Vladimir Putin has threatened to strike Kyiv with Oreshnik missiles, an intermediate-range weapon that Moscow used against the city of Dnipro last week and that Putin has claimed cannot be shot down by any air defence system.

“We do not rule out the use of Oreshnik against the military, military-industrial facilities or decision-making centres, including in Kyiv,” Putin said at a press conference in Kazakhstan on Thursday. He said the weapon was “comparable in strength to a nuclear strike” if used several times on one location, though he added that it was not currently fitted with nuclear warheads.

“The kinetic impact is powerful, like a meteorite falling,” Putin said. “We know in history what meteorites have fallen where, and what the consequences were. Sometimes it was enough for whole lakes to form.”

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accused Russia of a “despicable escalation”.

Moscow has said the new threats are a response to a decision earlier this month by the US, Britain and France to allow Ukraine to fire long-range missiles provided by them against military targets inside Russia, something Kyiv had long requested.

Kyiv is better protected than most other Ukrainian cities by air defence batteries, and there have been few successful strikes on the centre of the capital during almost three years of war. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president described Putin’s claim that air defence systems could not take out Oreshnik missiles as “fiction, of course”.

“Putin doesn’t understand military stuff. He’s a guy that people come and show him some cartoon about how the missile will fly, how nobody will be able to shoot it down. He said the same thing many times about their Kinzhal missile. And then when it turned out that Patriot [air defence systems], even the not-the-latest-generation systems, can comfortably shoot it down, he stopped talking about it,” Podolyak said.

Podolyak also said there was “no such thing” as Oreshnik and that the missile was simply a lightly modified version of existing Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles. “The man has just come up with a name, just an abstract name,” he said.

Nonetheless, the threats have caused alarm in Kyiv, causing a sitting of parliament scheduled for last Friday to be cancelled.

Russian state media outlets have been triumphantly touting the Oreshnik as a great achievement and there are even reports of parents naming their children after the missile.

Putin, when asked to clarify whether he was talking about striking military or political targets in Kyiv, and whether he planned to hit them with Oreshnik missiles, responded with what he said was a Soviet joke about the weather forecast: “Today, during the course of the day, everything is possible.”

Although the new threats will cause concern, many analysts believe that after using the weapon once as a demonstration, Putin is unlikely to escalate further before Donald Trump takes office in the US, instead hoping to use a window of opportunity to win Trump’s favour.

Putin praised Trump as “intelligent” on Thursday, in comments apparently designed to make a positive impression on the president-elect. He said he had been shocked by the assassination attempt on Trump during the campaign.

“In my opinion, he is not safe now,” Putin said. “Unfortunately, in the history of the United States, various incidents have happened. I think he [Trump] is intelligent and I hope he’s cautious and understands this.”

He suggested Joe Biden’s decision to allow the use of long-range weapons could either be a ploy to help Trump by giving him a future bargaining chip or an attempt to make Trump’s relations with Russia more difficult. Either way, he said, Trump would “find the solution” to the Ukraine war, and he claimed Moscow was ready for dialogue.

Early on Thursday morning, Russia again targeted Ukraine with missiles and drones, focusing on the country’s energy infrastructure and leaving more than 1 million households without power, according to reports from Ukrainian officials.

Moscow has frequently targeted Ukraine’s power grid and the country is expected to struggle to cope with demand during the winter, particularly if the attacks continue. About half of Ukraine’s energy capacity has been destroyed over the past three years, and in recent weeks Ukrainian officials have suggested Russia may be stockpiling missiles in order to launch coordinated strikes on the power infrastructure and make winter miserable for millions.

On Thursday Biden said Russia’s latest attack on Ukraine showed the urgency of backing Kyiv.

“This attack is outrageous and serves as yet another reminder of the urgency and importance of supporting the Ukrainian people in their defence against Russian aggression,” Biden said.

“On this day, my message to the Ukrainian people is clear: the United States stands with you,” added Biden, who has tried to shore up US support for Ukraine in his final weeks in the White House.

There is a growing awareness in Kyiv that exhaustion after nearly three years of full-scale war combined with the arrival of the Trump administration means there will be pressure to begin some kind of talks with the Russians. But there is no sign that Russia is ready to negotiate yet or that it would be willing to discuss ceasefire terms that are not humiliating for Ukraine.

Podolyak said: “Even people who say they are ready for negotiations understand that they are only possible if we force Russia to the table. Negotiations through strength, not through capitulation.”

On Wednesday, Trump named the retired army general Keith Kellogg as his envoy for Russia and Ukraine. Trump has promised to bring about a negotiated end to the war and officials in Kyiv have been watching anxiously to see what appointments he makes.

There will be reassurance over the appointment of Kellogg, 80, who has not espoused the pro-Russia rhetoric common to some in Trump’s orbit and has previously talked about a plan to leverage military aid by increasing it while pushing for peace talks.

During regular appearances on US television, Kellogg has criticised Russia’s invasion and warned that the conflict could escalate into a global conflagration. He has also made it clear that Ukraine will have little choice but to negotiate, even if it is not clear what security guarantees Kyiv could obtain that would ensure Russia would be held to any ceasefire deal.

“If Ukraine doesn’t want to negotiate, fine, but then accept the fact that you can have enormous losses in your cities and accept the fact that you will have your children killed, accept the fact that you don’t have 130,000 dead, you will have 230,000 [to] 250,000,” Kellogg told Voice of America at the Republican party convention in July.

Donald Trump’s plan to tap the retired US lieutenant general Keith Kellogg as US envoy to Ukraine and Russia has triggered renewed interest in a policy document he co-authored that proposes ending the war by withdrawing weapons from Ukraine if it doesn’t enter peace talks – and giving even more weapons to Ukraine if Russia doesn’t do the same.

Trump is said to have responded favorably to the plan – America First, Russia & Ukraine – which was presented to him in April and was written by Kellogg and the former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz, who both served as chiefs of staff in Trump’s national security council from 2017 to 2021.

The document proposes halting further US weapons deliveries to Kyiv if it does not enter peace talks with Moscow, while simultaneously warning Moscow that, should it refuse to negotiate, US support for Ukraine would increase.

It blames “unserious and incoherent” US foreign policy under Joe Biden for the three-year conflict, including what it describes as a “precipitous” US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the supposed antagonization of US allies including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and a policy to China described as “weak and confusing”.

The paper further accuses the Biden administration of putting “the idealistic agendas of the global elite ahead of a working relationship with Russia” – a “hostile policy” that it claims “made it an enemy of the US, drove Russia into the arms of China and led to the development of a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis”.

Kellogg and Fleitz criticize what they said was a decision to scold Vladimir Putin and threaten “unprecedented” sanctions as it prepared to invade Ukraine, “instead of using negotiations to de-escalate tensions”.

“An America First approach could have prevented the invasion,” they write.

Trump’s vice-president-elect, the Ohio senator JD Vance, has aired comparable views, arguing in effect that US support for Ukraine is a drain on resources necessary to counter Washington’s principal security threat with China.

The selection of Kellogg comes as the Biden administration pushes to complete more weapons transfers to Ukraine before the president’s term ends. A decision to approve the use of US-made Atacms missiles on targets inside Russia was met by Russia’s use of a powerful intermediate range missile, Oreshnik, on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

In an interview with Fox News, Kellogg said Biden’s decision to approve Ukrainian strikes inside Russia has given Trump “more leverage”.

“It gives president Trump more ability to pivot from that,” he said.

On Tuesday, Moscow responded to a New York Times report that unidentified western officials had suggested Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons before he steps down. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said discussions in the West about arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons was “absolutely irresponsible”.

But the Kellogg-Fleitz plan, though lacking in details, appears to mirror the counsel of Gen Mark A Milley, Biden’s former chief military adviser who argued that since neither Russia nor Ukraine could win the conflict, a negotiated settlement was the sole route to peace.

Under the plan, Moscow would also be coaxed to the table with the promise of Nato membership for Ukraine being delayed or abandoned.

“We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up,’” Kellogg told Reuters in June. “And you tell Putin, ‘He’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.’”

In that interview, Fleitz said Ukraine would not need to formally cede territory to Russia, but would come to recognize that it would not be able to regain effective control of all its territory.

“Our concern is that this has become a war of attrition that’s going to kill a whole generation of young men,” Fleitz said, adding that a lasting peace in Ukraine would require additional security guarantees, including “arming Ukraine to the teeth”.

But in the policy paper the pair acknowledged that it would be hard for Ukraine to accept a peace deal “that does not give them back all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia responsible for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine”.

Asking whether he endorses Kellogg’s position paper, the president-elect told NBC News: “I’m the only one who can get the war stopped. It should have never started in the first place.”

Trump said that European nations should contribute more aid, a position echoed by Vance at the Republican national convention in July. “We will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace,” he said. “No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.”

Trump chose Kellogg, an 80-year-old retired army lieutenant general, to be his top adviser on defense issues. He served as national security adviser to Vice-president Mike Pence, was chief of staff of the national security council, and then stepped in as an acting security adviser for Trump after Michael Flynn resigned.

During the Vietnam war he served in the 101st airborne division, also known as the Screaming Eagles, and after the first Iraq war he was named commander of special operations command Europe (SOCEUR). He retired in 2003 as a lieutenant general.

During the January 6 Capitol riot, Kellogg demanded that the Secret Service not evacuate Pence from the building, which would have prevented the vice-president from certifying Biden’s electoral victory. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it,” he reportedly said.

After naming Kellogg as envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Trump said Kellogg “was with me right from the beginning”!

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called Russia’s massive attack on energy infrastructure a “very despicable escalation of Russian terrorist tactics”. The overnight barrage that left more than half a million in Ukraine’s western Lviv region cut off from electricity. Another 280,000 in the western Rivne region and 215,000 in the north-western Volyn region also lost power, officials said. Ukraine’s emergency services said the Russian strikes inflicted damage in 14 regions across the country, with the nation’s west hard-hit. Zelenskyy said that Russia had also fired “cluster munitions” during the attack.

• Zelenskyy urging his allies to respond firmly to what he dubbed Russian “blackmail”. Russian president Vladimir Putin said the bombardment was a “response” to Ukrainian strikes on his territory with western missiles.

• Putin also threatened to strike Kyiv with Oreshnik missiles, an intermediate-range weapon that Moscow used against the city of Dnipro last week and that Putin has claimed cannot be shot down by any air defence system. “Of course, we will respond to the ongoing strikes on Russian territory with long-range western-made missiles, as has already been said, including by possibly continuing to test the Oreshnik in combat conditions, as was done on November 21,” Putin told leaders of a security alliance of ex-Soviet countries at a summit in Kazakhstan. “At present, the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff are selecting targets to hit on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defence and industrial enterprises, or decision-making centres in Kyiv,” he said.

• Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, described Putin’s claim that air defence systems could not take out Oreshnik missiles as “fiction, of course”. He said the Oreshnik was simply a lightly modified version of existing Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles, adding that Putin had made similar claims about the Kinzhal missile until they were shot down by Patriot air defence systems.

• Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said Putin’s threat to strike Kyiv was a “testament to weakness”, adding that the west would not be deterred by his words.

• Joe Biden has said the attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure showed the “urgency” of backing Kyiv, touting strong support ahead of Donald Trump taking office in January. “This attack is outrageous and serves as yet another reminder of the urgency and importance of supporting the Ukrainian people in their defence against Russian aggression,” Biden said in a statement. Trump is widely expected to bring a policy shift towards Ukraine, which has received almost $60bn from Washington for its armed forces since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.

• Donald Trump’s plan to tap the retired US Lt Gen Keith Kellogg as US envoy to Ukraine and Russia has triggered renewed interest in a policy document he co-wrote that proposes ending the war by withdrawing weapons from Ukraine if it doesn’t enter peace talks – and giving even more weapons to Ukraine if Russia doesn’t do the same.

• Georgian riot police deployed teargas and water cannon against demonstrators protesting against a decision by the pro-Russian ruling party to delay asking for European Union accession. Thousands rallied in the capital Tbilisi and cities across Georgia after prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced the decision amid a post-election crisis that saw the country’s president challenge the legitimacy of the newly elected parliament and government. The Caucasus country’s pro-western opposition has denounced the 26 October vote as “fraudulent”, while the EU and the US have called for an investigation into alleged electoral “irregularities”.

Police clashed with protesters in the Georgian capital Tbilisi early on Friday, after the country’s ruling party said the government would suspend talks on European Union accession until 2028.

The country’s interior ministry said three police officers were injured, two of whom were hospitalised.

Police fired water cannon and deployed pepper spray and teargas to disperse protesters as masked people tried to smash their way into the parliament. Some protesters tossed fireworks at police while shouting “Russians” and “Slaves!”

Thousands of pro-EU protesters had blocked streets in the capital before the altercations began. The country’s pro-EU figurehead president, Salome Zourabichvili, accused the government of declaring “war” on its own people and confronted riot police, asking whether they served Georgia or Russia.

“Today marks a significant point, or rather, the conclusion of the constitutional coup that has been unfolding for several weeks,” she told a news conference alongside opposition leaders. “Today, this nonexistent and illegitimate government declared war on its own people,” she added, calling herself the country’s “sole legitimate representative”.

The government announcement came hours after the European parliament adopted a non-binding resolution rejecting the results of Georgia’s 26 October parliamentary elections, alleging “significant irregularities”.

The resolution called for new elections within a year under international supervision and for sanctions to be imposed on top Georgian officials, including the prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze.

“Georgian Dream didn’t win the elections, it staged a coup. There is no legitimate parliament or government in Georgia,” said 20-year-old demonstrator Shota Sabashvili. “We will not let this self-proclaimed prime minister destroy our European future.”

Georgia’s relations with the EU have deteriorated sharply in recent months as Brussels has alleged that the government had resorted to authoritarian measures and adopted pro-Russian stances.

The ruling Georgian Dream party says it is not pro-Russian, and that it is committed to democracy and integration with the west. It says it still wants to join the EU eventually, but has repeatedly engaged in diplomatic feuds with Brussels in recent years, while deepening ties with neighbouring Russia.

Georgian Dream has accused the EU of “a cascade of insults”, saying in a statement it was using the prospect of accession talks to “blackmail” the country, and to “organise a revolution in the country”.

As a result, it said: “We have decided not to put the issue of opening negotiations with the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028. Also, we refuse any budgetary grant from the European Union until the end of 2028.”

The South Caucasus country of 3.7 million has the aim of EU accession written into its constitution and has long been among the most pro-western of the Soviet Union’s successor states.

With months of the downturn in relations, the EU had said that Georgia’s application for membership was frozen.

There was no immediate formal comment from the EU on Georgian Dream’s statement. But an EU official said the impact of Thursday’s move was huge, adding the government was doing what the EU had feared and had hoped it would not.

Opinion polls show that about 80% of Georgians support EU membership, and the bloc’s flag flies alongside the national flag outside virtually all government buildings in the country.

The pro-western opposition reacted to Georgian Dream’s announcement with fury as protesters massed. Local media reported that protests that erupted in provincial cities.

Giorgi Vashadze, a prominent opposition leader, wrote on Facebook: “the self-proclaimed, illegitimate government has already legally signed the betrayal of Georgia and the Georgian people.”

President Zourabichvili, a pro-EU critic of Georgian Dream whose powers are mostly ceremonial, said the ruling party had “declared not peace, but war against its own people, its past and future”.

Zourabichvili’s term ends in December, and Georgian Dream has nominated a former lawmaker with hardline anti-western views to replace her.

The opposition said that an October election, in which official results gave the Georgian Dream bloc almost 54% of the vote, was fraudulent and have refused to take their seats. Western countries have demanded an inquiry into irregularities. A global research and data firm called the official results reported by the electoral commission “statistically impossible”.

Both Georgian Dream and the country’s election commission say the election was free and fair.

Earlier on Thursday, prime minister Kobakhidze claimed that EU membership might harm Georgia’s economy because it would require Tbilisi to cancel visa-free agreements and trade deals with other countries.

The EU gave Georgia candidate status in December 2023, but has said that a raft of laws passed since by Georgian Dream, including curbs on “foreign agents” and LGBT rights, are authoritarian, Russian-inspired, and obstacles to EU membership.

Foreign and domestic critics of Georgian Dream say the party, which is seen as dominated by its billionaire founder, ex-prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, is steering Georgia back towards Moscow, from which it gained independence in 1991.

Russia and Georgia have had no formal diplomatic relations since Moscow won a brief 2008 war, but have had a limited rapprochement recently.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking during a visit to Kazakhstan, praised the “courage and character” he said Georgian authorities had shown in passing the law on foreign agents, which domestic critics have likened to Russian legislation.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Claudia Sheinbaum has said her “very kind” phone conversation with Donald Trump, in which they discussed immigration and fentanyl, means “there will not be a potential tariff war” between the US and Mexico.

The president of Mexico spoke to reporters on Thursday following Trump’s threat earlier in the week to apply a 25% tariff against Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% tariff against China, when he takes office in January if the countries did not stop all illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling into the US.

Trump, in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, claimed that during the phone call with Sheinbaum she had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border”.

During her Thursday address Sheinbaum clarified she did not agree to shut down the border.

“Each person has their own way of communicating,” Sheinbaum said. “But I can assure you, I guarantee you, that we never – additionally, we would be incapable of doing so – proposed that we would close the border in the north [of Mexico], or in the south of the United States. It has never been our idea and, of course, we are not in agreement with that.”

She added that the two did not discuss tariffs, but that the conversation with Trump had reassured her that no tit-for-tat tariff battle would be needed in future.

On Monday this week, Trump threatened to impose a 25% percent tariff on Mexico until drugs, including fentanyl, and undocumented immigrants “stop this Invasion of our Country”. He declared that Mexico and Canada should use their power to address drug trafficking and migration and, until they do, “it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

The following day, Sheinbaum suggested Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own.

On Wednesday, however, the conversation between Sheinbaum and Trump was “very kind”, the Mexican president said. She said she told Trump of the various migration initiatives her government has undertaken, including providing resources and support to central American countries and to migrants arriving in Mexico. Potential immigrants “will not reach the northern border, because Mexico has a strategy”, Sheinbaum said.

Trump “recognized this effort” by the Mexican government, Sheinbaum added.

She also said Trump expressed interest in the government-driven programs to address fentanyl addiction and overdoses in Mexico. And she raised the problem of American-made weapons entering Mexico from the US to be used by drug cartels.

Sheinbaum further added that she encouraged Trump to stop the blockades against Cuba and Venezuela, since “people suffer and it leads to the phenomenon of migration”.

Asked by a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine that quoted anonymous Trump-aligned sources discussing a “soft invasion” of Mexico by deploying the US military inside the country against drug trafficking groups, Sheinbaum dismissed the idea, calling it “entirely a movie”.

“What I base myself on is the conversation – the two conversations – that I had with President Trump, and then, at the moment, the communication we will have with his work team and when he takes office,” Sheinbaum said. “We will always defend our sovereignty. Mexico is a free, independent, sovereign country – and that is above everything else.”

A tariff is a type of tax imposed on goods when they cross national borders, often used by governments against trading partners they disagree with or to protect local industries.

Tariffs slapped on foreign imports make them more expensive, ostensibly providing a price advantage to locally made goods, while also raising revenues for governments.

But economists widely consider them an inefficient tool that typically leaves consumers and taxpayers in the country imposing them bearing the brunt of higher costs.

If a car manufacturer imports parts that are used in its vehicles, for example, then tariffs on those goods will add to production costs and the final price consumers pay. The artificial increase in the price of imports can also theoretically lead to weaker domestic competition, and local industries that are less efficient and innovative.

Tariffs often can devolve into a cycle of retaliation, or even a full-blown trade war, which was another feature of Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.

There are often other considerations, such as geopolitics. For instance, the tariffs in Trump’s first term were ostensibly to punish China for what the US said were longstanding intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices. They also aimed to constrain a powerful rival and rebalance a lopsided trade deficit. But they failed to boost US jobs in protected industries and harmed jobs in other sectors, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Exporting countries targeted by tariffs can lose out if buyers shy away from the resultant higher prices. Economists say as much as a full percentage point could be sliced from Chinese GDP growth, depending on the extent of US tariffs. But that can be mitigated if it can sell its products elsewhere, or as China has been doing, start moving part of its supply chains offshore.

Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest former Donald Trump critic to make his way Mar-a-Lago to break bread with the incoming US president.

The tech mogul had banned Trump from the social media sites Instagram and Facebook, which he owns, following the January 6 riot that the president-elect egged on in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election.

On Wednesday, however, the incoming White House deputy chief of policy, Stephen Miller, told Fox News that Zuckerberg, 40, had dined with Trump at his Florida compound.

“Mark, obviously, he has his own interests, and he has his own company, and he has his own agenda,” Miller said. “But he’s made clear that he wants to support the national renewal of America under President Trump’s leadership.”

Zuckerberg, whose personal fortune is estimated at $200bn, has previously indicated a thawing of relations between himself and the president-elect.

After Trump survived an assassination attempt in July and pumped his fist saying “fight, fight, fight”, Zuckerberg called it “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.

A month later, in a book called Save America, Trump still accused Zuckerberg of “plotting” against him during the 2020 election by “steering” Facebook against his campaign. He threatened Zuckerberg that if it happened again he would “spend the rest of his life in prison”.

In the book Trump also noted that Zuckerberg would visit him at the White House “with his very nice wife, be as nice as anyone”, but then claimed the CEO turned Facebook against his 2020 campaign – possibly referring to a $420m donation Zuckerberg’s charity made to fund election infrastructure in 2020.

“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me,” Trump wrote in the book. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison – as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told the BBC: “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration.

“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.

Meta is among several of the tech giants to hold contracts with the federal government. Earlier this month, the company announced it had approved a collaboration to integrate its Llama AI division into government operations.

Spain’s leftwing government has approved “paid climate leave” of up to four days to allow workers to avoid travelling during weather emergencies, a month after floods killed at least 224 people.

Several companies came under fire after the 29 October catastrophe for ordering employees to keep working despite a red alert issued by the national weather agency. The firms said the authorities failed to inform them sufficiently and sent telephone alerts too late during the European country’s deadliest floods in decades.

The new measure aims to “regulate in accordance with the climate emergency” so that “no worker must run risks”, labour minister Yolanda Díaz told public broadcaster RTVE.

If emergency authorities raise the alarm about a risk, “the worker must refrain from going to work”, said Díaz. Employees can resort to a reduced working day beyond the four-day period, a mechanism that already exists for emergencies, the government said.

The legislation was inspired by similar laws in Canada, RTVE reported. “In the face of climate denialism from the right, the Spanish government is committed to green policies,” Díaz said, according to a report in El País.

Economy minister Carlos Cuerpo warned the cost of extreme weather events could double by 2050 as the government confirmed €2.3bn of fresh aid for flood victims.

Extreme rainfall is more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia. This is because warmer air can hold more water vapour. Flooding has most likely become more frequent and severe in these locations as a result, but is also affected by human factors, such as the existence of flood defences and land use.

All but eight of the flood deaths were in Valencia, where conservative regional president Carlos Mazón has conceded mistakes were made but refused calls to step down, claiming the unprecedented and “apocalyptic” scale of the disaster simply overwhelmed the system.

Torrential rains hit parts of Spain again two weeks after the floods, forcing 3,000 people to evacuate their homes in Málaga.

With Agence France-Presse

Spain’s leftwing government has approved “paid climate leave” of up to four days to allow workers to avoid travelling during weather emergencies, a month after floods killed at least 224 people.

Several companies came under fire after the 29 October catastrophe for ordering employees to keep working despite a red alert issued by the national weather agency. The firms said the authorities failed to inform them sufficiently and sent telephone alerts too late during the European country’s deadliest floods in decades.

The new measure aims to “regulate in accordance with the climate emergency” so that “no worker must run risks”, labour minister Yolanda Díaz told public broadcaster RTVE.

If emergency authorities raise the alarm about a risk, “the worker must refrain from going to work”, said Díaz. Employees can resort to a reduced working day beyond the four-day period, a mechanism that already exists for emergencies, the government said.

The legislation was inspired by similar laws in Canada, RTVE reported. “In the face of climate denialism from the right, the Spanish government is committed to green policies,” Díaz said, according to a report in El País.

Economy minister Carlos Cuerpo warned the cost of extreme weather events could double by 2050 as the government confirmed €2.3bn of fresh aid for flood victims.

Extreme rainfall is more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia. This is because warmer air can hold more water vapour. Flooding has most likely become more frequent and severe in these locations as a result, but is also affected by human factors, such as the existence of flood defences and land use.

All but eight of the flood deaths were in Valencia, where conservative regional president Carlos Mazón has conceded mistakes were made but refused calls to step down, claiming the unprecedented and “apocalyptic” scale of the disaster simply overwhelmed the system.

Torrential rains hit parts of Spain again two weeks after the floods, forcing 3,000 people to evacuate their homes in Málaga.

With Agence France-Presse

Hezbollah has vowed to continue resisting Israel and is monitoring the Israeli army’s withdrawal from south Lebanon “with [our] hands on the trigger”, the militia said in its first comments since a ceasefire came into effect on Wednesday.

A tense calm has descended on southern Lebanon – despite Israeli warplanes firing on what the military claimed was a rocket storage facility – but in the Gaza Strip Israel appears to have stepped up its campaign against the Palestinian group Hamas. At least 21 people were killed in airstrikes in the past 24 hours, hospital officials said, and Israeli ground forces are pushing deeper into the north and south of the enclave.

The Israeli military said its forces were continuing to “strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip”.

Hezbollah did not directly mention the truce but said its fighters “remain fully equipped to deal with the aspirations and assaults of the Israeli enemy”. It also remained committed to the Palestinian cause, the statement from its operations centre late on Wednesday said.

A 60-day staged withdrawal, in which Israel will pull out of Lebanon and Hezbollah will move its fighters and heavy weaponry out of a 16-mile-deep (25km) boundary buffer zone, went into effect at 4am local time on Wednesday.

The truce is designed to help broker a permanent end to 14 months of fighting, and violations will be monitored by a US-led supervisory mechanism, but the situation on the ground remains tense.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that the air force struck a facility used by Hezbollah to store mid-range rockets, the first such attack since the ceasefire started. Initial reports suggested the airstrike hit a location north of the Litani River, which is not included in the ceasefire agreement.

Israeli tank fire hit six areasalong the UN-demarcated blue line separating the two countries on Thursday morning, wounding two people, Lebanese security sources and state media said.

Israel’s military said in a statement: “Several suspects were identified arriving with vehicles to a number of areas in southern Lebanon, breaching the conditions of the ceasefire.” It said troops “opened fire toward them” and the army would “actively enforce violations of the ceasefire agreement”.

Thousands of displaced people in Lebanon have already packed up their belongings and attempted to return to their abandoned homes in the south amid contradictory statements from officials. The speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, said residents could return home, while Israel has warned them not to.

In another incident on Wednesday, Israeli forces opened fire on a number of cars that attempted to enter what it said was a restricted area.

“The Israeli enemy is attacking those returning to the border villages,” the Hezbollah politician Hassan Fadlallah told reporters on Thursday. “There are violations today by Israel, even in this form.”

The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million people in Lebanon and about 60,000 in Israel. Israelis are not yet allowed to return to homes near the border.

Earlier this week, the Lebanese health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths, said Israeli fire had killed 3,823 people and injured 15,859 others since October 2023. Hezbollah strikes have killed 45 Israeli civilians and 73 soldiers, according to Israeli figures.

Hezbollah, which started firing rockets, drones and missiles at its neighbour in solidarity with Hamas a day after the Palestinian group attacked on Israel on 7 October 2023, traded cross-border fire with Israel for a year before Israel stepped up its air campaign in late September and sent in ground troops.

Crucially, during truce talks, Hezbollah dropped its demand that a ceasefire was contingent on an end to the fighting in Gaza.

The Israeli military declared a curfew for southern Lebanon from 5pm on Wednesday until 7am on Thursday, and again on Thursday night. It has prohibited displaced Lebanese people from returning to their homes while its forces remain in several areas.

Its spokesperson Avichay Adraee said: “We do not want to harm you – but our forces will not hesitate to engage with any forbidden movements in this zone.”

The US-brokered ceasefire, the most significant development in the effort to calm regional tensions that have rocked the Middle East since 7 October 2023, is not directly linked to the fighting in Gaza.

Talks aimed at stemming the bloodshed in the Palestinian territory have repeatedly failed. Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, announced earlier this month it was quitting its role until both parties showed “willingness and seriousness”.

Announcing the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire on Tuesday, the US president, Joe Biden, said his administration would revive diplomatic efforts for a truce in Gaza, but the delinking of the fronts has strengthened Israel’s position against Hamas. There is little hope that the momentum generated by the Lebanon ceasefire will help stop the fighting: neither side has indicated any willingness to change their conditions for a ceasefire as a result of the Lebanon deal.

The Palestinian territory is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis. Israel has been accused of deliberately blocking aid and forcibly displacing the population, allegations it denies. It is widely believed by observers of the conflict that Israel’s government is seeking to annex parts of the territory.

About 44,300 Palestinians have been killed in more than a year of fighting according to the local health ministry, whose figures are considered by the UN to be accurate. A total of 1,200 Israelis were killed and another 250 taken captive on 7 October 2023. Israel says 63 hostages are still alive.

A military vehicle mowed down a woman in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, as protests have gripped the southern African country weeks after an election that the opposition said was rigged.

Videos of the incident on Wednesday that have been widely shared on social media showed an armoured vehicle speeding down a busy street into a makeshift wooden barricade attended by protesters and then driving over the woman.

She sustained head injuries but was not in danger of dying, the director of the emergency department at Maputo central hospital said on Thursday.

Mozambique’s armed forces said in a statement that they “accidentally ran over a citizen” and would take responsibility for her medical care at the hospital. “The [armed forces] deeply regrets what happened,” the statement said. “The incident will be rigorously investigated to ensure that this type of situation does not happen again.”

Police shot and killed two protesters on Wednesday in the northern city of Nampula after a crowd that had barricaded a road and burned tyres confronted officers sent to break up the protest, an activist said.

Mozambique has been gripped by weeks of protests after elections in which Daniel Chapo, the presidential candidate of the Frelimo party which has ruled the southern African country since 1975, secured 70.7% of the vote, according to official results.

The opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane, who captured the imagination of many young voters, was said to have won just 20.3% of the vote. He has since fled abroad and called for people to block traffic from 8am to 4pm from Tuesday to Friday.

On Thursday, Mondlane’s supporters across the country continued to heed his call. On the highway leading from Maputo to South Africa’s border, women cooked pap, a staple maize porridge, plucked chickens and chopped lettuce for a salad.

On the road to the capital city’s international airport there was a festive mood, with some protesters sitting on chairs around a steaming pot of pap and fish, while others chanted, sang and danced.

At least 10 children have been killed by security forces since late October, according to Human Rights Watch. The Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, a local civil society group, said last week it knew of 65 people killed by police.

Ancha Bai, 30, an informal mobile money agent protesting in the city centre, said: “We want change in the country. We want to be free and … we no longer want to study just to stay at home with a diploma.”

A philosophy graduate who did not want to be named said: “We’re fed up with this corrupt and oppressive regime. Frelimo has already stolen [the election], but enough is enough. If I have to die, I’ll die here. I’d rather die in the protests than starve at home.”

On 19 October, Elvino Dias, a lawyer, and Paulo Guambe, a film-maker and opposition party Podemos official, were shot dead by unknown attackers. The deaths, for which no one has yet been arrested, fit a pattern of what human rights researchers have said are targeted killings of opposition figures without anyone being brought to justice.

The embassies of the US, UK, Canada, Norway and Switzerland said in a joint statement: “We strongly condemn the escalation of violence against civilians … This included an incident on 27 November in which a Mozambican security forces vehicle sped towards a group of people and brutally ran over a person.”

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

A military vehicle mowed down a woman in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, as protests have gripped the southern African country weeks after an election that the opposition said was rigged.

Videos of the incident on Wednesday that have been widely shared on social media showed an armoured vehicle speeding down a busy street into a makeshift wooden barricade attended by protesters and then driving over the woman.

She sustained head injuries but was not in danger of dying, the director of the emergency department at Maputo central hospital said on Thursday.

Mozambique’s armed forces said in a statement that they “accidentally ran over a citizen” and would take responsibility for her medical care at the hospital. “The [armed forces] deeply regrets what happened,” the statement said. “The incident will be rigorously investigated to ensure that this type of situation does not happen again.”

Police shot and killed two protesters on Wednesday in the northern city of Nampula after a crowd that had barricaded a road and burned tyres confronted officers sent to break up the protest, an activist said.

Mozambique has been gripped by weeks of protests after elections in which Daniel Chapo, the presidential candidate of the Frelimo party which has ruled the southern African country since 1975, secured 70.7% of the vote, according to official results.

The opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane, who captured the imagination of many young voters, was said to have won just 20.3% of the vote. He has since fled abroad and called for people to block traffic from 8am to 4pm from Tuesday to Friday.

On Thursday, Mondlane’s supporters across the country continued to heed his call. On the highway leading from Maputo to South Africa’s border, women cooked pap, a staple maize porridge, plucked chickens and chopped lettuce for a salad.

On the road to the capital city’s international airport there was a festive mood, with some protesters sitting on chairs around a steaming pot of pap and fish, while others chanted, sang and danced.

At least 10 children have been killed by security forces since late October, according to Human Rights Watch. The Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, a local civil society group, said last week it knew of 65 people killed by police.

Ancha Bai, 30, an informal mobile money agent protesting in the city centre, said: “We want change in the country. We want to be free and … we no longer want to study just to stay at home with a diploma.”

A philosophy graduate who did not want to be named said: “We’re fed up with this corrupt and oppressive regime. Frelimo has already stolen [the election], but enough is enough. If I have to die, I’ll die here. I’d rather die in the protests than starve at home.”

On 19 October, Elvino Dias, a lawyer, and Paulo Guambe, a film-maker and opposition party Podemos official, were shot dead by unknown attackers. The deaths, for which no one has yet been arrested, fit a pattern of what human rights researchers have said are targeted killings of opposition figures without anyone being brought to justice.

The embassies of the US, UK, Canada, Norway and Switzerland said in a joint statement: “We strongly condemn the escalation of violence against civilians … This included an incident on 27 November in which a Mozambican security forces vehicle sped towards a group of people and brutally ran over a person.”

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Australia has approved a social media ban for children aged under 16, one of the world’s toughest regulations targeting big tech.

The laws, which will come into effect from late 2025, will bar under-16s from being able to access social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit and X.

Exemptions will apply for health and education services including YouTube, Messenger Kids, WhatsApp, Kids Helpline and Google Classroom.

Here is what Australia, European countries and tech companies have been doing to regulate children’s access to social media.

Sweden has announced that it has sent a formal request to China for cooperation over the suspected sabotage of two undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.

The prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said on Thursday that Swedish authorities were seeking “clarity” from China about what happened to the two fibre-optic cables between Finland and Germany and Sweden and Lithuania last week.

“Today I can tell you that we have additionally sent a formal request to work together with Swedish authorities to get clarity about what has happened,” he said in a press conference.

“We expect China will choose to work together as we have requested.”

It comes amid speculation about the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3, which sailed over the cables at about the time they were severed and has remained anchored since 19 November in the Kattegat strait between Sweden and Denmark, where it is being monitored by multiple vessels, including the Danish navy.

Sweden, which is leading the investigation, has declined to comment on the claims and China’s foreign ministry has denied any responsibility.

The Wall Street Journal reported that investigators suspect the crew of the Chinese vessel deliberately severed the cables last week by dragging an anchor along the seabed for more than 100 miles.

The Swedish police and prosecutor declined to comment on the claim, saying they had nothing to add to Wednesday’s statements when they announced that the crime scene investigations of the two cables had been completed and that analysis was continuing.

The Swedish navy and coastguard also declined to comment.

The absence of any seismic signals to indicate explosions, as there were with the Nord Stream and Balticconnector pipelines, could support the theory that the damage was caused by an anchor, Norsar, the Norwegian national datacentre for the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, said. Kjølv Egeland, a senior researcher at Norsar, said: “There was no explosion or seismic signal at all, so that could be consistent with this anchor theory.”

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which carried natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, were damaged in explosions in September 2022. In August this year it was claimed that the explosions were the work of a small Ukrainian sabotage team but this was denied by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In a subsequent incident in the Baltic, in October 2023, the Balticconnector gas pipeline was extensively damaged. Finnish investigators recovered a large ship’s anchor near the spot which was linked to a Chinese container vessel, NewNew Polar Bear.

The Swedish prosecutor said: “The cable between Sweden and Lithuania, which is owned by a Swedish company, was damaged on 17 November. The cable between Finland and Germany, located south of the Sweden-Lithuania cable, was damaged a number of hours later. Both damage sites are located within the Swedish economic zone.”

Finnish police said investigators at the crime scene investigation into the cable rupture site between Finland and Germany had collected cable samples for further analysis. They said the damage was being investigated as aggravated criminal damage and aggravated interference with communications.

Kristersson said on Wednesday that the Baltic Sea was now a “high-risk” zone as he met Nordic and Baltic leaders at a summit in Harpsund, Sweden.

“We are aware that there is a high risk for different types of activities on the Baltic Sea that are dangerous,” he said.

He added: “Now we are careful about not accusing anybody right now of anything. We don’t know that this is sabotage. But we are investigating the matter very carefully.”

Residents in a series of coastal communities threatened by a bushfire have been told it was too late to leave and they should find shelter as the fire burned through evacuation points.

An emergency warning was in place for parts of Wedge Island, Grey, Cervantes, Nambung and Cooljarloo in the shire of Dandaragan in Western Australia on Friday morning.

At the fishing shack villages of Wedge Island and Grey, about 170km north of Perth, about 40 residents who chose to stay were told: “It is too late to leave and you must act immediately and take shelter now to survive.”

“There is a threat to lives and homes,” the Department of Fire and Emergency Services said in an alert early on Friday.

People in the seaside holiday town of Cervantes, about 200km north of Perth, were also told it was too late to leave.

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“Fire has impacted evacuation routes and leaving now will put your life in danger,” an alert said.

“You need to identify a room in your home where you can shelter from the approaching fire.

“It should have running water, such as a kitchen or laundry, and have a clear exit so you can easily escape.”

An incident controller, Damien Pumphrey, on Thursday night described the fire as a fierce blaze and said a change in wind direction was fanning it towards the communities.

He said difficult, windy weather conditions were expected for the next two days.

“The fire currently has a 48km perimeter … increasing the challenge for firefighters,” he told reporters.

More than 200 firefighters were battling the Dandaragan blaze. Crews were also building containment lines around Cervantes, a town of about 500 people.

Two large air tankers from the eastern states were to join the battle to help the four fixed-wing aircraft and two helicopters fighting it.

Parts of Indian Ocean Drive and multiple surrounding roads were closed.

“The bushfire is moving in a westerly direction towards Cervantes, Wedge and Grey,” emergency services said. “It is not contained or controlled.”

The blaze was started on Monday by a fatal car crash and has burned through more than 49,000 hectares of bushland.

Two volunteer firefighters were burned on Wednesday as the blaze flared.

A man in his 60s, who was airlifted to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, remained there in a stable condition.

The other firefighter sustained minor injuries and was treated at the scene.

An evacuation centre at Jurien Bay Sports and Recreation Centre was closed overnight but was expected to reopen on Friday morning.

Nambung national park has also been closed.

Temperatures are set to reach the high 30s over coming days, with squally winds predicted.

Residents along the Ashburton coast have been warned to brace for extreme fire conditions on Sunday.

About 1.5m years ago a big-toothed cousin of prehistoric humans walked quickly along a lakeside in Kenya, footprints marking the muddy ground. But they were not our only distant relative on the scene: treading the same ground was the early human Homo erectus.

Researchers say an analysis of fossilised footprints discovered in deposits of the Turkana Basin, northern Kenya, suggest the marks were made by two different species on the human family tree who were in the same place within hours or days of each other.

While skeletal fossils have previously suggested these species may have coexisted, the timespans they can be dated to, and the size of the deposits they are found in, are too large to pin down interactions.

“This is the first direct snapshot of the two species together on the same immediate landscape,” said Dr Kevin Hatala, the first author of the research from Chatham University in the US.

Writing in the journal Science, Hatala and colleagues reported how, along with fossilised tracks from birds and other animals, they discovered a continual set of footprints in the deposits made by a single hominin individual.

The stride length of the trackway, they noted, suggested that individual was walking at a modestly fast pace. However, the impressions differed from those observed in modern humans, in terms of foot anatomy and the patterns of contact made by walking.

Instead, they said, the impressions appeared to fit with footprints expected from Paranthropus boisei, a species also known as Nutcracker Man in reference to its big teeth, which is not a human ancestor but sits on a side branch of our family tree.

“There are aspects of their big toe anatomy, in particular, that seem consistent with the patterns that we see in the footprints,” said Hatala.

The team also found three separate prints close by that were in different orientations to this trackway.

These, the researchers said, did appear similar to those observed in modern humans, suggesting they were made by Homo erectus, an ancestor of our own species that lived in the region at the time.

“I would expect the two species would have been aware of each other’s existence on that landscape, and they probably would have recognised each other as being ‘different’,” said Hatala. “This raises lots of fascinating questions about how they would have interacted, and we don’t have all of those answers yet.”

The researchers added that when they looked back at other examples of fossilised hominin footprints found in east Turkana from a similar time period, they realised some also showed signs of having been made by two different hominin species.

Prof Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London and who was not involved in the work, described the research as fascinating, noting that while it was impossible to be completely sure which species made the tracks, the team had been careful in assessing the probabilities.

“It’s wonderful that these early human relatives can now be placed directly in a lakeside landscape, walking and wading on wet surfaces, and probably feeding on the plant and animal resources there,” he said. “[The authors] suggest that the two species with their different diets were probably not competing strongly at this time, hence their close and tolerant proximity in time and space.”