Pakistan summons US envoy over Joe Biden’s ‘most dangerous nation’ remark

US president questioned country’s nuclear weapons safety protocols sparking outrage in Islamabad

Pakistan on Saturday summoned the US ambassador for an explanation after President Joe Biden described the south Asian country as “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” and questioned its nuclear weapons safety protocols.

Biden made the apparently off-the-cuff remark late on Thursday while talking about US foreign policy during a private Democratic party fundraiser in California, but the White House later published a transcript of his comments, which provoked outrage in Pakistan.

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Russia-Ukraine war live: ‘endemic corruption and poor logistics’ harming Russian military, says UK – as it happened

UK Ministry of Defence says situation so bad reservists are having to buy their own body armour. This live blog is now closed

In case you missed it, Jon Henley reports that nearly eight months into Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, citizens in core western alliance countries show little appetite for the kind of concessions to Russia that might form part of an eventual agreement to end the fighting, according to a major survey.

The YouGov-Cambridge globalism project, which gauged public opinion in 25 of the world’s largest countries, also found strong support for maintaining, and often toughening and expanding, military and economic measures against Moscow.

Beside an abandoned Russian military camp in eastern Ukraine, the body of a man lay decomposing in the grass – a civilian who had fallen victim to a tripwire land mine set by retreating Russian forces.

Nearby, a group of Ukrainian minesweepers with the country’s territorial defense forces worked to clear the area of dozens of other deadly mines and unexploded ordnance – a push to restore a semblance of safety to the cities, towns and countryside in a region that spent months under Russian occupation.

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Juror in Gretchen Whitmer kidnap case dismissed for flirting with defendant

Judge acts after prosecutor says woman and Paul Bellar, 24, had ‘non-verbal communication’ in form of eye contact and smiling

A judge dismissed a young woman from the jury hearing the trial of three men in connection with a 2020 plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, after attorneys accused her of flirting with a defendant.

Judge Thomas Wilson announced on Friday that the woman had been removed from the jury, two days after attorneys raised concerns she was having too much non-verbal communication with the defendant Paul Bellar, the Jackson Citizen Patriot reported.

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Russian strikes fail to disable Ukraine’s energy infrastructure

Drones and missiles hit Kyiv region and Zaporizhzhia as Ukrainian forces make gains around Kherson

Russia has continued to try to hit Ukrainian’s energy infrastructure but Vladimir Putin’s forces did not appear to have enjoyed any significant success.

One missile seriously damaged a key energy facility in the region around Ukraine’s capital and 10 missiles and four drones hit locations in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

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‘My son has died’: Russia mourns loss of first drafted soldiers in Ukraine

As newly mobilised men return from the front in coffins, critics complain of aggressive recruiting, low morale and poor training

• Russia-Ukraine war latest – live blog

Andrei Nikiforov, a lawyer from St Petersburg, was one of the hundreds of thousands of Russians mobilised since last month to hold the frontlines in his country’s faltering war in Ukraine.

On 25 September he received his call-up papers. By 7 October, just two weeks later, he was dead.

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Chinese congress expected to cement power of Xi Jinping

Constitutional changes likely to enshrine leader as ‘core’ of ruling Communist party

The highest level meeting of China’s ruling Communist party this week is likely to include constitutional changes to further cement the power of the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, party officials have confirmed.

Xi is expected to regain his position as leader of the CCP and its military commission at the week-long conference, setting the stage for retaining the presidency next year, after abolishing term limits in 2018.

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Qatar World Cup imposes ‘chilling’ restrictions on media

Rules ban BBC, ITV and other broadcasters from filming near government buildings and migrant workers’ accommodation

International television crews in Qatar for the Fifa World Cup will be banned from interviewing people in their own homes as part of sweeping reporting restrictions that could have a “severe chilling effect” on media coverage.

Broadcasters, such as the BBC and ITV, will also be forbidden from filming at accommodation sites, like those housing migrant workers, under the terms of filming permits issued by the Qatari government.

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Iran police investigate video of officer’s alleged sexual assault of protester

Footage appears to show member of riot police grabbing detained woman from behind

Iranian police have said they are investigating footage allegedly showing a member of their riot squad sexually assaulting a female protester in Tehran after widespread outrage over the video.

The footage, recorded during a protest in the capital’s Argentina Square on Wednesday, shows a woman being violently detained and taken towards a motorbike in a street crowded with protesters and riot police. She is surrounded by four armed members of the riot force, and one of them appears to grab her inappropriately from behind. She then slumps to the ground.

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Idaho man dies while fighting as volunteer soldier in Ukraine

Dane Partridge, 34, died from injuries sustained during a Russian attack in Luhansk

Dane Partridge, a 34-year-old man from Idaho who fought as a volunteer soldier in Ukraine, died on Tuesday from injuries sustained during a Russian attack in Luhansk.

The Ukrainian government has recruited people with military experience to join the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine. At least four other US citizens have been killed fighting in Ukraine, based on reports from families and the state department.

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Netanyahu used golf metaphor to turn Trump against Palestinians, book says

In new memoir, former Israeli PM describes efforts to turn US president against Palestinian leader Abbas

Benjamin Netanyahu used maps of Hezbollah missile sites and intelligence gained from a Mossad raid in Tehran to make sure Donald Trump backed Israel in Middle East peace talks and pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, the former Israeli prime minister writes in a new memoir.

But in unconventional scenes similar to those in countless books of reportage and Trump tell-alls, Netanyahu also says that to sway Trump from his desire to pursue peace between Israel and the Palestinians and to scotch his positive first impression of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, the Israelis deployed golfing metaphors and maps of New York City.

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‘They tried to wipe us out’: Kurds shelled as Iran seeks scapegoats for unrest

Exiled Kurdish forces in Iraq feel abandoned by west and say they need weapons like in Ukraine

Picking through a pile of twisted metal, Rebaz, a Kurdish Iranian fighter, stooped to cradle a jagged chrome piece that was dug from the ruins of his base. “This was part of a Fateh missile,” he said. “It’s one of the biggest that the Iranians have in their arsenal. It’s from the day they tried to wipe us out.”

The heap included other wreckage – of rockets and kamikaze drones that had devastated this small outpost, just east of Erbil in northern Iraq, a fortnight ago. Since then, jittery guards had looked from the ruins towards the east, from where more than two dozen ballistic missiles and another dozen kamikaze drones blazed from a blue sky a fortnight ago.

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Justice department asks court to reject appointment of Trump special master

Independent arbiter was tasked to inspect thousands of documents taken from Mar-a-Lago in August search by FBI

The US justice department has asked the 11th circuit court of appeals to void the appointment of the special master examining materials seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for privilege protections, arguing it impedes the criminal investigation into mishandling of sensitive documents.

In a 53-page brief filed on Friday, the justice department argues that the Trump-appointed US district court judge who oversees the case, Aileen Cannon, should never have granted the former president’s request to have a special master because he failed to demonstrate the need for such a process.

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Democrats suggest shifting weapons from Saudi Arabia to Ukraine

Democrats call for suspension of transfer of Patriot missiles in wake of ‘turning point’ in relationship with Saudis

Democrats on Capitol Hill have suggested transferring US weapons systems in Saudi Arabia to Ukraine and suspending a planned transfer of Patriot missiles to Riyadh in the wake of what they call a “turning point” in Washington’s relationship with the kingdom.

Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California who is a leading supporter of a weapons freeze, said he believed that “at the very least” Congress would move to halt the transfer of Patriot missiles to the kingdom, and probably pause other defense initiatives.

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Two brothers jailed after admitting murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia

George and Alfred Degiorgio both given 40-year sentences for killing of Maltese journalist in 2017 car bombing

Two brothers charged with the car-bomb assassination of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have both been sentenced to 40 years in prison, after dramatically pleading guilty to her murder on the first day of their trial.

Caruana Galizia, who had investigated political corruption in the European Union’s smallest member state, died in an explosion that destroyed her car as she drove away from home on 16 October 2017.

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West makes plans to avoid panic if Russia uses nuclear bomb in Ukraine

Crisis is considered unlikely but officials re-examine plans to provide support for fearful populations

Western officials are engaged in “prudent planning” behind the scenes to prevent chaos and panic in their home countries in the event Russia was to detonate a nuclear bomb in or near Ukraine.

Although a nuclear crisis is considered highly unlikely, the insider said officials internationally were re-examining plans to provide emergency support and reassurance to populations fearful of nuclear escalation.

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Anger as DeSantis eases voting rules in Republican areas hit by hurricane

Executive order makes voting easier in Florida’s Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties but not in Democratic Orange county

Governor Ron DeSantis has made voting easier in certain Florida counties battered by Hurricane Ian – but only Republican-leaning ones.

DeSantis signed an executive order on Thursday that eases voting rules for about 1 million voters in Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties, all areas that Hurricane Ian hit hard and that all reliably vote Republican.

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Barges stranded as Mississippi River water levels reach critical low

Major shipping delays and backlog of vessels after region experiences lack of rainfall in recent weeks

The water in the Mississippi River has dropped so low that barges are getting stuck, leading to expensive dredging and at least one recent traffic jam of more than 2,000 vessels backed up.

The Mississippi River Basin produces nearly all – 92% – of US agricultural exports, and 78% of the global exports of feed grains and soybeans. The recent drought has dropped water levels to alarmingly low levels that are causing shipping delays, and seeing the costs of alternative transport, such as rail, rise.

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Iran bans director Mani Haghighi from attending London film festival

The Subtraction director had his passport confiscated by Iranian authorities and was prevented from boarding his flight to the UK, allegedly with no reason given

Iranian film-maker Mani Haghighi has been banned from leaving the country and had his passport confiscated after attempting to travel to London, where his latest film Subtraction is screening at the London film festival.

In a video statement, Haghighi said: “I was prevented by the Iranian authorities from boarding my flight to London on Friday. They gave me no reasonable explanation for this utterly rude behaviour.”

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Donald Trump considers testifying before January 6 panel

Sources tell Guardian ex-president may choose to appear before Capitol attack committee after Thursday vote to subpoena him

Donald Trump is considering testifying in front of the House January 6 committee, which this week concluded a dramatic hearing establishing what it says is his culpability for the deadly Capitol attack by voting to subpoena the former president.

On Friday, sources close to Trump confirmed to the Guardian that he may choose to appear before the congressional panel. Such an appearance would set up an unprecedented, high-stakes political event.

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