Reformists in Iran have ignited a debate about whether Tehran should be willing to shift from its deeply held opposition to a two-state solution in the Palestinian territories, which would require it to recognise the existence of an Israeli state.

“Death to Zionism” has been a staple of Iranian revolutionary thinking since 1979, and was the position effectively of the Palestine Liberation Organisation until the Oslo accords in the 1990s.

Under the former president Mohammad Khatami and his foreign minister Kamal Kharazi, Iran proposed a referendum on a one-state solution, with only descendants of those who lived there “before the Zionist invasion” and Palestinian refugees being permitted to vote – a process that would leave Israeli Jews largely outnumbered in the vote.

Iran has always seen Israel as a colonial enterprise of settlers, and some of its leaders have championed outright Holocaust denial. Last week Iran did not attend a two-day meeting of an international coalition for a two-state solution held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

However, on 21 October, the assembly of lecturers and scholars at Qom Seminary, a reformist-leaning body of clerics, issued a statement calling for the “return of the Zionist regime to its legal borders prior to the 1967 aggression and formation of an independent Palestinian state”.

This implied support for a two-state solution led to protests outside the assembly’s offices, in Qom, after Friday prayers. The Tehran-based hardline daily Kayhan labelled the assembly a “propaganda machine for the enemy” and characterised its “recognition of the fabricated regime of Israel” as “despicable and shameful”. The head of the judiciary also criticised the statement, saying corrective action was required, implying closure may be necessary. But reformist newspapers reported the statement sympathetically.

In response to the criticism, the seminary relented only to the extent that it clarified that it understood “the heinous crimes of the Zionist state” and did not recognise Israel, but believed an independent Palestinian state would bring the bloodshed to an end.

Iran’s opposition to a two-state solution has made it harder for it to build diplomatic alliances in the region – its absence from last week’s conference is a case in point.

The historian and author Arash Azizi denied that the backdrop of possible imminent military conflict between Israel and Iran made it a totally inappropriate moment for such a debate to be held.

“It is a debate between those that want Iran to be an incubator of revolutionary Islamist anti-Zionism, and those that support a pragmatic foreign policy based on the national interest,” he said. “Iran is going through a transition. The supreme leader is 85. Power is being passed on to a new generation. Iran cannot go on in these full-out crises. Khomenei’s strategy of no war no peace has not worked. It should not be Iran’s business to want to destroy Israel, and then say it does not want war. This is a moment of truth.”

He added that “if there was a Palestinian-Israeli agreement, Iran would not be able to do much”.

Azizi said the former Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif recently said Iranians were tired of a government “that is trying to be more pro-Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves”.

The possible flexibility in the Iranian position started under the last president, Ebrahim Raisi. In December, for instance, Iran backed a Jordanian-tabled resolution at the UN general assembly – albeit with a heavy reservation – that declared a two-state solution was the only way to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

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.

Full-scale war in the Middle East involving Israel and Iran is now likely, most western Europeans responding in a poll believe, with many criticising Israel’s conduct thus far and saying that if such a war did occur, the US and Europe should not provide it with military aid.

A YouGov Eurotrack survey in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and the UK found that strong majorities in all seven countries, ranging from 65% in France to 82% in Spain, felt the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 were not justified.

However, the most commonly held opinion in each country – from a low of 43% in Germany, 46% in France, 47% in the UK, 57% in Italy to a high of 65% in Spain – was that neither have Israel’s subsequent attacks in Gaza been justified.

Similar if slightly larger pluralities – from 47% in Denmark through 49% in Germany, 50% in France and the UK and 68% in Spain, consistently one of the EU’s most pro-Palestinian member states – said Israel’s attacks on Lebanon were unjustified.

Israel’s attacks on Iran were also most commonly viewed as not justified in all seven countries, by between 45% (Denmark) and 68% (Spain) of respondents, while Iran’s attacks on Israel were condemned by between 58% (France) and 71% (Spain).

The EU has been divided over the conflict in Gaza, with countries such as Spain and Ireland formally recognising a Palestinian state earlier this year but others, including Germany, arguing support of Israel’s security is central to its foreign policy.

Asked about Israel’s attacks on Gaza, which Palestinian health authorities say have killed more than 43,000 people, the most popular opinion was that Israel had been “right to send troops into Gaza, but has gone too far and killed too many civilians”.

That view was held by somewhat smaller pluralities of between 25% (Italy) and 39% (Sweden) – but more respondents (between 16% and 26%) felt Israel had been wrong to use military force against Hamas than that it had acted proportionately (10% to 19%).

Similarly, when asked whether Europe and the US should be doing more to help Israel meet its military objectives or to restrain Benjamin Netanyahu’s government from taking military action, pluralities of between 22% (France) and 36% (Spain) chose the latter.

Significant minorities of between 21% (France and the UK) and 25% (Italy), meanwhile, said they felt Europe and the US “should not be involved at all”.

Outright majorities ranging from 52% in Denmark through to 58% in France, 59% in Germany and Italy and 61% in the UK and 65% in Spain said they thought full-blown war in the region involving Israel and Iran was either “very” or “fairly” likely.

If such a war were to break out, the most widely held view in all seven countries – from 42% in Denmark to 47% in Britain, 51% in Germany and 59% in Italy – was that Europe and the US should not provide military aid to Israel.

Asked to give their overall opinion of Palestine and Israel, the most common assessment of both in all seven countries was “very” or “fairly” unfavourable. Only in Italy were opinions of Palestine remotely close, with 33% negative and 30% positive.

Elsewhere, 61% of Germans said they had an unfavourable view of Palestine, compared with 15% who were favourable, while the corresponding figures in Sweden were 57% and 20% and in France, 42% unfavourable against 25% favourable.

Opinions of Israel were equally poor, with net favourability ratings ranging from minus 15 in France through minus 24 in Germany, minus 30 in Sweden and minus 33 in Spain.

The Irish prime minister, Simon Harris, has said he plans to call a general election this week, paving the way for a polling date likely to be at the end of November.

Harris is expected to dissolve the Dáil, or Irish parliament, either on Thursday before a meeting of European leaders in Budapest, or on Friday when he returns.

Under the rules, a minimum of 18 days’ notice is required for an election, which can lead to short and frenetic campaigns.

A November or early December election has been firmly on the cards since the taoiseach announced two weeks ago he would call an election for this year rather than waiting until next February, one month before the government’s five-year term ends.

A €10.5bn (£8.8bn) budget giveaway in early October was also seen as putting the country on an election footing.

“I do intend to seek a dissolution of the Dáil this week, I don’t think that will come as a shock to any person right across this country,” Harris told reporters on Tuesday.

Harris said he would call an election once a finance bill putting the budget’s tax and spend changes into law had been passed. The bill is expected to be voted through by the Dáil on Tuesday and by the Seanad (senate) on Wednesday.

“We need to get through the business of the next few days first,” he added.

Harris leads a coalition government made up of his own party, the conservative Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green party.

Fine Gael has enjoyed a sizeable boost in its rankings since Harris, 37, took over in April from his predecessor, Leo Varadkar.

An opinion poll on Sunday put Fine Gael on 26%, Fianna Fáil on 20%, and the main opposition party, Sinn Féin, trailing on 18%.

In the last month, Sinn Féin has been hit by a succession of scandals over child safeguarding in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, where it is the largest party.

Two years ago it was considered within touching distance of government in Dublin, fuelling speculation that the party would be in power both north and south of the border and accelerate the prospect of a united Ireland.

Over the past year, however, its fortunes have turned, and the prospect of being the largest party in Dublin appears to be unlikely with a succession of polls putting it in the high teens compared with more than 30% in October 2022.

Fine Gael has eagerly seized on Sinn Féin’s woes for maximum electoral gain while at the same time deflecting attention from its own record, particularly in relation to the housing crisis, one of the opposition party’s strongest policy areas.

Tropical Storm Rafael has grown more powerful in the Caribbean Sea and is poised to reach hurricane strength on Wednesday, carrying the risk of damaging wind and rainfall. But it should weaken as it approaches the US Gulf coast, where several states have not been hit by a hurricane in November, according to records maintained since the early months of the US civil war.

Portions of the Florida Keys could see tropical storm conditions starting on Wednesday night, according to the National Hurricane Center.

If Rafael approaches that area around high tide, Dry Tortugas could see 1-3ft of storm surge, which is a wall of water pushed inland by a storm’s winds. And the Lower Keys could see 1-2ft of storm surge, which are manageable levels. The National Hurricane Center said that several tornadoes are possible over the Keys, as well as Florida’s southernmost mainland, on Wednesday.

Rafael traveled north-west on Tuesday morning, bringing heavy rain to Jamaica, the Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore said on Tuesday on X. “Jamaica and the Cayman Islands should have a nasty day and night with western Cuba getting it tomorrow,” Cantore wrote. “Depending on how fast it can intensify conditions will transition from [tropical storm] to hurricane over The Cayman Islands tonight.”

The National Hurricane Service (NHS) said that Rafael could bring “damaging hurricane-force winds, a dangerous storm surge, and destructive waves” as it nears the Cayman Islands on Tuesday evening. The storm is expected to reach hurricane status near the Caymans and strengthen further before making landfall in Cuba.

Rafael’s threat to Cuba comes just weeks after Hurricane Oscar dumped heavy rains on the island, leading to a nationwide blackout and killing at least seven people. Cuba is facing a lengthy recovery period, made all the more perilous by its worsening economic crisis, according to the Associated Press.

Meteorologists have also warned warn that the higher areas of Cuba – as well as Jamaica – are at risk of flash flooding and mudslides.

Forecasters believe that Rafael might also cause heavy rainfall in other US Gulf states, though dry air and lower water temperatures are expected to strip the storm of its hurricane intensity.

Some projections posit that the Louisiana coast, including New Orleans, and Mississippi could possibly see effects from the storm. Records dating to 1861 indicate that neither Louisiana, Mississippi, nor Texas have seen a hurricane make landfall in November, according to the New Orleans outlet WDSU.

The news outlet notes how a landfall-making hurricane at this time of year would be anomalous overall. Over that same period, records indicate that just eight hurricanes have made landfall on the Gulf coast in November.

Hurricane Etna was the last such storm to do so. The 2020 hurricane made landfall in Nicaragua, Cuba, Lower Matecumbe Key and Cedar Key, Florida, WDSU reported.

Rafael is the 17th named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, according to NBC News. Rafael will become the 11th hurricane if it grows in strength; the Atlantic hurricane season typically sees 14 named storms, with seven hurricanes, three among those considered major.

While the Atlantic hurricane season ends on 30 November, it is usually most active around 10 September, NBC News said. The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season had 10 named storms from 24 September to 4 November, which is the “most on record for this time span”.

Meteorologists had expected an unusually active hurricane season due to record-high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. Rising sea temperatures are widely attributed to global warming primarily driven by humans’ burning of fossil fuels.

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season has wreaked extensive destruction in the US. Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Florida on 9 October, resulted in dozens of deaths and cost a whopping $50bn in damage.

Just two weeks earlier, Hurricane Helene’s rains razed entire towns in western North Carolina, killing hundreds. Before striking North Carolina, Hurricane Helene’s deadly storm surge flooded large portions of Florida, destroying homes and businesses.

It also devastated several other south-eastern US states.

The Irish mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor raped a woman in a Dublin hotel, the city’s high court has been told.

Nikita Ni Laimhin is claiming civil damages against McGregor and another man, alleging she was sexually assaulted in 2018.

But, the court heard on Tuesday, McGregor’s lawyers say Ni Laimhin, who has no automatic right to anonymity, is attempting extortion.

The fighter, nicknamed “Notorious”, was in court to hear Justice Alexander Owens tell the jury it is alleged Ni Laimhin was sexually assaulted by McGregor and James Lawrence on 9 December.

The judge said that it is alleged that the pair had “in effect raped her”.

The court was told McGregor collected Ni Laimhin, a Dublin hairdresser, and her friend following a Christmas party on 8 December.

John Gordon SC for Ni Laimhin said that the pair were known to each other as they were in the same age group, from the same area and had mutual friends and had been in contact at various times through social media.

At the time she lived in the Dublin suburb of Drimnagh with her partner and seven-year-old daughter.

She and had been out with friends on the night of the alleged incident.

Gordon said McGregor was “enormously famous” and was considered a “hero” around Drimnagh.

He said that his client was “no angel” and “doesn’t pretend to be an angel”.

On the night, she had been drinking and had taken some cocaine. The court also heard that she suffered from depression and had been on antidepressants.

The court was told that later on in the night, Ni Laimhin and two of her friends returned to her salon where they continued to party and at some point she contacted McGregor.

McGregor collected her and her friend in his car, and Ni Laimhin understood they were to be taken to another party.

He sat in the back seat with the two women, while his driver took them around housing estates and beeped the horn.

They later went to the home of Lawrence, who joined them in the car.

The court was told that McGregor had a bag of cocaine, which was shared between McGregor, the complainant and her friend.

The group, which included the complainant, McGregor as well as his security team and others, then went to a penthouse suite in the Beacon hotel in Dublin.

The court was told that they were all drinking and laughing.

At one point, McGregor went into a bedroom and beckoned Ni Laimhin to join him.

The court was told that McGregor “came on to her”, but she did not want to have sexual intercourse with him as she was on her period.

Gordon told the court that she alleged that McGregor pinned her down on the bed and that she was no physical match for him.

“She will tell you that she was nervous, that she tried to push him off her but she was completely unable to do so,” he added.

“You will see pictures of her hands and wrists which are black and blue. You will see that her left breast has a bloodied scratch. The scratch is there because she was wearing a watch and had her hands up to protect herself. She was pressed down on and the watch scarred her breast.

“Mr McGregor then flips her over and puts her arm in a lock and draws her up by the neck. She can’t breathe. And he does it again.

“By the third time he does it, she gives up. She can’t resist this any more. In the course of this he says: ‘Now you know what it was like to be in the Octagon when I went down three times.’

“She was at this point completely terrified. She subjected herself to what was about to happen, which was a violent and vicious assault.”

It is alleged later that she had sex with Lawrence, but Gordon said she had no recollection of such an event ever happening.

Ni Laimhin later went home and visited her mother, who called 999. Ni Laimhin was taken to hospital in an ambulance. The court was told that she was shaking and in pain while being transferred to hospital.

Gordon said: “In the face of this, Mr McGregor will tell you that this was a consensual encounter, that they were just having fun and a bit of rough sex. That’s his answer.

“What did I say about common sense? Don’t be fooled into leaving it behind in this [court] room.

“What he is saying is that she gave him a licence to carry out what has to have been a brutal assault on her body.”

The defence claimed in the evidence booklet that Ni Laimhin had several opportunities to complain to people about how she was treated but did not.

It would also claim that Ni Laimhin is engaged in an attempt at extortion, the court heard.

Gordon said his client was being called a “gold digger and a fraud”, adding: “Brave. But where is the bravery in this? Bravery ultimately sits with my client.

“Because she pursued her mission for vindication and compensation to which she is entitled. And for these defendants to breezily and cheekily dispose of her claim is something you will consider in due course.”

Earlier the jury was sworn in at the high court and told that they were judges of fact as to what happened and would have to draw a conclusion and it would be based on their decision.

The action is expected to last around two weeks.

Police in Germany have arrested eight suspected members of a far-right terror cell alleged to have been plotting the armed takeover of eastern regions to establish a Nazi-inspired regime that would carry out “ethnic cleansing”, federal prosecutors said.

Amid a crackdown on neo-Nazi militants, the German nationals calling themselves Sächsische Separatisten (Saxonian Separatists) were taken into custody on Tuesday in pre-dawn raids on 20 premises in eastern Germany and the Polish border city of Zgorzelec, with another seven suspects in investigators’ sights.

Locations in Austria, not directly linked to any of the suspects, were also searched, including in the capital, Vienna.

The federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the Saxonian Separatists, numbering 15 to 20 people, had been active since at least November 2020, with an ideology “characterised by racist, antisemitic and partially apocalyptic ideas”.

The group, mainly young men, some of them adolescents, allegedly rejects Germany’s liberal democratic order, which it believes is nearing collapse and will implode on an unspecified “Day X”.

“On that occasion, the group intends to gain control over certain areas in Saxony and potentially in other east German states – namely by force of arms – to establish governmental and societal structures inspired by national socialism,” the prosecutor’s office said.

“If necessary, unwanted groups of people are supposed to be removed from the area by means of ethnic cleansing.”

It said the alleged plotters had been preparing for violent struggle with paramilitary training “in combat gear”, practising “urban warfare, firearms handling … as well as patrolling”. Police said the group had procured camouflage fatigues, combat helmets, gas masks and bulletproof vests but did not indicate they had found any weapons.

More than 450 police and special forces were deployed as part of the investigation.

The suspects in custody were to appear on Tuesday and Wednesday before a federal judge who will rule on whether they should remain in pre-trial detention.

The interior minister, Nancy Faeser, who has repeatedly called rightwing extremists the biggest threat to domestic security, hailed the arrests as “an important success” in the fight against the militant far right.

The justice minister, Marco Buschmann, said in a statement that the police action was a reminder that Germany’s constitutional system and free and democratic order “are under threat from many sides”.

“We must do everything we can to defend our liberal democracy against its enemies,” he added.

German authorities have repeatedly swooped on far-right groups allegedly seeking to overthrow the government.

In 2022, police arrested a sprawling group of far-right conspiracists allegedly linked to the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement and believed to have planned to violently topple the country’s parliament, forcibly eliminate the existing state order and replace it with their own regime.

Police in Germany have arrested eight suspected members of a far-right terror cell alleged to have been plotting the armed takeover of eastern regions to establish a Nazi-inspired regime that would carry out “ethnic cleansing”, federal prosecutors said.

Amid a crackdown on neo-Nazi militants, the German nationals calling themselves Sächsische Separatisten (Saxonian Separatists) were taken into custody on Tuesday in pre-dawn raids on 20 premises in eastern Germany and the Polish border city of Zgorzelec, with another seven suspects in investigators’ sights.

Locations in Austria, not directly linked to any of the suspects, were also searched, including in the capital, Vienna.

The federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the Saxonian Separatists, numbering 15 to 20 people, had been active since at least November 2020, with an ideology “characterised by racist, antisemitic and partially apocalyptic ideas”.

The group, mainly young men, some of them adolescents, allegedly rejects Germany’s liberal democratic order, which it believes is nearing collapse and will implode on an unspecified “Day X”.

“On that occasion, the group intends to gain control over certain areas in Saxony and potentially in other east German states – namely by force of arms – to establish governmental and societal structures inspired by national socialism,” the prosecutor’s office said.

“If necessary, unwanted groups of people are supposed to be removed from the area by means of ethnic cleansing.”

It said the alleged plotters had been preparing for violent struggle with paramilitary training “in combat gear”, practising “urban warfare, firearms handling … as well as patrolling”. Police said the group had procured camouflage fatigues, combat helmets, gas masks and bulletproof vests but did not indicate they had found any weapons.

More than 450 police and special forces were deployed as part of the investigation.

The suspects in custody were to appear on Tuesday and Wednesday before a federal judge who will rule on whether they should remain in pre-trial detention.

The interior minister, Nancy Faeser, who has repeatedly called rightwing extremists the biggest threat to domestic security, hailed the arrests as “an important success” in the fight against the militant far right.

The justice minister, Marco Buschmann, said in a statement that the police action was a reminder that Germany’s constitutional system and free and democratic order “are under threat from many sides”.

“We must do everything we can to defend our liberal democracy against its enemies,” he added.

German authorities have repeatedly swooped on far-right groups allegedly seeking to overthrow the government.

In 2022, police arrested a sprawling group of far-right conspiracists allegedly linked to the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement and believed to have planned to violently topple the country’s parliament, forcibly eliminate the existing state order and replace it with their own regime.

A far-right Danish-Swedish politician has been sentenced to prison on charges of incitement against an ethnic group for burning copies of the Qur’an and making offensive statements about Muslims.

Rasmus Paludan was the first person to go on trial in Sweden – and is now the first to be sentenced – for burning the Qur’an during an organised demonstration.

The leader of the Danish political party Stram Kurs (Hard Line) was on Tuesday sentenced to four months in prison at Malmö district court for two cases of incitement against an ethnic group and one case of insult in 2022. He was also ordered to pay damages and fees of 80,800 kroner (£5,822).

After Paludan’s trial last month, the chair of the court, Nicklas Söderberg, said: “It is permitted to publicly make critical statements about, for example, Islam and also about Muslims, but the disrespect of a group of people must not clearly cross the line for a factual and valid discussion.

“In these cases, there was no question of any such discussion. The statements instead only amounted to insulting and smearing Muslims.”

Paludan was sentenced to prison because he had been previously convicted of similar crimes by a Danish court, the Swedish court said.

The judgment said: “Rasmus Paludan has expressed disrespect for a people group or other such group of people with allusions to creed, national origin or ethnic origin by putting bacon in and around a Qur’an and then setting fire to, kicking and spitting on the Qur’an.”

The judgment also highlighted statements made by Paludan and their implications, including “that Muslims do not like western democracy and freedom of speech”, as well as “that Muslims like to use violence as a means of communication” and “that countries are negatively affected by Muslims going there”.

Speaking after the judgment, prosecutor Adrien Combier-Hogg said it was the first conviction “in this political context in Sweden”, meaning at a formally applied for and permitted protest event.

He said: “This gives some kind of understanding for the rest of society of what is permissible and what is not.”

He added that the context-based nature of such incidents meant that each has to be looked at individually. “It’s really hard to say something black and white is OK or not OK because it depends on so many different factors and variables. If you boil it down it concerns human communication. Human communication is very complex.”

In this case, though, he said it was clear that Paludan’s behaviour was illegal.

Paludan, who denied the charges, said he would appeal against the decision. While any appeal process is ongoing, he will not serve any jail time.

The sentence relates to Qur’an burnings and statements made by Paludan, 42, in April and September 2022.

Paludan refused to attend the trial, saying his life would be in danger if he went to the southern Swedish city. He appeared by video link from an undisclosed location in Sweden.

In April 2022, Paludan held a public meeting that was followed by riots in Swedish cities including Malmö, Landskrona, Linköping and Örebro during the Easter weekend. At the meeting he made several statements that the prosecutor alleged were incitement against an ethnic group.

At another meeting, in September 2022, Paludan was accused of racially motivated verbal attacks on “Arabs and Africans”. For this, he was charged with insult, a crime that under Swedish law is punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to six months.

Taking the stand remotely, Paludan said: “I am a critic of Islam and criticise Islam. Not Muslims.” He added: “I want to criticise ideas not people.”

In the summer of 2023, a string of Qur’an burning protests in Sweden, including some outside parliament, prompted domestic debate over Sweden’s exceptionally liberal freedom of expression laws. It also led to a diplomatic row between Sweden and Muslim countries.

Paludan’s burning of the Qur’an outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm in January 2023 is thought to have slowed Sweden’s passage to Nato membership.

China is blocking requests to rebuild the British embassy in Beijing while the fate of its controversial mega-embassy in east London is being decided, the Guardian can disclose.

Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, faces a politically fraught decision over whether to approve plans for a new Chinese embassy at Royal Mint Court.

The Chinese government has resisted UK requests to carry out a major reconstruction of the British embassy in Beijing for at least a year on the basis that its own proposals in east London had been blocked.

Three UK sources with knowledge of the negotiations said the embassy had become a top issue for China in its relations with Britain.

China wants to build a giant complex on 20,000 sq metres of land at Royal Mint Court, a historic site near the Tower of London that it bought six years ago. Tower Hamlets council refused planning permission for the embassy in 2022, citing security concerns and opposition from residents.

By calling in the decision last month, Rayner took it out of the council’s hands, though she has ordered a local inquiry into the matter.

“Until that one gets moving the British embassy in Beijing won’t move,” one source who was involved in the discussions under the Conservatives said. “The grounds for turning it down were pretty spurious … It came about more because they were so angry that [planning permission for the Chinese embassy in London] was just turned down without any support.”

Another source said of the Chinese government’s thinking: “They see it as a reciprocal-type thing where both people want changes, but our system doesn’t really work quite as centrally as theirs does.”

Half a dozen people who have visited or worked in the British embassy in Beijing in the past two years told the Guardian it was in a dire state and in need of major reconstruction. An official who visited the embassy for meetings in the past year said the issue would “come up at every single meeting”.

In a sign that the UK government is hopeful of finding a resolution to the matter, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) submitted a procurement notice in August setting out plans to demolish the embassy in Beijing and rebuild it. The work is estimated to cost about £100m and is subject to local planning permission.

The Chinese government bought the Royal Mint Court site for £255m in 2018 as part of a plan to relocate its embassy from Portland Place near Regent’s Park, where it is housed in a townhouse that has become a target for Uyghur and Tibetan protesters.

After Tower Hamlets declined planning permission and the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, chose not to intervene, China refused to appeal and made it clear to Conservative ministers it wanted them to step in and give assurances they would back a resubmitted application.

Relations between the UK and China were worsening, amid security and hacking concerns, Beijing’s crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong and reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

China’s decision to resubmit its application with no significant changes after Labour won the election marks a shift in relations. Rayner called in the proposal days after David Lammy, the foreign secretary, returned from a trip to China. If approved, the new embassy would be China’s biggest in Europe and almost twice the size of its embassy in Washington.

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “Applications for a new Chinese embassy in Tower Hamlets have been called in for ministers to decide. A final decision will be made in due course.”

A statement on the Chinese’s embassy website in August said: “Six years ago, the Chinese government purchased the Royal Mint Court, London, for the use as the new Chinese embassy premises. The UK government had given its consent to this. Now we are in the process of applying for planning permission.

“Host countries have the international obligation to support and facilitate the building of the premises of diplomatic missions. Both China and the UK have the need to build a new embassy in each other’s capital, and the two sides should provide facilitation to each other.”

A comic book has been withdrawn from sale by its Belgian publisher after an outcry over racist depictions of black people and “hyper-sexualised” images of women.

The publisher Dupuis announced that its graphic novel, Spirou and the Blue Gorgon, would be removed from shops after the book caused a storm on social media.

In an announcement last week, Dupuis said it was “profoundly sorry if this album has been shocking and hurtful”, adding that it had been done in a “caricatured style of representation from another era”. The publisher added it was “more aware than ever of our moral duty and the importance of comics,” adding: “We take full responsibility today for this error of judgment.”

Spirou and the Blue Gorgon, a satirical tale of so-called “eco-terrorists”, junk food and plastic rubbish, was first published in September 2023 and widely reviewed in the Francophone press with little controversy.

That changed last month when a TikTok video denouncing its portrayal of black people and women went viral, triggering a great deal of criticism. One internet user noted that all the white characters were human beings while black characters were depicted as monkeys, and the women, typically drawn with plunging cleavage and tiny waists, were “hyper-sexualised”.

After the publisher’s decision, local media reported that approximately 30,000 copies would be removed from sale, a decision said to be the first of its kind in Belgium.

Comic strips, or bandes dessinées, are celebrated as an art form in Belgium and France, but some once-fêted works have been strongly criticised for their stereotypical depictions of women and people of colour. In 2011 an attempt to ban the 1930 comic book Tintin and the Congo over its portrayal of Africans failed in the Belgian courts.

The cartoonist behind the Blue Gorgon, Daniel Henrotin, who uses the pen name Dany, said he had been emulating the style of the late Belgian comic strip artist, André Franquin, who was celebrated in the 1950s and beyond. Dany said he recognised he had “made a mistake” and was “truly sorry if I could have hurt anyone”.

Dany, 81, denied any racist or misogynist intentions, saying it was never his goal to mock or denigrate people of colour and women, while offering a partial defence. “I heard it said that we cannot draw like that today. I respond that humour and caricature are in the DNA of the Belgian school of bande dessinée”.

Leading lights of the comic world pushed back against the idea that caricature was no longer possible. “Comics are automatically caricatures,” Isabelle Debekker, the director of the Comic Strip Centre in Brussels told Le Soir. She said artists should not stigmatise groups of people as was done in the 1980s. “It is up to us to be a little more intelligent, whether in our humour or our way of representing reality.”

“I find it a shame that there are still people who do not understand what is problematic,” she said.

Migrant workers across the Gulf are risking their lives by being forced to work up to 14 hours a day in deadly temperatures, according to human rights researchers.

Equidem, a human rights organisation, interviewed more than 250 migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE between 2021 and May 2024 for a new report on the conditions they were facing including their exposure to extreme heat and long working hours.

It said that speaking to workers was challenging, as both they and the researchers could face arrest, detention and deportation if caught conducting interviews. Equidem said some of its researchers went undercover as migrant workers in order to collect testimonies.

The Gulf is a leading global destination for migrant workers from some of the world’s poorest countries, brought in to work on large-scale construction project such as Saudi’s Neom project and the men’s football World Cup in Qatar.

As part of its research, Equidem says it calculated the “wet-bulb” temperatures that workers across the region were being exposed to. Wet-bulb temperature measurements are used to assess the combined effect of temperature, wind speed, humidity and solar radiation on the human body.

According to the UN, all outdoor physical work should stop when the wet-bulb temperature reaches 32C (89.6F). At this point the body is no longer able to cool itself and organs can start failing.

Yet Equidem says that its research found that workers across the Gulf region were increasingly being forced to work in wet-bulb temperatures of more than 45C.

“People [at the UN climate talks] are talking a lot about mitigation, but for wide swaths of the population the climate crisis is already here. We are putting migrants to work in deadly temperatures day in and day out,” said Shikha Bharttacharjee, research director at Equidem.

Many of the workers interviewed for the report were employed to do jobs that involved extended periods of strenuous work outdoors on construction sites, or as delivery drivers or domestic workers, leaving them exposed to some of world’s highest temperatures between April and September.

Workers who spoke to Equidem reported limited access to water and break times, as well as a host of heat-related health issues including skin rashes, dehydration and heatstroke. Workers also reported illegal working hours of up to 84 hours a week and 14 hour-shifts with no overtime pay.

On construction sites in Qatar, in order to reduce breaks and keep people on site, teams of workers reported receiving buckets of frozen water to share, forcing them to wait for the ice to melt and take turns before drinking.

Nathan*, a Kenyan worker employed as a security guard by a subcontractor in the renewables sector in the UAE, told researchers: “Sometimes I am made to stand more than 10 hours in the scorching sun, and this gives me a constant headache all the time. I take pain killers to cool it down which isn’t good for my health.”

In other testimony, a food delivery worker, Sahil*, from India, said: “I picked up a delivery at around 1pm. While nearing the area, I felt dizzy. I parked my bike. While taking out the bottle from the container, I felt awkward and collapsed. People around there carried me to the shade, sprayed water on my face, awoke me and brought me back to consciousness. The medics diagnosed that it was a heatstroke.”

As many as 10,000 migrant workers from south and south-east Asia have previously been reported as dying every year in the Gulf countries, with overwork, abusive working conditions and extreme heat among risks cited by human rights groups.

Subjecting workers to extreme heat stress was a form of “workplace violence”, said Bharttacharjee. She called for a greater focus on adaptation at the UN climate talks in Azerbaijan that start on 11 November.

“At best they are leaving these countries with long-term damage to their bodies. They cannot sustain it for more than a few years, but are trading their long-term health for the short-time that they work in these conditions.”

*Names of workers have been changed

A genre-bending musical about a trans cartel boss and a Spanish veteran director’s English-language debut lead the nominations for this year’s European Film Awards, with Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Peréz and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door both up for honours in four categories.

The French and Spanish auteurs gained nominations for best film, best director and best screenwriter, the European Film Academy announced on Tuesday ahead of this year’s ceremony in the Swiss lakeside city of Lucerne on 7 December.

Trans actor Karla Sofía Gascón, who won a joint best actress prize at Cannes for her starring titular role as a Mexican cartel boss turned human rights champion in Audiard’s film, is also nominated as best European actress.

Tilda Swinton is nominated in the same category for her performance as a war correspondent dying of cancer in Almodóvar’s film, which won the Golden Lion at Venice this year.

The European Film Awards aim to recognise the best films of the last 12 months from geographical Europe, meaning works from EU and non-EU member states are included. British director Andrea Arnold is up for a best European director prize for her coming-of-age drama Bird, with German actor Franz Rogowski nominated as best actor for the titular role in the same film.

Under new rules announced last summer, films nominated for best European documentary and best animated feature film are also eligible in the best European film category, meaning the list of nominees is longer than in previous years.

Documentaries contending for the top prize in Lucerne this year include French-Senegalese director Mati Diop’s Berlinale-winning short documentary Dahomey, about the restitution of colonial-era artefacts to modern-day Benin, Palestinian-Norwegian co-production No Other Land, which charts the eradication of Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, and Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.

Presented annually since 1988, the European Film Awards are often seen as a bellwether for the Academy Awards taking place a few months later. In 2023, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall won four of the five major prizes before scooping an Oscar for best original screenplay in March this year.

This year’s event in Lucerne will mark the last time the ceremony takes place in December, with the dates shifting to mid-January from 2026.

Full list of nominations

Best European film

Bye Bye Tiberias
Dahomey
Emilia Perez
Flow
In Limbo
Living Large
No Other Land
Savages
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Sultana’s Dream
The Room Next Door
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
The Substance
They Shot the Piano Player
Vermiglio

Best European documentary

Bye Bye Tiberias
Dahomey
In Limbo
No Other Land
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Best European director

Andrea Arnold (Bird)
Jacques Audiard (Emilia Peréz)
Pedro Almodóvar (The Room Next Door)
Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig)
Maura Delpero (Vermiglio)

Best European actress

Renate Reinsve (Armand)
Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Peréz)
Trine Dyrholm (The Girl with the Needle)
Vic Carmen Sonne (The Girl with the Needle)
Tilda Swinton (The Room Next Door)

Best European actor

Franz Rogowski (Bird)
Ralph Fiennes (Conclave)
Lars Eidinger (Dying)
Daniel Craig (Queer)
Abou Sangare (Souleymane’s Story)

Best European screenwriter

Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez)
Magnus von Horn and Line Langebek (The Girl With the Needle)
Pedro Almodóvar (The Room Next Door)
Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig)
Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)