Benjamin Netanyahu’s house in the seaside town of Caesarea was hit by a drone on Saturday, causing superficial damage and no casualties, as Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon rage unabated after the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

The Israeli government said that one of the prime minister’s three homes was targeted by three drones, two of which were intercepted, and that neither Netanyahu nor his wife, Sara, were home at the time.

In a statement on Saturday night, Benjamin Netanyahu said: “The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake.”

Netanyahu vowed that Iran and its proxies would “pay a heavy price” and said Israel would continue to “eliminate the terrorists and those who dispatch them”.

Reports had emerged of his house in northern Israel being targeted on Saturday. The prime minister and his wife, Sara, were not home at the time. Israeli media later published a video of the prime minister walking in a park.

Israel’s air raid system was not triggered by the lightweight drones, which are difficult to detect. The Lebanese militia Hezbollah did not claim responsibility for the attack, but said it fired several barrages of rockets at northern and central Israel, which killed a 50-year-old man in Acre.

The rocket attacks came after Hezbollah said on Friday it had entered a new phase of the full-scale war that began with Israel’s ground invasion of southern Lebanon earlier this month. The Shia group, allied to Iran, said it planned to send more guided missiles and explosive drones into Israel.

On Saturday an Israeli drone strike killed two people driving on the highway in Jounieh, a Christian-majority city north of Beirut, marking the first time the city has been hit. The attack was the latest in a series of assassinations in northern Lebanon over the last month in areas that have otherwise not seen any Israeli strikes.

Eyewitness accounts said the drone fired at a car three times before a man and a woman fled the car on foot, where they were struck down in a field next to the highway. Glass storefronts near the airstrikes were shattered, shrapnel littered the highway and there was a crater where the couple was killed by the drone.

“I didn’t expect this here. Thank god my wife and daughter are OK, but my store is all broken,” Suhail Abd al-Karim, a 61-year-old who manages the building complex next to where the airstrike was carried out, told the Observer. He added that he expected that the target of the strike could have been affiliated with Hezbollah, though there has been no official information about the identity of those killed.

Israel also carried out at least three rare daytime airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, on Saturdayyesterday afternoon, with the blasts heard around the capital. Prior to the bombings, Israel issued warnings for people to evacuate at least 500 metres away from several buildings in Burj al-Barajneh and Chouifet, both neighbourhoods in Dahiyeh. The Israeli military said these were Hezbollah installations.

Israel also bombarded the Bekaa valley, killing five and wounding 13. Among the dead was Haidar Shahla, the mayor of the town of Suhmoor. Shahla was the second mayor killed by Israel in Lebanon this week. The mayor of Nabatieh, one of the largest cities in south Lebanon, was killed in a strike on the city’s municipality building on Wednesday.

The Israeli army also said on Saturday it killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander, Nasser Rashid, in the southern town of Bint Jbeil.

In Gaza, hospital officials said more than 50 people had been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past 24 hours amid Israel’s ferocious new assault on northern Gaza that has led to accusations Israel intends to forcibly expel the remaining 400,000 people living there. The Israeli army says the operation is aimed against regrouped cells of Hamas fighters.

At least two hospitals were targeted by Israeli forces on Saturday. At dawn, the Indonesia hospital in the northern town of Beit Lahiya was surrounded by Israeli tanks which shelled the upper floors of the complex and cut off the electricity, endangering staff and 40 patients and causing widespread panic, the local health ministry said. Two patients died due to oxygen shortages, medics said.

Al-Awda hospital in the Jabalia neighbourhood of Gaza City, already struggling to deal with the aftermath of a nearby strike overnight on Friday that killed 33 people, was also targeted by tank shelling that injured several staff members, the director said in a statement.

The killing of Sinwar in the southern city of Rafah after a year-long hunt for the architect of the 7 October Hamas attack that triggered the war in Gaza briefly raised hopes that an elusive ceasefire and hostage release deal could be reached.

Both Israel and Hamas, however, have so far stuck to their incompatible positions. Hamas has reiterated that Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian group will be released after a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, while Israel says it will not countenance leaving at least two areas of the territory.

Australia is carrying out a review of all 66 defence-related export permits for Israel that were approved prior to the Gaza conflict.

Guardian Australia understands the review is being done in a similar manner to the UK government’s recent reassessment of arms licences to Israel, with the outcome to be announced “in coming months”.

Sources said the Department of Defence was weighing up each permit on a case-by-case basis and considering how it fits with Australia’s international obligations, including with respect to human rights.

A Defence spokesperson confirmed the review was progressing: “As circumstances in the Middle East evolve, Australia continues to scrutinise pre-existing export permits to Israel to ensure they align with our calibrated approach.”

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The federal government has repeatedly stated that Australia “has not supplied weapons or ammunition to Israel since the conflict began and for at least the past five years”, and it continues to maintain that position.

But the government has faced criticism for failing to be transparent about what each permit covers. It has also defended Australia’s supply of parts for the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter aircraft. Israel has used F-35 aircraft in Gaza.

An export permit is required for any goods covered by Australia’s Defence and Strategic Goods List.

Defence officials told Senate estimates in June this year that Australia was “not a major defence exporter to Israel” but permits were required for a range of items, including IT equipment, software, radios, electronic components and dual-use goods.

Officials said Australia had issued about 247 permits that relate to Israel since 2019, of which about 66 remained “active”.

Shortly after those comments were made, Guardian Australia applied under freedom of information laws for an itemised list of the content of these 66 permits, but the Department of Defence did not meet the statutory deadline.

The application is now subject to a review by the Information Commissioner.

Defence officials hinted at the time that they would reassess existing permits, but Guardian Australia has since confirmed more details about the process.

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, told the House of Commons last month that the government would suspend 30 of the UK’s 350 existing arms licences to Israel because of “a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.

Australian officials are working their way through each active permit, looking at the export control criteria and talking to each of the companies involved.

It is understood the government has not yet revoked any of these permits but intends to finalise all decisions in one batch at the end of that review process.

“A permit would be refused if Australia identified an export would be used contrary to the national interest, including violating human rights,” the Defence spokesperson said.

“Permits are required for a broad range of goods and technologies, many of which have legitimate commercial and civilian applications.”

Guardian Australia can also reveal that Australia has now issued 12 defence-related export permits for Israel since October 2023, when the Hamas attacks triggered the Israeli military offensive on Gaza.

That figure is higher than the eight permits that were previously known at the time of the estimates committee hearing in June.

Defence says these export permits are required for items to travel from Australia to Israel for the purposes of repair or overhaul by Israeli suppliers before they return to Australia.

The Greens have called for an end to all two-way military trade with Israel, with the party’s defence spokesperson, David Shoebridge, saying Australia must not do anything to “embolden Israel to continue the genocide”.

But the Albanese government has pushed back at the idea of ending contracts with Israeli companies that supply goods for use by the Australian Defence Force and Australian police.

The review comes after an application from the Australian Centre for International Justice to the defence minister, Richard Marles, in April requesting the revocation of all current export permits to Israel and to other countries which might later make them available to Israel.

The centre was acting on behalf of Palestinian human rights organisations.

The centre’s executive director and principal lawyer, Rawan Arraf, said the government had “spent the last 12 months muddying the waters” about the export control regime.

She said that under the Arms Trade Treaty, Australia was obliged not to approve the export of conventional arms, munitions, parts or components when there was an overriding risk that the item could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law.

“The government has been put on notice, from the international court of justice, the international criminal court, the UN general assembly and other UN bodies, that Israel is committing serious violations of international law,” she said.

The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, has previously said he had “reasonable grounds to believe” two Israeli leaders and three Hamas leaders were responsible for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Israeli government has rejected the allegations in full, arguing the application for arrest warrants amounted to an attempt to deny the country’s right of self-defence.

The ICC pre-trial chamber has yet to make a decision on the arrest warrant applications. Israel said it had killed the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, in Gaza on Thursday, meaning that all three Hamas figures named in Khan’s application are now all believed to be dead.

The Israeli embassy was contacted for comment.

Israelis and others have ­welcomed the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and the ­master­mind of the 7 October 2023 attacks, as an “Osama bin Laden moment”. This reflects how many in Israel feel about the death of a man responsible for the ­murder of 1,200 people, mostly civilians and their compatriots, but ­terrorism experts have long debated the ­efficacy of eliminating the ­leaders of violent extremist groups, with some suggesting the strategy is counter-productive.

The truth is that no one is sure.

There are some cases where the elimination of a leader has brought definitive success. When the Mossad killed Wadie Haddad, leader of a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and responsible for a string of ­spectacular terrorist attacks in the 1970s, probably with poisoned ­chocolates, his group disintegrated. Hijackings and bombings ­continued, but were carried out by others.

Velupillai Prabhakaran, the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka, died in 2009 in a skirmish with government forces after a brutal campaign with ­many civilian casualties – though far fewer than the tens of –thousands in Gaza. This decisively closed a bloody decades-long civil war with complex social, ethnic, religious and economic roots.

Targeted killings were a mainstay of US strategy during the “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the work of Bin Laden and his al-Qaida. The advent of drones was one reason, but so was the growing reluctance to risk western soldiers’ lives in combat.

In Afghanistan, the killing of a series of Taliban leaders was lauded at the time but did ­nothing to change the circumstances, regional and local, that ultimately lent the movement its strength. “Hunting man is a difficult game,” one British brigadier blithely said in Kabul in 2006. It was also a futile one. The Taliban were ­undoubtedly hurt by their losses, and some ­studies show their capabilities ­suffered, but they were still able to retake power in 2021.

In Iraq, the US killed successive leaders of Sunni extremist ­jihadist groups. The elimination in 2006 of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the first prominent leader of al-Qaida’s ­affiliate there, merely cleared the way for competent, low-­profile local men to rebuild. These too were killed, eventually allowing the ­little known but ruthlessly effective Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to take over. He unleashed Islamic State on the region and eventually western Europe too.

Al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019, but the IS leaders who followed have been lacklustre – when they have stayed alive. The ­current head is thought to be a minor preacher and faction leader in a remote part of east Africa. So that could be counted as a win for those who support assassination as a strategy.

Then there’s Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah became leader of the Lebanon-based organisation in 1992 after his predecessor was killed by Israel, then ruled ­skilfully and ­effectively for 32 years, ­evading multiple efforts to end his life. Last month Israel killed not just Nasrallah but the entire top leadership echelon. This combination of “decapitation” and straightforward attrition is virtually unprecedented. Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah is reeling.

The US had its literal “Bin Laden moment” in 2011 when the founder and leader of al-Qaida was tracked to a Pakistani hide-out and killed by US special forces. Subsequently, under Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida gave up international attacks and entrenched itself in local communities. Al-Zawahiri was killed in 2022 and we still don’t really know who al-Qaida’s current leader is, not least because there is no one who has the profile of either predecessor.

Al-Qaida is still around, though it does not pose much of an ­international threat at the moment. This is less true of IS, which is gaining ground in Africa, active in Afghanistan and continues to inspire attacks elsewhere.

Israel has of course already killed many of the leaders and most ­capable operatives of Hamas in the past 20 years. Each death has forced change, but rarely that anticipated.

If the chequered history of ­decapitation strategies tells us ­anything, it is that it is almost impossible to predict what effect killing a leader will have. This may not matter to those who order the killings or to those who rejoice at the news of a successful assassination. Politics and entirely ­understandable desire for retribution and justice are important factors.

But any jubilation in Israel or elsewhere at the death of Sinwar should be tempered with an awareness that no one can know what will come next. It may indeed be the beginning of the end of the war in Gaza, as Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested. But the history of such killings ­suggests that, in the long term, any decisive victory will remain elusive.

France’s foreign minister pledged his support for Ukraine’s plan for ending the war with Russia, telling reporters in Kyiv on Saturday that he would work with Ukrainian officials to secure other nations’ backing for the proposal.

Presented by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this week, Kyiv’s “victory plan” hopes to compel Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine through negotiations.

The proposal is being considered by Ukraine’s western partners, whose help is vital for Kyiv to resist its bigger neighbour. A key element would be a formal invitation into Nato, which western backers have been reluctant to consider until after the war.

“A Russian victory would be a consecration for the law of the strongest and would push the international order toward chaos,” the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said at a joint news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha. “That is why our exchanges should allow us to make progress on President Zelenskyy’s victory plan and rally the greatest number possible of countries around it.”

Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, France has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest military, diplomatic and economic supporters in Europe, and is training and equipping what will become a full new brigade of Ukrainian soldiers for frontline deployment.

Zelenskyy said on Saturday that he expected the brigade would be in Ukraine by the end of November. “Brigade training is going ahead of schedule,” he said.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has also previously pushed for a policy shift from Ukraine’s western allies that could change the complexion of the war – allowing Kyiv to strike military bases inside Russia with sophisticated long-range weapons provided by western partners, which include missiles from France.

Barrot also announced that France would deliver the first batch of Mirage 2000 combat jets to Ukraine in the first three months of 2025, with Ukrainian pilots and mechanics also trained to fly and maintain them.

“By resisting against the invader with exceptional courage, you are not only fighting for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but you are also holding a frontline that separates Europe from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, that separates freedom from oppression,” the French minister said in Kyiv.

Barrot’s visit coincided with a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine late on Friday that included 190 prisoners of war traded by the two sides, under a deal negotiated by the United Arab Emirates.

Among the 95 Ukrainians were 34 Azov fighters who defended Mariupol and the Azovstal steelworks, the fortress-like plant in the now-occupied city where their last-ditch stand became a symbol of resistance against Moscow’s invasion.

Zelenskyy posted on X: “Ninety-five of our people are home again. These are the warriors who defended Mariupol and ‘Azovstal,’ as well as the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Kherson regions.”

The head of the Azov Brigade, Denys Prokopenko, said on Facebook that 34 Azov fighters had been returned, but that another 900 remained in Russian captivity.

A well-known Ukrainian human rights activist and service member, Maksym Butkevych, was also among the 95 exchanged. His release was announced by the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, the organisation that he co-founded.

The swap followed the repatriation of 501 dead soldiers to Ukraine on Friday in what appeared to be the biggest repatriation of war dead since the full-scale invasion began.

Most of the soldiers were killed in action in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, mostly around the city of Avdiivka, which Russian forces captured in February after a long and grueling battle, Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement.

Russia also received the bodies of 89 of its soldiers, the Russian lawmaker Shamsayil Saraliyev told reporters.

Elsewhere, the Russian Defense said that it shot down 16 Ukrainian drones over the Bryansk, Rostov, and Belgorod regions of Russia early on Saturday.

Local social media channels shared images that appeared to show a fire at a microelectronics factory in the Bryansk region. Russian authorities did not confirm the strike.

More than 100 Russian drones and missiles were also launched over Ukraine overnight, with 98 drones and six guided air missiles sighted over the country, the Ukrainian air force said. It said that it had shot down 42 of the drones and 46 more had disappeared from radar. Four missiles were also shot down, officials said. They did not specify the fate of the remaining drones or missiles.

• G7 defence ministers pledged “unwavering support” for Ukraine at the grouping’s first ever ministerial meeting dedicated to defence. “We underscore our intent to continue to provide assistance to Ukraine, including military assistance in the short and long term,” read the G7 defence ministers’ final statement after the meeting in Naples. The statement also backed Kyiv’s “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including Nato membership”. Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pitched his “victory plan” to the EU and Nato but failed to get the immediate membership invitation he was calling for. Ukraine’s admission to Nato would make political and diplomatic resolution of the conflict impossible and lead to its escalation, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.

• France’s foreign minister pledged support for Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” for ending the war with Russia, telling reporters in Kyiv on Saturday that he would work with Ukrainian officials to secure other nations’ backing for the proposal. Kyiv’s plan hopes to compel Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine through negotiations. The proposal is being considered by Ukraine’s western partners, whose help is vital for Kyiv to resist its bigger neighbour. A key element would be a formal invitation into Nato, which western backers have been reluctant to consider until after the war. “A Russian victory would be a consecration for the law of the strongest and would push the international order toward chaos,” the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said.

• Yet Zelenskyy’s plan to end Ukraine’s nearly three-year war with Russia has received mixed reactions from western allies so far, the Associated Press reports. The “victory plan” that Zelenskyy outlined at home and abroad includes a formal invitation for Ukraine to join Nato and permission to use western long-range missiles to strike military targets in Russia – two steps Kyiv’s allies have been reluctant to support before. US backing is crucial if Zelenskyy is to get support from other allies for proposals he believes are necessary to strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield and ahead of any peace negotiations. But analysts say the Biden administration is unlikely to make a decision before the US presidential election on 5 November, as it may not appeal to voters.

• Ukraine’s air-defence units were in operation trying to repel a new Russian air attack on Kyiv, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said late on Saturday. “Stay in shelters!” the mayor, Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.

• Ukraine launched a series of drones targeting Moscow and western Russia, officials said early on Sunday, adding that there were no injuries or significant damage reported. Russia’s air-defence units destroyed at least one drone flying towards Moscow, the mayor of the Russian capital Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram. Meanwhile, drone debris sparked several short-lived fires in the Lipetsk region in southwestern Russia, the region’s governor said. There were no injuries reported, he added. Governors of the Bryansk and Oryol region, also in western parts of Russia, reported that air defence units destroyed several drones there.
  A video purporting to show dozens of North Korean recruits lining up to collect Russian military fatigues has been released by Ukrainian officials, who say it shows the introduction of troops sent by Pyongyang into the conflict. The video, published by Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security, allegedly shows North Korean soldiers standing in line to pick up bags, clothes and other apparel from Russian servicemen. The centre said the footage was shot by a Russian soldier in recent days but did not say how the footage was obtained. The location is unknown.

• US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said he could not confirm reports that North Korea has sent troops to Russia ahead of what could be a deployment to the war in Ukraine, but added such a move would be concerning, if true. Ukraine foreign minister Andriy Sybiga warned Saturday that the involvement of North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia carried a “huge threat of further escalation” with the war at risk of “going beyond the current borders and boundaries”. And at the G7 meeting in Naples, German defence minister Boris Pistorius also said he was worried by the North Korean contribution to the Russian war effort. “(It) makes it clear that this conflict is spreading to other regions of the world in terms of its reach,” he said.

• Britain’s foreign secretary raised concerns about China’s support of Russia in its war against Ukraine on Friday, urging his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to prevent Chinese firms from supplying to Russia’s military in a meeting in Beijing. David Lammy made the comments as he made his first visit by a Cabinet minister to China since the Labor government took control in July. Lammy “reaffirmed that concerns over China’s supply of equipment to Russia’s military industrial complex risks damaging China’s relationships with Europe whilst helping to sustain Russia’s war,” the Foreign Office said in a statement. China’s readout of the meeting did not provide details or any response on the subject.

Kamala Harris highlighted the threat to women’s reproductive rights and Donald Trump’s apparent exhaustion at a rally Saturday in south Atlanta, continuing a full-court press for votes in Georgia as early voting breaks records here.

The race continues to appear close in Georgia, with polls suggesting the Republican nominee holds a one-point lead in the state. Trump has made multiple appearances in Georgia and has a rally with Turning Point Action planned in Gwinnett county, outside Atlanta, next week.

However, the National Rifle Association canceled a planned Saturday rally with Trump in Savannah, citing a “scheduling conflict”. Trump has also canceled several news interviews over the last week.

The Trump campaign has angrily pushed back against a suggestion raised by a staffer that Trump had been exhausted by the appearances. But Harris has seized the idea as a rallying cry.

“And now, he’s ducking debates, and canceling interviews because of exhaustion,” Harris said. “And when he does answer a question or speak at a rally, have you noticed that he tends to go off script and ramble, and generally for the life of him can’t finish a thought? … Folks are exhausted with someone trying to have Americans point their fingers at each other. We’re exhausted. That’s why I say it’s time to turn the page on that.”

Harris returned to familiar themes on a day of perfect Atlanta weather, describing the “opportunity economy” as one that brings down the cost of living for prescription medication, groceries and housing through anti-price-gouging initiatives, while providing financial support for new parents and entrepreneurs.

Extending Medicare coverage for home healthcare services would prevent working adults from having to quit a productive job or spend down savings to take care of aging parents. “It’s about dignity,” she said in the city’s Lakewood Amphitheater.

Harris will attend services Sunday at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a majority-Black megachurch in the heart of Atlanta’s Black suburbs in south DeKalb county. New Birth and other large Black churches in Georgia traditionally organize a “souls to the polls” push on Sunday early voting days.

As of 5pm Saturday, about 1.3 million Georgians had cast ballots early in person, more than double the 2020 pace on the fifth day of early voting in Georgia. In 2020, about 2.7 million out of 5 million voters cast ballots early in person, with more than two-thirds of votes cast before election day. Absentee ballots are down sharply, however, a reflection of the end of the pandemic and changes to absentee ballot rules.

Early voting provides real-time feedback for campaign strategists hoping to target voters who have not yet cast a ballot. Democrats pressed their supporters in Georgia to vote early in 2020 and 2022, a strategy that helped lead the party to victory in the 2020 presidential race and Georgia’s two vital wins in the US Senate.

“Georgia, out of nowhere, we made a way,” said the US Senator Jon Ossoff. “This is an election that will determine the character of our republic. This is much deeper than Democrats versus Republicans. Former president Trump is unfit for the presidency.”

But so far this year, early voting in rural and ex-urban areas of Georgia, rich in Republican votes, have outpaced core Atlanta turnout rates. Donald Trump has pointedly encouraged his supporters to vote early this year, a tacit acknowledgement of the strategic error of 2020.

Early voters among Democrats have been vocal about abortion policy driving their votes. The deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, two Georgia women who couldn’t access timely maternal health service or legal abortions, have resonated in the rhetoric of the election.

“Let us agree, one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree: the government should not be telling her what to do,” Harris said. The rally rolled clips of Thurman’s family describing their grief, and then of Trump mocking their loss in a town hall interview hosted by Fox News.

“He belittles their sorrow, making it about himself and his television ratings,” Harris said. “It’s cruel.”

But the Lakewood rally was plainly about driving turnout and enthusiasm among Black voters. Usher, an iconic Atlanta-based R&B musician and dancer, spoke early to the crowd, calling on people to vote early for Harris, and to reach out to friends and family.

“How we vote – I mean, everything that we do in the next 17 days – will affect our children, our grandchildren, of the people we love the most,” Usher said.

Ryan Wilson, the co-founder of private networking hub the Gathering Spot and a notable Atlanta entrepreneur, discussed the Harris proposal to offer up to $50,000 in grants to Black entrepreneurs. “That would have been a game changer for me,” he said. “Vice-President Harris’s opportunity agenda for Black men who provide folks like me the tools to achieve generational wealth, lower costs and protect their rights. And what would Donald Trump do? I think it’s fair to say: nothing.”

On the first day of early voting in Detroit, Michigan, rapper Lizzo campaigned for Kamala Harris, saying she rejected the argument that America was not ready for a female president, adding, “It’s about damn time”. In Atlanta, Georgia, Harris was joined by singer Usher, with the Democratic candidate describing Donald Trump’s speeches as “nonsense”.

With Harris and Trump essentially tied in the most competitive states, both campaigns are focused on early by mail or in person voting, with just 17 days until the 5 November election.

In the battleground of Pennsylvania, Trump escalated his personal attacks on Harris, calling her a “shit vice-president”. The Republican candidate had billed the event as the start of his final argument to voters but quickly went off script with a long story about Arnold Palmer that included remarks about the genitalia of the late golfing legend.

Here’s what else happened on Saturday:

Kamala Harris election news and updates

• In both Detroit and Atlanta, Harris urged her supporters to put in an all-out effort to win. “On election day, we don’t want to have any regrets about what we could have done these next 17 days,” she said. Harris hammered Trump for a second straight day for cancelling events and for avoiding another presidential debate because of what she called “exhaustion”. Her campaign called Trump’s Pennsylvania rally “junk”, saying he had focused on the issue “most important to voters in this election: a deceased golfer’s ‘anatomy’.”

• In Atlanta, Harris said Trump was “cruel” for how he talked about the grieving family of a Georgia mother who died after complications from an abortion pill. Harris blamed Amber Thurman’s death on Georgia’s abortion restrictions and referenced a clip of Trump at a Fox News town hall. When asked about the Thurman family joining a separate media call, Trump reportedly said “we’ll get better ratings, I promise.” “Donald Trump still refuses to take accountability, to take any accountability, for the pain and the suffering he has caused,” Harris said.

• Harris repeated her call for a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza and said it was important to seize the opportunity provided by the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Harris dodged a question on whether Arab American and Muslim anger over US support for Israel could cost her the election in the battleground state of Michigan, but said she would continue speaking out about the tragic loss of innocent lives. “I speak publicly all the time about the fact that there are so many tragic stories coming from Gaza,” Harris said.

Donald Trump election news and updates

• In Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Trump said Harris is further to the left than Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, adding “You have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it any more.” Trump underscored the importance of the eastern state’s electoral college delegates to the overall election: “If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole damn thing.”

• Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter. The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk, betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail

• Billionaire Mark Cuban – who has emerged as an energetic campaign surrogate for Harris – has told the Guardian that Trump’s planned tariffs could put “small retailers and manufacturers out of business.” “Small businesses don’t have the pricing elasticity of larger companies. They can’t pass on the incremental and administrative costs associated with tariffs.”

• Elsewhere another billionaire – Elon Musk – campaigned for Trump in Pennsylvania. Speaking in Harrisburg, he announced he would start randomly distribute cash awards – $1m each day until the election – to a registered voter in the state who signed his organisation’s petition. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has taken an increasingly visible role in Trump’s campaign and has donated almost $75m to his political organisation America PAC.

Read more about the 2024 US election:

• Presidential poll tracker

• Harris and Trump policies

• What to know about early voting

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter.

The potentially fake door-knocks – when canvassers falsely claim to have visited a home – could present a serious setback for Trump as he and Kamala Harris remain even in the polls with fewer than 20 days until an election.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk, betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns.

But leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.

The Arizona data, for example, shows that out of 35,692 doors hit by 442 canvassers working for Blitz Canvassing in the America Pac operation on Wednesday, 8,511 doors were flagged under the unusual survey logs.

The extent of the flagged doors in America Pac’s operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared with volunteers or campaign staff​.

America Pac denied it was experiencing that level of actual fraud in Arizona and Nevada and declined to comment on reporting for this story.

“Sidekick was never expected to handle the auditing of America Pac’s door operation. The reason the Pac is confident in its numbers is because of the auditing procedures each canvassing firm puts in place and the auditing procedures of the Pac writ large,” a person familiar with the America Pac operation said.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

But multiple people familiar with the Campaign Sidekick app, including a recent auditor for Blitz Canvassing and a senior executive at another vendor who signed a non-disclosure agreement with America Pac, agreed the unusual activity logs were an effective tool to detect cheaters.

The unusual activity logs, for instance, showed a canvasser who was marked by GPS as sitting at a Guayo’s On the Trail restaurant half a mile away from the doors he was supposedly hitting in Globe, Arizona. Another canvasser was recorded marking voters as “not home” two blocks away from that apartment.

The Guardian also conducted its own test to see whether manually removing instances of “false positives” – doors wrongly marked as fraudulent – would show the unusual activity logs were too sensitive. Using a randomly picked sample of 26 canvassers in Arizona, the rate of suspected fakes was in line with the overall rate.

Suspicious doors

The Trump campaign took a gamble this cycle when it outsourced the bulk of its ground game to political action committees, after the Federal Election Commission​ earlier this year for the first time allowed campaigns to coordinate its voter turnout efforts with ​outside groups.

The campaign initially envisaged multiple pacs helping to drive the Trump vote, but America Pac ultimately became the largest and most ambitious of the outside groups as it poured more than $29.8m into its field operation for Trump and became the only Pac with a material presence in every battleground state.

The largest of the other Pacs involved with doing field work, such as Turning Point Action and America ​First Works, have a smaller footprint. Turning Point’s team in Wisconsin has also since been subsumed into America Pac’s operation, two people familiar with the matter said.

A​s a result of its heavy investment, America Pac has been able to post impressive numbers of door-knocks in only a matter of months through its network of several vendors and dozens of subcontractors under those vendors in each of the battleground states.

But in the final stretch toward the election, as the total door-knocks have increased, so too have suspected fakes, according to the leaked data. On 15 October, 20.1% of doors in Arizona were flagged under the unusual activity logs. On 16 October, it rose to 23.8% and on 17 October, it hit 26.9%.

The uptick was also reflected in Nevada. On 15 October, 21.2% were flagged by the unusual survey log, a figure that rose on 16 October to 23.8% and then jumped dramatically on 17 October to 30.1%.

Under normal circumstances, a canvasser walks up to the door of a home where a Trump voter lives. The canvasser then navigates to a list of questions on the smartphone app and records responses to the survey.

An unusual activity report on the Campaign Sidekick app is auto-generated when a survey is filled out by a canvasser some distance from the location of the target voter’s home.

The app has built-in tolerances and generates an unusual survey report after taking into account several factors, such as how quickly the canvasser at issue is supposedly hitting doors and whether the responses are recorded more than 100ft away from the target door.

America Pac has said its auditing is done by its vendors. In Arizona and Nevada, Blitz Canvassing is understood to audit the numbers at least every five days and, when a canvasser is caught cheating, they are immediately fired with their walkbooks reassigned to another canvasser.

“The America Pac field program is the most robust and effective outside canvassing effort ever, knocking on more doors with more people in more isolated terrain than has ever been done before,” America Pac’s vendors Blitz Canvassing, Echo Canyon, Synapse Group, Patriot Grassroots and Campaign Sidekick said in a joint statement.

“We are fully confident in the authenticity of our door counts thanks to the rigorous auditing infrastructure each canvassing firm deploys to supplement Campaign Sidekick’s strong capabilities, and we are on pace to exceed every single one of our door goals,” the statement said.

But that auditing system used in Arizona and Nevada only works if the fraudulent canvassers are caught quickly, which has not always been the case. In one instance, one canvasser was terminated for blatant fraud only after he had worked for five days and supposedly hit 796 doors – with every single one flagged as suspicious.

Part of the problem with paid canvassing, in general, is that canvassing vendors are disincentivized to fire canvassers the more doors they hit because the vendors are paid by the door. If the doors are not hit, the vendor owes money back to the client or owes that many “free” doors.

For America Pac, there is further disincentive for vendors to fire canvassers who might only be frauding one door out of every 10 – effectively someone who just cuts corners – because the labor supply of canvassers is diminished this late in the cycle and hiring a replacement is increasingly difficult, two people familiar with the situation said.

Chris Hoy, the six-time Olympic gold medallist, has disclosed he has “two to four years” left to live after a terminal cancer diagnosis.

The 48-year-old told the Sunday Times that a scan in September showed a tumour in his shoulder.

And a second scan two days later found the main cancer to be in his prostate which has since metastasised to Hoy’s shoulder, pelvis, hip, ribs and spine and was stage 4.

Hoy had announced in February that he was being treated for the disease.

The 11-time track cycling world champion told the newspaper: “As unnatural as it feels, this is nature.

“You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process.”

He added: “You remind yourself, aren’t I lucky that there is medicine I can take that will fend this off for as long as possible.”

The father of two said his chemotherapy had “no guarantee” of shrinking his tumours but on “the sliding scale” of predictions it achieved the most promising results.

Of the men who first trialled in 2011 the medication he is taking, a quarter are still alive.

Hoy, whose grandfather and father both had prostate cancer, added: “One in four may sound like a terrible stat. But to me that’s like, one in four!”

“I do have faith that there are amazing things happening all the time,” he added.

In his new book All That Matters, the former track cyclist discloses that his wife, Sarra, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis last year.

The couple, who married at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh in 2010, have a son and daughter.

Hoy wrote of Sarra’s diagnosis: “It’s the closest I’ve come to … why me? Just, what? What’s going on here? It didn’t seem real.

“It was such a huge blow, when you’re already reeling. You think nothing could possibly get worse.

“You literally feel like you’re at rock bottom, and you find out, oh no, you’ve got further to fall. It was brutal.”

On his wife’s optimism, he said: “She says all the time, ‘How lucky are we? We both have incurable illnesses for which there is some treatment. Not every disease has that. It could be a lot worse.’”

Cuba’s government said on Saturday it had made some progress in gradually re-establishing electrical service across the island, including to hospitals and parts of the capital, Havana, after state-run media earlier reported the national grid had collapsed for a second time in 24 hours.

Most of Cuba’s 10 million people, however, remained without electricity on Saturday afternoon.

Traffic lights were dark at intersections throughout Havana, and most commerce was halted. Long lines formed at state-subsidised shops where Cubans buy bread and other staples.

The country’s top electricity official, Lázaro Guerra, said the grid operator, UNE, was working to raise enough capacity in the system to start several power plants and restore electricity to larger swathes of the country.

“I cannot assure you that we will be able to complete linking the system today, but we are estimating that there should be important progress today,” Guerra said on a TV newscast. The Guardian has verified that parts of the island are regaining electrical service.

Cuba was plunged into blackout for a second time on Saturday after its electrical grid collapsed again hours after authorities announced they had begun re-establishing service.

CubaDebate, a state-run media outlet, said the grid operator, UNE, had reported the “total disconnection of the national electro-energetic system” and was working on re-establishing it.

The electrical grid first collapsed at about midday on Friday after one of the island’s largest power plants failed, leaving more than 10 million people without power.

Even before the collapse, an electricity shortfall on Friday had forced Cuba’s communist-run government to send nonessential state workers home and cancel school classes as it sought to conserve fuel for generation. But lights began to flicker on in scattered pockets across the island early in the evening on Friday, offering some hope that power would be restored. UNE has not yet provided any details on what caused the grid to collapse again on Saturday, or how long it would take to re-establish service.

There have been weeks of worsening blackouts, often lasting 10-20 hours, across much of the island, which Cuba’s government has blamed on deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand. Strong winds that began with Hurricane Milton last week had also made it harder to deliver scarce fuel from boats offshore, officials have said.

Fuel deliveries to the island have dropped off significantly this year, as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once leading suppliers, have reduced their exports to Cuba. Venezuela slashed its deliveries of subsidised fuel by half this year, forcing the island to search for far more expensive oil on the spot market.

Cuba’s government also blames the US trade embargo, as well as sanctions imposed under the former US president Donald Trump, for its difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate and maintain its oil-fired plants. On Friday, the US denied any role in the grid collapse in Cuba.

Hurricane Oscar, which is forming north of the Dominican Republic, threatens to bring heavy rains and strong winds to parts of north-eastern Cuba in the coming days, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Cuba’s government said on Saturday it had made some progress in gradually re-establishing electrical service across the island, including to hospitals and parts of the capital, Havana, after state-run media earlier reported the national grid had collapsed for a second time in 24 hours.

Most of Cuba’s 10 million people, however, remained without electricity on Saturday afternoon.

Traffic lights were dark at intersections throughout Havana, and most commerce was halted. Long lines formed at state-subsidised shops where Cubans buy bread and other staples.

The country’s top electricity official, Lázaro Guerra, said the grid operator, UNE, was working to raise enough capacity in the system to start several power plants and restore electricity to larger swathes of the country.

“I cannot assure you that we will be able to complete linking the system today, but we are estimating that there should be important progress today,” Guerra said on a TV newscast. The Guardian has verified that parts of the island are regaining electrical service.

Cuba was plunged into blackout for a second time on Saturday after its electrical grid collapsed again hours after authorities announced they had begun re-establishing service.

CubaDebate, a state-run media outlet, said the grid operator, UNE, had reported the “total disconnection of the national electro-energetic system” and was working on re-establishing it.

The electrical grid first collapsed at about midday on Friday after one of the island’s largest power plants failed, leaving more than 10 million people without power.

Even before the collapse, an electricity shortfall on Friday had forced Cuba’s communist-run government to send nonessential state workers home and cancel school classes as it sought to conserve fuel for generation. But lights began to flicker on in scattered pockets across the island early in the evening on Friday, offering some hope that power would be restored. UNE has not yet provided any details on what caused the grid to collapse again on Saturday, or how long it would take to re-establish service.

There have been weeks of worsening blackouts, often lasting 10-20 hours, across much of the island, which Cuba’s government has blamed on deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand. Strong winds that began with Hurricane Milton last week had also made it harder to deliver scarce fuel from boats offshore, officials have said.

Fuel deliveries to the island have dropped off significantly this year, as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once leading suppliers, have reduced their exports to Cuba. Venezuela slashed its deliveries of subsidised fuel by half this year, forcing the island to search for far more expensive oil on the spot market.

Cuba’s government also blames the US trade embargo, as well as sanctions imposed under the former US president Donald Trump, for its difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate and maintain its oil-fired plants. On Friday, the US denied any role in the grid collapse in Cuba.

Hurricane Oscar, which is forming north of the Dominican Republic, threatens to bring heavy rains and strong winds to parts of north-eastern Cuba in the coming days, the US National Hurricane Center said.

In many countries around the world, breakfast TV means cele­brity interviews, soap operas and last night’s football highlights. On the German-language channel 3sat this Sunday morning, it means a one-hour philosophical discussion on trauma psychology, followed by a book review programme and a classical concert by the Munich Radio Orchestra.

The collaboration between public broadcasters in Austria, Germany and Switzerland is a unique experi­ment in pan-European broadcasting that has defied doubters for almost four decades: highbrow television.

Yet whether 3sat will get to cele­brate its 40th anniversary this De­cember is in serious doubt. At a summit in Leipzig this week, the heads of Germany’s 16 federal states will consider a proposal to close the world’s most donnish TV station by merging it “partially or completely” into Arte, the Franco-German culture channel that is embarking on a Europe-wide expansion.

Admirers of 3sat’s resolute intellectualism say the merger plans are a sign that authorities are bowing to populist attacks on public service broadcasting, by cutting culture programming that may appear painless but which is also unlikely to save much money. A petition to save the channel has been signed by 140,000 people including the film director Wim Wenders and actor Sandra Hüller.

But the debate over 3sat’s future also raises questions over the reformability of Germany’s public broadcasting system, which has one the biggest budgets in the world but is also one of the most complex and decentralised.

3sat was launched in 1984 as an antidote to what the then head of Austria’s public broadcaster bemoaned as the “­feeble-mindedness” of mainstream television. The bulk of its content is provided by the two main German public broadcasting channels, ARD and ZDF, with Austria’s ORF contributing 25% and Switzerland’s SRG supplying 10% of its programming.

“To make a daily feuilleton [arts and ideas] programme for tele­vision was something no one else dared do,” says the journalist and philosopher Gert Scobel, who presents several channel’s flagship shows. “Everyone told us we would last only three weeks.”

Among its mainstays are Scobel’s science programme Nano and the culture news programme Kulturzeit, which go out during mornings and evenings each weekday, as well as themed days on subjects as diverse as the dramatist Bertolt Brecht, Afghan history and genetics. It is the only channel to show all the three countries’ main news programmes, and to live-broadcast the two-week-plus Theatertreffen festival in Berlin and readings from the three-day Bachmannpreis poetry competition in Klagenfurt.

Scobel says: “I tell the guests on my show that each programme only has one aim – to leave viewers smarter than they were before, and that they approach each subject from different directions with the aim of finding a solution.”

3sat’s market share is only about 1% in each of the three collaborating countries, though with 90m German-language households, its viewing figures are considerable. The channel costs German public broadcasters around €92m a year, roughly the same as the German children’s TV channel Kika.

But, as in other countries across Europe, Germany is facing an increasingly acrimonious debate over state-funded public service broadcasting. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland has vowed to shrink the public broadcasters down to a tenth of their current size, scrap the compulsory licence fee and finance the remaining offering with a tax on streaming giants such as Amazon and Netflix.

Where the popu­list right is buoyant, centrist parties have fallen in line: in Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg, the Christian Democrat and Social Democrat state premiers have in the past few years tried to block plans for a licence fee rise.

From 2025, people registered in Germany face a monthly licence fee of €18.94 (£15.78), slightly higher than its equivalent in the UK (£14.12). France scrapped its licence fee altogether in 2022. In multilingual Switzerland, the fee is higher still at SFr27.91 (£24.73) and there is political pressure to cut back spending on public service television.

High-minded 3sat could become the sacrificial lamb on the altar of the populist zeitgeist. Swiss broadcaster SRF said it would not comment on German proposals to close the jointly funded channel. Only Austria’s ORF said it would seek an “intense exchange” with its partners on the station’s future, insisting it was “essential” that its marquee TV productions reach an international audience.

Not all criticism of 3sat is motivated by populist rabble-­rousing. The channel’s budget has been salami-sliced for years and its schedule increasingly includes reruns of period dramas, crime shows and wildlife documentaries.

“A lot of the original programmes produced by 3sat deserved to be protected, but are we sure we need them all in a separate channel?” asks Stefan Niggemeier, a German journalist and media commentator.

Its shortcomings are exposed by comparison with the Franco-German culture broadcaster Arte, which presents itself less and less as a linear TV channel and more and more as an arts-focused streaming platform, a “Netflix for the educated classes”, as the broadsheet Die Zeit has called it.

Established via a treaty between France and Germany in 1990, six years after the birth of 3sat, Arte has gained considerable momentum in recent years after the French president Emmanuel Macron proposed developing it into a “European platform”. Over the past six years, it has added offerings of programmes subtitled or dubbed into Polish, Italian, Spanish and English.

“Because Arte had to straddle a language barrier, it was always under more pressure to develop its own identity and come up with original ideas,” says Niggemeier. “Arte has managed to stay cool, while 3sat feels like a magazine for linear television.”

He doubts that politicians will close the German-speaking world’s most erudite TV channel in the immediate future. “But in the long-term, I think it’s right to ask how we can change it.”

Zayn Malik has announced that he will reschedule his tour after the “heartbreaking” death of his former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne.

Payne, 31, died on Wednesday after a fall from a third-floor balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Malik was due to perform in San Francisco on Wednesday before playing several more US dates this month and in November, which will be rescheduled.

The 31-year-old is also scheduled to perform in the UK in Edinburgh, London, Wolverhampton, Leeds, Newcastle and Manchester throughout the final two months of this year. A spokesperson for Malik told the PA news agency those dates were unchanged.

Malik, who left the boyband in 2015 before they went on hiatus the following year, wrote on X on Saturday: “Given the heartbreaking loss experienced this week, I’ve made the decision to postpone the US leg of the Stairway to the Sky Tour.

“The dates are being rescheduled for January and I’ll post them as soon as it’s all set in the next few days.

“Your tickets will remain valid for the new dates. Love you all and thank you for your understanding.”

Earlier on Saturday, Payne’s sister Ruth Gibbins said she didn’t “feel this world was good enough or kind enough” to him as she paid tribute on social media.

She said her brother’s ability to make her laugh is what she “loved most” about him, adding she was “in awe” of his talent.

Gibbins wrote on Instagram: “My brain is struggling to catch up with what’s happening and I don’t understand where you’ve gone.

“What I love most about you is your ability to make me laugh, I never chuckle as much as I do when I’m with you with anyone else.

“I’m always in awe of your talent, it should be illegal to be so talented and just have the ability to not only be good at things but be bloody great at everything you attempt, without even knowing you’re absolutely smashing it each time.”

Gibbins added: “I don’t feel this world was good enough or kind enough to you, and quite often over the last few years, you’ve had to really try hard to overcome all that was being aimed at you.

“You just wanted to be loved and to make people happy with your music. You never believed you were good enough, I hope you can now see this outpouring of love that you never received in your time.

“Thank you for changing my life, thank you for the incredible memories, thank you for being the best brother and friend I’ll ever have.”

A series of gatherings by fans continued this weekend with crowds attending a gathering at the Keel Wharf Bridge at Royal Albert Dock in Liverpool on Saturday.

Three people were killed and eight others were wounded in central Mississippi early Saturday when at least two people fired guns at a group of several hundred people who were celebrating a high school football team’s homecoming win at an outdoor trail several hours after the game had ended, authorities said.

The mass shooting near the community of Lexington was preceded by a fight among some of the men at the celebration, but deputies had not yet learned what sparked the fight, said Holmes county sheriff Willie March.

Anywhere from 200 to 300 people were on the trail celebrating, and the gunfire sent them fleeing, the sheriff said in a phone interview with the Associated Press.

“It was chaos, to tell you the truth,” March said. “The shooting just started and people started running.”

The shooting about 5 miles (8km) outside Lexington followed a football game several hours earlier at the Holmes county consolidated school’s homecoming celebration. After the victory, scores of young people headed to the trail to celebrate.

Lexington is located more than 60 miles (96km) north of Jackson.

Two of the victims who died were 19, and the third was 25. The injured victims were airlifted to local hospitals.

Deputies were collecting ammunition at the scene in an effort to determine how many weapons were fired, said March, whose county has a population of about 16,000.

There had been about 420 mass shootings across the US heading into this weekend, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The nonpartisan archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.

Perennially high rates of mass shootings in the US have prompted some in the country to call for more substantial federal gun control, though Congress has largely been unable or unwilling to implement such measures.

Guardian staff contributed reporting

A funeral home in Poland has apologised after a body that it was transporting fell out of a hearse and into traffic.

Polish media reported that a man was driving down a street on Friday in Stalowa Wola, a city in south-eastern Poland, when he saw a sheet on his car window. When the sheet slid down, he saw a body lying on the road. For a moment the driver feared that he had hit the person.

Local media published an image of the body lying on a white-striped pedestrian crossing, where it had tumbled out of the hearse.

The company transporting the body, Hades funeral services, issued a statement on Saturday taking responsibility for the incident and blaming a technical failure of the hearse.

“It is with deep regret that we inform you that as a result of an unexpected technical failure of the electric tailgate lock in the hearse during the transport of the body of the deceased, an unfortunate event occurred which does not reflect the high standards of our company, our deep empathy towards the families of the deceased, and the respect we always show to the deceased,” the company wrote in a statement posted on its website.

It apologised to “all those who were disappointed and upset by this event”.

A book borrowed from a school library before the first world war has finally been returned – more than a century overdue.

A copy of Poetry of Byron was found by a man in Carmarthenshire, south Wales, who felt it should be returned to St Bees School, near Whitehaven, Cumbria, where it had been lent out to a schoolboy.

Inside the blue clothbound book the name Leonard Ewbank is written, along with the date 25 September 1911. Ewbank, who was born in 1893, was a pupil of St Bees between 1902 and 1911, before going on to study at Queen’s College, Oxford.

Records show that, despite his poor eyesight, he was recruited to the 15th Border Regiment in 1915 to fight in the first world war. He was killed in battle on 23 February 1916 by a bullet to the head and is buried at the Railway Dugouts burial ground in Ypres, Belgium, a cemetery that contains the graves of 2,463 troops.

Ewbank is commemorated on the school’s roll of honour as “an Englishman, brave, honest and loyal”.

The school was “honoured” to have the book returned, said the headteacher, Andrew Keep. Keep told the BBC: “It’s incredible to think that a piece of St Bees’ history has found its way back to us after all these years.”

St Bees is a 430-year-old co-educational boarding and day school costing £16,000-£40,000 a year. Rowan Atkinson is a former pupil, along with two vice-chancellors of the University of Cambridge, a number of professors and three Victoria Cross recipients.

The book, featuring the work of Lord Byron, a Romantic poet famously described as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, is not the first to be returned to a library after spending a lifetime elsewhere, but it could be one of the most overdue library books of all time.

In May, a book borrowed from a library in Helsinki was returned 84 years overdue. A Finnish translation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical novel The Refugees had been due on 26 December 1939, a month after the Soviet invasion of Finland, so it “might not have been the first thing on the borrower’s mind”, said Heini Strand, a librarian at Helsinki’s Oodi central library.

In July, Canoe Building in Glass-Reinforced Plastic by Alan Byde was returned to Orkney Library more than 47 years late, after being found during a house clearance. The library’s John Peterson said: “Fortunately we don’t charge overdue fines.”