Israeli forces say the Hamas military chief, Mohammed Deif, the mastermind of the 7 October attack, was the target of a strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, which, according to the territory’s emergency services, has killed 90 people and injured hundreds more.

Deif, 58, who has been on Israel’s most-wanted list since 1995 and escaped multiple Israeli assassination attempts, is believed to be the chief architect of the attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and triggered the Israel-Hamas war.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Rafa Salama, another top Hamas official, was also targeted in the strike. The IDF did not have details on whether the two were killed.

A military official later said they were “still checking and verifying the result of the strike”, and did not deny it took place inside an area the Israeli military had designated as safe for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

“The air force and the southern command attacked, based on accurate intelligence information, in the area where the two top targets of the Hamas terrorist organisation and other terrorists were hiding among civilians,” reads a joint statement released by IDF and Shin Bet intelligence agency. “The area that was attacked is an open and wooded area, with several buildings and sheds.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said: “There is still no conclusive certainty that the two have been foiled, but I want to assure you that one way or another we will reach the top of Hamas.”

Hamas’s deputy leader, Khalil al-Hayya, told Al Jazeera TV that Deif had not been killed in the strikes and, addressing Netanyahu, said: “Deif is listening to you right now and mocking your lies.”

Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday that Israel’s strike on a camp for displaced people in Khan Younis killed at least 90 Palestinians and injured 289 others. Residents said they witnessed at least five “big warplanes bombing in the middle of Al Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis”.

Most of the injured were sent to Nasser hospital. However, according to officials and medics, the facility is “no longer able to function” as doctors are “overwhelmed with large numbers of casualties”.

Hamas says that Israeli claims of targeting leaders of the Palestinian militant group are “false” and are aimed at “justifying” the attack.

The Israeli military said its strike on Deif was in a “fenced Hamas area” and that most people there were militants.

Earlier, a senior Hamas official called the Israeli allegations “nonsense”. “All the martyrs are civilians and what happened was a grave escalation of the war of genocide, backed by the American support and world silence,” Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters, adding that the strike showed Israel was not interested in reaching a ceasefire deal. He did not confirm whether Deif had been present.

The targeted area of Nus Street contains more than 80,000 displaced people from across Gaza.

Witnesses said ambulances and civil defence crews were targeted after the strike, with a number of hovering Israeli aircraft “shooting and targeting directly at the ambulances and rescue teams upon their arrival”.

The Gaza health ministry said: “The number of the victims is still increasing because bodies are still being recovered beneath the rubble”.

“Rescue teams are still recovering dozens of martyrs and wounded until this moment from the site of bombing and targeting,” reads a statement by the government information office in Gaza. “This massacre comes in conjunction with the lack of hospitals that can receive this large number of martyrs and wounded, and in conjunction with the occupation’s destruction of the health system in the Gaza Strip.”

Not seen in public for years, Deif, known as “guest”, has frequently changed locations to elude Israeli detection. Engaged with Hamas from a young age, the former science student orchestrated a series of suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians in the 1990s and then again a decade later.

Speculations suggest that Deif may have been disabled in one of the numerous Israeli attempts on his life, with his spouse and young children having died in a 2014 airstrike.

Referred to by Israeli authorities as “a dead man walking”, Deif’s actual name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri.

On 7 October, Hamas issued a rare voice recording of Deif announcing the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation.

The Saudi channel Al-Hadath reported that Salama, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, was killed in the strike and that Deif was seriously wounded.

The death of Deif could represent a significant victory for Israel and a devastating blow to Hamas. The operation could provide Netanyahu with a potential advantage, as he has made clear his intention to continue the war until Hamas’s military capabilities are destroyed, with Deif’s death being a significant step in that direction.

Saturday’s strikes came as US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators were actively working to narrow the divide between Israel and Hamas in a proposed three-phase ceasefire and hostage release plan.

The talks were halted after three days of intense negotiations failed to produce a viable outcome, two Egyptian security sources said on Saturday, blaming Israel for lacking a genuine intent to reach agreement.

The sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the behaviour of the Israeli mediators revealed “internal discord”.

According to the sources, the Israeli delegation would give approvals on several conditions under discussion, but then come back with amendments or introduce new conditions that risked sinking the negotiations.

The sources said the mediators viewed the “contradictions, delays in responses, and the introduction of new terms contrary to what was previously agreed” as signs the Israeli side viewed the talks as a formality aimed at influencing public opinion.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday accused Netanyahu of seeking to block a ceasefire in the Gaza war with “heinous massacres”.

He said Hamas had shown “a positive and responsible response” to new proposals for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange, but “the Israeli position taken by Netanyahu was to place obstacles that prevent reaching an agreement,” Haniyeh said in a statement.

Mohammed Deif is the head of the military wing of Hamas and one of the masterminds of the group’s bloody surprise attack on 7 October which triggered the latest war in Gaza.

Israeli officials said Deif – whose real name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri – was the target of Saturday’s airstrike, which levelled several buildings in Khan Younis and killed 90 people, according to local health authorities.

Experienced, capable and utterly committed to the militant Islamist organisation, Deif has survived at least seven Israeli assassination attempts. The question is whether the 58-year-old has survived an eighth. If Israel has killed such a significant figure, this will be chalked up as a major step towards an increasingly elusive victory.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have so far only said the attack was based on “precise intelligence” and “struck” Deif but not that he is dead.

Deif means “the guest” in Arabic, a nom de guerre he owes to his effort to evade Israeli assassination attempts by moving location almost every night and staying in the homes of supporters of Hamas.

He was born in 1965 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, the southern Gaza City, one of dozens set up to house some of those Palestinians forced to flee their homes in the wars surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. His family was poor but Deif did sufficiently well at school to study for a degree in sciences from the Islamic University in Gaza, an Islamist stronghold. Deif joined Hamas when it was founded in 1987 in the first months of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

Working closely with Yahya Sinwar, the current leader of Hamas in Gaza, Deif soon showed a talent for military operations and internal security. In 1989, he was arrested by Israel and spent about 16 months in detention. Through the 90s, Deif helped plan and execute suicide bombings in Israel designed to derail the ongoing peace process and avenge assassinations of Hamas leaders.

Deif and Hamas sources say he lost an eye and sustained serious injuries in one leg in one of Israel’s past efforts to kill him. Some say he is confined to a wheelchair; others say this is not true though he has a pronounced limp. His wife, seven-month-old son, and three-year-old daughter were killed by an Israeli airstrike during the war in Gaza of 2014.

In recent years, Deif has overseen Hamas’ efforts both to build more effective rockets in Gaza and the immense tunnel complex across the territory. He is also thought to have been tasked with training the militants who attacked Israel last year, particularly the elite Nukhba forces.

If Hamas’s ability to fire rockets into Israel has been battered during the conflict and many of the Nukhba are dead, the tunnels continue to protect Sinwar and other leaders of the organisation. Israel’s invasion of Gaza has so far killed more than 38,000 according to Palestinian officials and reduced much of the territory to rubble.

Deif is thought to have been directing military operations from the tunnels and, possibly, discreet locations above ground, though he has never been seen.

There are only four known images of Deif: one in his 20s, another of him masked, an image of his shadow, which was used when an audio tape of a speech he made was broadcast on 7 October, and one found by Israel in an intelligence haul of millions of computer files during the invasion.

Israeli security services will now be rushing to confirm Deif’s death. This may take some time, but his passing will be hailed in Israel as a very significant achievement for the Israeli military and will be a welcome boost for the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. It would mean two of the three most senior individuals in Hamas in Gaza – described as “dead men walking” by top Israeli officials last year – have now been eliminated. Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas’ military wing, was killed in March. Sinwar remains alive.

Kenyan police said that they had found more bags filled with dismembered female body parts on Saturday, the latest macabre discovery at a rubbish dump that has horrified and angered the country.

Detectives have been scouring the site in the Nairobi slum of Mukuru since the mutilated corpses of at least six women were found on Friday in sacks floating in a sea of garbage.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) on Saturday said that another five bags had been retrieved from the abandoned quarry, three of them containing female body parts, including severed legs and two torsos.

“We want to assure the public that our investigations will be thorough and shall cover a wide range of areas, including but not limited to the possible activities of cultists and serial killings,” it said in a statement.

Kenya was left reeling last year by the discovery of mass graves in a forest near the Indian Ocean coast containing the bodies of hundreds of followers of a doomsday sect, one of the world’s worst cult-related massacres.

The country’s law enforcement services are also under scrutiny after dozens of people were killed during anti-government demonstrations last month, with rights groups accusing officers of using excessive force and of abducting protesters.

Police on Friday had reported finding bodies of at least six women in Mukuru, while the state-funded police watchdog said nine bodies had been found, seven of them women.

Tensions have been running high at the Mukuru site, with local media reports that police had fired into the air to try to disperse an angry crowd.

The DCI said a team of detectives and forensic experts “were impeded by agitated members of the public from accessing the scene”.

The Independent Police Oversight Authority (Ipoa) on Friday had said that it was investigating whether there was any police involvement in the gruesome saga.

“The bodies, wrapped in bags and secured by nylon ropes, had visible marks of torture and mutilation,” it said, noting that the dumpsite was less than 100 metres from a police station.

The Ipoa also said it was looking into claims of abductions of demonstrators who went missing after the deadly anti-government protests, but did not link those missing to the dumped bodies.

Some people on social media have described them as victims of femicide.

The Kenyan president, William Ruto, on Saturday said there was “no justification” for any Kenyan to lose their life.

“We are a democratic country guided by the rule of law. Those involved in mysterious killings in Nairobi and any other part of the country will be held to account,” he said on X.

Kenya’s feared police force is often accused of extrajudicial killings and other rights abuses, but convictions are rare.

A coalition of civil society and rights groups said the Mukuru discoveries came amid a “troubling surge” in cases of mysterious disappearances and abductions, particularly after the anti-tax protests.

“It represents a grave violation of human rights and raises serious concerns about the rule of law and security in our country,” the coalition said.

National police chief Japhet Koome resigned on Friday after being the target of much public anger over the protest deaths.

Ruto is scrambling to contain the worst crisis of his rule over the deeply unpopular plans for tax hikes, which he has now scrapped.

Crowds that gathered at the dumpsite on Friday chanted “Ruto must go”, the slogan of Gen-Z Kenyans leading the demonstrations that have now morphed into a wider campaign against the president, corruption and alleged police brutality.

On Monday, doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie went on trial along with 94 co-defendants over the deaths of more than 400 followers he is accused of inciting to starve themselves to death to meet Jesus.

He and his co-accused also face charges of murder, manslaughter and child cruelty in separate cases over what has been dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre”.

A hundred years ago, the plant scientist Arthur Watkins launched a remarkable project. He began collecting samples of wheat from all over the globe, nagging consuls and business agents across the British empire and beyond to supply him with grain from local markets.

His persistence was exceptional and, a century later, it is about to reap dramatic results. A UK-Chinese collaboration has sequenced the DNA of all the 827 kinds of wheat, assembled by Watkins, that have been nurtured at the John Innes Centre near Norwich for most of the past century.

In doing so, scientists have created a genetic goldmine by pinpointing previously unknown genes that are now being used to create hardy varieties with improved yields that could help feed Earth’s swelling population.

Strains are now being developed that include wheat which is able to grow in salty soil, while researchers at Punjab Agricultural University are working to improve disease resistance from seeds that they received from the John Innes Centre. Other strains include those that would reduce the need for nitrogen fertilisers, the manufacture of which is a major source of carbon emissions.

“Essentially we have uncovered a goldmine,” said Simon Griffiths, a geneticist at the John Innes Centre and one of the project’s leaders.

“This is going to make an enormous difference to our ability to feed the world as it gets hotter and agriculture comes under increasing climatic strain.”

Today, one in five calories consumed by humans come from wheat, and every year the crop is eaten by more and more people as the world’s population continues to grow.

“Wheat has been a cornerstone of human civilisation,” added Griffiths. “In regions such as Europe, north Africa, large parts of Asia, and subsequently North America, its cultivation fed great empires, from ancient Egypt’s to the growth of modern Britain.”

This wheat was derived from wild varieties that were originally domesticated and cultivated in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, 10,000 years ago. Many of these varieties and their genes have disappeared over the millennia, a process that was accelerated about a century ago as the science of plant breeding became increasingly sophisticated and varieties with properties that were then considered of no value were discarded.

“That is why the Watkins collection is so important,” said Griffiths. “It contains varieties that had been lost but which will be invaluable in creating wheat that can provide healthy yields in the harsh conditions that now threaten agriculture.”

The project’s other leader, Prof Shifeng Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said: “We can retrace the novel, functional and beneficial diversity that were lost in modern wheats after the ‘green revolution’ in the 20th century, and have the opportunity to add them back into breeding programmes.”

Scientists had wanted to pinpoint and study the wheat genes in the Watkins collection after the development of large-scale DNA sequencing more than a decade ago, but faced an unusual problem. The genome of wheat is huge: it is made up of 17bn units of DNA, compared with the 3bn base pairs that make up the human genome.

“The wheat genome is full of ­little retro elements and that has made it more difficult and, crucially, more expensive to sequence,” said Griffiths. “However, thanks to our Chinese colleagues who carried out the detailed sequencing work, we have overcome that problem.”

Griffiths and his colleagues sent samples from the Watkins collection to Cheng and were rewarded three months later with the arrival of a suitcase crammed with hard drives. These contained a petabyte – one million gigabytes – of data that had been decoded by the Chinese group using the Watkins collection.

Astonishingly, this data revealed that modern wheat varieties only make use of 40% of the genetic diversity found in the collection.

“We have found that the Watkins collection is packed full of useful variation which is simply absent in modern wheat,” said Griffiths.

These lost traits are now being tested by plant breeders with the aim of creating a host of new varieties that would have been forgotten if it had not been for the efforts of Arthur Watkins.

A shy pioneer

Arthur Watkins’s introduction to agriculture was unusual. At the age of 19, he was sent to fight in the trenches in the first world war. He survived, and for several months after the armistice he was ordered to remain in France to act as an assistant agricultural officer, tasked with helping local farmers feed the troops who were still waiting to be shipped home.

The post triggered his interest in agriculture and he applied to study it at Cambridge when he returned to Britain, said Simon Griffiths of the John Innes Centre. After graduating, Watkins – a shy, reserved academic – joined the university’s department of agriculture, where he began his life’s work: collecting wheat samples from across the planet.

“Crucially, Watkins had realised that, as we began breeding new wheat varieties, genes that were then thought to be of little use and which were being deleted from strains might still have future value,” said Griffiths.

“His thinking was incredibly ahead of its time. He realised that genetic diversity – in this case, of wheat – was being eroded and that we badly needed to halt that.

“Very few scientists were thinking of this issue in those days. Watkins was clearly thinking well ahead of his time, and we have much to be grateful for that.”

The fitness instructor Richard Simmons, who rocketed to fame in the 1980s with up-tempo neon-colored exercise videos such as Sweatin’ to the Oldies, has died.

Simmons had just thanked fans on social media for birthday wishes after he turned 76 on Friday. “I never got so many messages about my birthday in my life!” Simmons wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I am sitting here writing emails. Have a most beautiful rest of your Friday.”

ABC News said Simmons’ death was confirmed by his representative on Saturday, following a 911 call made by his housekeeper. It added that Simmons appeared to have died of natural causes, citing police sources.

Born in New Orleans as Milton Teagle Simmons, Simmons rose to fame in the 1970s and captured the zeitgeist in the 1980s through a series of exercise videos, conducted in often lurid outfits. He also opened a number of gyms, promoted a range of products and became an established media presence on TV and radio over the decades.

Having long been the most recognizable face of fitness and healthy living in the US, promoting various weight-loss programs in his often flamboyant style, Simmons also became involved in aspects of political activism, such as his support for non-competitive physical education in public schools.

In the past decade, Simmons had largely retreated from public life. In March, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with skin cancer, underneath his eye. In the same month, he posted on social media that “I am … dying. The truth is we all are dying. Every day we live we are getting closer to our death.”

He later clarified that he was not actually about to die and that he intended to pass on a message for people to embrace life.

It has produced one of the most consistent sets of negative results in the history of science. For more than 60 years, researchers have tried to find a single convincing piece of evidence to support the idea that we share the universe with other intelligent beings. Despite these decades of effort, they have failed to make contact of any kind.

But the hunt for alien civilisations may be entering a new era, researchers believe. Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world’s largest scientific research programme dedicated to finding alien civilisations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos.

These innovations will be outlined at the group’s annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week. Several hundred scientists, from astronomers to zoologists, are expected to attend.

Astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen, said: “There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI. They are going to transform how we look for alien civilisations.”

Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometre Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world’s most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world’s largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars.

Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyse these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilisations, added Croft.

“Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters – things like that.”

The importance of being able to detect civilisations from the signatures of their everyday activities is supported by astrophysicist Prof Adam Frank of the University of Rochester in New York. “By searching for signatures of an alien society’s day-to-day activities – a technosignature – we are building entirely new toolkits to find intelligent, civilisation-building life,” he writes in his new book, The Little Book of Aliens.

All sorts of technosignatures have been suggested as indicators of the presence of alien civilisations, from artificial lighting to atmospheric pollution. Some scientists have even suggested that alien civilisations could be spotted from the solar panels they have built. Solar panels absorb visible light but strongly reflect ultraviolet and infrared radiation, which could be detected using a powerful telescope.

However, this would only be possible to spot if vast tracts of a planet’s surface had been covered in solar farms and hundreds of hours of observing time were committed to such a search, says astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, writing in the latest edition of the BBC’s Sky at Night magazine.

Other alien efforts to trap solar radiation could be even more elaborate and conspicuous, however. The US physicist Freeman Dyson once proposed that some civilisations might be advanced enough to build vast arrays of solar panels encircling their home stars. These great orbiting edifices – known as Dyson spheres – would be detectable from Earth, and several candidates have been proposed, including Boyajian’s star, in the constellation Cygnus, whose output of light is sporadic and unpredictable. Some suggested this could be being caused by a Dyson sphere, though recent observations have ruled out the possibility.

The hunt for alien civilisations has been a cornerstone of cinematic sci-fi spectaculars from E.T. to Contact, Arrival and District 9. However, extraterrestrial life forms have remained the stuff of fiction, despite efforts which began in earnest in 1960 when astronomer Frank Drake used a 26-metre radio telescope to search for possible signals from the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. None were detected – a state of affairs that has continued despite vast increases in the power and sophistication of modern telescopes.

Whether this stream of negative results continues remains to be seen. Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. “We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere.

“I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it’s possible.”

It has produced one of the most consistent sets of negative results in the history of science. For more than 60 years, researchers have tried to find a single convincing piece of evidence to support the idea that we share the universe with other intelligent beings. Despite these decades of effort, they have failed to make contact of any kind.

But the hunt for alien civilisations may be entering a new era, researchers believe. Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world’s largest scientific research programme dedicated to finding alien civilisations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos.

These innovations will be outlined at the group’s annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week. Several hundred scientists, from astronomers to zoologists, are expected to attend.

Astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen, said: “There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI. They are going to transform how we look for alien civilisations.”

Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometre Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world’s most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world’s largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars.

Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyse these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilisations, added Croft.

“Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters – things like that.”

The importance of being able to detect civilisations from the signatures of their everyday activities is supported by astrophysicist Prof Adam Frank of the University of Rochester in New York. “By searching for signatures of an alien society’s day-to-day activities – a technosignature – we are building entirely new toolkits to find intelligent, civilisation-building life,” he writes in his new book, The Little Book of Aliens.

All sorts of technosignatures have been suggested as indicators of the presence of alien civilisations, from artificial lighting to atmospheric pollution. Some scientists have even suggested that alien civilisations could be spotted from the solar panels they have built. Solar panels absorb visible light but strongly reflect ultraviolet and infrared radiation, which could be detected using a powerful telescope.

However, this would only be possible to spot if vast tracts of a planet’s surface had been covered in solar farms and hundreds of hours of observing time were committed to such a search, says astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, writing in the latest edition of the BBC’s Sky at Night magazine.

Other alien efforts to trap solar radiation could be even more elaborate and conspicuous, however. The US physicist Freeman Dyson once proposed that some civilisations might be advanced enough to build vast arrays of solar panels encircling their home stars. These great orbiting edifices – known as Dyson spheres – would be detectable from Earth, and several candidates have been proposed, including Boyajian’s star, in the constellation Cygnus, whose output of light is sporadic and unpredictable. Some suggested this could be being caused by a Dyson sphere, though recent observations have ruled out the possibility.

The hunt for alien civilisations has been a cornerstone of cinematic sci-fi spectaculars from E.T. to Contact, Arrival and District 9. However, extraterrestrial life forms have remained the stuff of fiction, despite efforts which began in earnest in 1960 when astronomer Frank Drake used a 26-metre radio telescope to search for possible signals from the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. None were detected – a state of affairs that has continued despite vast increases in the power and sophistication of modern telescopes.

Whether this stream of negative results continues remains to be seen. Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. “We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere.

“I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it’s possible.”

• Russian launched a “double tap” missile attack on a small town near Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, killing two people, an emergency services official and a police officer, officials said. Officials also reported four dead in a series of attacks in Donetsk region to the south-east and two more in southern Kherson region. Prosecutors said the mid-afternoon missile attack targeted the railway station in Budy, south-west of Kharkiv. After rescue teams arrived, a second missile hit the area. Twenty-five people were injured in the incidents, including two children. Interior minister Ihor Klymenko said the head of the Kharkiv district emergency services was killed, along with a police officer from a rapid reaction unit. Among the injured were three emergency workers, a policeman and about 20 civilians.

• The Kremlin warns that the stationing of long-range US missiles in Germany could make European capitals targets for Russian missiles in a repeat of cold war-style confrontation. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov spoke of a “paradox” in which “Europe is a target for our missiles, our country is a target for US missiles in Europe”, reports Agence France-Presse. “We have enough capacity to contain these missiles but the potential victims are the capitals of these countries,” Peskov said, speaking to Russian state television. Peskov also hinted that such a confrontation could undermine Europe as a whole – in the same way that the cold war ended with the Soviet Union’s collapse. “Europe is coming apart. Europe is not living its best moment. In a different configuration, a repeat of history is inevitable,” he said. The US announced during this week’s Nato summit that it would periodically station long-range weapons including Tomahawk cruise missiles in Germany from 2026 as a deterrent. Russia had already criticised the move and accused Washington of taking a step towards a new cold war and of directly participating in the conflict in Ukraine.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has played down US president Joe Biden’s recent gaffe at a Nato summit where he introduced the Ukrainian leader as Russian “president Putin”, saying it was a “mistake” that could now be forgotten. “It’s a mistake. I think [the] United States gave a lot of support for Ukrainians. We can forget some mistakes, I think so,” Zelenskiy told reporters after touching down at Ireland’s Shannon airport. Zelenskiy is visiting Irish leader Simon Harris on his way back from the summit in Washington. Zelenskiy’s meeting with Harris is expected to cement Ireland’s support for Ukraine’s bid towards European Union membership.

• Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko says tensions had subsided at his country’s border with Ukraine and extra troops deployed there were being sent back to their bases. A close ally of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko said Belarusian intelligence determined that Ukraine had withdrawn troops from sensitive areas, according to the official BelTA news agency. “That means that those [Ukrainian] troops which had been brought in as reinforcements are now gone … There are now no difficulties with the Ukrainians and I hope there will be none,” Lukashenko said. Belarus’s defence ministry said late last month that it was reinforcing its border after a security incident and in response to a Ukrainian troop buildup. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s border guards, in a statement posted online, dismissed the notion of an extra deployment.

• European leaders will meet at the upcoming European Political Community (EPC) to discuss Ukraine and the “arc of conflict and instability” threatening Europe’s borders. UK prime minister Keir Starmer warned that “Europe is at the forefront of some of the greatest challenges of our time”, highlighting “Russia’s barbaric war” that “continues to reverberate across our continent”. Starmer has reiterated the UK’s “ironclad” support for Ukraine and is expected to use the meeting to push for continued international military and financial support ahead of what is expected to be a “difficult winter”. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to travel to the UK next week to address European leaders at the EPC.

• Germany said it “won’t be intimidated” over its support for Ukraine after reports of an alleged assassination attempt on the head of a leading defence company. This week, CNN reported that US intelligence services had foiled a plot to kill Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall, which has provided large amount of armaments to Ukraine. The report, which cited numerous US and western officials, said the plot was one of several Russian government plans to kill defence industry executives in European countries that have supported Ukraine’s war effort. German interior ministry spokesperson Maximilian Kall declined to comment on the reports, but said Germany takes the “significantly increased threat from Russian aggression very seriously”. “We know that Putin’s regime wants above all to undermine our support for Ukraine in its defence against the Russian war of aggression, but the German government won’t be intimidated,” Kall said. Asked about the reports, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that they “do not contain any serious arguments and are based on anonymous sources”. “It’s all presented in the style of another fake story. Therefore, such reports cannot be taken seriously.” Peskov said.

A court in Pakistan has acquitted the former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife on charges of unlawful marriage, just a day after his party won the majority of reserved seats in the supreme court.

Syed Zulfi Bukhari, an adviser to Imran Khan on international affairs and media, said: “The court has not only thrown out the case but the judge has ordered for the immediate release of Imran Khan and his wife.”

Bukhari said there is not a single pending case against Khan to keep him in prison. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party asked for the immediate release of Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi.

Khan and Bibi were sentenced to seven years days before the general elections in February by a local court in Pakistan, which found them guilty of breaking Islamic law and failing to observe the required interval between Bibi’s divorce and their marriage.

Khan was sentenced in four big cases including the unlawful marriage and another involving allegations of leaking state secrets and has been imprisoned since last August. He has been acquitted in all cases or granted bail.

Khan’s supporters and close aides were celebrating the acquittal of the unlawful marriage allegations, known as the Iddat case, hoping it would pave the way for his release. But minutes after Khan’s acquittal order, local media reported that an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan had issued written orders for the arrest and questioning of Khan in cases related to 9 May violence during his arrest last year.

Soon after his arrest, violence erupted across Pakistan when Khan’s supporters attacked military installations and buildings in protest. Khan has been accused of being the mastermind of the unrest.

Bukhari said: “Now all of sudden we are just hearing that Khan has to be questioned in cases related to 9 May violence and also his wife in a corruption case. It is a mockery of justice but we know these fake cases won’t stand in the court of law.

“The courts are releasing Imran Khan but the administration and military establishment are putting fake cases one after another to put him in prison. Why were these cases not brought before?”

Khan had accused Pakistan’s powerful military and its chief of harbouring a personal grudge against him and ordering his arrest. For decades, Pakistan has been ruled by military dictators, and the powerful military still plays a huge role in politics.

Fawad Chaudhry, the former information minister and a former close aide of Khan, said he is behind bars because of politics not criminal activity.

“[The] arrest of Imran Khan is [a] continuation of [a] political vendetta against Pakistan’s most popular political leader,” Chaudhry said. “The authorities are too scared of freeing Imran Khan hence [a] series of fake criminal cases are put together to keep him in jail.”

Zahid Hussain, a political analyst and author, said Khan’s acquittal in the Iddat case was very much expected as it was frivolous and had no legal standing.

Hussain said: “It was also expected that the military establishment does not want Khan to be out of prison and he will be arrested in another concocted case. But it will not be easy for the military to keep Khan in the prison for quite long now as the judiciary is asserting itself, we have seen yesterday in the major reserved seats case, and the pressure from the military and government is not working.”

What can we say to make you go, Joe? It is the question that more and more Democrats – elected members and ordinary voters – are asking as the rumbling crisis over Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, sparked by a pitiful display in the debate in Atlanta, degenerates into a war of attrition.

Last Thursday, the president’s fate appeared perched on the edge of an abyss, as Congress members deserted him, senators poured out their heartfelt fears at a tearful meeting with White House staff, and even his own close aides and advisers briefed reporters that he should stand aside.

Then Biden gave a rare press conference to close Nato’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington. With the exception of the now half-expected flubs – referring to Kamala Harris as “Vice-President Trump” (having earlier introduced Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as “President Putin”) – the feared Atlanta-style disaster did not materialise; instead, the 81-year-old Biden seemed to confound his advanced years as he expounded on foreign policy with an authority that would certainly have eluded Donald Trump, even if several thoughts trailed off unfinished.

Consequently, the president is now locked in a battle of wills with key segments of his party, with the campaign to coax him to step aside and avert a possible catastrophic election defeat boiling down to who has the greater conviction.

Campaigning in the vital swing state of Michigan on Friday, Biden made plain how strong his will was, evoking scenes that would have fitted a Trump rally.

“They hammer me because I sometimes confuse names. I say that’s Charlie instead of Bill,” Biden told a rally in Detroit, blaming his predicament on the media. “But guess what? Donald Trump has gotten a free pass.”

His broadside prompted boos from the crowd, some of whom turned to point accusingly at watching reporters in a scene with striking Trumpian parallels, the New York Times reported, while mention of Trump, his presumed Republican opponent, provoked chants of “lock him up” resembling those aimed at Hillary Clinton by the former president’s own supporters in the 2016 campaign.

The scenes unfolded after Mike Levin, a California Democrat, became the party’s first member of Congress to tell Biden to his face that he should step aside and “pass the torch” in a virtual meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Unmoved, the president replied that voters should “touch me, poke me, ask me questions” if they think he is too old to serve or beat Trump, as polls suggesta significant majority doesmany do.

“I think I know what I’m doing, because the truth of the matter is – I’m going to say something outrageous – no president in three years has done what we have in three years other than Franklin Roosevelt,” he reportedly said.

Where does the Democratic party go in the face of this obduracy, with its own national convention little more than a month away?

The default answer may be to hope for the worst as a means of hoping for the best, according to Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. That means waiting for Biden to undergo another crack-up reminiscent of the debate fiasco during the rash of public appearances he has promised to re-establish his credibility.

“I asked one member of Congress what extra pressure they could bring and he answered, ‘that’s all we got unless there’s another episode’,” said Sabato. “Does he freeze at the podium, does he start babbling? This member of Congress correctly pointed out to me that Trump has done the very same thing a number of times and has gotten away with it. But Biden can’t now get away with it – and he’s done it to himself.”

Another imagined scenario – widely touted, yet far from inevitable – is of party elders visiting the White House and persuading Biden to stand aside in the wider interest, as Republican grandees did with Richard Nixon in 1974 at the denouement of Watergate, telling him he would be impeached if he did not resign.

Speculation is rife that similar moves are afoot with Biden. “I think that there will be a visit to the White House by elder statesmen, probably Barack Obama, possibly Bill Clinton, John Kerry – contemporaries of Biden’s – who just say: ‘“Look at the party, look at yourself. You just can’t continue’,” said John Zogby, a veteran US pollster.

Without such dramatic symbolism Democrats face a “daunting task”, he argued, in persuading Biden to surrender a political prize he spent half a century of public service coveting and preparing for.

Short of that, Nancy Pelosi, the 84-year-old former speaker of the House of Representatives, and the former president, Barack Obama, are reported to have conferred privately about their concerns. Obama was apparently told in advance by George Clooney, a major Democratic fundraiser, about an opinion article the actor had written for the New York Times calling on the president to end his campaign – and did nothing to stop it.

In a drama-laden report following Biden’s Nato press conference, the Axios website described an unofficial “committee to un-elect the president” consisting of figures who had served in the administrations of Obama and Bill Clinton, that was “plotting hourly” to push Biden out of the race. These individuals were reported to be commissioning polls, lobbying ex-presidents and organising donors – with some effect on Friday when it was announced that $90m of donations had been frozen while Biden heads the ticket.

Yet signs persist that Biden’s camp may have fiercer convictions than their more numerous doubters. At Thursday’s meeting with White House staffers, the pro-Biden Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman – who revived his political career after suffering a stroke – crudely dismissed colleagues arguing that the president risked shredding his legacy if he stayed in the race only to lose to Trump.

“You have legacies, too, if you fuck over a great president over a bad debate,” he said, according to the Politico website.

Faced with that fervour, does the Democratic party’s elite – derided and blamed by Biden last week for his plight – have the stomach to apply the coup de grace and say time’s up, as GOP leaders once did with Nixon?

Sabato is not hopeful. “I guarantee you they won’t do it,” he said. “The Democrats have a talent for blowing races they could win. This may be another one.”

Every day for the last two weeks, Johannes-Harm Hovinga has sat at a raised table in Museum Arnhem, using a two-hole page puncher to systematically perforate the 7,705-page sixth assessment report produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

He has printed it out on coloured paper and the result is a vibrant heap piling up at the artist’s feet.

Hovinga remains completely silent during each performance in the Netherlands-based museum. He drinks water, but doesn’t eat, with bathroom breaks his only intermission.

“We are at a crucial turning point in history,” says Hovinga, “where the consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly evident. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and microplastics are just some examples of what our planet faces.”

The artist calls his living piece The Elephant in the Room. It is an artistic protest, meant to illustrate the lack of urgency by policymakers and global leaders. Hovinga believes in the power of creative expression to help raise awareness and persuade people to take a stand.

“The changing political landscape in Europe makes the work more relevant than ever. As humans, we are exhausting the Earth. Our current system of consumption is not sustainable. We need change, especially in our western world.

“For me, art and activism are symbiotic. The performance challenges each of us to confront our role in the climate crisis and encourages a renewed commitment to meaningful change.”

Hovinga’s artistic protest will last 20 days in total. By the end of it, he will have punched holes for 120 hours, at a physical and mental cost. “It’s getting harder to sit in silence concentrating on the same repetitive motion. I didn’t expect it to be so intense. After two days, my back, neck, elbows and wrists all started to hurt. I’ve been taking painkillers daily since the second week.”

Even so, he remains committed, accepting that change often comes with discomfort and sacrifice. For Hovinga, the most rewarding part is seeing the public reaction.

“Visitors have left me notes thanking me,” he says. “One day, two students from the art school next door waited until the museum closed so they could speak with me. I didn’t expect the reaction to be so positive. People see the layers of pain and are touched by it.”

However, Hovinga has had the odd negative response: “I’ve been called a WEF [World Economic Forum] puppet. Online, someone threatened to come and disrupt the performance. But that’s also fine because it still makes people reflect.”

Saskia Bak, the director at Museum Arnhem, says: “It’s crucial to showcase different perspectives on current topics, so we team up with artists not typically seen in museums. We highlight issues that are relevant in society, such as climate change. Johannes-Harm Hovinga’s performance fits perfectly.”

Of the audience reception, she says: “It’s been overwhelmingly positive. Some viewers get quite emotional during the performance, while others have applauded Hovinga for tearing up the nonsense that is the IPCC report.”

The hole-punching part of Hovinga’s art will wrap up on 14 July, after which the confetti installation will remain dispersed for two weeks. “After that, I will come back and clean in silence,” says Hovinga.

Having already staged a pilot version of Elephant in the Room for 11 days in 2022, during which he invited viewers to join him in the hole punching, the artist next plans to recreate the act during Cop29 in November.

In the long run, he hopes to take the performance across Europe, presenting his live art in museums and public spaces.

In the five months between the end of the Australian Open and the start of Wimbledon, Barbora Krejcikova won just three singles matches. She had fallen into a brutal cycle of illnesses, injuries and pitiful form and, at times, it seemed like there was no way out. She arrived in SW19 with low ­expectations, still just trying to find her feet again.

But things can change so quickly in tennis; just a few key wins can build enough confidence for a player’s game to suddenly flow as if nothing had ever been wrong. That process has played out in full for Krejcikova over the past fortnight and by the time she arrived in her first Wimbledon singles final, she was ready.

After seemingly heading towards being a one-sided rout, the final developed into a tense, brilliant tussle with so much heart before the Czech 31st seed steadied herself and held off a spirited comeback from Jasmine Paolini to close out a 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 win over the No 7 seed.

“I think nobody believes that I got to the final and I think nobody is going to believe that I won Wimbledon,” Krejcikova said. “I still cannot believe it.”

Three years after her shock run to the Roland Garros title, Krejcikova is now a two-time grand slam singles champion. She has already built one of the great doubles – including mixed – résumés of this generation and few active tennis players, male or female, can match her overall grand slam trophy cabinet: Krejcikova is now a 12-time grand slam champion and a three-time Wimbledon champion.

“It’s great that I’m a two-time major champion,” said Krejcikova. “It’s something unbelievable. On the other hand, I’m still the same person. I still love tennis very much. I still want to continue playing tennis well and fight for other tournaments.”

The only other meeting between these finalists had come in the first round of the 2018 Australian Open qualifying tournament, which was won comfortably by Krejcikova although she didn’t reach the main draw. It is a reflection of their late-blooming careers – they are both 28 and were born 17 days apart – that this occasion marked the first time that a grand slam qualifying match had been replicated in a major final.

This time, Krejcikova burst out of the blocks determined to take the first strike immediately and dominate with her forehand while serving brilliantly. Paolini mixed in drop shots, sharp forehand angles and she tried to disrupt Krejcikova’s game but each time she was under pressure, the Czech demonstrated her phenomenal hand skills, resetting countless exchanges with skidding defensive slices before working her way back on top of the point. She eased through the ­opening set.

Instead of crumbling under pressure, Paolini began the second set determined to impose her game on Krejcikova as the Centre Court crowd forcefully cheered her on throughout. She injected more pace into her ground strokes on both wings, found greater depth and began to throw herself into her forehand. The momentum shifted immediately and as the Italian took the initiative, nervous errors flowed from Krejcikova’s racket as a third set beckoned.

With both the momentum and crowd firmly behind her, Paolini opened the third set launching herself into forehands, dominating the neutral rallies and targeting the unravelling Krejcikova backhand. The Czech made up for her tense shot-making by serving immaculately and she built up her confidence by ­breezing through her service games.

By the middle of the third set, Krejcikova had regained enough ­confidence to make her move at 3-3 on Paolini’s vulnerable serve. She finally took back the initiative in the neutral rallies, dominating with her forehand again as she snatched the break.

The brilliant battle ended in a breathless final game as Krejcikova wrestled with her nerves and her backhand, while Paolini fought until the death. After nearly two hours, Krejcikova closed the door on a ­spectacular triumph.

Although Paolini was extremely disappointed, she recognised her undeniable progress. After spending most of her career outside the top 50, this year – which took off with her winning the Dubai 1000 in February – her performances have taken her to heights she could have never ­imagined, with back-to-back major finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. “It’s been an incredible year,” she said. “I’m ­enjoying. I hope to continue like that with this level of tennis. I’m going to try to work to keep this focus, this level.”

This is, of course, a poignant full-circle moment for Krejcikova. She was still hundreds of ranking spots from even competing at Wimbledon in 2014 when she knocked on the door of her compatriot Jana Novotna, the 1998 singles champion, in search of guidance from a home legend.

That meeting would spawn an instant friendship, as Novotna quickly decided to travel and work with her, coaching her until shortly before she died in November 2017. Twenty-six years after Novotna finally won Wimbledon, Krejcikova was tearful as she saw her name engraved on the All England Club’s honours board close to Novotna’s.

“The only thing that was going through my head was that I miss Jana a lot,” she said. “It was just very, very emotional. Very emotional moment to see me on a board right next to her. I think she would be proud. I think she would be really excited that I’m on the same board as she is because Wimbledon was super special for her.”