This was an opportunity for France to show they can dismiss high-level opponents without Kylian Mbappé but instead question marks will linger. They should have won a game that, although the first goalless draw of the tournament, was lively enough and brought a string of presentable chances. Most of them fell the favourites’ way but, as the list of misses stacked up, the absence of their talisman glared more brightly.

Had the night’s outcome been of huge consequence, Mbappé would surely have been wheeled into action for a side that simply could not score. Didier Deschamps suggested as much afterwards but this was always going to be a phoney war, the group stage offering little jeopardy to genuine hopefuls, and it was telling that Mbappé did not sport one of the golden bibs worn by France’s other substitutes while sitting on the bench. His broken nose was not worth risking and it remains to be seen whether he is given a chance to get his eye in when they look to top Group D against Poland, who have been eliminated, on Tuesday.

“I wasn’t bluffing at all,” said Deschamps, who had left open the possibility Mbappé might play after being fitted with a face mask for his injury. “He’s getting better and if it had been a decisive game this evening then maybe I’d have thought twice about him playing or not. He took a nasty blow, he’s got a bruise and will have to wear a mask. With every day that passes we’re getting to a point where we want to be. I thought the wiser decision was to keep him on the bench.”

Mbappé had uncharacteristically missed a sitter against Austria before taking that grievous knock for his troubles, but he must have been straining at the leash for a go at one of the openings France spurned in either half. Antoine Griezmann was particularly culpable and they were almost punished as proceedings entered their final 20 minutes.

The flag went up quickly after Xavi Simons, rifling in from 14 yards after Mike Maignan had denied Memphis Depay, briefly wheeled away in celebration. Denzel Dumfries, who was well offside, had been standing directly to Maignan’s left as the ball flashed past him on that side. The assumption was that he had impeded the keeper’s ability to dive and VAR set to work in rubber-stamping the call.

It was upheld after a wait of almost three minutes that culminated in Anthony Taylor calling Griezmann and Virgil van Dijk, the captains, across to run them through the rationale. The decision itself seemed reasonable but the delay, during which Taylor communicated with the VAR officials Stuart Attwell, felt straight out of Stockley Park. The past week has been notable for relatively quick resolutions to video referrals and this one did not meet that bar.

Deschamps raised his eyebrows at the interruption’s length, feeling the case was “a no brainer”. Unsurprisingly Ronald Koeman’s take cast a different hue. “I personally think the goal should have stood,” he said. “I think Dumfries is offside, that’s true. But he isn’t disturbing the goalkeeper, and when that doesn’t happen it’s a legal goal in my opinion. And you need five minutes [sic] to check it because it’s so difficult? I don’t understand it.”

Koeman watered that assessment down by accepting his team were not “up to scratch” for spells and noting France had enjoyed the clearer openings. A draw, he thought, was fair when that was all priced in. Again, it was hard not to think he might have been more strident had this been a knockout tie. No bones about it, this was a good result for the Netherlands even if they will not be given an easy ride next time out against Austria.

Perhaps it would have been even better if the lightning-quick Jeremie Frimpong, through on goal after racing away thrillingly from Théo Hernandez, had beaten Maignan inside the opening minute. A mobile Dutch front line caused particular headaches in the first half, Simons twinkling at the venue where he has shone all season for RB Leipzig and Cody Gakpo making Maignan save superbly, but France were the more consistent threat.

Griezmann drew an acrobatic stop from Bart Verbruggen and then, fed by an unselfish Adrien Rabiot who should surely have shot after clever work from Marcus Thuram, stumbled in front of goal when looking to convert. He also swiped wide from inside the box and then watched as Thuram, slipped into acres of space by a smart ball down the right from Jules Koundé, raced towards goal but blazed off target.

More glimpses followed in the second half. Aurélien Tchouaméni rose high but headed wide before Griezmann fluffed arguably the best chance of all. Teed up by N’Golo Kanté, who was again imperious throughout, he could not beat Verbruggen from six yards and France were left to sweat on video technology moments later.

They will also dwell on whether Mbappé comes back at full tilt. “It changes his vision but also the risks he’ll be taking,” Deschamps said of the situation Mbappé will face when, wearing the mask, he returns to contact training. France may just have to take the gamble.

Above a lush and rugged valley in Tenerife’s Rural De Teno national park, a police officer from Spain’s civil guard surveys the landscape with binoculars.

A few hundred yards below, members of the Canary’s civil defence force in orange hi-vis jackets are searching further into the valley close to where the British tourist Jay Slater disappeared five days ago.

The 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire was last heard from between 8am and 9am on Monday morning, when he had left the holiday cottage of some men he had gone back with after a music festival in the south of the island.

Slater’s last known location, according to his mobile phone, was around half a mile uphill from the cottage, on the outskirts of the village of Masca – in the opposite direction to the coastal resort where he was staying with friends.

Ofelia Medina Hernandez, the owner of the Airbnb where Slater went after the festival, said she was “very worried” about him, and added: “It’s not our fault.”

She said: “It’s dangerous walking around here, it’s easy to lose yourself. Here, people don’t get lost, there are routes everywhere. And he walked along the road when I saw him for the last time, up there … He was there alone.

“He was walking normally, though fast, a little fast.”

Hernandez said she had given all the information she had to the police, adding that Slater had asked about the bus, and she had told him that the bus leaves at 10am.

The Airbnb owner said the two men she hosted were friendly and had stayed one more night, spending the time in the house. She thought they had met Slater at the festival, but was not sure.

Friends of Slater also said he had met the men, believed to be from the south-east of England, at the festival. Some suggested police hadn’t questioned the men before they left the island, but other witnesses in Masca said officers had spoken to the men before they returned to the UK.

Police at the La Cruz de Hilda viewpoint, where the search has been concentrated, said on Friday that there were no updates.

In a statement, the Guardia Civil also said: “There is a search ongoing and the police operation is focused on the area of Masca (Tenerife). By now we cannot confirm any more information.”

Yesterday, a large group of Slater’s friends flew out to the island to help with the search. Members of his family including his mother, Debbie Duncan, have been in Tenerife since Tuesday.

“It’s just traumatic and it doesn’t feel real. It’s just awful, it’s horrendous,” she said. “He’s just a great person who everyone wanted to be with. He’s good looking, he’s a popular boy.”

Slater’s last known contact with friends was on Monday morning, when he texted his friend Lucy, who had been at the festival with him but had left before him.

He had told her he was lost, had been cut by a cactus, needed water, and that his phone battery was on 1%.

Lucy has been among those who have called for police reinforcements to be sent out from the UK to help with the search.

Friends of Slater have said more resources need to be dedicated to finding the missing teenager. “I just think they need to get as much help as they can out here,” Lucy told the Guardian.

“There are no helicopters here 1719005163. He’s been missing for that long now, what are they actually doing?”

Another friend said they had spent 12 hours driving “all down the coastal area”, had searched through dense undergrowth, and said “we were shouting, screaming”.

“We’ve been here since Tuesday and I’ve seen the helicopter once, we’ve seen the drones once, and I’ve seen one dog.”

Slater’s last Snapchat post was a photograph of him smoking a cigarette, believed to have been taken inside the Airbnb. Friends have been collecting cigarette butts they have found while searching in the undergrowth, in case they may come in useful as evidence later.

Yesterday the search had extended further across the valley, a considerable distance from where Slater was last seen. Personnel concentrated part of the search on a river named Barranco Madre del Agua at the bottom of a ravine, sifting through fallen dead palm trees with sticks.

On Thursday, one rescuer told the Guardian that search teams had not given up, and they believed it was possible to survive in the elements with current weather conditions.

Rescue workers told the Guardian on Friday that their search was focused on two ravines in the area and the paths around it, an area of about 30 square kilometres.

They said there were about 25 voluntary rescue workers involved, and that rescuers had spent the morning descending into the ravines to reach the bottom.

One added: “We still have hope that he’s alive, up until the last moment when the last hope is lost. The truth is that we feel a bit frustrated because we can’t find him. It’s so big [here] that it’s very difficult to search in such a steep area. But we’re doing everything we can.

“We haven’t found anything, we have combed this entire trail, we’ve been up and down but, until now, nothing.”

They said it was a “very difficult area to search”, with many areas covered in vegetation, as well as gaps and ravines.

A Facebook page dedicated to finding Slater, which had attracted more than 468,000 members, was paused after conspiracy theories about his disappearance began to spread wildly on social media profiles, including TikTok.

“It’s gone too far,” Rach Louise Harg, a friend of Slater and the Facebook page’s administrator, said in a post.

In a previous post, she said: “Struggling to find words at this time but all I can say is we are looking still and everyone is doing all they can.”

“I wish this would end now, this living nightmare,” she added. “Searches are ongoing and we remain positive.”

Separately, a fundraiser set up by Lucy to “get Jay Slater home” has received more than £23,500 in donations.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man who has been reported missing in Spain and are in contact with the local authorities.”

Nigel Farage has said the EU and Nato “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding eastwards, as the Reform UK leader was challenged over a series of policies and beliefs in a sometimes combative TV interview.

Speaking to BBC’s Panorama on Friday evening, Farage also said Brexit would have benefited the UK economically if he had been running the country, and that many of the Reform candidates criticised for saying offensive things had been “stitched up in the most extraordinary way”.

Challenged on his beliefs over the invasion of Ukraine, and his stated admiration for Vladimir Putin, Farage said he disliked the Russian president personally but “admired him as a political operator” because of the extent of his control over Russia.

On why Putin invaded Ukraine, Farage said: “I stood up in the European parliament in 2014 and I said: ‘There will be a war in Ukraine.’ Why did I say that? It was obvious to me that the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason … to say: ‘They’re coming for us again,’ and to go to war.”

He added: “We provoked this war. Of course it’s his fault, he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.”

The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have long accused Farage of being an apologist for the Russian president.

Earlier this year Rishi Sunak said it was “clearly ridiculous” to blame the west for the war. “Russia conducted an illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” the prime minister said. “I’m proud that the UK has stood strongly with Ukraine from the beginning.”

Elsewhere in the interview, one of a series hosted by Nick Robinson with party leaders, Farage accepted that a claim he made saying the UK had moved from being the “world’s seventh-biggest exporter to the world’s fourth-biggest exporter” after Brexit referred only to services.

Asked why exports in goods had not similarly benefited, Farage blamed net zero policies, saying they had “de-industrialised Britain”. On the economic effects of Brexit, he said: “If you put me in charge it’d be very, very different, but of course they didn’t do that did they?”

Challenged over his support at the time for Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget, Farage praised it for having “a lot of things here that were pro-growth and pro-business”, while saying it was undermined by not including matched cuts in spending.

Asking about Reform’s own fiscal plans, set out this week in the party’s manifesto, Robinson seemed unconvinced by Farage’s explanations as to how the party would cut public spending enough to make mass tax cuts.

“Well, number one, we will get people off the unemployment register into work,” Farage said. Robinson replied: “That’s not going to raise you £140bn a year. You were on I’m a Celebrity – you should have been on Fantasy Island.”

Discussing migration, Farage repeatedly said that people arriving in the UK could bring their mothers with them, which is not the case. On net zero, asked if he still believed King Charles was “an eco-loony”, Farage replied: “He wasn’t the king then, and I can’t speak ill of the monarch obviously.”

Robinson also questioned Farage about comments from a series of Reform’s election candidates, including one who said the UK should have been politically neutral towards Nazi Germany.

Reform has since blamed a vetting company it employed for failing to check what candidates had said. But Farage appeared to play down the seriousness of many of the comments, saying: “We’ve also had an awful lot of candidates being stitched up in the most extraordinary way with quotes being taken out of context.”

Robinson replied: “So, you can’t run vetting but you could find £140bn in public spending savings?”

Asked if Reform attracted such people because of his own views, Farage called this “cobblers, absolute cobblers”, quoting Martin Luther King and saying he believed in meritocracy.

Asked why he once praised Enoch Powell and criticised Rishi Sunak by saying he “doesn’t understand our culture”, Farage said this simply referred to the prime minister being “too upper-class”.

A 25-year-old video has come to light of a man identified by the FBI as a Saudi intelligence agent filming locations in the center of Washington three months before Al-Qaida decided to carry out the 9/11 attacks.

The footage, shot in the summer of 1999 and in the possession of the FBI, was unsealed in a court action by families of the victims of 9/11, who claim that Saudi Arabia’s government was complicit in the event, which the country’s rulers deny. It was obtained by CBS and shown on the 60 Minutes program.

The video includes commentary from the man, Omar al-Bayoumi, about various locations in the city, including the Washington monument and the entry points and security arrangements of the US Capitol building, and referring at one point to a “plan”.

The Capitol is believed to have been the target of one of the planes before its hijackers were overwhelmed by passengers, causing it to crash in the Pennsylvania countryside.

Saudi authorities have long and strenuously denied complicity or support for 9/11, as does Bayoumi. Lawyers for the Saudi government have filed for the families’ case to be dismissed, with oral arguments due this summer.

The film was initially found by UK investigators in Bayoumi’s flat in the days after the attack in 2001, when he was a PhD student at Aston University in Birmingham. The flat also contained an address book that lawyers for the families say contains the contact details of officials in the Saudi government at the time. Scotland Yard gave the footage to the FBI.

Saudi Arabia has always denied that Bayoumi was its agent. He has long been a subject of speculation due to his links to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. An FBI report declassified in March 2022 presented evidence of “a 50/50 chance [Bayoumi] had advanced knowledge the 9/11 attacks were to occur” from his relationship with Hazmi and Mihdhar.

Another bureau report declassified the year before says he gave significant help to the pair after their arrival in the US, and communicated with a key logistics facilitator for Osama bin Laden each time he assisted them.

The video was shot over several days and is of somewhat grainy quality. He starts it in Arabic, saying, “O beloved, esteemed brothers, a greeting to you from Omar al-Bayoumi,” then adds: “We greet you, the esteemed brothers, and we welcome you from Washington – Washington the American capital city.”

Pointing out the Washington monument, he talks about going there and “reporting to you in detail what is there” to the people he is addressing in the film. He also notes the proximity of the airport.

Focusing on cars outside an unidentified building, he says: “Their cars, you said that in the plan.”

The FBI claims that when Bayoumi was shooting the video, he was with two Saudi Arabian diplomats who the bureau said had ties to al-Qaida.

The Saudi government declined to comment to 60 Minutes about the contents of the report.

The official 9/11 Commission report, a 585-page document published in 2004 from the findings of an inquiry set up by the US government, concluded that intelligence failures on the part of the CIA and FBI were primarily to blame for the attack. Referring to Bayoumi, the report said: “We have seen no credible evidence that he believed in violent extremism, or knowingly aided extremist groups.”

The commission reported that when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, credited as the attack mastermind, was asked under interrogation if he knew Bayoumi, he said he did not.

A wide range of No Cow protein bars are contaminated with lead and toxic “forever chemicals”, recent filings with the California department of justice charges.

The filings, made by the Environmental Research Center (ERC), a San Diego-based consumer protection non-profit, states that its testing found PFOA, a dangerous PFAS compound, and lead in eight flavors of No Cow bars.

No Cow did not respond to a request for comment, and the ERC declined to discuss the filings because the case is ongoing.

The filings allege that No Cow is violating California’s Proposition 65 law, which, among other provisions, requires companies to alert consumers when toxic chemicals are used in goods.

No Cow has been in violation of the law since the company introduced the bars in 2021, the filing claims, and will remain so “until clear and reasonable warnings are provided to product purchasers and users or until this known toxic chemical is either removed from or reduced to allowable levels in the products”.

PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds typically used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems.

Food is thought to be one of the main exposure routes for PFAS, and the Food and Drug Administration has received intense criticism from public health advocates who charge the agency is not doing enough to protect public health. The ERC last year made a similar filing over KOS protein products, and a class-action suit alleged some Simply Tropical products were contaminated with PFAS.

No Cow, which is distributed at Target, Walmart, Kroger and other national chains, produces a range of protein and health products.

The filings do not provide lead and PFOA levels, but the Environmental Protection Agency states that virtually no level of exposure to either substance in drinking water is safe, while no level of exposure to lead through any route is safe.

The fillings demand that No Cow recall the eight protein bars and reformulate them so they don’t contain the chemicals. If they are not reformulated, then No Cow should affix a warning to the label, the filing states. It also calls for civil penalties.

No Cow and the state of California have 60 days to respond and take action from the dates of filings, which were made in late April for PFOA and early June for lead. If they do not, then ERC can file a lawsuit and ask a judge to order the company to comply with Proposition 65.

Most mornings, Wolf Ruck walks the mown paths in his yard in Mississauga, Ontario, watching for insects landing on the goldenrod, birds feeding on native seed heads, and chipmunk kits playing in the tall grass.

The septuagenarian artist, film-maker and former Olympic canoeist began rewilding his garden with native plants three years ago, as part of a growing movement across Canada towards replacing water-thirsty lawns with “naturalised gardens”.

Letting nature take its course has been a blessing to observe, Ruck says. But to city officials, his garden violates the city’s nuisance weed and tall grass control bylaw. Twice, officers responding to anonymous neighbour complaints have brought workers to forcibly cut Ruck’s garden, billing him later for the work.

“My property is not abandoned. It’s not a blight on the community. It simply seems to offend some neighbours who don’t like the look of it,” Ruck says.

A growing number of Canadian gardeners are facing legal action for their efforts to rewild their gardens, a movement that took off during the coronavirus pandemic, as people confined to their homes reconsidered their relationship with their lawn. Proponents of rewilding cite greater biodiversity, drought resistance, and lower upkeep as advantages.

Beyond sidewalk gardens overflowing with black-eyed susan, hairy beardtongue and white turtlehead, signs of the growing movement can be seen in the proliferation of community initiatives, such as wildflower seed libraries and butterfly ranger programs. In recent years big-box retailers and garden centres have started carrying native plants alongside Kentucky bluegrass seed and hybrid tea roses.

But the growing movement is facing blowback from lawn-loving neighbours complaining about gardens overrun with “weeds”. Prof Nina-Marie Lister says the Ecological Design Lab she directs at Toronto Metropolitan University is receiving more requests than ever to help gardeners facing bylaw complaints. “The number of cases we have supported with advice through my lab has more than quadrupled since 2020,” she says.

Across Canada and the United States, local bylaws regulate private gardens, often using subjective terms such as “tidy” or “neat”, arbitrary rules such as limiting grass height to 20cm, and vague or undefined terms such as “weeds”. Enforcement is driven by anonymous complaints and are carried out by often harried bylaw officers without specific botanical training, who may also be dealing with noise complaints, parking violations and vermin outbreaks.

Lister is helping local bodies update their garden regulations and cites 12 municipalities in Ontario alone that have updated or are updating their bylaws.

“The aesthetic of the lawn has been increasingly challenged as out of date, especially at a time when many cities – and the city of Toronto specifically – encourage residents to plant native species,” she says.

“The advice we give to municipalities is this: diversify the palette of what a garden looks like. Recognise the rights of residents to plant, cultivate and grow native species … the only proviso must be that they are not harmful to human or ecological health.”

For ordinary citizens concerned with habitat loss, environmental degradation and climate change, their garden is one of the few areas in which they have agency to act, says Lorraine Johnson, an author on native gardening. “The growing appeal is that it’s something you can do locally that has an important and demonstrable positive impact,” she says.

Ruck agrees. “It’s certainly helping me in terms of countering that feeling of helplessness, because I can say at least I’m trying to do my part,” he says.

After his arguments failed to convince bylaw officers, Ruck took his case to court. Legal precedent supports naturalised gardening in Ontario, where in 1996 a court ruled that Sandy Bell, a Toronto gardener, had the right to express her environmental beliefs through gardening, overturning a fine issued to her under the city’s weeds and grass bylaw.

But Ruck, who represented himself, lost his case on procedural grounds after arguing that the city had applied the bylaw unfairly and arbitrarily. Now on the hook for the municipality’s legal bills of $6,000 (£3,450), he has filed an appeal.

Officials have tried to work with Ruck in dealing with nuisance weeds and tall grass complaints at his property, a Mississauga spokesperson said. “Because this matter is before the courts, the city does not have any further comment at this time.”

In the meantime, Ruck remains on alert for the sound of garden strimmers. “It’s a cloud hanging over my head,” he says.

A geoengineering technique designed to reduce high temperatures in California could inadvertently intensify heatwaves in Europe, according to a study that models the unintended consequences of regional tinkering with a changing climate.

The paper shows that targeted interventions to lower temperature in one area for one season might bring temporary benefits to some populations, but this has to be set against potentially negative side-effects in other parts of the world and shifting degrees of effectiveness over time.

The authors of the study said the findings were “scary” because the world has few or no regulations in place to prevent regional applications of the technique, marine cloud brightening, which involves spraying reflective aerosols (usually in the form of sea salt or sea spray) into stratocumulus clouds over the ocean to reflect more solar radiation back into space.

Experts have said the paucity of controls means there is little to prevent individual countries, cities, companies or even wealthy individuals from trying to modify their local climates, even if it is to the detriment of people living elsewhere, potentially leading to competition and conflict over interventions.

The recent sharp rise in global temperatures has prompted some research institutions and private organisations to engage in geoengineering research that used to be virtually taboo.

In Australia, scientists have been trialling marine cloud brightening strategies for at least four years to try to cool the Great Barrier Reef and slow its bleaching.

Earlier this year, scientists at the University of Washington sprayed sea-salt particles across the flight deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet, docked in Alameda in San Francisco Bay. This experiment was halted by the local government to allow it to evaluate whether the spray contains chemicals that might pose a health risk to people or animals in the Bay area.

The new paper suggests the consequences could be much further reaching and harder to predict. Published on Friday in Nature Climate Change, the authors claim to be the first to demonstrate that cloud brightening effects can diminish or reverse as climate conditions change due to the already dramatic human impacts of burning fossil fuels and forests.

Using Earth system computer models of the climate in 2010 and 2050, they simulated the impacts of two cloud brightening operations carried out over different regions of the north-eastern Pacific Ocean, one in the subtropics near California and one in the mid-latitudes near Alaska. Both were designed to reduce the risk of extreme heat on the target region, the US west coast.

Counterintuitively, the more distant operation had the greater impact because it tapped into “teleconnections”, links in the climate system between geographically remote parts of the world.

The 2010 simulation suggested the operation near Alaska would lower the risk of dangerous heat exposure in the target region by 55% – equivalent to 22 million people-days per summer – while the closer subtropical test would cause smaller but still significant gains of 16%.

In simulations of the more disrupted climate of 2050, however, the same two operations produced very different results because there were fewer clouds, higher base temperatures and a slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc). Under these mid-century conditions, the operation near Alaska would have a drastically reduced effect on relieving heat stress in the western US, while the subtropical operation would push temperatures higher – the opposite of the desired result.

The consequences outside the target regions were also markedly different between 2010 and 2050. At the earlier date, the simulations suggested Europe would also be cooled by the marine cloud brightening in the north Pacific. However, by 2050, the local cooling operation would increase heat stress around the world, particularly over Europe, as a result of the slowing of Amoc.

“Our study is very specific,” said Jessica Wan, who is part of the research team led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It shows that marine cloud brightening can be very effective for the US west coast if done now, but it may be ineffective there in the future and could cause heatwaves in Europe.”

She said the results should concern policymakers, and prompt them to establish governance structures and transparency guidelines, not just on a global level but regionally.

“There is really no solar geoengineering governance right now. That is scary. Science and policy need to be developed together,” she said. “We don’t want to be in a situation where one region is forced to do geoengineering to combat what another part of the world has done to respond to droughts and heatwaves.”

Millions of mosquitoes are being released from helicopters in Hawaii in a last-ditch attempt to save rare birds slipping into extinction.

The archipelago’s endemic, brightly coloured honeycreeper birds are dying of malaria carried by mosquitoes first introduced by European and American ships in the 1800s. Having evolved with no immunity to the disease, the birds can die after just a single bite.

Thirty-three species of honeycreeper have become extinct and many of the 17 that remain are highly endangered, with concerns some could be extinct within a year if no action is taken. Now conservationists are urgently trying to save them with an unusual strategy: releasing more mosquitoes.

Every week a helicopter drops 250,000 male mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacterium that acts as birth control on to the islands of the remote archipelago. Already, 10 million have been released.

“The only thing that’s more tragic is if [the birds] went extinct and we didn’t try. You can’t not try,” said Chris Warren, the forest bird programme coordinator for Haleakalā national park on the island of Maui.

The population of one honeycreeper, the Kauaʻi creeper, or ʻakikiki, has dropped from 450 in 2018 to five in 2023, with just one single bird known to be left in the wild on Kauaʻi island, according to the national park service.

Honeycreepers have a canary-like song and incredible diversity: each species has evolved with special beak shapes, adapted to eating different foods, from snails to fruit to nectar. They are an important part of the ecosystem, helping to pollinate plants and eating insects.

As Hawaii birds did not evolve alongside avian malaria, they have very little immune response to it – the scarlet honeycreeper (‘i’iwi), for example, has a 90% chance of dying if it is bitten by an infected mosquito.

The remaining birds generally live at high elevations above 1,200-1,500 metres (4,000-5,000ft), where mosquitoes with the avian malaria parasite do not live because it is too cold. As the climate warms, however, mosquitoes are moving to higher elevations.

Researchers are using the incompatible insect technique (IIT), which involves releasing male mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacteria that stops the eggs of wild females that they mate with from hatching.

Female mosquitoes only mate once, and the idea is that over time this reduces the overall population. The bacteria, Wolbachia, lives naturally in most insects, which can only produce viable offspring with partners that have the same strain of Wolbachia.

The technique has been successfully used to reduce mosquito populations in China and Mexico, with programmes continuing in California and Florida. The effectiveness of this programme should become clear in summer when mosquito populations typically boom.

The project is being led by a coalition of groups including the US National Park Service, the state of Hawaii and the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project, operating under the banner Birds, Not Mosquitoes.

Dr Nigel Beebe, from the University of Queensland, researched how the IIT technique works on other mosquito species. “It’s much better than using pesticides that have large non-target effects. Especially for things like conservation of critical species,” he said.

He added, however, that long-term elimination of mosquitoes was challenging, especially for mainland countries. “Eradication may be difficult unless one can prevent migration back into the landscape,” he said. “Islands are ideal for this.”

Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that Russian could supply weapons to North Korea is “incredibly concerning”, a senior US official has said, days after Putin and the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, signed a defence pact that requires their countries to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked.

Matthew Miller, a US state department spokesperson, said the provision of Russian weapons to Pyongyang “would destabilise the Korean peninsula, of course, and potentially … depending on the type of weapons they provide … violate UN security council resolutions that Russia itself has supported”.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and South Korea’s foreign ministry said the treaty between Russia and North Korea posed a “serious threat” to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. Blinken said the US would consider “various measures” in response to the pact, which elevated ties between the sanctions-hit states to their highest level since the cold war.

Friction over shipments of weapons to both sides in the war in Ukraine has worsened this week, amid speculation that Putin and Kim discussed additional supplies of North Korea missiles and ammunition for use by Russian forces when they met in Pyongyang on Wednesday.

During a state visit to Vietnam on Thursday, Putin said reciprocal supplies of Russian weapons to the North would be an appropriate response to the west’s supply of weapons to Ukrainian forces.

“Those who send these [missiles to Ukraine] think that they are not fighting us, but I said, including in Pyongyang, that we then reserve the right to supply weapons to other regions of the world, with regard to our agreements” with North Korea, Putin said. “I do not rule this out.”

Putin, who met Kim for the second time in nine months, also warned South Korea that it would be making a “big mistake” if it decided to supply arms to Ukraine.

“I hope it doesn’t happen,” he told reporters in Hanoi. “If it happens, then we will be making relevant decisions that are unlikely to please the current leadership of South Korea.”

South Korea, a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped military backed by the United States, has provided non-lethal aid and other support to Ukraine, and joined US-led sanctions against Moscow. But it has a longstanding policy of not supplying weapons to countries that are at war.

But on Friday, Chang Ho-jin, the national security adviser to the South Korean president, Yoon Su Yeol, said Seoul would reconsider its stance on providing arms to Ukraine.

The head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, also voiced concern that Russia could help the North further its ballistic and nuclear missile programmes – both of which have made significant progress despite years of UN security council sanctions.

US officials believe North Korea wants to acquire fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, armoured vehicles, materials and equipment to build for ballistic missile production, and other advanced technologies from Moscow.

The US and South Korea say there is evidence that Pyongyang has already provided significant numbers of ballistic missiles and artillery shells to Russia. The North has described the allegations as “absurd”.

Exports of Russian weapons to the North would add to tensions on the Korean peninsula and, according to some experts, risk intensifying a regional arms race that has drawn in South Korea and Japan – both US allies.

Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated dramatically in recent weeks with the resumption of cold war-era psychological warfare that included North Korea using balloons to drop huge quantities of rubbish on the southern side of the countries’ border.

Seoul has responded by broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda via loudspeakers. On Friday its troops fired warning shots after soldiers from the North reportedly crossed the border for the third time this month.

There is also evidence that North Korea is building walls at points along the border, days after several of its soldiers were reportedly killed or injured while clearing land in areas packed with mines.

The BBC said high-resolution satellite imagery of a 7km stretch of the border appeared to show at least three sections where barriers have been built.

“My personal assessment is that this is the first time they’ve ever built a barrier in the sense of separating places from each other,” it quoted Dr Uk Yang, a military and defence expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, as saying.

Experts believe the intrusions could be related to the large number of troops the North Korea has deployed to fortify the border, possibly to prevent civilians and soldiers from defecting to the South.

Putin’s visit to Vietnam, where he was given a 21-gun salute on Thursday, has also caused unease in Washington. In response, the US’s most senior diplomat for east Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, will visit Vietnam on Friday and Saturday to underline Washington’s commitment to working with Hanoi to ensure a “free and open” Indo-Pacific region.

When New Zealand opened its borders after the pandemic, the departures began immediately. For Kirsty Frame, then a 24-year-old journalist for the country’s national broadcaster in Wellington, the sense of loss was constant.

“It was goodbye dinner after goodbye dinner, leaving drinks after leaving drinks, and I think that started to take a toll.”

For her, the city’s beauty came from its people. “If what made Wellington so great as a place to live and work was my community, and I feel I don’t have that here now and there’s a lot less people my age, what do I want to do?”

She considered moving to Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, but heard it felt empty too. She mulled London, but Britain seemed too distant. Finally, in the middle of 2023, she moved to Melbourne.

The flow of departures from New Zealand has accelerated since then. Now, record numbers of people are leaving the country as cost-of-living pressures increase and residents grapple with limited job opportunities. Provisional figures from Statistics NZ show a net loss of 56,500 citizens in the year to April – up 12,000 from the previous record.

Separate figures indicated that half of those who left New Zealand recently moved to Australia. Now, experts are worrying that a grim economic picture means departing Kiwis may not come back.

“We can’t compete with the salaries in Australia,” says David Cooper, director of immigration firm Malcolm Pacific. “Some people view that New Zealand has gone backwards, and so they’re voting with their feet.”

Frame says it “just felt like bad news after bad news” in New Zealand, and in Melbourne she found a higher-paying job in communications and a flat with lower rent.

“I could be happy here for a long time. I think I will be here for the long run.”

‘Grass looks a lot greener’ in Australia

New Zealand has a tradition of young residents travelling for an overseas experience. According to Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at economics consultancy Infometrics, part of the reason the recent surge hit record levels is a backlog of people travelling abroad after delaying their plans due to travel restrictions and uncertainty amid the pandemic.

Among them is Joshua Scott, who weathered the pandemic in Wellington, then decided to move to the UK. The prospect of European adventures and a larger city beckoned, and the 29-year-old settled in east London last year, and found a job in healthcare.

The shift was made easier by the number of New Zealanders making a similar move. “I haven’t really made new friends here, beyond getting to people that I sort of knew from Wellington,” he says.

But much of the record flow out of New Zealand, according to Cooper and Kiernan, is also due to the growing attraction of Australia. As New Zealand inches out a recent recession, many citizens have a perception that the cost of living is lower and salaries higher in Australia, says Keirnan, which might lead to more permanent shifts.

“It’s all very heavily in favour of people getting across the Tasman, because the grass looks a lot greener,” he says.

Emily Partridge is one of those who recently left New Zealand in search of opportunity. The 26-year-old, who grew up in Dunedin, made a professional calculation when the clothing company she worked for was sold to new owners.

“I was working in a relatively small industry in a small country,” she says. “Looking into the future five or 10 years, I’d think: I’m not sure how much growth there is down the line.”

She decided earlier this year to move to Sydney, where she works for a perfume brand.

“In New Zealand, you could either work for a cool company and get paid quite poorly, or you could work a job that’s less exciting but pays well. In Australia, because the economy is better, I can do both of those things.”

Fears New Zealanders won’t return

Maia Vieregg, a 26-year-old geologist, graduated university last year and struggled to find work in Wellington or elsewhere in the country. And when several conservative parties displaced New Zealand’s former progressive government at the last election, she felt “cynical and hopeless” about New Zealand’s future.

She had never planned to go overseas, but the combination pushed her to consider new options. In January, Vieregg moved to Newcastle – a couple of hours’ north of Sydney – where she found a job with a mining company that paid much better than anything she had seen at home. She has found Australia difficult to adjust to.

“New Zealand is a quite down-to-earth place,” she says, compared with Australia’s materialism. She plans to eventually return home – but does not expect that to happen any time soon.

Cooper worries that outflow might worsen an already severe skills shortage in the country.

“The record numbers of Kiwis leaving are not the desperate and dateless. They’re the young, skilled people,” he says.

“These are people who are well qualified, with good skills. It’s hard to attract the highly skilled people we need to replace the ones leaving.”

Kiernan agrees. “If we’re not able to keep people here because the economy isn’t going well and the cost of living is too high, it does reflect pretty poorly on our economic situation.”

For many of the young travellers, the pull of having children will probably be the driver to bring them home. Partridge does not expect to return to New Zealand unless she decides to have children, while Scott will also head back when he’s ready to start a family.

Frame, meanwhile, says: “What might bring me back is that feeling of missing my family, or a new chapter of my life starting. Or just feeling homesick for the country and the smallness of it.”

In the meantime, she does not even need to return to New Zealand to get a taste of home.

“There’s so many New Zealanders here, it’s kind of ridiculous,” Frame says. “Bumping into people from Wellington here is almost an everyday event.”