US senator says Israeli prime minister is using antisemitism to distract attention from aextremist and racist governmenta policies

Bernie Sanders has hit back fiercely at Benjamin Netanyahu over the Israeli prime ministeras claim that US universities were being overrun by antisemitism on a scale comparable to the rise of Nazism in Germany.

In a video posted on X, the progressive senator from Vermont a who is Jewish a accused Netanyahu of ainsult[ing] the intelligence of the American peoplea by using antisemitism to distract attention from the policies of his aextremist and racist governmenta in the military offensive in Gaza.

Tornadoes collapsed buildings and flattened homes in Nebraska and Iowa on Friday as warnings continued to be issued

Tornadoes wreaked havoc Friday in the midwestern US, causing a building to collapse with dozens of people inside and destroying and damaging hundreds of homes, many around Omaha, Nebraska.

As of Friday night, there were several reports of injuries but no deaths were immediately reported. Tornado warnings continued to be issued into the night in Iowa.

With pro-Palestine students arrested and campus protests broken up, educators are increasingly rallying in support

As student-led protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land continue to spread across US universities, some faculty members are increasingly joining the charge a speaking up and even standing alongside their students.

At Georgiaas Emory University, faculty members have been arrested at pro-Palestine demonstrations a including Emila Keme, a professor of English and Indigenous studies, and Noelle McAfee, the philosophy department chair.

Ex-movie mogul is at New York City department of correction for tests, his lawyer said, and will be transferred to Rikers Island

The disgraced former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been hospitalized in New York City for a series of tests, his lawyer said.

Weinsteinas hospitalization comes after the New York court of appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction on Thursday. According to the courtas ruling, the judge who oversaw the watershed case during the peak of the #MeToo era prejudiced Weinstein with aegregiousa improper rulings and was mistaken in allowing women whose accusations were not part of the case to testify against him.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy repeats pleas for more defensive missiles after fourth large-scale aerial assault on energy system in five weeks. What we know on day 795

• See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverage

Russian missiles have hammered power facilities in central and western Ukraine, increasing pressure on the countryas ailing energy system. Saturdayas airstrikes, carried out with long-range missiles including cruise missiles, was the fourth large-scale aerial assault targeting the power system since 22 March. DTEK, Ukraineas largest private electricity company, said four of its six thermal power plants had suffered damage. Rescuers battled to put out fires at several energy facilities in the western regions of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk, officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy repeated his pleas to partners for more defensive missiles a notably the Patriot system a and faster deliveries, despite this weekas breakthrough in US military aid. He said Russiaas targets included electricity and gas transit facilities, in particular those important for gas supply to the European Union. Ukrainian air defences brought down 21 of the 34 incoming missiles, the air forceas commander said. After strikes on energy facilities in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, running water supplies were disrupted in Zelenskiyas home town of Kryvyi Rih, officials said.

A Russian court ordered another suspect to be held in custody following the arrest of an ally of defence minister Sergei Shoigu on suspicion of taking bribes, TASS news agency reported on Saturday. It cited court documents as saying Anton Filatov, a subordinate of deputy defence minister Timur Ivanov, had been ordered to be held in custody.

A missile struck a hospital holding 60 patients on the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, injuring a woman and damaging the building, nearby water pipes and power lines, the regional governor said on Saturday.

Ukraine attacked the Ilsky and Slavyansk oil refineries in Russiaas Krasnodar region overnight to Saturday, a Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters. The drone strike conducted by the SBU security service caused fires at the facilities, the source said, and Russiaas Kushchevsk military airfield was also attacked in the southern region. The Slavyansk oil refinery was forced to suspend some operations after being damaged in the attack, Russian state news agency Tass cited an executive overseeing the plant as saying.

Russia has sent more troops to Ocheretyne in eastern Ukraine to reinforce an offensive there, but Kyivas forces largely hold the village and expect US arms deliveries to turn the tide in their favour, the Ukrainian military said. Russian troops have slowly advanced through at least half a dozen villages on the eastern front since capturing the bastion town of Avdiivka in February. Fierce fighting raged in Ocheretyne on Saturday but Nazar Voloshyn, a spokesperson for the eastern command, said Ukrainian forces had the situation aunder controla and controlled two-thirds of the village.

Australiaas defence minister, Richard Marles, announced a $100m military aid package for Kyiv including short-range air defence and drones, with air-to-ground precision munitions coming separately, during a visit to Lviv on Saturday.

Italy summoned Russiaas ambassador after Moscow announced it was putting a subsidiary of Italian heating firm Ariston under the atemporary managementa of state energy company Gazprom. An EU spokesperson condemned the move as ayet another proof of Russiaas disregard for international law and rulesa and called on Moscow to reverse it. Since invading Ukraine, Moscow has taken the Russian subsidiaries of a number of western companies a notably French food giant Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg a under what it calls temporary control.

Russia on Saturday said it would require major exporters to carry on converting the bulk of their foreign currency earnings into rubles for another year to help support the national currency. Moscow has used strict capital controls to prop up the value of the ruble in the two years since the west levelled sweeping financial sanctions in response to Russiaas invasion of Ukraine.

Amount paid for businessman John Jacob Astoras watch is highest ever for Titanic memorabilia, auctioneers say

A gold pocket watch that was recovered from the body of the richest man on the Titanic has sold for a record-breaking APS1.2m.

The watch was sold on Saturday to a private collector in the US at Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, for the highest amount ever for Titanic memorabilia, the auctioneers said.

Dazhon Darien arrested over fake recording of principal complaining about students and faculty members

A high school athletics director suspected of using artificial intelligence to create a fake, racist recording of a principal in Baltimore has been arrested by police.

Police arrested 31-year-old Dazhon Darien of Pikesville high school on Thursday after an investigation into an AI-generated recording which featured the duplicated voice of the schoolas principal, Eric Eiswert. Officers allege that Eiswert was investigating Darien in connection with the potential mishandling of school funds when the latter man purportedly created the recording.

End of secretary of state Antony Blinkenas three-day visit marks upsurge in military activity after period of relative calm

Taiwan has reported that a dozen Chinese warplanes flew sorties close to the island on Saturday, in a sudden surge of military activity just hours after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, left Beijing following talks with President Xi Jinping and top Chinese officials.

Before Blinkenas three-day visit to China, US officials had pointed to a period of relative calm in the Taiwan strait over the past few months, after years of aggressive Chinese military manoeuvres and threats, as a factor in improving US-Chinese relations since Joe Biden held a summit meeting with Xi in November.

Four buildings destroyed in blast that also damaged homes in nearby villages

An ammunition explosion at a base in south-western Cambodia has killed 20 soldiers and wounded several others, the prime minister has said.

Hun Manet said in a Facebook post that he was adeeply shockeda when he received the news of Saturday afternoonas blast at the base in Kampong Speu province. The cause was not immediately clear.

Robbi Mecus, 52, and climbing partner, who was rescued and hospitalized, fell from Mount Johnson in Denali national park

A helicopter crew on Saturday recovered the body of a climber who died after falling about 1,000ft (305 metres) while on a steep, technical route on Mount Johnson in Alaskaas Denali national park and preserve, park officials said in a statement.

Robbi Mecus, 52, of Keene Valley, New York, died of injuries sustained in a fall Thursday while climbing a route on the south-east face of the 8,400ft (2,560-metre) mountain, the park said. His climbing partner, a 30-year-old woman from California, was seriously injured; she was rescued Friday and flown to an Anchorage hospital, park officials said.

Boy discovers octopus figurine that fell from cargo ship along with 5m other Lego pieces during storm

A 13-year-old boy has discovered a aholy graila Lego octopus which spilled into the sea from a shipping container in the 1990s.

The octopus is one of nearly 5m Lego pieces that fell into the sea in 1997 when a storm hit a cargo ship 20 miles off Landas End, Cornwall. While 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks, and 92,400 swords went overboard, the octopuses are considered the most prized finds as only 4,200 were onboard.

A peaceful action at the school near Atlanta, Georgia, was met with violent use of force and 28 arrests of students and faculty

Clifton Crais, a history professor, was walking to class at Emory University in Decatur, Georgia, outside Atlanta, on Thursday shortly before 10am when several students rushed up to him.

aPlease, please contact president Fenves,a they begged, referring to the university president, Gregory Fenves. aAsk him to not call the police.a Several dozen protesters seeking the universityas divestment from Israel and opposing a $109m police training center colloquially known as aCop Citya had set up tents on the schoolas grassy quad a the size of a football field a several hours before.

Polls predict ANC likely to lose parliamentary majority, due to high unemployment and wealth inequality

South Africa marked 30 years since the end of apartheid and the birth of its democracy with a ceremony in the capital that included a 21-gun salute and the waving of the countryas multicoloured flag.

Any sense of celebration on the momentous anniversary was however set against a growing discontent with the current government.

The hush-money criminal trial receives less prominence in conservative media, and when Trump-friendly networks do turn to the trial, they give viewers an alternative narrative

In one America, he cuts a diminished, humbled figure during coverage that runs from morn till night. aHe seems considerably older and he seems annoyed, resigned, maybe angry,a said broadcaster Rachel Maddow after seeing Donald Trump up close in court. aHe seems like a man who is miserable to be here.a

But in the other America a that of Fox News, far-right podcasts and the Make America Great Again (Maga) base a the trial of the former president over a case involving a hush-money payment to an adult film performer is playing out very differently.

Scientific studies cannot agree on the relative importance of genes and environment on how we turn out as adults

The eternal mystery of how much we are shaped by our parents a or how much we shape our children a was stirred again last week with the publication of a study that suggests that we are less like our parents than we had previously thought.

Led by RenA(c) MAuttus of Edinburgh Universityas department of psychology, the study looked at more than 1,000 pairs of relatives to establish how likely children are to inherit what psychologists call the abig fivea or aOceana personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Peter Bernegger has brought at least 18 lawsuits against election clerks and offices over alleged fraud a now he faces criminal charges

Peter Bernegger has spent the last three and a half years bombarding local election offices in Wisconsin with litigation and accusations of fraud. Heas brought at least 18 lawsuits against election clerks and offices in state court, and on social media, he has relentlessly promoted his litigation and circulated false claims about election fraud in the swing state.

His campaign has recently landed him in legal trouble a Bernegger now faces criminal charges for allegedly falsifying a subpoena in connection with a lawsuit against the stateas top election office.

The feature-free phone, launched at Milan design week, is the latest device to tap into young peopleas concerns about attention-harvesting and data privacy

Itas almost enough to make you stop doomscrolling: dull devices are now cool.

The Boring Phone is a new, featureless flip phone that is feeding the growing appetites of younger people who want to bin their smartphones in favour of a dumbphone.

Documentary Bad Faith looks at the history of a group trying to affect and corrupt politics under the guise of religion

Bad Faith, a new documentary on the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, opens with an obvious, ominous scene a the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 a though trained on details drowned out by the deluge of horror and easily recognizable images of chaos. That Paula White, Donald Trumpas faith adviser, led the Save America rally in a prayer to overturn the results for aa free and fair electiona. That mixed among Trump flags, American flags and militia symbols were numerous banners with Christian crosses; on the steps of the Capitol, a aJESUS SAVESa sign blares mere feet from aLock Them UP!a

The movement to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump was, as the documentary underscores, inextricable from a certain strain of belief in America as a fundamentally Christian nation, separation of church and state be damned. In fact, as Bad Faith argues, Christian nationalism a a political movement to shape the United States according a certain interpretation of evangelical Christianity, by vote or, more recently, by coercion a was the agalvanizing forcea behind the attempted hijacking of the democratic process three years ago.

The Azov brigade, which leaders say has a culture of amutual respecta, is tasked with repelling relentless Russian attacks as the invaders make most of artillery mismatch

Fifteen miles east of the garrison town of Lyman, a desperate fight has been taking place on Ukraineas eastern front for months. The once verdant Serebryansky pine forest has been reduced to burnt-out stumps, reminiscent of images from the Somme, destroyed amid Russian attacks aimed at eliminating Ukrainian foxholes.

Fearful that the frontline could crack last summer, Ukraineas commanders deployed the Azov infantry brigade to the sector. Their task was and is to repel what aMasloa, a 29-year-old staff sergeant with the unitas first battalion, described as aconstant assaults, every day, sometimes for 24 hoursa. Occasionally the brigade makes dangerous counterattacks on foot.

The celebrated US photographeras haunting new series, documenting the locations where people have died in encounters with police, is a quietly devastating commemoration and a critique of modern American culture

In their monochrome starkness, Diana Mataras images of modern America possess a melancholic undertow that is both familiar and unsettling. Whether a deserted backroad fringed with sun-burnished grass in rural Texas or a single-storey liquor store in a sprawling Californian suburb, there is the sense that these often nondescript places are not where locals tend to linger, never mind gather to mourn and to remember.

And yet the 110 photographs in her new book, My America, are of sites where civilians were killed by law enforcement officers across Texas, California, Oklahoma and New Mexico in 2015 and 2016. aI chose those four states because Texas and California are where most people die in encounters with law enforcement,a she says, awhile Oklahoma and New Mexico have the highest per capita deaths. I would have liked to have photographed in other places like Chicago and Georgia, but I simply ran out of money.a

Austrian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger has spent her life hunting for signs of life in the universe. Here she talks about aliens, space exploration and why studying cosmology is like eating pizza

Staring into the abyssa| Am I really reaching anyone out there?a Lisa Kaltenegger is laughing about the unsatisfactory experience of teaching astrophysics over Zoom during Covid lockdowns, but she could be talking about her vocation: trying to discover if thereas life beyond our solar system.

Kaltenegger founded the Carl Sagan Institute in 2015 to investigate just that. A burst of sunny energy and infectious enthusiasm on a grey day, sheas speaking to me from the legendary extraterrestrial life researcheras old office, now hers, overlooking the leafy Cornell campus in upstate New York. The institute brings together researchers across a range of disciplines to work out what signs of life on other planets might look like from here, so that we recognise them if (or when) we find them.

They had only been married for 11 months when the world-famous novelist was attacked by a frenzied knifeman. His wife remembers the intense drama of hearing the news, and the traumatic aftermath

I woke early and alone on the sunny morning of Friday 12 August 2022. I was having coffee at the moment my husband, the Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, was nearly killed in a stabbing on stage in Chautauqua, New York.

This was the last morning, innocent and ordinary, before my life was shattered by the 27 seconds Salmanas attacker took to stab him more than a dozen times, driving a knife into his right eye until it nearly touched his optic nerve.

The liberal justice has been called the supreme courtas conscience but we canat afford a repeat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

A month ago Josh Barro (a man) at the Atlantic wrote a piece headlined Sonia Sotomayor Should Retire Now. Around the same time the Guardianas Mehdi Hasan (a man) similarly opined that afor the sake of all of us, Sonia Sotomayor needs to retire from the US supreme court.a The University of Colorado Boulder law professor Paul Campos (a man) also went on CNN to argue that 69-year-old Sotomayor should consider stepping down as a justice in order to give Joe Biden time to fill the seat with another liberal judge should the worst happen. And pundit Nate Silver (you guessed it a| another man) said much the same thing.

#MeTooas real legacy may not be ending predatorsa impunity so much as highlighting the tenacity of that impunity

Usually, rape isnat reported. When it is reported, it is often not charged. And when it is charged, it rarely leads to a conviction. These facts shape both our cultural understanding of sexual violence and womenas sense of their own embodied lives, clarifying something many of us already know a that while sexual violence is technically illegal and officially abhorred, it is also tolerated in practice, with actual arrests and convictions being so rare that most sexual violence is de facto decriminalized.

Only occasionally does a notable rape conviction come to pass; when it does, its very rarity highlights this dissonance, making plain the gulf between how rape is officially talked about and how it is usually treated. Now, that gulf has come to the fore again, because on Thursday one of the most high-profile rape convictions in American history was overturned.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Americans are recognizing we must do more for Palestine and are signaling dissatisfaction with the party, as they did in 2008

The US is just months away from the 2024 election, and the prospect of a second Trump presidency grows each day as he evades repercussions for the expansive list of indictments heas accrued. With this reality looming, many Democratic party loyalists are panicked about the aleave it blanka movement, in which hundreds of thousands of voters have marked auncommitteda on their primary ballots to protest against US support of Israelas war on Gaza.

Some worry that a protest vote at the ballot box is an automatic vote for Trump. Theyare sure that even during times of mass dissent, harm reduction is the only moral voting strategy. Theyare afraid that this election will mean the end of democracy, or that the re-election of Trump will guarantee unprecedented disharmony.

Camonghne Felix is an assistant professor of creative writing at The New School

In New York, areservation scalpersa are making $80,000 a year, but Iam banking on a neighbouras generosity

The land of restaurants is increasingly paradoxical. Every day, good ones close. Running costs are punitive and broke customers are eating at home more often. Yet still there are places where itas next to impossible to bag a table; where to have even the remotest chance of doing so requires near superhuman levels of patience and determination, as well as no other demands whatsoever on your time a including paid employment.

I laughed when I read in the New Yorkeras annual food issue of the areservation scalpersa who make $80,000 a year by hoarding bookings to then sell them on to the desperate-to-be-there rich. Only in Manhattan, I thought. But this didnat stop me. Just moments later, I was urging my neighbour, Sue, who is to restaurants what Harry Houdini once was to padlocks and straitjackets a just you watch her bust her way in! a to try to get us a table at X (I wonat say its name, for obvious reasons). Sue is also a hoarder of reservations, with the key difference that she then shares them with (I flatter myself) beloved friends at no extra charge. So now weare on tenterhooks, waiting and hoping a and hoping and waiting a for the hottest Sunday lunch in town.

When even the Met police and National Trust scones are apparently apeak wokeratia, itas become the establishment norm

Is woke dead? Is it over? Has it apeakeda, run its course before weave even properly agreed on what this endlessly controversial but somehow never quite defined social justice movement actually was? Though American rightwingers have been hopefully pronouncing its last rites for a while now, until very recently rumours of its death seemed exaggerated in Britain.

Sure, some vegan restaurants have gone bust lately, but sadly so have plenty of other restaurants in the face of a cost of living crisis. And yes, oat milk sales are down. But is that because it has been toxified by political association, or because it has fallen out of favour with the wellness lobby, or just because itas expensive? Even reports of a YouTube-fuelled anti-feminist backlash among some young men, or of young women lapping up the original (not very woke) Sex and the City series on Netflix didnat feel like much of a tipping point. But then came the paediatrician Dr Hilary Cassas landmark review on treating transgender children, which found that medical interventions have been underpinned by aremarkably weak evidencea and made clear treatment should be holistic, seeking a full understanding of everything going on in childrenas lives.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

If the former president regains the White House in November, America faces a more dystopian future than that being shown in cinemas

Director, cast and critics all agree: Civil War, the movie depicting America tearing itself to bloody bits while a cowardly, authoritarian president skulks in the White House, is not about Donald Trump. But it is, really.

Likewise, the first ever criminal trial of a US president, now playing to huge audiences in New York, is ostensibly about claims that Trump fraudulently bought the silence of a former porn star called Stormy after a tacky Lake Tahoe tryst. But it isnat, really.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

Managing the barrage of upsetting material online is a challenge that service providers are struggling to meet, even if they try

Way back in the mid-1990s, when the web was young and the online world was buzzing with blogs, a worrying problem loomed. If you were an ISP that hosted blogs, and one of them contained material that was illegal or defamatory, you could be held legally responsible and sued into bankruptcy. Fearing that this would dramatically slow the expansion of a vital technology, two US lawmakers, Chris Cox and Ron Wyden, inserted 26 words into the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which eventually became section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of the same year. The words in question were: aNo provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.a The implications were profound: from now on you bore no liability for content published on your platform.

The result was the exponential increase in user-generated content on the internet. The problem was that some of that content was vile, defamatory or downright horrible. Even if it was, though, the hosting site bore no liability for it. At times, some of that content caused public outrage to the point where it became a PR problem for the platforms hosting it and they began engaging in amoderationa.

Thereas no doubt about the mental health crisis facing young people. Jonathan Haidt blames our devices a which oversimplifies the problem

In the introduction to his new book The Anxious Generation, titled aGrowing up on Marsa, Jonathan Haidt tells a fanciful piece of science fiction about a child conscripted into a dangerous mission to the red planet that will deform the young person as they grow. The journey is undertaken without the parentsa consent. The ham-fisted metaphor is that technology companies have done the same to children and teenagers by putting smartphones into their hands.

Haidt, a New York University professor of ethical leadership who researches social psychology and morality, goes on to argue that smartphones ignited a wildfire of anxiety and depression in gen Z around the world, by granting them acontinuous access to social media, online video games, and other internet-based activitiesa. He says there are four foundational harms in this degradation of youth: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction.