Full recovery from an IT failure that wreaked havoc worldwide on Friday could take weeks, experts have said, after airports, healthcare services and businesses were hit by the “largest outage in history”.

Flights and hospital appointments were cancelled, payroll systems seized up and TV channels went off air after a botched software upgrade hit Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

It came from the US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, and left workers facing a “blue screen of death” as their computers failed to start. Experts said every affected PC may have to be fixed manually.

In the UK, Whitehall crisis officials were coordinating the response through the Cobra committee. Ministers were in touch with their sectors to tackle the fallout from the IT failure, and the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, said she was working “at pace with industry” after trains and flights were affected.

A Microsoft spokesperson said: “We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.”

CrowdStrike confirmed the outage was due to a software update from one of its products and was not caused by a cyber-attack. Its founder and chief executive, George Kurtz, said he was “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers”, adding there had been a “negative interaction” between the update and Microsoft’s operating system.

CrowdStrike’s stock price fell dramatically over the course of the day, dropping by as much as 13% at some points in trading.

Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) – the parent company of Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – warned passengers to expect delays. According to the service status monitoring website Downdetector, users in the UK were reporting issues with the services of Visa, BT, big supermarket chains, banks, online gaming platforms and media outlets.

The Sky News and CBBC channels were also temporarily off air in the UK before resuming broadcasting, while Australia’s ABC was also affected.

In financial services, Metro Bank reported problems with its phone lines in the UK and Santander said card payments “may be affected”. Monzo said some customers were reporting issues, while some bankers at JP Morgan were unable to log on to their systems and the London Stock Exchange said there were problems with its news service.

Troy Hunt, a leading cybersecurity consultant, said the scale of the IT failure was unprecedented.

“I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history,” he tweeted.

“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time,” he added, referring to the millennium bug that worried IT experts in the run-up to 2000 – but ultimately did not cause serious damage.

The UK’s chartered institute for IT, the BCS, said it could take days and weeks for systems to recover, although some fixes will be easier to implement.

“In some cases, the fix may be applied very quickly,” said Adam Leon Smith, a BCS fellow. “But if computers have reacted in a way that means they’re getting into blue screens and endless loops it may be difficult to restore and that could take days and weeks.”

Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey, said the fix required a manual reboot of affected machines and “most standard users would not know how to follow the instructions”. Organisations with thousands of PCs distributed in different locations face a tougher task, he added.

“It’s just sheer numbers. For some organisations it could certainly take weeks,” he said.

Among the companies affected on Friday was Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, which said on its website: “Potential disruptions across the network due to a global third-party system outage … We advise passengers to arrive at the airport three hours in advance of their flight to avoid any disruptions.”

Heathrow, Europe’s biggest airport, said it was “working hard” to get passengers “on their way”.

A spokesperson for Heathrow said: “We continue to work with our airport colleagues to minimise the impact of the global IT outage on passenger journeys. Flights continue to be operational and passengers are advised to check with their airlines for the latest flight information.”

In the US, flights were grounded owing to communications problems that appear to be linked to the outage. American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines were among the carriers affected. Berlin airport temporarily halted all flights on Friday. The aviation analytics company Cirium said 4,295 flights – 3.9% of those scheduled – were cancelled globally on Friday, including 143 UK departures.

GP practices in the UK said they were unable to access patient records or book appointments. Surgeries reported on social media that they could not access the EMIS Web system. It is understood that 999 services were unaffected by the outage, but the Royal Surrey NHS Trust, in the south of England, declared a critical incident and cancelled radiotherapy appointments scheduled for Friday morning. The National Pharmacy Association confirmed that UK services could be affected.

A spokesperson for Keir Starmer said they were unaware of the problem having any impact on government services, but added they recognised the impact it was having more broadly.

The Israeli health ministry said “the global malfunction” had affected 16 hospitals, while in Germany the Schleswig-Holstein university hospital in the north of the country said it had cancelled all planned operations in Kiel and Lübeck.

Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, issued an emergency declaration stating that certain essential city services including emergency communications were affected by the outage.

The University of Surrey’s Alan Woodward said the outage was caused by an IT product called CrowdStrike Falcon which monitors the security of large networks of PCs and downloads a piece of monitoring software to every machine.

“The product is used by large organisations that have significant numbers of PCs to ensure everything is monitored. Sadly, if they lose all the PCs they can’t operate, or only at a much reduced service level,” said Woodward.

Steven Murdoch, a professor of security engineering at University College London, said many organisations could struggle to carry out the fix swiftly.

“The problem is occurring before the computer is connected to the internet so there is no way to fix the problem remotely, so that requires someone to come out … and fix the problem,” said Murdoch, adding that companies and organisations that have cut back on IT staff or outsourced their IT work would find their ability to address the problem hampered.

However, Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, said that unlike adversarial cyber-attacks, this problem had already been identified and a solution had been flagged.

“The recovery is not about getting on top of the situation but getting back up. I think it’s unlikely to be very newsworthy in terms of ongoing disruption this time next week,” he said.

CrowdStrike’s president, George Kurtz, tweeted that the incident had been caused by a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts”. He added: “This is not a security incident or cyber-attack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

The problems for businesses in the US were also compounded by problems with Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing business that occurred on Thursday.

A global technology outage on Friday grounded flights, disrupted health services, crashed payment systems and blocked access to Microsoft services in what experts believe is one of the largest IT failures in history.

The cause of the disruptions originated from a cybersecurity firm called CrowdStrike, which provides software to a wide range of industries. An update to one of CrowdStrike’s pieces of software, Falcon Sensor, malfunctioned, throwing a wrench into computers running Windows, leading to major tech failures around the world, the company said.

Here’s what we know about the outage so far.

Thousands of air passengers were stranded across the US on Friday morning and police and hospital systems were left struggling as a global IT outage grounded major domestic airlines and struck rail services, shipping and police emergency systems, as well as some hospital functions.

Technology systems using both Microsoft’s Windows and CrowdStrike cybersecurity software were hit by the outage, after a CrowdStrike update installed faulty software in computers running Windows.

The problem left large numbers of workers around the world facing an error screen on computers, as experts began predicting it could turn out to be the largest-scale IT failure in history.

Alongside stranded travelers, the outage closed US courts, stopped customers at TD Bank, the US’s 10th largest bank, from accessing their accounts, and caused multiple problems for hospitals, police, and firefighters. Early on Friday morning, the San Francisco fire department reported 20 simultaneous false fire alarms that were probably caused by the issue.

The outage also affected emergency services, including law enforcement. In Alaska, both 911 emergency and non-emergency call centers stopped working correctly across the state, and state troopers were forced to put out notices encouraging people to use manual phone lines.

Emergency call lines were also reportedly impaired in a number of other states, including Arizona, Indiana, New Hampshire and Ohio.

CrowdStrike said it had since resolved the update-related issue, though IT administrators may need some time to implement the fix.

In an interview with the Today show on Friday morning, CrowdStrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, said the company was “deeply sorry for the impact we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this”. Kurtz emphasized that the outage was caused by a bug in a software update, not a cyber-attack.

“We’ve been on with our customers all night and working with them,” Kurtz said.

The White House told the press that Joe Biden had been briefed on the outage. “His team is engaged across the interagency to get sector by sector updates throughout the day and is standing by to provide assistance as needed,” it said in a statement.

In the US, airports along the east coast from Miami to Boston were engulfed in chaos amid serious flight disruptions caused by the Microsoft Windows outage, which centered on Microsoft’s 365 applications.

At Denver international airport in Colorado, passengers turning up expecting to catch flights were greeted with flashing blue error messages on information screens.

According to the data tracker FlightAware, 1,290 flights had been cancelled within, into or out of the US and a further 2,905 delayed by 9am ET on Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that at least five carriers – American, United, Delta, Allegiant Air and Spirit – had issued ground stops, holding planes at airports. Smaller airlines including Frontier and SunCountry also reported outages in the early hours.

In a statement, the FAA said it was “closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at US airlines. Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”

Airports along the east coast and midwest appeared to bear the brunt of the chaos, with New York City and the Chicago region affected especially hard. In Boston’s Logan international airport, passengers waited in check-in lines for Spirit Airlines as long as a football field.

American Airlines said that at 5am ET it managed to “safely re-establish our operation” and call off the ground stop. But it was likely that disruptions would continue for several hours, given the knock-on effects of stopping flights.

The outage caused havoc for Americans attempting to return to the US as well as domestic passengers. Patricia Sweeney told NBC News of her dismay when her American Airlines flight home from Tokyo to New York was cancelled. She described what happened when another American flight next to her gate was also cancelled: “You could just hear a roar of passengers – people are not happy,” she said.

According to Microsoft, the massive outage started at about 6pm ET on Thursday, with the first impact being felt in the central US region, and then spreading to the coasts. The initial disruption appears to have been suffered by customers using Azure services, a cloud computing platform used to manage applications.

In New York state, the Buffalo-based Kaleida Health network, which runs five hospitals in the region, reported problems with its systems overnight while saying it was getting services up and running again but, according to local media, adding: “We are encouraging all staff – as well as patients – to report as scheduled.”

At Mass General Brigham hospitals in Boston, all appointments classified non-urgent were cancelled on Friday as a result of the outage. The hospital group said that many of its systems had been affected, though its emergency services and urgent care facilities were being kept open.

Other US health groups also cancelled all non-emergency appointments including surgeries. Mount Nittany Health in Pennsylvania said it had made this exceptional move because it was “experiencing significant disruptions across our entire health system”.

As the crisis deepened across the US, other forms of transportation were hit. In New Jersey, two major shipping terminals, APM Terminals and Maher Terminals in Port Newark, delayed opening on Friday because of the outage.

In Washington DC, the website of the underground Metro commuter train system in the US capital remained down for several hours, but the Metro service said that its stations opened on time and trains and buses were operating as scheduled on Friday.

The US secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, said that the department was monitoring events, especially at the airlines, closely. He said he would hold all airlines “to their responsibilities to meet the needs of passengers”.

The CrowdStrike outage caused havoc across a swathe of industries spanning the global economy.

Airlines, railways, hospitals, television stations, sports clubs and financial systems were among the sectors hit by the technology glitches, prompting national governments to convene emergency meetings and stock markets to fall.

Travel

The US’s Federal Aviation Administration shut down operations due to the outage. There were about 110,000 commercial flights scheduled worldwide on Friday. By 6am ET, nearly 1,400 of them had been cancelled, according to reports.

US airlines including Delta, United and American grounded flights because of communication problems, while airports descended into chaos and some tourists were hit with large charges for purchasing tickets for new flights after original plans were cancelled.

Some rail transportation was also hit, with the metro system in the US capital, Washington DC, experiencing delays. And New York City’s subway system agency, the MTA, said that “some MTA customer information systems are temporarily offline due to a worldwide technical outage”. It added that train and bus services were unaffected.

In the UK, Gatwick and Luton airports were among the hubs where airline check-in systems were hit, while the biggest commuter rail network, GTR, said its Thameslink and Southern trains were disrupted due to communications systems failing. South Western Railway said all of its ticket vending machines had stopped working, and West Midlands Trains, Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway and TransPennine Express were also affected.

Health

Patients had important hospital appointments cancelled at the last minute in countries including the UK, Germany and Israel – with the Royal Surrey NHS trust, in the south of England, declaring a critical incident and cancelling radiotherapy appointments scheduled for Friday morning.

Doctors’ surgeries in the UK said they were unable to access patient records or book appointments, as they reported via social media that they were unable to access online systems. It is understood that NHS hospitals and 999 services are unaffected by the outage.

Some hospitals in Germany and the Netherlands cancelled operations, while others in Israel and the US said they were also having problems, often related to access to electronic medical records.

In the US, the emergency 911 lines went down in parts of Alaska, with officials posting alternative phone numbers on social media. There were similar problems reported in other states, including New Hampshire and Ohio.

Financial systems

The systems failure threatened to leave people without their weekly wages and monthly salaries as payroll systems seized up.

Melanie Pizzey, the chief executive of the Global Payroll Association, says: “We’ve been contacted by numerous clients already today who have been unable to access their payroll software due to the Microsoft outage and others who have been urged to log out with immediate effect.

“Depending on the length of this outage, it could have very serious implications for businesses, particularly those who process payroll on a weekly basis. Furthermore, we could see a backlog with regard to processing payrolls for the coming month end which may delay employees from receiving their monthly wage.”

In financial services, Metro Bank reported problems with its phone lines in the UK and Santander said card payments “may be affected”. Employees at the US bank JP Morgan were unable to log on to their systems and the London Stock Exchange said there were problems with its news service.

Bloomberg TV reported that it knew of hedge funds that were unable to process certain trades and that “some people had to go home”.

Retail

Retailing payment systems also appeared to have been hit by the systems failure, with some UK shopkeepers erecting “cash only” signs.

A spokesperson for the UK supermarket Morrisons said there were some “isolated incidents” with payment systems during the morning, which were later resolved with systems returning to working normally.

Its rival Waitrose said it was taking contactless payments largely as normal, as well as still processing payments by chip and pin and cash. A spokesperson for the supermarket said it had been able to take card payments throughout the day, but had been “briefly limited on contactless payments”.

Payment systems in some branches of the home improvements store B&Q were also affected, according to reports from customers.

Sport

In France, where the Olympic Games are due to start next week, there were reports of issues.

The organisers of the Games said: “Paris 2024’s technical teams are fully mobilised to limit the impact and we have activated our contingency plans to ensure the continuation of our operations.”

A few football clubs also warned that their ticketing systems are under pressure, with reigning Scottish champions Celtic announcing they were postponing ticket sales. In England Manchester United did the same.

Media

Several French television channels were reported to be experiencing technical problems, including difficulties displaying their graphics and weather maps.

In the UK, Sky News and CBBC were also temporarily off air, before resuming broadcasting.

A beleaguered Joe Biden entered potentially the most decisive weekend of his 50-year political career on Friday as the growing list of Democratic members of Congress calling on him to step aside surpassed 30.

Biden is recovering from Covid-19 in self-isolation at his home in Delaware and reportedly feeling “angry and betrayed” by allies and speculation mounted that he might be preparing to announce his withdrawal from the race.

Advisers were reported to be discussing the details, timing and setting of a possible withdrawal announcement, and a mood of resignation before Biden’s departure was said to be rampant among his campaign staff.

With six in 10 Democratic voters telling an AP-Norc Centre for Public Affairs Research poll released on Friday that Kamala Harris would make a good president, allies of the vice-president were making discreet preparations for her to assume the top of the presidential ticket, courting donors and crafting a new message to be used in the event she becomes the candidate.

A rare glimmer of light for Biden came in a letter on Thursday signed by more than 1,400 Black female supporters, who argued that he should remain the candidate, and that any attempt to change the ticket would “circumvent the will of millions of voters who participated in a democratic process” in the primaries. Another public statement of support on Thursday came from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman, who during an Instagram live stream on Thursday urged Democrats to reconsider their efforts to push Biden out.

On Friday, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who has become one of the Biden’s most vocal progressive supporters since the debate fiasco, also urged support for Biden.

The Congressional Hispanic caucus’s campaign arm also announced on Friday that it was endorsing Biden, which is no surprise given the group’s opposition to Trump but noteworthy at a moment when the president is fighting for his political life. “Another Trump presidency would be disastrous to the Latino community across the country. Make no mistake, Latinos nationwide will bear the brunt of the consequences of a second Trump presidency,” the group’s chairwoman, Linda Sánchez, said.

But with more than 30 Democrats in Congress, including the leading California representative Adam Schiff, having now called on Biden to step down, the president was said to be angry at senior figures in the party for encouraging the discontent. Chief among them is Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who has tried to persuade Biden of his declining poll numbers, as well as Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, who Biden reportedly feels have undermined him through their conspicuous silence.

After weeks of defiantly stating that he will remain the Democratic nominee, despite concerns about his age and mental acuity in the wake of last month’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump, some media outlets were reporting that Biden was reconsidering his position. “Reality is setting in,” a source close to Biden told the New York Times, adding that it would not be surprising if Biden announced his withdrawal soon to allow Harris to take the nomination.

“I don’t see how [Biden] can outmanoeuvre the sustained attacks,” Politico quoted a Democratic figure close to the White House as saying. “It feels like the ending is near.”

Biden’s resolve had reportedly been shaken by a combination of the intensive machinations of Pelosi, fresh poll data from swing states showing his path to an electoral college victory narrowing, and a boycott by key donors.

Pelosi, long one of his most important allies, is said to have used her knowledge of polling data and the political map to persuade him that his position is weak.

Biden has repeatedly insisted that he has polling evidence showing he could win, relying on data from his aide Mike Donilon. But when he made the argument to Pelosi in a recent phone call, she told him to “put Donilon on the phone” so she could counter it with her own polling and implying that the president was not being kept informed, the New York Times reported.

Public pressure intensified further on Thursday when the Senate Democrats Jon Tester of Montana and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico became the second and third to publicly urge Biden to step aside. Many more than the 30-plus congressional Democrats who have publicly called for his withdrawal have done so in private.

Four House members – Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin – issued the plea jointly Friday.

“We believe the most responsible and patriotic thing you can do in this moment is to step aside as our nominee while continuing to lead our party from the White House,” they wrote to Biden. “Mr President, you have always put our country and our values first. We call on you to do it once again, so that we can come together and save the country we love.”

Three further separate calls were made by Zoe Lofgren of California, a close Pelosi ally, Sean Casten of Illinois, and Greg Landsman of Ohio, whose seat is one of the Republicans’ top targets in November’s election.

Allies of Pelosi depicted her as exercising sensitivity towards Biden – by recognising his achievements as president, long record of political service and the fact that he has Covid – while subtly using gentle persuasion.

“She’s like a magician,” one source told the Hill. “She’s extraordinarily intentional. She’s trying hard to keep the balance and helping him reach a decision by gently pulling, never pushing.”

That cut little ice with Biden’s allies, one of whom compared his fate to Julius Caesar.

“People who have known this man for 30, 40 years are stabbing this man in the front and the back,” a senior campaign and administration aide told Politico. “They are JULIUS CAESAR-ing this man.”

Biden himself was reported to share such sentiments, telling aides that he feels “hurt and betrayed” at how the party’s leading figures – who he has previously derided as “elites” – have tried to push him out.

One Biden ally told NBC News that the party leaders now trying to force him from the ticket were to blame for Trump’s victory in the 2016 election.

“Can we all just remember for a minute that these same people who are trying to push Joe Biden out are the same people who literally gave us all Donald Trump? In 2015, Obama, Pelosi, [Chuck] Schumer [the Democratic Senate majority leader] pushed Biden aside in favour of Hillary; they were wrong then, and they are wrong now,” the source said.

“Perhaps we should learn a few lessons from 2016; one of them is polls are BS. And two, maybe, just maybe, Joe Biden is more in touch with actual Americans than Obama-Pelosi-Schumer?”

Biden’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, continued to stress that Biden had “work to do” but said the campaign did not have its “head in the sand”.

“For every person that has said that they are concerned, we’ve had another person that’s seen him and they’ve said you are our guy and we want to be with you,” she said, emphasizing that Biden’s campaign trail appearances have been reassuring to the campaign. “The more and more people that see Joe Biden out there post-debate they are reassured.”

Such defiance seemed increasingly rare inside the Biden campaign, however, with CNN reporting that some staff had undergone a “quiet quit” process. “I don’t think you can find a person who is off the record saying he should stay in,” one told the network. “There’s a growing sense that it’s game over.”

The UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories “as rapidly as possible” and make full reparations for its “internationally wrongful acts” in a sweeping and damning advisory opinion that says the occupation violates international law.

In a historic, albeit non-binding, opinion, the court found multiple breaches of international law by Israel including activities that amounted to apartheid.

It will make sobering reading for Israel’s allies, with the court advising that other states are under an obligation not to recognise the occupation as lawful nor to aid or assist it.

Reading the court’s opinion on Friday, the president of the ICJ, Nawaf Salam, said: “The court considers that the violations by Israel of the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force and of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination have a direct impact on the legality of the continued presence of Israel, as an occupying power, in the occupied Palestinian territory.

“The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the occupied Palestinian territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful.”

The opinion was provided in response to a request from the UN general assembly in 2022. It precedes the Gaza conflict and is not directly linked to it but will add to the pressure on Israel – and its allies – to bring an end to its military offensive, in which it has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which began after the 7 October attacks in which Hamas-led militants killed almost 1,200 people and took 250 people hostage, is the subject of a separate case at the ICJ brought by South Africa, which accuses it of genocide in its response to the killings on Israeli soil.

Responding to the ICJ’s opinion on Friday, the office of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, welcomed the court’s decision as “historic” and a “victory for justice” and said Israel must be compelled to implement it.

But office of the the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land – not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, nor in our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank].

“No decision of lies in The Hague will distort this historical truth, and similarly, the legality of Israeli settlements in all parts of our homeland cannot be disputed.”

Breaches of international law identified by the court included:

• Forcible evictions, extensive house demolitions and restrictions on residence and movement.

• The transfer by Israel of settlers to the West Bank and East Jerusalem and maintenance of their presence.

• Its failure to prevent or to punish attacks by settlers.

• Restricting the access of the Palestinian population to water.

• Israel’s use of the natural resources in the occupied Palestinian territory.

• The extension of Israel’s law to the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Hague court found Israel was in breach of article 3 of the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (CERD), which says: “Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction.”

Salam said: “The court observes that Israel’s legislation and measures impose and serve to maintain a near-complete separation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between the settler and Palestinian communities. For this reason, the court considers that Israel’s legislation and measures constitute a breach of article 3 of CERD.”

As well as ordering an end to the occupation as soon as possible, the court, which consists of 15 judges, said Israel must put an end to all unlawful acts, including ceasing all new settlement activity and repealing legislation that maintains the occupation, including that which discriminates against Palestinians or seeks to modify the demographic composition of any parts of the occupied territory.

Salam said reparations included restitution, compensation and/or satisfaction, defining the former as “Israel’s obligation to return the land and other immovable property, as well as all assets seized from any natural or legal person since its occupation started in 1967, and all cultural property and assets taken from Palestinians and Palestinian institutions, including archives and documents”.

“It also requires the evacuation of all settlers from existing settlements and the dismantling of the parts of the wall constructed by Israel that are situated in the occupied Palestinian territory, as well as allowing all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their original place of residence.”

He said where reparations were materially possible, compensation should be paid instead.

Israel did not participate in the proceedings, which featured arguments from an unprecedented 52 states, but it submitted a written argument in July last year, urging the ICJ to dismiss the request for an opinion. It said the questions put to the court were prejudiced and failed to “recognise Israel’s right and duty to protect its citizens”, address Israeli security concerns or acknowledge Israel-Palestinian agreements to negotiate issues, including “the permanent status of the territory, security arrangements, settlements, and borders”.

The court said it had taken account of Israel’s security concerns but they could not “override the principle of the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force” and imposing restrictions on all Palestinians was “disproportionate”.

Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the opinion as “fundamentally wrong” and one-sided, and repeated its stance that a political settlement in the region could only be reached by negotiations.

Philippe Sands KC, who acted as counsel for Palestine in the proceedings, said: “This is as clear and far-reaching ruling as I have come across from this court.

“Its legal consequences are entirely without ambiguity, its political consequences far-reaching.

“Among the many practical consequences, the court has made clear its view, by an overwhelming majority, that the US and other embassies in Jerusalem are illegal and must be removed for international law to be respected.”

Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 six-day war. It has annexed East Jerusalem in a move that is not recognised internationally and considers the West Bank, to which it has moved people in settlements, to be disputed territory.

While it withdrew its military and settlements from Gaza in 2005, the ICJ said its continued control over the strip, which had increased since 7 October, meant it was still occupied along with East Jerusalem and the West Bank, together constituting the occupied Palestinian territory.

Thorough, detailed and all encompassing, the international court of justice’s advisory ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and settlement building represents a stark refutation of Israel’s claims, and will have a profound impact for years to come.

The ICJ declared Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory “unlawful” and said it amounted to de facto annexation. The court called for Israel to rapidly quit the occupied territories and ruled Palestinians were due reparations for the harm of 57 years of an occupation that systematically discriminates against them.

And in its many parts, the judgment represents a devastating defeat for Israel in the world court.

While numerous UN reports and resolutions in the general assembly have made the same point, the ICJ ruling, by virtue of being made in reference to treaty and individual laws, represents a judgment that will be hard to ignore.

The ruling also stood as a rebuke to Israel’s argument that the ICJ had no standing to consider the issue on the grounds that UN resolutions, as well as bilateral Israeli-Palestinian agreements, had established that the correct framework for resolving the conflict should be political, not legal.

Effectively rejecting that argument, the court asserted that international law applies regardless of the decades of failed political efforts to reach a lasting peace agreement, not least as Israel has continued with its settlement-building.

Taking half an hour to read, the ruling gathered together multiple strands of international law from the Geneva conventions to the Hague convention to make a case that has been obvious to Palestinians and to critics of Israeli policy in the international community for years.

In summary it said that years of Israel’s own officially and self-described ambitions to build and settle in the occupied territories amounted to an intent to effectively annex territory against international law; that those policies were designed to benefit settlers and Israel, not the Palestinians living under military administration.

Perhaps the most significant section was the judgment that “the transfer by Israel of settlers to the West Bank and Jerusalem as well as Israel’s maintenance of their presence, is contrary to article 49 of the 4th Geneva convention”.

While the individual paragraphs applying to each breach of international law – and each inconsistency – were not surprising, taken in its entirety the ruling offers a profound challenge to governments, including the UK and US, that had for years soft-pedalled on Israel’s occupation policies, criticising settlement building but until recently doing little practical about it.

If that has changed in recent months, with a raft of US, UK and European sanctions targeting violent settlers, both individually and the groups that support them, the advisory ruling poses a far more serious question: whether, given the severity of the breaches of international law, sanctions should also be applied to Israeli ministers and institutions supporting the settlement enterprise.

While non-binding, the ruling will provide ample ammunition for government lawyers already actively examining future sanctions against those linked to Israeli settlement.

Significant in the ruling was that the court had noted the recent and continuing transfer of powers from the military to civilian officials overseeing the occupied territories, which critics had warned further exposed Israel activities to the court.

The timing, too, is significant. With Israel isolated over its conduct of the Gaza war, and under investigation at the ICJ and the international criminal court for alleged war crimes, the stark assessment of the long-term illegality of Israel’s occupation will only reinforce that isolation.

If the ruling felt inevitable, it was because of Israel’s own rightward drift under its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who now heads a coalition that includes far-right pro-settler parties and ministers and has embraced exactly the policies for which Israel has been condemned.

Adidas has pulled images of the model Bella Hadid from adverts promoting a sports shoe first launched to coincide with the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

The German-based sportswear company said it was “revising” its campaign after criticism from Israel over Hadid’s involvement.

The SL72 trainers, described by Adidas as a timeless classic, were promoted by Hadid, an American whose family has its roots in Palestine.

The model, who previously drew the ire of the Israeli government for allegedly chanting the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, has been accused of antisemitism.

Israel’s official account on X said it objected to Hadid as “the face of [the Adidas] campaign” in a post that noted that “eleven Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the Munich Olympics”.

Hadid has repeatedly criticised the Israeli government and supported Palestinians over the years and on 23 October made a statement on Instagram lamenting the loss of innocent lives while calling on followers to pressure their leaders to protect civilians in Gaza.

Adidas said in a statement that the campaign for the SL72 shoe “unites a broad range of partners”. It said: “We are conscious that connections have been made to tragic historical events – though these are completely unintentional – and we apologise for any upset or distress caused.

“As a result, we are revising the remainder of the campaign.”

It did not set out what changes would be made. Other advertising images showing Adidas brand ambassadors including the French footballer Jules Koundé, the US rapper A$AP Nast and the Chinese model Sabrina Lan remain online.

Members of the Palestinian group Black September broke into the Olympic village on 5 September 1972. Eleven members of the Israeli team were taken hostage and killed.

It is not the first time that the sportswear company has cut ties with celebrity ambassadors after accusations of antisemitism.

Adidas ended its partnership with the rapper Kanye West in October 2022, saying it “does not tolerate antisemitism” after the rapper was suspended from Instagram and Twitter over offensive posts.

It said the comments and actions from West had been “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous and violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness”.

A judge on Friday tentatively scheduled Harvey Weinstein’s planned retrial on rape and sexual assault charges to begin on 12 November.

Weinstein wore an American flag pin on his jacket during a brief court appearance in Manhattan that was delayed by more than 90 minutes due to a disruption that affected computers around the world, according to the judge, Curtis Farber.

Besides the setting of the trial date, the hearing addressed issues related to evidence in the case against the former Hollywood movie mogul, particularly information from phones that will be reviewed by a former judge to determine whether materials were relevant to the case and should be turned over to defense lawyers.

At a hearing last week, prosecutors said they anticipated a November retrial. They told Farber that they were still actively pursuing new claims against Weinstein, though they conceded that they hadn’t yet brought any findings to a grand jury.

Weinstein denies that he sexually assaulted anyone.

His lawyers told Farber they would prefer an earlier trial date.

Weinstein, 72, is jailed on Rikers Island. One of his attorneys, Arthur Aidala, has complained that Weinstein has not been getting proper care in jail for diabetes, macular degeneration and fluid in his lungs and heart.

Aidala was not in court on Friday, but another Weinstein attorney, John Esposito, told reporters that during a sidebar conversation with the judge, the defense again brought up Weinstein’s health. Farber said he would assist to the extent that he could to ensure that Weinstein is properly cared for, Esposito said.

Esposito said the preference would be for Weinstein to be moved back to Manhattan’s Bellevue hospital.

He was treated at Bellevue for several days after he was brought to New York City hours after the state’s highest court threw out his 2020 conviction earlier this year. The appeals court wrote that the original trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that weren’t part of the case.

He remains jailed in part because he was sentenced to 16 years in prison in California after he was convicted in a rape case in Los Angeles in 2022. In an appeal filed there last month, his lawyers argued he did not get a fair trial. Weinstein’s New York conviction had been considered a landmark in the #MeToo movement.

In New York, Weinstein had been convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress and of forcing himself on a TV and film production assistant in 2006. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors have said one of the accusers in that case, Jessica Mann, is prepared to testify against Weinstein again. Gloria Allred, a lawyer for the second accuser, Mimi Haley, said last week that her client had not yet decided whether to participate in the retrial.

A judge on Friday tentatively scheduled Harvey Weinstein’s planned retrial on rape and sexual assault charges to begin on 12 November.

Weinstein wore an American flag pin on his jacket during a brief court appearance in Manhattan that was delayed by more than 90 minutes due to a disruption that affected computers around the world, according to the judge, Curtis Farber.

Besides the setting of the trial date, the hearing addressed issues related to evidence in the case against the former Hollywood movie mogul, particularly information from phones that will be reviewed by a former judge to determine whether materials were relevant to the case and should be turned over to defense lawyers.

At a hearing last week, prosecutors said they anticipated a November retrial. They told Farber that they were still actively pursuing new claims against Weinstein, though they conceded that they hadn’t yet brought any findings to a grand jury.

Weinstein denies that he sexually assaulted anyone.

His lawyers told Farber they would prefer an earlier trial date.

Weinstein, 72, is jailed on Rikers Island. One of his attorneys, Arthur Aidala, has complained that Weinstein has not been getting proper care in jail for diabetes, macular degeneration and fluid in his lungs and heart.

Aidala was not in court on Friday, but another Weinstein attorney, John Esposito, told reporters that during a sidebar conversation with the judge, the defense again brought up Weinstein’s health. Farber said he would assist to the extent that he could to ensure that Weinstein is properly cared for, Esposito said.

Esposito said the preference would be for Weinstein to be moved back to Manhattan’s Bellevue hospital.

He was treated at Bellevue for several days after he was brought to New York City hours after the state’s highest court threw out his 2020 conviction earlier this year. The appeals court wrote that the original trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that weren’t part of the case.

He remains jailed in part because he was sentenced to 16 years in prison in California after he was convicted in a rape case in Los Angeles in 2022. In an appeal filed there last month, his lawyers argued he did not get a fair trial. Weinstein’s New York conviction had been considered a landmark in the #MeToo movement.

In New York, Weinstein had been convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress and of forcing himself on a TV and film production assistant in 2006. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors have said one of the accusers in that case, Jessica Mann, is prepared to testify against Weinstein again. Gloria Allred, a lawyer for the second accuser, Mimi Haley, said last week that her client had not yet decided whether to participate in the retrial.

Employees of the country’s largest provider of housing to unaccompanied migrant children encountered at the US’s southern border have been sexually abusing and harassing the children in their care for nearly a decade, the US justice department alleges in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

Southwest Key operates 29 shelters across Texas, Arizona and California, housing and feeding undocumented children between the ages of 13 and 17, who come mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, crossing the US-Mexico border without their parents.

These children remain in the shelter until they are reunited with their immediate families or placed with a relative or other vetted sponsor while their immigration cases are litigated.

Southwest Key has partnered with the federal government on immigration at the border for nearly 20 years, and has received more than $6b in federal funding since 2008 from the departments of health and human services, education, labor, justice and others.

“From at least 2015 through at least 2023, multiple Southwest Key employees have subjected unaccompanied children in their care to repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct and a hostile housing environment, including severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos, entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, sexual comments and gestures, leering, and inappropriate touching,” the lawsuit says.

“In some cases, Southwest Key employees threatened children to maintain their silence.”

Through the lawsuit, the justice department aims for Southwest Key’s practices to be declared discriminatory, and therefore in violation of the Fair Housing Act, and seeks monetary damages to compensate the children allegedly harmed in Southwest Key’s care, as well as “civil penalties against Southwest Key to vindicate the public interest”.

“In search of the American dream, children often endure perilous journeys on their migration north to the southern border,” said US attorney Alamdar S Hamdani for the southern district of Texas, the federal district court working with the justice department’s civil rights division and the US attorney’s office for the western district of Texas, where the lawsuit was filed.

“The sexual harassment alleged in the complaint would destroy any child’s sense of safety, turning what was an American dream into a nightmare,” Hamdani said.

Southwest Key denies the justice department’s allegations.

In a statement to the Guardian on Friday, the organization wrote: “Southwest Key Programs’ primary focus is the safety, health, and well-being of each one of the children and youth we care for. We continue to review the complaint, and it does not present the accurate picture of the care and commitment our employees provide to the youth and children. We are in constant communication and continue to closely partner with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), as we have done so for the past two decades to ensure the children and youth entrusted to our care are safe with us during their short stay with Southwest Key.”

A German combat medic accused by Belarus of committing crimes including “terrorism” and “mercenary activity” has been sentenced to death by firing squad, according to a Belarusian rights group.

Rico Krieger, 30, was convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code in a trial held at the end of June, the Viasna Human Rights Centre reported on Friday.

Part of the proceedings were held behind closed doors, the exact allegations against Krieger were not immediately clear and Belarus’s official news agency did not report anything about his case.

The case may be linked to the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment, a group of Belarusian volunteer fighters fighting against Russia in the war in Ukraine, Viasna reported.

This was the first time someone had been tried for mercenary activity in Belarus, the rights group said.

According to a LinkedIn profile Viasna said belonged to Krieger, he worked as a medical worker for the German Red Cross and as an armed security officer for the US embassy in Berlin.

The exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said she was “concerned” by the reports and was “collecting more information on his case”.

Belarus is the only European country to actively use capital punishment, reserving it for serious crimes including murder under aggravating circumstances, terrorism and treason.

Russia still has the death penalty but has a moratorium and has not carried out an execution since the mid-1990s.

It was not immediately clear whether Krieger had appealed against the sentence.

The Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment is named after the Polish-Belarusian writer and leading figure in the January uprising against the Russian empire in 1863.

The group is one of many foreign-founded volunteer units fighting alongside the Ukrainian army. It is considered an extremist group in Belarus, a close ally of Russia.

It is still not clear what connection Krieger may have had to the group, but Belarusian opposition media reported he may have been linked to a unit within the regiment known as the Western battalion.

He was convicted of six crimes, said Viasna: unlawful acts related to firearms; the disabling of transport or communication routes; creation of or participation in an extremist group; intelligence activity; mercenary activity; and terrorism.

Belarus is reported to have executed up to 400 people since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Amnesty International. Executions of foreign citizens are rare.

The authoritarian regime of the longtime president, Alexander Lukashenko, has detained thousands of dissidents and civic activists who oppose him.

In a surprise move on Wednesday, Minsk announced it would open its borders visa-free to nationals of 35 European countries for 90-day trips, in an attempt to improve frosty relations with the west.

The alleged killer of a British former Rolls-Royce designer who was stabbed to death at his home in Bavaria last week has been arrested outside Paris after a Europe-wide search, German police said. A motive was not immediately established.

Ian Cameron, 74, was attacked with a knife on 12 July and fatally wounded. A Serbian citizen, 22, was identified as the prime suspect based on tips from the public, the Fürstenfeldbruck police department said.

“After the manhunt was launched, investigators were quickly able to establish the identity of the suspect, verify it with the authorities and transfer it to the investigators of the Bavarian state criminal investigation office,” police said on Friday.

The suspect is believed to have fled the region via Munich, then Innsbruck and Zurich to France, where he was found in a flat in Aubervilliers, north-east of Paris, and taken into custody on Thursday morning by a special unit of the French police in coordination with German federal police. Authorities in Serbia, Austria and Switzerland contributed to the operation.

“The suspect was alone at this time and did not resist arrest,” police said. He was to appear before a French investigating judge on Friday.

Europol, the EU’s police body, said it was an operation “showcasing the power of international police cooperation” which it coordinated. It said the suspect would be extradited to Germany to face charges.

The German daily Bild said the knife believed to have been used in the murder had been found in a forest near Cameron’s mansion in the town of Herrsching on Lake Ammer and was being examined for DNA evidence.

It said nothing had been stolen from the home, leaving the motive a mystery. The suspect, who is believed to have rung the bell at the residence to gain entry, was found with €200 (£168) on him when captured.

Cameron’s wife, who reportedly works for a car manufacturer, was at the house during the attack and managed to escape by running to a neighbour’s home and alerting the police.

The assailant is believed to have fled on foot.

“We are working on the assumption that the perpetrator and the victim did not know each other,” the Fürstenfeldbruck police chief, Manfred Frei, told German media, adding that a contract killing could not be ruled out.

Investigators had released CCTV images of a bearded man at a local supermarket, where he bought gloves, as well as pictures of the suspect wearing a blue hoodie and a red backpack. Police said they had received more than 80 tips from the public.

The daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the decisive information had come from a witness in Munich who recognised the suspect in the photos and knew his name.

Cameron retired from Rolls-Royce in 2013 after serving as its chief designer, working on several of the luxury carmaker’s models.

Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist party and the country’s most powerful politician, has died aged 80, creating a power vacuum.

Trong died early on Friday afternoon “after a period of illness”, according to his medical team, state media reported.

Trong held Vietnam’s most powerful position, general-secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist party, since 2011, one of the longest-serving leaders in decades. He also served as president from 2018 to 2021.

During his time in office, he oversaw a period of rapid economic growth as well as a balancing of ties with China and Vietnam’s former foe, the US. Trong was known for his “blazing furnace” anti-corruption drive, under which even senior political figures, including former presidents, were forced to resign.

There had been speculation about Trong’s health for months, fuelled by his absences from recent meetings.

“General secretary of the central committee of the party, Nguyen Phu Trong, passed away at 13.38 on 19 July 2024, at the 108 Central Military hospital due to old age and serious illness,” the Nhan Dan newspaper said.

On Thursday, it was announced he would step back from his role as head of the Communist party, due to unspecified health concerns, with president To Lam instead taking over his duties. Trong was awarded the Gold Star medal, the country’s highest honour for public officials, on the same day.

Trong will be remembered for his anti-corruption campaigns, which were unprecedented in the history of the party. Since 2016, more than 139,000 party members have been punished for corruption – a crackdown so vast it was blamed for negative impacts on the economy, with officials reluctant to sign off approvals, fearful of being accused of wrongdoing.

In pursuing such crackdowns, he “consolidated an unrivalled level of power within the political system,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at the Vietnam studies programme of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

Any plans that he had for an orderly succession transition had gone unrealised, he added, and his death risks creating a power vacuum.

Giang added: “I think this will lead [to] a very difficult time for Vietnam, for the political allies to negotiate among themselves who will assume the position of Nguyen Phu Trong. That might lead to a succession crisis where different factions would not agree.”

Given Trong’s power and popularity, analysts say any successor is unlikely to deviate from his policies in relation to the economy, foreign policy, or the lack of tolerance for government critics.

There are now more than 160 people held in prison for peacefully exercising their civil and political rights, according to Human Rights Watch.

The courts convicted at least 28 rights campaigners and sentenced them to long prison terms during the first 10 months of 2023, the group said.

In his foreign policy, Trong pursued a so-called “bamboo diplomacy” – which “sways with the winds” and avoids picking sides in international disputes – including in relation to the rivalry between the US and China.

In 2015, he became the first general secretary of the Communist party to pay an official visit to the US, where he met with the former president Barack Obama.

Last year Trong hosted the US president, Joe Biden, and upgraded ties with Washington, as well as with Australia and Japan. China’s president, Xi Jinping, also made a state visit three months later.

China’s Communist party central committee said the Chinese people had lost a “good comrade, brother and friend”, Chinese state media reported.

The Boss is now a billionaire – at least according to Forbes.

Bruce Springsteen, the New Jersey-bred musician who became rock ’n’ roll’s voice of the working class, now has an estimated net worth of $1.1bn, according to a “conservative” estimate by the magazine.

Much of that fortune has accumulated in the last few years. In 2021, Springsteen sold his entire music catalogue – one of the most admired bodies of work in pop and rock, with over 300 songs spanning 20 studio albums and extra releases – to Sony for a reported $500-550m. The deal was the largest ever for a musical catalog, dwarfing the previous record of $300m paid by Universal for Bob Dylan’s catalogue in December 2020.

At 74, the musician is still putting on large, lucrative tours; Pollstar reported that in 2023, Springsteen sold more than 1.6m concert tickets, generating $380m in revenue.

Born and raised working class on the Jersey shore, Springsteen is one of his generation’s most revered songwriters and performers, narrativizing the trials of the everyday man and playing marathon concerts. From his 1973 debut album Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ onwards, he became among the bestselling musical artists of all time, with more than 71m albums sold in the US and 140m worldwide. His commercial hits include Born To Run, Thunder Road, I’m on Fire, and Dancing in the Dark.

Springsteen has won 20 Grammy awards, an Oscar (for best original song in 1994, for Streets of Philadelphia from the film Philadelphia), and a special Tony Award for Springsteen on Broadway, his stripped-back one-man show. In March of this year, he became the first foreigner to be inducted as a fellow of the UK’s Ivors Academy, for his “impact on the UK’s cultural landscape”.

Highlights from his discography include his 1975 breakthrough Born to Run; the literary songwriting of his first US No 1, The River in 1980; and the chart-aiming pop – and ironic patriotism – of 1984’s Born in the USA, which went 15 times platinum in the US. His songs have also provided hits for other artists, such as Patti Smith’s Because the Night, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s Blinded By the Light, and the Pointer Sisters’ Fire.

Along with his E Street Band, Springsteen is still touring to critical acclaim – the Guardian’s Kitty Empire, writing of his first UK tour in seven years in June 2023, called Springsteen’s show “tremendously Boss-like”.

“Springsteen doesn’t so much seize this rare scorcher of a day in Scotland as grab it by the lapels and shout in its face, wipe its tears, then give it a kiss,” she added.