Israel is bracing itself for another Iranian attack after a crescendo of threatening rhetoric from leaders in Iran saying the country would retaliate for Israeli missile strikes last month.

Iran initially played down the impact of the 26 October Israeli strikes on its military facilities, which were in turn a response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel at the beginning of October.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an initially ambivalent verdict on the Israeli strikes, saying that the attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed” while Tehran weighed a response.

On Saturday, however, Khamenei delivered a clear threat. He said: “The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response.”

Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, the supreme leader’s chief of staff, vowed on Thursday that an Iranian response was certain and that it would be “fierce and tooth-breaking”.

On the same day, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, Maj Gen Hossein Salami, said the Iranian response “will surpass all expectations”.

“Israel believed it could change the regional balance of power by launching a few missiles,” Salami said. “You have once again proven that you do not understand the Iranian people, and your calculations are completely wrong.”

The Wall Street Journal on Sunday quoted Iranian and Arab officials briefed on Tehran’s plans as saying the looming Iranian strikes would be more complex, involving more weapons and more powerful warheads than the 1 October attack, and the new barrage would come between Tuesday’s US elections and the inauguration of the next US president in January.

According to some reports, Israeli intelligence believes the next Iranian attack could be launched from Iraq, where Iran has close allies among the Shia militias, who are armed with Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles. The flight time from Iraq would be substantially shorter than from Iranian territory, from where the missiles were launched towards Israel on 1 October.

The previous Iranian missile attack was in turn a response to the Israeli airstrike that killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on 27 September, setting off the current cycle of escalation.

Israeli commanders have reportedly said that any new Iranian attacks would be met with a rapid response, and that Iran would have little protection, as many air defence batteries were damaged in the 26 October Israeli strikes.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said at a graduation ceremony for Israeli officers on Thursday: “Regarding Iran, we struck its soft underbelly … The haughty words of the Iranian regime’s leaders cannot cover up the fact that in Iran today, Israel has greater freedom of action than ever before. We can go anywhere that we need to in Iran.”

On Monday, Israel’s air force said it had struck Hezbollah intelligence assets near Damascus in an attack that Syria said had targeted civilian sites.

“Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters has a branch in Syria, which includes an independent intelligence-gathering, coordination, and assessment network,” the Israeli military said in a statement, expanding on the air force’s post on X.

Syria’s defence ministry said Israel had caused some damage in attacks that had targeted civilian sites south of the capital.

The US has vowed to help defend Israel against any Iranian attack. Last month it deployed an anti-ballistic missile defence system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, in Israel with nearly 100 American troops to operate it.

Six US B-52 bombers arrived in the Middle East over the weekend, probably in Qatar, after the deployment of a squadron of F-16 fighters and refuelling tankers in the region in October. The movements, the Pentagon said, were “in keeping with our commitments to the protection of US citizens and forces in the Middle East, the defence of Israel, and de-escalation through deterrence and diplomacy”.

Raz Zimmt, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Iranian leaders initially wanted to play down the significance of the Israeli strike last month but “when they realised its impact and the significance, certainly the most significant [strike on Iran] since the Iran-Iraq war, they reached a conclusion they can’t leave it without any kind of retaliation.”

Zimmt said the Tehran leadership faced a dilemma: failing to respond would be interpreted as weakness, at home and abroad; but a new attack on Israel could further fuel escalation at a time when Iran is vulnerable.

He said: “It might be very risky for them … It’s very obvious that Israel, in case of an Iranian retaliation, will probably move forward to the next stage of attacks on Iran, which could certainly involve not just military targets, but also symbols of the Iranian regime, oil installations and then also nuclear facilities.”

In Netanyahu’s remarks to graduating officers last week, he made clear that the Iranian nuclear programme was the ultimate Israeli target.

The Israeli prime minister said: “The supreme objective that I have set for the IDF [the Israel Defense Forces] and the security services is to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons … We have not taken – and we will not take – our eyes off this objective. Obviously, I cannot detail our plans to achieve this supreme goal.”

An alleged intelligence leak from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has ballooned into a major scandal for the Israeli prime minister after a court partly lifted a gag order on the case, saying that the affair may have undermined efforts to reach a hostage deal in the Gaza war.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the joint investigation by the police, internal security services and the army, a court in the city of Rishon LeZion said on Sunday night.

The central suspect was named as Eliezer Feldstein, whom the Israeli media said was hired as a spokesperson and media adviser in the prime minister’s office shortly after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. The other three people to be arrested are members of the security establishment.

A partial gag order is still in place, but the case involves a “breach of national security caused by the unlawful provision of classified information” that “harmed the achievement of Israel’s war aims”, the court said on Friday.

The suspects are alleged to have been involved in leaking Hamas strategy documents found by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, and manipulating or editing the material to make it seem as though the Palestinian militant group’s leadership planned to drag out the talks as long as possible, as well as smuggle hostages to Egypt.

Reports apparently based on the doctored documents appeared in the British outlet the Jewish Chronicle and the German tabloid Bild in September, leading the IDF to launch an investigation. The Jewish Chronicle later retracted the story and fired the journalist who wrote it.

Netanyahu’s detractors say the articles appeared at a time when he was facing renewed criticism over his handling of the negotiations after six killed hostages were found in a tunnel in Rafah.

The reports also appear to have bolstered Netanyahu’s new demand in the talks after a conditional framework had already been reached – that Israeli troops remain on the Gaza-Egypt border. The demand was rejected by Hamas, and the talks foundered.

Netanyahu has long been accused of stalling on a deal as a way to appease his far-right coalition partners, for whom any concession to Hamas is untenable. He is believed to see staying in office as the best way of avoiding prosecution in longstanding corruption charges, which he denies.

In a statement on Monday, the Hostage Families Forum, which represents most of the friends and relatives of the abductees, said it demanded an investigation “against all those suspected of sabotage and undermining state security”.

It added: “The suspicions suggest that individuals associated with the prime minister acted to carry out one of the greatest frauds in the country’s history. This is a moral low point like no other. It is a severe blow to the remaining trust between the government and its citizens.”

Netanyahu has sought to downplay the affair, calling for the gag order to be lifted and accusing the judiciary of bias. On Saturday he denied any involvement in the leak, or wrongdoing on the part of his staff. The main suspect, Feldstein, “never participated in security discussions, was not exposed to or received classified information, and did not take part in secret visits”, his office said.

Questions have arisen over whether Feldstein was formally employed by the prime minister’s office after reports were published alleging he failed a security clearance polygraph test; he has been photographed next to Netanyahu many times over the past year.

The 32-year-old, from the ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, previously worked for the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and in the IDF’s media unit.

Feldstein was arrested on 27 October and has been remanded in custody until Tuesday, the date of his next hearing. One of the other three suspects is understood to have been released.

The charges of leaking classified information, negligence in handling the material, and using it to influence public opinion, could result in a 15-year prison sentence, the ynet news site reported.

Israel has formally informed the United Nations of its intention to sever ties entirely with the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees in a move the country’s allies and aid workers warn will deepen the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East.

The Knesset passed two bills last week banning Unrwa from Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli state contact with the agency on the basis of allegations that Hamas had infiltrated it.

The ban will take effect in three months but in the first step towards implementing the Knesset vote, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, sent a letter to the UN secretary general and the president of the general assembly officially withdrawing Israel from a 1967 cooperation agreement with Unrwa.

“Despite the overwhelming evidence we submitted to the UN that substantiate[s] Hamas’s infiltration of Unrwa, the UN did nothing to rectify the situation,” Danon wrote on X on Monday.

An internal UN inquiry found in August that nine Unrwa employees “may have been involved” in the surprise Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October last year, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage, triggering the current conflict.

Unrwa has 13,000 employees in Gaza and is by far the biggest aid agency in the coastal strip. The UN has denied charges that the agency has been fundamentally compromised by infiltration.

Aid experts, as well as Israel’s closest allies, have said there is no alternative to Unrwa in terms of providing relief to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and across the region, and that the ban could cripple services to an embattled population that increasingly depends on them.

The head of Unrwa, Philippe Lazzarini, said Israel had cut the flow of aid entering Gaza to a trickle, with an average of 30 trucks entering the territory a day, only 6% of the quantity delivered to Gaza before the war.

“Restricting humanitarian access and at the same time dismantling Unrwa will add an additional layer of suffering to already unspeakable suffering. Only political will can put an end to a politically made situation,” Lazzarini said.

The state department said on Monday that Israel had failed to significantly improve conditions in the strip, as Washington’s deadline for a permanent transformation of the humanitarian crisis approached.

In a letter on 13 October, the Biden administration told Israel it had 30 days to take specific steps to address the situation or face possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers.

“As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around,” the state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said on Monday. “We have seen an increase in some measurements. We’ve seen an increase in the number of crossings that are open. But just if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter, those have not been met.”

In its retaliatory military campaign in the 13 months since the Hamas attack, Israel has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas but provides reliable figures on the death toll according to the UN.

The focus of the military campaign in the past month has been in the far north where an area comprising Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Jabalia has been besieged and heavily bombed, including the few remaining medical facilities.

The Kamal Adwan hospital continued to come under direct fire on Monday, according to its director, Hossam Abu Safieh, who described the situation as catastrophic. He said the “the army did not contact the hospital before directly targeting it”.

“Several of our staff have been injured, and we are unable to leave the hospital,” he said.

The bombardment comes at a time when health workers have been attempting to carry out a second round of polio vaccinations for children under 10.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said 94,431 children had received a dose of the vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza.

At least 90% vaccination coverage is needed to stop the spread of the virus. About 15,000 children are thought to be trapped in the zone besieged by Israeli ground forces and cannot be reached because of military operations.

Fadi was praying on Wednesday afternoon when the ground began to shake. At first he thought it was an earthquake, but then he saw a plume of smoke rising from his house. He rushed home and began to dig. One by one, he pulled family members from the rubble, all eight of them killed in an Israeli airstrike.

“I pulled my brother out of the rubble in pieces. I found his four-year-old daughter’s hand in the branches of an olive tree 20 metres away,” he said. The owner of a gaming cafe in Bednayel, a town on the outskirts of the historic eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, he asked only to be identified by his first name for fear of being targeted by the Israeli drones that circled overhead.

The day before, Fadi’s brother Ali had asked him if his family could stay at his house since they lived next to a petrol station and he feared it would blow up in the event of an Israeli bombing; a local family had burned to death in an earlier Israeli bombing and Ali did not want his wife and two children to suffer the same fate.

All four were killed on Wednesday, along with Ali’s wife’s parents and two of her sisters.

Five hours before Fadi’s home was bombed, Israel’s military had ordered the residents of Baalbek and two nearby towns, Douris and Ain Bourday, to evacuate ahead of what it said were strikes on Hezbollah – the first time it had issued evacuation orders outside southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

But intense Israeli bombing had signalled that it was turning its focus to the eastern Bekaa valley two days before any evacuation orders were given. More than 60 people were killed on Monday last week in bombing across the valley, and by Friday the death toll from strikes in the region had surpassed 120.

Bednayel, like most of the villages surrounding Baalbek that were struck by Israel, was not included in the evacuation orders, nor did it receive a warning before being bombed.

“Israel’s goal is to get us to stop supporting Hezbollah – but we won’t. We’re proud to be here and we won’t leave,” Fadi said. He added that while his family supported Hezbollah politically, they were civilians and not a part of the organisation. He pulled a pair of baby socks out of his pocket, which belonged to his one-year-old nephew Hassan, and pointed to a pink ballet slipper in the rubble, which belonged to his niece Fatimah, to illustrate his point.

Hezbollah traditionally enjoys strong support in the Bekaa valley, it being where many of its top officials originated and where training camps for the organisation’s recruits were held. However, the valley is the largest geographic area of Lebanon and encompasses towns with many different political and religious affiliations.

In the city of Baalbek, the streets were deserted. Wednesday’s evacuation orders had caused panic, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing to safer areas, according to the city’s mayor, Moustapha al-Chall. At the centre of the city stood ancient ruins, including one of the world’s largest extant Roman temples, which was designated a world heritage site in 1982. The provincial governor instructed residents not to seek shelter near the ruins, as he could not guarantee they would be spared from bombing.

A nearby Israeli air raid on Monday had already damaged the Gouraud barracks, a structure from the French-mandate era built near the ancient Roman complex. The weathered stones that made up one of the walls of the complex had been shattered and strewn across the city’s streets.

Amir al-Nimr, a 21-year-old resident of Baalbek, was trapped under the debris on Monday after Israel dropped a bomb on his house, the same strike that damaged the barracks’ walls. He, unlike the other three members of his family who were in the house, survived the attack. But it left him with two fractured hips and burns all over his body.

“There was nothing in our home from Hezbollah. We had sent our women to Syria but we couldn’t leave because we needed to protect the house from theft. I’m not upset for my family, I’m upset that I didn’t get to join them in heaven,” Nimr said, his voice breaking as he spoke from a hospital bed in Dar al-Amal hospital in Douris.

His hair had been scorched from his scalp, one of his eyes was filled with blood and scabs had spread across his face like webbing where he had been burned. “From my point of view, this is a war against the Shia, you can see what regions of Lebanon they’re hitting. But no matter what happens, I won’t leave,” Nimr said.

Those who stayed behind despite the intensifying bombing on Baalbek and surrounding areas spoke with a sense of defiance. But the majority of residents have already left, joining the more than 1.2 million people already displaced by Israeli bombing in Lebanon.

About half of the 700 staff members at the Dar al-Amal hospital have left, displaced by fighting and fearful of an evacuation order that just barely includes the hospital. Three of its nurses were killed in Israeli strikes while off duty in the last month.

“Our main threat now is manpower. Our other resources are available and we can manage it,” said Ali Allam, the hospital’s director. The hospital has received much of the injured and dead from nearby bombings, as well as patients evacuated from hospitals closer to Baalbek.

Allam said that prior to last Monday, a sense of normalcy had returned to the hospital as the pace of Israeli bombing had slowed. That changed as Israel turned its sights on the Bekaa valley.

“Maybe the good thing is that in the Bekaa, the houses are spread far apart. Economically, it will be more costly for them to bomb us. They wouldn’t get their money’s worth. But who could stop them if they finish in south [Lebanon]?” Allam said with a grim smile.

An incendiary device hidden in a DHL package that caught fire in Germany in July was due to be sent by air to the UK as part of a suspected Russian sabotage plot that may also have been a dry run for a similar attack on the US and Canada.

The device, reported to have been secreted in shipments of massage pillows and erotic gadgets, started a fire on the ground in Leipzig that was feared to be capable of downing a plane – similar to a package that ignited at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham on 22 July.

Sources indicated the suspect package in Leipzig was also bound for the UK, though why the UK was chosen as the destination for the two devices, originally sent from Lithuania, is not fully clear.

An unconfirmed German report suggests they were addressed to fake recipients at real addresses in the UK, as were two other incendiary devices found in Poland, one of which Polish media said caught fire at a warehouse in Warsaw while the other was successfully intercepted.

Metropolitan police counter-terror officers declined to comment. The only official statement in the UK about the alleged plot was made last month, when counter-terror police confirmed a device had caught fire in Birmingham, nobody was hurt, and it was dealt with “by staff and the local fire brigade at the time”.

Four people were arrested in Poland as part of the alleged plot, it was announced last week, which the country’s chief prosecutor said was intended to commit sabotage using “camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials” in Europe. Two other individuals are also wanted by investigators in the country.

Another intention, according to the Polish authorities, was “to test the transfer channel” for similar parcels to be sent to the US and Canada, to see if similarly dangerous and destructive attacks could be reproduced elsewhere.

British police and officials, as well as their European counterparts in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, strongly suspect that Russia was behind the attacks as part of an effort to cause “mayhem” in the west in retaliation for western military support to Ukraine.

Last month, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned that Russia’s GRU military intelligence appeared to be on “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more”.

His German counterpart, Thomas Haldenwang, told the Bundestag that had the Leipzig package started burning during a flight “it would have resulted in a crash”. Although Haldenwang did not say Russia was behind the fire when he gave evidence, he accused the Kremlin’s spy agencies of “putting people’s lives at risk”.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the massage items in the suspect packages were booby trapped with a magnesium-based flammable substance. Magnesium fires are notoriously difficult to put out and are worsened if water is applied; special dry powder extinguishers should be used instead.

Russia has denied involvement in the alleged plot. “These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the US newspaper.

Hundreds of civil and military emergency workers are searching shopping centres, garages and underground car parks for more victims of floods in the Valencia region that have killed at least 214 people, as public anger mounts over Spanish authorities’ handling of the disaster.

Yellow and amber weather warnings were in place for parts of Valencia and neighbouring Catalonia on Monday, with people in the affected areas advised to stay off the roads and keep away from the coast and rivers.

Heavy rain pounded the Barcelona area on Monday morning, leading the regional government to issue civil protection alerts and cancel all local train services. More than 50 flights due to take off from El Prat airport were cancelled or severely delayed.

Over the weekend, personnel from the armed forces’ military emergencies unit (UME) focused their efforts on shopping malls and car parks where people could have been trapped by the floods, which were caused by torrential rains that experts have linked to the climate emergency.

On Sunday, UME workers managed to enter the underground car park of the huge Bonaire shopping complex in the Valencian town of Aldaia. . Using a small boat and flashlights, police searched the lot’s 1,800 parking spaces, telling reporters that so far about 50 vehicles had been found and no bodies had been discovered.

The disaster, which has prompted the central government to deploy 10,000 troops and police officers, has killed 210 people in Valencia, three in Castilla-La Mancha and one in Málaga. The number of missing remain unknown. There are fears the death toll could rise as the relief efforts reach previously inaccessible areas.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has described the floods as the worst natural disaster in Spain’s recent history and said all necessary resources would be mobilised to deal with its aftermath.

On Monday, another 2,500 soldiers were sent to the affected areas, adding to the 5,000 sent in recent days. A Spanish navy vessel also arrived at Valencia’s port on Monday, carrying marines, helicopters and lorries loaded with food and water.

But anger over the response to the crisis – and, in particular, over the Valencian regional government’s delay in sending an emergency alert when the floods hit on Tuesday – has only risen.

On Sunday, a high-profile visit to the badly affected Valencian town of Paiporta was disrupted after a furious crowd threw mud at Sánchez, as well as the regional president, Carlos Mazón, King Felipe and Queen Letizia. There were also shouts of “Killers!” and “Get out!”

Speaking a few hours after he was swiftly escorted from the area, the prime minister acknowledged people’s pain but said a small minority of those in Paiporta were behind the angry scenes.

“We know what people need and our priorities are clear: saving lives, finding the bodies of the people who have died, and rebuilding the affected areas,” he said.

“The violence carried out by a few people won’t deflect the collective interest. It’s time to look ahead and to keep on working with all the means and coordination needed to get through this emergency together.”

Sources in Sánchez’s socialist administration were a little more forthright, describing the protests in Paiporta as “a far-right and anti-political show”.

Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, conceded the visit may have been mistimed.

“Maybe it wasn’t the best time,” he told the Spanish TV channel La Sexta. “There’s a lot of anger and people feel abandoned … and then you have the activities organised by some people who belong to the extreme right.”

The country’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, told broadcaster TVE that police had opened an investigation into the incidents that marred the official visit.

King Felipe, who insisted on continuing the visit, said he appreciated the scale of people’s fury.

“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,” he said on Sunday.

Mayors from the affected municipalities have been pleading with officials to send help as soon as possible.

“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.”

A British couple missing in Valencia after floods hit the region have been found dead in their car, their daughter has told the BBC.

Don Turner, 78, and his wife Terry, 74, had not been seen since torrential downpours caused flash floods in eastern Spain.

Their daughter, Ruth O’Loughlin, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, confirmed to the BBC that her parents’ bodies had been found in their car on Saturday.

She had previously told the BBC her parents had moved to Spain a decade ago because they had “always wanted to live in the sunshine”.

She was told they were missing on Thursday after friends checked on them and found their pets at home but their vehicle gone. Terry had told friends they were popping out to get some gas, she said.

O’Loughlin told BBC Radio WM she had found out about the death of her parents, who lived near Pedralba, in a message from one of their friends.

O’Loughlin said: “He said ‘Ruth, get your husband’. I called my husband in and he just said ‘Martin, hold your wife’, and said that they’d been found and they’d been found in their car.

“We still don’t know exactly what happened to them. The only thing we’ve got from this is that they were together. It’s not the way you want your parents to go.”

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man and woman who have died in Spain, and are in contact with the local authorities.”

The flooding, which has prompted the central government to deploy 10,000 troops and police officers, has killed 210 people in Valencia, three in Castilla-La Mancha and one in Málaga. There are fears the death toll could rise as the relief efforts reach previously inaccessible areas.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has described the floods as the worst natural disaster in the country’s recent history and said all necessary resources would be mobilised to deal with its aftermath.

Yellow and amber weather warnings were in place for parts of Valencia and neighbouring Catalonia on Monday, with people in the affected areas advised to stay off the roads and keep away from the coast and rivers.

Heavy rain had fallen in the Barcelona area, leading the regional government to issue civil protection alerts and cancel all local train services.

Thousands of UK air passengers are experiencing disruption after Barcelona airport was hit by the storms.

Climate activists in Scotland have carried out a series of actions against SUV cars, saying they are acting in solidarity with the victims of the Valencia floods.

The Tyre Extinguishers have called on their supporters to take actions against SUV cars in their areas, after members of the group in Edinburgh stencilled the sides of targeted vehicles on Sunday night with the words: “These cars kill Valencians.”

At least 214 people have been reported killed in Valencia and surrounding areas after unprecedented rainfall last week caused flooding that swept away bridges, cars and streetlights. Global heating made the heavy rainfall about 12% heavier and twice as likely, according to an initial estimate carried out by scientists from World Weather Attribution.

The flooding has been described as the worst natural disaster in recent Spanish history.

Posting pictures of the Edinburgh actions on their account on X, the Tyre Extinguishers said: “SUVs targeted in solidarity with Valencia climate victims.

“Outraged Edinburgh residents took action last night highlighting SUV’s [sic] disproportionate role in causing catastrophic weather, like that which has killed over 200 in Spain.

“If SUVs were a country they’d be the 5th biggest world polluter. There were over 360m SUVs on world roads in 2023, producing 1bn tonnes of CO2, up 10% on 2022. As a result, global oil consumption rose by 600,000 barrels/day, more than a quarter of total oil demand growth.

“Protestors defaced SUVs throughout Edinburgh’s New Town, and left windscreens with images of victims like José Castillejo, 28, who died in the Valencia floods, and Nuria Sajjad and Selena Lau, who were killed last year when an out-of-control Land Rover hit their primary school.

“We call on all TX groups to take solidarity actions on behalf of climate victims. We won’t stop until these death machines are off our roads.”

An activist named as Priya, who took part in the Edinburgh actions, said: “We hit 16 cars last night, and more planned … Not enough is being done to highlight that disasters like Valencia have human causes. This is not a natural disaster, it’s a disaster fuelled by our governments being enslaved by the fossil fuel and car lobbies.

“We need emergency action now to bring an end to SUV emissions, and if governments don’t do it, then it’s up to citizens to do it for them.”

Police Scotland was unable to give any information about whether the incidents had been reported or an investigation was under way without more specific details of the locations of the targeted vehicles.

Water-soluble spray chalk was used to deface the cars, the Guardian has been told.

Just one in five of boys at senior high school in Japan have had their first kiss, according to the Japanese Association for Sex Education – the lowest figure since the organisation conducted its first survey of sexual behaviour among young people in 1974.

In its latest poll, which covers the 2023 academic year, the association found that girls in the same age group were similarly cautious, with 27.5% saying they had experienced their first kiss, compared with 22.8% among boys – down 13.6 percentage points and 11.1 points since 2017.

The proportion of senior high school students – aged 15-18 – who had kissed for the first time has been declining since its 2005 peak, when one in two said they had locked lips.

The latest survey, the association’s ninth in half a century, showed a lower percentage of affirmative answers to the kissing question than in the 2017 poll across all the surveyed age groups, which also sought responses from junior high school and university students, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.

The association, which surveyed more than 12,500 students, said 12% of junior and senior high school students said they had had sexual intercourse, as did 14.8% of girls – down 3.5 percentage points and 5.3 points, respectively.

But a different trend emerged when the subject turned to solitary sexual habits, with rising proportions of students in all three groups saying they masturbated.

The association partly attributed the downward trend in kissing and intercourse to the Covid-19 pandemic, which triggered school closures and official advice to avoid the “three Cs”: confined spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings.

“Limited contact with others during the coronavirus outbreak may have lowered the rate of sexual activity among junior and senior high school students,” it said.

Yusuke Hayashi, a sociology professor at Musashi University who analysed the results, said the combination of school closures and restrictions on face-to-face contact during the pandemic came “at a sensitive time, when junior and senior high school students are beginning to become interested in their sexuality”.

Hayashi told the Mainichi that the greater prevalence of masturbation “may be due to increased exposure to [sexual imagery] in manga and other media, rather than as a substitute for interpersonal sexual behaviour”.

Tamaki Kawasaki, a columnist and sociology lecturer, said the survey’s findings suggested that young Japanese were “uniformly disengaging” from sex post-pandemic.

“It shows that the trend is for people to move away from real, physical sexual activity, even at a time when it’s natural for them to be sexually active,” Kawasaki wrote in the online edition of President magazine.

“Instead, there is a stronger tendency for them to stay home and watch sexual content alone. If teens, who represent the country’s future, continue like this then it is hard to see any improvement in the declining birthrate.”

North Korea’s UN envoy has said Pyongyang will accelerate a buildup of its nuclear weapons programme just days after it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time this year at a moment of rising tensions with the west.

Kim Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, said during a security council meeting on Monday that Pyongyang would accelerate the programme to “counter any threat presented by hostile nuclear weapons states”.

Early on Tuesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North had fired several short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea east of the Korean Peninsula. Japan’s coast guard said the projectile wsa believed to be a ballistic missile, and broadcaster NHK reported it appeared to have landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the ocean.

The security council meeting was convened to address Pyongyang’s testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday meant to demonstrate North Korea’s growing prowess at developing missiles that could deliver more powerful nuclear warheads potentially to the mainland US.

The US and Ukraine have warned that North Korea has nearly 8,000 soldiers stationed in the Kursk region of Russia who could go into combat in Ukraine in the coming days, and both countries have warned that those troops will become legitimate military targets if they take part in fighting.

“The nuclear threat of United States against [North Korea] has already reached critical point in terms of its scale and danger,” Kim said. “Due to reckless moves of the United States, the potential situation is approaching the brink of war.”

During the meeting, the US accused China and Russia of “shamelessly” protecting Pyongyang at the UN from “closer scrutiny of its sanctions-violating activities”, and said Pyongyang had been “emboldened to continue advancing its unlawful ballistic missile, nuclear and WMD programmes”.

North Korea is believed to be seeking Russian missile and space technology as part of a deal to provide troops in Russia’s war against Ukraine. But US officials have not said what they believe Vladimir Putin has provided to North Korea in exchange.

“Russia and China have shamelessly protected Pyongyang from any reprisal, or even condemnation of its actions,” said Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the UN.

Putin greeted North Korea’s foreign minister in a surprise meeting in the Kremlin after the US warnings about North Korean soldiers approaching Ukraine.

Footage was broadcast showing Putin meeting Choe Son Hui, the North Korean envoy, with whom he shook hands for a full minute. The meeting took place on Russia’s National Unity Day, a national holiday, and Choe said he brought “sincere, warm, comradely greetings” from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

The meeting was not previously scheduled and may have been prompted by the warnings by the west about the North Korean troops preparing to fight.

The US and South Korea announced a new memorandum of understanding to develop cooperation on civil nuclear energy, strengthening their “administration of export controls on civil nuclear technology”, the US Department of Energy said in a statement.

The department claimed that the announcement would help combat the climate crisis and protect critical supply chains, while “creating billions of dollars worth of new economic opportunities”.

North Korea’s UN envoy has said Pyongyang will accelerate a buildup of its nuclear weapons programme just days after it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time this year at a moment of rising tensions with the west.

Kim Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, said during a security council meeting on Monday that Pyongyang would accelerate the programme to “counter any threat presented by hostile nuclear weapons states”.

Early on Tuesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North had fired several short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea east of the Korean Peninsula. Japan’s coast guard said the projectile wsa believed to be a ballistic missile, and broadcaster NHK reported it appeared to have landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the ocean.

The security council meeting was convened to address Pyongyang’s testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday meant to demonstrate North Korea’s growing prowess at developing missiles that could deliver more powerful nuclear warheads potentially to the mainland US.

The US and Ukraine have warned that North Korea has nearly 8,000 soldiers stationed in the Kursk region of Russia who could go into combat in Ukraine in the coming days, and both countries have warned that those troops will become legitimate military targets if they take part in fighting.

“The nuclear threat of United States against [North Korea] has already reached critical point in terms of its scale and danger,” Kim said. “Due to reckless moves of the United States, the potential situation is approaching the brink of war.”

During the meeting, the US accused China and Russia of “shamelessly” protecting Pyongyang at the UN from “closer scrutiny of its sanctions-violating activities”, and said Pyongyang had been “emboldened to continue advancing its unlawful ballistic missile, nuclear and WMD programmes”.

North Korea is believed to be seeking Russian missile and space technology as part of a deal to provide troops in Russia’s war against Ukraine. But US officials have not said what they believe Vladimir Putin has provided to North Korea in exchange.

“Russia and China have shamelessly protected Pyongyang from any reprisal, or even condemnation of its actions,” said Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the UN.

Putin greeted North Korea’s foreign minister in a surprise meeting in the Kremlin after the US warnings about North Korean soldiers approaching Ukraine.

Footage was broadcast showing Putin meeting Choe Son Hui, the North Korean envoy, with whom he shook hands for a full minute. The meeting took place on Russia’s National Unity Day, a national holiday, and Choe said he brought “sincere, warm, comradely greetings” from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

The meeting was not previously scheduled and may have been prompted by the warnings by the west about the North Korean troops preparing to fight.

The US and South Korea announced a new memorandum of understanding to develop cooperation on civil nuclear energy, strengthening their “administration of export controls on civil nuclear technology”, the US Department of Energy said in a statement.

The department claimed that the announcement would help combat the climate crisis and protect critical supply chains, while “creating billions of dollars worth of new economic opportunities”.

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has condemned a “deliberate attack” on a Hindu temple in Canada, blaming Sikh activists for the violent clash at a time of escalating diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

Videos on social media showed demonstrators protesting outside the Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in the city of Brampton, where Indian diplomats were visiting ahead of Diwali celebrations. Some protesters held yellow Khalistan flags, representing a region of India they hope to one day carve out as a Sikh homeland.

As tensions rose, isolated fights broke out. Canada’s Peel regional police said on Monday that three people had been “arrested and criminally charged” following the attack and they were investigating “several acts of unlawfulness”.

The alleged offences include assault with a weapon and assaulting a police officer.

In the hours after the clashes, each side blamed the other for inciting violence.

Modi denounced “cowardly attempts to intimidate” consular staff, writing in a post on social media: “Such acts of violence will never weaken India’s resolve.”

The group Sikhs for Justice alleged in a statement the protest “turned violent” when a group of “Indo-Canadian nationalists, incited by Indian consulate officials” attacked the Sikh demonstrators. The group says some attenders retreated into the temple and began throwing rocks and wielding iron rods.

Canadian federal party leaders all condemned the violence.

“Every Canadian has the right to practice their faith freely and safely,” Justin Trudeau wrote on social media.

The Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, “unequivocally” condemned violence “targeting worshippers” and Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic party also “unequivocally” condemned the clashes. “Violence anywhere is wrong,” he wrote.

The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, said the violence was “completely unacceptable and must be condemned”.

Relations between India and Canada have remained tense ever since Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of assassinating Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Khalistan activist.

Tensions rose in October when Canada expelled six Indian diplomats including the country’s high commissioner. The move came as federal police warned of a vast, covert network of violence operated by the Indian government in Canada. Indian officials, conversely, say Canada has ignored the rise of Sikh separatism and done little to tamp down on what Delhi says is violent rhetoric.

Murray Sinclair, the Anishinaabe judge, senator and university chancellor, who reshaped Canada’s legal system and forced the public to confront the brutal realities of the Indigenous residential school system, has died at the age of 73.

Sinclair – whose spirit name was Mizhana Gheezhik, meaning “The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky” – was a champion of Indigenous rights and reconciliation efforts, dedicating his life to reversing the stark inequities many Indigenous communities face as the result of colonial policy.

Sinclair, Manitoba’s first Indigenous judge, chaired Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spent six years compiling testimony from survivors of horrific abuses at the country’s residential school system and concluded that Canada had carried out a policy of “cultural genocide”.

“The impact of our dad’s work reached far across the country and the world,” his family said in a statement, confirming his death. “From residential school survivors, to law students, to those who sat across from him in a courtroom, he was always known as an exceptional listener who treated everyone with dignity and respect.”

A sacred fire to help guide his spirit home has been lit outside Manitoba’s legislature, they said.

Tributes poured in from political leaders.

“He was kind, patient and understanding to people like me, who had a lot to learn,” the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, posted on social media.

“With his passing, Canada has lost a giant – a brilliant legal mind, a champion of Indigenous rights, and a trusted leader on our journey of Reconciliation.”

Wab Kinew, the premier of Manitoba, praised Sinclair’s legacy.

“It will be a long time before our nation produces another person the calibre of Murray Sinclair. He showed us there is no reconciliation without truth.”

Marc Miller, who previously served as minister of crown-Indigenous relations, wrote: “I’ll miss you, my friend.”

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said Sinclair “broke barriers and inspired countless individuals to pursue reform and justice with courage and determination”.

Sinclair, a member of Peguis First Nation, was born on 24 January 1951 and was a child of the Canadian prairies, growing up in Selkirk, Manitoba. He graduated high school as valedictorian and the year’s top athlete. His postsecondary studies in physical education were cut short when he left school to care for his grandmother.

Sinclair later enrolled in law school, graduating at the top of his class, and was called to the bar in 1980. Less than 10 years later, he became Manitoba’s first Indigenous judge in 1988 and that year was named co-commissioner of Manitoba’s Aboriginal Justice Inquiry.

The inquiry, which looked at the fraught relationship between Indigenous people and the province’s justice system, played a key role in the Gladue principles, a nationwide rewriting of the criminal code which required courts to consider the backgrounds of Indigenous offenders and weigh alternatives to prison when sentencing.

Sinclair was also tasked with leading the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission which in 2015 concluded that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide.

Painful survivor testimony to the commission made it clear that sexual, emotional and physical abuse had been rife. The final report estimated that more than 4,100 children died from disease, neglect and suicide, although Sinclair has said he believes the true figure could be as high as 15,000.

In an interview with the Guardian in 2021, Sinclair said the commission was prevented from investigating allegations of criminality and efforts to obtain key church and government records were stymied.

“The government, our social institutions, and even our population acknowledge what was done to Indigenous people was wrong. There have been several apologies and a promise of things will change. But there’s been no change,” he said. “So long as any change is only given reluctantly, it means there remains a willingness, ability – and even desire – to go back to the way things were.”

In 2016, Sinclair was appointed to the Senate and retired in 2021.

The next year, he received the Order of Canada, the country’s top honour, for championing the rights and freedoms of Indigenous people.

He used the award to highlight the need for all Canadians to fight to end a sustained, decades-long campaign to create and sustain racial inequity.

“It took constant effort to maintain that relationship of Indigenous inferiority and white superiority,” he said. “To reverse that, it’s going to take generations of concerted effort to do the opposite.”

Sinclair is survived by his five children.

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has accused the country’s supreme court of overstepping its functions and “trying to change what the people of Mexico decided” as it prepares to discuss whether to strike down parts of a transformative judicial reform.

The court is expected to vote on Tuesday whether the controversial reform violates other parts of the constitution, setting up a showdown with Sheinbaum barely a month into her government.

The move would shift Mexico to a system where almost all of its judges, including the supreme court, are elected by popular vote.

No other country in the world has such a system. The US elects judges at the lower level, while Bolivia elects 26 judges across its top courts. But in Mexico, thousands of positions at all levels would be put to the vote.

Proponents say the reform is needed to root out corruption in the judicial system. Opponents say it will do little to address corruption, but will hand the ruling Morena party control of the courts, while giving organised crime groups another chance to impose their candidates in elections.

“It has to be made very clear that eight justices cannot be above the people,” Sheinbaum told reporters on Monday.

Morena already has a level of political power not seen for decades in Mexico, after its landslide election victory in June gave it a supermajority in Congress and control of enough state legislatures to change the constitution at will.

It has passed a whirl of amendments since, including the judicial reform in September.

The judicial system itself has come out strongly against the reform, with strikes and protests. Though three members of the supreme court have said they support the reform, the other eight showed their resistance by declaring they would not run in the elections scheduled for August 2025.

Now the court will discuss whether the judicial reform violates existing precepts in the constitution in a last-ditch effort to stop it moving forwards.

This has already prompted the legislative to pass another amendment last week that blocks the court from reviewing legal challenges to any constitutional reforms, potentially nullifying any decision that the court takes.

That means if the supreme court does vote against the judicial reform, Mexico will be in uncharted territory. And Sheinbaum will have to decide whether to ignore or comply with the ruling.

“This will lead to a constitutional crisis of a kind we have not seen for the duration of the 1917 constitution,” Olvera Rangel told Proceso, a Mexican magazine.

The dispute has dominated the agenda during Sheinbaum’s first month in government, sucking attention away from other issues such as the expansion of social programs, the further militarisation of public security, and the rising violence in states such as Sinaloa and Chiapas.

It has also spooked markets, leading the peso to depreciate more than 15% against the dollar, and drawn rare public criticism from the US, Mexico’s largest trade partner, which said it jeopardised democracy and rule of the law in the country.

To defuse the crisis, one supreme court judge, Juan Luis González Alcántara, has suggested a compromise: that the top courts stand for election, but the thousands of other judges do not.

But it is unclear whether the other judges on the supreme court would agree to this, let alone Sheinbaum and her party.

Sheinbaum inherited the judicial reform from former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who founded Morena and was frustrated when the courts blocked some of his key policies.

Even if Sheinbaum was inclined to negotiate with the supreme court, she could face resistance from power brokers within Morena.

In any case, she has showed no signs of backing down, accusing the court of being a political actor and violating the constitution itself.

On Monday she added that her government has a plan in case the court goes against the judicial reform: “We are prepared, whichever way they vote.”

The butchered remains of a dolphin were found on a New Jersey beach, and federal authorities are investigating.

The Marine Mammal Stranding Center, which responds to reports of dead or distressed marine animals that come ashore in New Jersey, said the remains of a common dolphin were found on Wednesday on the beach in Allenhurst, just north of Asbury Park.

The dolphin “appeared to have been butchered”, the center said in a statement.

“The animal’s flesh had been completely removed with clean cuts from a sharp instrument, leaving only the head, dorsal fin and flukes,” the center wrote. “The animal’s organs, except for the heart and lungs, had been removed.”

Witnesses had reported seeing a dolphin of the same species struggling in the surf on Tuesday night a block from where the remains were found the next day.

But the animal was able to swim over a sand bar and back out to sea. It was not known whether it was the same animal whose remains were found the next day.

The common dolphin is not listed as threatened or endangered. The case is being investigated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s office of law enforcement.

Demons that Tucker Carlson claimed attacked him as he slept were also responsible for the invention of nuclear technology, the conservative former Fox News host said on Monday in another bizarre contention.

Carlson made the claim on the War Room podcast hosted by his fellow rightwing extremist Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser in the Trump administration who was released from prison last week after serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.

“Nuclear weapons are demonic, there’s no upside to them at all, and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or doing the bidding of the forces that created nuclear technology in the first place, which were not human forces obviously,” Carlson said during a discussion on the perceived “spirituality” involved in the US development of atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan in August 1945, hastening the end of the second world war.

“Let me ask you this,” he continued. “What was the moment we can point to that nuclear technology was invented? I’ve never met a person who can isolate the moment where nuclear technology became known to man. German scientists in the 1930s? Really? Name the date? It’s very clear to me that these [nuclear weapons] are demonic.”

Carlson’s talk about demons follows remarks he made last week about how he was allegedly “physically mauled” by one a year and a half ago. The former Fox News host claimed that it was a nighttime attack where he was left bleeding and scarred by “claw marks”.

Those comments came in a preview clip posted to YouTube of an upcoming documentary, Christianities?, which is billed as a “journey to the heart of the faith”.

John Heers, founder of the non-profit First Things Foundation, asked Carlson if he believed that “the presence of evil is kickstarting people to wonder about the good”.

“That’s what happened to me. I had a direct experience with it,” Carlson replied.

Asked if he was referring to journalism, Carlson responded: “No, in my bed at night. I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs and mauled, physically mauled.”

His assailant, Carlson added, was “a demon … or something unseen that left claw marks on my side”.

It was, he said, a “transformative experience” that left him “seized with this very intense desire to read the Bible”.

Barely a week earlier, Carlson gave another extraordinary, sexist speech at a Trump rally in Georgia, likening the Republican presidential nominee to an angry father coming home to give his teenage daughter “a vigorous spanking”.

Carlson, like Bannon, is a fervent supporter of Trump, whose campaign has leaned heavily into Christian evangelicalism in the final weeks before Tuesday’s election.

Scenes of religious leaders gathering around the seated former president and praying with and for him, their hands on his shoulders, have become commonplace at Trump’s rallies and other campaign appearances.

At one such event, a roundtable with Latino leaders at Trump’s Doral golf resort in Florida last month, the Honduran televangelist Guillermo Maldonado, founder of the Miami megachurch the King Jesus International Ministry, predicted supernatural forces would help Trump defeat Kamala Harris.

“There’s a higher assignment for him to finish with this nation,” he said. “This is a war between good and evil. God sets up kings. He removes kings. We’re going to pray for the will of God to make [Trump] the 47th president.”