A poll in Iowa that has unexpectedly put Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in what was previously expected to be a safe state for the Republicans has sent shockwaves through America’s poll-watchers.

The Selzer poll carried out for the Des Moines Register newspaper showed Harris ahead of her Republican rival by three points.

Midwestern Iowa is not one of the seven battleground states of the 2024 election, which have consisted of the Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and the Sun belt states of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona.

While political experts and pollsters are very wary of putting too much store in any one single poll, Selzer is a widely respected polling organisation with a good record in Iowa. If Harris were even competitive in Iowa – which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 – it could radically reshape the race.

The Selzer poll has Harris over Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters. A September poll showed Trump with a four-point lead over Harris and a June survey showed him with an 18-point lead over then-candidate Joe Biden.

“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” pollster J Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co, told the Register. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.”

The poll showed that women are driving the late shift toward Harris in the state. If true and borne out more widely, that would also be significant as the Harris campaign has focused on turning out women amid a broad gender gap with Republican-trending male voters. Harris and her campaign have focused on the overturning of federal abortion rights by the conservative-dominated US supreme court.

The reaction among pundits and pollsters was largely one of shock and surprise, though it was also pointed out that a rival polling group still had Trump leading in Iowa.

“This is a stunning poll. But Ann Seltzer [sic] has as stellar a record as any pollster of forecasting election outcomes in her state. Women are powering this surge. Portents for the country?” said David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama.

“I mean, margins of error exist and polls can be outliers and I doubt Harris will win Iowa, but Selzer is extremely well-regarded and a within-the-margin race in Iowa is not impossible particularly if the reported late shifts to Harris were real,” said Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.

Selzer is the highest-rated pollster on the national US survey done by polling guru Nate Silver, one of the most closely watched polling experts in the US.

“In the world where Harris wins Iowa, she is probably also cleaning up elsewhere in the midwest, particularly in Michigan and Wisconsin, in which case she’s already almost certain to win the electoral college,” Silver said on his website.

However, he also cautioned that another survey had been published on Saturday in Iowa that still had Trump ahead. The Emerson poll put the former US president up by nine points in the state compared with Harris.

“It is incredibly gutsy to release this poll. It won’t put Harris ahead in our forecast because there was also another Iowa poll out today that was good for Trump. But wouldn’t want to play poker against Ann Selzer,” Silver said.

That seemed to prevent any premature celebrations on behalf of many Democrats.

“Celebrate the Selzer poll for 90 seconds and get back to work. We have an election to win,” said Christopher Hale, a former Democrat congressional candidate in Tennessee.

Thousands of women rallied Saturday in the nation’s capital and elsewhere in support of abortion rights and other feminist causes ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Demonstrators carried posters and signs through city streets, chanting slogans such as: “We won’t go back!” Some men joined with them. Speakers urged people to vote in the election – not only for president but also on down-ballot issues such as abortion-rights amendments that are going before voters in various states.

At the Women’s March in Washington, feminist activist Fanny Gomez-Lugo read off a list of states with abortion ballot measures before leading the crowd in a chant of: “Abortion is freedom!”

In Kansas City, Missouri, rally organizers urged people to sign up to knock on doors in a get-out-the-vote push for an abortion-rights measure.

Abortion rights has passed inflation as the top issue in the presidential election for women under age 30 since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee against Donald Trump, according to a survey of female voters by KFF.

Ballot initiatives have surged in response to the 2022 US supreme court ruling that ended the nationwide right to abortion and shifted the issue to states.

Nine states will consider constitutional amendments that would enshrine abortion rights: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota. Most would guarantee a right to abortion until fetal viability and allow it later if necessary for the health of the pregnant person.

A proposed amendment in New York doesn’t specifically mention abortion but would prohibit discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “reproductive healthcare and autonomy”.

Some of Saturday’s rally participants also advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, higher wages, paid sick leave and greater efforts against gun violence.

A Georgia judge on Saturday rejected a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail ballots in person.

The lawsuit only named Fulton county, a Democratic stronghold that includes most of the city of Atlanta and is home to 11% of the state’s voters. But at least five other populous counties that tend to vote for Democrats also announced election offices would open over the weekend to allow hand return of absentee ballots.

The lawsuit was filed late Friday and cited a section of Georgia law that says ballot drop boxes cannot be open past the end of advance voting, which ended Friday. But state law says voters can deliver their absentee ballots in person to county election offices until the close of polls at 7pm on election day. Despite that clear wording, lawyer Alex Kaufman initially claimed in an emergency hearing Saturday that voters aren’t allowed to hand-deliver absentee ballots that were mailed to them.

Kaufman then argued that voters should be blocked from hand-delivering their ballots between the close of early in-person voting on Friday and the beginning of election day on Tuesday, even though he said it was fine for ballots to arrive by mail during that period. It has long been the practice for Georgia election offices to accept mail ballots over the counter.

Fulton county superior court judge Kevin Farmer, in an online hearing, repeatedly rejected Kaufman’s arguments before orally ruling against him.

“I find that it is not a violation of those two code sections for a voter to hand-return their absentee ballots,” Farmer said.

Republicans have been focused on the conduct of elections in Fulton county for years, after Donald Trump falsely blamed Fulton county workers for defrauding him of the 2020 election in Georgia.

Josh McKoon, the state GOP chair, accused counties controlled by Democrats of “illegally accepting ballots”. The issue quickly gained traction online Saturday among Republican activists, particularly after a Fulton county election official sent an email to election workers saying that observers would not be allowed to sit inside election offices while ballots were turned in.

Nadine Williams, the Fulton county elections director, said during the hearing that these were county offices and not polling places, and thus partisan poll watchers have never been allowed to observe those spaces.

But hours later, Williams sent out an email clarifying that the process should be open to the public and no credentials or badges were needed. She noted that members of the independent monitoring team that is observing Fulton county’s election processes were also on site and that investigators from the secretary of state’s office might also be present.

Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez, a Fulton county spokesperson, said that as of just before 5pm Saturday, 105 ballots had been received at the four locations.

Almost 70 million Americans have already voted in the historic US election which comes to a head on Tuesday, prompting furious arguments over what early voting trends might mean as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris prepare for their final showdown.

As both candidates and their top surrogates crisscrossed the country in a furious bout of last-minute campaigning, the race remains in a virtual dead heat – both in the head-to-head national polls and in the crucial seven battleground states that will actually decide the race for the White House.

But as Trump and Harris made their pitches for what must now be a vanishingly small number of still undecided voters, tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots in the election through the various processes in the US that allow early voting.

With so much at stake in the election, that huge number has triggered intense speculation as to what it might that mean with both Republicans and Democrats attempting to glean information that shows their side might already have the edge as voting day nears.

Harris’s campaign is latching on to some key information from the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. The giant state – which stretches from New Jersey in the east to Ohio in the west – is a part of the “rust belt” dominated by former manufacturing cities that is seen as probably the most crucial region in the election.

Nearly all the most likely paths to victory for both candidates involve picking up rust belt states with Pennsylvania as the biggest prize.

In that state, voters over the age of 65 have cast nearly half of the early ballots and registered Democrats account for about 58% of votes cast by seniors, compared with 35% for Republicans. That is a big lead in a demographic that usually trends towards Trump.

At the same time, women have a 10-point gap over men when it comes to the early vote in Pennsylvania, according to analysis by the Politico website, using data from the University of Florida’s United States Election Project. Another analysis, by NBC, showed an even larger gap in favor of women in the state of 13 points.

Harris and her team are hoping for a large showing of women in the election as they have made the loss of reproductive rights central to their campaign after the supreme court overturned federal abortion rights. Women have trended strongly Democratic in the election, while men have leaned more Republican and thus any signs of a strong turnout by women is potentially good news for the vice-president.

“The gender gap is a key reason for hope among Democrats and concern among Republicans, especially when many states have abortion rights amendments on their ballots in the 2024 election,” Thomas Miller, a data scientist at Northwestern University, told Newsweek.

But Republicans too are seeing signs of hope in the early voting trends – a sign that America’s divisive election is still proving impossible to predict even after almost two years of furious campaigning by both parties.

In Arizona, a crucial swing state in the so-called “sun belt” on electoral battlegrounds, male voters have been turning out in increased numbers – a sign that Republican strategies of turning out men who have not voted before might be working. In Arizona last week, the number of new voters in Arizona was 86,000 – far more than the tiny margin by which Joe Biden beat Trump in the state in 2020 – and the biggest share of those new voters were male Republicans.

Overall, Republicans have traditionally been outnumbered in early voting with more Democrats choosing to go to the polls. In part, that has been because Trump and some of his allies have assailed early voting with baseless claims of fraud and conspiracy, despite Republican professional campaigners exhorting their supporters to get to the polls before election day.

In 2024, there are signs that Republicans are indeed heading to the polls early in large numbers.

In Georgia – another key sun belt battleground in the deep south – there are strong signs of a significant early Republican turnout. More than 700,000 people who voted already in 2024 did not vote at all in 2020, according to Georgia Votes, and that is seen as a sign that many of them might be Republicans as the campaign has focused on that demographic. At the same time, the top three counties for voter turnout rates in Georgia are rural areas won easily by Trump in 2020.

“We’ve got a lot of voters that voted in 2016 but didn’t vote in 2020 … What makes me believe that they are Trump voters is that most of them are … from parts of the state that are pretty strong Republican strongholds,” Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, told Fox News.

Of course, as voting patterns shift for both sides, it could also be that an advantage in early voting for either Democrats or Republicans is quickly overwhelmed on election day itself when tens of millions of voters go to the polls in person.

In the end, the 2024 race remains entirely unpredictable. The Guardian’s 10-day polling average tracker has shown little change over the past week, after a slight erosion in Harris support over October, Harris retains a one-point advantage in national polls of 48% to Trump’s 47%, virtually identical to last week and well with the margin of error of most polls.

The battleground states, too, remain in a dead heat. The candidates are evenly tied at 48% in Pennsylvania while Harris has single-point leads in the two other rust belt states of Michigan and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Trump is marginally ahead in the sun belt, where he is up by 1% in North Carolina, 2% in Georgia and Arizona, and ahead in Nevada by less than a percentage point.

But one wildcard for both campaigns is the Muslim vote, angered by US support for Israel in its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. A poll released on Friday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations showed that 42% of the country’s 2.5 million Muslim voters favor Green party nominee Jill Stein for president while 41% favor Harris. Trump registered 10% support.

In theory, those margins of support for Stein, as in 2016, could swing some key swing states, such as Michigan, to Trump if the contest there is very close.

• Ukrainian forces are restraining one of Russia’s most powerful offensives since the start of Moscow’s 2022 invasion, the top commander of Kyiv’s forces has said. Russian troops advanced in September at their fastest rate since March 2022, the month after the invasion, according to open-source data, and Moscow said on Saturday it had taken two more settlements along the Donbas frontline in eastern Ukraine. Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s military commander, said on the Telegram messaging app: “The armed forces of Ukraine are holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives from launching a full-scale invasion.” Syrskyi also said he told the chair of the US military’s joint chiefs of staff, Gen Charles Brown, of the “difficult” situation on the frontline and the Ukrainian military’s “urgent needs” and that Brown assured him of continued US support. Washington said on Friday it would provide an additional $425m in military aid to Ukraine.

• Kyiv has called on Moscow to provide a list of Ukrainian prisoners of war ready for a swap after Russia accused Ukraine of sabotaging the exchange process. In requesting the list of Ukrainians from his Russian counterpart on Sunday, the Ukrainian human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, wrote online: “We are always ready to exchange prisoners of war!” On Saturday, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine was essentially sabotaging the process and had refused to take back its own citizens. She said Russia’s defence ministry had offered to hand over 935 Ukrainian PoWs but that Ukraine had taken only 279. Lubinets, in turn, said Ukraine was always ready to accept its citizens and accused Russia of slowing down the exchange process. Kyiv and Moscow’s last PoW exchange took place in mid-October, with each side bringing home 95 prisoners.

• Ukraine’s air defence units were trying to repel a Russian air attack on Kyiv late on Saturday, the mayor said. “There was an explosion in the suburbs of Kyiv,” Vitali Klitschko said. “Air defence forces operating in the capital and its region. Stay in shelters!” Russia earlier targeted the capital with a drone attack that lasted to midday and wounded at least one person, city officials said. Debris from downed drones struck six city districts, wounding a police officer, damaging residential buildings and starting fires, according to city military administrator Serhiy Popko. A high-voltage line powering the capital and two distribution networks in the Kyiv region had been damaged, Ukrainian energy provider DTEK said. Electricity had mostly been restored and repairs were under way, it said.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said strikes were reported in the central Poltava and north-eastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions. “This year, we have faced the threat of ‘Shahed’ drones almost every night – sometimes in the morning, and even during the day,” he said on social media, referring to the Iranian-made attack drones used by Russia. The Ukrainian air force said air defences destroyed 39 of 71 Russian drones launched during Moscow’s air attacks on Ukraine overnight to Saturday, with 21 drones “locationally lost” and five turned back to Russia.

• A court in Russia’s far east has said it convicted Robert Shonov, a former US consular employee, of illegally and covertly cooperating with the US government to harm Russia’s national security and had jailed him for nearly five years. Russia’s FSB security service detained Shonov, a Russian, in Vladivostok in May last year and accused him of taking money to covertly supply US diplomats with information that was potentially harmful to Russia, including on Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine. The US on Saturday condemned the conviction as “an egregious injustice”.

• A US citizen who Russia said was spirited out of eastern Ukraine by its special forces after reportedly helping the Kremlin target Ukrainian troops said in Moscow on Saturday that he had asked for Russian citizenship. “My name is Daniel Martindale,” he told a press conference reported by state media. “Here is my passport. It went through the war with me, you can see in what condition it is,” he said in English, holding up what appeared to be a well-used US passport and birth certificate. He said he was under no duress and wanted to receive Russian citizenship. The US embassy in Moscow did not immediately comment.

Ukraine’s president urged allies to stop “watching” and take steps before North Korean troops deployed in Russia reach the battlefield, while the army chief said his troops were facing “one of the most powerful offensives” by Moscow since the full-scale war began.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy raised the prospect of a pre-emptive Ukrainian strike on camps where the North Korean troops are being trained and said Kyiv knows their location. But he said Ukraine can’t do it without permission from allies to use western-made long-range weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia.

“But instead … America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching. Everyone is just waiting for the North Korean military to start attacking Ukrainians as well,” Zelenskyy said in a post late on Friday on the Telegram messaging app.

The Biden administration said on Thursday that about 8,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia’s Kursk region near Ukraine’s border and are preparing to help the Kremlin fight against Ukrainian troops.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s military intelligence said that more than 7,000 North Koreans equipped with Russian gear and weapons had been transported to areas near Ukraine. The agency, known by its acronym GUR, said that North Korean troops were being trained at five locations in Russia’s far east. It did not specify its source of information.

Western leaders have described the North Korean troop deployment as a significant escalation that could also jolt relations in the Indo-Pacific region, and open the door to technology transfers from Moscow to Pyongyang that could advance the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programme.

North Korea’s foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, met her Russian counterpart in Moscow on Friday.

Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly said they need permission to use western weapons to strike arms depots, airfields and military bases far from the border to motivate Russia to seek peace. In response, US defence officials have argued that the missiles are limited in number and that Ukraine is already using its own long-range drones to hit targets farther into Russia.

Moscow has consistently signalled that it would view any such strikes as a significant escalation. President Vladimir Putin warned on 12 September that Russia would be “at war” with the US and Nato states if they approve them.

Zelenskyy’s call came shortly before Ukraine’s top commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday that his troops were struggling to stem “one of the most powerful offensives” by Russia since its all-out invasion of its southern neighbour in February 2022.

Writing on Telegram after a call with a top Czech military official, Syrskyi hinted that Ukrainian units are taking heavy losses in the fighting, which he said “require constant renewal of resources”.

While Syrskyi did not specify where the heavy fighting took place, Russia has for months been conducting a ferocious campaign along the eastern front in Ukraine, gradually compelling Kyiv to surrender ground. But Moscow has struggled to push Ukrainian forces out of its Kursk border region after an incursion almost three months ago.

Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv overnight into Saturday, killing a police officer and injuring dozens, the local governor, Oleh Syniehubov, reported.

In Ukraine’s southern Kherson province, Russian shelling on Saturday killed a 40-year-old woman and wounded three others, including two children, the local governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported. Another Kherson resident was wounded in a drone attack later that day, according to local Ukrainian authorities.

Five more civilians, including two children, were injured after Russia struck Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region,its governor, Serhiy Lysak, said.

In Kyiv, air raid sirens wailed for more than five hours early Saturday morning as Russian drones hit the capital, starting a fire in an office block downtown and injuring two people, according to the city’s military administration.

Overall, Russian forces overnight attacked Ukraine with more than 70 Iranian-made Shahed drones, the Ukrainian air force reported on Saturday. It said most were shot down or sent off-course using GPS jamming. Falling debris damaged power networks and residential buildings in multiple provinces and injured an elderly woman near Kyiv, officials said.

Russia’s defence ministry reported that its forces overnight shot down 24 Ukrainian drones over four Russian regions and occupied Crimea. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The Israeli military abducted who it said was a senior Hezbollah official in an unprecedented operation on Saturday morning during which Israeli commandos landed on the shores of Batroun, northern Lebanon, captured the alleged official and escaped via speedboat.

In a statement, an Israeli military official said its forces captured a “senior operative of Hezbollah” and transferred him to its territory to be investigated by military intelligence. The media outlet Axios cited Israeli sources as saying the captured man – Imad Amhaz – was responsible for Hezbollah’s naval operations.

Lebanon’s caretaker minister of transport, Ali Hamie, said that Amhaz was a civilian boat captain, while Hezbollah did not comment on allegations that he belonged to the organisation. Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said Lebanon would be submitting a complaint to the UN security council, and that he had asked Lebanon’s military and the UN’s peacekeeping mission to investigate the incident.

The Israeli naval raid was a first of its kind, with Israeli soldiers landing in north Lebanon – an area unaffiliated with Hezbollah and almost 100 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border.

“An unidentified military force carried out a landing operation on the beach of Batroun, and moved … to a chalet near the beach, where it kidnapped the citizen Imad Amhaz and … left by speedboats to the open sea,” Lebanon’s National News Agency reported.

Surveillance footage of the incident showed a man with his hands pinned behind his back being led by a column of soldiers.

“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will continue to act wherever necessary to protect the state of Israel and its citizens,” an Israeli military official said in a statement.

The Lebanese transport minister, Ali Hamieh, said that the abduction of the Amhaz could be a violation of UN resolution 1701, which is supposed to govern security dynamics between Israel and Lebanon after the 2006 war.

“The kidnapping of Amhaz took place 100 metres from his place of residence. If it is proven that the kidnapping took place via a naval landing, where is the implementation of resolution 1701?” Hamieh said.

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which started on 8 October 2023 after the militant group launched rockets at Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack a day prior, has generally spared north Lebanon.

Israeli troops have been conducting ground raids into south Lebanon since 30 September, but within a few kilometres of the border. Previous Israeli operations against Hezbollah in non-border areas have been conducted via aerial bombing.

Israeli warplanes continued their aerial campaign across the country on Saturday afternoon, killing one and injuring 15 others in a rare daytime bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs, which occurred without warning. Israel also struck Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, the focal point of much of its bombing over the past week.

Hezbollah fired rockets and drones on Saturday, with a rocket injuring 19 people in Tayibe in central Israel.

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed 2,968 people and wounded more than 13,300 over the past year, the vast majority of whom were killed and injured during the past five weeks.

The views from the old thatched cottage perched on top of Sidmouth cliffs in Devon have always been spectacular.

Now, though, they are downright terrifying after part of the 185m-year-old sandstone cliff collapsed, leaving the period property teetering on the edge of a 400ft drop.

A rockfall directly below the cottage occurred after a large portion of the cliff collapsed a few hundred metres away, at Jacob’s Ladder Beach. The cottage is now just 10 metres from the cliff edge.

Thousands of tonnes of earth from the cliff came crashing down on Friday last week, forcing East Devon district council to close the popular south-west coastal path for safety reasons.

The council warned visitors to “keep their distance from cliffs” on social media.

“Rockfalls and landslides are unpredictable events, occurring without warning, and can cause serious injury or death,” the council states on its website.

“You should always take care around the cliffs of East Devon as all are made of soft rock and pose a cliff-fall danger.”

Similar collapses of the Sidmouth cliffs occurred in 2020, 2022 and 2023 but this landslip was bigger than most.

Ian Hosker, who captured drone footage of the impact of the collapse, told Devon Live: “It was a big one. But perhaps not yet finished. It is the largest I have seen here in my 35 years living here.”

Local beachgoers are advised to stay well clear of the cliff base – the coastguard recommends staying at least the height of the cliff away from the base – and keep an eye out for fresh fall material or water running down the cliffs which may indicate an area that is weakened and loose. “If in doubt, don’t walk under or near the cliffs,” the council warns.

The views from the old thatched cottage perched on top of Sidmouth cliffs in Devon have always been spectacular.

Now, though, they are downright terrifying after part of the 185m-year-old sandstone cliff collapsed, leaving the period property teetering on the edge of a 400ft drop.

A rockfall directly below the cottage occurred after a large portion of the cliff collapsed a few hundred metres away, at Jacob’s Ladder Beach. The cottage is now just 10 metres from the cliff edge.

Thousands of tonnes of earth from the cliff came crashing down on Friday last week, forcing East Devon district council to close the popular south-west coastal path for safety reasons.

The council warned visitors to “keep their distance from cliffs” on social media.

“Rockfalls and landslides are unpredictable events, occurring without warning, and can cause serious injury or death,” the council states on its website.

“You should always take care around the cliffs of East Devon as all are made of soft rock and pose a cliff-fall danger.”

Similar collapses of the Sidmouth cliffs occurred in 2020, 2022 and 2023 but this landslip was bigger than most.

Ian Hosker, who captured drone footage of the impact of the collapse, told Devon Live: “It was a big one. But perhaps not yet finished. It is the largest I have seen here in my 35 years living here.”

Local beachgoers are advised to stay well clear of the cliff base – the coastguard recommends staying at least the height of the cliff away from the base – and keep an eye out for fresh fall material or water running down the cliffs which may indicate an area that is weakened and loose. “If in doubt, don’t walk under or near the cliffs,” the council warns.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has ordered the country’s largest peacetime military deployment, announcing that 10,000 troops and police officers will be drafted in to help deal with the aftermath of this week’s devastating floods, which have killed at least 211 people in eastern, southern and central regions.

Speaking after chairing a meeting of the flood crisis committee, Sánchez said the government was mobilising all the resources at its disposal to deal with the “terrible tragedy”, which stuck hardest in the eastern region of Valencia. He also acknowledged that much of the help still wasn’t getting through and called for unity and an end to political bickering and blame games.

“There are still dozens of people looking for their loved ones and hundreds of households mourning the loss of a relative, a friend or a neighbour,” he said in a televised address on Saturday morning. “I want to express our deepest love to them and assure them that the government of Spain and the entire state, at all its different administrative levels, is with all of them.”

Describing the torrential rains and floods as “the worst natural disaster in our country’s recent history” and the second deadliest European floods of the century, the prime minister announced a huge increase in the numbers of army and police personnel taking part in the relief effort.

In the first 48 hours of the crisis, he said, Spain had witnessed “the largest deployment of armed forces and police personnel that’s ever been seen in our country during peacetime. It has so far carried out 4,800 rescues and helped more than 30,000 people in their homes, on the roads, and in flooded industrial estates.”

However, he said much of the help was taking too long to reach blocked and flooded houses and garages and isolated villages.

“That is why the Spanish government is today sending 4,000 more personnel from the military emergencies unit to Valencia province,” said Sánchez. “Tomorrow, another 1,000 military personnel will arrive … I’ve also ordered the deployment of an amphibious navy boat that has operating theatres, helicopters and a fleet of vehicles that will arrive at Valencia port in the coming hours.”

The prime minister also said 5,000 more national police and civil guard officers would be sent to the region. There are already 2,500 soldiers and 5,000 police officers deployed in the region.

“Our second priority is identifying and recovering the bodies of the dead and we need to do it quickly but with all the dignity and guarantees that the victims and their families deserve,” he said. “Over the past 48 hours, military and security personnel have inspected thousands of garages, riverbeds and roads, and recovered the bodies of 211 mortal victims.”

Specialist forensic personnel and mobile morgues were already in the disaster zone, he added, and would work “day and night; night and day for as long as it takes until all the victims have been located”.

Sanchez’s address came as thousands of volunteers turned up to Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences centre, which has been transformed into the nerve centre of the clean-up operation. On Friday, the spontaneous mass arrival of volunteers complicated access for emergency workers to some areas, prompting authorities to devise a deployment plan.

The prime minister said power had been restored to 94% of affected homes, while phone lines were scheduled to be repaired over the weekend.

Sánchez also acknowledged the deep public anger over the handling of the emergency – many have questioned why the Valencian government did not send out an emergency alert until after 8pm on Tuesday – but called for unity.

“The situation we’re experiencing is tragic and dramatic,” he said. “We’re almost certainly talking about the worst flood our continent has seen so far this century. I’m aware that the response we’re mounting isn’t enough. I know that. And I know there are severe problems and shortages and that there are still collapsed services and towns buried by the mud where people are desperately looking for their relatives, and people who can’t get into their homes, and houses that have been buried or destroyed by mud. I know we have to do better and give it our all.”

He said there would be time later to look into what had gone wrong and to learn lessons “about the importance of our public services and how to reinforce them in the situations we’re living through as a consequence of climate change … But now we need to focus all our efforts on the colossal task we face and to forget our differences and put ideologies and disagreements to one side and act together.”

This week’s flash floods, caused by torrential rains that scientists have linked to the climate emergency, have inundated cities, towns and villages, sweeping away bridges, cars, trees and streetlights. The number of missing people remains unknown. Thousands more have no access to water or reliable food, while parts of the heaviest-hit areas remain inaccessible. The piles of vehicles and debris have trapped some residents in their homes while others are without electricity or stable phone service.

An orange weather warning remained in place on Saturday for Castellón, a province in Valencia, and for a stretch of coast in Tarragona, a province in Catalonia.

King Charles and Prince William’s property empires are taking millions of pounds from cash-strapped charities and public services including the NHS, state schools and prisons, according to a new investigation.

The reports claim the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which are exempt from business taxes and used to fund the royals’ lifestyles and philanthropic work, are set to make at least £50m from leasing land to public services. The two duchies hold a total of more than 5,400 leases.

One 15-year deal will see Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS hospital trust in London pay £11.4m to store its fleet of electric ambulances in a warehouse owned by the Duchy of Lancaster, the monarch’s 750-year-old estate.

The king will also make at least £28m from windfarms because the Duchy of Lancaster retains a feudal right to charge for cables crossing the foreshore, according to an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches and the Sunday Times.

William’s Duchy of Cornwall, the hereditary estate of the heir to the throne, has signed a £37m deal to lease Dartmoor prison for 25 years to the Ministry of Justice, which is liable for all repairs despite paying £1.5m a head for a jail empty of prisoners because of high levels of radon gas.

His estate also owns Camelford House, a 1960s tower block on the banks of the Thames, which has brought in at least £22m since 2005 from rents paid by charities and other tenants. Two cancer charities, Marie Curie and Macmillan – of which the king is a longstanding patron – have both recently moved out to smaller premises.

The Duchy of Cornwall has charged the Royal Navy more than £1m to build and use jetties and moor warships. It also charges the army to train on Dartmoor but the Ministry of Defence refused a Freedom of Information Act request asking how much it costs. The duchy also made more than £600,000 from the construction of a fire station and stands to get nearly £600,000 from rental agreements with six state schools.

In spite of the king and Prince William’s speeches and interventions on environmental issues, many residential properties let out by the royal estates are in breach of basic government energy efficiency standards.

InvestigatorsThe investigation found 14% of homes leased by the Duchy of Cornwall and 13% by the Duchy of Lancaster have an energy performance rating of F or G. Since 2020, it has been against the law for landlords to rent out properties that are rated below an E under the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards regulations.

The Duchy of Lancaster said: “Over 87% of all duchy-let properties are rated E or above. The remainder are either awaiting scheduled improvement works or are exempted under UK legislation.”

The royal estates also have deals with mining and quarrying companies.

The investigation has prompted calls for a parliamentary investigation and for the two empires to be folded into the crown estate, which sends its profits to the government. The king and Prince William pay income tax on profits from the estates after business expenses have been deducted, but both now refuse to say how much.

Critics say the estates, the income from which have been used by successive governments to keep the headline cost of the monarchy to the taxpayer down, enjoy a commercial advantage over rivals because they are exempt from corporation tax and capital gains tax.

Baroness Margaret Hodge, a former chair of the Commons public accounts committee, said the duchies should at least pay corporation tax. “This would be a brilliant time for the monarch to say, I’m going to be open, and I want to be treated as fairly as anybody,” she said.

Both duchies said they were commercial operations that complied with statutory requirements to disclose information. They also emphasised their efforts to become greener.

The Duchy of Lancaster said: “His majesty the king voluntarily pays tax on all income received from the duchy.”

Federal authorities have confirmed that they seized drugs, homemade weapons and electronic devices during a sweep of the jail where Sean “Diddy” Combs is being held on sex trafficking conspiracy charges ahead of a trial next year.

The Bureau of Prisons, which headed up the interagency sweep of the Metropolitan detention center (MDC) in Brooklyn that began on Monday, said the action was not related to Combs’s detention but was “preplanned and coordinated to ensure the safety and security” of staff and inmates.

The jail, which holds 1,200 people, has been under renewed scrutiny since two men were fatally stabbed over the summer. Five inmates were later charged with murder.

Four other detainees and a guard were also charged with assault over incidents that included a man who was stabbed 44 times by three gang members, and one in which an inmate was stabbed in the spine with a makeshift ice pick.

An MDC corrections officer was also charged with shooting at a car during an unauthorized high-speed chase.

“Violence will not be tolerated in our federal jails,” US attorney Breon Peace said, adding that the charges should serve as a “warning to those who would engage in criminal conduct behind bars, and anyone else who facilitates those crimes: your conduct will be exposed, and you will be held accountable”.

The detention center has in recent years held Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and currently holds cryptocurrency swindler Sam Bankman-Fried along with Combs, whose lawyers have made poor conditions at the jail a part of their argument for bail.

The music impresario, who is facing over a dozen civil claims of sexual assault, has asked the 2nd US circuit court of appeals to grant his release after twice being denied bail by two separate judges in Manhattan. The arguments are set for Monday.

A federal grand jury will also hear new evidence against Combs next week, which is expected to include testimony from a man.

Prosecutors have also urged a federal judge in papers filed late Wednesday to reject requests by Combs’ defense team for early disclosure of evidence, including his accusers’ identities, describing the request as “blatantly improper”.

The justice department said the requests were “a thinly veiled attempt to restrict the government’s proof at this early stage of the case and to hijack the criminal proceeding so the defendant can respond to civil lawsuits” and “poses to witness security”.

The celebrity news website TMZ last published what it said was a non-disclosure agreement that Combs asked party-goers to sign for attending one of his notorious gatherings, or “freak offs”.

The NDA document directs signatories not to photograph, film or record – or, have another person photograph film or record – Diddy or anyone in his orbit without his written consent, and specifically names social media sites where attendees can’t post photos to without Combs’s permission.

Federal authorities have confirmed that they seized drugs, homemade weapons and electronic devices during a sweep of the jail where Sean “Diddy” Combs is being held on sex trafficking conspiracy charges ahead of a trial next year.

The Bureau of Prisons, which headed up the interagency sweep of the Metropolitan detention center (MDC) in Brooklyn that began on Monday, said the action was not related to Combs’s detention but was “preplanned and coordinated to ensure the safety and security” of staff and inmates.

The jail, which holds 1,200 people, has been under renewed scrutiny since two men were fatally stabbed over the summer. Five inmates were later charged with murder.

Four other detainees and a guard were also charged with assault over incidents that included a man who was stabbed 44 times by three gang members, and one in which an inmate was stabbed in the spine with a makeshift ice pick.

An MDC corrections officer was also charged with shooting at a car during an unauthorized high-speed chase.

“Violence will not be tolerated in our federal jails,” US attorney Breon Peace said, adding that the charges should serve as a “warning to those who would engage in criminal conduct behind bars, and anyone else who facilitates those crimes: your conduct will be exposed, and you will be held accountable”.

The detention center has in recent years held Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and currently holds cryptocurrency swindler Sam Bankman-Fried along with Combs, whose lawyers have made poor conditions at the jail a part of their argument for bail.

The music impresario, who is facing over a dozen civil claims of sexual assault, has asked the 2nd US circuit court of appeals to grant his release after twice being denied bail by two separate judges in Manhattan. The arguments are set for Monday.

A federal grand jury will also hear new evidence against Combs next week, which is expected to include testimony from a man.

Prosecutors have also urged a federal judge in papers filed late Wednesday to reject requests by Combs’ defense team for early disclosure of evidence, including his accusers’ identities, describing the request as “blatantly improper”.

The justice department said the requests were “a thinly veiled attempt to restrict the government’s proof at this early stage of the case and to hijack the criminal proceeding so the defendant can respond to civil lawsuits” and “poses to witness security”.

The celebrity news website TMZ last published what it said was a non-disclosure agreement that Combs asked party-goers to sign for attending one of his notorious gatherings, or “freak offs”.

The NDA document directs signatories not to photograph, film or record – or, have another person photograph film or record – Diddy or anyone in his orbit without his written consent, and specifically names social media sites where attendees can’t post photos to without Combs’s permission.

Detectives investigating historic allegations of sexual assault against Russell Brand have asked prosecutors to consider bringing charges against the actor and comedian.

It follows a joint investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches and the Sunday Times, published in September 2023, in which four women accused Brand of offences including rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse.

The allegations date back to between 2006 and 2013, when the 49-year-old was at the height of his fame.

He has denied any wrongdoing and insisted his sexual relationships have been “absolutely always consensual”.

Following the initial media reports, the Metropolitan police confirmed it had “received a number of allegations of sexual offences in London” and elsewhere in the country.

On Saturday it said “a man in his 40s had been interviewed by officers under caution on three separate occasions”.

“A file of evidence has now been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for their consideration,” it said.

At the time of the alleged offences, Brand was working as a presenter on BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4 and as an actor in Hollywood, appearing in films including Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

One woman told Dispatches that Brand entered a relationship with her when he was 31 and she was 16.

She alleged that the relationship, which lasted three months, was ­emotionally abusive and controlling and that Brand would refer to her as “the child”. Another woman alleged Brand raped her in 2012 in his Los Angeles home, adding that she received treatment at a rape crisis centre the same day, the Sunday Times reported.

The paper said she then messaged him to say she had been scared and felt taken advantage of, adding: “When a girl say[s] NO it means no.” Brand reportedly replied saying he was “very sorry”.

A third woman said Brand sexually assaulted her while she worked with him in Los Angeles and that he threatened to taken legal action against her if she told anyone, according to the paper.

A fourth woman said she had also been sexually assaulted by Brand and that he had been “physically and emotionally abusive” towards her, the Sunday Times said.

The paper said the women it had spoken to did not know each other and had mostly chosen to remain anonymous.

Following the allegations, the BBC and Channel 4 removed material featuring Brand from their websites, while YouTube stopped him making money from videos posted on his channel.

A piece of the radioactive fuel left from the meltdown of Japan’s tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been retrieved from the site using a remote-controlled robot.

Investigators used the robot’s fishing-rod-like arm to clip and collect a tiny piece of radioactive material from one of the plant’s three damaged reactors – the first time such a feat has been achieved. Should it prove suitable for testing, scientists hope the sample will yield information that will help determine how to decommission the plant.

The plant’s manager, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco), has said the sample was collected from the surface of a mound of molten debris that sits at the bottom of the Unit 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel.

The “telesco” robot, with its frontal tongs still holding the sample, returned to its enclosed container for safe storage after workers in full hazmat gear pulled it out of the containment vessel on Saturday. But the mission is not over until it is certain the sample’s radioactivity is below a set standard and it is safely contained.

If the radioactivity exceeds the safety limit then the robot must return to find another piece, but Tepco officials have said they expect the sample will prove to be small enough.

The mission started in September and was supposed to last two weeks, but had to be suspended twice.

A procedural mistake held up work for nearly three weeks. Then the robot’s two cameras, designed to transmit views of the target areas for its operators in the remote control room, failed. That required the robot to be pulled out entirely for replacement before the mission resumed on Monday.

Fukushima Daiichi lost its cooling systems during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, causing meltdowns in three of its reactors. An estimated 880 tons of fuel remains in them, and Tepco has carried out several robotic operations.

Tepco said that on Wednesday the robot successfully clipped a piece estimated to weigh about 3 grams from the area underneath the Unit 2 reactor core, from which large amounts of melted fuel fell during the meltdown 13 years ago.

The plant’s chief, Akira Ono, said only the tiny sample can provide crucial data to help plan a decommissioning strategy, develop necessary technology and robots and retroactively establish exactly how the accident had developed.

The Japanese government and Tepco have set a target of between 30 and 40 years for the cleanup, which experts say is optimistic. No specific plan for the full removal of the fuel debris or its final disposal has been decided.

Silvio Jeremias was on his way home from his job at a petrol station on the night of 25 October, in Mozambique’s capital Maputo, when he and his friends happened upon a group of protesters demonstrating against that day’s election results.

The ruling Frelimo party’s presidential candidate Daniel Chapo secured 70.7% of the vote, according to official results, ensuring the party that has ruled Mozambique since independence in 1975 remained in power, but there were widespread allegations of rigging.

At the protest, one of many across the country, the police fired live bullets and Jeremias, who had a two-year-old daughter, was shot dead.

“This situation was a total shock for us. He was still very young,” his friend Carmelita Chissico said. Jeremias is one of at least 11 people killed by security forces during protests against the election results across the country on 24 and 25 October, while 50 received serious gunshot wounds, according to Human Rights Watch.

Police said they only shot live bullets in the air to disperse crowds. Angela Uaela, a police spokesperson, said that one woman was killed and five people injured by “stray bullets”, when police tried to prevent supporters of opposition party Podemos from snatching a gun from them.

Mozambique is one of the world’s poorest countries and its young population – the average age is less than 18 – is turning against Frelimo, which has governed for almost five decades.

Its main opponent in last month’s election was Venâncio Mondlane, a former forestry engineer and banker who captured the imaginations of many younger voters.

Podemos claimed it won 53% of the vote and 138 seats in parliament. It has submitted 300 kg worth of documents in support of a 100-page legal challenge to the election results. The official election commission, however, said Frelimo had increased its representation in the 250-seat parliament by 11 MPs to 195, while Podemos won 31.

Before the vote, civil society groups had accused Frelimo of registering almost 900,000 fake voters, out of an electorate of 17 million. Mozambique’s Catholic bishops alleged there had been ballot stuffing, while EU election observers said there were “irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results”.

On 19 October, as allegations of vote rigging were already swirling, lawyer Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, a filmmaker and Podemos official, were shot dead by unknown gunmen.

Human rights researchers have said that the shootings fit a pattern of opposition politicians, journalists, activists and lawyers being killed and no one being brought to justice.

“It’s premature to say whether or not there are any clues [as to who the killers are],” said Hilário Lole, spokesperson for the National Criminal Investigation Service, which is investigating the case.

António Niquice, a member of Frelimo’s central committee, said he was shocked by the shootings and called on the judiciary to hold the killers accountable.

Plain clothes policemen also allegedly shot at Mondlane as he held a press conference on 21October at the site where Dias and Guambe were killed.

“They started firing real bullets directly at… Venâncio,” said Amade Ali, a 30-year-old who was acting as one of Mondlane’s bodyguards.

“We started running to the car [and I] suddenly got hit by a real bullet, not a rubber one,” he said, indicating that a bullet had hit his right cheekbone.For those mourning Jeremias, their grief has merged with calls for political change. Last Tuesday, as mourners wept over his coffin, wearing white t-shirts bearing his face and holding up his photo. They shouted out, calling for justice and democracy.

In footage broadcast by STV, a local TV station, two young women held up paper signs in Portuguese that read: “You can kill me but don’t kill democracy.”

It has been nearly 70 years since Francis Thomas Bacon developed a source of clean green energy that would help power the first moon landing and change the course of history.

Yet, few are aware of the Essex-born, Cambridge-based engineer whose invention of the first working hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell helped send Apollo 11 to the moon. His pioneering work is still a source of inspiration for scientists working on renewable energy solutions today.

Now, the charity Cambridge Past, Present & Future is seeking to shine a light on Bacon’s remarkable achievements by honouring him with a blue plaque at his former home in Little Shelford, Cambridgeshire.

Bacon’s fuel cells – nicknamed “Bacon Cells” by Nasa in his honour – provided secondary power for the Apollo missions, producing electricity for the communications, air conditioning and lights, as well as water for the astronauts.

“Normally, in the course of time, a battery runs down and you’ve got to recharge it,” Bacon told BBC Radio 4, shortly before the moon landings in 1969. “Now, [with] this device, as long as you go on feeding hydrogen and oxygen into it, and you remove the water formed, it will go on generating power indefinitely – and the astronauts drink the water.”

The efficiency and high energy density of the fuel cells played such an integral role in the success of the Apollo missions that President Richard Nixon told Bacon: “Without you, Tom, we wouldn’t have gotten to the moon.”

Sam Stranks, professor of energy materials and optoelectronics at Cambridge University, said: “He was a pioneer. Fuel cell technology was extremely important to the space programme, because as long as you can continuously supply the gases, you can keep producing electricity.” This is vital in a remote location like outer space. “Obviously, there’s no easy means to get electricity there.”

Bacon’s legacy is still inspiring scientists working on new technologies for solar power, hydrogen generation and battery storage today, Stranks said, and fuel cells remain “very relevant” as a potential way of providing green electricity and emergency power, particularly in remote places. They could also power the electric engines of long-haul trucks and ships in the future, avoiding the need for impossibly large and heavy rechargeable batteries and fulfilling a dream Bacon shared in his BBC radio interview. “I always hoped it would be used for driving vehicles about,” he said, before predicting: “In a modified form, it is going to come.”

Stranks said: “I see him very much as a visionary and an unsung hero. The fuel cell is a sustainable power solution that foreshadows today’s clean energy efforts and was decades ahead of its time.”

A direct descendent of the Elizabethan philosopher and empiricist Francis Bacon, he began researching fuel cells while working for an engineering firm in 1932, a few years after graduating from Cambridge with a third-class degree in mechanical sciences.

Nearly a century earlier, the physicist William Grove had demonstrated the theoretical concept of fuel cells in 1839, but failed to generate much electricity. Excited by the huge potential, Bacon secretly started conducting experiments with the highly flammable gases, on his employer’s premises.

Told to either stop or leave, he quit his job and devoted his life to engineering a solution to this complex problem, working first at Cambridge University, then Marshall, a local engineering firm.

He later revealed in his BBC interview that it was unclear for decades what the practical use of his invention would be, and he struggled to fund his research as a result. Then, in 1962, Nasa decided to develop his alkaline fuel cell for the Apollo programme and a US company invested $100m in the project.

“British engineers have some of the most brilliant ideas, but turning those ideas into commercial successes is what then often fails, and Bacon faced this,” said Cambridge professor Clemens Kaminski, head of the chemical engineering and biotechnology department where Bacon once worked. “Yet he persevered.”

After they returned to Earth, astronauts Neil Armstong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins met Bacon at Downing Street and presented him with a signed photograph of Armstrong’s famous first “small step” on the moon.

Outside the scientific community, however, Bacon, who died in 1992, is not very well known, Kaminski said. “He was an incredibly modest and quiet man. His delight was solving problems and coming up with real solutions for the benefit of society.”

He thinks Bacon was so far ahead of his time that it may be 20 or 30 years before his legacy is fully understood. “If we can crack the problem of generating and storing hydrogen sustainably and efficiently, then the fuel cell could make an enormous impact on everyday life.”