More than a million people have thronged Brazil’s Copacabana beach for a free Madonna concert, braving the heat to see the end of her Celebration world tour.

The sand and oceanfront boulevard around Rio de Janeiro’s famed beach were filled for several blocks on Saturday night by a crowd the city estimated at 1.6 million.

Many had been there for hours or even days to get a good spot, while richer fans anchored in dozens of boats near the beach and people crowded beachfront apartments.

Firefighters sprayed water before the concert, when temperatures exceeded 30C (86F), to cool fans gathered near the pop queen’s stage, and drinking water was distributed for free. The temperature was about 27C (81F) during the late night show.

Madonna, 65, was on stage for more than two hours, performing songs including Like a Prayer, Vogue and Express Yourself from 10.45pm as she wound up the greatest hits tour, which started late last year.

“Rio, here we are, in the most beautiful place in the world, with the ocean, the mountains, Jesus,” Madonna told the crowd, referring to the city’s huge mountaintop Christ the Redeemer statue. “Magic.”

The Brazilian pop artists Anitta and Pabllo Vittar, as well as younger musicians from samba schools, participated in the show.

More than 3,000 police officers were deployed around the concert area, where the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart have also drawn million-strong crowds. The authorities used a crowd-management strategy similar to their handling of the city’s famous New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Brazilian authorities have stepped up their vigilance over heat-related health problems after a young Brazilian fan died at a concert by Taylor Swift last year due to heat exhaustion.

Rio’s state and city governments said they spent 20m reais (£3.1m) on the concert, while the rest was financed by private sponsors. The authorities estimate the concert could bring in about 300m reais (£47m) to Rio’s economy.

This year’s Cop29 UN climate summit will be the first “Cop of peace”, focusing on the prevention of future climate-fuelled conflicts and using international cooperation on green issues to help heal existing tensions, according to plans being drawn up by organisers.

Nations may be asked to observe a “Cop truce”, suspending hostilities for the fortnight-long duration of the conference, modelled on the Olympic truce, which is observed by most governments during the summer and winter Olympic Games.

Cop29 will be held in November in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, amid two big wars – the Ukraine invasion and the Israel-Gaza conflict – raging in neighbouring regions and worsening geopolitical tensions.

But the host country’s top national security adviser said that the climate summit, which 196 governments are expected to attend, could become an engine for peace, by finding common ground among countries in the urgent need to tackle global heating.

“Azerbaijan continues and will exert additional efforts to make Cop yet another success story with regard to peace, and to make Cop29 a Cop of peace alongside the climate action issue,” said Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to the president, Ilham Aliyev, in an interview with the Observer in Baku. “We are working on the advancement of the peace agenda.”

The climate crisis is likely to exacerbate food and water shortages, and could increase migration, adding to pressures on states and potentially sparking border issues, he warned.

“Security isn’t about hardware – it has many elements, and you cannot deny climate action, environment change or environmental problems [are relevant to national security and peace],” he said. “We are affected by climate change – it’s part of national security and global security.”

Hajiyev would like to see nations observe a “Cop truce”, but conceded this would be difficult. “We are discussing with different partners about a Cop truce, like in the Olympics. But it is at an early stage of thinking. It will require additional consultations and discussion,” he said.

Until late last year, Azerbaijan was locked in a 30-year conflict with neighbouring Armenia over disputed territory and ethnic differences.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, hostilities between the majority Muslim Azerbaijanis and the Christian majority in neighbouring Armenia had been partially resolved in a 1994 ceasefire.

But the simmering tension flared into violence in 2020, leading to more than 7,000 deaths and the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Each side has accused the other of ethnic cleansing.

In December 2023 the countries negotiated a peace deal, which has held. However, there are still disputes over the status of some detainees.

At the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai in December last year, Armenia supported Azerbaijan’s campaign to hold this year’s climate conference, the first international gesture of support between the two longtime antagonists.

Hajiyev said that this experience was what led Azerbaijan to focus on global peace at Cop29. “Our approach to the peace agenda is living by example.”

It is understood that there is nervousness in some quarters at the UN over tying the issues of the climate crisis and national security too closely together. The fear is that bad feeling over global conflicts could spill over to affect the climate negotiations, and it could be safer to keep them as separate issues.

Putting peace on the agenda at Cop29 also throws a spotlight on Azerbaijan’s conduct in the war with Armenia, and its human rights record, which has attracted strong criticism.

Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland and UN high commissioner for human rights, who has also twice served as a UN climate envoy, is now chair of the Elders group of former world political and business leaders. She said she welcomed the intention to focus on peace, noting there were precedents in the work of environmental activists who linked their work with healing conflicts.

But she voiced concern over Azerbaijan’s stance. She said: “I think the idea is a good idea. If we could make more of climate and security and peace, that would be a good step.”

But she added: “I’m not sure the peace with Armenia is a perfect peace, to say the least. There are very big issues. There are political prisoners, I am part of a campaign to try to get them released. We should hold [Azerbaijan] to account for their own human rights record.”

Hajiyev told the Observer that NGOs and civil society groups would be “most welcome” at Cop29.

The worsening rivalry between the world’s two most powerful countries that has in recent years spread across the world, has now extended beyond the terrestrial, into the realms of the celestial.

As China has become deeply enmeshed in strategic competition with the US – while edging towards outright hostilities with other regional neighbours – Washington’s alarm at the pace of its advancement in space is growing ever-louder.

Beijing has made no secret over its ambitions and a spate of recent successful space missions has shown that the government’s rhetoric is backed by technological advances.

On Friday, China launched a robotic spacecraft on a round trip to the moon’s far side, in a technically demanding mission that will pave the way for an inaugural Chinese crewed landing and a base on the lunar south pole. The Chang’e-6 is aiming to bring back samples from the side of the moon that permanently faces away from Earth.

Earlier this week saw the launch of the Shenzhou-18, Beijing’s latest staffed spacecraft mission to the Tiangong space station, which was developed after China was excluded from the International Space Station.

Along with the three taikonauts, a live fish which has been dubbed “the fourth crew member”, was among the crew. The zebrafish is part of an experiment to test the viability of a large closed ecosystem, involving fish and algae, to help people live in space for long periods.

But the collection of moon samples and the viability of zebrafish are not the only focus for China’s space sector.

The pace of China’s ambitions has drawn concern from the government’s major rival, the US, over Beijing’s geopolitical intentions amid what the head of Nasa has called a new “space race”.

Last week the head of Nasa, Bill Nelson, said the US and China were “in effect, in a race” to return to the moon, and he feared that China wanted to stake territorial claims.

“We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program,” he told US legislators.

There are concerns over China’s development of counter-space weapons, including missiles that can target satellites, and spacecraft that can pull satellites out of orbit.

“On a geopolitical level, China’s space ambitions raise questions about how it might leverage its space capabilities to further its regional and domestic political and military interests,” says Dr Svetla Ben-Itzhak, deputy director of Johns Hopkins University’s West Space Scholars Program.

Gen Stephen Whiting of the US Space Command, told reporters last week that China’s advances were “cause for concern”, noting it had tripled the number of spy satellites in orbit over the last six years.

‘It’s the wild, wild west’

The US and China are indeed in a race, says Prof Kazuto Suzuki, of the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, but it’s not to simply set feet on the moon like during the cold war. Rather, it’s to find and control resources, like water.

“It’s a race for who has better technical capabilities. China is quickly catching up. The pace of Chinese technological development is the threatening element [to the US],” he says.

Suzuki says international agreements don’t allow for national appropriation of resources on the moon, but in reality “it’s the wild, wild west”.

“Generally speaking China wants to be first so they have the right to dominate and monopolise the resources. If you have the resources in your hand then you have a huge advantage in the future of space exploration.”

The US and China are leading the development of separate space station programs for the moon. The US-led Artemis program includes plans for a “Lunar Gateway”, a station orbiting the moon as a communication and accommodation hub for astronauts, and a scientific laboratory.

The Americans however, “are not so interested in owning the moon because they’ve been there”, Suzuki says.

“They know it’s not really a habitable place, they are more interested in Mars. So for them the Lunar Gateway is sort of a gas station for the journey to Mars.” If the Artemis program can source water from the moon, it could be processed to create rocket fuel from the hydrogen and oxygen.

In contrast, China and Russia announced in 2021 joint plans to build a shared research station on the surface of the moon. The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) would be open to any interested international parties they said. However the US would unlikely be among them given its poor relations with both China and Russia.

Suzuki says the China-Russia station “is supposed to serve like the research station in Antarctica”, which is within the rules of international space treaties. “But if it turns out to be a station to base their territorial claims, then that is against the rules.”

The US is gathering allies to ensure China doesn’t win the space race. Earlier this month, not long after China announced its intentions to land a person on the moon, US leader Joe Biden and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida pledged to send a astronaut from Japan – China’s historical rival – to the moon on Nasa’s Artemis missions in 2028 and again in 2032.

But China is also gathering allies. It has partnerships or financial stakes in projects across the Middle East and Latin America, and around a dozen international members for its ILRS.

But Ben-Itzhak notes there are some overlapping memberships. Also “neither bloc has instituted exclusionary practices thus far, which is promising”.

Ben-Itzhak says the US and China are indeed engaged in a race, but the term doesn’t fully capture “the complex, nuanced dynamics currently unfolding in space, in terms of the diverse and increasing number of actors and initiatives, and no clear end goal in sight”.

“The real challenge in space is not just about reaching a specific milestone, like planting flags or collecting rocks; it is about establishing a sustainable, resilient presence in an incredibly challenging environment. This is a test against our own abilities.”

Additional research by Chi Hui Lin

Gemma and I were both junior lawyers working at a Melbourne legal aid office, providing free advice to disadvantaged people facing eviction. Having experienced housing insecurity myself as a young person, it was a dream to give back to my community by helping others in the same situation.

Our office romance began in 2017 after we both attended a colleague’s apocalypse-themed house party in Brunswick West. Gemma had gone to a lot of effort to dress up as Octavia Blake from the sci-fi show The 100, while I only managed to find an aged, pilled black hoodie for the occasion. Over a few too many dirty martinis, I fessed up to my raging crush on her and we spent the rest of the night canoodling in the back yard on a structurally unsound velvet couch.

Our new relationship blossomed in secret over overpriced lattes served on crates in the Melbourne CBD and in tucked-away laneway bars after work. We had some great fun in those days, swapping war stories about our hectic days in the tenancy tribunal and laughing about the endless office dramas in our quirky, underfunded office.

I adored her passion for sticking up for the underdog and skill in bringing people together. Whether we were in a casework meeting or doing the lunchtime quiz, Gemma always found a way to keep us all feeling merry. But I wasn’t expecting things to become serious. I’d just had a big breakup and this was Gemma’s first queer relationship. I kept reminding myself to enjoy things while they lasted.

Then early the next year, one of our most important cases was appealed by the landlord to the supreme court of Victoria. This was a big deal, since the decision would affect all renters across the state. Somebody had to step up, dust off the communal office wig and gown, and advocate for a vulnerable client facing homelessness, in an imposing, Renaissance-style sandstone building.

After agonising for a moment, Gemma put up her hand to do it. The rest of us breathed a sigh of relief. Over the next two weeks, Gemma put her head down to learn everything there was to know about homelessness law, civil procedure and arcane supreme courtroom etiquette. I made her strong cups of tea while she stayed up late working, while my housemates and I drank wine and watched TV.

On the big day, I took a seat on the hardwood pews at the back as Gemma began to speak. I noticed a few journalists sitting beside me jotting down notes. This was a big deal and I felt terrified on Gemma’s behalf. I needn’t have. Gemma put on the performance of a lifetime, advocating for our client’s right to shelter and safety with poise and skill far beyond her years.

Hours later, Gemma and her client hugged in tears of joy and relief on the steps of the supreme court. I felt an immense sense of pride. I knew at that moment that Gemma wasn’t just a great person who was fun to be around, but a brilliant advocate full of compassion and empathy. It made me believe that Gemma would have my back if I needed her too.

A few weeks later, despite feeling incredibly nervous, I told Gemma that I wanted to transition. At first she was scared, worried she wasn’t informed enough to know how to support me. But she took up the challenge to learn all she could, and had me smiling and laughing as she drove me to what felt like an endless stream of healthcare appointments. Since then, she has been a constant source of stability and support, and even become an expert in transgender legal issues.

This year, we’ll celebrate our seventh anniversary. Gemma is now a successful human rights barrister and I’m still working in community law. We’re the proud fur-parents of a black cat and a senior dog, and still love a night out now and then in Melbourne’s tiny laneway bars.

Sam Elkin is the author of Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga (Upswell Publishing, RRP $29.99). His book launch is at the Wheeler Centre Performance Space in Melbourne at 6.30pm on 6 May.

Students demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza waved Palestinian flags and keffiyehs and chanted anti-war slogans during the University of Michigan’s commencement ceremony on Saturday.

Videos on social media showed students donning their graduation gowns as they appeared to chant: “Israel bombs, UMich pays!” and “How many kids have you killed today?” One photo showed a plane appearing to carry a sky banner over the university with the message: “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!”

According to the Associated Press, one banner read: “No universities left in Gaza.”

At one point, several graduates appeared to stage a walkout from the ceremony while carrying Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyehs as onlooking students applauded.

The protest, along with numerous other student-led protests across US universities, comes amid Israel’s deadly war on Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attacks that killed more than 1,100 Israelis. In response, Israeli forces have killed more than 34,000 Palestinians across Gaza while leaving 2 million survivors displaced across the narrow strip amid a famine caused by Israeli restrictions on aid.

Israel has also destroyed every university in Gaza, in addition to killing at least 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors, according to the UN, which has condemned Israel’s actions as “scholasticide”.

No arrests were reported during the University of Michigan ceremony, which comprised tens of thousands of attendees, the Associated Press reports, adding that as US navy secretary Carlos Del Toro addressed the crowd, he at one point said: “Ladies and gentlemen, if you can please draw your attention back to the podium.”

While administering an oath to the armed forces graduates, Del Toro said they would “protect the freedoms that we so cherish”, including “the right to protest peacefully”, according to the Associated Press.

On Monday, University of Michigan students set up a Palestinian solidarity encampment on campus in calls for the university to divest from companies with investments in Israel. The encampment was led by Tahrir, a coalition of more than 80 organizations including the university chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the Michigan Daily reports.

Pictures online showed various hand-painted signs at the encampment including ones that read: “Faculty and staff for liberation” and “Apartheid isn’t kosher! Jews demand divestment!”

On Friday, police arrested a pro-Palestinian protester outside the University of Michigan’s Museum of Art, the Detroit News reports, adding that police used a chemical spray to disperse students. According to a university spokesperson who spoke to the outlet, a dinner was held at the museum on Friday to recognize those receiving honorary degrees from the university.

One video online appeared to show Sarah Hubbard, chair of the university’s board of regents, waving and appearing to film students from inside the museum as they chanted: “Regent Hubbard, you can’t hide, you are funding genocide!”

In recent weeks, more than 2,000 people have been arrested during Palestinian solidarity and anti-war protests on US college campuses. University leaders have been heavily criticized across the country for authorizing police forces to conduct arrests on campus, many of which have been carried out violently.

At Columbia University in New York, the Columbia Spectator reported police using stun grenades on the anti-war protesters while carrying out arrests. The Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed that a police officer fired a gun during the arrests.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, videos online showed police in riot gear firing rubber bullets on campus, with anti-war student protesters saying that multiple people had been shot in the head.

Other videos surfacing online throughout the week showed multiple faculty members at various universities being violently arrested by police. In a post on X, Steve Tamari, a 65-year-old Middle East historian at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, said that he had been “body-slammed and crushed by the weight of several St Louis county police officers, then dragged across campus by the police”. In addition to broken ribs, Tamari said he sustained a broken hand.

Rishi Sunak was dealt a series of shattering blows last night as Labour won a knife-edge battle to seize the West Midlands mayoralty from the Conservatives and Sadiq Khan trounced his Tory rival in London to secure a third term.

The results, along with decisive victories for Labour’s Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram in Liverpool and Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire, left Labour in charge of most of England’s mayoralties.

The West Midlands upset where Andy Street lost to Richard Parker by 1,508 votes, announced after a dramatic series of recounts, followed a disastrous showing for the Tories in Thursday’s local council elections. They finished third behind the Liberal Democrats in the number of seats won, for the first time since 1996.

The danger for Sunak is that Conservative MPs will now see the PM and the national party as having destroyed a successful and popular mayor in the West Midlands who was credited by many with boosting the region’s economy. Street’s fate was sealed despite him having done all he could to disassociate himself from the national Conservative party in his campaign for a third term.

After hours of frenzied speculation about the result in the West Midlands Conservative former home secretary Suella Braverman responded by saying it was time for Sunak to make bold offers to voters.

“Let me cut to the chase so no-one wastes time over-analysing this: we must not change our leader,” she said. “Changing leader now won’t work: the time to do so came and went. The hole to dig us out of is the PM’s, and it’s time for him to start shovelling.”

She said Tory voters wanted a reason to vote Conservative. “We need to be frank about this if we are to have any chance of fixing the problem,” she added, and urged Sunak to adopt “strong leadership, not managerialism” on tax, migration, the small boats and law and order.

Writing exclusively for the Observer, Labour leader Keir Starmer says that Sunak has no option but to call a general election immediately to avoid further damage being inflicted on the country by his paralysed government and deeply divided party.

“Tragically, Britain is now the victim of a zombie government, stuck in purgatory with a prime minister who won’t call an election he fears he’ll lose, but can’t give this country the change it deserves. Dragging this out will only cause more damage, more decline and more drift.”

Starmer said the results, in which Labour gained 185 council seats while the Tories lost 473, showed how all parts of the country were coming together behind a national project under Labour that would heal old divides, including those over Brexit and arguments around Scottish independence.

“My changed party is for anyone who loves this country, aspires for themselves and their family, and knows we can all do better than this.

“Winning the trust of people across past divides, such as leave and remain or yes and no in Scotland, is vital. Our country should demand a brighter future, and it’s only by coming together, we can secure it.”

Despite a late rush of wild speculation that he was in trouble in the race for the London mayoralty, Khan easily secured a third term, increasing his vote share to 44%, finishing 11% ahead of his Conservative rival Susan Hall. She had focused her campaign on attacking Khan’s decision to expand the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez).

In his victory speech at City Hall, Khan reinforced Starmer’s call for a general election. “For the last eight years, London has been swimming against the tide of a Tory government,” he said. “And now, with a Labour party that’s ready to govern again under Keir Starmer, it’s time for Rishi Sunak to give the public a choice.

“A general election will not just pave the path to a new direction for our country, but it will make bold action Londoners want to see a reality.”After Ben Houchen provided a rare positive result for the Conservatives on Friday by retaining the Tees Valley mayoralty, the Tories were pinning their hopes on Street hanging on in the West Midlands to provide them with a positive narrative of success from the regions.

But although Street had seemed to be edging ahead in a close contest until early yesterday afternoon, word then got out that Labour’s Parker had pulled off a sensational win but by such narrow margin that Street’s team had asked for recounts. The only full recount was in Coventry, while “bundle checks” were carried out across other parts of the West Midlands.

Parker said he would “make this region a roaring success again” and that his election shows “people are calling for Labour, and calling for change”.

He said: “This is the most important thing I will ever do, this week people here voted for the person and the party. They recognise that a Labour mayor can make a positive difference in this region.”

“You have put your trust in me and I will repay that trust – I will deliver for you and your family, I promise you that I will deliver jobs, we will fix our public transport system, we will build the homes you need and we will give this region the fresh start it richly deserves.”

He said he would stand up “in the face of unprecedented Tory cuts”, and added: “I will also stand up for those people who didn’t vote for me.

“It also means so much to our country, it shows that people are calling for Labour, and calling for change. People are looking once again at our party and asking us to govern, up and down the country.”

Starmer said Labour’s victory in the West Midlands mayoral election was a “phenomenal result’’ which was “beyond our expectations’’.

Labour’s deputy national campaign co-ordinator and Lewisham MP Ellie Reeves posted on X: “Congratulations RichParkerLab. An incredible result and significant victory.”

Rebel Tory MPs had been threatening to move against Sunak if the results were at the worse end of Tory expectation, but backed off after Houchen’s win on Friday. Now the threat to him may be reignited when MPs return to parliament on Tuesday.

Conservative MP Martin Vickers, a member of the executive of the 1922 committee of backbenchers, urged his colleagues to stop any talk of a coup and rally behind Sunak. “After 14 years, the chances are you are going to have a change of government, but you don’t give up on that basis. You fight against it, try to minimise losses and hope something turns up. Who knows what crises might occur during the next three or four months?”

In further ominous news, the latest Opinium poll for the Observer shows another fall in Sunak’s personal approval ratings, which plummeted by a further six points from a fortnight ago to -40. Starmer’s rating remained stable at -9. Overall, it showed that Labour has maintained a 16-point lead over the Conservatives.

With concerns growing over the threat from Reform UK – which almost pushed the Tories into third place in the Blackpool South byelection – Vickers has joined calls for Jeremy Hunt to announce further tax cuts is his autumn statement.

Another senior Tory on the right of the party said: “We just need more robust Tory policies, particularly on the visceral issues like crime and punishment, public order, immigration and asylum.”

However, writing in the Observer, Gavin Barwell, the former Tory MP and chief of staff to Theresa May in Downing Street, says that many of those eyeing the leadership did not want to take over now “and be blamed for the inevitable defeat”. He also argues that there is “probably nothing Sunak or anyone else can do to avert defeat” following the reputational damage inflicted on the Tory brand by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Labour won three of the eight police and crime commissioner elections declared yesterday, gaining Cheshire from the Conservatives and holding West Midlands and Merseyside.

The Ukrainian village of Ocheretyne has been battered by fighting, drone footage obtained by the Associated Press shows. The village has been a target for Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

Russian troops have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs. Ukraine’s military has acknowledged that Russia has gained a “foothold” in Ocheretyne, which had a population of about 3,000 before the war, but says the fighting there is continuing.

Residents have scrambled to flee the village, among them a 98-year-old woman who walked almost 6 miles (10km) alone last week, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane, until she reached the Ukrainian frontline.

Not a single person is seen in the footage, and no building in Ocheretyne appears to have been left untouched by the fighting. Most houses, apartment blocks and other buildings look damaged beyond repair, and many houses have been reduced to piles of wood and bricks. A factory on the outskirts has also been badly damaged.

The footage shows smoke billowing from several houses and fires burning in at least two buildings.

Russia has in recent weeks also stepped up attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. Four people were wounded and a two-storey civilian building was damaged and set ablaze overnight after Russian forces struck the north-eastern city with exploding drones, the region’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said on Saturday.

The four people, including a 13-year-old, were hurt by falling debris, he said on the Telegram messaging app.

Moscow’s forces struck a drone warehouse in Kharkiv that had been used by Ukrainian troops, the Russian state agency RIA reported on Saturday, citing Sergei Lebedev, described as a coordinator of local pro-Moscow guerrillas. His comments could not be independently verified.

Russian forces continued hitting Kharkiv and its surroundings on Saturday, according to updates posted by Syniehubov and other Ukrainian officials on Telegram. One strike hit a civilian business in an industrial district of the city, wounding at least five people, Syniehubov said. A further attack killed a 49-year-old civilian outside his house in Slobozhanske, a village outside the city, the governor reported.

In the Black Sea port of Odesa, which has been repeatedly targeted in recent days, three people were hurt in a rocket attack on “civil infrastructure”, regional governor Oleh Kiper said.

Ukraine’s military said Russia launched 13 Shahed drones at the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions of eastern Ukraine overnight, all of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defences.

Ukraine’s energy ministry on Saturday said overnight strikes damaged an electrical substation in the Dnipropetrovsk region, causing a brief power cut.

According to Serhiy Lysak, the province’s governor, falling drone debris damaged critical infrastructure and three private houses, one of which caught fire. Two residents were hospitalised.

Russia’s defence ministry said early on Saturday that its forces shot down four US-provided long-range Atacms missiles over the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. The ministry did not provide further details.

Ukraine has recently begun using the missiles to hit Russian-held areas, including a military airfield in Crimea and in another area east of the occupied city of Berdiansk, US officials said last week.

Long sought by Ukrainian leaders, the new missiles give Ukraine nearly twice the striking distance – up to 186 miles – that it had with the mid-range versions it received from the US last October.

A Ukrainian drone also damaged telecommunications infrastructure on the outskirts of Belgorod, a Russian city about 31 miles from the Ukrainian border, according to the local governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, who did not say what the site was used for.

Hours later, Gladkov reported that five people in Belgorod were hospitalised, with shrapnel wounds and other injuries, after a strong blast on Saturday that also damaged about 30 private homes and caused two fires.

Extreme heat has gripped much of south and south-east Asia over recent weeks, killing dozens of people, forcing millions of students to miss school and destroying crops.

Both the Philippines and Bangladesh shut schools due to the unbearable heat last month, while governments across the region have issued health warnings. In Thailand, at least 30 people have died from heatstroke since the start of the year.

The extreme weather has seen durian fruit burst on trees in Thailand, destroyed rice crops and caused eggs to shrink, according to local media. The heat has even been cited as a factor that led to an ammunition blast in Cambodia that killed 20 soldiers at an army base last weekend.

Records have been broken across the region. Bangladesh experienced its hottest April ever recorded, with daily maximum temperatures between 2C and 8C hotter than the 33.2C average daily high for the month. In Myanmar, 48.2C was reached in the town of Chauk, in central Magway region – the hottest April temperature since records began.

In Vietnam, 102 weather stations reported record highs in April. Northern and central areas of the country experienced temperatures up to 4C higher than the same period last year, while seven stations recorded temperatures above 43C on Tuesday last week. Kolkata, in India, also reached 43C, the city’s hottest April day since 1954.

Dr Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said: “The frequency, intensity, duration and the area covered by these heatwaves are increasing over time. We are on a rollercoaster ride in terms of temperature, which is not going to come down any time soon. It’s going to be worse, which means we need to be prepared.”

Koll added that there was a need for governments to adapt – by developing policies to decide, for example, when schools should be shut or how to protect workers.

KC Libre, 15, is a student at Manuel Roxas high school in Manila, but she is currently studying at home after the school suspended in-person classes last week. “This is the first time that our classes have been suspended because of the hot weather,” she said. “We have 47 students in our class. Even with electric fans, it’s still hot, and usually there are only two electric fans switched on because ceiling fans in some of the rooms are broken.

“I feel irritated and can’t focus when it’s hot. The rooms are on the fourth floor, and so especially when I go up and down [the stairs], it’s really difficult … I won’t have even started writing yet but I’m already sweating.

“Even in our home it’s so hot. We don’t have aircon because we are not well-off. I do my school work at night because it’s less hot. In the morning, it’s as if extreme heat is blowing into you.

“The air coming from the electric fans is so hot … The heat inside of the oven … that’s what it feels like.”

Sae Klomkamnerd, 63, a farmer in Phichit province in Thailand, was forced to sell his 5,200 ducks as the extreme heat stopped them from laying eggs. “During the day, we would draw more groundwater to fill our pond, so the ducks can go in the water to cool down,” he said.

“But it’s still too hot; after 9 or 10 in the morning, the water becomes hot and they don’t want to get in any more. They just go in the shade and hide under the trees.

“In normal weather, 80-90% of the young ducks will lay eggs, but right now, when it’s so hot, it’s down to 60% or even down to 50%. In the case of the older ducks, the number of eggs is even down to 30%.”

He said the eggs the ducks did manage to lay were smaller than usual, meaning each tray of eggs weighed less and therefore fetched a lower price when sold. “I could only get 75 baht [£1.60] for those trays; in a good year, we could sell them for 100-105 baht per tray. This year is really awful, it’s really hard.”

Lay Samrach, 44, a construction worker in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, said: “I have never experienced this kind of heat. Other years were hot but this year it’s even hotter. When it’s too hot I can’t breathe.”

“Last year, we only took one break in the afternoon, but now we have up to three breaks in the afternoon because of the heat. I have to leave all my equipment in the shade. If I don’t do so it will break down my materials. Last year, I could leave my shovel out, but this year I can’t leave it out because I can’t use it if it’s so hot.”

AFP contributed to this report

Spain has denounced comments by Argentina’s presidency that accused the Spanish government of bringing “poverty and death” to its own people.

The office of the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, had published a statement on X, accusing the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, of damaging Spain’s economy and stability.

The post appears to have been in reaction to earlier comments from the Spanish transport minister, Óscar Puente, who had suggested, during a panel discussion in Salamanca on Friday, that Milei had ingested “substances” during last year’s election campaign.

Milei’s office released a statement on Saturday condemning the remarks while also attacking Sánchez.

It accused Sánchez of “endangering Spanish women by allowing illegal immigration” and undermining Spain’s integrity by making deals with separatists, an allusion to a pact Sánchez’s Socialist Workers’ party struck with Basque and Catalan regionalist parties to form a government, while suggesting his leftist policies brought “death and poverty”.

That provoked a rebuke from the Spanish foreign ministry who said: “The Spanish government categorically rejects the unfounded words … which do not reflect the relations between the two countries and their fraternal people.”

After the election of Milei, a rightwing populist who took the helm in December, relations between Argentina and Spain, ruled by a left-wing coalition led by Saánchez’s Socialist Workers’ party, have significantly cooled.

Milei will travel to Spain in two weeks for an event on 18 and 19 May organised by the far-right opposition party Vox, which is in a race with the socialists in next month’s European elections.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report