Florida’s western coast was making emergency preparations on Tuesday for the impact of Hurricane Milton, with thousands of evacuees clogging highways, contending with fuel shortages, and the mayor of Tampa warning residents bluntly “you are going to die” if they stayed behind.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Milton would retain major hurricane status and “expand in size” as it approached Florida after passing the Mexican city of Mérida before swerving north towards the US.

The eye of the storm closed overnight on Monday, and winds slowed slightly, before reorganizing as an “extremely dangerous” 155mph (250km/h) category 4 hurricane. As of Tuesday afternoon, the storm had restrengthened to a category 5 in the Gulf of Mexico.

Milton packed maximum sustained winds of 165mph (270km/h), the NHC said.

At 7pm CDT, the eye of the storm was 440 miles (710km) south-west of Tampa, moving east/north-east at 10mph.

“Milton’s wind field is expected to expand as it approaches Florida. In fact, the official forecast shows the hurricane and tropical-storm-force winds roughly doubling in size by the time it makes landfall,” the hurricane center said.

The greater size also enlarges the scope of the risk of storm surge to hundreds of miles of coastline. The hurricane center sees surges of 10-15ft (3-4.5 meters) north and south of Tampa Bay, in addition to the ferocious winds and risk of inland flash flooding from intense rainfall.

Milton has the potential to be “one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida”, the NHC said.

“This is a very serious threat and residents in Florida are urged to listen to local officials,” the center said. Residents should get “their families and homes ready” – and evacuate if told to do so.

Joe Biden said that Hurricane Milton could be one of the worst storms in the US for 100 years and advised residents to leave immediately as “a matter of life and death”.

Milton is projected to hit the south-west coast of Florida by Wednesday evening local time, the US National Weather Service said in its latest update, and could cause destruction in areas already reeling from Hurricane Helene’s devastation nearly two weeks ago.

Almost all of Florida’s west coast was under a hurricane warning, with more than a million people told to evacuate, fleeing potentially catastrophic damage and power outages that could last days.

Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, warned residents intending to leave that they were almost out of time. “If you’re gonna get out, get out now,” he told a Tuesday afternoon press conference.

At a briefing earlier in the day, he said: “Let’s prepare for the worst and let’s pray that we get a weakening and hope for the least amount of damage as possible, but we must be prepared for a major, major impact to the west coast of Florida.”

The US president cancelled a trip to Angola and Germany less than a day after it was announced during a briefing that abruptly ended when the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, stormed out, accusing journalists of spreading misinformation in response to questions about emergency disaster funding.

The president also approved DeSantis’s request for a federal emergency declaration and said disinformation in the wake of Hurricane Helene was “unAmerican”.

That came after a DeSantis aide said the governor was not taking Vice-President Kamala Harris’s calls, pointing to the intense politicization around the response to Helene and Milton.

Harris later said that moments of crisis “should really be the moment that anyone who calls themselves a leader says they’re gonna put politics aside and put the people first”.

DeSantis responded that for Harris to “say that my sole focus on the people of Florida is somehow selfish, is delusional”.

“She has no role in this. In fact, she’s been vice-president for three and a half years. I’ve dealt with a number of storms under this administration. She has never contributed anything to any of these efforts, and so what I think is selfish is her trying to blunder into this,” he continued.

With one day left for people to leave, local officials raised concerns about traffic jams and long queues at fuel stations as well as discarded household debris piled up on sidewalks after last week’s Hurricane Helene that could become projectiles when Milton’s winds hit.

DeSantis told reporters crews had made “a huge dent” in debris removal, carting away 1,300 truckloads in little more than 48 hours.

Almost one-fifth of Florida’s gas stations were out of fuel by Tuesday afternoon, however, according to the tracking website GasBuddy. It said 17.4% of stations were dry by 2pm, up from 14.5% earlier in the day.

US forecasters and officials fear Milton could make landfall in the Tampa Bay region, home to more than 3 million people. Tampa has not had a direct hit by a major hurricane since 1921.

Hurricane damage modellers have for years warned that the Tampa Bay area is particularly vulnerable to rising seas caused by storm surges, due to its wide and shallow seabed, which can push water upwards.

The mayor of Tampa, which is low-lying, issued a stark warning to residents as Hurricane Milton dashed across the Gulf of Mexico.

“If you choose to stay … you are going to die,” said the mayor, Jane Castor.

Castor delivered the blunt assessment to CNN on Monday while also describing Milton as a “literally catastrophic” hurricane projected to push up to 15ft of Gulf water inland – an amount that officials say is deadly.

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in late September, caused more than 200 deaths and catastrophic damage stretching from Florida to the Appalachian mountains. There are fears that mounds of building rubble left in Helene’s wake could turn into dangerous debris if caught up in Milton’s floods and winds.

The National Weather Service downgraded Milton early on Tuesday to a category 4 hurricane but forecasters said it still posed an extremely serious threat. Around 5pm EST on Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center announced that Milton had re-energized to “category 5 strength”.

“While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida,” the agency said.

The slight weakening from category 5 status occurred after Milton’s barometric pressure rose slightly to 924mbar from 879mbar. That happened as Milton appeared to be undergoing an eye wall replacement, which can briefly raise barometric pressure and reduce its intensity.

However, the phenomenon tends to make a hurricane wider, increasing its windfield. Projections expect the hurricane to restrengthen to a category 5 then weaken as it approaches Florida, though the storm’s effects are still going to be potent.

Milton is due to become the 10th major hurricane – category 3 or higher – to make landfall along the US’s Gulf coast since 2017, gaining power from the warm seas in the Gulf. Milton was the third fastest-intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the agency said.

Weather and climate experts attribute such a high rate of powerful, destructive storms to the climate crisis, spurred by the burning of fossil fuels.

Before Milton’s arrival, DeSantis, declared a state of emergency for 51 of its 67 counties. “What you don’t want to do is stay in an area where you have 10, 15ft of storm surge,” he told Fox News on Monday.

DeSantis also told Floridians to make sure they had a week’s food and water and were braced for more evacuation orders.

The governor is pro-fossil fuels and has criticised climate action as being led by “radical green zealots”.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to reporting

In happier times, Interstate 4 from Tampa to Orlando is choked with pleasure seekers heading for the theme parks of Disney and similar enjoyable Florida pursuits. But on Tuesday, a deep sense of foreboding hung over the lengthy lines of near-stationary traffic as Hurricane Milton, the strongest storm forecast to strike Tampa Bay in more than a century, churned in the Gulf of Mexico, edging ever closer to its target.

Hundreds of thousands of Floridians, heeding urgent warnings from authorities to flee while they still had the opportunity, were caught up in the traffic jams as they headed inland to safety. Some even took to the air, with three people injured as their small plane crashed into Tampa Bay on Tuesday morning during their attempt to escape.

“There will likely not be enough time to wait to leave on Wednesday,” the National Hurricane Center in Miami cautioned in a mid-morning advisory.

Families who abandoned their homes in evacuation zones in low-lying coastal areas such as Clearwater and St Petersburg – where Milton’s storm surge could peak at anything up to 15ft (4.5 metres) – were uncertain what they would return to.

But the risk of staying put, as so many did to their cost during Hurricane Helene, which roared through Florida’s Panhandle and into the Carolinas and beyond only 11 days ago, was not an option.

Recalling the death toll from Helene, which is at least 227, the Tampa mayor, Jane Castor, was as blunt as she could be in urging people to leave. “I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever: if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” she said in an appearance on CNN.

Her words have resonance. Florida’s west coast has seen this before, most recently in 2022 when Hurricane Ian struck south of Tampa Bay at a cost of 149 lives. The majority drowned in an 18ft storm surge, which is essentially a rushing wall of ocean water that a hurricane’s winds pushes inland – and there were questions regarding why authorities delayed an evacuation order until the day before landfall.

For many, the call came too late, and people who were reluctant or lacking the resources to join long lines of traffic opted to shelter in place.

A growing number of gas stations were flashing “empty” signs as data from fuel markets tracker GasBuddy showed that by 6.30pm on Tuesday, 7,912 gasoline stations in Florida – about 17.4% of the total – had run out of fuel.

Kinder Morgan has shut its Central Florida Pipeline system, which moves refined products between Tampa and Orlando, the company said in an emailed statement. It has closed all fuel delivery terminals in Tampa, but expects trucks to be able to pick up fuel from Orlando wholesale racks until winds exceed 35 miles per hour.

Fuel trucks cannot safely deliver at wind speeds exceeding that threshold, wholesale distributor Mansfield explained, and said it expects wind conditions to bring all Florida fuel deliveries to a near-halt by Wednesday.

Refiner CITGO Petroleum and infrastructure and logistics provider Buckeye Partners are also shutting down their Tampa terminals, the companies told Reuters.

On Tuesday, hurricane refugees were filling hotel rooms in Orlando usually occupied by tourists and convention-goers, or heading north or south away from the danger zone, into areas of Georgia unaffected by Helene or to the Miami metropolitan area in south-eastern Florida.

“For every room we’ve had to cancel due to a convention or something not being able to get into the area, we’re refilling that room with somebody who’s impacted by this storm,” Jennifer Rice-Palmer, director of guest contact at Orlando’s Rosen Centre hotel, told the Orlando Sentinel.

The newspaper spoke to Nick Santos, an evacuee from Tampa who was taking advantage of the hotel’s discounted “distress rates” with his wife Tara and their children Scarlett, six, and Cole, three.

“It’s part of living where we live, but it could be a big, scary thing for them,” Santos said, explaining why he left early with his children and was taking them to a theme park. Disney said it was closing its theme parks on Wednesday afternoon until at least Friday.

Emergency shelters were also welcoming evacuees, with spaces still available in several Gulf coast counties on Tuesday.

Back in Tampa, meanwhile, rental companies ran out of vehicles, gas stations were emptied of fuel, and many supermarkets sold out of storm essentials including water, paper towels and cleaning supplies.

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, lifted tolls on major highways and ordered breakdown lanes open to try to ease the flow. But officials said traffic levels were above 150% of normal, and accidents were blocking some routes.

“Unfortunately every storm we see traffic fatalities because people wait until the last minute to leave,” Florida’s transportation secretary, Jared Perdue, said at a Tuesday morning press conference.

A small plane carrying four people and a dog crashed into Tampa Bay on Tuesday morning shortly after takeoff from St Petersburg’s downtown Albert Whitted airport. The occupants were rescued by nearby boaters, and three were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The plane reportedly sank.

Analysts fear that the Tampa Bay area, home to more than 3 million people – many of whom have never experienced a hurricane of Milton’s magnitude – is particularly vulnerable.

“It’s a huge population. It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition,” Kerry Emanuel, a meteorology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Associated Press, referring to the storm as the “black swan” worst-case scenario experts have feared for years.

“I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about the most.”

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of Americans have moved to the area, with 51,622 new residents from 2022 to 2023, making it the country’s fifth fastest-growing metropolitan region, according to the US Census Bureau.

Meteorologists at AccuWeather reinforced the “get out early” message, warning that Milton could bring a “worst-case impact” for the Tampa Bay area even before Wednesday night’s expected landfall.

“You do not want to wait for storm surge to start occurring before you take action. We have seen so many preventable tragedies during Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Ian,” said Jon Porter, AccuWeather’s chief meteorologist.

“Please get out of areas at risk of this devastating storm surge while you still can. We are very concerned that Hurricane Milton could become one of the most damaging and [costly] storms that Florida has ever seen.”

The speed with which recent hurricanes have been intensifying in strength is alarming climate experts, officials and residents facing these huge storms. More than a million people have been told to evacuate as Florida braces for the arrival of Hurricane Milton this week on the state’s west coast.

Milton is the third fastest-intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the US National Weather Service has said as experts warn the climate crisis is fueling more powerful storms.

As the country turns its attention to Hurricane Milton, which is expected to bring life-threatening conditions to parts of Florida after it makes landfall later this week, communities in much of the south-east US are still reeling from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene almost two weeks ago.

In western North Carolina, home to many mountain communities such as Green Mountain, entire towns were destroyed and washed away during the storm. Residents became isolated as roads became impassable. Electricity and cellphone service went out.

The death toll from Hurricane Helene has soared to more than 225 people, with deaths recorded across six states and officials warning that the number will probably rise as recovery efforts continue.

North Carolina was one of the hardest-hit states, accounting for more than half of the total number of deaths caused by the hurricane. Search-and-rescue missions there remain ongoing, and more than 100,000 people in the area remain without power as of Tuesday.

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region on 26 September as a category 4 hurricane, became the deadliest mainland hurricane in the US since Katrina in 2005. Helene brought strong winds, rainfall, storm surge and devastating flooding to the south-eastern region of the US.

This week, many residents remain displaced with no homes to return to, while others are waiting to hear any news about their missing loved ones. Some have received the news they most feared.

On Monday, rescue crews in parts of North Carolina continued to search for the many people still unaccounted for since the hurricane hit the region.

Alison Wisely, with her two children, Felix, nine, and Lucas, seven, and her fiance Knox Petrucci tried to evacuate from their home in Green Mountain on Friday 27 September.

They expected some flooding, but not what unfolded. After a failed attempt at driving away from their home resulted in the family having to return home by foot, an eyewitness saw the group of four get swept away by a wave into the Toe River.

Search teams, family and friends looked tirelessly for the family. The bodies of Alison, Felix and Lucas were recovered last week. On Monday, family members were notified that Knox’s body had been found.

“This unspeakable tragedy has broken our hearts into a million pieces,” family and friends said in a statement.

Alison and Knox were to be married in a small ceremony on 9 November, the family said. Now, on that date, the family plan to gather to mourn their passing.

“We are heartbroken,” the family said in a statement posted to a GoFundMe page set up to help raise money to cover the costs of the burials and memorial, as well as to support grieving family members.

In a statement, the surviving relatives said that the family had created a life full of “love, family, creativity, bees, chickens, cats, dogs” in the North Carolina mountains next to the North Toe River.

Knox was a local beekeeper, aspiring blacksmith and gifted musician, while Alison, a sanctuary operations manager at Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, has been described as the “most loving mother” who “encouraged her children to stretch their imaginations and nurtured their creative, loving, funny spirits”.

Nine-year-old Felix “wanted to know everything about the world”, his family said, and seven-year-old Lucas loved the outdoors and had an “incredible imagination”.

Knox’s sister, Briana Petrucci Yarbrough, told the Guardian that Knox “embraced being part of the Appalachian beekeeping, arts and queer communities”. He’d told her about “the neighborliness of the people of Burnsville and Green Mountain”, and how even though “people came from many sides of the political spectrum, if someone needed help their neighbor would come through”.

Petrucci Yarbrough added: “He built a beautiful life with a central focus on family and friends who were like family.”

Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s governor, announced over the weekend that air search-and-rescue teams in the state flew 48 missions on Saturday and located 39 survivors in western North Carolina who had been stranded.

“So far 6,586 people and counting have been rescued, evacuated or assisted by search-and-rescue teams since the storm hit,” the announcement reads.

Authorities in Asheville, North Carolina, one of the worst-hit areas, said on Monday that they had recovered an additional nine people who had been declared dead, and had located about 85% of those missing, according to CNN.

So far, more than $27m in Fema individual assistance funds have been paid to western North Carolina disaster survivors, and more than 83,000 people have registered for individual assistance, the governor’s office said on Saturday.

Nearly 1,400 people are being housed in hotels through Fema’s transitional sheltering assistance, officials said. More than 755 Fema personnel are on the ground assisting in the western North Carolina relief effort, and more than 1,100 responders from 34 states are also supporting the response and recovery efforts.

The White House ordered an additional 500 active-duty troops to be sent to North Carolina, to aid the recovery efforts on Sunday. The additional troops will supplement the nearly 1,000 soldiers already on the ground.

The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced a day earlier that North Carolina would receive $100m in emergency relief funds to help pay for repairs in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

In an effort to stave off more devastation and loss of life, residents in Tampa, Florida, are being warned to evacuate before Milton makes landfall in Tampa Bay on Wednesday, as it is projected to do.

“If you choose to stay … you are going to die,” said the Tampa mayor, Jane Castor, on Tuesday, adding that Hurricane Milton was expected to be “literally catastrophic” and push up to 15ft of Gulf water inland – an amount that officials say is deadly.

When they go low, she goes high. Miller High Life to be precise.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, took her election campaign to late night television on Tuesday by cracking open a can of the lager with host Stephen Colbert. The moment set her apart from Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both, famously, teetotallers.

The vice-president also used the interview in New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater to lambast Trump over a report that he sent Covid testing kits to Russia’s Vladimir Putin even as US citizens went without. “He thinks, well, that’s his friend,” she said. “What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”

The appearance before a live audience capped a media blitz for Harris who, having previously been criticised for dodging interviews, spoke in recent days to CBS’s 60 Minutes, the podcast Call Her Daddy, the daytime show The View and radio host Howard Stern.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has featured Harris, Biden and numerous other politicians over the years, blending serious political issues with light relief. During Tuesday’s interview in New York, he noted that people are calling this “the vibe election” and that voters typically want a candidate they can have a beer with.

He duly invited Harris to share a drink and said she had requested Miller High Life in advance. The vice-president remarked: “OK, the last time I had beer was at a baseball game with Doug. Cheers.”

Harris repeated the popular slogan “The champagne of beers”, while Colbert noted that it comes from Milwaukee, in the swing state of Wisconsin. He said: “So that covers Wisconsin. Let’s talk Michigan. Let’s appeal to the Michigan voters, OK? What are your favourite Bob Seger songs?”

The host proceeded to reel off a list of Seger songs but Harris did not appear enthusiastic. Finally, she said: “I’ll go Aretha or Eminem. You got any?”

The 40-minute interview, due to be broadcast on CBS on Tuesday night, also tackled serious topics. Colbert asked about the 7 October attack by Hamas and Israel’s response. Harris said: “We must have a ceasefire and hostage deal as immediately as possible. This war has got to end. It has to end.”

Progress on a deal for a ceasefire and the release of hostages is “meaningless”, she acknowledged, until it is reached. Harris said she has met with the families of hostages and the families of Palestinians killed in Gaza. “We’ve got to get a deal done and we’re not going to give up.”

The interview took place after it emerged that journalist Bob Woodward writes in his new book, War, that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president Covid test machines in 2020. Trump has denied the claims.

Harris commented: “He openly admires dictators and authoritarians. He has said he wants to be a dictator on day one if he were elected again as president. He gets played by these guys. He admires so-called strongmen and he gets played because they flatter him or offer him favour.”

Referring to the Covid test kits, she went on: “I ask everyone here and everyone who is watching: do you remember what those days were like? You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them?”

Harris became visibly irate as she recalled that hundreds of people were dying every day, some comforted only by nurses because their families could not reach them.
“And this man is giving Covid test kits to Vladimir Putin? Think about what this means on top of him sending love letters to Kim Jong-un. He thinks, well, that’s his friend. What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”

Earlier Colbert asked Harris about a now celebrated image of her in the presidential debate against Trump in which she frowned and rested her chin on a hand. Asked what she was thinking at that moment, she replied: “It’s family TV, right? It starts with a W, there’s a letter between it, then the last letter’s F.” She burst into laughter.

The comedian asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, something he has always denied. Harris said: “You know, when you lost millions of jobs, you lost manufacturing, you lost automotive plants, you lost the election. What does that make you? A loser. This is what somebody at my rallies said. I thought it was funny.”

She laughed and Colbert remarked: “It’s accurate. It’s accurate.”

Then Harris pointed out: “This is what happens when I drink beer!”

Israel has said it is expanding its ground operation in Lebanon with the deployment of a fourth division after another night of intense airstrikes across the south and east of the country.

The reservist 146th division was sent to southern Lebanon overnight, hours after Israel announced the mobilisation of a third standing division, meaning the number of troops on the ground is now likely to number 15,000.

Launching what it has called Operation Northern Arrows last week, the Israeli army said the ground offensive would involve “limited, localised and targeted raids” to remove Hezbollah infrastructure along the disputed de facto border between the two countries, known as the blue line.

However, the rapid deployment of four divisions operating across south Lebanon, alongside evacuation orders for Lebanese villages on the coast upwards of 20 miles from the blue line and the intensive bombing of the country’s south and east and the capital, suggests Israel is preparing for a wider push north against the Lebanese militia.

In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Hezbollah’s acting secretary general, Naim Qassem, said the group’s military capabilities were still functional despite two weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes, including Beirut bombings that killed the group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and much of the militia’s top command.

“You see that our daily accomplishments are great. Hundreds of rockets and dozens of aircraft [drones], a great number of [Israeli] settlements and cities have come under rocket fire … I would like to reassure you that our capabilities are fine,” he said.

Hezbollah had replaced all of its senior commanders, he said, and Israeli ground troops had not made any advances after a week of fighting.

However, on Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed the IDF had killed Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to replace the late Nasrallah.

“We’ve degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement,” Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message. It was not immediately clear whom Netanyahu meant by the “replacement of the replacement”.

Hezbollah has not confirmed Safieddine’s death.

The IDF said that it had also killed Suhail Husseini, responsible for overseeing logistics, budget and management, the night before. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah, but about 85 projectiles were launched towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa from Lebanon on Tuesday morning. Most of the projectiles were intercepted by Israel’s air defence systems.

Two Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s Shia-majority southern suburbs almost immediately after Qassem’s speech. There were reports of a “massive airstrike” in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, about 30km east of Beirut, on Tuesday night, and at least four strikes on Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut where Nasrallah was killed.

Elsewhere, the Syrian government said seven civilians were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Damascus, that a war monitor said targeted a building used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

The defence ministry said women and children were among the dead and the toll was preliminary as rescuers were still combing the rubble. None of the dead were Iranian, the Iranian embassy in Damascus said.

At least 1,400 Lebanese people, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million – about a quarter of the population – have been driven from their homes since fighting escalated three weeks ago.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least 36 people had been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, with 150 people being injured.

Israel says the operation’s goal is to allow approximately 60,000 displaced people to return to their homes across northern Israel after a year of simmering cross-border fighting.

Hezbollah began firing on Israel in solidarity with its Palestinian allies a day after Hamas’s 7 October attack last year that triggered the new war in Gaza and now threatens to drag in Iran and the US.

In a statement on Tuesday, the anniversary of Hezbollah’s involvement, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon, and Lt Gen Aroldo Lázaro of Unifil, the head of the peacekeeping force on the blue line, called for a “negotiated solution” to end the latest round of violence.

“Near-daily exchanges of fire have escalated into a relentless military campaign whose humanitarian impact is nothing short of catastrophic,” the statement said.

“A negotiated solution is the only pathway to restore the security and stability that civilians on both sides so desperately want and deserve … The time to act is now.”

The region is still waiting for Israel’s response to an unprecedented missile attack from Iran last week, launched in support of its Lebanese ally after Israel’s ground invasion.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said in an interview with CNN late on Monday: “Everything is on the table. Israel has capabilities to hit targets near and far – we have proved it.”

Israel is consulting Washington, its most important ally, over how to retaliate against Tehran without triggering an even stronger response. The New York Times, citing US officials, said the US believed Israel would prioritise attacking military bases and intelligence sites before nuclear facilities.

A Pentagon spokesperson announced on Tuesday night that Gallant had cancelled plans for a visit to Washington to meet his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, on Wednesday.

Netanyahu reportedly told Gallant his trip would not be approved until the Israeli prime minister has a phone call with Joe Biden to discuss the response to Iran’s missile attack, and until the Israeli security cabinet approves the plan.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, earlier warned against a new Israeli attack. Fighting also continues to rage in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, medics said.

At least 15 people, including two women and four children, were killed on Tuesday in ground fighting in the Jabaliya neighbourhood of Gaza City, the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital said, after new Israeli evacuation orders for the city were issued on Monday. The IDF has intensified bombing of the area and moved in tanks.

The Israeli military said it killed about 20 militants in Jabaliya and located a large quantity of weapons, including grenades and rifles.

Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, said in a speech on the anniversary of the 7 October attack that the group would “keep up the fight in a long war of attrition, one that is painful and costly for the enemy”.

Hamas fired a barrage of longer-range rockets at Tel Aviv on Monday’s anniversary, underscoring that the group’s military capabilities are eroded but not yet defunct after a year of war.

A total of 1,205 people were killed on 7 October and 251 taken hostage. Another 41,965 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza over the past year, which has also drawn in militia groups allied to Iran in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Israeli media outlets reported earlier this week that government officials have not met to discuss the stalled ceasefire and hostage swap negotiations aimed at ending the war in Gaza for more than two weeks.

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, will meet his counterpart in Saudi Arabia to discuss the growing threat of an Israeli attack on Tehran and what steps, if any, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon can take to secure a ceasefire in the face of growing evidence that the US supports Israel’s efforts to dismantle Hezbollah and force it to disarm.

In what is becoming a multifront war, Iran and Saudi Arabia are probably the two key regional players. Araghchi, who has already been to Beirut and Damascus, has been playing his cards close to his chest but he is seen as critical to any decision that Hezbollah needs to step back, regroup and prevent Lebanon from turning into a second Gaza.

So far, a defiant Hezbollah, backed by Iran, has denied it is reeling from the Israeli assassination of its leadership. Although it has said it is willing to listen to ceasefire discussions led by its Lebanese political allies, it has not formally said it is willing to give up on its demand for a “simultaneous ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon”.

Lebanon has been a past source of tension between Tehran and Riyadh, with Saudi Arabia wanting to see Iranian and Hezbollah influence curtailed. But Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, faces a challenge. He is set on a long-term path to improve relations with Iran and wants the US to do more to recognise the twin dangers of Israeli escalation, including in Lebanon, and a major attack on Iran. At the same time, Riyadh thinks Hezbollah has been the block to the formation of a functioning state.

He is also deeply frustrated by Israel’s refusal to support a Palestinian state. Saudi diplomats pointed to remarks by Basen Naim, the head of Hamas’s political division, that “if we have a chance to have a sovereign Palestinian state we will cooperate and be part of this”. The remarks revive a previous Hamas indication that it could accept a two-state solution.

Much of the Iranian-Saudi talks will focus on how to respond to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and whether Iran wishes to revive a diplomatic path to ease the crisis or thinks Hezbollah can recover militarily.

Saudi Arabia was instrumental in backing a call for a 21-day ceasefire unveiled at the UN on 25 September, supported by the US, France and the UK. The three weeks were designed to give space for Lebanese politics to elect a new president and possibly for Hezbollah to agree to decouple the Lebanon crisis from Gaza. Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel from Lebanon since 8 October last year in support of Hamas in Gaza.

Lebanese politicians opposed to Hezbollah are now caught between, on the one hand, wanting Israel to stop the bombardment and agree a ceasefire and, on the other, a growing anger that Hezbollah is not willing to face reality and make necessary political concessions, including over the presidency.

Lebanese politics has been deadlocked since the 2022 elections led to a parliamentary make-up that in effect provides Hezbollah and its allies with a veto over the choice of a president. A two-thirds majority or 86 seats is required for a president to be elected for a six-year term. Successive rounds of voting in 2022 and 2023 led to no agreement. The US is now pushing for the election of Joseph Aoun, the current commander general of the Lebanese army.

Auon’s election would be the first stage to strengthening the official state armed forces and reducing the military role of Hezbollah, leading to the organisation’s disarmament as set out in UN resolutions passed in 2004 and 2006.

Britain and the US are both willing to provide funds to strengthen the army as part of an effort to weaken Hezbollah and reduce Iranian influence. The UK has previously funded watchtowers on the Syrian border that may slow the flow of arms to Hezbollah.

The ceasefire plan was dealt a blow 48 hours after it was launched in New York when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected its terms and then, without consulting the US, assassinated Nasrallah in Beirut.

The US appears to have buried the ceasefire for now, with a US state department spokesperson endorsing Israel’s actions, saying: “Nothing that we have seen as of yet leads us to conclude that they are doing anything other than targeting a terrorist organisation, Hezbollah, that had launched strikes and was continuing to launch strikes against Israel, including in the last few days.”

The spokesperson added: “We do ultimately want to see a ceasefire and a diplomatic resolution, but we do think it’s appropriate that Israel, at this point, is bringing terrorists to justice and trying to push Hezbollah back from the border.” He described Israel’s actions as a limited incursion.

Since 1978 a series of Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon, including a years-long occupation, have failed to bring security and calm to northern Israel.

As Israeli forces escalate their current campaign, how does this operation compare with previous incursions?

Operation Litani, 1978

In March 1978, after the “coastal road massacre”, when a group of Palestine Liberation Organisation members entered Israel from Lebanon and killed 35 civilians, Israel launched Operation Litani. Its target was PLO bases in southern Lebanon and its objective to restore security in northern Israel.

At its height, the operation involved about 25,000 Israeli troops, including the bulk of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) 36th Division and the Paratroopers Corps. During the fighting the scope was extended to include operations up to the Litani River, a key demarcation point in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli forces struggled to significantly engage PLO fighters who withdrew. About 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed in the operation, which lasted until June, when UN peacekeepers from the newly formed UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were deployed under UN security council resolutions that called for Israel’s withdrawal.

Lebanon war, 1982

Despite Operation Litani, security in northern Israel had not been restored and clashes between the PLO and Israeli forces around the border continued. When the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization shot and badly wounded the Israeli ambassador in London, the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, blamed the PLO instead and used it as a pretext to launch Operation Peace for Galilee.

The aim was to restore security in northern Israel, and destroy Palestinian forces and their infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

More than 40,000 Israeli troops with hundreds of tanks entered Lebanon, backed by Christian allies of Israel, who Israel hoped would form the basis of a more Israel-friendly regime, putting Beirut under siege for several months.

Amid the fighting 19,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian civilians and combatants died, of whom 5,500 were civilians from west Beirut.

While Israel succeeded in forcing the evacuation of the PLO from Lebanon under international supervision, the assassination of the Lebanese president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, triggered the Sabra and Shatila massacre, when Christian Phalangists killed 2,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Kahan commission later judged that Israel was “indirectly” responsible for the massacre.

Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, 1982–2000

Although Israeli forces withdrew from Beirut, Israel continued to occupy southern Lebanon for 18 years, operating largely south of the Awali River. From 1985 Israeli forces concentrated their operations in alliance with the Christian paramilitary South Lebanon Army [SLA], in the so-called security zone, which was between 5km and 20km deep and ran the length of the border.

The described purpose of the occupation and security zone was to ensure the safety of residents of northern Israel. However, with the PLO now gone, the zone became the focus of a new conflict between Israeli occupation forces and groups including the newly emerged Shia group Hezbollah, which would emerge at the forefront of a guerilla war against Israeli troops.

The occupation was much smaller in size than previous active incursions, but ultimately failed to restore security to northern Israel. It ended over two days in May 2000 when the prime minister, Ehud Barak, ordered the withdrawal of Israeli forces in compliance with UN resolution 425, triggering the collapse of the SLA.

The most obvious immediate beneficiary of the occupation and withdrawal was Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was credited in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world with driving out the IDF.

Second Lebanon war, 2006

After a complex operation by Hezbollah across the border to kidnap Israeli soldiers to swap for prisoners, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, launched the second Lebanon war “to change the equation”, by attempting to force Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon to restore security in Israel’s north.

As the Israeli academic Prof Efraim Inbar noted a year after the month-long war, the IDF “planned for small skirmishes, not for a large-scale, conventional military campaign” and was caught out by the intensity of Hezbollah’s resistance, describing “overreliance on airpower [as] another strategic folly”.

The war began with a massive air operation including the bombing of Beirut’s airport, Hezbollah headquarters and rocket stockpiles in Beirut, and militia positions and rocket launchers in the south. An initial ground incursion of 2,000 troops escalated quickly.

The conflict is now regarded as one of Israel’s most inconclusive wars. The fighting ended with the unanimous passage of UN security council resolution 1701, which envisaged the disarmament of armed groups including Hezbollah and no armed forces other than UNIFIL and the Lebanese armed forces south of the Litani River. However, 1701 was never enforced.

Third Lebanese war, 2023-?

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Hezbollah began firing missiles, mortars and anti-tank fire from its positions in southern Lebanon in support of Hamas, in a campaign that gathered pace and violence on both sides over a year.

In recent months there has been growing political pressure to allow the return of 60,000 displaced Israelis and to restore calm and security in northern Israel.

In what now appears to have been a complex and well-laid plan, Israel began targeting Hezbollah in recent weeks, first through the use of exploding communications devices supplied to the group surreptitiously, and then via the assassination of its leadership, including Nasrallah, in a series of airstrikes.

A week ago, following a now familiar pattern, Israel launched what it said were limited operations on the border to clear Hezbollah infrastructure. That, however, has rapidly expanded, with elements of four separate Israeli divisions operating in the ground campaign.

At the time of writing the scope of the operation, and whether it is more achievable than previous campaigns, remains unclear. Since last October at least 2,036 people in Lebanon have been killed and 9,535 wounded.

A fugitive father and his three children have been spotted together for the first time in nearly three years, along the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

Just before Christmas 2021, Tom Phillips fled into the Waikato wilderness with his children Ember, now 8, Maverick, now 9, and Jayda, now 11, following a dispute with their mother.

Phillips has not been seen since last November after he allegedly stole a quad bike from a rural property and broke into a shop in Piopio. CCTV footage showed two figures on a street, believed to be him and one of the children.

But a breakthrough in the search for the family came when the group was seen together last Thursday on Marokopa farmland, in New Zealand’s Waikato region, after a chance encounter with teenage pig hunters who pulled out their phones and began filming.

Det Insp Andrew Saunders described the sighting as “credible”, with police believing it to be Phillips and his three children, who he does not have legal custody of.

Patrols began throughout the area on Thursday night and a search was launched the following morning, but the group has not been seen again.

“While we cannot go into detail, we want to reassure the public that we have the resources in place to respond to any information or reports of sightings that come in,” Saunders said.

“Our focus is very much on the safe return of Jayda, Maverick and Ember to their whānau [family] and we are doing all that we can to make that happen.”

In September 2021, Phillips and the children were reported missing and his truck was found abandoned, resulting in a major search operation across land and sea.

Nineteen days later, they walked into his parents’ farmhouse just outside Marokopa and Phillips claimed he had taken his children on an extended camping trip. He was charged with wasting police time and resources.

But fewer than three months later, the four were reported missing again and when Phillips failed to appear at a January court appearance, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The children’s mother, who last saw them in 2021, told the New Zealand Herald she was “relieved” to know they were alive.

“I’m so happy that they’re all there,” she said, instantly recognising each child. “I’m so relieved to see all three of my babies. They’re all alive.”

Phillips’ mother, Julia, also told the Herald she was happy to see her grandchildren and would “love for them to come home”.

“We were relieved to see the children alive and well,” she said. “We thought they would be but you never know.”

John McOviney said his 16-year-old grandchild was one of the pig hunters who spotted the group.

He told 1News the teenagers were “only about 50 metres” from the group when they first saw them, before going closer and speaking with them briefly.

“He said to them, ‘What are you doing here? Who are you? Does anybody else know you’re here?’ The kid said ‘only you’, and then they just kept walking,” McOviney said.

The teenagers described Phillips as having a long beard and carrying a gun, McOviney said, and all the kids were masked “like [they were] going into the bush for a while”.

A warrant for Phillips arrest was issued in September 2023 over an alleged aggravated robbery. Police allege that two armed people entered a bank in Te Kuiti in May and demanded cash, before fleeing on a black, farm-style motorbike.

An $80,000 reward for information leading to the location and safe return of the three children was announced in June this year by New Zealand police. The offer expired before they were found.

Police have previously said they believed Phillips and the children were being assisted and have urged “anyone who’s doing this to please stop, do the right thing and tell police what you know.”

A fugitive father and his three children have been spotted together for the first time in nearly three years, along the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

Just before Christmas 2021, Tom Phillips fled into the Waikato wilderness with his children Ember, now 8, Maverick, now 9, and Jayda, now 11, following a dispute with their mother.

Phillips has not been seen since last November after he allegedly stole a quad bike from a rural property and broke into a shop in Piopio. CCTV footage showed two figures on a street, believed to be him and one of the children.

But a breakthrough in the search for the family came when the group was seen together last Thursday on Marokopa farmland, in New Zealand’s Waikato region, after a chance encounter with teenage pig hunters who pulled out their phones and began filming.

Det Insp Andrew Saunders described the sighting as “credible”, with police believing it to be Phillips and his three children, who he does not have legal custody of.

Patrols began throughout the area on Thursday night and a search was launched the following morning, but the group has not been seen again.

“While we cannot go into detail, we want to reassure the public that we have the resources in place to respond to any information or reports of sightings that come in,” Saunders said.

“Our focus is very much on the safe return of Jayda, Maverick and Ember to their whānau [family] and we are doing all that we can to make that happen.”

In September 2021, Phillips and the children were reported missing and his truck was found abandoned, resulting in a major search operation across land and sea.

Nineteen days later, they walked into his parents’ farmhouse just outside Marokopa and Phillips claimed he had taken his children on an extended camping trip. He was charged with wasting police time and resources.

But fewer than three months later, the four were reported missing again and when Phillips failed to appear at a January court appearance, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The children’s mother, who last saw them in 2021, told the New Zealand Herald she was “relieved” to know they were alive.

“I’m so happy that they’re all there,” she said, instantly recognising each child. “I’m so relieved to see all three of my babies. They’re all alive.”

Phillips’ mother, Julia, also told the Herald she was happy to see her grandchildren and would “love for them to come home”.

“We were relieved to see the children alive and well,” she said. “We thought they would be but you never know.”

John McOviney said his 16-year-old grandchild was one of the pig hunters who spotted the group.

He told 1News the teenagers were “only about 50 metres” from the group when they first saw them, before going closer and speaking with them briefly.

“He said to them, ‘What are you doing here? Who are you? Does anybody else know you’re here?’ The kid said ‘only you’, and then they just kept walking,” McOviney said.

The teenagers described Phillips as having a long beard and carrying a gun, McOviney said, and all the kids were masked “like [they were] going into the bush for a while”.

A warrant for Phillips arrest was issued in September 2023 over an alleged aggravated robbery. Police allege that two armed people entered a bank in Te Kuiti in May and demanded cash, before fleeing on a black, farm-style motorbike.

An $80,000 reward for information leading to the location and safe return of the three children was announced in June this year by New Zealand police. The offer expired before they were found.

Police have previously said they believed Phillips and the children were being assisted and have urged “anyone who’s doing this to please stop, do the right thing and tell police what you know.”

Mexico’s new government has been shaken by the murder of a city mayor who was attacked and beheaded days after taking office.

Alejandro Arcos Catalán was sworn in as the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero, on 30 September, a day before Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, took power herself.

On Monday, less than a week into her presidency, Sheinbaum confirmed reports that the 43-year-old city leader had been slain the previous day, telling reporters: “All the necessary investigations are taking place.”

Photographs of Arcos Catalán’s bloodied head, exhibited on the roof of a white vehicle while his body lay slumped inside, spread on social media – a terrible reminder of the violence that Mexico’s organised crime conflict has inflicted on the Latin American country.

The mayor’s murder came after two close allies were shot dead in the early days of his short-lived administration. A secretary, Francisco Tapia, was gunned down on 3 October, while Ulises Hernández Martínez, a former special forces police commander who was tipped to become Arcos Catalán’s security chief, was riddled with bullets on the eve of the mayor’s inauguration.

Shocked citizens shared footage of an interview with the mayor before his death in which he said he wished to be remembered as a champion of peace and happiness. “I’ve lived here all my life … and it’s here that I want to die – but I want to die fighting for my city,” Arcos Catalán said.

The murder sparked anger and disgust, with Alejandro Moreno, the president of Arcos Catalán’s party, the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), denouncing what he called a grotesque “act of terror”.

Ricardo Anaya, an opposition senator, lamented the “spine-chilling” security situation in Mexico, where more than 450,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderón launched his doomed “war” against the drug cartels in 2006.

“The fact that they have decapitated the mayor of such an important city should make us shudder. It is utterly unacceptable and we need to do something to ensure it stops happening,” Anaya told reporters, calling for an immediate change in tack in security policy.

But Sheinbaum has promised to continue the so-called “hugs, not bullets” security policy of her predecessor and mentor, the 70-year-old nationalist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during her six-year term.

“We will not return to Calderón’s reckless war on the narcos that did our country so much harm. It remains our conviction that security and peace are the fruits of justice,” she told thousands of supporters who packed Mexico City’s Zócalo Square for her historic inauguration last Tuesday.

Although López Obrador claimed to have achieved a modest reduction in Mexico’s murder rate in the later stages of his presidency, there is consensus among security analysts that his attempts to “pacify” the country failed. Last year Mexico suffered more than 30,000 murders. According to the Instituto Igarapé thinktank, Mexico was home to 11 of the world’s 50 most murderous cities in 2023, compared with three in 2015. Chilpancingo was one of them.

Despite that bleak reality, López Obrador, who most Mexicans know simply as Amlo, left office with approval ratings of 70%, largely as a result of his relentless focus on fighting inequality and positioning himself as a champion of the poor.

Aware that tackling violence represents one of her most daunting challenges – and under pressure after Arcos Catalán’s murder – Sheinbaum said she would set out her public security plans on Tuesday.

Another major security crisis is playing out in the north-western city of Culiacán, where an internal conflict within the Sinaloa cartel triggered by the capture of its co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García has led to scores of killings.

Sheinbaum’s security drive will be spearheaded by the security minister, Omar García Harfuch, who served as her police chief while she was mayor of Mexico City. García Harfuch has first-hand experience of the dangers of organised crime: in 2020 he came close to death when hitmen ambushed his car on the capital’s best-known street, firing more than 400 times with assault rifles and grenade launchers.

The identity of the killers of the mayor of Chilpancingo remained unclear but in recent years the city has witnessed a bloody squabble between two criminal groups called Los Ardillos (the Squirrels) and Los Tlacos. As often happens in Mexico, local politicians have been implicated in that underworld. Arcos Catalán’s predecessor Norma Otilia Hernández was removed from office after compromising footage emerged showing her talking with a Squirrels boss in a restaurant. Hernández, who was then a member of López Obrador and Sheinbaum’s political movement, Morena, claimed it was a “chance” encounter, but was later expelled from the party.

After his election earlier this year, Arcos Catalán reportedly said he would not do deals or negotiate with criminal groups.

Donald Trump secretly sent Covid-19 testing machines to Vladimir Putin in the early stages of the pandemic when such resources were in short supply, the veteran reporter Bob Woodward reveals in an eagerly awaited new book.

According to Woodward, Trump “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use”.

In response, the Russian president told his US counterpart: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you.”

Remarkably, Woodward also reports that the relationship between the two men, hugely controversial during Trump’s first presidential campaign and subsequent four years in the White House, has continued since Trump has been out of power, through as many as seven private calls.

The revelations were among many published by US outlets on Tuesday, among them dramatic scenes of Joe Biden warning Putin not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine and new reporting about how Biden was this summer convinced to step aside as the Democratic nominee for president, clearing the way for the vice-president, Kamala Harris, to challenge Trump in November.

Now 81 – the same age as Biden – Woodward has been a Washington institution since the 1970s, when his work with Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal led to Richard Nixon’s resignation as president. Following three scoop-filled books on Trump’s presidency – Fear, Rage and Peril, the last co-written with Robert Costa – Woodward’s new book, War, considers key events under Biden including the Russian war in Ukraine, Israel’s war against Hamas, and political battles at home. It will be published next week.

Excerpts were released by Woodward’s two employers, the Washington Post and CNN.

Though the US and Russia did share medical equipment such as ventilators in the early stages of the pandemic, Trump’s decision to send Putin Covid testing machines would probably have proved hugely controversial if known.

Apparently recognizing this, Putin reportedly told Trump: “Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me.”

Trump said: “I don’t care. Fine.”

Putin was said to have replied: “No, no. I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”

Trump lost the White House later in 2020 but, remarkably, Woodward says calls between the two men have continued. Earlier this year, Woodward writes, Trump ordered an aide to leave his office at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, so he could hold a private call with Putin.

Worries persist about Putin’s influence on Trump. Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who investigated links between Trump and Moscow around the 2016 election, concluding that Putin sought to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, recently said Russia would interfere again this year.

According to the Post, Woodward reports that Jason Miller, a close Trump adviser, responded hesitantly when asked about Trump and Putin’s continuing calls.

“Um, ah, not that, ah, not that I’m aware of,” Miller reportedly said, adding: “I have not heard that they’re talking, so I’d push back on that.”

Woodward adds that Avril Haines, Biden’s director of national intelligence, “carefully hedged”, saying: “I would not purport to be aware of all contacts with Putin. I wouldn’t purport to speak to what President Trump may or may not have done.”

On Tuesday, Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, said: “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man … clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.”

That lawsuit concerns tapes of calls that Woodward released in 2022 and over which Trump sued the following year. Woodward has sought to have the suit dismissed.

Drama around Woodward’s new book comes less than a month from the 5 November presidential election, when Trump could be returned to office. According to Axios, which cited sources who had seen Woodward’s book, Woodward describes a 4 July White House lunch at which Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, discussed with the president whether he should withdraw, given concerns about his age and fitness.

Three weeks later, Biden withdrew, a historic decision that has placed a spotlight on Trump’s own age, 78, and mental state. In Woodward’s judgment, according to the Post, “Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.”

And yet Trump and Harris remain locked in a tight race, notwithstanding Trump’s two impeachments, one for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress; his conviction on 34 criminal charges concerning hush-money payments; his other ongoing criminal cases, over election subversion and retention of classified information; multimillion-dollar civil penalties in cases including a defamation suit arising from a rape claim a judge deemed “substantially true”; and proliferating other scandals.

Elsewhere, Woodward’s book reportedly captures Biden’s candid responses to foreign policy challenges.

The president is reportedly depicted calling Benjamin Netanyahu, the rightwing Israeli prime minister who has resisted US attempts to secure a ceasefire with Hamas, “That son of a bitch” and “a bad fucking guy!”

“That fucking Putin,” Biden reportedly said about the Russian president. “Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil.”

Russian aggression against Ukraine began when Barack Obama was US president. According to Woodward, Biden believes the man under whom he was vice-president between 2009 and 2017 “never took Putin seriously” – a point of view familiar from reports of tensions between the two men.

“They fucked up in 2014” when Russia invaded Crimea, Biden told a friend, according to Woodward. “That’s why we are here. We fucked it up. Barack never took Putin seriously. We did nothing. We gave Putin a license to continue! Well, I’m revoking his fucking license!”

According to CNN, Woodward reports that in October 2021, US intelligence including material from a precious human source inside the Kremlin “conclusively” showed that Putin planned to invade Ukraine. Biden reportedly told Bill Burns, the CIA director: “Jesus Christ! Now I’ve got to deal with Russia swallowing Ukraine?”

According to Woodward, Biden confronted Putin twice that December, on a video conference and then a “hot 50-minute call” in which Putin “raised the risk of nuclear war in a threatening way” and Biden told him “it’s impossible to win” such a conflict.

Woodward also reports an October 2022 conversation between Lloyd Austin, the US secretary of defense, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, about possible use of nuclear weapons.

“If you did this, all the restraints that we have been operating under in Ukraine would be reconsidered,” Austin reportedly said. “This would isolate Russia on the world stage to a degree you Russians cannot fully appreciate.”

Shoigu said: “I don’t take kindly to being threatened.”

Austin said: “Mr Minister, I am the leader of the most powerful military in the history of the world. I don’t make threats.”

In another call two days later, Woodward reports, Shoigu claimed Ukraine was planning to use a “dirty bomb”, a claim the US deemed false but meant to justify a Russian nuclear strike.

“We don’t believe you,” Austin reportedly said. “We don’t see any indications of this, and the world will see through this. Don’t do it.”

“I understand,” Shoigu replied.

Colin Kahl, a senior Pentagon official, tells Woodward: “It was probably the most hair-raising moment of the whole war.”

Woodward also reports that the US struggled to convince Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, that Russia would actually invade. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, Harris reportedly told Zelenskyy to “start thinking about things like having a succession plan in place … if you are captured or killed or cannot govern”, then left Germany thinking she might not see Zelenskyy again.

Russia invaded that month. Two and a half years later, the war drags on, Zelenskyy defiant in Kyiv. Democrats, however, warn that given Trump’s close ties to Putin, a second Trump presidency would have dire consequences for Ukraine and its allies.

Elon Musk has said it would be “pointless” to try to kill Kamala Harris weeks after a pressure campaign led to him to delete a social media post expressing surprise that no one had tried to assassinate the vice-president or Joe Biden.

The Tesla and Space X entrepreneur re-entered the murky waters of political assassinations in a web video interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson which Musk then posted on the X platform that he owns.

Referencing the original comment at the beginning of the one hour and 48 minute exchange, Musk tells Carlson: “I made a joke, which I realised – I deleted – which is like: nobody’s even bothering to try to kill Kamala because it’s pointless. What do you achieve?”

Both men dissolved into laughter, with Carlson responding: “It’s deep and true though.”

“Just buy another puppet,” Musk continues, before adding: “Nobody’s tried to kill Joe Biden. It’d be pointless.”

“Totally,” agrees Carlson.

Invited to elaborate on the post, Musk goes on: “Some people interpreted it as though I was calling for people to assassinate her, but I was like … Does it seem strange that no one’s even bothered? Nobody tries to assassinate a puppet … She’s safe.”

“That’s hilarious,” Carlson deadpans, as his guest laughs at his own joke.

Authorities have notably made multiple arrests of individuals who have made death threats against Harris and Biden. A Virginia man was arrested in August and charged with making threats against the vice-president.

Musk’s original comment on X was posted in the immediate aftermath of a suspected second assassination attempt on Donald Trump last month. On 15 September, a man was arrested after a Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of a gun sticking out of bushes at the former president’s golf club in Palm Beach, Florida. A suspect, Ryan Routh, has since been charged with trying to kill Trump. He denies the charges.

“And no one’s even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” Musk wrote after the incident, with a emoji symbolising puzzlement attached.

Musk, a vocal and committed supporter of Trump’s campaign to re-enter the White House, later deleted the post amid an angry backlash and comments from the Secret Service that it was “aware” of it.

“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” he later wrote in explanation.

“Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

The interviewer then laughed uproariously after suggesting to his guest: “If he [Trump] loses man … you’re fucked, dude.”

Musk bantered back: “I’m fucked. If he loses, I’m fucked.”

To the sound of general background laughter and Carlson’s obvious delight, the tech billionaire continued: “How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be. Will I see my children, I don’t know.”

Musk’s latest assassination comments came just days after he appeared on stage with Trump last weekend at the same site in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a would-be assassin tried to kill the ex-president on 13 July. In that instance, Trump’s ear was grazed with a bullet and a rally-goer was shot dead before the perpetrator himself was killed by a Secret Service agent.

Trump was endorsed by Musk moments after that attempt. He later said he would appoint Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if he became president again.

The Secret Service – which stepped up its security protection for Trump following criticism of its failure to prevent the first assassination attempt – has said it is familiar with Musk’s latest comments, according to the Washington Post.

Elon Musk has said it would be “pointless” to try to kill Kamala Harris weeks after a pressure campaign led to him to delete a social media post expressing surprise that no one had tried to assassinate the vice-president or Joe Biden.

The Tesla and Space X entrepreneur re-entered the murky waters of political assassinations in a web video interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson which Musk then posted on the X platform that he owns.

Referencing the original comment at the beginning of the one hour and 48 minute exchange, Musk tells Carlson: “I made a joke, which I realised – I deleted – which is like: nobody’s even bothering to try to kill Kamala because it’s pointless. What do you achieve?”

Both men dissolved into laughter, with Carlson responding: “It’s deep and true though.”

“Just buy another puppet,” Musk continues, before adding: “Nobody’s tried to kill Joe Biden. It’d be pointless.”

“Totally,” agrees Carlson.

Invited to elaborate on the post, Musk goes on: “Some people interpreted it as though I was calling for people to assassinate her, but I was like … Does it seem strange that no one’s even bothered? Nobody tries to assassinate a puppet … She’s safe.”

“That’s hilarious,” Carlson deadpans, as his guest laughs at his own joke.

Authorities have notably made multiple arrests of individuals who have made death threats against Harris and Biden. A Virginia man was arrested in August and charged with making threats against the vice-president.

Musk’s original comment on X was posted in the immediate aftermath of a suspected second assassination attempt on Donald Trump last month. On 15 September, a man was arrested after a Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of a gun sticking out of bushes at the former president’s golf club in Palm Beach, Florida. A suspect, Ryan Routh, has since been charged with trying to kill Trump. He denies the charges.

“And no one’s even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” Musk wrote after the incident, with a emoji symbolising puzzlement attached.

Musk, a vocal and committed supporter of Trump’s campaign to re-enter the White House, later deleted the post amid an angry backlash and comments from the Secret Service that it was “aware” of it.

“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” he later wrote in explanation.

“Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

The interviewer then laughed uproariously after suggesting to his guest: “If he [Trump] loses man … you’re fucked, dude.”

Musk bantered back: “I’m fucked. If he loses, I’m fucked.”

To the sound of general background laughter and Carlson’s obvious delight, the tech billionaire continued: “How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be. Will I see my children, I don’t know.”

Musk’s latest assassination comments came just days after he appeared on stage with Trump last weekend at the same site in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a would-be assassin tried to kill the ex-president on 13 July. In that instance, Trump’s ear was grazed with a bullet and a rally-goer was shot dead before the perpetrator himself was killed by a Secret Service agent.

Trump was endorsed by Musk moments after that attempt. He later said he would appoint Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if he became president again.

The Secret Service – which stepped up its security protection for Trump following criticism of its failure to prevent the first assassination attempt – has said it is familiar with Musk’s latest comments, according to the Washington Post.

Two researchers who helped lay the foundations for modern artificial intelligence – although one later warned of its potential harms – have been awarded the 2024 Nobel prize in physics.

Inspired by the workings of the brain, John Hopfield, a US professor emeritus at Princeton University, and Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, built artificial neural networks that store and retrieve memories like the human brain, and learn from information fed into them.

Hinton, 76, who is often called “the godfather of AI”, made headlines last year when he quit Google and warned about the dangers of machines outsmarting humans.

The scientists’ pioneering work began in the 1980s and demonstrated how computer programs that draw on neural networks and statistics could form the basis for an entire field, which paved the way for swift and accurate language translation, facial recognition systems, and the generative AI that underpins chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.

Hopfield, 91, was honoured for building “an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data”, while Hinton invented a method that can “independently discover properties in data”, an important feature of the large artificial neural networks in use today.

In 1982, Hopfield built a neural network that stored images and other information as patterns, mimicking the way memories are stored in the brain. The network was able to recall images when prompted with similar patterns, akin to identifying a song heard only briefly in a noisy bar.

Hinton built on Hopfield’s research by incorporating probabilities into a multilayered version of the neural network, leading to a program that could recognise, classify and even generate images after being fed a training set of pictures.

Announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, the winners share the 11m Swedish kronor (about £810,000) prize for “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”.

Ellen Moons, the chair of the Nobel committee for physics, said: “These artificial neural networks have been used to advance research across physics topics as diverse as particle physics, material science and astrophysics. They have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation.”

Speaking at a press briefing immediately after the announcement, Hinton said he had received the call from Stockholm while staying in a cheap hotel in California that lacked an internet connection. “I’m flabbergasted,” he said. “I had no idea this would happen, I’m very surprised.”

Hinton quit Google in order to speak freely about his concerns over the possible harms AI could inflict, from spreading misinformation and upending the jobs market to threatening human existence.

Asked how AI might affect the world, Hinton told reporters: “I think it will have a huge influence. It will be comparable with the Industrial Revolution. But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in the intellectual ability.”

Having technology that was smarter than humans would be “wonderful in many respects”, Hinton said, leading to substantial improvements in healthcare, better digital assistants, and huge improvements in productivity. “But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control,” he added. “I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control.”

Prof Michael Wooldridge, a computer scientist at the University of Oxford, said the award reflected the profound impact that AI was having. “The award is an indicator of just how much AI is transforming science,” he said. “The success of neural nets this century has made it possible to analyse data in ways that were unimaginable at the turn of the century. No part of the scientific world is left unchanged by AI: we find ourselves in a remarkable moment in scientific history, and it is wonderful to see the academy recognise this.”

But Prof Dame Wendy Hall, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton and an adviser to the UN on AI, said she was surprised at the award. “There is no Nobel prize for computer science so this is an interesting way of creating one, but it does seem a bit of a stretch,” she said. “Clearly artificial neural networks are having a profound effect on physics research, but is it fair to say that in themselves they are the result of physics research?”

Ethel Kennedy, a human rights advocate and widow of US Senator Robert F Kennedy, is recovering from a stroke she suffered last week, according to a statement her grandson, the former representative Joseph P Kennedy III, shared on X on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately on Thursday morning she suffered a stroke in her sleep,” her grandson posted on X. “She was brought to an area hospital where she is now receiving treatment.” His aunt, Kerry Kennedy, later posted the same statement.

Ethel, 96, is the sister-in-law of the former president John F Kennedy and mother of former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. With her husband, who served as attorney general under his brother’s administration, Ethel had 11 children. She became a widow at the age of 40 when her husband was assassinated while running for the presidency. After, Ethel founded the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights non-profit in her husband’s honor.

“She is comfortable, she is getting the best care possible, and she is surrounded by family,” Joe and Kerry Kennedy said. “She is, as you may know, a strong woman who has led a remarkably fulfilling life. We are here looking after her.”

Ethel’s involvement in human rights organizations, including the Coalition of Gun Control, earned her the Congressional Medal of Freedom in 2014. When President Barack Obama presented her with the honor, he remarked that her “love of family is matched only by her devotion to her nation”.

In the post they shared on X, the Kennedy family asked for privacy as Ethel recovers.

Donald Trump’s truthfulness as well as his knowledge of Middle East geography has come under fresh scrutiny after the former president claimed to have been to Gaza – although there is no evidence of him ever visiting the war-torn Palestinian territory.

Trump raised eyebrows after the Republican nominee in November’s presidential election told Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio host, that he had been in the tiny coastal strip where more than 41,000 people have been killed and the majority of buildings badly damaged or destroyed in blistering Israeli military attacks responding to last year’s 7 October attack by Hamas. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 about Israelis and took about 250 hostage.

Asked by Hewitt if Gaza could be transformed into Monaco if properly rebuilt, Trump replied:

“It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything. It’s got, it is the best, I’ve said it for years.

“I’ve been there, and it’s rough. It’s a rough place … before all of the attacks and before the back and forth what’s happened over the last couple of years.”

He went on: “I mean, they have the back of a plant facing the ocean, you know. There was no ocean as far as that was concerned. They never took advantage of it. You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place – the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East.”

Hewitt did not challenge Trump’s assertion to have visited the territory, which had suffered substantial infrastructural damage in repeated clashes between Hamas, the militant group that has dominated it for years, and Israel even before the current war.

However, the New York Times said there was no record of Trump ever having gone there – either when he was president or before.

The paper quoted a campaign official, who said: “Gaza is in Israel. President Trump has been to Israel.”

In fact, Gaza has never been part of Israel, although some far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current coalition government have called for its annexation.

The territory was home to several thousand Jewish settlers until 2005, when the Israeli prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, withdrew them under a disengagement plan.

Asked by Axios to provide further explanation, Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, responded in an emailed statement that the former president “has been to Gaza previously”, although she did not say when.

Trump visited Israel as president in 2017, when he also travelled to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president. Gaza and the West Bank are separate territories and about 25 miles apart at their closest point. They can only be reached from each other by travelling through Israel.

Trump’s comments on Gaza’s potential echo those made by his son-in-law Jared Kushner – a former adviser and Middle East envoy during his presidency – who was criticised for describing waterfront property in the territory as “very valuable” and suggesting that Israel remove civilians while cleaning it up.

Trump has made support for Israel a central plank of his campaign, although he has also drawn accusations of antisemitism by saying that Jewish voters “would have a lot to do with a loss” if he were to suffer defeat in next month’s election.

At an event in Florida on Monday commemorating the first anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack on Israel, he claimed antisemitism in US party politics was confined to the Democrats and did not exist in the Republican party.

His remarks overlooked the fact that he hosted Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who has engaged in Holocaust denial, at his Mar-a-Lago club in 2022, along with the rapper Kanye West, who has also been accused of antisemitism.

The questions over Trump’s Gaza claims come as he is already under fire for spreading disinformation over the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, which has caused widespread destruction to south-eastern states in the US.

The Spanish tennis star Paula Badosa has apologised after she was accused of racism over a photo that appeared to show her pulling her eyes back with chopsticks while in China for a series of tournaments.

Following her defeat on Saturday in the semi-finals of the China Open, Badosa’s coach, Pol Toledo, posted the photo on his Instagram, tagging the official China Open account. Comments soon began pouring in, accusing Badosa of racism.

The 26-year-old former world No 2 swiftly responded, urging people not to interpret the photo in that way. “We weren’t even imitating Asian people,” she wrote in response. “I was playing around with my face and wrinkles.”

She continued: “I love Asia … and have plenty of Asian friends. They are the kindest.” Toledo later deleted the photo from his Instagram account.

Before Tuesday’s appearance at the Wuhan Open, Badosa apologised. “Really sorry, I didn’t know this was offensive (or) towards racism,” she wrote on social media. “My mistake. I take full responsibility.”

She added that she hoped people would understand and said she would learn from her mistake.

Badosa, who is ranked No 15 in the world, later withdrew from the event in Wuhan, citing a gastrointestinal illness. She did not reply to a request for comment from the Guardian.

The accusations against Badosa marked the second time that Spanish athletes have fended off accusations of racism while in China. Before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Spain’s basketball federation published an advert for their men’s team that showed players using their fingers to pull at the sides of their eyes.

After it emerged that the women’s basketball team – as well as the Spanish tennis federation – had published similar photos, the basketball star Pau Gasol apologised and blamed a sponsor for insisting that players make the gesture.

“It was just a bad idea to do that. It was never intended to be offensive or racist against anybody,” he said in 2008. “If anyone feels offended by it, we totally apologise for it.”