Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent victims of the disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein who also alleged she was sexually trafficked to Prince Andrew, has died aged 41.

Her family issued a statement on Saturday confirming she took her own life at her farm in Western Australia, where she had lived for several years.

“It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia. She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking,” the statement read.

“In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”

Giuffre was one of the most vocal victims of Epstein, alleging she had been groomed and sexually abused by him and his longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, beginning in her teens.

The family described her as a “fierce warrior” against sexual abuse and sex trafficking and a “light that lifted so many survivors”.

“Despite all the adversity she faced in her life, she shone so bright. She will be missed beyond measure,” they said.

Giuffre is survived by her three children, Christian, Noah and Emily, who her family said were the “light of her life”.

“It was when she held her newborn daughter in her arms that Virginia realised she had to fight back against those who had abused her and so many others,” they said.

“There are no words that can express the grave loss we feel today with the passing of our sweet Virginia. She was heroic and will always be remembered for her incredible courage and loving spirit.”

Giuffre’s lawyer, Sigrid McCawley, said she was “much more than a client”.

“She was a dear friend and an incredible champion for other victims. Her courage pushed me to fight harder, and her strength was awe-inspiring,” McCawley said. “The world has lost an amazing human being today. Rest in peace, my sweet angel.”

Giuffre’s representative Dini von Mueffling said she was “one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever had the honour to know”.

“Deeply loving, wise, and funny, she was a beacon to other survivors and victims. She adored her children and many animals,” she said. “She was always more concerned with me than with herself. I will miss her beyond words. It was the privilege of a lifetime to represent her.”

Josh Schiffer, a lawyer who represents one of Epstein’s victims, said Giuffre was integral to exposing the financier. “The case wouldn’t have existed without the input, her cooperation, her bravery at the beginning, inspiring so many other people to come forward,” he told the US cable network NewsNation.

Schiffer said: “Her loss will hopefully be a marker and almost an inspiration for people to calling attention to the epidemic that is sex trafficking, that is the international sex industry. This is an issue that still persists. It changes its form all the time and it exists all around the world. This just happened to be a really prominent example.”

Western Australia police did not publicly confirm Giuffre had died, but said emergency services responded to reports a 41-year-old woman was unresponsive at a home in Neergabby, about 75km north of Perth, about 9.50pm on Friday.

The woman was given emergency first aid but was pronounced dead, they said.

The death will be investigated but is not considered suspicious.

Earlier this month, Giuffre posted on social media that she had just days to live after a school bus crashed into her car.

WA police later confirmed a 41-year-old woman was in a car that collided with a bus on 24 March but there were no reported injuries. It is understood Giuffre presented to a Perth hospital emergency department on 1 April.

Giuffre, who is American, said she met Maxwell, a British socialite, in 2000 when working as a locker-room assistant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Maxwell offered her a job as massage therapist to Epstein, during which she alleged she was trafficked to the financier’s friends and clients – “passed around like a platter of fruit”.

In a 2009 civil lawsuit against Epstein, under the pseudonym “Jane Doe 102”, she alleged that her duties included being “sexually exploited by Epstein’s adult male peers including royalty”. Giuffre reached a settlement with Epstein in that case before it went to trial.

In 2021, Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit against Prince Andrew in the federal court in New York, alleging he sexually assaulted her on three occasions when she was 17. Andrew has repeatedly and strongly denied the accusations.

In the lawsuit, Giuffre alleged Epstein and Maxwell had introduced her to Andrew in 2001, and alleged that Maxwell forced her to have sex with Andrew.

In 2022, Andrew and Giuffre agreed to an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed sum.

Maxwell, who has maintained her innocence, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for sex trafficking.

Epstein was arrested by federal authorities in July 2019 and charged with sex-trafficking counts. Shortly after, he died by suicide while awaiting trial.

An immense blast in Iran’s southern port of Shahid Rajaee has killed at least four people and injured more than 500, according to state media, with an official suggesting the fire was caused by the explosion of chemical containers.

A spokesperson for Iran’s crisis management body pointed to poor storage conditions of chemicals as the trigger for the port explosion. “The cause of the explosions was the chemicals inside the containers,” Hossein Zafari, a crisis management spokesperson, told Iran’s ILNA news agency. He added that the port administration had previously been warned about the danger these chemicals posed.

The Iranian government has not yet specified the exact cause of the explosion, though it suspected combustible chemicals to be behind the blast.

The provincial attorney general had ordered a “thorough and urgent” investigation into the circumstances of the explosion, which local officials said began in several containers in the port.

Shahid Rajaee is a large Iranian container facility that handles 80m tons of goods a year, including fuel and other combustible materials. It is part of the Bandar Abbas port, the country’s largest.

State media had previously quoted Iranian security officials as saying “any speculation about the cause of the explosion is worthless”.

Videos showed a huge billowing mushroom cloud and the force of the blast destroyed a nearby building and shattered windows.

Injured people lay on the roadside as authorities declared a state of emergency at hospitals across Bandar Abbas to cope with the influx of wounded.

Aerial and naval firefighting teams worked to extinguish the blast, and state media reported officials expected the firefighting operation to be completed within an hour. Local media reported people trapped under the wreckage of a collapsed building.

In the aftermath of the explosion, port activities were suspended and Iranian customs officials halted export and transit shipments to the port.

The state-owned National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company said that oil refineries, tankers and pipelines in the area continued to operate and were unaffected by the blast.

The explosion occurred as Iran and the US met for the third round of nuclear talks in Oman on Saturday, aiming to achieve a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi spoke through Omani mediators for six hours on Saturday to create a framework for a new nuclear deal.

Trump, in an interview with Time magazine on Friday, said that he thought a deal with Iran was possible. Oman’s foreign minister announced that another “high-level meeting” was scheduled for 3 May.

The US and Israel view the prospect of Iran getting a nuclear weapon as an urgent threat. Iranian officials, in turn, are keen to lift a severe US sanctions regime on the beleaguered economy.

“Iran remains steadfast in its principled stance on the need to end unjust sanctions and is ready to build confidence about the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said in Oman.

In 2020, the Shahid Rajaee container facility was hit with a complex cyber-attack that jammed port logistics, which the Washington Post reported as being perpetrated by Israel in retaliation for an Iranian cyber-attack.

The cyber-attack was one of a series of incidents that has affected Iranian critical infrastructure in recent years.

The government has blamed some of the incidents, such as a 2024 coalmine blast in southern Iran which killed 31 people, on negligence. Tehran has accused Israel of being behind other incidents, such as an attack on Iranian gas pipelines last year.

The Israeli government made no comment on Saturday’s explosions in Iran.

Reuters contributed to this report

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have sat down for a face-to-face talk in the opulent halls of a Vatican basilica to discuss a possible ceasefire, after which the US president accused his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, of not wanting to “stop the war”.

The White House described Trump’s meeting with the Ukrainian leader before Pope Francis’s funeral as “very productive”, while Zelenskyy said on X that the talk with the US president was symbolic and had the “potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”.

It was the first time that Zelenskyy and Trump had met face to face after a frosty February encounter in the White House where Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, berated the Ukrainian leader and accused him of ingratitude for US aid.

Trump later published a social media post criticising Putin. “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” he posted on Truth Social.

“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ’Banking’ or ’Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!” the US president wrote.

In an effort to to end fighting between Ukraine and Russia, Washington is engaging in intense mediation between the two countries, at war since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

On Friday, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin, in Moscow for three hours to discuss Washington’s peace proposal. Trump said that “most of the major points are agreed to”, in a post on his Truth Social platform, without further elaboration. He called for a meeting between Kyiv and Moscow’s leadership to sign a ceasefire deal, which he said was “very close”.

Despite Trump’s eagerness for a deal, significant differences remain between the US vision for peace and what Ukraine and its European allies have deemed acceptable conditions for a ceasefire.

Two sets of peace plans published by Reuters on Friday showed that the US is proposing Moscow retain the territory it has captured, including the strategic Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.

This is seemingly a non-starter for Ukraine and European countries, with Zelenskyy insisting the territory is the “property of the Ukrainian people”.

“Our position is unchanged,” the Ukrainian president told reporters in Kyiv. “The constitution of Ukraine says that all the temporarily occupied territories … belong to Ukraine.”

It is also unclear if Moscow will agree to the US peace deal, which is seen as offering considerable concessions to Russia.

On Saturday, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said all Ukrainian troops had been forced from Russia’s Kursk region, a key aim for Moscow. Ukrainian officials disputed the claim.

The technical details of a ceasefire deal still need to be hammered out, including how western sanctions imposed on Russia would be lifted and what sort of security guarantees would be offered to Ukraine.

Trump acknowledged on Friday that the talks were “very fragile”, and he has warned that the US would halt its mediation efforts if the two sides did not come to an agreement soon.

Fighting continues in tandem with mediation efforts, and the Kremlin blames Ukraine for a car bomb that killed a senior Russian general near Moscow on Friday. Kyiv did not comment on the incident, the latest in a string of killings of Russian military officials over the past three years.

The day before, Russia carried out its deadliest attack in months on Ukraine, launching 70 missiles and 145 drones, mostly towards Kyiv.

The attack caused Trump to lash out at Putin on social media. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday.

A secretive Russian satellite in space that US officials believe is connected to a nuclear anti-satellite weapons program has appeared to be spinning uncontrollably, suggesting it may no longer be functioning in what could be a setback for Moscow’s space weapons efforts, according to US analysts.

The Cosmos 2553 satellite, launched by Russia weeks before invading Ukraine in 2022, has had various bouts of what appears to be errant spinning over the past year, according to Doppler radar data from space-tracking firm LeoLabs and optical data from Slingshot Aerospace, shared with Reuters.

Believed to be a radar satellite for Russian intelligence as well as a radiation testing platform, the satellite last year became the centre of US allegations that Russia for years has been developing a nuclear weapon capable of destroying entire satellite networks, such as SpaceX’s vast Starlink internet system that Ukrainian troops have been using.

US officials assess Cosmos 2553’s purpose, though not itself a weapon, is to aid Russia’s development of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon. Russia has denied it is developing such a weapon and says Cosmos 2553 is for research purposes.

Russia has for decades been locked in a security race in space with the US that, in recent years, has intensified and seeped into public view as Earth’s orbit becomes a hotspot for private sector competition and military technologies aiding ground forces.

The Cosmos 2553 satellite has been in a relatively isolated orbit about 2,000km above Earth, parked in a hotspot of cosmic radiation that communications or Earth-observing satellites typically avoid.

LeoLabs in November detected what appeared to be errant movements with the satellite using Doppler radar measurements from its global network of ground stations. The company in December upgraded its assessment to “high confidence” that it was tumbling based on additional radar data and imagery of the satellite taken by another space company, Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, told Reuters.

Russia’s defence ministry did not return a request for comment.

“This observation strongly suggests the satellite is no longer operational,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based thinktank, said of LeoLabs’ analysis in its annual space threat assessment, published on Friday.

US Space Command, which tracks objects in space and has condemned Russian military satellites in the past, said it was aware of a change in Cosmos 2553’s altitude but declined to provide further assessment on its current state.

The satellite earlier showed signs of odd behaviour. Slingshot, whose global telescope network has been tracking the spacecraft since its launch on 5 February 2022, detected movements in May 2024.

“Slingshot noted that the object’s brightness became variable, indicating a potential tumble,” a company spokesperson said.

But according to Slingshot’s latest observations, Cosmos 2553 appears to have stabilised, according to Belinda Marchand, the company’s Chief Science Officer.

Commercial space-tracking services are relatively young but fast-evolving and in high demand as the number of civil and military satellites in space soars.

The US defence department and other countries’ militaries, keen on avoiding military miscalculation, have made better eyesight in orbit a high priority to better distinguish between various types of spacecraft manoeuvres and whether objects are civil or military assets.

Russia, a US Space Command spokesperson said, has claimed Cosmos 2553’s mission is to test onboard instruments in a high-radiation environment, “but this does not align with its characteristics”.

“This inconsistency, paired with a demonstrated willingness to target US and allied on-orbit objects, increases the risk of misperception and escalation,” the spokesperson said.

Cosmos 2553 is one of dozens of Russian satellites in space with suspected ties to its military and intelligence programs. The country has viewed SpaceX’s Starlink, a formidable constellation of thousands of satellites, as a legitimate military target as Ukrainian troops use the service in conjunction with weapons on the battlefield.

Indian and Pakistani troops have exchanged gunfire across the volatile frontier in Kashmir for a second day, amid growing tensions after a brazen attack that killed 26 people at a popular tourist resort.

The massacre has sent relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours into a dangerous downward spin. India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which is divided between them but claimed fully by both.

India’s military said Pakistani soldiers opened fire from “multiple posts” along the heavily militarised ceasefire line, and Indian forces “responded appropriately” to what it called “unprovoked” firing. No casualties were reported. Pakistan did not immediately comment.

The clashes followed the attack last Tuesday, when gunmen opened fire in a meadow near Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. The attackers reportedly asked the victims, all male, whether they were Hindu or Muslim and shot the Hindus. Violence had been steadily abating in Kashmir, and the attack struck a heavy blow to the region’s recovering tourism industry.

An obscure group calling itself the Kashmir Resistance claimed responsibility. India links the group to the outlawed Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, but Pakistan denies involvement.

In an apparent attempt to ease tensions, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, offered to cooperate with a “neutral investigation”. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has vowed to “track and punish every terrorist and their backers” and pursue the killers “to the ends of the earth”.

“Pakistan is open to participating in any neutral, transparent and credible investigation,” Sharif said, while warning Pakistan’s forces stood ready to repel “any misadventure” by India.

In tit-for-tat moves, India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, a critical water-sharing pact, expelled Pakistani diplomats and cancelled Pakistani visas. Islamabad retaliated by expelling Indian diplomats, cancelling Indians’ visas and closing its airspace. It also suspended the 1972 Shimla accord, a key framework for dialogue.

India’s resources minister, C R Patil, said the country would move to ensure “not a single drop” of river water flowed into Pakistan after the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. Pakistan has warned any attempt to block water would be an “act of war”, with the Pakistan People’s party chief, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, declaring: “Either our water will flow through it, or their blood.”

Experts say disrupting the flow would require big investment and years of work. “India lacks the hydro infrastructure needed to actually impede the flow of water to Pakistan in the short term,” Brahma Chellaney, an analyst, said. “So the action is largely symbolic.”

Americans, including some Republicans, are losing faith in Donald Trump across a range of key issues, according to polling released this week. One survey found a majority describing the president’s second stint in the White House so far as “scary”.

Along with poor ratings on the economy and Trump’s immigration policy, a survey released on Saturday found that only 24% of Americans believe Trump has focussed on the right priorities as president.

That poll comes as Trump’s popularity is historically low for a leader this early in a term. More than half of voters disapprove of Trump’s performance as president, and majorities oppose his tariff policies and slashing of the federal workforce.

The scathing reviews come as Trump next week marks 100 days of his second stint office, and suggest Americans are already experiencing fatigue after a period that has seen global financial market nosedives and chilling deportations, including of documented people.

A poll by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research published this weekend, found that even Republicans are not overwhelmingly convinced that Trump’s attention has been in the right place.

A narrow majority, 54%, of Republicans surveyed said that Trump is focussed on the “right priorities”, while the president’s numbers with crucial independent voters are much weaker. Just 9% of independents said that the president is focussed on the right priorities – with 42% believing Trump is paying attention to the wrong issues.

About four in 10 people in the survey approve of how Trump is handling the presidency overall, and only about 40% of Americans approve of Trump’s approach to foreign policy, trade negotiations and the economy.

Meanwhile, a New York Times/Siena College poll of registered voters on Friday found that Trump’s approval rating is 42%, and just 29% among independent voters. More than half of voters said Trump is “exceeding the powers available to him”, and 59% of respondents said the president’s second term has been “scary”.

While Republican leaders typically receive strong scores on economic issues, Americans have been underwhelmed by Trump’s performance. The Times survey found that only 43% of voters approve of how Trump is handling the economy – a stark turnaround from a Times poll in April 2024, which found that 64% approved of Trump’s economy in his first term.

Half of voters disapproved of Trump’s trade policies with other countries, and 61% said a president should not have the authority to impose tariffs without congressional approval, while the Times reported that 63% – including 40% of Republicans – said “a president should not be able to deport legal immigrants who have protested Israel”.

The poor reviews have dogged Trump all week. An Associated Press poll on Thursday found that about half of US adults say that Trump’s trade policies will increase prices “a lot” and another three in 10 think prices could go up “somewhat”, and half of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the possibility of the US economy going into a recession in the next few months.

Polling conducted by the Trump-friendly Fox News has brought little respite. A survey published on Wednesday found that just 38% of Americans approve of Trump on the economy, with 56% disapproving.

The Fox News poll found that 58% of respondents disapproved of Trump’s performance, and 59% disapproved on inflation. Just three in 10 Americans said they believed Trump’s policies were helping the economy, and only four in 10 said Trump’s policies will help the country.

Americans, including some Republicans, are losing faith in Donald Trump across a range of key issues, according to polling released this week. One survey found a majority describing the president’s second stint in the White House so far as “scary”.

Along with poor ratings on the economy and Trump’s immigration policy, a survey released on Saturday found that only 24% of Americans believe Trump has focussed on the right priorities as president.

That poll comes as Trump’s popularity is historically low for a leader this early in a term. More than half of voters disapprove of Trump’s performance as president, and majorities oppose his tariff policies and slashing of the federal workforce.

The scathing reviews come as Trump next week marks 100 days of his second stint office, and suggest Americans are already experiencing fatigue after a period that has seen global financial market nosedives and chilling deportations, including of documented people.

A poll by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research published this weekend, found that even Republicans are not overwhelmingly convinced that Trump’s attention has been in the right place.

A narrow majority, 54%, of Republicans surveyed said that Trump is focussed on the “right priorities”, while the president’s numbers with crucial independent voters are much weaker. Just 9% of independents said that the president is focussed on the right priorities – with 42% believing Trump is paying attention to the wrong issues.

About four in 10 people in the survey approve of how Trump is handling the presidency overall, and only about 40% of Americans approve of Trump’s approach to foreign policy, trade negotiations and the economy.

Meanwhile, a New York Times/Siena College poll of registered voters on Friday found that Trump’s approval rating is 42%, and just 29% among independent voters. More than half of voters said Trump is “exceeding the powers available to him”, and 59% of respondents said the president’s second term has been “scary”.

While Republican leaders typically receive strong scores on economic issues, Americans have been underwhelmed by Trump’s performance. The Times survey found that only 43% of voters approve of how Trump is handling the economy – a stark turnaround from a Times poll in April 2024, which found that 64% approved of Trump’s economy in his first term.

Half of voters disapproved of Trump’s trade policies with other countries, and 61% said a president should not have the authority to impose tariffs without congressional approval, while the Times reported that 63% – including 40% of Republicans – said “a president should not be able to deport legal immigrants who have protested Israel”.

The poor reviews have dogged Trump all week. An Associated Press poll on Thursday found that about half of US adults say that Trump’s trade policies will increase prices “a lot” and another three in 10 think prices could go up “somewhat”, and half of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the possibility of the US economy going into a recession in the next few months.

Polling conducted by the Trump-friendly Fox News has brought little respite. A survey published on Wednesday found that just 38% of Americans approve of Trump on the economy, with 56% disapproving.

The Fox News poll found that 58% of respondents disapproved of Trump’s performance, and 59% disapproved on inflation. Just three in 10 Americans said they believed Trump’s policies were helping the economy, and only four in 10 said Trump’s policies will help the country.

An American man identified as the son of a deputy director of the CIA was killed in eastern Ukraine in 2024 while fighting under contract for the Russian military, according to an investigation by independent Russian media.

Michael Alexander Gloss, 21, died on 4 April 2024 in “Eastern Europe”, according to an obituary published by his family. He was the son of Juliane Gallina, who was appointed the deputy director for digital innovation at the Central Intelligence Agency in February 2024.

The story of how the son of a top-ranking US spy died fighting for Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is an unlikely tale of how homegrown anger at the United States and online radicalisation led from a middle-class Virginia childhood to the killing fields of eastern Ukraine.

On a VKontakte page attributed to Gloss, a high school football player born to parents who both served in the military, he described himself as “a supporter of the multipolar world. I ran away from home. traveled the world. I hate fascism. I love my homeland.” He also posted the flags of Russia and Palestine.

According to the investigative website iStories, Gloss is one of more than 1,500 foreigners who have signed contracts with the Russian military since February 2022. The database for the enrollment office was later leaked, exposing him as having signed the contract in September 2023. Sources told iStories that Gloss had been deployed with “assault units”, those engaged in harsh frontline fighting, in December 2023. An acquaintance said that he had been deployed to a Russian airborne regiment sent to storm Ukrainian positions near the city of Soledar.

“With his noble heart and warrior spirit Michael was forging his own hero’s journey when he was tragically killed in Eastern Europe on April 4, 2024,” his family wrote in the obituary, which did not mention Russia and Ukraine or discuss the circumstances of his death.

In university, Gloss was active in gender equality and environmental protest circles. He joined Rainbow Family, a leftwing environmental protest group, and in 2023 traveled to Hatay, Turkey, to assist in the recovery following the earthquake that killed more than 56,000 people. He had also become increasingly angry at the US for its support of Israel and the war in Gaza.

While in Turkey, Gloss began expressing a desire to go on to Russia. “He was usually watching videos about Palestine and was so angry at America,” one acquaintance told iStories. “He started thinking about going to Russia. He wanted to war with the USA. But I think he was very influenced by the conspiracy theory videos.”

After receiving a visa to Russia, he traveled around the country before arriving in Moscow, where he joined the military shortly before his documents expired. Photographs and videos obtained by iStories showed he was sent to a Russian training camp, where he mostly trained alongside Nepali contract soldiers. Three months after enlisting, an acquaintance said, he was deployed to Ukraine as a member of an assault battalion.

A number of acquaintances told the outlet that he had not been interested in fighting, but hoped the army would allow him to receive a Russian passport and stay in the country.

The circumstance’s of Gloss’s death are not known. A friend said that his family had been informed by the Russian government of his death but were given little other information. “It was announced that he died within the borders of Ukraine,” the friend wrote. “We do not know whether he participated in the war. They did not provide any other detailed information.”

It was not clear whether the Russians performed a background check on Gloss or knew the identity of his mother. The Guardian has approached the CIA for comment on the reports.

After 529 days on the run, Australia’s favourite fugitive has been caught at last.

Valerie the miniature dachshund, who went missing on Kangaroo Island way back in 2023, has been rescued by conservationists.

“Kangala Wildlife Rescue is overjoyed to announce the successful rescue of Valerie,” the group said on TikTok on Friday night.

“After weeks of tireless efforts … by volunteers and partner organisations Valerie has been safely rescued and is fit and well.

“We are absolutely thrilled and deeply relieved that Valerie is finally safe and able to begin her transition back to her loving parents.”

People have been trying to find Valerie since she went missing in November 2023, when her owners, New South Wales couple Georgia Gardner and Josh Fishlock, were holidaying at Stokes Bay – home to one of Australia’s best beaches but also farmland and dense scrub.

Valerie escaped from her pen at their campsite at Stokes Bay before running into the scrub. The pair searched for her with the help of locals but to no avail.

Then, in March, reports began coming in that Valerie had been spotted. One picture appeared to show the dog’s oversized ears poking above some paddock stubble.

Kangala Wildlife Rescue volunteers used surveillance, traps and lures to try to find Valerie. They captured a video of her, but she remained at large.

Stokes Bay locals like to point out their island is six times bigger than Singapore. It’s also much wilder – a place where a couple can walk alone on a pristine beach, whales visit, trees grow bent over from the wind, and bushfires occasionally raze the land. Much of it remains untamed, remote.

So the residents are somewhat bemused at the way Valerie’s story has spread around the world. The New York Times reported on the elusive dog, still apparently wearing her pink collar. In the UK, the Times wrote of her dodging snakes and eagles, and the Independent commented on her “remarkable resilience”.

“Kangaroo Island is known for many things … dogs that survive for 500 days is not what you expect,” resident and animal lover Louise Custance said in April.

“I think people just want to have a good news story; otherwise, everything’s so sad. The last global headline that Kangaroo Island made was the [2020] fires.”

Now, after an estimated 1,000 hours of volunteer effort and more than 5,000km travelled around the island searching for her, she was snared in a search operation using cameras and prepared traps.

“There were many challenging moments over the past month,” the group said, “and we are incredibly grateful to everyone who played a part in bringing Valerie home.”

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s orbit has become consumed by a contentious leak investigation that those inside the Pentagon believe is behind the firing of three senior aides last week, according to five people involved in the situation.

The secretary’s office has been marked for weeks by ugly internal politics between chief of staff Joe Kasper, who left the department on Thursday, and the three ousted aides, including senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief Darin Selnick, and the chief to the deputy defense secretary, Colin Carroll.

The fraught nature of the investigation into the mishandling of classified information also threatens to reopen scrutiny of Hegseth’s ability to manage the Pentagon at a time when he himself shared plans for US strikes against the Houthis in Yemen in a second Signal group chat that included his wife.

The fallout from the leak investigation has been far-reaching, the people said. Hegseth has dramatically narrowed his inner circle, which now consists of three people: his acting chief of staff, Ricky Buria, until recently his junior military assistant; his lawyer Tim Parlatore; and spokesperson Sean Parnell.

At the center of the leak investigation is an inquiry into the disclosure of an allegedly top-secret document to a reporter. The document outlined flexible options for the US military to reclaim the Panama canal including by sending US troops to the area.

The leak was attributed to Caldwell, according to two people familiar with what was briefed to Hegseth and the White House, and it was suggested he did so because he disagreed with the options for military involvement in Donald Trump’s efforts to reclaim the Panama canal.

But Caldwell has strenuously denied leaking to a reporter and told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview that he believed the leak investigation had been “weaponized”, not least because he had been teased internally for expressing support for military options for the Panama canal.

The two other aides, Selnick and Carroll, were also fired last week although they were not characterized to the White House as the principal targets of the leak investigation, the people said.

Carroll was interviewed by the air force office of special investigations, which has jurisdiction over civilian employees at the defense department, but only on the Monday after all three aides had been fired and only because he had repeatedly sought an interview to clear his name.

The two aides have privately suggested that they were pushed out over the perception they were undercutting Kasper, whom they considered to be ineffective at his job, and were vocal about their complaints.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the reporting about the investigation.

The forcefulness of the denial by Caldwell, coupled with his close relationship with Hegseth, who had brought him on after they worked together at Concerned Veterans for America, has caught numerous senior officials at the White House and the Pentagon off-guard.

And the fraught background to the leak investigation of vicious interpersonal conflicts among Hegseth’s senior aides has left them unable to decipher who and what to believe.

When Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon, it was with the least experience of any of his predecessors. He got the job after impressing Trump in an interview they did during the campaign, and Trump later suggested he lead the Pentagon or the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Hegseth is seen to have been fairly successful through the first six weeks of his tenure, according to four Pentagon officials who interacted with him on a daily basis. He was affable with world leaders and won over skeptical House Freedom caucus members when he briefed them on the Pentagon budget.

But the pressures of running an $800bn-plus agency that oversees more than 2 million troops started to catch up, the officials said, and a series of leaks intensified his distrust of career employees, whom defense officials once hoped could guide him to efficiently run the Pentagon.

The pressures appear to have filtered down to his team, which became increasingly split between a faction that supported Kasper and dismissed his detractors as ambitious colleagues, and a faction behind the three aides who considered Kasper an ineffective manager.

Kasper complained to associates that Caldwell, Selnick and Carroll were trying to force his ouster and about what he saw as attempts to manufacture controversy. In one instance, Carroll sent him an email about possible leaks from the inspector general’s office, which he found to be baseless.

Kasper also told associates that he had allegedly heard Selnick say something to the effect of “the way to get people fired in this place is to get bad headlines on them”, two officials said.

But senior aides at the White House and the Pentagon increasingly started routing requests through Caldwell and Selnick, the officials said, in large part because they were seen to be quicker at getting things done – in a dynamic that appeared to grate on Kasper.

The internal rivalries escalated in the wake of the Panama canal material leak. Hegseth ordered an investigation into some nine leaks, and Kasper suggested that he wanted to bring in the FBI and to conduct polygraph tests on aides, the officials said.

Caldwell advocated for the leak investigations to be narrowed in scope in part because he was against having the FBI rummage through their affairs, according to multiple people he spoke to about the matter – which appears to have been part of the reason he came under suspicion.

The tensions among the former aides have continued since their collective ouster. Carroll has considered filing a defamation suit against Kasper and started making calls on the Monday after he was fired, asking people whether Kasper had ever been seen doing cocaine in a previous job.

Kasper has complained that some of the calls went to his wife and previous clients, asking rhetorically to associates how he would have been able to hold a security clearance and pass regular drug tests. “It’s so egregiously stupid,” Kasper said when reached for comment.

Civil rights activists in Germany have demanded an independent inquiry into alleged police racism after an officer shot a 21-year-old black man from behind, killing him after an altercation outside a nightclub.

The 27-year-old officer was suspended from duty over the shooting early on Sunday morning in the city of Oldenburg in north-west Germany pending a murder investigation, said state prosecutors. Fatal police shootings are relatively rare in Germany and prosecutors were quoted in local media as saying the suspension and investigation were “routine”.

Police have not identified the victim due to data protection laws but media and pressure groups have identified him as Lorenz A.

Police said in a statement that the man, a German citizen, aimed pepper spray at security staff outside the club after they refused him entry, hurting four people, and that he threatened others with a knife while running away.

When a patrol car tracked him down, police said he again used the pepper spray and approached the 27-year-old officer in a threatening manner. The police officer then opened fire.

A coroner’s report found that at least three bullets hit the man from behind: in the back of his head, torso and hip, local prosecutors said. A fourth shot is believed to have grazed his upper thigh. He later died in hospital.

The state interior minister, Daniela Behrens, said the autopsy results raised “serious questions and grave suspicions” that must be “unsparingly addressed and resolved”.

Police representatives warned against any rush to judgment. “There are racism accusations because the deceased was a person of colour,” Kevin Komolka, the state chair of the GdP police union, told the public broadcaster NDR. “There’s a mood developing painting police as trigger-happy hooligans.”

Prosecutors have begun evaluating security camera footage and audio recordings from the scene and said there was no indication that Lorenz A had threatened police with the knife he had with him. The officers’ body cameras were reportedly turned off.

Rights groups, which have organised a rally in Oldenburg on Friday, said the shooting raised serious concerns.

The German chapter of Amnesty International said the killing “impacts an entire community and all those people in Germany affected by racism”. It said any investigation into the incident led by police would be biased. “We finally need independent investigation mechanisms that are not controlled by police or interior affairs authorities,” it said, citing “structural racism”.

The Black People in Germany Initiative (ISD) quoted friends and the family of Lorenz, calling him a keen basketball player and a “fun-loving person who was full of energy”.

“Now he’s dead, killed by an institution that is supposed to protect us,” it said in a statement, joining the call for an independent investigation as well as a national complaints office for allegations of police racism.

The ‪Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which campaigns against extremism and racism in German society, also denounced what it said was not an isolated incident and questioned the police account that the officer had grounds to fear for his life.

The gathering and march in Oldenburg, called by a Justice for Lorenz group with more than 15,000 followers on social media, is expected to draw at least 1,000 people, according to police. Similar vigils have been called in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Vienna.

The Black Lives Matter movement, which was initiated after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, also led activists to turn a spotlight on German police. In September of that year, 29 officers in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia were temporarily suspended after their unit was found to have shared extreme rightwing content on a WhatsApp group including a collage of a refugee inside a gas chamber and the shooting of a young black person.

A 2024 study found that 30% of German police had heard colleagues make racist comments in the previous year, with a marked rise in reported anti-Muslim sentiment.

An average of 10.5 people a year are shot dead by police in Germany, the news agency dpa said, citing figures collected by the trade journal Civil Rights and Police, with no clear upward or downward trend across the decades. However, last year there were 22 victims, and this year there have already been 11 such cases reported.

In 2023, the last year statistics were available, Germany’s federal criminal police office reported a record number of incidents of violence against firefighters, police and emergency services workers.

Liam and Noel Gallagher have performed together for the first time in 16 years in a working men’s club in north London, according to reports.

The brothers were pictured arriving at the Mildmay club in Newington Green, north London, on Thursday where they are believed to have filmed a promotional video for this summer’s sold-out Oasis reunion tour.

According to the Sun, they arrived at the venue separately, stayed for just over an hour, and made enough noise to provoke the ire of local people.

Set to begin in Cardiff on 4 July, the much-anticipated Oasis ‘25 tour will come 16 years after the band bitterly split after an infamous backstage fight at Rock en Seine festival in Paris, and 30 years after the release of their bestselling second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?.

In a joint statement after the tour’s announcement, the band said: “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”

The brothers are thought to be back in each other’s good graces, with Noel confirming to TalkSport earlier this week that rehearsals for the tour will begin in the next few weeks. When asked about Liam, he said: “He’s alright. He’s on tip-top form. I was with him yesterday, actually.”

The UK leg of the tour will include seven shows at Wembley Stadium in London, as well as five in the Gallaghers’ home town of Manchester. They will then tour the US, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and Australia, before ending in South America in November.

The tour made headlines earlier this week when data from Lloyds Banking Group revealed that fans have collectively lost more than £2m to scams since tickets went on sale in August 2024.

The Competition and Markets Authority previously found that Ticketmaster may have “breached” consumer protection law in the way it sold more than 900,000 tickets, with some fans ending up paying more than £350 for tickets worth £150.

The band shrugged off any criticism of ticket pricing, saying in a statement last year: “Inevitably interest in this tour is so overwhelming that it’s impossible to schedule enough shows to fulfil public demand.

“As for the well-reported complaints many buyers had over the operation of Ticketmaster’s dynamic ticketing: it needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management, and at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used.”

In response to one fan, who wrote on X that they “didn’t expect [Oasis] to rip off the fans as much as they have”, Liam curtly replied: “SHUTUP”.