Joe Biden has tested positive for Covid-19 and is suffering mild symptoms, the White House has said.

Karine Jean-Pierre, his press secretary, said the US president is vaccinated and boosted. He has tested positive for Covid twice before.

Mr Biden, 81, was seen earlier on Wednesday visiting supporters in Las Vegas and speaking at an event. He has cancelled a campaign speech later in the night.

The illness comes as he faces increasing pressure to step aside because of his age following a poor debate performance at the end of June.

Ms Jean-Pierre said the president planned to isolate at his home in Delaware while he carries out “all of his duties fully during that time”.

The president’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, said Mr Biden presented with upper respiratory symptoms, including a runny nose and a cough and was given his first dose of Paxlovid.

He felt fine during his first event of the day, but later tested positive Dr O’Connor said.

Mr Biden later used X/Twitter to thank everyone for “the well wishes” and said he would “work to get the job done for the American people” while in recovery.

In another tweet his account stated: “I’m sick”, before replying back: “… of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election. And if you agree, pitch in here.”

The tweet pointed to a donations portal.

Reporters on the Las Vegas trip said they were rushed to the city’s airport following the announcement.

Mr Biden moved slowly and cautiously up the steps to the plane, video shows. He was not wearing a mask.

As he boarded Air Force One he was heard to say: “Good, I feel good.”

The president was forced to cancel a speech at UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights organisation.

Mr Biden’s illness comes as he faces growing calls to withdraw from the election race.

Nearly two dozen Democratic politicians have called for him to step aside in recent weeks, including Adam Schiff, a congressman from California,, who said today he had serious doubts about whether the president could beat former President Donald Trump.

He called on Mr Biden to “pass the torch”.

Mr Schiff said that Mr Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history”, and he could “secure his legacy of leadership” by allowing another Democrat to step forward.

In an interview with BET, which was due to be broadcast on Wednesday evening, Mr Biden said he did not feel he could pass the mantle with the country so “divided”.

The president also said, for the first time, that he would consider dropping out of the race if any of his doctors said he had a “medical condition”.

Cyanide has been found in the blood of all six people who died in a luxury hotel suite in Bangkok, say doctors after examining their bodies.

Based on the initial post-mortem examination, they say there is “no other cause” that would explain their deaths “except for cyanide”.

But further tests are being carried out to determine the “intensity” of the deadly chemical and to rule out any other toxins.

Forensic investigators had earlier found traces of cyanide on the teacups used by the victims, all of whom are of Vietnamese origin including two with dual US citizenship. Police suspect that one of the dead was behind the poisoning and was driven by crushing debt – but have not said who.

The victims’ lips and nails had turned dark purple indicating a lack of oxygen, while their internal organs turned “blood red”, which is another sign of cyanide poisoning, said Professor Kornkiat Vongpaisarnsin of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Chulalongkorn University.

Doctor Chanchai Sittipunt, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine, said they still needed to find out how much cyanide was in the blood of the deceased.

“But from what we have detected – from observation, from internal organ check, from finding cyanide in the blood during the screening test – there is no other cause that would be the factor that would cause their deaths, except for cyanide,” he told reporters.

The deceased were found by housekeepers at the Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel in the Thai capital late on Tuesday.

Investigators believe they had been dead for between 12 and 24 hours by then.

The mystery around the shocking discovery made international headlines.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin ordered an urgent investigation into the case, stressing that the deaths were the result of a “private matter”, and there was no suggestion of public danger.

Police have since begun to piece together what might have happened.

Two of the six victims had loaned “tens of millions of Thai baht” to another of the deceased for investment purposes, authorities said. Ten million baht is worth nearly $280,000 (£215,000).

Earlier on Wednesday, Deputy Bangkok police chief Gen Noppassin Poonsawat told a press conference the group checked into the hotel separately over the weekend and were assigned five rooms – four on the seventh floor, and one on the fifth.

They had been scheduled to check out on Monday but failed to do so.

Four of the victims are Vietnamese nationals Thi Nguyen Phuong, 46, her husband Hong Pham Thanh, 49, Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, 47, and Dinh Tran Phu, 37.

The other two are American citizens Sherine Chong, 56, and Dang Hung Van, 55.

The US state department has offered its condolences and said it is “closely monitoring” the situation. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is assisting Thai authorities in the investigation, Mr Srettha said.

The motive is not clear, but police said two of the six had loaned a substantial amount of money to another person in the group, who had not been paid back.

Police say on Monday afternoon all six victims gathered in the room on the fifth floor.

The group ordered food and tea, which was delivered to the room around 14:00 local time (08:00 BST) and received by Ms Chong – who was the only person in the room at the time.

According to the deputy police chief, a waiter offered to make tea for the guests but Ms Chong refused this. The waiter recalled that she “spoke very little and was visibly under stress”, authorities said.

The waiter later left the room.

The rest of the group then began streaming into the room at various points, between 14:03 and 14:17. No one else is believed to have entered the room apart from the six inside and police have said the door to the room was locked from within.

Police say there were no signs of a struggle, robbery or forced entry. They later found traces of cyanide in all six tea cups.

Pictures released by the police show plates of untouched food left on a table in the room, some of them still covered in cling wrap.

There was a seventh name on the group’s hotel booking, whom police identified as the younger sister of one of the victims. She had left Thailand last week for the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang and is not involved in the incident, police said.

Relatives interviewed by the police said Thi Nguyen Phuong and Hong Pham Thanh, a couple, owned a road construction business and had given money to Ms Chong to invest in a hospital building project in Japan.

Police suspect that Mr Tran, a make-up artist based in Da Nang, had also been “duped” into making an investment.

Mr Tran’s mother Tuý told BBC Vietnamese that he had travelled to Thailand on Friday and had called home on Sunday to say he had to extend his stay until Monday. That was the last his family had heard from him. She rang him again on Monday but he did not answer the call.

Ms Chong had hired Mr Tran as her personal make-up artist for the trip, one of his students told BBC Vietnamese. Mr Tran’s father, Phu, told Vietnamese media that his son was hired last week by a Vietnamese woman to travel to Thailand.

The six bodies were discovered one day after Thailand expanded its visa-free entry scheme to travellers from 93 countries and territories to revitalise its tourism industry.

Cyanide is a rapidly-acting, highly toxic chemical that is potentially deadly. Low levels of cyanide occur in nature and in products we eat and use. But in larger doses it is a notorious poison, and has been used as a chemical warfare agent because of its fast-acting and highly lethal properties.

It can occur as a colourless gas or liquid or in crystal form. People can be exposed to cyanide by breathing it in, absorbing it through the skin, or eating food or liquids that contain it.

When consumed in large amounts, cyanide can lead to lung injury, coma and death within seconds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Even in smaller doses, cyanide is still very harmful, causing chest pain, nausea, shortness of breath and vomiting.

Cyanide can produce a “bitter almond” smell but not everyone can detect this and it doesn’t always give off an odour.

Speeding along a road in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, Fariba Hashimi rises out of the saddle of her £15,000 bike and works the pedals even harder to close the gap between her and her sister, Yulduz, a few metres up ahead.

Training rides like this are the last steps on a journey that began with the two siblings from rural Afghanistan racing in disguise on borrowed bikes, before having to escape when the Taliban came to power.

Now they’re on their way to the Olympic Games in Paris. And, despite a Taliban ruling banning women from sport, they will compete under their country’s flag.

In a world where many elite athletes take up sport almost as soon as they can walk, Fariba, 21, and Yulduz, 24, came late to cycling.

They grew up in Faryab, one of the most remote and conservative provinces in Afghanistan, where it was practically unheard of to see women on bicycles.

Fariba was 14 and Yulduz 17 when they saw an advert for a local cycle race and decided to take part.

There were two problems; they didn’t have a bike and they didn’t know how to ride.

The sisters borrowed a neighbour’s bike one afternoon. After a few hours, they felt they had got the hang of it.

Their next challenge was to avoid their family finding out what they were doing because of the stigma around women taking part in sport in conservative areas of Afghanistan.

The sisters used false names and covered themselves up, wearing big baggy clothing, large headscarves and sunglasses so people didn’t recognise them.

Race day dawned, and incredibly the sisters came first and second.

“It felt amazing,” says Fariba. “I felt like a bird who could fly.”

They kept on entering races and kept on winning until their parents eventually found out when they saw pictures of them in the local media.

“They were upset at first. They asked me to stop cycling,” Fariba says. “But I didn’t give up. I secretly continued,” she smiles.

It didn’t come without dangers – people tried to hit them with cars or rickshaws as they rode or threw stones at them as they cycled past.

“People were abusive. All I wanted to do was win races,” says Yulduz.

And the situation was about to get worse.

In 2021, four years after the sisters started riding, the Taliban retook control of the country and clamped down on women’s rights, restricting their access to education and limiting how they could travel. They also banned women from taking part in sport.

Yulduz and Fariba had dreamed of one day competing in the Olympics. Now they knew if they wanted to race at all they had to leave Afghanistan.

Using contacts in the cycling community they managed to secure seats on an Italian evacuation flight, along with three teammates.

Once in Italy, the women joined a cycling team and got proper coaching for the first time.

“Back in Afghanistan, we didn’t have professional training,” says Yulduz. “All we used to do was take our bikes and ride.”

But leaving their homeland and family was not easy.

“The biggest thing for me is to be away from my mother,” says Fariba. “I never thought that because of cycling I would be separated from my brothers and sisters.”

“I’ve sacrificed a lot.”

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan also threw into doubt whether the country would even be allowed to compete at the Olympics.

National Olympic Committees are supposed to select athletes for the Games without any government interference.

As the Taliban’s ban on women playing sport breaks this rule, by preventing women being chosen for Afghanistan’s team, it led to calls for the country to be banned from the Olympics – as it had been when the militant group was last in power.

But the International Olympic Committee wanted to find a way to allow Afghan women to compete at the Games.

Behind the scenes talks took place between the heads of Afghan sporting bodies, including some now living in exile, about putting together a special team to represent the country in Paris.

As time ticked by, and Paris 2024 got ever closer, it looked as if no Afghan athletes would be at the Games.

Then, in June, International Olympic Committee announced that it had arranged for a special gender-equal team representing Afghanistan to go the Paris Olympics. It would be made up of three women and three men. And both the sisters are among them.

“This was a big surprise for both of us,” says Fariba.

“We always dreamt of taking part in the Olympic Games, this is our dream come true,” Yulduz adds.

“Despite all the rights that were taken from us we can show that we can achieve great success, we will be able to represent 20 million Afghan women.”

The IOC say no Taliban officials will be allowed to attend Paris 2024.

The sisters are preparing for the Olympic road race event while riding for a development team run and funded by the UCI and based at the World Cycling Centre, an ultra-modern facility in the Swiss town of Aigle.

The elite facilities are a world away from the dusty roads in Afghanistan where Yulduz and Fariba first taught themselves to cycle.

But their spirit remains the same.

“We are each other’s strength – I support her and she supports me,” says Yulduz.

“Our achievement belongs to Afghanistan,” adds Fariba. “This belongs to Afghanistan women. I am going to the Olympics because of them.”

Donald Trump’s would-be assassin was flagged as “suspicious” up to an hour before he began shooting and his phone’s history showed he’d searched for images of the Republican, senators have heard amid growing calls for the head of the US Secret Service to resign.

In two closed briefings to lawmakers in the House and Senate on Wednesday, law enforcement officials, including the Secret Service, shared limited new information about security and the man who opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso said the Secret Service told them they had spotted the attacker one hour before the attack, but then lost sight of him in the crowd.

“He was identified as a character of suspicion because [he had] a rangefinder as well as a backpack. And this was over an hour before the shooting actually occurred,” he told Fox News.

“So, you would think over the course of that hour, you shouldn’t lose sight of the individual.”

It was also revealed during the briefings that the gunman had visited the site of the attack, the Butler County fairgrounds, in the days before the assassination attempt and had previously searched on his phone for symptoms of a depressive disorder, an official familiar with the briefing told CBS News, the BBC’s news partner.

The attacker had also used his phone to search for images of both Trump and President Joe Biden. FBI Director Wray told lawmakers on the call that more than 200 interviews had already been conducted and 14,000 images reviewed.

Multiple Republican senators criticised the lack of transparency from investigators on their call and expressed outrage that Trump was allowed to take the stage even after a threat was identified.

“I am appalled to learn that the Secret Service knew about a threat prior to President Trump walking on stage,” tweeted Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

A law enforcement official involved in the investigation told CBS that a sniper from a local tactical team deployed to assist the Secret Service took a picture of the gunman looking through the rangefinder, and immediately radioed to a command post to report the sighting.

According to ABC News and other US outlets, the 20-year-old gunman was spotted again on the roof of a building 20 minutes before the attack began, officials revealed.

He was killed by Secret Service snipers within 26 seconds of opening fire on Trump.

Multiple senators who participated in the call complained that investigators did not answer their questions and demanded the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.

“The egregious security failures and lack of transparency around the assassination attempt on President Trump demand an immediate change of leadership at the Secret Service,” tweeted Utah Senator Mike Lee.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson called the briefing to lawmakers “unbelievably uninformative” and said investigators only took four questions from lawmakers.

Other senior Republicans also called for Ms Cheatle to resign. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the call that “the nation deserves answers and accountability” and a change in leadership at Secret Service would be “an important step in that direction”.

House lawmakers similarly were briefed on Wednesday by law enforcement about security and what led up to the Saturday shooting.

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also called for Ms Cheatle to quit. He said he plans to open an investigation in the House.

“It’ll be comprised of Republicans and Democrats to get down to the bottom of this quickly, so the American people can get the answers that they deserve,” he told Fox News.

FBI Director Chris Wray, who participated in the calls, told lawmakers that no motive has yet been identified for the gunman.

Ms Cheatle, a 27-year veteran of the Secret Service, is due to testify next week to the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee and House Homeland Security Committee.

The attack is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, and President Biden said he would direct an independent review be opened.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) decide on Thursday whether to hand Ursula von der Leyen a second term as European Commission president.

Despite Ms von der Leyen’s recent efforts to shore up support, the outcome of the vote – due to take place at the European Parliament in Brussels at 13:00 (11:00 GMT) – is far from certain.

European leaders officially nominated Ms von der Leyen at a summit in Brussels at the end of June.

The decision came despite resistance from Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who abstained from the vote after accusing fellow EU leaders of excluding parties like her own from the conversation.

Ms von der Leyen, who has had the job of Commission president since 2019, will need 361 votes in order to be confirmed for a second term.

Support from her own centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists & Democrats and the liberal Renew should give her enough votes.

But what makes things potentially tricky is that the vote is secret – meaning MEPs can cast ballots according to their inclinations rather than the declared party line.

Several Irish MEPs belonging to centrist parties have said they would vote against Ms von der Leyen’s nomination because of her stance on the war in Gaza. Some French MEPs belonging to Ms von der Leyen’s own EPP grouping have also said they won’t support her.

To limit the potential for unwelcome surprises, over the past few weeks Ms von der Leyen has held private meetings with some parliamentary groupings in an attempt to secure their votes.

Her bid has not always been successful. After one such meeting, MEPs belonging to the Left grouping said they had decided not to vote for Ms von der Leyen due to her willingness to increase military and defence spending.

She also met with the Greens and received positive signals – although some MEPs said they would wait to hear Ms von der Leyen’s speech on Thursday before making a final decision.

She reportedly managed to convince some members of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) to back her, although the Romanian, French and Polish delegations have said they would vote against her.

The Italian prime minister, who leads the ECR, is also said to be holding off on making a decision on how she will instruct her 24 Italian MEPs to vote until after Ms von der Leyen’s address.

However, according to Italian media she is leaning towards endorsing Ms von der Leyen in exchange for Italy being offered a senior job in the next Commission – such as the coveted economy or competition portfolios.

Ms Meloni, who heads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, has gained a prominent status among European right-wingers.

The third biggest group in Parliament, the newly formed Patriots for Europe, has refused to back Ms von der Leyen. Formed by Hungary’s Viktor Orban, it includes the leaders of far-right parties in France, Austria and the Netherlands.

If Ms von der Leyen does not pass today’s European Parliament vote, the EU will be back to square one, with leaders having to agree on a new candidate who would then need to be approved by the Parliament.

Although names have been floated, no obvious alternative candidate has emerged so far.

Ms von der Leyen won the job five years ago, when her name was put forward by EU leaders in a last-minute deal after a political stalemate over other contenders.

At the time, she was voted in with only nine votes over the required majority. Thursday’s vote might end up being just as close.

A drug has increased the lifespans of laboratory animals by nearly 25%, in a discovery scientists hope can slow human ageing too.

The treated mice were known as “supermodel grannies” in the lab because of their youthful appearance.

They were healthier, stronger and developed fewer cancers than their unmedicated peers.

The drug is already being tested in people, but whether it would have the same anti-ageing effect is unknown.

The quest for a longer life is woven through human history.

However, scientists have long known the ageing process is malleable – laboratory animals live longer if you significantly cut the amount of food they eat.

Now the field of ageing-research is booming as researchers try to uncover – and manipulate – the molecular processes of ageing.

The team at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Science, Imperial College London and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore were investigating a protein called interleukin-11.

Levels of it increase in the human body as we get older, it contributes to higher levels of inflammation, and the researchers say it flips several biological switches that control the pace of ageing.

The researchers performed two experiments.

• The first genetically engineered mice so they were unable to produce interleukin-11
• The second waited until mice were 75 weeks old (roughly equivalent to a 55-year-old person) and then regularly gave them a drug to purge interleukin-11 from their bodies

The results, published in the journal Nature, showed lifespans were increased by 20-25% depending on the experiment and sex of the mice.

Old laboratory mice often die from cancer, however, the mice lacking interleukin-11 had far lower levels of the disease.

And they showed improved muscle function, were leaner, had healthier fur and scored better on many measures of frailty.

I asked one of the researchers, Prof Stuart Cook, whether the data was too good to be believed.

He told me: “I try not to get too excited, for the reasons you say, is it too good to be true?

“There’s lots of snake oil out there, so I try to stick to the data and they are the strongest out there.”

He said he “definitely” thought it was worth trialling in human ageing, arguing that the impact “would be transformative” if it worked and was prepared to take it himself.

The big unanswered questions are could the same effect be achieved in people, and whether any side effects would be tolerable.

Interleukin-11 does have a role in the human body during early development.

People are, very rarely, born unable to make it. This alters how the bones in their skull fuse together, affects their joints, which can need surgery to correct, and how their teeth emerge. It also has a role in scarring.

The researchers think that later in life, interleukin-11 is playing the bad role of driving ageing.

The drug, a manufactured antibody that attacks interleukin-11, is being trialled in patients with lung fibrosis. This is where the lungs become scarred, making it harder to breathe.

Prof Cook said the trials had not been completed, however, the data suggested the drug was safe to take.

This is just the latest approach to “treating” ageing with drugs. The type-2 diabetes drug metformin and rapamycin, which is taken to prevent an organ transplant being rejected, are both actively being researched for their anti-ageing qualities.

Prof Cook thinks a drug is likely to be easier for people than calorie restriction.

“Would you want to live from the age of 40, half-starved, have a completely unpleasant life, if you’re going to live another five years at the end? I wouldn’t,” he said.

Prof Anissa Widjaja, from Duke-NUS Medical School, said: “Although our work was done in mice, we hope that these findings will be highly relevant to human health, given that we have seen similar effects in studies of human cells and tissues.

“This research is an important step toward better understanding ageing and we have demonstrated, in mice, a therapy that could potentially extend healthy ageing.”

Ilaria Bellantuono, professor of musculoskeletal ageing at the University of Sheffield, said: “Overall, the data seems solid, this is another potential therapy targeting a mechanism of ageing, which may benefit frailty.”

However, he said there were still problems, including the lack of evidence in patients and the cost of making such drugs and “it is unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old for the rest of their life”.

Schools and universities across Bangladesh have been shut until further notice after six people were killed in protests over quotas in government jobs.

University students have been holding rallies for days against the system of reserving some public sector jobs for the relatives of war heroes, who fought for the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Some jobs are also reserved for women, ethnic minorities and the disabled.

A third of posts are kept for the family members of those categorised as war heroes. The students argue that the system is discriminatory, and they want recruitment based on merit.

Several cities, including the capital Dhaka, this week witnessed clashes between supporters of the anti-quota movement and their opponents, particularly the student wing of the governing Awami League known as the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL).

Student groups attacked each other with bricks and sticks. Police fired tear gas and used rubber bullets to disperse the clashing groups. Student activists said hundreds of people had been injured in the attacks.

“We blame the BCL members for the violence. They killed the protesters. Police didn’t intervene to save the ordinary students,” Abdullah Shaleheen Oyon, one of the co-ordinators of the anti-quota movement, told the BBC.

Government jobs are highly coveted in Bangladesh because they pay well. In total, more than half of the positions – amounting to hundreds of thousands of jobs – are reserved for certain groups.

Critics say the system unfairly benefits the families of pro-government groups who support Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who won her fourth straight election in January.

Ms Hasina’s government abolished the reservation in 2018, following protests. But a court ordered the authorities to reinstate the quotas in early June, triggering the latest round of protests.

Officials say three people were killed in the southern port city of Chittagong and two in Dhaka, while one student was killed in the northern city of Rangpur by a stray bullet.

Media reports say at least three of those killed were students, though there is no official confirmation yet.

The government blames opposition groups for the violence.

“The student fronts of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP] have infiltrated this anti-quota movement. They are the ones who initiated the violence,” Law Minister Anisul Huq told the BBC.

Bangladesh’s top court suspended the current system last week, but protests are expected to continue until it is permanently removed.

“The case has been listed for hearing on 7 August. Students have been given an opportunity to present their argument in the court,” Mr Huq said.

In a late-night operation on Tuesday, police raided the headquarters of the BNP, the main opposition party, in Dhaka, following the violent clashes.

Senior BNP leader Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said the raid was nothing but a drama and it was a message for the students to return home.

The protests have seen students blocking roads in Dhaka and other major cities, bringing traffic to a halt.

Student leaders said they were angered by recent comments by Ms Hasina who, they say, described those opposed to the job quotas as – a term used for those who allegedly collaborated with the Pakistani army during the 1971 war.

Several student leaders said Ms Hasina had insulted them by comparing them to . The comparison, they said, also encouraged BCL members to attack them.

“They want to suppress our voices through creating a reign of terror in the country. If I don’t protest today, they will beat me another day. That’s why I am on the streets to protest,” Rupaiya Sherstha, a female student at Dhaka University, told the BBC.

But government ministers say Ms Hasina’s comments were misinterpreted, and she did not call the students .

Mohammad Ali Arafat, state minister for information and broadcasting, denied allegations that the student wing of the Awami League triggered the violence.

He said the trouble began after anti-quota students intimidated residents of a hall in Dhaka.

“If there’s chaos on the university campuses, there’s no benefit for the government. We want peace to be maintained,” Mr Arafat told the BBC.

UN Secretary General António Guterres called on the government to “protect the demonstrators against any form of threat or violence”, according to his spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The students have vowed to continue their protests until their demands are met.

The government has strengthened security by deploying the paramilitary, Border Guards Bangladesh, in five main cities, including Dhaka and Chittagong.

More than a week after Hurricane Beryl swept through Texas and left millions without power, nearly 60,000 people in the state still do not have electricity.

The issue is more than an inconvenience, as many in the state have faced a deadly days-long heat wave that claimed its latest victim on Tuesday.

Local news reported that a woman was found dead in her apartment after spending the last eight days in her home without electricity and air conditioning. The heat index in Houston had climbed to 110F (43F) the day her body was discovered.

With the power issue lingering and more than a dozen deaths now linked to the heat, frustrations in Houston have started to boil over – particularly as the forecasts for the coming days warn of high temperatures.

Armed residents living without electricity have reportedly harrassed and threatened workers from CenterPoint Energy, the local energy provider, who have been sent out to restore power.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a statement saying that CentrePoint Energy “has lost the faith and trust of Texans”.

He issued a July 31 deadline for the company to respond to questions about what went wrong and what can be done to mitigate hurricane damage to the electric grid.

On Monday, Lynnae Wilson, a senior CenterPoint vice president told USA Today: “We know the remaining customers are counting on us and are committed to restoring power to all remaining customers able to receive it.”

Texas officials have reported 18 deaths related to Hurricane Beryl. In the Houston area, several were due to heat exposure after losing power, the Associated Press reported, citing the Harris County medical examiner’s office.

The electricity at Emily Schkud’s home, who lives on the north side of Houston with her husband and two children, was finally restored on Tuesday evening.

“It just is quite shocking,” Mrs Schkud told BBC News.

“You would think we’re in a third-world country, to be out of power for nine days.”

Mrs Schkud considers herself “lucky” that she survived Hurricane Beryl’s deadly blow on 8 July.

But life without power was difficult and forced her to live “day-by-day”, Mrs Schkud said. She stayed at a neighbour’s home and in hotels as she waited for word that power would be restored.

“It was very concerning and extremely stressful,” she said, as she felt that her main role as a parent was to ensure her children “are safe and have access to food and water”.

Between the hotels and eating out every meal, she estimated the cost her family incurred could be as high as $10,000 (£7,689).

At its worst, nearly three million people in Texas were without power after Beryl struck, most of them in the Houston area.

Lingering power outages mixed with high temperatures caused a strain on local hospitals that soon became overflowed.

Churches and libraries were converted into cooling centres. Houston’s football stadium became a “transitional facility” for hospitals at capacity.

Roughly 150 “seasonal relief” spaces were open in the Houston area on Wednesday, as hot summer temperatures show no signs of cooling.

Temperatures in the area are supposed to remain high through the weekend, peaking at or above 90F (32C).

Climate scientists say that average daily temperatures globally have increased, making hotter days more likely and more intense.

The cause is often linked to human-led climate change.

Dozens of deaths related to the heat have been reported in the US in the past two weeks, including in states like Oregon that are known for their mild climates.

Ohio Senator JD Vance, Donald Trump’s newly minted running mate, will make his national debut on Wednesday as he delivers a prime-time address on the third day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

At 39, the junior senator and former venture capitalist is the first millennial to join a major party ticket, a youthful contrast to the 78-year-old Trump and the 81-year-old incumbent president, Joe Biden.

As Trump’s running mate, Mr Vance is an early favourite for the party’s 2028 Republican presidential nomination, but he remains politically unknown to most Americans and many in the party.

Donald Trump Jr, the former president’s son and a close friend of Mr Vance, is expected to speak before Mr Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, introduces the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

As Mr Vance steps into the national spotlight, here are three things to look out for in his speech.

Mr Vance is expected to highlight his blue-collar background and his family roots in Appalachia as well as Middletown, Ohio, which inspired him to write his 2016 bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

The book – which focuses on his impoverished upbringing with a drug-addicted mother in southern Ohio, enlisting as a US Marine and later attending Yale Law School – was published as Trump was elected to the White House. Later adapted into an Oscar-nominated film, it was upheld as a glimpse into understanding the white working-class voters that helped fuel Trump’s rise.

Republicans are hoping Mr Vance’s background will appeal to those voters, especially in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three battleground states that were key to Trump’s 2016 coalition and will be critical for a White House victory in November.

Mr Vance is also expected to highlight his military background. The former Marine, who was deployed to Iraq for six months in 2005, is the first veteran – and the first post-9/11 veteran – to be named to a major party ticket since John McCain in 2008.

Mr Vance’s debut follows appearances by former Trump rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who offered their full support for the former president on Tuesday after challenging his candidacy during the Republican primary.

Republicans have sought to close ranks around Trump while Democrats remain divided over whether to proceed with President Biden at the top of their ticket.

The Ohio senator is expected to strike a similar tone of unity, which Trump has said would be an underlying theme of the convention in the wake of an attempt on his life at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Authorities have yet to determine the motive of the attacker, who was killed at the scene.

In the hours after the shooting, Mr Vance laid blame on President Biden as the country was still learning about the events that unfolded.

“Today is not just some isolated incident,” Mr Vance wrote on the platform X, formerly Twitter.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Former Republican Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a vocal critic of Trump who has endorsed Joe Biden, said Mr Vance’s response “should absolutely disqualify” him from the vice-presidential nomination.

Mr Vance is expected to emphasise the message of national unity that his running mate has promised, but so far speakers at the convention have continued heated attacks on the Biden administration and Democrats.

Wednesday’s convention theme, “Make America Strong Once Again,” is expected to focus on US foreign policy, highlighting the former president’s “America First” isolationist policies that reshaped US relationships on the world stage.

Mr Vance has been sharply critical of the Biden administration’s foreign policy on issues including the US withdrawal in Afghanistan, the Israel-Gaza war, southern border security and support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

The nomination of Mr Vance has stoked fears in Europe over the implications of a second Trump presidency for both the Nato alliance and continued US military and financial aid for Ukraine.

The Ohio senator told the Munich Security Conference in February that European countries needed to shoulder a bigger burden so the US could pivot to East Asia against a rising China.

He played a key role in delaying the $60bn (£46bn) military aid package from Washington earlier this year and has suggested that Ukraine should broker a peace deal with Russia, even if that means giving up territory.

But the Republican party remains divided over support for Ukraine and it’s unclear if Mr Vance’s scepticism of Ukraine aid will influence Trump.

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, traveled to Milwaukee on Tuesday to meet with Trump on continued aid. Following the meeting, he posted on X that he had “no doubt that [Trump] will be strong and decisive in supporting that country and defending democracy”.

Concerns about a second Trump presidency rattled stock markets after Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek that Taiwan should have to pay for its own defense.

In response to a question on whether he would defend Taiwan against China, which sees the self-governing island as a breakaway province, the former president said: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.”

He also said Taiwan, which is critical to the global chipmaking industry, “took 100% of our chip industry”, sending semiconductor stocks tumbling on Wednesday.

From causing seismic activity at Harry Styles concerts to Swifties boosting the UK economy during the Eras Tour, the power of teenage female pop fans shouldn’t be underestimated.

For playwright Yve Blake, the danger of dismissing these youngsters is the inspiration behind her new comedy musical Fangirls.

Following the life of 14-year-old Edna, who is obsessed with a boy band resembling One Direction, Fangirls explores “what it means to love something without apology”.

The idea came to Blake in 2015 after she witnessed a pivotal moment in the lives of thousands of teenage girls – Zayn Malik left One Direction.

Despondent and heartbroken fans across the world were shown weeping inconsolably – but for Blake, something even more interesting caught her eye.

“People started calling these young girls crazy, hysterical and psycho,” the writer explains. “I asked myself the question – would the same words be used to describe male football fans?

“The girls screaming at the top of their lungs at Taylor Swift concerts are cringe, but men running around with their tops off and fist pumping the air because England scored a goal are just supporting their country.

“It seems like there’s definitely a double standard there.”

But the musical doesn’t just praise fangirls.

“It’s a lot more nuanced than that,” Blake explains. “We look at the dark side of worshipping celebrities as well as praising the decision for girls to make an empowered choice to love something free of judgement.

“I’d describe it as a glittery trojan horse.”

The hit musical premiered in 2019 in Blake’s home country, Australia, and has been met with critical acclaim across three runs.

Its stint at the Sydney Opera House was awarded five stars by Time Out, which said “it deals with the exquisite pain of being a teenager, of having little agency and lesser respect from the world around you”.

In a four-star review, the Guardian called it “witty and agile” and said it “balances serious social reflections with a loving twinkle in its eye”.

Blake says the show “retains its fearlessness, cheekiness and naughtiness from Australia, but the screws have really been tightened”.

She is both excited and nervous about bringing the show to the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith, west London.

“Brits are definitely a lot more repressed than Aussies, so I don’t know if they can match the energy of previous runs,” Blake says.

At one point in the show, the stage is transformed into a concert venue and audience participation is encouraged.

“Theatre is so polite normally, but Fangirls is about unleashing your feral excitement and screaming like you’re 14 again.”

In Australia, Blake had no problem getting the audience involved – she tells the BBC that an older lady in the front row accidentally flashed the actors because she “was so in the moment and excitedly dancing”.

Playing the lead role of Edna is Jasmine Elcock, who got a golden buzzer on Britain’s Got Talent in 2016.

The singer was 14 when she reached the talent show final, and this is her first major acting role.

“I’m excited for people to be able to see the world through the eyes of a young girl,” Elcock says.

As a self-proclaimed fangirl, Elcock can relate to the feelings and emotions that the play delves into.

“I am a mega fangirl and at the moment I am absolutely obsessed with Little Simz. I can spend hours in my bedroom dancing and singing along to her,” she says.

In comparison, writer Blake explains she was a “victim of my own cringe growing up”.

“I was socially embarrassed to be a fangirl so I definitely repressed it as a teenager,” she says.

“As an adult that’s what made me interested in exploring this topic – I woke up to the fact that my cringe was a symptom of internalised misogyny because it’s only the things that teenage girls like that are ever called cringeworthy.”

It seems that for Blake, this play is a way for her to tell her younger self, and all teenage girls out that, that it’s OK to let lose and embrace being a fangirl.

Germany’s reputation for super-efficiency has suffered a body blow.

As football fans poured in and out of cities across the country for Euro 2024, they discovered the trains weren’t as good as they thought.

One supporters’ group even said services were better when Russia hosted the World Cup.

Fans praised “sensational” pricing deals which, for ticket holders, included discounted or even free local travel as part of a sustainability drive.

But Thomas Concannon from the Football Supporters’ Association complained: “We were in constant contact with fans who were experiencing problems.”

He believes surprise at the situation was partly borne out of a “pre-conceived reputation about Germany that the trains run on time”.

Lindsey and Darren Ramskill from Goole in East Yorkshire went to six out of England’s seven matches and experienced packed trains, stop-start services and poor communication.

“I’m not moaning about British trains anymore,” said Lindsey. “Ours are better.”

Another football supporter from the neighbouring Netherlands, who travels a lot for his work as a motivational speaker, was less shocked.

“If I can, I try to avoid Germany now because there are always problems,” said Wiebe Wakker.

After the England v Netherlands semi-final, his delayed journey out of Dortmund included an “unbearably hot” carriage with no functioning air conditioning.

“Everyone was sweating,” he said. It was so “horrible” he got off and took a taxi the rest of the way with some England supporters.

Within Germany there’s been exasperation with the Deutsche Bahn national rail operator for years.

Just 64% cent of long-distance trains ran on time in 2023. That compares with a declining level of punctuality in Great Britain of 67.8% trains arriving on schedule in the year to March 2023.

In Germany, calls for desperately needed investment are often heard as part of a wider debate about how to boost a flagging economy.

German transport lobby group Allianz pro Schiene (pro-Rail alliance) compared spending per person on railway infrastructure across 14 European countries including the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

It found Germany was 10th last year at €115 (£97) per person, while the UK was sixth and Luxembourg topped the group with €512 per head.

For Germans it is no surprise that well-used motto “Vorsprung durch Technik” (Headstart through Technology) belies a less potent, more sluggish, picture.

Europe’s largest economy has for years quite publicly struggled with how to modernise.

Analysts do not just blame a lack of investment but a failure to digitise the economy married with tedious red tape.

Rules and paperwork can suck up valuable time for both businesses and people.

One example, in Berlin, is that you are legally required to make an in-person appointment to register a new home address within two weeks.

But good luck getting one.

The local government website offers no available appointments at all on Wedneday, right through to mid-September.

Both private and public sectors have seen under-investment for years, says Professor Hubertus Bardt from the German Economic Institute (IW).

Railways have undergone a “here and there” approach to repairs, he says, which “causes delays and doesn’t really solve the problems”.

More major works are now getting going such as the five-month mega-renewal on the Frankfurt-to-Mannheim line.

But Professor Bardt believes a “huge programme” of broader spending is needed which looks well beyond the annual budgets that can cause political agony for Germany’s ruling coalition.

“We have thousands of bridges that have to be renovated or rebuilt,” he says. The problem is primarily in western Germany which is creaking under infrastructure built in the sixties and seventies, while the east saw fresh investment after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

The overall view for Germany is worrying, as economic growth forecasts continue to put it at the bottom of the pile when compared with other G7 major economies.

It’s projected to grow by just 0.2% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Efficiency, unrivalled industry and punctuality are labels that have stubbornly stuck to Germany’s reputation abroad but have long worn thin at home.

As the war in Gaza grinds on, there are growing fears another Middle East war may erupt – with devastating consequences for the region, and beyond.

Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah (backed by Iran) have been trading fire across their shared border for the past nine months. If this conflict escalates to all-out war, it could dwarf the destruction in Gaza, draw in Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, spread embers around the Middle East and embroil the US. Iran itself could intervene directly.

The United Nations has warned of a “catastrophe beyond imagination”.

For now, a low-level war simmers in the summer heat, along a 120km (75 mile) stretch of border. One spark here could set the Middle East alight.

Over the lapping of the waves, and the thwack thwack of paddle games on the beach, a sound cuts through – a sudden deep boom.

Soon smoke billows from a hillside in the distance after an Israeli strike.

Around the pool in a resort hotel, a few sunbathers stand briefly to scan the horizon.

Others don’t move a tanned limb.

Explosions are part of the sound of summer 2024 in the ancient Lebanese city of Tyre, as Hezbollah and Israel exchange fire across the border 25 kilometres (15 miles) away.

“Another day, another bomb,” says Roland, 49, with a shrug, as he relaxes on a lilo. He lives abroad but is back home on holiday.

“We got used to it somehow over the months,” says his friend Mustafa, 39, “though children are still a little bit scared.” He nods towards his daughter Miral, 7, who is dripping wet from the pool.

“When she hears an explosion, she always asks, ‘will there be a bomb now?’” he says.

Earlier this month, there was a massive blast in his neighbourhood in Tyre, as his family of four were having a meal. Israel had assassinated a senior Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Nimah Nasser.

“We heard the noise,” Mustafa says, “and we carried on eating.”

But the sunbathers on the beach in Tyre may be on borrowed time. This city will be in the firing line in the event of all-out war, along with the rest of southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold.

We are now at the water’s edge of a potentially devastating war which both sides say they don’t want. Iran doesn’t seem to want it either.

How did we get here?

On October 8th last year – one day after Hamas gunmen stormed out of Gaza and killed about 1,200 Israelis as well as taking 251 others hostage – Hezbollah joined in, firing at Israeli targets from Lebanon.

The Shia Islamist armed group said it was acting in support of Gaza.

Soon Israel was firing back.

Hezbollah, which is also a political party, is the most powerful force in Lebanon.

Like Hamas, it is classed as a terrorist organisation by many countries, including the UK and the US.

But unlike Hamas, Hezbollah has the firepower to seriously threaten Israel.

It is believed to have an arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets and missiles – some precision-guided – capable of inflicting heavy damage around the country.

• What is Hezbollah in Lebanon and will it go to war with Israel?

Put simply Hezbollah – its English translation, the Party of God – has more arms than many countries.

Its backer Iran – which denies Israel’s right to exist – is happy to train and fund the enemies of the Jewish state.

The conflict has been heating up, with thousands of cross-border strikes.

Some countries have already told their nationals to leave Lebanon urgently, including Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and Saudi Arabia. The UK has advised against all travel to the country and is urging Britons who are here to leave – while they still can.

So far, both sides are mainly striking military targets, close to the border – staying within familiar red lines.

But here on the Lebanese side, we have seen destruction in civilian areas with scorched fields, flattened houses and abandoned villages.

And the current tit-for-tat has already driven tens of thousands from their homes – more than 90,000 in Lebanon and about 60,000 in Israel.

Israeli officials say 33 people have been killed so far in Hezbollah attacks, mostly soldiers.

Lebanon’s losses are far higher at 466, according to the Ministry of Health here. Most of the dead were fighters.

Sally Skaiki was not.

“I never called her Sally,” says her father Hussein Abdul Hassan Skaiki. “I always called her ‘my life’ – she was everything for me.”

“She was the only girl in the house, and we spoiled her, me and her three brothers.”

Sally, 25, was a volunteer paramedic. She was killed by an Israeli strike after sunset on 14 June as she stood in the doorway of her building.

Her father wears the black of mourning, and the green scarf of the Shia Amal movement, which is allied to Hezbollah.

We meet in his village of Deir Qanoun En-Naher, 30km (18 miles) from the border. The main road is dotted with sun-bleached posters of fighters killed in battle against Israel – some in recent months, others back in 2006 when the two sides last went to war.

In that conflict, Hezbollah fought Israel to a standstill but at huge cost to Lebanon and its people. There was massive destruction, and more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed – according to official figures – along with an unconfirmed number of Hezbollah fighters.

Israel’s death toll was 160, according to the government, most of them soldiers.

By Hussein’s side there is a large poster of Sally, in her headscarf and paramedic uniform. He speaks of his daughter with pride and with anguish.

“She loved to help people,” he says. “Any problem that happened, she rushed there. She was well-loved in the village. She always had a smile on her face.”

As we speak there is a loud boom which rattles the windows.

Hussein says it is a normal, daily occurrence.

“Since a long time, Israel killed our people here,” he says.

“We can’t forgive them. There is no hope of peace with them.”

This time, there is no death or destruction. Instead, Israeli warplanes are breaking the sound barrier to spread fear.

And, since October, Israel has been spreading something else in southern Lebanon – choking, searing clumps of white phosphorus, contained in munitions.

The chemical substance ignites immediately on contact with oxygen. It sticks to skin and clothing and can burn through bone, according to the World Health Organization.

Moussa al-Moussa – a farmer stooped by his 77 years – knows only too well.

He says Israel fired white phosphorous shells at his land in the village of al-Bustan every day for over a month, robbing him of breath, and his livelihood.

“I had my scarf on, and I wrapped it around my mouth and nose until I was brought to the hospital,” he tells me, gesturing to the red and white keffiyeh – the traditional Arab scarf – on his head.

“We didn’t have any masks. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see a metre in front of me. And if you touch a fragment a week later it will ignite and burn again.”

The international campaign group, Human Rights Watch, has verified the use of white phosphorus over several populated areas in southern Lebanon, including al-Bustan.

It says Israel’s use of white phosphorus is “unlawfully indiscriminate in populated areas”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dispute this, saying the use of white phosphorus shells to create a smokescreen “is lawful under international law”. It says these shells are not used in densely populated areas “with certain exceptions”.

Like many farmers along the border, Moussa fears Israel has poisoned his tobacco crop and his olive groves.

“White phosphorous burns the ground, it burns people and the crops and buildings,” he says.

Even if he can return home, he is afraid to bring in a harvest in case it harms his family or his buyers.

He lives in limbo – in classroom 4B of a vocational school in Tyre. About 30 families who fled the border area are sheltering in the building. Washing is strung across the school yard. A lone little boy races up and down the empty corridors on a bicycle.

When I ask Moussa how many wars he has seen, he begins to laugh.

“We spent our lives in wars,” he says. “Only God knows if another one is coming.”

As one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders, Mohammed Nimah Nasser, was a wanted man. He fought Israel in 2006, and before, and went on to fight in Syria and Iraq. In recent months he “planned, led and supervised many military operations against the Israeli enemy”, according to Hezbollah.

Israel tracked him down in Tyre on 3 July. Death came from the sky in broad daylight, with an air strike which turned his car into a fireball.

In the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut, he was given a hero’s funeral, or rather a “martyr’s” one.

The event was carefully choreographed and strictly segregated – men in one area, women in another – including the press.

His coffin, draped in the yellow flag of Hezbollah, was carried by pall bearers in camouflage uniforms and red berets. Many more fighters stood to attention, lines deep. There was a brass band in spotless white uniforms, if not in perfect harmony.

It had the feel of a state funeral – in a country that lacks a functioning state.

Lebanon has no president, a caretaker government and a shattered economy. It is carved up by sect, and hollowed out by corruption, its citizens left to fend for themselves. Many Lebanese are weary. The last thing they want is another war.

But as the funeral prayers concluded, the talk among mourners was of “martyrdom” not death, and of readiness for war, if it comes.

Hassan Hamieh, a 35-year-old nurse, told us he would fight. “We are not afraid,” he said.

“In fact, we are longing for an all-out war. Martyrdom is the shortest path to God. Young or old, we will all take part in this war, if it is forced upon us.”

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has stressed the armed group is ready, but not eager, for war. He says if there is a ceasefire agreed in Gaza, Hezbollah will cease fire too, immediately.

Will that satisfy Israel? Maybe not.

It sees Hezbollah as a permanent threat too close for comfort. At the very least, it wants its heavily armed enemy to pull back from the border.

There have been plenty of bellicose threats. Israel’s Education Minister, Yoav Kish, said Lebanon would be “annihilated”. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant chimed in, saying the country would be returned “to the stone age”.

As the attacks and counter attacks continue, families are destroyed. This month parents have been ripped from children, and children from parents.

An Israeli couple were killed in their car by Hezbollah rockets as they headed for home in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in Syria. They left behind three teenage children.

And in southern Lebanon three children were killed in an Israeli strike earlier this week. They were aged between four and eight, and their parents were Syrian farm workers.

The IDF approved “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon” a month ago.

For now, no tanks are rolling over the border. There has been no political decision to attack. Israel is still waging war in Gaza and fighting on two fronts could overstretch the military.

But without a diplomatic solution between Israel and Hezbollah – two old enemies – all-out war may be coming, if not now, then later.

An ex-police officer who claims to save children from human traffickers has faked stories to raise money for his charity, the BBC has discovered.

Adam Whittington, founder of Project Rescue Children (PRC) says he has helped more than 700 children in countries including Uganda, Kenya and The Gambia.

But BBC File on 4 has found that some of these children have never been trafficked, and that funds raised – sometimes with the help of celebrity supporters – have not always reached children in need.

PRC has described our allegations that it does not support children as being “completely without merit, misleading and defamatory”.

Our investigation shows Mr Whittington, a British-Australian citizen, has misled donors in a variety of ways – including by raising funds for a baby supposedly rescued from people traffickers, who has actually been with her mother all along. The mother, who lives in poverty, says she and her daughter have never received any money from PRC.

Mr Whittington started working in child rescue two decades ago, after leaving the Metropolitan Police.

He set up a company retrieving children taken abroad by a parent following custody disputes, but later switched his attention to trafficked or abused children.

Both his and PRC’s social media pages have accumulated 1.5 million followers and attracted celebrity support, thanks to their shocking and sometimes disturbing content.

Sam Faiers from ITV’s The Only Way is Essex became a PRC ambassador, and last September was taken to Uganda to meet orphaned and destitute children.

While there, she appealed to her millions of fans to donate and ended up raising £137,000 ($175,000) to build a rescue centre and cover its initial running costs.

It was this fundraising drive that gave me the first real sense that something was amiss.

In the weeks after Sam Faiers’ total was announced, allegations against PRC began popping up on social media, with former ambassadors and directors alleging financial mismanagement and suggesting stories about children were being fabricated.

Less than half of the money – £58,000 ($74,000) – that donors believed would fund the construction and running costs of the proposed rescue centre, was sent to PRC’s Ugandan partner organisation, Make a Child Smile.

Its founder, Alexander Ssembatya, who has apologised to donors, told the BBC he believed the rest of the money had been “eaten by Adam Whittington and PRC”. Construction work was on hold because of a lack of funds, he added.

Sam Faiers told the BBC she was “deeply appalled” and “heartbroken” to learn that not all the funds raised had reached the children and urged Mr Whittington to “do the right thing and release the remainder of the funds immediately to where they are so desperately needed”.

PRC said the money provided was sufficient to complete construction of the rescue centre, and told the BBC it had now withdrawn from the project, accusing Mr Ssembatya of refusing to sign a contract and mismanaging funds.

It said the remaining money had been spent on other children in Uganda and the Philippines.

File on 4: The Child Rescue Con

Charity claims to save children from trafficking and abuse but File on 4 has found that unsuspecting children are being used as props and the rescue centres have no children.

Listen on BBC Sounds now, or on Radio 4 (Tuesday 16 July at 20:00 and Wednesday 17 July at 11:00)

Watch the story on BBC iPlayer, or on the BBC News channel (Saturday 20 July at 13:30)

Although efforts to establish a rescue centre in Uganda fell flat, PRC already claimed to have operations up and running in other African countries, including Kenya.

Since 2020, Mr Whittington has told detailed and distressing stories about the children he has allegedly supported at PRC’s Kenya rescue centre – including siblings who had watched their parents being butchered by traffickers.

Within weeks of launching a sponsorship programme, PRC announced that all 26 Kenyan children pictured on its website had been sponsored.

The rescue centre is in a remote location on the outskirts of the city of Kisumu, which made verifying its existence difficult.

So in April 2024, I travelled with a BBC team, escorted by a police officer, and found the property – supposedly run by a woman known as Mama Jane.

I discovered Mama Jane was an elderly lady called Jane Gori, who lived in the house with her husband. We didn’t find any children, rescued or otherwise.

But I did find out that her son, Kupa Gori, was PRC’s director in Kenya and he had brought Mr Whittington to visit her home.

Mr Whittington uses pictures of improvement work PRC has funded at Mrs Gori’s house to convince donors he is running a rescue centre. Mrs Gori said she had no idea that her name, her house and her photograph were being used by PRC.

Nearby, I met a farmer called Joseph, whose two sons and a granddaughter have featured on the PRC website, described as orphaned, homeless, or victims of trafficking or exploitation. But none of this is true.

Not long after the photographs were taken in 2020, Joseph’s son Eugene died. But his picture remained online until at least February this year. According to PRC’s website, people continued to sponsor him.

Joseph says he has never received any money from PRC, adding: “It pains my heart that someone is using the photos of my child for money we did not get personally.”

When we put our findings to PRC, it told us that it stands by its claim that Jane Gori’s home is a PRC rescue centre that cares for children. It said that all funds for work carried out there were submitted to the Australian Charity Commission – where it was registered.

It did not respond to our question about the misuse of photographs of Joseph’s family.

The next case of deception I uncovered started in 2022, when Mr Whittington claimed to have carried out a dramatic rescue mission – saving a newborn baby from the clutches of traffickers in a busy marketplace in The Gambia.

On the morning of 17 December, his team chased two men who dropped a basket as they ran, he said. Inside was a newborn baby, whom he named Mireya. Mr Whittington posted a picture of her wrapped in a gold-coloured blanket.

To give the story further credibility he told his followers he had adopted the baby and said she was being looked after at PRC’s rescue centre in The Gambia.

He told his UK director Alex Betts the same story and asked her to adopt the child with him.

Ms Betts, an online influencer, hoped to bring the baby back to the UK. An online fundraising campaign was launched, along with a sponsorship programme.

In March 2023, Ms Betts visited the girl she thought was Mireya and took photos and videos of herself playing with a beautiful baby girl. The footage went viral – seen by more than 40 million people.

After Ms Betts arrived back in the UK, Mr Whittington asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement that would have prevented her saying anything publicly about PRC. She did not understand why and raised concerns.

Then PRC terminated her contract on the grounds, it said, that she was “exploiting children for social media gain”. Ms Betts stopped receiving photo and video updates about Mireya and Mr Whittington attacked her online, falsely branding her a drug addict and alleging, again falsely, that a warrant had been issued for her arrest in The Gambia.

Ms Betts says she was recruited to PRC to “bring social media attention to the organisation”. She rejects the claims against her and says she has always acted “with honest and pure intentions”.

When Ms Betts decided to google “Gambia newborn baby” she discovered the photograph of the baby in a gold blanket was of another child. It had been posted on a maternity unit’s social media page two years before Mireya’s “rescue”.

PRC told us a member of staff had misguidedly used this image because they didn’t want to reveal Mireya’s identity, and that the PRC board had subsequently apologised publicly for any confusion.

The BBC has found no evidence that the marketplace rescue ever happened. But Ms Betts had met a baby – so who was the child?

In May 2024, a year after Ms Betts had posted her viral video, we travelled to The Gambia. Our first stop was the location of PRC’s supposed rescue centre.

But, just as we had found in Kenya, it was not a rescue centre and no rescued children had ever lived there. The man who owned the property told us it was just a family home.

His name was David Bass, the father of Ebou Bass, who had been recruited as PRC’s director in The Gambia. He told us that PRC fixed his roof and installed a fresh water supply. Again, Mr Whittington posted images of this construction work on social media and the PRC website to support his claim to be running a rescue centre.

Mr Bass senior told us he did not know the work on his home had been funded with money raised for the renovation of a rescue centre.

We were told the baby known as Mireya lived in a nearby village. Our search took us to a small compound, where we saw a toddler we recognised immediately from Ms Betts’ videos.

The child’s arms were covered in sores caused by a bacterial skin infection, as her mother couldn’t afford the medication she needed.

She told us her baby had been born and raised in the village and that she had been approached by Ebou Bass when her daughter was three months old. He had told her there were people who wanted to sponsor her baby, she said, so she had allowed him to take the child to meet Ms Betts.

She was amazed to hear the stories being told about her daughter online. She said she had never received any money but had been given some groceries on a few occasions.

Ebou Bass, who is no longer PRC’s director in The Gambia, acknowledged that Mireya’s story was false and that the rescue centre was his family’s home. When challenged, he said it was Mr Whittington’s idea to say they had rescued a baby from traffickers but that he had gone along with it because the child they had used as a prop was very poor and he had hoped she would receive financial help.

Lamin Fatty, from a Gambian organisation called the Child Protection Alliance, is now working with the country’s authorities to investigate Mr Whittington and PRC. He says multiple laws may have been broken in this incident.

PRC insists Mireya’s story is true and told us she was rescued by PRC in collaboration with the Gambian authorities. It has invited the BBC to carry out a DNA test on the child we found. It maintains the Bass home is a PRC rescue centre and that Mireya wasn’t at the property because she was overseas visiting relatives.

Adam Whittington served in the Australian Army before joining the Metropolitan Police in 2001, where he worked for at least five years.

We have not been able to find out what has happened to all the money raised for PRC or where it is being spent – Mr Whittington has set up companies and charities in multiple countries, many of which have never filed any detailed accounts.

But we do know some donations haven’t reached their intended targets.

The BBC has found that, in 2022, the UK’s Charity Commission rejected an application to register PRC as it had not demonstrated it was exclusively charitable and had failed to respond to what the commission described as “significant issues” with its application.

Mr Whittington also has other charitable organisations registered in The Gambia, Kenya, Ukraine and the Philippines.

PRC was a registered charity in Australia until we told the Australian Charity Commission about our investigation. Its charitable status has now been revoked.

Adam Whittington is currently living in Russia. He didn’t respond to our request for an interview.

Since we started our investigation, some content has been removed from PRC’s website and Mr Whittington has been banned from Instagram. He instructed solicitors in Kenya to block our investigation from being broadcast, though they have not succeeded. He has launched an online campaign against the BBC, calling me a “rogue journalist”.

On his remaining social media I can see he is currently travelling back and forth to the Philippines – raising money for a rescue centre and claiming to rescue children. And he says he will soon be expanding PRC into South Africa.

In 2015 Australia’s multi-billion-dollar greyhound racing industry vowed it would clean up its act.

A damning investigation at the time had exposed the preventable deaths of as many as 17,000 young dogs a year – revelations so shocking the government of the day rushed to implement an ultimately short-lived ban.

Almost a decade later, Greyhound Racing New South Wales (GRNSW) – the epicentre of the sport in the country – is back in the spotlight for alleged abuse, due to the work of one whistleblower.

In an explosive report made public by lawmakers, the organisation’s former chief veterinarian has described the industry as a hotbed of “exploitation and suffering”, claiming that dogs are being raced at “barbaric” rates, euthanised without cause, or left to rot in metal cages when they can no longer compete.

Executive heads are rolling, and an inquiry, which GRNSW says it “welcomes”, has been announced to investigate the accusations, as calls from critics to have greyhound racing outlawed grow louder.

But despite evidence of slipping public support, the state’s premier has said he won’t shut down the sport, prompting a standoff with those calling for that to happen.

“The reality is the greyhound racing industry cannot exist without systemic animal cruelty,” says NSW Animal Justice MP Emma Hurst.

“It will be shut down – it’s just a matter of when.”

Australia has been touted as the world’s largest commercial greyhound racing industry – with roughly 60 tracks in operation. New Zealand, the US, the UK and Ireland are also home to markets, but none operate at the same velocity.

Thanks to online betting, Australia’s industry has seen rising profits in recent years, turning over A$8.3bn ($5.6bn; £4.3bn) in 2023 – with 75% of the money coming from Victoria and New South Wales (NSW), according to the greyhound protection organisation GREY2K.

The spark that ignited the current outcry over the sport’s practices was a “handover” letter, from GRNSW’s Chief Veterinary Officer Alex Brittan to his incoming replacement – his final act in a job that by his own account, had nearly broken him.

The 54-page document contains a litany of accusations – including claims that GRNSW had worked with vets “unaccepting of modern medicine” who were prone to euthanising dogs without cause, and that the company’s leadership was directing staff to treat animal welfare groups “as the enemy”.

Within hours of Mr Brittan’s letter becoming public, the chief of GRNSW Rob Macaulay had resigned and the rest of the company’s board is now fighting for their survival.

NSW’s Gaming and Racing Minister David Harris has announced an inquiry into Mr Brittan’s claims which will be led by the industry’s regulator – something which GRNSW has been quick to embrace.

“We welcome the opportunity for an external examination of our processes and record,” its acting CEO Wayne Billett wrote in a statement. And a spokesperson for GRNSW told the BBC that the organisation takes concerns related to animal welfare “very seriously”.

But Mr Brittan’s account differs.

In his letter he described witnessing “cases of extreme distress” in which competing dogs had “recent pools of blood” around them after ripping off their toenails while “clawing” at their caged doors.

He also called out a flurry of “preventable” on-track deaths, due to greyhounds running into poles with “no padding on them” and questioned the figures GRNSW had put forward concerning how many retired dogs it had found homes for – a practice which gives the sport its social licence to operate.

Mr Brittan says that of the roughly 4,200 dogs entering the industry each year, only 1,600 were making it out and finding owners, with the rest living out their days in “industrial kennels”.

Further – he alleged that a company programme which had been set up to export retired greyhounds to the US, so that they could find homes there, had an alarming lack of oversight.

To prove his point, he told the story of Carey – a dog who died at Sydney airport after confusing its travelling box with a racer’s starter box and running into a fence at full speed when the door opened.

NSW’s premier Chris Minns said he would examine all the allegations put forward by Mr Brittan, but quickly ruled out a blanket ban on greyhound racing in the state.

“We’re not going to shut down the industry, but we do take this report seriously,” he told reporters last week.

And Mr Harris reiterated that the government would make sure the industry was held to “the highest standards of animal welfare and integrity” once the new investigation had concluded.

But given GRNSW has weathered multiple crises – including a government-backed inquiry in 2016 which delivered findings of “systemic animal cruelty” and mass killings – advocates are sceptical another inquiry will yield results.

“The greyhound racing industry was already given a chance to clean up its act eight years ago, and it’s monumentally failed,” Ms Hurst told the BBC.

Mr Brittan has also challenged the impartiality of the current investigation – saying it should be done by an external source, rather than the industry’s own regulator.

And he questioned why an all-out ban had been taken off the table already.

“It could be perceived as concerning that the premier and gaming minister have stated that the outcome of the inquiry is a foregone conclusion and that, irrespective of any findings, all bets are on, and the gambling will continue,” he said, according to the Guardian.

Around the world, the prominence and popularity of dog-racing for sport has been in decline.

In the US for example – which used to be one of the sport’s largest industries – betting on greyhounds has been outlawed in all but a handful of states, and only two active tracks remain, both in West Virginia.

Advocates like Ms Hurst argue that the practice endures in Australia not because of community fanfare, but gambling profits.

The last time the industry was in the spotlight in 2016, over 80% of people polled by the country’s national broadcaster said they wanted to see it shut down.

And in recent years, it has been outlawed in the Australian Capital Territory, while petitions calling for other jurisdictions to follow suit have made their way to several state parliaments.

GRNSW says it has no plans to go anywhere – and that racing, which first came to the nation’s shores in the late 1800s, can be done “sustainably”.

But Ms Hurst, and others calling for an end to the sport, say that the latest spate of allegations present a unique “opportunity” to “listen to the community and ban this cruel industry”.

In a sign of the seismic political changes in South Africa, John Hlophe, a once-celebrated judge whose career ended ignominiously with his impeachment just five months ago, has been parachuted into parliament to lead the official opposition.

Dr Hlophe is expected to be in full flight on Friday, when he will open the debate in response to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech on Thursday, setting out his new coalition government’s plans to tackle South Africa’s myriad problems – including an unemployment rate of 32%, high levels of crime, deteriorating infrastructure, and land ownership in a nation bedevilled by racial inequality.

“Watch this pace. See him perform on Friday,” Dr Hlophe’s lawyer Barnabas Xulu told the BBC.

Dr Hlophe’s dramatic fall as a judge – and meteoric rise as a politician – can both be traced to former President Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s most polarising politician who defied the odds by making his own stunning comeback in the 29 May general election.

Less than three years after he became the first South African president to be jailed for an offence – contempt of court – Mr Zuma led his newly formed party, uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation) into third spot in the election.

But as he was barred him from taking up his seat in parliament because of the 15-month jail sentence he had received, Mr Zuma turned to Dr Hlophe to take up the all-important post of Leader of the Opposition.

The post comes with an annual salary of just under 1.7m rand ($94,000; £73,000), which Dr Hlophe is likely to appreciate after reportedly losing his judge’s pension because of his impeachment for gross misconduct.

MK has become the official opposition because the second-biggest party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has joined President Ramaphosa’s coalition government after his African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority in the election for the first time since the end of the racist system of apartheid in 1994.

Born in 1959, Dr Hlophe, who grew up as a child labourer in a family where his mother was a domestic worker and gardener and his father a security guard and traditional healer, went on to study law locally and abroad, acquiring a PhD from the UK’s prestigious University of Cambridge.

As a lawyer in South Africa, he took part in court battles challenging the draconian laws of the apartheid regime, before forging a career as an academic, returning to Cambridge as a Roman law tutor in 1987.

Despite this, Dr Hlophe is a fierce advocate for the “Africanisation” of South Africa’s legal system, saying it was “imposed on us” by colonisers, and which “we have mastered, by the way, even better than them” – a comment he made in an address to the African Legal Professionals Association in the coastal city of Durban soon after he joined MK in June.

“African law has never been allowed to develop and take its rightful place,” he added.

Dr Hlophe returned to the theme after being sworn in as an MP, saying MK was not “apologetic in our call for the law to be Africanised”.

“By that, we mean we bring back the laws that used to govern the African people. One of those laws is this: the land in Africa can never be the subject of private ownership. The land belongs to the nation,” he said.

Some critics saw Mr Zuma’s decision to appoint him as MK’s parliamentary leader as returning a political favour.

His impeachment in February ended a long-running saga that started in 2008 when two judges of South Africa’s highest court sent shockwaves through legal and political circles by accusing him of trying to improperly influence them to rule in favour of Mr Zuma in a corruption-related case that the controversial politician was fighting at the time.

Dr Hlophe denied the charges, with Mr Xulu telling the BBC that he simply had a “casual conversation” with the two judges about “legal principles” in what was a “novel” case – something that judges often do among themselves.

Mr Xulu said that with the state no longer prepared to pay his legal bills, Dr Hlophe decided to drop the battle to clear his name in favour of a career in politics, joining MK as it was his “ideal” political home.

“He was not going to sit at home and be idle,” Mr Xulu said.

“He’ll continue the fight for justice and transformation in a different platform, the National Assembly, where he will have more freedom, more protection,” Mr Xulu added.

Dr Hlophe’s impeachment marked a sad end to his judicial career, as he was once among the cream of South Africa’s judges, or, as constitutional law expert Narnia Bohler-Muller put it in The Conversation magazine, he was “both brilliant and controversial, on and off the bench”.

At the age of 35, in 1995, just a year after the end of apartheid, he made history by becoming the first back judge in South Africa’s Western Cape province, and five years later its Judge President.

But his leadership there was turbulent, as he accused some of his colleagues of treating him as a “legal non-entity” and undermining him because he was black. He faced counter-claims of being verbally abusive and even assaulting a judge, which he dismissed as a malicious allegation based on rumour and gossip.

He was also embroiled in numerous other controversies – including allegations that he served as a non-executive director at a financial company, and was paid about $26,000 over three years in consultancy fees.

He denied any wrongdoing, saying he had declared his links with the company to the-then justice minister. The Judicial Services Commission (JSC) dismissed a case against him over the issue, saying there was a lack of evidence.

Now, he has become the first ex-judge to become not only the Leader of the Opposition, but also a member of parliament’s justice committee, and, to top it all, MK’s representative on the JSC.

Comprising both judges and cross-party MPs, the JSC is the very body that found Dr Hlophe guilty of gross misconduct, leading to parliament impeaching him.

It is also responsible for the appointment of judges, and will choose his successor as Western Cape Judge President.

His long-time adversaries have vowed to challenge his elevation to the JSC in court, with campaign group Freedom Under Law saying it was “irrational” for an impeached judge to be involved in the appointment of other judges.

Significantly, the ANC supported his appointment to the JSC, while two of its coalition partners, the DA and the Afrikaner nationalist Freedom Front Plus, opposed it.

William Gumede, an academic at Wits University’s School of Governance in Johannesburg, said the ANC’s decision did not come as a surprise.

“There are going to be big battles with MK, but this is not one that the ANC was prepared to fight because it could have set the wrong tone for the opening of parliament,” Prof Gumede told the BBC.

Furthermore, the ANC had to take into account the fact that Dr Hlophe remains popular, despite his impeachment, said Prof Gumede.

“Many black voters appear not to mind supporting people implicated in abusing public office, if these people can successfully cast themselves as victims of a conspiracy, supposedly by the ‘system’,” he added.

He said a lot now depended on how Dr Hlophe performed in parliament.

“If he provides effective opposition, MK could grow and he could potentially be its next leader,” Prof Gumede added.

This is a far cry from the 65-year-old’s childhood as a labourer for a sugar-cane farmer whom he called “filthy rich” – a man who went on to help finance his university education.

“I grew up poor, like most South Africans,” he told a podcast hosted by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), an opposition party with whom MK has formed an alliance in parliament.

“I started weeding sugar-cane fields at the age of 12. I would carry 12kg of fertiliser on my back and I would never look back. We used to work very hard, even Christmas and public holidays. There were just no holidays, considering there were no labour laws then,” Dr Hlophe added.

His comments are a poignant reminder of black people’s lives under white-minority rule – and the racial and ideological fault-lines that run through a country where black people have only been allowed to vote for 30 years.

• The ex-gangster who has become South Africa’s sports minister
• Behind the ‘Zuma tsunami’ in South Africa
• The winners and losers in South Africa’s historic new government
• Why voters fall out of love with liberation movements
• Cyril Ramaphosa – South African union leader, mine boss, president

Despite being Hollywood’s hottest new star, Glen Powell has said he will finish studying for his degree while shooting his next movie.

The actor – who recently starred in Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You and Twisters – plans to complete his Spanish and early American history degree at the University of Texas.

Powell, 35, is from Austin, Texas, and has recently moved back to his home state to be closer to his family, after living in Hollywood.

Speaking to IndieWire, Powell said he plans to attend Zoom classes while he’s working on his next film, a remake of 1987 sci-fi film The Running Man, in the UK.

“So I’m going to be in London, but I am going to be going back for proctored [supervised] exams,” he said.

“They’re letting me figure it out [with] distance learning.

“And I’m obviously going to be coming in, Zooming in for classes and whatnot, but I have to be back for the proctored exams.”

He will have to return to Texas “two or three times a semester”, and said The Running Man director Edgar Wright had been understanding.

“Edgar has been very nice about letting me finish my degree in the middle of his massive movie.”

In May, Powell was the cover star on a Hollywood Reporter issue about “the new A-list”.

He told the magazine he felt he was able to return to Texas because “getting to this point in Hollywood [means] that I can now leave Hollywood”.

He added that he felt “like I’ve earned the ability to go back to my family”, and was given the advice to move by fellow Texan actor Matthew McConaughey.

Powell also told the publication it was an “emotional thing” to finish the degree, which he started before he reached this level of fame.

“I think it’s really important to my mom and it’s more of an emotional thing for me,” he said.

The actor is incredibly close to his parents, who regularly attend press events with him, and two sisters.

In the interview with IndieWire, Powell clarified that he has “nothing against Hollywood” – but he would be happier spending time in Austin between projects.

“I love being around people who love entertainment, and I love what [Hollywood] represents.

“Coming here for little chunks of time and doing all the stuff I need to do here, it’s great.

“And I have nothing against Hollywood.

“I just realised, in terms of filling up the pieces of me that need to be refuelled between projects and doing stuff like that, that’s all Austin for me.”

Thailand has expanded its visa-free entry scheme to 93 countries and territories as it seeks to revitalize its tourism industry.

Visitors can stay in the South-East Asian nation for up to 60 days under the new scheme that took effect on Monday,

Previously, passport holders from 57 countries were allowed to enter without a visa.

Tourism is a key pillar of the Thai economy, but it has not fully recovered from the pandemic.

Thailand recorded 17.5 million foreign tourists arrivals in the first six months of 2024, up 35% from the same period last year, according to official data. However, the numbers pale in comparison to pre-pandemic levels.

Most of the visitors were from China, Malaysia and India.

Tourism revenue during the same period came in at 858 billion baht ($23.6bn; £18.3bn), less than a quarter of the government’s target.

Millions of tourists flock to Thailand every year for its golden temples, white sand beaches, picturesque mountains and vibrant night life.

The revised visa-free rules are part of a broader plan to boost tourism.

Also on Monday, Thailand introduced a new five-year visa for remote workers, that allows holders to stay for up to 180 days each year.

The country will also allow visiting students, who earn a bachelor’s degree or higher in Thailand, to stay for one year after graduation to find a job or travel.

In June, authorities announced an extension of a waiver on hoteliers’ operating fees for two more years. They also scrapped a proposed tourism fee for visitors flying into the country.

However some stakeholders are concerned that the country’s infrastructure may not be able to keep up with travellers’ demands.

“If more people are coming, it means the country as a whole… has to prepare our resources to welcome them,” said Kantapong Thananuangroj, president of the Thai Tourism Promotion Association.

“If not, [the tourists] may not be impressed with the experience they have in Thailand and we may not get a second chance,” he said.

Chamnan Srisawat, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand, said he foresees a “bottleneck in air traffic as the incoming flights may not increase in time to catch up with the demands of the travellers”.

Some people have also raised safety concerns after rumours that tourists have been kidnapped and sent across the border to work in scam centres in Myanmar or Cambodia.

A fatal shooting in Bangkok’s most famous shopping mall last year has also caused concern among visitors.

Billionaire Elon Musk has said he will move the headquarters of two of his most high-profile companies, rocket firm SpaceX and social media platform X, from California to Texas.

He said the move was due to recent laws passed by the state – in particular a new law which prevents schools from making rules requiring staff tell anyone, including parents, information about a child’s gender identity.

A spokesperson for the governor said the law keeps “children safe while protecting the critical role of parents”.

But Mr Musk called it “the last straw” in a post on his social media platform.

The billionaire previously moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas in 2021 and he is a resident of the state – which has no income tax.

The issue of what schools should tell parents about their children’s gender identities has become a major topic of debate in the US.

LGBTQ advocates say students have a right to privacy, but others argue parents have a right to know what is happening with their children.

“It protects the child-parent relationship by preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations,” Brandon Richards told the Associated Press.

Mr Musk, who has a transgender daughter, has previously said he “supports trans” while expressing impatience with pronouns – calling them an “aesthetic nightmare”.

The billionaire’s daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson filed to cut ties with him in 2022.

She said she no longer wanted to “be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form” when applying to legally change her name and gender.

Last year, Mr Musk said he would lobby to criminalise transgender medical treatment.

“Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” he said in a post on X on Tuesday, noting that he had previously expressed his opposition to the bill.

California Governor Gavin Newsom criticised Mr Musk’s decision on social media.

“You bent the knee,” he posted, along with a screenshot of a 2022 post from Donald Trump which said Mr Musk would “drop to [his] knees and beg” if he asked.

States have historically competed aggressively to woo companies to establish headquarters, bringing with them high-paying corporate jobs.

SpaceX, which employs more than 5,000 people in California, according to state records, also already has a large base of operations in Texas.

In response to Mr Musk’s pledge, Greg Abbott, governor for Texas, said: “This cements Texas as the leader in space exploration.”

Neither SpaceX nor X responded to requests for comment about whether the decision to move headquarters would lead to job cuts in California.

The move comes after Mr Musk formally endorsed Donald Trump for president following the assassination attempt on him on Saturday.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Mr Musk would be directing $45m a month toward his campaign.

Mr Musk responded on X with a meme implying the report was false, though he later seemed to suggest there was some truth to the claim by responding positively to a post claiming he was pledging millions of dollars to help Trump get elected.

Country singer Ingrid Andress has apologised and admitted being drunk while performing a much-derided rendition of the US national anthem, at a baseball stadium.

Andress’s erratic performance of The Star-Spangled Banner was widely shared after Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby, in Texas, on Monday.

“I was drunk last night,” wrote Andress, who has previously received four Grammy Award nominations.

“I’m checking myself into a facility today to get the help I need. That was not me last night. I apologize to MLB, all the fans, and this country I love so much for that rendition.”

She added: “I’ll let y’all know how rehab is – I hear it’s super fun.”

Andress’s a-capella version of the anthem was called “painful” and “one of the worst national-anthem renditions ever”, on social media.

The Daily Beast headline said: “America unites over new all-time worst national-anthem performance.”

Some people posted clips of Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm apparently smirking as Andress was singing.

But she also received sympathy and support following her apology.

“I’m so sorry you’re going through this,” singer and actress Lucy Hale wrote. Sending you a lot of my thoughts. Take care of you and you’re going to come out of this so much stronger.”

Country star Martina McBride said: “Sending lots of love and positivity. You got this.”

Singer-songwriter Julia Michaels said: “Love you, girl. I’m sorry you’re going through this. And I’m sorry the world can be so cruel. Here for you XX.”

Fellow singer-songwriter Carly Pearce said: “Being this open takes a lot. You’ve got this. Hang in there.”

And one fan posted a video of Andress on stage at a concert, to show her “true talent”.

Andress appeared as an a-cappella singer on NBC series The Sing-Off, in 2010 – and after forging a solo career, was nominated for the 2021 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

She also co-wrote Charli XCX’s hit song Boys and Bebe Rexha’s Girl in the Mirror.

Joe Biden has tested positive for Covid-19 and is suffering mild symptoms, the White House has said.

Karine Jean-Pierre, his press secretary, said the US president is vaccinated and boosted. He has tested positive for Covid twice before.

Mr Biden, 81, was seen earlier on Wednesday visiting supporters in Las Vegas and speaking at an event. He has cancelled a campaign speech later in the night.

The illness comes as he faces increasing pressure to step aside because of his age following a poor debate performance at the end of June.

Ms Jean-Pierre said the president planned to isolate at his home in Delaware while he carries out “all of his duties fully during that time”.

The president’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, said Mr Biden presented with upper respiratory symptoms, including a runny nose and a cough and was given his first dose of Paxlovid.

He felt fine during his first event of the day, but later tested positive Dr O’Connor said.

Mr Biden later used X/Twitter to thank everyone for “the well wishes” and said he would “work to get the job done for the American people” while in recovery.

In another tweet his account stated: “I’m sick”, before replying back: “… of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election. And if you agree, pitch in here.”

The tweet pointed to a donations portal.

Reporters on the Las Vegas trip said they were rushed to the city’s airport following the announcement.

Mr Biden moved slowly and cautiously up the steps to the plane, video shows. He was not wearing a mask.

As he boarded Air Force One he was heard to say: “Good, I feel good.”

The president was forced to cancel a speech at UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights organisation.

Mr Biden’s illness comes as he faces growing calls to withdraw from the election race.

Nearly two dozen Democratic politicians have called for him to step aside in recent weeks, including Adam Schiff, a congressman from California,, who said today he had serious doubts about whether the president could beat former President Donald Trump.

He called on Mr Biden to “pass the torch”.

Mr Schiff said that Mr Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history”, and he could “secure his legacy of leadership” by allowing another Democrat to step forward.

In an interview with BET, which was due to be broadcast on Wednesday evening, Mr Biden said he did not feel he could pass the mantle with the country so “divided”.

The president also said, for the first time, that he would consider dropping out of the race if any of his doctors said he had a “medical condition”.

The daughter of Dubai’s ruler appears to have announced her divorce on social media.

A post from the verified Instagram account of Sheikha Mahra bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said she was ending her marriage, and reads: “I hereby declare our divorce.”

The BBC has reached out to officials in the country to seek clarity on the matter.

There has been no public comment from Sheikha Mahra’s husband, Sheikh Mana bin Mohammed bin Rashid bin Mana Al Maktoum, or her father.

The post, which begins “Dear Husband”, concluded – “I divorce you, I divorce you, and I divorce you,” seemingly using the Islamic practice known as triple talaq.

The practice has been banned in many countries, but usually allows husbands to swiftly divorce their wives by saying “I divorce you” three times.

“Take care. Your ex-wife,” the post on Instagram added.

All images of Sheikha Mahra’s husband appear to have been deleted from her account. Sheikh Mana’s account likewise seems stripped of pictures of his wife.

The couple married in April 2023 in a lavish ceremony, and their first child was born two months ago.

Some comments from Instagram users have speculated that Sheikha Mahra’s account could have been hacked. There has been no official indication of this. At time of publication, the post declaring her divorce was listed as one day old.

Dubai’s government and the UAE Embassy in London did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A drug has increased the lifespans of laboratory animals by nearly 25%, in a discovery scientists hope can slow human ageing too.

The treated mice were known as “supermodel grannies” in the lab because of their youthful appearance.

They were healthier, stronger and developed fewer cancers than their unmedicated peers.

The drug is already being tested in people, but whether it would have the same anti-ageing effect is unknown.

The quest for a longer life is woven through human history.

However, scientists have long known the ageing process is malleable – laboratory animals live longer if you significantly cut the amount of food they eat.

Now the field of ageing-research is booming as researchers try to uncover – and manipulate – the molecular processes of ageing.

The team at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Science, Imperial College London and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore were investigating a protein called interleukin-11.

Levels of it increase in the human body as we get older, it contributes to higher levels of inflammation, and the researchers say it flips several biological switches that control the pace of ageing.

The researchers performed two experiments.

• The first genetically engineered mice so they were unable to produce interleukin-11
• The second waited until mice were 75 weeks old (roughly equivalent to a 55-year-old person) and then regularly gave them a drug to purge interleukin-11 from their bodies

The results, published in the journal Nature, showed lifespans were increased by 20-25% depending on the experiment and sex of the mice.

Old laboratory mice often die from cancer, however, the mice lacking interleukin-11 had far lower levels of the disease.

And they showed improved muscle function, were leaner, had healthier fur and scored better on many measures of frailty.

I asked one of the researchers, Prof Stuart Cook, whether the data was too good to be believed.

He told me: “I try not to get too excited, for the reasons you say, is it too good to be true?

“There’s lots of snake oil out there, so I try to stick to the data and they are the strongest out there.”

He said he “definitely” thought it was worth trialling in human ageing, arguing that the impact “would be transformative” if it worked and was prepared to take it himself.

The big unanswered questions are could the same effect be achieved in people, and whether any side effects would be tolerable.

Interleukin-11 does have a role in the human body during early development.

People are, very rarely, born unable to make it. This alters how the bones in their skull fuse together, affects their joints, which can need surgery to correct, and how their teeth emerge. It also has a role in scarring.

The researchers think that later in life, interleukin-11 is playing the bad role of driving ageing.

The drug, a manufactured antibody that attacks interleukin-11, is being trialled in patients with lung fibrosis. This is where the lungs become scarred, making it harder to breathe.

Prof Cook said the trials had not been completed, however, the data suggested the drug was safe to take.

This is just the latest approach to “treating” ageing with drugs. The type-2 diabetes drug metformin and rapamycin, which is taken to prevent an organ transplant being rejected, are both actively being researched for their anti-ageing qualities.

Prof Cook thinks a drug is likely to be easier for people than calorie restriction.

“Would you want to live from the age of 40, half-starved, have a completely unpleasant life, if you’re going to live another five years at the end? I wouldn’t,” he said.

Prof Anissa Widjaja, from Duke-NUS Medical School, said: “Although our work was done in mice, we hope that these findings will be highly relevant to human health, given that we have seen similar effects in studies of human cells and tissues.

“This research is an important step toward better understanding ageing and we have demonstrated, in mice, a therapy that could potentially extend healthy ageing.”

Ilaria Bellantuono, professor of musculoskeletal ageing at the University of Sheffield, said: “Overall, the data seems solid, this is another potential therapy targeting a mechanism of ageing, which may benefit frailty.”

However, he said there were still problems, including the lack of evidence in patients and the cost of making such drugs and “it is unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old for the rest of their life”.

A New York grand jury has indicted a former US Central Intelligence Agency analyst on charges of acting as a spy for the South Korean government in exchange for luxury goods, bags and fancy meals.

Sue Mi Terry, who previously worked as a senior official for the White House National Security Council, faces two counts of failing to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Federal officials say Ms Terry – a prominent US expert on North Korea – acted as an agent for the South Korean government for over a decade, but she did not register as a foreign agent with American officials, according to court documents made public on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York.

The Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank where Ms Terry works as a senior fellow on Asia, has placed her on unpaid leave, a spokesperson told US outlets. The organisation has also removed her biography from its website.

Ms Terry, 54, denies the charges and her attorney, Lee Wolosky, told the BBC the allegations against her were “unfounded”.

The charges “distort the work of a scholar and news analyst known for her independence and years of service to the United States”, Mr Wolosky said. “In fact, she was a harsh critic of the South Korean government during times this indictment alleges that she was acting on its behalf.”

Born in South Korea, Ms Terry moved to the US at age 12, according to her previous employer at Columbia University.

In 2001, she earned her doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a prominent international relations school in Massachusetts. She is known to lecture in English and Korean.

Ms Terry, 54, then went on to work as a senior analyst for the CIA from 2001 to 2008, before holding a variety of posts in the federal government, including as Director for Korea, Japan, and Oceanic Affairs at the National Security Council during the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

Prosecutors say Ms Terry’s work as an agent for the South Korean government began in 2013, about five years, after she stopped working for the CIA and the National Security Council.

In the 31-page indictment, officials say Ms Terry admitted to FBI agents in a voluntary interview in 2023 that she was a “source” for South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

The indictment alleges that the South Korean government gifted Ms Terry a $2,845 (£2,100) Dolce & Gabbana coat, a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag and meals at upscale restaurants.

Officials say the government also gave her $37,000 and came up with a plan to hide the source of the funds, ultimately placing them in a gift fund at the think tank where she worked.

Ms Terry’s indictment comes just a day after Democratic Senator Robert Menendez was convicted of helping foreign governments in exchange for luxury items including gold bars and a Mercedes car.

Police were stationed inside the building from which gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks fired shots at Donald Trump, the director of the US Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle says.

Ms Cheatle told ABC News that local police were inside the building while Crooks was on the roof, and that local police – not the Secret Service – had been “responsible” for securing the building and its outer perimeter.

Questions have swirled about how police officers and agents tasked with securing Trump’s Pennsylvania rally allowed Crooks to get as close as he did.

He was able to access the roof of a building near the outdoor event at Butler County fairgrounds, Pennsylvania, from where he shot at Trump 130m (430ft) away.

The local police deployment inside the building comprised three snipers, who are alleged to have seen Crooks trying to get on the roof, according to sources quoted by CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

One audience member was killed and two others critically injured in the shooting. Trump was wounded in the ear.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said that his agency was responsible for securing inside the perimeter of the fairgrounds, while local police secured the area outside, which included the private building used by the gunman.

The local sheriff’s department referred BBC questions to the state police, which said it was not responsible for the area containing the building.

A state police spokesman told the BBC that it provided “all resources” requested by the Secret Service, including between 30 to 40 troopers inside the perimeter.

Many observers have questioned how security plans broke down to allow the gunman unobstructed access to Trump.

Crowd members said they had spotted the suspect on the roof minutes before the shooting started, while Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said a local security officer had also spotted him but could not stop him.

The sheriff admitted there had been “a failure” in securing the premises, but said he believed that there was no single party to blame.

It is common for the US Secret Service to rely on local police for help when securing rallies, said Jason Russell, founder of Secure Environments Consultants who worked as an agent from 2002 to 2010, including during election campaigns.

“The Secret Service doesn’t have unlimited resources in terms of agents that they can post everywhere,” he told the BBC.

He said that agents usually scope out a campaign event’s venue days in advance to develop a security plan that is then shared with local police agencies.

During an event, he said communications were shared with every agency involved. However, he added that in “the 10 seconds that it takes” for information to flow through, that could be just enough time for a gunman to fire a few shots.

The rooftop was a known vulnerability before the event, according to NBC News, which cited two sources familiar with Secret Service operations.

Mr Russell said it was probable that Secret Service agents identified that building as a threat, and had requested local authorities to station officers nearby to prevent access.

“For whatever reason, that didn’t happen,” he said.

One witness, Thomas Gleason, who served 21 years with the US Army as paratrooper and ranger, said “there should have been greater security for a long-range threat”.

“Looking at the distance and vantage point, if someone is going to try to assassinate [Trump] that would have been the most logical shooting point,” he said.

The FBI has since taken over the role of lead investigator into the incident, and the shooting is now the subject of several other investigations by both the House and the Senate.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas called it a “failure” of security, telling CNN that “an incident like this cannot happen again”.

Ms Cheatle said on Monday that her agency is working with federal and local police to “understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from taking place again”.

“The buck stops with me,” she said in the ABC interview, adding that she would not step down in the face of mounting calls from some lawmakers.

A briefing for Senators on 17 July left many questions unanswered, with Senator Ron Johnson describing the call as “unbelievably uninformative”, with only four questions permitted.

John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, told CBS that the senators were told Crooks was identified well before the attack and he was found carrying a range finder and a backpack.

“The Secret Service lost sight of him,” he added. “No one has taken responsibility. No one has been held responsible.”

Ms Cheatle has been subpoenaed to face the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on 22 July.

Republicans on the committee have also called on the Secret Service to produce evidence including internal communications, audio and video recordings, messages to local law enforcement, maps, diagrams and pre-event assessments.

Additionally, House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that a bipartisan task force will be assembled to investigate the assassination attempt and concerns about how security was handled.

Speeding along a road in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, Fariba Hashimi rises out of the saddle of her £15,000 bike and works the pedals even harder to close the gap between her and her sister, Yulduz, a few metres up ahead.

Training rides like this are the last steps on a journey that began with the two siblings from rural Afghanistan racing in disguise on borrowed bikes, before having to escape when the Taliban came to power.

Now they’re on their way to the Olympic Games in Paris. And, despite a Taliban ruling banning women from sport, they will compete under their country’s flag.

In a world where many elite athletes take up sport almost as soon as they can walk, Fariba, 21, and Yulduz, 24, came late to cycling.

They grew up in Faryab, one of the most remote and conservative provinces in Afghanistan, where it was practically unheard of to see women on bicycles.

Fariba was 14 and Yulduz 17 when they saw an advert for a local cycle race and decided to take part.

There were two problems; they didn’t have a bike and they didn’t know how to ride.

The sisters borrowed a neighbour’s bike one afternoon. After a few hours, they felt they had got the hang of it.

Their next challenge was to avoid their family finding out what they were doing because of the stigma around women taking part in sport in conservative areas of Afghanistan.

The sisters used false names and covered themselves up, wearing big baggy clothing, large headscarves and sunglasses so people didn’t recognise them.

Race day dawned, and incredibly the sisters came first and second.

“It felt amazing,” says Fariba. “I felt like a bird who could fly.”

They kept on entering races and kept on winning until their parents eventually found out when they saw pictures of them in the local media.

“They were upset at first. They asked me to stop cycling,” Fariba says. “But I didn’t give up. I secretly continued,” she smiles.

It didn’t come without dangers – people tried to hit them with cars or rickshaws as they rode or threw stones at them as they cycled past.

“People were abusive. All I wanted to do was win races,” says Yulduz.

And the situation was about to get worse.

In 2021, four years after the sisters started riding, the Taliban retook control of the country and clamped down on women’s rights, restricting their access to education and limiting how they could travel. They also banned women from taking part in sport.

Yulduz and Fariba had dreamed of one day competing in the Olympics. Now they knew if they wanted to race at all they had to leave Afghanistan.

Using contacts in the cycling community they managed to secure seats on an Italian evacuation flight, along with three teammates.

Once in Italy, the women joined a cycling team and got proper coaching for the first time.

“Back in Afghanistan, we didn’t have professional training,” says Yulduz. “All we used to do was take our bikes and ride.”

But leaving their homeland and family was not easy.

“The biggest thing for me is to be away from my mother,” says Fariba. “I never thought that because of cycling I would be separated from my brothers and sisters.”

“I’ve sacrificed a lot.”

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan also threw into doubt whether the country would even be allowed to compete at the Olympics.

National Olympic Committees are supposed to select athletes for the Games without any government interference.

As the Taliban’s ban on women playing sport breaks this rule, by preventing women being chosen for Afghanistan’s team, it led to calls for the country to be banned from the Olympics – as it had been when the militant group was last in power.

But the International Olympic Committee wanted to find a way to allow Afghan women to compete at the Games.

Behind the scenes talks took place between the heads of Afghan sporting bodies, including some now living in exile, about putting together a special team to represent the country in Paris.

As time ticked by, and Paris 2024 got ever closer, it looked as if no Afghan athletes would be at the Games.

Then, in June, International Olympic Committee announced that it had arranged for a special gender-equal team representing Afghanistan to go the Paris Olympics. It would be made up of three women and three men. And both the sisters are among them.

“This was a big surprise for both of us,” says Fariba.

“We always dreamt of taking part in the Olympic Games, this is our dream come true,” Yulduz adds.

“Despite all the rights that were taken from us we can show that we can achieve great success, we will be able to represent 20 million Afghan women.”

The IOC say no Taliban officials will be allowed to attend Paris 2024.

The sisters are preparing for the Olympic road race event while riding for a development team run and funded by the UCI and based at the World Cycling Centre, an ultra-modern facility in the Swiss town of Aigle.

The elite facilities are a world away from the dusty roads in Afghanistan where Yulduz and Fariba first taught themselves to cycle.

But their spirit remains the same.

“We are each other’s strength – I support her and she supports me,” says Yulduz.

“Our achievement belongs to Afghanistan,” adds Fariba. “This belongs to Afghanistan women. I am going to the Olympics because of them.”

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) decide on Thursday whether to hand Ursula von der Leyen a second term as European Commission president.

Despite Ms von der Leyen’s recent efforts to shore up support, the outcome of the vote – due to take place at the European Parliament in Brussels at 13:00 (11:00 GMT) – is far from certain.

European leaders officially nominated Ms von der Leyen at a summit in Brussels at the end of June.

The decision came despite resistance from Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who abstained from the vote after accusing fellow EU leaders of excluding parties like her own from the conversation.

Ms von der Leyen, who has had the job of Commission president since 2019, will need 361 votes in order to be confirmed for a second term.

Support from her own centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists & Democrats and the liberal Renew should give her enough votes.

But what makes things potentially tricky is that the vote is secret – meaning MEPs can cast ballots according to their inclinations rather than the declared party line.

Several Irish MEPs belonging to centrist parties have said they would vote against Ms von der Leyen’s nomination because of her stance on the war in Gaza. Some French MEPs belonging to Ms von der Leyen’s own EPP grouping have also said they won’t support her.

To limit the potential for unwelcome surprises, over the past few weeks Ms von der Leyen has held private meetings with some parliamentary groupings in an attempt to secure their votes.

Her bid has not always been successful. After one such meeting, MEPs belonging to the Left grouping said they had decided not to vote for Ms von der Leyen due to her willingness to increase military and defence spending.

She also met with the Greens and received positive signals – although some MEPs said they would wait to hear Ms von der Leyen’s speech on Thursday before making a final decision.

She reportedly managed to convince some members of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) to back her, although the Romanian, French and Polish delegations have said they would vote against her.

The Italian prime minister, who leads the ECR, is also said to be holding off on making a decision on how she will instruct her 24 Italian MEPs to vote until after Ms von der Leyen’s address.

However, according to Italian media she is leaning towards endorsing Ms von der Leyen in exchange for Italy being offered a senior job in the next Commission – such as the coveted economy or competition portfolios.

Ms Meloni, who heads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, has gained a prominent status among European right-wingers.

The third biggest group in Parliament, the newly formed Patriots for Europe, has refused to back Ms von der Leyen. Formed by Hungary’s Viktor Orban, it includes the leaders of far-right parties in France, Austria and the Netherlands.

If Ms von der Leyen does not pass today’s European Parliament vote, the EU will be back to square one, with leaders having to agree on a new candidate who would then need to be approved by the Parliament.

Although names have been floated, no obvious alternative candidate has emerged so far.

Ms von der Leyen won the job five years ago, when her name was put forward by EU leaders in a last-minute deal after a political stalemate over other contenders.

At the time, she was voted in with only nine votes over the required majority. Thursday’s vote might end up being just as close.

Billionaire Elon Musk has said he will move the headquarters of two of his most high-profile companies, rocket firm SpaceX and social media platform X, from California to Texas.

He said the move was due to recent laws passed by the state – in particular a new law which prevents schools from making rules requiring staff tell anyone, including parents, information about a child’s gender identity.

A spokesperson for the governor said the law keeps “children safe while protecting the critical role of parents”.

But Mr Musk called it “the last straw” in a post on his social media platform.

The billionaire previously moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas in 2021 and he is a resident of the state – which has no income tax.

The issue of what schools should tell parents about their children’s gender identities has become a major topic of debate in the US.

LGBTQ advocates say students have a right to privacy, but others argue parents have a right to know what is happening with their children.

“It protects the child-parent relationship by preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations,” Brandon Richards told the Associated Press.

Mr Musk, who has a transgender daughter, has previously said he “supports trans” while expressing impatience with pronouns – calling them an “aesthetic nightmare”.

The billionaire’s daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson filed to cut ties with him in 2022.

She said she no longer wanted to “be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form” when applying to legally change her name and gender.

Last year, Mr Musk said he would lobby to criminalise transgender medical treatment.

“Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” he said in a post on X on Tuesday, noting that he had previously expressed his opposition to the bill.

California Governor Gavin Newsom criticised Mr Musk’s decision on social media.

“You bent the knee,” he posted, along with a screenshot of a 2022 post from Donald Trump which said Mr Musk would “drop to [his] knees and beg” if he asked.

States have historically competed aggressively to woo companies to establish headquarters, bringing with them high-paying corporate jobs.

SpaceX, which employs more than 5,000 people in California, according to state records, also already has a large base of operations in Texas.

In response to Mr Musk’s pledge, Greg Abbott, governor for Texas, said: “This cements Texas as the leader in space exploration.”

Neither SpaceX nor X responded to requests for comment about whether the decision to move headquarters would lead to job cuts in California.

The move comes after Mr Musk formally endorsed Donald Trump for president following the assassination attempt on him on Saturday.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Mr Musk would be directing $45m a month toward his campaign.

Mr Musk responded on X with a meme implying the report was false, though he later seemed to suggest there was some truth to the claim by responding positively to a post claiming he was pledging millions of dollars to help Trump get elected.