Israel’s parliament has voted to ban the UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) from the country within 90 days, in defiance of US and other international pressure to maintain the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to the country’s Palestinian population.

In a 92-10 vote late on Monday, the Knesset banned the agency, which operates in Israel according to a 1967 treaty, from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, including the areas of annexed East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank.

Israeli lawmakers also voted to declare Unrwa a terror group, effectively banning any direct interaction between the UN agency and the Israeli state.

Taken together, the legislation – which will not come into effect immediately – is expected to lead to the closure of Unrwa’s East Jerusalem headquarters and would effectively block the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza via Rafah. The severing of diplomatic relations would preclude Israel from issuing entry and work permits to foreign Unrwa staff and prevent coordination with the Israeli military to permit aid shipments.

More than 1.9 million Palestinians are displaced and the Gaza Strip faces widespread shortages of food, water and medicine.

“It’s outrageous that a member state of the United Nations is working to dismantle a UN agency which also happens to be the largest responder in the humanitarian operation in Gaza,” Juliette Touma, spokesperson for Unrwa, said in a statement.

In a statement, Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of Unrwa, called the vote “unprecedented” and said it “sets a dangerous precedent”.

“These bills will only deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell,” he said.

Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the UK was “gravely concerned” that the bill had passed, adding: “This legislation risks making Unrwa’s essential work for Palestinians impossible, jeopardising the entire international humanitarian response in Gaza and delivery of essential health and education services in the West Bank.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is simply unacceptable. We need to see an immediate ceasefire, the release of the hostages and a significant increase in aid to Gaza. Under its international obligations, Israel must ensure sufficient aid reaches civilians in Gaza.”

Speaking at a daily briefing, the US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said Washington was “deeply concerned” about the vote and had urged Israel to “pause implementation” of the legislation, which could “have implications under US law”.

US law prevents Washington from providing military aid to countries that restrict US humanitarian assistance, although that legislation is rarely enforced.

During the briefing, Miller said that Unrwa had an “irreplaceable” role in providing aid to the Gaza Strip.

The legislation, which was co-sponsored by members of the rightwing Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud parties, followed allegations by Israel that members of the Unrwa staff in Gaza were involved in the 7 October Hamas attacks that led to the deaths of more than 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of hundreds more.

Israel responded to the Hamas raid with military operations in the Gaza Strip that have sparked a humanitarian crisis, leading to the deaths of more than 43,000 civilians.

“Unrwa workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable,” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement. “Since avoiding a humanitarian crisis is also essential, sustained humanitarian aid must remain available in Gaza now and in the future.”

“In the 90 days before this legislation takes effect – and after – we stand ready to work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security,” he said.

The UN launched an investigation into the Israeli claims and fired nine Unrwa staff as a result. The allegations also led the US and EU to briefly halt funding to the agency.

Unrwa was established in 1949 to provide aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees displaced after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The agency now provides services to millions of Palestinians in Israel and nearby countries, many of whom remain stateless and live in refugee camps. It has 13,000 staff in the Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the UK all voiced their opposition to the legislation and said it could lead to “devastating consequences”.

Unrwa “provides essential and life-saving humanitarian aid and basic services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and throughout the region”, the foreign ministers said in a statement before the vote. “Without its work, the provision of such assistance and services, including education, health care, and fuel distribution in Gaza and the West Bank would be severely hampered if not impossible, with devastating consequences on an already critical and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, particularly in northern Gaza.”

“It is crucial that Unrwa and other UN organisations and agencies be fully able to deliver humanitarian aid and their assistance to those who need it most, fulfilling their mandates effectively,” the statement continued.

In the same statement, the foreign ministers, who include some of Israel’s closest allies, condemned the 7 October attacks and said that Unrwa had “taken steps to address allegations regarding individual employees’ support for terrorist organisations”.

“We call on Unrwa to continue its path of reform as a priority, demonstrating its commitment to the principle of neutrality, and ensure that its activities remain entirely in line with its mandate. We will continue to actively monitor and support this process,” the statement concluded.

Israel’s parliament has passed bills banning the UN agency for Palestinian refugees from operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories, designating it a terror organisation, and cutting all ties between the agency and the Israeli government.

What is Unrwa?

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees is the main refugee agency for Palestinians and operates across the Middle East.

It was originally set up in 1948 to support 700,000 Palestinians displaced in the war that saw Israel established, and provides services education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and runs shelters during periods of conflict.

Its operations are spread across the occupied West Bank – including East Jerusalem – and the Gaza Strip, as well as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

It is funded largely by voluntary contributions from UN member states, and also receives some funding directly from the UN. Employing 30,000 Palestinians, it serves almost 6 million refugees, including in Gaza where 1,476,706 Palestinians are registered as refugees in eight Palestinian refugee camps, while in the West Bank 800,000 are registered.

During the current conflict in Gaza almost the entire population of Gaza has been reliant on Unrwa for basic necessities, including food, water and hygiene supplies. More than 200 Unrwa staff have been killed in Israeli attacks during the year-long war.

Why has Israel’s parliament voted to ban it?

On Monday 92 Israeli MPs voted for a measure to ban Unrwa’s activities in Israel while only 10 voted to oppose the measure. A second bill severed diplomatic relations with the agency.

Israel has long complained that Unrwa is obsolete and its continuing support of the descendants of those initially displaced in 1948 is an impediment to a peace settlement.

Critics say that Israel’s own actions – not least its failure to meaningfully accept the foundation of a Palestinian state, and continued settlement activity on lands intended for that Palestinian state – represent the most significant obstacle to peace.

During the current conflict with Hamas, Israel also has repeatedly claimed that Unrwa has employed militants from Hamas.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has in the past called on the US – Israel’s top ally and the agency’s biggest donor – to roll back its support, saying the agency is “perforated by Hamas”.

A six-page Israeli dossier shared with the US accused 12 Unrwa staff members of taking part in the 7 October 2023 attacks, including nine who it said worked as teachers in the agency’s schools.

The dossier said Israel also had wider evidence that Unrwa has employed 190 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, which would represent 0.64% of the total Unrwa staff if true. The agency fired nine employees after an investigation but denied it knowingly aids armed groups.

Unrwa, however, has long shared the list of its staff with Israel. Speaking earlier this year, the spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, reiterated the currency of this arrangement.

What does the new Israeli law mean?

Under the laws – which will not be implemented for several months – Unrwa could not “operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly”.

Opponents charge that would imperil the already fragile process for distributing aid in Gaza at a moment when Israel is under increased US pressure to ramp up aid.

While most of Unrwa’s activities take place in the West Bank and Gaza, it is hugely dependent on an agreement with Israel to operate, including access to border crossings into Gaza including for humanitarian aid.

The legislation does not include provisions for alternative organisations to oversee its work.

What do other countries say?

The move is strongly opposed by numerous governments, including the UK, as well as international aid groups. They say that Israel has not only offered no suggestion of what could replace Unrwa [nothing was mentioned during the debate on the bill] but has consistently failed to articulate a “day after” plan for Gaza for when the conflict ends.

The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday, said the Biden administration was “deeply concerned” by the legislation. “There’s nobody that can replace them right now in the middle of the crisis,” he said.

Unrwa condemned the Knesset’s approval of the bill.

“These bills will only deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell,” wrote Philippe Lazzarini, Unrwa’s commissioner general, in a statement on X. “It ⁠will deprive [more than] 650,000 girls and boys there from education, putting at risk an entire generation of children. These bills increase the suffering of the Palestinians and are nothing less than collective punishment.”

Israel’s parliament has passed bills banning the UN agency for Palestinian refugees from operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories, designating it a terror organisation, and cutting all ties between the agency and the Israeli government.

What is Unrwa?

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees is the main refugee agency for Palestinians and operates across the Middle East.

It was originally set up in 1948 to support 700,000 Palestinians displaced in the war that saw Israel established, and provides services education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and runs shelters during periods of conflict.

Its operations are spread across the occupied West Bank – including East Jerusalem – and the Gaza Strip, as well as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

It is funded largely by voluntary contributions from UN member states, and also receives some funding directly from the UN. Employing 30,000 Palestinians, it serves almost 6 million refugees, including in Gaza where 1,476,706 Palestinians are registered as refugees in eight Palestinian refugee camps, while in the West Bank 800,000 are registered.

During the current conflict in Gaza almost the entire population of Gaza has been reliant on Unrwa for basic necessities, including food, water and hygiene supplies. More than 200 Unrwa staff have been killed in Israeli attacks during the year-long war.

Why has Israel’s parliament voted to ban it?

On Monday 92 Israeli MPs voted for a measure to ban Unrwa’s activities in Israel while only 10 voted to oppose the measure. A second bill severed diplomatic relations with the agency.

Israel has long complained that Unrwa is obsolete and its continuing support of the descendants of those initially displaced in 1948 is an impediment to a peace settlement.

Critics say that Israel’s own actions – not least its failure to meaningfully accept the foundation of a Palestinian state, and continued settlement activity on lands intended for that Palestinian state – represent the most significant obstacle to peace.

During the current conflict with Hamas, Israel also has repeatedly claimed that Unrwa has employed militants from Hamas.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has in the past called on the US – Israel’s top ally and the agency’s biggest donor – to roll back its support, saying the agency is “perforated by Hamas”.

A six-page Israeli dossier shared with the US accused 12 Unrwa staff members of taking part in the 7 October 2023 attacks, including nine who it said worked as teachers in the agency’s schools.

The dossier said Israel also had wider evidence that Unrwa has employed 190 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, which would represent 0.64% of the total Unrwa staff if true. The agency fired nine employees after an investigation but denied it knowingly aids armed groups.

Unrwa, however, has long shared the list of its staff with Israel. Speaking earlier this year, the spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, reiterated the currency of this arrangement.

What does the new Israeli law mean?

Under the laws – which will not be implemented for several months – Unrwa could not “operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly”.

Opponents charge that would imperil the already fragile process for distributing aid in Gaza at a moment when Israel is under increased US pressure to ramp up aid.

While most of Unrwa’s activities take place in the West Bank and Gaza, it is hugely dependent on an agreement with Israel to operate, including access to border crossings into Gaza including for humanitarian aid.

The legislation does not include provisions for alternative organisations to oversee its work.

What do other countries say?

The move is strongly opposed by numerous governments, including the UK, as well as international aid groups. They say that Israel has not only offered no suggestion of what could replace Unrwa [nothing was mentioned during the debate on the bill] but has consistently failed to articulate a “day after” plan for Gaza for when the conflict ends.

The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday, said the Biden administration was “deeply concerned” by the legislation. “There’s nobody that can replace them right now in the middle of the crisis,” he said.

Unrwa condemned the Knesset’s approval of the bill.

“These bills will only deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell,” wrote Philippe Lazzarini, Unrwa’s commissioner general, in a statement on X. “It ⁠will deprive [more than] 650,000 girls and boys there from education, putting at risk an entire generation of children. These bills increase the suffering of the Palestinians and are nothing less than collective punishment.”

The founder of the Proud Boys, the far-right group that played a major role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol and was memorably instructed by Donald Trump to “stand back and stand by”, has told the makers of a Trump documentary: “We want to make America hate again.”

Gavin McInnes, the UK-born British Canadian citizen who co-founded Vice magazine and was influential in the New York hipster scene of the early 2000s before becoming a far-right militia figure, also claimed to the BBC that his group wasn’t responsible for what happened that day.

“It was you,” he told the makers of the documentary, which has aired on the BBC’s Panorama strand. “If anyone should apologise … it should be the corrupt leftwing media, and I’ll accept your apology now if you want to do it.”

The program – Trump: A Second Chance? – talks to ardent Trump supporters about their enduring support for the New York property developer and reality TV show figure who faced two impeachment inquiries during four years in office and has been indicted in four separate criminal cases since, including being found guilty of 34 felony counts.

Polls suggest an exceptionally tight US presidential race, with the final few days of campaigning before next week’s vote characterized by Democrats’ claims that a second Trump term would plunge the US into a period of neo-fascism.

At a packed Trump rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, the speakers rotated between patriotism and grievance, including a podcaster who called the unincorporated US territory of Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”, made lewd comments about Latinos, depicted Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers.

McInnes, designated a “terrorist entity” by the Canadian government and described by Vanity Fair as “one of our era’s most troubling extremists”, was not at the January 6 protest. But about 50 members of the Proud Boy group faced charges for their part in the insurrection, which was staged to prevent the certification of the 2020 election.

The Proud Boys chair, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, 39, of Miami, Florida, was sentenced to 22 years in prison last year after being convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges.

The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the sentences that the Proud Boy members received reflected “the danger their crimes pose to our democracy” and Tarrio had “learned that the consequence of conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power”.

McInnes resigned from the Proud Boys in November 2018 after 10 members were charged in connection with a brawl on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. But in 2022, he was pictured in a black hoodie embroidered with the gold Proud Boy logo.

McInnes said on his Get Off My Lawn podcast that he was wearing the Proud Boy regalia “as an homage to our brothers behind bars”.

Last month, McInnes was scheduled to speak at dinner hosted by Uncensored America, a student organization at the University of South Carolina. The invitation misspelled Kamala Harris’s first name in a sexually suggestive way, the news station WIS 10 reported.

McInnes’s planned appearance at the event sparked controversy over free speech on campus. A petition protesting against the event argued it contributed to “overall negative environment that the university continues to allow”.

In response, McInnes said he would not be the one bringing hate to the event, and repeated the sentiment he offered to Panorama.

“If you’re looking for violence you’re looking on the wrong side of the political spectrum. The left are the violent ones. They burnt down this country for two years straight. We had one riot on January 6,” he said.

He said the dinner, a “roast” in colloquial terms, was set to “make fun of what could be the worst president in American history”, referring to Harris’s candidacy.

The impending election is predicted in polls to fall along gender lines. Polls show men are more likely to say efforts to promote gender equality have gone too far and plan to vote for Trump. Women are more apt to say those efforts haven’t gone far enough, and plan to vote for Harris. The margins for each are split roughly 60-40.

Appearing together in the home town of Michigan’s largest university, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sought on Tuesday to burnish their credentials with young voters and soothe Democrats who had grown nervous as the apparent deadlock in the race to keep Donald Trump out of the White House has dragged on.

Much of the rhetoric at the evening rally in Ann Arbor, a city synonymous with the University of Michigan and its nearly 53,000-strong student body, was aimed squarely at the first-time voters who have traditionally been a treasure trove of votes for Democrats. Speaking at a city park just south of the university campus, Harris offered comfort to a generation where many view their challenges as existential.

“I want to speak specifically to all the young leaders, all the students who are here today,” Harris said. “So, I love your generation. I really do, and one of the things about it is you are rightly impatient for change.”

“You are impatient for change because, look, you have only known the climate crisis and are leading, then, the charge to protect our planet and our future. You, you young leaders who grew up with active shooter drills and are fighting, then, to keep our schools safe. You, who now know fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers, are standing up for reproductive freedom, and for you, then, I know that these issues that are at stake, they are not theoretical. This is not political for you. It is your lived experience, and I see you, and I see your power.”

It was a similar tone taken by Maggie Rogers, the 30-year-old Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter who was the rally’s warm-up act and one of several music stars the Harris campaign has booked for their recent events.

“As I’m standing here with you today, I can’t ignore the headlines that I’ve been seeing on my phone any longer. I have to face the reality of what’s happening in the next eight days, and to tell you the complete truth, it’s terrifying,” Rogers said.

“These are such wild and unprecedented times, and the energy feels so high, and the future feels so uncertain, and I don’t always know what to do with that feeling, but there is something to me that is greater than fear, and that’s action, all of you being here today, right now, and voting – voting is the key to the future.”

Early voting began in Michigan two days ago, and Walz and Harris both encouraged young people to get in their ballots. Whether they do could prove crucial to securing Democratic victories up and down the ballot in a swing state where polls show no clear frontrunner.

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Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which make up the trio of Democratic states in the “Blue Wall” along the Great Lakes, have been counted on for decades by Democrats to get their candidates into the White House.

That confidence was blown apart in 2016, when Trump narrowly won all three in his upset victory over Hillary Clinton, only for Biden to reclaim them, again narrowly, four years later. The margins this year are expected to be slim – polls have showed Harris and Trump tied or barely ahead in each state, just as they have for the four battleground states in the Sun Belt.

Walz acknowledged the tension, telling the crowd: “If you’re feeling any of that anxiety, any of that nervousness, any of that worry, we’ve got the solution for you: get out there and vote for Kamala Harris. I know, I did it last Wednesday with my son, who voted the first time, and it works.”

Among the Blue Wall states, Michigan gave Biden his largest margin of victory in 2020, and its governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is among the rising stars in the party who was briefly viewed a successor to him until Harris stepped in. But Biden’s support for Israel after the October 7 attack and its subsequent invasions of Gaza and Lebanon have alienated the large community of Arab Americans and Muslims around Detroit, who otherwise were expected to support Democrats.

Harris has said little different from Biden about the conflict, noting that she supports a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. But her campaign found time at the Ann Arbor rally to hear from Assad Turfe, the highest-ranking Arab American official in the Detroit area, who said his community should back the vice-president.

“Vice-president Harris has called for a ceasefire that brings the hostages home, allows displaced families in Lebanon to return to their villages and gives the Palestinian people the dignity and self determination they deserve. When she wins, she will continue doing everything she can to bring relief to innocent civilians and secure lasting peace for the region,” said Turfe, the Wayne county deputy county executive.

“We know what Trump thinks of Muslims and Arab Americans and how he treats us,” Turfe continued, mentioning the ban Trump imposed during his presidency on people entering the United States from Muslim-majority countries, and his recent comments in support of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

“If he gets another chance to occupy the Oval Office, he will only bring more chaos and more suffering.”

However, it wasn’t enough to prevent around a dozen people, mostly young, from interrupting Harris’s speech, shouting “stop the genocide” and waving placards that read “abandon Harris”. The vice-president, who has experienced this repeatedly on the campaign trail, responded as she often does: “We all want this war to end as soon as possible and get the hostages out, and I will do everything in my power to make it so.”

The war in Gaza is in issue that matters to Haley Litman, a University of Michigan psychology major who attended Harris’s speech. But she said withholding her vote from the vice-president would solve nothing.

“There’s definitely been protesting on both sides, and it is an issue for me. However, I think choosing Kamala provides us with an opportunity to address the issue. If we were to elect Trump, I feel like there is no chance of addressing that issue,” she said.

Donald Trump yet again descended upon Atlanta with a week and a day to go, looking for votes in a state that is rapidly running out of voters to woo.

“I do hear the votes are coming in very nicely,” the former president said. When he asked the crowd who had voted, about half raised their hands and cheered. “We’ve got to finish it off.”

Just before Trump took the stage on Monday afternoon across the street from the CNN debate stage that took Joe Biden out of the race, Georgia’s early vote count crossed the 3m mark. More than 40% of Georgia voters have already cast a ballot. About 5 million people voted in Georgia’s 2020 presidential race.

Trump refrained from his regular practice of trashing Atlanta, though he disparaged Fulton county’s district attorney Fani Willis and the election interference charges he still faces, referring to “Fani and her boyfriend” attempting to lock up their “political opponent”.

He described the Harris campaign as one of “demonization and hate”, then referred to her “radical, lunatic left policies”.

“They say: ‘He’s Hitler.’ They say: ‘He’s a Nazi.’ I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” he said. “How can Kamala Harris lead America when she hates Americans? … They’re very bad people who are a threat to democracy.”

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Trump took issue with recent criticism made by Michelle Obama. “She was nasty,” Trump said.

But Trump generally stuck to familiar themes about how unauthorized immigrants are “savages” and “monsters” who are “destroying this country”, the perils of accepting transgender surgery and the size of his rallies. He said he would support a tax credit for family caregivers – a new economic proposal with eight days to go in the election.

Racist comments yesterday by a conservative comedian at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York overshadowed whatever message the campaign intended to present. Critics on the left had widely likened the event to the Nazi party rally held there in the run-up to the second world war, building on reports from his former officials that Trump had admired Hitler’s general officers and wished his own generals had been like them.

In warm-up comments before Trump’s appearance, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene complained about how the rally on Sunday night had been portrayed in the media.

“That rhetoric right there is why I get death threats,” Greene said. “We’re fed up with being called Nazis and fascists. They’re absolutely lies, and we’re not going to take it anymore,” suggesting that conservatives should launch a class-action lawsuit to muzzle this criticism.

The crowd at the McCamish Pavilion on Georgia Tech’s campus skewed much younger than most rallies held near Atlanta over the last month. Perhaps a quarter of those attending were Georgia Tech students or recent graduates.

Though Georgia Tech students have a longstanding tradition of stealing the letter T from every sign they can on campus, Trump’s signs were not apparently so affected.

And yet, Lt Gov Burt Jones had the temerity to joke about how Kirby Scott, coach of the University of Georgia football team, was a gift from God while speaking to an arena full of Georgia Tech students on their own campus.

Georgia Tech tends to be a much less politically active campus than the state flagship University of Georgia, or Georgia State University a couple of miles east of campus, or Emory University, which held raucous protests about the war in Gaza earlier this year.

That said, a group of pro-Palestinian students set up an enormous display of flags marking the death of Gazans in the center of Georgia Tech’s campus in advance of Trump’s visit. The demonstration had less to do with Trump’s presence than the general call for the school to disclose and divest from investments in Israel, said Renee Alnoubani, a civil engineering student.

“We should be talking about the war in Gaza every day,” she said. “Any leader, most of all a presidential candidate, has a responsibility to dedicate significant effort to end the genocide with every ounce of power they have.”

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, has penned a column in his own newspaper defending the decision not to endorse a candidate in the US presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, widely seen as a crucial stress test for American democracy.

The decision not to endorse has rocked the Post, one of the most storied names in US journalism since breaking the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, and seen newsroom unrest, resignations from its editorial board and the loss of 200,000 subscribers who have cancelled their accounts with the newspaper.

In his essay Bezos – who founded Amazon – said he had taken the decision because he was worried that people had lost trust in the traditional US media and were getting their news from social media, leaving them vulnerable to disinformation.

“Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose,” Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, said.

He added: “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say: ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

Bezos, and his recently installed Post publisher Will Lewis, a British transplant with a controversial history of scandal at newspapers owned by the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has endured a torrent of brutal criticism following the decision not to endorse a candidate.

Marty Baron, the former editor of the Post, slammed the paper’s leaders on Friday in the wake of the decision. “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” Baron wrote on Twitter/X.

David Hoffman, who recently won a Pulitzer prize for his Washington Post series on “new technologies and the tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent in the digital age”, resigned from the editorial board and stated in a letter: “I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump. I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice at this perilous moment.

About 20 columnists at the Post signed a joint statement saying the decision was “an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love”.

A meeting between executives from Bezos’s aerospace company and Donald Trump on the same day the Post shied away from a reportedly planned endorsement of Harris also raised concern.

Bezos in his column denied that business interests had motivated his decision and that the business meeting had been entirely coincidental.

“I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally … But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand,” he said.

He did, however, admit that the timing of the decision was unfortunate. The election is just over a week away with Trump and Harris virtually in a dead heat, both in head-to-head polls and also in the crucial swing states that will decide the election.

“I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy,” Bezos said.

Bezos’s explanation for the decision to not endorse a candidate may not convince many of his growing legion of critics. Trump is widely seen as an autocratic threat to political and media freedoms in the US should he return to the White House. On Sunday night in New York, Trump held a rally in which his allies and supporters gave speeches laden with racist and inflammatory language.

In a CBC interview with the As It Happens host Nil Köksal, Baron lamented the decision as a stain on Bezos’s previously good record of backing the Post in its journalism, which has broken numerous high-profile scoops about Trump and his circle.

“Jeff Bezos stood behind us all the way. He endured a lot of pressure from Donald Trump, and Trump threatened his business, Amazon, and all of that. And he didn’t bend at all,” Baron told the show.

“I see this development as yielding to Trump’s pressure.”

North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to train and fight in the Ukraine war within “the next several weeks,” the Pentagon has said, in a move that western leaders say will intensify the almost three-year war and jolt relations in the region.

Some of the North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said on Monday, and were believed to be heading for the Kursk border region, where Russia has been struggling to push back a Ukrainian incursion.

Earlier on Monday, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte confirmed recent Ukrainian intelligence reports that some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region.

The South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, said the developments posed a global security threat.

“This illegal military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is a significant security threat to the international community and could pose a serious risk to our national security,” he said.

Adding to concerns about the two countries’ growing cooperation over Russia’s war in Ukraine, North Korean state media said on Tuesday a delegation led by foreign minister Choe Son Hui had left Pyongyang for an official visit to Russia, without elaborating. Russia’s embassy in Pyongyang said the visit was taking place “within the framework of a strategic dialogue”.

Adding thousands of North Korean soldiers to Europe’s biggest conflict since the second world war will pile more pressure on Ukraine’s weary and overstretched army. It will also stoke geopolitical tensions in the Korean Peninsula and the wider Indo-Pacific region, including Japan and Australia, western officials say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is keen to reshape global power dynamics. He sought to build a counterbalance to western influence with a summit of Brics countries, including the leaders of China and India, in Russia last week. He has sought direct help for the war from Iran, which has supplied drones, and North Korea, which has shipped large amounts of ammunition, according to western governments.

Rutte told reporters in Brussels that the North Korean deployment represents “a significant escalation” in Pyongyang’s involvement in the conflict and “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.”

US President Joe Biden also called the deployment “dangerous. Very dangerous.”

Defence secretary Lloyd Austin and secretary of state Antony Blinken will meet with their South Korean counterparts later this week in Washington.

Singh said Austin and defence minister Kim Yong-hyun would discuss the deployment of North Korean soldiers in Ukraine. There would be no limitations on the use of US-provided weapons on those forces, Singh said.

“If we see DPRK troops moving in towards the frontlines, they are co-belligerents in the war,” Singh said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea. “This is a calculation that North Korea has to make.”

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov shrugged off Rutte’s comments and noted that Pyongyang and Moscow signed a joint security pact last June. He stopped short of confirming North Korean soldiers were in Russia.

Lavrov claimed that western military instructors have long been covertly deployed to Ukraine to help its military use long-range weapons provided by western partners.

Ukraine, whose defences are under severe Russian pressure in its eastern Donetsk region, could get more bleak news from next week’s US presidential election. A Donald Trump victory could see key US military help dwindle.

In Moscow, the defence ministry announced Monday that Russian troops have captured the Donetsk village of Tsukuryne – the latest settlement to succumb to the slow-moving Russian onslaught.

Rutte spoke in Brussels after a high-level South Korean delegation, including top intelligence and military officials as well as senior diplomats, briefed the alliance’s 32 national ambassadors at Nato headquarters.

The South Koreans showed no evidence of North Korean troops in Kursk, according to European officials who were present for the 90-minute exchange and spoke to AP about the security briefing on condition of anonymity.

It’s unclear how or when Nato allies might respond to the North Korean involvement. They could, for example, lift restrictions that prevent Ukraine from using western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes on Russian soil.

With Associated Press and Reuters

• A Russian guided bomb attack on Kharkiv on Monday shattered much of the Derzhprom building, one of the most celebrated landmarks in Ukraine’s second city, dating from the 1920s and noted by Unesco. Six people were injured in the 9pm strike, adding to 13 wounded in an earlier overnight bomb attack on the city. Eight were hurt in a rocket attack in the city of Chuhuiv just to the south-east, officials said.

• In the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, a Russian missile struck a three-storey residential building, killing one person and wounding at least 11. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, deplored the attack on his home town, as well as on Kharkiv, and called for renewed efforts to force Vladimir Putin to halt the war.

• In the southern Kherson region, a drone attack killed a medic, the regional governor said. Three people were killed in Kherson region on Sunday.

• The Russian army advanced 478 sq km into Ukrainian territory in October, a record since March 2022 in the first weeks of the war, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Two-thirds of the Russian gains that the news agency calculated were in the eastern Donetsk region. Russian forces are a few kilometres from Pokrovsk, which they are approaching from the south and east. They have also gained territory at the north of the front, having seized more than 40 sq km near Kupiansk.

• North Korea’s foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, left Pyongyang on Monday to visit Russia, state media KCNA said on Tuesday. It came as the Nato chief, Mark Rutte, said after a briefing with South Korean intelligence officials that he could confirm North Korean military units had been deployed in Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops occupy territory. He called the involvement of Kim Jong-un’s regime “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war” and “a sign of Putin’s growing desperation”.

• Zelenskyy on Monday said he expected 12,000 North Korean soldiers on Russian territory “soon” as he met with Nordic leaders in Iceland. He warned that about 3,000 North Korean soldiers and officers were “already on Russian territory” and Russia would use them in its war on Ukraine.

• The Pentagon said North Korea has sent 10,000 troops to eastern Russia, up from its previous estimate of 3,000. The US president, Joe Biden, called the situation “very dangerous”. Matthew Miller, US state department spokesman, said Washington had also made clear to China “that we are concerned about it and that they ought to be concerned about this destabilising action by two of its neighbours, Russia and North Korea”.

• Britain on Monday imposed sanctions on three Russian agencies and three senior figures at the agencies who it said were trying to use disinformation to “undermine and destabilise Ukraine and its democracy”. Britain’s foreign ministry said the Social Design Agency and its partner company Structura had attempted to deliver a series of “interference operations” designed to weaken international support for Ukraine.

• Croatia will buy up to 50 Leopard tanks from Germany in a transaction that includes sending some of its older tanks and other military equipment to Ukraine, the Croatian ministry of defence said on Monday. It added that the value of the older eastern European-made tanks and equipment would be deducted from the total price for the new Leopard 2A8 tanks that Croatia will buy. Since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Croatia has delivered military aid worth more than €200m to Ukraine.

Indonesia has prohibited the marketing and sale of the iPhone 16 model over Apple’s failure to meet local investment regulations, according to its industry ministry.

South-east Asia’s biggest economy has a young, tech-savvy population with more than 100 million people under the age of 30, but Apple still does not have an official store in the country, forcing those who want its products to buy from resale platforms.

Indonesia’s industry ministry spokesperson said imported phones of the iPhone 16 model – which launched in September – could not be marketed domestically because Apple’s local unit had not met a requirement that 40% of phones be made from local parts.

“The iPhone 16 devices imported by registered importers cannot yet be marketed domestically,” the ministry spokesperson, Febri Hendri Antoni Arif, said in a statement on Friday.

“Apple Indonesia has not fulfilled its investment commitment to obtain … certification.”

To reach that percentage, Apple must invest in Indonesia and source Indonesian materials to be used for iPhone components, according to local media reports. Apple had previously committed to investing 1.7tn rupiah in Indonesia but had only invested 1.5tn as of earlier this month, according to Bloomberg.

Apple did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

The ministry said the new Apple phones could be carried into Indonesia as long as they were not being traded commercially.

It estimates just 9,000 units of the new model have entered the country, which has a population of around 280 million. Though those units entered the country legally, selling it in Indonesia would be illegal, Arif added.

Indonesia has used similar bans to encourage domestic production in the past – with mixed results. Apple previously warned that an import ban on 4,000 goods such as laptops and raw materials that went into effect in March would result in a shortage of laptops in the country. Several companies have scaled back their operations as a result of the ban. However, the country’s years-long restrictions on the import of mineral ores has resulted in the acceleration of Indonesia’s own battery sector.

Indonesia’s smartphone market shipment share in the second quarter of the year was dominated by China’s Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, as well as South Korea’s Samsung, according to Counterpoint Research.

The lack of presence in Indonesia is a missed opportunity for the company that enjoys considerable success in other parts of Asia. There are 350m active mobile phones in Indonesia – even more than the current population of the country, Bloomberg reported.

In April, the Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, visited Indonesia as the tech giant explores ways to invest in south-east Asia’s biggest economy and diversify supply chains away from China.

He met the then president, Joko Widodo, and his successor, Prabowo Subianto, for talks after the iPhone maker announced it would expand its developer academies in the country.

Indonesia has prohibited the marketing and sale of the iPhone 16 model over Apple’s failure to meet local investment regulations, according to its industry ministry.

South-east Asia’s biggest economy has a young, tech-savvy population with more than 100 million people under the age of 30, but Apple still does not have an official store in the country, forcing those who want its products to buy from resale platforms.

Indonesia’s industry ministry spokesperson said imported phones of the iPhone 16 model – which launched in September – could not be marketed domestically because Apple’s local unit had not met a requirement that 40% of phones be made from local parts.

“The iPhone 16 devices imported by registered importers cannot yet be marketed domestically,” the ministry spokesperson, Febri Hendri Antoni Arif, said in a statement on Friday.

“Apple Indonesia has not fulfilled its investment commitment to obtain … certification.”

To reach that percentage, Apple must invest in Indonesia and source Indonesian materials to be used for iPhone components, according to local media reports. Apple had previously committed to investing 1.7tn rupiah in Indonesia but had only invested 1.5tn as of earlier this month, according to Bloomberg.

Apple did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

The ministry said the new Apple phones could be carried into Indonesia as long as they were not being traded commercially.

It estimates just 9,000 units of the new model have entered the country, which has a population of around 280 million. Though those units entered the country legally, selling it in Indonesia would be illegal, Arif added.

Indonesia has used similar bans to encourage domestic production in the past – with mixed results. Apple previously warned that an import ban on 4,000 goods such as laptops and raw materials that went into effect in March would result in a shortage of laptops in the country. Several companies have scaled back their operations as a result of the ban. However, the country’s years-long restrictions on the import of mineral ores has resulted in the acceleration of Indonesia’s own battery sector.

Indonesia’s smartphone market shipment share in the second quarter of the year was dominated by China’s Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, as well as South Korea’s Samsung, according to Counterpoint Research.

The lack of presence in Indonesia is a missed opportunity for the company that enjoys considerable success in other parts of Asia. There are 350m active mobile phones in Indonesia – even more than the current population of the country, Bloomberg reported.

In April, the Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, visited Indonesia as the tech giant explores ways to invest in south-east Asia’s biggest economy and diversify supply chains away from China.

He met the then president, Joko Widodo, and his successor, Prabowo Subianto, for talks after the iPhone maker announced it would expand its developer academies in the country.

Iran has executed a 69-year-old German-Iranian political scientist after years in captivity, sparking outrage in Germany and beyond.

Berlin warned of “serious consequences” for Iran’s “inhumane regime” after Jamshid Sharmahd was put to death on Monday, while a Norway-based human rights group labelled the execution the “extrajudicial killing of a hostage”.

Sharmahd, a German citizen of Iranian descent and a US resident, was seized by Iranian authorities in 2020 while travelling through the United Arab Emirates, according to his family.

Iran, which does not recognise dual citizenship, announced his arrest after a “complex operation”, without specifying how, where or when he was seized.

Sharmahd was sentenced to death in February 2023 for the capital offence of “corruption on Earth”, a sentence later confirmed by Iran’s supreme court.

The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan website said on Monday that “the death sentence of Jamshid Sharmahd … was carried out this morning”.

He had been convicted of playing a role in a 2008 mosque bombing in the southern city of Shiraz, in which 14 people were killed and 300 wounded.

His family have long maintained that Sharmahd was innocent.

Sharmahd was also accused of leading the Tondar group, which aims to topple the Islamic Republic, and is classified as a terror organisation by Iran.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said the killing “shows once again what kind of inhumane regime rules in Tehran: a regime that uses death against its youth, its own population and foreign nationals”.

She added that Berlin had repeatedly made clear “that the execution of a German national would have serious consequences”.

“This underlines the fact that no one is safe under the new government either,” she said in reference to the administration of president Masoud Pezeshkian, who was inaugurated in July.

Baerbock expressed her “heartfelt sympathy” for Sharmahd’s family, “with whom we have always been in close contact”, and said the German embassy in Tehran had worked “tirelessly” on his behalf.

However, Mariam Claren – the daughter of another German-Iranian detained by Tehran – charged on X that “this state murder could have been prevented if the German government had really wanted to”.

The director of Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, called the execution “a case of extrajudicial killing of a hostage aimed at covering up the recent failures of the hostage-takers of the Islamic Republic”.

“Jamshid Sharmahd was kidnapped in the United Arab Emirates and unlawfully transferred to Iran, where he was sentenced to death without a fair trial,” said Amiry-Moghaddam, whose group closely tracks executions in Iran.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights said: “The unlawful abduction of Sharmahd, his subsequent torture in custody, the unfair show trial and today’s execution are exemplary of the countless crimes of the Iranian regime.”

Sharmahd grew up in an Iranian-German family and moved to California in 2003, where he was accused of making statements hostile to both Iran and Islam on television.

Mizan said Sharmahd was “a criminal terrorist” who “was hosted by the United States as well as European countries and was operating under the complex protection of their intelligence services”.

Iran carries out the second highest number of executions worldwide per year after China, according to human rights groups including Amnesty International.

At least 627 people have been executed this year alone by Iran, according to IHR. Rights groups accuse the authorities of using capital punishment as a tool to instil fear throughout society.

Several other Europeans are still being held in Iran, including at least three French citizens.

European parliament member Hannah Neumann, who chairs the assembly’s Iran delegation, called for a total change in the EU’s policy towards Tehran, the Bild daily reported.

“There were some voices who wanted to wait and see how the regime would develop after Pezeshkian’s election,” Neumann said. “This terrible execution shows us clearly how we should judge this new government.”

The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has told a senate inquiry into drug killings under his leadership that he kept a “death squad” of criminals to kill other criminals while serving as a mayor.

The 79-year-old, making his first public appearance on Monday since his term ended in 2022, said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his presidency, during which as many as 30,000 people were killed in a “war on drugs”.

“My mandate as president of the republic was to protect the country and the Filipino people. Do not question my policies, because I offer no apologies, no excuses. I did what I had to do, and whether you believe it or not, I did it for my country,” he said. Duterte had entered the hearing walking with a stick and was defiant throughout, often cursing as he addressed senators.

Families of victims also attended the hearing, including the uncle of Kian delos Santos, who was killed aged 17 in a case that caused international outrage.

It is estimated that between 12,000 and 30,000 people were killed between July 2016 and March 2019. Most of the victims were young men from poor, urban areas, who were shot dead in the streets or in their homes.

Duterte is facing an investigation by the international criminal court (ICC) for crimes against humanity over killings that occurred in Davao, in the south of the country, while he was mayor and during his presidency. The current president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, has previously said he will not cooperate with the court, but relations between the Duterte and Marcos families have soured over recent months, and it is possible the president could change his stance.

Duterte said in an opening statement that he had told police not to abuse their powers, that they should “repel the aggression only in self-defence” and that he considered drug addicts as “patients requiring medical health and not as criminals”.

Duterte denied authorising police to kill suspects, saying he had never ordered his national police chiefs to carry out extrajudicial killings. However, he said he maintained a death squad of seven “gangsters” while mayor of Davao City before he became president.

“I can make the confession now if you want,” Duterte said. “I had a death squad of seven, but they were not policemen, they were also gangsters.”

“I’ll ask a gangster to kill somebody,” Duterte said. “If you will not kill [that person], I will kill you now.”

When asked by senators for further details of the death squad, he said he would give more information at the next hearing.

Duterte also said that he ordered officers to encourage criminals to fight back and resist arrest, so that police could then justify killing them.

“What I said is this, let’s be frank, I said encourage the criminal to fight, encourage them to draw their guns. That was my instruction, encourage them to fight, and if they fight, then kill them so my problem in my city is done,” he said, in comments reported by Rappler, an independent news outlets.

Earlier this month, a separate parliamentary inquiry heard evidence from a former police colonel who said officers could earn between 20,000 pesos (£265) and 1m pesos (£13,200) per killing during the drugs crackdowns, depending upon the target. Rewards were given only for killings, not arrests, she said. On Monday, Duterte denied her claims.

During the hearing, Father Flavie Villanueva, an activist and fierce critic of the “war on drugs”, unfurled a scroll that listed the names of 312 victims whose families he supported, and cited a previous public statement by Duterte in which the former president said: “If you are doing an illegal activity in my city, if you are a criminal or part of a syndicate that preys on the innocent people of the city, for as long as I am the mayor, you are legitimate target of assassination.”

Prior to and during his presidency, Duterte repeatedly and openly threatened drug dealers with death. He urged people to kill drug addicts and dealers. In 2016, he claimed he had personally killed suspects while mayor.

Carlos H Conde, senior researcher at the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said it was doubtful the senate hearing would lead to accountability, pointing out that the inquiry was initiated by Duterte’s allies in the senate, who are themselves implicated.

“This was clearly designed as a platform by Duterte’s people to refute what had come out of the hearings in the lower house,” he said, referring to claims in another inquiry that Duterte’s office had given financial rewards for killings.

The senate hearing is being held in aid of legislation, where senators invite people to give evidence to help in the creation of new laws or amendments to current laws and is not a criminal investigation.

The number of kindergartens in China fell by more than 5% last year, the second year in a row that preschool institutions were in decline, reflecting the country’s falling birthrate.

In 2023, there were 274,400 kindergartens across China, down from 289,200 in 2022, according to a Ministry of Education statistical bulletin published last week.

China is grappling with a falling birthrate and an ageing population, related trends that are causing a headache for policymakers who have tried various measures to encourage people to have more children, with limited success.

The number of children enrolled in kindergartens also fell. In 2023 there were 40.9 million children in preschool education, according to the government’s figures, a decrease of more than 11% from the previous year.

In 2022, the number of kindergartens fell by 1.9%, while the number of children enrolled in kindergartens fell by 3.7%.

Several kindergartens have been converted into elderly care facilities in order to cater for the increasingly greying population.

Some regions are offering subsidies for families who have second or third babies. In Guangdong, a populous province in southern China, one village is offering bonuses of 10,000 yuan (£1,083) for a second baby, and 30,000 yuan for a third, according to Chinese state media.

Lian Jianzhang, an influential economist and demographer, argues that such incentives do not go far enough. In an article published in June, Lian called for monthly subsidies of up to 3,000 yuan for third and subsequent children, and also suggested a one-time cash reward of 100,000 yuan (£10,821) for new babies.

“The downward trend in fertility has a self-reinforcing inertia that can only be broken by policy tools,” Lian wrote.

In 2016, China’s decades-long one child policy was scrapped, and couples can generally now have up to three children. Sichuan, a province of more than 80 million people, has removed all restrictions on the number of babies that a parent can register.

Last year, China’s population dropped by 2.08 million, the second consecutive year of decline. The birthrate hit a record low of 6.39 births per 1,000 people.

Additional research by Chi-hui Lin

Rodri and Aitana Bonmatí have been named winners of the 2024 Ballon d’Or at football’s annual awards ceremony in Paris, their trophies handed out at the end of a bizarre day in which Real Madrid’s delegation opted not to attend.

In Rodri’s case the award crowned an extraordinary year’s work in which the influential Manchester City and Spain midfielder became a Premier League and European champion, also winning the Club World Cup.

That was not enough to impress the contingent from Real that had been expected to attend. Their forward, Vinícius Júnior, had been hot favourite to win the award but they cancelled their plans to travel upon learning earlier in the day that he had been pipped to the prize.

Rodri is sidelined with a long‑term anterior cruciate ligament injury, meaning he walked up to the stage aided by crutches, but the 28‑year‑old holding midfielder has become indispensable to City since arriving five years ago from Atlético Madrid. He is the first non-forward to win the men’s prize since Luka Modric in 2018. “An incredible night for me,” Rodri said after receiving the trophy from George Weah, a previous winner who spent a brief spell at City in 2000. “Today is a very special day, not just for me but for my family and my country.”

He beat Vinícius to top spot, with the Brazilian’s Madrid teammate, England’s Jude Bellingham, in third place. Carlo Ancelotti, the Madrid coach, won the men’s Johan Cruyff award as the top manager.

Before the ceremony, Madrid issued a statement to AFP and the Spanish media, saying: “If the award criteria doesn’t give it to Vinícius as the winner, then those same criteria should point to [Dani] Carvajal as the winner. As this was not the case, it is clear that Ballon d’Or-UEFA does not respect Real Madrid. And Real Madrid does not go where it is not respected.”

Bonmatí became the second player to retain the women’s award since its inception in 2018, following in the footsteps of her Barcelona teammate Alexia Putellas. The playmaker was influential in another Liga F and Champions League double for Barcelona, also pulling the strings as Spain won the women’s Nations League earlier this year.

“What drives me to be here is the winning mentality that we have as a team and a national team, it’s what leads you to these successes,” Bonmatí said. The runner-up Caroline Graham Hansen and third-placed Salma Paralluelo completed a full Barca podium.

The ceremony was again held during a women’s international window, limiting the number of shortlisted players and coaches able to attend. Emma Hayes, who won the award for women’s coach of the year, accepted it remotely two days before her USA national team face Argentina.

Real’s apparent tantrum meant nobody was on hand to pick up their award for men’s club of the year. Barcelona received the women’s equivalent, with the club’s president, Joan Laporta, being joined on the stage by a handful of players.

The Gerd Müller award for the top men’s goalscorer last season was shared by Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappé but, similarly, Mbappé was not present to collect his trophy. To complete an awkward set of would‑be presentations Ancelotti did not arrive to pick up his gong.

Rodri’s national team colleague Lamine Yamal began the evening’s festivities by winning the Kopa trophy, which is given to the best player under 21. At 17, he became the youngest player to be handed the accolade.

Other winners included the Aston Villa and Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez, who won the Lev Yashin trophy, and the Spain forward Jenni Hermoso, who won the Socrates award for off-field charity or humanitarian work.

Sean “Diddy” Combs is accused in one of two lawsuits filed on Monday of drugging and sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in a New York City hotel room in 2005.

The second lawsuit accuses the jailed hip-hop mogul of similarly assaulting a 17-year-old would-be contestant on the reality television series Making the Band in 2008.

The lawsuits filed in state supreme court in New York are the latest in a wave of lawsuits in which accusers allege they were sexually assaulted by Combs at parties and meetings over the last two decades.

Combs’s lawyers denied the two new claims Monday and accused the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Anthony Buzbee, who also represents accusers in earlier lawsuits, of seeking publicity.

“Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts and the integrity of the judicial process,” an emailed statement said. “In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone – man or woman, adult or minor.”

Combs, 54, is incarcerated in a New York City jail after pleading not guilty to federal sex trafficking charges contained in an indictment unsealed the day after his 16 September arrest. Charges include allegations he coerced and abused women and silenced victims through blackmail and violence.

The 10-year-old boy who was not identified in the lawsuit was an aspiring actor and rapper who had traveled with his parents from California for meetings with music industry representatives. During what was supposed to be an audition for Combs, he was given a drug-laced soda by a Combs associate and sexually assaulted by the Bad Boy Records founder, according to the lawsuit.

The boy eventually lost consciousness. When he awoke, Combs threatened to badly hurt the child’s parents if he told anyone what happened, the filing said.

In a second lawsuit, a 17-year-old unidentified male said Combs forced him into sexual acts with Combs and a bodyguard during a three-day audition for the Making the Band television show, which Combs produced.

When the aspiring contestant expressed reservations, he was eliminated from the competition and unable to return to the music industry for seven years, according to the filing.

Both lawsuits were brought under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act, which allows survivors to bring lawsuits even if the statute of limitations has passed.