Donald Trump’s final Georgia rally filled the Atrium Health amphitheater in the city of Macon on Sunday, with early voting tallies showing that supporters from the state’s middle could prove to be decisive in the waning days of the election.

Trump was an hour and a half late to the event and wore a black-and-gold “Make America Great Again” cap. Sticking to familiar themes, the former president said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1790, the law under which Japanese, Italian and German Americans were interned during the second world war, and would pursue the death penalty for undocumented immigrants who kill an American.

“The United States is now an occupied country. This is thousands of people all over our towns and cities.”

Trump raised the name of Minelys “Mimi” Zoe Rodriguez-Ramirez, who was murdered last week in Cornelia, Georgia. The suspect in that murder is in the United States illegally, Trump alleged.

Rodriguez-Ramirez’s family took the stage.

“I lose my daughter, but I don’t lose my faith,” said Carmen Rodriguez, Mimi’s mother, at the rally Sunday. “Donald Trump is the best choice for the USA … I met Donald Trump in person. He’s the most wonderful person that I’ve seen.”

More than four million Georgians have voted early this year in record numbers. While turnout has been slightly higher in metro Atlanta than other parts of the state, but early voter numbers have generally been balanced between traditionally Democratic and Republican counties.

Macon-Bibb County – the locations of Trump’s Sunday rally – voted almost two-to-one for Biden in 2020, but it is surrounded by rural counties that generally backed Trump in the same year. Turnout in the county has been about 10% below the state average so far.

Elsewhere, Trump referred to retired generals who worked for him as “stupid”, naming former chair of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley, his former chief of staff John Kelly and former defense secretary James Mattis. Each of the retired generals have been sharply critical of Trump, with Kelly describing Trump last month as “fascist to the core”.

“With your vote on Tuesday, I will end inflation, I will stop the invasion of criminals coming into our country,” Trump said. “We’re at the five-yard line, maybe even the one-yard line … This is really all you need to know: Kamala broke it and I’ll fix it.”

Georgia Republican chairperson Josh McKoon told rally-goers that he had authorised a federal lawsuit to stop Fulton County election offices from remaining open over the weekend to accept absentee ballots delivered by hand.

“They decided they wanted some overtime,” McKoon said. “We will not let them make 2024 [into] 2020.”

On Saturday, a Georgia judge rejected the Republican lawsuit to block counties from keeping their offices open over the weekend to let voters hand in their ballots in person.

Sunday’s rally was attended by Herschel Walker, Trump’s hand-chosen senate pick who narrowly lost a challenge against Raphael Warnock in 2022 after a campaign marred by gaffes. It was the first appearance by Walker at a Trump rally this year.

Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, was conspicuous by his absence. Trump spent years antagonising Kemp following the governor’s refusal to accede to the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia. But Trump and Kemp recently appeared to reconciled and the governor pledged his support to the former president. The two appeared together at a stop near Augusta to review damage from Hurricane Helene last month.

Kemp has not appeared at a Trump rally.

Speaker after speaker on Sunday referred back to President Joe Biden’s comment about Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally a week ago, in which a comedian called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Biden sparked outrage after appearing to call Trump supporters “garbage” in response, an assertion the president has rejected.

Nonetheless, speaker after speaker leaned into the “garbage” comment.

“I can tell you right now, if this is what they consider garbage,” said Georgia lieutenant governor Burt Jones, “then I’ll take this trash all day long.”

Representative Andrew Clyde said: “There’s an old saying. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Donald Trump said with two days until the presidential election that he should never have left the White House after his defeat in 2020 and joked darkly he would be fine with reporters getting shot, dredging up grievances that overshadowed his attack lines against Kamala Harris.

The closing themes of the former president’s campaign at a rally in Lititz in the battleground state of Pennsylvania brought him full circle with his 2016 campaign that went after the news media and his 2020 campaign that was defined by his attempts to overturn the result.

Trump stayed on message for the first part of his remarks but could not resist reverting to resentments he has held on to for years, describing Democrats as demonic and lamenting the 2020 election.

“We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean honestly, we did so well, we had such a great – ” he said before abruptly cutting himself off.

The remark reflected what Trump told aides and allies in the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat, a loss he has never conceded, and how he sat in at least one meeting at the end of his first term where he mused about refusing to leave the White House, a person familiar with the matter said.

Trump at one point also praised himself for going-off script, a startling moment that reflects how he has become increasingly uninhibited, perhaps as the fatigue of doing multiple rallies a day has inexorably taken its toll.

Once Trump started on the 2020 election, he could not stop. He revived debunked conspiracy theories from 2020 and suggested anew that voting machines would be hacked, and efforts to extend polling hours in Pennsylvania – what his own team has pushed for – amounted to fraud.

Trump also spent time at the rally lashing out at a series of recent polls, notably a Des Moines Register poll in Iowa that put him four points behind Harris in the state of Iowa. Harris is universally not expected to win Iowa, but it could be indicative of her momentum in the final days.

“You really do inflict damage, like you do with this person in Iowa,” Trump said of the Selzer poll done for the Des Moines Register on Saturday. “It is called suppression. They suppress. And it actually should be illegal.”

The Guardian has reported that Trump’s aides are bullish on his chances, even though they concede they have no real idea how must-win states like Pennsylvania will break on election day. Part of the confidence is coming from internal polls that has Trump possibly winning five out of seven battlegrounds.

The trail of grievances extended to reviving an old favorite that he debuted when he was in office: castigating the news media and suggesting that he would have no concerns about reporters being shot at if there were another assassination attempt against him.

“To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, because, I don’t mind. I don’t mind,” Trump said from behind panes of bulletproof glass, as some supporters in the crowd laughed and jeered.

Hours after the rally, as Trump traveled to Kinston, North Carolina, for his second of three campaign stops of the day, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung claimed in a statement that the comments were supposedly an effort to look out for the welfare of the news media.

“President Trump was brilliantly talking about the two assassination attempts on his own life, including one that came within 1/4 of an inch from killing him, something that the media constantly talks and jokes about,” the statement said.

“President Trump was stating that the media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said,” it said.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that the former president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected.

Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear-and-tear, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on Twitter/X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.

“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S​. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again”, he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.

Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”

The Republican nominee declined to say whether he would seek a cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added: “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”

Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views”.

The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over US public health.

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In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.

Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in US kids.

In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.

A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. US district judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.

In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including the Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.

But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former attorney general Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy.

Kennedy traveled with Trump on Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.

“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added.

“As Republicans, we are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

The startling comment came from a mother of five and grandmother of two, Vikki Westbrook, as she lined up on Sunday outside an aircraft hangar in rural North Carolina. She had come to hear Donald Trump make one of his last pitches of the 2024 presidential election.

Westbrook, 55, wasn’t entirely joking with her “locked and loaded” remark. Nor was she being entirely frivolous.

She does own guns, she said, though she wouldn’t specify how many.

Personally, she intended to avoid any trouble that might erupt in the wake of Tuesday’s election, she said. “I have kids, I can’t afford to go to prison. And I don’t like orange.”

It’s her fellow Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters whom she fears might be tempted to take action should the former president lose the election. “At this point, a lot of Republicans aren’t going to take it any longer. They won’t let the election be stolen from us twice.”

Westbrook remains convinced that the 2020 presidential election was snatched from Trump. Now she is equally certain that should Kamala Harris win on Tuesday, it will be for one reason only.

“Only if they cheat. I’m absolutely positive of that.”

Trump has been studiously nurturing such passions for years, his rhetoric rising in intensity in recent days. He has repeatedly refused to confirm that he will accept the results of the vote count, and earlier on Sunday he told supporters in Pennsylvania that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House four years ago.

A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute recorded that one in four Republican Trump supporters believe that were Trump to lose the election, he should declare the results invalid and do “whatever it takes” to retake the White House. That’s a sobering finding, but a grossly understated one, judging from the mood at Trump’s Kinston rally.

“People will riot if Trump doesn’t win,” said Cedric Perness, 38, an African American Trump supporter. He said it would be too dangerous for him to participate in any post-election unrest – “I’d get killed right there.”

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Instead he does what he can, he said, to help Trump by selling merchandise on his campaign’s behalf. He has a stall of hats and T-shirts, some saying: “You missed bitches. Two times!”

In the final stages of the 2024 race, Trump has been whipping up the passions of his millions of devoted followers to a fever pitch. In the last three days of campaigning alone he has made four stops in North Carolina, a battleground state which the Democrats have won only twice since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (the other time being Barack Obama in 2008).

Trump must hold North Carolina to have a clear shot at returning to the White House.

In these frantic last hours, he has pursued a two-pronged strategy to fire up his followers. On the one hand, he has been raising their expectations by claiming that he is well ahead in the polls.

“We’re going to have on Tuesday a landslide that’s too big to rig,” a tired and hoarse-sounding Trump told the Kinston crowd. “We have a big lead. We have a big lead. The fake news, they don’t tell you this. We have a big, beautiful lead.”

In fact, poll trackers suggest that he and Harris remain neck-and-neck in North Carolina and the other six critical swing states.

On the other hand, Trump has also been laying the foundations of a renewed conspiracy, should he need it, to subvert the election results by alleging widespread fraud. He touted the false accusation at the Kinston rally that Democrats are enabling non-citizens to vote in vast numbers, accusing the Biden administration of pursuing an open-border policy on the southern border with Mexico “maybe [because they] want to put them on the voting rolls. That’s probably the reason.”

Supporters at the rally faithfully parroted the lie on Sunday.

“That’s why they opened the border, to allow all the illegals in so they could vote for Democrats,” said a woman in the line who declined to give her name. “There’s always been corruption in this country, but I had no idea it was this bad. America has been run into the ground – anyone with half a brain can see that.”

Almost as pervasive as the supporters’ belief in the demonic intentions of Democrats was their frustration at what they could do about it. Last time around, such toxic emotions culminated in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

The Kinston rally goers, following Trump’s lead, universally dismissed January 6 as a “set up” in which peaceful and patriotic Americans were lured into a dastardly deep-state trap. Westbrook, the “locked and loaded” grandmother, admitted to having been present at the Capitol that day.

Hundreds of Trump supporters, driven to distraction by the then president’s “stop the steal” rhetoric, stormed the heart of American democracy on that day. In the violent clashes that ensued, approximately 140 police officers were assaulted.

That’s not how Westbrook sees it. “It wasn’t what they said happened. The only people causing trouble were antifa, they were put into us to cause problems.”

This is a lot for any American voter to be carrying. The 2020 election was stolen from her candidate of choice, she firmly believes, and now she’s worried that Tuesday could see a repeat performance.

“Four years ago I felt angry, very angry. This time I will be even more angry.”

Should her worst fears come to pass, and Trump lose, where will all that powerful emotion go?

“If he loses, I’m scared,” the grandmother said.

The pro-western incumbent Maia Sandu has won a second term in office in the Moldovan presidential election, preliminary results have shown, marking a significant boost for the country’s EU aspirations and a clear rebuke to Moscow.

The runoff election was seen as a crucial indicator of whether the country’s long-term geopolitical alignment will be with Russia or Europe.

The pro-western incumbent, Sandu, who has intensified the nation’s efforts to break away from Moscow’s influence, was facing the Kremlin-friendly political newcomer, Alexandr Stoianoglo, from the Socialist party, in the second round of voting on Sunday.

With 98% of the ballots counted, Sandu led with 54.35%, the Central Election Commission said. With only parts of the country’s diaspora vote still outstanding, analysts said that Sandu was all but guaranteed to win re-election.

Early results indicated that the large Moldovan diaspora, accounting for about 20% of the electorate, had overwhelmingly voted for Sandu. The result will be a significant boost for Sandu and her long-term EU agenda.

In her victory speech, delivered after nearly all votes were tallied, Sandu said that she had listened to the voices of her supporters and those of her opponent, Stoianoglo. She said that her primary goal for the coming years would be to serve as a president for all citizens.

“Today, dear Moldovans, you have given a lesson in democracy, worthy of being written in history books… Freedom, truth, and justice have prevailed,” she said.

Sandu’s position was weakened after a referendum she initiated, asking Moldovans whether they supported EU integration, that was passed by only the tiniest of margins on 20 October. The referendum was held alongside the first round of the presidential elections where Sandu received 42% of the ballot but failed to win an outright majority.

The election outcome will be welcomed in Brussels a week after Georgia, another ex-Soviet state hoping to join the EU, re-elected a party viewed by most countries as increasingly Moscow-friendly and authoritarian.

On Sunday night, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Sandu on her re-election victory and the country’s “European future”.

“It takes a rare kind of strength to overcome the challenges you’ve faced in this election. I’m glad to continue working with you towards a European future for Moldova and its people,” von der Leyen wrote on X.

The EU has promised a €1.8bn multiyear package for Moldova to help it on the accession path which the country officially began in June. Sandu has pledged to “work night and day” to take Moldova into the EU by 2030.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Moldova has gravitated between pro-western and pro-Russian courses. But under Sandu, a former World Bank adviser, the impoverished country has accelerated its push to escape Moscow’s orbit as the war in neighbouring Ukraine continues.

Both presidential election rounds as well as the EU referendum vote were marred by accusations of Russian interference.

For months, Sandu and her allies have accused Russia and its proxies of leading a large-scale campaign involving vote-buying and misinformation to sway the election.

Officials in the capital of Chișinău believe that Moscow invested approximately $100m (£77.2m) before the first vote and had reportedly smuggled in some of the funds by “money mules” detained by police at the main airport while carrying bundles of €10,000 (£8,390) in cash.

Sandu’s team said it intensified efforts to prevent a repeat of what they described as a large-scale vote-buying scheme orchestrated by the Russian-backed fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor during the first round.

“Moldova has had a monumental task before it: just two weeks to stop a sprawling Kremlin-backed vote-buying scheme that proved effective in the twin vote on 20 October,” said Olga Rosca, a foreign policy adviser to Sandu.

Still, on Sunday, Sandu’s national security adviser, Stanislav Secrieru, wrote on X that they were “seeing massive interference by Russia in our electoral process … an effort with high potential to distort the outcome”.

“Cybersecurity agency reports the Central Election Commission’s voter education site was temporarily down this morning due to a DDoS attack,” Secrieru added.

The Kremlin has denied interfering in the vote.

“We resolutely reject any accusations that we are somehow interfering in this. We are not doing this,” the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

The tight result of the EU referendum has weakened Sandu’s standing, placing her in direct opposition to Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general who exceeded expectations with 26% of the vote on the Party of Socialists’ ticket.

In last weekend’s presidential debate, Sandu accused Stoianoglo of being a “Trojan horse” candidate for outside interests bent on seizing control of Moldova.

Stoianoglo has denied working on behalf of Russia. In an interview with the Guardian in October, he claimed that he was in favour of joining the EU but boycotted the vote, calling it a parody.

He has also declined to criticise the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine and called for improved relations with Moscow. “The level of Russian interference in Moldova is highly exaggerated,” he said, adding that he would seek a “reset of relations” with Moscow.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked many in Chișinău, which is just a few hours’ drive from Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa, and the Kremlin’s shadow looms large. Moscow has 1,500 troops stationed in Transnistria, a region run by pro-Russian separatists who broke away from Moldova’s government in a brief war in the 1990s.

Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has repeatedly praised Sandu, will breathe a sigh of relief, as many in Kyiv had been anxious about the prospect of a Russia-friendly president leading the country that borders them.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is at the centre of a new political storm related to a hostage deal in the Gaza war after the arrest of several people in connection with an alleged leak of classified documents from his office.

An Israeli court announced the arrests on Friday afternoon, before the beginning of Shabbat, saying that a joint investigation by the police, internal security services and the army suspected a “breach of national security caused by the unlawful provision of classified information”, which had also “harmed the achievement of Israel’s war aims”.

One of those arrested is believed to be spokesperson for the prime minister.

While most details are still subject to a partial gag order, Israeli media has reported that the war aim in question is the release of the 101 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas. The suspects are alleged to have selectively leaked Hamas strategy documents found by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, and manipulated or edited the material to make it seem as though the Palestinian militant group sought to smuggle hostages to Egypt, and then to Iran or Yemen.

In September, Netanyahu made this claim in interviews and news conferences in support of a fresh demand he had made in ceasefire and hostage release deal talks: the need for Israeli troops to remain on the Gaza-Egypt border. The demand was rejected by Hamas on the grounds it was not part of the terms both sides had already conditionally accepted, and was a major reason that months of negotiations failed.

Netanyahu has been accused repeatedly of stalling on a deal in order to avoid the collapse of his coalition government. Anything short of a total victory over Hamas is anathema to his far-right allies, and he is believed to see staying in office as the best way of avoiding prosecution in fraud, bribery and breach of trust cases filed in 2019. He denies any wrongdoing.

Shortly after the Israeli leader first mentioned the supposed Hamas plan, reports apparently based on the same doctored material appeared in the British outlet The Jewish Chronicle and the German tabloid Bild, which were picked up widely by the Israeli media.

Worried that the articles’ publication would jeopardise intelligence-gathering efforts in Gaza, the Israeli army launched an investigation into the leak, announcing that it was “unaware of any such document existing”. The Jewish Chronicle later retracted the story and fired the journalist who wrote it.

The prime minister’s office on Friday said no one who worked for Netanyahu has been questioned or detained, but on Saturday did not deny that the leak may have originated from his office. Dozens of other leaks related to ceasefire and hostage release negotiations have appeared in media reports, it pointed out, without triggering investigations.

The charges are understood to be related to the leaking of classified documents, negligence in handling the material, and using it to influence public opinion, as well as the improper hiring of an adviser without adequate security clearance.

News of the arrests has been met with fury by the prime minister’s detractors in the bitterly politically divided country. On Saturday night, thousands of people across Israel joined what are now weekly demonstrations in favour of a deal.

The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, wrote on X: “We have tough enemies abroad, but the danger from within and at the most sensitive decision-making centres shakes the foundations of the confidence of the citizens of Israel in the prosecution of the war, and in handling the most sensitive and explosive security issues.”

Kamala Harris pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population two days out from the election.

Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Biden in 2020, helping him to a narrow victory over Donald Trump. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the vice-president’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza, and polling suggests that these voters are gravitating towards Jill Stein, the Green party candidate.

With Harris and the former president essentially tied in Michigan, a drop in voting numbers for either could be critical, and Harris made a clear appeal at the beginning of her speech.

“We are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan, and I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon,” Harris said.

“It is devastating, and as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination.”

Speaking at the Michigan State University campus, Harris repeated her campaign promise to “turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division”. Harris did not mention Trump by name in East Lansing, as she gave an address that struck a hopeful tone for the future.

“America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy, but as a neighbor,” she said.

“We are ready for a president who knows that the true measure of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it is based on who you lift up.”

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Harris was making her fourth stop of the day in Michigan, having earlier spoken at a church in Detroit and stopped by a barber shop in Pontiac. The state is key to her chances of success, but the result is likely to be close. Trump won Michigan by about 10,000 votes in 2016 as he demolished Democrats’ “blue wall”, and Biden also carried the state by a narrow margin in 2020. Trump is holding his final rally of the campaign in Michigan on Monday night, but Harris was defiant.

“We need to finish strong. So for the next two days we still have a lot of work to do but here’s the thing: we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work,” she said.

“And make no mistake, we will win.”

It was a raucous atmosphere at the rally, Harris’s final stop in Michigan before Tuesday’s vote. She repeatedly had to pause for loud chants of “Kamala, Kamala” from a diverse crowd who seemed enthusiastic about voting for her

“I feel more energized and more excited in this election than I have in a while,” said Latonya Demps, 40, a small business owner and a Michigan State alumna.

“I’m very excited to vote for Harris. As a woman she speaks for my rights and the rights of women that we have fought for for a very, very long time: the right to choose, the right to have equity and access, also freedom for all of us in terms of climate change, in terms of our economy, the type of neighbors we want to have, the families that we want to raise, I think she represents the values that are really important to me.”

This week Democrats have fought to counter the gains made by Stein among Arab American and Muslim American voters in Michigan, with the Democratic National Committee launching a series of ads on Instagram and YouTube aiming to discourage people from voting for Stein and Cornel West, who is running as an independent and is also a critic of Israel.

The ads highlight recent comments by Trump that he likes Stein “very much”, because: “She takes 100% from [Democrats].” The pro-Democrat organization MoveOn has also been running a “seven-figure” ad campaign this week, which it said was designed to appeal to people who are yet to decide on a candidate and “third-party curious voters”.

Polling on the issue has yielded inconsistent results. Last week a national survey of Arab Americans, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit, found 43% supporting Trump compared with 41% for Harris, and 4% backing Stein, while a survey of Muslim Americans, by the Council on American-Islamic Relations of American Muslims, found that 42.3% plan to vote for Stein, 41% for Harris and 9.8% for Trump.

Despite that uncertainty, Harris supporters left buoyant on Sunday night.

“She’s going to be the first Black woman president that we’ve had. She’s actually going to fight for our rights. She’s fighting for women’s reproductive rights, she’s also fighting for the middle class, for entrepreneurs, and business owners like myself,” said Zay Worthey, 19.

Worthey said he was “100%” confident that Harris will win the White House on Tuesday.

“Because she has something that Donald Trump doesn’t: community,” Worthey said.

“She’s really working and fighting for the people of America, and Donald Trump is just only working for the people of the rich.”

A polio vaccination centre and the car of a UN aid official involved in this weekend’s vaccination campaign came under fire despite a promised “humanitarian pause” in Israeli bombardment, the UN has said.

Catherine Russell, the executive director of the UN child support and protection agency, Unicef, said: “At least three children were reportedly injured by another attack in the proximity of a vaccination clinic in Sheikh Radwan while a polio vaccination campaign was under way.”

She added that the personal car of a Unicef employee working on the polio vaccine campaign “came under fire by what we believe to be a quadcopter.

“The car was damaged. Fortunately, the staff member was not injured. But she has been left deeply shaken,” Russell wrote. She added that in the previous 48-hour period, more than 50 children had reportedly been killed in the Jabaliya refugee camp, a focus of Israeli military operations over the past month.

“The attacks on Jabaliya, the vaccination clinic and the Unicef staff member are yet further examples of the grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza Strip,” Russell said.

“Taken alongside the horrific level of child deaths in north Gaza from other attacks, these most recent events combine to write yet another dark chapter in one of the darkest periods of this terrible war.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denied responsibility for the reported attack on Sheikh Radwan, which is in northern Gaza to the west of the Jabaliya camp.

“We are aware of a claim about the harm to Palestinian civilians at the Sheikh Radwan vaccination centre in the northern Gaza Strip. Contrary to what was claimed, a preliminary investigation reveals that there was no strike by IDF forces in the area at the time in question,” an IDF statement said.

The weekend’s inoculation campaign was intended to give more than 100,000 Palestinian children under the age of 10 a second dose of polio vaccine, made necessary by an outbreak of the virus reported in July. It had been postponed in late October because of Israeli bombardment.

This weekend, the IDF agreed to suspend its strikes to allow the vaccinations to go ahead in northern Gaza except in the besieged areas in the northern governorate: Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya.

Approximately 15,000 children under 10 are estimated to be in the excluded area and therefore will not receive the inoculation, threatening the effectiveness of the vaccination campaign, which requires at least 90% of all children in every district to be vaccinated to be sure of stopping the spread of the polio virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that 58,604 children had been vaccinated on Saturday, the first day of the campaign. The WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described the reported strike on the Sheikh Radwan clinic as “extremely concerning”, saying it had happened “while parents were bringing their children to the life-saving polio vaccination in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed”.

“A WHO team was at the site just before,” Ghebreyesus said on the X social media platform. “This attack, during humanitarian pause, jeopardises the sanctity of health protection for children and may deter parents from bringing their children for vaccination. These vital humanitarian-area-specific pauses must be absolutely respected.”

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited Israel’s northern border with Lebanon on Sunday, where he said that Hezbollah must be pushed back beyond the Litani River, with or without a ceasefire deal in place, and that the Iran-backed group must be prevented from re-arming.

“With or without an agreement, the key to returning our (evacuated) residents in the north safely to their homes is to keep back Hezbollah beyond the Litani, to strike its every attempt to rearm, and to respond forcefully against all action against us,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the border. The river is roughly 30km (20 miles) inside Lebanon from the border with Israel.

The Israeli army said Hezbollah had fired about 60 rockets across the Lebanese border on Sunday, some aimed at the occupied Golan Heights, others at the western Galilee area.

The IDF said most of the projectiles were intercepted and those that got through Israeli defences fell in open areas, causing no casualties on this occasion. The IDF, meanwhile, issued evacuation warnings to Lebanese residents in some areas of the ancient city of Baalbek and said that buildings being used by Hezbollah militants would be targeted imminently.

The death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon has now climbed to 2,897 and the number of injured to 13,150 since October 2023, including 30 dead and 183 injured in the past 24 hours, the Lebanese health ministry said.

The lead singer of the British rock band Coldplay has fallen into a hole in the stage while performing in Melbourne.

Chris Martin was talking to the crowd at the fourth and final Melbourne show at Marvel Stadium as part of the Music of the Spheres tour when he walked backwards into a large open hole in the thrust stage.

Footage captured by fans throughout the stadium shows Martin reading and pointing to posters in the crowd just before the fall. A person could be seen standing inside who caught Martin at the last moment and appeared to cushion his landing.

A shocked gasp was heard from the audience before Martin said: “That’s uh, not planned, thank you for catching me, so much. Thank you guys, holy shit.”

He then thanked the person who caught him and said he had “the jitters”.

“Yeah I’m OK, thank you,” Martin added, as he was checked over by a staff member, before continuing with the show.

The mishap comes just three weeks after the US pop star Olivia Rodrigo also fell through the stage while performing at a different venue in Melbourne, the Rod Laver Arena.

During the final night of the Melbourne leg of her Guts tour, she was running across the stage, pointing to cheering fans, when she ran straight into a hole in the ground and fell.

In a video posted to social media at the time, Rodrigo did not appear injured and got straight back up after the dramatic fall, saying: “Oh my God, that was fun!”

“I’m OK. Woah. Sometime’s there’s just a hole in the stage,” she said. “That’s all right. OK. Where was I?”

After taking a few days off, Coldplay will continue their tour this week in Sydney with shows from Wednesday to Sunday at Accor Stadium.

The lead singer of the British rock band Coldplay has fallen into a hole in the stage while performing in Melbourne.

Chris Martin was talking to the crowd at the fourth and final Melbourne show at Marvel Stadium as part of the Music of the Spheres tour when he walked backwards into a large open hole in the thrust stage.

Footage captured by fans throughout the stadium shows Martin reading and pointing to posters in the crowd just before the fall. A person could be seen standing inside who caught Martin at the last moment and appeared to cushion his landing.

A shocked gasp was heard from the audience before Martin said: “That’s uh, not planned, thank you for catching me, so much. Thank you guys, holy shit.”

He then thanked the person who caught him and said he had “the jitters”.

“Yeah I’m OK, thank you,” Martin added, as he was checked over by a staff member, before continuing with the show.

The mishap comes just three weeks after the US pop star Olivia Rodrigo also fell through the stage while performing at a different venue in Melbourne, the Rod Laver Arena.

During the final night of the Melbourne leg of her Guts tour, she was running across the stage, pointing to cheering fans, when she ran straight into a hole in the ground and fell.

In a video posted to social media at the time, Rodrigo did not appear injured and got straight back up after the dramatic fall, saying: “Oh my God, that was fun!”

“I’m OK. Woah. Sometime’s there’s just a hole in the stage,” she said. “That’s all right. OK. Where was I?”

After taking a few days off, Coldplay will continue their tour this week in Sydney with shows from Wednesday to Sunday at Accor Stadium.

Hundreds of people have heckled Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia, as well as the prime minister and the regional leader of Valencia – throwing mud and shouting “murderers” – as the group attempted an official visit to one of the municipalities hardest hit by the deadly floods.

The scenes playing out in Paiporta on Sunday laid bare the mounting sense of abandonment among the devastated areas and the lingering anger over why an alert urging residents not to leave home on Tuesday was sent after the flood waters began surging.

Much of the fury appeared to be directed at the elected officials, as calls rang out for the resignation of Pedro Sánchez, the country’s prime minister, and Carlos Mazón, Valencia’s regional leader.

Sánchez was swiftly evacuated as bodyguards used umbrellas to protect the group from the barrage of mud. “What were they expecting?” one furious local person asked the newspaper El País. “People are very angry. Pedro Sánchez should have been here on day one with a shovel.”

The king insisted on continuing the visit, at one point meeting a man who wept on his shoulder. He was also confronted by a young man who told him that “you’ve abandoned us”, asking why residents had been left on their own to grapple with the aftermath of the deadly floods. “You’re four days too late,” he told the king.

The man also challenged the king on why the civil protection service, which is overseen by the regional government, had sent the alert hours after the state-run weather agency had warned of deteriorating conditions. “They knew it, they knew it, and yet they did nothing,” he shouted at the monarch. “It’s a disgrace.”

Hours after the visit, King Felipe appeared to address the incident.

Speaking to officials in Valencia in a video posted online, he said: “One has to understand the anger and frustration of many people given all that they have gone through, as well as the difficulty in understanding how all the mechanisms work when it comes to the emergency operations.”

Spain’s royal palace later said that the king’s plans to visit a second hard-hit town in the region had been postponed.

The public rage came as the death toll from the floods climbed to 217. As the meteorological agency on Sunday again issued a red alert, forecasting further heavy rain in the area, mayors from the affected municipalities pleaded with officials to send help.

“We’re very angry and we’re devastated,” said Guillermo Luján, the mayor of Aldaia. “We have a town in ruins. We need to start over and I’m begging for help. Please help us.”

The town’s 33,000 residents were among many in the region grappling with the aftermath of the ferocious floods that rank as the deadliest in Spain’s modern history. The number of people missing remains unknown.

Luján said his town was in desperate need of heavy machinery to clear out the vehicles and debris piled up along the streets.

The municipality had yet to confirm the extent of the devastation, leaving Luján bracing for the worst. Aldaia has one of the region’s most visited shopping centres, with a vast underground car park that on Tuesday filled with water in a matter of minutes.

“Right now, the upper part of the centre is devastated and the lower level is a terrifying unknown,” Luján told the broadcaster RTVE. “We don’t know what we’re going to find. We want to be cautious, but we’ll see. It might be heartbreaking.”

In Paiporta, the mayor, Maribel Albalat, described the situation as desperate. Days after the town’s ravine overflowed, unleashing a deluge of water that wreaked havoc on the 29,000 inhabitants, parts of the town remain inaccessible, she said. “It’s impossible because there are bodies, there are vehicles with bodies and these have to be removed,” she told the news agency Europa Press. “Everything is very difficult.”

Albalat said the number of deaths had climbed to 70 in the small town and was expected to climb in the coming days, as access was secured to underground garages. On Tuesday, in the absence of any sign that this storm would be different from any other, many people had gone down to their garages to move their cars to higher ground.

In flooded towns such as Alfafar and Sedaví, mayors described feeling abandoned by officials as people scrambled to shovel mud from their homes and clear streets. In some areas, people were still trying to secure an electricity supply or stable phone service.

On Friday, the catastrophic images from these municipalities led to a show of solidarity, as thousands of volunteers from less-affected areas trekked to the hardest hit carrying shovels, brooms and food supplies. On Saturday, thousands more turned up at Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, which had been hastily converted into the nerve centre of the clean-up operation.

The mayor of Chiva, where on Tuesday nearly a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours, said the situation was a “rollercoaster” for the 17,000 residents.

“You see sadness, which is logical given that we’ve lost our town,” Amparo Fort told reporters. “But on the other hand, it’s heartening to see the response that we’ve had from everyone … there is a real, human wave of volunteers, particularly young people.”

Sánchez said 10,000 troops and police would be deployed to help with what he described as “the worst flood our continent has seen so far this century”.

He acknowledged that help had been slow in reaching where it was most needed. “I’m aware that the response we’re mounting isn’t enough. I know that,” he said. “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.”

Scientists say the human-driven climate crisis is increasing the length, frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe, experts have also said.

• United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said he is “very concerned” about reports that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, and at their possible deployment to the conflict zone of Ukraine. “The Secretary-General is very concerned about reports of troops from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea being sent to the Russian Federation,” said Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief’s spokesperson, on Sunday. US intelligence has said North Korean forces have made their way to Russia’s Kursk border region, with Washington and Seoul urging Pyongyang to withdraw its troops. North Korea and Russia have not denied the troop deployment reports.

• Russian forces attacked Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, on Sunday, injuring at least five people, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
  Syniehubov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said a Russian guided bomb hit a supermarket in Kharkiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, near the city centre. Four people were injured. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the supermarket was located next to residences. An earlier strike had hit a forested area of the city, he said.

• Moldova’s pro-western President Maia Sandu has won a second term in office in a pivotal presidential runoff against a Russia-friendly opponent, in a race that was overshadowed by claims of Russian interference, voter fraud, and intimidation in the European Union candidate country.

• Europe will need to rethink its support of Ukraine if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said on Sunday, as the continent “will not be able to bear the burdens of the war alone”.
  Orban opposes military aid to Ukraine and has made clear he thinks Trump shares his views and would negotiate a peace settlement for Ukraine. He backs former president Trump, the Republic candidate, to beat Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s US election.

• The Guardian’s Luke Harding has been in Kupiansk, where Russian combat units are now less than two miles away. A little to the south, troops have already reached the Oskil River, turning Ukrainian-controlled territory on the left bank into two separate and shrinking bulges. Bridges across the river are relentlessly bombed. Moscow’s apparent plan is to flatten Kupiansk and then reoccupy it.

• A second Taiwanese volunteer fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers against Russia has been killed, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said on Sunday. The man was a member of Ukraine’s military legion of foreign fighters, the foreign ministry said in a statement, expressing condolences to his family, who did not want him publicly identified. The ministry said they received reports of the man’s death on Saturday and Taiwan’s representative office in Poland verified it with Ukraine’s International Legion. No other details were released.

The European Union gave generous farming subsidies to the companies of more than a dozen billionaires between 2018 and 2021, the Guardian can reveal, including companies owned by the former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš and the British businessman Sir James Dyson.

Billionaires were “ultimate beneficiaries” linked to €3.3bn (£2.76bn) of EU farming handouts over the four-year period even as thousands of small farms were closed down, according to the analysis of official but opaque data from EU member states.

The 17 “ultimate beneficiaries” who featured on the 2022 Forbes rich list include Babiš, the former Czech prime minister who was acquitted in February of fraud involving farming subsidies; Dyson, the British vacuum cleaner tycoon who argued that Britain should leave the EU and whose company received payments before Brexit; and Guangchang Guo, a Chinese investor who owns Wolverhampton Wanderers football club.

Other billionaire beneficiaries of EU taxpayer funds include Clemens Tönnies, the German meat magnate who admitted he “was wrong” about Vladimir Putin in 2022; Anders Holch Povlsen, the Danish rewilding enthusiast and UK private landowner; and Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the Danish toymaker and former CEO of Lego.

“It’s madness,” said Benoît Biteau, a French organic farmer and MEP for the Greens in the last European parliament. “The vast majority of farmers are struggling to make a living.”

The EU gives one-third of its entire budget to farmers through its common agricultural policy (Cap), which hands out money based on the area of land a farmer owns rather than whether they need the support.

But strict privacy rules, weak transparency requirements and complex chains of company ownership mean little scrutiny has been possible of who gets the money. In a study commissioned by the European parliament’s budgetary control committee in 2021, researchers from the Centre for European Policy Studies (Ceps) found that it is “currently de facto impossible” to identify the largest ultimate beneficiaries of EU funding with full confidence.

To make a best estimate, the researchers linked data on farm subsidy recipients from each member state with a commercial database of companies. Working backwards from the recipients, they identified people who owned at least 25% of a company at each step of the ownership chain to work out the “ultimate beneficiaries”.

In some cases, the researchers were unable to trace the money because it went to regional bodies who redistributed the cash.

The analysis looked at the final natural person at the end of a chain of companies, said Damir Gojsic, a financial markets researcher who co-wrote the Ceps report and updated the analysis for the Guardian. “Ideally, you would focus on millionaires, but there isn’t a list of millionaires out there.”

Gojsic found 17 billionaires had received EU farming handouts through companies they owned wholly or in part over the four-year period. The total sum of money linked to the billionaires was €3.3bn but the chain of companies was too complex and imprecise to weight the amounts by their ownership stake, he said.

Scientists have criticised “perverse incentives” in the Cap that push farmers to destroy nature. They estimate that 50%-80% of EU farming subsidies go toward animal agriculture rather than foods that would be better for the health of people and the planet.

“We need a rapid food transition for a healthier future and subsidies are the biggest economic lever for change,” said Paul Behrens, a global change researcher at Leiden University, who was not involved in the study.

He said: “The inequality in the Cap is extreme and this work highlights again just how much the richest land-owners continue to get richer from subsidies. Although transparency in the Cap has improved over time, the amount of detective work needed to uncover how the public’s tax money is spent is astonishing.”

Most of the 17 billionaires did not respond to requests for comment. A handful declined to comment.

Dyson wrote a letter to the Guardian last year arguing he has “never supported the basis of the Cap”. A spokesperson for Dyson Farming said the family had invested £140m into sustainably improving its farms and farmland, in addition to the cost of land, which “dwarfs any subsidy payments” received by Dyson Farming Ltd. They said: “Its companies have also contributed many hundreds of millions of pounds in EU taxes and tariffs.

“The farms now employ more than 250 people and use agri-technology and innovation to support UK food security. In 2023 alone, Dyson Farming sustainably produced 40,000 tonnes of wheat, 12,000 tonnes of potatoes and 750 tonnes of out-of-season British strawberries, which avoid the air miles and carbon impact of fruit imported from overseas.”

Thomas Dosch, the head of public affairs at Tönnies, said the company supported a “reorientation” of European agricultural policy so that farmers who worked in environmentally friendly ways were compensated for the associated loss of income. “No subsidies should be paid for quantity of products or as area premiums per hectare,” he said.

Another option would be to sanction environmentally harmful behaviour by imposing high costs, he added. “However, if this were to lead to much higher food prices and perhaps even to food shortages, I believe this would be politically unacceptable.”

The European Union gave generous farming subsidies to the companies of more than a dozen billionaires between 2018 and 2021, the Guardian can reveal, including companies owned by the former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš and the British businessman Sir James Dyson.

Billionaires were “ultimate beneficiaries” linked to €3.3bn (£2.76bn) of EU farming handouts over the four-year period even as thousands of small farms were closed down, according to the analysis of official but opaque data from EU member states.

The 17 “ultimate beneficiaries” who featured on the 2022 Forbes rich list include Babiš, the former Czech prime minister who was acquitted in February of fraud involving farming subsidies; Dyson, the British vacuum cleaner tycoon who argued that Britain should leave the EU and whose company received payments before Brexit; and Guangchang Guo, a Chinese investor who owns Wolverhampton Wanderers football club.

Other billionaire beneficiaries of EU taxpayer funds include Clemens Tönnies, the German meat magnate who admitted he “was wrong” about Vladimir Putin in 2022; Anders Holch Povlsen, the Danish rewilding enthusiast and UK private landowner; and Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the Danish toymaker and former CEO of Lego.

“It’s madness,” said Benoît Biteau, a French organic farmer and MEP for the Greens in the last European parliament. “The vast majority of farmers are struggling to make a living.”

The EU gives one-third of its entire budget to farmers through its common agricultural policy (Cap), which hands out money based on the area of land a farmer owns rather than whether they need the support.

But strict privacy rules, weak transparency requirements and complex chains of company ownership mean little scrutiny has been possible of who gets the money. In a study commissioned by the European parliament’s budgetary control committee in 2021, researchers from the Centre for European Policy Studies (Ceps) found that it is “currently de facto impossible” to identify the largest ultimate beneficiaries of EU funding with full confidence.

To make a best estimate, the researchers linked data on farm subsidy recipients from each member state with a commercial database of companies. Working backwards from the recipients, they identified people who owned at least 25% of a company at each step of the ownership chain to work out the “ultimate beneficiaries”.

In some cases, the researchers were unable to trace the money because it went to regional bodies who redistributed the cash.

The analysis looked at the final natural person at the end of a chain of companies, said Damir Gojsic, a financial markets researcher who co-wrote the Ceps report and updated the analysis for the Guardian. “Ideally, you would focus on millionaires, but there isn’t a list of millionaires out there.”

Gojsic found 17 billionaires had received EU farming handouts through companies they owned wholly or in part over the four-year period. The total sum of money linked to the billionaires was €3.3bn but the chain of companies was too complex and imprecise to weight the amounts by their ownership stake, he said.

Scientists have criticised “perverse incentives” in the Cap that push farmers to destroy nature. They estimate that 50%-80% of EU farming subsidies go toward animal agriculture rather than foods that would be better for the health of people and the planet.

“We need a rapid food transition for a healthier future and subsidies are the biggest economic lever for change,” said Paul Behrens, a global change researcher at Leiden University, who was not involved in the study.

He said: “The inequality in the Cap is extreme and this work highlights again just how much the richest land-owners continue to get richer from subsidies. Although transparency in the Cap has improved over time, the amount of detective work needed to uncover how the public’s tax money is spent is astonishing.”

Most of the 17 billionaires did not respond to requests for comment. A handful declined to comment.

Dyson wrote a letter to the Guardian last year arguing he has “never supported the basis of the Cap”. A spokesperson for Dyson Farming said the family had invested £140m into sustainably improving its farms and farmland, in addition to the cost of land, which “dwarfs any subsidy payments” received by Dyson Farming Ltd. They said: “Its companies have also contributed many hundreds of millions of pounds in EU taxes and tariffs.

“The farms now employ more than 250 people and use agri-technology and innovation to support UK food security. In 2023 alone, Dyson Farming sustainably produced 40,000 tonnes of wheat, 12,000 tonnes of potatoes and 750 tonnes of out-of-season British strawberries, which avoid the air miles and carbon impact of fruit imported from overseas.”

Thomas Dosch, the head of public affairs at Tönnies, said the company supported a “reorientation” of European agricultural policy so that farmers who worked in environmentally friendly ways were compensated for the associated loss of income. “No subsidies should be paid for quantity of products or as area premiums per hectare,” he said.

Another option would be to sanction environmentally harmful behaviour by imposing high costs, he added. “However, if this were to lead to much higher food prices and perhaps even to food shortages, I believe this would be politically unacceptable.”

Amnesty International has called on authorities in Iran to “immediately and unconditionally” release a female student who was arrested after stripping to her underwear in what the organisation described as a public protest against harassment relating to the country’s strict dress code.

The incident took place after the woman, who has not been identified, reportedly had a confrontation with members of the Basij paramilitary force who ripped her headscarf and tore at her clothes inside Tehran’s prestigious Islamic Azad University.

Videos posted to social media appear to show the woman removing her clothes and walking out on to the street in her underwear. A second video appears to show the woman being bundled into a car by men in plainclothes.

The student media outlet Amir Kabir newsletter said the woman had been harassed by a Basij member for not wearing a headscarf. Under Iran’s mandatory dress code, women must wear a headscarf and loose-fitting clothes in public.

The media outlet also alleged that she was beaten during the arrest and on Saturday said that information about the woman’s condition and whereabouts was unavailable.

Amnesty International Iran called for an “independent and impartial” investigation into the allegations of abuse.

“Iran’s authorities must immediately and unconditionally release the university student who was violently arrested after she removed her clothes in protest against abusive enforcement of compulsory veiling by security officials,” it said on social media.

“Pending her release, authorities must protect her from torture and other ill-treatment and ensure access to family and lawyer.”

Iran’s conservative Fars news agency confirmed the incident, saying that the student had worn “inappropriate clothes” and had “stripped” after being told by security guards to comply with the dress code.

In a report that cited “witnesses”, it said that security guards had spoken “calmly” with the student and denied reports that their actions had been aggressive in any way.

The incident comes more than two years after Iran was rocked by nationwide protests after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman who had been arrested for an alleged breach of the dress code. The protests, during which some women defied authorities to cast off their headscarves, were later violently curbed by authorities.

With contributions from Agence France-Presse and Reuters

The Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek has revealed he has been diagnosed with bowel cancer.

Despite the diagnosis, the 47-year-old said there was “reason for optimism” and that he was “feeling good” as he made the announcement in an interview with the US outlet People.

The star made his name playing Dawson Leery in the US teen drama series from 1998 to 2003 and is due to appear in a US Fox special called The Real Full Monty, which is based on the 1997 British film and will see a group of male celebrities strip down to raise awareness for cancer awareness and research.

He told People: “I have colorectal cancer, I’ve been privately dealing with this diagnosis and have been taking steps to resolve it, with the support of my incredible family. There’s reason for optimism, and I’m feeling good.”

The Connecticut actor has continued to work, appearing in an episode of Walker, the reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger, on the US network The CW, and will appear in Sidelined: The QB And Me, a Tubi original film which will be released on 29 November.

He told People he had been prioritising time with his wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, and their children Olivia, Joshua, Annabel, Emilia, Gwendolyn and Jeremiah.

Van Der Beek is also known for his roles as a fictional version of himself in Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, in CSI: Cyber as the FBI agent Elijah Mundo, and as Matt Bromley in the first season of the FX drama Pose.

Bowel cancer can develop in the rectum or colon and is one of the most common types of cancer in many parts of the world. It is sometimes known as colorectal cancer because it affects the large bowel, which includes the colon and rectum. Symptoms include pain in the rectum or anus, a change in appearance or shape of faeces, blood or mucus in the stool, unexplained anaemia or a change in normal bowel habits.

A routine traffic stop in California’s central valley turned into a major fentanyl bust when authorities seized enough lethal doses to kill a quarter of California’s population, according to California highway patrol (CHP).

In a statement released on Friday, CHP officers in Stockton, about 50 miles south of the capitol city of Sacramento, said that last month, while conducting a traffic stop on Interstate 5 highway near Airport Boulevard, officers uncovered “an alarming amount of fentanyl-laced pills” after a K9 signaled the scent of narcotics.

Officers discovered two duffel bags and a shopping bag filled with counterfeit oxycodone, or M30, pills. In total, more than 66lbs of 330,000 pills were confiscated. The driver, who was registered to Washington, was arrested and booked into Yolo county jail.

“For perspective, the [Drug Enforcement Administration] reports it only takes a few milligrams of fentanyl to be deadly. With enough pills in this seizure to create between 10-15m lethal doses, it’s an amount that could kill a quarter of the population of California,” CHP officers said.

A picture of the bust posted on Facebook showed the pills packaged in transparent plastic bags and stacked on a car.

The bust, which occurred in late October, took place just weeks after CHP officers seized $1.7m worth of fentanyl across two enforcement stops in California’s central valley. Officers arrested three suspects from out of state, including one person who tried to conceal the drugs inside multiple packages of raw carne asada beef.

Since January, the California national guard’s counterdrug task force has seized more than 5,000lbs of fentanyl powder and 9.6m pills containing fentanyl, making the seizures worth more than $43m.

According to a 2022 report by the thinktank Cato Institute, US citizens made up 89% of convicted fentanyl traffickers in 2022. In 2023, 93% of fentanyl seizures in the US occurred at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints.

Fentanyl, which can be snorted, smoked, taken orally by pill or tablet, or spiked onto blotter paper, produces a myriad of physical effects including relaxation, euphoria, pain relief, sedation, confusion, drowsiness, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, according to the DEA.

Signs of fentanyl overdose include changes in pupil size, clammy skin, cyanosis or a bluish discoloration in the skin, lips and nail beds caused due to oxygen shortages in the blood. It can also lead to coma and respiratory failure.