An eight-year-old girl died of sepsis after being sent home by a GP who said the local hospital was full.

Mia Glynn visited a GP surgery twice in four hours, but her parents Soron, 39, and Katie, 37, were told by the doctor to take her home, despite Mia showing symptoms of Group A Strep.

Her parents, from Biddulph, Staffordshire, first took Mia to the doctor after she had begun vomiting, had a severe headache and complained of a sore throat on Dec 5, 2022.

On the morning of Dec 8, her parents took Mia, who had developed a temperature and severe headache, back to the GP surgery.

A nurse practitioner told her mother that Mia’s symptoms were viral and advised her to give her daughter fluids and paracetamol.

But Mia returned to the surgery just after midday and was sent home following an examination by a GP.

Despite asking whether she had the infection Group A Strep, which was prevalent at the time, a doctor advised Mia’s mother to give her fluids and ibuprofen and to wait to start the antibiotics when Mia went to bed.

They were told to take their daughter home because the hospital was full and they would have to wait in a corridor.

Mia slept in her parents’ bed that night but woke in the early hours of Dec 9, disorientated and with blue lips and rashes on her arms and legs.

She complained of feeling hot but was cold to touch.

After being rushed to the hospital by ambulance, Mia was given intravenous fluids and antibiotics, but went into suspected septic shock and suffered a cardiac arrest about 15 minutes after arriving at the hospital.

Despite resuscitation attempts, she died around 20 minutes later.

Mia’s cause of death was given as sepsis caused by Group A Strep infection.

Following Mia’s death, her parents, who also have a son, Beau, 12, instructed expert medical negligence lawyers to investigate her care and secure answers.

Speaking publicly for the first time since Mia’s death, her mother Katie said: “Our world and hearts broke forever when our beautiful daughter was snatched away from us.

“Mia had been taken to the doctors twice to be told her symptoms were viral. Around 15 hours later she died of sepsis.

“The unbelievable and unbearable pain we feel is unexplainable and unimaginable.

“Our beautiful healthy girl was the happiest, brightest, most loving and caring girl who smiled, danced, brought joy and love to everyone she met.

“She brought so much laughter and fun.”

After Mia’s death, her family and well-wishers raised more than £40,000 in Mia’s memory through fundraising events.

The family has donated more than £16,000 to the UK Sepsis Trust and has set up the charitable organisation aiM – an anagram of Mia’s name – in their daughter’s memory.

Mia’s mother added: “We’ll never get over the pain of losing Mia, especially in the way we did.

“Our family will never be the same without Mia. She had her whole life ahead of her and was taken from us in the cruellest way imaginable.

Her father, an engineering teacher, said: “Seeing Mia in her final moments was awful.

“We feel so blessed that she was our daughter but are completely heartbroken that Mia was taken from us so soon.

“A lot of people may have heard of sepsis but it’s only after what happened to Mia that we realise just how dangerous it is.”

He added: “We need to educate the public and health professionals to identify the signs of sepsis and ask the question “could it be sepsis?”.

Victoria Zinzan, the specialist medical negligence lawyer representing the couple, said: “Sadly through our work we see too many families affected by sepsis; with Mia’s death vividly highlighting the dangers of the condition.

“Early diagnosis and treatment is key to beating sepsis, therefore it’s vital people know what signs to look out for when it comes to detecting this incredibly dangerous and life-threatening condition.”

A 10-month-old baby has been rushed to hospital and eight people have died trying to cross the Channel after a migrant boat ran aground on the north French coast.

The migrants were declared dead after the dinghy carrying about 55 people ran aground near a boat ramp off the coast near Ambleteuse at around 1.15am on Sunday.

Jacques Billant, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais, told a press conference that six people were taken to hospital “in relative emergency”, including a 10-month-old baby with hypothermia.

Survivors of the accident came from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iran, he added.

The tragedy comes less than two weeks after the deaths of at least 12 people, including a pregnant woman and six children, when their dinghy broke up in the sea.

The latest deaths mean at least 45 people have died in Channel crossings so far this year, compared with 12 for the whole of 2023. The worst previous incident was in November 2021 when 27 people died after their inflatable dinghy capsized.

It comes ahead of a visit to Italy on Sunday and Monday by Sir Keir Starmer to learn how Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, has more than halved illegal crossings of the Mediterranean.

Some 801 migrants crossed the Channel to the UK on Saturday, according to provisional Home Office figures, the second highest daily total this year.

The migrants crammed into 14 boats, an average of 57 per craft. The only day this year which saw a higher number of crossings was June 18, when 882 people made the journey.

Saturday’s arrivals take the total in 2024 to 23,241, with 9,667 since Sir Keir became Prime Minister.

French authorities rescued 200 people off the coast of Calais over a 24-hour period between Friday and Saturday night. The French authorities said they monitored 18 attempts to launch boats across the Channel on Saturday.

Sixty-one migrants were picked up off the coast of La Becque d’Hardelot, 48 people were recovered near a lighthouse and at the end of the day 36 people were rescued, French authorities said. All of those rescued were brought back to land.

People smugglers are cramming more people into dinghies as the supply of boats and equipment have been limited because of a crackdown by border agencies and law enforcement. The average number of migrants per boat is now around 60, triple the rate when the first dinghies started crossing in 2018.

Dame Angela Eagle, the border security minister, has previously warned of a “worrying trend” where the small boats are being filled with more migrants than in the past. She said the quality was also “deteriorating”, which meant “these crossings are getting more and more dangerous as time goes on”.

Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “It would be unforgivable to treat this frequency and scale of loss of life with a sense that it is inevitable. It is not. Effective and humane pathways for those seeking refuge is what will help undermine the smugglers’ business model.”

Steve Valdez-Symonds, of Amnesty International, said: “The Government’s ‘smash the gangs’ slogan and its security-heavy approach is contributing to the death toll because the refusal to establish safe asylum routes means these flimsy vessels controlled by people smugglers are the only real option for desperate people fleeing persecution.

“Until UK ministers and their counterparts in France start sharing responsibility over the need for safe routes, we should expect this weekend’s tragedy to keep repeating itself time and time again.”

Interest in Albania option

Speaking on BBC TV, David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, said the further loss of life was “awful”. He said ministers were working with the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Border Force to smash the people smugglers in cooperation with other European countries.

Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, said: “Criminal gangs are making millions of pounds from putting lives at risk in this terrible way and they have been getting away with it for far too long.

“I have offered our full support to the French authorities in the pursuit of the gangs behind this latest tragedy.

“We are determined to drive a major increase in law enforcement cooperation to strengthen our border security and pursue these dangerous criminals.”

Ahead of Sir Keir’s visit to Italy, he said the UK was “interested” in discussing with Italy their scheme for processing asylum claims offshore in Albania and its success in working with Libya and Tunisia to more than halve arrivals of illegal migrants from north Africa.

A UK Government spokesman confirmed the Channel crossing incident and said French authorities were leading the response and investigation.

Angela Rayner is facing opposition from the Business Secretary over plans to hand workers full employment rights from day one in a job, amid a growing backlash from bosses.

Whitehall sources said Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds were in disagreement over how far reforms should go, amid concerns that far-reaching changes could put companies off hiring and damage growth.

The disagreement is understood to centre around how probation periods will work under the new system.

Ms Rayner is understood to be pushing to hand staff full-employment rights from day one following a short probation period, including the right to take companies to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. At the moment, people must be employed for at least two years to qualify for this right.

Mr Reynolds is said to favour shortening the qualification period for full employment rights but still requiring a probation period of almost a year.

“Day one rights is proving very difficult,” a Whitehall source said. “Angela is less keen on a longer probation period, Reynolds thinks nine months is reasonable. It’s unclear if an agreement will be reached.”

Conversations about how probationary periods will work under the new system are understood to have been “intense”, as the frontbenchers try to iron out their differences within Labour’s first 100 days in government. The self-imposed deadline for employment reform in practice gives them only a fortnight to agree.

A Labour source stressed that the two ministers were close friends and their disagreement was not acrimonious. They are MPs for neighbouring constituencies and have been jointly meeting business leaders to discuss their plans.

Businesses fear the changes as proposed will effectively amount to an axing of probation, which bosses view as crucial for allowing them to properly assess new recruits. 

The division follows discontent among some cabinet members over the decision to scrap the winter fuel allowance. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said he was “not remotely happy” about the policy.

Labour promised in its manifesto to overhaul workers’ rights to “include basic individual rights from day one for all workers, ending the current arbitrary system that leaves workers waiting up to two years to access basic rights of protection against unfair dismissal, parental leave and sick pay.”

The proposals are part of a package meant to strengthen workers’ rights and “make work pay”. The reforms are being spearheaded by Ms Rayner.

Other measures designed to boost employee rights also include ending zero-hour contracts, banning “fire and rehire” practices and increasing the minimum wage. Ministers also want to strengthen workers’ right to request flexible working and hand them the power to ask for a four-day week.

Ms Rayner and Mr Reynolds have held a series of joint meetings with chief executives, unions and lobby groups meant to reassure them and explain the extent of the reforms and how they will work.

However, executives have repeatedly voiced their concerns. A survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) of its members, which include AstraZeneca, Drax and PwC, found 62pc believed Britain was becoming a less attractive place to do business and invest. Looming jobs market reforms were the most common reason given.

An economic confidence index produced by the Institute of Directors (IoD), which is sometimes nicknamed the bosses’ union, plunged from a three-year high of +7 in July to -12 in August. The IoD cited “newsflow in recent weeks on employment rights” as one of the reasons for the slump.

Business leaders are concerned that the proposals as they stand would trigger a wave of costly and time consuming unfair dismissal claims. 

This will be a crunch week for discussions about the reforms as the Government gets closer to unveiling its employment rights bill next month. Ministers have promised to put forward the bill within the first 100 days of entering office.  

Sources said it was “unclear” if an agreement on day one workers’ rights will be reached in time for the bill, with fears in Whitehall that vague plans will “really worry people”.

“Everyone is trying to get to an agreement so that they can consult on something quite clear,” a Whitehall source said. 

“Getting [Chancellor] Rachel Reeves, Jonathan [Reynolds] and Angela [Rayner] in the same place will be the point at which we can close it off.”

A government spokesman said: “Our number one priority is economic growth and wealth creation which is why our plan for better workers’ rights is designed to help people into secure work and lead to a more productive workforce.

“This is why we are working in close partnership with business and civil society to find the balance between improving workers’ rights while supporting the brilliant businesses that pay people’s wages.”

A new skin cancer treatment has been found to help patients live more than 10 years after diagnosis, a study shows.

A combination of two drugs allows patients with advanced melanoma to live an average of 10 years post-diagnosis, data show.

Only one in 20 patients with the stage four condition would survive for five years just 15 years ago, with many dying less than a year after being diagnosed.

Around 20,000 people are diagnosed with melanoma every year in the UK, with cases rising as a result of increased UV exposure and cases in older people.

A decade-long study investigated two immunotherapy drugs, ipilimumab and nivolumab, which work by stopping the patient’s immune system from attacking healthy tissues.

Almost 1,000 patients at more than 130 sites worldwide were recruited for the study, which was presented at the annual congress presented at the European Society of Molecular Oncology.

One third received the double-drug cocktail, another third had only ipilimumab and the final third received only nivolumab.

More than a third of the patients on the two-drug protocol were alive at the end of the study 10 years later, and many patients in the study died from causes that were not melanoma.

The melanoma-specific survival rate for patients on both drugs was 52 per cent, data show, compared to 44 per cent with nivolumab, and 23 per cent with ipilimumab.

The researchers said in the paper: “These 10-year data underscore how immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy has helped to change the long-term prognosis for patients with advanced melanoma and highlight the potential for a cure in patients who have a response to this type of treatment.” 

James Larkin, a consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust and a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research, told The Guardian: “The definition of cure is to return someone to their normal life expectancy for their age and state of health.

“Having treated a lot of these patients over the past 10 years it seems that some are cured: they’re back to their normal lives, they’re getting on with things.”

Dr Sam Godfrey, the science engagement lead at Cancer Research UK, said: “Over the last decade, there have been big improvements in survival for people with advanced melanoma skin cancer, partially because of the introduction of a group of immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors.

“This study indicates that combining two of these checkpoint inhibitors led to more people surviving their disease for 10 years or more.

“Promising results like this show how vital ongoing research into cancer is, to help people live longer, better lives.”

The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

David Lammy has called Vladimir Putin a “fascist” and said that the West must ignore his threats to use nuclear weapons.

The Foreign Secretary said the West should not be bullied by Putin’s threat of all-out war with Nato if Ukraine was given permission to use Western weapons to strike inside Russia.

The comments are likely to put further pressure on the US, which is understood to be holding up a change in policy to allow long-range missiles into Russian territory.

Joe Biden, the US president, has signalled there would be no decision on allowing Ukraine to fire Western-made missiles into Russia until he met with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader, at the end of the month.

Russian president Mr Putin warned last week that allowing long-range strikes “would mean that Nato countries, the United States, and European countries are at war with Russia”.

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Mr Lammy said there was “a lot of bluster” from Mr Putin but “we cannot be blown off course by an imperialist fascist” who “wants to move into countries willy-nilly”.

He said: “Putin said, ‘Don’t send tanks.’ We sent them.

“Putin said, ‘Don’t send any missiles.’ We sent them.

“Putin threatens every few months to use nuclear weapons.

“What he should now do is cease his aggression and leave Ukraine.”

Ukraine and Britain have been urging the US president to give the green light for the weapons to be used to strike airfields and other strategically important military targets.

But, asked about the timing of any decision at a security conference in Kyiv, Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said: “This is something that I think is the subject of intense consultation among allies and partners, and will be discussed between President Biden and President Zelensky.”

Mr Zelensky is due to meet Mr Biden in late September in New York at a UN General Assembly meeting.

On Sunday he again urged Western backers to approve changes to missile policy.

He said: “The fear of making strong, objectively necessary decisions must be overcome. Only decisiveness can bring a just end to this war. It is decisiveness that most effectively protects against terror.”

On Friday, Sir Keir Starmer travelled to the White House and discussed the issue with Mr Biden.

The US is concerned that giving Ukraine permission to fire Western missiles at Russia will escalate the conflict and the meeting ended without a decision.

Mr Sullivan told the annual Yalta European Strategy conference via video link that a decision on changing the terms of use for Western-made missiles would be made in the context of a wider “plan to win the war” that Mr Zelensky intends to present to Mr Biden in New York.
 
He said: “I do believe that we need a comprehensive strategy for winning this war, and that’s what President Zelensky says he’s going to bring, so we’re looking forward to sitting down and talking to him about that.”

Five former British defence ministers and a former prime minister have now urged Sir Keir to unilaterally allow Ukraine to fire British-made Storm Shadow long-distance missiles at Russia rather than wait for Mr Biden to make a decision.

Grant Shapps, Ben Wallace, Gavin Williamson, Penny Mordaunt, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson have said that any more delays will “play into Russia’s hands”.

Mr Sullivan has been a high-profile spokesman and security adviser for the US throughout the war but his more cautious approach over authorising Western missiles to be fired at Russia has reportedly caused a split with the more hawkish Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state.

Storm Shadow missiles, which have a range of about 150 miles, have been credited with turning the tide of the war by allowing Kyiv to hit Russian command centres and supply depots in occupied Ukraine deep behind the frontlines.

Military supplies from the US have been vital for Ukraine’s war effort but some arms shipments have been delayed over the past month, delays that Mr Sullivan blamed on “difficult and complex logistic issues”.

He said: “This is not a question of political will. But given what Ukraine is up against, we need to do more and do it better.”

Mr Zelensky has increased his criticism of these slow military aid deliveries from Ukraine’s Nato allies and on Saturday he said that “every delay in military aid packages has consequences on the front”.

On the front lines, Russian military bloggers reported that Russia has now launched a major counterattack against Ukraine’s incursion into its southern Kursk region.

According to the Two Majors channel, the Russian attack has “reduced the enemy’s control zone with a decisive onslaught” although this has been denied by Ukraine.

The British Ministry of Defence confirmed that Russian forces were trying to push back the Ukrainian invasion and had recaptured some ground in the Kursk region.

It said: “Spearheaded by Airborne and Naval Infantry United, Russian forces have attacked Ukrainian positions in the west of the salient and have highly likely retaken several villages.”

To the south-east, reports said that Russian forces were also making slow progress towards the strategically important town of Pokrovsk on the front line running through Donbas.

Russian military bloggers reported that Russian forces were trying to trap Ukrainian forces in a pocket.

Yemen’s Houthi terror group struck central Israel for the first time after a missile broke Israel’s air defence system on Sunday.

Sirens were sounded in Tel Aviv and across central Israel before the attack at 6.35am .

No injuries were reported according to Israel’s military, as the missile hit an unpopulated area. A train station in Modi’in, east of Tel Aviv, was damaged by shrapnel.

“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in central Israel, a surface-to-surface missile was identified crossing into central Israel from the east and fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” Israel’s military said.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would inflict a “heavy price”

“Whoever needs a reminder of that is invited to visit the Hodeida port,” Mr Netanyahu said, referring to an Israeli retaliatory air strike against Yemen in July for a Houthi drone that hit Tel Aviv.

Nasruddin Amer, the deputy head of the Houthis’ media office, said on Sunday that a Yemeni missile had reached Israel after “20 missiles failed to intercept” it. He also described the attack as the “beginning”.

Through its Telegram channel, the Iran-backed terror group warned its military spokesman would soon give details about a “qualitative operation that targeted the depth of the Zionist entity”.

It comes as the Houthis continue their Red Sea region blockade, launched in November on the instruction of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The group initially set out to attack and hijack Israeli-linked vessels in a bid to force a ceasefire in Gaza, but it has since expanded to target global shipping on the trade route.

Dozens of hostages from across the world have been taken and missiles launched at multiple international vessels.

In recent weeks, a Yemeni drone hit a residential building in central Tel Aviv, its target was believed to be the US embassy on the city’s coastline.

Sunday’s strike is the first time the Houthis have penetrated deep into Israeli airspace with a missile. Most such missiles have been shot down although one hit an open area near Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat in March.

Since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, killing around 1,100 mostly civilians, Iran’s proxies on Israel’s borders and Iraq have surrounded the Jewish state. The worst conflict has been on Israel’s northern border where Hezbollah have been sending almost daily bombardments.

Over 6,000 projectiles have been fired to the north of Israel since October 7 from Iran’s biggest proxy, with over 60,000 Israelis displaced, and around the same number displaced from southern Lebanon.

Israel dropped leaflets over a Lebanon border village on Sunday urging residents to leave, state-run media said, but Israel’s military told AFP a brigade had taken the initiative without approval.

It was the first time Israelis had told residents of south Lebanon to evacuate in 11 months of cross-border fire between Hezbollah and Israel over the Gaza war, triggered by Hezbollah ally Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

The leaflet read in Arabic: “To all residents and refugees living in the area of the camps, Hezbollah is firing from your region. You must immediately leave your homes and head north of the Khiam region before 04:00 pm (1300 GMT). Do not return to this area until the end of the war”.

It added: “Anyone present in this area after this time will be considered a terrorist.”

Wazzani is an agricultural region where Syrians are often hired to work the land.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli aircraft regularly drop leaflets urging residents to evacuate before an attack.

The United States sent faulty military items to Taiwan including mouldy armour and expired ammunition.

Most military equipment that suffered water damage was delivered from November 2023 through March 2024. 

They remained at the aerial port of embarkation for more than three months pending air transport to Taiwan. 

The army didn’t initiate requests for transportation until the end of 2023, unable to equip sufficient storage capacity. It failed to fully mitigate the exposure of items to adverse weather conditions.

The Department of Defense (DoD) failed to “effectively or efficiently implement accountability and quality controls for items delivered to Taiwan using the Presidential Drawdown Authority”, according to a report issued on Wednesday. 

“The DoD provided unserviceable and poorly packaged equipment and munitions to Taiwan.”

Photos clearly show damaged pallets and mouldy body armour that arrived in Taiwan in 2023, including more than 3,000 mildewed body armour plates and 500 wet and mouldy tactical vests. 

Personnel at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said the equipment was “soaking wet and full of mould”.

According to the report, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense issued a letter to the AIT’s security cooperation office in December 2023, stating that Taiwan had received 2.7 million rounds of ammunition.

This included expired, loose, and rounds of ammunition in the wrong packaging, which did not comply with shipping standards.

AIT described the open boxes of ammunition as “obviously extra boxes” of ammunition that give an impression of the army trying to “clear out stuff they didn’t want”.

Machine guns are also shipped without proper packaging such as serviceability paperwork, labels, wrapping, and cushioning. 

The National Defense Authorization Act 2023 authorised the US president to draw down up to $1 billion from existing DoD stock to provide military assistance to Taiwan. 

In July last year, Joe Biden approved $345 million worth of military equipment and services to provide assistance to Taiwan.

The delivery of faulty military equipment has led to additional costs for Taiwan authorities and weeks of unpacking, drying and inventorying the wet and mouldy items.

The Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command spent $618,894 in labour and materials to clean and dry the body armour, and an additional $113,492 to replace the damaged arms.

“The delivery of non-mission-capable items inhibit the DoD’s ability to achieve established security cooperation goals and may lead to loss of partner confidence in the United States,” the report concluded.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense told local media that the subject matter is jointly reviewed and addressed by both Taiwan and the US.

A top Isis commander tipped to become the group’s new global leader was killed in one of the largest US counter-terror operations in years.

More than 100 US special forces and 100 Iraqi troops attacked a network of Isis compounds and bunkers in a remote part of Iraq.

During a helicopter-borne assault, several American soldiers were wounded and 14 Isis operatives were killed in total, US officials said.

Among the dead were a number of senior Isis leaders, including one of its most significant designers, manufactures and teachers of explosives.

The raid took place in volatile Anbar province, a vast tribal region bordering Syria that was the site of some of Iraq’s bloodiest post-2003 battles.

In a statement, US Central Command said that Isis leaders Ahmad al-Ithawi, Abu Hammam, Ali al-Tunisi and Shakir Abud Ahmad al-Issawi were killed in Anbar province on Aug 29 during a mission conducted in partnership with Iraqi security forces.

“The raid appears to have effectively killed off Isis’ entire command in Anbar,” said Charles Lister, a counterterror expert from leading Washington-based think tank The Middle East Institute.

“The death of Ahmed al-Ithawi is a hugely consequential achievement. He has been a prime candidate for Isis global leadership in recent years.”

Ali al-Tunisi, who was the subject of a $5 million (£3.8 million) reward from the US government, was an expert in improvised explosive devices, suicide vests and car bombs.

The raid came as the US and Iraqi officials said they had concluded a deal that would see American troops leave Iraq by 2026.

“The first phase will begin this year and continue until 2025, while the second phase will conclude in 2026,” Iraqi defence minister Thabit Al Abassi told Saudi television.

The 2,500 strong contingent of US troops in Iraq are tasked with destroying remnants of the Islamic State, a mission that has grown in urgency due to an increase in Isis attacks in Iraq and Syria and the growing influence of Iran on Iraqi internal politics.

According to the Washington Post, the raid was unusual for the high number of US troops involved in leading the assault directly.

Though Isis has claimed responsibility for 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria thus far this year, Iraqi political and military leaders, including prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, have vowed to keep the Isis threat under control without US assistance.

Mr Sudani has been under pressure from Iran, and its allies inside Iraq, to reduce the US military presence in the country.

The Iraqi military statement on the raid barely acknowledged US assistance and instead referred to “coordination from the international coalition”.

Italian prosecutors have requested a six-year prison sentence for Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, for prohibiting rescued migrants from disembarking in an Italian port.

During closing arguments in Palermo, prosecutors argued that Mr Salvini was trying to promote and position himself during a political crisis when he knowingly broke Italian law and international conventions by blocking the migrants from landing.

“Six years in prison for having blocked arrivals and defended Italy and Italians? It is madness,” responded Mr Salvini, who was not present in court. “Defending Italy is not a crime.”

The 147 migrants, including 32 minors, had been rescued from rubber dinghies crossing the Mediterranean from Libya by a ship operated by Open Arms, the Spanish non-profit human rights organisation.

As interior minister at the time, Mr Salvini refused to assign a port of safety for the migrants to disembark, even when asked by Giuseppe Conte, then prime minister, whose Five-Star Movement was in a coalition with Mr Salvini’s League party.

Prosecutors ordered the ship’s seizure and evacuation, and later charged Mr Salvini with kidnapping and refusal to execute acts of office. The first trial of a three-stage judicial process is expected to finish this year.

The high-profile 2019 incident off the island of Lampedusa drew international criticism. Richard Gere, Hollywood actor, broke off his Tuscan holiday to fly to Sicily and be ferried out to the ship, where he distributed aid and spoke with traumatised refugees.

Mr Gere later offered to testify about the scene on board, with migrants’ physical and mental well-being becoming critical as sanitary conditions deteriorated, including an outbreak of scabies.

“Between human rights and the protection of state sovereignty, it is human rights that must prevail in our fortunately democratic system,” Geri Ferrara, prosecutor, said in his summing up.

Marine Le Pen, French Right-wing leader and Elon Musk, Tesla chief executive, offered support on social media for Mr Salvini, now infrastructure minister in Giorgia Meloni’s Right-wing coalition government.

Ms Meloni also criticised prosecutors, calling it “incredible that a minister of the Italian Republic risks six years in prison for doing his job defending the nation’s borders”.

Ms Meloni is scheduled for talks in Rome on Monday with Sir Keir Starmer, who has expressed interest in learning how the Italian government has tackled illegal immigration through financial deals with northern African nations and an asylum processing scheme offshore in Albania.

Hay fever may have led to the extinction of woolly mammoths, a study claims.

Plant pollen has been found in the remains of four mammoths, with scientists also discovering the first evidence of the animal having allergies.

Scientists believe that the ancestors of elephants may have suffered from allergies to plant pollen that damaged their sense of smell and ability to find a mate and reproduce.

This hay fever, researchers suggest, could have led to a prolonged decline in birth rates, culminating in the extinction of the species around 4,000 years ago.

The last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago and led to a period of rapid climate change which saw trees and plants flourish.

Scientists from private companies in Israel partnered with academics in Italy and at the Russian Academy of Sciences to analyse tissue samples from four mammoth corpses now in a museum that were dug up from the permafrost in north-eastern Siberia.

A new technology was used to extract and analyse immunoglobulins, chemicals made by the immune system in response to a foreign body and also known as antibodies, in the specimens.

“This was the first study where fragments of immunoglobulins were found in remains tens of thousands of years old,” study first author Gleb Zilberstein, co-founder at Spectrophon, told The Telegraph.

“In parallel, fragments of proteins of highly allergenic plants and their pollen were found in these remains.

“We found evidence in mammoth samples of allergies and they may have gone extinct because mammoths developed allergies to pollen during the breeding season which stopped them being able to find each other to reproduce.”

Climate change theory

The conventional school of thought is that climate change led to the extinction of the woolly mammoths 4,000 years ago, after millennia of increased isolation and population decline following the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

A 2021 study by Cambridge University scientists concluded that rapid climate change was “the final nail in the coffin” for the species which could grow up to 12ft tall and weigh eight tons.

The warmer climate saw trees and wetland plants replace the preferred grassland habitat of the woolly mammoth, the decade-long project found. The loss of vegetation has been blamed as a key reason for mammoth extinction.

But humans have also been blamed for the demise of the mammoth, with studies suggesting over-hunting by early tribes fatally lowered herd numbers.

Early cavemen are known to have painted mammoths on the side of caves, as well as using their giant bones to make shelters and tusks to make weapons.

First theory pointing to disease

But the latest study, published in the new Elsevier journal Earth History and Biodiversity “proposes a new evolutionary mechanism for the extinction of mammoths”.

“A new hypothesis and mechanism for the extinction of mammoths is proposed based on a decrease in the likelihood of mating due to allergies and decreased sensitivity to odours,” the scientists write.

Mr Zilberstein added: “Our theory of the extinction of mammoths is the first one that pointed to markers of diseases – allergies to plants.

“It showed that the extinction was a slow process of decreasing the mammoth population due to the destruction of chemical communication (recognition by smell) between animals during the breeding season.”

A mother was fined £500 for fly-tipping after she left an Ikea cabinet outside her home.

Isabelle Pepin, 42, from Bournemouth left the cabinet for others in her community to take for free. But three weeks later, a representative from the council knocked on her door and told her she had 14 days to pay the fine or it would be doubled.

Bournemouth council increased fines for fly-tipping in April 2023 to a maximum of £1,000, in line with government regulation. Since then 73 people, including 15 in August, have been fined for fly-tipping.

A carpet fitter from the town was fined £500 for leaving an off-cut outside his home for somebody else to take.

Ms Pepin described the enforcement officer as “quite intimidating” and said that he was wearing a chest camera while questioning her about the cabinet. She claims the officer asked for her name and address, claiming that refusing to answer would result in another offence.

“I am usually quite a confident person but by this point I was shaking and panicking,” said Ms Pepin, a graphic designer and artist who lives with her eight-year-old son. “I have lived in this property for 12 years and I see people in the area leaving things out probably every other day.”

Ms Pepin questioned how the incident fit with the council’s environmental policies. In 2019, Bournemouth declared a climate and ecological emergency. One of the ways the council suggests helping is by “reducing and recycling your waste”.

“It’s not fly-tipping, that is not what is happening here,” she said. “It’s recycling things people no longer want or need.

“We are supposed to be pushing a green agenda but the council are going around fining people for recycling,” she added.

Jeff Hanna, a Liberal Democrat councillor for West Southbourne, said he disagreed with the council’s heavy-handed approach and was looking into the matter.

“I find it difficult to accept that this is fly-tipping, and think a £500 fine is excessive,” he said. “I have told officers that I think at most a friendly warning should have been given.”

Enforcement of fly-tipping fines is carried out by a private company, not council officers. Mr Hanna has asked officers to review the company’s contract.

Cllr Kieron Wilson, the council’s portfolio holder for housing and regulatory services, said that the council was “committed to tackling fly-tipping”.

“Officers closely monitor and manage this waste enforcement contract, which includes regular reviews, and a commitment to responding promptly to any issues or concerns that may arise,” she said.

Dramatic flooding across Central Europe left at least half a dozen people dead as forecasters warned of more rain to come.

Poland, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Romania were particularly hard hit by Storm Boris in what could be some of the worst flooding in the region for 30 years.

Romania was forced to set up displacement camps and launch volunteer rescue operations, with Klaus Iohannis, the president of Romania, offering his condolences to the victims’ bereaved families.

“We must continue to strengthen our capacity to anticipate extreme weather phenomena” he wrote. Five thousand homes were flooded in the east of the country.

Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, confirmed there was one death by drowning in the district of Klodzko, calling on the population to follow evacuation orders and telling reporters that “the situation is dramatic in many places.”

Officials said 40 per cent of the major city of Wrocław was underwater, while the mayor of nearby Głuchołazy warned: “We are drowning.”

Rivers were continuing to break their banks on Sunday and town centres were being flooded, with homes swept away.

Some 25,000 residents have been evacuated in a valley in the Sudetes mountains near the border with the Czech Republic.

50 litres of rainfall per square metre are expected in parts of the country, more than in the historic 1997 flood which killed 100 people across central Europe.

A firefighter died in a rescue operation in a cellar in Austria as the region of Lower Austria declared a state of emergency.

“We are experiencing difficult, dramatic hours in Lower Austria,” said Johanna Mikl-Leitner, Governor of the region.

“For many Lower Austrians, these will be the hardest hours of their lives”.

“We will do everything we can to stand up to the water to protect the land and its people.” A Black Hawk helicopter was deployed to rescue two trapped motorists near Markersdorf.

The region was declared a “catasrophe zone”, while motorways and railways were cut off completely

Karl Nehammer, Austria’s Chancellor, said: “The storm situation has worsened in the last few hours…the storm situation in the federal states is very serious.”

Thousands of people have been evacuated from the eastern Czech region of Moravia, with more than a quarter of a million people without power.

Polish train operator PKP has suspended train services that enter the Czech Republic and more than 180 patients were evacuated from the Brothers of Mercy Hospital in the city of Brno.

Meteorologists have warned the situation still might get worse as waters in most rivers are rising, the flood wave made its way through the country and more heavy rains could return overnight.

Thousands of others were also evacuated in the towns of Krnov and Cesky Tesin. The Oder River that flows to Poland was expected to reach extreme levels in the city of Ostrava and later in Bohumin.

Towns and villages in the Jeseniky mountains, including the local centre of Jesenik, were inundated and isolated by raging waters that turned roads into rivers. The military sent a helicopter to help with evacuations.

Four people who were swept away by waters were missing, police said.

People are unable to tell if a voice speaking to them is that of a real person or an AI clone, scientists have found.

AI audio cloning is now so advanced that it is able to create entire paragraphs from small snippets of recordings and make a voice that is indistinguishable from a real human.

Experts fear realistic computer voices could be used by scammers imitating banks and spread fake news.

Researchers at University College London played audio clips out loud to 100 people and found they could not which was human and which was created using artificial intelligence (AI).

People were played a phrase twice – read by a real person, and by an AI clone of that person – and asked which they thought was authentic.

Participants only answered correctly 48 per cent of the time.

People were better at recognising AI when it was impersonating someone they knew, with correct identification 88 per cent of the time when it was the voice of a friend.

Prof Carolyn McGettigan, the study’s author and chairman of speech and hearing sciences at UCL, presented her findings at the British Science Festival ahead of publication in a scientific journal.

“What we’ve found is that for people who know the original voice, they are actually quite sensitive to whether what they’re hearing is a clone or an authentic recording. But when it comes to a stranger’s voice, they’re basically guessing,” Prof McGettigan said.

“What we’re seeing now is that the technology is good enough to mean that listeners may be unable to tell if what they’re listening to is the voice of a real person or not.”

Ad-hoc experiment

A recording of Aesop’s fable, The North Wind and the Sun, was played aloud to journalists at the festival. They were asked to say if the audio clip was real or fake.

Every person in the ad-hoc experiment believed the recording to be genuine, but Prof McGettigan revealed it was a chimera, with both AI and human voices interwoven in one clip.

“You were hard-pressed to think that this was a computer-generated voice in any part, and you probably wouldn’t have thought there were two different sources of speech in there,” Prof McGettigan said.

“Synthetic voices can sound very, very human-like. You were all pretty convinced that it was human all the way through.”

The technology is now so readily available and competent that people and companies are contemplating the idea of allowing people to use AI clones of a specific voice for smart assistants like Siri and Alexa, or to read audiobooks to individuals.

Ethical questions

Prof McGettigan adds that there are serious ethical questions on how to deploy and regulate this technology and also how to protect people from deception. There is also the possibility the technology could be used to recreate the voice of a deceased loved one, in the style of the sci-fi TV show Black Mirror.

“This has serious ethical implications that we all need to consider – the technology already exists, so it’s up to us to decide how we best make use of it,” Prof McGettigan said.

“I think it is realistic to say that any kind of technology will always be apt to be abused, regardless of its benefits.

“It seems like there are probably ways in which, as a whole society, we need to think about the ways in which we evaluate information.

“I think there are lots of possibilities for harm in these kinds of technologies that might seek to replicate a person’s identity if they were used for nefarious purposes, but I suppose the question is to what extent would minimising the harms also interrupt the potential benefit.”

Donald Trump was the target of a suspected second assassination attempt by a gunman armed with an assault-style rifle, the FBI have said.

The former president was rushed to safety while golfing after a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of a fence at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday.

The agent opened fire on the male suspect, who was equipped with an AK-47 rifle with a scope, two backpacks and a GoPro camera, said Ric Bradshaw, the Palm Beach County Sheriff.

Trump was as few as 300 yard of him at the time, Mr Bradhsaw said. “With a rifle and a scope, that’s not a long distance,” he added.

The suspect was identified on Sunday night as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh by multiple US media outlets.

Mr Bradshaw said it appeared the gunman intended to use the camera “to take pictures” of the attack.

On being engaged at around 1.30pm local time, he dropped the items and was observed by an eyewitness fleeing in a black Nissan.

Mr Routh was later detained on a motorway and identified as the same man by the eyewitness, Mr Bradshaw said.

The FBI said it was “investigating what appears to be an attempted assassination of former President Trump”.

It is the second time in just over two months that an attempt has been made on the life of the Republican 2024 candidate, after he was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania.

The incident is likely to raise major questions about the under-fire Secret Service tasked with protecting him.

Mr Bradshaw, the local sheriff, admitted on Sunday night that Trump’s golf course had security vulnerabilities owing to the shrubbery surrounding it.

However, he suggested the security surrounding it was not as stringent as it could have been because he is no longer in office.

“If he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded,” he said. 

“The security is what the Secret Service deems possible”.

He added the arrangements were likely to change going forward.

The golf course was partially shut down for Trump as he played and agents were a few holes ahead of him when they noticed the gunman, officials said.

Secret Service agents and officers in golf carts and on ATVs generally secure the area several holes ahead and behind Trump when he golfs.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were briefed on the assassination attempt, the White House said.

Ms Harris said she was “deeply disturbed” by the attempt on Trump’s life. 

“I am thankful that former President Trump is safe,” she said.

“I commend the US Secret Service and law enforcement partners for their vigilance.”

Trump was later escorted back to his main residence, Mar-a-Lago, about five miles away on Palm Beach.

In a fundraising appeal following the incident, Trump reiterated that he was “safe and well”.

“Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER!” he said.

JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, said Trump was “amazingly, in good spirits” following the incident.

“I’m glad President Trump is safe,” Mr Vance said. 

“Still much we don’t know, but I’ll be hugging my kids extra tight tonight and saying a prayer of gratitude.”

Trump had returned to Florida this weekend from a West Coast swing that included a Friday night rally in Las Vegas and a fundraiser in Utah.

He often spends the morning playing golf, before having lunch at his Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach, one of three he owns in the state.

The course was immediately locked down and Trump was scrambled to safety.

No injuries were reported, according to a spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.

Trump’s security had already been ramped up since an assassination attempt on the ex-president just two months ago.

Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple shots at Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. One bullet grazed the ex-president’s ear.

Since resuming outdoor campaign events, he has been speaking from behind bulletproof glass.

Elizabeth Debicki won her first Emmy Award for her role as Diana, Princess of Wales in Netflix’s The Crown – the fictionalised drama about the royal family – at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards.

“Playing this part based on this unparalleled, incredible human being, has been my great privilege – it has been a gift,” Debicki said on stage after collecting the award for outstanding supporting actress in a drama.

Hollywood stars descended upon the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles for the second time this year to celebrate the best in television, after the September 2023 ceremony was delayed following the US writers’ and actors’ strikes.

Shogun and Hacks were awarded top series as Baby Reindeer and The Bear each took four awards

Scottish star Richard Gadd said “no matter how bad it gets, it always gets better” as he collected his first Emmy award for Netflix’s darkly quirky British series Baby Reindeer.   He also won two other Emmys for producing and starring in the hit series.

His co-star Jessica Gunning also won an Emmy, making four for the series.

These Emmys awards were hosted by the father and son duo of Eugene and Dan Levy, the winning stars of the 2020 Emmys with their show Schitt’s Creek.

Hacks won the comedy series at Sunday’s Emmy Awards, topping The Bear, which took home several of the night’s honors.

Shogun won the best drama series win, collecting a whopping 18 Emmys for its first season, just one of several historic wins.

Gadd, who created and starred in the show, appeared on stage at the Peacock Theatre to collect the award for best writing for a limited or anthropology series.

“This is the stuff of dreams,” the 35-year-old, wearing a kilt, said on stage about the hit show said to be inspired by his real-life experiences. “Look, 10 years ago I was down and out. I never ever thought I’d get my life together.

“I never ever thought I’d be able to rectify myself what had happened to me and get myself back on my feet again, and then here I am, just over a decade later, picking up one of the biggest writing awards in television.

“… So if you’re struggling, keep going – keep going and I promise you things will be okay.”

His win comes after English co-star Gunning won the Emmy for best supporting actress in a limited or anthology series for playing Martha Scott, who stalks Gadd’s character Donny Dunn.

“My biggest thanks has to go to Mr Richard Gadd, I tried so many times to put into words what working on Baby Reindeer meant to me and I fail every time, so I’m going to sing,” she joked.

“Thank you for trusting me to be your Martha, I will never, ever forget her or you or this.”

The show hit the headlines after a woman claiming to be the inspiration behind Martha, filed a lawsuit against Netflix alleging the story is inaccurate.

In their opening monologue, the Levy hosting duo remarked about The Bear featuring in the comedy category following reaction that it should be categorised as a drama.

“Now, I love the show, I love the show, and I know some of you will be expecting us to make a joke about whether The Bear is really a comedy – but in the true spirit of The Bear, we will not be making any jokes,” Eugene Levy said.

The series is about a star chef (Jeremy Allen White) who returns to Chicago to run the family business after the death of his brother.

Allen White described himself as “so, so, so lucky” after picking up the Emmy for lead actor in a comedy series for his role as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto. “This show has changed my life, it has instilled a faith that change is possible, that change is possible if you are able to reach out, you are really truly not actually alone,” he said on stage.

His win came after US actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach won best supporting actor in a comedy for his role as restaurant manager Richard “Richie” Jerimovich in The Bear. Christopher Storer picked up the directing award for a comedy series for The Bear.

The ceremony also saw Liza Colon-Zayas win an Emmy for best supporting actress for her role as Tina in The Bear, telling the audience she “revered” the women in the category including Carol Burnett and Meryl Streep.

Referencing the upcoming presidential election, she added: “To all the Latinas who are looking at me, keep believing and vote, vote for your rights.”

The FX series Shogun, about lordly politicking in feudal Japan, had already set a record for most Emmys for a single season of a series, with its 14 wins at the precursor Creative Arts Emmy Awards last weekend.

The show seized all the Emmy power in the top categories by shifting from the limited series to the drama category in May when it began developing more seasons. And it was in some ways Emmy royalty from the start. During the golden age of the miniseries, the original 1980 Shogun, based on James Clavell’s historical novel, won three including best limited series.

Veteran screen star Hiroyuki Sanada, who won the actor award, and Anna Sawai, the actress award, were the first Japanese actors to win Emmys.

Sanada had faced a challenge from Gary Oldman, who has been quietly creating one of his career defining roles on Apple TV+ as spy chief Jackson Lamb on Slow Horses.

Sawai’s competition came from Emmy luminary Jennifer Aniston of The Morning Show, who has only won once before in 10 nominations, and Imelda Staunton for playing Queen Elizabeth II on The Crown.

Sunday was a victory lap for The Bear, which took most of the big comedy Emmys home in January for its first season.

The suspect in the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump is a 58-year-old Florida resident who seemingly travelled to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion and became a champion for sending arms and even American soldiers to help Kyiv.

Officials told US media the man taken into custody was Ryan Wesley Routh, whose bio on X, formerly Twitter, says: “I feel lucky to have been born in America, with freedom and opportunity and hope that I do not waste such a valuable thing; to do more and take less.”

Based on his social media profile, it seems that two years ago he travelled to Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion and urged Americans to join him there. 

He also urged Congress to send money and arms.

“I am here in Kyiv and want to use Independence Park to create a tent city of all the foreigners here in support to get thousands more foreign civilians to come and support Ukraine,” he wrote on Twitter in April 2022.

Tweeting the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he said: “Forget the no fly zone – ask Congress to put all American military on paid leave so they can fight. Ask Congress to put all American military on paid leave so they can fight as civilians in Ukraine. 

“Tell Congress what you will pay for all weapons – drones, missiles, planes-everything. Give them a blank check so no US responsibility.”

Mr Routh was allegedly armed with an AK-47, had a protective ceramic tile vest, and was carrying two backpacks during the alleged attempted assassination on Sunday. Officials said Mr Routh dropped them and fled in a car, a Nissan.

A witness was able to photograph the vehicle’s number plate and Mr Routh was subsequently arrested almost 50 miles from Trump International Golf Club in neighbouring Martin County.

On his LinkedIn page, Mr Routh displays the Ukrainian flag and says he owned Camp Box Honolulu in Hawaii, which builds “simple economical structures to help address the highest homelessness rate in the United States due to unparalleled gentrification”.

“I am constantly looking for collaborative opportunities which yield the most public impact for the improvement of our society,” he writes.

“I would tremendously enjoy the invitation to join any monumental worthy cause to bring about real change in our world.”

Mr Routh apparently attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, but relocated to Hawaii sometime around 2018. 

US media said he had eight arrests on his record for minor offences and the car he allegedly used on Sunday was registered to a family member, who is said to live in the south Florida area.

On his LinkedIn page, Mr Routh wrote: “I am certainly free to relocate to any remote location on the planet that might render the most positive impact, or right around the corner creating something unique and magical.”

It appears he has not used X for a year, when he wrote about Haiti’s struggle to combat gang violence.

“I have thousands of Afghan soldiers that wish to serve for the Haiti national police at cheap wages,” he said. “1000s with passports ready to fly.”

The “replies” tab on Mr Routh’s X feed shows he recently sent messages to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, urging them to visit the people injured during a previous assassination attempt on Trump.

Referring to the July rally Trump held in Butler County, Pennsylvania, where the former president narrowly escaped with his life and a rally-goer was killed, he said: “You and Biden should visit the injured people in the hospital from the Trump rally and attend the funeral of the murdered fireman.”

He added: “Trump will never do anything for them….show the world what compassion and humanity is all about.”

In another post from May 2022 he wrote: “Killing anywhere is extremely tragic.”

CNN said law enforcement officers were not only trying to ascertain a motive for the attempted killing, but how Mr Routh might have hoped to exploit it.

They are understood to be looking at the time he is said to have spent in Ukraine, and also the fact he was carrying a GoPro camera, suggesting he intended to film or stream any actions.

According to a report by Greensboro’s News and Record newspaper, in 2002 Mr Routh was convicted of “possessing a weapon of mass destruction”, according to online North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records.

The report said Mr Routh was pulled over during a traffic stop, put his hand on a firearm and later drove off to a roofing business, where he reportedly barricaded himself in.

He was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possessing a weapon of mass destruction, understood to be a fully automatic machine gun.

Donald Trump was enjoying an afternoon of golf at his resort in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday when shots rang out just ahead of him.

As Trump made his way between holes five and six of the course, just before 2pm local time, a Secret Service agent who had been dispatched to check the next hole as part of the agency’s protective “bubble”, had spotted a gunman’s rifle poking out of the shrubbery.

The agent dispatched a volley of shots into the bushes, as Trump was rushed to safety. He was as few as 300 yards from the incident.

It came just two months after another lone gunman, Thomas Crooks, took shots at the former president from a nearby rooftop at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania.

But unlike on that day, Trump’s Secret Service protection was unable to neutralise the threat immediately.

The suspect fled the scene, and a witness spotted a man leaving the area and climbing into a Nissan SUV parked nearby.

The witness snapped a photograph of the car and phoned the police.

The former president’s campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, issued a statement informing the press that Trump was “safe following gunshots in his vicinity”.

As reports first emerged of shots fired at the golf course, the early indications were that two gunmen had been shooting at each other in an incident unrelated to Trump.

But law enforcement officials knew that the shots had been fired by an agent protecting Trump. It became clear to those working at the scene that another gunman had tried to kill the former president.

For the next 30 minutes, a frantic manhunt was launched involving two local police forces, the Secret Service and the FBI.

Palm Beach County’s sheriff’s office fired up its “real time crime centre”, feeding the details from the driver’s number plate into its system.

In Martin’s County, north of the scene, Sheriff William D. Snyder had settled in for a coffee break when a BOLO alert ─ code for “be on look out” ─ flashed up from the neighbouring force.

“I had just sat down to have my only second cup of coffee today, and as soon as I heard the BOLO being looked out, heading to Martin [county], I knew we’d get the car,” he later recalled.

“I sat my coffee down and started getting ready to come out here.”

Police raced along the i-95, an interstate running the entire length of the US east coast, past Trump’s golf course in Florida and towards North Carolina.

Fifty miles away from the bushes where the shots were fired, the Nissan was brought to a stop by police.

Sheriff Snyder and his officers recovered a lone driver from the car, described as displaying a “relatively calm, flat” demeanour.

“He was not displaying a lot of emotions,” he said. “Never asked, ‘What is this about?’

“Obviously [there were] law enforcement with long rifles, blue lights, a lot going on. He never questioned it.”

The man’s identity had not been confirmed by police on Sunday night, but sources told US media outlets he was 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh.

He was taken into custody, while the witness who had first spotted the car was flown to the scene of the arrest by helicopter.

They confirmed the vehicle was the same one spotted fleeing the scene earlier in the afternoon.

The road remained closed on Sunday afternoon and the scene was complicated further by an unrelated crash between two vehicles that were brought to a stop by the police roadblock.

Back at the Trump International Golf Club, officers searched the bushes where the gunman was identified and recovered two backpacks and an AK-47-style rifle.

The bags contained ceramic tiles and a GoPro video camera had been fixed to the fence.

The tiles were in the second backpack, and experts said the gunman would have slipped this on backwards so that the tiles protected his chest, acting in the same way as a bullet-proof vest.

Authorities believe the camera had been brought and set up to film the incident. Both were seized by the FBI, which assumed responsibility for the investigation into what was by then an assumed assassination attempt against Trump.

Jeffrey B. Veltri, the lead agent in the FBI’s Miami field office, deployed the full force of the agency’s resources, including investigative and crisis response teams, bomb technicians and personnel to recover and analyse evidence.

The FBI was handed the suspect’s vehicle (circled below) for a full search, although police said he was not armed as he was taken into custody.

The local attorney’s office put together the paperwork to charge the suspect, if investigations confirm he was the shooter.

Further federal charges could be brought at a later date.

The incident immediately raised concerns about the level of security offered to Trump, even after an attempt on his life that almost succeeded in July.

After the first shooting, in which a bullet grazed Trump’s ear, the Secret Service faced severe criticism for its failure to prevent an assassin getting close enough to their “principal” to take a shot.

Ric Bradshaw, the Palm Beach County Sheriff, preempted concerns about the former president’s security team in a press conference on Sunday afternoon.

Describing the response as “fabulous”, he said that Floridians should “be proud of your law enforcement”.

“We started out with ‘we don’t know anything,’ to where we had a tag, we had a vehicle description, and we got an area where we saw the person,” he said.

But describing the scene on the golf course earlier in the afternoon, he acknowledged that the second assassination attempt had been almost as close as the first.

“When this gentleman was caught and stopped, [Trump was] probably between 300 and 500 yards [away],” he said. 

“But with a rifle and a scope like that, that’s not a long distance.”

A second attempt on Trump’s life, on a golf course he owns and uses regularly, will raise serious concerns that the Secret Service has not learned from the first assassination attempt.

After that attack, the Department of Homeland Security launched an immediate review into Trump’s security detail, and banned him from speaking outdoors without a bulletproof screen around him.

Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service director, resigned and the government issued statements attempting to reassure the public that the former president was safe.

But on Sunday afternoon, Mr Bradshaw acknowledged: “The security is what the Secret Service deems possible”.

“You’ve got to understand that the golf course is surrounded by shrubbery, so [if] someone gets into the shrubbery, they’re pretty much out of sight,” he said.

“At the level that he is right now, he’s not a sitting president. If he was, we would have had this whole golf course surrounded.”

Trump’s statement after the shooting was typically bullish. He told his supporters in an email: “FEAR NOT! I am safe and well, and no one was hurt. Thank God!

“But, there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us.

“I will not stop fighting for you.

“I will Never Surrender!” 

But back at Secret Service headquarters, the mood is unlikely to be so upbeat.

“The threat level is high,” said an agency spokesman, in response to a journalist’s question that risked stating the obvious.

“We live in dangerous times.”

Sir Keir Starmer’s new border security commander will accelerate the use of undercover tactics and covert surveillance in an attempt to smash Channel migrant gangs.

Martin Hewitt, the former Scotland Yard chief who led the police response to the Covid pandemic, has been appointed by the Prime Minister to take charge of hundreds of investigators taking on the gangs behind the Channel crossings.

It is understood the former head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) clinched the job after presenting a detailed plan to boost the use of undercover tactics and covert surveillance to track down and stop the people-smugglers.

It is the first sign of how the Government plans to tackle the migrant crisis after being criticised for scrapping the Rwanda scheme without an alternative deterrent.

The appointment came as eight migrants died trying to cross the Channel when their dinghy ran aground and sank off the coast of northern France. It brings the total number of deaths this year to 45, compared with just 12 last year. A 10-month-old baby with hypothermia was among six others taken to hospital for treatment.

Sir Keir will meet Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, in Rome on Monday to see how the UK could emulate her success in more than halving migrant crossings of the Mediterranean. Her tactics have included crackdowns on the gangs, striking new returns agreements with source countries and fast-tracking deportations of failed asylum seekers.

The Prime Minister pledged Mr Hewitt would “lead a new era of international enforcement to dismantle these networks, protect our shores and bring order to the asylum system”.

Mr Hewitt, 58, who is accompanying Sir Keir to Italy, said: “I am honoured and excited to lead this new and groundbreaking command. I am under no illusions of the challenges that lie ahead, but I am determined to face them head-on.

“For too long, the criminal gangs who smuggle people through Europe have abused our borders in the name of profit, and they are responsible for the deaths of scores of vulnerable, innocent people. We will dismantle them, bring them to justice and prevent them from using exploitation and deceit to fill their pockets.

“It is great to see that progress has been made in recent weeks, and we will build on this to forge deeper relationships with all of the organisations within Border Security Command, as well as our friends and partners across the world.”

During his time in the Metropolitan Police, Mr Hewitt was seen as a “troubleshooter”. As well as being responsible for gangs, organised crime and frontline policing, he was tasked to devise a strategy to reverse low rape conviction rates. After seeing the carnage caused by zombie knives, he was one of the first police officers to call for new laws on them in 2018.

At the NPCC, he led the national policing response after the murder of Sarah Everard. During the pandemic, he was not afraid to be critical of badly drafted guidance and laws around lockdown.

Mr Hewitt is understood to have been one of 11 candidates long-listed by officials for the job. The final four had “fireside chats” with Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, before the final decision was taken.

Sources said he was chosen for three key attributes: a track record of overseeing complex operations involving multiple agencies; his understanding of the machinery of Government and its interaction with agencies; and expertise on organised crime networks and how to target the kingpins.

As head of the Border Security Command, Mr Hewitt will lead hundreds of investigators, police officers and prosecutors from the National Crime Agency (NCA), MI5, Border Force and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who will get new powers to treat people-smugglers like terrorists.

“He has an understanding of how organised crime works and has plans to enhance covert capabilities with practical steps we can take to increase the capacity of the NCA to disrupt illicit finance routes or intercept communications through social media,” said a source.

In Italy, Sir Keir and Mr Hewitt will visit the national co-ordination centre for migration, from which it runs its operations against trafficking rings and illicit finance.

Ms Meloni has extended organised crime penalties to those who finance people-smuggling after courts used them to seize assets worth €1.9 billion from Mafia and gang bosses in 2021.

Sir Keir has said he is “interested” in Ms Meloni’s plans to send migrants to Albania to process their asylum claims, although government sources played down the prospect of Labour adopting a similar scheme.

Instead, they said it was an example of the fast-track processing of asylum claims to allow the rapid deportation of illegal migrants back to “safe” countries that Britain aimed to emulate.

Italy has negotiated a bespoke returns agreement with Tunisia to transfer thousands of migrants back to the north African state and the UK Government is seeking to increase the number of similar returns deals.

Unlike the UK’s agreement with France, the deals Italy has made with Libya and Tunisia allow for their border force vessels to intercept migrants at sea and return them from whence they came.

In an article for The Telegraph, Tony Smith, the former Border Force director general, said the EU’s backing for such “turn backs” at sea was “inconsistent and at worst disingenuous” when it refused to allow British vessels to take the same approach with dinghies in the Channel.

“The EU should stop pretending returns of UK-bound migrant boats to France is not an option. Rather, they should enter into immediate negotiations with us on joint patrols in the Channel – and the immediate safe return of all the migrants to France, regardless of who rescues them and where,” he said.

More people than ever are waiting at least four weeks to see a GP, analysis shows.

There were 10.3 million people waiting for a GP appointment for at least 28 days in the first seven months of this year.

According to research by the Liberal Democrats, this represents an increase of a fifth from the equivalent period in 2023.

A record 17.6 million waits for appointments were recorded last year, with Sir Ed Davey’s party forecasting that the final total for this year will be even greater.

‘Tories broke NHS so badly’

The Liberal Democrat leader said: “Everyone should be able to see a doctor when they need one, but the Conservative Party broke the NHS so badly that millions of people are waiting weeks for an appointment.

“Fixing the GP crisis is critical to saving our NHS. If people can get seen quicker, fewer will end up in hospital in the first place. 

“That’s better for them, better for the NHS and better for taxpayers.”

The Liberal Democrats want everyone to have a right to see a GP within seven days, or 24 hours if it is urgent.

They are also pressuring Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, to inject more money into the NHS at the Budget next month in order to fund more appointments and fix social care.

Prof Kamila Hawthorne, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said that family doctors worked “incredibly hard” and delivered almost 32 million appointments in July.

“The reality is that we don’t have enough GPs to deliver care to the increasing numbers of patients who need it, especially as they have increasingly complex health needs,” she said.

However, Prof Hawthorne criticised the Lib Dem proposals to introduce “arbitrary targets”, claiming this would only worsen the situation in practice.

Ruth Rankine, director of primary care at the NHS Confederation, said the wait times data showed her sector was “under enormous pressure”.

Echoing Liberal Democrat calls for more cash, she said: “Ahead of winter, the Government must address the estimated gap between what the NHS is committed to do this year and what funding services have to deliver it.

“A failure to do that will lead to a crisis and make it more difficult for people to be seen in primary care.”

In her speech at the annual Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton on Monday, Daisy Cooper, the party’s health spokesman, will insist that the NHS is their “top priority”.

Ms Cooper is expected to say: “As liberals, we don’t blindly defend the NHS as an institution. We defend it because it’s an idea, and because of its founding principles…

“The NHS was a liberal idea, driven forward by Labour. So Wes [Streeting], if you’re listening – take up our ideas, and put forward your own, and if we support them we’ll back you.

“But if you don’t act with the right level of ambition, we’ll hold your feet to the fire.”

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Ms Cooper said Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms, which her party introduced while in coalition with the Conservatives, were a “mistake”.

The changes overseen by Mr Lansley, a former Tory health secretary, created NHS England to run the health service and replaced primary care trusts with GP-led clinical groups.

“At the time, the Liberal Democrats were fighting tooth and nail within the coalition to protect the day-to-day spending on health and education on a real-terms basis,” Ms Cooper said.

She accused the Conservatives of pushing the NHS “on to its knees” during their time in office, citing nurses wearing bin bags as personal protective equipment during the pandemic.

‘Committed to extra 1,000 GPs’

A Department of Health spokesman said: “The NHS is broken. These findings show how much general practice has been neglected.

“This government will fix this by shifting the focus of healthcare out of the hospital and into the community. 

“We have committed to hiring an extra 1,000 GPs into the NHS by the end of this year.

“In addition, we have provided a further £311 million towards GP contract funding in 2024-25 – an uplift of 7.4 per cent.

“We will also ensure that GPs have the resources they need to offer patients the highest quality care.”

Government sources said more than 1,000 newly-qualified GPs will be recruited by cutting red tape that prevents surgeries hiring doctors.

Sir Keir Starmer has suggested he will not tell people how many children they should have, amid a falling birth rate.

Several European leaders have urged their citizens to have bigger families to help grow their economies and deal with the pressures of ageing populations.

The Prime Minister said it was not his place to “tell people how to live their lives”, despite the fact that his government has brought in a slew of “nanny state” measures such as banning smoking in pub gardens.

Tory MPs said his comments suggested he “doesn’t understand the basic mathematical problem” underpinning slow economic growth and was not being consistent, given his support for other nanny state measures.

The fertility rate in England and Wales is down to 1.49 per woman – well below the 2.1 needed to keep a population steady.

It means there will be fewer workers to care for the ageing population and to pay taxes to keep public services adequately funded.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned these pressures could see the national debt soar over the next 50 years.

It said deaths would consistently outnumber births in Britain from the middle of the next decade, leaving the country dependent on migration to avoid a falling population.

Sir Keir was asked whether Britons should have more children during a trip to Washington DC last week.

He replied: “I’ve spent my whole time saying I’m not going to tell people how to live their lives – I’m not going to start by dictating whether they should or shouldn’t have children.”

Asked whether he thought the birth rate needed to rise, the Prime Minister said: “I think there are a number of ways of growing the economy.

“When I said local growth plans, I actually had in mind plans led by mayors, local businesses, local representatives, not the birth plan.

“So I think growing the economy can be solved by local growth plans, by stabilising the economy and all the measures we’ve already set out – but I’m not going to lead a, sort of, birth plan.”

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has brought in free fertility checks for those aged 18 to 25 to encourage people to have children sooner.

Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, has set a target of 500,000 births annually, while Hungary’s Viktor Orban has brought in tax breaks for parents in a bid to speed up the birth rate.

Miriam Cates, the former Tory MP, said: “It’s very concerning that the Prime Minister doesn’t appear to understand the basic mathematical problem underpinning the UK’s sluggish growth; namely that falling birth rates mean we have fewer and fewer working people supporting growing numbers of pensioners.

“No amount of local business plans or productivity drives are going to change this fundamental fact.

“If the Prime Minister wants growth, he should follow the example of increasing numbers of Western leaders in urgently looking for ways to increase the birth rate.”

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, who has six children, said: “Starmer seems incapable of telling the truth. 

“He spends his whole time telling people how to live their lives with smoking bans, advertising bans and potentially sugar and salt taxes.

“No one is asking him to tell people how many children to have, all that is being suggested is that he should say having children is a good thing but the old lawyer never wants to give a straight answer.”