Donald Trump has won the presidential election in Arizona, Associated Press has declared, completing a clean sweep of all seven battleground states and locking in a decisive electoral college victory over the Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris.

Trump, who had secured the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House by early Wednesday, now has what is expected to be a final total of 312 votes to Harris’s 226.

The win returned the state to the Republican column after Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and marked Trump’s second victory in Arizona since 2016. Trump had campaigned on border security and the economy, tying Harris to inflation and record illegal border crossings during Biden’s term in office.

Trump has also won the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Nevada. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by winning six of the seven swing states – he narrowly lost North Carolina – and won 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232.

Trump also won 306 in his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton.

Associated Press said Trump had won 74.6m votes nationwide, or 50.5%, to Harris’ 70.9m, or 48%.

In the US Senate race in Arizona between the Republican Kari Lake and the Democrat Ruben Gallego, Lake, who always denied that Biden won the White House fairly in 2020, was trailing the Democrat 48.5% to 49.5%, or by about 33,000 votes, as of mid-morning on Saturday.

Other Arizona races remain close, including the sixth congressional district battle between the incumbent Republican, Juan Ciscomani, and his Democratic challenger, Kirsten Engel.

However, Republicans appear close to clinching control of the US House of Representatives, in addition to control of the Senate, which they have already won, meaning they would have sweeping powers to potentially ram through a broad agenda of tax and spending cuts, energy deregulation and border security controls.

Protests against Trump erupted in the US on Saturday as people on both coasts took to the streets in frustration at his re-election. Thousands of people in major cities including New York and Seattle demonstrated against the former president and now president-elect amid his threats against reproductive rights and pledges to carry out mass deportations at the start of his presidency.

Biden and Trump would meet on Wednesday in the Oval Office, the White House announced on Saturday. “At President Biden’s invitation, President Biden and President-elect Trump will meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday,” the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement.

In a sign of Trump’s possible impact on the war in Ukraine, one of his senior advisers said that the incoming US administration’s priority for the country would be achieving peace rather than helping it regain territory captured by Russia in the almost three years of the war. In an interview with the BBC, broadcast on Saturday, Bryan Lanza, who has been a political adviser to Trump since his 2016 presidential campaign, said: “When Zelenskyy says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace, once Crimea is returned, we’ve got news for President Zelenskyy: Crimea is gone.”

While Donald Trump has cultivated his reputation as a feared strongman, internal chats and online talk across a spectrum of terrorist organizations calling the US government their enemy show that many see advantages to the president-elect’s incoming administration.

Key to those beliefs are Trump’s own promises that once in office, he plans to reduce the global US military footprint and purge the so-called “deep state” national security agencies of workers he considers disloyal to him.

Part of the Trump transformation, some believe, will also include further alignment with Russia and ending the war in Ukraine to the advantage of the Kremlin and weakening US hegemony globally.

On Rocket.Chat, the chosen encrypted communications platform for the Islamic State (IS) and its followers, users in a covert chatroom for the terror group immediately discussed the results of the election.

“Trump won,” one IS user posted moments after much of the media had declared Trump the victor. Several users reacted to the news with feces and vomit emojis.

“Bad for the comedian,” responded another, referring to Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy, who was previously a comedic actor on television. “Trump leans towards Russia.”

“Real, he said he will stop the war in Ukraine [in] 24 hours,” said another.

Of course, IS has a sordid history with Trump: he proudly announced the killing of its infamous leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019 and spurred major military operations on its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

Lucas Webber, a research fellow and a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, said he had been monitoring online IS chatter since Trump’s victory to glean their reactions. He says the terror group was actively “crafting its rhetoric and strategy to capitalize on and exploit trends”, which includes global reactions to the Trump v Kamala Harris election.

“Since the election, some [IS] supporter discussions have weighed the pros and cons of a Trump administration foreign policy approach,” said Webber, “with a segment of followers suggesting that a peace deal with Ukraine would strengthen Russia and greater support for Israel would be worse for Palestine.”

While the tenor of the Trump talk acknowledged he was “worse” for IS than a hypothetical Harris administration, many shrugged him off.

“It’s not going to have that much of a big effect on us in my opinion,” said one IS poster, before pointing out that the incoming president will ally himself with their other sworn enemy, Russia. “When [IS] comes back, not Trump and neither his friend Putin will be able to do anything about it.”

IS has always believed Vladimir Putin’s total war in Ukraine has weakened his country and offered the group softer targets inside of Russia. Earlier this year, in March, an Afghan branch of IS attacked a Moscow theater and killed 145 people.

In contrast, if the US abandons another ally, as it did in Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul in 2021, IS sees the flirtations with Russia as more signs of American decline and the power vacuum it offers.

“Him and his buddy [Elon Musk] who have turned [X, formerly Twitter] into a backdoor for Russia to manipulate the foolish American people,” said one IS operative in the chat.

Some stateside terrorists believe the resurrection of Trump as president is yet another opportunity to recruit and grow their far-right movements, unencumbered by a more liberal and unfriendly administration.

“Looks like Trump won,” said a Telegram post from an account connected to former members of the designated neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Division, which for a time had international cells but is now defunct. “On the good note, seems [that] both Project 2025 and Elon Musk himself want to cut the federal workforce by insane amounts. This includes the FBI and DHS.”

Trump and Musk have stated their determination to slash federal workers under a “government efficiency commission”, which could result in a mass exodus of agents in the FBI, DHS or even the CIA – all among the nation’s most important national security agencies tracking terrorists and bad actors intent on US attacks.

The Telegram post continued: “While in actuality slashing the federal bureaucracy to a minimum and filling the roles with newbie loyalists is retarded from a system power point of view. We’re happy with it.”

Throughout the Biden administration, Republican lawmakers allied themselves with Trump and denounced the arrests of January 6 attackers, accusing the FBI of maligning “conservative” employees and purging Maga supporters from its ranks.

Congressman Jim Jordan led the charge, using his seat on the House judiciary committee to attack his Democratic counterparts for what he portrayed as a witch hunt in the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Some extremists, on the other hand, are openly applauding the potential relief from police pressures that a Trump-led FBI might offer.

“In addition to strongly supporting proposed mass deportations, some extreme right groups are hoping that likely cuts to federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies and changing priorities will mean that attention will no longer be focused on them,” said Joshua Fisher-Birch, a terrorism analyst at the Counter Extremism Project.

“They are anticipating having breathing room and some are hopeful about the future.”

One Telegram post from within the far-right ecosystem of that app, spoke for the imprisoned white nationalist leader Rob Rundo and his support for the election of Trump.

“He may not be the cure for all our issues at hand,” said the post claiming to speak for Rundo, “but it could be the difference between freedom and incarceration for many young nationalists.”

Meanwhile, the Blood Tribe, a violent American neo-Nazi group that has shown up armed to drag events, thinks a newly minted Trump administration may target them as an offering to placate the mainstream.

“Expect federal interference in the operations of our groups to become more prioritized,” said one of the group’s ex-marine leaders in a Telegram post.

Protests against Donald Trump erupted in the US on Saturday as people on both coasts took to the streets in frustration about his re-election.

Thousands of people in major cities including New York City and Seattle demonstrated against the former president and now president-elect amid his threats against reproductive rights and pledges to carry out mass deportations at the start of his upcoming presidency.

In New York City on Saturday, demonstrators from advocacy groups focused on workers’ rights and immigrant justice crowded outside Trump International Hotel and Tower on 5th Avenue holding signs that read: “We protect us” and “Mr President, how long must women wait for liberty?” Others held signs that read: “We won’t back down” while chanting: “Here we are and we’re not leaving!”

Similar protests took place in Washington DC, where Women’s March participants demonstrated outside the Heritage Foundation, the rightwing thinktank behind Project 2025. Pictures posted on social media on Saturday showed demonstrators holding signs that read: “Well-behaved women don’t make history” and “You are never alone”. Demonstrators also chanted: “We believe that we will win!” and held other signs that read: “Where’s my liberty when I have no choice?”

Crowds of demonstrators also gathered outside Seattle’s Space Needle on Saturday. “March and rally to protest Trump and the two-party war machine,” posters for the protests said, adding: “Build the people’s movement and fight war, repression and genocide!” Speaking to a crowd of demonstrators, some of whom dressed in raincoats while others wore keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel’s deadly war on Gaza, one demonstrator said: “Any president that has come to power has also let workers down.”

On Friday, protesters gathered outside city hall in Portland, Oregon, in a similar demonstration against Trump. Signs carried by demonstrators included messages that read: “Fight fascism” and “Turn fear into fight”.

“We’re here because we’ve been fighting for years for health, housing and education. And whether it was Trump, or [Joe] Biden before this, we have not been getting it and we are wanting to push to actually get that realized,” Cody Urban, a chair for US chapter of the International League of People’s Struggle, said, KGW reported.

Also on Friday, dozens of demonstrators in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, gathered in Point Start park to protest Trump’s election victory. People carried signs reading: “We are not going back” and “My body, my choice”.

“We are afraid of what’s coming, but we are not going to back down,” Steve Capri, an organizer with Socialist Alternative, told WPXI TV. “Trump is an attack on all of us so we need to unite, we need to get organized, join movements, study and learn together.”

Ukraine has carried out its biggest drone strike on Moscow since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Russian media said on Sunday, as the Kremlin launched its own record air attack over Ukraine.

Three airports in the Russian capital were temporarily closed and flights diverted. At least one person was injured. Russia said its air defences shot down 70 drones, nearly half of them in the skies above Moscow and the rest in western Russia.

The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said it successfully targeted an ammunition dump near the Russian city of Bryansk. Video showed multiple explosions coming from warehouses on the military site. Fires could be seen burning in the night sky.

Other footage posted on Russian Telegram channels recorded drones buzzing above urban areas including suburbs of multistorey buildings and a lorry park.

Ukrainian commentators said the strike on Moscow was in response to a massive Russian drone barrage directed at Kyiv on Thursday, soon after Donald Trump was elected as US president.

On Saturday and Sunday, Moscow sent over another wave of 145 drones, the largest number yet. There was damage to the Black Sea port of Odesa. Ukrainian officials said 62 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were downed and others lost en route.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had thwarted a “terrorist attack” on its territory using “airplane-type drones”. At least 36 planes were diverted, the country’s air transport agency said.

Both sides have developed innovative and increasingly sophisticated UAV programmes. Ukraine has established its own drone command and has improved the range of its systems, with attacks hundreds of kilometres into Russia. It has hit weapons storage units, oil processing facilities and enemy airstrips near the Arctic Circle, as well as naval vessels in the Caspian Sea.

Russia has begun using drones steered by fibre-optic cables in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops control a salient around the Russian town of Sudzha. The new drones cannot be jammed with regular electronic countermeasures.

Trump’s victory has fuelled speculation that Russia’s 10-year-old war against its smaller neighbour may be coming to a close. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spoke to Trump last week – and also chatted to Elon Musk, after Trump passed the phone to the billionaire.

The president-elect famously boasted he could fix the war in Ukraine in “24 hours”. Vladimir Putin has indicated he is ready to listen to what Trump has to say, with a pre-condition that the US cease military assistance to Ukraine before bilateral relations can be improved.

Zelenskyy is ready to fly to the US this week and hold substantive talks with Trump, sources in Kyiv indicated. Their most recent phone call was “very positive”, they added. The two met last month in Trump Tower when Zelenskyy flew to New York for the UN general assembly meeting.

Trump’s aides have previously sketched the outlines of a Russia-friendly “peace plan”. It would involve current frontlines being frozen, with the de facto loss by Ukraine of Crimea and much of the east of the country, plus a veto or a long-term pause on Kyiv’s Nato application. What Trump will actually propose in office remains unclear.

Musk’s views on Ukraine are wildly contradictory. He has provided Ukraine with Starlink satellite internet, which is used extensively on the frontline and is a crucial tool for Ukraine’s military. Zelenskyy thanked Musk for Starlink during their conversation. At the same time, Musk has echoed Kremlin talking points, calling for Crimea to be made part of Russia and for Ukraine to remain neutral. He has held secret talks with Putin, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.

There was no sign of panic on Moscow’s boulevards after the drone attack, agencies reported on Sunday. Muscovites walked their dogs, and the bells of the onion-domed Russian Orthodox churches rang out across the capital.

The UK is examining all possible options when it comes to the US president-elect Donald Trump’s approach to Ukraine, the chief secretary to the Treasury has said, as the UK’s chief of the defence staff said approximately 1,500 Russian troops were being killed and injured every day.

Whitehall officials are “considering and planning lots of different scenarios”, Darren Jones told Sky News on Sunday. During the US election campaign, Trump said he would find a solution to end the war “within a day”, but did not explain how he would do so. His vice-president nominee, JD Vance, has been vociferously opposed to providing more funds to support Ukraine.

Jones said the UK would not be stepping back from its own commitments. “We don’t want any countenance of the idea that we’re stepping back from that. That’s why we’re offering them £3bn a year, which you know, in the fiscal context here in the UK, is difficult but the right decision for us,” he said.

“Officials will be considering and planning lots of different scenarios – as they would do under any administration – to make sure that the UK is in the strongest possible position.”

However, Jones said he would not commit to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence by the end of the current parliament, saying that security and defence were a priority but that meant “trade-offs” in other areas.

Jones was also scathing about the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s offer to help the Labour government work with Donald Trump, saying: “The counterfactual here is that we do not have influence and we do not have relationships. That’s just not true.

“I think [Mr Farage] should focus on working with his constituents in Clacton who deserve a bit of a full-time MP as opposed to a transatlantic commentator.”

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, the UK’s chief of the defence staff, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, said Russia was still paying an “extraordinary price” for Vladimir Putin’s invasion and October was the worst month for losses since the conflict began in February 2022.

“Russia is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded – the enormous pain and suffering that the Russian nation is having to bear because of Putin’s ambition,” he told BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme, adding that the only gains were “tiny increments of land”.

The cost of the war, which he put at more than 40% of public expenditure on defence and security, was also “an enormous drain” on Russia.

Jones said a target to be reached for defence spending would be announced but needed to wait for the strategic defence review.

He told Sky News: “Today, we’re spending 2.3%. The question is how you spend that but defending the country is a non-negotiable. That is not a trade-off; the trade-off is then with other areas of public spending. Now, are we defending the country today? Absolutely we are. Do we want to make sure we’re hitting our Nato obligations? Absolutely we do.

“But the strategic defence review will start to answer some of the questions, which is beyond that – what more does the UK want to offer as part of our global alliances? And that’s where you start.”

The Valencian regional government, which has been heavily criticised over its response to the deadly floods that have killed at least 222 people in Spain, has ruled out any imminent resignations over the matter, arguing that the departure of senior leaders would constitute a betrayal of the victims of the disaster.

Growing public anger over the authorities’ handling of the emergency brought 130,000 people on to the streets of the city of Valencia on Saturday night to call for the resignation of the regional president, Carlos Mazón.

Mazón, a member of the conservative People’s party (PP), is under mounting pressure after it emerged he had a three-hour lunch with a journalist on Tuesday 29 October, the day the torrential rains hit the region, and did not arrive at the emergency command centre until 7.30 that evening.

There are unanswered questions about why, despite a series of red weather alerts from the state meteorological office, his administration waited almost 14 hours before sending emergency civil protection messages to people’s mobile phones.

On Sunday morning the region’s vice-president, Susana Camarero, was emphatic that no one would be stepping down as Spain faced its biggest crisis in recent memory.

“Given the magnitude of the catastrophe and the damages inflicted on towns and on people, given that magnitude and all the damages caused, we cannot abandon the victims,” she said. “This government won’t abandon the victims. This government will be, as it has been from the first day, at the side of the victims. Any resignations at the moment are not an option. They’re not an option. All we can think about is working on the recovery efforts and on repairing the damage that has been done.”

Mazón himself promised to offer answers when he appears in parliament this week. “I’ll be providing political explanations and giving an account of the events with full details on Thursday,” he said. “I think it’s also important – for the sake of the victims and because of what’s happened – to explain things well and in an orderly fashion so as to avoid the fake news phase that we had to waste time refuting when we could have been getting on with what was really important.”

The Valencian president has previously attempted to point the finger at Spain’s socialist-led government, and even at the armed forces’ military emergencies unit (UME), whose personnel have been deployed to the region in huge numbers.

Mazón’s colleagues in the national PP have defended his actions and claimed he is assuming full responsibility. They accuse the central government of refusing to take charge of the crisis.

Spanish government sources insist they have done everything they can, having sent more than 18,000 soldiers and police officers to the region. They point out that Mazón has full command and control over the relief effort because the crisis remains a level 2 emergency and so a matter for the regional authorities.

Were the Valencian government to say it could not cope with the situation, a level 3 emergency could be declared, transferring command to the central government.

Although the central government has stopped short of calling for Mazón’s resignation, describing the matter as “a debate for when the time is right”, it has said the facts speak for themselves.

Many of those who took part in Saturday’s protests chanted “Mazón resign!” and carried signs reading “You killed us”, and “Our hands are stained with mud, yours with blood”. Some of the demonstrators clashed with riot police in front of Valencia’s city hall, prompting officers to use batons to push them back.

Camarero said that while she understood people’s anger and pain, she suspected some had used the demonstration for political and violent ends.

“Probably on that march, given the damage and acts of vandalism we’ve seen, there were people who’d attended because they really wanted to shown their outrage and pain, and there were also people who were using it politically,” she said. “I totally respect those who were protesting but they weren’t represented by those committing violence. What some people do has nothing to do with what other people do.”

Cold-case detectives in the Netherlands are hoping that an innovative lifesize hologram of a young sex worker who was murdered in Amsterdam 15 years ago will jog people’s memories and help bring her killer, or killers, to justice.

Bernadett Szabó, known as Betty, was born in Hungary and left for Amsterdam when she was 18. Once there, she started earning money as a sex worker in the red light district. She continued to work after becoming pregnant and gave birth to a son who was placed with a foster family.

On the night of 19 February 2009, two fellow sex workers realised they had not seen her in her workroom on Oudezijds Achterburgwal and had not heard the music she usually played. When they checked on her at 1am, they found her dead in her room having been stabbed dozens of times. She was 19.

A decade and a half later, police are using technology and a huge publicity campaign in a final attempt to solve the case. A house at the corner of Korte Stormsteeg and Oudezijds Achterburgwal has been devoted entirely to Szabó’s murder, with large stickers on the windows, and TV screens showing the crime scene, a documentary and the last images made of Szabó when she was still alive.

But the most eye-catching element of the campaign is the lifesize hologram of Szabó that sits on a stool in a window, trying to make contact with passersby and asking them for their help. The hologram, created using 3D visualisation technology, shows the large and memorable dragon tattoo that covered Szabó’s stomach and chest.

“This is the first time we’ve done something like this and, to be honest, we’re a bit nervous,” said Benjamin van Gogh, the coordinator of the Amsterdam wanted and missing persons team. “We want to do justice to Betty, to her family and friends, and to the case. Therefore, before deciding to use a hologram for the campaign, we brainstormed with different parties both within and outside the police on whether we should go ahead with this and how we should set it up.”

Van Gogh stressed that the project had been undertaken in consultation with Szabó’s family. “We are committed to doing this with dignity and with the clear purpose of achieving some form of justice for Betty by finding her murderer or murderers.”

He said police always tried to put a face on a victim to help with public appeals, “and the hologram is a way of taking this a step further”.

Detectives hope the hologram and a €30,000 (£25,000) reward will help yield new witnesses who may not necessarily be local people.

Anne Dreijer-Heemskerk, of the cold case team, said: “Betty was murdered in one of the busiest areas in Amsterdam, maybe even in the Netherlands. It is really almost impossible that there are no people who saw or heard something unusual at the time. Or heard someone talk about the case, which doesn’t even have to have been in Amsterdam, because, after all, the red light district gets visitors from all over the world.”

Noting that 15 years had passed since the killing, Dreijer-Heemskerkadded: “We hope witnesses who may have been afraid before or kept silent for other reasons now have the courage to come forward.”

When a white whale, mysteriously kitted out with covert surveillance equipment, was first spotted in icy waters around Norway five years ago it seemed like an improbable chapter from a spy thriller. But working out the true identity and secret objectives of this beluga, nicknamed Hvaldimir by the Norwegians, quickly became a real-life puzzle that has continued to fascinate the public and trouble western intelligence analysts.

Now missing clues have surfaced that finally begin to make sense of the underwater enigma. The makers of a new BBC documentary, Secrets of the Spy Whale, believe they have traced the beluga’s probable path and identified its likely mission.

Hvaldimir, whose nickname is a combination of hval, Norwegian for whale, and the first name of Russian president Vladimir Putin, has regularly been described as a Russian “spy whale”. After all, the harness it wore bore the words “Equipment of St Petersburg” and seemed designed to carry a small camera. But the film uncovers new evidence that he might have been trained as a covert “guard whale”, rather than being sent out to sea to conduct maritime espionage.

“Our latest findings about the potential role that Hvaldimir had been trained to do bring us closer to solving the mystery,” said Jennifer Shaw, director of the film, which airs on BBC Two on Wednesday. “But they also prompt many further questions about what Russia might be seeking to guard in the Arctic, and why.”

After 10 months of research into the strange history of marine mammal training, the documentary team met one of the last remaining veterans of an early US Navy programme run from Point Mugu in California. Former dolphin trainer Blair Irvine, now in his 80s, explained how he had developed the programme. “Swimmers create bubbles, bubbles cause noise. The dolphin’s hearing is extremely sensitive and in this context it was unfailing,” he said.

Irvine and his team trained dolphins to swim like sentries, listening out for intruders. They would push a paddle with their rostrum, or snout, to sound an alarm if they detected noises. The Soviet Union soon launched its own programme using similar techniques. A phalanx of dolphins is thought to have guarded the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea. Kept in floating cages, they were trained to warn of the approach of any underwater saboteurs.

The documentary includes evidence given by whale expert Dr Eve Jourdain, who details patterns of behaviour she had observed while watching Hvaldimir in Hammerfest harbour in 2019. She had seen the whale swim right up to touch the cameras being carried by anyone who tried to swim close by. “It was obvious that this particular whale had been conditioned to be putting his nose on anything that looked like a target,” Jourdain told the film-makers.

Shaw told the Observer that the whale found on the Norwegian coast had shown every sign of having been recruited as part of a security patrol. “As we sat interviewing Blair Irvine in America, thousands of miles away from Hammerfest, it dawned on me that I might be sitting opposite the man who had devised the exact training system Hvaldimir had been conditioned by, albeit 50 years later.”

In the 1980s, as the strategic importance of the Arctic grew during the Cold War, a new branch of the programme was launched in the northern Russian city of Murmansk. Here, Shaw suspects, these mammals were used to guard the ballistic missile submarines of the Northern Fleet. A former Soviet dolphin trainer and nuclear submarine commander Volodymyr Belousiuk, who was stationed in Murmansk at this time, reveals in the documentary that instructors turned their attention to whales because dolphins became ill in sub-zero temperatures.

“We knew we wanted to uncover more about the true identity of the whale,” said Shaw. “It’s a mystery that has captivated people around the world. But it also gave us an opportunity to explore the history of marine mammal training within the military – something that few people are aware of as it has been steeped in secrecy for decades and many of those who knew the truth are sadly no longer alive.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union saw funding for marine mammal programmes reduced, but the appearance of the “spy whale” was one of several signs of reinvestment. Imagery of a Russian Navy base at Olenya Guba revealed the presence of two large floating pens containing “white spots” thought to be belugas.

Hvaldimir was found dead earlier this year by two men fishing in Risavika Bay, southern Norway. Police opened an investigation after animal rights groups claimed he had been shot. However, an autopsy showed he had died after a stick became lodged in his mouth.

When a white whale, mysteriously kitted out with covert surveillance equipment, was first spotted in icy waters around Norway five years ago it seemed like an improbable chapter from a spy thriller. But working out the true identity and secret objectives of this beluga, nicknamed Hvaldimir by the Norwegians, quickly became a real-life puzzle that has continued to fascinate the public and trouble western intelligence analysts.

Now missing clues have surfaced that finally begin to make sense of the underwater enigma. The makers of a new BBC documentary, Secrets of the Spy Whale, believe they have traced the beluga’s probable path and identified its likely mission.

Hvaldimir, whose nickname is a combination of hval, Norwegian for whale, and the first name of Russian president Vladimir Putin, has regularly been described as a Russian “spy whale”. After all, the harness it wore bore the words “Equipment of St Petersburg” and seemed designed to carry a small camera. But the film uncovers new evidence that he might have been trained as a covert “guard whale”, rather than being sent out to sea to conduct maritime espionage.

“Our latest findings about the potential role that Hvaldimir had been trained to do bring us closer to solving the mystery,” said Jennifer Shaw, director of the film, which airs on BBC Two on Wednesday. “But they also prompt many further questions about what Russia might be seeking to guard in the Arctic, and why.”

After 10 months of research into the strange history of marine mammal training, the documentary team met one of the last remaining veterans of an early US Navy programme run from Point Mugu in California. Former dolphin trainer Blair Irvine, now in his 80s, explained how he had developed the programme. “Swimmers create bubbles, bubbles cause noise. The dolphin’s hearing is extremely sensitive and in this context it was unfailing,” he said.

Irvine and his team trained dolphins to swim like sentries, listening out for intruders. They would push a paddle with their rostrum, or snout, to sound an alarm if they detected noises. The Soviet Union soon launched its own programme using similar techniques. A phalanx of dolphins is thought to have guarded the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea. Kept in floating cages, they were trained to warn of the approach of any underwater saboteurs.

The documentary includes evidence given by whale expert Dr Eve Jourdain, who details patterns of behaviour she had observed while watching Hvaldimir in Hammerfest harbour in 2019. She had seen the whale swim right up to touch the cameras being carried by anyone who tried to swim close by. “It was obvious that this particular whale had been conditioned to be putting his nose on anything that looked like a target,” Jourdain told the film-makers.

Shaw told the Observer that the whale found on the Norwegian coast had shown every sign of having been recruited as part of a security patrol. “As we sat interviewing Blair Irvine in America, thousands of miles away from Hammerfest, it dawned on me that I might be sitting opposite the man who had devised the exact training system Hvaldimir had been conditioned by, albeit 50 years later.”

In the 1980s, as the strategic importance of the Arctic grew during the Cold War, a new branch of the programme was launched in the northern Russian city of Murmansk. Here, Shaw suspects, these mammals were used to guard the ballistic missile submarines of the Northern Fleet. A former Soviet dolphin trainer and nuclear submarine commander Volodymyr Belousiuk, who was stationed in Murmansk at this time, reveals in the documentary that instructors turned their attention to whales because dolphins became ill in sub-zero temperatures.

“We knew we wanted to uncover more about the true identity of the whale,” said Shaw. “It’s a mystery that has captivated people around the world. But it also gave us an opportunity to explore the history of marine mammal training within the military – something that few people are aware of as it has been steeped in secrecy for decades and many of those who knew the truth are sadly no longer alive.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union saw funding for marine mammal programmes reduced, but the appearance of the “spy whale” was one of several signs of reinvestment. Imagery of a Russian Navy base at Olenya Guba revealed the presence of two large floating pens containing “white spots” thought to be belugas.

Hvaldimir was found dead earlier this year by two men fishing in Risavika Bay, southern Norway. Police opened an investigation after animal rights groups claimed he had been shot. However, an autopsy showed he had died after a stick became lodged in his mouth.

Israeli warplanes have carried out more strikes in northern Gaza, reportedly destroying a home in the Jabaliya area that had been under siege for weeks, killing and wounding dozens, including many women and children.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 25 people had died in the pre-dawn attack on Sunday, including 13 children, while another 30 people were reported to have been wounded.

Dr Fadel Naim, the director of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City which received bodies after the strike, said the death toll was 17, including nine women, but the total was likely to rise as rescue efforts continued.

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, and Hamas media put the number of people killed at 32. There was no immediate confirmation of the tally by the territory’s health ministry.

The death toll is one of the biggest in a single strike so far in Jabaliya, where hundreds of people have died since a major Israeli operation in the area began last month.

Anas al-Sharif, a reporter for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, said the home that was destroyed in the raid belonged to the Aloush family, adding that no civil defence agencies or ambulances had been able to reach the area due to the Israeli siege and that locals were still searching for more victims.

United Nations officials said the last civil defence post in Jabaliya was destroyed in a strike more than a week ago, leaving the area without any effective rescue service.

The Israeli military launched a new offensive on Jabaliya and the nearby towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun early last month which it said was aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping but which Palestinians and human rights groups say is aimed at depopulating northern Gaza.

In recent days there have been a series of airstrikes on Jabaliya and neighbouring areas, in which dozens have died. With only poor communications to northern Gaza and no international reporters allowed into the territory, exact details of casualties are difficult to verify. Witnesses report intense fighting between troops and militants.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday that at least 43,603 people had been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants. More than half of identified casualties are women and children. Thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble.

The toll includes 51 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which also said 102,929 people had been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200, mostly civilians, and abducting 250.

Ramy Abdu, the chair of the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which tracks casualties of the Gaza war, said last month that his team of more than 40 researchers in Gaza had identified 365 families that had lost 10 or more members from the beginning of the war until August, and 2,750 which had lost at least three.

Early on Sunday the Israeli military claimed in a post on X it had “eliminated dozens of terrorists and destroyed terrorist infrastructures and a warehouse of weapons” in Jabaliya. Israel says it has issued evacuation orders telling civilians to leave Jabaliya for their own safety and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields to protect its fighters and weapons, a charge the militant Islamist group denies.

Aid agencies, medics and witnesses say those trapped by the fighting in Jabaliya and the north of Gaza are suffering appalling conditions, with very limited water, food stocks running out, debris everywhere and continuing bombardment and combat.

Food experts this week said northern Gaza faced imminent famine. In a rare alert, the independent Famine Review Committee said: “If no effective action is taken by stakeholders with influence, the scale of this looming catastrophe is likely to dwarf anything we have seen so far in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023.”

The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches next week of a 30-day ultimatum the Biden administration gave Israel to raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk restrictions on US military assistance.

The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said Israel had made some progress by announcing the opening of a new crossing into central Gaza and approving new delivery routes.

But he said Israel must do more. “It’s not just sufficient to open new roads if more humanitarian assistance isn’t going through those roads.”

In Lebanon, the Israeli air campaign against Hezbollah continued on Sunday with reports of an Israeli strike on a house in the main eastern city of Baalbek.

The Lebanese state-run National News Agency said: “Enemy aircraft launched a strike on a house in the al-Laqees neighbourhood.”

Earlier, NNA had reported a rare Israeli strike north of Beirut, on the Shia-majority village of Almat, which is located in a mostly Christian region.

Israel launched an intense air offensive mainly targeting Hezbollah bastions in Lebanon’s east and south and in southern Beirut on 23 September and a week later sent in ground troops.

The escalation came after nearly a year of low-intensity, cross-border attacks by Hezbollah in support of Hamas after the 7 October attack. On Sunday morning, new rocket warnings sounded in northern Israel.

• Additional reporting by Helen Livingstone. Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press also contributed to this report

Stefanos Kasselakis, the Greek American shipping investor and former banker who burst into Greek politics over a year ago, has said he is leaving leftwing Syriza, the country’s main opposition party he had led, and forming his own.

Kasselakis announced he was leaving Syriza on Friday after a two-day party congress refused to consider his leadership candidacy in a contest that will take place later this month.

Kasselakis, 36, has lived most of his life in the US and only entered Greek politics in May 2023 as a candidate in a national election. Syriza suffered a disastrous double defeat at elections held in May and June of that year. He unexpectedly entered the leadership contest to replace longtime leader Alexis Tsipras and triumphed in September 2023.

His main opponent, Efi Achtsioglou, and several of her supporters left the party in December 2023, forming a new organisation, New Left. Many of the Syriza members who had supported Kasselakis soon soured on him, accusing him of not being a true leftist. Kasselakis did not endear himself with his confrontational style and open disdain for the elected party organs.

In September, Syriza’s central committee ousted Kasselakis from his post after a motion of no confidence. He contested the legitimacy of the vote and was set to run in the leadership race but was stopped by the party’s central committee.

Along with Kasselakis, four MPs also left the party on Friday and Saturday. This has left Syriza with 31 MPs in the 300-member Greek parliament, equal with the socialist Pasok party.

Syriza, once dominant, has been in disarray since its resounding defeat by the conservative New Democracy party in the 2023 elections.

Already in opposition since 2019, Syriza had hoped to regain power. Instead, it was roundly disavowed, falling in the most recent election to 17.8%, compared with New Democracy’s 40.6%, a result that led to Tsipras to announce his resignation.

Kasselakis’ style, based on social media presence and charisma, and his past as a former Goldman Sachs employee and shipowner, rankled with old-school leftists, who were also incensed by some of his positions, such as advocating stock options for employees, and his overall ideological vagueness.

They openly derided him for his “post-politics” and one prominent party person even compared him to former US president Donald Trump and comedian Beppe Grillo, founder of the populist Five Star party in Italy.

Under Tsipras, Syriza had governed the country from 2015 to 2019. Recent opinion polls show party support has fallen into single digits.

Associated Press contributed to this report

Crowds fell silent at war memorials in villages, towns and cities across the country on Remembrance Sunday as generations gathered to commemorate lives lost in conflicts.

In Whitehall, the Princess of Wales joined King Charles to honour the fallen, after a year in which they both revealed they had been diagnosed with cancer. A two-minute silence was led by the king, who was the first to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph.

An unprecedented eight former prime ministers took part in commemorations in central London, along with Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, who laid a wreath for the first time.

In Northern Ireland, the first minister, Michelle O’Neill, became the first Sinn Féin politician to take part in a formal Remembrance Sunday ceremony at Belfast City Hall. O’Neill said her attendance was a demonstration of her determination to fulfil her promise to be a “first minister for all”.

A message on the wreath she laid at Belfast Cenotaph read: “As first minister, I wish to take our society beyond old limits, to build bridges and to a shared future together. Today I remember all lives lost in the horror of war and conflict – past and present.”

About 10,000 veterans marched past the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Sunday, representing 326 different armed forces and civilian organisations for the Royal British Legion, the charity behind the annual poppy appeal.

Among the youngest of those marching were about 95 young people from Scotty’s Little Soldiers, a charity supporting children who lost a parent serving in the armed forces. They walked past the war memorial wrapped in black and yellow scarves. A group of Chelsea Pensioners received a loud cheer as they marched down Whitehall during the Royal British Legion event.

The closest Sunday to Armistice Day is used to commemorate the moment that fighting stopped at the end of the first world war in 1918. Another two-minute silence will be held on Monday at 11am, 106 years after that war ended.

This year coincides with the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings and the commemorations had a particular focus on remembering the sacrifices of those who took part.

A dwindling number of veterans remain from the second world war and just 11 are understood to have attended events at the Cenotaph this year. Among them was Christian Lamb, 104, who mapped the Normandy beaches for D-day troops and was awarded France’s highest honour this year for her work from an office in Whitehall.

Those taking part in the events in central London went through airport-style security but the day passed without incident. The measures followed last year’s unrest on Armistice Day when far-right protesters went to “defend” the Cenotaph while a march against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza took place.

Crowds lined Whitehall behind barriers, including many wearing service medals. Large screens were erected so they could watch the proceedings.

The Princess of Wales was watching from a government building balcony overlooking the Cenotaph in her second public appearance of the weekend to mark Armistice Day. It is the first time she has attended public appearances on two consecutive days since her cancer diagnosis.

The Prince of Wales laid a wreath after his father. He said last week that 2024 had been “brutal” and “probably been the hardest year in my life”, with his wife and father both diagnosed with cancer.

Nigel Farage and the Green party co-leader Carla Denyer also watched from balconies. Only parties with six or more seats in parliament and the largest party from each of the devolved nations lay a wreath.

The queen did not attend as she was recovering from a chest infection. A wreath was laid on her behalf by her equerry, Major Ollie Plunket of The Rifles, as she watched the ceremony on television at home in Wiltshire.

The secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, was at the annual Remembrance Sunday commemoration at Enniskillen, to remember not just the war dead but the 12 people killed and dozens injured after an attack in November 1987, minutes before a Remembrance Sunday ceremony was due to start.

In Edinburgh, the first minister, John Swinney, laid wreaths at the Stone of Remembrance outside the city chambers. Speaking before a service to commemorate the fallen, Swinney said he would be particularly thinking of his uncle, Cpl Tom Hunter, a marine who died in Italy in April 1945. Hunter was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross after making himself a target to save his troops from German gunfire.

“On Remembrance Sunday I remember particularly all those who lost their lives, but especially my late uncle,” he told PA Media.

“He was 21 years of age. He laid down his life to protect his troop and consequently he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery in the United Kingdom.

“Although that award was given to my late grandmother and my late grandfather, it was of limited comfort to them because they had lost their son, my mum had lost her brother, and her brothers had lost their brothers too. We remember fondly the sacrifice he made so we could live in freedom.”

Family members of a 31-year-old American tourist who was killed while on vacation in Hungary’s capital mourned their loss while a 37-year-old suspect was in custody Saturday.

The victim, Mackenzie Michalski from Portland, Oregon, was reported missing on 5 November after she was last seen at a nightclub in central Budapest. Police launched a missing person investigation and reviewed security footage from local nightclubs, where they observed Michalski with a man later identified as the suspect in several of the clubs the night of her disappearance.

The man was detained on 7 November and questioned by police, and later confessed to the killing.

Before the confession, Michalski’s family and friends had launched an effort to find her, starting a Facebook group to gather tips on her whereabouts. Her parents traveled to Hungary to assist in the search, but while en route learned that she had been killed.

At a candlelight vigil in Budapest on Saturday night, the victim’s father, Bill Michalski, told the Associated Press that he was “still overcome with emotion” at the death of his daughter.

“There was no reason for this to happen,” he said. “I’m still trying to wrap my arms around what happened … I don’t know that I ever will.”

Police detained the suspect, an Irish citizen, on the evening of 7 November. Investigators said that Michalski and the suspect had met at a nightclub and danced before leaving for the man’s rented apartment. The man killed Michalski while they were engaged in an “intimate encounter”, police said.

The suspect, whom police identified by the initials LTM, confessed to the killing, but said it had been an accident. Police said that he had attempted to cover up his crime by cleaning the apartment and hiding Michalski’s body in a wardrobe before purchasing a suitcase and placing her body inside.

He then rented a car and drove to Lake Balaton, around 90 miles (150 km) south-west of Budapest, where he disposed of the body in a wooden area outside the town of Szigliget.

Video released by police showed the suspect guiding authorities to the location where he had left the body. Police said the suspect had made internet searches before being apprehended on how to dispose of a body, police procedures in missing person cases, whether pigs really eat dead bodies and the presence of wild boars in the Lake Balaton area.

He also made an internet search inquiring on the competence of Budapest police.

Crime scene photographs released by police showed a rolling suitcase, several articles of clothing including a pair of fleece-lined boots and a small handbag next to a credit card bearing Michalski’s name.

According to a post by an administrator of a Facebook group called Find Mackenzie Michalski, which was created on 7 November, Michalski, who went by “Kenzie”, was a nurse practitioner who “will forever be remembered as a beautiful and compassionate young woman”.

At the candlelight vigil in Budapest on Saturday, Michalski’s father gave brief comments to those who had gathered, and wore a baseball cap he said he had received as a gift from his daughter.

Michalski had visited Budapest before, and called it her “happy place”, her father told the AP.

“The history, she just loved it and she was just so relaxed here,” he said. “This was her city.”

Is there a job you’re putting off finishing so you can read this story? Well, if new research into procrastination is anything to go by, you’d better get back to it.

Scientists studying the psychology of people who leave things to the last minute have found that work that is submitted late tends to be judged more harshly than when a deadline is met.

The findings suggest that, while you might be tempted to take the maximum allotted time to put the finishing touches to a report, submission or piece of work, the extra effort might not be appreciated by colleagues if it comes at the expense of punctual delivery.

Work completed late was viewed as significantly lower quality than the same piece of work delivered on time, the study found.

“All the research that we could find looked at how deadlines impact the minds and actions of workers. We wanted to know how a deadline impacts the minds and actions of others when they look at those workers,” said Prof Sam Maglio, who researches at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.

The study surveyed thousands of people in the US and UK, including managers, executives, human resources personnel and others whose jobs included an element of evaluating others.

Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles. But first, they were told it was either submitted early, on deadline or late. “Late” work was consistently rated as worse in quality than when people were told the same work was completed early or on time. The difference was equivalent to including an objective shortcoming such as not meeting a word count.

A missed deadline led evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and they reported they would be less willing to work with or assign tasks to that person in the future.

“Everyone saw the exact same art contest entry, school submission or business proposal, but they couldn’t help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was,” said Maglio, who co-authored the study with David Fang of Stanford University.

Those who eagerly submit work early should be advised that this does not appear to earn a boost in opinion, according to the report in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. It also didn’t matter how late the work was submitted, with one day or one week delays viewed just as negatively – and that remained the case if the employee gave their manager advance warning.

Previously psychologists have identified a phenomenon known as the “planning fallacy”, a tendency to underestimate the time and challenges involved in completing a task even when it directly contradicts our past experiences.

The latest study suggests that it is this inability to plan realistically that is frowned on, with factors beyond an employee’s control, such as jury duty, not viewed as negatively. “If the reason why you missed the deadline was beyond your control, you as the employee should let your manager know,” said Maglio. “That seems to be one of the few instances in which people cut you a break.”