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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has said in his first blogpost since emerging from a coma that western laboratories had found traces of novichok in and on his body and demanded that Moscow return his clothes.

Navalny, who is recovering in Berlin’s Charité hospital, fell critically ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow and spent two days in hospital in Russia before being airlifted to Germany.

“Two independent laboratories in France and Sweden, and the Bundeswehr specialised laboratory confirmed the presence of novichok in and on my body,” he said, referring to a German military lab.

He noted that Russia had still not opened an investigation and that Russian talk shows had suggested that western intelligence officials or his own allies carried out the attack. He demanded that Russian authorities return his clothes that were removed before he was flown to Germany – “totally naked” – saying they were important evidence.

“Taking into account that Novichok was found on my body, and poisoning through physical contact is highly likely, my clothes are a very important piece of evidence,” he wrote.

“I demand my clothes be carefully packed in a plastic bag and returned to me.”

In a poignant post on Instagram, he published a picture with his wife of 20 years, Yulia, saying he remembered little of his illness but that she had helped his recovery.

“Now I definitely know from experience: love heals and brings you back to life,” he said.

“Yulia, you have saved me, and let it go down in neurobiology textbooks.”

He said she had played him music, sang him songs and laughed.

The opposition figure said last weekend he could walk with a “tremble” and that in his first days he had needed therapy to help him recover his speech.

Navalny supporters and European leaders have said that the poisoning using Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent, points to a state-sanctioned attack.

Animal charities in southern Spain were urgently seeking homes for 110 cats on Saturday after they and their owner were evicted from a flat in the Valencia region.

Spama Safor, an animal shelter in the south-eastern seaside town of Gandia, had initially thought there were only 96 cats in the flat. But by Saturday evening, the charity said it had removed a total of 110 cats and urgently needed help to shelter them “at least until they are vaccinated or sterilised”.

The cats had been left homeless after they and their owner were evicted from an apartment in the town measuring 100 sq metres (1,000 sq ft), they said.

“Apparently the owner took in a pair of cats three years ago and they have been procreating ever since,” Salvadora Tormas, who works with the shelter, told AFP.

The charity said it did not have enough space to take them all in as it was already housing about 200 cats.

Tormas said they had collected 48 of the cats on Friday and were going to get the rest later on Saturday with the help of the owner, whom she described as a young man.

Rare books worth more than £2.5m that were stolen from a warehouse in west London in a daring Mission Impossible-style heist have been found buried under the floor of a house in rural Romania.

The recovery of the 200 books, which include first editions of significant works by Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, is the culmination of a three-year police operation that involved raids on 45 addresses across three countries and led to charges against 13 people.

The books were stolen from a postal transit warehouse in Feltham in January 2017 en route to a specialist book auction in Las Vegas. Two men, Daniel David and Victor Opariuc, broke in by cutting holes into the warehouse roof before abseiling into the building, perching on shelving inside to avoid sensors that would have set off alarms.

In a five-hour operation they then took the books out the same way in 16 holdalls, leaving at 2.15am with a third man, Narcis Popescu, who had waited in a car. The vehicle was later discovered abandoned after being cleaned with bleach.

After the trials of most of the men involved in the case, who were tracked down after a DNA sample, which had escaped the clean-up, was found on a headrest in the car, the books were eventually tracked down to Neamt in north-east Romania. Local police officers who searched the property on Wednesday found the books, which included a rare edition of Newton’s Principia, stacked in neatly wrapped packages in a cement pit.

The Metropolitan police said the discovery was “a perfect end to this operation” and a tribute to the cooperation between British, Romanian and Italian police.

DI Andy Durham said: “These books are extremely valuable, but more importantly they are irreplaceable and are of great importance to international cultural heritage.”

The suspects were identified as being part of a Romanian organised crime group responsible for a string of high-value warehouse burglaries across the UK, often using the same method. The Met said the gang had typically avoided prosecution because members were flown into the UK to commit specific offences and flown out as soon as the crimes were completed, with the stolen property removed later by other people by different transport methods.

The gang was linked to a number of prominent Romanian crime families who formed part of the Clamparu crime group, the Met said.

The day after the books were stolen, Popescu rented a house in Balham, where the books were stored. Earlier this year a court heard that a few days later, two others, Marian Mamaliga and Ilie Ungureanu, entered the UK through Eurotunnel in a van, picked up the books, and took them out of the country.

The group was also linked to other successful raids using similar methods, stealing laptops and other electronics worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. In one case, they used ladders and ropes to scale a warehouse, cut holes to get in, and stole laptops worth about £150,000. Police estimated that goods worth another £2m were stolen in 11 offences.

Italians will vote in seven regional elections on Sunday and Monday – the first major electoral test for the fragile national coalition since the coronavirus outbreak – with the far right poised to make significant gains.

While voters have mostly approved of prime minister Giuseppe Conte’s handling of the pandemic, his popularity has waned in recent weeks as the government grappled with the reopening of schools and economic challenges. At the same time, the government’s allies, the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Democratic party (PD), are weak at regional level compared with the tight-knit coalition led by the far-right former interior minister Matteo Salvini.

A candidate with Brothers of Italy, the smaller far-right party running in coalition with Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, looks set for a clear victory in the central region of Marche, potentially ending 25 years of leftwing rule. A win there would give Brothers of Italy, a descendant of a post-fascist party and led by the increasingly popular Giorgia Meloni, its second regional seat after Abruzzo.

The far right has played on immigration in Marche, especially since early 2018, when 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro was allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant in Macerata. Days later, a far-right extremist wounded six African migrants in a shooting rampage in the city, claiming he was acting in revenge for the murder.

But other themes, such as the mismanagement of the region by the incumbent Democratic party in recent years and the need for a more robust healthcare system and better infrastructure, have emerged as the dominant drivers of change.

“The change is not unique to Marche. You’re seeing it in other Italian regions that were traditionally leftwing,” said Andrea Prontera, an assistant politics professor at the University of Macerata. “Either the League or Brothers of Italy are rising in those areas.”

Polling indicates that the race is going to be extremely tight in Tuscany, a leftwing bastion for over 50 years where the League has captured several towns and cities in recent years, and in Puglia, where the PD’s incumbent president, Michele Emiliano, is competing against a Brothers of Italy candidate.

The only region that the Democratic party looks certain to retain is Campania, where the popularity of the current leader and candidate Vincenzo De Luca has surged thanks to his tough response to the pandemic.

The League is certain to keep hold of Liguria and Veneto, another region where voters have appreciated the leadership during the pandemic. The seventh vote is in the small Aosta Valley region, which has its own party system.

However, the real game-changer would be Tuscany, where the League’s candidate, MEP Susanna Ceccardi and outgoing mayor of Cascina, which was the first Tuscan town to fall to the party in 2016, is outshining the PD’s candidate. Salvini’s coalition has already managed to seize eight regions from the left since general elections in March 2018.

“Losing Tuscany would be like the American Democrats losing California,” said Mattia Diletti, a politics professor at Rome’s Sapienza university.

While regional losses for the PD will raise questions over Nicola Zingaretti’s leadership and an expected lacklustre performance for M5S will intensify the party’s internal disarray, a thumping victory for the opposition is unlikely to lead to snap elections.

The timing is also delicate as Italy drafts a spending programme for its €209bn share of the European Recovery Fund.

“There is no alternative in parliament,” added Diletti. “So you might have a reshuffle, but no more than that as stability is needed in order to have a strong relationship with Europe.”

Votes are also being cast in mayoral elections in over 1,000 towns and in a national referendum on reducing the number of parliamentariansto cut costs, a flagship policy for M5S.

“The advantage they have is that no quorum is necessary for the referendum,” said Wolfango Piccoli, the co-president of the London-based research company Teneo Holdings. “So even if less than 50% of people vote, the referendum will be considered legitimate.”

The PD and M5S’s shaky relationship is reflected in the fact that they were unable to ally in any of the regional votes apart from Liguria, where their defeat is inevitable.

Joe Biden on Wednesday joined the clamour of Democrats warning Boris Johnson not to let the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement become a casualty of his Brexit talks.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, is in Washington trying to repair relations with pro-Irish Democrats amid concerns that the UK’s attempt to leave the EU on its own terms will undermine the Good Friday peace agreement.

Democrats have warned that if the UK undermines the peace process or reinstates a hard border to secure Brexit on its terms, the UK’s chances of securing the required congressional support for a UK-US free trade deal will disappear.

Biden, the Democrat presidential candidate, said in a tweet on Wednesday night: “We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”

UK diplomats will be deeply disturbed that with fewer than 50 days to the presidential election, the UK government has contrived to set up a major political clash with the candidate currently given a 75% chance of becoming the next president in January 2021.

Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker and leading Democrat, also issued a warning to Raab after their meeting.

Raab had earlier accused the EU of trying to politicise the Brexit withdrawal agreement, and insisted the UK had no desire to set up new infrastructure on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Pelosi said she welcomed his assurances but that she had reiterated the message she said she had given to leaders in London last year.

She added: “If the UK violates its international agreements and Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of UK-US free trade agreement passing the Congress.

“The Good Friday agreement is valued by the American people and will continue to be proudly defended by the US Congress.”

Pelosi met Raab with the chairman of the Congress ways and means committee, Richard Neal.

The pro-Irish lobby in Washington is as politically influential as that in the UK, even though its economy and defence capabilities are no match for London’s.

Pelosi’s warning shows how the UK efforts to renegotiate the Northern Ireland protocol is having wider repercussions across the Atlantic, and so risking free trade with the US, one of the major touted benefits of Brexit. The possible election of Joe Biden as president only increases that risk, but whichever candidate wins a free trade deal needs the support of two-thirds of Congress to pass.

Earlier, Raab, standing alongside the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, had told reporters: “Our commitment to the Good Friday agreement, and to avoid any extra infrastructure at the border between the north and south [of the island of Ireland], is absolute.

“To be absolutely clear, the UK action here is defensive in relation to what the EU is doing. It is precautionary – we have not done any of it yet – and is proportionate.

“What we cannot have – and this is contrary to the Northern Ireland protocol and a risk to the Good Friday agreement – is the EU seeking to erect a regulatory border down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Britain.”

Pompeo said simply it was a matter for the UK government but “he had great confidence that they will get this right in a way that treats everyone fairly and get a good outcome for the people of the UK that voted for this several years back”.

Pompeo struck an aggressive note on Iran, the other point of friction between the UK and the US, by saying the US would return to the UN next week to reimpose UN sanctions, adding that this would mean the arms embargo on Iran, due to be lifted in October, would become permanent next week.

“We’ll do all the things we need to do to ensure that those sanctions are enforced,” he said when asked how the US would achieve that and what it would do to punish countries that did not reimpose the measures.

The UK justice secretary, Robert Buckland, has said he would resign if the law was “broken in a way that I find unacceptable”, as Downing Street continued to come under pressure over planned legislation that would override parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

In a remarkable scene in the Commons last week that astonished Conservative backbenchers, the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, admitted the internal market bill “does break international law in a very specific and limited way”.

The publication of the bill on Wednesday, under which key parts of the withdrawal agreement agreed last year with the EU would be negated, has infuriated Brussels and prompted a Tory rebellion. With the bill’s second reading on Monday before a parliament vote, Labour has confirmed it will vote against it in its current form.

Pressed on whether he would walk away from the government, he said: “If I see the rule of law being broken in a way that I find unacceptable then, of course, I will go. We are not at that stage.”

Asked again directly if he would resign if the government breaks international law, Buckland said: “What I will be seeking to do, and indeed the government will be seeking to do, is to resolve that conflict as soon as possible.”

He added: “I don’t believe we’re going to get to that stage. I know in my mind what I have to do. But the government collectively here also has a responsibility, we’ve got to resolve any conflict, that’s what we will do.”

Pressed a further time if he would resign at the point the government actually breaks international law, he said: “I don’t believe we’re going to get to that point and that is why I shall be working very hard to ensure we don’t.”

There is growing discontent among Conservative backbenchers over the bill, with senior Tory MP Sir Bob Neill tabling an amendment to impose a parliamentary lock on any changes to the withdrawal agreement.

On Friday, Boris Johnson sought to quell signs of a rebellion during a Zoom call with his MPs, telling them that the clauses in the bill were necessary to prevent a foreign power from “breaking up our country”.

However, on Sunday, the EU chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, dismissed the prime minister’s assertion that the Northern Ireland protocol could be used to break up the UK.

“Protocol on IE/NI is not a threat to the integrity of the UK. We agreed this delicate compromise with Boris Johnson and his government in order to protect peace and stability on the island of Ireland. We could not have been clearer about the consequences of Brexit,” he tweeted.

Barnier also denied the EU is refusing to list the UK as a third country for food imports. “To be listed, we need to know in full what a country’s rules are, including for imports. The same objective process applies to all listed countries,” he said.

Speaking on the Marr programme, Labour’s shadow cabinet office minister, Rachel Reeves, confirmed her party would vote against the internal market bill in its current form as well as urging both the UK and the EU “to stop the posturing and get back to the negotiating table and take this seriously”.

She said: “So legislation is needed, a bill is needed, but we would like to see a greater level of collaboration between the nations of the United Kingdom rather than a power grab by Westminster.”

Eleven Syrian asylum seekers who were removed from the UK on a charter flight to Spain nine days ago and who were abandoned in the streets of Madrid have all returned to Calais, hoping to reach the UK once again, the Guardian has learned.

One of the men who returned to Calais on Friday evening, said: “We were left in the street after the Home Office deported us last Thursday. It was impossible to survive like this.”

Another member of the group, who fled the same area of Syria, said the 11 asylum seekers wanted to remain together: “After I fled the war in Syria I had a very difficult journey. It took me two years to reach the UK but the Home Office finished everything for me in just one hour. I will keep trying to reach safety. My wife and children are still in danger in Syria. I want them to have a future.”

The Home Office says it is working on returning almost 1,000 asylum seekers in the UK to other European countries they have passed through under EU regulations known as Dublin lll. These returns will need to take place before 31 December when the UK completes its exit from the EU.

So far, 185 asylum seekers who, like the 11 Syrians, crossed the Channel in small boats, have been removed from the UK under Dublin. It is not known if any of the 185 subsequently returned to the UK. Between 2015 and 2018 other EU countries accepted 7% of the 18,953 requests made by the Home Office to return people under Dublin – 1,395 people.

The Guardian spoke to an asylum seeker who was removed on a charter flight to France and Germany on 26 August. He too has returned to Calais. “The Home Office sent me back to Germany because I had been fingerprinted there. But I never claimed asylum in Germany. I spent just one hour passing through the country trying to reach the UK but in that time the police caught me and took my fingerprints.”

Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, a charity that works to support asylum seekers in northern France, said she had seen many asylum seekers like the 11 Syrians, making more than one attempt to return to the UK after being removed.

The process is expensive for the UK government. After processing the arrivals the asylum seekers are dispersed into temporary accommodation for several weeks or months before being rounded up, arrested, placed in detention, which costs £95 per persona day, and then removed on privately chartered planes with escorts. Each flight costs the government tens of thousands of pounds. At the end of 2019 charter flights cost the UK an average of £12,000 a person. The smugglers profit each time someone purchases a space in an overcrowded dinghy.

Moseley said: “It is particularly upsetting to meet people in Calais who have been removed from the UK and are trying to get back there again. This brings into sharp relief the level of desperation they are feeling. Despite the extreme risk to life this shows clearly that they have no other choice. They simply can’t go back home so will try again no matter how slim their chance of success.”

The UK received fewer asylum applications last year than countries such as Germany with 142,400 applications, France 119,900 applications and Spain 115,200 applications. In the UK there were 34,354 asylum applications. In the most recent figures available there were 4,850 asylum applications in the UK between April and June, a sharp drop from the 8,455 between January and March of this year.

A woman who successfully fought a seven-year legal battle to prove she was the daughter of the former king of Belgium, Albert II, will learn next month whether, against the wishes of her father, she will be able to use the titles Her Royal Highness and the Princess of Belgium.

Delphine Boël, 52, an artist and sculptor, whose mother had an extra-marital affair with Albert in the 1960s and 70s, argued in the Brussels court of appeal that she should also be able to use her biological father’s surname of Saxe-Coburg. The court will give its judgment on 29 October.

King Albert, 86, who abdicated from the Belgian throne in 2013, was forced to acknowledge he was Boël’s biological father after a court-ordered DNA test last January.

Boël, who had spent time with Albert as a child, nicknaming him Papillon(butterfly), had sought acknowledgement more than 20 years ago but her requests had been rejected. She launched a legal battle to prove paternity in June 2013, after the elder of her two children, Joséphine, was admitted to hospital with pneumonia, and she felt the absence of her biological father.

Boël’s claim received a vital boost last autumn when the court of appeal ruled that Jacques Boël, with whom she grew up, was not her biological father and instructed an expert to carry out a test to compare her DNA with Albert’s.

The king agreed to provide a saliva sample – which proved his paternity – after the courts threatened to fine him €5,000 (£4,370) for every day he refused.

Retired King Albert II of Belgium, pictured last year. He was forced to take a DNA test, which proved he was Boël’s biological father. Photograph: Isopix/Rex/Shutterstock

Marc Uyttendaele, Boël’s lawyer, said she simply wanted to be treated the same as Albert’s other children. “Those titles are things that belong to her, just as they belong to the other children of King Albert. My client never had any other intention than to be treated in exactly the same way as the other children of the king, her brothers and sister,” he said.

Alain Berenboom, who is acting for the former king, said the issue of royal titles should be in the hands of the state, rather than the courts. “As far as the title is concerned, it is not a prerogative of the court but a prerogative of the executive power, in our opinion”, he said.

On the day Albert stepped down from the throne seven years ago, citing ill-health, Boël’s mother, Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps, gave a TV interview where she spoke publicly for the first time about her affair with the king.

“I thought I could not have children because I had had an infection,” she said of the relationship, which is said to have lasted from 1966 to 1984. “We had not taken any precautions.”

But following Downing Street’s move towards regionalised travel restrictions announced earlier this week, the Portuguese islands of Madeira and the Azores remain on the list of exempted locations.

Sweden, which pursued a light-touch approach to coronavirus restrictions, has been added to the travel corridor list for the first time. Hungary, French Polynesia and Réunion are among other locations that are being removed from the list of places free from quarantine restrictions.

Boris Johnson pledged during a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday that Border Force would be stepping up its enforcement of quarantine measures. Last month, the Guardian revealed that Border Force officials were aiming to check less than a third of arrivals for passenger locator forms.

Portugal was first added to the travel corridor list on 22 August. Scotland, which along with other devolved nations has the power to make its own decisions on quarantine restrictions, has already removed Portugal from its list. On Thursday it announced that it was also removing Hungary and Réunion from the travel corridor, but adding Sweden, from 4am on Saturday.

Wales removed mainland Portugal last week, but kept Madeira and Azores on its list of exempt locations. It is also now removing Hungary and Réunion. Northern Ireland is making the same changes as England to the list.

Greece’s tourism minister has said the UK government should review its decision to quarantine people travelling from seven of the country’s most popular islands, labelling the move “unfortunate and unfair”.

Harry Theoharis said infection levels in Greece remained below the UK’s threshold for taking countries off its exemption list.

“From the point of view of headline numbers, it’s a decision that is unfortunate and unfair,” he told the Guardian. “There have been 13 cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days in Greece, which is below other countries and below the UK’s own self-imposed yardstick. We are very much hoping it will be reviewed as soon as possible.”

But taking a new regional approach to quarantine policy, Britain’s transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said on Monday that increased coronavirus caseloads on Greek islands posed a risk to public health in the UK.

The seven islands singled out were Zakynthos (Zante), Santorini, Mykonos, Crete, Lesbos, Serifos and Tinos. The Greek mainland was not removed from the exemption list.

More British holidaymakers flew to Greece in August than any other nationality, with 315,840 arrivals at the country’s 14 regional airports, according to Fraport Greece.

About 60,000 Britons were said to be holidaying on the islands when Shapps announced the decision in the Commons, triggering a panicked rush for increasingly costly air tickets back to the UK before the measure came into force at 4am on Wednesday.