Joe Biden has reportedly become more open in recent days to hearing arguments that he should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate after the party’s two main congressional leaders told him they doubted his ability to beat Donald Trump.

While continuing to insist he will be the party’s nominee in November, the president has reportedly started asking questions about negative polling data and whether Vice-President Kamala Harris, considered the favourite to replace him if were to withdraw, fares better.

The indications of a possible rethink come after Biden tested positive on Wednesday for Covid-19, forcing him to isolate for several days while curtailing a campaigning visit to Nevada that had been part of a drive to show his candidacy was very much alive.

It also coincides with fresh polling data showing that he now trails Trump by two points in Virginia, a state he won by 10 points in 2020.

The Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey showed Trump ahead by 45% to 43%, within the margin of error but consistent with a spate of other polls showing that Biden’s support has fallen in swing states since his disastrous showing at last month’s debate in Atlanta.

Biden’s newfound receptivity to at least the possibility of stepping aside represents a shift from the position he adopted at a press conference at last week’s Nato summit in Washington, when he told journalists he would only drop out if polling data showed him “there’s no way you can win”.

“No one’s saying that,” he added.

His willingness to listen to opposing arguments comes after Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, reportedly both told him that it would be in the country’s interests if he stepped aside, ABC reported.

Schumer described the report of his meeting with Biden at the president’s Delaware home last weekend as “idle speculation” but tellingly did not deny its contents.

The Senate leader’s intervention has apparently been influential in delaying a move by the Democratic National Committee to stage an early electronic roll call of delegates that could have started next week and was aimed at locking in the nomination for Biden before next month’s party convention in Chicago. The roll call vote has been pushed by at least a week, giving forces opposed to him running more time to organise.

Equally persuasively, Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, also told Biden in a recent conversation that polls show he cannot beat Trump and that he could wreck the Democrats’ chances of recapturing the chamber in November, according to CNN.

Biden is said to have pushed back during the conversation, insisting – as he has in several Zoom sessions with other Democrats – that he had seen polling data showing he could win.

It is not known if Pelosi had called on the president to stand aside during the talk, which was said to have taken place in the past week.

Pelosi has been widely reported as orchestrating the renewed pressured on Biden to give up his re-election bid, which has intensified in recent days after a brief pause following last Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Trump, to which the president responded with a series of authoritative statements calling for calm.

Adam Schiff, the California congressman who on Tuesday became the latest elected Democrat to urge Biden to stand down, is known to be close to the former speaker.

“The speaker does not want to call on him to resign [as the Democratic nominee], but she will do everything in her power to make sure it happens,” Politico reported one Pelosi ally as saying.

In another ominous sign for Biden, Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the president’s main advisers and a co-chairman of his campaign, has told him that donors have stopped giving money to his campaign.

A Biden adviser told the New York Times that the decision on whether to withdraw from the race boiled down to three factors – polling, money and which states were in play. All three were moving in the wrong direction for Biden, he said.

The reports on Biden’s receptivity come just after the Democratic National Committee backed away from a plan to fast-track a virtual roll call vote to solidify his nomination this month. On Wednesday, the DNC said that it would not start early voting in July.

As renewed speculation about Biden’s thinking intensified on Thursday, his supporters continued to insist that the position was unchanged.

“When it comes to if he’s open or being receptive to any of that, look, the president has said it several times: he’s staying in this race,” Quentin Fulks, the Biden campaign deputy manager, told reporters on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee.

“Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not at the top of the ticket,” he added.

A toxic, racist, far-right response to Harmeet Dhillon’s Monday-night Sikh prayer at the Republican national convention is just one sign of the difficulties Donald Trump and Republicans have in selling a more diverse version of Trumpism to the party’s base.

Social media posts following Dhillon’s prayer indicated that some far-right Trumpists had been polarized by the sight of a non-Christian form of religious devotion on the convention stage in Milwaukee.

The barrage of hate she received from a segment of fellow Trump supporters may have been especially galling to Dhillon, whose earliest public prominence was as a civil rights lawyer defending turban-wearing Sikh men from post-9/11 racial profiling.

At the same time, Dhillon’s benediction showed how far the California lawyer and Republican national committeewoman has ascended in the Trump movement, where she is now a serious player.

In a decade, Dhillon has gone from a serial Bay Area political candidate to a well-remunerated member of Trump’s stable of top lawyers, an integral part of the post-Maga Republican party’s power structure, and a star of conservative media.

The case of Dhillon – whose firm has banked $8.25m from Maga Pacs for its assistance in Trump’s myriad legal battles – illustrates the tensions that may arise as Trump’s personal loyalties, and his attempts to expand his voter base, run up against the racial and religious prejudices of elements of his existing coalition.

The Guardian emailed Dhillon for comment on this reporting but received no response.

Prayer greeted with hate

Perhaps the earliest response to Dhillon’s prayer came from white nationalist and antisemitic activist Nick Fuentes, who said of the prayer in his live stream of the convention’s first night: “This is blasphemy. This is total blasphemy. Oh, fuck off. What a joke.”

In his post-stream summary, Fuentes, who leads the so-called “Groyper” movement under the slogan “Christ is King”, added that “Jesus Christ needs to be front and center,” and said: “Jesus saved Trump’s life on Saturday and no one wants to give him credit at this convention.”

Fuentes came to broader notoriety after he attended an infamous November 2022 dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club with his then-employer Ye, the singer formerly known as Kanye West.

Fuentes’s acolytes followed suit. As the prayer was ending, an X account associated with the Fuentes-aligned “America First” website posted: “RNC promotes blasphemy and Sikh idolatry moments after Lutheran benediction.”

The far-right podcaster and internet personality Stew Peters took a similar line on X, posting: “Day 1 of the RNC was complete with satanic chants and multiple prayers to FALSE GODS.”

Peters is known for his conspiracy theories on Covid and vaccines, outspoken Christian nationalism, and antisemitic rhetoric. On X and other platforms, Peters has freely advocated antisemitic narratives including Holocaust denial.

The Gab founder, antisemite and self-proclaimed “Christian nationalist” Andrew Torba posted a screenshot of a supportive reply to a Dhillon post on her prayer from a Jewish American with the line: “Your Judeo-GOP, sir.”

Lauren Witzke, meanwhile, posted video of a part of Dhillon’s speech with the caption, “How about you get deported instead, you pagan blasphemer,” adding: “God saves our president and the RNC mocks him with this witchcraft.”

Witzke is a far-right political activist and one-time Republican Senate candidate who has promoted anti-LGBTQ+ positions, the “QAnon” conspiracy theory, and various antisemitic tropes, including that Jews control government, academia and the media, and that they have a divided loyalty between America and Israel.

Others, members of the Republican hard right and conservative media stars were similarly unimpressed, though less direct in criticizing Dhillon.

Matt Walsh, the host of The Matt Walsh Show on Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire platform, is known for inflammatory expressions of traditionalist Christian positions on cultural, religious and political issues, especially in relation to LGBTQ rights.

On Tuesday, he complained: “Trump has never had more momentum or good will and the RNC decided to use that to push a message of diversity and inclusivity rather than using it to advance anything resembling a conservative agenda.”

The lawyer and Blaze Media host Daniel Horowitz, notable for his fixation on immigration at the southern border, called Monday a “night of endless racial and ethnic pandering, union communism not just populism, and a porn star. This is going to be a long haul.”

Other convention speakers included the Teamsters union president, Sean O’Brien, and Amber Rose Levonchuck, known professionally as Amber Rose, who has appeared in hip-hop videos.

Carol M Swain posted that “I’m just say … The God of Abraham, Issac [sic], and Jacob would oppose interfaith chapels and the blending of worship across deities,” followed by an extended Bible quote.

Swain is a former professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt Universities and remains a conservative public intellectual. Swain, who is African American, attracted student protests in the years leading up to her retirement in 2017 over publicly stated views on Islam (“an absolute danger to us and our children”) and Black Lives Matter (which she said was “misleading black people”).

Maga maven, Maga money

Dhillon’s appearance thus appeared to divide a Maga movement which had come to see her as one of its tribunes.

That status ultimately derived from her litigation on behalf of leading Trump movement figures, including Trump himself, and media savvy lawsuits targeting movement bugbears and defending rightwing activists.

Through her firm Dhillon Law and the non-profit Center for American Liberty, where she serves as chief executive, Dhillon has brought suit on behalf of rightwing internet personalities including Andy Ngo and Rogan O’Handley, known online as “DC Draino”.

During the Covid pandemic, Dhillon pushed back on lockdowns and mask mandates, launching a flotilla of suits in California that named leading Democrats including Governor Gavin Newsom as defendants.

She parlayed all of this into brand-building media appearances, and became a regular on Fox News programs hosted by Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, until the latter was dropped by the network.

About the time of Carlson’s exit, Dhillon went from being his regular guest to a go-to lawyer, reportedly acting for him in the discrimination case that led up to his ouster, in a 2023 dispute with Fox itself , and against a Pac proposing to draft the former host for the 2024 presidential election.

Dhillon has acted directly for Trump in several high-profile cases. Her firm, Dhillon Law, represented Trump and acolytes including Michael Flynn and Sebastian Gorka in their interactions with Congress’s January 6 committee, to which Trump refused to testify. Her firm also represented Trump at the supreme court in January after courts in Maine and Colorado struck him from the state’s presidential ballots in 2023.

Advocacy for Trumpist causes has won Dhillon the prominence that booked her spot on the convention stage, as well as millions of dollars for her firm.

The most recent Federal Election Commission figures indicate that Dhillon Law has received over $10.4m in legal fees to date from Republican campaign committees.

All of those payments came after 2019, and the bulk – some $8.1m – has been paid since 2023, the year of her campaign to displace Ronna McDaniel as RNC chair. That campaign failed to oust McDaniel, but endeared her further to Trumpist conservatives who blamed McDaniel for Trump’s loss in 2020 and the GOP’s underperformance in the 2022 midterms.

A whopping $8.25m of the total has come from Trump-related Pacs, reportedly making Dhillon one of the highest-paid of Trump’s many lawyers.

Another big client is the Republican National Committee Dhillon sits on, which has paid the firm nearly $1.8m since 2019, despite Dhillon serving as RNC committeewoman for California since 2016, and has coincided with Dhillon’s ascent to national prominence and Trumpworld’s inner circle.

The culture-wars suits have also channeled money to Dhillon Law. The Guardian previously reported that the Center for American Liberty, where Dhillon is chief executive, had paid Dhillon Law $1.3m since its founding, making the firm its single biggest contractor.

At that time, Joan Harrington, a fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at the Santa Clara University, called the arrangement a “conflict of interest”.

A filing subsequent to that reporting indicates that the non-profit paid Dhillon Law an additional $269.864 in 2022, bringing the total to over $1.5m.

Meanwhile, while the Monday night event tried to represent Trump supporters as more diverse than the largely white bloc who have hitherto voted for the president, the response to Dhillon’s prayer suggests that a swath of rightwing opinion will volubly resist that becoming a reality.

The US Secret Service decried as an “insult” rightwing attacks on the performance of female agents during the failed assassination attempt against Donald Trump, and claims the presence of such agents and a woman as agency director are the result of diversity policies.

“It is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender,” Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service communications chief, told NBC News.

“Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce.”

At a Trump rally in Butler county, Pennsylvania, last Saturday, the former president and Republican presidential nominee sustained a wound to his right ear when a gunman opened fire from a rooftop.

One rallygoer was killed and two critically injured.

Amid growing reports of serious security failings, the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, has come under intense pressure. Subject to calls to resign, even confronted by Republican senators at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, she was served a subpoena for testimony in Congress next week.

The second woman to lead the agency, Cheatle faces rightwing claims she only secured the role thanks to policies to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) which she has previously backed.

Her role is a tough one. In 2014, Julia Pierson, the first woman to lead the Secret Service, resigned over high-profile security lapses.

Since the failed Trump assassination, rightwingers have also attacked women agents in the field.

One social media post, by a user described as a “MAGA2024 Ex-con deplorable” and viewed 10m times, shows a male officer carrying a large gun next to a woman agent in action at the Trump rally.

Its caption says: “Secret service agents: Before DEI vs After DEI.”

Elected Republicans, practiced in blaming DEI for supposed military weakness and even the collapse of a bridge in Baltimore harbour, have made similar charges.

Cory Mills, a Florida congressman, told Fox News: “Look, I’m not sure about who the individuals are on the individual detail, Secret Service, but I can tell you under this Biden administration, the one thing I’ve seen is massive DEI hires.

“And I can tell you when you primarily, when you primarily go after D-E-I, you end up with D-I-E.”

Tim Burchett, of Tennessee, went after Cheatle directly, posting: “I can’t imagine that a DEI hire from Pepsi would be a bad choice as the head of the Secret Service. #sarcasm.”

Cheatle, a former agent, worked for Pepsi before being appointed to lead the Secret Service in 2022.

The Secret Service was formed in 1865. The first woman agent was appointed in 1970. The agency now says women make up 24% of its workforce.

Most agents at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania were men. When Trump was fired on, women agents were among those who protected him with their bodies.

In his statement to NBC, Guglielmi said: “We stand united against any attempt to discredit our personnel and their invaluable contributions to our mission and are appalled by the disparaging and disgusting comments against any of our personnel.

“As an elite law enforcement agency, all of our agents and officers are highly trained and fully capable of performing our missions.”

Kenneth Valentine, a former agent and supervisor, told the same network: “There are some unbelievable female agents. They are very welcome, they are needed, and I can’t imagine my tenure in the Secret Service without that kind of diversity.”

Ursula von der Leyen has won a second term as European Commission president, securing an emphatic victory in the European parliament as mainstream lawmakers united against anti-EU and extreme-right forces.

The Strasbourg chamber erupted in applause when it became clear that von der Leyen, the first woman to lead the EU executive, had cleared the hurdle by 41 votes – a stronger result than her first election in 2019.

The German Christian Democrat will now be the head of the EU’s lawmaking and enforcement body until 2029.

“I can’t begin to express how grateful I am for the trust of all MEPs that voted for me,” she tweeted minutes after the results.

The victory cements von der Leyen’s status as one the most consequential commission presidents in the 67-year history of the European project. She has been feted for her unequivocal and early support for Ukraine, a pioneering response to the pandemic that led to the joint purchase of vaccines and the first-ever joint borrowing with the creation of the Covid recovery fund.

She has also been criticised, however, for relying heavily on a narrow coterie of advisers and avoiding scrutiny. On Wednesday the European court of justice found that her commission had failed to give the public “sufficiently wide access” to the purchase deals for Covid vaccines.

In an attempt to meet these concerns, on Thursday von der Leyen promised “more transparency, more accountability” and more frequent visits to the parliament.

Speaking on the floor of the Strasbourg chamber before the vote, she appealed to “all the democratic forces in this house” to support her, and announced a wide-ranging set of priorities for her second term.

“I will never accept that demagogues and extremists destroy our European way of life,” she said.

Far-right gains in recent elections, coupled with the tumultuous international backdrop, explain why von der Leyen was returned with a bigger vote than in 2019.

In total, 401 MEPs voted in her favour, 284 against, 15 abstained and seven votes were void. She needed 360 votes to be re-elected.

The result will be a relief to EU leaders who nominated her for a second term last month after European elections shifted the parliament to the right.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, congratulated von der Leyen, saying her re-election was “a clear sign of our ability to act in the European Union, especially in difficult times”. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said: “I’m sure you’ll do a great job. We will do, together.”

Von der Leyen’s European People’s party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats and the centrist Renew group had announced they intended to support her, although some members had said they would vote against.

The Greens, who voted against von der Leyen in 2019, had said they would support her to keep the far right out of power.

“Is this a green programme that she has provided us? I can tell you no,” Terry Reintke, a co-leader of the Greens, said on the chamber floor before the vote. But, she added, it was crucial that a majority of pro-European democratic groups holds to “keep the far right from getting into power”.

The Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists grouping, which includes Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and Poland’s Law and Justice, was split. It planned a free vote but had said “a large majority” of its MEPs would oppose von der Leyen.

The EPP leader, Manfred Weber, who has cool relations with von der Leyen, had urged his group to back her, telling them: “If you want to defend democracy, vote today for Ursula von der Leyen.”

Against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine, widespread concern about foreign interference in European elections and the potential return of Donald Trump, his words appeared to underscore the view of many MEPs that the vote was something bigger than the choice of another commission president.

The shifting balance in the parliament was underlined when the French far-right leader Jordan Bardella was the third group leader to speak before the vote, reflecting the status of his Patriots group as the third largest force in the parliament behind the EPP and Socialists.

Soon afterwards an extreme nationalist Romanian MEP was removed from the chamber after heckling a liberal lawmaker, while a far-right Polish MEP who spoke for the newly formed extremist Europe of Sovereign Nations group attacked EU migration policy – and von der Leyen personally – in lurid terms.

Some insiders suggested the presence of these noisy voices on the far right could have helped tilt the balance in von der Leyen’s favour by underlining the stakes.

In an appeal to her own centre-right EPP, von der Leyen had promised a “burden reduction” of EU law to help small businesses, describing her first priority as competitiveness and prosperity.

Nodding to the Greens, liberals and Socialists, she vowed to stay the course on EU climate plans, promising in her first 100 days a new “clean industrial deal” to channel investment into decarbonising manufacturing and green tech.

Reflecting the French president Emmanuel Macron’s vision, she promised “a true union of defence” to develop common projects, suggesting a European air shield to protect shared airspace.

Under her programme, the EU will have a commissioner in charge of housing for the first time, although the bloc has no policymaking power on the issue. Nonetheless, she promised a “European affordable housing plan” to address a crisis of high rents and unaffordable homes, a key priority for the Socialists.

Von der Leyen reaffirmed the EU’s support for Ukraine and issued her strongest criticism yet of the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s recent trip to Moscow. “This so-called peace mission was nothing but an appeasement mission,” she told MEPs, generating the biggest applause of her 50-minute speech.

Europe must not fall into the trap of creating a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that Nato would die under a second Trump presidency and that the transatlantic bond would be over, the secretary general of the military alliance has said.

Jens Stoltenberg said leaders must engage with Donald Trump in the same way they did in 2016, no matter what the rhetoric during the US election campaign.

“I worked with him for four years,” he said. Asked if he thought Trump had changed since the end of his presidency in 2020, Stoltenberg said he could not answer but added: “I think it’s important not to create self-fulfilling prophecies in a way that assuming that a new administration in the United States will mean the end of Nato. There were concerns about that also in 2016. The reality was that Nato is stronger after four years … more troops, high readiness.”

European leaders are growing increasingly concerned about the prospect of Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, taking a controlling position in foreign policy if Trump wins in November. Vance was one of the leading opponents of the new US aid package to Ukraine, held up for months but finally approved in the spring.

On Wednesday night, Vance signalled that the US’s commanding role in global security would not be a given in a Trump administration, telling party faithful gathered at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee that US soldiers would no longer be sent overseas unnecessarily. “We will send our kids to war only if we must,” Vance said.

In an interview with the Guardian, Stoltenberg said he remained optimistic about the future of Nato.

When the he joined in 2014, only two member states were spending 2% of their budget on defence. He said that now stood at 23 of 31 members, and he said Trump’s complaint during his presidency that Europeans were not contributing their fair share had merit.

“The reason why I’m expecting the United States to remain a strong ally … is that the main criticism from President Trump but also from the candidate for vice-president, JD Vance, has not primarily been against Nato. It has primarily been against Nato allies not spending enough on Nato on defence and that is changing.”

He said that if Trump gets in this year, all Europe would have to do is repeat its 2016 strategy.

“What we decided in 2016 was of course engage with the new administration, not least because the questions were asked about whether they [the US] were supportive of Nato, so we engaged, we sat down, and the reality was that some of the messages were very valid,” he said.

He also argued that the US would stay in Nato because the alliance’s members represented 50% of the world’s “military might”. If the US leaves it would stand alone and represent just 25% of that military capability.

Making Europe Trump-proof is high on the list of concerns raised by European leaders gathered for the European Political Community meeting at Blenheim Palace in the UK, amid fears that not only could Trump abandon the US’s position on Ukraine but he could put pressure on Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accept a peace plan involving the loss of Russian-occupied territory.

The Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, said that “Europe will have to do its part by taking a larger share of the costs than we now do” in Nato. “We have to demonstrate the value of this alliance and why we stand together. And I think that case is pretty strong,” he said.

Støre said proofing Europe against Trump was on the agenda on the sidelines of the conference, opened by Keir Starmer and Zelenskiy who recalled Winston Churchill’s resilience and bravery. “We need to be in a good discussion with the US,” he said.

Ireland’s taoiseach, Simon Harris, said he was prepared to use his country’s special relationship with the US to try to bridge any gaps after the election.

An “incoming president may or may not wish to utilise that bridge, but we will stand ready to work with whoever is the democratically elected president of the United States,” he said.

Keir Starmer has promised European leaders he will reset Britain’s ties with their countries as the prime minister uses his first international summit on domestic soil to draw a line under years of fractious relations with continental Europe.

The prime minister used his opening speech at the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace on Thursday to reassure the leaders of more than 40 other countries that he wanted to renew “trust and friendship” with them.

British ministers are hoping to use the summit as a chance to explore future talks on migration and trade, with Starmer hoping to eventually secure new deals with the EU on returning asylum seekers and trading defence and agricultural products.

Starmer told the summit: “We want to work with all of you to reset relationships, rediscover our common interest and renew the bonds of trust and friendship that brighten the fabric of European life.”

He added: “We will strengthen our existing relationships and we will build new ones.

“This includes resetting our relationship with the EU because I believe that the UK and the EU, working together as sovereign partners, are a powerful force for good across our continent.”

He contrasted his approach with that of his predecessor, Rishi Sunak, who upset some European allies with his plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and by threatening to leave the European convention on human rights if the scheme was blocked in Strasbourg.

Starmer said: “We are resetting our approach. This government will not commit taxpayer money to gimmicks. We will approach this issue with humanity and with a profound respect for international law, and that’s why we scrapped the unworkable Rwanda scheme on day one.”

And in the most full-throated defence of the ECHR from a British prime minister in years, Starmer – who once wrote a textbook on European human rights law – said: “I myself first read about these principles of the convention and international law in a law library in Leeds, well, 40 years ago now. That inspired me in everything I have done since then and I still draw strength from it, and value from it, every day.”

European leaders arriving at the summit said they were largely optimistic about the chances of renegotiating parts of Britain’s relations with the EU.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, said: “We welcome the new tone of the British government and we look forward to engaging with it. We are ready to reinforce our foreign and security policy cooperation.”

Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said: “On the field of migration, we can see how we can deepen the ties, how we can cooperate more together.”

Simon Harris, the Irish taoiseach, said the Labour government was a “gamechanger” for the EU.

“You have a British government that wants to actively talk about a closer relationship with Europe, the importance of multi-relevant-lateralism, staying within the ECHR, working closely with Ireland, talking about language around co-guarantor of our peace process. It’s a very different landscape.”

While British and European leaders have spoken warmly about the possibility of a renegotiation, formal talks remain some way off. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, said on Thursday morning the UK was “nowhere near” negotiating agreements with the EU.

Lammy told BBC Breakfast: “Of course, we’re entering into discussions but we’re nowhere near a negotiation on the trade agreement – that paper-thin trade agreement that Boris Johnson struck – the veterinary deal that we’ve said that we want to get, the mutual qualifications that we want to work on, and the UK-EU security pact that we’re proposing to Europe that will enable us to discuss a whole range of issues across the European family.”

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has taken aim at the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, accusing him of betraying fellow European leaders after Orbán’s recent “peace mission” to Moscow.

The Ukrainian president kicked off the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace on Thursday with an emotional speech in which he made veiled but repeated references to Orbán’s recent attempts to get close to Moscow.

Zelenskiy was addressing a room packed full of European leaders and defence ministers, who have gathered in Oxfordshire at a pivotal moment for the war in Ukraine.

He told the session: “We have maintained unity in Europe by acting together, which means that Putin has missed his primary targets … This is our advantage, but it remains an advantage only as long as we are united.”

Referring to Putin, he said: “He may try to approach you, or go to some of your partners individually, trying to tempt or pressure you to blackmail you so that one of you betrays the rest. We keep our unity.”

In an apparent reference to Orbán’s recent visit to meet Putin in Moscow, he added: “If someone in Europe tries to resolve issues behind our backs, or even at the expense of someone else, if someone wants to make some trips to the capital of war to talk – and perhaps promise something against our common interests or at the expense of Ukraine or other countries – then why should we consider such a person?

“The EU can also address all their issues without this one individual.”

Orbán has regularly been a thorn in the side of European leaders attempting to maintain unity in their support for Ukraine. Earlier this year he blocked a €50bn (£42bn) support package for Kyiv for more than a month while he negotiated additional conditions.

This month, the Hungarian leader travelled to Moscow for what he called a “peace mission”, holding a joint press conference with Putin in which the Russian leader told Kyiv to give up more land, pull back its troops and drop its efforts to join Nato.

Orbán then held talks with the former US president Donald Trump, after which he wrote to European leaders telling them Trump had “well-founded plans” for peace should he return to the White House after November’s presidential election. Trump has since underlined his desire to back out of foreign conflicts by choosing the isolationist JD Vance as his running mate.

Orbán’s actions on the world stage have caused alarm in European capitals, with Zelenskiy’s invitation to Blenheim Palace designed in part as a show of unified support for Ukraine.

Hours before the Ukrainian president spoke, Ursula von der Leyen issued a similar message in a speech to MEPs. The president of the European Commission said: “Two weeks ago, a European prime minister went to Moscow. This peace mission was nothing but an appeasement mission.”

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, made a strong statement of support as he introduced Zelenskiy on Thursday. “Every day Ukraine fights to protect not just the Ukrainian people, but the European people – a continent where our belief in freedom, democracy and the rule of law was hard won, that wants to live in peace,” he said.

“President Zelenskiy, in your struggle to uphold those values, we salute you. Once again, have no doubt, we will stand with you for as long as it takes.”

Zelenskiy also used his speech to European leaders to urge them to provide air defences for Ukraine and not to place limits on their use. The UK has provided Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles, but is not allowing Zelenskiy to use them against Russian territory.

“We should not fear these capabilities,” the Ukrainian president said. “The more effective our air defences, the more helpless Putin will be. The fewer restrictions we have on the use of effective weapons, the more Russia will seek peace.”

Pressure for Joe Biden to step aside as the Democrats’ presidential pick to face Donald Trump had eased since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend, but began to rise again on Wednesday.

The tension rose as Biden was diagnosed with Covid and cancelled events to self-isolate at his home in Delaware.

Adam Schiff, the influential US representative from California, said publicly that Biden should quit, becoming the most well-known lawmaker so far to do so openly.

Then ABC News reported that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and the most senior Democrat in Congress, had told Biden in a meeting on Saturday it would be better for the country and the Democratic party if the president ended his re-election campaign.

However, a spokesperson for Schumer called the report “idle speculation”.

“Unless ABC’s source is Senator Chuck Schumer or President Joe Biden, the reporting is idle speculation,” the spokesperson said. “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday.”

Later on Wednesday a second report from CNN said the former house speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden that polling showed he could not beat Trump, and that would affect the Democrats’ chances in the House of Representatives this November.

Also on Wednesday afternoon, David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama as president, increased his persistent pressure campaign on Biden as he warned that the president had not done enough to relieve voters’ concern about his age since last month’s hapless debate performance.

“I’ve said for a long time, it’s not in any way a commentary on his record, which I think will be honoured more by history than it is by voters right now, but it’s a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons,” Axelrod told the Guardian in Milwaukee.

Having already riled Biden with criticism of his re-election bid, Axelrod continued the attack at an event on the sidelines of the Republican national convention, where Trump is expected to receive the official party nomination on Thursday.

Asked whether he thought Biden can survive as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, the chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns replied: “That’s entirely in his hands.”

His and Schiff’s comments followed those of a “prominent strategist” who, in a sign of how sharply divided the party stands, was moved to say of the internal rebellion against Biden’s candidacy: “It’s over.” The strategist spoke anonymously to the Hill.

At a press conference in Milwaukee, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a party grandee, said Biden would be confirmed as the Democratic nominee by virtual vote between 1 and 7 August, before the Chicago convention.

Walz told reporters: “We need to get these things done. We need to get the roll call done. But it won’t happen before 1 August.”

The debate over Biden’s age and cognitive fitness is likely to stoke more nasty public splits.

On Wednesday morning, as a new ABC-Norc poll found nearly two-thirds of Democrats saying Biden should withdraw, the blogger and podcaster Nate Silver linked to video of moments in a speech in Las Vegas the night before, in which the 81-year-old president seemed to struggle.

Silver said: “It’s just so weird living through this real-life Emperor Has No Clothes Moment. He obviously shouldn’t be president for four more years. Everyone knows this.”

Schiff followed reports that he had predicted heavy Democratic losses under Biden by going public on the matter.

Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history” but it was time “to pass the torch”, Schiff, now a Democratic candidate for US Senate, told the Los Angeles Times.

“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

Biden insists he is up to the job, telling one interviewer he will be the nominee “unless I get hit by a train”.

The White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement on Wednesday: “The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families.”

Silver also said it was “incredibly revealing which people are willing to lie” about Biden’s age and the problem facing his party.

That was a reference to Silver’s public argument on Tuesday with Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, over plans to confirm Biden’s nomination before the convention, officially related to uncertainty over election law in Ohio and the deadline for ballot inclusion.

Harrison wrote: “Love y’all but when it comes to election law and ballot access, I put my trust in our legal team who make a living understanding these laws and processes and not in the pollster who promised us the red wave. #ClassDismissed.”

He was referring to predictions that the 2022 midterms would see Republicans retake the Senate and strengthen their hold on the House, which did not transpire.

Silver answered: “Jaime, I’m not a pollster and I didn’t promise a red wave. The data is here. Actual experts have weighed in and said you’re spreading misinformation. You should probably stop lying.

“You and the White House have run the whole campaign on the premise that you could bullshit your way through things. It’s early enough so as not to be unsalvageable, but you’ve put Democrats in an incredibly difficult position. Enough with the BS.”

Silver also accused Harrison and the Democratic National Committee of “blatantly lying” about a need to confirm Biden before the convention, adding: “The good news is that there very much will be consequences if they force Biden’s nomination [through] and he loses.”

Harrison said: “Nate … you can call me a lot of things but a liar is definitely not one of them. I know you THINK you know every thing but class is now truly in session. Pull up a chair.”

He then offered an explanation of the plan for an early confirmation, in light of events in Ohio. Silver said he was “trying to gaslight people based on a technicality”.

Elsewhere, the Ohio secretary of state said the election law issue was “resolved”, adding that Democrats “know that and should stop trying to scapegoat Ohio for their own party disfunction”.

Amid it all, Ron Klain entered the chat.

The former White House chief of staff, who remains close to Biden and his campaign, posted a FiveThirtyEight prediction of a Biden electoral college victory and said: “But I thought he had ‘no path’ according to donors and the electeds following the donors?”

Klain added: “Based on working in two campaigns against Trump I am unchanged in my view that Joe Biden is uniquely capable of defeating him – that’s my gut view based on experience.”

Silver said: “You’d say that whether you really believed it or not. But come on the podcast Ron and we’ll see how many mental gymnastics you’re willing to do to defend this position.”

Klain, Silver added, was “the one person on the campaign who might be smart enough to know he’s full of shit and will write a memoir in five years saying Biden’s inner circle was incorrigible and he had to provide the most help he could to Biden under the circumstances”.

Also on social media, Simon Rosenberg, a pollster and strategist who correctly said there would be no “red wave” in 2022, made an appeal for sanity, posting on X, in part: “Fellow Dems, every moment you attack other [Democrats] you are helping Trump win. Stop it.”

Harrison reposted the message.

Pressure for Joe Biden to step aside as the Democrats’ presidential pick to face Donald Trump had eased since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend, but began to rise again on Wednesday.

The tension rose as Biden was diagnosed with Covid and cancelled events to self-isolate at his home in Delaware.

Adam Schiff, the influential US representative from California, said publicly that Biden should quit, becoming the most well-known lawmaker so far to do so openly.

Then ABC News reported that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and the most senior Democrat in Congress, had told Biden in a meeting on Saturday it would be better for the country and the Democratic party if the president ended his re-election campaign.

However, a spokesperson for Schumer called the report “idle speculation”.

“Unless ABC’s source is Senator Chuck Schumer or President Joe Biden, the reporting is idle speculation,” the spokesperson said. “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday.”

Later on Wednesday a second report from CNN said the former house speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden that polling showed he could not beat Trump, and that would affect the Democrats’ chances in the House of Representatives this November.

Also on Wednesday afternoon, David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama as president, increased his persistent pressure campaign on Biden as he warned that the president had not done enough to relieve voters’ concern about his age since last month’s hapless debate performance.

“I’ve said for a long time, it’s not in any way a commentary on his record, which I think will be honoured more by history than it is by voters right now, but it’s a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons,” Axelrod told the Guardian in Milwaukee.

Having already riled Biden with criticism of his re-election bid, Axelrod continued the attack at an event on the sidelines of the Republican national convention, where Trump is expected to receive the official party nomination on Thursday.

Asked whether he thought Biden can survive as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, the chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns replied: “That’s entirely in his hands.”

His and Schiff’s comments followed those of a “prominent strategist” who, in a sign of how sharply divided the party stands, was moved to say of the internal rebellion against Biden’s candidacy: “It’s over.” The strategist spoke anonymously to the Hill.

At a press conference in Milwaukee, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a party grandee, said Biden would be confirmed as the Democratic nominee by virtual vote between 1 and 7 August, before the Chicago convention.

Walz told reporters: “We need to get these things done. We need to get the roll call done. But it won’t happen before 1 August.”

The debate over Biden’s age and cognitive fitness is likely to stoke more nasty public splits.

On Wednesday morning, as a new ABC-Norc poll found nearly two-thirds of Democrats saying Biden should withdraw, the blogger and podcaster Nate Silver linked to video of moments in a speech in Las Vegas the night before, in which the 81-year-old president seemed to struggle.

Silver said: “It’s just so weird living through this real-life Emperor Has No Clothes Moment. He obviously shouldn’t be president for four more years. Everyone knows this.”

Schiff followed reports that he had predicted heavy Democratic losses under Biden by going public on the matter.

Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history” but it was time “to pass the torch”, Schiff, now a Democratic candidate for US Senate, told the Los Angeles Times.

“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

Biden insists he is up to the job, telling one interviewer he will be the nominee “unless I get hit by a train”.

The White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement on Wednesday: “The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families.”

Silver also said it was “incredibly revealing which people are willing to lie” about Biden’s age and the problem facing his party.

That was a reference to Silver’s public argument on Tuesday with Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, over plans to confirm Biden’s nomination before the convention, officially related to uncertainty over election law in Ohio and the deadline for ballot inclusion.

Harrison wrote: “Love y’all but when it comes to election law and ballot access, I put my trust in our legal team who make a living understanding these laws and processes and not in the pollster who promised us the red wave. #ClassDismissed.”

He was referring to predictions that the 2022 midterms would see Republicans retake the Senate and strengthen their hold on the House, which did not transpire.

Silver answered: “Jaime, I’m not a pollster and I didn’t promise a red wave. The data is here. Actual experts have weighed in and said you’re spreading misinformation. You should probably stop lying.

“You and the White House have run the whole campaign on the premise that you could bullshit your way through things. It’s early enough so as not to be unsalvageable, but you’ve put Democrats in an incredibly difficult position. Enough with the BS.”

Silver also accused Harrison and the Democratic National Committee of “blatantly lying” about a need to confirm Biden before the convention, adding: “The good news is that there very much will be consequences if they force Biden’s nomination [through] and he loses.”

Harrison said: “Nate … you can call me a lot of things but a liar is definitely not one of them. I know you THINK you know every thing but class is now truly in session. Pull up a chair.”

He then offered an explanation of the plan for an early confirmation, in light of events in Ohio. Silver said he was “trying to gaslight people based on a technicality”.

Elsewhere, the Ohio secretary of state said the election law issue was “resolved”, adding that Democrats “know that and should stop trying to scapegoat Ohio for their own party disfunction”.

Amid it all, Ron Klain entered the chat.

The former White House chief of staff, who remains close to Biden and his campaign, posted a FiveThirtyEight prediction of a Biden electoral college victory and said: “But I thought he had ‘no path’ according to donors and the electeds following the donors?”

Klain added: “Based on working in two campaigns against Trump I am unchanged in my view that Joe Biden is uniquely capable of defeating him – that’s my gut view based on experience.”

Silver said: “You’d say that whether you really believed it or not. But come on the podcast Ron and we’ll see how many mental gymnastics you’re willing to do to defend this position.”

Klain, Silver added, was “the one person on the campaign who might be smart enough to know he’s full of shit and will write a memoir in five years saying Biden’s inner circle was incorrigible and he had to provide the most help he could to Biden under the circumstances”.

Also on social media, Simon Rosenberg, a pollster and strategist who correctly said there would be no “red wave” in 2022, made an appeal for sanity, posting on X, in part: “Fellow Dems, every moment you attack other [Democrats] you are helping Trump win. Stop it.”

Harrison reposted the message.

Joe Biden has caught Covid-19 and cancelled a speaking engagement at the last minute, before he was due to address a conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday afternoon, the White House has confirmed.

The US president had developed symptoms, and just before he was going to address the UnidosUS annual conference in Nevada – after a long delay – the organization’s president and chief executive, Janet Murguía, told those gathered he would not be taking the podium.

Shortly afterwards, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, issued a statement saying, in part: “Earlier today following his first event in Las Vegas, President Biden tested positive for Covid-19.”

She added: “He is vaccinated and boosted and he is experiencing mild symptoms. He will be returning to Delaware where he will self-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time. The White House will provide regular updates on the president’s status as he continues to carry out the full duties of the office while in isolation.”

The news came at a time when Biden is under severe pressure in his campaign for re-election, facing calls to step down as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee because of his age and episodes of slipping acuity, most notably a dire debate performance against Donald Trump last month.

On Wednesday, the California congressman and Senate candidate Adam Schiff became the most high-profile Democratic representative to call for Biden to quit his campaign. His statement was followed by a report from Jonathan Karl of ABC News that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and a staunch ally of the president, had told Biden on Saturday that he should end his bid for another term in the White House.

After news that he had tested positive, Biden was seen walking very slowly up the steps of Air Force One in Las Vegas, preparing to return to Delaware, where he resides when he is not at the White House. He told reporters traveling with him that he felt good.

Jean-Pierre had earlier included with her statement from the White House a “note from the president’s doctor” saying that the president had a runny nose, a non-productive cough and “general malaise”, and would be taking the anti-viral drug Paxlovid.

The note continued that Biden “felt OK for his first event of the day, but given that he was not feeling better, point-of-care testing for Covid-19 was conducted, and the results were positive for the Covid-19 virus”.

It went on: “Given this, the president will be self-isolating in accordance with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance for symptomatic individuals. PCR confirmation testing will be pending. His symptoms remain mild … [He] has received his first dose of Paxlovid. He will be self-isolating at his home in Rehoboth [Delaware].”

Biden previously had Covid in 2022.

Bangladeshi students have set fire to the state broadcaster’s building, a day after Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, appeared on the network seeking to calm escalating clashes that had killed at least 32 people.

Hundreds of protesters demanding reform of civil service hiring rules clashed with riot police who had shot at them with rubber bullets on Thursday, chasing the retreating officers to BTV’s headquarters in the capital, Dhaka.

The incensed crowd then set ablaze the network’s reception building and dozens of vehicles parked outside, a BTV official told AFP.

The broadcaster said that “many people” were trapped inside as the fire spread but another official from the station later told AFP they had safely evacuated the building.

The government of Hasina, 76, has ordered schools and universities to close indefinitely as police step up efforts to bring the country’s deteriorating law and order situation under control.

The premier appeared on the broadcaster’s station on Wednesday night to condemn the “murder” of protesters and vow that those responsible would be punished regardless of their political affiliation. But violence worsened on the streets despite her appeal for calm as police again attempted to break up demonstrations with rubber bullets and tear gas volleys.

At least 25 people were killed on Thursday in addition to seven killed earlier in the week, according to a tally of casualty figures from hospitals compiled by AFP. Hundreds more people were wounded. Police weaponry was the cause of at least two-thirds of those deaths, based on descriptions given to AFP by hospital figures.

“We’ve got seven dead here,” said an official at Uttara Crescent hospital, in Dhaka, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. “The first two were students with rubber bullet injuries. The other five had gunshot injuries.”

Nearly 1,000 others had been treated at the hospital for injuries sustained during clashes with police, the official said, adding that many of those people had rubber bullet wounds.

Didar Malekin, of the online news outlet Dhaka Times, told AFP that Mehedi Hasan, one of his reporters, had been killed while covering clashes in Dhaka.

There was violence in several cities across Bangladesh throughout the day as riot police marched on protesters, who had begun another round of human blockades on roads and highways.

Helicopters rescued 60 police officers trapped on the roof of a campus building at Canadian University, the scene of some of Dhaka’s fiercest clashes on Thursday, the elite Rapid Action Battalion police force stated.

People on marches, almost every day this month, have demanded an end to the quota system which reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups which back Hasina, who has ruled the country since 2009. She won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition. Her administration is accused by rights groups of capturing state institutions and stamping out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Mubashar Hasan, a Bangladesh expert at the University of Oslo, in Norway, said the protests had grown into a wider expression of discontent with Hasina’s autocratic rule. “They are protesting against the repressive nature of the state. Protesters are questioning Hasina’s leadership, accusing her of clinging on to power by force. The students are in fact calling her a dictator.”

Bangladeshis reported widespread mobile internet outages around the country on Thursday, two days after internet providers cut off access to Facebook, the protest campaign’s key organising platform.

The telecommunications minister, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, told AFP that the government had ordered the network to be cut off. He earlier told reporters that social media had been “weaponised as a tool to spread rumours, lies and disinformation”, forcing the government to restrict access.

Along with police crackdowns, demonstrators and students allied to the premier’s ruling Awami League party have also battled each other on the streets with bricks and bamboo rods.

Boeing faces fresh questions about the safety of its aircraft after an engine fire on a transatlantic flight from Edinburgh caused an emergency landing soon after takeoff.

Flames were seen by passengers briefly shooting from the engine of a Delta Air Lines 767 soon after it took off for New York in February last year, after a turbine blade broke off during takeoff.

The flames subsided while the plane was airborne but it made an emergency landing at Prestwick airport south of Glasgow, where ground crew noticed fuel leaking from the plane’s right wing.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch, the UK government agency that investigates aviation safety, has written to the Federal Aviation Administration in the US asking it to take action with Boeing, which has its headquarters in Virginia.

The AAIB said the fractured turbine blade damaged five other blades in the engine. Vibrations from the “out of balance turbine” caused a tube carrying fuel in the wing to fracture, leading fuel to escape from the wing’s fuel tank.

The fuel was ignited by the engine’s hot air exhaust, with footage of the flames captured by a passenger sitting near the wing.

In a statement, the AAIB said: “A safety recommendation has been made to the Federal Aviation Administration that requires the Boeing Aircraft Company to demonstrate that following this serious incident, the design of the slat track housing drain tube on the Boeing 767 family of aircraft continues to comply with the certification requirements for large transport aircraft.”

The Delta flight to JFK airport in New York was carrying 211 passengers and 10 crew. It said two members of the cabin crew had heard a rattling sound as the Boeing taxied for takeoff, which appeared to come from the cargo hold.

Nothing abnormal was seen or heard by the pilots, but the noise continued during takeoff. They warned the flights purser, who tried but failed to warn the pilots on the plane’s internal phone. She made contact at the second attempt and said passengers were alarmed by the “quite bad” noise.

A temperature indicator for the right engine began fluctuating. The flight commander walked the length of the aircraft but could not locate any specific issues. He decided to divert the plane to Prestwick, which has long runways, as a precaution.

En route to Prestwick, the flames were filmed by a passenger. The flames disappeared and the commander decided to fly on with the right engine at reduced power.

There were no injuries as a result of the incident but the AAIB said all those onboard were “rapidly disembarked” once the fuel leak was spotted at Prestwick.

Boeing has been contacted for comment.

This is the latest in a series of safety incidents involving Boeing aircraft, which have contributed to company executives leaving in a management shake-up. It pleaded guilty to US criminal charges over the crashes of two 737 Max jetliners in 2018 and 2019 after violating an agreement with regulators in 2021.

It has also been sanctioned after a 737 Max 9 cabin panel blew out in mid-air on an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon, in January this year. A number of whistleblowers have gone public with concerns about safety culture and management at the company.

In 2021, the UK government temporarily banned from British airspace Boeing 777 aircraft which used the same type of engine which caught fire over Denver, Colorado.

Brazil has recorded unprecedented levels of rape and other forms of gender-based violence for the second year running, amid growing concerns over rightwing efforts to criminalize rape victims who have an abortion.

The data, released on Thursday in the annual report by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, showed that reported cases of rape rose by 6.5% from the previous year to a new historic high of 83,988 – or one every six minutes.

Experts say the figures are “even more alarming” against a backdrop of far-right activism, which includes a bill currently before the lower house of Congress that seeks to penalize rape survivors who seek a termination.

Every single indicator of gender-based violence increased in 2023 compared with the previous year, including murder (0.8%), sexual harassment (48.7%) and stalking (34.5%).

In contrast, the total number of homicides (against men and women) fell for the sixth consecutive year, dropping 3.4% from 47,963 in 2022 to 46,328 last year.

One possible explanation for the continued increase in gender-based violence may be the lingering after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, said the forum’s executive director, Samira Bueno.

“Since 2021, the figures for violence against women have been increasing at an accelerated rate, and they’re much higher than in the pre-pandemic period,” she said.

“Brazil has always been a very violent country … but it seems that the pandemic changed something. The tensions that arose in the domestic environment potentially exacerbated all these forms of violence,” she said.

Many states do not record details of the racial background of rape victims, but the data where available suggested that at least 52% of them were black.

Children continued to be dramatically overrepresented among rape survivors, with 61.6% aged 13 or younger – most of whom who were assaulted by family members or acquaintances (84.7%), a profile that remained unchanged.

Activists warn that they risk further victimisation under proposed legislation in the chamber of deputies which would penalise women who undergo an abortion after 22 weeks, even in cases of rape.

Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but there is an exception for rape. The new legislation, backed by supporters of the rightwing former president Jair Bolsonaro, would impose prison sentences of up to 20 years for a termination – equal to that for homicide and longer than that for rape (up to 15 years).

After an outcry from feminist and human rights movements, the legislation is now dormant in the lower house, but activists fear it could be revived – and warn that it would inevitably penalise victims of child sexual abuse.

“These are children who don’t have the maturity to understand that they’re being victims of rape,” said Bueno, who added that many young victims do not even realise they are pregnant.

“So criminalising the victim for a supposed ‘delay’ in having an abortion is yet another form of violence against these girls,” she said.

“Our Congress is completely disconnected from what is happening to the population, especially to girls and women,” said Bueno. “Shouldn’t we be discussing how to support these victims?”

For the first time, the report also ranked rape rates in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. The highest rate was record in in Sorriso in Mato Grosso state.

There were 77,000 cases of stalking reported in 2023, an increase of 34%. “This data is particularly relevant because stalking is a crime that often precedes other forms of violence – such as murder,” said Bueno.

Stalking was recognised as a crime in Brazil only in 2021, so the rates are expected to increase yearly as more people become aware of the law.

Despite a new decrease in the total number of homicides, Brazil still accounts for 10% of the world’s murders from just 3% of the global population.

“Brazil was able to reduce murders for another year, but it has also become much more unsafe for girls and women,” said Bueno.

Brazil has recorded unprecedented levels of rape and other forms of gender-based violence for the second year running, amid growing concerns over rightwing efforts to criminalize rape victims who have an abortion.

The data, released on Thursday in the annual report by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, showed that reported cases of rape rose by 6.5% from the previous year to a new historic high of 83,988 – or one every six minutes.

Experts say the figures are “even more alarming” against a backdrop of far-right activism, which includes a bill currently before the lower house of Congress that seeks to penalize rape survivors who seek a termination.

Every single indicator of gender-based violence increased in 2023 compared with the previous year, including murder (0.8%), sexual harassment (48.7%) and stalking (34.5%).

In contrast, the total number of homicides (against men and women) fell for the sixth consecutive year, dropping 3.4% from 47,963 in 2022 to 46,328 last year.

One possible explanation for the continued increase in gender-based violence may be the lingering after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, said the forum’s executive director, Samira Bueno.

“Since 2021, the figures for violence against women have been increasing at an accelerated rate, and they’re much higher than in the pre-pandemic period,” she said.

“Brazil has always been a very violent country … but it seems that the pandemic changed something. The tensions that arose in the domestic environment potentially exacerbated all these forms of violence,” she said.

Many states do not record details of the racial background of rape victims, but the data where available suggested that at least 52% of them were black.

Children continued to be dramatically overrepresented among rape survivors, with 61.6% aged 13 or younger – most of whom who were assaulted by family members or acquaintances (84.7%), a profile that remained unchanged.

Activists warn that they risk further victimisation under proposed legislation in the chamber of deputies which would penalise women who undergo an abortion after 22 weeks, even in cases of rape.

Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but there is an exception for rape. The new legislation, backed by supporters of the rightwing former president Jair Bolsonaro, would impose prison sentences of up to 20 years for a termination – equal to that for homicide and longer than that for rape (up to 15 years).

After an outcry from feminist and human rights movements, the legislation is now dormant in the lower house, but activists fear it could be revived – and warn that it would inevitably penalise victims of child sexual abuse.

“These are children who don’t have the maturity to understand that they’re being victims of rape,” said Bueno, who added that many young victims do not even realise they are pregnant.

“So criminalising the victim for a supposed ‘delay’ in having an abortion is yet another form of violence against these girls,” she said.

“Our Congress is completely disconnected from what is happening to the population, especially to girls and women,” said Bueno. “Shouldn’t we be discussing how to support these victims?”

For the first time, the report also ranked rape rates in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. The highest rate was record in in Sorriso in Mato Grosso state.

There were 77,000 cases of stalking reported in 2023, an increase of 34%. “This data is particularly relevant because stalking is a crime that often precedes other forms of violence – such as murder,” said Bueno.

Stalking was recognised as a crime in Brazil only in 2021, so the rates are expected to increase yearly as more people become aware of the law.

Despite a new decrease in the total number of homicides, Brazil still accounts for 10% of the world’s murders from just 3% of the global population.

“Brazil was able to reduce murders for another year, but it has also become much more unsafe for girls and women,” said Bueno.

Colombian authorities have insisted it will be safe to attend a UN biodiversity summit in Cali later this year, after a dissident rebel group threatened to disrupt the event.

This week Central General Staff (EMC), a guerrilla faction that rejected the country’s 2016 peace agreement, said the UN nature summit Cop16 would “fail”, in a post on X addressed to the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro.

The warning comes amid a government clampdown on the EMC, which is active in the region near Cali where the summit will be held.

The Colombian defence ministry said on Tuesday it had ended a ceasefire with parts of the EMC because of ongoing violence. A series of bombings and shootings have been blamed on the group.

The Cop16 organising committee said it was working with local and national authorities to ensure a safe environment during the summit, which is due to begin on 21 October. They said they were closely monitoring the situation and working to establish the validity of the messages circulating on social media.

“The safety and wellbeing of all participants, attendees and collaborators are our top priority. All security guarantees are in places to have a successful and smooth conference. We convey to all participants, delegates, media and stakeholders a message of reassurance,” the statement read.

About 12,000 soldiers and police are expected to be deployed for the summit, which Colombia announced it would host during UN climate talks at the end of last year.

The new UN biodiversity chief, Astrid Schomaker, said she was satisfied that Colombian authorities were taking the situation seriously and she was in regular contact with the Colombian government.

She said: “We’ve all watched the recent tweets and other manifestations of armed groups in Colombia. The Colombian government is taking that very seriously. They’re trying to track where this is coming from. There are a lot of conversations going on. I am confident that the Colombians are taking it seriously and that everything is being put in place to make Cop16 a safe and successful event.”

The 2016 peace deal between the Colombian government and the country’s biggest guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), formally ended the longest-running war in the western hemisphere, which killed more than 260,000 people and forced 7 million from their homes. Thousands of rebel fighters demobilised but about 1,500 refused to sign up to the deal, and many more are likely to have returned to arms.

Under Petro’s presidency, Colombia has positioned itself as an international leader on environmental issues, becoming the first major oil, gas and coal producer to join an alliance calling for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty at Cop28 last year.

Petro’s government has had success in reducing deforestation. But the progress has been hampered this year by El Niño and tensions with the EMC, which controls large areas of rainforest and has been encouraging people to cut down trees.

At the last UN biodiversity summit, Cop15 in Montreal in 2022, governments agreed a once-in-a-decade deal to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems.

• Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features.

Argentina’s undersecretary of sport has been sacked after calling for Lionel Messi to apologise for the racist and transphobic song about France’s players that the former captain Hugo Lloris has described as “an attack on French people”.

Chelsea said on Wednesday they had “instigated an internal disciplinary procedure” against Enzo Fernández after the midfielder posted a video on Instagram that showed him and some of his Argentina teammates involved in the chants as they celebrated their victory against Colombia in the Copa América final. He later apologised, saying the video did not “reflect my beliefs or my character”, and is expected to be fined by his club.

Fifa has confirmed it is investigating the incident, which Julio Garro had also urged Messi – who captained Argentina at the Copa América – and the Argentinian Football Association (AFA) president, Claudio Tapia, to apologise for.

But the office of Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, issued a strongly worded statement on X confirming that Garro had been dismissed. “The president’s office says that no government can tell the Argentina national team – world champion and two-time Copa América champion – what to comment, what to think or what to do, or to any other citizen,” it said. “For this reason, Julio Garro is no longer undersecretary of sports of the nation.”

The vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, also hit back at the country’s critics on social media. “No country with a colonial history is going to put us down for a song sung on a field nor for speaking a truth that nobody wants to admit,” she wrote. “Enough of pretending to be offended, hypocrites. Enzo I am with you, Messi thanks for everything! Argentines always keep your heads high! Long live Argentina!”

Villarruel said Argentina’s history had been forged by people of all races: “We never forced our way of life on anyone, nor will we tolerate that someone tries to do the same to us.”

Lloris, who captained France at the past two Word Cups – including their run to the final at Qatar 2022 when the chant was first sung by Argentina fans – said the players involved should have shown “more responsibility”.

“They deserve a lot of credit for what they have done on the field for the last four or five years,” Lloris said. “But when you win, you are an example for others, especially kids. It was a proper attack about the French people, especially for the French people who have African origin and family.”

Demba Ba, the former Chelsea and Senegal striker, wrote on X: “Argentina, land of asylum for former Nazis on the run. From 1945, [Juan] Perón hosted war criminals. And it surprises you …”

An Italian court has ordered a journalist to pay €5,000 in damages to the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, for mocking her height over social media in what was defined as “body shaming”.

Giulia Cortese, a journalist based in Milan, was also given a suspended fine of €1,200 over the jibe, which dated back to October 2021, a year before Meloni’s far-right coalition government came to power.

The pair clashed after Cortese, 36, published a mocked-up photo of Meloni with the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the background on Twitter, now X. In reaction, Meloni wrote on Facebook that the “falsified photo” was of “unique gravity” and that she had instructed her lawyer to pursue legal action against the journalist.

In two further tweets on the same day, Cortese wrote messages that translate as: “The media pillory you created on your Facebook page qualifies you for what you are: a little woman,” and “You don’t scare me, Giorgia Meloni. After all, you’re only 1.2 metres (4 ft) tall. I can’t even see you.”

Cortese was acquitted over the tweet comparing Meloni to Mussolini, but convicted of defamation over the latter two, which the Milan judge said amounted to “body shaming”.

Cortese said that being convicted over a “joke phrase” was “scandalous”. “There’s [a] climate of persecution. I don’t feel I have the freedom any more to write about this government, because once you are identified as an inconvenient journalist for this government, they don’t let anything pass,” Cortese told the Guardian.

Cortese can appeal but is undecided about whether to do so. “Going ahead with it risks costing me a lot, and I don’t know how it would end,” she said.

Meloni’s lawyer said she would donate the €5,000 to charity when a definitive sentence was confirmed and the money was paid.

According to various Italian news outlets, Meloni is 1.63 metres (5ft 3in) tall.

It is not the first time she has taken legal action against a journalist or someone who has criticised her publicly. Since coming to power, her government has been accused of making strategic use of defamation suits to silence journalists and public intellectuals.

In a high-profile case last autumn, the anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano was found guilty of libelling Meloni and fined €1,000 for calling her “a bastard” over her migration policies. The case dated back to a TV interview in December 2020 in which Saviano, author of the bestselling book Gomorrah, castigated Meloni and her fellow far-right leader Matteo Salvini on TV over their vitriol towards charity-run ships rescuing people in the Mediterranean.

Meloni is also suing the Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, who has Italian and Israeli citizenship, over a tweet dating from September 2022. In addition, Jebreal is being sued by Fabio Rampelli, a politician from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, and vice-president of the lower house of parliament, over a tweet in January.

Meloni’s government has been accused of exerting its influence over the state broadcaster, Rai, and other Italian media. In April, Rai came under fire for alleged censorship after the abrupt cancellation of an anti-fascist monologue that was due to be read by the author Antonio Scurati.

Meloni attacked Scurati on social media while accusing the left of “crying at the regime”.