became the appointed border tsar, was to undo Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border,” he said.

This contains inaccuracies.

First, Harris was never a “border tsar” – that’s a term invented by her critics. She had a role in the Biden administration to look into addressing the root causes of migration to the US, including safety and economic turmoil in Central American countries.

Second, she did not “undo Donald Trump executive actions”. Presidents sign executive orders, and she was not president. Joe Biden did reverse some Trump executive orders on the border. He initially kept in place Trump-era restrictions known as Title 42, which allowed the US to turn away immigrants at the border on the grounds of preventing the spread of Covid-19, before eventually lifting them.

Vance on Trump’s role on January 6

Vance defended Trump’s role on the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol. The Ohio senator picked out one line of his running mate’s speech on 6 January 2021 – prior to the insurrection.

According to Vance, Trump “said on January 6 the protesters ought to protest peacefully”.

But Trump also repeatedly encouraged supporters to “fight”.

“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said in 2021.

Vance on Trump and the Affordable Care Act

Vance claimed that Donald Trump bolstered or salvaged the Affordable Care Act.

That’s not true.

The former president cut millions in funding for helping people enroll in healthcare, repeatedly supported efforts in Congress to repeal the law and asked the supreme court to overturn the law.

Vance on immigrants and housing prices

Vance twice implicated immigrants in driving up housing prices, though when pressed, agreed that immigration was not the “only” contributor.

A nonpartisan analysis found that Trump’s vow of mass deportation would drive up prices in several sectors and affect the availability of labor. The Peterson Institute for International Economics projects that the policy would be “a major shock to the US economy, with substantial disruption across all sectors, especially agriculture, mining, and manufacturing”.

Vance on Trump’s position on abortion

Vance said that Donald Trump has supported states making their own abortion laws.

Vance claimed that Trump has said that “the proper way to handle this … is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy”.

That’s not quite right. Donald Trump declined to say whether he would sign a national abortion ban during the last debate.

Walz on Project 2025’s ambitions

The Minnesota governor claimed that Project 2025, the ambitious blueprint from the Heritage Foundation to remake the federal government under a second Trump term, would require people to register their pregnancies.

“Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said.

That claim is false. Project 2025 calls for a number of restrictive policies on abortion, including reversing FDA approval of abortion pills, rolling back privacy protections for abortion patients and increasing surveillance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over abortion, but it does not call for all pregnant people to register.

The CDC already collects information about abortion from most of the country, but its reports are incomplete, as some states do not supply the data. Project 2025 suggests that the CDC should go so far as to cut funds from a state if it does not tell the CDC “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method”.

Vance on immigrants in Springfield, Ohio

Referring to Springfield, Ohio – where a number of Haitian immigrants have recently settled – Vance referred to immigrants with legal status as “illegal”.

“You’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you’ve got housing that’s totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans,” he said.

The Haitian immigrants in Springfield, as CBS moderator Margaret Brennan noted, have legal status. Their arrival, local residents and leaders have said, has helped revive the town, which has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.

Vance on the climate crisis and manufacturing

The Ohio senator has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the reality that carbon emissions have caused global heating.

Tonight, he was a bit subtle: “One of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions, this idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change … let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument.”

Despite Vance’s skepticism, it is indeed true. One hundred percent of global heating since 1950 is due to human activity such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation.

Vance also took viewers on a circuitous journey to suggest that if Harris really cared about the climate crisis, she would bring back manufacturing jobs to the US.

Carbon emissions, whether they are manufactured in the US or overseas, contribute to global heating. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – the Biden administration’s landmark climate legislation – is greatly aimed at incentivizing domestic manufacturing.

Read more about the 2024 US election:

• Vance-Walz vice-presidential debate – live updates

• What we know so far about JD Vance and Tim Walz’s debate styles

• 2024 US presidential polls tracker

Authorities in Ukraine have launched an investigation into what they said was the apparent summary execution by Russian troops of 16 Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered on the eastern frontline.

“This is the largest reported case of the execution of Ukrainian PoWs on the frontline and yet another indication that the killing and torture of prisoners of war are not isolated incidents,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said on X. “This is a deliberate policy of the Russian military and political leadership.”

Moscow did not immediately comment on the accusations. The Kremlin denies that Russia commits war crimes in Ukraine.

The Ukraine prosecutor general’s office said on the Telegram messaging app that it was looking into a video shared on social media showing the alleged killing.

In the video, grainy drone footage shows a group of more than 10 people leaving a trench. They are lined up and then fall down after being fired upon by other, indistinct figures.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the location and date the video was filmed.

Kostin said the incident took place on the Pokrovsk front, an area of intensified Russian assaults.

Ukrainian prosecutors have previously accused Russia of killing prisoners of war. They said in September they were investigating the deaths of at least 73 Ukrainian prisoners. Kyiv says it has documented more than 130,000 war crimes committed by Moscow since its full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

• Russia’s plan to hike defence spending next year “is an outrage”, 80-year-old pensioner Irina told Agence France-Presse in Moscow on Tuesday. “We need to end this war, and spending the budget on war is a crime.” Russia is to spend more than 40% of its total budget on defence and security – more than the money allocated for social welfare and education combined.

• “There is not enough for anything at all. Not for treatment, not for anything,” said another Irina, 70, who complained her pension was only 25,000 rubles (US$260) a month. “It’s pennies. People are unprotected. It’s a shame and a disgrace that the country has no money to treat its own children.” Another pensioner, Elena, 68, told AFP: “The population of the country does not live so well … I am generally against military action of any kind, in any country, in ours, and in general the whole world.”

• Some in Moscow were supportive of the budget plans. “If it is not to the detriment of education, medicine, some other social programmes … In the current situation, an increase in the amount of funding is understandable,” said 49-year-old lawyer Vladimir. Another Vladimir, 50, told AFP: “In the current times, it is necessary to spend money on defence, because Nato is playing against us. We have to do something and we can’t do it any other way.”

• Russian troops have nearly reached the centre of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine, according to the regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, who told Ukrainian TV the situation was very difficult. Public broadcaster Suspilne quoted two soldiers of Ukraine’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade defending Vuhledar as saying that while Russian forces were in control of most of the town “certain parts” remained under Ukrainian control. “The brigade has received no order to leave the city,” Suspilne quoted the soldiers as saying.

• Vuhledar has strategic significance because of its high ground and location near the junction of the two main fronts, in eastern and southern Ukraine. The popular war blog DeepState reported that Russian forces held Vuhledar and had hoisted Russian flags throughout. Footage online showed Russian soldiers waving a flag from atop a bombed-out multi-storey building and unfurling another flag on a metal spire. Reuters said it had matched the footage to street patterns of Vuhledar.

• Authorities in Ukraine have launched an investigation into what they said was an apparent summary execution by Russian troops of 16 Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered on the eastern frontline. Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said the alleged war crime, shown in video footage, took place on the Pokrovsk front.

• An apparent Russian artillery strike hit a market in the southern Ukraine city of Kherson on Tuesday, killing at least six people and wounding three others, authorities said, on a morning when people were observing a minute’s silence for their military and war dead. Across Ukraine on Tuesday, traffic stopped and people on sidewalks came to a halt at 9am to commemorate those defending Ukraine and those who have sacrificed their lives.

• People gathered at Independence Square in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, carrying pictures of fallen soldiers. Angelina Stashenko held a portrait of her 30-year-old brother, Denys Stashenko, who was killed in action in May in the Donetsk region. His mother, Halyna Stashenko, said: “I hope future generations will never forget the price our loved ones paid for their freedom … I hope Ukraine’s future will be bright.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy used the occasion to appeal for further support from western allies: “The daily Russian terror, the daily attempts to destroy life – all this can be stopped. Ukrainian strength and the determination of our partners must be greater than Putin’s desire to spread terror.”

• Zelenskyy hailed Ukraine’s “new defence industry” that has ramped up production to help fight the Russian invasion. “In the first half of this year alone, Ukraine produced 25 times more ammunition for artillery and mortars than in the whole of 2022,” Ukraine’s president told a defence forum in Kyiv. Almost 300 weapons companies, both Ukrainian and foreign, were in Kyiv for the conference, Zelenskyy said. “In the extremely difficult conditions of a full-scale war, under constant Russian attacks, Ukrainians were able to build a virtually new defence industry. Today, everyone can see this new Ukrainian capability.” Zelenskyy said Ukraine had built up the capacity to produce four million drones a year.

• While much attention has focused on the billions of dollars in military aid from western backers, Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmygal, has told a government meeting that half of the ammunition Ukraine uses at the front is produced domestically. Alongside long-range drones, Ukraine also makes the Neptune anti-ship missiles that have been used to hit Russian vessels in the Black Sea. At the end of August, Zelenskyy announced the successful test firing of the first Ukrainian-made ballistic missile.

• Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a Ukrainian river, with deadly consequences for wildlife, write Luke Harding and Artem Mazhulin from Slabyn, Ukraine. A toxic slick was detected on 17 August coming from the Russian border village of Tyotkino. According to Kyiv, chemical waste from a sugar factory had been dumped in vast quantities into the Seym river. The pollution crossed the international border just over a mile away and made its way into the Desna river of Ukraine’s Sumy region where mass die-offs of fish, molluscs and crayfish have resulted.

The model Naomi Campbell’s Fashion for Relief project was the subject of a “serious incident” report filed with the Charity Commission after it claimed to be a fundraising partner of Unicef, it has emerged.

Fashion for Relief put on a spectacular star-studded fashion show and charity auction held at the British Museum in 2019 at which it said it was working with the global children’s charity to raise funds for it and a third charity, the Mayor’s Fund for London.

However, Unicef UK said it had never been a partner of Fashion for Relief, had been unaware of the event, and received no proceeds from the fundraiser. It submitted a serious incident report about Campbell’s charity to the commission in 2022. This is understood to outline concerns that the Unicef brand had been used at the event without the agreement of the charity and in a way that misled potential donors.

Unicef has also asked for clarification as to why Campbell was referred to as a Unicef “envoy” at an official government meeting with the then foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, in 2018. It said Campbell had never held an official role with the charity.

Campbell received a five-year ban from running a charity last week after a highly critical commission inquiry revealed financial misconduct and chaotic management at Fashion for Relief, the charity she founded and was a trustee for.

The inquiry report revealed Fashion for Relief had raised nearly £4.8m in five years up to 2020 but gave just a fraction of the £4.6m it spent on charitable activities – 10% – to partner charities in the form of grants. It said Campbell had run up bills for hotels rooms, flights and spa treatments that were inappropriately charged to the charity.

Campbell criticised the report’s findings at the time, saying it was flawed and “incomplete and misleading”. She added: “I have never undertaken philanthropic work for personal gain, nor will I ever do so.”

In a statement, Unicef UK said: “We take fundraising compliance very seriously and Unicef UK reported Fashion for Relief 2019 to the Charity Commission, as per our statutory requirements. We have never held any official partnership with Fashion for Relief and we have never received any funds from the 2019 event.”

Asked why Fashion for Relief had said it was raising funds for Unicef without Unicef’s agreement, a spokesperson for Campbell said: “Naomi Campbell never held herself out as a representative of Unicef although she worked with them.”

In a brochure for the event, held during London fashion week in September 2019, Fashion for Relief said the funds raised would “support Unicef’s efforts” to protect and transform children’s lives.

On a page prominently displaying the Unicef brand logo, the brochure said: “Working together, funds raised will support Unicef’s efforts to provide the essential interventions to protect, save lives and ensure the rights of all children, everywhere.”

It added: “Through uniting the fashion industry for this very special event by building a community of supporters to raise vital funds and awareness, Fashion for Relief is contributing to help Unicef continue to transform children’s lives worldwide.”

The Mayor’s Fund for London received £100,000 from Fashion for Relief from the 2019 British Museum event. However, it subsequently submitted a serious incident report to the commission after it said £50,000 promised to it from the proceeds of a Fashion for Relief pop-up shop fundraiser in November 2019 never materialised.

Save the Children threatened legal action against Fashion for Relief in 2019 over sums it said it was owed from two previous gala fundraising events held in Cannes in 2017 and 2018. Save the Children and the Mayor’s Fund for London were paid £200,000 and £50,000 respectively when Campbell’s charity was wound up in December 2023.

It is understood Unicef held exploratory talks about a potential link-up with Fashion for Relief in 2018 but decided not to go ahead. Like many big charities, it requires any fundraising partners to sign a formal licensing agreement setting out clear parameters for the use of its name and logo.

Charities are required to make serious incident reports to the Charity Commission when they experience “adverse events” that result in harm to beneficiaries, financial loss, or damage to the charity’s reputation.

Questions have also been raised about a meeting between Campbell and Johnson in 2018 to discuss girls’ education in developing countries. A Foreign Office (FCDO) press release dated 15 June 2018 described Campbell as a “Unicef women’s empowerment envoy”.

Unicef said that Campbell had never been a Unicef envoy – a title that the charity does not use. It said: “Naomi Campbell has never held an official role or title with Unicef or Unicef UK and we are in touch with the FCDO to understand what happened.”

A spokesperson for Campbell said: “Since this was a government press release, we’re not sure why they referred to her as being an ‘envoy’.”

The FCDO was approached for comment.

For the average Indian, the working week is now longer than ever – totalling almost 47 hours.

According to recent labour data, India now has one of the most overworked labour forces in the world, enduring longer hours than in China, Singapore and even Japan, a country renowned for its relentless work culture. On average, Indians work 13 hours longer every week than an employee in Germany.

Almost 90% of those working in India are employed in the informal sector, which is largely unregulated and exploitative. However, concerns have also begun to be raised about the working conditions of those in formal employment, particularly those in India’s corporate sector where working practices have remained largely unchanged in decades and critics say pursuit of profit remains king.

In July, Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old chartered accountant at the India offices of corporate accounting giant Ernst and Young, died four months after joining. In a letter written in the aftermath, her mother said that the “overwhelming” high-pressure work environment had taken a heavy toll on Perayil and eventually led to her death.

“She worked late into the night, even on weekends, with no opportunity to catch her breath,” said her mother’s letter, which went viral across India. “The relentless demands and the pressure to meet unrealistic expectations are not sustainable, and they cost us the life of a young woman with so much potential.” She also noted that no-one from the company had attended her daughter’s funeral.

One former Ernst and Young employee, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their job, said that the toxic culture alleged by Peyaril’s mother was standard practice at the firm, and came from the very top.

“Life is pretty brutal and everyone is overburdened,” he said, describing it as the norm to work 12- or 13-hour days, finishing up around 10pm, and regularly working both days on the weekend.

The belittling and degradation of staff was commonplace, he added, with employees viewed as resources rather than human beings. “There is an extreme hierarchy,” he said. “Senior managers were known to terrorise junior staff to keep everyone on their toes constantly. They would shout and throw files around and people would often be reduced to tears.”

One issue he highlighted was just how competitive and sought after roles at these companies were in India. Growing numbers of young Indians are now going to universities and getting qualifications such as accounting, yet the number of positions in the corporate sector has not risen to meet demand and only 40% of graduates are employed. Often there are tens of thousands of applicants for a single position, with global firms such as Ernst and Young seen as particularly aspirational.

“There’s no incentives for big corporates to change their practices because executives know that if one person won’t do it or quits, there are thousands of other people who will take their place,” he said. “The sole focus is productivity and long hours, with no thought for the wellbeing of employees. It’s hard to see that changing anytime soon.”

In the aftermath, Ernst and Young’s India head, Rajiv Memani, released a statement stating that the allegations of high pressure were “completely alien to our culture” and said he attached “the highest importance to the wellbeing of our people”.

In a further comment to the Guardian, Ernst and Young said they were “deeply saddened” by Peyaril’s death. “We are taking the family’s correspondence with the utmost seriousness and humility. We place the highest importance on the well-being of all employees and will continue to find ways to improve,” they said in a statement.

However many have pointed out that excessive demands were not only the preserve of the big accounting firms in India. Narayana Murthy, one of the founder of India’s biggest IT firm Infosys, suggested last year that Indians should be prepared to work 70-hour weeks to ensure the growth of the country.

Ravneet, who previously worked at an IT company, described a similarly toxic work environment where employees were not allowed to talk or socialise in the workplace, had all their breaks closely monitored and had their pay arbitrarily docked.

“Everything we did was so heavily policed,” he said. “They knew they could exploit people because everyone is desperate and wait years to get these kinds of jobs. They can’t afford to lose them, so they don’t complain even when we know when we are being exploited or labour laws are being broken.”

Ravneet said working there had taken a major toll on his mental health before one day he was fired, with no reason given.

Employees in other sectors, from media to entertainment, said the problem was endemic there too. Sara, who has worked in corporate events for over a decade, said it was completely normalised to work 16-hour days and be given tasks on at 11pm Sunday night and told to have them done by first thing Monday morning.

“These companies actually encourage gruesome office politics because they think it’s good for business to have employees feeling uncertain and threatened in their jobs, so they will work harder,” she said.

She eventually went freelance to free herself from some of the toxic corporate culture of the office where she worked. “You barely have time to eat or sleep properly and in the end you lose sight of yourself completely,” she said. “Of course it takes a huge toll – but no one seems to care.”

The Swedish government has been accused of trying to “outlaw poverty” after it presented plans for a national begging ban.

The centre-right coalition, backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats, has announced a nine-month inquiry into the implementation of a national begging ban, saying that if it is deemed feasible such a prohibition could become law.

At a press conference on Monday, the Sweden Democrats group leader, Linda Lindberg, took aim at people she claimed were coming from other EU countries “to beg outside out shops”. Sweden could not, she said, act as “Europe’s conscience”.

But Stockholms Stadsmission, a Christian social organisation working with vulnerable people in the capital, condemned the move. Fanny Siltberg, a spokesperson, said: “To ban begging, or to require permission to beg, is just shifting the problem in a futile attempt to outlaw poverty.”

She added: “Instead, we believe that this group’s vulnerability can be reduced through structural poverty reduction and work against discrimination – both in home countries and within the EU. It is long-term work. In the meantime, society needs to take responsibility, for example offering paths into the workplace and housing market and in that way reduce the social vulnerability of these people.”

Aida Samani, the deputy legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, said the government could face legal action if it goes ahead with the proposal.

“It is remarkable that the government is prioritising this in a situation that they themselves describe as a crisis of organised and violent crime,” she said. “Then there is the question of the lawfulness of a ban. As far as I can see a national ban on begging would most likely not be lawful.”

Banning begging, she added, would contravene the right to a private life and freedom of expression as expressed in the European convention on human rights, enshrined in the Swedish constitution.

The government said that begging has risen in Sweden since the early 2010s. Samani, however, questioned the extent to which begging is a problem for the country..

Civil Rights Defenders said it would be monitoring the situation and could mount a legal challenge if it becomes law.

The proposed begging ban is part of an overall shift towards “more oppressive policies” in criminal and migration policy, Samani said, and of “disregarding human rights and freedoms”.

The proposal, which has been in the works since the formation of the government two years ago, has already caused disagreement within the coalition of the Moderates, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats.

Anna Starbrink, a Liberal MP, wrote on Facebook: “I will not contribute to the introduction of such a ban. Of course, measures are needed to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable people. But people in need cannot be forbidden from asking for help.”

The Sweden Democrats provide outside support to the government.

The Swedish government has been accused of trying to “outlaw poverty” after it presented plans for a national begging ban.

The centre-right coalition, backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats, has announced a nine-month inquiry into the implementation of a national begging ban, saying that if it is deemed feasible such a prohibition could become law.

At a press conference on Monday, the Sweden Democrats group leader, Linda Lindberg, took aim at people she claimed were coming from other EU countries “to beg outside out shops”. Sweden could not, she said, act as “Europe’s conscience”.

But Stockholms Stadsmission, a Christian social organisation working with vulnerable people in the capital, condemned the move. Fanny Siltberg, a spokesperson, said: “To ban begging, or to require permission to beg, is just shifting the problem in a futile attempt to outlaw poverty.”

She added: “Instead, we believe that this group’s vulnerability can be reduced through structural poverty reduction and work against discrimination – both in home countries and within the EU. It is long-term work. In the meantime, society needs to take responsibility, for example offering paths into the workplace and housing market and in that way reduce the social vulnerability of these people.”

Aida Samani, the deputy legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, said the government could face legal action if it goes ahead with the proposal.

“It is remarkable that the government is prioritising this in a situation that they themselves describe as a crisis of organised and violent crime,” she said. “Then there is the question of the lawfulness of a ban. As far as I can see a national ban on begging would most likely not be lawful.”

Banning begging, she added, would contravene the right to a private life and freedom of expression as expressed in the European convention on human rights, enshrined in the Swedish constitution.

The government said that begging has risen in Sweden since the early 2010s. Samani, however, questioned the extent to which begging is a problem for the country..

Civil Rights Defenders said it would be monitoring the situation and could mount a legal challenge if it becomes law.

The proposed begging ban is part of an overall shift towards “more oppressive policies” in criminal and migration policy, Samani said, and of “disregarding human rights and freedoms”.

The proposal, which has been in the works since the formation of the government two years ago, has already caused disagreement within the coalition of the Moderates, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats.

Anna Starbrink, a Liberal MP, wrote on Facebook: “I will not contribute to the introduction of such a ban. Of course, measures are needed to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable people. But people in need cannot be forbidden from asking for help.”

The Sweden Democrats provide outside support to the government.

Taiwan shut offices, schools and financial markets ahead of the arrival of a weakening Typhoon Krathon, which is forecast to bring storm surges along the coast and torrential rain.

The government in the key port city of Kaohsiung, right on the path of the eye of the storm, told people on Wednesday to stay at home and away from the sea, rivers and mountains, warning of a repeat of 1977’s Typhoon Thelma which killed 37 people and devastated the city of 2.7 million.

Taiwan regularly gets hit by typhoons but they generally land along the mountainous and sparsely populated east coast facing the Pacific, but Krathon will make landfall on the island’s flat western plain.

It is forecast to hit between Kaohsiung and its neighbouring city of Tainan in the early hours of Thursday, then work its way up the west coast towards the capital Taipei, the Central Weather Administration said.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had put more than 38,000 troops on standby.

The fire department reported 35 injuries, mostly in the mountainous eastern county of Taitung.

All cities and counties in Taiwan declared a day off on Wednesday, shutting financial markets. Domestic flights have been cancelled for the day, along with dozens of international ones.

The typhoon has weakened but the threat from a storm surge and strong winds and rain remains as it slowly makes its way towards Taiwan’s coast, the weather administration said.

“Because of Typhoon Gaemi being quite severe earlier this year, everyone is more cautious and prepared this time around,” said sales representative Yu Ren-yu, 35, picking up sandbags at a government office, referring to July’s storm that killed 11.

“First be prepared, then we can face this typhoon.”

Chou Yi-tang, a government official working in the Siaogang district where the airport is located, said the typhoon brought back bad memories of Thelma for the older generation, prompting residents to take extra precautions.

In his district, more than 700 sandbags have been distributed, which is a record for a typhoon, while authorities are making more to meet demand, Chou said.

“We were hit directly by the eyewall,” he added, of the events almost five decades ago. “Power was out for two weeks and no water for almost a month. It was disastrous.”

Keir Starmer is under pressure to signal that he is open to a European youth mobility scheme as he travels to Brussels for the first time as prime minister.

Starmer will hold his first bilateral meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, at lunchtime on Wednesday.

The one-day trip is an opportunity for Starmer to set out what he wants a more “pragmatic and mature relationship” relationship with the EU to look like.

He is under pressure from Brussels to open discussions on a scheme that would allow young people from the EU to live and work in the UK for a fixed period, and vice versa.

Senior European politicians have made it clear that developing such a scheme is their top priority. EU officials and analysts told the Guardian it had become a “token of good faith” in the relationship.

One EU official said: “The commission mainly wants to see if Starmer is willing to engage on the detail of a youth mobility scheme. If he shows a willingness to do so, that could unlock a lot of other ‘low-hanging fruit’ such as a defence deal.”

Starmer has resisted the proposals so far, telling reporters last week that he had “no plans for a youth mobility scheme”. This and the fact he has yet to have a formal meeting with von der Leyen has stunted the much-anticipated reset in UK-EU relations. The pair spoke on the margins of the UN general assembly in New York.

Anand Menon, the director of the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank, said youth mobility had become a “token of good faith” in the relationship between London and Brussels.

He said: “There is a sense of apprehension that nice talk is all there is, and when it comes to the substance either the Labour party isn’t really willing to do anything or doesn’t know what it wants. A lot of people are looking at this meeting to see if there’s any meat in the sandwich.”

Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, said: “I’ve been taken aback by how frustrated both sides are actually … There’s a sense on the European side that Labour raised expectations in opposition. They’ve got a stonking majority and yet the government’s rhetoric on Europe seems very unambitious.

“There’s a real sense there is no plan. Senior officials on the European side are asking, what does Labour actually want to do? The suspicion is that the principals in the cabinet – Starmer, Cooper, Reeves, Thomas-Symonds – aren’t aligned.”

A Whitehall source said Labour ministers had “accidentally boxed themselves into this position” where they opposed a youth mobility scheme for fear that it would look like a form of freedom of movement with the EU.

“When they [Labour] were in opposition they were keen not to be seen as undoing Brexit so they ruled out absolutely everything,” the source said. “In reality this only affects a really small proportion of people.”

In an interview last week, Pedro Serrano, the EU’s ambassador to London, suggested young people from Britain could do gap years in the EU an example of how the scheme could work. His remarks were interpreted as a softening in Brussels’ position, because the original proposal envisioned young people spending up to four years in the UK or EU.

Three EU diplomats said the EU had not taken a final position on the length of stay and that options ranged from three years to multiple “mini stays”.

Starmer and von der Leyen are expected to agree to a work programme aiming for a reset on some of the easier issues by next spring. The UK is pursuing closer cooperation with the EU on defence and security and mutual recognition of professional qualifications.

The prime minister will also meet Charles Michel and Roberta Metsola, the heads of the European Council and the European parliament.

In a statement before the trip, the prime minister said: “The UK is undeniably stronger when it works in lockstep with its closest international partners. This has never been more important – with war, conflict and insecurity all knocking on Europe’s door.”

“We will only be able to tackle these challenges by putting our collective weight behind them, which is why I am so determined to put the Brexit years behind us and establish a more pragmatic and mature relationship with the European Union.”

Sandro Gozi, who is expected to be elected chair of the European parliament’s UK delegation on Thursday, said: “The momentum for positive change created by prime minister Starmer’s election and a new European commission should not be wasted, but this will require boldness and flexibility from the UK government.”

The UK has an existing youth mobility scheme with a dozen countries including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Korea.

Donald Trump’s lawyers made a last-ditch effort on Tuesday to limit the amount of evidence that could become public that special counsel prosecutors collected during their criminal investigation into the former US president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The prosecutors last week filed under seal a brief, which may be as long as 180 pages, to presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan that defends the viability of the charges against Trump even after the US supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling.

Simultaneously, the prosecutors asked the judge to allow them to file a public version of the secret brief with quotations and references to grand jury testimony from some of Trump’s closest aides, such as his former chief of staff, and his former vice-president, Mike Pence.

To protect the integrity of proceedings and to protect lesser-known witnesses, the prosecutors said they intended in their public filing to redact specific names and use job titles to give context to the information being referenced.

The kinds of identifiers being proposed by prosecutors include, according to their filing: “Campaign Manager”, “Arizona’s Governor”, “Senior Campaign Advisor”, “executive assistant”, “the Defendant’s Chief of Staff”, “Georgia Attorney General” and “Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee”.

On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers bitterly complained that the redactions were so specific that it would make public identification of the witnesses easy, accusing prosecutors of trying to damage Trump’s presidential campaign with fewer than five weeks until election day.

“In numerous instances, the redactions and pseudonyms proposed by the Special Counsel’s Office fail to meaningfully mitigate the privacy and safety issues the Office references in the Motion and has previously discussed at length,” the Trump lawyers wrote.

Trump’s lawyers also claimed that prosecutors were adopting a double standard over redactions: in the case they brought against Trump in Florida over his retention of classified documents, which has since been dismissed, prosecutors pushed for no identifying information whatsoever.

“Use of functionally impotent redactions is flatly inconsistent with the Office’s approach to other filings here and in the Southern District of Florida, where they sought to anonymize even ‘Ancillary Names’ based on privacy concerns,” the Trump lawyers wrote.

The situation reflects a role reversal for Trump and the special counsel. When it was more expedient for Trump to have witnesses identified in the documents case, so they could complain about the case in public, Trump pushed for looser redactions.

But now that it is against Trump’s interests to have the identities of former officials who testified against him become public, Trump has sought for more restrictive redactions that would make public scrutiny of his plot to overturn the 2020 election harder.

The special counsel’s filing and Trump’s objections come in the aftermath of the supreme court conferring broad immunity from criminal prosecutions to former presidents for actions that related to their official duties in office.

As part of the decision, the court’s conservative supermajority ordered Chutkan to sort through the indictment and decide which of the allegations against Trump should be tossed because of the immunity rules and which could remain and proceed to trial.

The special counsel’s opening brief was the first round of that process that could take months to resolve and involve hearings to decide what allegations should be kept. Much of the evidence Smith uses to make his case come from sensitive sources, such as grand jury testimony, which are secret.

Chutkan has the power to decide how much of the indictment should be kept as well as how much of the special counsel’s evidence can be unsealed to make her determination, although much of the evidence became public knowledge during the House January 6 committee’s hearings two years ago.

Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis is ending his retirement from acting to star in his son’s directorial debut.

The 67-year-old British actor quit acting after starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread, and has largely stayed out of public life since.

But he is now set to star in a film titled Anemone, directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis, US independent production company Focus Features confirmed on Tuesday.

The film will feature actors including Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley and Safia Oakley-Green, and is currently shooting in Manchester.

Father and son wrote the screenplay, which “explores the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”, Focus Features said.

Daniel Day-Lewis made his screen debut as a teenager in Sunday Bloody Sunday before moving on to a number of memorable period drama roles, including as Hawkeye in The Last Of The Mohicans.

He is known for his dedication to method acting, and has won three best actor Oscars, for playing disabled Irish writer Christy Brown in My Left Foot, oil man Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood and Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.

Day-Lewis was made a knight bachelor of the British empire by the Duke of Cambridge in 2014.

In June 2017 it was announced he was retiring from acting, months before Phantom Thread was released.

“Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor,” the statement, issued by his representative, read.

“He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years. This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject.”

He had previously taken extended breaks from the industry, including a stint working as an apprentice shoemaker in Florence in the 1990s.

“My life as it is away from the movie set is a life where I follow my curiosity just as avidly as when I am working,” he told the Observer in 2008. “It is with a very positive sense that I keep away from the work for a while. It has always seemed natural to me that that, in turn, should help me in the work that I do.”

In January, Day-Lewis presented US film-maker Martin Scorsese with an award for his western epic Killers of the Flower Moon.

The actor, who starred in Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York and The Age Of Innocence, said working with the director was “one of the greatest joys and unexpected privileges of my life”.

San Francisco recorded its hottest day of the year on Tuesday, and Phoenix set a record for the hottest 1 October on record, as the National Weather Service predicted record-high fall temperatures across the south-western US.

With temperatures hitting 100F (38C) or higher in many places, officials and local media outlets issued warnings that the heat posed “a significant threat to property or life”. Excessive heat warnings were in place across the region, bringing with it warnings about elevated wildfire risk, the potential for sweeping power outages in California and a rising toll of heat-related deaths, a particularly deadly risk for unhoused people and the elderly.

In San Francisco, temperatures hit 93F, while across the Bay Area, multiple cities were recording temperatures “as much as 25 degrees above normal” for October, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and many Bay Area public schools cancelled outdoor athletics as a result of the heat.

In Arizona, Phoenix continued to break heat record after heat record, with temperatures expected to break previous daily highs for October every day of the week. On Tuesday, the high was around 113F (45C). So far in 2024, the city has recorded 67 days with temperatures above 110F, compared with an average of about 21 in previous decades. Earlier in the summer, the city saw 100 straight days with temperatures above 100F.

The record heat is bringing with it a record number of heat-related deaths. More than 666 deaths in Phoenix this year have been confirmed as heat-related, or are still under investigation as potentially heat-related, according to local public health data.

Nearly half of heat-related deaths in Phoenix this year were among unhoused people, according to the public health data. In extreme heat, sidewalks and asphalt can get hot enough to give people severe burns. But dozens of recorded heat deaths in Phoenix were recorded indoors as well, including in homes where air conditioners were broken, or turned off, potentially because of concerns about cost.

While older people were more at risk of heat deaths, about 40% of the Phoenix victims were under 50, according to the public health data.

In Las Vegas and the rest of southern Nevada, officials said heat was a factor in the deaths of at least 342 people this year, the most ever recorded, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last week.