The Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people in 2017 was the result of a chain of failures by governments, “dishonest” companies and a lack of strategy by the fire service, the final report of the six-year public inquiry has concluded.

The damning report sets out a “path to disaster” at Grenfell stretching back to the early 1990s over how fire safety in high-rise buildings has been managed and regulated.

The coalition and Conservative governments “ignored, delayed or disregarded” concerns about the safety of industry practices, the inquiry said.

The report highlighted the “systematic dishonesty” of manufacturers as a reason for the tower block being clad in combustible materials.

One manufacturer was also found to have “deliberately concealed” the fire risks its cladding posed.

Among the recommendations laid out in the 1,700-page report are the introduction of a single construction regulator, a College of Fire and Rescue to improve the training of firefighters and changes to the way materials are tested for fire safety.

The report’s publication comes more than seven years after the fire started in a fridge on the fourth floor of the west London tower block, spreading through the cladding before racing up the sides of the building.

Many residents were trapped on higher floors as it spread, and the inquiry found all the victims were dead or unconscious by the time the flames reached them due to “inhalation of asphyxiant gases”, primarily carbon monoxide.

The cladding was made of highly flammable polyethylene which was added to the sides of the 1970s-built Grenfell Tower in a disastrous refurbishment in 2016.

The inquiry found fault and incompetence among almost every company involved in the refurbishment.

Among the key findings of the report were:

• “Systematic dishonesty” by the manufacturers of cladding and insulation
• US firm Arconic, manufacturer of the Reynobond 55 cladding which experts at the inquiry said was “by far the largest contributor” to the fire, deliberately concealed the true extent of the danger of using its product
• Manufacturers made “false and misleading claims” over the safety and suitability of insulation to the company which installed it on Grenfell
• Failures in London Fire Brigade’s training and a lack of a strategy to evacuate the building
• Successive governments missed opportunities to act
• The local council and the Tenant Management Organisation had a “persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”
• How building safety is managed in England and Wales is “seriously defective”

Speaking after the report was published, the inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick said not all of the named organisations and companies “bear the same degree of responsibility for the disaster”.

But he said the report showed they all “contributed in one way or another” to the tragedy, attributing most of the failings to “incompetence” but some to “dishonesty and greed”.

In a statement to Parliament on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer apologised on behalf of the British state, saying those affected had been “let down very badly before, during and in the aftermath of the tragedy”.

Police and prosecutors have said that investigators will need until the end of 2025 to complete their inquiry, with final decisions on potential criminal charges by the end of 2026.

The inquiry examined the roles of three companies which made cladding and insulation used in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower.

In a key passage it concluded:

“One very significant reason why Grenfell Tower came to be clad in combustible materials was systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding… and insulation.”

They engaged in “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent data and mislead the market,” the report found.

Arconic produced panels of Reynobond PE cladding, formed from metal sheets with a plastic layer. This was “extremely dangerous” when folded into box shapes, a practice widely used in the cladding industry, the inquiry concluded.

The cladding was “by far the largest contributor” to the Grenfell fire, according to new research by two inquiry experts.

However from 2005 until after the Grenfell Tower fire, Arconic “deliberately concealed from the market the true extent of the danger of using Reynobond 55 PE in cassette form, particularly on high-rise buildings”. It allowed customers to continue buying the product.

Arconic commissioned fire tests which revealed very poor ratings for cladding installed as folded cassettes but concealed these from the BBA, a British private certification company which attempted to keep the construction industry up to date about safety risks.

This “caused BBA to make statements that Arconic knew were ‘false and misleading’”, the report said.

Among the UK customers which were misled, was Harley Facades, the company which installed the Grenfell cladding.

In a statement released after the report’s publication, Arconic Architectural Products SAS (AAP) rejected claims it had sold an “unsafe product” and said it sold sheets of aluminium composite material as specified in the design process which was safe to use and legal to sell in the UK.

“AAP did not conceal information from or mislead any certification body, customer, or the public,” the statement added.

• Follow live updates here
• Key findings from the inquiry
• Firefighter: ‘I still feel guilt over decision to leave person behind’
• Watch: All Grenfell deaths were avoidable, says inquiry chair

The inquiry also found fault with both Celotex and Kingspan, which both made insulation, also part of a cladding system.

Celotex made “false and misleading claims” and presented its product to Harley Facades as being safe and suitable for Grenfell although “it knew that was not the case”.

It used magnesium oxide boards, which do not burn, during testing and did not reveal this in marketing literature.

Kingspan, which had led the way in gaining market share in the insulation industry by selling its product for tall buildings “misled the market” by not revealing the limitations of its product, used on a small section of Grenfell Tower.

A spokesperson for Celotex said the company was considering the contents of the inquiry report “with care” and since the fire had “reviewed and improved” its approach to marketing to “meet industry best practice”.

They added that independent testing commissioned following the company’s internal review over the circumstances its insulation was tested, launched and marketed demonstrated that the cladding system described in the literature “met the relevant safety criteria”.

Kingspan, meanwhile, said it had “long acknowledged the wholly unacceptable historical failings that occurred in part of our UK insulation business” which “while deeply regrettable…were not found to be causative of the tragedy”.

“Kingspan has already emphatically addressed these issues, including the implementation of extensive and externally-verified measures to ensure our conduct and compliance standards are world leading,” its statement said.

The refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was overseen by the Tenant Management Organisation which ran social housing for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC).

The relationship between the TMO and its own residents was characterised by “distrust, dislike, personal antagonism and anger”. Allowing the relationship to deteriorate was a “serious failure on its part to observe its basic responsibilities”, the inquiry said.

Both the TMO and RBKC were found to have “persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”.

Elizabeth Campbell, leader of RBKC, said she apologised “unreservedly and with all her heart” for the council’s “failure to listen to residents and to protect them”.

A statement from the TMO said: “We accept that the TMO contributed to this and we are deeply sorry.”

The inquiry found that a 2011 project to replace fire doors at Grenfell left the building with doors which did not meet the correct standard because the TMO failed to specify the correct one when ordering them.

Fire doors are designed to withstand flames and smoke for thirty minutes to improve residents’ chance of rescue.

In assessing the role of the architects Studio E, project manager Rydon and cladding contractor Harley Facades the report most often described them as incompetent.

Studio E failed to recognise the cladding and insulation were combustible and “bears a very significant degree of responsibility for the disaster”, in the words of the inquiry report.

Harley Facades “bears significant responsibility. It did not concern itself with fire safety at any stage”.

Rydon, also bears “considerable responsibility” as project manager which “saw its role as the conductor of a large and varied orchestra”.

But “there was a failure to establish clearly who was responsible for what, including who was responsible for ensuring the designs were compliant with statutory requirements. That eventually resulted in the unedifying ‘merry go round of buck passing'”.

While cladding is added to older buildings to make them warmer and drier, the inquiry found the initial motive to clad Grenfell was for its “visual appearance”.

Residents in the area have always alleged Grenfell was refurbished because it would have otherwise looked shabby next door to the new Kensington Academy and Leisure centre.

According to the report, there were “many opportunities for the government to identify the risks posed by the use of combustible cladding panels and insulation… and to take action”.

Experts warned of the risk of cladding fires in 1992, the year after a fire at the 11-storey Knowsley Heights tower on Merseyside and again in 1999 after a fire at Garnock Court in Scotland, after which MPs said only non-combustible cladding should be used on tall buildings.

But combustible cladding was not banned because it met a British standard known as “Class Zero”. The MPs said this should have been scrapped.

“It could and should have been removed years earlier,” the inquiry found.

In 2001 a series of large-scale fire tests revealed “striking results” in which cladding “burned violently”, but the rules still weren’t tightened by the government and the results of the tests were kept confidential.

“We do not understand the failure to act in relation to a matter of such importance,” the inquiry panel said.

A fatal fire at Lakanal House in South London in 2009 prompted a coroner to order a review of building regulations, but this was “not treated with any sense of urgency.”

When the coalition government took power in 2010 ministers were told to cut red tape.

The inquiry found this “dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded”.

The pressure to cut red tape was “so strong… civil servants felt the need to put it at the forefront of every decision”.

The inquiry panel described the housing ministry as “poorly run”, with fire safety placed in the hands of a single “relatively junior” official.

The government has previously apologised at the inquiry saying it “deeply regrets past failures in relation to the oversight of the system that regulated safety in the construction and refurbishment of high-rise buildings”.

The government’s expert adviser, the Building Research Establishment was privatised in 1997 becoming BRE, a private company.

It was strongly criticised by the government for its “unprofessional conduct, inadequate practices, a lack of effective oversight, poor reports and a lack of scientific rigour”.

These exposed it to “unscrupulous product manufacturers”.

While individual firefighters trekked repeatedly up the smoke-filled staircase to find trapped residents, the London Fire Brigade had failed to prepare them for what they faced.

The Lakanal fire in 2009, in which six people died, “should have alerted the LFB to the shortcomings of its ability to fight fires in high-rise buildings”, the inquiry found.

There was an “unfounded assumption the building regulations were sufficient to ensure external wall fires in other countries would not occur in this country”.

“No-one appears to have thought that firefighters needed to be trained to recognise and deal with the consequences.”

Senior officers were complacent and lacked the management skills to recognise the problems or the will to correct them.

There was a failure to share knowledge about cladding fires, a failure to plan for a large number of 999 calls, or train staff in what to tell trapped residents.

London Fire Commissioner Andy Roe said since the fire the service had “introduced and embedded important policies, new equipment, improved training and better ways of working, particularly in how we respond to fires in high-rise buildings”.

The inquiry has concluded that the way building safety is managed in England and Wales is “seriously defective”, “complex and fragmented”.

It has recommended the introduction of a single construction regulator, and one secretary of state to oversee the issue.

The guidance the industry follows to ensure fire safety should be revised, the inquiry says.

There is also a recommendation to make it a legal requirement that a fire safety strategy is submitted with any application for permission from building control inspectors to construct or refurbish a “higher risk building”.

Other recommendations cover the way materials and designs are tested for fire safety, and the need to make public the results.

Currently building inspectors who sign off work as safe can be employed by councils or work as private “approved inspectors” who can compete for work. The inquiry recommends setting up an independent panel which would consider whether this is in the public interest. The panel could decide to set up a national authority for building control, which would be a major change to the system for ensuring construction standards.

Finding major issues with standards in the fire service, the inquiry recommends setting up a College of Fire and Rescue to improve the training of firefighters and incident commanders.

There are a series of recommendations for the London Fire Brigade management of major incidents and a demand for the service to be reviewed by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services.

The inquiry also calls for improvements to the way local authorities, RBKC in particular, respond to major emergencies.

Australian actor and director Simon Baker has pleaded guilty to drink driving in a New South Wales (NSW) court.

Baker was caught intoxicated behind the wheel on a road near his home in the Byron Bay region in the early hours of 20 July.

He was excused from appearing at Mullumbimby Court House on Wednesday, but court documents show the 55-year-old admitted to a single charge of driving under the influence of alcohol, his first such offence.

Baker has starred in Home and Away, the Devil Wears Prada and earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his lead role in the US-crime drama series The Mentalist.

He grew up in northern NSW and cut his teeth on classic Australian shows like Heartbreak High and A Country Practice.

He won Best New Talent at the Logies – Australia’s top television awards – in 1993, but soon made the move to the US, where he landed a role in the Academy Award winning film L.A. Confidential.

After two decades in Hollywood, for which he received a star on the city’s Walk of Fame, Baker returned to Australian film and TV, branching into directing as well as acting.

He was most recently nominated for Best Lead Actor at the Logies for his role in the hit Netflix show Boy Swallows Universe.

He is listed to appear in Mullumbimby Court House again on September 11 where he is due to face sentencing.

UK shares dropped on Wednesday morning following falls in Asian and US markets as concerns grow about the world’s largest economy.

Data showed US manufacturing activity remains subdued, with investors now focussed now on US jobs figures due on Friday.

American chip giant Nvidia was hit particularly hard, slumping by almost 10% as optimism about the boom in artificial intelligence (AI) dampened.

Despite the sharp fall, Nvidia’s shares are still worth double their value a year ago.

The FTSE 100 index, which comprises the largest companies on the London Stock Exchange, dropped 0.55% by lunchtime, with major European indexes also down. Germany’s Dax fell 1.41%, France’s Cac 40 was down by almost 1%, and Spain’s Ibex was also lower, by 0.51%.

Market watchers are now trying to second-guess how the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, will respond when it meets to decide interest rate policy next week.

“Growth concerns are dominating market moves,” Julia Lee at FTSE Russell told the BBC.

In New York on Tuesday, the S&P 500 index closed more than 2% lower, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq fell by over 3%.

Nasdaq-listed Nvidia fell by 9.5%, wiping $279bn (£212.9bn) off its stock market valuation.

Over the longer term however Nvidia shares are still worth nine times their price in November 2022, when the launch of ChatGPT set off the current bout of interest in AI, prompting a surge in demand for Nvidia’s chips.

Other US tech giants — including Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft — also saw their shares tumble on Tuesday.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 ended Wednesday’s trading session 4.2% lower, while South Korea’s Kospi lost more than 3% and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong dropped 1.1%.

Major Asian technology firms including TSMC, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Tokyo Electron were sharply lower.

Asian markets have performed less strongly over the last year, with the Shanghai and Hong Kong indexes lower over the twelve months. Japan’s Nikkei is up 12% over the year, however.

“Concerns around global growth look to be hitting exporting countries in the region particularly hard,” Ms Lee added.

As well as next week’s interest rate decision in the US, investors will be waiting for Friday’s US jobs market report, to provide further signs on the direction the US economy is taking.

Swetha Ramachandran, fund manager for Artemis Investment Management in London, said Tuesday’s US share falls were a sign that investors were beginning to doubt the Federal Reserve would make a large cut in interest rates.

Nvidia’s slide was a matter of “expectations catching up with reality” for the AI giant, she told the BBC.

“[Nvidia] did report results last week where it alluded to a natural and expected deceleration in growth: from having delivered 122% growth in the second quarter it expects to deliver 80% growth in the third quarter,” she said.

The fall might also be a reaction to reports that the US Department of Justice had issued a subpoena, requiring the firm to give evidence over anti-trust issues, she added.

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Australian Olympian Rachael Gunn has apologised to the nation’s breakdancing community for the “backlash” they have experienced following her controversial routine in Paris, which made headlines globally.

Gunn, who competes as Raygun, was eliminated from the B-Girls competition with a score of zero, prompting ridicule and praise for her unorthodox style by users across social media.

In her first sit-down interview since taking part in the Games – and amid questions over her qualification and performance – Gunn was asked if she genuinely thought she was Australia’s best female breakdancer.

“I think my record speaks to that,” she told Network 10’s The Project.

“It is really sad to hear those criticisms and I am very sorry for the backlash that the community has experienced, but I can’t control how people react,” she continued, addressing the flood of critiques her routine has garnered online.

The 36-year-old university lecturer lost all three of her Olympic battles, with her green tracksuit and eccentric performance – which included the sprinkler move and kangaroo-inspired hopping – generating a sea of memes.

In the aftermath of her performance, Gunn faced accusations that she had manipulated the selection process, including allegations that she had set up her own governing body and that her husband had judged her qualification trial.

These claims have since been denounced as false by several organisations, including the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) and the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF).

“The conspiracy theories were just awful,” Gunn told Network 10.

“I was the top-ranked Australian B-girl in 2020 and 2022 and 2023. I have been invited to represent at how many World Championships… So, the record is there. But anything can happen in a battle,” she added.

Gunn, who has a background as a jazz, tap and ballroom dancer, had publicly defended her routine as “artistic and creative”.

“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently,” she said last month.

The top judge who oversaw the B-Girls competition has also thrown his weight behind Gunn, as have team officials and the broader Olympic breakdancing community.

But the fallout has divided and disappointed those involved in the sport in Australia.

“It made a mockery of the Australian scene and I think that’s why a lot of us are hurting,” Australian hip-hop pioneer Spice previously told the BBC.

A hip-hop inspired dance born in the boroughs of New York in the 1970s, breaking was introduced into this year’s Olympic schedule to attract a younger audience to the Games.

But some critics say it should never have been included, due to the organic nature of the genre, which doesn’t necessarily suit organised competition.

After her performance in Paris, Gunn appealed to the media directly in a video posted on her Instagram to stop “harassing” her family and friends.

In her interview with Network 10, she described being chased by reporters in the aftermath of the fallout as “really wild”.

“That really did put me in a state of panic… Dancing was my medicine, and then it turned into my source of stress,” she said.

Gunn admitted that she is “not in a place yet” to watch her performance back, but was touched by the support she has received from her fellow Olympians at the Closing Ceremony as well as from some of the general public.

“It so warmed my heart,” she said. “I would rather much focus on the positives out of this and the joy that I’ve brought people.”

A former Philippine mayor who was on the run for weeks after being accused of spying for China has been arrested in Indonesia.

Philippine authorities have been pursuing Alice Guo across four countries since she disappeared in July following an investigation into her alleged criminal activities.

She has been accused of protecting online casinos, which were a front for scam centres and human trafficking syndicates in her sleepy pig farming town, Bamban.

Ms Guo denies the allegations. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said she would be flown back to the Philippines as early as Wednesday.

She said she grew up on the family farm with her Chinese father and Filipina mother, but MPs who investigated the scam centre operations said her fingerprints matched a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping and accused her of being a spy who provided cover for criminal gangs.

The dramatic nature of her case, which has since seen her sister arrested and questioned by the Philippine Senate, sparked fury in the country and drew international attention.

Ms Guo’s case has played out as the Philippines and China continue to spar over reefs and outcrops in the South China Sea.

China has not commented on the allegations against her.

Authorities believe that Ms Guo slipped past border checks in July and took several boats, crossing neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, on her way to Indonesia, where she was arrested on Tuesday on the western border of the capital Jakarta.

Mr Marcos said her arrest is “a warning to those who attempt to evade justice”.

“Such is an exercise in futility. The arm of the law is long and it will reach you,” he wrote on Facebook.

Photos showed Ms Guo wearing light pink pyjamas and a white coat when she was arrested.

Ms Guo was thrust under the national spotlight after authorities in March uncovered a sprawling scam centre in Bamban that were hiding under online casinos, known locally as Philippine Online Gaming Operations (Pogo).

Pogos cater to clients in the Chinese mainland, where gambling is illegal.

Ms Guo’s case confirmed suspicions that Pogos were being used as a front for organised crime and led to Mr Marcos outlawing them in response to public anger.

Pogos flourished under his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose presidency was marked by close ties with China.

But Mr Marcos reversed the country’s foreign policy direction and has cracked down on Pogo-linked crimes since assuming office in 2022.

During the raid in Ms Guo’s town, police rescued close to 700 scam centre workers, including 202 Chinese nationals and 73 other foreigners who were forced to pose as online lovers.

A Senate investigation that followed centred on her inability to detect the eight-hectare scam centre despite its location near her office.

Senators also grilled her on her parentage. A relative unknown in local politics, she was elected mayor on her first run for public office, which is rare in areas ruled by political families.

Ms Guo’s opaque answers on questions regarding her roots, led some senators to accuse her of being a Chinese “asset” or spy.

She gave a television interview where she attributed her low profile to being her father’s illegitimate child with her mum, who is also his maid. She said this forced her to lead a sheltered life in the family farm, until she was elected mayor of Bamban.

But the controversy did not subside and after she refused to appear in subsequent hearings, senators in July ordered her arrest. By that time, however, she had fallen from public view.

Soon after, an anti-graft body removed her from office.

In August, Filipino authorities said she had fled the country undetected and passed through Singapore and Malaysia on her way to Indonesia.

One official said she could be headed for the Golden Triangle, a border region in mainland South East Asia that is a known hideout of organised crime groups.

A furious Mr Marcos then ordered her Philippine passport cancelled and warned then that “heads will roll”.

He said Ms Guo’s escape “laid bare the corruption that undermines our justice system and erodes the people’s trust”.

The United States is to accuse Russia of a sustained campaign to interfere in the November presidential election, US media has reported.

The Biden administration is expected to address the Kremlin’s efforts to influence public opinion with a series of actions including criminal charges, according to CBS, the BBC’s partner in the US.

The Russian state media network RT – formerly Russia Today – would be a major focus of the US efforts, according to CNN.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to announce sanctions or other law enforcement action on Wednesday.

US officials warn that a growing number of foreign adversaries have attempted to interfere with its elections since Russia’s efforts in 2016.

In June, a group of hackers linked to the Iranian government successfully breached the Donald Trump campaign and leaked some of its internal documents.

Telegram has apologised to South Korean authorities for its handling of deepfake pornographic material shared via its messaging app, amid a digital sex crime epidemic in the country.

It comes days after South Korean police said they had launched an investigation into Telegram, accusing it of “abetting” the distribution of such images.

In recent weeks, a large number of Telegram chatrooms – many of them run by teenagers – were found to have been creating sexually explicit “deepfakes” using doctored photographs of young women.

Authorities say Telegram has since removed such videos from its platform.

In a statement to South Korea’s Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), Telegram said the situation was “unfortunate”, adding that it “apologised if there had been an element of misunderstanding”.

It also confirmed that it had taken down 25 such videos as requested by KCSC.

In its latest statement to KCSC, Telegram also proposed an email address dedicated to future communication with the regulator.

KCSC described the company’s approach as “very forward-looking” and said Telegram has “acknowledged the seriousness” of the situation.

Deepfakes are generated using artificial intelligence, and often combine the face of a real person with a fake body.

The recent deepfake crisis has been met with outrage in South Korea, after journalists discovered police were investigating deepfake porn rings at two of the country’s major universities.

It later emerged that police received 118 reports of such videos in the last five days. Seven suspects, six of whom are teenagers, have been questioned by the police in the past week.

The chat groups were linked to individual schools and universities across the country. Many of their victims were students and teachers known to the perpetrators.

In South Korea, those found guilty of creating sexually explicit deepfakes can be jailed for up to five years and fined up to 50 million won ($37,500; £28,300).

These discoveries in South Korea follow the arrest of the Russian-born founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, in France, on allegations that child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud were taking place on the messaging app.

Mr Durov has since been charged.

Last Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol had instructed authorities to “thoroughly investigate and address these digital sex crimes to eradicate them”.

Women’s rights activists have accused South Korean authorities of allowing sexual abuse to take place on Telegram.

In 2019, it was discovered that a sex ring had used the app to blackmail dozens of women and children to film pornographic content. The ring leader Cho Ju-bin, who was then 20, was sentenced to 42 years in jail.

The French rescue workers packed up their gear with well-practised efficiency. The medical tents. The stretchers. The security cordons.

Shortly after the last bodies had been driven away from the quayside in Boulogne, the remaining ambulances and red emergency vehicles drove off too, leaving only a handful of officials standing in the fading light beside a few frayed fishing nets near the harbour wall.

“It’s so upsetting,” said Frederic Cuvillier, Boulogne’s mayor, reflecting on the way this long, constantly evolving migrant crisis has reshaped – and traumatised – France’s northern coastline.

On Tuesday six children and a pregnant woman were among 12 people who died after a boat carrying dozens of migrants sank off the coast here, in the English Channel.

“These people flee death and end up dying here. Mothers, children… convinced they will find a better life across the Channel,” said Cuvillier, gesturing west, towards a grey sea.

In the immediate aftermath of such incidents there is – I have noticed, after witnessing several already this year – a widening gap between the way the French and British react.

In the UK, officials have been quick to focus on – and to condemn – the smuggling gangs. Each incident, each death, is seen as the result of cynical criminal activity. Which, of course, it is.

Once again, the smugglers crammed far too many of their paying clients into what appear to be increasingly flimsy boats, with nowhere near enough life jackets.

Here in northern France, the police have a similar focus. They are preoccupied with the task of trying to patrol ever larger stretches of their increasingly militarised coastline. They now have more manpower, buggies, night-vision equipment, and special drones that can detect groups of migrants hiding in the dunes.

But the police are aware that, as they expand their operations – much of it now funded by British taxpayers – the smuggling gangs are responding, finding new ways to cross, and often putting the migrants themselves at ever greater risk as a result.

The gangs now launch their boats inland, from canals, or way down the French coast, meaning far longer journeys to cross a busy stretch of water crowded with commercial shipping and tugged at by powerful tides.

The gangs pack more people inside inflatable boats of ever more dubious quality – sometimes 90 people in a boat designed, or barely designed, to hold 40. It’s a problem exacerbated as the authorities succeed in disrupting the supply of boats brought to the coastline from deep within Europe.

And, increasingly, the smugglers use violence too. Stones hurled at police on the beaches. Sometimes knives brandished too.

I was recently shown footage by police at a local gendarmerie of what looked like another pitched battle on a beach at dawn, with riot-shielded police defending themselves against a hail of rocks. I witnessed a separate battle myself in April.

The smugglers’ aim is to buy themselves a few precious seconds to get their boats and their passengers into the water, after which the police – concerned they may be blamed for putting people at even greater risk – rarely intervene.

But while the police have their duties and dangers to face, for French politicians and civilians in resort towns scattered along this coastline, the reaction to yet another deadly incident is not to focus on the criminality of the smugglers, but on the motives of the migrants, on what still drives so many of them to attempt this dangerous crossing.

And the blunt conclusion, repeated to me so often – by local mayors, by pensioners, by couples out walking their dogs on beaches where they now fear they may come across bodies washed ashore – is that this is Britain’s fault.

Having watched this crisis evolve over decades, from the camps around the Channel tunnel and the ferry ports, to this more recent phenomenon of small boats, many French people deeply resent the way their own lives and communities have been transformed by a crisis they see as British-made.

France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, spoke of it on Tuesday at the harbour in Boulogne.

He did condemn the smugglers, but most of his comments focused on the lure of what he views as Britain’s loosely regulated job market, that acts like a magnet, drawing young Eritreans, determined Sudanese, Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis to this coastline, convinced that they if they can just make it across this last, short stretch of water – or even half way across – they’ll end up in a country where they can find work, even without the right paperwork.

Darmanin called, as he has done many times, for a new migrant treaty between Britain and the European Union.

In doing so, he touched on a widely-held belief here in France, which is that however much effort is put into tackling the smuggling gangs it will never be enough. That this is a crisis fuelled by the demands of tens of thousands of determined migrants, rather than by the profit-seeking motives of a loose network of criminals.

And there is another difference between the way Britain and France react to such moments. You can see it in the newspaper and television headlines.

The small boat crisis may be big news in the UK, but in France – a country currently preoccupied by its own political turmoil and, frankly, tired of the situation on its northern coastline – even twelve deaths in the Channel barely make headlines.

China has announced a probe of Canadian canola imports, escalating a trade fight between the two countries.

The move, which could lead to tariffs on a key Canadian export, came a week after Canada said it would impose new border taxes on Chinese-made electric vehicles, steel and aluminium.

Beijing also said it would file a complaint with the World Trade Organization over the EV tariffs, which it criticised as “discriminatory” and “unilateral”.

Canada’s minister of agriculture said plans for the canola investigation were “deeply concerning” and the government was closely monitoring the situation.

The latest tit-for-tat comes as a rising number of governments, including the US and European Union, erect barriers against Chinese-made electric cars.

In announcing the EV tariffs last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said countries such as China had “chosen to give themselves an unfair advantage in the global marketplace”.

Western countries allege that Chinese firms are benefiting from subsidies and other government help, allowing for “dumping”, which is when product is sold below cost, making it difficult for other firms to compete.

China cited similar dumping complaints in its probe of Canadian canola oil, noting that imports had jumped 170% since 2023, while prices had “continuously fallen”.

“China’s position is clear-cut. The country will take all measures necessary to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in announcing the measures.

China has also launched investigations of European pork and dairy products. It recently declined to impose tariffs on French cognac, despite alleged dumping.

Canola, also known as rapeseed, is a major agricultural product in Canada, accounting for roughly one-quarter of all farm crop receipts, according to the Canola Council, an industry group.

Canada exports more than 90% of its canola, which is sold as raw seed, oil, or meal and is used for cooking, animal feed and some forms of energy, according to the council.

China’s imports of Canadian canola were worth roughly $C5bn ($3.7bn;£2.8bn) last year, making the country the second biggest market after the US.

It has been the target in previous trade disputes.

Beijing blocked exports from two major Canadian grain companies for three years citing pest concerns, following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Chinese businesswoman Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the tech firm Huawei.

Canada’s agriculture minister, Lawrence MacAulay, said Canadian farmers “depend on, and play by, a rules-based global trading order that provides reliable market access”.

Calling Beijing’s announcement “deeply concerning”, he said Ottawa is monitoring developments closely.

“We will continue to defend and support the sector every step of the way,” he said.

A mother and her three daughters were among seven people killed in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, during a fresh wave of Russian attacks. A baby and another girl were also killed, officials said.

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy said Russia had attacked with drones and hypersonic missiles early on Wednesday.

The attack came as Ukraine reeled from Russia’s deadliest single bombardment this year – a strike on a military institute in the central city of Poltava that left 53 people dead.

Explosions were also heard on Wednesday over the capital Kyiv as air defences targeted Russian missiles. Five people were wounded in Kryvyy Rih when a hotel was hit and nearby blocks of flats were damaged.

The attack on Lviv in the far west of Ukraine came as all of Ukraine was under air raid alert. Witnesses said the city was targeted at about 05:40 (02:40 GMT).

Russia’s defence ministry said it had fired Kinzhal hypersonic weapons at Ukrainian defence industry facilities in Lviv and that all designated targets had been hit.

However, Mr Sadovy said Russia’s attack had damaged more than 50 buildings in the historic heart of Lviv, including homes, schools and clinics.

He posted a picture on social media of a local family, saying that only the father had survived. His wife, Yevgenia, and their three daughters – Darina, Emilia and 21-year-old Yaryna – all died in their own home, he said.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia had fired 13 missiles and 29 attack drones and that seven cruise missiles and 22 drones were shot down.

Mr Sadovy said some buildings were struck near the railway station and Lviv regional administration head Maksym Kozytskyi said residential buildings had been damaged in the attack.

Lviv has largely been spared the worst of the fighting over the two and a half years of war, but last week, Russian strikes targeted its energy infrastructure causing outages, according to officials.

President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his calls for Ukraine’s Western allies to all their long-range weapons to be fired further into Russia.

In Poltava, rescue workers continued to search through the rubble of the military communications institute for survivors of the attack.

Mykyta Petrov, a 26-year-old cadet who only started there two weeks ago, said two missiles hit shortly after 09:00 (06:00 GMT) on Tuesday, the second detonating just three seconds after the first.

“I ran outside, there was smoke and dust everywhere…lots of people were outside having a cigarette, and many were killed.”

The cadet said there was “too much blood, too many dead bodies”, and what he had seen had affected him psychologically.

An air raid siren had gone off two minutes earlier, but had not given people enough time to reach bomb shelters.

“You just imagine you’re on the sixth floor of some building and you need to run away downstairs. Is it realistic that you can do this in two minutes?” Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko told the BBC.

Officials said 271 people had been wounded in the Russian strikes on Poltava, and by Wednesday afternoon, 400 people had already given blood at the main regional hospital.

Among them was Oleksandr Moskvich, 38, who was badly wounded on the frontline last year in the fierce battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut.

He pointed to scars on his neck and back where he had been shot by Russian troops while he was on patrol. “At the moment I can only give people my blood, my support. I can talk to them and try to understand, because I passed through this.”

Poltava is observing three days of mourning and there was an eerie quiet throughout the hospital. A Ukrainian flag flew outside the building with a black ribbon attached, while inside, the corridors of the blood donation ward were filled as people waited their turn.

The doctor in charge of blood donation, Volodymyr Rudikov, said the people of Poltava had joined together at an unimaginably difficult time: “This is something I’ve never seen in my 16 years as a chief doctor.”

President Zelensky promised that what he called “Russian scum” would pay for the attack, and repeated calls for more air defences so Ukraine could protect itself by carrying out its own long-range missile attacks.

In a statement confirming the deaths of military personnel, Ukraine’s land forces said an investigation was under way to establish whether enough was done to protect those in the facility the missile hit.

Poltava regional governor Philip Pronin called the attack a “cunning and cynical Russian strike,” and later said 15 people were still thought to be trapped under the rubble.

Mr Zelensky was due to meet the Irish premier on Wednesday as Ireland prepared to announce new funding for Ukraine’s war effort.

The Irish government said the package would provide essential humanitarian assistance, support rehabilitation and eventual reconstruction, and contribute to Ukraine’s longer-term goals.

Jimmy McCain, son of the late Republican Senator John McCain, is endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris following controversy around Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery.

He called Trump’s visit last week to the military burial site “a violation”.

The Army has accused a Trump staffer of pushing aside an Arlington employee as they tried to warn his team about rules against filming in the cemetery.

The Trump campaign says it received permission from families of fallen service members to film video during an event to honour US soldiers killed during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

“Show respect and leave. It doesn’t need to be videoed,” Mr McCain told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday.

He added: “The point of Arlington Cemetery is to go and show respect for the men and women who have given their lives to this country. When you make it political, you take away the respect of the people who are there.”

Mr McCain, who was previously an independent, said he has changed his voter registration to Democrat and plans to vote for Ms Harris for president in November.

“I feel that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz embody a group of people that will help make this country better. That will take us forward. That’s really what matters at the end of the day,” he said.

The youngest McCain son enlisted in the Marine Corps and has served as an intelligence officer since 2022.

Three generations of McCain family are buried at Arlington.

Federal law prevents use of the site for political campaigning.

The Trump campaign has disputed the cemetery’s version of events and released a statement from the Gold Star military families that invited him to the site, saying the former president was there to honour the sacrifice of their relatives who were killed.

Trump – who is running for president for a third time – and late Sen McCain had a long rivalry.

The Vietnam war hero was one of the most outspoken Republican critics of Trump from the very start of his first candidacy.

Trump once attacked McCain, himself a former Republican presidential candidate, saying he was “not a war hero” because he was captured and held as a prisoner of war.

Jimmy McCain is not the only family member to say they are not voting for Trump.

His sister Meghan said on Monday she does not plan to support either Trump or Ms Harris.

“I greatly respect the wide variety of political opinions of all of my family members and love them all very much,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“I however, remain a proud member of the Republican Party and hope for brighter days ahead.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote

• ANALYSIS: Will Harris debate tactics work against Trump?

• EXPLAINER: Seven swing states that could decide election

• IMMIGRATION: Could Trump really deport a million migrants?

• FACT CHECK: Was US economy stronger or weaker under Trump?

A controversial bill which will change the way judges are chosen in Mexico has been approved by the lower chamber on Wednesday and will now go to the Senate, where it is also expected to pass.

Proponents of the bill, among them President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, argue it would help hold judges accountable but its critics say it erodes Mexico’s system of checks and balances.

The judicial reform has triggered strikes by judicial workers and demonstrations in several cities across the country.

Supreme Court justices are the latest to have stopped work in protest at the planned measures, which would see magistrates and judges chosen by popular vote.

The Chamber of Deputies overwhelmingly approved the reform with 359 votes in favour and 135 against after a session lasting more than 12 hours.

The lawmakers were meeting in a sports hall after demonstrators had blocked the entrance of the legislative palace.

Despite the protests, the governing Morena party quickly pushed the bill through the lower house, where it holds the two-thirds majority necessary to make constitutional changes.

It will now be debated in the Senate, where Morena is just one vote shy of a two-thirds majority.

President López Obrador is keen to see the judicial reform approved before the end of his term on 30 September.

During his six years in office, the president has been particularly critical of the Supreme Court, after it blocked some of his proposed changes in the energy and security sectors.

His Morena party and its presidential candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, won by a landslide in the general election held in June and Ms Sheinbaum backs the judicial reform.

Mr López Obrador argues that his party’s electoral success demonstrates that Mexicans support his proposed judicial overhaul.

He has long lobbied for a reform of the judiciary, arguing the current system is corrupt and inefficient.

Supreme Court justices are currently nominated by the president and then approved by senators.

Under the new system, justices – including those on the Supreme Court – will have to stand for election, to be chosen by popular vote.

Mr López Obrador argues that having to stand for election will make them more accountable to the Mexican voters but critics say it could open them up to influence from powerful local figures, including those linked to organised crime.

Those opposed to the reform also say that it does not address many of the key problems facing Mexico’s judicial system, such as high levels of impunity and chronic underfunding.

Among those who have spoken out against it is the US Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, who said that the “popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy”.

His comments were echoed by the Canadian ambassador, who said that Canadian investors had expressed concern over the proposed changes.

“They [the investors] want stability, that want a judicial system that works if there are problems,” Ambassador Graeme Clark said.

President López Obrador bristled at the remarks and “paused” relations with the countries.

“They have to learn to respect Mexico’s sovereignty,” he said.

Last Saturday, a Telegram message popped up on Heejin’s phone from an anonymous sender. “Your pictures and personal information have been leaked. Let’s discuss.”

As the university student entered the chatroom to read the message, she received a photo of herself taken a few years ago while she was still at school. It was followed by a second image using the same photo, only this one was sexually explicit, and fake.

Terrified, Heejin, which is not her real name, did not respond, but the images kept coming. In all of them, her face had been attached to a body engaged in a sex act, using sophisticated deepfake technology.

Deepfakes, the majority of which combine a real person’s face with a fake, sexually explicit body, are increasingly being generated using artificial intelligence.

“I was petrified, I felt so alone,” Heejin told the BBC.

But she was not alone.

Two days earlier, South Korean journalist Ko Narin had published what would turn into the biggest scoop of her career. It had recently emerged that police were investigating deepfake porn rings at two of the country’s major universities, and Ms Ko was convinced there must be more.

She started searching social media and uncovered dozens of chat groups on the messaging app Telegram where users were sharing photos of women they knew and using AI software to convert them into fake pornographic images within seconds.

“Every minute people were uploading photos of girls they knew and asking them to be turned into deepfakes,” Ms Ko told us.

Ms Ko discovered these groups were not just targeting university students. There were rooms dedicated to specific high schools and even middle schools. If a lot of content was created using images of a particular student, she might even be given her own room. Broadly labelled “humiliation rooms” or “friend of friend rooms”, they often come with strict entry terms.

Ms Ko’s report in the Hankyoreh newspaper has shocked South Korea. On Monday, police announced they were considering opening an investigation into Telegram, following the lead of authorities in France, who recently charged Telegram’s Russian founder for crimes relating to the app. The government has vowed to bring in stricter punishments for those involved, and the president has called for young men to be better educated.

Telegram said it “actively combats harmful content on its platform, including illegal pornography,” in a statement provided to the BBC.

The BBC has viewed the descriptions of a number of these chatrooms. One calls for members to post more than four photos of someone along with their name, age and the area they live in.

“I was shocked at how systematic and organised the process was,” said Ms Ko. “The most horrific thing I discovered was a group for underage pupils at one school that had more than 2,000 members.”

In the days after Ms Ko’s article was published, women’s rights activists started to scour Telegram too, and follow leads.

By the end of that week, more than 500 schools and universities had been identified as targets. The actual number impacted is still to be established, but many are believed to be aged under 16, which is South Korea’s age of consent. A large proportion of the suspected perpetrators are teenagers themselves.

Heejin said learning about the scale of the crisis had made her anxiety worse, as she now worried how many people might have viewed her deepfakes. Initially she blamed herself. “I couldn’t stop thinking did this happen because I uploaded my photos to social media, should I have been more careful?”

Scores of women and teenagers across the country have since removed their photos from social media or deactivated their accounts altogether, frightened they could be exploited next.

“We are frustrated and angry that we are having to censor our behaviour and our use of social media when we have done nothing wrong,” said one university student, Ah-eun, whose peers have been targeted.

Ah-eun said one victim at her university was told by police not to bother pursuing her case as it would be too difficult to catch the perpetrator, and it was “not really a crime” as “the photos were fake”.

At the heart of this scandal is the messaging app Telegram. The app is known for having a ‘light touch’ moderation stance and has been accused of not doing enough to police content and particularly groups for years.

This has made it a prime space for criminal behaviour to flourish.

Last week, politicians and the police responded forcefully, promising to investigate these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice.

On Monday, Seoul National Police Agency announced it would look to investigate Telegram over its role in enabling fake pornographic images of children to be distributed.

• South Korea faces deepfake porn ’emergency’
• South Korean women protest in Seoul over hidden sex cameras

The app’s founder, Pavel Durov, was charged in France last week with being complicit in a number of crimes related to the app, including enabling the sharing of child pornography.

But women’s rights activists accuse the authorities in South Korea of allowing sexual abuse on Telegram to simmer unchecked for too long, because Korea has faced this crisis before. In 2019, it emerged that a sex ring was using Telegram to coerce women and children into creating and sharing sexually explicit images of themselves.

Police at the time asked Telegram for help with their investigation, but the app ignored all seven of their requests. Although the ringleader was eventually sentenced to more than 40 years in jail, no action was taken against the platform, because of fears around censorship.

“They sentenced the main actors but otherwise neglected the situation, and I think this has exacerbated the situation,” said Ms Ko.

Park Jihyun, who, as a young student journalist, uncovered the Nth room sex-ring back in 2019, has since become a political advocate for victims of digital sex crimes. She said that since the deepfake scandal broke, pupils and parents had been calling her several times a day crying.

“They have seen their school on the list shared on social media and are terrified.”

Ms Park has been leading calls for the government to regulate or even ban the app in South Korea. “If these tech companies will not cooperate with law enforcement agencies, then the state must regulate them to protect its citizens,” she said.

Before this latest crisis exploded, South Korea’s Advocacy Centre for Online Sexual Abuse victims (ACOSAV) was already noticing a sharp uptick in the number of underage victims of deepfake pornography.

In 2023 they counselled 86 teenage victims. That jumped to 238 in just the first eight months of this year. In the past week alone, another 64 teen victims have come forward.

One of the centre’s leaders, Park Seonghye, said over the past week her staff had been inundated with calls and were working around the clock. “It’s been a full scale emergency for us, like a wartime situation,” she said.

“With the latest deepfake technology there is now so much more footage than there used to be, and we’re worried it’s only going to increase.”

As well as counselling victims, the centre tracks down harmful content and works with online platforms to have it taken down. Ms Park said there had been some instances where Telegram had removed content at their request. “So it’s not impossible,” she noted.

In a statement, Telegram told the BBC that its moderators “proactively monitor public parts of the app, use AI tools and accept user reports in order to remove millions of pieces of content each day that breach Telegram’s terms of service”.

While women’s rights organisations accept that new AI technology is making it easier to exploit victims, they argue this is just the latest form of misogyny to play out online in South Korea.

First women were subjected to waves of verbal abuse online. Then came the spy cam epidemic, where they were secretly filmed using public toilets and changing rooms.

“The root cause of this is structural sexism and the solution is gender equality,” read a statement signed by 84 women’s groups.

This is a direct criticism of the country’s President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has denied the existence of structural sexism, cut funding to victim support groups and is abolishing the government’s gender equality ministry.

Lee Myung-hwa, who treats young sex offenders, agreed that although the outbreak of deepfake abuse might seem sudden, it had long been lurking under the surface. “For teenagers, deepfakes have become part of their culture, they’re seen as a game or a prank,” said the counsellor, who runs the Aha Seoul Youth Cultural Centre.

Ms Lee said it was paramount to educate young men, citing research that shows when you tell offenders exactly what they have done wrong, they become more aware of what counts as sexual abuse, which stops them from reoffending.

Meanwhile, the government has said it will increase the criminal sentences of those who create and share deepfake images, and will also punish those who view the pornography.

It follows criticism that not enough perpetrators were being punished. One of the issues is that the majority of offenders are teenagers, who are typically tried in youth courts, where they receive more lenient sentences.

Since the chatrooms were exposed, many have been closed down, but new ones will almost certainly take their place. A humiliation room has already been created to target the journalists covering this story. Ms Ko, who broke the news, said this had given her sleepless nights. “I keep checking the room to see if my photo has been uploaded,” she said.

Such anxiety has spread to almost every teenage girl and young woman in South Korea. Ah-eun, the university student, said it had made her suspicious of her male acquaintances.

“I now can’t be certain people won’t commit these crimes behind my back, without me knowing,” she said. “I’ve become hyper-vigilant in all my interactions with people, which can’t be good.”

It’s been nearly a month since former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina hurriedly landed at a military base near Delhi after a chaotic exit from her country.

Ms Hasina’s dramatic ouster on 5 August followed weeks of student-led protests which spiralled into deadly, nationwide unrest. She was initially expected to stay in India for just a short period, but reports say her attempts to seek asylum in the UK, the US and the UAE have not been successful so far.

Her continued presence in India has generated challenges for Delhi in developing a strong relationship with the new interim government in Dhaka. 

For India, Bangladesh is not just any neighbouring country. It’s a strategic partner and a close ally crucial to India’s border security, particularly in the north-eastern states. 

The two countries share a porous border 4,096km (2,545 miles) long which makes it relatively easy for armed insurgent groups from India’s north-eastern states to cross into Bangladesh for a safe haven. 

• Sheikh Hasina: The pro-democracy icon who became an autocrat

After Ms Hasina’s Awami League party came to power in 2009, it cracked down on some of these ethnic militant groups. Ms Hasina also amicably settled several border disputes with India.  

While border security is at the core of the relationship, there are financial aspects too. During Ms Hasina’s 15-year rule, trade relations and connectivity between the two countries flourished. India has gained road, river and train access via Bangladesh to transport goods to its north-eastern states. 

Since 2010, India has also given more than $7bn (£5.3bn) as a line of credit to Bangladesh for infrastructure and development projects. 

Ms Hasina’s sudden exit means that Delhi has to work hard to ensure that these gains are not lost. 

“It’s a setback in the sense that any turbulence in our neighbourhood is always unwanted,” says Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka. 

But the former diplomat insists that Delhi will work with the interim government in Dhaka because “there is no choice” and “you can’t dictate what they do internally”. 

The Indian government has wasted no time in reaching out to the interim government in Dhaka, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding a telephone conversation with leader Muhammad Yunus.

However, it will take a while for Delhi to assuage the anger in Bangladesh over its unwavering support for Ms Hasina and her Awami League for the last 15 years.  

Many Bangladeshis attribute the anger against India to Delhi’s swift endorsement of three controversial elections won by Ms Hasina’s party amid allegations of widespread vote-rigging. 

With Ms Hasina’s fall, Delhi’s “neighbourhood first” policy has taken another jolt with Bangladesh joining the Maldives and Nepal in resisting any attempt at dominance by India. 

Analysts say that Delhi can’t afford to lose its influence in another neighbouring country if it wants to protect its status as a regional powerhouse – especially as rival China is also jostling for influence in the region. 

Just last year, Mohamed Muizzu won the presidency in the Maldives on the back of his very public anti-India stand. 

“It’s time for India to do some introspection regarding its regional policy,” says Debapriya Bhattacharya, a senior economist with the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka.

Delhi needs to look at whether it has adequately taken on board the perspectives of its regional partners, he says.

“I am not only talking about Bangladesh, [but also] almost all other countries in the region,” adds Mr Bhattacharya, who heads a committee appointed by the interim government to prepare a white paper on the state of Bangladesh’s economy.

• Can India help its special ally Bangladesh defuse the crisis?

For example, in the case of Bangladesh, analysts point out that successive Indian governments have failed to engage with other opposition parties, particularly the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). 

“India somehow thought that the Awami League and its government are the only allies inside Bangladesh. That was a strategic blunder,” says Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior leader of the BNP.  

If free and fair elections are held in Bangladesh in the coming months, BNP leaders are confident of victory.

That will pose a diplomatic challenge for Delhi. There is a perceived trust deficit between India and the BNP, which is led by Begum Khaleda Zia, who had been prime minister for two terms earlier. 

Ms Zia, who spent most of her time in jail since 2018, has always denied corruption charges against her and has accused Ms Hasina of political vendetta. She has now been released from jail and is recovering from her illness.  

In the coming days, Delhi and the BNP leaders will have to find a way to work past their differences.

During the previous BNP-led coalition government from 2001 to 2006, the bilateral relationship deteriorated with Delhi accusing Dhaka of harbouring insurgents from India’s north-east.

During Ms Zia’s rule, Hindu leaders in Bangladesh said there were a series of attacks against them – including murder, looting and rape – by Islamist parties and the BNP which began as the election results were announced in 2001. 

The BNP denies the charges of giving shelter to anti-Indian insurgents and also of carrying out attacks on minority Hindus in 2001.

BNP leaders, including Mr Khan, say India hasn’t been forthcoming in engaging with them, adding that “now it’s time for a policy shift on the part of Delhi”.

He also stresses that given India’s proximity, population, geographical size and its growing economic and military might, a party like the BNP cannot afford to make the mistake of harbouring any anti-Indian insurgents within Bangladesh.

• ‘There is no law and order. And Hindus are being targeted again’

There are other factors also behind the anger against India. India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers and the sharing of water resources is a contentious issue.

The recent floods triggered by heavy rains in eastern Bangladesh are an example of how misinformation can fuel suspicions between the two countries. 

Following a sudden heavy downpour in the Indian state of Tripura, the excess water flowed into the Gumti river – which flows between the two countries – inundating vast areas inside the state as well as downstream in neighbouring Bangladesh.  

Millions of people were affected with many losing their houses, belongings and farmland. Many villagers and social media users accused India of deliberately releasing water from a dam in the night, leading to the floods. 

The Indian external affairs ministry was forced to issue a statement denying this, explaining that the floods had been caused by heavy rains in the catchment areas of the Gumti river. 

Then there is another factor – China. Beijing is keen to extend its footprint in Bangladesh as it battles for regional supremacy with India. 

It rolled out the red carpet for Mr Muizzu when he chose China for his first state visit after winning the Maldives election.

Delhi would want to avoid the same fate with Bangladesh. And it would hope that Bangladesh’s reliance on Indian goods and trade will buy it some time to work out its diplomatic strategy and change its image. 

So Delhi will have to tread carefully around Ms Hasina’s presence in India, especially if the new government makes a formal extradition request.

A statement issued on her behalf by her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy last month had already stoked anger in Bangladesh. 

But India wouldn’t want to ask Ms Hasina to leave the country when her future remains uncertain and come across as leaving a formidable former ally in the lurch. 

“It doesn’t matter how she is accorded hospitality in India. But it matters to Bangladeshis how she intervenes in the domestic matters staying over there. If she speaks against the current interim government, that would be considered as an act of hostility,” Mr Bhattacharya warned.  

Diplomats in Delhi will hope that Ms Hasina makes a choice for herself without forcing India’s hand.

Sir Tony Blair has been out of power in government for 17 years.

Yet he thinks he’s learned almost as much after leaving Number 10 as when he was in it.

One of the key insights from the revolutions in behavioural economics and neuroscience of the past 20 years is the degree to which our biases and experience frame our understanding of fresh information.

Even when we don’t want to, we make sense of the new by reference to the old.

It is inevitable, then, that the recent election of a Labour prime minister after more than a decade of Tory rule has occasioned endless comparison with the last time that happened, in 1997.

Both Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Tony are lawyers by training.

Both have cast themselves against the Left of the Labour Party.

But the similarities pretty much end there.

“The zeitgeist today is different,” Mr Blair says.

New Labour was approaching not just the turn of the century, but of the millennium, and the mood in the country was “pretty optimistic”.

And today?

“More anxious.”

Britain is not, as Sir John Major, Mr Blair’s predecessor, wanted, a nation at ease with itself.

In particular, our recent economic history is, like that of many other Western democracies, a tale of shocks and stagnation: a “vicious cycle of increased costs, increased taxes, and poor outcomes”.

Aside from the UK being very different under each of their tenures, Sir Tony and Sir Keir have very different political antennae and life experiences.

Mr Blair, while concerned about inequality and the plight of the poor, wrote in his memoir, A Journey, that he identified more with the aspirations of the middle class than the anxieties of the working class.

He said he wanted to move Labour beyond class struggle.

Sir Keir has said his “project” is “to return Labour to the service of working people, to become once again the natural vehicle for hopes and aspirations.”

But I am told that the question “What would Tony do?” is often heard, explicitly or implicitly, within the new government, just as those who ran the coalition government referred to him, with tongue only loosely in cheek, as the Master.

Luckily for all concerned, he has written down some answers in a new book, called On Leadership.

It has two central arguments.

First, the quality of governance and leadership is the difference between success and failure for countries.

Effective leadership requires stability and decisions for the long term.

When Mr Blair stood down, Britain had been led by just three people over 28 years.

Now we’re on our sixth prime minister in eight years.

The second, which is not new coming from Sir Tony, is that we are living through a technology revolution greater in consequence than previous industrial revolutions.

Primarily, this concerns Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The former prime minister is of the school that AI will change everything everywhere.

He’s all in.

And his argument, which forms a key plank of his institute’s work, is “the big question for any political leader in modern politics is how do I understand, master and harness the technology revolution?”

He is sometimes criticised for talking in generalities or abstractions about technology rather than specifics, but this overlooks the many detailed policy recommendations his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has made.

This think tank works in over 40 countries, advising governments, they say, on policy, delivery and strategy.

Prime among them: a digital ID, kept in a personalised digital wallet for each person to control who it is shared with.

In power, Mr Blair spent a lot of capital on ID cards, and lost the argument.

Today, although Labour has ruled out Digital ID, figures such as former chancellor George Osborne have changed their mind, accepting Sir Tony’s point that given how much data we hand over to tech companies, and the potential gains in running services and controlling migration, the idea should be revisited.

Technology allows Sir Tony to channel the optimism that he exuded after winning the Labour leadership.

There has never been a more exciting time to be in politics, he argues, such is the potential of this technology revolution.

But there is no getting away from the sheer scale of the challenges.

I ask him how he would describe Britain’s standing in the world compared with 20 years ago.

Initially at least he is, as it were, diplomatic.

His foreign policy, he says, had three pillars.

First, he believed Britain should be “America’s strongest ally”, and second, that we should be “key players in Europe”.

The third pillar was that we should exert soft power globally through a Department for International Development.

“And the truth of the matter is”, he says, “where we are on all three now?”

I ask him if what he’s really saying is, Britain is smaller and less influential in a more dangerous world.

“Yes,” he says, “but it’s a consequence of decisions that we’ve taken”.

Brexit is just one of those. “We’re going to have to rebuild our defence capabilities,” he says, costly though that may be.

As you will see in the interview, we had a strident exchange on globalisation.

I put to him an argument that Gordon Brown has made: that globalisation created a lot of losers, and that perhaps his government wasn’t sufficiently ready for, or sensitive to, that.

And that national populism, which is surging across much of the world, is in part a reaction to that.

He resists.

An unrepentant globalist, Mr Blair insists that “the world is not going to slow down”, and that you have to re-skill and equip people for a world that is doing the opposite.

Asked why politics in many Western democracies has shifted toward socio-cultural issues of identity and belonging, potentially more uncomfortable terrain for those on the left than socio-economic policy, he says: “Where people feel the world is changing in a way in which they don’t have a lot of control, then they cling to their identity.”

And on whether the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq also eroded public trust in democracy, Mr Blair argues that none of the public inquiries into the Iraq War ever found deception.

The mistake, he continues to insist, was failure to sufficiently understand the terrain Britain and America were entering.

To spend time in the Blair universe is to come across familiar patterns of thought.

He often describes people he rates highly as “capable”; uses the phrase “I always say to people” constantly; says of laudable figures that such and such person “was and is” admirable; and leans on tropes such as, you can look at politics in terms of right and left, or in terms of right and wrong.

But the biggest surprise in his new book is the constant Biblical references, and in particular, Moses.

In his 2010 memoir, Sir Tony said he always had a passion greater than politics, which is religion.

That can be keenly felt now.

When, in preparation for this interview, I spoke to over a dozen people who know him well, including former prime ministers, the word they most frequently attached to him was “messianic”.

At 71, he retains that zeal. Whether for good or for ill you can decide; but his continued influence around the world, and in 10 Downing Street, is not in doubt.

With pomp and splendour, China has welcomed more than 50 Africans leaders to Beijing this week for a summit to strengthen ties at a time of increasing political and economic turmoil around the world.

“It appeals to their vanities,” Macharia Munene, a Kenya-based professor of international relations tells the BBC, referring to the red carpet welcome – spiced up with entertainment by dancers in colourful costumes – that the leaders received.

The optics were carefully choreographed to make the leaders feel that it is a meeting of equals.

Many of them – including South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and Kenya’s William Ruto – held one-to-one meetings with their Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and were given tours of Beijing and other cities at the heart of China’s development ahead of the summit.

As Prof Munene puts it, China’s aim is to show African leaders that “we are in the same boat, we are all victims of Western imperialism”.

Paul Frimpong, executive director of the Ghana-based Africa-China Centre for Policy and Advisory, says that Western powers – as well as oil-rich Gulf states – are trying to match China’s influence in Africa.

“There is a keen interest and competition in and around what Africa’s potential is,” he tells the BBC.

Cobus van Staden, co-founder of the China-Global South Project, writes that China goes out of its way to emphasise its own status as a developing country, signalling solidarity with Africa and the rest of the Global South.

“It avoids the dreariness of the US and EU’s ongoing aid focus with its attendant conditionality and preaching,” he adds.

Over the last two decades, China’s diplomacy has paid off. Out of all the countries in the world, it has risen to become Africa’s largest trading partner.

Data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that a fifth of Africa’s exports go to China, the bulk of which includes metals, mineral products and fuel. The exports have quadrupled in US dollar terms since 2001.

For African countries, China is also the “single largest source of imports” of manufactured goods and machinery, according to the IMF.

But the balance of trade, in most cases, favours China massively.

This is something Mr Ramaphosa sought to address in his bilateral meeting with President Xi.

“We would like to narrow the trade deficit and address the structure of our trade,” South Africa’s president said.

A joint communique issued afterwards said that “China showed it was willing to uplift job creation, citing recruitment conferences for Chinese enterprises to promote local employment in South Africa”.

Kenya, on the other hand, is seeking more credit, despite a heavy debt burden that gobbles up nearly two thirds of its annual revenue and which recently triggered street protests after the government sought to introduce new taxes to fund the budget deficit.

Mr Ruto hopes to secure funding for various infrastructure projects, including the completion of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) to connect Kenya’s coast to neighbouring Uganda, the building of roads and dams, the establishment of a pharmaceutical park and a technology-driven transport system for the capital, Nairobi.

After connecting Nairobi to the port city of Mombasa, China discontinued its financing of the controversial SGR four years ago, leading to rail tracks ending in a field outside the lake city of Naivasha.

As a major bilateral lender to many African countries, China has often come under scrutiny for its deals, particularly in recent years when several African countries, including Ghana, Zambia and Ethiopia, experienced debt distress.

Debt sustainability is at the centre of discussions at every major forum on Chinese and African relations, and it is likely to be the case at the latest summit as well, Mr Frimpong says.

The debt crisis is a reminder that foreign powers are motivated by their own interests – and African states need to improve their economies and finances in order to reduce their reliance on them.

This is especially the case as the IMF predicts that China’s economic growth will continue to slow – and recommends that African countries adapt by deepening regional economic integration and implementing structural reforms to increase local revenue.

Most of all, as Dr Van Staden points out, African leaders need to “overcome the velvet rope aspect of these summits to make their own deals, set their own terms, and throw their own parties”.

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The Grenfell Inquiry’s final report sets out how a chain of failures across government and the private sector led to Grenfell Tower becoming a death trap.

The fire killed 72 people in 2017, with the cladding already found to be the “principal” reason for the blaze’s rapid spread.

On Wednesday, the final 1,700-page report of the six-year public inquiry into the fire was published.

Here are the key points from that report.

The report by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, a retired High Court judge, says experts sounded an alarm about cladding fires in 1992 after the 11-storey Knowsley Heights tower caught alight in Huyton, Merseyside.

Seven years later there was another fire at Garnock Court in Irvine, North Ayrshire, and a committee of MPs repeated the concerns.

But the flammable cladding wasn’t banned because it had already been classed as meeting a British safety standard.

Safety tests in 2001 revealed the type of cladding of concern “burned violently”. The results were kept confidential and the government did not tighten any rules.

“We do not understand the failure to act in relation to a matter of such importance,” the inquiry panel said.

Eight years later in 2009, six people died in a fire at Lakanal House, a high rise in South London. The coroner at their inquests asked for a review of building regulations but, the inquiry found, this was “not treated with any sense of urgency.”

• Follow live updates here
• Grenfell’s path to disaster: How failures and ‘systemic dishonesty’ led to deaths
• Firefighter: I still feel guilt over decision to leave person behind
• Watch: All Grenfell deaths were avoidable, says inquiry chair

In 2010 the coalition government headed by David Cameron was on a mission to cut regulations – which it had dubbed as “red tape” holding back British enterprise.

The inquiry found this policy so “dominated” thinking in government that “even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded.”

The inquiry found that the then housing department was “poorly run” and fire safety had been left in the hands of a relatively junior official.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is a key body in the UK that was set up 100 years ago to help deliver quality science-led standards for the construction industry. It is the government’s expert adviser.

The BRE was privatised in 1997 – but the inquiry said it then became exposed to “unscrupulous product manufacturers.”

The inquiry found there had been “systematic dishonesty” from those who made and sold the cladding.

Arconic, a manufacturer, “deliberately concealed” the true extent of the danger of the cladding used to wrap Grenfell Tower. Fire tests it commissioned showed the cladding performed poorly but this information was not given to the BBA, a British private certification company tasked with keeping the construction industry up to date.

This “caused BBA to make statements that Arconic knew were ‘false and misleading’”, the report said.

Two firms made the insulation inside the cladding panels – Celotex and Kingspan.

Celotex made “false and misleading claims” about its product being suitable for Grenfell, said the inquiry. Kingspan, the inquiry said, misled the market by not revealing the limitations of its product.

The inquiry said Grenfell’s refit was poorly managed by contractors and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s company that ran social housing, known as a Tenant Management Organisation (TMO).

The inquiry said there had been a breakdown in trust and relations between the TMO and residents, which led to a “serious failure to observe responsibilities”.

It showed a “persistent indifference” to fire safety and the needs of vulnerable residents.

When the TMO had to replace self-shutting fire doors in the block – a key safety measure to prevent spread of smoke and flames – it did not order the correct specification that would improve the chances of residents being rescued.

The inquiry said that during the refit of the building there was a failure to establish who was responsible for safety standards – resulting in an “unedifying ‘merry go round of buck-passing'”.

Studio E, the architect, Rydon, the principal contractor, and Harley Facades, the cladding sub-contractor, “all took a casual approach to contractual relations,” said the report.

“They did not properly understand the nature and scope of the obligations they had undertaken, or, if they did, paid scant attention to them.”

The inquiry said Studio E “bears a very significant degree of responsibility for the disaster” before it had failed to recognise the cladding was combustible.

Harley Facades “bears significant responsibility” because it had not concerned itself with fire safety at any stage.”

Rydon failed to make clear which contractor was responsible for what – and it failed “to take an active interest in fire safety.”

The LFB had known since the 2009 Lakanal fire that it faced challenges in fighting blazes in high-rise blocks. The firefighters who went into Grenfell had not been prepared for what they had to battle through to try to save lives.

The inquiry said senior officers had been complacent and lacked the skills to recognise the problems and correct them. There was a failure to share knowledge about cladding fires, a failure to plan for a large number of 999 calls, or train staff in what to tell trapped residents.

The inquiry pulls no punches in concluding that the path to disaster began many years ago.

It says that the way building safety is managed in England and Wales is “seriously defective”. It recommends a single regulator, answerable to a government minister, so that officials and the industry can be held to account.

The day Beslan began burying its dead, there were so many cars loaded with coffins that there was gridlock on the road to the cemetery.

In the small Caucasus town, everyone had lost a relative or knew someone killed in the siege of School No. 1.

Launched by heavily armed militants, mainly from Chechnya, the terror attack lasted three days.

Three hundred and thirty-four people died; 186 of them were children.

It’s 20 years today since the siege ended suddenly in devastating explosions, but I can still hear the wailing of Beslan’s mothers; the grief that rolled over the town in waves.

I can picture the white open coffin of 11-year-old Alina, laid out in her front yard with her dolls placed carefully beside her.

And I will always remember Rima, who spent three days crammed into the stifling school gym with her grandchildren and hundreds of other hostages, bombs strung from the basketball hoops above them.

Back then, she confessed that she was ashamed to have survived.

As she and her grandchildren ran for the exit, under fire, they had to climb over the dead body of a small boy.

“God forgive us for that,” Rima begged, through streams of tears.

In 2004, the suffering of Beslan was felt all over Russia and resonated all over the world.

First and foremost, the tragedy was caused by the dozens of men and women who stormed the school, firing in the air and taking hundreds of petrified people hostage.

They had rounded up mothers with babies and balloons, and little girls with big white bows in their hair. Whole families who had been celebrating the first day back to school. The militants stuffed the gym with explosives and began executing the male hostages.

That summer, Vladimir Putin’s brutal war against separatists in Chechnya – launched four years earlier – had already burst beyond the borders of the southern Russian republic.

The day before the Beslan siege, 10 people were killed when a Chechen woman blew herself up outside a Moscow metro station. Before that, suicide bombers blew two planes from the sky and there was a deadly attack on a music festival.

But for two decades now there have been persistent, troubling questions about how Mr Putin and his officials handled the attack on Beslan in their determination not to “give in” to terrorists.

Did they even try to negotiate?

Why claim the attackers made no political demands when they had called for Russian troops to pull out of Chechnya?

Could more children have been freed?

Most critically, why did rescuers fire from tanks and use flamethrowers when there were still hundreds of hostages inside the school?

To many, the siege of Beslan offered crucial early lessons in Putinism, including that he would spare nothing and no one to crush those who challenged him.

It took 20 years for Mr Putin to visit the ruins of School No. 1.

Even then, he didn’t join the anniversary events with the families. He only travelled there two weeks ago, alone.

A few shattered walls of the school were left standing as a memorial, eventually encased in a gold-tinted shroud and hung with framed photographs of the dead.

There, in the middle of the gym where the hostages were held, Mr Putin placed flowers beneath a wooden cross.

For most world leaders, it would be unfathomable not to have visited this spot before. It was Russia’s deadliest ever terror attack. But Mr Putin has always preferred to be filmed in a fighter jet or flanked by soldiers.

The graves of children that he couldn’t save do nothing for his action man image.

In fact, he had been to Beslan before, but barely noticed.

Right after the siege collapsed, he flew in late at night to visit a hospital under cover of darkness. He told Beslan that all Russia was mourning with them but by sunrise he was gone.

“He came far too late,” I remember hearing back then, from grieving families. “He should have stayed with us.”

But President Putin didn’t dare.

Four years earlier, a previous encounter with grieving women had scarred and scared him. When the Kursk submarine sank in 2000 it took him five days to break off his holiday and by the time he met the relatives, they tore shreds off him.

So Mr Putin began making the carefully-choreographed meeting a hallmark of his presidency. Only small, pre-vetted crowds. Everything under control.

Last month in Beslan, just three mothers were brought to meet him.

“It was an awful act of terror that took the lives of 334 people,” Mr Putin described their tragedy to them, for the sake of the state TV camera.

“Of that number, 136 were children.”

The mothers are not in vision at that moment, but they surely winced at his mistake.

Because 186 children were killed in Beslan.

It’s a number engrained on the brains of everyone in that town. It’s the one thing you don’t forget.

But Mr Putin didn’t visit Beslan to empathise. The mothers in black were just a prop.

He was using them to make a point.

Two decades ago, he reminded Russians, he had fought and won his war on terror. Now he was battling “neo-Nazis” and a hostile West in Ukraine, and he vowed he would win that war too.

Distortion and lies were already in the 2004 Putin playbook. Then, officials grossly under reported the number of hostages in Beslan.

I arrived in town on the first day of the siege and soon realised there were three times more hostages captive in that school than officials were admitting to.

Every local told us so. But state TV reporters, under instruction, continued to repeat the lie.

People feared that troops were preparing to storm the school, so the authorities were playing down the potential casualty-count.

I’ve often wondered what would happen to a government in a Western democracy after an attack that ended with many more hostages dead, than terrorists.

I think it would struggle to survive the inevitable official inquiry, or the next election.

Vladimir Putin didn’t have to worry about either.

In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia had failed in its duty to protect the hostages and used ‘indiscriminate force’ as the siege collapsed. The case was brought by desperate, bereaved mothers, hunting for justice.

But there was no new investigation in Russia itself. No senior officials held to account.

When the 3 Beslan mothers complained to Putin about that in August, at their meeting, he professed surprise and promised to look into it.

He’s had 20 years.

He did address one thing, though, right after the siege.

In 2004, Mr Putin announced he was cancelling direct elections for governors in Russia’s regions, claiming that would help improve security. There was no connection whatsoever to the Beslan attack.

When parliament gathered to vote on the move, opposition politicians picketed the building warning of a creeping dictatorship.

Two decades on, there is no more opposition.

State media has been fully tamed. Democracy has been crushed.

The prime lesson Mr Putin took from the siege of Beslan was one about increasing control.

A woman who developed a rare type of cancer linked to her breast implants has warned that others with similar implants could be “walking around like timebombs”.

Susan Axelby, 68, was recently paid £57,000 by Allergan Limited after she fell ill with breast-implant associated anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL).

It is thought to be one of the first payouts of this kind linked to Allergan breast implants in the UK.

She had her breasts removed to avoid the risk of inherited breast cancer – but went on to develop cancer after the implants.

Regulators have received at least 106 reports of BIA-ALCL relating to surgery in the UK, involving six manufacturers.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is currently collecting data on women who are affected.

In her first broadcast interview, Susan told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour programme about the ordeal – and while her case is very rare, she has a warning for others.

“I’m thinking, not so much me – I’m nearly 70 – but there’s young girls, because they wanted breast augmentation, and they’re walking around like timebombs,” she said.

“They’ve no idea what’s in their body now – and if it’s happened to me and a few other people, you know, they can be walking around like that.”

Susan had the implants in Sheffield, where she lives, after her own breasts were removed to protect her against an inherited cancer risk.

A few years later, she noticed some swelling in one of her new breasts, which felt hot to the touch.

“I went back to the hospital and they drained 500 millilitres of fluid out of it,” Susan said.

“Then I went back home and it swelled up again.

“I went back again and they drained the same amount off – within a month, that was.”

Susan was referred to a surgeon, who discovered she had BIA-ALCL – a cancer of the immune system, not a type of breast cancer, that can develop in the scar tissue around breast implants.

“I didn’t believe it,” she said.

“I was in denial because I’d had my breasts off to stop me getting cancer and now I’ve got cancer.

“I thought, ‘How can that be?'”

The surgeon then told Susan the implant had to be removed.

“He said, ‘we’re going to have to take it out and take the breasts off again’,” she said.

“And they said I could never, ever have another implant.

“The only way around it is to take stuff from another part of my body and rebuild it.

“I just said to him, ‘I can’t go through that again’.”

Susan now has no implants, breast tissue or nipples.

“There’s actually nothing,” she said.

“There’s just a straight line all the way across the top of my body.”

It has affected her confidence and wellbeing.

“I don’t like anyone to see me without any clothes on and that does quite include my husband, although he’s not bothered at all.

“I have bad days.

“I still get problems with my anxiety and my depression, so it’s never gone away.”

Susan had sued Allergan, she said, not just for her own sake but for others too.

The claim was settled and Allergan, a US pharmaceutical company, paid Susan the £57,000 in October 2023, with no admission of liability.

Scientists say BIA-ALCL could be a reaction to the implant’s textured surface or a bacterial infection.

As of December 2023, the estimated incidence of BIA-ALCL, based on confirmed cases requiring surgery in the UK, is one per 14,200 implants sold.

Other affected people in the UK are coming together to take legal action.

And another group is seeking compensation from Allergan on behalf of 60,000 women from the Netherlands.

In 2019, Allergan issued a voluntary global recall of Biocell textured breast implants and tissue expanders and no longer manufactures these types of implants.

The MHRA says there is no need for people with breast implants but no signs or symptoms of BIA-ALCL, to have them removed or checked.

But anyone with unusual signs or symptoms, such as swelling around their breast implant, should see a doctor.

A US judge has ordered Donald Trump’s campaign to stop using the song Hold On, I’m Coming at his rallies, in response to a lawsuit from the family of the song’s co-writer, Isaac Hayes.

The Republican presidential nominee regularly plays the song before and after his speeches, including at the Republican National Convention in July.

However, Hayes’ family have sued Mr Trump’s campaign, saying that it repeatedly ignored requests to stop using the song, made famous by soul duo Sam and Dave in 1966.

The temporary ruling, by Judge Thomas Thrash in Georgia, means the campaign is banned from playing it again until the court case is settled.

However, the judge did not grant a request to order Mr Trump’s campaign to take down recordings of past events in which it had used the song.

Hayes’ son, Isaac Hayes III, welcomed the ruling, saying that his father, who died in 2008, would not have endorsed the former President.

“We have to take a stand that we want to separate ourselves from someone with Donald Trump’s character,” he said outside the Richard B Russell Federal courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia.

“This is not a political issue, this is a character issue.”

Ronald Coleman, a lawyer for Mr Trump, said that the campaign had already agreed to “cease further use” of Hold On, I’m Coming (Mr Trump has returned to using the Village People’s YMCA since the lawsuit was filed last month).

“We’re very gratified that the court recognised the First Amendment issues at stake and didn’t order a takedown of existing videos,” Mr Coleman added.

He also suggested the case could be settled before coming to trial.

“Before we left court, we spoke to the Hayes’ attorneys and to Mr Hayes III, about trying to work something out. We want this to be as a cooperative process as possible going forward,” he told reporters.

Hayes composed the song in 1966 with Dave Porter, when he was a staff writer at Stax Records. He went on to become a Grammy and Oscar-winner in his own right, with hits like Shaft and Walk On By.

The star’s estate claims that the Mr Trump’s campaign used the song on 134 separate occasions after they first asked him to desist.

They are demanding $3m (£2.4m) in licensing fees for the repeated use of the song between 2022 and 2024.

Mr Trump’s lawyers argued that the Hayes estate was not the license holder for the song, and that it had permission to use it, a statement Hayes family lawyers said was “erroneous”.

Dozens of other artists have objected to the use of their songs at Republican rallies, as the US Presidential election draws closer.

Abba, Foo Fighters, the White Stripes singer Jack White, Celine Dion and Johnny Marr have all raised objections in the last month alone.

However, musicians have only had limited success in stopping politicians from using their music, and legal proceedings often drag on for years.

A case from Guyanese-British singer Eddy Grant over Mr Trump’s use of his song Electric Avenue is due to be heard in a Manhattan court this Friday, four years after the star’s initial complaint.

The star sued Mr Trump over a 2020 campaign video that was soundtracked by a 40-second clip of his song.

The video was viewed 13.7 million times before Twitter took it down, and Grant says this was an unauthorised use for which Mr Trump owes him $300,000 (£229,000) in damages.

As with the Hayes’ case, lawyers for Mr Trump argue that the singer does not hold the copyright for his own song.

Queen guitarist Sir Brian May has revealed he recently suffered a minor stroke, which left him unable to use his left arm.

However, the 77-year-old rock legend said he’s now OK and has regained enough movement to be able to play music again.

“The good news is that I can play guitar after the events of the last few days,” he said in a video posted on his website on Wednesday.

“I say this because it was in some doubt because that little health hiccup that I mentioned happened about a week ago, and what they called it was a minor stroke.

“All of a sudden – out of the blue – I didn’t have any control over this arm. So it was a little scary, I have to say.”

He praised doctors at Frimley Hospital in Surrey, “where I went, blue lights flashing, the lot – very exciting”.

“So, the good news is I’m OK. I’m just doing what I’m told, which is basically nothing.”

He said he had been “grounded”, adding: “I’m not allowed to go out – well, I’m not allowed to drive, not allowed to get on a plane, not allowed to raise the heart rate too high.”

Sir Brian filmed the video outdoors, and as a plane could be heard overhead, he joked: “I’m not allowed to have planes flying over, which will stress me. But I’m good.”

The star added that he didn’t say anything publicly at the time the minor stroke happened because “I really don’t want sympathy”.

“Please don’t do that because it’ll clutter up my inbox and I hate that,” he added.

The revelation comes almost two weeks after the broadcast of a BBC One documentary fronted by Sir Brian about his campaign to protect badgers from being culled.

In his new video, he also discussed the programme, saying it had received some “great reactions from farmers particularly – also from wildlife people of course”.

Badger culling is used as a way to prevent the spread of tuberculosis in cattle.

The musician added: “We’ve been attacked very strongly from some quarters, and you have to look very carefully, because the people who are shouting the most of course are the people who feel most threatened.”

The show was criticised by bodies including the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, which said it was “missing key evidence that would have helped to inform viewers on the facts about bovine TB”.

The NHS says a stroke is a serious life-threatening medical condition that happens when the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off.

One sign is often that the person has weakness or numbness in one arm, as well as one side of their face appearing to drop, and their speech being slurred or garbled.

There’s also a related condition called a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), where the blood supply to the brain is temporarily interrupted, which causes what’s often described as a “mini-stroke”.

Find out more about how to spot a stroke on the NHS website.

May’s stroke comes four years after he had a “small” heart attack.

At the time, he said was shocked to realise he wasn’t as healthy as he thought, and he was “very near death”.

He discovered three arteries were “congested and in danger of blocking the supply of blood to my heart”, and subsequently had surgery to fit three stents – tiny tubes to hold open blocked arteries.

May’s guitar playing, songwriting and vocals helped propel Queen to be one of the biggest bands in the world in the 1970s and 80s.

He wrote hits including We Will Rock You, Who Wants to Live Forever and Flash, and co-wrote others.

After the death of frontman Freddie Mercury in 1991, the band have continued with new singer Adam Lambert.

As well as his music career, May is known for his animal rights activism, and earned a PhD in astrophysics in 2007, 36 years after abandoning his thesis when the band took off.

He is married to former EastEnders actress Anita Dobson.

Supermodel Elle MacPherson has revealed she was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago.

Nicknamed “The Body”, MacPherson told Australian Woman’s Weekly that she found out she had cancer following a lumpectomy to remove a growth in 2017.

MacPherson used what she described as holistic therapies, rather than traditional medicine.

Cancer Research UK states on its website that “there is no scientific or medical evidence” to show that alternative therapies can help to treat or cure cancer.”

It also states that some alternative therapies might be harmful and cause side effects.

MacPherson said she is now in “clinical remission but I would say I’m in utter wellness”.

The news of her illness was also revealed in a chapter of her new book, titled Elle: Life, Lessons and How to Trust Yourself, under the heading Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

The model, now 60, told Woman’s Weekly that her doctor had recommended a mastectomy with radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, plus reconstruction of her breast.

“It was a shock, it was unexpected, it was confusing, it was daunting in so many ways,” she told the magazine. “And it really gave me an opportunity to dig deep in my inner sense to find a solution that worked for me.”

She said she spent several weeks deliberating over treatment options and sought advice from “32 doctors and experts” – but we don’t know who they were or anything about their qualifications or experience.

Ultimately, she decided not to have chemotherapy and use what she described as “an intuitive, heart-led, holistic approach”.

“I came to the understanding that there was no sure thing and absolutely no guarantees. There was no ‘right’ way, just the right way for me,” she wrote in her book, quoted in the magazine.

“I chose an holistic approach. Saying no to standard medical solutions was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But saying no to my own inner sense would have been even harder,” she added.

MacPherson, who is also the founder of beauty and wellness firm WelleCo, said she was under the care of several specialists, including her primary doctor, a doctor of naturopathy, an holistic dentist, an osteopath and a chiropractor. It is not known what qualifications each member of her medical team holds.

Research suggests alternative treatments are linked to reduced survival rates.

MacPherson added that she spent eight months in a rental property in Phoenix, Arizona, under her health team’s care.

In her book, the model said her treatment decision received mixed reactions from her family, with one of her then teenage sons supportive of her not having chemotherapy, while the other “being more conventional, wasn’t comfortable with my choice at all”.

She added that he was still supportive even if he didn’t agree with her, as was her former partner and the father of her sons, Arki Busson, who thought avoiding a traditional treatment plan was “extreme”.

MacPherson said she had previously found a cyst in one of her breasts in 2014, but it had turned out to be benign.

Cancer charity Macmillan says that if you are considering using alternative therapies, talk to your cancer doctor for advice and support.

Doctors are generally supportive of people using any complementary therapies that may help them cope better with their illness.

Complementary therapies are used alongside conventional breast cancer treatments such as chemotherapy. But doctors usually advise against using alternative therapies, which are used instead of medical treatment.

Macmillan adds that if you decide to use an alternative therapy, it is important to check it is safe: “Always check the credentials of the therapist. Alternative therapies can be expensive, and some can cause serious side effects. They can also make you feel unwell and be harmful to your health.

Cancer Research UK says: “Therapists and companies who promote alternative therapies can cause harm by convincing people an alternative therapy will cure them, when it can’t. This can be especially harmful if a person is also encouraged to give up their conventional cancer treatment.”

Responding to the news of Elle Macpherson’s breast cancer diagnosis, Jane Murphy, clinical nurse specialist at Breast Cancer Now, said: “Each person’s breast cancer diagnosis is different, and as such the treatment they are recommended will be tailored to their individual situation and agreed by them and a team of breast cancer experts. Specialists base this on robust clinical evidence.”

A British national has said he is at a loss as to why the Nigerian police have accused him of planning to overthrow Nigeria’s government and placed a bounty on his head.

It was alleged by Nigeria’s police spokesperson on Monday that Andrew Wynne – and a co-conspirator – had built up a network of sleeper cells to destabilise Nigeria and had fled the country in the wake of last month’s cost-of-living protests.

Speaking from the UK, Mr Wynne told Nigeria’s Channels Television he was not aware of accusations and would be happy to talk to officials.

He said he ran a bookshop in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and had been visiting the West African nation for 25 years without any problems.

A reward of 10m naira ($6,000, £5,000) has been offered by Nigeria’s police to anyone who has information that could lead to the arrest of Mr Wynne – and the same amount for his alleged Nigerian accomplice Lucky Obiyan.

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“I am more than happy to talk with the police; I am more than happy to have a discussion on WhatsApp or Zoom; I am more than happy to go to London and meet with officials from the Nigerian High Commission,” said Mr Wynne, who is also known by the name Andrew Povich.

He was declared a fugitive on the day that 10 Nigerians were charged with treason for taking part in the protests that were dubbed “10 days of rage”.

These demonstrations were mainly organised via social media but also had the backing of the country’s trade unions.

All of those who were accused on Monday in the federal high court of treason, destruction of public property and injuring police officers pleaded not guilty. Their charge sheet also alleged that they had been working with Mr Wynne.

Later, police spokesperson Muyiwa Adejobi gave more details about Mr Wynne, saying he had rented a space at Abuja’s Labour House, the headquarters of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) – the country’s main trade union body.

He also said the British national had established a school to cover up his activities – working towards the overthrow of President Bola Tinubu’s government.

“I am not aware that I am a fugitive; I am not aware that I am running away from the law,” Mr Wynne told Channels TV.

“I have had a bookshop at the NLC offices right at the centre of Abuja for seven years and all that time, of course the security forces have paid no interest in me,” he said.

The August demonstrations turned violent in some places as protesters clashed with security forces leaving at least seven dead, according to police, though rights groups have put the death toll at 23.

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Like many full-time workers Laura Etchells had longed for hours more flexible than the traditional Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.

The mum-of-two from Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, now works her full-time job in publishing, compressed into four days, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

She says the extra day off – Friday in her case – saves her around £350 a month in childcare costs, and she says makes her more productive in her job.

“The longer days allow me to get my teeth stuck into things a bit more,” she says, adding that if she were to work anywhere else then a compressed week would be a “must”.

“Cost wasn’t the deciding factor to condense into four days, but it did contribute to the decision. The overall benefit was spending more time with my children whilst maintaining my full-time job.”

The BBC has heard from several people, like Laura, who work compressed hours, after Labour said it wants to strengthen workers’ rights for more flexible hours.

On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds held a meeting with business leaders to discuss their plan, which is part of the upcoming Employment Bill.

Since April, employees have had the right to request flexible working from day one, including compressed hours, but legal experts think Labour’s plan will likely aim to make it harder for employers to reject requests for greater flexibility.

Currently, workers need to convince their employers to allow flexible hours. Under Labour’s plan, employment solicitor Alison Loveday says companies may need to explain “on what grounds can they justify refusing a four-day week”.

The proposals do not match the definition as set out by the official four-day week campaign, which calls for the same pay for fewer hours.

Rather, Labour has said that employees would “still be doing the same amount of work” across different working patterns – such as, for example, four 10-hour shifts.

Laura’s employer, Emerald Publishing, offers a range of flexible working options, which it says makes staff more productive and improves work-life balance.

However, the company’s chief legal and people officer Emma Tregenza admits: “While the benefits are clear, it’s worth noting that it can be a long day for people doing compressed hours.

“That can also have a knock-on effect on others in the team who work a ‘normal pattern’… what it does to their schedules. It can be challenging to work around multiple variations of working hours.”

Jason Magee had a rather different experience to Laura when Cortex, the Guernsey-based software firm he works for, trialled compressing staff’s hours last August, with everyone working 35 hours across four days, rather than five.

Although he was eager to give it a go and recalls making full use of his Fridays off, he says the longer working days were a challenge and thinks he was less productive.

“After about seven or eight hours, you start to feel run down and you’re not working as best as you can,” he says.

Matt Thornton, one of Cortex’s founders, says it shifted the firm’s focus.

“We’re not a company that clock watches. But during the trial period, we became far more conscious of working hours, rather than whether they were getting the work done.

“We’re a software business and have longer-term business goals rather than weekly, but when you compress working hours, you put the spotlight on those four days rather than the outcome.”

Cortex is now experimenting with a four-day week with reduced hours, meaning four eight-hour days, in line with the official campaign, and Matt says the feedback to this has been much more positive.

There is limited research around the benefits of working compressed hours.

A 2023 report for the International Labour Organization states: “Studies of the effects of existing compressed workweeks generally conclude that they positively affect work–life balance.”

But it adds: “However, there is a lack of consensus concerning the physiological and psychological health effects of compressed workweeks.”

For Kelly Burton, a mental health nurse from Crewe, condensing her hours into a four-day week since July has given her “perfect work-life balance”.

“I’m happier at work, can spend the extra day looking after elderly parents and still have my weekend,” she told the BBC.

Peter Meacham, a dispensing optician at a pharmacy in Basildon, Essex, made the same move in September 2020.

Both Kelly and Peter say they had to convince their bosses that they could get the same amount of work done over four days.

Peter works Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, which gives him Tuesday and Wednesday off for his hobby – performing magic shows for charity.

If he were to get a new job, he says the ability to work a compressed week would be “an absolute key factor” in his decision.

Despite the success stories from people like Laura, Kelly and Peter, Michelle Ovens, founder of Small Business Britain, has mixed views on compressed hours.

She describes it as “a limited solution that will not work for all, particularly the small businesses that need to stay open throughout the week, often with peak periods of activity”.

She says that introducing a four-day week could lead to higher staffing costs and that there are other ways of improving flexibility and accommodating staff “rather than simply implementing compressed hours and a strict four-day week system”.

She advises businesses not to be alarmed by the government’s proposals, though.

“Labour has been clear that it is not mandating the four-day working week,” she says.

“It is important that small businesses are reassured that there is no cause for concern, especially for sectors where this policy would not be feasible.”

For those who are still unsure about whether a compressed week will work for them, those words will come as some relief.

Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine has been injured in the leg in a confrontation with a policeman, but his party says he is recovering in hospital.

The National Unity Platform (NUP) said the pop star-turned-politician had been hit by a tear-gas canister – initially it was thought his wound was caused by a bullet.

The incident occurred while the NUP leader was on his way to visit his lawyers on Tuesday in Bulindo, which is about 20km (12 miles) north of the capital, Kampala

A statement from the police said officers on site reported that the opposition leader had stumbled while getting into his vehicle.

Earlier, the X account of Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, first broke the news, saying: “@HEBobiwine has been shot in the leg by police in Bulindo.”

Footage was shared on social media by journalist Solomon Serwanjja, who was at the scene, showing the 42-year-old opposition leader being helped from a building with a bleeding injury from his left shin.

Later NUP spokesperson Joel Ssenyonyi said X-ray reports showed “there were some fragments from a tear-gas canister embedded in Bobi Wine’s leg”.

An investigation would be conducted to clarify the facts, a police statement stated.

The NUP leader is due to undergo surgery to remove the fragments, medical experts at Nsambya Hospital in Kampala, told journalists.

The police say Bobi Wine had attended an event in Bulindo and afterwards “he and his team moved out of their cars and embarked on a procession up to Bulindo town.

“However, the police advised against it. Despite their guidance, he insisted on proceeding… closing the road, leading to police intervention to prevent the procession.

“During the ensuing altercation, it is alleged that he sustained injuries,” the statement said.

At least four NUP members were arrested during the altercation, the party said.

Veteran opposition figure Kizza Besigye condemned the “horrible outcome” of what he termed “usual police aggression against political opposition”.

Bobi Wine was first elected to parliament in 2017, and ran against President Yoweri Museveni in the 2021 election, which was marred by state repression.

He is popular among young people and has been arrested – and beaten up – numerous times.

The country’s security forces have a long history of pursuing political opponents of President Museveni, who has been in power for almost 40 years.

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A businesswoman who styled herself as the “Queen of Trash” has gone on trial in Sweden accused of illegally dumping mountains of waste, in the country’s biggest ever environmental crime case.

Bella Nilsson is one of 11 people charged with “aggravated environmental crime”.

She was chief executive of waste management company NMT Think Pink, which is accused of dumping or burying 200,000 tonnes of waste in 21 locations between 2015 and 2020.

Lawyers for Ms Nilsson who is now called Fariba Vancor, and another former chief executive Leif-Ivan Karlsson say they deny any wrongdoing.

Entering Attunda district court north of Stockholm, Ms Nilsson refused to answer reporters’ questions.

Prosecutors said the way the company mismanaged the waste led to harmful levels of carcinogenic chemicals, lead, arsenic and mercury being released into the air, soil and water.

In one incident, a Think Pink waste pile close to a nature reserve burned for two months after spontaneously combusting.

Ms Nilsson has previously told Swedish media that her company acted in line with the law.

Prosecutors said that NMT Think Pink – which went bankrupt in 2020 when Bella Nilsson was arrested – had “no intention or ability to handle [the waste] in line with environmental legislation”.

The way the rubbish was discarded at the sites endangered the “health of humans, animals and plant life”, they added.

Think Pink was hired by building companies, municipalities and private individuals, to dispose of everything from building materials, electronics, metals, plastics, wood, tyres and toys. But it left the piles “unsorted” and abandoned, according to prosecutors.

All 11 defendants have denied wrongdoing. They include Bella Nilsson’s ex husband Thomas Nilsson, whose lawyer said that as chief executive before 2015 he had was not in charge when the offences were committed.

A preliminary investigation into the scandal ran to 45,000 pages.

Prosecutor Anders Gustafsson argues that as well as dumping waste, the defendants used falsified documents to mislead authorities and make money which was used for private purposes.

Several municipalities are seeking damages of 260m kronor ($25.4 million) for cleaning up the mountains of waste as well as decontaminating the sites.

Botkyrka council, south of Stockholm, has sought 125m kronor in damages, having spent far more than that merely on removing the waste.

One fire in Kagghamra forced parents to keep their children indoors for miles around because of toxic smoke fumes.

A former Philippine mayor who was on the run for weeks after being accused of spying for China has been arrested in Indonesia.

Philippine authorities have been pursuing Alice Guo across four countries since she disappeared in July following an investigation into her alleged criminal activities.

She has been accused of protecting online casinos, which were a front for scam centres and human trafficking syndicates in her sleepy pig farming town, Bamban.

Ms Guo denies the allegations. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said she would be flown back to the Philippines as early as Wednesday.

She said she grew up on the family farm with her Chinese father and Filipina mother, but MPs who investigated the scam centre operations said her fingerprints matched a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping and accused her of being a spy who provided cover for criminal gangs.

The dramatic nature of her case, which has since seen her sister arrested and questioned by the Philippine Senate, sparked fury in the country and drew international attention.

Ms Guo’s case has played out as the Philippines and China continue to spar over reefs and outcrops in the South China Sea.

China has not commented on the allegations against her.

Authorities believe that Ms Guo slipped past border checks in July and took several boats, crossing neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, on her way to Indonesia, where she was arrested on Tuesday on the western border of the capital Jakarta.

Mr Marcos said her arrest is “a warning to those who attempt to evade justice”.

“Such is an exercise in futility. The arm of the law is long and it will reach you,” he wrote on Facebook.

Photos showed Ms Guo wearing light pink pyjamas and a white coat when she was arrested.

Ms Guo was thrust under the national spotlight after authorities in March uncovered a sprawling scam centre in Bamban that were hiding under online casinos, known locally as Philippine Online Gaming Operations (Pogo).

Pogos cater to clients in the Chinese mainland, where gambling is illegal.

Ms Guo’s case confirmed suspicions that Pogos were being used as a front for organised crime and led to Mr Marcos outlawing them in response to public anger.

Pogos flourished under his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose presidency was marked by close ties with China.

But Mr Marcos reversed the country’s foreign policy direction and has cracked down on Pogo-linked crimes since assuming office in 2022.

During the raid in Ms Guo’s town, police rescued close to 700 scam centre workers, including 202 Chinese nationals and 73 other foreigners who were forced to pose as online lovers.

A Senate investigation that followed centred on her inability to detect the eight-hectare scam centre despite its location near her office.

Senators also grilled her on her parentage. A relative unknown in local politics, she was elected mayor on her first run for public office, which is rare in areas ruled by political families.

Ms Guo’s opaque answers on questions regarding her roots, led some senators to accuse her of being a Chinese “asset” or spy.

She gave a television interview where she attributed her low profile to being her father’s illegitimate child with her mum, who is also his maid. She said this forced her to lead a sheltered life in the family farm, until she was elected mayor of Bamban.

But the controversy did not subside and after she refused to appear in subsequent hearings, senators in July ordered her arrest. By that time, however, she had fallen from public view.

Soon after, an anti-graft body removed her from office.

In August, Filipino authorities said she had fled the country undetected and passed through Singapore and Malaysia on her way to Indonesia.

One official said she could be headed for the Golden Triangle, a border region in mainland South East Asia that is a known hideout of organised crime groups.

A furious Mr Marcos then ordered her Philippine passport cancelled and warned then that “heads will roll”.

He said Ms Guo’s escape “laid bare the corruption that undermines our justice system and erodes the people’s trust”.

Australian Olympian Rachael Gunn has apologised to the nation’s breakdancing community for the “backlash” they have experienced following her controversial routine in Paris, which made headlines globally.

Gunn, who competes as Raygun, was eliminated from the B-Girls competition with a score of zero, prompting ridicule and praise for her unorthodox style by users across social media.

In her first sit-down interview since taking part in the Games – and amid questions over her qualification and performance – Gunn was asked if she genuinely thought she was Australia’s best female breakdancer.

“I think my record speaks to that,” she told Network 10’s The Project.

“It is really sad to hear those criticisms and I am very sorry for the backlash that the community has experienced, but I can’t control how people react,” she continued, addressing the flood of critiques her routine has garnered online.

The 36-year-old university lecturer lost all three of her Olympic battles, with her green tracksuit and eccentric performance – which included the sprinkler move and kangaroo-inspired hopping – generating a sea of memes.

In the aftermath of her performance, Gunn faced accusations that she had manipulated the selection process, including allegations that she had set up her own governing body and that her husband had judged her qualification trial.

These claims have since been denounced as false by several organisations, including the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) and the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF).

“The conspiracy theories were just awful,” Gunn told Network 10.

“I was the top-ranked Australian B-girl in 2020 and 2022 and 2023. I have been invited to represent at how many World Championships… So, the record is there. But anything can happen in a battle,” she added.

Gunn, who has a background as a jazz, tap and ballroom dancer, had publicly defended her routine as “artistic and creative”.

“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently,” she said last month.

The top judge who oversaw the B-Girls competition has also thrown his weight behind Gunn, as have team officials and the broader Olympic breakdancing community.

But the fallout has divided and disappointed those involved in the sport in Australia.

“It made a mockery of the Australian scene and I think that’s why a lot of us are hurting,” Australian hip-hop pioneer Spice previously told the BBC.

A hip-hop inspired dance born in the boroughs of New York in the 1970s, breaking was introduced into this year’s Olympic schedule to attract a younger audience to the Games.

But some critics say it should never have been included, due to the organic nature of the genre, which doesn’t necessarily suit organised competition.

After her performance in Paris, Gunn appealed to the media directly in a video posted on her Instagram to stop “harassing” her family and friends.

In her interview with Network 10, she described being chased by reporters in the aftermath of the fallout as “really wild”.

“That really did put me in a state of panic… Dancing was my medicine, and then it turned into my source of stress,” she said.

Gunn admitted that she is “not in a place yet” to watch her performance back, but was touched by the support she has received from her fellow Olympians at the Closing Ceremony as well as from some of the general public.

“It so warmed my heart,” she said. “I would rather much focus on the positives out of this and the joy that I’ve brought people.”

A top New York state government aide secretly helped the Chinese government access an official call about Covid-19 while enjoying a lavish lifestyle as an undercover agent for Beijing, according to a US indictment.

Over a period of roughly 14 years, Linda Sun rose through the ranks to become deputy chief of staff to the governor.

But according to federal prosecutors, the 41-year-old used her position to aid Chinese officials, including by blocking Taiwanese diplomats from contacting the state government and covertly sharing internal documents with Beijing.

In return, China allegedly showered Ms Sun and her husband, Christopher Hu, with millions of dollars in kickbacks that helped them buy a $4.1m (£3.1m) house in New York and perks including special home deliveries of salted duck.

They also bought a $2.1m ocean-view condominium in Honolulu, Hawaii, and luxury vehicles including a 2024 Ferrari Roma sports car, according to the indictment.

The couple pleaded not guilty on Tuesday in a Brooklyn federal court to a range of charges, from failing to register as a foreign agent to visa fraud and money laundering.

US law requires that individuals acting for or in the interests of foreign countries or political parties register as foreign agents.

Ms Sun never did – and, according to prosecutors, the Chinese-born naturalised citizen “actively concealed that she took actions at the order, request, or direction” of Chinese government officials and representatives.

In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic spread through the state, Ms Sun allegedly found ways for Chinese consular officials to gain access to New York leaders.

So brazen were her efforts that, in one instance, she surreptitiously added a Chinese official to a private state government call about the public health response to the virus, according to prosecutors.

Former New York prosecutor Howard Master told the BBC the charges reflect a “disturbing” trend of senior public officials – including former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez – corruptly receiving gifts from foreign governments.

“How she got away with it for so long will be a matter for ongoing investigation, but it appears that she took numerous steps to avoid getting caught, allegedly lying to the FBI, the New York State Office of the Inspector General, and others when questioned and taking other steps to conceal her role,” he said.

The indictment against Ms Sun lists occasions in which she worked to prevent Taiwanese representatives from either communicating with or meeting high-ranking officials in the US government.

“It’s all been taken care of satisfactorily,” Ms Sun is said to have bragged in one 2016 message to a Chinese consular official after successfully diverting a top New York politician from an event hosted by Taiwan.

And when the island’s president travelled to New York City in 2019, she was even pictured joining a pro-Beijing protest against the visit.

Up until January 2021, she worked behind the scenes to scrub mentions of Beijing’s detention of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang Province.

When Chinese officials asked if the governor could record a Lunar New Year video, Ms Sun asked what “talking points” they wanted.

“Mostly holiday wishes and hope for friendship and co-operation,” the Chinese officials wrote. “Nothing too political.”

Ms Sun later told another Chinese official that she had argued with Ms Hochul’s speechwriter to get a mention of the “Uyghur situation” removed from a draft of the governor’s remarks.

In 2023, while working in the New York labour department, Ms Sun obtained a framed official Lunar New Year proclamation from Governor Kathy Hochul and presented it to a Chinese official.

The proclamation was produced outside of ordinary channels and even without the permission of Ms Hochul’s office.

Ms Sun also drafted fraudulent invitation letters for Chinese politicians to travel to the US and wrote an unauthorised letter of employment to add a compatriot to the New York governor’s Asian American advisory council.

In return, Ms Sun and Mr Hu “received substantial economic and other benefits from [Beijing] representatives”, prosecutors say.

The gifts included all-expenses-paid travel to China; tickets to top shows, concerts and sporting events; employment in China for Ms Sun’s cousin; and home deliveries of Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a Chinese government official’s personal chef.

According to the indictment, the duck delicacy was gifted to Ms Sun – and sent directly to her parents’ home – on at least 16 different occasions.

On Tuesday morning, federal agents entered the couple’s Long Island home and detained them on 10 criminal counts.

Her lawyer, Jarrod Schaeffer, was quoted by AP news agency as saying: “We’re looking forward to addressing these charges in court. Our client is understandably upset that these charges have been brought.”

A judge released the pair on bail, limiting their travel to three US states and ordering Ms Sun to avoid any contact with representatives from the Chinese consulate or mission in New York.

Jimmy McCain, son of the late Republican Senator John McCain, is endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris following controversy around Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery.

He called Trump’s visit last week to the military burial site “a violation”.

The Army has accused a Trump staffer of pushing aside an Arlington employee as they tried to warn his team about rules against filming in the cemetery.

The Trump campaign says it received permission from families of fallen service members to film video during an event to honour US soldiers killed during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

“Show respect and leave. It doesn’t need to be videoed,” Mr McCain told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday.

He added: “The point of Arlington Cemetery is to go and show respect for the men and women who have given their lives to this country. When you make it political, you take away the respect of the people who are there.”

Mr McCain, who was previously an independent, said he has changed his voter registration to Democrat and plans to vote for Ms Harris for president in November.

“I feel that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz embody a group of people that will help make this country better. That will take us forward. That’s really what matters at the end of the day,” he said.

The youngest McCain son enlisted in the Marine Corps and has served as an intelligence officer since 2022.

Three generations of McCain family are buried at Arlington.

Federal law prevents use of the site for political campaigning.

The Trump campaign has disputed the cemetery’s version of events and released a statement from the Gold Star military families that invited him to the site, saying the former president was there to honour the sacrifice of their relatives who were killed.

Trump – who is running for president for a third time – and late Sen McCain had a long rivalry.

The Vietnam war hero was one of the most outspoken Republican critics of Trump from the very start of his first candidacy.

Trump once attacked McCain, himself a former Republican presidential candidate, saying he was “not a war hero” because he was captured and held as a prisoner of war.

Jimmy McCain is not the only family member to say they are not voting for Trump.

His sister Meghan said on Monday she does not plan to support either Trump or Ms Harris.

“I greatly respect the wide variety of political opinions of all of my family members and love them all very much,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“I however, remain a proud member of the Republican Party and hope for brighter days ahead.”

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The French rescue workers packed up their gear with well-practised efficiency. The medical tents. The stretchers. The security cordons.

Shortly after the last bodies had been driven away from the quayside in Boulogne, the remaining ambulances and red emergency vehicles drove off too, leaving only a handful of officials standing in the fading light beside a few frayed fishing nets near the harbour wall.

“It’s so upsetting,” said Frederic Cuvillier, Boulogne’s mayor, reflecting on the way this long, constantly evolving migrant crisis has reshaped – and traumatised – France’s northern coastline.

On Tuesday six children and a pregnant woman were among 12 people who died after a boat carrying dozens of migrants sank off the coast here, in the English Channel.

“These people flee death and end up dying here. Mothers, children… convinced they will find a better life across the Channel,” said Cuvillier, gesturing west, towards a grey sea.

In the immediate aftermath of such incidents there is – I have noticed, after witnessing several already this year – a widening gap between the way the French and British react.

In the UK, officials have been quick to focus on – and to condemn – the smuggling gangs. Each incident, each death, is seen as the result of cynical criminal activity. Which, of course, it is.

Once again, the smugglers crammed far too many of their paying clients into what appear to be increasingly flimsy boats, with nowhere near enough life jackets.

Here in northern France, the police have a similar focus. They are preoccupied with the task of trying to patrol ever larger stretches of their increasingly militarised coastline. They now have more manpower, buggies, night-vision equipment, and special drones that can detect groups of migrants hiding in the dunes.

But the police are aware that, as they expand their operations – much of it now funded by British taxpayers – the smuggling gangs are responding, finding new ways to cross, and often putting the migrants themselves at ever greater risk as a result.

The gangs now launch their boats inland, from canals, or way down the French coast, meaning far longer journeys to cross a busy stretch of water crowded with commercial shipping and tugged at by powerful tides.

The gangs pack more people inside inflatable boats of ever more dubious quality – sometimes 90 people in a boat designed, or barely designed, to hold 40. It’s a problem exacerbated as the authorities succeed in disrupting the supply of boats brought to the coastline from deep within Europe.

And, increasingly, the smugglers use violence too. Stones hurled at police on the beaches. Sometimes knives brandished too.

I was recently shown footage by police at a local gendarmerie of what looked like another pitched battle on a beach at dawn, with riot-shielded police defending themselves against a hail of rocks. I witnessed a separate battle myself in April.

The smugglers’ aim is to buy themselves a few precious seconds to get their boats and their passengers into the water, after which the police – concerned they may be blamed for putting people at even greater risk – rarely intervene.

But while the police have their duties and dangers to face, for French politicians and civilians in resort towns scattered along this coastline, the reaction to yet another deadly incident is not to focus on the criminality of the smugglers, but on the motives of the migrants, on what still drives so many of them to attempt this dangerous crossing.

And the blunt conclusion, repeated to me so often – by local mayors, by pensioners, by couples out walking their dogs on beaches where they now fear they may come across bodies washed ashore – is that this is Britain’s fault.

Having watched this crisis evolve over decades, from the camps around the Channel tunnel and the ferry ports, to this more recent phenomenon of small boats, many French people deeply resent the way their own lives and communities have been transformed by a crisis they see as British-made.

France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, spoke of it on Tuesday at the harbour in Boulogne.

He did condemn the smugglers, but most of his comments focused on the lure of what he views as Britain’s loosely regulated job market, that acts like a magnet, drawing young Eritreans, determined Sudanese, Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis to this coastline, convinced that they if they can just make it across this last, short stretch of water – or even half way across – they’ll end up in a country where they can find work, even without the right paperwork.

Darmanin called, as he has done many times, for a new migrant treaty between Britain and the European Union.

In doing so, he touched on a widely-held belief here in France, which is that however much effort is put into tackling the smuggling gangs it will never be enough. That this is a crisis fuelled by the demands of tens of thousands of determined migrants, rather than by the profit-seeking motives of a loose network of criminals.

And there is another difference between the way Britain and France react to such moments. You can see it in the newspaper and television headlines.

The small boat crisis may be big news in the UK, but in France – a country currently preoccupied by its own political turmoil and, frankly, tired of the situation on its northern coastline – even twelve deaths in the Channel barely make headlines.

UK shares dropped on Wednesday morning following falls in Asian and US markets as concerns grow about the world’s largest economy.

Data showed US manufacturing activity remains subdued, with investors now focussed now on US jobs figures due on Friday.

American chip giant Nvidia was hit particularly hard, slumping by almost 10% as optimism about the boom in artificial intelligence (AI) dampened.

Despite the sharp fall, Nvidia’s shares are still worth double their value a year ago.

The FTSE 100 index, which comprises the largest companies on the London Stock Exchange, dropped 0.55% by lunchtime, with major European indexes also down. Germany’s Dax fell 1.41%, France’s Cac 40 was down by almost 1%, and Spain’s Ibex was also lower, by 0.51%.

Market watchers are now trying to second-guess how the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, will respond when it meets to decide interest rate policy next week.

“Growth concerns are dominating market moves,” Julia Lee at FTSE Russell told the BBC.

In New York on Tuesday, the S&P 500 index closed more than 2% lower, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq fell by over 3%.

Nasdaq-listed Nvidia fell by 9.5%, wiping $279bn (£212.9bn) off its stock market valuation.

Over the longer term however Nvidia shares are still worth nine times their price in November 2022, when the launch of ChatGPT set off the current bout of interest in AI, prompting a surge in demand for Nvidia’s chips.

Other US tech giants — including Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft — also saw their shares tumble on Tuesday.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 ended Wednesday’s trading session 4.2% lower, while South Korea’s Kospi lost more than 3% and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong dropped 1.1%.

Major Asian technology firms including TSMC, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Tokyo Electron were sharply lower.

Asian markets have performed less strongly over the last year, with the Shanghai and Hong Kong indexes lower over the twelve months. Japan’s Nikkei is up 12% over the year, however.

“Concerns around global growth look to be hitting exporting countries in the region particularly hard,” Ms Lee added.

As well as next week’s interest rate decision in the US, investors will be waiting for Friday’s US jobs market report, to provide further signs on the direction the US economy is taking.

Swetha Ramachandran, fund manager for Artemis Investment Management in London, said Tuesday’s US share falls were a sign that investors were beginning to doubt the Federal Reserve would make a large cut in interest rates.

Nvidia’s slide was a matter of “expectations catching up with reality” for the AI giant, she told the BBC.

“[Nvidia] did report results last week where it alluded to a natural and expected deceleration in growth: from having delivered 122% growth in the second quarter it expects to deliver 80% growth in the third quarter,” she said.

The fall might also be a reaction to reports that the US Department of Justice had issued a subpoena, requiring the firm to give evidence over anti-trust issues, she added.

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Telegram has apologised to South Korean authorities for its handling of deepfake pornographic material shared via its messaging app, amid a digital sex crime epidemic in the country.

It comes days after South Korean police said they had launched an investigation into Telegram, accusing it of “abetting” the distribution of such images.

In recent weeks, a large number of Telegram chatrooms – many of them run by teenagers – were found to have been creating sexually explicit “deepfakes” using doctored photographs of young women.

Authorities say Telegram has since removed such videos from its platform.

In a statement to South Korea’s Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), Telegram said the situation was “unfortunate”, adding that it “apologised if there had been an element of misunderstanding”.

It also confirmed that it had taken down 25 such videos as requested by KCSC.

In its latest statement to KCSC, Telegram also proposed an email address dedicated to future communication with the regulator.

KCSC described the company’s approach as “very forward-looking” and said Telegram has “acknowledged the seriousness” of the situation.

Deepfakes are generated using artificial intelligence, and often combine the face of a real person with a fake body.

The recent deepfake crisis has been met with outrage in South Korea, after journalists discovered police were investigating deepfake porn rings at two of the country’s major universities.

It later emerged that police received 118 reports of such videos in the last five days. Seven suspects, six of whom are teenagers, have been questioned by the police in the past week.

The chat groups were linked to individual schools and universities across the country. Many of their victims were students and teachers known to the perpetrators.

In South Korea, those found guilty of creating sexually explicit deepfakes can be jailed for up to five years and fined up to 50 million won ($37,500; £28,300).

These discoveries in South Korea follow the arrest of the Russian-born founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, in France, on allegations that child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud were taking place on the messaging app.

Mr Durov has since been charged.

Last Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol had instructed authorities to “thoroughly investigate and address these digital sex crimes to eradicate them”.

Women’s rights activists have accused South Korean authorities of allowing sexual abuse to take place on Telegram.

In 2019, it was discovered that a sex ring had used the app to blackmail dozens of women and children to film pornographic content. The ring leader Cho Ju-bin, who was then 20, was sentenced to 42 years in jail.

It’s been nearly a month since former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina hurriedly landed at a military base near Delhi after a chaotic exit from her country.

Ms Hasina’s dramatic ouster on 5 August followed weeks of student-led protests which spiralled into deadly, nationwide unrest. She was initially expected to stay in India for just a short period, but reports say her attempts to seek asylum in the UK, the US and the UAE have not been successful so far.

Her continued presence in India has generated challenges for Delhi in developing a strong relationship with the new interim government in Dhaka. 

For India, Bangladesh is not just any neighbouring country. It’s a strategic partner and a close ally crucial to India’s border security, particularly in the north-eastern states. 

The two countries share a porous border 4,096km (2,545 miles) long which makes it relatively easy for armed insurgent groups from India’s north-eastern states to cross into Bangladesh for a safe haven. 

• Sheikh Hasina: The pro-democracy icon who became an autocrat

After Ms Hasina’s Awami League party came to power in 2009, it cracked down on some of these ethnic militant groups. Ms Hasina also amicably settled several border disputes with India.  

While border security is at the core of the relationship, there are financial aspects too. During Ms Hasina’s 15-year rule, trade relations and connectivity between the two countries flourished. India has gained road, river and train access via Bangladesh to transport goods to its north-eastern states. 

Since 2010, India has also given more than $7bn (£5.3bn) as a line of credit to Bangladesh for infrastructure and development projects. 

Ms Hasina’s sudden exit means that Delhi has to work hard to ensure that these gains are not lost. 

“It’s a setback in the sense that any turbulence in our neighbourhood is always unwanted,” says Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka. 

But the former diplomat insists that Delhi will work with the interim government in Dhaka because “there is no choice” and “you can’t dictate what they do internally”. 

The Indian government has wasted no time in reaching out to the interim government in Dhaka, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding a telephone conversation with leader Muhammad Yunus.

However, it will take a while for Delhi to assuage the anger in Bangladesh over its unwavering support for Ms Hasina and her Awami League for the last 15 years.  

Many Bangladeshis attribute the anger against India to Delhi’s swift endorsement of three controversial elections won by Ms Hasina’s party amid allegations of widespread vote-rigging. 

With Ms Hasina’s fall, Delhi’s “neighbourhood first” policy has taken another jolt with Bangladesh joining the Maldives and Nepal in resisting any attempt at dominance by India. 

Analysts say that Delhi can’t afford to lose its influence in another neighbouring country if it wants to protect its status as a regional powerhouse – especially as rival China is also jostling for influence in the region. 

Just last year, Mohamed Muizzu won the presidency in the Maldives on the back of his very public anti-India stand. 

“It’s time for India to do some introspection regarding its regional policy,” says Debapriya Bhattacharya, a senior economist with the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka.

Delhi needs to look at whether it has adequately taken on board the perspectives of its regional partners, he says.

“I am not only talking about Bangladesh, [but also] almost all other countries in the region,” adds Mr Bhattacharya, who heads a committee appointed by the interim government to prepare a white paper on the state of Bangladesh’s economy.

• Can India help its special ally Bangladesh defuse the crisis?

For example, in the case of Bangladesh, analysts point out that successive Indian governments have failed to engage with other opposition parties, particularly the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). 

“India somehow thought that the Awami League and its government are the only allies inside Bangladesh. That was a strategic blunder,” says Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior leader of the BNP.  

If free and fair elections are held in Bangladesh in the coming months, BNP leaders are confident of victory.

That will pose a diplomatic challenge for Delhi. There is a perceived trust deficit between India and the BNP, which is led by Begum Khaleda Zia, who had been prime minister for two terms earlier. 

Ms Zia, who spent most of her time in jail since 2018, has always denied corruption charges against her and has accused Ms Hasina of political vendetta. She has now been released from jail and is recovering from her illness.  

In the coming days, Delhi and the BNP leaders will have to find a way to work past their differences.

During the previous BNP-led coalition government from 2001 to 2006, the bilateral relationship deteriorated with Delhi accusing Dhaka of harbouring insurgents from India’s north-east.

During Ms Zia’s rule, Hindu leaders in Bangladesh said there were a series of attacks against them – including murder, looting and rape – by Islamist parties and the BNP which began as the election results were announced in 2001. 

The BNP denies the charges of giving shelter to anti-Indian insurgents and also of carrying out attacks on minority Hindus in 2001.

BNP leaders, including Mr Khan, say India hasn’t been forthcoming in engaging with them, adding that “now it’s time for a policy shift on the part of Delhi”.

He also stresses that given India’s proximity, population, geographical size and its growing economic and military might, a party like the BNP cannot afford to make the mistake of harbouring any anti-Indian insurgents within Bangladesh.

• ‘There is no law and order. And Hindus are being targeted again’

There are other factors also behind the anger against India. India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers and the sharing of water resources is a contentious issue.

The recent floods triggered by heavy rains in eastern Bangladesh are an example of how misinformation can fuel suspicions between the two countries. 

Following a sudden heavy downpour in the Indian state of Tripura, the excess water flowed into the Gumti river – which flows between the two countries – inundating vast areas inside the state as well as downstream in neighbouring Bangladesh.  

Millions of people were affected with many losing their houses, belongings and farmland. Many villagers and social media users accused India of deliberately releasing water from a dam in the night, leading to the floods. 

The Indian external affairs ministry was forced to issue a statement denying this, explaining that the floods had been caused by heavy rains in the catchment areas of the Gumti river. 

Then there is another factor – China. Beijing is keen to extend its footprint in Bangladesh as it battles for regional supremacy with India. 

It rolled out the red carpet for Mr Muizzu when he chose China for his first state visit after winning the Maldives election.

Delhi would want to avoid the same fate with Bangladesh. And it would hope that Bangladesh’s reliance on Indian goods and trade will buy it some time to work out its diplomatic strategy and change its image. 

So Delhi will have to tread carefully around Ms Hasina’s presence in India, especially if the new government makes a formal extradition request.

A statement issued on her behalf by her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy last month had already stoked anger in Bangladesh. 

But India wouldn’t want to ask Ms Hasina to leave the country when her future remains uncertain and come across as leaving a formidable former ally in the lurch. 

“It doesn’t matter how she is accorded hospitality in India. But it matters to Bangladeshis how she intervenes in the domestic matters staying over there. If she speaks against the current interim government, that would be considered as an act of hostility,” Mr Bhattacharya warned.  

Diplomats in Delhi will hope that Ms Hasina makes a choice for herself without forcing India’s hand.

The Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people in 2017 was the result of a chain of failures by governments, “dishonest” companies and a lack of strategy by the fire service, the final report of the six-year public inquiry has concluded.

The damning report sets out a “path to disaster” at Grenfell stretching back to the early 1990s over how fire safety in high-rise buildings has been managed and regulated.

The coalition and Conservative governments “ignored, delayed or disregarded” concerns about the safety of industry practices, the inquiry said.

The report highlighted the “systematic dishonesty” of manufacturers as a reason for the tower block being clad in combustible materials.

One manufacturer was also found to have “deliberately concealed” the fire risks its cladding posed.

Among the recommendations laid out in the 1,700-page report are the introduction of a single construction regulator, a College of Fire and Rescue to improve the training of firefighters and changes to the way materials are tested for fire safety.

The report’s publication comes more than seven years after the fire started in a fridge on the fourth floor of the west London tower block, spreading through the cladding before racing up the sides of the building.

Many residents were trapped on higher floors as it spread, and the inquiry found all the victims were dead or unconscious by the time the flames reached them due to “inhalation of asphyxiant gases”, primarily carbon monoxide.

The cladding was made of highly flammable polyethylene which was added to the sides of the 1970s-built Grenfell Tower in a disastrous refurbishment in 2016.

The inquiry found fault and incompetence among almost every company involved in the refurbishment.

Among the key findings of the report were:

• “Systematic dishonesty” by the manufacturers of cladding and insulation
• US firm Arconic, manufacturer of the Reynobond 55 cladding which experts at the inquiry said was “by far the largest contributor” to the fire, deliberately concealed the true extent of the danger of using its product
• Manufacturers made “false and misleading claims” over the safety and suitability of insulation to the company which installed it on Grenfell
• Failures in London Fire Brigade’s training and a lack of a strategy to evacuate the building
• Successive governments missed opportunities to act
• The local council and the Tenant Management Organisation had a “persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”
• How building safety is managed in England and Wales is “seriously defective”

Speaking after the report was published, the inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick said not all of the named organisations and companies “bear the same degree of responsibility for the disaster”.

But he said the report showed they all “contributed in one way or another” to the tragedy, attributing most of the failings to “incompetence” but some to “dishonesty and greed”.

In a statement to Parliament on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer apologised on behalf of the British state, saying those affected had been “let down very badly before, during and in the aftermath of the tragedy”.

Police and prosecutors have said that investigators will need until the end of 2025 to complete their inquiry, with final decisions on potential criminal charges by the end of 2026.

The inquiry examined the roles of three companies which made cladding and insulation used in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower.

In a key passage it concluded:

“One very significant reason why Grenfell Tower came to be clad in combustible materials was systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding… and insulation.”

They engaged in “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent data and mislead the market,” the report found.

Arconic produced panels of Reynobond PE cladding, formed from metal sheets with a plastic layer. This was “extremely dangerous” when folded into box shapes, a practice widely used in the cladding industry, the inquiry concluded.

The cladding was “by far the largest contributor” to the Grenfell fire, according to new research by two inquiry experts.

However from 2005 until after the Grenfell Tower fire, Arconic “deliberately concealed from the market the true extent of the danger of using Reynobond 55 PE in cassette form, particularly on high-rise buildings”. It allowed customers to continue buying the product.

Arconic commissioned fire tests which revealed very poor ratings for cladding installed as folded cassettes but concealed these from the BBA, a British private certification company which attempted to keep the construction industry up to date about safety risks.

This “caused BBA to make statements that Arconic knew were ‘false and misleading’”, the report said.

Among the UK customers which were misled, was Harley Facades, the company which installed the Grenfell cladding.

In a statement released after the report’s publication, Arconic Architectural Products SAS (AAP) rejected claims it had sold an “unsafe product” and said it sold sheets of aluminium composite material as specified in the design process which was safe to use and legal to sell in the UK.

“AAP did not conceal information from or mislead any certification body, customer, or the public,” the statement added.

• Follow live updates here
• Key findings from the inquiry
• Firefighter: ‘I still feel guilt over decision to leave person behind’
• Watch: All Grenfell deaths were avoidable, says inquiry chair

The inquiry also found fault with both Celotex and Kingspan, which both made insulation, also part of a cladding system.

Celotex made “false and misleading claims” and presented its product to Harley Facades as being safe and suitable for Grenfell although “it knew that was not the case”.

It used magnesium oxide boards, which do not burn, during testing and did not reveal this in marketing literature.

Kingspan, which had led the way in gaining market share in the insulation industry by selling its product for tall buildings “misled the market” by not revealing the limitations of its product, used on a small section of Grenfell Tower.

A spokesperson for Celotex said the company was considering the contents of the inquiry report “with care” and since the fire had “reviewed and improved” its approach to marketing to “meet industry best practice”.

They added that independent testing commissioned following the company’s internal review over the circumstances its insulation was tested, launched and marketed demonstrated that the cladding system described in the literature “met the relevant safety criteria”.

Kingspan, meanwhile, said it had “long acknowledged the wholly unacceptable historical failings that occurred in part of our UK insulation business” which “while deeply regrettable…were not found to be causative of the tragedy”.

“Kingspan has already emphatically addressed these issues, including the implementation of extensive and externally-verified measures to ensure our conduct and compliance standards are world leading,” its statement said.

The refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was overseen by the Tenant Management Organisation which ran social housing for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC).

The relationship between the TMO and its own residents was characterised by “distrust, dislike, personal antagonism and anger”. Allowing the relationship to deteriorate was a “serious failure on its part to observe its basic responsibilities”, the inquiry said.

Both the TMO and RBKC were found to have “persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”.

Elizabeth Campbell, leader of RBKC, said she apologised “unreservedly and with all her heart” for the council’s “failure to listen to residents and to protect them”.

A statement from the TMO said: “We accept that the TMO contributed to this and we are deeply sorry.”

The inquiry found that a 2011 project to replace fire doors at Grenfell left the building with doors which did not meet the correct standard because the TMO failed to specify the correct one when ordering them.

Fire doors are designed to withstand flames and smoke for thirty minutes to improve residents’ chance of rescue.

In assessing the role of the architects Studio E, project manager Rydon and cladding contractor Harley Facades the report most often described them as incompetent.

Studio E failed to recognise the cladding and insulation were combustible and “bears a very significant degree of responsibility for the disaster”, in the words of the inquiry report.

Harley Facades “bears significant responsibility. It did not concern itself with fire safety at any stage”.

Rydon, also bears “considerable responsibility” as project manager which “saw its role as the conductor of a large and varied orchestra”.

But “there was a failure to establish clearly who was responsible for what, including who was responsible for ensuring the designs were compliant with statutory requirements. That eventually resulted in the unedifying ‘merry go round of buck passing'”.

While cladding is added to older buildings to make them warmer and drier, the inquiry found the initial motive to clad Grenfell was for its “visual appearance”.

Residents in the area have always alleged Grenfell was refurbished because it would have otherwise looked shabby next door to the new Kensington Academy and Leisure centre.

According to the report, there were “many opportunities for the government to identify the risks posed by the use of combustible cladding panels and insulation… and to take action”.

Experts warned of the risk of cladding fires in 1992, the year after a fire at the 11-storey Knowsley Heights tower on Merseyside and again in 1999 after a fire at Garnock Court in Scotland, after which MPs said only non-combustible cladding should be used on tall buildings.

But combustible cladding was not banned because it met a British standard known as “Class Zero”. The MPs said this should have been scrapped.

“It could and should have been removed years earlier,” the inquiry found.

In 2001 a series of large-scale fire tests revealed “striking results” in which cladding “burned violently”, but the rules still weren’t tightened by the government and the results of the tests were kept confidential.

“We do not understand the failure to act in relation to a matter of such importance,” the inquiry panel said.

A fatal fire at Lakanal House in South London in 2009 prompted a coroner to order a review of building regulations, but this was “not treated with any sense of urgency.”

When the coalition government took power in 2010 ministers were told to cut red tape.

The inquiry found this “dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded”.

The pressure to cut red tape was “so strong… civil servants felt the need to put it at the forefront of every decision”.

The inquiry panel described the housing ministry as “poorly run”, with fire safety placed in the hands of a single “relatively junior” official.

The government has previously apologised at the inquiry saying it “deeply regrets past failures in relation to the oversight of the system that regulated safety in the construction and refurbishment of high-rise buildings”.

The government’s expert adviser, the Building Research Establishment was privatised in 1997 becoming BRE, a private company.

It was strongly criticised by the government for its “unprofessional conduct, inadequate practices, a lack of effective oversight, poor reports and a lack of scientific rigour”.

These exposed it to “unscrupulous product manufacturers”.

While individual firefighters trekked repeatedly up the smoke-filled staircase to find trapped residents, the London Fire Brigade had failed to prepare them for what they faced.

The Lakanal fire in 2009, in which six people died, “should have alerted the LFB to the shortcomings of its ability to fight fires in high-rise buildings”, the inquiry found.

There was an “unfounded assumption the building regulations were sufficient to ensure external wall fires in other countries would not occur in this country”.

“No-one appears to have thought that firefighters needed to be trained to recognise and deal with the consequences.”

Senior officers were complacent and lacked the management skills to recognise the problems or the will to correct them.

There was a failure to share knowledge about cladding fires, a failure to plan for a large number of 999 calls, or train staff in what to tell trapped residents.

London Fire Commissioner Andy Roe said since the fire the service had “introduced and embedded important policies, new equipment, improved training and better ways of working, particularly in how we respond to fires in high-rise buildings”.

The inquiry has concluded that the way building safety is managed in England and Wales is “seriously defective”, “complex and fragmented”.

It has recommended the introduction of a single construction regulator, and one secretary of state to oversee the issue.

The guidance the industry follows to ensure fire safety should be revised, the inquiry says.

There is also a recommendation to make it a legal requirement that a fire safety strategy is submitted with any application for permission from building control inspectors to construct or refurbish a “higher risk building”.

Other recommendations cover the way materials and designs are tested for fire safety, and the need to make public the results.

Currently building inspectors who sign off work as safe can be employed by councils or work as private “approved inspectors” who can compete for work. The inquiry recommends setting up an independent panel which would consider whether this is in the public interest. The panel could decide to set up a national authority for building control, which would be a major change to the system for ensuring construction standards.

Finding major issues with standards in the fire service, the inquiry recommends setting up a College of Fire and Rescue to improve the training of firefighters and incident commanders.

There are a series of recommendations for the London Fire Brigade management of major incidents and a demand for the service to be reviewed by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services.

The inquiry also calls for improvements to the way local authorities, RBKC in particular, respond to major emergencies.

Australian actor and director Simon Baker has pleaded guilty to drink driving in a New South Wales (NSW) court.

Baker was caught intoxicated behind the wheel on a road near his home in the Byron Bay region in the early hours of 20 July.

He was excused from appearing at Mullumbimby Court House on Wednesday, but court documents show the 55-year-old admitted to a single charge of driving under the influence of alcohol, his first such offence.

Baker has starred in Home and Away, the Devil Wears Prada and earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his lead role in the US-crime drama series The Mentalist.

He grew up in northern NSW and cut his teeth on classic Australian shows like Heartbreak High and A Country Practice.

He won Best New Talent at the Logies – Australia’s top television awards – in 1993, but soon made the move to the US, where he landed a role in the Academy Award winning film L.A. Confidential.

After two decades in Hollywood, for which he received a star on the city’s Walk of Fame, Baker returned to Australian film and TV, branching into directing as well as acting.

He was most recently nominated for Best Lead Actor at the Logies for his role in the hit Netflix show Boy Swallows Universe.

He is listed to appear in Mullumbimby Court House again on September 11 where he is due to face sentencing.