At least four people were confirmed killed on Thursday as Florida began to assess the damage from Hurricane Milton, a category 3 storm that caused extensive property damage across the state and left more than 3.4m homes and businesses without power.

Authorities said the fatalities were in a senior community in St Lucie county that was struck by a tornado formed in Milton’s outer bands. The tornado happened before the hurricane made landfall near Sarasota on Florida’s western coast on Wednesday evening.

Parts of Sarasota, Fort Myers, Venice and other Gulf coast cities were inundated by up to 10ft of storm surge while tornadoes wrecked buildings, including a sheriff’s department facility, the skies turned purple and winds as high as 120mph (193km/h) turned cars, trees and debris into projectiles.

At a Thursday morning press briefing, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said more than 40 rescues had taken place in several counties, search-and-rescue operations were ongoing, and that “it was too soon to tell” how many had people had died.

The Tampa police department released video of officers rescuing multiple children from a house that was partially destroyed by a fallen tree.

DeSantis, however, said forecasters’ worst fears of a storm surge up to 15ft in the densely populated cities of Tampa and St Petersburg had not been realized. The worst-hit county, Sarasota, he said, saw an 8-10ft wall of seawater from the Gulf of Mexico.

“Thankfully it was not the worst-case scenario. The storm did weaken before landfall, and the storm surge has not been as significant overall as what was observed for Hurricane Helene,” he said, referring to the category 4 storm that struck Florida 12 days previously, and which caused at least 232 deaths in six states.

“We will better understand the extent of the damage as the day progresses,” the governor added.

Milton made landfall on Siesta Key south of St Petersburg around 8.30pm on Wednesday. Eight hours later it moved offshore just north of Cape Canaveral as a category 1 hurricane with winds of 85mph, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Although the core of Milton had moved into the Atlantic, the NHC warned of significant ongoing hazards.

“Heavy rainfall across the central to northern Florida peninsula through this morning continues to bring the risk of considerable flash and urban flooding along with moderate to major river flooding,” it said in a Thursday morning advisory.

Floridians awoke on Thursday to scenes of devastation in a number of counties. A crane collapsed in downtown St Petersburg leaving a gash in an office building, blocking a street, the water supply was cut, and the roof of a Major League Baseball stadium was ripped off.

It will take days for the damage to be assessed, but insurers have warned that losses could reach $60bn. Tornadoes that accompanied the approach of the storm may prove as damaging as the hurricane itself: at least 116 tornado warnings were issued across Florida, DeSantis said on Wednesday evening.

The four deaths in St Lucie county were at the Spanish Lakes Country Club in Fort Pierce, WQCS reported. Kevin Guthrie, director for the Florida division of emergency management, said that early reports indicated about 125 homes were destroyed, mostly mobile homes in senior communities.

Inland, about 11 million people are at risk of flash and river flooding after some parts of the state received one-in-1,000-year amounts of rain.

In Bradenton, north of Sarasota, the police chief said “probably” more than 60% of the city had no electricity. In Hillsborough county, which includes Tampa, the sheriff’s office said there were “downed power lines and trees everywhere”.

According to poweroutage.us, more than 3.4m homes and businesses in Florida were without power at 10am ET on Thursday.

But the powerful storm surge that authorities predicted ahead of Milton’s arrival may not have been as bad as projected. Communities to the north of Siesta Key were hit by heavy rain, predicted to be up to 18in, while areas to the south, including Fort Myers Beach and Naples, were hit by the storm’s sea-surge.

Some forecast models had predicted that Milton would hit squarely on Tampa Bay’s inlet, creating a 15ft storm surge, but the storm’s path wobbled, directing it about about 70 miles south to hit the beaches.

Still, just inland from Tampa, the flooding in Plant City was “absolutely staggering”, according the city manager, Bill McDaniel. Emergency crews rescued 35 people overnight, said McDaniel, who estimated the city had received 13.5in of rain.

“We have flooding in places and to levels that I’ve never seen, and I’ve lived in this community for my entire life,” he said on Thursday morning.

Milton, which formed close to Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula earlier in the week, at times reached maximum category 5 status with winds of 200mph as it crossed the Gulf towards Florida.

Ahead of the storm’s arrival, the state issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties with a total population of about 7.2 million people. Anyone who stayed behind was warned they would have to fend for themselves until the hurricane passed over.

Among some who stayed were 12 workers at Tampa’s zoo, located in the evacuation zone, where they made sure orangutans had blankets, manatees had supplies of lettuce and rhinoceroses had bamboo.

Now, Florida is faced with a huge cleanup. In Orlando, Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and Sea World remained closed on Thursday. At the news conference, DeSantis said 9,000 national guard members were ready to step in, as well as 50,000 utility workers from as far as California.

“Unfortunately, there will be fatalities. I don’t think there’s any way around that,” DeSantis said.

As Hurricane Milton ripped across Florida, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake, trolls and politicians alike spawned misinformation about the storm, questioning government preparations and calling it a “simulation” designed to hurt the Republican state.

But after it made landfall and exited into the Atlantic Ocean, there’s a new propaganda target among conspiracists: Walt Disney World in Orlando.

On Thursday morning, pictures were circulating on X, formerly Twitter, showing a flooded promenade at Disney World in Orlando with the Cinderella castle at its center.

“Hurricane Milton has flooded Disney World in Orlando,” wrote one known vector of disinformation on X, with the photos, which X users immediately noted was probably created using an automated AI image creator. The post has already been viewed over 300,000 times.

Other versions of the same, allegedly deceptive post were also translated into Spanish and other languages then spread across X. The platform has added a warning indicating the images are AI-generated fakes.

Still, that didn’t stop RIA Novosti, one of Russia’s top state-owned news agencies from reposting the images to its official Telegram channel.

“Social media users publish photos of the sinking of Disneyland in Florida as a result of Hurricane Milton,” said the post, incorrectly identifying the location as Disneyland, the theme park located thousands of miles away in Anaheim, California.

The RIA Novosti post has already garnered over 300,000 views.

In a storm update on its website, Disney World said the theme park is closed through 10 October, but made no mention of flooding and pointed out that it continues “to operate select dining locations for Guests currently staying in our Disney Resort hotels.”.

Disney did not immediately respond to questions about the flood photos of Cinderella Castle.

Disinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding Milton began long before the storm even made landfall. Since last week, Donald Trump has been spreading lies about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, accusing the Federal Emergency Management Agency of “abandoning” North Carolina residents in what is a hotly contested state in the November presidential election.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an extremism and disinformation watchdog organization, told the Guardian that hostile actors are known for using manipulated images and propaganda posts to undermine western democracies in times of crisis.

Russia is one of the most infamous offenders of such tactics.

“It’s well-known that Kremlin-backed outlets and the Kremlin itself often exploit natural disasters and political crises to sow chaos and spread misinformation for their own gain,” said Moustafa Ayad, ISD executive director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia. “The use of this image is no different.”

Through online chatter in places like Telegram, far-right trolls seized on the moment Milton began to pick up steam and barrel towards Florida, using the suspicions around Helene as a catalyst.

“Simulation,” posted one popular extremist channel days ago, accusing the hurricane of being a government creation.

Another post, from the same channel and viewed thousands of times, went further, posting an image of the storm in the form of an antisemitic cartoon as it approached Florida.

“Pray for Florida and everyone else whose lives are being destroyed while our tax money gets shipped to satanists and other people who hate White Christians,” said the post referring to Israel’s military operations in the Middle East.

Today, one adjacent channel, known for crafting neo-Nazi takes on the news, accused the government of using “stratospheric aerosols” to create Milton.

Some of the most blatant misinformation has come from the halls of Congress.

On Monday, the congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene doubled down on her own track record of misinformation directly accusing the federal government of storm manufacturing.

“Climate change is the new Covid,” wrote the Georgia representative on X. “Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled.

“Are you paying for it?” she blithely asked. “Of course you are.”

Last night, as Milton was hitting Florida, Joe Biden made it clear that the Republican presidential nominee was at the eye of the disinformation storm.

“Quite frankly, these lies are un-American,” Biden said in an address from the White House. “Former president Trump has led this onslaught of lies.”

The barrage of falsehoods has become so bad, Deanne Criswell, Fema chief, was forced to respond to the conspiracy theories about how her agency has responded to the storms, which ranges from accusations that money is being diverted from storm victims to migrants, to Helene being some sort of meteorological Frankenstein.

Most left when they were told to. But some chose to stay, even though officials warned Hurricane Milton would turn their homes into coffins.

Along Florida’s Gulf coast, where millions of people were urged to get out of harm’s way, cities were largely deserted on Wednesday afternoon as time ran out to evacuate. Those who remained were advised to shelter in place as best they could. Others who fled spoke of their dread at what, if anything, they would return to once the storm had passed.

“I’m fearful that I’m not going to have a house, that it’s going to just be demolished. I’m fearful that my island is going to sink into the water,” said Amanda Champ, who evacuated with her husband, children and two dogs to Alabama on Monday from their home on Anna Maria island, just north of Sarasota.

“I’m fearful that everybody’s belongings are going to be floating around, that there’s just not going to be a way to even get back there. I don’t know what to expect.”

William Tokajer, police chief of Holmes Beach, told islanders who planned to stay to write their names, dates of birth and social security numbers on their limbs with Sharpies to help identify their bodies after the storm.

His alarming words resonated with Champ, and the rest of Anna Maria’s population of about 1,000, reinforcing a message they had been hearing for days. Tokajer said Wednesday that he didn’t believe any residents stayed behind.

“I am a strong believer that things are just things, and that people, the memories, your friends and family, that’s what matters, and how you live your life,” said Champ, who is known as the coconut lady on Anna Maria island for her business selling coconuts to tourists and locals.

“When we were packing to leave my nine-year-old son said ‘Mom, I don’t need anything’. He didn’t want to take anything, he just brought clothes. He’s like, ‘There’s people that need stuff more than me’.”

Champ and her family relocated to a condo in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where she spent Wednesday preparing her coconut stall for a prearranged shrimp festival. It was a welcome distraction from hurricane anxiety, she said.

Messaging from local authorities, she said, had been perfectly clear. “They were going around telling people to leave,” she said. “We just pray that everyone listened and evacuated.”

In Venice, about 40 miles (64km) to the south, Sherry Hall and her family decided to stay in their house several blocks from the ocean, despite many of their neighbors leaving amid warnings of a storm surge up to 15ft. Her husband, Tommy, prepared the property with shutters and sandbags, and she said they had generators, portable air conditioning units, and plenty of water and food to be self-sufficient.

The couple, with their 18-year-old son Devin, did not want get tangled in heavy traffic on evacuation routes, or drive hours searching for hotels. But she said she was still apprehensive, and had heard Gulf waves crashing on the beach during previous storms.

“I’m not saying that I’m not worried. I’m not worried about me or my husband, but when you have children you worry about them,” she said. “As far as life-threatening and all that, we have good faith in the Lord, and we hope and pray for everyone, not just us. Items can be replaced but life isn’t about things, it’s about people and keeping people safe.”

Hall, a hospital administration worker, said although some neighbors left, many others had remained. All, however, had made their decisions aware of authorities’ warnings, she said.

“Word of the storm has got out nicely. They share with you that at a certain point they cannot come and rescue you, they’re telling people, you know, if you decide to stay, that’s on your own risk and on your life, basically,” she said.

“They also tell you it might be a while until the storm’s over and we don’t know when we’re going to get to you. They let the public know. Do I think a lot of people listened this time? Yeah, I think a lot of people have left. And then there are the ones that try to just hunker down as best as they can.”

Christine Bottger, general manager of the Clearwater Beach Holiday Inn, was another who opted to stay. “We’re in a pretty safe area and a pretty sound house, and honestly by the time I would have been able to leave, we would be stuck without a hotel room, then perhaps be stuck on an interstate, not where I want to be in the middle of a storm,” she said.

She said the waterfront hotel suffered significant damage and was flooded by two feet of water in Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, and contractors were in as recently as Monday to start measuring up for repairs.

Now Bottger fears any wind damage from Milton will bring further delay, although she said the hotel’s staff of about 120, who she calls a family, will be eager to help with the clean-up.

She said that even if the hotel cannot reopen for guests, its rooms could shelter first responders and essential workers to help speed the city’s recovery.

“We can get the power companies in and give them a clean room with a comfortable bed, and help get the infrastructure that’s needed back up and running,” she said. “It helps everybody. The pool has 2ft of sand in it and the restaurant was wrecked in Helene, but they won’t be using those.”

Like Champ and Hall, Bottger said warnings from local officials to those who needed to evacuate were clear and on point, and that residents were more likely to listen to those than more general messaging from state or federal authorities.

“The city manager and police chief were driving around yesterday afternoon on the beach, just checking everything before the bridges to the barrier islands were closed,” she said.

“They felt most people were heeding the warning. This time around people noticed the intensity and started taking it seriously when they saw 180mph winds being talked about. It opened their eyes.”

Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time in weeks on Wednesday amid expectations of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran, which Yoav Gallant warned would be “deadly, precise and surprising”.

Netanyahu’s defence minister issued the warning in a video message on Israeli media on Wednesday night, broadcast after he postponed a scheduled trip to Washington.

Gallant said that the Iranian missile attack on Israel on 1 October had been a failure but would be avenged.

“Whoever attacks us will be hurt and will pay a price. Our attack will be deadly, precise and above all surprising, they will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results,” the Israeli defence minister said.

Gallant’s video message was broadcast a few hours after the conversation between Netanyahu and Biden, their first in seven weeks, which was joined by the vice-president, Kamala Harris, whose presidential campaign could be upset by the widening hostilities in the Middle East and any consequent spike in oil prices. It also emerged on Wednesday that Netanyahu last week spoke with Harris’s opponent, Donald Trump.

A White House readout of the call did not directly mention possible retaliation for the Iranian missile strike but said Biden had condemned Tehran’s attack “unequivocally” and pledged “ironclad” support for Israel.

Biden and Netanyahu “agreed to remain in close contact over the coming days, both directly and through their national security teams,” the readout said.

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.

Netanyahu’s relationship with Biden has deteriorated significantly since the spring over Israel’s 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.

In War, a book out next week, Woodward reports that Biden regularly accused Netanyahu of having no strategy, and shouted: “Bibi, what the fuck?” at him in July, after Israeli strikes near Beirut and in Iran.

Netanyahu’s office also confirmed that the prime minister had recently spoken with the former president Trump. The Republican, who is in a close White House race against Harris, called Netanyahu last week and “congratulated him on the intense and determined operations that Israel carried out against Hezbollah”, according to Netanyahu’s office.

“World leaders want to speak and meet with President Trump because they know he will soon be returning to the White House and will restore peace around the globe,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said in a statement about that call, which a Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, also joined.

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.

During their call Biden emphasised to Netanyahu the “need to minimise harm to civilians, in particular in the densely populated areas of Beirut”.

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.

Mark Rutte, the new head of Nato, has brushed off anxieties about the possible election of Donald Trump, arguing that the US would risk isolation in “a harsh, uncompromising world” if he sought to withdraw from the military alliance.

Speaking in London on Thursday, after meeting the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Rutte said he believed that both Trump and his presidential rival, Kamala Harris, recognised the value of continuing military aid to Ukraine.

But, 10 days into the job as secretary general, the Dutchman also responded to concerns raised by the Republican nominee that levels of defence spending in Europe would have to rise, and indicated that a new target of 2.5% or 3% of GDP could be set.

In an interview with the Guardian, Rutte insisted he was “not that worried about Donald Trump, as I am not worried about Kamala Harris” and went on to describe the former president as “somebody who wants to defend the US”. That, he argued, required Nato membership because “without membership he is alone, and in a harsh, uncompromising world he needs the alliance”.

Trump has long been a Nato-sceptic, arguing the US contributes too much relative to Europe, and at one point in his presidency in 2018 he reportedly considered leaving the alliance. In March, however, the Republican candidate said he would remain in Nato as long as European countries “play fair” and do not “take advantage” of high levels of US defence spending.

Appearing to reflect such concerns, Rutte said he believed defence spending in Europe would have to rise from its existing average of 2% of GDP across the 31 members of Nato, apart from the US. “We are now on 2% but clearly it’s not enough because we can look at all the capability gaps, the targets we have, and then we really need to do more,” he said.

Setting a spending level target higher than 2% was a discussion Nato members needed to have, but Rutte said whether it would be “2.5% or 3% or more, that is something we have to debate”. Even at 2.5% that would require every Nato member to spend more on defence other than Poland, Greece and the Baltic states.

In Britain, the new Labour government has promised to increase defence spending from 2.32% of GDP to 2.5% but has not set out a timetable to do so. Rutte said he had encouraged Starmer “to reach it as soon as possible”, though he said the precise timetable was up to the British government.

North Korean military engineers have been deployed to help Russia target Ukraine with ballistic missiles, and fighters operating in occupied areas of the country have already been killed, senior officials in Kyiv and Seoul said.

There are dozens of North Koreans behind Russian lines, in teams that “support launcher systems for KN-23 missiles”, a source in Ukraine told the Guardian.

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, last year travelled to Russia for a summit with Vladimir Putin where the two men bolstered their deepening ties with a secret arms deal.

Pyongyang’s ammunition shipments were vital in allowing Russian forces to advance in a grinding war of attrition in eastern Ukraine this summer. But it appears increasingly clear that the agreement went beyond supplying materiel.

North Koreans were among the dead after a Ukrainian missile strike on Russian-occupied territory near Donetsk last week, South Korean and Ukrainian officials said. It was not clear if they were military engineers or other forces.

Foreigners have fought as mercenaries for Russia, but if North Koreans are on the ground it would mark the first time a foreign government has sent troops in uniform to support Moscow’s war.

South Korea’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, told MPs in Seoul this week that it was “highly likely” that North Korean officers had been deployed to fight alongside Russians, and several had died in the attack, although he did not give further details.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, said in a post on Telegram that some North Koreans had been killed in Russia. His organisation is part of the national security and defence council.

On Wednesday the Ukrainian military said they had destroyed North Korean ammunition in a strike on a depot in the Bryansk region, 75 miles (120 km) from the Ukrainian border.

Joining the war on Ukraine gives North Korea a chance to test weapons, gain combat experience for its troops and bolster its standing with a powerful international ally.

“For North Korea, which has supplied Russia with many shells and missiles, it’s crucial to learn how to handle different weapons and gain real-world combat experience,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, told the AFP news agency. “This might even be a driving factor behind sending North Korean soldiers – to provide them with diverse experiences and wartime training.”

North Korean missiles and shells are of poor quality and unreliable but have been key to keeping Russian guns firing relentlessly on Ukraine’s better-trained and motivated army.

Pyongyang is estimated to have provided around half the larger-calibre ammunition used on the battlefield this year, more than 2m rounds, a Ukrainian source said. It also provided KN-23 missiles, which were used in dozens of strikes across Ukraine last winter, Ukrainian media reported. After a pause of several months, they were deployed again from July.

The KN-23 is a short-range ballistic missile that was first tested in 2019 and has been compared to Russia’s Iskander-M missiles. It is thought to have a range of about 280 miles when carrying a 500kg warhead.

Moscow and Pyongyang have denied weapons sales even as they have publicly celebrated deepening ties in recent months. The Kremlin on Thursday dismissed North Korean troop deployments in Ukraine as “another bit of fake news”.

Kim described Putin as his “closest comrade” in a birthday message sent this week, and Putin made a state visit to North Korea in June during which the leaders signed a mutual aid agreement.

In return for its missiles and other military hardware, North Korea is thought to be seeking Russian help with its spy satellite programme, which has had embarrassing failures over the past two years.

It is not clear how far Russia is willing to go in sharing sensitive military technology with North Korea in return for continued support in Ukraine.

Pyongyang, after decades of UN-led sanctions targeting its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes, is attempting to strengthen its ties with Russia and China as part of an alliance against “western hegemony and imperialism”.

The strategy paid dividends in March when Russia used its veto in the UN security council to in effect end UN monitoring of sanctions violations, a move publicly welcomed by Pyongyang.

Artem Mazhulin contributed to this report.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Downing Street for talks with Keir Starmer and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte.

No 10 is hosting the Ukrainian president, who has been pressing western governments for more military support and the green light to fire long-range weapons into Russia.

Zelenskyy is also due to meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and German chancellor, Olaf Sholz, within the next 24 hours, his office said.

A spokesperson for Starmer told reporters on Wednesday that the British PM would be “reiterating the UK’s ironclad support for Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression”.

Zelenskyy had been due to present a “victory plan” for the war to leaders in Germany this week, but the summit was postponed after the US president, Joe Biden, pulled out to manage the domestic response to Hurricane Milton.

Organisers of the summit have promised to reschedule but it is unclear whether it can take place before the US presidential election in November. A victory for Donald Trump, a military aid sceptic, could result in the US government withdrawing support from Kyiv.

Zelenskyy visited Starmer in Downing Street days after his election victory in July. During that trip, the Ukrainian president became the first foreign leader to address the cabinet since Bill Clinton in 1997.

The No 10 spokesperson told reporters there had been no change to the UK government’s position on authorising Ukraine to fire long-range Storm Shadow missiles at targets inside Russia.

Ukrainian officials have argued for months that the weapons are vital to weaken Russia’s ability to strike Ukraine and force it to move its strike capabilities further from the border. Nato members led by the US are concerned about the prospect of a direct confrontation with Russia.

In a joint appearance with Rutte in Kyiv last week, Zelenskyy said western governments were “dragging out” deliveries of long-range weapons.

“We need sufficient quantity and quality of weapons, including long-range weapons, that, in my opinion, our partners are already dragging out,” Zelenskyy said.

He also called on Nato members to take a more active role in helping his country to fend off Russian aerial attacks. “We will continue to convince our partners of the need to shoot down Russian missiles and drones,” Zelenskyy said, adding: “what works in the skies of the Middle East and helps Israel defend itself can also work in the skies of our part of Europe”.

Kamala Harris’s campaign has raised a record-breaking $1bn within 80 days of her becoming the Democrats’ nominee yet has failed to translate her cash advantage over Donald Trump into a poll advantage in the key battleground states that will probably decide the election.

The vice-president’s fundraising haul, first reported by NBC, dwarfs the $309m raised by Trump’s campaign by the end of August, and equals the amount brought in by Joe Biden for his entire 2020 campaign.

But Democrats’ joy over the bounty is being tempered by a lack of evidence that it is giving her the edge she will need in the battleground states to win enough of them to affect the election outcome in her favor.

In the latest warning sign for the vice-president, a Quinnipiac university poll published on Wednesday showed her trailing Trump by two and three points respectively in Wisconsin and Michigan – states which, along with Pennsylvania, Democrats have labelled the “blue wall”.

The survey showed Trump ahead by 48-46% in Wisconsin and 50-47% in Michigan. Harris has a narrow lead in most nationwide polls.

Harris maintains a three-point advantage in Pennsylvania, according to Quinnipiac, as Barack Obama arrives in the state to campaign for Harris. The former president will headline a Thursday rally in Pittsburgh, where he is expected to urge naturally pro-Democrat voters to turn out for the 5 November poll.

Paradoxically, there are fears that Harris’s fundraising success may lead to cash drying up when it matters most, by dampening the enthusiasm of donors to give the extra funds that strategists believe might be necessary to get her over the line in a tightening race.

“There have never been so many electoral college votes in play so late in the cycle, which means that our strong fundraising and volunteer enthusiasm are not guaranteed to be enough to fully reach voters everywhere they are,” the Washington Post quoted an unnamed Harris campaign staff member as saying.

Obama’s appearance on the campaign trail follows evidence that Harris is failing to connect with key components of the Democrats’ constituency, including Black men.

Politico reported that Democratic operatives were worried about apathy among Black men in Detroit, Michigan’s biggest city, even as Harris’s campaign has dispatched several high-profile African American surrogates to the state, including the basketball legend Magic Johnson and the party elder James Clyburn.

“I am worried about turnout in Detroit,” Jamal Simmons, a former communications director for Harris, told the site. “Do they have the machine to turn people out?”

“We continue to have this widening apathy in cities like Detroit … [Harris] hasn’t done anything to change that,” added Scott Holiday, executive director of Detroit Action, a voter mobilisation group.

Concerns have spread to strategists of past victorious Democratic presidential campaigns, including David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama, who told Axios: “Harris made steady, incremental progress in the 10 days after the [10 September] debate, but now the race has plateaued.”

He added: “[Harris] had a great launch, right through the convention and the debate. But in these campaigns, every time you clear a bar, the bar gets raised. You have to lift your game and adjust your strategy.”

James Carville, an architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 triumph, told the site that Harris “needs to be more aggressive”.

A Harris campaign official said it had always expected the election to be “a margin of error race”.

“We’re dealing with a polarised electorate – cycle after cycle, the pool of true swing voters just gets smaller and smaller,” the official said.

Kamala Harris’s campaign has raised a record-breaking $1bn within 80 days of her becoming the Democrats’ nominee yet has failed to translate her cash advantage over Donald Trump into a poll advantage in the key battleground states that will probably decide the election.

The vice-president’s fundraising haul, first reported by NBC, dwarfs the $309m raised by Trump’s campaign by the end of August, and equals the amount brought in by Joe Biden for his entire 2020 campaign.

But Democrats’ joy over the bounty is being tempered by a lack of evidence that it is giving her the edge she will need in the battleground states to win enough of them to affect the election outcome in her favor.

In the latest warning sign for the vice-president, a Quinnipiac university poll published on Wednesday showed her trailing Trump by two and three points respectively in Wisconsin and Michigan – states which, along with Pennsylvania, Democrats have labelled the “blue wall”.

The survey showed Trump ahead by 48-46% in Wisconsin and 50-47% in Michigan. Harris has a narrow lead in most nationwide polls.

Harris maintains a three-point advantage in Pennsylvania, according to Quinnipiac, as Barack Obama arrives in the state to campaign for Harris. The former president will headline a Thursday rally in Pittsburgh, where he is expected to urge naturally pro-Democrat voters to turn out for the 5 November poll.

Paradoxically, there are fears that Harris’s fundraising success may lead to cash drying up when it matters most, by dampening the enthusiasm of donors to give the extra funds that strategists believe might be necessary to get her over the line in a tightening race.

“There have never been so many electoral college votes in play so late in the cycle, which means that our strong fundraising and volunteer enthusiasm are not guaranteed to be enough to fully reach voters everywhere they are,” the Washington Post quoted an unnamed Harris campaign staff member as saying.

Obama’s appearance on the campaign trail follows evidence that Harris is failing to connect with key components of the Democrats’ constituency, including Black men.

Politico reported that Democratic operatives were worried about apathy among Black men in Detroit, Michigan’s biggest city, even as Harris’s campaign has dispatched several high-profile African American surrogates to the state, including the basketball legend Magic Johnson and the party elder James Clyburn.

“I am worried about turnout in Detroit,” Jamal Simmons, a former communications director for Harris, told the site. “Do they have the machine to turn people out?”

“We continue to have this widening apathy in cities like Detroit … [Harris] hasn’t done anything to change that,” added Scott Holiday, executive director of Detroit Action, a voter mobilisation group.

Concerns have spread to strategists of past victorious Democratic presidential campaigns, including David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama, who told Axios: “Harris made steady, incremental progress in the 10 days after the [10 September] debate, but now the race has plateaued.”

He added: “[Harris] had a great launch, right through the convention and the debate. But in these campaigns, every time you clear a bar, the bar gets raised. You have to lift your game and adjust your strategy.”

James Carville, an architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 triumph, told the site that Harris “needs to be more aggressive”.

A Harris campaign official said it had always expected the election to be “a margin of error race”.

“We’re dealing with a polarised electorate – cycle after cycle, the pool of true swing voters just gets smaller and smaller,” the official said.

The Kremlin has confirmed that Donald Trump sent Vladimir Putin Covid tests when they were scarce during the early stages of the pandemic, as reported this week in a book by veteran US political journalist Bob Woodward.

The Russian president’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov largely confirmed the account of Woodward, whose book reveals how Trump secretly sent tests to the Russian president for his personal use, despite US shortages.

Peskov told journalists on Thursday that “all countries tried to somehow exchange between themselves” during the early phase of the pandemic, when there was not enough equipment. “We sent a supply of ventilator units to the US, they sent these tests to us,” he said. The exchanges occurred “when the pandemic was starting”, he said, adding that at this time tests were “rare items”.

According to Woodward, the Russian president told Trump: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you.”

Woodward also reported that Trump and Putin may have spoken up to seven times on the phone since 2021, including after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Peskov, however, denied this account, saying the calls “didn’t happen”.

The details about Trump’s ties to Putin are contained in a new book by Woodward, the celebrated US reporter, who with Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as US president. Woodward has written and co-written three books about the Trump presidency. His latest work, War, puts the spotlight on the Biden presidency, and covers Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s campaign against Hamas and US domestic politics.

While the revelations of Trump’s connections to Putin shed new light on the former US president’s campaign to pressure Republicans to block military aid for Ukraine, it is thought unlikely they will harm his remarkable popularity with his base, which has held firm despite numerous scandals, criminal and civil cases and his conviction for 34 felonies in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the result of the 2016 election.

Separately, the Kremlin spokesperson denied statements from the head of M15, Ken McCallum, that the GRU military intelligence agency was “on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”. In a speech on Tuesday, McCallum said intelligence services had seen “arson, sabotage and more”, an account that tallies with intelligence reports from across Europe.

The issue was raised by EU foreign affairs ministers in May, with one minister saying then that they were deeply worried about “sabotage, physical sabotage, organised, financed and done by Russian proxies”.

Responding to McCallum’s comments, the Kremlin spokesperson said the allegations were not worthy of attention. “All these statements are absolutely unsubstantiated and unfounded,” he said.

The former Premier League footballer George Baldock “most likely” died after drowning in the pool of his seaside apartment in southern Athens, Greek authorities believe.

Police investigating the circumstances of the former Sheffield United and Greece defender’s death said there was no suggestion of foul play “at least at this stage of the inquiry”.

A state-appointed coroner who conducted an initial examination of Baldock’s body at the apartment in Glyfada, less than half an hour’s drive from the centre of Athens, reported no signs of bruising or other wounds. But it was unclear whether the 31-year-old was alone or if his death had been triggered by “sudden collapse”.

The full-back, who was born in England and had Greek roots on his father’s side, moved to the Greek capital after signing for Panathinaikos in the summer.

“He was found lifeless at the bottom of the pool and pronounced dead at 22.38 last night [Wednesday],” a police source involved in the inquiry told the Guardian. “All the evidence, so far, points to death by drowning.”

The initial findings were supported by the results on Thursday of a postmortem conducted at the University of Athens’ hospital mortuary.

Forensic scientists were quoted as saying they believed Baldock had been dead “for five hours” before his body was discovered by the owner of the first-floor apartment, who jumped over a fence to access the property. The man had been asked to look for the footballer by Baldock’s concerned wife, who had remained in England with the couple’s young son, after her repeated telephone calls had gone unanswered.

Panathinaikos fans streamed to the Glyfada apartment building on Thursday to pay tribute, with many in a state of apparent shock. Baldock, who last played for the team against their great rivals Olympiakos in the Super League on Sunday, had won the respect of fellow players and was described as being “much loved”.

A police investigation, launched within minutes of his body being discovered, is under way, with the apartment sealed off. “An investigation is now being carried out,” said a senior police official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Witness statements have been taken from neighbours and footage from CCTV cameras around the building will be inspected. Was he alone? That is the question we all want to answer.”

The Football Association said there would be a period of silence before Thursday’s Nations League match between England and Greece at Wembley, and that players of both sides would wear black armbands.

“It is impossible for us to believe that our beloved friend, and teammate, George, is no longer with us,” the Greece players said in statement posted under a group picture with him on X. “Our pain is indescribable. Tonight we shall try and reach the strength of his soul, which was a shining example to all of us. Our thoughts are with his family. We will never forget you, friend.”

More than 370 million women and girls alive today – or almost one in eight – experienced rape or sexual assault before they turned 18, according to the first global estimates of the problem.

A new Unicef report describes sexual violence against children as an “overwhelming” human rights violation, with survivors carrying the trauma into adulthood. It says the scale of the violation is “abhorrent in its magnitude”.

If “non-contact” forms of sexual violence are included, such as unwanted sexual jokes or comments, exposure to pornography or exposure of sexual organs, the rate rises to one in five, researchers found.

The agency said that while girls and women were the worst affected, approximately one boy or man in 11 had also experienced rape or sexual assault during childhood.

Unicef’s executive director, Catherine Russell, said: “Sexual violence against children is a stain on our moral conscience. It inflicts deep and lasting trauma, often by someone the child knows and trusts, in places where they should feel safe.”

The report includes anonymised stories of individual cases, including 12-year-old Analyn, who was rescued from her home in the Philippines and taken to a government shelter. Aged 10, she had taken part in livestreaming of child sexual abuse after a neighbour approached her and offered money.

Xume, a 15-year-old shepherd from a village in Ethiopia, was ostracised by her community after being raped. She said: “The cows were dying because of the drought, but people said it was my fault because I am a bad person. That was because I was raped and didn’t tell anyone out of shame and fear.

“But when I turned out to be pregnant, I was excluded from the community and accused of the death of the cows.”

Most childhood sexual violence was inflicted on teenagers, with a particular spike between the ages of 14 and 17. The most likely abusers are family, friends or intimate partners.

Russell said children in fragile settings, such as those with weak institutions, UN peacekeeping forces, or a large number of refugees, were especially vulnerable. In those areas, one in four girls faced rape or sexual assault.

“We are witnessing horrific sexual violence in conflict zones, where rape and gender-based violence are often used as weapons of war,” she said.

Sexual violence against children occurred in all regions of the world, the report found. The highest rate was in Oceania, where 34% of women – 6 million people – had been victims. The highest number was in sub-Saharan Africa, where 79 million women and girls, or 22%, were affected.

However, Unicef said caution was necessary when comparing between regions, due to factors such as different levels of under-reporting and societal and cultural norms.

In 2015, the global community committed to ending all forms of violence against children by 2030 as one of the sustainable development goals. The report comes before an inaugural global ministerial conference on ending violence against children in Colombia in November.

Unicef said it had been hard to grasp the scale of sexual violence against children “because of stigma, challenges in measurement, and limited investment in data collection”. This was particularly true when looking at boys’ experiences, and non-contact forms, the UN agency said.

But it said that “since the start of the millennium, the widespread boom in access to the internet and use of digital and mobile technology at a global scale has created new forms of sexual abuse and exploitation”.

The report is based on surveys conducted between 2010 and 2022 in 120 countries and areas, while estimates for boys and men and of non-contact sexual violence “were informed by a broader range of data sources and applied some indirect methods”.

A Spanish couple have been detained after the man held a banner to protest against Peter Lim, the billionaire Singaporean owner of Valencia football club.

Dani Cuesta had shared photos on social media of himself holding a sign that said “Lim go home” at various locations in Singapore, including the residences where Lim reportedly lives and the tourist landmark Merlion Park.

Singapore has some of the world’s strictest rules around protests, even for demonstrations that involve only one person.

Police said the couple were assisting investigations over the alleged offence of taking part in a public assembly under section 16(2) of the Public Order Act 2009, which is punishable with a fine of up to S$3,000 (£1,750) for first-time offenders. Their passports were impounded.

Cuesta had posted on X that the couple were on their honeymoon, and planned to travel onwards to Bali, taking their “Lim go home” sign with them.

Lim, a former stockbroker, was seen by many as a saviour of Valencia when he took over the club in 2014, at a time when it was in crisis and debt-ridden, but any hopes he could restore the club to its former glory have long faded. Fans, angered at the club’s declining performance and continued financial problems – and at Lim’s perceived lack of interest in its fate – have repeatedly protested against him at the Mestalla Stadium.

Protests in Singapore, however, are far more tightly controlled. There is only one location in the city state – Speakers’ Corner, in Hong Lim Park – where citizens are allowed to hold protests without first obtaining a police permit, though they must still apply to the national park authorities. Non-Singaporean citizens are required to secure a police permit.

Singapore’s government says these rules are necessary to maintain law and order, though rights groups say they are used to stifle dissent and free speech.

Singaporean police said in a statement: “The police confirm that a police report was lodged against a 34-year-old Spanish man and a 30-year-old Spanish woman. They are assisting with investigations for the alleged offence of taking part in a public assembly under section 16(2) of the Public Order Act 2009. The passports of the two subjects have been impounded while investigations are ongoing.”

In 2020 the activist Jolovan Wham was charged with unlawful assembly after he held a sign bearing a smiley face as part of a one-man protest in support of two climate activists. He later received what amounted to an acquittal, but was fined S$3,000 over a separate protest in which he briefly held a sign calling for defamation charges against an editor of a news website to be dropped. He served 15 days in prison for refusing to pay the fine.

Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy who raised their 11 children after he was assassinated and remained dedicated to social causes and the family’s legacy for decades thereafter, died on Thursday, her family said. She was 96.

Kennedy had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke in her sleep on 3 October, her family said.

“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III posted on X. “She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week.”

The Kennedy matriarch, whose children were Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr, David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining member of a generation that included President John F Kennedy. Her family said she had recently enjoyed seeing many of her relatives, before falling ill.

“She has had a great summer and transition into fall,” said a family statement, issued after she was hospitalized. “Every day she enjoyed time with her children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was able to get out on the water, visit the pier and enjoy many lunches and dinners with family. It has been a gift to all of us and to her as well.”

More details soon …