The leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult has gone on trial on charges of terrorism over the deaths of more than 400 of his followers in a macabre case that shocked the world.

The self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie appeared in court in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa along with 94 co-defendants.

Journalists were removed from the courtroom shortly after the start of the hearing to enable a protected witness to take the stand.

Mackenzie, who was arrested in April last year, is alleged to have incited his acolytes to starve to death in order to “meet Jesus”.

He and his co-accused all pleaded not guilty to the charges of terrorism at a hearing in January.

They also face charges of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, and child torture and cruelty in separate cases.

The remains of more than 440 people have been unearthed so far in a remote wilderness inland from the Indian Ocean coastal town of Malindi, in a case that has been dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre”.

Autopsies have found that while starvation appeared to be the main cause of death, some of the victims – including children – were strangled, beaten or suffocated.

Previous court documents also said that some of the bodies had had their organs removed.

Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, turned himself in on 14 April last year after police acting on a tipoff first entered Shakahola forest, where mass graves have been found.

In March, the authorities began releasing some victims’ bodies to distraught relatives after months of painstaking work to identify them using DNA.

Questions have been raised about how Mackenzie, a self-styled pastor with a history of extremism, managed to evade law enforcement despite his prominent profile and previous legal cases.

The interior minister, Kithure Kindiki, last year accused Kenyan police of being lax in investigating the initial reports of starvation.

“The Shakahola massacre is the worst breach of security in the history of our country,” he told a senate committee hearing, vowing to “relentlessly push for legal reforms to tame rogue preachers”.

The state-backed Kenya National Commission on Human Rights in March criticised security officers in Malindi for “gross abdication of duty and negligence”.

The president, William Ruto, has vowed to intervene in Kenya’s homegrown religious movements.

In largely Christian Kenya, the saga has thrown a spotlight on failed efforts to regulate unscrupulous churches and cults that have dabbled in criminality.

Washington is bracing for what may be one of the most politically significant weeks in recent memory, as the US Congress reconvenes Monday and leading Democratic lawmakers will face the urge or obligation to reveal openly if they plan to stick with Joe Biden as their nominee for re-election.

Pressure continued to mount on Sunday as some prominent House Democrats reportedly told House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries in a virtual meeting that they believe the president should step aside in the race after his poor debate performance against Donald Trump and an underwhelming ABC interview.

The Senate and House of Representatives will both be in session in Washington simultaneously for the first time since the debate, during which Biden struggled to make his points, became muddled and couldn’t effectively parry a litany of attacks and lies from the former president.

This drew renewed scrutiny to Biden’s ability to serve as president for another four years as, at 81, he is already the oldest president in US history and had been suffering in the polls over questions over his mental fitness and stamina.

Lawmakers’ return to Capitol Hill could pressure party leaders known to be influential with Biden, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, as well as Jeffries, to signal definitively if they think Biden should stay in the race, and also give those urging him to quit the opportunity to rally support.

“I think that he’s got to go out there this week and show the American public that he is still that Joe Biden that they have come to know and love. I take him at his word. I believe that he can do it, but I think that this is a really critical week. I do think the clock is ticking,” Democratic senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN in an interview Sunday morning.

But later, reports began surfacing that in the afternoon meeting with Jeffries, Congressmen Jerry Nadler of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland were apparently among a significant clutch of lawmakers who told Jeffries that Biden should leave the presidential race, with the New York Times reporting this was the consensus. Jeffries has not revealed his hand.

In the days since the debate and ABC interview, a small number of Democratic congressman have openly called on Biden to step down, and other reports emerged that Virginia senator Mark Warner was looking to assemble a group of Democrats from the upper chamber to encourage Biden to quit his crisis-hit re-election campaign. That had been expected to lead to a key private meeting for senators with Warner on Monday but the effort is now more likely to continue with smaller-scale conversations after too much became public, the Associated press reported late on Sunday.

Biden spent Sunday campaigning in Pennsylvania, where the state’s Democratic senator John Fetterman likened Biden’s struggles to his own recovery from a stroke and said: “I know what it’s like to have a rough debate, and I’m standing here as your senator.”

Biden insisted to supporters in Philadelphia that he was the person to reunite America in a second term. Last Friday to ABC he said his debate performance was “a bad night”, while downplaying the importance of his low approval ratings and insisting he is capable of doing the job.

But there were more questions on Sunday and those will only mount this week.

“The interview didn’t put concerns to rest. No single interview is going to do that,” Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who is expected to win election as California’s senator in November, said on NBC News.

“Either he has to win overwhelmingly, or he has to pass the torch to someone who can. It’s as simple as that.”

Schiff said Vice-President Kamala Harris could beat Trump decisively and some House lawmakers reportedly also told Jeffries in their virtual meeting that Harris was the most likely person to take over the nomination. The House Democratic caucus is expected to meet in person Tuesday.

Biden’s exit from the race would be a historic upheaval that the United States has not seen in decades, and could kick off a vigorous contest ahead of the party’s convention six weeks from now in Chicago where the nominee is traditionally anointed.

The last president to decline to seek re-election was Lyndon B Johnson, who abandoned his campaign in 1968 amid the carnage of the Vietnam War, slumping approval ratings and concerns about his own health.

As European leaders and top defense officials from 31 Nato countries descend on Washington next week, all eyes will be focused firmly on Joe Biden, whose faltering performance at last month’s debate has added to concerns about the country that some Europeans already described as their “unpredictable ally”.

The US president has hoped that his leadership at the summit will rescue his campaign against Donald Trump amid concerns about his age and mental acuity. In a primetime interview on US television this week, he said: “And who’s gonna be able to hold Nato together like me?… We’re gonna have, I guess a good way to judge me, is you’re gonna have now the Nato conference here in the United States next week. Come listen. See what they say.”

But in private conversations, some European officials and diplomats have expressed concerns about his “shaky” public appearances and worries about the high likelihood of a second Trump term. Several foreign officials questioned whether Biden would remain in the race through next week.

“You can’t just put the genie back in the bottle,” said one European diplomat of the questions concerning Biden’s age. “It is one of the big issues [around the summit].”

Officials who normally focused on security policy said they would pay close attention to Biden’s behaviour during his public appearances at the Nato summit, including a speech in the Mellon Auditorium on Tuesday and then meetings with the other member and partner countries on Wednesday. Some expressed confidence in his team, including Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, to manage major crises, but said that the question of Biden’s political future had taken a toll.

Several foreign officials said that Biden’s slump in the polls would compound problems from this year’s bruising fight in Congress over the $60.8bn in military aid to Ukraine and make it less likely for the administration to take bold action.

“The issue with his age has become a major concern … a distraction from other real issues [for Nato],” said a European official. One administration official told the Washington Post that the summit has “gone from an orchestrated spectacle to one of the most anxious gatherings in modern times”.

US officials have insisted that Biden is mentally acute, especially pointing at his handling of national security issues such as the Russian war on Ukraine.

A long piece detailing concerns about Biden’s mental state in the New York Times included aides describing his forceful warnings to Benjamin Netanyahu not to launch a massive counterattack against Iran as an example of his good health.

“Look, foreign leaders have seen Joe Biden up close and personal for the last three years,” said a senior administration official. “They know who they’re dealing with and, you know, they know how effective he’s been.”

But that article also said that G7 leaders were concerned about Biden’s physical condition, quoted a European official who said Biden was sometimes “out of it”, and quoted two officials who struggled to say they would put Biden in the same room as Vladimir Putin.

“I’ve heard multiple times [US officials] talking about how he’s very sharp,” a European official told the Guardian. “But he can’t be great just part of the time, he needs to be on his game all of the time.”

Some have gone public with their concerns. “They certainly have a problem,” said Polish prime minister Donald Tusk after last week’s debate. “Yes, these reactions are unambiguous. I was afraid of that. I was afraid … in the sense: it was to be expected that in a direct confrontation, in a debate, it would not be easy for President Biden.”

Especially following the debate, many European diplomats are bracing for a second Trump administration. The former president has openly flirted with the idea of pulling out of Nato and personally harangued members of the alliance who failed to reach a 2% spending benchmark. He has also indicated that he may withhold further aid to Ukraine.

Since early in the campaign, European diplomats have sought to understand Trump’s policies, sending envoys to his campaign or conservative thinktanks like the Heritage Foundation who have produced voluminous briefings about what a second-term Trump administration’s foreign policy could look like.

But Trump’s foreign policy vision remains unclear, they said, subject to his own whims, and will likely be decided at the last minute. (In a surprise on Friday, he disavowed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, often touted as a 900-page road map for his administration’s agenda, saying he “had no idea who they are”.)

“You meet a lot of people who will tell you that they know what Trump is thinking, but no one actually does,” said one European official.

Ahead of the election, officials from Nato countries have sought to “Trump-proof” military aid by having the alliance take over coordination of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group from the US. European countries have also pushed for language in a final Nato communique that would proclaim the “irreversibility” of Ukraine’s accession to the alliance.

“On managing the unpredictability of the US ally … again, it’s not new,” said a European official. “It’s clearly a sentiment which is shared among European allies, that we need to be prepared for the unpredictability of the US ally.”

In a policy brief, Camille Grand, a former Nato assistant secretary general who is now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that leaders should prepare to “defend Europe with less America”.

“Even setting aside the outcome of the US presidential election this year and the need to Trump-proof Europe, there is a fundamental and deep trend in US security policy that suggests Europe will have to become less reliant on US support for its security,” he wrote.

Planners want to avoid a repeat of last year’s summit in Lithuania, when Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted that the lack of a timetable for the country’s accession to Nato was “absurd” after learning of last-minute discussions between other leaders.

“The US team has been making absolutely sure that there wouldn’t be too many or any open issues at the summit to avoid what happened in Vilnius,” Grand said in an interview.

“It’s meant to be a smooth summit and a celebration and an opportunity for Biden to shine, then I guess what the European leaders will be watching in light of the debate is, how is Biden? Is he truly leading? So they will have an eye on him, but I think they will all, at least most of them … rather be in the mood to strengthen him than the opposite.”

The new Labour government is expected to drop a bid to delay the international criminal court (ICC) reaching a decision on whether to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The development came as Keir Starmer, the new UK prime minister, told the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, that he believed the Palestinians had an undeniable right to a Palestinian state. Starmer spoke to Abbas on Sunday about the “ongoing suffering and devastating loss of life” in Gaza.

He also spoke to Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, setting out the “clear and urgent” need for a ceasefire in Gaza. “He added that it was also important to ensure the long-term conditions for a two-state solution were in place, including ensuring the Palestinian Authority had the financial means to operate effectively,” a readout of the call said.

Starmer said the situation on the northern border of Israel, where exchanges of fire with Lebanon-based Hezbollah have been taking place, was “very concerning” and it was “crucial all parties acted with caution”.

Labour officials briefed that the party continued to believe that the ICC, based in The Hague, had jurisdiction over Gaza. In a submission to the ICC, made by the previous government, the UK had claimed the court did not have jurisdiction over Israeli nationals. Britain’s request to lodge the challenge was made on 10 June in secret but was revealed a fortnight ago by the ICC.

The court’s pre-trial chamber had given the UK until 12 July to submit its full claim, but it now appears highly unlikely that the new government will go ahead with it, lifting the potential delay on the ICC pre-trial chamber ruling on the request for arrest warrants.

In its legal challenge, the UK had questioned whether the ICC could order the arrest of Israeli citizens. The Foreign Office said the Palestinian authorities had no jurisdiction over Israeli nationals under the Oslo accords, and as a result they could not transfer jurisdiction to the ICC.

In 2021 the ICC ruled that, despite the state of Palestine not being a sovereign state, the ICC did have jurisdiction over any alleged violations of the Rome statute, the ICC’s foundational charter, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, said he would this week start reviewing issues such as the future funding of the Palestinian relief works agency Unrwa, and the legal advice given to the previous government which said there was no risk that UK arms sales were being used by Israel in breach of international humanitarian law.

The UK is now one of the few countries that has refused to restore funding to Unrwa after it was claimed that up to a dozen of its staff might have taken part in the attack on Israel on 7 October. UK funding of Unrwa should have restarted in May, but the Conservative government said it would wait until the outcome of a UN investigation.

Insisting on his right to consider the issue carefully, Lammy added: “We did raise issues about the funding of the dispatch box, and real concerns that did not want the situation where the UK was contributing to tremendous hardship already in Gaza.”

On the publication of official advice about the legality of arms sales, Lammy said: “I made the solemn undertaking in parliament that I would look at the legal assessments, and I will begin that process, of course, as soon as I’m able to. I expect that to begin next week as I sit down with officials.”

Defending the Labour position in the wake of a loss of support among many Muslim voters at the general election, he added: “I have been crystal clear on the international humanitarian law. There will be no resiling from that, because it’s important that we are all seen to uphold the rules-based order at a time particularly when authoritarian states are discarding it. It’s on that basis that I enter into this role and I take that very, very seriously.”

Lammy also said he was deeply worried about the so-called “day after”, including the planning for some kind of revamped Palestinian Authority in Gaza. He rejected Hamas being given a role in the future governance of Gaza, saying: “It’s hard to see how an organisation that’s not committed to a two-state solution, and is committed to terrorism, can be part of that solution. But I also recognise that there are real problems at the moment with the Palestinian Authority, which is why this is going to take a lot of work with our partners.”

Hurricane Beryl has hit the Texas coast near Houston, according to the US National Weather Service.

The hurricane, which has sustained winds of 75mph (120km/h), was moving north-west at 10mph and made landfall near Matagorda.

Beryl was already inundating parts of Texas as coastal residents boarded up windows and beach towns were ordered to evacuate in preparation for a storm that has already cut a deadly path through parts of Mexico and the Caribbean.

A tornado watch is in place for an area covering more than 7 million people, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

Parts of eastern Texas were also on flood watch. Temperatures near the Texan coast are forecast at above 90F (32C) in the coming days, including heat indices as high as 108F on Sunday.

“Preparations should be rushed to completion in Texas,” the National Hurricane Service (NHC) said.

Dan Patrick, the state’s lieutenant governor, said: “One of the things that kind of triggers our concern a little bit, we’ve looked at all of the roads leaving the coast and the maps are still green. So we don’t see many people leaving.”

Patrick is serving as the acting governor while Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, is traveling overseas.

Officials warned the storm would cause power outages and flooding and also expressed worry that not enough coastal residents and beach vacationers in Beryl’s path were heeding warnings to leave.

More than 120 counties were under disaster declaration on Sunday after statements from Patrick that Beryl was a “serious threat to Texans”.

The NHC has been issuing frequent updates as the storm approaches, after Beryl caused devastation in the Caribbean as the earliest category-5 hurricane to form in the Atlantic on record. The climate crisis continues to fuel hurricanes and an above average season is projected to be in store this summer.

“Anybody living within this storm surge watch area, if you live in the storm surge evacuation zone, please start making preparations in case you are asked to evacuate by local officials,” Michael Brennan, the NHC director, told the Houston Chronicle. “Get ready to potentially leave your home, especially in those barrier islands.”

On Sunday, the port of Corpus Christi was closed because of expected gale-force winds and other ports along the Texas coast, principally serving the oil industry, also started to close or restrict vessel traffic.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has a launch site on South Padre island, said via a Nasa post on YouTube that cranes had lowered and the Ship 31 rocket had been rolled back to the production site in preparation for the storm’s arrival.

Over the past week, Beryl has smashed through the south-east Caribbean as a category 5 hurricane, killing 10 people, displacing hundreds of others and wrecking buildings. It then made landfall again in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula as a category 2 storm before moving north-west across excessively warm sea waters as a tropical storm.

Once Beryl has hit Texas, the storm is expected to disperse as a post-tropical cyclone, bringing rain and flooding to the US midwest and upper midwest.

“The fastest rate of intensification is likely to occur right before landfall, and the latest intensity forecast still shows Beryl becoming a hurricane again in 24 hours, with some additional intensification possible right up until landfall,” the NHC said.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 109 tropical systems have made landfall in Texas since 1850. The most recent was Hurricane Nicholas, a category 1 hurricane, which killed two people and caused $1bn in damage.

Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston area in 2017.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Hurricane Beryl has hit the Texas coast near Houston, according to the US National Weather Service.

The hurricane, which has sustained winds of 75mph (120km/h), was moving north-west at 10mph and made landfall near Matagorda.

Beryl was already inundating parts of Texas as coastal residents boarded up windows and beach towns were ordered to evacuate in preparation for a storm that has already cut a deadly path through parts of Mexico and the Caribbean.

A tornado watch is in place for an area covering more than 7 million people, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

Parts of eastern Texas were also on flood watch. Temperatures near the Texan coast are forecast at above 90F (32C) in the coming days, including heat indices as high as 108F on Sunday.

“Preparations should be rushed to completion in Texas,” the National Hurricane Service (NHC) said.

Dan Patrick, the state’s lieutenant governor, said: “One of the things that kind of triggers our concern a little bit, we’ve looked at all of the roads leaving the coast and the maps are still green. So we don’t see many people leaving.”

Patrick is serving as the acting governor while Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, is traveling overseas.

Officials warned the storm would cause power outages and flooding and also expressed worry that not enough coastal residents and beach vacationers in Beryl’s path were heeding warnings to leave.

More than 120 counties were under disaster declaration on Sunday after statements from Patrick that Beryl was a “serious threat to Texans”.

The NHC has been issuing frequent updates as the storm approaches, after Beryl caused devastation in the Caribbean as the earliest category-5 hurricane to form in the Atlantic on record. The climate crisis continues to fuel hurricanes and an above average season is projected to be in store this summer.

“Anybody living within this storm surge watch area, if you live in the storm surge evacuation zone, please start making preparations in case you are asked to evacuate by local officials,” Michael Brennan, the NHC director, told the Houston Chronicle. “Get ready to potentially leave your home, especially in those barrier islands.”

On Sunday, the port of Corpus Christi was closed because of expected gale-force winds and other ports along the Texas coast, principally serving the oil industry, also started to close or restrict vessel traffic.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has a launch site on South Padre island, said via a Nasa post on YouTube that cranes had lowered and the Ship 31 rocket had been rolled back to the production site in preparation for the storm’s arrival.

Over the past week, Beryl has smashed through the south-east Caribbean as a category 5 hurricane, killing 10 people, displacing hundreds of others and wrecking buildings. It then made landfall again in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula as a category 2 storm before moving north-west across excessively warm sea waters as a tropical storm.

Once Beryl has hit Texas, the storm is expected to disperse as a post-tropical cyclone, bringing rain and flooding to the US midwest and upper midwest.

“The fastest rate of intensification is likely to occur right before landfall, and the latest intensity forecast still shows Beryl becoming a hurricane again in 24 hours, with some additional intensification possible right up until landfall,” the NHC said.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 109 tropical systems have made landfall in Texas since 1850. The most recent was Hurricane Nicholas, a category 1 hurricane, which killed two people and caused $1bn in damage.

Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston area in 2017.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge stemming from two deadly crashes of 737 Max jetliners, after the government determined the company violated an agreement that had protected it from prosecution for more than three years, the US the government said in court filing late on Sunday.

Federal prosecutors gave Boeing the choice this week of entering a guilty plea and paying a fine as part of its sentence, or facing a trial on the felony criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the US.

The plea deal, which still must receive the approval of a federal judge to take effect, calls for Boeing to pay an additional $243.6m fine, according to a justice department (DOJ) document filed in federal court in Texas.

Boeing has also agreed to invest at least $455m over the next three years to strengthen its safety and compliance programs, the DOJ said. The department will appoint a third-party monitor to oversee the firm’s compliance. The monitor will have to publicly file with the court annual reports on the company’s progress.

A guilty plea potentially threatens the company’s ability to secure lucrative government contracts with the likes of the US defence department and Nasa, although it could seek waivers. Boeing became exposed to criminal prosecution after the justice department in May found the company violated a 2021 settlement involving the fatal crashes.

Prosecutors accused the American aerospace giant of deceiving regulators who approved the airplane and pilot-training requirements for it.

The plea deal however spares Boeing a contentious trial that could have exposed to even greater public scrutiny many of the company’s decisions leading up to the fatal Max plane crashes. It would also make it easier for the company, which will have a new CEO later this year, to move forward as it seeks approval for its planned acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems.

Boeing confirmed to the New York Times and Reuters that the company reached an agreement with the justice department, but declined to comment further.

The plea deal covers only wrongdoing by Boeing before the crashes, which killed all 346 passengers and crew members aboard two new Max jets. It does not give Boeing immunity for other incidents, including a panel that blew off a Max jetliner during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, a justice department official said.

The deal also does not cover any current or former Boeing officials, only the corporation.

Federal prosecutors alleged Boeing committed conspiracy to defraud the government by misleading regulators about a flight-control system that was implicated in the crashes, which happened in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia less than five months later.

The company’s guilty plea will be entered in US district court in Texas. The judge overseeing the case, who has criticised what he called “Boeing’s egregious criminal conduct”, could accept the plea and the punishment that prosecutors offered with it or he could reject the agreement, likely leading to new negotiations between the justice department and Boeing.

Relatives of the people who died in the crashes were briefed on the plea offer a week ago and at the time said they would ask the judge to reject it.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

Japan’s meteorological agency has issued a heatstroke alert for 26 of the country’s 47 prefectures, urging people not to go outside unless absolutely necessary, to use their air conditioners during the day and at night, and to drink plenty of water.

Authorities in Japan issued the extreme heat warnings after the temperature reached 40C for the first time this year on Sunday, as the country swelters in the grip of another heatwave.

Shizuoka in central Japan reported a temperature of 40C in the early afternoon on Sunday, while 244 other locations saw the mercury rise to 35C or over – a level officially recognised as “extremely hot”.

The temperature in Shizuoka, recorded shortly after 1 pm, was the highest in the city since records began in 1940, according to the Japan Times.

The meteorological agency warned earlier this year that temperatures are expected to be higher than average again this summer, perhaps exceeding those last summer – the hottest on record.

Hot and humid summers are normal in Japan , particularly after the rainy season ends in mid- to late July, but temperatures have been particularly high in recent years as a result of global heating and other climatic factors, according to experts.

There is particular concern for the welfare of the country’s large older population, who are more vulnerable to heatstroke. The fire and disaster management agency said that of the 2,276 people were taken to hospital for heatstroke in the last week of June, more than half were aged over 65.

Young children are also at risk. This month firefighters were called out in Kyoto after nine children showed symptoms of heatstroke during a school trip. Three were taken to hospital, according to public broadcaster NHK, which warned that temperatures had reached “life-threatening” levels.

At least four deaths associated with the weather have been reported in recent days: a man in his 70s who was found dead at his home after cutting the grass, and another in his 80s who had been working on his farm. On Sunday, media reported that a woman in her 90s was pronounced dead after collapsing at home, while an 83-year-old woman died after working outside.

In Tokyo, 198 people were taken to hospital with suspected heatstroke on Sunday, NHK said. The temperature in some parts of the city had reached at least 35C by mid-morning on Monday.

Statistics from the health ministry reported by the Japan Times show that the number of heatstroke-related deaths increased from an average of 201 people a year between 1995 and 1999, to an average of 1,295 from 2018 to 2022. Between 80 and 90% of those who die are over 65, according to data cited by the newspaper.

The maximum recorded temperature in Japan was 41.1°C in the central city of Hamamatsu on August 17, 2020, and in Kumagaya, north-west of Tokyo, on July, 23, 2018.

When he heard a hospital in Karachi was setting up a milk bank for babies, the news was a “huge relief” to Mohammad Munawwar.

With his wife very sick and their premature son Ayan in hospital, the 52-year-old father had had to collect milk five or six times a day from different female relatives who were breastfeeding their own babies.

His elation was short-lived; last month the bank closed before a single ounce could be deposited after complaints from Islamic clerics. Doctors who had been working on the bank for more than 12 months share Munawwar’s disappointment.

“We had been working on the bank [for] a year and had been in intense discussions with the religious clerics from Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi [for] the last eight months,” said Dr Jamal Raza, executive director of the Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN), which had established what should have been the first-ever milk bank in Pakistan, in collaboration with Unicef.

He said the scholars had raised several concerns, all of which were addressed, and after finally getting a nod from the seminary, the bank was inaugurated on 12 June.

But the seminary has now withdrawn its fatwa of assent, saying it had new advice that the hospital would find it not only “difficult but almost impossible to adhere to the strict conditions” set down by the institution’s clerics.

“The objective of the doctors who wanted to set up the human milk bank may be in good faith, but we concur with Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi, and do not think it needs to be encouraged,” said Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chair of the Pakistan Ulema Council, though he refused to elaborate.

The complexity arises due to the kinship bond. In Islam, when a baby feeds from a woman who is not the biological mother, any future marriage is forbidden between that baby and any of the woman’s own children.

Further exacerbating the concern is that in the 750 milk banks in nearly 70 countries, donors are anonymous and milk can be combined from several sources.

However, Raza said this would not have been an issue. “The original fatwa allowed us to mix a maximum of three to five mothers’ milk but we intend to keep it to one mother donating to one child at a time.”

Dr Azra Pechuho, health minister for Sindh province said: “When there is a properly developed digital identification system in place in Pakistan, keeping a record of which child got milk from which woman is not difficult.”

She said the state should not let this opportunity of “saving the lives of premature babies lapse because of this issue which is clearly resolvable”.

Ayan is not the only baby whose survival is at risk, said Dr Hassan Jabbar, who works in the 52-bed neonatal unit. The unit has, on average, between five and eight premature babies, who stay until they are strong enough to go home. A baby born at 26 weeks will stay for an average of six weeks, for instance.

“It’s the same story that keeps repeating and which is very distressing,” said Jabbar. “I just saw a baby weighing a kilogram whose mother died while giving birth; how do we feed him?”

Formula is no substitute he said. “I am totally against feeding babies with formula, it means putting them through even more complications. People say ventilators are important in an [intensive care unit]; I say mother’s milk is even more important. A vent costs 7.5m rupees [£4,000]; human milk is free.”

Leading paediatrician Dr DS Akram said breast milk protects babies in a way formula milk does not. “Premature babies have a very underdeveloped protection against bacteria in their intestines. If fed formula milk, [they] are at high risk of developing a severe gut infection called necrotising enterocolitis, which has a very high death rate.”

That is why, said Pechuho, “If we want our premature babies to survive we have to have human milk banks in all our obstetric and paediatric hospitals.”

Of the almost 15 million babies in the world born prematurely each year, nearly 1 million die due to complications.

According to the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2018, the neonatal mortality rate in the country is 42 per 1,000 live births, one of the highest in the world.

“A premature baby cannot latch, cannot suckle and nor can he swallow, he has to be fed through a tube,” said Dr Syed Rehan Ali of the neonatal intensive care unit at SICHN, adding: “The milk bank was one way of reducing our dismal neonatal mortality rate.”

Last week, Pechuho told lawmakers in the Sindh assembly she will call upon the Council of Islamic Ideology to help make the initiative “Sharia-compliant”.

Now a month old, Ayan is on formula. “He’s gained weight and looks good,” said Munawwar. But cost is now a concern. “A tin of milk costs 2,600 rupees and it is consumed within six days,” he said. “I have three other kids and do not have a regular job,” he added.

Formula milk is not without danger, say doctors, in places where few adhere to safe practices of sterilising bottles and teats or are able to ensure the water used for mixing is clean. “Mothers from lower socioeconomic groups often reduce the proportion of the milk powder to the water for it to last longer, to save the cost,” said Akram.

Despite laws promoting breastfeeding, Akram said the relentless marketing of formula continues and has had an impact. It is now illegal for breastmilk substitute companies to approach healthcare facilities and for health professionals to promote their products.

Just 48% Pakistani mothers exclusively breastfeed their babies, lower than in Bangladesh (65%) and India (64%). In Sri Lanka 82% of women breastfeed their babies in the first six months.

The clerics did not respond to requests for comment.

Paramount Global, one of Hollywood’s best-known companies, has agreed to a merger with the independent film studio Skydance, in a deal that ends its links with the Redstone family.

The Paramount chair, Shari Redstone, whose father, Sumner, bought the company in 1994, has given the green light to the sale of the family’s controlling stake in the company behind classic films such as The Godfather, Titanic and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Paramount also owns the television network CBS and channels including MTV, Nickelodeon and the UK’s Channel 5.

The deal, which values the company at $28bn (£22bn), brings an end to more than six months of negotiations.

Skydance has agreed to invest $8bn into the new company as part of the merger deal. Skydance will then pay a further $2.4bn to buy National Amusements, the Redstone-owned theatre movie operator that holds nearly 80% of voting shares in Paramount.

The agreement comes four years after the death of Sumner Redstone, whose company Viacom bought Paramount Pictures three decades ago in a deal worth $10bn.

Shari Redstone had pulled the plug on advanced talks with Skydance Media last month. National Amusements, her company, said the two sides had been unable to reach mutually acceptable terms.

Last week, however, Skydance and Redstone were said to have reached a preliminary deal.

Skydance, the production group, is led by the producer David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, the tech tycoon who co-founded Oracle. It assembled a consortium of investors to buy National Amusements, and then merge with Paramount.

Paramount and Skydance have partnered on several recent big releases, including Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and Star Trek Into Darkness.

The deal is backed by several private equity firms, including RedBird Capital Partners, which walked away from a joint bid with the UAE government to buy Telegraph Media Group in April, saying new legislation meant the acquisition was “no longer feasible”.

Redstone said: “Given the changes in the industry, we want to fortify Paramount for the future while ensuring that content remains king.

“Our hope is that the Skydance transaction will enable Paramount’s continued success in this rapidly changing environment.

“As a longtime production partner to Paramount, Skydance knows Paramount well and has a clear strategic vision and the resources to take it to its next stage of growth. We believe in Paramount and we always will.”

Ellison said: “I am incredibly grateful to Shari Redstone and her family who have agreed to entrust us with the opportunity to lead Paramount.

“We are committed to energising the business and bolstering Paramount with contemporary technology, new leadership and a creative discipline that aims to enrich generations to come.”