The golden jackal, Canis aureus, may seem an exotic creature from a far-off country but the species has suddenly expanded its range into western Europe. Much smaller than a wolf but larger than a fox, the jackal will compete with both species for food and territory. The animals have been found as far north as Finland and Norway and have also reached Spain.

Genetic research shows the individual jackals studied had travelled at least 745 miles (1,200km) from their original homes, and sometimes twice as far. This is comparable with wolves looking for new territories.

Climate breakdown seems to be the driver of the expansion of the jackal’s normal territory, which is described as Eurasia. They are common in India and found in the Baltic states but there is also a population in Austria.

Finland has decided that since jackals arrived naturally, rather than being introduced, they should be classified as a native species and protected.

It is clear jackals could thrive in the UK, and could help keep the deer population under control, but they would have to be introduced.

Jackals live in pairs and sometimes have “helpers”. These are last year’s cubs, which stay with their parents and help to hunt and raise the next litter. Jackals keep clear of humans and are mainly nocturnal.

Tim Walz and JD Vance faced each other for the first and only vice-presidential debate of this election cycle – and clashed on issues including abortion, childcare, the cost of living and Trump’s 2020 election claims.

Here are the facts on some of the false or misleading claims offered during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate.

Vance on Harris’s record as ‘border tsar’

Vance attacked Harris’s record on the border. “The only thing that she did when she became the vice-president, when she became the appointed border tsar, was to undo Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border,” he said.

This contains inaccuracies.

First, Harris was never a “border tsar” – that’s a term invented by her critics. She had a role in the Biden administration to look into addressing the root causes of migration to the US, including safety and economic turmoil in Central American countries.

Second, she did not “undo Donald Trump executive actions”. Presidents sign executive orders, and she was not president. Joe Biden did reverse some Trump executive orders on the border. He initially kept in place Trump-era restrictions known as Title 42, which allowed the US to turn away immigrants at the border on the grounds of preventing the spread of Covid-19, before eventually lifting them.

Vance on Trump’s role on January 6

Vance defended Trump’s role on the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol. The Ohio senator picked out one line of his running mate’s speech on 6 January 2021 – prior to the insurrection.

According to Vance, Trump “said on January 6 the protesters ought to protest peacefully”.

But Trump also repeatedly encouraged supporters to “fight”.

“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said in 2021.

Vance on Trump and the Affordable Care Act

Vance claimed that Donald Trump bolstered or salvaged the Affordable Care Act.

That’s not true.

The former president cut millions in funding for helping people enroll in healthcare, repeatedly supported efforts in Congress to repeal the law and asked the supreme court to overturn the law.

Vance on immigrants and housing prices

Vance twice implicated immigrants in driving up housing prices, though when pressed, agreed that immigration was not the “only” contributor.

A nonpartisan analysis found that Trump’s vow of mass deportation would drive up prices in several sectors and affect the availability of labor. The Peterson Institute for International Economics projects that the policy would be “a major shock to the US economy, with substantial disruption across all sectors, especially agriculture, mining, and manufacturing”.

Vance on Trump’s position on abortion

Vance said that Donald Trump has supported states making their own abortion laws.

Vance claimed that Trump has said that “the proper way to handle this … is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy”.

That’s not quite right. Donald Trump declined to say whether he would sign a national abortion ban during the last debate.

Walz on Project 2025’s ambitions

The Minnesota governor claimed that Project 2025, the ambitious blueprint from the Heritage Foundation to remake the federal government under a second Trump term, would require people to register their pregnancies.

“Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said.

That claim is false. Project 2025 calls for a number of restrictive policies on abortion, including reversing FDA approval of abortion pills, rolling back privacy protections for abortion patients and increasing surveillance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over abortion, but it does not call for all pregnant people to register.

The CDC already collects information about abortion from most of the country, but its reports are incomplete, as some states do not supply the data. Project 2025 suggests that the CDC should go so far as to cut funds from a state if it does not tell the CDC “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method”.

Vance on immigrants in Springfield, Ohio

Referring to Springfield, Ohio – where a number of Haitian immigrants have recently settled – Vance referred to immigrants with legal status as “illegal”.

“You’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you’ve got housing that’s totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans,” he said.

The Haitian immigrants in Springfield, as CBS moderator Margaret Brennan noted, have legal status. Their arrival, local residents and leaders have said, has helped revive the town, which has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.

Vance on the climate crisis and manufacturing

The Ohio senator has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the reality that carbon emissions have caused global heating.

Tonight, he was a bit subtle: “One of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions, this idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change … let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument.”

Despite Vance’s skepticism, it is indeed true. One hundred percent of global heating since 1950 is due to human activity such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation.

Vance also took viewers on a circuitous journey to suggest that if Harris really cared about the climate crisis, she would bring back manufacturing jobs to the US.

Carbon emissions, whether they are manufactured in the US or overseas, contribute to global heating. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – the Biden administration’s landmark climate legislation – is greatly aimed at incentivizing domestic manufacturing.

Read more about the 2024 US election:

Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis is ending his retirement from acting to star in his son’s directorial debut.

The 67-year-old British actor quit acting after starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread, and has largely stayed out of public life since.

But he is now set to star in a film titled Anemone, directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis, US independent production company Focus Features confirmed on Tuesday.

The film will feature actors including Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley and Safia Oakley-Green, and is currently shooting in Manchester.

Father and son wrote the screenplay, which “explores the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”, Focus Features said.

Daniel Day-Lewis made his screen debut as a teenager in Sunday Bloody Sunday before moving on to a number of memorable period drama roles, including as Hawkeye in The Last Of The Mohicans.

He is known for his dedication to method acting, and has won three best actor Oscars, for playing disabled Irish writer Christy Brown in My Left Foot, oil man Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood and Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.

Day-Lewis was made a knight bachelor of the British empire by the Duke of Cambridge in 2014.

In June 2017 it was announced he was retiring from acting, months before Phantom Thread was released.

“Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor,” the statement, issued by his representative, read.

“He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years. This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject.”

He had previously taken extended breaks from the industry, including a stint working as an apprentice shoemaker in Florence in the 1990s.

“My life as it is away from the movie set is a life where I follow my curiosity just as avidly as when I am working,” he told the Observer in 2008. “It is with a very positive sense that I keep away from the work for a while. It has always seemed natural to me that that, in turn, should help me in the work that I do.”

In January, Day-Lewis presented US film-maker Martin Scorsese with an award for his western epic Killers of the Flower Moon.

The actor, who starred in Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York and The Age Of Innocence, said working with the director was “one of the greatest joys and unexpected privileges of my life”.

Iran’s decision to launch about 180 high-speed ballistic missiles at Israel indicates that Tehran sought to inflict serious damage in Tuesday’s night attack, unlike the well-telegraphed drone and missile attack in April.

Their sheer speed makes ballistic weapons challenging to intercept, but the initial reports of no fatalities within Israel and one in the West Bank would suggest despite the numbers of missiles launched it was a military failure, though some of the weapons or fragments appear to have struck the ground.

Tehran’s Emad and Ghadr missiles, used earlier this year, are estimated to travel at six times the speed of sound on impact or more, and take 12 minutes to fly from Iran. That would be more than 4,600mph. But Iran said it deployed the even faster, hypersonic Fatteh-2, with a maximum speed estimated at 10,000mph.

Iran has been estimated to have an arsenal of about 3,000 ballistic missiles, though the original calculation was made by the US two-and-a-half years ago, so the number may well be higher. Tehran will have wanted to retain the vast majority of its stock in case the conflict with Israel further escalates into a full-blown war.

Firing so many ballistic missiles in a few minutes also represents a serious effort to overwhelm or exhaust Israel’s air defences. Because they are sophisticated, the interceptor missiles are expensive – and their stocks uncertain.

Stopping ballistics in flight is principally the task of the long-range US-Israeli Arrow 3 and Arrow 2 systems, first used during the Israel-Hamas war, which are supported by the medium-range David’s Sling system. The better-known Iron Dome is used for short-range interceptions, often of rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza.

In April, a former financial adviser to the IDF chief of staff said that an Arrow missile typically costs $3.5m (£2.8m) a time, and David’s Sling interceptors $1m (£800,000). Eliminating 100 or more missiles would easily run into hundreds of millions of dollars – though the missiles themselves will have cost Iran £80,000 each or more.

At that time, Tehran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said it had given neighbouring countries 72 hours’ notice of a planned attack – which took place a fortnight after Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus. This time, Iran acted within days of Israel’s killing of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.

Nevertheless, warnings that an attack was going to take place on Tuesday began circulating from US sources a couple of hours or so before the missiles were launched. It is unclear how the information would have been obtained but it may have come from satellite imagery, communications intercepts or a diplomatic notification. There were unconfirmed reports that Iran notified Russia before the attack.

It is not immediately clear how many Iranian missiles hit the ground; in April’s attack, of the 120 ballistic missiles fired by Iran only nine got through, causing minor damage to two airbases, meaning in narrow military terms that that attack was also a failure.

Iran had used more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistics in April, but on Tuesday dispensed with slower-moving drones – indicating that they are felt to be ineffective against an opponent with a sophisticated air defence system. It may not have used cruise missiles either.

Shahed drones, also being heavily used by Russia in Ukraine, are relatively slow and can be easily shot down by fighter jets. Cruise missiles rely on manoeuvrability to evade air defences, but are also slow compared with ballistic weapons – Iran’s Paveh cruise missile travels at about 500mph.

Ukraine, which has been constantly attacked by Russian missiles and drones since the start of the full-scale invasion, released its own interception rates in August. Its success proportion would be lower than Israel’s, partly because the length of the war has meant it has run out of some types of short-range interceptor missiles.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said that while 63% of drones were intercepted and 67% of cruise missiles were stopped, that dropped to 4.5% when Russian ballistic missiles were concerned.

Sean “Diddy” Combs, the hip-hop mogul who was arrested last month after an indictment by a federal grand jury, is now facing even more allegations of sexual misconduct.

On Tuesday, Tony Buzbee, a Texas-based attorney, revealed at a press conference that he is representing 120 accusers who allege misconduct against Combs over the course of two decades.

“We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors. We will pursue this matter no matter who the evidence implicates,” Buzbee said in the press conference.

“The biggest secret in the entertainment industry, that really wasn’t a secret at all, has finally been revealed to the world. The wall of silence has now been broken.”

Andrew Van Arsdale, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, told the Washington Post that the forthcoming filings were “unprecedented in scope” and included allegations from both men and women, who ranged in age from nine to 38 at the time of the alleged attacks.

Van Arsdale added that there will be 120 individual lawsuits filed in New York, Los Angeles and Miami in the coming weeks.

In his preview of lawsuits to come, Buzbee said “many powerful people … many dirty secrets”. He added that his team has “collected pictures, video, texts”.

The lawyer said he’s had more than 3,000 individuals come forward to his office with accusations against Combs and that he plans to begin filing lawsuits in various states.

Buzbee said that the new civil claims against Combs will include “violent sexual assault or rape, facilitated sex with a controlled substance, dissemination of video recordings, sexual abuse of minors”.

He added: “It’s a long list already, but because of the nature of this case, we are going to make sure damn sure we are right before we do that. These names will shock you.”

The lawyer broke down the new claimants as 62% African American, from more than 25 states. He also said that 25 of the accusers were minors at the time of the incidents occurring as early as 1991, with one as young as nine at the time.

Separately, the New York Post reported Tuesday that a sexually explicit video of Combs and another A-list celebrity was allegedly being “shopped around”.

Combs is being detained at the Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn and was denied bail after prosecutors in New York charged him with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs pleaded not guilty.

Marc Agnifilo, Combs’s lawyer, offered an intriguing reason why government investigators allegedly found 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant in Combs’s homes, which were raided in March, allegedly used during “freak-off” orgies.

“He has a big house, he buys in bulk,” Agnifilo said. “I think they have Costcos in every place where he has a home.”

Agnifilo also offered an explanation for Combs’s parties that the government calls “elaborate sex performances” and involved “force, threats of force and coercion, to cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers”.

“They called them ‘freak-offs’. But, you know, back when I was a kid in the late 70s, they were called threesomes,” he told TMZ.

Combs has denied all claims against him, calling them “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday”. The criminal allegations against the star appear based on allegations made by plaintiffs in pre-existing civil claims, including by Comb’s ex-girlfriend, Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, who last year filed a civil suit alleging assault and sex trafficking.

That set off a cascade of similar claims against Combs, recently from Dawn Richard, a former member of the girl group Danity Kane, who alleged that Combs groped, assaulted, imprisoned and threatened her life.

In a statement following Buzbee’s public statement Tuesday, Combs’s attorney Erica Wolff said her client could not address “every meritless allegation in what has become a reckless media circus”.

Wolff added that her client “emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors” and “looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court if and when claims are filed and served”.

Every day, Raquel Atlahua begins her work as a roofer bracing for the blistering sun.

On the roof, there is no escape from the direct light and heat, and the temperatures in Florida quickly climb as the day progresses. The high humidity and lack of shade make it feel even hotter, and even more difficult to cool down.

She and her co-workers get going at 7am, sometimes earlier. They hope the early start means they can get as much work done before temperatures peak in the afternoon – before constant physical exertion, heat and humidity make them feel drained. They battle the climate while rushing to finish a job where the pay is based on the work they complete, rather than by an hourly or daily rate.

“Sometimes we see that the thermometer is 95 degrees, but really when you’re up roofing, it feels like 120 degrees, so there’s a big difference from what people see to what we’re feeling up there,” Atlahua said.

Employers often don’t provide workers water even though they are supposed to, so she and her co-workers make sure they have plenty. She adds lemon, sugar and salt to her water to keep up her electrolytes, as she is constantly sweating. She has learned to avoid drinks like soda to keep up her hydration and eats as healthy as she can; she often sees co-workers struggle with the fatigue of being exposed to intense heat. Fatigue, dizziness, headaches and soreness are constant issues.

Atlahua has worked outdoors for 20 years in central Florida. She began as a roofer in 2004, then became a farm worker in 2009 when the economic recession slowed down roofing work, before returning to roofing in 2015.

Atlahua said she has noticed a significant increase in the intensity and number of hot days she experiences since she began two decades ago.

“One of the things I remember in 2004 when I started was that intense heat days would start around May. Now those heatwaves are felt as early as January,” said Atlahua.

Atlahua’s experiences, about the weather in Florida getting hotter, are backed by data and climate science research. A 2024 study conducted by Payless Power utilizing data from the World Weather Online API found Florida is now the hottest state in the US, with an average temperature of 74.1F (23.4C) over the past 15 years. Unusually hot conditions in Florida have been made five times more likely due to the climate crisis.

Globally, 2024 is on track to become the hottest year on record, which is currently held by 2023.

There are an estimated 2 million outdoor workers in Florida. But despite warming trends, workers here and throughout the US currently have no heat protections on the job. Earlier this year, Republicans in Florida passed a law banning cities and counties from enacting heat protections for workers, amid industry pressure. The Biden administration has proposed a federal rule to provide heat protections for workers, but it could be several more years until it is approved and enacted.

Atlahua explained employers provide no heat protections or resources to her and her co-workers who are directly exposed to the sun on the roofs of houses and buildings. Instead, she and her co-workers are left to try to take care and support themselves.

“They don’t give anything to the workers,” Atlahua noted in reference to whether employers provide any water, training or support for workers around the heat.

As roofers, she and her co-workers aren’t provided any shade, either. If they have to use the bathroom, they are forced to drive to the nearest gas station to use one there and rely on the air conditioning in the gas station and their vehicles to cool down on breaks.

Atlahua argued that she would like to see improvements in education for workers on how to protect themselves from the heat, and for more patience and support from employers, who often won’t allow workers to work too early or too late in the day when the temperatures and sun exposure aren’t as hot.

She also noted due to the nature of the work, with contractors often utilizing subcontractors who have their own employees, that the lack of education and protections around heat get dismissed and the onus is put on workers to try to protect themselves the best they can.

Though employers are supposed to provide clean, drinkable water for free to workers under Osha’s general duty clause, employers will come up with excuses against doing so. “It’s because of the laws in Florida and the message Florida sends to employers. Employers also give the excuse that they are liable if they give us water and we get sick,” she added.

She also has a message for the owners whose homes and buildings she’s repairing: “Owners should think more about the workers and let us sit down and rest when needed. I often see co-workers suffering muscle issues, constantly drinking water, and how much it affects them and how hard it is for them to work in the heat.”

A 43ft (13 meters) effigy of an entirely nude Donald Trump on the interstate from Las Vegas to Reno, Nevada, has been dismissed as “deplorable” and “pornographic” by Republicans in the state.

In a statement, the Nevada Republican party said it “strongly condemns” the effigy of the former president, which hangs from a crane, weighs 6,000lbs, is made from foam and rebar, is titled Crooked and Obscene and is expected to be brought to other cities as part of a nationwide tour.

“While families drive through Las Vegas, they are forced to view this offensive marionette, designed intentionally for shock value rather than meaningful dialogue,” said the party’s statement, invoking the name of a city that was essentially founded to capitalize on gambling and sex.

The artists behind the graphic effigy – who want to remain anonymous – told the Wrap that Trump’s nudity was “intentional, serving as a bold statement on transparency, vulnerability and the public personas of political figures”.

Political battles over statuary run hot and have become a feature of the Trump era after he won the presidency in 2016.

For instance, hundreds of statues paying tribute to the white supremacist Confederacy that lost the US civil war have come down in southern states where the Confederacy was based after a spate of police killings victimizing Black Americans.

The Trump effigy and the offense Republicans took over it drew attention days after he boasted at a political rally in Wisconsin of his “beautiful body”. It was taken down Monday with plans to move it to other swing states in November’s presidential election, during which Trump is seeking a return to the White House as the Republican nominee.

The sculpture in Las Vegas came eight years after artist Joshua “Ginger” Monroe created statues of Trump that he told a Cleveland news outlet took four to five months of strenuous labor to create. He described it as a “hate-filled labor to create this monstrosity”.

Monroe told Cleveland Magazine the following year: “The reason we show Trump’s veins [is] to show a visible representation of his thin skin.”

At the same time, a 16ft effigy of Trump’s rival in November’s presidential race, Kamala Harris, has been put up at the United States Funhouse in West Hartford, Connecticut. The display is from Matt Warshauer, a professor and political historian at Central Connecticut State University – and it likens Harris to the Statue of Liberty.

Warshauer says he sees Harris – whose statue is flanked by Halloween skeletons and ghouls – not as “a fundamental threat to the system”.

“I see her as a stable force,” he said.

A statement on the statue suggests it could be the last of Warshauer’s annual political displaying. It declares the piece as “the final year of Political Halloween”.

An 81-year-old Montana man was sentenced on Monday to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in central Asia and the US to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.

The US district court judge Brian Morris said he struggled to come up with a sentence for Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana. He said he weighed Schubarth’s age and lack of a criminal record with a sentence that would deter anyone else from trying to “change the genetic makeup of the creatures” on the Earth.

Morris also fined Schubarth $20,000 and ordered him to make a $4,000 payment to the US Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Schubarth will be allowed to self-report to a federal bureau of prisons medical facility.

“I will have to work the rest of my life to repair everything I’ve done,” Schubarth told the judge just before sentencing.

Schubarth’s attorney, Jason Holden, said cloning the giant Marco Polo sheep hunted in Kyrgyzstan in 2013 has ruined his client’s “life, reputation and family”.

“I think this has broken him,” Holden said.

Holden, in seeking a probationary sentence, argued that Schubarth was a hard-working man who has always cared for animals and did something that no one else could have done in cloning the giant sheep, which he named Montana Mountain King – or MMK.

The animal has been confiscated by US Fish and Wildlife Services and is being held in an accredited facility until it can be transferred to a zoo, said Richard Bare, a special agent with the wildlife service.

Sarah Brown, an attorney with the US Department of Justice, had asked that Schubarth be sentenced to prison, saying his illegal breeding operation was widespread, involved other states and endangered the health of other wildlife. The crime involved forethought, was complex and involved many illegal acts, she said.

Schubarth owns Sun River Enterprises LLC, a 215-acre (87-hectare) alternative livestock ranch, which buys, sells and breeds “alternative livestock” such as mountain sheep, mountain goats and ungulates, primarily for private hunting preserves, where people shoot captive trophy game animals for a fee, prosecutors said. He had been in the game farm business since 1987, Schubarth said.

Schubarth pleaded guilty in March to charges that he and five other people conspired to use tissue from a Marco Polo sheep illegally brought into the US to clone that animal and then use the clone and its descendants to create a larger, hybrid species of sheep that would be more valuable for captive hunting operations.

Marco Polo sheep are the largest in the world, can weigh 300lb (136kg) and have curled horns up to 5ft (1.5 meters) long, court records said.