Fallout from Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week continues to draw calls for health exams and clinical testing for the US president, and speculation.

High-profile neurosurgeon Dr Sanjay Gupta called on Biden Friday to undergo neurological testing and release the results to the public, saying he and other brain specialists believe a detailed cognitive exam is warranted.

“From a neurological standpoint, we were concerned with his confused rambling; sudden loss of concentration in the middle of a sentence; halting speech and absence of facial animation, resulting at times in a flat, open-mouthed expression,” Gupta wrote for CNN.

Gupta qualified that his suggestion was based on “only observations, not in any way diagnostic of something deeper”. He continued that “the president should be encouraged to undergo detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing, and those results should be made available to the public”.

Gupta’s article followed a recent New York Times story, based largely on anonymous sources, that people in contact with Biden reportedly had recently noticed the president making more factual errors and losing concentration.

The same story raised the specter of Parkinson’s disease, although publicly available medical records show no evidence that the president has the disease. Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease associated with a stiff gait, changes in motor skills and lack of facial expression. Some people also experience cognitive decline.

The president’s primary care physician, Dr Kevin C O’Connor, told the New York Times that he observed “no findings which would be consistent with” Parkinson’s disease in his most recent physical of the president.

The president’s most recent physician’s examination, from February, attributed his stiff gait to a healed foot fracture and peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy is nerve damage that, in the president, resulted in a deficit in sensing hot and cold in his feet. O’Connor reported the president “continues to be fit for duty” with “no new concerns”.

Biden’s age, 81, has been a locus of concern for voters. Those concerns were piqued by a debate performance that was widely considered jumbled and disjointed. Trump is only three years Biden’s junior, at 78.

Notably, voters don’t particularly like either candidate. In a survey released by the Wall Street Journal two days after the debate, about half of voters said they were not enthusiastic about either candidate on the ticket and would like to replace them both.

Biden and his team have defended his debate performance and batted back calls to step aside by saying the president had a cold and was tired after international travel. Biden told Democratic governors that he needed to listen to his team’s warnings about his schedule, and get more sleep.

Gupta’s warning also draws on a tension in medicine that has been especially animated in the last two presidential administrations: between professionals’ “duty to warn” Americans about the fitness of their leaders and the potentially high degree of error inherent in “armchair” medicine.

During the Trump administration, a group of psychiatrists authored a book warning that the former president could be perhaps dangerously mad and a narcissist. The warning prompted the American Psychological Association to reiterate its commitment to the “Goldwater rule” against “armchair psychiatry”.

Cardiologists also questioned whether the former president was at risk of a heart attack because of high cholesterol levels reported by the White House physician, Dr Ronny L Jackson. At that time, Jackson reported the former president was in “excellent” cardiac health.

Amid pronounced concerns about Biden’s age, Trump’s rally speeches have been criticized as rambling, bizarre, incoherent and fascistic. For instance, Trump once described Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system as: “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.” Trump, like Biden, has lapsed when trying to recall specific facts.

In the minutes after Joe Biden and Donald Trump stepped on to the stage for the first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, the grand narrative of this election year shifted off its axis and, in the words of CNN’s veteran broadcaster John King, “a deep, wide and aggressive” panic set in among Democrats.

A week on, and Biden has said he isn’t going anywhere, but a trickle of major Democratic donors speaking out against the president has grown into a stream.

On Thursday, Abigail Disney – the heir to the Disney family fortune and a major party donor – announced she would withhold donations unless Biden dropped out of the race.

“This is realism, not disrespect,” Disney told CNBC, adding: “If Biden does not step down the Democrats will lose. Of that I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire.”

Another prominent donor followed on Friday. The media tycoon Barry Diller, when asked by the Ankler if he and his wife, the designer Diane von Fürstenberg, were holding firm with Biden’s campaign, he replied: “No.”

Diller, previously a key financial backer of Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 campaign, has already donated more than $100,000 to Biden and the Democrats this time around.

In her statement, Disney said vice-president Kamala Harris could be an alternative candidate to beat Trump. “If Democrats would tolerate any of her perceived shortcomings even one tenth as much as they have tolerated Biden’s … we can win this election by a lot,” she said.

For now, Disney represents a minority of donors, but within Biden’s campaign, a clear and concerted effort to tamp down panic among campaign funders is under way.

On Monday, the campaign held a hastily scheduled call with hundreds of top Democratic donors, according to the Reuters news agency. On the call, Biden’s team reportedly promised to make the president more visible at town halls and through interviews to reassure the public.

Despite their reassurances, the campaign was reportedly forced to field “pointed” questions from donors, including “can the president make it through a campaign and another term?”

“We’re in fuck city,” Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood powerbroker and significant Democratic donor, declared last week. He recalled at the Aspen Ideas Festival taking away his father’s car when he was aged 81 – and suggested if you wouldn’t want Biden or Trump driving at night, “you cannot have them running a $27tn company called the United States”.

“The lifeblood to a campaign is money,” Emanuel added, “and maybe the only way this gets [solved] is if the money starts drying up.” Some donors are choosing to divert funds down ballot, he claimed, to congressional races.

According to Reuters and the Associated Press, another call with about 40 top donors over the weekend turned tense after Biden’s campaign manager was asked whether the campaign would offer a refund if Biden doesn’t run.

In the days that followed, one major fundraiser for the Biden campaign said some donors were learning fast how little influence they had in this situation. “There are a lot of people who think they are more important than they actually are,” the fundraiser said.

Some donors have taken the same path as Disney: to halt funding unless the Democratic candidate changes.

Screenwriter Damon Lindelof, who has been a significant contributor to the party, proposed on Wednesday a “DEMbargo”, withholding funding until Biden stands aside.

“When a country is not behaving how we want them to, we apply harsh economic sanctions. It’s a give and take – short term hurt for long term healing,” Lindelof wrote in Deadline.

According to CNBC, philanthropist Gideon Stein will pause almost all of a planned $3m in planned donations. “Virtually every major donor I’ve talked to believes that we need a new candidate in order to defeat Donald Trump,” Stein said.

On Wednesday, Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix and a Democratic party megadonor, joined calls for Biden to take himself out of the presidential race.

Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, have been prolific supporters of the Democratic party, donating more than $20m in recent years, including roughly $1.5m to Biden during his 2020 campaign, according to the New York Times.

The Biden campaign is eager to show its fundraising strength is holding up after the debate and have highlighted record “grassroots” fundraising in the days that followed the event. The day of the debate and the Friday after were best days for fundraising from small-dollar donors to date, with more than $27m raised across both days.

But Biden’s standing in opinion polls has taken a hit, with 59% of Democrats responding to a Reuters/Ipsos poll saying that the leader of their own party was too old to work in government and 32% saying he should give up his re-election bid.

Biden held a $100m funding advantage over Trump just a few months ago, but his campaign and the Democratic National Committee entered June with $212m in the bank, compared with $235m for the Trump operation and the Republican National Committee.

However, analysts predict that if Biden can continue to attract donations in the weeks leading up to the Democratic convention, he will be able to offer party strategist and fellow congressional colleagues a reason to stay on as the candidate.

Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and an influential donor, has continued to throw his weight behind Biden, telling his donor network in an email that he felt it was counterproductive to be “musing on Biden’s flaws” and that they should be “organising around Trump’s flaws”.

Reuters contributed reporting

Robert F Kennedy Jr has made a startling pledge to not “take sides” with respect to the September 11 terrorist attacks if his long-shot presidential campaign vaults him to the White House.

“My take on 9/11: It’s hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn’t. But conspiracy theories flourish when the government routinely lies to the public,” Kennedy wrote on Friday in a post on X in reference to the deadliest terrorist attack ever aimed at the US. “As president I won’t take sides on 9/11 or any of the other debates.

“But I can promise … that I will open the files and usher in a new era of transparency.”

The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001 after terrorists hijacked and crashed passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania.

Kennedy’s decision to revisit one of the most traumatic subjects in American history came just three days after the noted conspiracy theorist responded to an allegation that he sexually assaulted a babysitter previously in his employ by saying: “I’m not a church boy” and “I am who I am.”

That allegation – reported in Vanity Fair – came amid growing scrutiny of his independent run for president, which has fueled worries among Democrats and Republicans that he could decide November’s election by pulling votes away from Joe Biden, Donald Trump or both in key states.

Friday’s statement on X was not the first time Kennedy had expressed dubiousness about the US’s official account of 9/11. In a podcast interview in September, he refused to say al-Qaida carried out the attacks – as the terrorist organization acknowledged and investigators determined long ago.

Kennedy wrote on Friday that he was prompted to speak out by a recent report from the CBS news program 60 Minutes which chronicled how a man identified by the FBI as a Saudi intelligence agent filmed locations in the center of Washington just three months before 9/11.

A court action from family members of September 11 victims, who contend that the Saudi government was complicit in the terrorist attacks, brought the footage to light. Saudi rulers deny the victims’ families’ claims.

For his part, Kennedy on Friday described himself as “agnostic” concerning 9/11, so-called UFOs “and other contentious topics”.

“My issue is transparency,” Kennedy added in a related follow-up post on X.

Kennedy is polling at less than 10% of the national vote and is highly unlikely to win the presidency, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average.

His relation to his father, Robert F Kennedy – the New York senator who was assassinated in 1968 – and uncle John F Kennedy, who was president at the time of his 1963 assassination, has afforded his campaign attention. So has his marriage to actor and comedian Cheryl Hines.

In addition to his 9/11 skepticism, peddling falsehoods about Covid-19 and vaccine safety has seemingly undermined Kennedy’s effort to attract wider support. And so have outlandish claims such as linking antidepressants to school shootings and asserting that certain chemicals in water make children transgender.

The 27 June presidential debate – marked by a calamitous Biden performance that left his party in a panic as well as Trump’s rapid-fire delivery of lies and half-truths – did little to improve Kennedy’s standing.

A recent HarrisX/Forbes poll found a paltry 18% of voters were more likely to vote for a third-party candidate after the debate.

“Whatever shaking of the box happened with the debate, these voters aren’t really yet thinking about RFK Jr or any of the third-party candidates,” HarrisX chief executive officer Dritan Nesho later said. “None of the tickets are prominent enough at this stage to be able to capture a good share of vote – at least that’s what we’re seeing in polls right now.”

Hurricane Beryl has made landfall as a category 2 storm in Mexico’s top tourist destinations, triggering a red alert in the region following its deadly trail of destruction across several Caribbean islands.

The storm’s core shifted over the Yucatán, with winds slowing to approximately 100mph (160km/h) as it reached the north-eastern region of Tulum, famed for its white-sand beaches, lush landscapes and Mayan ruins.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicts that the storm will move towards north-eastern Mexico and southern Texas towards the end of the weekend. In anticipation of that, Texas officials on Friday urged coastal residents to prepare to deal with Beryl, the Associated Press reported.

While the storm’s center moving through Tulum resulted in slower winds and some downed branches, the NHC continues to anticipate dangerous winds, storm surges and destructive waves in the area of landfall.

Video posted on social media on Friday showed fierce winds battering Tulum’s downtown.

A hurricane warning has been issued for the coast from Puerto Costa Maya to Cancún, including Cozumel.

Hurricane Beryl, the first of the 2024 Atlantic season, was at one point a category 5 storm, making it the earliest storm of that magnitude on record. This extraordinary storm season is believed by scientists to be fueled by the climate crisis.

Mexico’s civil protection agency has issued a red alert, signaling a maximum hazard threat. The agency has advised residents to remain in their homes or seek refuge in storm shelters.

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, echoed this advice, urging those in the storm’s path to seek shelter. He emphasized the importance of prioritising life over material possessions in a social media post.

In Quintana Roo, home to Cancún, the governor, Mara Lezama, posted a video of Tulum’s downtown showing strong winds and rain already affecting the region. Posting on X, she urged residents to remain indoors, saying: “We’re asking everyone to stay in your homes, in your shelters, do not leave.”

Schools in Quintana Roo have been closed and the Mexico’s defense ministry has opened around 120 storm shelters in the area.

Before reaching Mexico, Hurricane Beryl wreaked havoc in the Caribbean. It swept through Jamaica, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and northern Venezuela, claiming at least 11 lives, bringing down buildings and uprooting trees.

The death toll may rise as more information becomes available.

Beryl is expected to weaken rapidly as it crosses the Yucatán peninsula, but is forecast to regain strength when it moves over the Gulf of Mexico.

Hurricane Beryl forced the evacuation of around 3,000 tourists from Isla Mujeres, an island near Cancun, the island’s tourism director, Jose Magana, said. Many residents, including fishermen, have sought shelter in anticipation of the storm’s impact.

About 100 flights were canceled at the Cancún international airport on Thursday, causing many tourists to rush to catch the last outgoing flights.

Mexico’s major oil platforms, primarily located in the southern Gulf of Mexico, are not expected to be affected or shut down, but oil projects in US waters to the north may be affected if the hurricane continues on its expected path.

Research by the ClimaMeter consortium determined that the climate crisis, caused by human activities, significantly intensified Hurricane Beryl. According to the study, the storm’s severity, along with its associated rainfall and wind speed, saw an increase of 10-30% as a direct result of the climate emergency.

The controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate will be allowed to leave Romania while awaiting trial on charges of human trafficking, a court has ruled.

Tate, 37, had been banned from leaving the country but will now be permitted to travel within the EU without restrictions while awaiting the trial.

The self-professed “misogynist influencer” was indicted in June 2023 along with his brother, Tristan, and two Romanian female suspects for alleged human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, allegations they have all denied.

In April this year the Bucharest court ruled that their trial could start, a decision Tate has appealed against. Pending a ruling on his appeal, the four suspects had been banned from leaving Romania, but Friday’s court decision lifted the restriction within the EU.

The Bucharest tribunal’s decision was hailed by Tate’s spokesperson Mateea Petrescu as a “significant victory and a major step forward” in the case.

In a social media post on X, Tate wrote: “I am free. For the first time in 3 years I can leave Romania. The sham case is falling apart.”

In a video also posted on X, he said: “My judges decided … I’m allowed to leave Romania, so do we take the [Ferrari] SF90 to Italy, the [Maserati] MC20 to Cannes, the [Ferrari] 812 Competition to Paris, where do I go?”

Eugen Vidineac, one of Tate’s lawyers, said: “We embrace and applaud the decision of the court today, I consider it a reflection of the exemplary behaviour and assistance of my clients.”

He said the Tates were “still determined to clear their name and reputation”.

Vidineac said the ability to travel within the 27-country EU bloc would allow the Tates to “pursue professional opportunities without restriction”.

The brothers, who are dual UK-US nationals, were held in police custody during the criminal investigation from December 2022 until April 2023 to prevent them from absconding from Romania or tampering with evidence.

They were then under house arrest until August, when courts placed them under judicial control. In January a Romanian court rejected an appeal by Tate to ease the judicial control measures.

Tate, a kickboxer who has 9.1 million followers on X, has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him.

He was previously banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and for hate speech.

The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has urged all political parties to call for calm on a tense last day of campaigning for a snap election in which the far right hopes to win a majority in parliament.

“Violence and intimidation have no place in our society,” Attal wrote in a social media post.

The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said: “This campaign is short and yet we already have 51 candidates, substitutes and activists who have been physically assaulted.”

Darmanin told BFM TV that some of the assaults had been extremely serious and led to people being admitted to hospital. He said more than 30 arrests had been made across France and denounced what he called “a climate of great violence towards politics and all that it represents”.

It was too early to establish a “typical profile” of the people carrying out the attacks, but they ranged from people who had “spontaneously got angry” to “political activists either from the ultra-left or ultra-right”. The assaults had happened against people on all sides, he said.

About 30,000 police will be deployed across France after the results on Sunday, including 5,000 in Paris and the surrounding area. Darmanin said he feared “excesses” and had asked the Paris police chief to ban street protests expected outside parliament on Sunday night. He said he feared the “ultra-left” above all. He also said he anticipated demonstrations in Lyon, Rennes and Nantes or “anywhere there is the ultra-right or ultra-left”.

The Paris Bar Council has asked the public prosecutor’s office to open a case after a far-right website called for the “elimination” of lawyers who had signed an article against Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally (RN).

The far-right party has said it could win an absolute majority of 289 seats in parliament and form a government. Latest polling, however, suggests it will fall short of that target, but it is expected to become the largest party. An Ipsos poll forecast the RN would get between 175 and 205 seats and Ifop pollsters put the figure at between 170 and 210.

Polls also showed that tactical voting could limit the RN’s gains. Emmanuel Macron’s centrists and a broad leftwing coalition agreed this week to withdraw more than 200 candidates from the final round to avoid splitting the vote against the RN.

Polls suggest only between a third and a half of centrists could switch to the leftwing alliance to fend off the far right, while perhaps two-thirds of left-leaning voters could back a centrist.

If the RN and its allies do not win an absolute majority but end up as the largest party, there could be deadlock in parliament and a struggle to form a government.

Le Pen said on Friday that such deadlock would “not [be] chaos but a quagmire, a total standstill”, urging her supporters to turn out and give her party the biggest score possible. She said that if the RN did not have a clear majority, “no law will be voted … for a year, the country will be at standstill at the worst moment for France”.

If no party reaches a clear majority, there is uncertainty about how a government could be formed, weeks before Paris hosts the Olympics.

Attal, an ally of Macron, was campaigning on Friday in Paris and did not rule out his minority administration remaining in place for “as long as necessary” after polling day. That was understood to mean the government could continue for a brief period in case of deadlock in parliament, but Attal did not explain further.

The president’s decision to call a snap vote three years ahead of schedule after his party was trounced by the far right in European elections was seen as the biggest gamble of his political career. He said at the time that it would allow French people to reject extremes and reset parliament.

Predictions are hard to make before Sunday’s second round but polling showed Macron’s centrists losing ground and the far right gaining support.

The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has urged all political parties to call for calm on a tense last day of campaigning for a snap election in which the far right hopes to win a majority in parliament.

“Violence and intimidation have no place in our society,” Attal wrote in a social media post.

The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said: “This campaign is short and yet we already have 51 candidates, substitutes and activists who have been physically assaulted.”

Darmanin told BFM TV that some of the assaults had been extremely serious and led to people being admitted to hospital. He said more than 30 arrests had been made across France and denounced what he called “a climate of great violence towards politics and all that it represents”.

It was too early to establish a “typical profile” of the people carrying out the attacks, but they ranged from people who had “spontaneously got angry” to “political activists either from the ultra-left or ultra-right”. The assaults had happened against people on all sides, he said.

About 30,000 police will be deployed across France after the results on Sunday, including 5,000 in Paris and the surrounding area. Darmanin said he feared “excesses” and had asked the Paris police chief to ban street protests expected outside parliament on Sunday night. He said he feared the “ultra-left” above all. He also said he anticipated demonstrations in Lyon, Rennes and Nantes or “anywhere there is the ultra-right or ultra-left”.

The Paris Bar Council has asked the public prosecutor’s office to open a case after a far-right website called for the “elimination” of lawyers who had signed an article against Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally (RN).

The far-right party has said it could win an absolute majority of 289 seats in parliament and form a government. Latest polling, however, suggests it will fall short of that target, but it is expected to become the largest party. An Ipsos poll forecast the RN would get between 175 and 205 seats and Ifop pollsters put the figure at between 170 and 210.

Polls also showed that tactical voting could limit the RN’s gains. Emmanuel Macron’s centrists and a broad leftwing coalition agreed this week to withdraw more than 200 candidates from the final round to avoid splitting the vote against the RN.

Polls suggest only between a third and a half of centrists could switch to the leftwing alliance to fend off the far right, while perhaps two-thirds of left-leaning voters could back a centrist.

If the RN and its allies do not win an absolute majority but end up as the largest party, there could be deadlock in parliament and a struggle to form a government.

Le Pen said on Friday that such deadlock would “not [be] chaos but a quagmire, a total standstill”, urging her supporters to turn out and give her party the biggest score possible. She said that if the RN did not have a clear majority, “no law will be voted … for a year, the country will be at standstill at the worst moment for France”.

If no party reaches a clear majority, there is uncertainty about how a government could be formed, weeks before Paris hosts the Olympics.

Attal, an ally of Macron, was campaigning on Friday in Paris and did not rule out his minority administration remaining in place for “as long as necessary” after polling day. That was understood to mean the government could continue for a brief period in case of deadlock in parliament, but Attal did not explain further.

The president’s decision to call a snap vote three years ahead of schedule after his party was trounced by the far right in European elections was seen as the biggest gamble of his political career. He said at the time that it would allow French people to reject extremes and reset parliament.

Predictions are hard to make before Sunday’s second round but polling showed Macron’s centrists losing ground and the far right gaining support.

Viktor Orbán, Europe’s most pro-Russian leader, met Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Friday on a rare trip to Russia that drew strong condemnation from other European leaders.

Orbán’s visit to Moscow came days after he made a similar unannounced trip to Kyiv, as the Hungarian prime minister attempts to position himself as a peace broker between Russia and Ukraine.

Shortly after landing in Russia for his first trip to the country since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Orbán published a photo with the caption: “The peace mission continues. Second stop: Moscow.”

At the Kremlin, the two leaders held talks that a senior Moscow aide described as a “frank conversation” covering all issues related to Ukraine.

Speaking at a joint conference with Orbán afterwards, Putin signalled he was not ready to compromise on the maximalist demands he made of Ukraine last month.

Putin repeated his earlier ultimatum to end the war, demanding Kyiv cede more land, withdraw troops deeper inside its own territory and drop its Nato bid.

These terms have already been firmly rejected by Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his western allies as they imply that Kyiv would have to relinquish four Ukrainian regions that Russia has “annexed” but does not fully control militarily.

Orbán this week assumed the rotating EU presidency until the end of the year and he told reporters in Moscow that he viewed his six-month tenure as a peace mission.

“Many steps are needed to end the war but we took the first step to restore dialogue,” Orban said, admitting that “points of view remained far from each other in Kyiv and Moscow”.

Brussels was quick to denounce the visit, stressing that Orbán did not speak for the EU and had “not received any mandate from the EU Council to visit Moscow”.

“Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s visit to Moscow takes place exclusively in the framework of the bilateral relations between Hungary and Russia. The Hungarian prime minister is thus not representing the EU in any form,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, wrote in a statement.

Ukraine condemned Orbán’s visit, saying it had been made “without approval or coordination” with Kyiv. The Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement that “the principle of ‘no agreements on Ukraine without Ukraine’ remains inviolable for our country”.

Hungary has been at odds with other western countries over Orbán’s continued cultivation of close ties to Russia and refusal to send arms to Ukraine. Budapest’s foreign minister called plans to help the country a “crazy mission” in May.

The Hungarian leader, who maintains links with rightwing groups around the globe, has long suggested Hungary could play a role in bringing peace to Ukraine. Aside from making vague calls for a ceasefire, he has not provided any details of a potential peace plan and has largely been ignored.

However, with elections in France later this week and a possible return to the US presidency for Donald Trump this year, Orbán may sense that the geopolitical winds are changing.

During his visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, Orbán said he had asked Zelenskiy to consider a quick ceasefire that could accelerate peace talks.

Both Zelenskiy and Putin rejected Orbán’s call for a ceasefire, with the Ukrainian leader saying his country “cannot just trust Putin in principle”.

“It is important that Hungary recognises that Russia is an aggressor,” Zelenskiy said in an interview after Orbán’s visit.

Ukrainians fear that without hard security guarantees, such as Nato membership, a ceasefire would simply allow Russia to regroup and attack again in the future.

Putin said Russia could not agree to a ceasefire “because it is not sure of Kyiv’s reciprocal actions”.

Orbán’s visit is the first by an EU leader to Russia since the Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, made a fruitless effort to negotiate an end to Russia’s invasion in April 2022.

Friday’s trip caused further anxiety in Brussels and in EU member states, where many are already horrified that a leader who they feel has done everything to undermine European unity and the rule of law in recent years is now the bloc’s main representative for the next six months.

Citing Orbán, who said the trip would “serve as an important tool in making the first step towards peace”, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on social media: “The question is in whose hands this tool is.”

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, wrote on X: “Appeasement will not stop Putin. Only unity and determination will pave the path to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”

A fast-moving wildfire burning near Yosemite national park is threatening rural communities as millions of people in California and across the US west swelter under a brutal heatwave that is predicted to persist through the weekend.

The so-called French fire broke out on Thursday and grew to more than 840 acres by Friday. The fire is 5% contained with “multiple evacuations and road closures in place”, according to local fire officials.

Footage posted on social media showed flames and smoke billowing on Thursday night over the Gold-Rush era town of Mariposa, a community in the Sierra Nevada foothills about 40 miles outside the national park. The area is under an excessive heat alert with temperatures due to top 100F (38C) on Friday.

Bulldozers and crews built a line across the entire eastern side of Mariposa and are making progress in bringing the fire under control.

“Winds have calmed which has helped firefighters make progress overnight,” according to a statue report from Cal Fire, the state’s wildfire agency.

The fire is one of more than a dozen burning across the state, including several that broke out on the Fourth of July. Further north, firefighters were gaining ground against the Thompson fire near the city of Oroville in Butte County, which has burned more than 3,700 acres and prompted evacuation orders for thousands of people.

On Friday, containment of the Thompson fire had increased to 29% and evacuated residents were allowed to return home as crews continue to battle the flames in scorching heat. Officials have warned of hot temperatures in the area that could hit 108F, with even hotter weather expected into the weekend.

California has faced a number of spring and early summer wildfires, thanks to a wet winter that left landscapes coated in grasses that were primed to burn as the summer heated up.

The excessive heat will only dry out the landscapes further, adding to the threat of an active wildfire season in the months ahead. Officials had feared that fireworks and other Fourth of July celebrations would add to the risks.

“The combination of events has presented a huge challenge for firefighters. It is so incredibly dry out there,” said Ed Fletcher, a public information officer with Cal Fire, this week.

Meanwhile, residents across the US west are dealing with stifling temperatures. About 108 million Americans will spend the remainder of the weekend under excessive heat advisories, with record-breaking temperatures forecast for many spots in California, southern Oregon and the south-west, the National Weather Service said.

“Numerous record-breaking temperatures can be expected through the next few days,” according to a NWS briefing. The west coast will hover 15 to 30F above average, with many towns and cities reaching close to 110F (43C) or above on Friday.

“Expect only subtle changes to our daily high temperatures through the weekend,” the National Weather Service in Flagstaff, Arizona, said on X.

“Where did you go, monsoon? Hurry back,” it said, referring to a recent bout of torrential rain in the area, which is usually bone-dry this time of year.

Some of the hottest spots will include Phoenix, where it is expected to be 115F (46C), and Palm Springs, California, where it will reach 119F (48C). Las Vegas is expected to hit 118F on Monday, potentially breaking an all-time record.

Elsewhere, ferocious heat will also prevail from Mississippi to Florida, and north along the east coast to Pennsylvania, where temperatures will exceed 100F (38C).

The National Weather Service warned that hot overnight conditions across the Mississippi Valley could lead to “a dangerous situation for those without access to adequate cooling”.

Hopes for a ceasefire in Gaza and de-escalation on the boundary between Israel and Lebanon were raised on Friday, as Israel’s intelligence chief was dispatched by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Qatar to resume stalled negotiations as Hamas reportedly told its Lebanese ally Hezbollah it had accepted a ceasefire proposal.

An official for the Lebanese group, which said on Thursday that it had fired 200 rockets into Israel in retaliation for a strike that killed one of its top commanders, also told Reuters that the group would cease fire as soon as any Gaza ceasefire agreement takes effect, echoing previous statements.

“If there is a Gaza agreement, then from zero hour there will be a ceasefire in Lebanon,” the official said.

The efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages held for nearly nine months gained momentum this week as Hamas put forward a revised proposal outlining the terms of an agreement, and Israel expressed readiness to resume discussions that had previously come to a standstill.

The head of the Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea, travelled alone on Friday to Doha to meet Qatar’s prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, to study proposals from Hamas to pause the nearly nine-month war, the Kan public broadcaster reported, citing senior Israeli officials.

The United States appears to hold high expectations regarding the recently resumed contact between Israel and Hamas, with the White House describing the latest Hamas ceasefire proposal as a “breakthrough” establishing a framework for a possible hostage deal.

‘‘I think the framework is now in place and we have to work out the implementation steps,” a senior US official said. “What we got back from Hamas was a pretty significant adjustment to what had been their position, and that is encouraging. We have heard the same from the Israelis.”

The main obstacle in negotiations until this week had been widely differing views on how the agreement would move from its first phase to its second.

The first phase involves the release by Hamas of elderly, sick and female hostages during a six-week truce, an Israeli withdrawal from cities in Gaza, and the release of Palestinian detainees held by Israel.

The second phase would involve the release of all remaining hostages as well as the bodies of those who have died, a permanent end to hostilities and a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Phase three would mark the start of Gaza’s reconstruction.

The transition from the first to the second phase was to be negotiated during the first six-week truce, and the ceasefire would continue as long as good-faith negotiations continued, but Hamas wanted stronger guarantees over the path to a permanent ceasefire.

Netanyahu had publicly cast doubt on whether that would happen, vowing to complete the destruction of the group, which had run Gaza for nearly two decades before it launched its surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

A Palestinian official close to the internationally mediated peace efforts told Reuters the new Hamas proposal could lead to a framework agreement if it is embraced by Israel.

He said Hamas was no longer demanding as a pre-condition an Israeli commitment to a permanent ceasefire before the signing of an agreement, and would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout a first six-week phase.

The White House said Biden and Netanyahu had on Thursday discussed the response received from Hamas on the possible terms of a deal, and that Biden had welcomed Netanyahu’s decision on resuming the stalled talks “in an effort to close out the deal”.

A source in the Israeli negotiating team told Reuters: “There’s a deal with a real chance of implementation.”

A Gaza ceasefire could also allow for the de-escalation between Hezbollah and Israel on the Lebanese boundary. Hezbollah has declared its attacks on Israel to be in support of Hamas and indicated its willingness to halt its assaults if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

A Hamas delegation headed by the group’s deputy leader, Khalil al-Hayya, briefed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah about the latest developments at a meeting in Beirut, the sources said.

Its deputy secretary general Naim Qassem on Friday publicly indicated that the group is not anticipating a full-scale war with Israel, but remains prepared for any extreme scenarios, in an interview with Russian outlet Sputnik.

“The possibility of expanding the war is not at hand at the moment but the organisation is prepared for the worst,” he said.

Mothers of Hamas-held hostages demonstrating in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square urged Israeli leaders to make an agreement. “There is right now a deal on the table,” said Shira Albag, the mother of 19-year-old Liri Albag, calling on the prime minister to “show leadership and courage and sign it off”.

One of the main obstacles to the negotiations within Israel is the far-right faction of the Netanyahu coalition government. The national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, issued a warning about potentially exiting the coalition during a highly charged security cabinet session on Thursday evening.

According to media reports in Israel, Ben Gvir criticised Netanyahu for engaging in private discussions with the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and top security officials, painting the cabinet as merely a superficial facade.

“I want to make it abundantly clear, prime minister, that if you choose to act unilaterally, the consequences are solely your own to bear, and you will find yourself standing alone. I did not receive half a million votes to partake in a government where key security decisions are made outside the collective,” he was quoted as saying.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lucy Letby cried from the dock “I’m innocent” after she was sentenced to a whole-life order for attempting to kill a newborn girl in what the judge called a “shocking act of calculated, callous cruelty”.

The former neonatal nurse made the remark as she was taken to the court cells after being sentenced.

The judge, James Goss KC, told the prison officers to take the defendant down when she turned to face him, turned out her palms and said “I’m innocent”, to gasps in the courtroom.

Members of her newborn victim’s family – who had moments earlier described the everlasting grief of her crimes – appeared visibly shocked and emotional at Letby’s outburst.

Letby, 34, was found guilty on Tuesday of trying to kill the extremely premature infant less than two hours after she was born on 17 February 2016.

Letby was handed a 15th whole-life order, having been jailed last year for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another six.

Letby was convicted of attempting to kill a seventh infant, known as Baby K, after a three-week retrial at Manchester crown court.

Goss told Letby she had deliberately interfered with the breathing tube of the tiny newborn – who was born 15 weeks’ premature and weighted only 692g (1.52lbs) – when a nurse had briefly left the infant’s side.

Her actions were “completely contrary to the normal human instincts and nurturing and caring for babies”, he said, and were “in gross beach of the trust that all citizens place in those who work in the medical and caring professions”.

Baby K died three days later after being transferred to a separate hospital. Letby was not accused of causing her death.

Sentencing Letby, Goss said she could not be blamed for causing Baby K’s death but she was guilty of a “shocking act of calculated, callous cruelty”.

As Letby stared straight ahead, Goss told her she was a “conscientious, hard-working, confident and professional nurse … which allowed you to harm babies without suspicion”.

“Only you know the reason, or reasons, for your murderous campaign,” he said, adding that the impact of her crimes was “immense”. “You have no remorse. There are no mitigating factors,” he added.

Eight members of the jury were in court to watch the sentencing.

Fighting back tears, Baby K’s mother told a silent courtroom how she and her husband had been “beyond ecstatic and overwhelmed with love” when they heard their unborn child’s heartbeat for the first time, after a previous miscarriage.

She described how their loss had affected every area of their lives, damaging their relationships, friendships and careers. “The impact is across all aspects of your life,” she said, “like ripples in the water, layer by layer of your life is touched”.

As relatives became emotional in the public gallery, Baby K’s mother said the “biggest future struggle that plagues us each day” was how to tell their children about her death.

“The devastation expands so far and for so long when a child is lost let alone under these circumstances,” she said. “Will we get answers and the verdict that we want? Will that actually bring some peace and closure?”

Addressing Letby from the witness box, Baby K’s mother said her daughter was “not here, never will be, we will never have what would give us peace, closure, or a feeling of being complete family unit”.

She went on: “However, you, Lucy Letby, will never hurt another child or have the privilege and joy that children give.

“Our time and effort that you have absorbed over the years will stop today and our focus will remain on our beautiful children and building the most exciting and love-filled life that we possibly can.”

Benjamin Myers KC, for Letby, said his client “recognised the sympathy” for the families but that she maintained her innocence. He said there was no mitigation. “The sentence is inevitable and there is no more I can say,” he said.

Immersive research into the everyday lives of normal people conducted by the actor Kevin Bacon has revealed some startling results: it’s not as good as being a celebrity.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Bacon said he had long hankered after the anonymity of the everyman, so commissioned a prosthetics specialist to enable him to do so.

“I’m not complaining,” he said, “but I have a face that’s pretty recognisable. Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent.”

He continued: “I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.”

Kitted out with fake teeth, a different nose and a pair of glasses, the actor trialled his new look at a shopping mall in Los Angeles called The Grove. To his delight, he discovered that “nobody recognised me”.

Yet the newfound freedom soon palled as Bacon discovered the downsides of invisibility.

“People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice,” he said. “Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.”

Bacon, now 65, made his screen debut 46 years ago, in National Lampoon’s Animal House, before starring in the likes of Diner, Footloose, A Few Good Men, JFK, The River Wild and Tremors. He has also featured in films such as The Woodsman, Patriots Day and TV series I Love Dick and City on a Hill.

His industry ubiquity spawned the parlour game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which challenges players to trace anyone in showbiz back to Bacon in six names or fewer.

Other celebrities rumoured to have gone undercover using similar strategies include Ellen DeGeneres (as a keen shopper), Daniel Radcliffe (as a dog walker), Arnold Schwarzenegger (as a gym instructor) and Chris Pratt (as a Chris Pratt lookalike).

Meanwhile celebrities who have admitted how much they enjoy the trappings of notoriety include Noel Gallagher, Catherine Deneuve and Billie Eilish.

In 2019, Christina Ricci declared: “I’m not going to lie, I like being famous. I like being well respected. I like that people don’t laugh when they hear my name. I like being able to get tables at restaurants and discounts on clothes. My life is exactly the life that I wanted for myself.”