The category 5 Hurricane Milton is expected to double its wind field by the time it makes landfall in the US late Wednesday or early Thursday, with up to 15ft (4.5 metres) of storm surge along a low-lying stretch of the Florida coast that includes the cities of Tampa, St Petersburg and Sarasota.

Described as the “storm of a century”, with sustained winds still registering at 160mph (257km/h), Milton turned north-east overnight about 300 miles (480km) south-west of Tampa, aiming for heavily populated and highly vulnerable communities. It is expected to weaken slightly when it makes landfall to a category 4 with sustained wind speeds of about 130mph.

“Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” the National Hurricane Center warned.

In an 8am update, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, said it was not clear exactly where the eye of the storm would come ashore but the impact would be “broader than that … absolutely every place on the west coast of Florida could get major storm surge.”

DeSantis later said 8,000 national guard members would be activated and he had spoken with Joe Biden about Florida’s needs. “Everything that we’ve asked for, the administration has approved,” he said.

“If you are in a single storey home that is hit by a 15ft storm surge, which means that water comes in immediately, there’s nowhere to go,” said the mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor.

“So if you’re in it, basically that’s the coffin that you’re in.”

Deanne Criswell, the director of Fema, said at a news conference that she would travel to Florida on Wednesday – and would send more agency personnel to the state. “I want the people to hear it from me directly: Fema is ready.”

Authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders across 11 Florida counties with a combined population of about 5.9 million people and said anyone choosing to stay behind must fend for themselves.

Before Helene hit, residents staying behind were encouraged to write their name and social security numbers on their bodies for easier postmortem identification.

Under current projections, the surge is expected to hit Fort Myers Beach, an area still recovering from Hurricane Ian two years ago that smashed a causeway to outlying islands.

The area was also hit by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, raising concerns that discarded furniture, appliances and debris from that storm will become projectiles in this next one. DeSantis said the state deployed more than 300 dump trucks that had removed 1,300 loads of debris.

One resident said he had seen bull sharks swimming in the flooded streets after Helene.

No matter exactly where Milton comes ashore, the damage is expected to be extensive, with seawater funneling up through coastal channels inland. Cody Fritz at the US National Hurricane Center storm surge team told NBC News: “Florida’s west coast is very sensitive to storm surge. It doesn’t take much to push water over land that would be dry. It’s extremely vulnerable.”

Kara Doran, a US geological survey scientist, said the risk of permanent change to the coastline “cannot be overstated as I believe communities are more vulnerable to this storm’s impacts due to the erosion that occurred recently from Helene”.

Residents trying to leave have been faced with gas shortages and gridlocked roads. There are few hotels to shelter in and no flights out of the area. Ashley Khrais, a resident of Holiday, Florida, just inland from the coast, told NBC: “it seems very, very scary, but there’s no way to leave.”

Mark Prompakdee, 71, a resident of a trailer park near St Petersburg, said he planned to sit the storm out in a minivan parked on higher ground at a high school. “They’re saying, ‘Get out of here,’” he said. “Where?”

But many people appeared to have heeded the warnings. “If there’s any good news here, we toured Fort Myers beach yesterday [and] it looks like people have listened to those warnings,” said Jay Gray of NBC News.

Efforts to protect property with sandbags and by boarding up windows had been done “with the knowledge that this could be the most powerful storm many in this area have ever seen, and they’ve seen plenty”, Gray said.

The National Weather Service warned that as Milton began moving onshore on Wednesday “conditions will be favorable for tornado development, even far away from the expected landfall”.

With area airports now closed, operators said they would not reopen until damage had been assessed. A spokesperson for Tampa international airport told Scripps News that safety was critical for their operations and it could not act as a shelter for travelers stuck there since it is located in an evacuation zone.

The National Weather Service (NWS) in Miami has issued a tornado watch and several tornado warnings for parts of Florida as Hurricane Milton rapidly approaches west-central Florida.

On Wednesday morning, the NWS reported several tornadoes, including one crossing the I-75 highway, and urged residents to seek shelter immediately.

The tornado watch remains valid until Wednesday evening at 9pm ET and covers parts of south Florida including Miami, Key Largo, Tampa, Port St Lucie, Jupiter Farms, Sebring, Sebastian, Sarasota, North Port, Cape Coral and Bonita Springs, according to the agency.

As of 11am ET, three tornado warnings are also in effect. A tornado watch is issued when a tornado is possible, while a tornado warning is issued when a tornado is happening or about to happen, per the NWS.

Videos and pictures posted online showed several of the spotted tornadoes growing in size as they move across south Florida.

The agency also warned that isolated hail up to a 0.5in size is possible, along with isolated gusts of wind traveling up to 70mph (112km/h). Approximately 12.6 million residents face potential exposure to the tornadoes, in addition to 2,424 schools and 170 hospitals.

The tornado watch and warnings come as the category 5 Hurricane Milton is expected to double in size as the “storm of the century” by the time it makes landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday.

The record storm is expected to bring up to 15ft (4.5 metres) of storm surge along the coast of Florida as the state continues to reel from the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Helene a few weeks ago.

The aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the approaching Hurricane Milton in the US south-east has left residents once again scrambling for ways to fortify their homes or, in extreme cases, to find sanctuary elsewhere. But the cost of doing so is burdensome at best and devastating at worst.

Alexandra Marcella, a resident of Sarasota, Florida, had a baby two weeks ago. Along with her newborn, toddler and husband, Marcella left home to stay with her in-laws to ride out the storm.

“Literally the day after we got home from the hospital, Helene hit. We got very lucky with that, and did not have any damage from the storm surge, but our area got totally decimated,” Marcella, a schoolteacher, said.

Knowing the risk that comes with living in her area, Marcella said she and her husband invested in a new roof in 2021 and category 5 hurricane-proof windows. But she remains worried.

“We have all the things, but we’re about two streets over from a creek that feeds out to the bay, and we are just really scared of storm surge right now. So we had been planning on staying here, but we don’t want to be in a situation where we have to get rescued in the middle of the night with an infant and a toddler,” Marcella said.

Faiza Patel lives in a townhouse in downtown Tampa she bought earlier this year with her husband. The city of Tampa told all residents in zone A – where the couple live – to evacuate ahead of Milton. Patel, a pharmacist, and her husband spent the better part of Tuesday moving their cars to higher ground in a parking garage, placing shutters and tarp on their doors and sandbags outside at the base of their home to prevent flooding, shelling out hundreds of dollars in the process. She and her husband plan to evacuate to zone D, where they will stay with friends until the storm passes.

“I haven’t even got to enjoy this place for a year,” Patel said.

Like Marcella, Patel grew up in Florida, so hurricanes are nothing new. But after seeing the wreckage from Helene and now faced with the prospect of Milton, Patel, 29, said she has become more cautious and better prepared. While she was spared from Helene, Patel said her neighbors on her cul-de-sac got nearly a foot of water in their garages.

“Because we saw how bad the water was [during Helene], we ended up investing in the reusable sandbags. Most of the hurricanes that I have gone through were never this bad. I think this last hurricane, Helene, is kind of what woke everyone up. That’s the worst I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen a storm surge like that, and I’ve never seen people lose their homes like that in Florida,” Patel said.

Chris Emrich, an environmental science and public administration professor at the University of Central Florida, said there were two main scenarios those in the path of a hurricane consider: one in which they go, and one in which they stay put and brace for impact.

But for a multitude of reasons, evacuating is not a feasible option for many. Some residents cite having all of their family in the same area as a reason for not leaving, having elderly or disabled loved ones to care for, or simply not having the financial means to leave.

Emrich, who is preparing for Milton, said: “I don’t think, as a society, everyone has the option or means to make these decisions. But I also don’t think that managed retreat needs to be the last option after we’ve exhausted all the options. I think great care needs to be taken, because who am I to say who stays and who goes? There may be huge cultural and historic reasons that a community is where it is. We need to be working with communities to make these decisions. So instead of a top-down approach, this needs to become a bottom-up approach.”

And the financial implications of a hurricane can be devastating. Residents returning to their homes after evacuating may face a new, tragic reality upon seeing the extent of the damage.

Just an inch of water can cause roughly $25,000 worth of damage to a property, according to Fema.

The damage from Helene has cost between about $30.5bn and $47.5bn in total damage from winds and flooding across 16 states, according to CoreLogic, a data and analytics company.

“A significant portion of the losses from this hurricane are likely to go uninsured, leaving the individual property owner responsible for paying for repairs,” CoreLogic said.

The structural damage to the homes and businesses leaves residents spending an unexpected amount to repair or replace roofs, baseboards, drywall, or much more.

Although federal assistance agencies such as Fema help affected homeowners and residents, Emrich said it was by no means an economic solution to the damage caused by a hurricane or other natural disaster.

He said: “Fema is great for what Fema is. Fema is a disaster response organization, so they come in after a disaster and help, but they are not made by mission to make people whole. So anyone that thinks that the feds are going to come and help them and they are going to recover are probably misinformed.”

The maximum amount for a Fema grant is $42,500 for housing or other assistance needed for disaster-related costs. But the average Fema payout a single family received between 2016 and 2022 was only $3,000 – which could be a fraction of what is ultimately spent on home repairs.

“There’s a disconnect between what people think they’re going to get and what they actually get,” Emrich said.

To even possibly qualify for a Fema grant, the US president must declare the natural disaster a national emergency – and not all flood events get this designation.

Instead of placing bets on federal assistance, Emrich recommends forward planning. In addition to stocking up on non-perishable foods and water, those living in hurricane-prone areas should shop for a flood insurance policy – particularly a federally managed one from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), he said. Fema also encourages those in vulnerable regions to purchase flood insurance.

But those in Florida are already at a disadvantage. At an average of nearly $10,000 a year for a home valued at $300,000, Florida has the highest home insurance premiums in the country, due in large part to the risk posed by the many natural disasters it endures. And neither home nor rental insurance cover flooding, so to add flood insurance on top means Floridians are expected to spend even more to protect their homes.

When buying their home, Patel’s mortgage lender required them to take out a flood insurance policy. But the price of the policy took the couple by surprise.

“We had to do so much research and find insurance that wasn’t going to rip us off. Because it was so expensive, we ended up going with one that was honestly one of the cheaper options, but it does include what we would need,” she said. “That was a huge burden that I wasn’t expecting.”

The cheaper option was $1,300 annually.

There is typically a 30-day waiting period between the purchase of a policy and when it becomes effective, so that window of opportunity has passed for those in Milton’s path, which is leaving many second-guessing not purchasing a policy sooner.

“Because we don’t live in a flood zone, we don’t have flood insurance. And that’s another thing that is hard to deal with. If our house does flood and we have a storm surge, what do we do?” Marcella said.

Marcella and her husband have looked into flood insurance before but fear they will be dropped from it like they were with her home insurance several times due to the risk of their home’s location.

She has also considered more drastic measures, like moving altogether.

Marcella said: “I would love to leave, but my husband has a business here and our families are both here. When you’re in the community and it’s established, and both of our families are here, it’s a bit trickier in that sense.”

Through tears, Marcella said she just hopes her worst fears don’t come true when her family returns home.

“Looking at all of this baby stuff in the nursery, and being like, ‘What is essential to take and what am I willing to lose?’ is a lot, emotionally, to go through. What are we going to be walking back into? It’s daunting to consider like losing all this stuff that is sentimental.”

Ursula von der Leyen has accused Viktor Orbán of a historic failure to support Ukraine, economic mismanagement and making his country a “back door for foreign interference” in her sharpest public rebuke yet to Hungary’s strongman leader.

Standing a few metres away from Orbán in the European parliament in Strasbourg, the European Commission president pointedly criticised Orbán’s stance on Ukraine by contrasting his record with that of Hungarian freedom fighters of 1956, who rose against Soviet oppression but were ultimately defeated by the Red Army.

Without naming Orbán directly, she said: “There are still some who blame this war not on Putin’s lust for power but on Ukraine’s thirst for freedom, so I want to ask them: would they ever blame the Hungarians for the Soviet invasion in 1956?”

She added: “There is no European language where peace is synonymous with surrender and sovereignty is synonymous with occupation.”

Von der Leyen was speaking after Orbán set out the priorities for Hungary’s six-month EU presidency, in an address where he sometimes offered a fairly conventional script calling for less regulation and efforts to bolster the EU’s single market.

This usually routine moment in the EU calendar became a boisterous session, with singing and personal insults. Orbán’s MEPs in the far-right Patriots for Europe group applauded him, while the mainstream pro-European parties clapped for von der Leyen. The Hungarian leader also had to listen to a rowdy rendition of the anti-fascist song Bella Ciao from a small group, prompting the speaker, Roberta Metsola, to intervene to bring order: “This is not Eurovision.”

After Orbán lamented Europe’s declining share of global trade, von der Leyen took him to task for Hungary’s economic policies such as taxes that target foreign companies, export restrictions, “arbitrary inspections” and public contracts awarded to a small group of beneficiaries.

While Orbán attempted to cast himself as a strong defender of European borders, she said Hungarian authorities had released convicted people smugglers and traffickers early from prison, adding: “This is not fighting illegal migration in Europe, this is not protecting our union, this is just throwing problems over your neighbour’s fence.”

Referring to an agreement that allows Chinese police to patrol with their local counterparts in Hungary, she said: “This is not defending Europe’s sovereignty, this is a back door for foreign interference.”

And she criticised Orbán for failing to follow through on an EU pledge made in 2022 to end dependency on Russian fossil fuels. “Instead of looking for alternative sources [of energy], in particular, one member state just looked for alternative ways to buy fossil fuels from Russia.”

The Hungarian leader said he was surprised by what he had heard from von der Leyen and accused her of turning the commission into “a political weapon”. He rejected any comparison between the events of 1956 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while reiterating that the EU, he believed, had a “losing strategy” over the war.

“We are never going to accept that European unity means that you tell us what to do and that we should keep quiet,” he said.

Orbán also had to hear his domestic record lambasted by the man widely seen as his most dangerous rival, the centre-right MEP Péter Magyar, leader of the Tisza party, which made a political breakthrough in recent European elections.

Magyar, a former member of the ruling Fidesz party’s inner circle, became a household name after openly breaking with the government, alleging corruption at the highest levels. Orbán, Magyar said, had turned Hungary from a bright star into “the poorest and most corrupt country in the EU”, in a speech that accused the government of presiding over emigration of Hungarians, dilapidated trains and declining standards in hospitals.

Hungary has a higher GDP per capita than Slovakia, Greece, Latvia and Bulgaria according to Eurostat; it is the lowest ranked EU member state in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.

Lawmakers from across the EU also lined up to criticise Orbán, with the Green group co-leader Terry Reintke summing up the mood: “You are not welcome here.” But the Hungarian leader was also praised: the far-right German MEP René Aust approved of his “decisive action” on migration.

The commission president, who has faced criticism for not being tough enough on Hungary, drew praise for her forceful speech from mainstream pro-EU MEPs, who secured her a second term a few months ago.

“At last! @vonderleyen shows her claws in response to Viktor Orbán and denounces his double talk when he defends European sovereignty while he welcomes with open arms Russia and China in Hungary,” the French centrist MEP Laurence Farreng wrote on X.

“Viktor Orbán was just roasted by Ursula von der Leyen in the European parliament,” wrote one long-term critic, the German Green MEP Daniel Freund.

Inside the parliament in Strasbourg, Freund and Transparency International Hungary organised an exhibition to showcase what they called “some of the most absurd and wasteful projects funded by Hungarian and EU taxpayers’ money”.

Highlights included a village with 11 EU-funded observation towers, many of which were either inaccessible or dismantled because they were dangerous; a €1m cycling track that has been officially declared dangerous and can only be used on request at the cyclist’s own risk; a beach minus planned sun loungers, cafe and benches, where visitors are greeted with a sign “bathing at your own risk”. Beneficiaries of the public contracts are frequently powerful business people with close links to the ruling party, according to the exhibition material.

The Hungarian government’s use of EU funds has long concerned lawmakers and the bloc’s anti-fraud body has previously found “serious irregularities, fraud and possible corruption” in the construction of a Budapest railway line.

Around €19bn (£16bn) of EU funds have been frozen over concerns about the government’s control over judges, academic freedom and its failure to tackle corruption.

Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu are scheduled to speak on Wednesday, a call believed to be crucial amid expectations of an Israeli attack on Iran and a growing escalation of the year-old Middle East conflict.

The US news outlet Axios reported late on Tuesday that the US president and Israeli prime minister would discuss Israel’s response to last week’s unprecedented missile attack from Iran, launched in support of its ally Hezbollah after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. They are expected to talk in the late afternoon Israeli time, morning on the US east coast.

The timing and scope of the Israeli retaliation is still unclear, and a miscalculation could propel Iran and Israel into a full-scale war, which neither side says it wants. The US, Israel’s staunch ally, is wary of being drawn into the fighting, and of oil price shocks.

The Biden administration is keen to weigh in on Israel’s plans and avoid surprises like the Israeli killing of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, although the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had so far refused to share details. Biden said last week that he would not support strikes on Iranian oil or nuclear sites.

It is believed that Biden and Netanyahu have not spoken in two months. Their relationship has deteriorated since the spring over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. Biden allegedly shouted and swore at Netanyahu in July over Israel’s failure to give Washington advance warning of another strike on a senior Hezbollah leader, according to a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.

There still appear to be disagreements within Israel’s security cabinet over an appropriate response to Iran’s firing of 180 ballistic missiles, an attack that was mostly intercepted by air defence systems but killed one person in the occupied West Bank and hit some Israeli military sites.

Netanyahu promised that Iran would pay for the attack, while Tehran has repeatedly warned that an Israeli attack on its soil would be met with further escalation.

Israel is fearful of a costly war of attrition with Iran while it is fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. After Tehran fired its first ever direct salvo at Israel in April in retaliation for the killing of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander in Syria, Israel heeded western calls for restraint, striking an air defence battery at an Iranian airbase.

Israel’s response this time is expected to be more severe, but its timing remains unclear. Axios reported that the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, postponed a scheduled visit to Washington on Wednesday at Netanyahu’s insistence. The prime minister wanted the cabinet to vote on the attack plans first and to speak to Biden himself before Gallant held discussions with Pentagon officials, the report said.

In Lebanon on Wednesday, eight days into Israel’s ground invasion, clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces appeared to be spreading across the mountainous border area.

The militant group said it had pushed back Israeli troops near Labbouneh, close to the Mediterranean coast, and attacked units with rocket fire in the villages of Maroun el-Ras, Mays al-Jabal and Mouhaybib.

Four people were killed and 10 wounded by an Israeli airstrike in Wardanieh, near the coastal town of Sidon.

Heavy fire from Lebanon triggered rocket sirens and air defence interceptions across northern Israel on Wednesday, killing two people in the border town of Kiryat Shmona and wounding six in the major city of Haifa.

A quarter of Lebanon is now under Israeli evacuation orders, which have driven 1.2 million people from their homes. At least 1,400 have been killed in the last three weeks.

Many Lebanese people fear that Israel’s intense bombings and use of widespread evacuation orders mean the country faces a similar fate to Gaza, where 42,000 people have been killed in a year of fighting. The war was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October rampage in southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Gaza remain trapped by the latest Israeli offensive centred on Jabaliya refugee camp, according to UN agencies and human rights groups.

“At least 400,000 people are trapped in the area,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, posted on X on Wednesday, amid witness accounts of bodies lying uncollected in the streets because of the renewed fighting.

“Recent evacuation orders from the Israeli authorities are forcing people to flee again & again, especially from Jabaliya camp,” added Lazzarini. “Many are refusing because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe.”

The Israeli military says the large-scale raid, now in its fifth day, is intended to stop Hamas fighters staging further attacks from Jabaliya and to prevent them regrouping, as at least 60 people were killed in Israeli military strikes on Gaza on Wednesday.

Lazzarini said some Unrwa shelters and services were being forced to shut down for the first time since the war began and that with almost no basic supplies available, hunger was spreading again in northern Gaza. “This recent military operation also threatens the implementation of the second phase of the #polio vaccination campaign for children,” he said.

Israel did not immediately comment on Lazzarini’s remarks. Israeli authorities have previously said they facilitate food deliveries to Gaza despite challenging conditions.

Despite a year of relentless Israeli attacks on Gaza, and intermittent declarations by the IDF and other officials claiming to have defeated Hamas, Israeli tanks and infantry attacked northern Gaza for a third time in force earlier this week, claiming the action was necessary to prevent Hamas “regrouping”.

Among the casualties on Wednesday was the Al Jazeera camera operator Fadi al-Wahidi.

“Israeli forces shot at the Al Jazeera crew, and the network’s photographer, our beloved colleague Fadi al-Wahidi, was injured by a sniper’s bullet in the neck during our coverage,” Al Jazeera Arabic’s Anas al-Sharif said in a post on X.

Along with evacuation orders, the IDF has ordered the closure once again of several hospitals in northern Gaza, including the Kamal Adwan, Indonesia and al-Awda hospitals. The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights described the situation as “deja vu” on social media, adding: “We all know the horrors that follow such orders.”

Among those raising the alarm has been the international medical group Médecins Sans Frontières, whose staff described the situation in northern Gaza.

“All of a sudden, I was told that we had to move from the north,” said Mahmoud, an MSF guard, who left Jabaliya at night to find refuge at the MSF guest house in Gaza City.

“We left our home in despair, under bombs, missiles and artillery. It was very, very difficult. I would prefer to die than to be displaced to the south; my home is here, and I do not want to leave.”

Sarah Vuylsteke, an MSF project coordinator in Gaza, said: “The latest move to forcefully and violently push thousands of people from northern Gaza to the south is turning the north into a lifeless desert while aggravating the situation in the south.

“Access to water, healthcare and safety is already almost nonexistent, and the thought of more people fitting into this space is impossible to imagine,” she said. “People have been subjected to endless displacement and relentless bombing for the past 12 months. Enough is enough. This must stop now.”

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and dozens of humanitarian facilities had been affected by the Israeli military’s latest forced evacuations across north, central and southern Gaza.

Between Saturday and Monday, evacuations orders were in place for several areas in the north of the Palestinian territory as well as areas in central Deir al-Balah and southern Khan Younis.

“There are growing risks that humanitarian access will be further constrained, particularly between southern and northern Gaza,” OCHA warned.

At least 18 people were killed in the latest Israeli military strikes on Gaza overnight, Palestinian medics said on Wednesday, including five children and two women. Two strikes hit tents for displaced people in the urban Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza.

The bodies of nine people, including three children, were brought to the al-Aqsa hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah. An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies at the morgue.

In northern Gaza, an Israeli strike hit a family home in the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing at least nine people, according to the Civil Defence, a rescue agency operating under the Hamas-run government.

The dead were taken to the al-Ahli hospital, which said two women and two children were among those killed. Footage shared by the Civil Defence showed first responders recovering dead bodies and body parts from under the rubble.

The latest deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza by Israeli operations since October 2023 to 42,010 with a further 97,720 injured, according to Gaza’s ministry of health.

An international summit on Ukraine where Volodymyr Zelenskyy was going to present a “victory plan” to western leaders has been formally postponed – though the Ukrainian president will try to organise a tour of European capitals instead.

Organisers said that the Saturday meeting of about 20 world leaders at the US Ramstein airbase in Germany would be rescheduled, a day after Biden had said he had to stay at home to respond to Hurricane Milton’s landfall in Florida.

Ukrainian sources said that Zelenskyy would travel to meet the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin on Friday – and potentially go on to visit other leaders as part of what sources described as a “European tour”.

German officials also promised that another leaders’ meeting to discuss Ukraine would be held soon, though it is not clear if it will happen before the US presidential election in November, which pits military aid sceptic Donald Trump against a more supportive Kamala Harris.

Steffen Hebestreit, a spokesperson for the German government, said: “It is true that the national security advisers are in close contact with each other and are also coordinating closely on the issue of Ukraine … there should be a face-to-face meeting soon and an exchange of views.”

The Ramstein summit was to be a centrepiece of a four-day trip by Biden to Germany, where Zelenskyy was to lobby to use long-range missiles inside Russia and to be given more air defence systems, in a fresh attempt to fend off Moscow’s aggression.

But it was also an opportunity for Ukraine to present proposals to bring a halt to the fighting – though it is unclear how that can be achieved. Russia is continuing to gain ground gradually in eastern Ukraine, and the Kremlin is hoping that if Trump wins, billions of military support will be stopped.

There had also been speculation that the meeting would discuss concrete steps on how Ukraine could eventually become a member of Nato, but any extra commitments were not expected to amount to immediate membership and direct military support.

Those due to attend the summit included Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, but once Biden said he could not go, their presence was in doubt. Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, pulled out earlier on Wednesday before the postponement was announced.

Two scientists at Google DeepMind and an American biochemist have been awarded the 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry for breakthroughs in predicting and designing the structure of proteins.

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind’s British founder, and John Jumper, who led the development of the company’s AI model AlphaFold– which predicts the structure of proteins based on their chemical sequence – share half of the prize.

The other half was awarded to Prof David Baker, of the University of Washington, whose computational research has led to the creation of entirely new kinds of proteins, with applications in vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors.

The winners were announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, and will share the 11m Swedish kronor (£810,000) prize for computational protein design and protein structure prediction.

Hassabis and Jumper, who had been highly tipped as potential winners, discovered they had been awarded the prize just minutes before the announcement. “I don’t think they had either of our numbers,” said Hassabis, adding that his wife had declined several Skype calls before realising they were from a Swedish number.

“It’s an unbelievable honour of a lifetime to receive the Nobel prize,” he said. “I spent my whole life working on AI, dreaming of this kind of impact … where we can use it for the benefit of society.”

Speaking at a press briefing immediately after the announcement, Baker described how the ambition to create entirely new proteins began as a dream more than 20 years ago. Advances in computing and scientific understanding in the intervening years had paved the way for this vision to have a meaningful impact in the world, he said, including in the design of novel vaccines for coronavirus.

“We glimpsed at the beginning that it might be possible to create a whole new world of proteins that address a lot of the problems faced by humans in the 21st century,” Baker said. “Now it’s becoming possible.”

Heiner Linke, the chair of the Nobel committee for chemistry, said: “One of the discoveries being recognised this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences. Both of these discoveries open up vast possibilities.”

Proteins control and drive all the chemical reactions that are the basis of life. They function as hormones, antibodies and the building blocks of different tissues. Baker’s mission was to design new proteins that do not exist in nature, and in 2003, he succeeded. Since then, his group has produced novel proteins with wide-ranging applications in medicine and materials science.

Proteins generally consist of 20 different amino acids, which are linked together in long strings that fold up to make three-dimensional structures. It is these structures – as well as the chemical composition – that determine how proteins will interact and whether, for instance, they will bind to a drug in the body. Since the 1970s, scientists have been working on what had become known as “the prediction problem”: working out a protein’s three-dimensional structure from its chemical sequence alone. The problem seemed theoretically intractable and progress was slow.

Four years ago, there was a breakthrough. In 2020, Hassabis and Jumper announced the development of an AI model called AlphaFold 2. Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, Jumper said that deep learning models had provided the right kind of mathematics to tackle the “irreducible complexity of biology”.

With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200m proteins that researchers have identified. Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold 2 has been used by more than 2 million people from 190 countries in applications such as understanding antibiotic resistance and developing enzymes that can decompose plastic.

Hassabis said that Alphafold should be viewed as proof of AI’s potential for accelerating scientific discovery – and for benefiting society butadded that as a “dual purpose technology” AI also had the potential to be used for harm. “I’ve always felt it would be one of the most transformative technologies in human history,” he said.

He added: “We really have to think very hard … about how to empower the good use cases while mitigating … the bad use cases. It carries risks as well and we need to be aware of those.”

Dr Annette Doherty, the president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “The benefits of this research are remarkable, as we can all look forward to applications improving our health and wellbeing. I am sure that their work will prove as inspirational to future generations as the discoveries of their predecessors who have been awarded this most prestigious honour.”

Two scientists at Google DeepMind and an American biochemist have been awarded the 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry for breakthroughs in predicting and designing the structure of proteins.

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind’s British founder, and John Jumper, who led the development of the company’s AI model AlphaFold– which predicts the structure of proteins based on their chemical sequence – share half of the prize.

The other half was awarded to Prof David Baker, of the University of Washington, whose computational research has led to the creation of entirely new kinds of proteins, with applications in vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors.

The winners were announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, and will share the 11m Swedish kronor (£810,000) prize for computational protein design and protein structure prediction.

Hassabis and Jumper, who had been highly tipped as potential winners, discovered they had been awarded the prize just minutes before the announcement. “I don’t think they had either of our numbers,” said Hassabis, adding that his wife had declined several Skype calls before realising they were from a Swedish number.

“It’s an unbelievable honour of a lifetime to receive the Nobel prize,” he said. “I spent my whole life working on AI, dreaming of this kind of impact … where we can use it for the benefit of society.”

Speaking at a press briefing immediately after the announcement, Baker described how the ambition to create entirely new proteins began as a dream more than 20 years ago. Advances in computing and scientific understanding in the intervening years had paved the way for this vision to have a meaningful impact in the world, he said, including in the design of novel vaccines for coronavirus.

“We glimpsed at the beginning that it might be possible to create a whole new world of proteins that address a lot of the problems faced by humans in the 21st century,” Baker said. “Now it’s becoming possible.”

Heiner Linke, the chair of the Nobel committee for chemistry, said: “One of the discoveries being recognised this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences. Both of these discoveries open up vast possibilities.”

Proteins control and drive all the chemical reactions that are the basis of life. They function as hormones, antibodies and the building blocks of different tissues. Baker’s mission was to design new proteins that do not exist in nature, and in 2003, he succeeded. Since then, his group has produced novel proteins with wide-ranging applications in medicine and materials science.

Proteins generally consist of 20 different amino acids, which are linked together in long strings that fold up to make three-dimensional structures. It is these structures – as well as the chemical composition – that determine how proteins will interact and whether, for instance, they will bind to a drug in the body. Since the 1970s, scientists have been working on what had become known as “the prediction problem”: working out a protein’s three-dimensional structure from its chemical sequence alone. The problem seemed theoretically intractable and progress was slow.

Four years ago, there was a breakthrough. In 2020, Hassabis and Jumper announced the development of an AI model called AlphaFold 2. Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, Jumper said that deep learning models had provided the right kind of mathematics to tackle the “irreducible complexity of biology”.

With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200m proteins that researchers have identified. Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold 2 has been used by more than 2 million people from 190 countries in applications such as understanding antibiotic resistance and developing enzymes that can decompose plastic.

Hassabis said that Alphafold should be viewed as proof of AI’s potential for accelerating scientific discovery – and for benefiting society butadded that as a “dual purpose technology” AI also had the potential to be used for harm. “I’ve always felt it would be one of the most transformative technologies in human history,” he said.

He added: “We really have to think very hard … about how to empower the good use cases while mitigating … the bad use cases. It carries risks as well and we need to be aware of those.”

Dr Annette Doherty, the president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “The benefits of this research are remarkable, as we can all look forward to applications improving our health and wellbeing. I am sure that their work will prove as inspirational to future generations as the discoveries of their predecessors who have been awarded this most prestigious honour.”

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, of whom he does not have legal custody.

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.”

Europe, the UK and Ukraine urgently need to “Trump-proof” their collective security by setting up a “Nato bank” to aid defence spending, a report suggests.

Europeans have to face the reality that if Donald Trump wins next month’s presidential election, he may quickly slash US defence spending in Europe, seek to impose a peace deal on Ukraine that leaves tracts of its territory in Russian hands and even withdraw from Nato altogether, the report by UK and German thinktanks says.

Such steps would have huge consequences for intelligence sharing and the viability of article 5, Nato’s crucial collective self-defence clause, the report, published on Wednesday, says.

“Trump’s first term was littered with withdrawn treaties, tariffs on allies and praise for authoritarian governments. European leaders need to practically and pre-emptively bolster European defence, security and resilience against a second-term Trump presidency,” said Sam Goodman, one of the report’s authors.

The report has been prepared by the New Diplomacy Project, which is advised by Sir David Manning, a former UK ambassador to Washington, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is linked to the chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SDP).

Its publication comes on the eve of a meeting in London on Thursday between the new Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy.

Trump has said that if he wins the US election he will tell Ukraine it has to make a deal with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. There are only three months left to convince him that the price of peace the Kremlin is likely to demand is unacceptable, the report says.

To mitigate the impact of a second Trump presidency, Nato countries should support the creation of an allied multilateral lending institution, in practice a Nato bank, it says. This could “save nations millions on essential equipment purchases, offer low interest rates on loans to alliance members and introduce a new line of financing with longer repayment timeframes. The bank would be funded with initial subscriptions from Nato members in return for authorised capital stock”.

The UK should also prepare to sign or upgrade security agreements with Germany, the EU and France, the report says. The agreements could include developing missile defence systems, air-to-air refuelling, aircraft maintenance, airlift capabilities, and joint-cyber capabilities. A UK guarantee to share intelligence from the Five Eyes alliance, which involves the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is also proposed.

Other threats the reports says a Trump victory could pose include a breakdown of diplomatic communication between the US and Europe, US withdrawal of troops and military assets from Europe and the widespread introduction of tariffs leading to the collapse of the World Trade Organisation.

The authors predict the Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine is likely to fail because Russia wants more than Trump realises and opposition to a perceived capitulation may be too difficult for him to ignore.

Dr Jade McGlynn, one of the report’s authors from the New Diplomacy Project, said: “The UK government and European leaders need to actively consider measures now to pre-emptively support Ukraine in the event that Trump is re-elected in November.

“While Trump will have limited political room to manoeuvre on Ukraine policy when it comes to the provision of lethal aid, strategic ambiguity, and diplomatic leverage, he could seek to undermine the Nato alliance and use his ‘peace plan’ to limit further lethal aid to Ukraine”.

A Turkish Airlines flight from Seattle to Istanbul made an emergency landing at New York’s John F Kennedy airport after its 59-year-old captain died mid-flight.

Flight 8JK, an Airbus A350-900, landed around 6am, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, after initial medical intervention to help the man who had lost consciousness onboard proved ineffective. A co-pilot took over the plane and successfully landed it.

The dead pilot has been identified as Ilcehin Pehlivan. Turkish Airlines told NBC News that it had employed him since 2007 and he last had a routine health check in March when no health issues that would affect his duties were found.

“As Turkish Airlines, we deeply feel the loss of our captain and extend our sincerest condolences to his bereaved family, colleagues, and all his loved ones,” the airline said in a statement.

The airline said arrangements are being made for passengers to return to Istanbul out of JFK.

The FAA requires two crew members in the cockpit at all times and pilots over 40 are required by the agency to get two physical examinations a year.

In 2015, an American Airlines pilot died after becoming ill on an overnight red-eye flight from Phoenix to Boston.

Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay Coleen Rooney a further £100,000 after their “Wagatha Christie” libel fight, in advance of the full amount being decided.

Vardy, the wife of the Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy, lost the high-profile case in July 2022, having sued Rooney for libel.

In 2019, Rooney, the wife of the former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, accused Vardy of leaking her private information to the press, which Mrs Justice Steyn found was “substantially true”.

In October 2022, the judge ordered Vardy to pay 90% of Rooney’s legal costs, with an initial payment of £800,000.

The pair’s lawyers returned to court in London this week in a dispute over how much should be paid.

But at the end of the hearing, which began on Monday, the senior costs judge, Andrew Gordon-Saker, ordered Vardy to pay a further £100,000 to Rooney within 21 days.

He said: “I think there is some scope for a further payment on account so the defendant [Rooney] is not kept out of her costs, and I think that should be no more than £100,000.”

The hearing, which neither woman attended, dealt with several preliminary issues before a full “line-by-line” assessment of costs takes place at a later date, which will decide the overall amount of money to be paid.

The judge said this could take place in early 2025, but added: “The parties need to get on with this and put it behind them.”

He said: “Realistically, it [the line-by-line assessment] is probably going to be next year, hopefully early next year.”

In written submissions, Jamie Carpenter KC, for Vardy, had challenged the “sheer magnitude” of some of Rooney’s legal costs. He said Rooney’s total claimed legal bill – £1,833,906.89 – was more than three times her “agreed costs budget of £540,779.07” and was “disproportionate”.

But Robin Dunne, for Rooney, said in his written submissions that Vardy had shown “deplorable conduct” in the case and that costs could have been lower if she had “conducted this litigation appropriately”.

In her 2022 ruling, Steyn described Vardy as an “untrustworthy witness” who was likely to have destroyed potentially crucial evidence on purpose. She concluded Vardy probably worked with her agent, Caroline Watt, to leak stories from Rooney’s private Instagram account to the Sun.

Rooney had conducted a “sting” operation to find out who was leaking the stories. She went public in 2019, with Wednesday marking five years since the viral post that alleged: “It’s … Rebekah Vardy’s account.”