King Charles acknowledged “painful aspects” of Britain’s past while sidestepping calls to directly address reparations for slavery at the summit of Commonwealth leaders, saying “none of us can change the past, but we can commit … to learning its lessons”.

Charles was speaking to leaders representing 56 Commonwealth nations at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in the Pacific nation of Samoa, his first time attending the summit since taking the throne. In his speech, the king also addressed the climate crisis, development challenges and paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth.

Some leaders attending Chogm had hoped that Charles might use his address as an opportunity to issue an apology for Britain’s colonial past, and that this year’s summit would commit to a discussion on the topic of reparatory justice. Charles seemed to acknowledge the concerns of leaders, but did not directly engage with the issue.

“I understand from listening to people across the Commonwealth how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate. It is vital therefore, that we understand our history to guide us to make the right choices in the future,” he said.

“Where inequalities exist … we must find the right ways and the right language to address them. As we look around the world and consider its many deeply concerning challenges, let us choose within our Commonwealth family, the language of community and respect and reject the language of division.”

There have been calls from some African and Caribbean nations for Britain – and other European powers – to pay financial compensation for slavery.

The Bahamas’ prime minister Philip Davis told AFP that a debate about the past was vital.

“The time has come to have a real dialogue about how we address these historical wrongs,” he said.

“Reparatory justice is not an easy conversation, but it’s an important one,” Davis said. “The horrors of slavery left a deep, generational wound in our communities, and the fight for justice and reparatory justice is far from over.”

On Thursday, British prime minister, Keir Starmer appeared to open the door to non-financial reparations for the UK’s role in the transatlantic enslavement, as he came under pressure from Commonwealth leaders to engage in a “meaningful, truthful and respectful” conversation about Britain’s past.

While Starmer has ruled out paying reparations or apologising for the UK’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, a Downing Street source indicated that the UK could support some forms of reparatory justice, such as restructuring financial institutions and providing debt relief. They also accepted that some reference to reparations was likely to be included in the end-of-summit communique.

Responding to Starmer’s decision to discuss “non-financial” reparations, the St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves – who was one of the founding leaders of the current reparations committee – stressed the importance of a reparative justice plan that addressed the enduring psychological and socioeconomic impact of slavery.

Arguing that the British had committed genocide against and traumatised both the Indigenous people and enslaved Africans in SVG, he added that while enslavers were compensated with millions at abolition, nothing was given to those who had been enslaved and oppressed.

“There was nothing for them to start with and build on – no land, no money, no training, no education,” he told the Guardian. This damaging legacy of enslavement and oppression, he added, has continued to plague Caribbean nations.

Patricia Scotland, the outgoing secretary-general of the Commonwealth, also nodded to the concerns about colonial legacies in her speech at the summit’s opening, saying: “For 75 years, we have demonstrated an unparalleled ability to confound the painful history which brought us together and sit together as equals.”

Davis said the call for reparations “isn’t simply about financial compensation; it’s about recognising the enduring impact of centuries of exploitation and ensuring that the legacy of slavery is addressed with honesty and integrity.”

Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, who is one of three candidates vying to be the next Commonwealth’s secretary-general, said reparations could include non-traditional forms of payment such as climate financing.

“We can find a solution that will begin to address some injustices of the past and put them in the context happening around us today,” he said.

In his speech on Friday, Charles also paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth and her commitment to the Commonwealth, which he said “has helped to shape my own life for as long as I can remember.” It also took in development challenges and the climate crisis.

“Lives, livelihoods and human rights are at risk across the Commonwealth, I can only offer every encouragement for action with unequivocal determination … If we do not, then inequalities across the Commonwealth and beyond would only be exacerbated with the potential to fuel division and conflict.”

Israeli strikes hit Beirut on Thursday evening, after the US warned against Israel being led into a “protracted” campaign in Lebanon and efforts got under way to hold renewed talks over a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza.

Lebanese state media said several strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday, about half an hour after Israel issued evacuation warnings for the Hezbollah bastion after intense strikes the night before.

A month into Israel’s military assault on Iranian-backed Hezbollah, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said he hoped Iran was getting a clear message that any further attacks on Israel risked its own interests. Israel has vowed retaliation for an Iranian missile barrage on 1 October.

Israel unleashed its Lebanon offensive with the declared aim of securing the return of tens of thousands of people evacuated from homes in northern Israel during a year of cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah.

“As Israel conducts operations to remove the threat to Israel and its people along the border with Lebanon, we have been very clear that this cannot lead, should not lead, to a protracted campaign,” Blinken said in Doha on his 11th trip to the region in the last year.

Blinken said the US was working on a diplomatic deal which would allow civilians on both sides on the border to return to their homes. Later, the head of Israel’s military said an end to the conflict with Hezbollah now looked possible.

“In the north [of Israel], there’s a possibility of reaching a sharp conclusion. We thoroughly dismantled Hezbollah’s senior chain of command,” Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said in a video statement.

Blinken is set to meet with Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati in London on Friday, as well as with the foreign ministers of Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, two key US partners in a postwar plan for Gaza, the state department said.

US and Israeli negotiators will gather in Doha to prepare for renewed talks on a Gaza ceasefire deal which would also entail release of hostages in the Palestinian territory, Qatar and Washington said on Thursday.

Israel said its Mossad intelligence agency head David Barnea will travel to Doha on Sunday to try to restart talks, and meet with CIA director William Burns and Qatar’s prime minister.

“The parties will discuss the various options for starting negotiations for the release of the hostages from Hamas captivity, against the backdrop of the latest developments,” the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Hamas senior official Osama Hamdan told pro-Iranian channel Al Mayadeen there was no change in the group’s position. “The hostages held by the resistance will only return by stopping the aggression and completely withdrawing,” Hamdan said.

Previous attempts to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal have failed.

Blinken, who held talks with Qatar’s prime minister, has been on his first trip to the region since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the group’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered conflict across the Middle East.

Washington, Israel’s close ally, has expressed hope his death can provide an impetus for an end to the fighting.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Donald Trump said on Thursday he would order the immediate firing of the special counsel Jack Smith if he were re-elected in the November election in the clearest expression of his intent to shut down the two criminal cases brought against him.

The remarks from Trump, who remains in a tight race for the presidency against Kamala Harris with 12 days until the election, came in a conversation with the conservative podcast host Hugh Hewitt, who asked whether Trump would pardon himself or fire the special counsel.

“Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy … I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said of Smith, who last year charged the former president in Florida over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, and in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump also said in the interview that he had been given immunity from the US supreme court, a reference to its ruling earlier this year that found former presidents are immune from prosecution for official actions related to the office of the presidency.

The power to fire the special counsel formally rests with the attorney general, but Trump has made no secret of his intention to appoint a loyalist as attorney general who would agree to withdraw the justice department from the two pending criminal cases.

Trump has previously tried to fire prosecutors who have investigated him personally. During his first term, he repeatedly tried to fire the special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Trump’s ties to Russian interference in the 2020 election.

He ultimately backed off after the White House counsel, Don McGahn, disagreed with Trump’s attempts to fire Mueller and threatened to quit if Trump continued to press ahead with his order to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Multiple current and former Trump advisers have suggested there would be no such hurdles in a second term. Trump, the advisers said, would simply call his loyalist attorney general to involve himself at the justice department as he wished, without pushback from career officials.

Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team and the Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive, has repeatedly said anyone who wanted to join the second Trump administration – at the justice department or elsewhere – would need to be personally loyal to him.

“This concept of doing what you want to do because I don’t think he’s right, throwing banana peels, you get fired in America, you get fired in every company,” Lutnick told Bloomberg TV last week.

“Donald Trump loves conversation, he loves to get all sides of the idea. But then you make your choice and you go where the elected president of the United States goes,” Lutnick said. “Anybody who says otherwise – I don’t even know what they’re talking about, this is make-believe politics.”

The Harris campaign said that Trump’s latest comments indicate he thinks he is above the law. The campaign also pointed to the former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly, who said he believed Trump met the definition of a fascist. Harris said she agreed with that statement.

Vice-president Kamala Harris appeared with Barack Obama for the first time on the campaign trail, offering closing arguments targeting Black voters in Atlanta’s eastern suburbs, a vibrant, symbolic part of Georgia.

“Ours is a fight for the future,” Harris said at the rally in Clarkston. She touched on familiar themes – reducing the costs of drugs, housing and groceries. “I come from the middle class, and I will never forget where I come from.

Harris said she believes “healthcare should be a right and not just a privilege for those who can afford it”, and said Trump would gut the Affordable Care Act and roll back the $35 cap on insulin.

The Democratic nominee also reaffirmed her support for abortion rights, referring to the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman whose death was recently found to be a result of the state’s abortion ban. Harris said: “Donald Trump still refuses to acknowledge the pain and suffering he has caused … women are being denied care during miscarriages.”

Pollsters and commentators have suggested that the Harris campaign has been losing support among Black male voters. That assertion does not have much credence among Democratic activists, who say conservatives are exaggerating polling anomalies for political effect.

“I do not believe that significant numbers are going to vote for the likes of Donald Trump,” said the Rev Raphael Warnock, the Democratic Georgia senator, recounting Trump’s history of racial discrimination and public acts of bigotry. He said: “We are not a monolith. There will be some … but we know who Donald Trump. We are not confused.”

Nonetheless, the Harris campaign has more closely targeted its messaging to Black voters in the closing days. Harris has said she rejects the idea that her ethnicity entitles her to Black votes.

Obama directed his ire at Trump, excoriating him for his failures in the pandemic, his general incompetence and for – in the words of Trump’s former military staff – wishing his general officers were more like Hitler’s.

Trump’s erratic behavior has “become so common that people no longer take it seriously. Just because he acts goofy doesn’t mean his presidency wouldn’t be dangerous.”

The campaign has turned up the wattage on Black star power in its closing days, bringing actor Samuel L Jackson and directors Spike Lee and Tyler Perry to warm up the crowd.

“This is where I found the American dream for itself,” Perry said, speaking about how Atlanta supported his rise from poverty to success. He spent time in homelessness, trying to scrape enough money to stay in extended stay hotels on Buford Highway, only a few miles from the stadium.

Perry, now a multimillionaire, owns much of the former Fort McPherson, which he noted was once a Confederate army base. “We are all shapes, sizes and colors. But we are one.”

Bruce Springsteen also performed an acoustic set of Promised Land, Land of Hopes and Dreams and Dancing in the Dark before Obama and Harris spoke.

“Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant,” Springsteen said.

The city of Clarkston has often been called the most diverse square mile in America. As a central location for refugee resettlement, it is common to see women from Iraq wearing an abaya walking to the store next to Nepalese immigrants, while children from Haiti and Somalia buy a Coke at the gas station up the street from James R Hallford Stadium, where the rally filled its 15,000-seat capacity. The Harris campaign said 20,000 people were in attendance.

“Fifty different countries are represented here among the people of this district. Those are hard-working people. They’re our brothers and sisters,” said Congressman Hank Johnson, who represents the city. “They are who we are. They are part of the fabric of America.”

Though Clarkston has been going through a historic revitalization over the last few years, this area of DeKalb county continues to fight for economic growth. Pockets of first and second-decile poverty surround the city. Memorial Drive, once a thriving business district, is the effective dividing line between north DeKalb county’s thriving multiracial cities and the majority-Black, economically challenged southern half of the county.

“The demographic of Clarkston matters,” said Jacquelyn Smith, a Clarkston resident at the rally. “I saw little Black girls walking here who will never see something like this again.”

Smith spoke of parking on Robert E Lee Boulevard in Stone Mountain on her way to the rally, named for the Confederate general and memorialized at the Stone Mountain park, the largest Confederate monument remaining in America. She said: “We have come such a long way.”

About 584,000 Georgians are naturalized citizens, the largest proportionately among the eight swing states. About one in six Georgians in metro Atlanta were born outside the United States. Naturalized citizens tend to have lower voter turnout, and turnout will determine the election in Georgia.

Early voting has been setting records in Georgia in a historic shift, with almost a third of Georgians having already cast a ballot. Some counties have already crossed the 50% voter turnout threshold. The Harris campaign has sent text messages pointedly asked every supporter in the state to volunteer two hours for door knocking or phone banking.

“This man is no good bad news and it’s up to us to stop him,” said the senator Jon Ossoff, who, with others, referred to the sacrifices of late, iconic congressman John Lewis as a call to action today. “John Lewis bled on that bridge so we could rise to this moment,” he said.

Donald Trump, campaigning in the border swing state of Arizona on Thursday, called the country a “garbage can” because of immigration policies under the Biden administration.

“We’re like a garbage can, you know, it’s the first time I’ve ever said that,” Trump said in Tempe, Arizona, the home of Arizona State University. “And every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country, I get angry. First time I’ve ever said garbage can, but you know what, it’s a very accurate description.”

Candidates and their surrogates for both presidential campaigns are blitzing swing states like Arizona in the final two weeks before election day. The Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance held two campaign rallies in Arizona earlier this week. Joe Biden and the former president Barack Obama are set to visit this week, as is Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential pick.

A banner behind the stage said, “Vote early!” – a change in strategy for Republicans and Trump, who have cast doubt on early and mail-in voting by falsely claiming it is an avenue for widespread fraud. He said of Arizona voting: “They got a problem. Gotta make it too big to rig.” An image of Trump, raised fist and bloodied ear after his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, showed before he came out. Early on, he displayed on screens behind him the chart of migration that he has attributed with saving his life.

“We must defeat Kamala Harris and stop a radical left agenda with a landslide that is simply too big to rig,” he said. “And we’re doing that. We’re doing that, we’re doing that. If these numbers hold up, and they probably will, why wouldn’t they? Who the hell wants these people in office?”

His speech started on a menacing message about migration, a key theme for the Trump re-election bid, in what campaign officials have cast as his final pitch to voters: that Harris “broke” the country and Trump will “fix” it, according to Fox News.

He called increased immigration under the Biden administration “the most egregious betrayal that any leader in American history has ever inflicted upon our people”, by allowing in an “army of migrant gangs”.

He laid out a host of policies aimed at migrants: invoking the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer, ending migrant flights, outlawing sanctuary cities and hiring 10,000 more border agents and increasing their pay.

He sought to tie Medicare and Social Security to immigration, saying the presence of migrants will “obliterate” the two programs, and claimed that Latino and Black people are losing jobs to migrants, an appeal to two of the groups Republicans are trying to win more votes from.

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Trump called Biden a “stupid fool” and Nancy Pelosi “crazy as a bed bug”. He said Harris is a “low IQ individual”. He implored women watching to tell their husbands to vote: “Get your fat ass off the couch, you’re going to vote Jimmy, you’re going to vote, we’re going to save our country, Jimmy.’

He boosted Elon Musk, the ultra-rich owner of X, who’s become one of Trump’s most vocal supporters and financial backers, and praised Musk’s businesses, including Starlink and SpaceX. Among his list of campaign promises was that he would “land an American astronaut on Mars”.

“Thank you, Elon, thank you,” he said. “How good was his endorsement? I mean, his endorsement just kept coming. He said that we will not have a country if we don’t win this election. And he is a smart cookie.”

Trump again asked former Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for harsh immigration policies that cost county taxpayers hundreds of millions for the resulting legal issues that followed, to stand and receive applause, though he did not kiss him on the cheek as he did at a prior Arizona rally.

Donald Trump has denounced his own former chief of staff, John Kelly, as a “degenerate” and a “low life” after the former US Marine Corps general gained the backing of Kamala Harris for calling his ex-boss a fascist.

With Kelly’s intervention in effect propelling the debate over fascism firmly to the centre of the US presidential election, the Republican nominee also turned his fire on his Democratic opponent. He inaccurately accused Harris of calling him Adolf Hitler after the vice-president amplified Kelly’s comments in a televised address before endorsing them in a CNN town hall meeting.

Trump’s angry fusillade came in social media posts amid the fallout from Kelly’s comments in a New York Times interview in which he recalled the former US president repeatedly lauding Hitler’s achievements when he was in the White House.

In a separate interview with the Atlantic, Kelly described Trump lamenting that he did not have generals who were loyal in the way he believed German military commanders had been to Hitler.

Trump responded on his Truth Social platform, calling Kelly – who was his White House chief of staff for 18 months – a “degenerate…..who made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred.

“This guy had two qualities, which don’t work well together,” he wrote. “He was tough and dumb. John Kelly is a low life.”

Kelly told the Times that Trump “fitted the general definition of a fascist” and said he would rule as a dictator if elected again.

In Wednesday’s statement, Harris – who had been issuing increasingly strident warnings on the campaign trail about Trump’s authoritarian outlook in the face of his increasingly threatening rhetoric – said the interview showed that he sought “unchecked power”.

She added that it was “deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous” that he would “invoke” Hitler. She later told the CNN moderator Anderson Cooper that she agreed that Trump was a fascist and praised Kelly for sending a “911 call” to the nation.

Trump responded with a post on X that received more than 20m views and 292,000 likes, accusing Harris of “going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind”, because, he claimed, polls indicated she was losing.

Trump’s campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung, accused Harris of “dangerous rhetoric” which he said was “directly to blame for the multiple assassination attempts against President Trump”.

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However, Kelly’s depiction of Trump as an undemocratic authoritarian was backed up by Elizabeth Neumann, a former deputy chief of staff in the homeland security department in his administration, who told Politico that he “does not operate by the rule of law”.

“Does he have authoritarian tendencies? Yes,” she said. “Is he kind of leaning towards that ultra-nationalism component? Absolutely.”

Trump’s Republican supporters belittled Kelly’s intervention. Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, called his portrayal of the former president “an outrageous statement” and said Trump’s own record of extreme statements was “baked in” to the electorate’s assessment.

“I respect John Kelly a lot, but obviously, everyone knows there’s a huge personal relationship divide,” Sununu told NewsNation.

The row overshadowed other developments on the campaign trail, where the Republican nominee extended his catalogue of recent threats to Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by the justice department to investigate allegations that he tried to overturn the 2020 election and hide classified documents.

Asked by the conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt whether he would grant himself a presidential pardon or fire Smith if elected, Trump said: “It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds.”

He also noted that “we got immunity from the supreme court,” a reference to a ruling by the court’s conservative majority last June that presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts carried out in the line of duty.

Vladimir Putin has sidestepped claims that North Korea has sent soldiers to Russia, insisting that it was up to Moscow how to run its mutual defence clause with Pyongyang.

Speaking at the close of the Brics summit in Kazan on Thursday, he accused the west of escalating the Ukraine war and said it was “living an illusion” if it thought it could inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.

The US said it had seen evidence that North Korea had sent 3,000 troops to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine, a move that could mark a fundamental challenge to Ukraine due to its manpower shortages.

Asked by a reporter about satellite imagery apparently showing North Korean troop movements, Putin said: “Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something.”

He repeated his claims that the west had escalated the Ukraine crisis and said Nato officers and instructors were directly involved in the Ukraine war.

“We know who is present there, from which European Nato countries, and how they carry out this work,” Putin said.

The US and South Korea have said that North Korean troops have reached Ukraine and, although Putin may be being deliberately ambiguous to lower Ukraine morale, it is also striking he did not deny the allegations given a high-profile opportunity to do so.

No fellow Brics leader raised the issue in public during the summit, which instead heard vague calls for restraint.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s military intelligence service said that the first North Korean units trained in Russia had been deployed in the Kursk region, the Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August.

“On October 23, 2024, their presence was recorded in the Kursk region,” the Ukrainian intelligence agency said in a statement.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, used his speech to call for a “just peace”.

Guterres was in Russia for the first time since April 2022 and was due to hold private talks on Ukraine with Putin later in the day. Moscow is seeking to use the forum to build a united front of emerging economies that use alternatives to the dollar with which to trade.

In a brief passage on Ukraine, the UN chief said: “We need peace in Ukraine, a just peace in line with the UN charter, international law and the [UN] general assembly resolution.”

He said: “We must uphold the values of the UN charter, the rule of law and the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states.” He made no reference to the North Korean troops.

It is the first time Guterres has met Putin since the international criminal court in March 2023 issued a warrant for the arrest of the Russian leader because of children in Ukraine being abducted and taken to Russia. The Ukrainian foreign ministry has criticised Guterres over the meeting, especially since he rejected an invitation to attend a Ukrainian-sponsored peace summit this summer.

Guterres urged members of Brics not to see the organisation as an alternative to the UN, saying: “No single group and no single country can act alone or in isolation. It takes a community of nations, working as one global family, to address global challenges.”

Putin stated that the emergence of a “more just world order” was being hampered by “forces accustomed to thinking and acting in the logic of domination over everything and everyone”. He said Kyiv’s foreign backers did not any longer even hide their goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on his country.

Putin said: “Only those who don’t know the history of Russia can believe in this, because they don’t take into account the unity and the strength of spirit of Russians forged over the centuries.”

Vladimir Putin has sidestepped claims that North Korea has sent soldiers to Russia, insisting that it was up to Moscow how to run its mutual defence clause with Pyongyang.

Speaking at the close of the Brics summit in Kazan on Thursday, he accused the west of escalating the Ukraine war and said it was “living an illusion” if it thought it could inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.

The US said it had seen evidence that North Korea had sent 3,000 troops to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine, a move that could mark a fundamental challenge to Ukraine due to its manpower shortages.

Asked by a reporter about satellite imagery apparently showing North Korean troop movements, Putin said: “Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something.”

He repeated his claims that the west had escalated the Ukraine crisis and said Nato officers and instructors were directly involved in the Ukraine war.

“We know who is present there, from which European Nato countries, and how they carry out this work,” Putin said.

The US and South Korea have said that North Korean troops have reached Ukraine and, although Putin may be being deliberately ambiguous to lower Ukraine morale, it is also striking he did not deny the allegations given a high-profile opportunity to do so.

No fellow Brics leader raised the issue in public during the summit, which instead heard vague calls for restraint.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s military intelligence service said that the first North Korean units trained in Russia had been deployed in the Kursk region, the Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August.

“On October 23, 2024, their presence was recorded in the Kursk region,” the Ukrainian intelligence agency said in a statement.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, used his speech to call for a “just peace”.

Guterres was in Russia for the first time since April 2022 and was due to hold private talks on Ukraine with Putin later in the day. Moscow is seeking to use the forum to build a united front of emerging economies that use alternatives to the dollar with which to trade.

In a brief passage on Ukraine, the UN chief said: “We need peace in Ukraine, a just peace in line with the UN charter, international law and the [UN] general assembly resolution.”

He said: “We must uphold the values of the UN charter, the rule of law and the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states.” He made no reference to the North Korean troops.

It is the first time Guterres has met Putin since the international criminal court in March 2023 issued a warrant for the arrest of the Russian leader because of children in Ukraine being abducted and taken to Russia. The Ukrainian foreign ministry has criticised Guterres over the meeting, especially since he rejected an invitation to attend a Ukrainian-sponsored peace summit this summer.

Guterres urged members of Brics not to see the organisation as an alternative to the UN, saying: “No single group and no single country can act alone or in isolation. It takes a community of nations, working as one global family, to address global challenges.”

Putin stated that the emergence of a “more just world order” was being hampered by “forces accustomed to thinking and acting in the logic of domination over everything and everyone”. He said Kyiv’s foreign backers did not any longer even hide their goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on his country.

Putin said: “Only those who don’t know the history of Russia can believe in this, because they don’t take into account the unity and the strength of spirit of Russians forged over the centuries.”

• The Russian opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya has slammed the UN secretary general, António Guterres, for meeting Vladimir Putin. “It was the third year of the war, and the UN secretary general was shaking hands with a murderer,” Navalnaya said on X, posting a photo of Putin greeting Guterres. Navalnaya is the widow of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition figurehead who died as a Russian political prisoner in February.

• Guterres told the Russian president on Thursday that “the Russian invasion of Ukraine was in violation of the United Nations charter and international law” a readout from the UN chief’s spokesperson said after their meeting on the sidelines of the Brics summit in Kazan, Russia. Guterres called on Thursday for a “just peace” in Ukraine.

• Moscow was ready to consider any options to end the conflict in Ukraine but only proceeding from “reality on the ground”, and was “not ready for anything else”, Putin said on Thursday. He accused the west of using Ukraine to “create critical threats to Russia’s security”.

• Putin made no denial of North Korean troops being brought into the war as he spoke on Thursday about defence ties with Kim Jong-un’s regime, writes Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor. Asked by a reporter about satellite imagery showing North Korean troop movements, Putin said: “Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something.” The US and South Korea have said North Korean troops have reached Ukraine, while Ukraine’s military intelligence service said on Thursday that the first of them had been deployed in Russia’s Kursk region which has been counter-invaded by the Ukrainians.

• Russian attacks on eastern Ukraine killed at least six people and wounded 10 on Thursday, regional authorities said. A thermobaric bomb hit the town of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, wounding 10 people, said the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov. One woman died later in hospital. “The enemy struck near a shop and the town market,” Syniehubov said. Russian shelling later in the day killed three people around Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, said the governor, Vadym Filashkin, adding later that a Russian strike on a branch of the Nova Poshta delivery service killed two people in Oleksiyevo-Druzhkiva, near the frontline towns of Chasiv Yar and Kostyantynivka.

• Russian media and war bloggers reported on Thursday that Russian forces had advanced into the coal mining town of Selydove, about 20km (12 miles) south-east of Pokrovsk. Ukraine’s military general staff said that currently the most intense Russian assaults along the frontline were taking place on the Pokrovsk front, including near Selydove.

• The international criminal court reported Mongolia to its oversight organisation on Thursday for failing to arrest Vladimir Putin when he visited in September. The ICC has an arrest warrant out for Putin related to the Ukraine war, but instead of arresting the Russian ruler as required by its membership of the ICC, Mongolia rolled out the red carpet. “In view of the seriousness of Mongolia’s failure to cooperate with the court, the chamber deemed it necessary to refer the matter to the assembly of states parties,” the court said, referring to its oversight body that meets in December in The Hague. The organisation, made up of all 124 of the court’s member states, can “take any measure it deems appropriate”, according to the ICC.

• A father and son from Ukraine have been sentenced to 20 years’ jail each in Belarus after being convicted of preparing terrorist acts. Serhiy Kabarchuk and his son Pavlo were arrested in February for allegedly assembling a store of weapons and explosives. State television later ran footage in which the Kabarchuks said they were acting under the direction of Ukraine’s SBU security service. Many observers claim such televised confessions in the authoritarian country are made under duress.

• Ukraine said on Thursday it had detained six people including three army recruitment officials in Kyiv as part of a probe into “illegal evasion of mobilisation by persons liable for military service”. The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) added: “More than $1.2 million and 45,000 euros in cash were discovered and seized. In addition, 11 luxury cars worth over $100,000 each were seized.” The SBI alleged a civilian acted as a liaison between the recruitment officials and people seeking to avoid being drafted. The price to be removed from the call-up list ranged from $2,000 to $15,000 and the scheme may have aided “thousands” to evade service. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this week ordered the scrapping of the central body that issues medical disability certificates, and Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, resigned after security services uncovered a large-scale scheme that provided draft exemptions for government officials.

• Russian lawmakers voted on Thursday for a budget that will see defence spending surge by almost 30% next year as the Kremlin diverts huge resources to its Ukraine offensive. Only one lawmaker in the lower house voted against. The bill will go through a second reading on 14 November.

Argentinian police have raided the Buenos Aires hotel where ex-One Direction singer Liam Payne stayed before dying last week after falling from a third-floor balcony.

A police special investigations unit went to the Casa Sur hotel late on Wednesday on orders from the public prosecutor’s office. Officers seized items including computer hard drives and footage from hotel cameras, said a government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The singer died on 16 October after falling from the third-floor balcony in the up-market, touristy Palermo district. According to the autopsy, Payne died from multiple injuries as well as both internal and external bleeding caused by the fall. His body was found in the hotel’s internal courtyard.

Initial investigations suggest that the musician was alone and experiencing a “breakdown” due to consumption of substances that have not yet been fully determined. Following Payne’s death, police found substances in his hotel room, as well as several destroyed objects and furniture, according to the public prosecutors’ office.

The former pop star had cocaine in his system, according to a preliminary toxicology report published by local press Monday and confirmed to the AP by a source familiar with the situation. Definitive results aren’t expected to be made public for several weeks.

The Casa Sur hotel has become a place for Payne’s fans to pay their respects. They have left flowers, candles and photos of the singer in a makeshift shrine around a tree at the hotel’s entrance.

The singer’s father, Geoff Payne, is in Buenos Aires arranging the repatriation of his son’s body, which is expected to be released around 28 October.

Payne’s family – which includes his mother Karen Payne and his two sisters Ruth and Nicola – have expressed their devastation over the loss, as have his former bandmates. Artists and celebrities from various countries continue to share their grief.

One Direction was among the most successful boy bands of recent times. It announced an indefinite hiatus in 2016 and Payne – like his former bandmates Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, and Louis Tomlinson – pursued a solo career.

The singer had posted on his Snapchat account that he traveled to Argentina to attend Horan’s concert in Buenos Aires on 2 October. He shared videos of himself dancing with his girlfriend, the American influencer Kate Cassidy, and singing along in the stands. Cassidy had left Argentina after the show, but Payne stayed behind.

George Gascón, the Los Angeles county district attorney, has recommended that the Menéndez brothers be resentenced for the 1989 killings of their parents, a step that is expected to lead to their release.

Gascón said during a news conference on Thursday that the pair should be resentenced, and that life without the possibility of parole be removed, after the office reviewed new evidence in the case. They will be eligible for parole immediately because of their ages at the time of the murder, he said.

“After a very careful review of all the arguments made … I came to a place where I believe that, under the law, resentencing is appropriate and I’m going to recommend that to a court tomorrow,” Gascón said.

A judge will have the final say in a case during a hearing next month.

The development is a major victory to the brothers and their supporters who said that they killed their parents in self-defense after years of sexual, physical and psychological abuse by their father. Prosecutors had argued that they were driven by greed and a desire to inherit a multimillion-dollar fortune.

Gascón said he believed the brothers’ account of abuse. “I do believe the brothers were subjected to a tremendous amount of dysfunction in the home, and molestation,” he said.

“They have been in prison for nearly 35 years. I believe that they have paid their debt to society.”

Erik and Lyle Menéndez were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Kitty. The violent killing of the prominent entertainment executive and his wife in Beverly Hills attracted international attention and drew renewed interest in recent years thanks to a new Netflix show and documentary series.

During the pandemic, the case reached a new audience thanks to viral TikTok videos that offered a more sympathetic view of the brothers and created a new network of supporters. Kim Kardashian has become an advocate for the brothers, and argued in a recent essay that the case is more complex than it appears and that Erik and Lyle “chose what they thought at the time was their only way out – an unimaginable way to escape their living nightmare”.

The district attorney highlighted the brothers’ behavior in prison. Since they were first incarcerated, they have earned college degrees and served as mentors and caregivers in prison.

“Even though they didn’t think they would ever be let free, they engaged in a journey of redemption and a journey of rehabilitation,” Gascón said.

Cousins of Erik and Lyle spoke at Thursday’s press conference and praised the district attorney for his action, describing it as a “day filled with hope” for the family.

“This decision is not just a legal matter – it is a recognition of the abuse my cousins endured,” said Karen VanderMolen, Kitty’s niece.

Gascón had announced earlier this month that his office would review new evidence and decide whether the case should be considered for resentencing or a new trial. The new evidence included a letter written by Erik before the killings that his attorneys say corroborates his account of sexual abuse as well as allegations from a former member of the boy band Menudo who said that José Menéndez had sexually abused him.

“There is no question they committed the killing. The question is to what degree of culpability should they be held accountable to given the totality of the circumstance,” Gascón told CNN earlier this month. He suggested the state exhibited implicit bias in a manner that may have affected how the case was presented, citing a comment from one prosecutor “how men cannot be raped”.

The district attorney had announced earlier this week that he planned to expedite his decision due to the public interest in the case. His own office remains divided about whether or not the brothers should be released, Gascón said. He made his decision just an hour before the press conference, he told reporters.

Justin Trudeau has insisted that he will lead his Liberal party into the next election, dismissing a request by some party members to not run for a fourth term.

The Canadian prime minister met with his Liberal members of parliament for three hours on Wednesday, where he learned that more than 20 lawmakers from his party signed a letter asking him to step down before the next election.

On Thursday, Trudeau said there were “robust conversations” ongoing about the best way forward, but “that will happen as me as leader going into the next election”.

No Canadian prime minister in more than a century has won four straight terms.

Trudeau’s cabinet ministers have said he had the support of the vast majority of the 153 Liberal party members of the house of commons.

The Liberals recently suffered upsets in special elections for seats representing two districts in Toronto and Montreal that the party has held for years, raising doubts about Trudeau’s leadership.

The federal election could come anytime between this fall and next October. The Liberals must rely on the support of at least one major party in parliament, as they do not hold an outright majority themselves.

The leader of the opposition Bloc Québécois has said his party would work with the Conservatives and the New Democratic party (NDP) to bring down the Liberals and force an election if the government does not boost pensions.

Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said pressure was building on Trudeau but that his unhappy lawmakers do not have much power to force him out.

“Trudeau holds all the cards. It is up to him if he wants to stay. The Liberal party revised its rules in 2016 so that the party leader is immune to any challenge to his leadership so long as he is prime minister,” said Wiseman.

Trudeau channeled the star power of his father in 2015 when he reasserted the country’s liberal identity after almost 10 years of Conservative party rule. But the son of the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau is now in trouble. Canadians have been frustrated by the rising cost of living and other issues including the country’s emergence from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Liberals trail the Conservatives by 38% to 25% in the latest Nanos poll. The poll of 1,037 respondents has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Justin Trudeau has insisted that he will lead his Liberal party into the next election, dismissing a request by some party members to not run for a fourth term.

The Canadian prime minister met with his Liberal members of parliament for three hours on Wednesday, where he learned that more than 20 lawmakers from his party signed a letter asking him to step down before the next election.

On Thursday, Trudeau said there were “robust conversations” ongoing about the best way forward, but “that will happen as me as leader going into the next election”.

No Canadian prime minister in more than a century has won four straight terms.

Trudeau’s cabinet ministers have said he had the support of the vast majority of the 153 Liberal party members of the house of commons.

The Liberals recently suffered upsets in special elections for seats representing two districts in Toronto and Montreal that the party has held for years, raising doubts about Trudeau’s leadership.

The federal election could come anytime between this fall and next October. The Liberals must rely on the support of at least one major party in parliament, as they do not hold an outright majority themselves.

The leader of the opposition Bloc Québécois has said his party would work with the Conservatives and the New Democratic party (NDP) to bring down the Liberals and force an election if the government does not boost pensions.

Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said pressure was building on Trudeau but that his unhappy lawmakers do not have much power to force him out.

“Trudeau holds all the cards. It is up to him if he wants to stay. The Liberal party revised its rules in 2016 so that the party leader is immune to any challenge to his leadership so long as he is prime minister,” said Wiseman.

Trudeau channeled the star power of his father in 2015 when he reasserted the country’s liberal identity after almost 10 years of Conservative party rule. But the son of the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau is now in trouble. Canadians have been frustrated by the rising cost of living and other issues including the country’s emergence from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Liberals trail the Conservatives by 38% to 25% in the latest Nanos poll. The poll of 1,037 respondents has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The owner and operator of a ship that crashed into a Baltimore bridge in March, leaving six dead, will pay the US a $100m settlement.

The US justice department announced on Thursday that Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Private Limited, the Singapore-based corporations that owned and operated the Dali agreed to the $101,980,000 sum, settling a lawsuit over the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s catastrophic collapse.

“Nearly seven months after one of the worst transportation disasters in recent memory, which claimed six lives and caused untold damage, we have reached an important milestone with today’s settlement,” said Benjamin C Mizer, principal deputy associate attorney general.

“This resolution ensures that the costs of the federal government’s cleanup efforts in the Fort McHenry Channel are borne by Grace Ocean and Synergy and not the American taxpayer,” Mizer also said.

The justice department civil claim, filed in September, accused the owner and operator of ignoring electrical problems on the ship. Prosecutors alleged that because the Dali’s mechanical and electrical systems were poorly maintained, the vessel lost power, traveled off course and then struck the bridge.

A large portion of this major road bridge fell into the river, killing half a dozen construction workers. Authorities spent more than $100m to clean up underwater debris and reopen Baltimore’s port.

“This tragedy was entirely avoidable,” the lawsuit said.

The bridge collapse disrupted commercial ship traffic through Baltimore’s port, and the channel did not fully re-open until June.

The Dali was departing Baltimore en route to Sri Lanka when its steering failed from power loss. While police swiftly stopped traffic from driving on to the bridge, likely preventing far more deaths, they were not able to warn the road crew in time.

The construction crew was working overnight to fill potholes on the roadway when the Dali collided with a key support column, propelling them into the water.

The victims’ families have called for stronger worker protections, especially for immigrant laborers. All the victims were Latino immigrants who moved to the US for better-paying work and greater opportunities.

The federal government, which led cleanup efforts, had to remove some 50,000 tons of steel, concrete, and asphalt from the channel, as well as the ship. Federal officials also had to construct temporary channels to help alleviate the blocked waterway.

This settlement does not include money for re-building the Francis Scott Key Bridge. As Maryland built, owned and operated the bridge, state attorneys are pursuing claims for these damages.

The state estimates that rebuilding costs will range between $1.7bn and $1.9bn and that the project should be completed by fall 2028.

Reuters contributed reporting

Gambling poses a growing worldwide threat to public health, with its rapid expansion via mobile phones and the internet harming far more people than previously thought, a report warns.

Much stronger global regulatory controls are urgently needed to curb the impact of commercial gambling on global health and wellbeing, a group of leading experts in gambling, public health, global health and regulatory policy concluded.

About 450 million people have at least one behavioural symptom or have experienced a harmful personal, social or health consequence of gambling, the 45-page report from the Lancet public health commission on gambling found.

Of those, at least 80 million people suffer from gambling disorder, a mental health condition identified by a pattern of repeated and continuous betting despite negative consequences on a person’s life. The estimates of the numbers experiencing significant harm to their health as a result of gambling are likely to be conservative, the experts said.

Incredibly sophisticated marketing, ever-widening easy access to the internet and mobile phones are enabling the gambling industry to reach more people than ever before. These included adolescents and younger children who were routinely exposed to advertising of gambling products in ways that were unprecedented before the digital revolution, the report found.

Prof Heather Wardle, the co-chair of the commission, said the huge global threat posed to public health was rooted in the fast changing nature of gambling.

“Most people think of a traditional Las Vegas casino or buying a lottery ticket when they think of gambling. They don’t think of large technology companies deploying a variety of techniques to get more people to engage more frequently with a commodity that can pose substantial risks to health, but this is the reality of gambling today,” she said.

“Anyone with a mobile phone now has access to what is essentially a casino in their pocket, 24 hours a day. Highly sophisticated marketing and technology make it easier to start, and harder to stop gambling, and many products now use design mechanics to encourage repeated and longer engagement.”

Wardle, a specialist in gambling research, policy and practice from the University of Glasgow, added: “The global growth trajectory of this industry is phenomenal; collectively we need to wake up and take action. If we delay, gambling and gambling harms will become even more widely embedded as a global phenomenon and much harder to tackle.”

A systematic review and meta analysis conducted for the commission estimated that gambling disorder affected 15.8% of adults and 26.4% of adolescents who used online casino or slot products, and 8.9% of adults and 16.3% of adolescents who gambled using sports betting products.

Online casino and online sports betting are two of the most rapidly expanding areas for commercial gambling globally, the report found.

Commercial gambling is clearly associated with financial losses and the risk of financial ruin, but it is also associated with physical and mental health problems, relationship and family breakdown, heightened risk of suicide and domestic violence, increased crime against property and people, and loss of employment, the experts concluded.

The commission report noted that this impact was not spread evenly through populations, and specific groups faced an “elevated risk” of harms including adolescents and younger children who were routinely exposed to advertising of gambling products. In addition, gambling is often embedded into the architecture of video games.

Dr Kristiana Siste, one of the report’s experts, said: “We need to take action to protect children from the harms of gambling. We know that early exposure to gambling increases the risk of developing gambling disorders later in life, and children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to the allure of easy money and the game-like designs of online gambling.”

The report also warned how a complex ecosystem enabled the multibillion dollar gambling industry to promote its products and protects its interests.

This includes innovative digital marketing approaches rooted in “deep surveillance” to target consumers online, as well as widespread sports and broadcast media sponsorship.

The experts also raised concerns about how the betting industry undermined legitimate science on the impact of gambling, reframed discussions about its harmful effects to promote individual responsibility and consumer freedom, and influenced political processes around regulation.

Prof Malcolm Sparrow, one of the experts behind the report, said the findings pointed to the need for increased regulation of gambling.

“While the industry continues to promote gambling as harmless entertainment, countries and communities are experiencing rapidly increasing threats from gambling harms.

“The commission urges policymakers to treat gambling as a public health issue, just as we treat other addictive and unhealthy commodities such as alcohol and tobacco.”

Fresh onions are the probable source of an E coli outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants that has sickened 49 people and killed one, the US Department of Agriculture said, alarming fast food chains using the ingredient.

Taylor Farms, a supplier for McDonald’s, the biggest US burger chain, recalled several batches of yellow onions produced in a Colorado facility, according to a memo on Wednesday by US Foods, one of the largest suppliers of food service operations in the country.

The US Foods recall alert does not mention whether the company supplies onions to McDonald’s. Fresh onions are an ingredient in the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburger, and McDonald’s has pulled the item from its menu in Colorado, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, and in parts of Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Some types of E coli bacteria are harmless but a few strains cause illness and even death.

Past outbreaks of the bacterial disease have hampered sales at big fast food restaurants, as customers shun the affected chains.

Yum Brands said on Thursday that it was removing fresh onions from menus “out of an abundance of caution” at some of its KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains.

Restaurant Brands International, parent of Burger King, the McDonald’s rival, had removed onions from its menu at at least one outlet in Colorado, the state at the center of the McDonald’s outbreak.

“We’ve been told by corporate to not use any onions going forward for the foreseeable future,” said Maria Gonzales, the on-duty manager inside a Burger King in Longmont, Colorado, on Wednesday. “They’re off our menu.”

Neither McDonald’s nor Restaurant Brands International immediately responded to requests for comment on Thursday.

Reuters contributed reporting