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UN experts warn against ‘surging Israeli settler terror’ – as it happened

We’re wrapping up our live coverage of the Middle East crisis for now but we have a full report on the latest, and here’s a recap of the day’s events. Thanks for joining us. Donald Trump announced Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to “stop shooting” at each other in a mutual de-escalation. Hezbollah had pledged through intermediaries not to attack Israel, and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to pull back any troops preparing to attack Beirut, the US president said. Lebanon’s embassy in Washington said the agreement would not end the conflict but that it called for Israel to refrain from strikes on Beirut and its southern suburbs controlled by Hezbollah, while the Iran-aligned group would halt its attacks on Israel. Netanyahu said Israel would continue military operations in southern Lebanon, where ground forces are pushing their deepest incursion in 25 years. Hostilities in southern Lebanon later appeared to continue, with Hezbollah reportedly claiming several attacks on Israeli targets in the south late on Monday. The Israeli military said early on Tuesday it had intercepted two projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel, with no injuries reported. Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said the militia would support a full ceasefire across all of Lebanon as a precursor to the withdrawal of Israeli troops. Lebanon said it would seek to expand the ceasefire in talks with Israel in Washington DC on Wednesday. Iranian state media said Tehran was halting indirect peace talks with the US and might end a ceasefire that has largely held since early April, citing the war in Lebanon. Trump later told CNBC the peace talks had “started to get very boring” and that he “couldn’t care less” if they were over. However, he also told US ABC News he expected there would be a deal with Tehran “over the next week” to extend the truce and reopen the strait of Hormuz. The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force threatened to expand its blockade of the strait of Hormuz to the Bab El Mandeb strait, another chokepoint at the mouth of the Red Sea. Oil prices rose 4% on Monday amid the heightened tensions. UN chief António Guterres said peacekeepers would be needed in Lebanon after the mandate of the current mission expired at the end of this year – an option likely to face opposition from the US and Israel. A team of 14 UN experts issued a “stark warning about surging Israeli settler terror” in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem and the “existential risk” it posed to Palestinian communities there. With news agencies

Ukraine war briefing: Ending war before winter ‘correct and realistic’, says senior Kyiv aide

A deal to end the war against Russia by winter is a “realistic” outcome, Kyrylo Budanov said. The celebrated former Ukrainian spymaster, now Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said on Monday: “This is the president’s instruction: to try to end this war as soon as possible … preferably before winter. In my opinion, this is absolutely correct, timely, and realistic.” Zelenskyy in an interview aired on Sunday called for reviving stalled talks with Russia before the onset of winter to take account of Kyiv’s improved strategic position. A senior Ukrainian commander said last week that Ukraine had a six-month window in which to seize the battlefield initiative and strengthen its hand for peace talks. Budanov said he expected a US delegation to visit Moscow and Kyiv in the near future, without giving details. Kyiv came under heavy Russian attack early on Tuesday with authorities urging residents to seek shelter. The Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said a fire broke out in the Podil district on the grounds of a non-residential property, and a nine-storey apartment building was on fire after debris apparently struck the roof. “In the Obolon district, cars are burning after being struck by falling missile debris. There are also fires at two locations in open areas, including one near a kindergarten,” Klitschko posted. Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported that air defences were at work in Kyiv according to their journalists and witnesses. Zelenskyy on Monday reiterated warnings of a possible massive Russian strike and urged residents to pay special attention to air raid alerts. A suspected Russian “shadow fleet” oil tanker has been detained by France in the Atlantic, Angelique Chrisafis writes. The Tagor was detained on Sunday morning in international waters more than 400 nautical miles (740km) west of Brittany with the help of the UK and other partners, said the French president, Emmanuel Macron. French authorities said the ship had departed Murmansk in north-west Russia, and was headed for Cameroon under a false Cameroonian flag. It was being escorted to an anchorage for further inspection. Moscow complained of piracy. Macron said everything was conducted “in strict compliance with the law of the sea … It is unacceptable for ships to circumvent international sanctions, violate the law of the sea, and finance the war that Russia has been waging against Ukraine for more than four years.” Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military was capable of hitting Russian military logistics “across virtually the entire depth of the temporarily occupied territories … In practice, there are almost no safe roads left for the occupier in the south and east of our country.” The Russian government intends to increase fuel supplies from Belarus and tighten oversight of exports of gasoline and diesel because of domestic fuel shortages, the RBC news outlet reported on Monday. RBC also reported that a complete ban on gasoline exports for two months, including under some inter-governmental agreements, is under discussion. Fuel sales in Sevastopol in illegally Russia-occupied Crimea would be limited on Tuesday, said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed de facto governor, amid gasoline rationing caused by Ukrainian attacks. Russia on Monday also banned the export of aviation fuel until the end of November. Dozens of countries denounced Russia at the UN on Monday after a Russian drone hit a Romanian apartment building, injuring two people. “Such behaviour is unacceptable under international law and must stop,” said the Romanian foreign minister, Oana-Silvia Toiu, in a statement representing 56 UN members, including from the EU and Nato.

Trump says Hezbollah and Israel have agreed to ‘stop all shooting’

Donald Trump has said Hezbollah and Israel have agreed to mutual de-escalation and to scale back fighting, seemingly averting an Israeli strike on Beirut and the potential collapse of ceasefire talks with Iran. The US president said in a social media post that he spoke to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and representatives of Hezbollah and both agreed that “all shooting will stop”. “There will be no troops going to Beirut and any troops that are on their way have already been turned back. Likewise, through highly placed representatives, I had a very good call with Hezbollah, and they agreed all shooting will stop,” Trump said in a post. According to a statement by Lebanon’s presidency, under the proposed arrangement Israel would not strike Beirut’s southern suburbs if Hezbollah did not launch attacks against Israel. However attacks from both sides were reported after Trump’s announcement, and both Israeli officials and Hezbollah made statements that cast doubt on the durability of the agreement. The Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah said the group refused a partial truce offer to spare Beirut in exchange for an end to Hezbollah attacks on Israel. In a statement on X, Netanyahu said he told Trump that Israel would attack Beirut if Hezbollah did not stop attacking Israel and its citizens, adding that Israel will continue to operate “as planned” in southern Lebanon. Early on Tuesday, the Israeli military said that it intercepted two projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel, but that no injuries were reported. Trump’s statement came just hours after Netanyahu instructed the Israeli military to bomb the southern suburbs of Beirut, sparking a mass exodus by the area’s residents. The Israeli prime minister and his defence minister, Israel Katz, said they had given instructions to strike “terrorist targets” in the southern suburbs for what they described as “repeated and ongoing violations of the ceasefire by Hezbollah”. The bombing order marked the most serious escalation of Israel’s war in Lebanon since a supposed ceasefire was announced on 17 April and was followed by Iran’s political leadership had calling off all further negotiations, maintaining that a ceasefire in Lebanon was a precondition for a broader truce with the US. Iran had previously threatened that further Israeli attacks on Lebanon could endanger the US-Iran ceasefire. Donald Trump initially responded by suggesting he was not opposed to a halt in negotiations, telling US media: “I think we’ve been talking too much.” However, those comments were then followed by a flurry of phone calls, in which Trump said he spoke with Netanyahu and, via intermediaries, with Hezbollah as he sought to broker a new ceasefire. He later told ABC news that he expected a deal with Tehran in “the next week,” while playing down the significance of Monday’s events. “There was a little glitch today, but I turned that one around very quickly, as you probably noticed earlier,” Trump said. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has not stopped despite the last month’s ceasefire, and Israeli strikes have killed more than 800 people in Lebanon since its announcement. Hezbollah has targeted Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, and in recent days launched rockets towards northern Israel. The ceasefire was previously understood to exempt Beirut from Israeli strikes, largely at Washington’s request, though Israel has struck the southern suburbs twice in what is still a reduction from the daily bombing of the capital before 17 April. More than a million people have been displaced because of Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa valley, as well as the dozens of forced evacuation orders the Israeli military has placed on towns and villages across Lebanon. On Sunday, the Israeli military captured the medieval Beaufort castle in southern Lebanon, the deepest it has reached since its 18-year occupation of the region ended in 2000. It also bombarded Tyre, levelling entire buildings in some of the most violent airstrikes yet on the southern city. An Israeli airstrike on Tyre severely damaged the city’s Jabal Amel hospital, blowing in windows and collapsing sections of its ceiling, leaving patients and staff in disarray. European leaders have condemned Israel’s expansion into Lebanon. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for an end to the fighting, saying “nothing justifies the major escalation under way in south Lebanon”. The foreign ministers of the UK and Germany joined France in condemning the new operation. Britain’s Yvette Cooper called for the US-brokered ceasefire to be respected. Israeli media reported that Netanyahu’s government had been lobbying Washington in recent days for a green light to strike Beirut, with Washington agreeing over the weekend to expanded strikes as tensions between Washington and Tehran grew. Sources cited by Israeli media said Netanyahu convened high-level security consultations over the weekend and spoke by phone with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, arguing that Israel could not allow Hezbollah to enjoy what it viewed as de facto immunity in Beirut. The Israeli military subsequently presented political leaders with a range of operational plans, including options that would require civilian evacuation orders. Reports said Netanyahu acknowledged in private discussions that US restrictions continued to limit Israel’s freedom of action. The current conflict began in March, after Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader. Since then, more than 3,300 people, including children and first responders, have been killed in Lebanon. Hezbollah strikes since 2 March have killed two people in Israel and more than 20 soldiers and one contractor in southern Lebanon. Talks between senior officials from Israel and Lebanon began in April in Washington, the first in more than three decades between the countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations. Those discussions were scheduled to continue this week. Hezbollah is not taking part and has said it will not accept any results. Observers have suggested Israeli officials and military commanders want to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before a potential deal imposes new limits or stops the current offensive. Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

‘A shock to all Lebanese’: Israel sends a message as it takes ancient fort

When Hussain Alawieh used to take tourists to Beaufort Castle, they would marvel at the view. The ancient hilltop fort, captured nearly 1,000 years earlier by Crusaders, still offered the same sweeping panoramic views of south Lebanon and the Litani River that empires fought over for a millennia. On Sunday, the view from the castle was obscured by white phosphorus smoke, the toxic incendiary munition providing a smoke screen for advancing Israeli soldiers. Out of the fog rose an Israeli flag, and the castle, for the first time in 26 years, was once again conquered. In the age of drones and surveillance blimps, the value of the ancient hilltop fort is diminished. But to both Israelis and Lebanese, its capture carried psychological weight in a conflict that for six weeks had ground to a deadlock. “The raising of the Israeli flag and the flag of the Golani Brigade above the castle caused a shock to me and to all southerners and Lebanese people,” said Alawieh, a tour guide based in south Lebanon. The castle, Alawieh explained, was a symbol of steadfastness and of resistance in south Lebanon. Its thick stone walls helped it survive Israeli aerial bombing in the 1980s when it was used as a base by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and again when Israel carried out a detonation in the castle upon its withdrawal in 2000. “Raising the Israeli flag above it is intended to send a message of psychological domination and defeat to the population, conveying that the ‘sites you considered impregnable have fallen’,” said Alawieh. The capture of the castle came as Israel’s invasion of south Lebanon lurched forward once again. The pace of the war in Lebanon had slowed since a supposed ceasefire on 17 April. With much of south Lebanon declared a no man’s land by Israel, it was impossible to tell what was happening on the battlefield. Last week, what was a low-intensity war suddenly accelerated, with Israeli warplanes killing at least a dozen people a day, and Israeli soldiers once again marching forward. Beaufort Castle was the most tangible marker of Israel’s progress, both to Israelis and Lebanese. Netanyahu, facing pressure from his domestic political rivals, happily announced that Israel was deepening its invasion in Lebanon. To the Lebanese, the sight of the Israeli flag over the castle brought back memories of its 18-year occupation of south Lebanon starting in 1982. “Of course, it brought me back to the occupation. We went back to 1986, 1987, and 2000. It brought back memories of those painful days,” said Fouad Fatimi, the mayor of Arnoun, where the castle is located. Arnoun had been emptied out in the weeks before its capture, as Israeli airstrikes pounded the town and its surroundings. Fatimi had recorded a phone call he had received last month from an Israeli officer telling him that residents must leave the village. Israeli soldiers arrived to an empty village and a castle undefended. The Israeli military drove the point home; it shared footage of its soldiers striding up the castle’s steps set to a song by Lebanon’s most famous singer, Fairuz, entitled Waynun, its chorus repeating: “Where are they? Where are they?” As Israel’s soldiers patrolled the castle, its warplanes dropped bombs on south Lebanon, leaving little time to absorb the new loss of territory. The city of Tyre was pounded with airstrikes on Sunday, leaving smoking craters where residential buildings had once stood. Entire neighbourhoods of one of south Lebanon’s oldest and most populated cities were covered in rubble and immense plumes of smoke rose above its homes. The city’s civil defence withdrew from the city before the bombing on Sunday. The Israeli military had called them and demanded they evacuate. They returned on Monday, establishing a new headquarters in the city’s Christian quarter, where Israel had not yet bombed, according to the head of Tyre’s civil defence, Ali Safieddine. Israel’s campaign expanded further on Monday, with Beirut once again coming under threat – the last feature of a ceasefire which had until now left the country’s capital largely untouched. On Monday morning, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said the military would once again start striking Beirut. Roads leading out of the southern suburbs were soon choked with cars heading north, as people fled their homes after returning home just six weeks earlier. The streets of Beirut were filled with the sounds of car horns as they sought to escape. WhatsApp chats contained messages of resignation. “Here we go again,” one resident of the southern suburbs sent to a group chat. Others desperately inquired if anyone knew of empty apartments for families displaced anew. Both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah issued condemnations of the escalation, but neither seemed to able to stop it. “[The resistance] has never claimed to prevent invasion or occupation of territory, nor has it claimed to posses an armament balance,” said Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah MP, on Sunday, adding the group would work to prevent the Israeli military from “consolidating control” over the areas it has already occupied. Unable to stop the advancing Israelis, many Lebanese could do little else but look towards the castle’s history as a symbol of hope that they may one day return to their villages. “Seeing the castle once again covered by the flag of occupation was regarded as a deep wound to our national identity,” said Alawieh. “But I see this presence as temporary, looking at the history of the castle, which has cast out all invaders and occupiers before.”

One Nation wants to roll back abortion rights in Australia – and is emboldening activists seeking US-style laws

The headline act at a Sydney anti-abortion rally being held on Tuesday in support of Libertarian MP John Ruddick’s bill to restrict abortion will not be Ruddick. It will be the One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce. Joyce left the Nationals last year, not long after he was rebuked for his statements about abortion. The dramatic rise in the polls of his new party has given fresh impetus to a loose network of anti-abortion groups trying to chip away at reproductive rights. Since abortion was decriminalised in all states and territories almost three years ago, there has been a slew of attempts to wind back access. Bills have been brought by different parties and independents in several states, aiming to reduce access in a variety of ways, including banning late-term abortions (which are rare and often heartbreaking), mandating medical care for babies “born alive” after abortions (experts have called such claims misleading) and banning sex-selective abortions. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Those three themes are echoed by a range of rightwing, religious anti-abortion activists. They also form part of One Nation’s policy to “seek every opportunity to roll back brutal and extreme abortion law”. Prudence Flowers, a senior lecturer in US history at Flinders University, says the resemblance is not a coincidence. “One of the reasons these policies are similar … is that the Australian anti-abortion movement is explicitly looking at historical measures in the US,” she says. “The reason it seems so coordinated is that there is that playbook people can look to.” In the US, this incremental approach to tackle abortion rights from multiple directions culminated in Roe v Wade being overturned in 2022 and continues now with states implementing abortion bans. Since then, it has become harder to get healthcare for miscarriages, to access fertility treatments and for obstetrician/gynaecologists to practise, and there has been a rise in infant mortality and pregnancy-related deaths. Attempts to change abortion law In South Australia, the former One Nation MP Sarah Game has proposed legislation to ban abortion after 25 weeks, even in cases of severe foetal abnormalities. The three newly elected One Nation representatives in the 22-member upper house may help it pass, although it is doubtful it would also get through the Labor-dominated lower house. In Queensland, the Katter’s Australian party MP Robbie Katter has introduced a disallowance motion aimed at stopping nurses and midwives prescribing medical abortions, known as MS-2 Step. Twenty organisations, including Children by Choice, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and MSI Australia, released an open letter on Monday saying those practitioners were often the only timely option available to people outside major cities, and that any delay did not prevent abortions but made them “harder, later and more complex”. In NSW, Ruddick is using an Edith Cowan University study that found indirect evidence that some migrant communities prefer boys to girls, using data from 1994 to 2015, to argue for his bill to ban sex-selective abortion. But a 2020 NSW Health review found sex selection happened “rarely”. Of 15,973 abortions in the year to September 2020, 13 were done for sex selection, it reported. Of those, 10 were “likely to be reporting errors” as they were done at less than nine weeks, when “there is no readily available and reliable way of determining gender”. Ruddick insists “gender selection abortions are happening” and the law is needed to send a message it is not acceptable. “If a mother still wants to abort because of their child’s sex they can obviously say it’s for any other reason and no one will know, but the law will have a positive ripple effect in cementing into our culture that baby boys and baby girls are of equal value,” he says. Tuesday’s event in Sydney has been organised by the activist Joanna Howe, who is calling it a rally for “Ruth and Emma”, the names she attached to an image of what she thought were foetuses, but that turned out to be baby sugar gliders. Howe has worked with state and federal MPs on legislation to reduce access to abortion. She believes all abortion should be banned, and that “everybody involved” should face criminal penalties. Pauline Hanson has appeared several times on the podcast Howe hosts with her husband, James Howe. Howe told her large social media following to vote for One Nation in the Farrer byelection, even though Hanson has said she is not against abortion in the first trimester – an exemption not mentioned in the party’s formal policy. Flowers says people “should be alarmed” at the number of measures proposed by activists. “The pace of activity has really intensified. “We have had multiple anti-abortion initiatives and protests across multiple jurisdictions. The purpose of this incrementalism is to position it as something that should be subject to political debate, which traditionally in Australia politicians have avoided. “It’s normalising the idea.” The Australian College of Midwives (ACM) has said in a statement it was “alarmed” by moves to restrict abortion and that any such restriction “creates real harm for real women”. The chief executive of MSI Australia (previously Marie Stopes), Adurty Rao, describes them as “attempts to disrupt decades of progress toward women’s rights”. “Misinformation campaigns will not deter our mission to deliver essential care to women and pregnant people seeking critical abortion services,” she says. One Nation was contacted for comment.

Peter Garrett to head independent inquiry into the Aukus submarine pact

The former environment minister Peter Garrett will lead an independent inquiry into the Aukus defence pact, launched by a group of Labor veterans and public figures concerned proper scrutiny has never been applied to the $368bn defence plan. Garrett, the Midnight Oil frontman and longtime environmental campaigner, will be the lead commissioner on the five-month community-based investigation, being launched on Tuesday. It will hold public hearings and take written submissions before delivering a final report by 30 October. Labor agreed to support the deal for Australia to acquire nuclear submarines in collaboration with the US and the UK, negotiated under the Morrison government and announced in 2021. As part of the agreement, Australia is funding upgrades to the US defence industrial base and will start receiving secondhand nuclear submarines in 2032. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The UK parliament held a year-long review into the trilateral partnership and, after an inquiry by the Pentagon in 2025, Donald Trump agreed to support it. But some within Labor, including the former prime minister Paul Keating, as well as civil society groups believe Aukus is not in Australia’s best interest. Garrett said the new inquiry – supported by trade unions and non-profit organisations – would consider if the subs can be delivered on time and on budget, how nuclear waste will be managed and if Australia’s defence and strategic interests are well served by the deal. He has previously lashed Aukus, saying the plan “stinks” and represents “the most costly and risky action ever taken by any Australian government”. “This inquiry is doing the job that a proper parliamentary inquiry should be doing,” Garrett told Guardian Australia. “How is it that there’s been inquiries about the submarine program in other countries and we haven’t had a full parliamentary inquiry here?” A group of commissioners will be named to lead the inquiry, convened under the auspices of the Australian Peace and Security Forum. Critical to its deliberations will be the rise of China and the prospect of conflict in the Indo-Pacific region. Nuclear non-proliferation issues, employment and environmental consequences are also among the inquiry’s terms-of-reference. Despite the Albanese government expressing confidence since winning government in 2022, on Sunday the defence minister, Richard Marles, announced Australia would buy three secondhand American Virginia-class submarines, instead of at least one brand new vessel from the US. He said the change – announced after talks between Marles and his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, in Singapore – was about Australia placing “a premium on simplicity” and not about challenges in submarine production for the US navy. Marles conceded there would be no “fundamental” shift in the cost but operating two models of the American-made submarines would be more costly and complicated. The government’s preferred measure of the total cost is 0.15% of GDP over the lifetime of the deal. The first Virginia-class nuclear sub from the US is due to arrive in Australia in 2032, with another arriving every four years, before the Australian-built model is ready for operations. The bespoke SSN Aukus model is due to come online in 2042. Australia has not identified a permanent storage site for the nuclear waste generated by the submarine fleet, including the high-level radioactive waste from the reactor core and spent fuel, which will remain toxic for thousands of years. In 2023, Marles committed to publicly outlining a process for identifying a waste site “within 12 months”. But no plan, or site, has yet been identified. Starting as early as 2027, US and UK nuclear-powered submarines will begin rotations at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia. An east coast base is also expected to be built. To cover capability gaps before the Aukus fleet arrives, Australia is extending use of 30-year-old Collins-class submarines for an extra 10 years. As part of the second pillar of the agreement, Marles announced plans for the three countries to develop new weapons systems and sensors for underwater drones, to protect undersea cables, conduct surveillance and strike enemy targets.

Trump admirer’s surprise first-round win is a blow to Colombia’s traditional conservatives

The far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda have just under three weeks to compete for the roughly 3.6m votes that did not go to either of them in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election. That is no insignificant number, given that De la Espriella’s lead over Cepeda amounted to little more than 670,000 votes – 43.7% to 40.9%. Although polls had shown the wealthy lawyer gaining ground, they had also consistently indicated a solid lead for the senator, who is backed by the leftwing president, Gustavo Petro. This made De la Espriella’s first-round victory on Sunday a surprise to most Colombian analysts and politicians. An admirer of Donald Trump and other far-right leaders in the region, he campaigned amid a string of controversies and with a promise to end, within 90 days, Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict which has claimed nearly half a million lives. His lead on Sunday is being interpreted as a sign that the radical right has overtaken Colombia’s traditional conservative forces, reflected in the collapse of the candidacy of the rightwing senator Paloma Valencia. A loyal follower of the former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who governed from 2002 to 2010, Valencia spent months in second place in the polls but lost momentum in the final weeks and finished with just 6.9% of the vote. “What really helped De la Espriella was Valencia’s collapse,” said the political scientist Yan Basset. “There was a tactical shift of rightwing voters towards De la Espriella, who appeared to be the safest rightwing candidate to reach the runoff.” Another political scientist, Nadia Jimena Pérez Guevara, said De la Espriella “managed to consolidate the vote of the dissatisfied citizen, not only those opposed to Petro and leftwing policies, but also people who are simply fed up with politics”. Both analysts described the lawyer’s first-round victory as “surprising” and said they believed the left faced a difficult, though not impossible, task in overturning the result before the runoff on 21 June. Second-place candidates have come back to win in 1998 and 2014. De la Espriella and Cepeda offer opposing approaches to dealing with the resurgence of violence, now at its highest levels since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). The lawyer advocates military alliances with the US and Israel, total confrontation with criminal groups and the construction of mega-prisons. The senator supports Petro’s “total peace” strategy of negotiating the dismantling of all criminal groups. On Monday morning, Cepeda challenged De la Espriella to a debate. In his speech on Sunday night, he had described his rival as a “misogynist”, “homophobe” and “lawyer for paramilitaries and drug traffickers”. De la Espriella called his opponent and Petro “a pair of delinquents” and “miserable criminals”, and attacked the president as a “miserable drug addict”. Petro sparked controversy by refusing to recognise the preliminary results released by the National Civil Registry, the independent public body responsible for organising elections, alleging without evidence that the count included “800,000 additional people”. Guevara described the allegations, later echoed by Cepeda in his speech, as “not healthy” for Colombian democracy. She added: “It also seemed misguided that Cepeda’s first reaction was to focus on that issue rather than speaking directly to his supporters and potential supporters about the way forward … it gives ammunition to those who want to equate De la Espriella and Cepeda, when in reality they represent completely different styles of leadership.”

Cyclist praised for rescuing four people who nearly drowned in Ruhr, Germany

A cyclist has been praised for having “stepped in decisively” and rescuing four members of a family who nearly drowned in the Ruhr River in Germany during a waterside barbecue that almost ended in tragedy. The family of eight had set themselves up on the riverbank in the western city of Bochum, the local fire brigade reported, but the gathering took a panicked turn when one woman got too close to the water’s edge and toppled down into the current, police told local media. Another woman who waded in to try to help her also lost control in the water. Two more relatives rushed in in an effort to pull the others to safety. All four, who were unable to swim, ended up in jeopardy, unable to pull themselves on to dry land despite the relative shallowness of the water at that point in the river. The cyclist, who is also a doctor, rode past and immediately recognised what was happening in the strong current and “stepped in decisively” to help the three women and a man, a fire brigade spokesperson said. She managed to drag each of the victims out of the water to safety and administered first aid to a woman who was already unconscious. All survived. A family member alerted the authorities. Emergency services workers who arrived soon after the cyclist’s intervention transported a woman who needed immediate medical attention to hospital. The other three victims had only minor injuries. The German Life Saving Association (DLRG), a voluntary water rescue organisation, dispatched a boat to the site. The other family members required assistance during the nearly two-hour rescue operation due to the traumatic nature of the narrowly averted tragedy. “The relatives were deeply shaken by the incident after seeing their family members in mortal danger,” the fire brigade spokesperson said. Police have launched an investigation into the exact cause of the incident. The local DLRG chapter and the fire brigade issued a renewed warning on the risks of rivers and streams, particularly for non-swimmers. “Currents, steep banks and cold water temperatures can put even experienced people in danger,” the fire brigade said in a statement, noting that swimming in the Ruhr is considered life threatening due to its unpredictable currents. Those wishing to take a dip in natural waters should stick exclusively to designated and supervised bathing areas, it added. Last month, a 14-year-old boy drowned in the Ruhr in Essen, about 24 miles west of Bochum. The recent heatwave in parts of Europe led to a spate of drownings and other water-related deaths in the UK and France. The Royal Life Saving Society UK has issued a plea for members of the public to “stop and think” before getting into the water. “Warmer weather unfortunately sees an increase in accidental drownings,” it said.