The former prime minister of New Zealand has been made a dame by the Prince of Wales, despite being a republican.

Jacinda Ardern, 44, said she was conflicted about accepting the accolade when she was awarded her country’s second-highest honour last year for leading New Zealand through the Covid pandemic.

As prime minister, she was outspoken about her views that the country would become a republic within her lifetime, but did not make it a priority of her six years in government.

On Wednesday, Prince William made her a Dame Grand Commander of the New Zealand Order of Merit at Windsor Castle.

Dame Jacinda donned a traditional Maori cloak (Korowai), which is often worn during special ceremonies, after she was made a Dame.

Speaking after the ceremony, the former leader said receiving the damehood had been “particularly special” as the pair had got to know each other over recent years, particularly through their work on the Prince’s environmental Earthshot Prize.

Of the royal honour, Dame Jacinda said she was “incredibly honoured and very humbled” and that she felt it acknowledged her family, her former colleagues and New Zealanders who gave her the “extraordinary privilege of serving them for five years”.

Previously, when her damehood was announced, the former prime minister said she was “incredibly humbled” but “in two minds” about accepting the accolade.

She explained: “So many of the things we went through as a nation over the last five years were about all of us rather than one individual.

“But I have heard that said by so many Kiwis who I have encouraged to accept an honour over the years. And so for me this is a way to say thank you – to my family, to my colleagues, and to the people who supported me to take on the most challenging and rewarding role of my life.”

She served as prime minister from 2017 to 2023 and was recognised for her leadership during the pandemic and the 2019 Christchurch terror attacks.

Speaking during her premiership, she said she thought that New Zealand ditching the monarchy was an inevitability.

Dame Jacinda made clear she was personally in favour of the country becoming a republic, but while prime minister she insisted that she had other more pressing issues to deal with.

In her first comments on the issue of republicanism after Elizabeth II’s death, Dame Jacinda said: “I’ve made my view plain many times. I do believe that is where New Zealand will head, in time. I believe it is likely to occur in my lifetime.”

The New Zealand government announced in June 2023 that it would bestow the country’s second-highest honour on Ms Ardern to mark the King’s official birthday.

It marked the second time last year that Dame Jacinda had been recognised by the Royal family, with the King personally approving damehoods.

Ms Ardern, who claimed she did not have “enough in the tank” to stand for re-election when she resigned in 2023, was also appointed a trustee of the Prince of Wales’s Earthshot Prize last April.

Wednesday’s investiture comes ahead of the King’s tour of Australia and Samoa, where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting with the Queen.

The tour – which marks his first to a realm as monarch – had been planned to include New Zealand, but the palace confirmed over the summer that the country will not be included in their itinerary while he undertakes a “limited” programme as he continues his treatment for cancer.

The King was said to be “disappointed” not to be visiting New Zealand but both sides are said to be aware of the need to pace himself during his ongoing treatment.

Liam Payne, who rose to fame in the pop band One Direction, has died at the age of 31 after falling from the third floor balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires. 

Police and paramedics were called to the hotel in the Argentine capital after reports of a body found on a hotel patio on the inside of the building.

It is unclear whether Payne had fallen accidentally or jumped to his death at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel. 

Reuters news agency, citing local newspapers, said that police had received reports of “an aggressive man who could be under the effects of drugs and alcohol” at the hotel prior to Payne’s death.

The hotel manager told officers they were concerned for the welfare of a guest, Associated Press reported.

Police were called to the hotel at 5.04pm local time (9.04pm UK) and Payne was pronounced dead at 5.11pm.

Alberto Crescenti, a spokesperson for the city’s ambulance service, said: “Unfortunately the injuries he had suffered as a result of the fall proved to be fatal. There was no possibility of resuscitating him.” 

His death will be devastating for the legions of fans of One Direction (many of whom, seen below, gathered outside the hotel), who were for a period the biggest pop band in the world. 

Pictured: How the tragic day unfolded

One Direction – often shortened to 1D – was propelled to success on the television show The X Factor in 2010 and went on to have a string of huge hits worldwide and five chart-topping albums before splitting up in 2016.

Payne is thought to have been on holiday in Argentina with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy, an online influencer who he had been dating since October 2022. 

Payne shared video on day of his death

In the days before his death, Payne had attended a concert by one of his former bandmates Niall Horan at Buenos Aires’s Movistar Arena on October 2. 

Videos of him at the concert had been posted showing him singing along with the crowd below from his VIP box. He had appeared the worse for wear.

Earlier on Wednesday, Payne had posted a video on Snapchat about his trip in Argentina, talking about riding horses, playing polo, and looking forward to returning home to see his dog. “It’s a lovely day here in Argentina,” he said in the video.

Payne had seemingly struggled to cope with life and the extraordinary fame and wealth as a result of the band’s astonishing success. 

He was just 17 when the band came second on The X Factor, having been put together by the music impresario Simon Cowell. The other members Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik were all teenagers at the time.

Payne had dated the former X Factor judge and one-time girl band singer Cheryl Cole, who at 41 was ten years his senior, for two years from 2016 until 2018 and the couple had a child together that they named Bear, now aged seven. 

His subsequent engagement to the model Maya Henry ended after ten months.

Singer struggled with fame and alcohol

Payne had previously talked about his struggles with mental health and a self-confessed addiction to “pills and booze” at the height of the band’s success. He told a podcast in 2021 of his battle with alcohol at the peak of their success when long periods were spent travelling on four world tours.

Payne, who was from Wolverhampton, said at the time: “There were points where it was toxic and difficult. Don’t get me wrong, we had the best time ever, but… you don’t realise you have a choice at that point.” 

He told the podcast he had “moments of suicidal ideation”.

Emergency workers confirmed the death of the singer, who was reportedly found in the hotel’s interior courtyard.

Local news outlet Todo Noticias TV reported one eyewitness who said: “The neighbourhood is very shaken up … There’s a lot of police, some fans arriving. It is very sad.”

Pictures showed shocked fans gathering outside the hotel after police cordoned off the area with forensic investigators seen entering and exiting in white protective suits and blue gloves.

They were photographed lighting candles and adorning the side of the road with flowers as they paid tribute to the beloved music star.

The Foreign Office (FCDO) confirmed it is in contact with authorities in Argentina “regarding reports of the death of a British man”.

Pictured: A career of highs and lows

Shocked stars pay tribute

Dermot O’Leary, who presented The X Factor, calling it “the worst news”.

O’Leary remembered Payne as a 14 year-old-boy auditioning for for the show.

Alongside a photo of O’Leary and Payne standing on stage together, he wrote on Instagram: “The worst news. I remember him as a 14 year old turning up to audition on The X Factor, and blowing us away singing Sinatra. He just loved to sing.

“He was always a joy, had time for everyone, polite, grateful, and was always humble.”

Harry Styles’ mother Anne Twist posted a broken-hearted emoji on Instagram, captioning it: “Just a boy.”

Paris Hilton has paid tribute to Payne on social media.

The socialite called the news “so upsetting” in a post on X, and sent her “love and condolences” to his friends and family.

Pop duo Jedward, who also began their careers on X Factor, shared a post on X sending “strength to Cheryl and his son Bear and all the One Direction family”.

Former X Factor contestant Rylan Clark said Liam Payne’s death was “tragic”.

A statement on the official X account of the Brit Awards said: “We’re incredibly sad to learn of the tragic passing of Liam Payne. Our thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family at this time”.

A car driving the wrong way down the motorway was involved in a crash that killed five people, including two children, in Cumbria.

Police said a Skoda crashed head-on into a Toyota as it drove southbound on the M6’s northbound carriageway at 4pm on Tuesday.

The driver of the Skoda, a man from Cambridgeshire, died instantly.

The male driver of the Toyota, 42, and a 33-year-old woman and two boys, aged 15 and seven, who were his passengers, were also pronounced dead at the scene.

A fifth passenger, aged seven, was airlifted by the Great North Air Ambulance to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, where he remains in a serious condition.

A spokesman for the Great North Air Ambulance said: “Our team arrived on the scene in just eight minutes, and provided treatment to one patient before airlifting them to hospital.

“Our thoughts and condolences are with everyone affected by this incident.”

All of those in the Toyota were from Glasgow.

Cumbria Police said the deceased are yet to be formally identified but their families have been informed.

“Officers would like to thank members of the public that assisted at the scene and those affected by the collision for their patience,” a spokesman said.

“We would also like to thank those that have already been in touch who witnessed or have dashcam [footage] of the incident, we continue the appeal to anyone with information or with dashcam [footage] to contact us.”

The force said they were called to reports of a Skoda travelling the wrong way down the motorway at around 4.04pm on Tuesday.

As officers rushed to the scene, they were informed that the vehicle had been involved in a head on collision with a Toyota.

Photographs on social media showed a plume of black smoke rising into the sky above the motorway at the site of the crash.

The images also showed tailbacks created by the incident, with traffic backed up across all three lanes of the motorway.

The motorway was closed overnight but has since reopened.

In August, a large section of the M6 was closed for more than seven hours after another incident.

The northbound carriageway in Cumbria between junction 36 for Kirkby Lonsdale and 38 for Tebay was forced to close on Aug 15 following the incident. Police later confirmed that the crash was fatal.

Last December, a separate incident took place on a similar stretch of the road when a man was hit by another vehicle after parking his car on the hard shoulder in Cumbria. He was taken to hospital with serious injuries to his legs.

Similarly, in April 2023, a crash near Tebay Services meant that the southbound carriageway was forced to close for five hours to allow an air ambulance to land near the scene.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have bought a property in Portugal, it has been claimed.

It comes almost two years after the couple were asked by the King to give up their Windsor home, Frogmore Cottage.

The new home will give the Sussexes a base in Europe, enabling them to stay over whenever they make the transatlantic flight to visit friends or family.

It may also allow them to acquire a so-called Golden Visa, which allows visa-free access to the European Union’s Schengen area, the Daily Mail reported.

The couple spent several days in Portugal last September, when they are understood to have stayed with the Duke’s cousin, Princess Eugenie, 34, and her husband Jack Brooksbank, 38.

‘Mega-secret’ trips to Europe

The romantic three-night break came after they attended the Invictus Games in Germany and before heading back home to their children, Archie, now five, and Lilibet, three.

The couple were said to have flown from Dusseldorf to Lisbon before travelling an hour south to the coastal town of Melides, in the Alentejo region, in a “mega-secret” operation.

A source close to the Sussexes confirmed they had been to Portugal.

Princess Eugenie and Mr Brooksbank split their time between London and the CostaTerra Golf and Ocean Club in Melides where Mr Brooksbank works in marketing and sales at the resort in the Alentejo region

The Duke and Duchess have remained close to the couple, who have visited them at their home in Montecito, California. Like them, they have two young children, August, three, and Ernest, one.

Harry and Meghan were with Jack and Eugenie in Toronto when the news of their relationship became public knowledge in October 2016.

The foursome had dressed up for Halloween to enjoy “one final fun night out” before their relationship was revealed to the world.

In February 2022, Prince Harry was joined by Princess Eugenie at the Super Bowl in California. She was also the only member of the royal family to appear in new footage during their Netflix documentary series Harry and Meghan, released in December 2022.

The Duke and Duchess purchased their first home together, a sprawling, nine-bedroomed property in Montecito, California, in June 2020 for $14.6 million (£11.2 million).

Their office has been contacted for comment.

A father hired a sex worker for his 13-year-old son then said “don’t be a p—y” when he said he did not want to have sex, a court has heard.

The man – who cannot be named to protect the boy’s identity – booked two rooms at a hotel in Bromley, south-east London, and arranged for a pair of sex workers to attend, Croydon Crown Court heard. The boy told his father he did not want to have sex with a 26-year-old.

The father also offered a line of cocaine to his son – who replied: “I’m f—ing 13, that’s ridiculous.”

The man pleaded guilty to arranging for a child to engage in sexual activity, as well as offering to supply cocaine.

Martin Ingle, prosecuting, said the man took his son to dinner then told him he had “bought a brass [prostitute]”.

When his son told him he didn’t want that, the father blamed it on the boy’s mother being “overprotective” and told him “don’t be a p—y”. 

The father added that the sex workers were already in a taxi so it was too late to cancel, the court heard.

When the two women arrived the boy was taken to a separate room where a 26-year-old sex worker performed a sex act on him, the court heard.

In a police statement the boy said he did not want to do it and he was left feeling disgusted.

The father then paid the women £150 each and they left.

When the boy’s mother found out what had happened she drove her son to the police station and the father was later arrested, Mr Ingle said.

The defendant appeared in court but chose not to be represented by a barrister. He said: “I can’t have this hanging over my head, I just need it over with.”

Tony Hyams-Parish, the judge, warned him the offence has a starting point of five years and that he faces “significant” prison time.

The case was adjourned for sentencing at a later date.

Sir Keir Starmer would lose his Commons majority if there was a snap election with Robert Jenrick as leader of the Tories, according to a poll.

Mr Jenrick, the former immigration minister, would win 57 extra seats if he was leader of the Tories compared with 30 seats that would be gained if Kemi Badenoch, his rival for the top job, was in charge of the party, according to the poll of nearly 6,300 people by Electoral Calculus.

That would mean there would be a hung parliament if Mr Jenrick was leader against a Labour majority of 14 seats if Mrs Badenoch, the shadow housing secretary, was Tory leader.

It is the first poll to assess the respective electoral chances of the remaining two contestants in the race to lead the Tory party. Tory members started voting on Wednesday to elect the winner, who is due to be declared on Nov 2.

Surveys of Tory members suggest that Mrs Badenoch has the edge over Mr Jenrick, although the gap has narrowed. A YouGov poll of members at the beginning of October showed Mrs Badenoch ahead by 52 per cent to Mr Jenrick’s 48 per cent, compared with 59 per cent versus 41 per cent six weeks earlier.

Prof Sir John Curtice, a polling expert, claimed earlier this week that neither Mr Jenrick nor Mrs Badenoch would be able to win back voters and lead the Tories to electoral victory.

The Electoral Calculus poll appears to challenge this hypothesis by suggesting they could take as many as 100 seats off Labour’s majority.

“These figures suggest that the Conservatives would do better at an immediate general election under Jenrick compared with Badenoch. In both cases, Labour would lose a large number of seats, and the Conservatives (and Reform UK) would gain seats,” said the Electoral Calculus analysis.

Under Mr Jenrick, the Conservatives would increase their number of seats from 121 to 178, with Labour falling from 412 to 311, the Liberal Democrats dropping from 72 to 58 and Reform rising from five to 24. That would place Labour 14 seats short of a majority.

Under Mrs Badenoch, the Conservatives would increase their number of seats from 121 to 151, while Labour would fall from 412 to 332, the Lib Dems would dip from 72 to 63 and Reform rise from five to 25. That would see Labour in government with a 14-seat majority.

Mr Jenrick would shave seven percentage points off Labour’s 35 per cent of the vote at the election, with the Tories on 23 per cent. Mrs Badenoch would take six points off Labour, with the Tories on 23 per cent.

Electoral Calculus carried out a similar analysis during the 2019 Conservative leadership campaign, which asked how people would vote if any of the candidates were chosen as leader.

“That gave the result that the Conservatives would win a big majority if Boris Johnson were chosen as leader. This finding was dismissed by many at the time, although it turned out to be broadly correct as the Conservatives won a big majority under Johnson at the subsequent election six months later,” said the report.

A Jenrick campaign source said: “All the polling shows that Rob is more popular than Kemi with the public — whether they are Labour, Lib Dem or Reform voters.

“This is a contest to pick the next prospective prime minister, not just an opposition figure to shout at Starmer. Everyone has had enough of excuses and drama, we just need to deliver.”

Russia is suspected of placing an incendiary device on a plane to Britain in a sabotage attack that could have caused the aircraft to crash out of the sky.

British counter-terrorism police are investigating after the parcel containing the device caught fire in a DHL warehouse in Birmingham on July 22.

The Telegraph understands that there are suspicions that Moscow was behind the attack.

The suspect parcel arrived in Birmingham by air, The Guardian reported. If it had ignited while the plane was in flight, the result could have been catastrophic, experts said on Wednesday night.

Russia has stepped up sabotage attacks on European soil in recent months, with Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warning last week that Vladimir Putin was intent on causing “mayhem” on British and European streets.

He revealed that GRU, Russia’s foreign military intelligence unit, had carried out “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness” in Britain since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On Monday, Germany reported a near-identical incident in which an incendiary device caught fire in a DHL facility before it was due to be carried on a plane out of Leipzig.

A Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism spokesman said: “On Monday 22 July, a package at the [Birmingham] location caught alight. It was dealt with by staff and the local fire brigade at the time and there were no reports of any injuries or significant damage caused.”

“Officers are liaising with other European law enforcement partners to identify whether this may or may not be connected to any other similar-type incidents across Europe.”

Incendiary devices are designed to catch fire rather than explode and as such are easier to conceal than simple bombs.

New front in Russia’s hybrid war

The parcel fire in Leipzig also occurred in July, prompting German authorities to write to logistics and transport firms the following month warning that packages containing incendiary devices had caught fire en route across Europe, and that more such parcels could be circulating.

In September, The LoadStar, a logistics industry news site, reported that a package originating from the Baltics had caught fire in Leipzig, one of “several” that caught ablaze in European countries. The packages were said to contain liquids and electronic consumer devices.

The European Commission is investigating the proliferation of attempts to send incendiary devices around Europe.

A Western official told The Telegraph it was seen as a new front in Russia’s hybrid war on Nato countries and had caused a number of mysterious warehouse fires around Europe.

In one of the most common routes, devices originating in Lithuania were sent to Germany, Poland or elsewhere.

One source said these incendiary devices don’t get caught by the security controls carried out by air freight firms before loading up their plans with cargo. 

Analysts said that the apparent sabotage attacks marked a worrying escalation if confirmed to have originated from Russia.

John Foreman, a former British defence attaché in Moscow, said that Putin was showing a new “recklessness” in his attempt to “dishearten, deter and weaken the West”.

‘Biggest incident in aviation security in many years’

Philip Baum, associate professor of aviation security at Coventry University, said: “This is a game changer in world politics.”

He termed the attack the “the biggest incident in aviation security in many years”, adding: “Russia is a member of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which is a United Nations body. Any recognised state doing this – what’s the implications of that for aviation security?”

The plane carrying the parcel was “certainly still carrying crew and could blow up over a population centre”.

DHL did not immediately respond when approached for comment by The Telegraph. In an earlier statement, it told The Guardian that it was working ”to secure its network, staff and assets as well as customer shipments” amid “ongoing investigations by authorities from several countries”.

Earlier this week, British counter-terror police disclosed that they were facing a four-fold increase in attempts by hostile states, such as Russia, to murder or spy on people in the country.

 Matt Jukes, the head of UK counter-terrorism police and a Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner, said: “I’m talking really here about spies, saboteurs, assassins and war criminals. That sounds quite Le Carre and potentially remote to a lot of people’s lives in the country.”

In April, Britain charged several men with an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned logistics firm in London. They were alleged to be aiding the mercenary Wagner group.

Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, said this summer it was “quite likely” that Russia was behind a blaze which destroyed a Warsaw shopping centre in May.

Moscow is also suspected of launching a failed plot to assassinate Armin Papperger, the chief executive of the German arms firm Rheinmetall, which plays a key role in supplying artillery ammunition to Kyiv’s forces.

It is arguably the oldest and simplest battlefield tactic out there: swarming, the attempt – usually by a side richer in numbers than firepower – to overwhelm the opposition not necessarily by precision or force, but by sheer numbers. 

In centuries gone by, those numbers might have comprised surging ground troops or volleys of ammunition. But today, as with so many aspects of modern warfare, the task can be done by drones. Dozens, or perhaps even hundreds or thousands, of cheap, devastating drones.

On Sunday evening it reportedly only took a few drones for Hezbollah to infiltrate Israel’s normally impregnable “Iron Dome” air defences, but the impact was vast: on one of the bloodiest days since October 7 2023, four Israeli soldiers and around 60 people were injured in a strike at a military base in the north of the country. 

Hezbollah said it targeted the camp using a “swarm of kamikaze drones”, which “broke through the Israel defence radars without detection.”

An Israeli military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said they are “studying and investigating the incident – how a drone infiltrated without warning and struck the base”. His conclusion was bashful. “We must provide better defence.”

Ruinous and deadly though they may be, drone swarms are no longer surprising in the modern theatre of war. The Israel-Gaza conflict is just one inevitable setting for the tactic. Another is the 600-mile frontline of the Ukraine-Russia war, where it has been estimated that up to 10,000 drones are in the air on any given day. 

In the Red Sea, Houthi rebels have also shown an increasing inclination towards using swarms of sea drones to threaten commercial ships and intimidate western warships. One evening in January, a group of 18 drones – thought to be the relatively inexpensive Iranian-designed Shahad 136 – were flown towards merchant vessels and US and British warships patrolling the region. HMS Diamond shot down seven.

“This isn’t revolutionary, but it is different. Drones have existed for a very long time, but when you think about them in the Afghanistan war [for example], they existed in small numbers because people thought of them as aeroplanes without pilots, and most were almost as big as that,” says Professor Michael Clarke, visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London.

“The Western powers were very slow to cop on to the idea that much smaller, cheaper drones could be used as weapons, and in numbers, that’s the point. Not three or four, [but] 40 or 50 potentially.” The “wake-up call”, Prof Clarke says, came during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, when Azerbaijani drones wrought havoc on the Armenian forces from the air.

“Their targets were Russian T-72 tanks. I remember even our own military said, ‘Bloody hell, this is what we need to prepare for.’ So it wasn’t the existence of the drone, it was the use of them, efficiently, and in numbers.” He returns to that maxim of swarming, the oldest trick in the book. “It doesn’t matter if it’s ballistic missiles or troops, if the numbers are high enough, you’ll always overwhelm the defence.”

The drones used in Armenia were not of the kamikaze kind, but rather raptors, meaning they came back and could be used again.

Increasingly that is not necessary, however, as drones the military can cheaply replace have entered the fray. In fact, the development of very affordable – between $300 and $500 – First Person View (FPV) drones, which are by far the most common on the Ukrainian battlefield, has arguably changed war forever.

Currently, FPVs have skilled human pilots to fly them to the right targets using headsets and controllers not at all dissimilar from a games console. In the future, even that pilot won’t be necessary. “It’s entirely plausible, and we’re embarking on it already, of letting artificial intelligence control the drones, and then you could have thousands of drones with just one person looking after them. And if enough are used, they’ll overpower any system. That’s what happened to the Israelis on Sunday.” 

For a few hundred dollars, then, a drone could feasibly wreak damage into the hundreds of millions. In swarms, they have an even better chance. Prof Clarke points out that Ukraine took delivery of over 1,000 small flat-packed Corvo drones from SYPAQ in Australia. Made from cardboard and invisible to radar, they are essentially toys, and fly too slowly for many modern radars to detect them. (“They’re essentially like birds,” he says.)

The Ukrainians fixed fragmentation bombs to them and sent a swarm of 16 to attack an enemy base in Pskov in Russia. They disabled at least five Russian fighter jets and some radar units, causing billions of rubles worth of damage. Unsurprisingly, President Zelensky wishes to up the ante: at the end of last year he said Ukraine aimed to produce a million drones in 2024.

Still, when most of us think of drone swarms, the image that comes to mind might well be a flock of hundreds of whirring machines with LEDs attached, creating a light display as an eco-friendly alternative to fireworks. Such displays are now commonplace at royal events, New Year’s Eve or at Glastonbury, but they’re also a familiar sight in heavily militarised societies, where they have come to replace the traditional military parade.

It doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to picture a future in which those drones are used not to impress but kill. Indeed, a now-viral clip from the 2019 Gerard Butler film Angel Has Fallen has laid it out: small drones, en masse, can be like a giant swarm of bees. You could swat one, but not all of them.

“We enjoy these fabulous displays, with a cityscape or Spitfire or whatever being formed in the night sky, but it’s the same technology to make weapons of war, so who’s going to do it first?” Prof Clarke says. “In battle terms, the area below 5,000ft is a new section of aerial warfare: it’s the drone domain now.”

So how to defend against them? “Ultimately, the focus has got to be on electronic counter-measures. It’s an arms race. You see hapless Russian soldiers taking pot-shots at them, but you see over Ukraine and Gaza now, even the sound of a drone creates terror. Just like the Doodlebugs in the Second World War, the psychological phenomenon is a weapon in itself.”

There are almost as many potential defence tactics as there are drones, but one will surely win out. Traditional air defences are not only ill-suited but often too expensive: former US defence officials have said the best weapon against small drones is the Standard Missile-2, a medium-range air defence weapon. The latest version, the Block IV, is $2.1 million a shot. Even if a swarm attack wasn’t successful, then, it could be financially crippling.

The futuristic solutions vary from solid-state lasers, which are being used by the US to disable unmanned aerial vehicles, to guns that fire at all angles to snag as many drones as possible, to new AI-powered censors that could detect drones flying much lower and slower than traditional aerial weapons, allowing traditional weapons to take them down earlier. Perhaps due to haste, Israel is currently focusing on the latter.

The British Army is not ignorant to the matter. The much-debated, sixth-generation Tempest fighter jet, which will have its future revealed in the defence review early next year, may be fitted with its own drone swarms, known as the Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACP) or “loyal wingman”. The pilot would be able to send swarms just as they do missiles.

Prof Clarke believes this is a matter that only underlines how the soldiers of the future won’t necessarily need simply “belligerence and the ability to carry their luggage across the Brecon Beacons in terrible weather.” Instead, as foes unleash the drones of war, they’ll need to be technically proficient.

“The British are up with all this, conceptually, but they’re scratching their heads about it, what we can do about it, and whether we can afford to do anything about it. We’ll find out in the defence review,” he says. “But if Hezbollah can do it, we can be sure everyone we might find ourselves up against in the next 40 years certainly will.”

Australia’s prime minister has been accused of “diabolical optics” for buying a £2.2 million cliff-top villa while the country is in the grip of a housing crisis.

Anthony Albanese’s purchase of the beach house in the town of Copacabana on the coast of New South Wales could hurt his chances in the forthcoming general election, according to his party’s own MPs.

The purchase of the property was revealed on Tuesday, just as the leader of the centre-Left Labor Party was announcing measures, including building more homes, to deal with the housing crisis.

Millions of Australians have been struggling to afford to rent or buy property.

Mr Albanese, 61, was criticised by political opponents and mocked by media commentators for the timing of the purchase.

His decision to buy a property “with ocean views so expansive that they would challenge the visual field of an owl, right in the middle of a national housing crisis, right before an election campaign” was a “baffling strategic initiative,” commentator Annabel Crabb wrote for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

An estate agent listing says the A$4.3 million four-bedroom, three-bathroom house occupies “a premier location to enjoy sun, whale watching or spectacular sunsets year-round”.

It has “uninterrupted ocean views from all levels” and boasts “timber-lined cathedral ceilings” and “mesmerising ocean views”.

There is no suggestion that the prime minister has done anything wrong in buying the property.

But the purchase is not a good look at a time when so many Australians are struggling to pay their mortgages or to get onto the property ladder in the first place, critics said.

The next federal election, due to be held by May, will be fought in part on the issue of housing affordability.

Several MPs from Mr Albanese’s party said the timing of the purchase was disastrous from a political point of view.

‘Act of self-sabotage’

“I can’t think of a greater act of self-sabotage in my life. I am gobsmacked,” one unnamed MP told The Sydney Morning Herald.

“Some people [within Labor] were aware and tried to stop it. My instinct is this is f—ing terrible.”

The prime minister said he decided to buy a property on the Central Coast of NSW because that is where his fiancée, Jodie Haydon, is from.

He said she was a “proud coastie” (coastal dweller) and that three generations of her family had lived in the region.

But at least two Labor MPs said he should have delayed the purchase until after the election. “It’s not a good look,” said one.

“The optics are diabolical,” said Tony Barry, a political strategist. “One of the golden rules of leadership is that you just can’t do all the things you’d like to do. Like overseas holidays, like selling investment properties, like buying spectacular waterfront real estate.”

When quizzed about the property acquisition at a press conference in Queensland, Mr Albanese insisted he knew what it was like to struggle financially.

“My mum lived in the one public housing [home] that she was born in for all of her 65 years. I know what it is like, which is why I want to help all Australians into a home.”

“Of course, I am much better off as prime minister, I earn a good income, I understand that.”

Critics said it could turn out to be his “Hawaii moment” – a reference to the decision taken by the former prime minister, Scott Morrison, to take a family holiday in Hawaii in December 2019 during the Black Summer bushfires that engulfed large parts of the country.

The decision caused outrage, with many Australians accusing him of abandoning the country at a time of national emergency.

Mr Morrison, known by the nickname “ScoMo”, was forced to cut short his holiday and apologise for the “great anxiety” it had caused.

A battalion of 3,000 North Korean soldiers will shortly join Russian troops in fighting Ukraine, marking Pyongyang’s full entry into the war.

Intelligence sources said the unit has been secretly training in Russia’s Far East ahead of deployment as part of a Russian airborne regiment.

“They are called the Buryat Battalion,” a senior Ukrainian military source told Politico. Buryatia is a remote region of Russia bordering Mongolia that the Kremlin has targeted heavily for military recruitment.

The Kyiv Independent quoted another Western intelligence source claiming that North Korea had sent 10,000 soldiers to join the Russian army.

Presenting his “victory plan” to Ukraine’s parliament on Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelensky said Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un were now a “coalition of criminals”.

“This is the participation of the second state in the war against Ukraine on the side of Russia,” he said.

It comes after Russian forces last week launched a counterattack against a Ukrainian invasion into their southern Kursk region.

Ukrainian officials had talked up the Kursk invasion in August as a “strategic masterstroke” but the Institute for the Study of War said that it may have inadvertently dragged North Korea into the war.

The US-based think tank said that the Kremlin would “justify” sending North Korean soldiers into battle when the Russian parliament ratified a deal with its ally to provide mutual military support if either was attacked. This is expected within days.

The two-and-a-half-year-long war has become a battle of attrition with supply lines and military recruitment likely to prove key to victory.

North Korea has been sending artillery shells and missiles to Russia but this would be the first time that its soldiers will have gone into battle.

The announcement comes after six North Korean officers were killed by a Ukrainian artillery attack on a Russian position in occupied Donetsk this month, according to South Korea.

Analysts said that although the quality of North Korean troops would be poor, the numbers would represent a boost for Russia.

“It’s tragic to see Ukraine’s partners offering support as if they are playing some academic simulation based on theory, while Russian allies just throw in military force to help Russia win,” said Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at St Andrews University.

The North Korean army is estimated to have over one million soldiers, giving Putin a potentially large pool of reserves to replenish his forces. Russia is estimated to be losing more than 1,000 men per day using mass infantry tactics.

Ukraine, by contrast, has been finding it tough to replenish its front lines. Recruitment has dropped – despite increased press-gang powers – because men see a front-line posting as a one-way ticket to death or serious injury.

And this, said John Foreman, Britain’s former defence attaché in Moscow, made the North Korean troop deployment an important part of the Kremlin’s calculation for winning the war.

“It means tapping a new source of cannon fodder,” he said. “It also means using non-Russians. No one will care if the North Korean troops are killed.”

North Korean soldiers have not been seen in battle since the Cold War when they were deployed in various fringe wars as Soviet allies and proxies.

According to reports by Russian military bloggers, at least 18 North Korean soldiers have already deserted their training camps in Russia.

The US has said that it is “concerned” about the reports that North Korea may soon be joining Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Iranian border guards have reportedly killed dozens of Afghans in a massacre as they attempted to enter the country.

The Islamic Republic’s border forces ambushed and opened fire on a group of about 300 migrants trying to reach Iran on Sunday night, multiple sources have reported.

“Dozens of Afghan nationals at the Saravan border were targeted,” said the Haalvsh human rights news agency, which monitors rights violations in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan region.

Border guards directly fired bullets and rockets at migrants, according to Haalvsh.

The alleged massacre follows a crackdown by the Iranian regime on migrants fleeing the Taliban.

The Islamic Republic has said it hopes to achieve two million deportations by March next year.

Survivors of the shooting reported out of the 300 Afghan migrants present, only about 60 to 70 were unhurt.

The rest were either killed or seriously injured.

The Telegraph cannot independently confirm the exact number of casualties. The shooting happened in a remote region with no internet access.

“We were at the Kalagan border when they ambushed us,” one survivor said. “We were around 300 people, maybe 50 or 60 people survived unscathed, everyone else was either martyred or injured. Twelve of my friends were also killed.”

Videos purportedly showing the aftermath of the massacre show a harrowing scene at the border.

The Telegraph has chosen not to publish the videos, which show the bodies of a number of migrants lying motionless in the desert and their clothes stained with blood.

One video, shot at night, shows a man desperately attempting to stem blood flowing from a severely wounded companion.

With only a scarf at his disposal, he wraps it around the victim’s legs but the fabric quickly becomes saturated with the amount of blood pouring from the wounds.

“He is my cousin and he was shot four times,” a man’s voice could be heard saying. “It happened when we were crossing into Iran.”

In another clip, a bloodied and injured man with signs of gunshots on his body reaches for water. He appears to be parched from the desert heat and trauma.

His companions, however, urgently caution him against drinking. “Don’t drink water,” they warn. “It will deteriorate your condition.”

Several wounded migrants were transferred to a clinic in a nearby Pakistani town. However, before the local police could arrive to document the necessary legal paperwork, the injured migrants left the centre.

A smuggler in Afghanistan’s Nimroz province, where the migrants began their journey, confirmed the shooting to The Telegraph.

The man said he had lost contact with several of the migrants he sent to the border.

“I don’t know whether they’re dead or alive,” he said. “They’re all desperate, poor people just trying to reach Iran, find work and send money back to their starving families.

“It doesn’t get worse than killing someone who is just trying to enter your country to work and help their family survive. Who knows what will happen to their families now.”

‘Crime against humanity’

However, the Islamic Republic’s special representative for Afghanistan denied the shooting.

“As of now, it has been confirmed that reports of dozens of illegal migrants dying at the Saravan border are false,” Hassan Kazemi Ghomi claimed.

“A legal response to the illegal entry of unauthorised migrants is a legitimate right of countries, and border forces are obligated to prevent the entry of illegal nationals,” he added.

He said the Islamic Republic “is determined to return unauthorised refugees and to take legal action against their illegal entry at all border points”.

Reports of the shooting have sparked outrage inside and outside Afghanistan with a former attorney general describing it as a “crime against humanity”.

“The brutal Iranian regime took out its frustrations with Israel on innocent Afghans,” one Taliban official said. “Our neighbours are far more savage and cruel than Israel.”

According to the UN, about 4.5 million Afghans live in Iran, with many having fled the country since the government takeover of the Taliban in 2021.

To prevent more migrants entering the country, Tehran is also building a 13ft-tall wall along a stretch of the 900km-long border with Afghanistan.

Afghans in Iran face severe restrictions after the Islamic Republic launched a crackdown aimed at deporting two million by March next year.

They are banned from buying groceries, renting homes and visiting certain areas.

Rachel Reeves is set to spare second home owners from a capital gains tax raid in her first budget, according to reports.

Second homes will be left untouched because raising the levy on them could end up costing the Treasury money, The Times reported. 

She is instead poised to raise the current 20 per cent rate levied on the sale of shares and could target other assets, while some reliefs in the current system are also expected to be axed. 

The move is expected to raise an amount in the “low billions”, a government source told the newspaper. 

When the last government cut the rate on second homes from 28 per cent to 24 per cent in its final budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility said that doing so would in fact raise almost £700 million because the number of property transactions would increase. 

Revenues from capital gains tax can fluctuate widely because changes in the behaviour of a very small number of people can have a large impact. 

Just 12,000 people pay two thirds of the £15 billion a year raised from capital gains tax.

HMRC has estimated that increasing capital gains tax by 10 points would reduce Treasury revenues. 

“Very large tax rate rises can reduce exchequer yield due to taxpayer behavioural impacts,” it said.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that any increases in capital gains tax should be accompanied by reforms to the system, such as by charging the levy on assets after people die.

Just 12,000 people pay two-thirds of the £15billion a year raised from capital gains tax.

More than half of all capital gains relates to the sale of shares, while just 12 per cent is from the sale of property.

Last month Lord Wolfson, the chief executive of Next, sold £29 million of his shares in the homewares giant, leading City analysts to speculate that the sell-offs were an attempt to sell them before any raid. 

Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, has signalled that the government will increase capital gains tax but rejected reports it could rise to as much as 39 per cent.

He said that the suggestions of such a big rise were “wide of the mark”.

It comes as Ms Reeves prepares to launch the biggest Budget tax raid in history in her maiden Budget later this month. 

It will involve as much as £35bn of tax rises – the most on record in cash terms – as she protects her commitment to ending “austerity” and attempts to ensure departments avoid real-terms cuts in spending.

There is also speculation that the budget will include the first increase in fuel duty for 13 years. 

Ministers have also refused to rule out raising employers national insurance in a move that is set to raise significant sums. 

Critics claim raising employer NICs would breach the spirit of Labour’s manifesto- which pledged not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT. 

Sadiq Khan’s enforcers have seized thousands of non-Ulez-compliant cars from drivers and sold off hundreds of the vehicles.

Transport for London (TfL) said more than 1,400 vehicles were seized by bailiffs in 12 months for non-payment of London’s ultra low emission zone (Ulez) fees.

TfL, which is run by the Mayor of London, said a total of 1,429 cars were removed from their owners in the year to the end of July.

Some 761 were auctioned, recovering £710,000 of debts accrued by drivers refusing to pay the Ulez charge.

TfL said income generated by the Ulez scheme is invested into public transport, such as improving bus routes in outer London.

Mr Khan made the Ulez area almost four times larger by covering all the capital’s boroughs on Aug 29 last year, creating the world’s biggest pollution charging zone.

At the time, he said it was “a difficult decision” but insisted that it was vital to tackle air pollution.

For petrol cars to meet Ulez standards – based on emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter – they must generally have been first registered after 2005.

Most diesel cars registered after September 2015 are also exempt from the charge.

Drivers who enter the zone in a non-compliant vehicle are required to pay a £12.50 daily fee unless they are exempt, such as taxis or transport for disabled people.

Failing to pay the charge by midnight on the third day following a journey risks incurring a penalty charge notice (PCN) of £180, reduced to £90 if paid within 14 days.

Ignoring this leads to the sum increasing to £270, and eventually TfL can apply for a court-issued warrant to take action to recover debts, such as using bailiffs.

TfL said £25.6 million of debt was recouped over 12 months.

It gave examples of a driver with 45 warrants against them settling a balance of almost £16,000 in July after being traced to a new address, and another with 21 warrants making payments of more than £7,800.

The organisation said it is tripling the size of its investigations team to boost its work with enforcement agents.

An anti-Ulez Facebook group with more than 45,000 members urges people to refuse to pay Ulez PCNs, and praises vandalism of the scheme’s enforcement cameras.

Alex Williams, TfL’s chief customer and strategy officer, said: “The most recent data shows that on average, over 96 per cent of vehicles seen driving in the Ulez are compliant.

“We want to send a clear message to vehicle owners that if you receive a penalty charge for driving in the zone, you should not ignore it.

“Your penalty will progress to enforcement agents to recover the fines that you owe, and there is a risk that your vehicle and other items of property will be removed.

“The aim of the Ulez is to clean up London’s air and remove old polluting cars from the road so no drivers need to pay and no fines occur.

“There is only a small minority of drivers who are eligible for the charge, and even fewer who are refusing to pay – but we encourage anyone experiencing financial difficulties not to ignore PCNs, and to engage with our staff, who will work with you towards a resolution, including setting up debt payment plans.”

Mr Khan’s representatives have been contacted for comment by The Telegraph.

This article contains images showing injured animals. 

A scandal-hit zoo where a keeper was mauled to death by a tiger is embroiled in further controversy after images revealed the scale of alleged animal abuse. 

South Lakes Safari Zoo in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria, is accused of failing to prevent avoidable animal deaths, neglecting animal welfare and breeding a hostile working environment.

The zoo’s past has been marked by a litany of safety issues, including the death of Sarah McClay, 24, who was attacked by a tiger; the escape of a white rhino that was later shot; and the deaths of 30 lemurs in a fire.

Former staff handed the BBC graphic photographs taken between 2017 and 2019 showing dead and injured animals.

One picture shows a zebra with its hoof stuck in the bars of a pen, with former employees claiming management ignored concerns that the animal was stressed from being kept indoors. The zebra was later put down. 

Other images display a capybara covered in cuts from fighting and a giraffe with a bloodied head after it threw itself against the bar of its enclosure. 

The zoo’s management denied “each and every allegation”, and cited a history of positive independent inspections.

However, one former employee said that “fighting” and “inbreeding” had become commonplace because “animals were housed in inappropriate social groups”. She added that she had witnessed severe injuries and deaths that “could have been avoided”.

Another employee claimed: “A peacock flew into the giant otter enclosure and the two giant otters ripped its head off in front of a school group.”

The Captive Animals’ Protection Society called on the local council to revoke the South Lakes’ licence in 2017 after reports of nearly 500 animal deaths between 2013 and 2016.

The RSPCA also launched an investigation before David Gill, the zoo’s owner, was refused a licence, prompting the Cumbria Zoo Company Limited to take charge and promise widespread improvements.

“Nothing changed under this new management and animals suffered greatly,” a former employee said, adding: “I saw staff in tears, I saw staff leaving regularly.”

Another former staff member said: “Staff were broken at times, completely broken.

“There was shouting at people and belittling people. The morning meeting turned into isolating and humiliating people.”

Cumbria Zoo Company told the BBC that it “wholly denied and disputed” claims that it had ever “engaged in any practices which has led to the death, injury or poor treatment of animals”.

The company said: “We do not accept that there is a ‘bullying culture’ or that staff are overworked.

“We take any allegations of bullying extremely seriously, and when they are made they need to be fully investigated and dealt with.”

Karen Brewer, the company’s new chief executive, told the BBC: “The zoo is subject to regular inspections by local authority inspectors and if there were issues of the sorts described, they would have been addressed by the inspectors.

“We keep comprehensive records of all animal injuries. As a licensed zoo, animal welfare is our prime concern and we dispute these allegations.

“We find these claims to be outrageous and have no substance in fact. Our veterinary team are internationally recognised and unrivalled in their field.”

Westmorland and Furness Council conducted an unannounced inspection of the zoo in March and raised welfare concerns after finding a work experience student left unsupervised with dangerous animals.

Inspectors also found rhinos being kept indoors for more than 17 hours straight as “senior staff may be spread too thin”. They also said underinvestment could result in failure to manage animals properly, posing a “potential danger to animals, staff and the public”.

The council conducted a follow-up visit in June and reported that 26 of 28 improvement directions were being complied with.

In May 2013, zookeeper McClay was killed after a tiger escaped through an open door into the corridor where she was working, dragging her by the neck back into its enclosure. 

South Lakes has been approached for comment.

Sir Keir Starmer was spied on by police while he worked on a libel case against McDonald’s in the 1990s, a public inquiry heard.

An undercover Metropolitan Police officer said he accessed confidential details about the legal advice Sir Keir was giving to two environmentalist campaigners in the case against the fast food giant, the Undercover Policing Inquiry was told.

Helen Steel and Dave Morris were sued by McDonald’s over a leaflet they had distributed that criticised the company’s practices in what became known as the McLibel case. 

Sir Keir gave the pair free legal advice and the trial turned out to be the longest civil hearing in English history.

The case was cited in his 2020 leadership bid, with his campaign launch video describing how “for 10 years he defended Helen Steel and David Morris when they were sued for libel by McDonald’s”. 

The covert monitoring of Ms Steel and Mr Morris is now being scrutinised by the Undercover Policing Inquiry, which is examining how police deployed about 139 undercover officers to spy on more than 1,000 political groups between 1968 and at least 2010.

John Dines, a member of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a covert Scotland Yard unit, was an undercover officer who infiltrated anarchist and environmental groups between 1987 and 1991.

Mr Dines formed a two-year intimate relationship with Ms Steel as part of the operation.

Giving evidence to the inquiry on Tuesday, Mr Morris quoted Mr Dines as saying: “It is accurate to say that I was by the side of Helen Steel and Dave Morris in 1991 and relaying the legal advice back to my bosses in the SDS.”

Mr Morris added: “Dines was getting details of our confidential legal advice and strategy following the private legal meetings Helen and I held with lawyer Keir Starmer.”

He said this was a breach of the legal rule allowing lawyers and their clients to debate tactics confidentially.

Mr Morris cited evidence that the police secretly passed information about the campaigners to McDonald’s, which he said gave the company an advantage in the legal fight.

The McLibel case exposed damaging stories about the business and the quality of food being sold. It was also seen as a heavy-handed way of stifling criticism.

In 1997, a high court judge ordered Ms Steel and Mr Morris to pay £40,000 in damages for libelling McDonald’s, although they never paid.

Alex Salmond’s body is set to be flown home by a private individual after calls for the RAF to conduct the repatriation were rejected.

Friends and political allies of the former first minister had said that the military should return Salmond to Scotland, after he died of a heart attack while attending a conference in North Macedonia on Saturday.

It is understood a private flight will be chartered and paid for by an unknown individual to return him to Scotland, and while the date of the flight has not yet been confirmed, Salmond’s body could be brought back to Scotland on Friday.

“It will be Friday at the earliest,” a source said. “Though Friday could turn into Saturday. The final details are still being worked out.”

A standard private flight from Ohrid in North Macedonia, where Salmond died, to Aberdeen on a midsize jet this week would cost at least £26,500, according to the website PrivateFly. The cost of hiring a large airliner to make the trip would be at least £63,000.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Scottish Government said that it was not in a position to confirm or deny the report.

While there are few precedents for high-profile former British leaders dying abroad, UK Government insiders said that the military would usually only be deployed in repatriation cases related to members of the Royal family.

The rejection of the military option risks angering allies of Salmond, who had argued that it would have afforded “dignity” to one of the most influential figures in Scottish political history and ensured the return of his body as quickly as possible.

On Tuesday, Chris McEleny, the general secretary of the Alba Party, which Salmond led, repeated his call for the RAF to fly the body home.

“Conventions are conventions, until they’re not conventions,” Mr McEleny, who is in North Macedonia to assist with repatriation efforts, said

“He was the former first minister of Scotland, we’re talking about the office here.”

He added: “There’s clearly an outpouring of love and hurt in Scotland for Alex, his family obviously need to get him home.

“I just want to get him home as quickly as possible so that we can move on to, instead of talking about the manner in which he died, start talking about the manner in which he lived.”

The North Macedonian ministry of foreign affairs has said that the “technical work” of repatriation had been completed and they were “waiting for information regarding the departure time from the Scottish side”.

‘Great deal of comfort’

In a statement, the Alba Party said: “The family of Alex Salmond are able to advise that an agreement has been reached to charter a private plane, the costs of which will be paid for by a private citizen, for the purpose of transporting and returning the body of the former first minister Alex Salmond from Ohrid, North Macedonia, to Aberdeen.”

Kenny MacAskill, the acting leader of the Alba Party, said: “The family of Alex Salmond would like to put on record their appreciation to the North Macedonian government for expediting the necessary procedures to allow Alex’s body to be released.

“The family would also like to thank the UK and Scottish Governments for their endeavours to put in place the swift arrangements to bring Alex Salmond home to Scotland.

“The family are incredibly grateful for the support which is being provided by a private citizen to charter a private plane to allow Alex’s body to come home to Scotland.

“It brings a great deal of comfort to Moira Salmond’s wife and other members of the family to know that he will soon be home with them.

“The family have asked that their privacy be respected at this time and will be making an announcement in due course about the funeral arrangements and a memorial service to honour the life of Alex Salmond.”

A British social media influencer who fell to his death as he climbed a Spanish bridge for an Instagram stunt has been pictured for the first time.

Lewis Stevenson, 26, fell from the 630ft (192m) Castilla-La Mancha bridge in Talavera de la Reina, 75 miles south-west of Madrid, on Sunday.

The freeclimber was attempting to scale the cable-stayed bridge without safety equipment when he died.

Speaking from his home in Derby, Clifford Stevenson, 70, confirmed that his grandson had died in the incident.

“We all tried to talk him out of it. We were always trying to talk him out of doing things but that was the way he was,” he told MailOnline.

“He loved doing it, always went out there believing he’d be all right. He did what he did for his own pleasure. He did not get any money for it, he was an adventurer.”

Savannah Parker, Mr Stevenson’s girlfriend, said that he slipped from the bridge after fainting.

“He didn’t just fall,” she said. “He lost consciousness because he wasn’t feeling well. His friend who he was with sent me over his police statement.

“He told his friend he wasn’t feeling well and he said: ‘Shall we go back down?’ Lewis said, ‘Give me a minute,’ and that’s when he lost consciousness and slipped.

“I suspect that he hadn’t eaten because he wouldn’t care if he was hungry or thirsty, he’d do something.”

Ms Parker, 25, said Mr Stevenson was due to return to Britain on Monday and that the last thing he told her was, “Good night, I love you,” on Saturday night.

She added: “Every time he went away I would tell him to be careful.

“As much as it worries me, I don’t look into things because I worry enough as it is and I just let him do his thing and generally he just comes back. This weekend he didn’t.”

Mr Stevenson’s social media profiles show him on top of skyscrapers in cities around the world, including London and New York.

Macarena Muñoz, the local councillor for citizen security, said Stevenson and another 24-year-old British man had “come to Talavera to climb the bridge and create content for social networks, which has resulted in this unfortunate and sad outcome”.

Climbing the bridge is “totally prohibited”, she added.

A spokesman for the national police in Toledo said: “He was about 40 to 50 metres up, about a quarter of the total height of the bridge, when he fell.”

The other climber, whose identity is not known, survived.

Donald Trump has claimed to be the “father of IVF” in his latest effort to court female voters.

“I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question,” the former president told an all-female audience in Georgia during a campaign event with Fox News.

“We really are the party for IVF. We want fertilisation, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it and we’re out there on IVF even more than them.”

Trump, 78, has continually flip-flopped on the issue of reproductive rights.

He previously boasted he helped to “kill” Roe v Wade, which granted women a constitutional right to an abortion, by appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court.

The 2022 ruling opened the door to possible restrictions on IVF with many pro-life campaigners against the procedure.

Fertility treatment was threatened in Alabama earlier this year after the state’s highest court ruled frozen embryos were “unborn children”.

Kamala Harris said those comments were “quite bizarre”, adding: “What he should take responsibility for is that couples who are praying and hoping and working toward growing a family have been so disappointed and harmed by the fact that IVF treatments have now been put at risk.”

“Let’s not be distracted by his choice of words,” Ms Harris said of Trump. “The reality is his actions have been very harmful to women and families in America.”

Thin on details

Earlier this year, Trump said if he wins this year’s election he will make IVF free for Americans, but he was thin on details about how such a measure would be funded.

“I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump administration, your government will pay for – or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for – all costs associated with IVF treatment,” he said at the time.

He added: “Because we want more babies, to put it nicely.”

Tuesday’s town hall was Trump’s latest attempt to appeal to female voters who polls have shown are put off by his stance on reproductive rights and abortion.

Some 21 states have restricted access to abortion since the Supreme Court’s decision, with a handful adopting complete bans on the procedure.

Trump has insisted he had returned the issue to individual states to decide their abortion laws.

“It’s back in the states, where they can have the vote of the people”, he told broadcaster Harris Faulkner on Tuesday. 

“It’s exactly where they want to be. Remember this, this issue has torn this country apart for 52 years. So we got it back in the states, we have a vote of the people, and it’s working its way through the system, and ultimately it’s going to do the right thing,” Trump said.

Redoing abortion laws

At one point, the former president suggested that some states will have to redo their abortion laws, referencing rape, incest and exception.

“It’s going to be redone,” Trump said of the abortion laws. “They’re going to, you’re going to, you end up with a vote of the people, and some of them, I agree here — they’re too tough, too tough. And those are going to be redone because already there’s a movement in those states.”

It comes after Trump told female voters he would be their “protector” if he won the election and they would “no longer be thinking about abortion”.

Republicans have voted down two bills in the past four months that would legally protect the right to IVF.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, told the New York Times the “father of IVF” comment was “a joke President Trump made in jest when he was enthusiastically answering a question about IVF”.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have bought a property in Portugal, it has been claimed.

It comes almost two years after the couple were asked by the King to give up their Windsor home, Frogmore Cottage.

The new home will give the Sussexes a base in Europe, enabling them to stay over whenever they make the transatlantic flight to visit friends or family.

It may also allow them to acquire a so-called Golden Visa, which allows visa-free access to the European Union’s Schengen area, the Daily Mail reported.

The couple spent several days in Portugal last September, when they are understood to have stayed with the Duke’s cousin, Princess Eugenie, 34, and her husband Jack Brooksbank, 38.

‘Mega-secret’ trips to Europe

The romantic three-night break came after they attended the Invictus Games in Germany and before heading back home to their children, Archie, now five, and Lilibet, three.

The couple were said to have flown from Dusseldorf to Lisbon before travelling an hour south to the coastal town of Melides, in the Alentejo region, in a “mega-secret” operation.

A source close to the Sussexes confirmed they had been to Portugal.

Princess Eugenie and Mr Brooksbank split their time between London and the CostaTerra Golf and Ocean Club in Melides where Mr Brooksbank works in marketing and sales at the resort in the Alentejo region

The Duke and Duchess have remained close to the couple, who have visited them at their home in Montecito, California. Like them, they have two young children, August, three, and Ernest, one.

Harry and Meghan were with Jack and Eugenie in Toronto when the news of their relationship became public knowledge in October 2016.

The foursome had dressed up for Halloween to enjoy “one final fun night out” before their relationship was revealed to the world.

In February 2022, Prince Harry was joined by Princess Eugenie at the Super Bowl in California. She was also the only member of the royal family to appear in new footage during their Netflix documentary series Harry and Meghan, released in December 2022.

The Duke and Duchess purchased their first home together, a sprawling, nine-bedroomed property in Montecito, California, in June 2020 for $14.6 million (£11.2 million).

Their office has been contacted for comment.

Kamala Harris’s big Fox gamble did not pay off

Kamala Harris’s interview with Fox News on Wednesday night was never expected to be a friendly affair.

The network has been consistently hostile to the vice-president since she entered the race in July, and this awkward 30 minutes was no different.

There are many within the Harris campaign who thought sitting down with Bret Baier, one of Fox’s most experienced interviewers, was a mistake.

But the stakes were too high. With several swing states too close to call, including battlegrounds that Ms Harris needs to win the presidency, she has just three weeks to convince Republicans to vote for her.

It is hard to see how Wednesday’s interview achieved that goal. On almost every subject, Ms Harris batted away policy questions and opportunities to push her plan for the White House in favour of slamming Donald Trump.

Ms Harris described border security as a “topic of discussion that people want to rightly have”, but then didn’t talk about it. She talked about Trump’s role in blocking Joe Biden’s border deal, and offered no solutions of her own.

She was then asked why voters do not trust her to tackle inflation, and she talked about Trump’s economic plan, not her own. A question about transgender operations in federal prisons produced a response about Trump.

Even in the most newsworthy section of the interview, about how her White House would differ from Mr Biden’s, Ms Harris suggested she would avoid “the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump”.

It is hard to imagine that this strategy was compelling for Fox News viewers, who are almost all likely to think Trump’s policy positions are at the least defensible, more probably laudable.

Ms Harris has spent weeks on the back foot, unable to answer detailed policy questions even in softball interviews with Left-wing outlets. When she finally sat down with Fox, she could only attack the man the network most supports.

The other theme of the interview, which got heated at times as Mr Baier tried to interrupt Ms Harris, was Mr Biden’s legacy.

Ms Harris is stuck with the inheritance of his administration, including a record of high inflation and record border crossings.

She must support him and continue the fiction that he is mentally agile, while trying to run a campaign based on a “new generation of change”.

Many Republicans will have tuned in to hear Ms Harris face their favourite anchor on Wednesday.

After hearing her answers, my instinct is that they will still support Trump. What alternative did Ms Harris offer?

Patronising, stuttering, this was a disaster for Harris 

Kamala Harris is evidently sensitive to criticism over her reticence to take interviews, even with friendly outlets. Well, on Fox, she was ready to prove the critics wrong. 

Fox News proved it was no friend to Kamala almost instantly, with host Bret Baier immediately questioning the Democratic administration’s handling of illegal immigration. 

Harris isn’t the first Dem politician to get frustrated at a Fox host, but her brittle demeanour hardly covered her in glory. Refusing to answer how many illegal aliens had entered the US under the Biden administration or to express regret in the termination of the Remain in Mexico policy, Harris instead expressed theatrical exasperation at being unable to “finish the questions” due to interruption – ultimately dodging them entirely. It was a performance worthy of Trump himself.

Indeed, Harris could hardly keep the former president’s name out of her mouth, repeatedly attacking his “point-scoring” while avoiding her personal failures to get a handle on the crisis while supposedly serving as “border tsar”. Accusing Trump of political games on border control may be true, but it is hardly a convincing line of attack at the tail end of election season.

Voters “want a president who has a plan for the future”. But Harris could hardly get the words out to tell us what hers is. And what was up with Harris’s voice? Her tone wavered like a Pennsylvania independent. It was difficult to believe that this was the same woman who comfortably ran rings around Trump in the first debate.

Her nervous stutters and oddly patronising rhetoric (asked by the host if she thought voters were stupid, she drawled “I would never say that about the American people!”) made for painful watching.

With an electorate this polarised, even winning over the rare Fox viewer who isn’t a fully signed-up Republican could make a difference. But this interview was a disaster: three weeks out to the election, Harris still looks like an amateur. 

Leave your questions below for Tony Diver who will answer them at 9am ET, Thursday

Donald Trump is now tied with Kamala Harris in Michigan, a new Telegraph poll shows, amid concerns about the state of the US economy and border security.

Both candidates are now tied on 47 points each, reversing an upward trend for Ms Harris in Michigan since Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21.

The latest poll, by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for the Telegraph, who asked 820 people in Michigan, casts doubt on Ms Harris’s route to 270 electoral college votes, which relies on strong performances in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Michigan is one of the so-called “blue wall” states that generally support Democratic candidates, but which fell to Trump in 2016.

It has voted for a Democrat in every election since 1992, other than in 2016 when it backed Trump over Hillary Clinton.

The Telegraph’s tracker shows that Michigan swung towards Ms Harris in late August, giving her a three-point lead that she maintained until early September.

Between Sept 16 and Oct 2, Ms Harris’s lead fell to two points, and has now been erased.

Philip van Scheltinga, director of research at Redfield & Wilton, said: “Trump is improving across the board. It’s not a story unique to Michigan. However, I would note that Trump’s improving chances in Michigan is an important story that risks going undetected with the focus mostly on Pennsylvania. 

“With the polling so close, and given the margins in 2020, it is entirely possible that Trump loses Pennsylvania but still wins Michigan and therefore the election.”

He added that Trump’s campaign had “done a good job of focusing the central conversation of the election on the economy and staying out of the abortion debate,” on which Ms Harris leads.

Poorest state

Both Trump and Ms Harris have campaigned heavily in Michigan, which is the poorest of the seven swing states on average.

The latest data from the US Census Bureau shows the average household in the Wolverine State earns $62,000, compared with $63,000 in North Carolina and $67,000 in Georgia.

Nevada is the highest-earning swing state, with an average income of $80,000, while households in Pennsylvania earn $75,000 on average.

The latest poll shows the largest group of voters in Michigan trusts Trump more on the economy, inflation and immigration – three of their top priorities overall. Ms Harris is trusted more on policing and crime, healthcare and abortion.

Almost half of voters in Michigan say their financial situation has worsened in the last year, while only 21 per cent said it had improved. A majority of voters said the US did not have control over its borders.

The state’s 15 electoral college votes make it one of the greatest prizes of the swing states that could flip in this election, and the state has become central to Ms Harris’s strategy during the campaign.

Trump will speak at a rally in Detroit on Friday, and will focus his remarks on the economy and the auto industry.

His campaign released a statement on Tuesday claiming Michigan voters have been “crushed” by inflation, and that Ms Harris would “destroy” car manufacturing if she wins power next month.