A former model who says she met Donald Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower in 1993, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.

Stacey Williams, who worked as a professional model in the 1990s, said she first met Trump in 1992 at a Christmas party after being introduced to him by Epstein, who she believed was a good friend of the then New York real estate developer. Williams said Epstein was interested in her and the two casually dated for a period of a few months.

“It became very clear then that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,” Williams said.

The alleged groping occurred some months later, in the late winter or early spring of 1993, when Epstein suggested during a walk they were on that he and Williams stop by to visit Trump at Trump Tower. Epstein was later convicted on sex offenses and killed himself in prison in 2019.

Moments after they arrived, she alleges, Trump greeted Williams, pulled her toward him and started groping her. She said he put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and her buttocks. She said she froze because she was “deeply confused” about what was happening. At the same time, she said she believed she saw the two men smiling at each other.

Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary for Donald Trump’s campaign, provided a statement denying the allegations, which said in part: “These accusations, made by a former activist for Barack Obama and announced on a Harris campaign call two weeks before the election, are unequivocally false. It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign.”

Williams says that Trump sent her agent a postcard via courier later in 1993, an aerial view of Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach residence and resort. She shared it with the Guardian. In his handwriting – using what appears to be his usual black Sharpie – he wrote: “Stacey – Your home away from home. Love Donald”.

Williams, who is 56 and a native of Pennsylvania, has shared parts of her allegation on social media posts in the past, but revealed details about the alleged encounter on a call on Monday organized by a group called Survivors for Kamala, which supports Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. The Zoom call featured actor Ashley Judd and law professor and academic Anita Hill, among others. Survivors for Kamala also took out an ad in the New York Times this week, signed by 200 survivors of sexual and gender violence, which was meant to serve as a reminder that Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse in a court.

After the alleged incident, Williams said that she and Epstein left Trump Tower, and that she began to feel Epstein growing angry at her.

“Jeffrey and I left and he didn’t look at me or speak to me and I felt this seething rage around me, and when we got down to the sidewalk, he looked at me and just berated me, and said: ‘Why did you let him do that?’” she said on the Zoom call.

“He made me feel so disgusting and I remember being so utterly confused,” she said.

She described how the alleged incident seemed to her to be part of a “twisted game”.

“I felt shame and disgust and as we went our separate ways, I felt this sensation of revisiting it, while the hands were all over me. And I had this horrible pit in my stomach that it was somehow orchestrated. I felt like a piece of meat,” she said in an interview with the Guardian.

She and Epstein parted ways soon after. Williams said she never had any knowledge of his pattern of sexual abuse, which would later become known. Epstein is now considered one of the worst and most prolific pedophiles in modern history.

The allegation of groping and unwanted sexual touching follows a well-documented pattern of behavior by Trump.

About two dozen women have accused the former president, who has been convicted of multiple felonies, of sexual misconduct dating back decades. The allegations have included claims of Trump kissing them without their consent, reaching under their skirts, and, in the case of some beauty pageant contestants, walking in on them in the changing room.

A former model named Amy Dorris shared allegations about Trump similar to what Williams described in an interview with the Guardian in 2020. Trump denied ever having harassed, abused or behaved improperly toward Dorris.

Last year, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing the columnist E Jean Carroll in 1996 and awarded her $5m in a judgment.

Williams’ allegations raise new questions about Trump’s relationship with Epstein.

No evidence has surfaced that Trump was aware of or involved in Epstein’s misconduct.

But Trump and Epstein knew each other for decades and were photographed at the same social events in the 1990s and early 2000s, years before Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to state charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

After Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, Trump told journalists in the Oval Office that he “knew him, like everybody in Palm Beach knew him” but that he had a “falling out” with Epstein in the early 2000s.

“I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years,” Trump said. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

Asked whether she had considered coming forward in the past, as other women were making allegations against Trump, Williams said she was a person who wanted to avoid negative attention or risk the backlash many other survivors have faced.

“I left the business,” she said. “I disappeared on purpose because I love being anonymous and I love my life of being a private citizen. Then I watched what has happened to women who come out and it is so horrifying and abusive. The thought of doing that, especially as a mother with a child in my house, was just not possible,” she told the Guardian.

“I just chose in my own way – comments on social media to contradict people who said he didn’t do anything,” she said.

Like other survivors, she said, she has processed what happened to her and became more confident about facing an angry backlash, she said.

Williams spoke about the allegations to at least two friends who spoke to the Guardian. One friend, who asked not to be named, said Williams told her about the alleged incident in 2005 or 2006 during a conversation in which Williams mentioned knowing Epstein, and how he had introduced her to Trump. The friend specifically remembers Williams telling her that she had been groped by Trump. Epstein was not a household name at the time, but the friend would later recall the anecdote when the Epstein scandal erupted.

“What I recall is that it was groping … what we would call feeling someone up,” the friend said.

Ally Gutwillinger, another longtime friend, said Williams told her about the alleged incident in 2015. Gutwillinger remembers the timing because Trump had announced that he was running for president.

“I went to her house sometime in that week and I saw a postcard of Mar-a-Lago and I said: ‘What’s this?’ and she said ‘Turn it over,’” Gutwillinger said. “She said something like: ‘He’s vile, he groped me in Trump Tower.’”

Disgruntled members of Canada’s Liberal party have given Justin Trudeau an ultimatum: decide early next week if you want to stay on as leader, or face the prospects of a caucus revolt.

The prime minister met with Liberal lawmakers in a closed-door caucus meeting on Wednesday where 20 MPs – none of them cabinet members – called on their leader to resign before a likely electoral drubbing in the next election.

Two dozen lawmakers also signed a letter calling on Trudeau to make his decision by 28 October, but failed to give any clear consequence.

There are 153 Liberal members of parliament, suggesting the mutiny still lacks widespread support. Although questions over Trudeau’s political future are mounting, no alternative leader for the party has stepped forward to oppose him.

In his ninth year as prime minister, Trudeau is deeply unpopular and facing calls within his party to step down to avoid an embarrassing electoral loss that could push the party to a distant third-place finish.

The CBC Poll Tracker shows the Conservatives have a nearly 20-point lead over the governing Liberals.

Two by-election results over the summer gave wary lawmakers even more reason to question Trudeau’s future tenure as leader: the party lost the riding of LaSalle–Émard–Verdun, a district that had been held almost exclusively by Liberals for more than 50 years and months earlier lost a safe seat in downtown Toronto.

The losses reflect a souring public opinion of Trudeau’s government: the cost of living has surged alongside a housing shortage, and policy failures and mismanagement have eroded strong support for immigration.

Trudeau has nonetheless said he intends to contest – and win – the next federal election, which would happen anytime before fall 2025.

Leaving Wednesday’s three-hour meeting, senior figures in cabinet reiterated their support for the embattled prime minister. Immigration minister Marc Miller, a key ally of Trudeau, said he expects the Liberal leader to contest the next election against Tory rival Pierre Poilievre.

“This isn’t a code red situation. The prime minister can sure as hell handle the truth,” he said, adding he “respects the hell out of my colleagues who were brave and stood up and said things to [Trudeau’s] face”.

Other MPs suggested Trudeau might keep the confidence of the party if he and his inner circle were to make significant changes to how they’re handling both policy and messaging.

“The prime minister has to listen to the frustrations – in some cases, very valid frustrations of caucus colleagues – and incorporate that into changes moving forward,” said Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith.

Trudeau said little when he emerged from the caucus gathering, except to tell reporters: “The Liberal party is strong and united.”

Donald Trump escalated his personal insults against Kamala Harris at a Wednesday evening rally in Georgia as he faces growing scrutiny over reports of his praise of Hitler and alleged sexual misconduct.

“This woman is crazy,” the former president said at an event in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth, hosted by Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group. He said voters should stand up to the vice-president and tell her: “You’re the worst ever. There’s never been anybody like you. You can’t put two sentences together. The world is laughing at us because of you.” He also said that in her recent interview with CBS, she “gave an answer that was from a loony bin”, later adding: “She’s not a smart person. She’s a low IQ individual.”

The rally, less than two weeks before election day, came after the Guardian published an interview with a former model who accused Trump of groping her at Trump Tower in 1993 after notorious sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein introduced them, an allegation the Trump campaign denied. Stacey Williams said it felt as if the unwanted touching was part of a “twisted game” between the two men and that it appeared Epstein and Trump were “really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together”.

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Williams’s account put the spotlight back on the roughly two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct throughout his career. Harris, campaigning with Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has sought to encourage Republican women to support the Democrat.

The Georgia rally also came after Harris’s surprise speech in Washington DC on Wednesday, when she denounced the former president as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power”. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff and a retired Marine general, told the New York Times this week that he believed Trump met the definition of “fascist” and was “certainly an authoritarian”. He also said Trump repeatedly commented: “Hitler did some good things, too.”

In a characteristically rambling speech, Trump went on meandering tangents about Google (“Google is treating us much better. Do you notice that? What happened to Google?”); McDonald’s (“McDonald’s was one of the most viewed things that [Google] ever had”); Emmanuel Macron (“I stopped wars with France”); Richard Nixon (“That was not good when they found out he taped every single conversation”); and the vice-president’s name (“You can’t call her ‘Harris’ because nobody knows who the hell you’re talking about”).

He threatened to sue CBS’s 60 Minutes, repeating false claims that the station manipulated Harris’s interview after Trump backed out of his planned interview with the program. He reiterated the threat a second time about an hour later in his speech.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, former independent presidential candidate, also rallied for Trump in Georgia, calling Kelly a “known liar”. Trump did not address Kelly at the rally, but on Truth Social called his former chief of staff a “LOWLIFE” and “total degenerate”.

In a “faith-focused” town hall in Zebulon, Georgia earlier on Wednesday, Trump praised Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister who has been condemned for undermining democratic institutions and aligning with Moscow and Beijing.

Asked about his faith, Trump responded: “When you believe in God, it’s a big advantage over people that don’t have that.” He went on to falsely suggest he has endured more investigations than notorious gangster Al Capone.

Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, refused to allow the newspaper’s editorial board to endorse Kamala Harris for president, the former editor of the paper’s opinion section told a media news outlet on Wednesday.

Mariel Garza, a veteran California journalist who has worked for the Times’ editorial board for nearly a decade, resigned from the paper in protest of Soon-Shiong’s decision, she told the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR).

“In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up,” Garza told CJR.

Harris is the first presidential nominee from California in any political party since Ronald Reagan.

In a long social media post on X, apparently written in response to Garza’s comments, Soon-Shiong wrote that the Los Angeles Times editorial board had rejected a proposed alternative to a typical presidential endorsement editorial, which he described as “a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation”.

Soon-Shiong wrote that the paper’s opinion editors, who typically endorse one candidate each for a range of local and national offices and explains why each candidate is the best pick, were asked to instead present “clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, [so] our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years.

“Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision,” Soon-Shiong wrote. He ended with the words: “Please #vote.”

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionaire, bought the Los Angeles Times in 2018, pledging to make it one of the “bastions of democracy in this country”. He said at the time that his $500m purchase of the Times and other California papers was an effort to fight fake news, which he called a “cancer of our time”.

The Los Angeles Times Guild, which supports the publication’s rank-and-file, said they were “concerned about Soon-Shiong decision to block an endorsement.

“We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse,” according to a statement released by the union. “We are still pressing for answers from newsroom management on behalf of our member.”

In the resignation letter she shared with CJR, Garza did not reference any potential reasons for Soon-Shiong’s decision to block the California newspaper he owns from endorsing Harris’s campaign for president.

But Garza argued that the decision was consequential and that it also had the potential to undermine the credibility of all of the editorial board’s future political recommendations.

“It’s perplexing to readers, and possibly suspicious, that we didn’t endorse [Harris] this time,” Garza told CJR.

Semafor reported on Tuesday that Terry Tang, the Los Angeles Times executive editor, had “told editorial board staff earlier this month that the paper would not be endorsing a candidate in the presidential election this cycle”, and that the decision had come from Soon-Shiong.

Garza told CJR that the editorial board had been preparing to endorse Harris, and that she had even prepared an outline of the endorsement, when Tang informed her on 11 October that Soon-Shiong had decided the paper would not be making an endorsement in the presidential contest.

In the resignation letter she shared, Garza said she had initially tried to convince herself that Soon-Shiong’s decision not to allow a presidential endorsement did not matter. “I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many ‘Trump is unfit’ editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her,” Garza wrote.

But her feelings shifted after the news of the non-endorsement became public, Garza wrote.

She noted that the Trump campaign quickly seized on the news this week that the Los Angeles Times was not making a presidential endorsement, telling supporters on Tuesday: “Even her fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job. The Times previously endorsed Kamala in her 2010 and 2014 races for California attorney general, as well as her 2016 race for US Senate – but not this time.”

“Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state – and one of the largest in the nation still – declined to endorse in a race this important,” Garza wrote. “It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger – who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?”

On Wednesday, Semafor reported that the non-endorsement appeared to be costing the financially struggling Los Angeles Times some of its subscribers. “Cancelations were twice as high yesterday compared to Monday” and “nearly 400 subscribers cited ‘editorial content’ as the reason for canceling”, Semafor’s Maxwell Tani reported.

The US justice department has sent a letter to Elon Musk’s Super Pac warning that the billionaire and Tesla CEO’s $1m-a-day giveaways may violate federal law, according to multiple reports.

A letter from the department’s public integrity section, which investigates potential election-related law violations, went to the Pac, reports in CNN and the New York Times said. The justice department and Musk’s America Pac did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

South Africa-born Musk, who has thrown his support behind Donald Trump in advance of the 5 November election, announced on Saturday while speaking before a crowd in Pennsylvania that he was giving away $1m each day until election day to someone who signs his online petition supporting the US constitution.

He handed $1m checks to two separate people over the weekend: one to a man in Harrisburg on Saturday and another to a women in Pittsburgh on Sunday. Another voter in North Carolina has won $1m. Between in-person campaign events in support of the Republican presidential candidate, Musk has tweeted his congratulations to the winners and urged other registered voters in swing states to sign his petition and enter the lottery.

Election law experts had called the sweepstakes potentially illegal. The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, had called on law enforcement to investigate.

Musk, ranked by Forbes as the world’s richest person, so far has supplied at least $75m to America Pac, according to federal disclosures, making the group a crucial part of Trump’s bid to regain the White House.

Even among major political donors, the degree of Musk’s involvement in Trump’s campaign for president has been unusual. He is not only spending tens of millions of dollars to back his favored candidate, but also campaigning in person, literally jumping up and down on stage at a Trump rally, and now appearing in person across Pennsylvania as a high-profile campaign surrogate. Online, Musk is attacking Kamala Harris, and spreading election misinformation to his 202 million followers on X, the popular social media platform that he owns.

Analysts have suggested that one reason Musk may be interested in investing in a second Trump presidency is that the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, has long resented government regulations, and might see Trump as someone who would champion deregulation in areas convenient to his billionaire backer.

Those observing his behavior in the campaign so far have noted Musk’s “complete eschewal of discretion as a mode of political engagement”, a particularly unusual choice for an ultra-wealthy individual, as well as his eagerness to receive attention.

Musk has faced legal and financial repercussions in the past for doing things that he thought were brilliant but that regulators did not. In 2018, Musk and Tesla agreed to pay $40m in fines over a tweet Musk had sent, including one saying that he was going to take Tesla public for $420 a share. Later, Musk tweeted that he did not regret the tweet and that the fines were “worth it”.

Israeli strikes across Gaza killed 42 people on Wednesday as the military intensified a siege on northern parts of the Palestinian territory, forcing the World Health Organization to pause the latest phase of its polio vaccination campaign, medics and officials said.

Israeli forces began the operation in the north about three weeks ago with the declared aim of preventing Hamas fighters from regrouping. The operation has intensified since the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar a week ago, despite hopes from the US that his death could provide a fresh impetus for peace.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 650 people had been killed since the new offensive began and of at least 42 people reported killed by Israeli military strikes across the territory on Wednesday, 37 of the deaths were in northern Gaza.

The WHO said that due to the “escalating violence and intense bombardments” in northern Gaza, the third phase of a vital polio vaccination campaign has been postponed. The vaccination campaign was launched last month after a baby was paralysed by the disease in Gaza for the first time in 25 years.

According to the agency, 119,279 children across northern Gaza were due to be vaccinated, but current conditions were “making it impossible for families to safely bring their children for vaccination, and health workers to operate.”

Israel’s military humanitarian unit, Cogat, which oversees aid and commercial shipments to Gaza, said the vaccination campaign in northern Gaza will begin in the coming days, “after a joint assessment and at the request” of the WHO and Unicef.

The Gaza Civil Emergency Service said three of its rescuers were wounded in northern Gaza in what it said was a “targeted strike”, that aimed to force them out of Jabalia, hours after the Israeli army ordered some of their staff to leave the camp.

Later it said, all its operations in northern Gaza were suspended after Israeli forces detained five staff members and bombed the only fire truck.

The UN Palestinian refugee agency said on Wednesday one of its staff members was killed when an Unrwa vehicle was hit in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Medics said the man’s brother was also killed.

The US has called on Israel to allow more humanitarian supplies into northern Gaza. Israel says aid has been delivered in scores of trucks as well as airdrops, but Gaza medics say the aid has not reached them.

In a phone call on Wednesday, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin told Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant that Washington welcomed the movement of humanitarian assistance through the Erez crossing into northern Gaza, but urged Israel take steps to address the dire situation there, a Pentagon summary of the call said.

In the same call, Austin also told his Israeli counterpart that Washington had concerns about strikes against the Lebanese armed forces while urging Israel to take steps to ensure the safety of the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, the Pentagon said.

Three Lebanese soldiers were killed in an Israeli strike on an army vehicle in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese military said on Sunday. Israel, which says it is targeting Lebanese Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, apologised and said its military was not operating against the Lebanese army.

Israeli strikes continued to pound Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday, shortly after an Israeli military spokesperson issued evacuation warnings for the neighbourhood. Six buildings were levelled in at least 17 Israeli raids, according to the country’s National News Agency.

One strike hit the office of pro-Iran broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, the station said. It said the office had been empty since the conflict began. Lebanon’s health ministry said one person was killed and five others, including a child, were wounded.

Lebanon’s government said on Wednesday at least 28 people had been killed by Israeli strikes in the previous 24 hours, raising the total toll since October 2023 to 2,574.

Hezbollah said in a statement late on Wednesday that it had escalated its attacks on Israel, using “precision missiles” for the first time and launched new types of drones on Israeli targets, without offering further details.

It later said it had targeted an Israeli military factory on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. There was no immediate indication of any defence facility having been hit around Tel Aviv.

The intensifying exchanges of fire come as Washington makes a final major push for peace between Israel and Iran-backed groups Hezbollah and Hamas before the 5 November US presidential election.

Despite the presence of US secretary of state Antony Blinken in the region, the conflict appeared to be spreading, with new strikes around midday on Wednesday on Tyre, a Unesco-listed port city in south Lebanon, which also came after Israeli evacuation orders.

With Reuters

Planned airstrikes on Iran will make the world understand Israel’s military might, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said.

The Middle East has been braced for more than three weeks for a threatened Israeli response to Iran’s 1 October missile attack, which was in turn a reprisal for Israel’s killing of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Gallant visited aircrews at Hatzerim airbase on Wednesday and made clear that Israel still intended to strike back. “After we attack in Iran, they will understand in Israel and elsewhere what your preparations have included,” Gallant told the crews in a video distributed by his office.

On X, Gallant added more about his exchange with the air force personnel. “In my conversation with them I emphasised – after we attack Iran, everyone will understand your might, the process of preparation and training – any enemy that tries to harm the state of Israel will pay a heavy price,” the minister said.

The extent of Israel’s target list has been the subject of protracted conversations between Israeli leaders and the Biden administration, which has urged them not to strike Iran’s oil industry infrastructure or its nuclear programme. Washington fears a cycle of escalation, particularly in the last two weeks before the US presidential election.

Israel is already fighting on multiple fronts. In Lebanon on Wednesday, Hezbollah confirmed the death of Hashem Safieddine, who was expected to be Nasrallah’s successor. Israel claimed Safieddine had been killed in an airstrike earlier this month, alongside Ali Hussein Hazima, the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence unit.

In the statement, Hezbollah said Safieddine spent most of his life serving the movement and that he “competently managed” the executive council – the highest political decision-making body in Hezbollah. The group pledged to carry on in “that path of resistance and jihad”.

The death of Safieddine, the most senior Hezbollah official killed since the killing of Nasrallah, throws the leadership of the group further into question. The current de facto public face of the group is Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary general, but he has not yet been picked as its permanent leader. Despite most of its senior military command and top political leaders having been killed by Israel over the past three months, Hezbollah has said the organisation retains its ability to fight Israel.

Israel carried out airstrikes on Wednesday in Tyre, one of the largest cities in southern Lebanon, which had become a refuge over the past year for thousands of families displaced by fighting further south. Videos showed large plumes of smoke billowing between residential buildings in the centre of the city.

“We’re sitting here terrified. The strikes are near us, the sounds are just next to us. We’re horrified,” said Rita Darwish, a woman who had been displaced to Tyre from Dhayra, a border village, a year earlier. She added that she would flee Tyre “at the first chance” once the bombing stopped.

The strikes on central Tyra, a Unesco-listed port city, were part of Israel’s expanding military campaign in Lebanon that had escalated in the last week. Parts of greater Beirut that had not been hit before, as well as Tyre and Nabatieh, another large city in the south, were now included in Israel’s attacks.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah announced it had carried out 39 operations against Israel, including the downing of two drones, striking six tanks and targeting 19 groups of Israeli soldiers. Fighting continued on Wednesday, with Hezbollah bombing Israeli soldiers in the towns of Odaisseh and Rab Thalatheen in south Lebanon.

The number of strikes carried out each day by the Islamist militant group has significantly increased in recent weeks, with it announcing it had entered into a “escalatory phase” of war against Israel. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a drone attack on the holiday residence of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the coastal city of Caesarea on Saturday. Netanyahu was not present at the time of the attack.

On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces accused six Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza of “military affiliation” to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reacted with scepticism, saying that “Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence”.

“After killing Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul in July, the IDF previously produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007 – when he would have been 10 years old,” the NGO said in a statement on X.

In the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, the IDF continued to round up Palestinian men as it sought to end resistance in the area, more than a year after the Gaza war began. An IDF statement said at least 150 men had surrendered and had been detained. The UN estimates that over the past two weeks, about 60,000 people have fled from the north of Gaza to the southern end of the coastal strip in the face of Israeli evacuation orders, military strikes and dire shortages of food, water and medicines.

The mother of a teenager who killed himself after becoming obsessed with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot now accuses its maker of complicity in his death.

Megan Garcia filed a civil suit against Character.ai, which makes a customizable chatbot for role-playing, in Florida federal court on Wednesday, alleging negligence, wrongful death and deceptive trade practices. Her son Sewell Setzer III, 14, died in Orlando, Florida, in February. In the months leading up to his death, Setzer used the chatbot day and night, according to Garcia.

“A dangerous AI chatbot app marketed to children abused and preyed on my son, manipulating him into taking his own life,” Garcia said in a press release. “Our family has been devastated by this tragedy, but I’m speaking out to warn families of the dangers of deceptive, addictive AI technology and demand accountability from Character.AI, its founders, and Google.”

In a tweet, Character.ai responded: “We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our users and want to express our deepest condolences to the family. As a company, we take the safety of our users very seriously.” It has denied the suit’s allegations.

Setzer had become enthralled with a chatbot built by Character.ai that he nicknamed Daenerys Targaryen, a character in Game of Thrones. He texted the bot dozens of times a day from his phone and spent hours alone in his room talking to it, according to Garcia’s complaint.

Garcia accuses Character.ai of creating a product that exacerbated her son’s depression, which she says was already the result of overuse of the startup’s product. “Daenerys” at one point asked Setzer if he had devised a plan for killing himself, according to the lawsuit. Setzer admitted that he had but that he did not know if it would succeed or cause him great pain, the complaint alleges. The chatbot allegedly told him: “That’s not a reason not to go through with it.”

Garcia attorneys wrote in a press release that Character.ai “knowingly designed, operated, and marketed a predatory AI chatbot to children, causing the death of a young person”. The suit also names Google as a defendant and as Character.ai’s parent company. The tech giant said in a statement that it had only made a licensing agreement with Character.ai and did not own the startup or maintain an ownership stake.

Tech companies developing AI chatbots can’t be trusted to regulate themselves and must be held fully accountable when they fail to limit harms, says Rick Claypool, a research director at consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen.

“Where existing laws and regulations already apply, they must be rigorously enforced,” he said in a statement. “Where there are gaps, Congress must act to put an end to businesses that exploit young and vulnerable users with addictive and abusive chatbots.”

• In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org, and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

The mother of a teenager who killed himself after becoming obsessed with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot now accuses its maker of complicity in his death.

Megan Garcia filed a civil suit against Character.ai, which makes a customizable chatbot for role-playing, in Florida federal court on Wednesday, alleging negligence, wrongful death and deceptive trade practices. Her son Sewell Setzer III, 14, died in Orlando, Florida, in February. In the months leading up to his death, Setzer used the chatbot day and night, according to Garcia.

“A dangerous AI chatbot app marketed to children abused and preyed on my son, manipulating him into taking his own life,” Garcia said in a press release. “Our family has been devastated by this tragedy, but I’m speaking out to warn families of the dangers of deceptive, addictive AI technology and demand accountability from Character.AI, its founders, and Google.”

In a tweet, Character.ai responded: “We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our users and want to express our deepest condolences to the family. As a company, we take the safety of our users very seriously.” It has denied the suit’s allegations.

Setzer had become enthralled with a chatbot built by Character.ai that he nicknamed Daenerys Targaryen, a character in Game of Thrones. He texted the bot dozens of times a day from his phone and spent hours alone in his room talking to it, according to Garcia’s complaint.

Garcia accuses Character.ai of creating a product that exacerbated her son’s depression, which she says was already the result of overuse of the startup’s product. “Daenerys” at one point asked Setzer if he had devised a plan for killing himself, according to the lawsuit. Setzer admitted that he had but that he did not know if it would succeed or cause him great pain, the complaint alleges. The chatbot allegedly told him: “That’s not a reason not to go through with it.”

Garcia attorneys wrote in a press release that Character.ai “knowingly designed, operated, and marketed a predatory AI chatbot to children, causing the death of a young person”. The suit also names Google as a defendant and as Character.ai’s parent company. The tech giant said in a statement that it had only made a licensing agreement with Character.ai and did not own the startup or maintain an ownership stake.

Tech companies developing AI chatbots can’t be trusted to regulate themselves and must be held fully accountable when they fail to limit harms, says Rick Claypool, a research director at consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen.

“Where existing laws and regulations already apply, they must be rigorously enforced,” he said in a statement. “Where there are gaps, Congress must act to put an end to businesses that exploit young and vulnerable users with addictive and abusive chatbots.”

• In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org, and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Boeing workers have rejected the latest offer to end the more than a month-long strike that has crippled the already struggling manufacturing giant.

In a blow to Boeing and the Biden administration, which has fought for a resolution to the dispute, 64% of the 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union voted to reject the contract, the union said late on Wednesday.

“After 10 years of sacrifices, we still have ground to make up, and we’re hopeful to do so by resuming negotiations promptly,” leaders of the union said in a statement after votes were tallied.

The news came on the same day that new CEO Kelly Ortberg said he would “fundamentally” transform the culture inside the beleaguered aerospace giant, and announced Boeing’s quarterly losses had swelled to almost $6bn.

The workers represented by the union began striking on 13 September.

The latest contract proposal included a 35% wage increase over the four-year contract, reinstatement of incentive bonuses, increases to the company 401k match – though workers were pushing to bring back pensions that were lost as concessionary in previous contracts, and a $7,000 ratification bonus.

After weeks of tense negotiations, a deal had appeared to be in the offing over the weekend.

“With the help of acting US secretary of labor Julie Su, we have received a negotiated proposal and resolution to end the strike, and it warrants presenting to the members and is worthy of your consideration,” the union’s bargaining committee said in a statement to members on 19 October. “We are finalizing the strike settlement agreement, which will be completed soon, along with additional contract details to provide you with a clear understanding of the offer.”

Workers also rejected an initial tentative agreement in early September. Talks resumed with a federal mediator on 7 October after a two-week stalemate. But those talks quickly broke down as Boeing suspended negotiations with the union and withdrew the offer that included a 30% wage increase.

On 1 October, employee healthcare benefits for Boeing workers on strike were cut off by the company. The union noted workers had been engaging with the community for striking members to work temporary jobs in addition to the strike pay of $250 a week members have been receiving since the third week of the strike.

Boeing had also announced plans to layoff 17,000 workers as part of plans for a 10% work reduction at its commercial unit for union and non-union workers.

According to a recent analysis by the Anderson Economic Group, the strike cost an estimated $7.6bn in direct economic losses, including $4.35bn for Boeing and nearly $2bn for Boeing suppliers.

The US has said for the first time that it has seen evidence that North Korea has sent 3,000 troops to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine, a move that could mark a significant escalation in Russia’s war against its neighbour.

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said it would be “very, very serious” if the North Koreans were preparing to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine, as Kyiv has alleged. But he said it remained to be seen what they would be doing there.

“There is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia,” Austin told reporters on Wednesday, using North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Speaking to reporters later on Wednesday White House spokesperson John Kirby said the US believes at least 3,000 North Korean troops are undergoing training in Russia.

The US determined the North Korean soldiers were transported by ship in early-to-mid October from North Korea’s Wonsan region to the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok before being taken to three military training sites in eastern Russia, said Kirby.

“If they do deploy to fight against Ukraine, they’re fair game,” he said. “They’re fair targets and the Ukrainian military will defend themselves against North Korean soldiers the same way they’re defending themselves against Russian soldiers.”

In Seoul, South Korean lawmakers said Pyongyang had promised to provide a total of about 10,000 troops, whose deployment was expected to be completed by December, the lawmakers told reporters after being briefed by South Korea’s national intelligence agency.

The figure of 3,000 is twice a previous estimate of numbers of North Korean troops already in Russia.

Park Sun-won, a member of a parliamentary intelligence committee, said after the briefing: “Signs of troops being trained inside North Korea were detected in September and October. It appears that the troops have now been dispersed to multiple training facilities in Russia and are adapting to the local environment.”

Austin said the alleged North Korean deployment could be further evidence that the Russian military was having problems with manpower, after huge numbers of casualties on both sides in what has become a war of attrition.

The Kremlin has previously dismissed Seoul’s claims about the North’s troop deployment as “fake news”, and a North Korean representative to the United Nations called it “groundless rumours” at a meeting in New York on Monday.

Moscow and Pyongyang have also denied weapons transfers, but they have pledged to boost military ties and signed a mutual defence treaty at a summit in June.

Last Friday South Korea’s national intelligence service said the North had sent 1,500 special forces personnel to Russia by ship and they were likely to be deployed for combat in the war in Ukraine after training and acclimatisation.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has also accused Pyongyang of preparing to send 10,000 soldiers to Russia. On Tuesday he called on his allies to respond to evidence of North Korean involvement in Russia’s war.

Lee Seong-kweun, a lawmaker on the South Korean committee, said Pyongyang authorities had tried to keep news of the deployment from spreading. “There are also signs of North Korean authorities relocating and isolating those families [of the troops] in a certain place in order to effectively control them and thoroughly crack down on the rumours,” Lee said, citing the spy agency.

Lee also said the agency had confirmed that Russia had recruited a “large number” of interpreters for the North Korean soldiers, while training them in the use of military equipment such as drones.

“Russian instructors are assessing that the North Korean military has excellent physical attributes and morale but lacks understanding of modern warfare such as drone attacks,” he said. “Therefore there could be many casualties if they are deployed to the frontlines.”

US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say more than 600,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the war in Ukraine.

Austin said the North Korean deployment could point to a shortage of Russian recruits. “This is an indication that he [Vladimir Putin] may be even in more trouble than most people realise,” he said.

On Tuesday the South’s presidential office urged an immediate withdrawal of the North’s troops from Russia, warning that it may consider supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine if military ties between them went too far.

Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman who has become a feminist hero for insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and 50 other men should be held in public, has told a court in southern France she was driven by her desire to change society and expose rape culture.

“I am a woman who is totally destroyed, and I don’t know how I’m going to rebuild myself. I’m 72 soon and I’m not sure my life will be long enough to recover from this,” said the former logistics manager, who was repeatedly unknowingly sedated and raped by her then husband, Dominique Pelicot, 71.

Dominique Pelicot crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and drink and invited men to rape her over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020 in the village of Mazan, in Provence.

Members of the public had queued from before dawn outside the criminal court in Avignon to show their support in a case that has gained coverage worldwide and prompted thousands across France to demonstrate about tightening rape laws and improve the handling of rape cases by the justice system.

Gisèle Pelicot arrived and left court to cheers and applause, as she has done every day since the trial began last month. Many of the supporters said they hoped the case would change attitudes to rape and consent. Several walls of the city were papered with messages of support, including: “Gisèle, women thank you”.

She was asked in court how she has handled sitting through almost two months of evidence from dozens of men who are accused of raping her in her own home when she was drugged and unconscious. She said: “It’s true that I hear lots of women, and men, who say you’re very brave. I say it’s not bravery, it’s will and determination to change society.”

She said she wanted to lift the shame felt by rape victims. “I wanted all woman victims of rape – not just when they have been drugged, rape exists at all levels – I want those women to say: Mrs Pelicot did it, we can do it too. When you’re raped there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.”

She said: “The profile of a rapist is not someone met in a car park late at night. A rapist can also be in the family, among our friends.”

After hearing wives or girlfriends or friends in court saying the accused did not seem capable of rape, she said: “We have to progress on rape culture in society … People should learn the definition of rape.”

Addressing her ex-husband but saying she refused to turn her head to look at him in the dock, she said: “How can the perfect man have got to this? How could you have betrayed me to this point? How could you have brought these strangers into my bedroom?”

She said: “I always tried to lift you higher, you who plumbed the depths of the human soul, but you made your own choices.”

Dominique Pelicot has admitted the charges against him and said that for almost a decade he was in contact with men on an online chatroom titled “without her knowledge” where he would organise for strangers to come to the couple’s home in Mazan to rape his wife while she was in a comatose state in her bed.

He has said he administered drugs to her at mealtimes or in bowls of ice-cream he brought to her as she watched TV after dinner. “I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” Pelicot has told the court, saying the other men on trial were aware they were being invited to rape his wife.

Gisèle Pelicot was asked in court if she had noticed moments when he might have drugged her food or drinks. She said she had not noticed falling under sedation and must have passed out very quickly.

She told the court: “He made a lot of meals. I saw that as him being attentive. I know that one night he came to collect me at Avignon station after 10 days with my grandchildren. He had already prepared the meal – mashed potato. Two plates were already in the oven. I put olive oil on my potatoes and he put butter, so it was easy to see which plate was his.”

She said: “We would have a glass of white wine together. I never found anything strange about my potatoes. We finished eating. Often when it’s a football match on TV, I’d let him watch it alone. He brought my ice-cream to my bed, where I was, my favourite flavour, raspberry. And I thought, how lucky I am, he’s a love.”

“I never felt my heart flutter, I didn’t feel anything, I must have gone under very quickly. I would wake up with my pyjamas on. The mornings, I must have been more tired than usual, but I walk a lot and thought it was that.”

Pelicot said she had noticed problems with her health. She feared she was having neurological problems or could have Alzheimer’s, and she had really appreciated her husband apparently standing by her through that.

“He took me to a neurologist, to scanners when I was worried. He also went with me to the gynaecologist. For me, he was someone I trusted entirely.” She said to Dominique Pelicot in court: “So many times, I said to myself how lucky am I to have you at my side.”

She said she had also noticed gynaecological problems, which he had also supported her through. “I consulted three gynaecologists. Several times I had woken up and felt like I had lost my waters – as happens when you give birth.”

She said of the druggings: “In the morning I take my breakfast in the kitchen, it’s basic, orange juice, toast, jam, honey. He could have put it in my orange juice or my coffee. But I didn’t feel that moment where I went under [as sedated].”

She said she once went for a morning hairdressing appointment and her husband insisted on driving her. She had what seemed like a blackout, she said, and did not remember the haircut or styling.

In almost two months of testimony, the court has heard from dozens of accused men. The majority have denied rape. Some said they thought that she was pretending to be asleep or was playing a game, or felt the fact her husband had consented was sufficient.

A total of 50 men were identified by police from films meticulously labelled and stored by Dominique Pelicot. The men on trial alongside him could face sentences of up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

In total, 49 men are accused of rape, one of attempted rape and one of sexual assault. Five others are also accused of possessing child abuse imagery. Aged between 26 and 74, the accused include a nurse, a journalist, a prison officer, a local councillor, a soldier, lorry drivers and farm workers.

The trial is expected to run until 20 December.

Whether it is news headlines or WhatsApp messages, modern humans are inundated with short pieces of text. Now researchers say they have unpicked how we get their gist in a single glance.

Prof Liina Pylkkanen, co-author of the study from New York University, said most theories of language processing assume words are understood one by one, in sequence, before being combined to yield the meaning of the whole sentence.

“From this perspective, at-a-glance language processing really shouldn’t work since there’s just not enough time for all the sequential processing of words and their combination into a larger representation,” she said.

However, the research offers fresh insights, revealing we can detect certain sentence structures in as little as 125 milliseconds (ms) – a timeframe similar to the blink of an eye.

Pylkkanen said: “We don’t yet know exactly how this ultrafast structure detection is possible, but the general hypothesis is that when something you perceive fits really well with what you know about – in this case, we’re talking about knowledge of the grammar – this top-down knowledge can help you identify the stimulus really fast.

“So just like your own car is quickly identifiable in a parking lot, certain language structures are quickly identifiable and can then give rise to a rapid effect of syntax in the brain.”

The team say the findings suggest parallels with the way in which we perceive visual scenes, with Pylkkanen noting the results could have practical uses for the designers of digital media, as well as advertisers and designers of road signs.

Writing in the journal Science Advances, Pylkkanen and colleagues report how they used a non-invasive scanning device to measure the brain activity of 36 participants.

Each participant was presented with a three-word starting sentence that flashed up for 300ms, followed by a second sentence that was either identical or differed by one word. Participants were asked to indicate whether the sentences matched, with the experiment repeated using different starting sentences.

The results reveal participants made faster and more accurate judgments on whether the sentences matched when they contained a subject, verb and object – such as “nurses clean wounds” – than when they contained a list of nouns such as “hearts lungs livers”.

What’s more, participants’ brain activity rapidly increased in response to a starting sentence with a subject, verb and object, with activity detected in the left-middle temporal cortex within 130ms – about 50ms quicker than for a list of nouns.

A similar rapid response was noted when starting sentences with a subject, verb and object were altered so that they contained an agreement error – for example “nurses cleans wounds” – or became implausible, for example “wounds clean nurses”.

But the effect disappeared when the sentences were given less typical structures, for example “wounds nurses clean” or “wounds cleans nurses”. Pylkkanen said that suggests these sequences do not trigger the same sentence-recognition system.

While the authors note they focused on English, adding that rapid at-a-glance comprehension may rely on other features in different languages, they say the study offers new insights.

“The earliest stage of at-a-glance comprehension appears to be more structure than meaning driven,” they write.

Liam Payne’s girlfriend, Kate Cassidy, has said she has “lost the best part of myself” after the singer’s death at the age of 31.

A postmortem examination report said former One Direction member Payne died of multiple traumas and “internal and external haemorrhage” after falling from a third-floor balcony of the Casa Sur hotel in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.

Police officers and the emergency services found the music star dead at the scene last week and his body was transferred to the judicial morgue.

In a post to Instagram on Wednesday, a week after the singer’s death, Cassidy said: “I don’t even know where to begin. My heart is shattered in ways I can’t put into words.

“I wish you could see the huge impact you’ve had on the world, even as it feels so dark right now.

“You brought so much happiness and positivity to everyone – millions of fans, your family, friends, and especially me.

“You are so incredibly loved.

“You are – because I can’t say were – my best friend, the love of my life, and everyone you touched felt just as special as I did.

“Your energy was contagious, lighting up every room you walked into.

“None of this feels real, and I can’t wrap my head around this new reality of not having you here. I’m struggling to figure out how to live in a world without you by my side.

“Together, we got to be kids again, always finding joy in the smallest things.

“Liam, you had the kindest soul and the most fun-loving spirit. It feels like I’ve lost the best part of myself.

“I can’t imagine a day without your laughter and love. You brought so much light into my life.”

Cassidy said the pair had sat “manifesting our lives together” a few weeks ago and revealed she had a note from the singer, which she has kept “close”.

According to Cassidy, it said: “Me and Kate to marry within a year/engaged & together forever 444”.

“Liam, I know we’ll be together forever, but not in the way we had planned”, she added.

“You’ll always be with me. I’ve gained a guardian angel.

“I will love you for the rest of my life and beyond, carrying our dreams and memories with me everywhere I go.”

Tributes have flooded in for Payne since the news of his death, including from his former partner Cheryl, his One Direction bandmates and music mogul Simon Cowell.

Payne’s bandmates, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Harry Styles, said in a joint statement that they were “completely devastated” and will miss the singer “terribly”, adding the “memories we shared with him will be treasured forever”.

The singer’s family said they were “heartbroken” after his death, adding: “Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul.”

Payne found fame alongside his One Direction band members when The X Factor creator Cowell put them together to form the boyband on the ITV talent show in 2010.

Payne first auditioned for The X Factor in 2008 when he was 14, singing Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me To The Moon, with judge Cowell telling him to return to the talent show two years later.

Payne previously said he struggled with alcoholism at the peak of his success with One Direction, describing hitting “rock bottom” to The Diary Of A CEO podcast host, Steven Bartlett.