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Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man, in a move parents described as “outrageous” and “upsetting”.

The man noticed that posts encouraging him to “get Threads”, Mark Zuckerberg’s rival to Elon Musk’s X, were being dropped into his Instagram feed featuring embedded posts of uniformed girls as young as 13 with their faces visible and, in most cases, their names.

The children’s images were used by Meta after their parents had posted them on Instagram to mark their return to school. The parents were unaware that Meta’s settings permitted it to do this. One mother said her account was set to private, but the posts were automatically cross-posting to Threads where they were visible. Another said she posted the picture to a public Instagram account. The posts of their children were highlighted to the stranger as “suggested threads”.

The recipient told the Guardian the posts felt “deliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved”.

The father of a 13-year-old who appeared in one of the posts said it was “absolutely outrageous”. The images were all of schoolgirls in short skirts with either bare legs or stockings.

“When I found out an image of her has been exploited in what felt like a sexualised way by a massive company like that to market their product it left me feeling quite disgusted,” he said.

Meta, the $2tn (£1.5tn) company based in Menlo Park, California, said the images did not violate its policies. It said it recommended people to visit Threads by showing them publicly shared photos that comply with its community standards and recommendation guidelines. Its systems do not recommend Threads shared by teenagers, but these were posts made from adults’ accounts.

The man who received the posts said that as he was only sent promotional posts of schoolgirls – there were no boys in school uniform, for example – there appeared to be “an aspect of sexualisation”.

The mother of a 15-year-old whose picture was used in a promotional post that featured a large “Get Threads” button said: “For me it was a picture of my daughter going to school. I had no idea Instagram had picked it up and are using it as a promotion. It’s absolutely disgusting. She is a minor.”

She said she would have refused consent and “not for any money in the world would I let them use a girl dressed in a school uniform to get people on to [its platform]”.

With 267 followers, her Instagram account usually had modest reach but the post of her child attracted nearly 7,000 views, 90% from non-followers, half of whom were aged over 44 and 90% of whom were men.

Another mother whose post of her 13-year-old was used in a promotional post said: “Meta did all of this on purpose, not informing us, as they want to generate content. It’s despicable. And who is responsible for creating that Threads ad using children’s photos to promote the platform for older men?”

Meta said it called such posts “recommendation tools” and that public postscould be used for this purpose.

A company spokesperson said: “The images shared do not violate our policies and are back-to-school photos posted publicly by parents. We have systems in place to help make sure we don’t recommend Threads shared by teens, or that go against our recommendation guidelines, and users can control whether Meta suggests their public posts on Instagram.”

The 37-year-old Instagram user from London who received the posts and asked to remain anonymous said: “Over several days I was repeatedly served Meta adverts for Threads that exclusively featured parents’ images of their daughters in school uniform, some revealing their names. As a father, I find it deeply inappropriate for Meta to repurpose these posts in targeted promotion to adults.”

He said he had not posted or liked any similar images before he was sent the schoolgirl pictures.

“To me, showcasing such content as trending or popular feels deliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved, putting their online safety at risk.”

Beeban Kidron, a crossbench peer and campaigner for children’s rights online, said: “Offering up school-age girls as bait to advertise a commercial service is a new low even for Meta.

“At every opportunity Meta privileges profit over safety, and company growth over children’s right to privacy. It is the only reason that they could think it appropriate to send pictures of schoolgirls to a 37-year-old man – as bait – Meta is a wilfully careless company.”

She called on the regulator Ofcom to consider if measures, introduced this summer to prevent unknown adults connecting to children, make clear that “companies cannot offer sexualised images of children as bait to unknown men”.

Ofcom’s illegal harms codes intended to tackle online grooming require that “children’s profiles and locations – as well as friends and connections – should not be visible to other users”.

Meta’s system means that if a Threads profile is public, posts on adult profiles may be suggested on Facebook or Instagram “so people can discover, follow, and interact with you”. These suggestions can be turned off or the Threads profile can be switched to private.

Older savers should avoid making rash decisions about their pension cash based on “fear and rumour”, experts urged this week.

The warning came as figures showed a rise in the sums people were pulling out of their retirement pots.

Data from the Financial Conduct Authority showed that UK pension savers withdrew more than £70bn from their retirement pots in 2024-25 – up almost 36% on the £52bn taken out the year before. Of this, £18.3bn was tax-free cash – an increase of 62% on the £11.3bn the previous year.

Many financial experts say “budget jitters and fiscal rumours” are driving this trend as speculation swirls about what measures the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will announce in her budget on 26 November.

They warn kneejerk decisions could wreak havoc on people’s long-term plans.

Eamonn Prendergast, a chartered financial adviser at Palantir Financial Planning, said pension pots were “meant to last decades, not be raided in panic. The government must do more to quash rumours early and give clarity.”

Rachel Vahey at the investment platform AJ Bell said the concern is “people aren’t making decisions based on what’s best for them but because they are worried about possible changes to pensions tax incentives”.

Currently, from the age of 55 (57 from April 2028) you can usually take up to 25% of your pension as a tax-free lump sum, to a limit of £268,275.

However, there is speculation that the government may slash this maximum or make other changes.

Stephen Lowe at the retirement specialist Just Group said rising living costs could be forcing more people to dip into their pension money to pay the bills, but added that the sums being withdrawn might also reflect concern the Treasury may view tax-free cash as “an easy target”.

The figures came after what some called an “inheritance tax raid” on unspent pension money that was announced last October.

Pensions tend not to be counted as part of a person’s estate for inheritance tax (IHT) purposes. However, from April 2027, money left in a defined contribution pension will be included in IHT calculations.

In March, the Guardian reported that financial firms were reporting a “huge” increase in well-off older people taking sizeable sums out of their pensions to splash out on family holidays and give to their children

The question of whether to take cash out is a complicated area. For some well-off older people it could mean avoiding a bill later. Despite this, it is vital people ensure they have enough money to support themselves through their later years, so individual financial advice is worth seeking.

Humanitarian workers in northern Gaza have been repeatedly warned by the Israeli military that only hospitals will be considered protected sites and all other aid infrastructure could be targeted.

In messages and conversations with aid workers in recent days seen by the Guardian, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said an order to “all Gaza residents and inhabitants” to evacuate Gaza City, the biggest urban centre in the territory, applied “to all humanitarian locations [there], except hospitals” and warned that “to defeat Hamas [Israeli troops] will operate … with great force”.

On Friday, the IDF said it had expanded operations in Gaza City and bombarded “Hamas infrastructure”. Between a quarter and half a million of the city’s estimated 1 million inhabitants have already fled but some displaced Palestinians traumatised by the advance said they had no means to leave.

Vehicles for the gruelling six- to eight-hour journey south can now cost as much as $2,000 (£1,500).

“The situation is really bad. All night long, the tank was firing shells,” said Toufic Abu Mouawad, who left a camp for the displaced on the city’s outskirts but had nowhere else to go. “I want to flee with the boys, the girls, the children. This is the situation that we are living in. It is a very tragic situation.”

Israeli officials said they were preparing a “humanitarian zone” in the overcrowded, underdeveloped al-Mawasi coastal area in southern Gaza by building new aid distribution sites nearby, supplying electricity to desalination plants, providing some water and allowing in more aid.

Most of northern Gaza is already emptied of civilian and in ruins. If Israeli troops take over Gaza City, the entire 2.1 million population of the devastated territory will be confined to a small enclave in the south. Currently, all these checkpoints through which goods and people can enter Gaza are in the south, with the Zikim checkpoint which served the north closed since last week.

Much of the north lies in ruins after 23 months of conflict and a campaign of systematic destruction by Israeli forces that has intensified in recent months. Little of Gaza City is expected to escape the new Israeli offensive.

“People might want to go back but what would they go back to? It is very difficult to imagine how it could work,” said one senior aid official working in Gaza. “There is an emotional attachment but there is a real question mark over how you would live.”

The Israeli army has constructed two new aid distribution hubs close to Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, which will be used by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an opaque US and Israel-backed private organisation that started work in May. The GHF has been running five such sites where food boxes were handed out on a first come first served basis, but three are thought to have been shut.

In an email, GHF said that 12 truckloads of food had been distributed on Wednesday at two existing sites in the far south of Gaza , one in the ruins of Rafah and another in Khan Younis. The new sites are close to the Egyptian border.

The main entry point from Israel serving the north of Gaza has been shut since last week. Aid convoys from the south face massive logistic difficulties and are often refused permission by the IDF. Last month a famine was declared in Gaza City by UN-backed experts.

The IDF has said it is expanding the Kissufim crossing to allow more aid to reach the designated “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi. This too will serve the south of Gaza only, aid workers said.

All aid into Gaza was blocked by Israel between March and May, and only very minimal amounts were allowed to enter until recent weeks. About 250 trucks were now bringing food and other essentials into Gaza daily but such quantities were only a fraction of what was needed, and tight restrictions remained in place, experts said.

“It is better no doubt than in June and July but not the kind of better that will move the needle in any major way on the famine, for children dying of malnutrition or in terms of the day to day life of the average Gazan,” said Katy Crosby, Mercy Corps senior director of policy and advocacy.

A high proportion of trucks are commercially operated and are bringing in items such as soft drinks and snacks that are not nutritious but expensive.

Many Israeli observers and commentators believe the real motives for the new offensive into Gaza City are political: to keep Israel in a state of war so as to fend off early elections in which Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition could be unseated – and to ensure that north Gaza is made uninhabitable, which would please the Israeli prime minister’s far right allies.

It could also encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza permanently.

Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body that administers access to Gaza, on Wednesday issued advice to Palestinians in the territory who wanted to leave, while Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, described Gaza as a “real-estate bonanza”, according to Hebrew media last week.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, compared Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC stations over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s commentary to “mafioso” tactics similar to those in Goodfellas, the 1990 mobster movie.

“Look, Jimmy Kimmel has been canned. He has been suspended indefinitely. I think that it a fantastic thing,” Cruz said at the start of the latest episode of his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz. There were, however “first amendment implications” of the FCC’s role, the senator, a Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for US supreme court chief justice William Rehnquist, added.

Cruz, a formerly fierce political rival of Donald Trump turned strong supporter, called Carr’s comments “unbelievably dangerous” and warned that government attempts to police speech could harm conservatives if Democrats return to power.

“He threatens explicitly: ‘We’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take him off the air so ABC cannot broadcast any more’ … He says: ‘We can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.’ And I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” Cruz said.

“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz also said. “But let me tell you: if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said. We’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”

During an Oval Office event on Friday, when Trump was asked about Cruz’s comments on Carr, the president raised the issue of licenses and suggested stations might be “illegally” using the airwaves to broadcast critical coverage of him in news reports.

“When you have networks that give somebody 97% bad publicity,” the president said, “I think that’s dishonesty.”

“I think Brendan Carr is a patriot. I think Brendan Carr is a courageous person. I think Brendan Carr doesn’t like to see the airwaves be used illegally and incorrectly,” Trump said. “So I disagree with Ted Cruz on that.”

The president’s claim that news coverage on ABC, NBC and CBS was almost entirely negative appears to have been based on a subjective analysis of “the networks’ spin” by NewsBusters, a conservative media watchdog group founded by Trump’s nominee to serve as US ambassador to South Africa, the activist L Brent Bozell III.

The federal prosecutor for the eastern district of Virginia resigned Friday under intense pressure from Donald Trump, after his office determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, a political rival of the president, with a crime.

Erik Siebert told colleagues he was resigning in a letter sent Friday, NBC News reported. Hours earlier, Trump bluntly told reporters in the Oval Office: “I want him out.” The president claimed he soured on Siebert because Virginia’s two Democratic senators had endorsed his nomination, but also claimed that James “is very guilty of something”. ABC News reported earlier on Friday that Trump decided to fire Siebert after he failed to obtain an indictment against James.

In 2024, James filed a civil lawsuit against Trump and his company that resulted in a significant financial penalty. That penalty was thrown out in August by an appeals court that upheld a judge’s finding that Trump had engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades.

After a five-month investigation, officials did not find enough clear evidence to charge James with a crime, ABC News reported earlier this week. Trump nominated Siebert, who worked since 2010 as an assistant US attorney in that office, for the position in May.

The investigation centered on the allegation that James falsely said she was going to use a home she purchased in Virginia as her primary residence. While one document indicated James intended to use the home as her primary residence, others in the transaction show James clearly indicating she intended to use it as a second home.

Ed Martin, a former January 6 defendant lawyer who is leading the justice department effort to target Trump’s political rivals, pressured prosecutors to seek an indictment, according to ABC News. Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a staunch Trump ally, who criminally referred James, had urged Trump to fire Siebert, according to ABC.

Pulte also referred California senator Adam Schiff, another political rival of Trump, and the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook for mortgage fraud. The allegations in both of those cases appear similarly thin.

The justice department has long held a level of independence from the White House, an arms length seen as necessary to give Americans confidence its prosecutors and other attorneys are making enforcement decisions based on facts and not politics. Trump has upended that norm, firing career attorneys and FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases.

Those fired include Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey and a career prosecutor who worked on some of the highest-profile cases in the southern district of New York. Maurene Comey, who was not given a reason for her firing, sued the Trump administration this week.

The South Australian premier has said he’s never witnessed “such incompetence” from an Australian communications company after an eight-week-old baby was among three people who died during a botched Optus network upgrade.

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue admitted on Friday that the upgrade, which prevented people from making triple-zero calls the day before, impacted up to 600 households in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Two of the deceased were in South Australia and one was in Western Australia, Stephen Rue said, but added that welfare checks after the upgrade were “ongoing”.

South Australia police said an eight-week-old boy from the town of Gawler and a 68-year-old woman from the Queenstown suburb of Adelaide died.

“The upgrade impact … resulted in the failure of a number of triple zero calls in South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia,” Rue said in a press conference on Friday afternoon.

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“I have been advised that during the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away.”

The premier Peter Malinauskas said in a press conference on Friday evening: “I have not witnessed such incompetence from an Australian Corporation in respect to communications.”

“Worse than this, It is somewhat extraordinary to me and senior members of the South Australian government that Optus have seen it fit to make this announcement during the course of a press conference, and then only after the commencement of that press conference, to advise senior members of the South Australian government of this occurrence,” he said.

“I think, quite frankly, that is reprehensible conduct on behalf of Optus.”

Optus was approached for comment on Malinauskas’ accusations it did not inform the government until the press conference was underway. It has denied to other media that this was the case.

“My message to Optus this evening is that there will be a thorough examination, conducted independently by the South Australian Government on every single matter pertaining to their conduct, regarding this incident,” Malinauskas said.

The CEO said about 600 customers were affected by the network upgrade, and that Optus was conducting a thorough investigation.

He said normal calls were going through at that time but triple zero calls were affected. The exact duration of the outage was also being investigated.

“We will cooperate fully and transparently with all relevant government agencies and regulatory bodies while we investigate this matter further,” he said.

Rue repeatedly apologised, describing the “technical failure” as “not acceptable” and something that “should not have happened”.

“I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away.

“I am so sorry for your loss. What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down.”

He said the facts of the outage would be shared when they were established.

Rue said it was particularly frustrating the outage occurred less than two years after a similar failure.

In November 2023, a routine software upgrade to the network resulted in more than 2,000 people being unable to make triple zero calls.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority fined the network $12m last year for the incident, which breached emergency call rules.

Rue said the investigation into Thursday’s outage would look into why the emergency calls were not handed over to another network.

He did not answer questions about whether the latest outage reflected poorly on him, given it occurred under his watch.

“Today is not about me, this is about the people who lost their lives,” he said.

The network could face fines of more than $10m and other legal penalties.

“Worse than this, it is somewhat extraordinary to me and senior members of the South Australian government that Optus have seen it fit to make this announcement during the course of a press conference, and then only after the commencement of that press conference, to advise senior members of the South Australian government of this occurrence,” he told reporters.

I think, quite frankly, that is reprehensible conduct on behalf of Optus.

Anika Wells, the minister for communications, said the government had accepted all the recommendations of the review into the previous Optus outage.

“This is incredibly serious and completely unacceptable. The impact of this failure has had tragic consequences and my personal thoughts are with those who have lost a loved one,” she said in a statement.

“While details are still emerging, no triple zero outage is acceptable. Optus and all telecommunication providers have obligations to ensure they carry emergency services calls.”

In a statement, WA police said there was a “national protocol in place for triple zero outages”.

“Where an outage has disrupted a triple zero call, the carrier will attempt to make contact with the caller as soon as possible,” the statement said.

“Where that follow-up contact is not achieved, the carrier must contact police, who then conduct a welfare check on the caller.”

The statement continued that WA police were, as of Friday evening, in the process of conducting a number of welfare checks and would be notifying the relevant emergency service for their response.

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Donald Trump said on Friday that he and Xi Jinping had agreed to approve a deal over TikTok.

“He approved the TikTok deal,” Trump said about Xi to reporters in the Oval Office, suggesting the leaders signed off on a preliminary agreement. But Trump offered no details about the agreement or when it would be signed.

The American and Chinese leaders had connected over a phone call earlier in the day, the first direct contact between the two leaders since June. China and the US have been at loggerheads over trade negotiations and the future of TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media platform that faces a ban in the US.

Trump had said earlier this week that Washington and Beijing had agreed a deal on TikTok under which it would be transferred to US control, but details of the framework have been scant, and elements reportedly remain to be hashed out. Investors including the US software giant Oracle have been in talks to take a large stake in TikTok’s US operations, which would dilute the amount of China-based ownership to comply with a law Congress passed last year.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that investors in the TikTok deal would pay the US a fee in exchange for negotiating the agreement with China.

In the call on Friday, the Chinese president “emphasised the vital importance of US-China relations”, according to a Chinese readout of Friday’s phone call.

“China’s position on the TikTok issue is clear,” the readout said. “The Chinese government respects the wishes of companies and welcomes them to conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance interests. China hopes that the US will provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies to invest in the US.”

China described the call as “pragmatic, positive, and constructive”.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump described the call as “very productive”. “We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump wrote.

He said he and Xi would meet at the Asia-Pacificeconomic cooperation summit in South Korea in late October and he would visit China “in the early part of next year”. China has not commented on when Trump and Xi might meet in person.

The TikTok deal was negotiated this week in Madrid, where the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng met to negotiate a trade deal. The US and China have agreed to a temporary pause in the trade war and the deadline to reach an agreement is 10 November.

The call came as Trump returned from a state visit to the UK, which was accompanied by news of a multibillion-dollar investment deal for US tech companies in the UK. Microsoft will invest $30bn while Nvidia will invest £11bn.

US tech companies have been caught in the cross-hairs of the US-China trade war. This week it was reported that China had ordered its top tech firms to stop buying semiconductors from Nvidia, which makes the world’s most advanced chips. Nvidia’s most high-end models are already banned by the US from being exported to China, but it had developed less sophisticated chips specifically for the Chinese market.

The Chinese readout of the call said Trump had praised Beijing’s recent military parade – the biggest showcase of military might in decades – as “magnificent”. The second world war commemoration parade, which was attended by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, was widely seen in the west as being a show of unity from an anti-American bloc.

However, China has been keen to stress its cooperation with the allied forces in the second world war. According to the readout, Xi on Friday “pointed out that China and the United States were allies who fought side by side during world war two”.

China described US-China ties as “the most important bilateral relationship in the world”.

Labour has ruled out motions about Palestine being debated at its party conference later this month, triggering accusations that it is trying to stifle debate.

The conference arrangement committee, made up of Labour elected reps and officials, has ruled about 30 motions about Palestine from local parties out of order.

Some of those who submitted the motions may appeal against the decisions, which were mostly made on the grounds that the issue was already dealt with by the National Policy Framework (NPF) report in August. They have until Sunday to object, with appeals heard on Monday.

The prime minister is preparing to recognise Palestine as an independent state this weekend, but many Labour members and MPs would like to see the government going further by ceasing all arms trade with Israel and withdrawing military cooperation.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), which has support from some Labour MPs, accused party officials of attempting to stifle debate on Palestine at the party conference.

The group argued that many of the proposed motions focused on events that took place after the NPF report was published, including the announcement of the Israeli government’s plans to militarily occupy Gaza City on 8 August and the killing of five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza City on 10 August.

The motions also raised new issues such as comprehensive sanctions and a ban on trade that aids or assists Israel’s violations of international law.

There was a huge increase in submitted motions compared with the previous year, reflecting the priority given to the issue by Labour members and local parties.

John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor and a supporter of the PSC, said: “With more than 30 motions on Palestine submitted to this year’s Labour party conference, it is clear that party members see Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people as a major issue that needs to be raised on [the] conference floor.

“The government should join those including Sadiq Khan who have spoken out this week to make clear that what we are witnessing in Gaza is genocide and urgently implement sanctions, including a full arms embargo and a ban on all trade that aids or assists Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. Delegates must not be prevented from discussing these issues at conference.”

Ben Jamal, the PSC’s director, added: “Just days after a UN commission of inquiry confirmed that Israel has committed and is committing genocide in Gaza, it is shocking that Labour officials are trying to block a large influx of motions in solidarity with Palestine from being debated at this year’s party conference.”

Israel has consistently rejected all accusations of genocide, citing its right to self-defence.

Asked whether there would be any opportunity for delegates to debate Palestine at the Liverpool conference, a Labour spokesperson said: “A wide range of topics will be debated and discussed at annual conference. The democratically elected conference arrangements committee rules on whether motions to conference are in order, in line with Labour party rules. All party procedures have been followed.”