Israeli strikes killed 22 people in Beirut in the deadliest attack on the city centre since recent hostilities broke out, as the UN said its peacekeepers in Lebanon’s south were in growing danger.

The strikes hit a densely packed residential neighbourhood of apartment buildings and small shops in the heart of the Lebanese capital. Israel had not previously struck the area, which is removed from Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah’s headquarters have been repeatedly bombed over the past weeks.

Wafiq Safa, who heads Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies, was reportedly the target of Thursday’s strikes, but survived, security sources told the Reuters news agency.

There was no immediate comment by Israel. The Israeli military issued a new evacuation warning on Thursday night for Beirut’s southern suburbs including specific buildings. Earlier in the day, Israel warned Lebanese civilians that to avoid the fighting they should not return to homes in the south.

The casualties in central Beirut on Thursday night rose quickly; the Lebanese health ministry reported 22 people killed and 117 wounded. Among the dead were a family of eight, including three children, who had evacuated from the south, according to a security source.

The deadly attack came as a UN official told the security council that the safety of more than 10,400 UN peacekeepers in Lebanon was “increasingly in jeopardy” and operations had virtually halted since late September, coinciding with Israel’s escalation against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The UN peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said Unifil had decided to relocate about 300 peacekeepers to larger bases temporarily for their safety and that one contractor had already been killed.

His comments came after the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon said Israeli forces had deliberately fired on its positions, injuring two peacekeepers. Unifil called attacks on peacekeepers “a grave violation of international humanitarian law”.

The White House said the US was deeply concerned by those reports and was pressing Israel for details. Israel’s military said its troops operated in the Naqoura area, “next to a Unifil base”. “Accordingly, the IDF instructed the UN forces in the area to remain in protected spaces, following which the forces opened fire in the area,” Israel’s statement said, adding it maintains routine communication with Unifil.

The peacekeepers were determined to remain at their posts despite Israeli attacks and orders by Israel’s military to leave, said the UN force’s spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti. Its 50 contributing countries had agreed on Thursday to keep deploying more than 10,000 peacekeepers between the Litani River in the north and the UN-recognised boundary between Lebanon and Israel known as the Blue Line in the south.

“We are there because the [UN] security council has asked us to be there. So we are staying until the situation becomes impossible for us to operate,” Tenenti said.

In New York, Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said Israel recommends Unifil relocate 5km north “to avoid danger as fighting intensifies”.

The conflict in Lebanon erupted one year ago when Hezbollah opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war. It has intensified dramatically in recent weeks, with Israel bombing Beirut’s southern suburbs, the south and the Bekaa Valley, before sending in ground forces.

The Middle East remains on high alert for further escalation in the region, awaiting Israel’s response to an Iranian missile strike on 1 October.

With Reuters

The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon said on Thursday that Israeli forces had deliberately fired on its positions, injuring two peacekeepers and bringing fresh accusations of violations of international law.

Israel has been carrying out repeated ground incursions across the border into Lebanon in its war with Hezbollah, as the conflict that began in Gaza a year ago continues to spread across the region.

The alleged attacks brought expressions of outrage from UN member states who contribute troops to the UN interim force in Lebanon (Unifil), at a time Israel is already under scrutiny on multiple fronts for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A UN report published on Thursday accused Israel of pursuing a concerted policy of destroying Gaza’s healthcare system in the war in the strip, saying this constituted war crimes and extermination as a crime against humanity.

The report was authored by a UN-commissioned panel of experts led by a former UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay.

Before the presentation of the full report to the UN general assembly on 30 October, Pillay issued a statement previewing its findings, saying Israel had carried out “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities” over the course of the war, triggered by a Hamas attack on 7 October last year on southern Israel.

“Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,” Pillay said.

There was no immediate response from Israel, which has consistently accused the UN of institutional bias against it.

The international court of justice is weighing claims led by South Africa that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and the international criminal court is considering calls for arrest warrants for war crimes against Benjamin Netanyahu, his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar.

An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah killed 27 people on Thursday, including a child and seven women, according to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where the bodies were brought.

The Israeli military said it carried out a precision strike targeting a militant command and control centre inside the school. More than 42,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, are estimated to have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since the war began.

Late on Thursday, 22 people were killed and at least 117 injured in Israeli airstrikes on the Basta neighbourhood of central Beirut, a working-class area that has hosted many displaced people.

Unifil said an Israeli tank fired on an observation tower in the force’s headquarters in Naqoura just north of the Lebanese border, causing two Indonesian peacekeepers to fall off it.

“The injuries are fortunately, this time, not serious, but they remain in hospital,” a Unifil statement said, adding that deliberate attacks on UN peacekeepers was a “grave violation” of international law.

Unifil said Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers also fired at a UN observation post at Labbouneh a few hundred metres from the border, “hitting the entrance to the bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, and damaging vehicles and a communications system”.

The Unifil statement made it clear that the peacekeepers thought the attacks on their positions were no accident, suggesting there had been premeditation.

“An IDF drone was observed flying inside the UN position up to the bunker entrance,” it said. “Yesterday, IDF soldiers deliberately fired at and disabled the position’s perimeter-monitoring cameras.”

Unifil also said Israeli forces had “deliberately fired” on a UN facility at a border point on the coast where peacekeepers hosted tripartite meetings with Israeli and Lebanese officers before the outbreak of the current conflict.

Unifil said any deliberate attack on peacekeepers was a “grave violation of international humanitarian law” and of security council resolution 1701.

The Irish government, which has a contingent of troops in Unifil, said none of its peacekeepers had been hurt, but the taoiseach, Simon Harris, said attacks on peacekeepers “can never be tolerated or acceptable”.

France, Italy, Indonesia, Malaysia and Ghana also contribute soldiers to Unifil ranks.

Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, said firing on Unifil bases was “totally unacceptable” and clearly flouted international law.

The French foreign ministry condemned the attack and said it was awaiting an explanation from Israel.

The IDF said its troops had opened fire near the Unifil base after instructing UN forces in the area to remain in protected spaces on Thursday morning. “Hezbollah operates from within and near civilian areas in southern Lebanon, including areas near Unifil posts,” it said in a brief statement.

The attacks on Unifil positions came two days after a standoff between Israeli forces and 30 Irish peacekeepers at a UN observation post on the border, after the IDF parked more than two dozen tanks and other armoured vehicles around the position last Saturday.

The Israeli forces finally withdrew on Tuesday but only after a flurry of calls from the taoiseach and the Irish foreign minister to UN leaders and to Joe Biden.

The Irish foreign minister, Micheál Martin, said Thursday’s incidents of UN positions being fired on were “unacceptable”.

“Peacekeeping is the noblest thing anyone can do,” Martin added. “UN peacekeeping soldiers are there to keep the peace at the invitation of both sides to this conflict, and Israel has an obligation to make sure that no UN peacekeeper gets into harm’s way.”

Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition has taken an increasingly aggressive approach to the UN, and particularly Unrwa, the organisation’s relief agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel alleges has been infiltrated by Hamas. A UN internal inquiry reported in August that nine Unrwa employees may have been involved in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel in which 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 taken hostage.

An Israeli parliamentary committee has approved a pair of bills this week that would ban Unrwa from operating on Israeli territory. The head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, told the UN that if the bills were approved by the full Knesset it would be a violation of Israel’s obligations under the UN charter and of international law, and that it could lead Unrwa to disintegrate.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said that the infiltration of Unrwa was “so ingrained, so institutional, that the organisation is simply beyond repair”.

The director of the only major hospital in the northern Gaza Strip now offering specialised care for children has described a “catastrophic situation” as Israeli forces launched new ground assaults and airstrikes in the north and centre of the territory.

Dr Husam Abu Safiyeh, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, said it had not been possible to comply with an Israeli army order to evacuate all patients within 24 hours.

“We have seven cases in intensive care … all these cases are very severe and they all need intensive surgical or medical care,” he said. “Moving or transporting these patients puts their life in serious danger, it is not possible to transfer them. In addition, there is no facility in Gaza that has capacity to take them as they are all overrun with their own similar cases.”

The latest raids and strikes came on the sixth day of an Israeli offensive centred on the devastated cities of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun and the Jabaliya refugee camp, all of which experienced heavy fighting in the first months of the war. The offensive has trapped hundreds of thousands of civilians in fast-deteriorating conditions.

Farther south, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central town of Deir al-Balah killed at least 26 people, including a child and seven women, Palestinian officials said on Thursday.

Dr Eid Sabah, the director of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan hospital, which offers paediatric intensive care facilities and a malnutrition clinic, said a fleet of ambulances evacuated some but not all of its patients.

The hospital is now running short of medical supplies as well as diesel for its generators, which means electricity and oxygen shortages. Doctors said 100 dead and more than 300 injured had been brought into the facility in recent days, including many children. “Until this moment, none of the workers inside the hospital was able to leave it due to the danger of the bombing,” Sabah said.

Israeli forces issued evacuation orders to civilians in Jabaliya and other parts of Gaza before launching their operations but one resident in Jabaliya said they had been trapped in their homes by fighting and food was running out.

Heba Abu Habl, who has three daughters and two sons, has been displaced 18 times since first leaving Beit Lahiya early in the war, and is now stuck in Jabaliya.

“We have been trapped for days and we don’t know where to go. All places are dangerous and are subjected to heavy and indiscriminate bombardment. In the end we decided to stay where we are … but we don’t have water or food and we cannot sleep at night because of the intensity of the bombing,” Abu Habl, 38, said.

Gaza’s health ministry said it recovered 40 bodies from Jabaliya, a densely populated neighbourhood in northern Gaza, between Sunday and Tuesday, and another 14 from communities farther north.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, said on X on Wednesday that at least 400,000 people were trapped in Jabaliya. “Many are refusing [to evacuate] because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe,” he added.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the attack on the school in Deir al-Balah. Witnesses said the strike targeted a makeshift post of the Hamas-run police inside the shelter.

Israel has repeatedly attacked schools turned shelters in Gaza, accusing militants of deliberately using the population as a human shield. Hamas has denied the charge. Numerous strikes have targeted police in Gaza, who Israeli officials argue are part of Hamas, and who have now largely withdrawn from the streets.

On Thursday, UN investigators accused Israel of deliberately targeting health facilities and killing and torturing medical personnel in Gaza.

“Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza,” the UN independent international commission of inquiry said in a statement.

Israeli officials say its forces do not target civilians and accuse Hamas of building command centres under hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. Hamas denies the charge.

The Israeli military said the latest raid was intended to stop Hamas fighters staging further attacks from Jabaliya and to prevent them from regrouping. Though the group has suffered significant losses, Hamas has continued to launch attacks on Israeli forces and fire occasional rockets into Israel in recent months. Israeli forces have had to return to many areas earlier cleared of militants.

R Adm Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, said Israeli forces in Jabaliya had killed about 100 militants, without providing evidence.

The death toll from the Israeli offensive in the territory has passed 42,000. More than two-thirds of those killed are women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities’ data. The statistics do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

The war began on 7 October last year when waves of Hamas militants broke through Israel’s security fence and attacked army bases and farming communities, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Hamas is still holding about 100 captives inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

The conflict has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.

Mystery surrounded the whereabouts and health of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Esmail Ghaani, amid reports that he was being investigated over how Israel managed to penetrate and crush the command structure of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia at the heart of the Iranian “axis of resistance”.

It is known that Ghaani, who leads the IRGC’s al-Quds force, was in Beirut at the time of the killing of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, but Iranian authorities have insisted he is alive, and even in line for an award for valour.

The Qatari-backed outlet Middle East Eye claimed Ghaani had been put under house arrest and was being investigated over the failures that allowed Israel to penetrate the Hezbollah network so effectively.

Over the past two months, Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders and appears to have made a leap forward in the quality of its intelligence.

Another Arabic outlet claimed Ghaani had suffered a heart attack during questioning.

Israeli sources said the reports, regardless of their veracity, showed the degree of stress inside the IRGC over the destruction of the Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon.

One source said: “This has been a mind-blowing success as a result of a decade of intelligence gathering. An operational shock has been delivered that has eliminated its capability to nominate successors and to conduct a coherent response to Israel.”

The source doubted Ghaani was under suspicion, describing him as “a hard-working nerd totally loyal and totally committed to the cause”. On Tuesday, Iraj Masjedi, the deputy commander of al-Quds and a former Iranian ambassador to Baghdad, told reporters that Ghaani was “in good health and is carrying out his daily duties”.

Western diplomats said it was possible that Israel was considering a campaign of assassinations of the Iranian leadership as the most escalatory end of the range of options to be used in its imminent response to Tehran’s attack last week.

The diplomats believe Joe Biden came away from a conversation on Wednesday with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, still unclear how and when Israel would respond. “He has the whiff of cordite in his nostrils” said one source, of Netanyahu, adding that there was little obvious leverage to restrain him.

The three other options are a strike on Iranian military targets of an order similar to the Israeli strike in April; an attack on economic infrastructure, including oil facilities; or an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

The US has strongly advised Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, and it has been made clear that neither the US or the UK would provide the practical help probably needed to undertake such an attack. Israeli officials have also been advised that it would be unwise to start its response at the top end of the escalatory scale.

Western diplomats believe the Israeli strikes could start as early as next week, but others calculate that the more Netanyahu delays until closer to the US presidential election on 5 November, the more leverage Netanyahu will have over the Democrats to support any decision he takes. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has been urging Israel to hit Iranian nuclear sites.

Gulf states are lobbying Washington to stop Israel from attacking Iran’s oil sites because they are concerned their own oil facilities could come under fire from Tehran’s proxies if the conflict escalates. Senior former Israeli intelligence officials argue that an attack on Iranian oil infrastructure would work, and not lead to a big escalation in oil prices. They doubt claims that Iran or its proxies would then attack Gulf state oil facilities, as that would undermine Tehran’s efforts to deepen diplomatic relations in the region.

The Iranian foreign minister, Sayeed Abbas Araghchi, in a diplomatic tour of the Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has won commitments that they will not allow Israel to fly through their airspace for any attack on Iran and have conveyed this to Washington. He said diplomatic channels with the US through other countries were open indirectly.

“Israel is looking for a large-scale war and pushing some countries into this war,” Araghchi said. “Iran is not the only one that does not want a large-scale war, but everyone knows how disastrous this war is.”

Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst close to the royal court in Riyadh, said: “The Iranians have stated: ‘If the Gulf states open up their airspace to Israel, that would be an act of war.’”

Haitian armed gangs are recruiting starving children to swell their ranks ahead of an anticipated long and bloody battle with international security forces, a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.

Armed groups – which control most of Haiti – are enticing hundreds, if not thousands, of impoverished children to take up arms with offers of food and shelter, the rights groups said.

HRW says that up to 30% of Haitian gang members are now children forced into illegal activities as armed soldiers or spies or exploited for sex.

“All the sources we consulted, including children associated with criminal groups, told us that more children are joining the gangs and that it is in preparation to have more personnel available to fight against the international security forces and the Haitian police,” the report’s author, Nathalye Cotrino, told the Guardian. “Eventually, they plan to use children as ‘human shields’ if operations against criminal groups begin in their controlled areas.”

Haiti has fallen into ever-growing chaos and desperation since its president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in July 2021. Across the country, 5.4 million people are regularly going hungry and 2.7 million – including half a million children – are under the dominion of violent armed groups.

Kenya deployed the first contingent of a UN-backed security force intended to restore order to the Caribbean nation in June but momentum has stalled due to a lack of funding, allowing armed groups to bolster their forces in the expectation of drawn-out gun battles over territory.

Last week, the Gran Grif gang massacred 70 people, including some children, in the western town of Pont-Sondé, as it went from house to house unchecked, executing civilians and torching buildings in what the gang’s leader, Luckson Elan, said was retribution for civilians not stopping police and vigilante groups from killing his combatants. Six thousand people were forced to flee the agricultural town, where rival factions are warring for control of the country’s breadbasket.

Gang leaders were publishing videos on TikTok that portrayed them living glamorous lives full of cash, women and flashy jewellery to lure in impressionable teenagers, Cotrino said.

“This attracts the attention of children living in poverty who are often homeless and going days without food. They see it as their only way out of misery,” she said.

Children are often exploited as informants, as they are less conspicuous, but are also forced to carry out extortion and violent crimes such as kidnapping and murder.

Girls are often forced to cook, clean and offer their bodies to gang leaders.

Children interviewed by HRW said they joined the gangs when they were desperate and hungry, but once they had picked up a machine gun there was no way out.

A 14-year-old member of the Tibwa gang – one of the more than 200 criminal groups competing for control of Haiti – told HRW: “Once, they told me to blindfold someone we were going to kidnap. When I refused to do it, they hit me in the head with a baseball bat and said if I didn’t, they would kill me.”

HRW has called for the government to launch programmes to safeguard children and help them demobilise and reintegrate into society.

Aid organisations on the ground say it is challenging to stop minors from being lured into gangs, given Haiti’s state services have all but collapsed, hunger continues to grow and schools are frequently closed.

One humanitarian worker at an educational centre on the edge of Port-au-Prince said it was easy to identify the children once they were in the orbit of criminal groups but it was far more difficult to get them back out.

“Generally, the children start coming in with new clothes, like shoes or jackets, or with small amounts of cash,” the aid worker said. “They also start to withdraw from activities and begin to miss days – at first, one or two days, and then a week – if they return at all. When we notice this, we immediately start a conversation with the child to find out what’s going on. The response is almost always the same. They say, ‘I have to support myself, and they, the gangs, are the only option.’”

Barack Obama made his first appearance on the campaign trail for Kamala Harris on Thursday, speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania and at an event for Black voters, where he urged men in particular to support the vice-president.

In comments directed specifically to Black men in the swing state during an event at one of Harris’s campaign offices, Obama questioned their unwillingness to vote for her – a September NAACP poll showed that over one quarter of Black men under 50 say they will vote for Donald Trump.

“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers,” Obama said.

“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses. I’ve got a problem with that.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and reasons for that.”

He added: “When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting.”

Later in the evening, at the Fitzgerald Field House in Pittsburgh, where thousands appeared to be in attendance, the Democratic party leader called on residents of the crucial swing state to vote for Harris – and down-ballot for other Democratic candidates like Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey.

“We need a president who actually cares about solving problems and making your life better, and that’s what Kamala Harris will do,” Obama said. “And to help her do it, she will need a Senate full of serious public servants like Bob Casey.”

With 19 electoral college votes, Pennsylvania is essential for either candidate to win the election. Recent surveys released by Quinnipac University showed Harris leading in Pennsylvania, but polling between the vice-president and Donald Trump has been close.

The state may also determine control of the Senate: Casey, for example, is up for re-election and facing a well-funded Republican opponent.

Obama and Harris have long been supporters of each other’s campaigns, and at the Democratic national convention in August the former president and his wife sought to cast Harris as the heir to their movement. Harris was an early supporter of Obama’s long-shot bid against Hilary Clinton, starting in 2007 when she knocked on doors for him ahead of the Iowa caucuses. In 2010, when Harris ran for attorney general of California, Obama backed her campaign – calling her “a dear, dear friend of mine”.

In Pittsburgh on Thursday, Obama acknowledged American voters’ frustrations with inflation, the Covid recovery and other issues – while denouncing Trump and praising Harris’s platform.

“This election is going to be tight because there are a lot of Americans who are still struggling out there,” Obama said. “I get it why people are looking to shake things up. I mean, I am the hope-y, change-y guy. So I understand people feeling frustrated. We can do better. What I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you.

“The good news is, Kamala Harris – she doesn’t have concepts for a plan. She has an actual plan to make your life better.”

Harkening back to the message he shared with Black voters earlier in the day, Obama later added: “I’m sorry, gentlemen, I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior of bullying and putting people down is a sign of strength. And I am here to tell you: that is not what real strength is. It never has been.

“Real strength is about helping people need it and standing up for those who can’t always stand up for themselves, that is what we should want for our daughters and for our sons, and that is what I want to see a president of the United States of America.”

Before the former president took the stage, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who was among those shortlisted to be Harris’ running mate, touted the Democratic party’s work in the state to expand universal free breakfast and gun violence prevention efforts, while criticizing Republican party leadership on the national level. He specifically encouraged attendees to vote to re-elect Casey.

Casey himself spoke, laying out the stakes for the upcoming election and denouncing his rival, David McCormick. McCormick, a businessman, ran the world’s largest hedge fund while it managed and advised funds holding hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian debt, documents obtained by the Guardian show.

“These out-of-state billionaires [are] spending more than $100m to defeat me in this race. Well, I got news for those billionaires. I’m going to beat David McCormick, and I’m going to beat those billionaires,” Casey said.

Obama’s appearance comes as Democratic surrogates are campaigning for Harris in swing states across the country. This week, the Harris campaign confirmed that vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz will campaign in Wisconsin, former president Bill Clinton will tour the southern states of Georgia and North Carolina, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders will host events in Michigan. Meanwhile, former first lady Michelle Obama has relaunched Party at the Polls, a program of her non-partisan voting initiative When We All Vote.

At the same time, Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance held a town hall Thursday evening in Greensboro, North Carolina, shortly after Trump spoke in Detroit.

Donald Trump attacked the city of Detroit in a speech he was giving while stumping for votes in Detroit.

The former US president and Republican nominee was speaking on Thursday at the Detroit Economic Club in the city, which is the biggest city in Michigan – one of the most crucial swing states in the 2024 US election.

But Trump, whose speeches are frequently rambling and lengthy discourses rather than set piece deliveries, could not stop himself from lambasting the city in which he was speaking by pointing to Detroit’s recent history of economic decline from its heyday as the home of American car production.

As he was speaking about China being a developing nation, Trump said: “Well, we’re a developing nation too, just take a look at Detroit. Detroit’s a developing area more than most places in China.”

He later returned to the theme, warning of an economic disaster if his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, wins in November’s election.

“Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands,” Trump said.

Michigan polling shows Harris and Trump still caught up in a very tight race.

Democrats in the state reacted angrily to the insults and saw a chance to score political points.

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer posted on Twitter/X: “Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities – something Donald Trump could never understand. So keep Detroit out of your mouth. And you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.”

Detroit has struggled in the face of the decline of American manufacturing. Just over a decade ago the city became the largest municipality in the country to file for bankruptcy.

But Detroit has also been touted as a symbol of an American post-industrial city in recovery with numerous projects aimed at revitalizing its downtown and attempts to repair and reinvest in its housing stock. In May the city reported a population rise for the first time in decades.

That sense of recovery was the theme of Detroit mayor Mike Duggan’s response. He posted: “Detroit just hosted the largest NFL Draft in history, the Tigers are back in the playoffs, the Lions are headed to the Super Bowl, crime is down and our population is growing. Lots of cities should be like Detroit. And we did it all without Trump’s help.”

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 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 said 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 did 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, apart from Poland, Greece and the Baltic states, to spend more on defence.

In Britain, the 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.

Rutte said he had met Trump “several times” during his 14 years as Dutch prime minister, while he said he met Harris for a “long sit-down” over dinner at a Ukraine summit in Lucerne, Switzerland, in June. But he said he had no immediate plans to meet either candidate before November’s presidential election.

When it came to support for Ukraine, Rutte said he believed Trump would continue with delivering billions in military aid for Kyiv, even though the Republican has repeatedly said he wants the war to stop and his vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, has suggested a peace settlement that would freeze the conflict on the current frontlines.

“If [Vladimir] Putin would get his way, we will all be under threat, because it won’t end with Ukraine,” Rutte said. “He [Trump] knows this and Kamala Harris knows this. And that is why I’m absolutely convinced that if he becomes president, that he will continue supplying support to Ukraine.”

An analysis by Germany’s Kiel University, which tracks western military aid to Ukraine, has concluded that the value of arms supplied would slump to €34bn (£28.5bn) from a projected €59bn if US aid was completely withdrawn.

Ukraine would also be likely to suffer significantly on the battlefield, as it did at the beginning of the year when Republicans in the US Congress prevented aid being voted through.

Rutte, however, offered little fresh hope for Ukraine’s ambition of joining the military alliance while the war is ongoing – or any concrete intermediate steps towards membership either. He focused on a declaration at last summer’s Nato summit in Washington DC, which concluded that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path” to membership at some unspecified future date.

That meant, Rutte said, that “Ukraine ultimately will be a part of Nato”, though raised the question of when. “Obviously, that’s not something I can answer,” he said. “We have to make clear to Putin that he has no vote or veto on that decision.”

A US Coast Guard helicopter crew rescued a man who was left clinging to an ice box in the Gulf of Mexico after his boat was stranded overnight in waters roiled by Hurricane Milton.

The man was aboard a fishing vessel that became disabled on Wednesday off Madeira Beach, Florida, hours before the hurricane made landfall, said coast guard press officer Nicole Groll. The man, who was not identified, was able to radio the coast guard station in nearby St Petersburg before contact was lost about 6.45pm.

But on Thursday searchers located the man about 30 miles (48km) off Longboat Key, Florida, clinging to an open cooler chest, a video clip provided by the coast guard shows. In the video, a coast guard diver was lowered from a helicopter and swam to the man to pick him up.

“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” coast guard official Dana Grady said.

Rescue teams continued pull Florida residents from the wreckage of Hurricane Milton throughout Thursday, after the storm smashed through coastal communities, where it tore homes into pieces, filled streets with mud and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes. At least six people were dead.

Among the most dramatic rescues, Hillsborough County officers found a 14-year-old boy floating on a piece of fence and pulled him on to a boat.

Despite the destruction, many people expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialised.

At least 340 individuals and 49 pets have been rescued in ongoing efforts, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Thursday afternoon.

Arriving just two weeks after the misery wrought by Hurricane Helene, the system also knocked out power to more than 3 million people, flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off a baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.

The man rescued off the coast clinging to the ice box was taken to Tampa general hospital for medical treatment, the coast guard said. The agency estimated he had survived winds of 75-90mph (121-145km/h) and waves up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) high during his night on the water. The fate of his boat was unknown.

A US Coast Guard helicopter crew rescued a man who was left clinging to an ice box in the Gulf of Mexico after his boat was stranded overnight in waters roiled by Hurricane Milton.

The man was aboard a fishing vessel that became disabled on Wednesday off Madeira Beach, Florida, hours before the hurricane made landfall, said coast guard press officer Nicole Groll. The man, who was not identified, was able to radio the coast guard station in nearby St Petersburg before contact was lost about 6.45pm.

But on Thursday searchers located the man about 30 miles (48km) off Longboat Key, Florida, clinging to an open cooler chest, a video clip provided by the coast guard shows. In the video, a coast guard diver was lowered from a helicopter and swam to the man to pick him up.

“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” coast guard official Dana Grady said.

Rescue teams continued pull Florida residents from the wreckage of Hurricane Milton throughout Thursday, after the storm smashed through coastal communities, where it tore homes into pieces, filled streets with mud and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes. At least six people were dead.

Among the most dramatic rescues, Hillsborough County officers found a 14-year-old boy floating on a piece of fence and pulled him on to a boat.

Despite the destruction, many people expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialised.

At least 340 individuals and 49 pets have been rescued in ongoing efforts, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Thursday afternoon.

Arriving just two weeks after the misery wrought by Hurricane Helene, the system also knocked out power to more than 3 million people, flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off a baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.

The man rescued off the coast clinging to the ice box was taken to Tampa general hospital for medical treatment, the coast guard said. The agency estimated he had survived winds of 75-90mph (121-145km/h) and waves up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) high during his night on the water. The fate of his boat was unknown.

The death toll from Hurricane Milton rose to at least 10 on Thursday as Florida continued to assess the damage from the category 3 storm that caused extensive property damage across the state and left more than 3.5m homes and businesses without power.

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

The Volusia county sheriff, Michael Chitwood, said three people died in his county, and police in St Petersburg confirmed two storm-related deaths there.

Parts of Sarasota, Fort Myers, Venice and other Gulf coast cities were inundated by up to 10ft (3 metres) 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.

“Our hearts break for the Floridians who have lost so much,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said in an afternoon briefing from the White House.

Rescue operations were still under way into Thursday afternoon, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said at a press briefing. Authorities had already rescued at least 340 people and 49 pets, DeSantis said, including a 14-year-old boy found floating in floodwaters on a piece of fence.

A US Coast Guard crew rescued a man who was clinging to an ice chest in the Gulf of Mexico, about 30 miles (50km) off the coast, after his boat broke down before Milton made landfall.

In Tampa, 135 people were rescued from an assisted living facility. The city’s police department also released video of officers rescuing multiple children from a house that was partially destroyed by a fallen tree.

Joe Biden addressed the disaster from Washington DC, telling reporters he had spoken to DeSantis and local officials and promised his administration would ensure “they have everything they need” to respond to the disaster.

“This is a whole of government effort,” the US president said, naming multiple departments and promising that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would open disaster recovery centers in impacted areas “right away”.

Biden praised efforts of US Coast Guard personnel and urban search and rescue teams, and local officials whose early evacuation orders allowed hundreds of thousands of people to escape the path of the storm, and tens of thousands more to ride out the storm in emergency shelters.

“It’s too early to know the full account of the damage, but we know lifesaving measures did make a difference. More than 80,000 people followed orders to safely shelter last night,” he said.

DeSantis 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. State crews, he said, rescued 108 individuals and 18 animals.

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).

By mid-afternoon Thursday, the NHC downgraded a fast-weakening Milton to a post-tropical cyclone as it moved further away from Florida in the Atlantic, but warned there were still significant ongoing hazards.

“We still have on the backside of Milton strong winds, heavy rainfall and storm surge affecting portions of the east coast of Florida, with tropical storm conditions and storm surge affecting the Georgia coast, and even some strong winds up into the South Carolina coast,” Michael Brennan, the NHC director, said in a video briefing.

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 five deaths in St Lucie county were at the Spanish Lakes Country Club in Fort Pierce, WPBF 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 11m people were 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 3.1m homes and businesses in Florida were still without power at 3.30pm ET on Thursday, down from a peak of more than 3.5m.

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.

In Orlando, Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and Sea World said theme parks would reopen on Friday.

Now, Florida is faced with a huge cleanup. At the news conference, DeSantis said 9,000 national guard members were deployed, as well as 50,000 utility workers from as far as California.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said a ceasefire with Russia is not under discussion with European allies as he urged more western support ahead of winter during a whistle-stop tour of four capitals. The Ukrainian president discussed his proposed “victory plan” with the leaders of Britain, France and Italy as well as the incoming head of Nato. “The next peace summit has to be in November. The plan will be on the table … early November the plan will be with all the details,” the Ukrainian president told reporters in Paris on Thursday when asked about a potential peace conference. He dismissed any talk of a ceasefire, while also giving no specific details in London or Paris on the “victory plan”.

• Zelenskyy also discussed whether Ukraine could use western missiles against targets in Russia in talks earlier on Thursday with Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, and Mark Rutte, the Nato chief. “We discussed it today, but in the end it is up to the individual allies,” Rutte told reporters in Downing Street after the talks. Starmer’s spokesperson said there had been no change to the UK government’s position on the use of long-range missiles.

• The Italian prime minister announced Rome would host the next “recovery conference” to help Ukraine’s reconstruction, after talks with Zelenskyy on Thursday. “Ukraine is not alone and we will stand with it for as long as needed,” Giorgia Meloni told reporters after having dinner with the Ukrainian leader. After previous conferences in Switzerland, London and Berlin, Meloni said the next Ukraine recovery conference would take place on 10-11 July 2025 in Rome.

• In Paris, the French president sought to show that his country is still fully behind Kyiv in its war despite political difficulties at home that have raised questions about how much help France will be able to give in the coming months. Emmanuel Macron said France would keep to its current commitments, which include €3bn ($3.28bn) in support this year. Paris is training and equipping a brigade of 3,000 Ukrainian troops and plans to send Mirage fighter jets to Ukraine at the beginning of next year.

• A Ukrainian journalist who was captured by Moscow while reporting from occupied east Ukraine has died in Russian detention, according to Ukrainian officials. Victoria Roshchyna, who would have turned 28 this month, disappeared in August last year after travelling to Russian-held east Ukraine for a report. She remained missing until April this year, when her father received a letter from Moscow’s defence ministry saying she was being held in Russian detention, according to Ukraine’s main journalist union. The circumstances of her arrest were not made public and it was not clear where she was being held inside Russia.

• The World Bank’s executive board has approved the creation of a financial intermediary fund to support Ukraine, with contributions expected from the US, Canada and Japan, Reuters reported three sources familiar with the decision as saying. The only objection to the vote came from Russia, two sources said. The fund, to be administered by the World Bank, will help fulfil a pledge by G7 countries to provide Ukraine with up to $50bn in additional funding by the end of the year, the sources said on Thursday. Exact amounts to be contributed by the US, Japan and Canada were still being worked out but would be backed by interest from frozen Russian sovereign assets, one of the sources said.

• Ukraine’s presidency has been accused of pressuring the country’s Ukrainska Pravda news outlet, an allegation legislators urged prosecutors to “verify”. The outlet accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration on Wednesday of “exerting pressure” in order to influence editorial policy. Ukrainska Pravda said the issue was “particularly outrageous” during Russia’s invasion, “when our common struggle for both survival and democratic values is essential”.

• Russia attacked Ukraine’s port infrastructure almost 60 times in the past three months and is intensifying such strikes, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister has said. “The purpose of these attacks is to reduce our export potential,” Oleksiy Kuleba said. “We are talking about deliberately provoking a food crisis in those parts of the world that directly depend on Ukrainian grain supplies.” Kuleba added that strikes damaged or destroyed almost 300 port infrastructure facilities and 22 civilian vessels.

Eighteen theatregoers at Stuttgart’s state opera required medical treatment for severe nausea over the weekend after watching a performance that included live piercing, unsimulated sexual intercourse and copious amounts of fake and real blood.

“On Saturday we had eight and on Sunday we had 10 people who had to be looked after by our visitor service,” said the opera’s spokesperson, Sebastian Ebling, about the two performances of Sancta, a work by the Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger. A doctor had been called in for treatment in three instances, he added.

Holzinger, 38, is known for freewheeling performances that blur the line between dance theatre and vaudeville. Her all-female cast typically performs partially or fully naked, and previous shows have included live sword-swallowing, tattooing, masturbation and action paintings with blood and fresh excrement.

“Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,” Holzinger told the Guardian in an interview earlier this year.

Sancta, Holzinger’s first foray into opera, premiered at the Mecklenburg state theatre in Schwerin in May, and is based on Paul Hindemith’s 1920s expressionist opera Sancta Susanna, which has its own history of controversy.

Hindemith’s original opera tells the story of a young nun who, aroused by a tale told by one of the nunnery’s older women, steps on to the altar naked and rips the loincloth from Christ’s torso. An encounter with a large spider leads her to repent her action and beg the other nuns to wall her up alive.

It was originally meant to premiere at Stuttgart’s state opera in 1921, but was not put on stage until 1922 after protests against its allegedly sacrilegious content.

The version that unsettled audience members in Stuttgart this year supplanted the original musical performance with naked nuns rollerskating on a movable half-pipe at the centre of the stage, a wall of crucified naked bodies and a lesbian priest saying mass.

After Holzinger brought Sancta to her native Vienna in June, bishops from Salzburg and Innsbruck criticised it as a “disrespectful caricature of the holy mass”.

The Austrian artist has previously suggested that her opera was less designed to mock the church than explore parallels between the conservative institution on the one hand, and kink communities and BDSM subcultures on the other.

“We recommend that all audience members once again very carefully read the warnings so they know what to expect,” Ebling told the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper. Visitors to the adults-only show were alerted in advance to a long list of warnings for potential triggers including incense, loud noises, explicit sexual acts and sexual violence.

“If you have questions, speak to the visitor service,” Ebling added. “And when in doubt during the performance, it might help to avert your gaze.”

Reports of medical treatment in the auditorium do not appear to have done Holzinger’s Sancta any commercial harm. All five remaining shows at the Stuttgart state opera, as well as two performances at Berlin’s Volksbühne in November, have since sold out.

A Claude Monet pastel looted from a Jewish couple by Nazis in the second world war was returned to the family’s descendants, officials said on Wednesday.

Adalbert “Bela” and Hilda Parlagi purchased the artwork, titled Bord de Mer, at an Austrian art auction in 1936. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Parlagis had to flee and they left their possessions in storage.

The Nazis in 1940 seized their belongings, which included seven other artworks, and a Nazi art dealer purchased the pastel. The Monet, which dates to about 1865, subsequently “disappeared” in 1941, the FBI said in a press release.

Bela Parlagi searched for his stolen art after the second world war until he died in 1981. His son also tried to find the family’s art, to no avail, until his 2012 death.

FBI agents started to investigate the stolen pastel in 2021 after the Commission for Looted Art in Europe contacted authorities about the pastel. The commission had learned that a New Orleans art dealer acquired the pastel in 2017 and sold it to private collectors two years later.

The pastel was listed for sale at a Houston, Texas, art gallery in 2023. FBI agents and New York City police detectives contacted the pastel’s owners – who did not know its provenance – and explained that it had been looted.

The owners voluntarily surrendered the pastel to authorities and gave up their ownership rights. The work was returned to the Parlagis’ granddaughters, Helen Lowe and Francoise Parlagi.

“It’s an act of justice to have it returned,” Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, reportedly said. “It has huge sentimental feeling for the family.”

James Dennehy, assistant director in charge of the FBI in New York City, said his agents were “honored” to have helped return the art.

“While this Monet is undoubtedly valuable, its true worth lies in what it represents to the Parlagi family,” Dennehy said in a press release. “It’s a connection to their history, their loved ones, and a legacy that was nearly erased. The emotions tied to reclaiming something taken so brutally can’t be measured in dollars – it’s priceless.”

Federal authorities are continuing to investigate art stolen from the Parlagis, including the 1903 Paul Signac watercolor Seine in Paris (Pont de Grenelle). The same Nazi art dealer who trafficked their Monet also purchased this Signac.

Because of the Signac watercolor’s history, the FBI said it’s “very likely” the work is now known by a different name. The Signac was placed in the FBI’s National Stolen Art File (NSAF) catalog and authorities are urging anyone with information to come forward.

Some 20% of the art in Europe was looted by Nazis, according to the National Archives. The World Jewish Restitution Organization and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany released a report in March indicating that 24 countries “had made little or no progress” in returning art stolen during the Holocaust.

The reported estimated that more than 100,000 of the 600,000 “paintings and many more of the millions of books, manuscripts, ritual religious items, and other cultural objects” stolen during the Holocaust have not been returned.

The two dozen countries that have lagged in their Nazi art recovery efforts, which include Russia and Turkey, are among more than 40 nations that in 1998 backed the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. The principles were meant to foster the return of looted art and cultural works.

Reuters contributed reporting

A Claude Monet pastel looted from a Jewish couple by Nazis in the second world war was returned to the family’s descendants, officials said on Wednesday.

Adalbert “Bela” and Hilda Parlagi purchased the artwork, titled Bord de Mer, at an Austrian art auction in 1936. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Parlagis had to flee and they left their possessions in storage.

The Nazis in 1940 seized their belongings, which included seven other artworks, and a Nazi art dealer purchased the pastel. The Monet, which dates to about 1865, subsequently “disappeared” in 1941, the FBI said in a press release.

Bela Parlagi searched for his stolen art after the second world war until he died in 1981. His son also tried to find the family’s art, to no avail, until his 2012 death.

FBI agents started to investigate the stolen pastel in 2021 after the Commission for Looted Art in Europe contacted authorities about the pastel. The commission had learned that a New Orleans art dealer acquired the pastel in 2017 and sold it to private collectors two years later.

The pastel was listed for sale at a Houston, Texas, art gallery in 2023. FBI agents and New York City police detectives contacted the pastel’s owners – who did not know its provenance – and explained that it had been looted.

The owners voluntarily surrendered the pastel to authorities and gave up their ownership rights. The work was returned to the Parlagis’ granddaughters, Helen Lowe and Francoise Parlagi.

“It’s an act of justice to have it returned,” Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, reportedly said. “It has huge sentimental feeling for the family.”

James Dennehy, assistant director in charge of the FBI in New York City, said his agents were “honored” to have helped return the art.

“While this Monet is undoubtedly valuable, its true worth lies in what it represents to the Parlagi family,” Dennehy said in a press release. “It’s a connection to their history, their loved ones, and a legacy that was nearly erased. The emotions tied to reclaiming something taken so brutally can’t be measured in dollars – it’s priceless.”

Federal authorities are continuing to investigate art stolen from the Parlagis, including the 1903 Paul Signac watercolor Seine in Paris (Pont de Grenelle). The same Nazi art dealer who trafficked their Monet also purchased this Signac.

Because of the Signac watercolor’s history, the FBI said it’s “very likely” the work is now known by a different name. The Signac was placed in the FBI’s National Stolen Art File (NSAF) catalog and authorities are urging anyone with information to come forward.

Some 20% of the art in Europe was looted by Nazis, according to the National Archives. The World Jewish Restitution Organization and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany released a report in March indicating that 24 countries “had made little or no progress” in returning art stolen during the Holocaust.

The reported estimated that more than 100,000 of the 600,000 “paintings and many more of the millions of books, manuscripts, ritual religious items, and other cultural objects” stolen during the Holocaust have not been returned.

The two dozen countries that have lagged in their Nazi art recovery efforts, which include Russia and Turkey, are among more than 40 nations that in 1998 backed the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. The principles were meant to foster the return of looted art and cultural works.

Reuters contributed reporting

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.

More than a century after it sank below the icy Weddell Sea in Antarctica, forcing its crew to embark on one of the most celebrated survival quests in history, new images have revealed the remarkable state of preservation of Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance.

The famed vessel, which sank in 1915 after becoming stuck in pack ice, was discovered in 2022 resting at a depth of 3km below what Shackleton called “the worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.

The images, compiled from thousands of detailed 3D scans of the wreckage, show how little it has altered or decayed in the century since, with the ship’s rigging, helm and woodwork all remarkably preserved under the icy waters.

In addition, a number of the crew’s dining plates can be seen resting on the deck, along with a single knee-length boot, which may have belonged to Frank Wild, Shackleton’s second-in-command.

Perhaps most remarkably of all, the images show a flare gun among the debris – the same gun that was fired by Frank Hurley, the expedition’s photographer, as the Endurance sank, an event he described in his diary.

“Hurley gets this flare gun, and he fires the flare gun into the air with a massive detonator as a tribute to the ship,” John Shears, who led the expedition that found Endurance, told the BBC. “And then in the diary, he talks about putting it down on the deck. And there we are. We come back over 100 years later, and there’s that flare gun. Incredible.”

The composite images were compiled from 25,000 digital scans mapped by underwater robots when the wreck was discovered, employing new laser and photogrammetric technology for the first time at this depth, according to the team behind them. They reveal the damage to the hull and masts by the crushing ice before the ship sank – which was also captured at the time in pioneering film footage by Hurley – but show that the vessel is otherwise largely unaltered.

“It’s absolutely fabulous. The wreck is almost intact like she sank yesterday,” said Nico Vincent, whose organisation Deep Ocean Search developed the technology for the scans, along with Voyis Imaging and McGill University.

Shackleton and his crew of 27 sailed to Antarctica in late 1914 planning to attempt the first land crossing of the continent, but quickly became icebound and helplessly stuck. For months they could do nothing but wait, listening to the groans and cracks of Endurance’s wooden hull being crushed by the ice and salvaging what they could before it sank in November 1915.

Shackleton was forced to lead his men across the ice, eventually reaching the tiny Elephant island, off the Antarctic peninsula. When it became apparent they could not survive there, he led a small party of five in a small boat on an epic 800 mile (1,300km) journey across rough seas to South Georgia, where he and two others then hiked across the island’s glaciers to reach a whaling station on the other side of the island. Though his initial expedition was a failure, every crew member survived.

The images have been released to accompany a new National Geographic documentary about the expedition and the 2022 quest to find the Endurance. In another technical innovation, the film uses AI tools to reconstruct the voices of Shackleton and six of his crew to allow them to “narrate” their own diaries.

“Being able to bring those diary readings to life using AI means you’re listening to Shackleton and his team narrating their own diaries, and it is their voices,” said Jimmy Chin, one of the directors. “That was something that couldn’t have been done even a few years ago, which really brings a new aspect of the film to life.”

• Endurance will be at London film festival on 12 October, in UK cinemas on 14 October and on Disney+ later this year.

A woman has been taken to hospital after her arm was severed in a vicious dog attack in north Queensland.

Emergency services were called to reports of a dog mauling at a Lonerganne Street property in Garbutt, a suburb of Townsville, just after 7am on Friday.

A woman in her 30s sustained significant injuries to her arm which was severed during the attack.

She was taken to Townsville University hospital.

Police attempted to subdue the dog but were unsuccessful and it was “euthanised” at the scene.

Officers said investigations into the attack were ongoing.

It followed another attack in a Melbourne back yard on Thursday when a woman was critically injured and the three dogs responsible fatally shot by police.

Going breakdancing today? If so, maybe go easy on the headspins. Unless you want to end up with a “cone-head”, that is.

Breakdancing’s extreme physical demands mean it is known to involve a high risk of injury: everything from hair loss to sprains and damage to almost every part of the anatomy.

But now breakdancing enthusiasts have been warned of a new danger: that spinning on their heads too much could lead to them developing a sizeable protrusion on top of their head.

This has emerged as a potential hazard in a case report in a leading medical journal about a man in his 30s in Denmark who developed such a visible lump on his head, as a result of undertaking breakdancing training up to five times a week for 19 years, that he had surgery to remove it.

It grew as a result of what breakdancers call “headspin hole” or “breakdance bulge”, which BMJ Case Reports describes as “a unique overuse injury in breakdancers caused by repetitive headspins”.

The case report, written by two of the doctors who treated him at Copenhagen university hospital, details how “his training regimen consisted of approximately five sessions a week, each lasting around one-and-a-half hours. During each session there was direct pressure applied to the vertex of the head [from spinning on it] for durations ranging from two minutes to seven minutes.”

Over the five years before he was referred for treatment for his protuberance, “there had been a notable increase in its size and the onset of tenderness. The presence of the lesion and associated discomfort were aesthetically displeasing to the patient, but the protuberance had not hindered the patient from continuing his head-spinning activities.”

Doctors initially considered a number of possible diagnoses, including that the bulge could be cancer or a benign tumour.

An MRI scan showed that it was what the authors of the case report call “a subgaleal mass measuring 34cm x 0.6cm x 2.9cm near the midline vertex”.

It turned out to be an extreme example of the lump on the scalp that “headspin hole” can involve. “In radiologic descriptions, the term ‘cone-head sign’ is used,” the doctors write.

The unnamed man, tired of wearing a cap or hat to hide his pointy growth, opted to have surgery rather than have injections of steroids, which may have shrunk it.

He was pleased with once again having a more normal-shaped head, he told BMJ Case Reports. “The outcome is much better than it looked before, and I am glad I had it done,” he said. “I would choose to do it again if I had the choice.

“It is now possible for me to go out in public without a cap/hat, which is of course a very nice feeling. I have received a lot of positive feedback and people say it looks well done, that I have a nice scar, and that my overall appearance has improved significantly.”

The case report does not say if he is still spinning on his head five times a week.