Nine people were killed and others injured when a driver ploughed a car into a crowd at a street festival in the Canadian city of Vancouver, local police have said.

Police said they were confident that the incident on Saturday was not an act of terrorism. A 30-year-old man who was driving a black SUV was arrested.

“We can confirm nine people have died after a man drove through a crowd at last night’s Lapu Lapu festival. Our thoughts are with all those affected by this tragic incident, Vancouver police posted online.

The incident happened shortly after 8pm as members of the city’s Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival commemorates a Filipino anticolonial leader from the 16th century.

Footage posted online showed a black SUV with a damaged bonnet parked on a street littered with debris as first-aiders tended to people lying on the ground.

One witness told CTV News he saw a vehicle driving erratically in the area of the festival just before the crowd was hit. The Vancouver Sun said thousands of people had been in the area.

“I didn’t get to see the driver, all I heard was an engine rev,” said Yoseb Vardeh, a food truck operator, in an interview with Postmedia. “I got outside my food truck, I looked down the road and there’s just bodies everywhere. He went through the whole block, he went straight down the middle.”

The Vancouver mayor, Ken Sim, said: “Our thoughts are with all those affected and with Vancouver’s Filipino community during this incredibly difficult time.”

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, said he was devastated at the news. “I offer my deepest condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured, to the Filipino Canadian community, and to everyone in Vancouver,” he wrote on X. “We are all mourning with you.”

The incident happened just before Canadians go to the polls on Monday after a frenetic election race where candidates have wooed voters on issues including rising living costs and tackling Donald Trump’s tariffs. Carney is favoured to win after promising voters he would stand up to Washington’s sweeping import levies.

Police set up a 24-hour assistance centre to help anyone who had been unable to contact relatives or friends who were at the festival.

Lapu Lapu Day is celebrated in the Philippines in remembrance of the Indigenous chief Lapulapu, who led his men to defeat the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in battle in 1521.

Nine people were killed and others injured when a driver ploughed a car into a crowd at a street festival in the Canadian city of Vancouver, local police have said.

Police said they were confident that the incident on Saturday was not an act of terrorism. A 30-year-old man who was driving a black SUV was arrested.

“We can confirm nine people have died after a man drove through a crowd at last night’s Lapu Lapu festival. Our thoughts are with all those affected by this tragic incident, Vancouver police posted online.

The incident happened shortly after 8pm as members of the city’s Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival commemorates a Filipino anticolonial leader from the 16th century.

Footage posted online showed a black SUV with a damaged bonnet parked on a street littered with debris as first-aiders tended to people lying on the ground.

One witness told CTV News he saw a vehicle driving erratically in the area of the festival just before the crowd was hit. The Vancouver Sun said thousands of people had been in the area.

“I didn’t get to see the driver, all I heard was an engine rev,” said Yoseb Vardeh, a food truck operator, in an interview with Postmedia. “I got outside my food truck, I looked down the road and there’s just bodies everywhere. He went through the whole block, he went straight down the middle.”

The Vancouver mayor, Ken Sim, said: “Our thoughts are with all those affected and with Vancouver’s Filipino community during this incredibly difficult time.”

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, said he was devastated at the news. “I offer my deepest condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured, to the Filipino Canadian community, and to everyone in Vancouver,” he wrote on X. “We are all mourning with you.”

The incident happened just before Canadians go to the polls on Monday after a frenetic election race where candidates have wooed voters on issues including rising living costs and tackling Donald Trump’s tariffs. Carney is favoured to win after promising voters he would stand up to Washington’s sweeping import levies.

Police set up a 24-hour assistance centre to help anyone who had been unable to contact relatives or friends who were at the festival.

Lapu Lapu Day is celebrated in the Philippines in remembrance of the Indigenous chief Lapulapu, who led his men to defeat the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in battle in 1521.

Thousands of people queued to visit Pope Francis’s tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica the day after heads of state, royalty and hundreds of thousands of mourners attended his funeral in Rome.

Many crossed themselves and took photos on their phones as they filed past the tomb, marked simply with the name Franciscus.

“Pope Francis for me was an inspiration, a guide,” said Elias Caravalhal, a Rome resident who came “to thank him for what he has done”.

Susmidah Murphy, who was visiting the city from her home in India, said: “It’s unbelievable that he’s no more with us. It’s sad that we don’t get popes like this very often.”

Many of those mourning the late pope were anxious about who would succeed him.

Romina Cacciatore, 48, an Argentinian translator living in Italy, said Pope Francis had transformed the Roman Catholic church into “something more normal, more human. I’m worried about what’s coming.”

Maria Simoni, 53, from Rome, said: “I hope we get another pope as skilled as Francis at speaking to people’s hearts, at being close to every person, no matter who they are.”

Tatiana Alva, 49, from Peru, said Francis had been “very kind, humble. He used language young people could understand. I don’t think the next pope can be the same but I hope he will have an open mind and be realistic about the challenges in the world right now.”

A special mass was held on Sunday morning in St Peter’s Square led by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, who is the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Francis. About 200,000 people attended, according to the Vatican.

More than 220 cardinals will meet at the Vatican on Monday morning to decide the date that the conclave to elect the next pope will begin.

Only cardinals under the age of 80 – 135 in total – are eligible to take part in the conclave, which will begin its deliberations after the completion of nine days of official mourning for Francis.

Jean-Claude Hollerich, a cardinal from Luxembourg, has said he expects the conclave to start within a day or two of the end of the mourning period on 4 May. It must start by 10 May.

Reinhard Marx, a German cardinal, said on Saturday the conclave would last just “a few days”.

The cardinal-electors – about 80% of whom were appointed by Francis – will cast four votes a day until one candidate secures a two-thirds majority. The news that a successor has been chosen will be communicated by white smoke emitted from the Sistine Chapel.

Cardinals were expected to pay their respects at Francis’s tomb at Santa Maria Maggiore on Sunday.

Conservative and progressives will intensify efforts to shape the future of the Roman Catholic church in the coming days as 135 cardinals prepare to be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel in order to choose a successor to Pope Francis.

The group of cardinals who will vote for the next leader of about 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide are less predictable than ever before, with the vast majority having no experience of a papal conclave. A much wider geographic spread of cardinals adds to the uncertainty.

Eight in 10 of those eligible to vote in the conclave were appointed by Pope Francis in the past 12 years. Twenty became cardinals only in December last year. Many had never met each other before heading to Rome over the past week after the pope’s death last Monday.

The papal conclave is expected to begin formal deliberations next week. But discreet ad hoc discussions and lobbying in the Vatican’s corridors, dining rooms and magnificent gardens have gathered pace over recent days.

“In fact, conversations have probably been going on for some time, certainly since the start of this year, because the trajectory of Pope Francis’s health has been clear,” said Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic church at Oxford University.

More than 20 cardinals have been identified as papabile – candidates for the papacy – by Vatican observers. However, few frontrunners at the start of the process make it through successive rounds of voting. In 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was not considered a papabile, but by the end of the conclave he was Pope Francis.

Some cardinals who are not thought to be in the running for the job are likely to be pushing their favoured candidates, especially among less experienced colleagues.

Among those likely to be lobbying for a conservative successor to Francis are Raymond Burke, a Donald Trump-supporting US bishop, and Gerhard Müller, a German who warned last week that the church could split if an orthodox pope is not elected.

The progressive camp includes Jean-Claude Hollerich from Luxembourg, Timothy Radcliffe from the UK and Michael Czerny from Canada.

Critics accused Francis of packing the college of cardinals with his supporters in making more than 100 appointments during his papacy. But Pattenden said: “Historically, no pope has been able to control the election of his successor.”

There were clear conservatives and progressives among the cardinals, but “it’s a spectrum”, he added. “There are some who hold conservative views on certain issues but liberal views on other issues – for example, sexuality and climate change.

“Francis was more inclined to promote his ideological confreres, but he didn’t exclusively appoint those who appeared to agree with him. He had other priorities – to make the college of cardinals as inclusive as possible, which meant choosing men from very small Catholic communities like Iran and Algeria and Mongolia and balancing it away from its rich European and North American heartlands.”

In 2013, more than half of cardinal electors were European. Now, the proportion has dropped to 39%, while 18% come from Asia, 18% from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 12% from sub-Saharan Africa.

Francis also sought to lower the age profile of the college of cardinals. Seven of those appointed last December were under the age of 60, with one – Mykola Bychok, a Ukrainian-born bishop in Melbourne – only 44. Cardinals were appointed from Peru, Ecuador, Algeria and Iran in an attempt to tilt the balance away from Europe.

The first vote will be taken soon after the conclave convenes, and then each morning and afternoon until a candidate secures a two-thirds majority.

The cardinals will be “under quite a lot of pressure to choose quite quickly,” Pattenden said. “The world’s eyes are on them, and the Catholic faithful might find it a bit disconcerting if they’re still in the conclave in June or in July.”

In the past century, most conclaves have lasted two to three days. The longest conclave, in the 13th century, lasted two years and nine months, and the shortest was in 1503 when a result came within hours.

The bookmakers’ favourites to succeed Francis are Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s chief diplomat, and Luis Antonio Tagle, a Filipino cardinal.

Speculation on the outcome of the conclave has already become one of the most popular betting markets this year. Leighton Vaughan Williams, a professor of economics and finance at Nottingham Business School, told AFP: “What was once a pursuit confined largely to Renaissance Roman bankers and courtiers has evolved into a multimillion-dollar global market accessible at the click of a button or a tap on a crypto wallet.”

He said the speed with which betting activity had taken off this year “underscores an enduring cultural fascination with the papacy, amplified by media coverage and popular culture”.

Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse.

Lawyers are gearing up for court action against a company contracted by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, after meeting moderators at a facility in Ghana that is understood to employ about 150 people.

Moderators working for Majorel in Accra claim they have suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia and substance abuse as a direct consequence of the work they do checking extreme content.

The allegedly gruelling conditions endured by workers in Ghana are revealed in a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

It comes after more than 140 Facebook content moderators in Kenya were diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content.

The workers in Kenya were employed by Samasource, an outsourcing company that carries out content moderation for Meta using workers from across Africa. Majorel, the company at the centre of the allegations in Ghana, is owned by the French multinational Teleperformance.

One man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said he attempted suicide owing to the nature of his work. His claims his contract was subsequently terminated and he has returned to his home country.

Facebook and other large social media companies employ armies of content moderators, often based in the poorest parts of the world, to remove posts that breach their community standards and to train AI systems to do the same.

Moderators are required to review distressing and often brutal pictures and videos to establish whether they should be removed from Meta’s platforms. According to workers in Ghana, they have seen videos of a person being skinned alive and a woman being beheaded.

The moderators claim mental health care offered by the firm was unhelpful, was not delivered by medical doctors, and that personal disclosures made by staff about the effects of their work were circulated among managers.

Teleperformance disputed this, saying it employed licensed mental health professionals who are registered with the local regulatory body and hold a master’s degree in psychology, counselling, or another mental health field.

The legal case is being prepared by a UK-based nonprofit, Foxglove. It would be the second case brought by content moderators in Africa, after Samasource workers in Kenya sued in 2023.

Foxglove said it was “urgently investigating these shocking abuses of workers” with a view to using “every tool at our disposal, including potential legal action” to improve working conditions.

It is working with a Ghanaian firm, Agency Seven Seven, on preparing two possible lawsuits. One would allege psychological harms and could involve a group of moderators, and the other unfair dismissal, involving the moderator from east Africa whose contract was terminated after he attempted suicide.

Foxglove’s co-executive director Martha Dark said: “These are the worst conditions I have seen in six years of working with social media content moderators around the world.

“In Ghana, Meta is displaying nothing short of a complete disregard for the humanity of its key safety workers upon whom all its profits rely: content moderators. They are treated as objects who can be used up, burned out and replaced with no care whatsoever for the permanent damage to their mental and physical wellbeing.”

Dark said basic wages for content moderators in Accra were below living costs, incentivising them to work overtime, for which pay is understood to be even lower than normal rates. Moderators faced deductions from their pay for failing to meet performance targets, she added.

Contracts seen by the Guardian show that the base wage starts at about 1,300 Ghanaian cedis a month – just over £64. This is supplemented by a system of performance-related bonuses, the upper range of which amounts to about 4,900 cedis (£243) a month, significantly less than the estimated cost of living in Accra.

A Teleperformance spokesperson said content moderators enjoyed “strong pay and benefits, including monthly pay that is roughly 10 times the country’s minimum wage for domestic moderators, and 16 times the minimum wage for those who have relocated from other countries, when including project allowance, transportation allowance, language premium and more – all of which are automatically paid to the moderator and are not performance-based”.

Foxglove’s researcher Michaela Chen said she had seen photos of moderators’ living quarters, in which they were “crammed five to a flat, two to a room”. She said there appeared to be a culture of secrecy, including surveillance from managers, who follow workers into the toilets during breaks.

This extends to moderators’ work for Meta. She said: “Workers spend all day working on Meta’s platforms, moderating to Meta’s standards and using Meta’s systems, but at the same time, moderators are told constantly: ‘You do not work for Meta,’ and are forbidden from telling anyone they do.”

Teleperformance said moderators were “offered housing in … one of the most upscale and well-known residential and commercial neighbourhoods in Accra”.

The spokesperson described the housing as “safe, with strong security” and having air conditioning, recreation facilities, including gyms and pools.

Carla Olympio, a partner at Agency Seven Seven, said she believed a personal injury case could succeed in Ghana’s courts and would set a precedent establishing that worker protections extend to psychological harms as well as physical injury.

“[There is] currently a gap in our laws because they haven’t necessarily caught up with the new developments that cover technology and virtual work,” she said.

Rosa Curling, a co-executive director at Foxglove, said it was seeking for the court to “order immediate changes to the content moderators’ workplace”, including proper safeguards and psychiatric care.

A spokesperson for Teleperformance said: “At TP in Ghana, we take our content moderation work seriously. From the very beginning during the interview process, within the employee contract and through employee training and resiliency testing, we are fully transparent with our prospective moderators regarding the content they might see during their work to help keep the internet safe for our communities. We have robust people management systems and workplace practices, including a robust wellbeing programme staffed by fully licensed psychologists to support our content moderators throughout their content moderation journey.”

Meta said the companies it worked with were “contractually obliged to pay their employees who review content on Facebook and Instagram above the industry standard in the markets they operate”.

The tech company said it took “the support of content reviewers seriously”, including detailing expectations around counselling, training and other support in contracts with the companies it outsourced.

It said all content moderators signed client confidentiality agreements because they were dealing with user information which needed to be protected and for their own safety, but moderators may discuss their jobs with doctors and counsellors, and some aspects with family members.

When Solomon* strode into the gleaming Octagon tower in Accra, Ghana, for his first day as a Meta content moderator, he was bracing himself for difficult but fulfilling work, purging social media of harmful content.

But after just two weeks of training, the scale and depravity of what he was exposed to was far darker than he ever imagined.

“The first day I didn’t come across any graphic content, but gradually I started coming across very graphic content like beheadings, child abuse, bestiality. When I first came across that ticket I was very shocked. I didn’t even look at my computer because it was very disturbing for me.

“But gradually I started normalising what happened because I became used to it. I even started to enjoy seeing people beheaded, child abuse, pornography, suicide. I asked myself, is that normal? And I replied, it’s not.”

Solomon, who arrived from his home in east Africa in late 2023, said he would “never forget the day” he came across a person being gradually skinned alive. “The system doesn’t allow us to skip it … we have to look at it for 15 seconds, at least.”

Another video featured a woman from his home country screaming for help in his native language while several people stabbed her.

He says the videos became more and more disturbing. Some days, there would be no videos, then something would start trending and in the same day 70-80% of videos would feature graphic content. He felt himself gradually becoming “out of humanity”.

In the evenings, he would return to the shared flat provided by his employer, the outsourcing company Teleperformance, with “no room for privacy and many problems with water and electricity”.

When Solomon learned that a childhood friend had been killed, his already fragile mental health unravelled. He broke a window and a mirror in frustration, leading Teleperformance to suspend him until he felt better.

He spent the next two weeks home alone. “I started developing depression. I didn’t eat or sleep, I drank day and night and smoked day and night. I was not this kind of person before,” he said.

Solomon attempted suicide, and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where, he said, he was diagnosed with major depression disorder with suicidal ideation. He was discharged after eight days, at the end of 2024.

Teleperformance offered to transfer him to a lower-paid job, but he feared he would not earn enough to survive in Accra. He asked for compensation for harm and longer term psychological care to be covered but instead Teleperformance sent him back to his home town, which is in the midst of an insurgency.

“You’re using me and throwing me. They treated me like a water bottle – you drink water and throw the bottle way,” Solomon said after his dismissal.

He said he had held a professional job in his home country, adding: “Before coming here I was so happy and peaceful.”

Another moderator, Abel*, shared how he, too, had had his contract terminated, for standing up for his friend Solomon and for the rights of other employees.

He said he had told Teleperformance: “You’re not treating him well.”

“They just put him in the house. He stayed alone and he was telling me he’s scared being alone all the time, it was giving him severe stress, so he started to going to the company, ‘I want to stay with you guys, I want to be in office, I’m scared.’”

Abel, too, had struggled with his mental health because of the content. “I didn’t know the nature of the job, actually. I didn’t realise I’d see people skinned alive and porn videos as my daily job … This is the first time I’d heard of content moderators … I used to be spooked when I saw blood, but now I’ve become numb. Gradually I’ve seen it altering my character … I’m struggling. Not to exaggerate, it’s 100% changed me.”

He said his colleagues often sat around drinking coffee and discussing disturbing content, including religious colleagues sharing their feelings of shame.

He has come to fear raising such issues with the wellbeing coach, as he has seen his disclosures later being referred to by his team leader. When he said he no longer wished to use wellbeing services, which he believed were “for research on us”, he was challenged.

A Teleperformance spokesperson said: “Upon learning of his depression as a result of his friend’s death, we conducted a psychological assessment and determined that the employee was no longer well enough to continue providing moderation services.

“Instead, we offered him a different non-moderation role which he declined, insisting that he wanted to continue in this moderation role. Given this was not an option, his position ended and he was provided compensation according to his contractual agreement.

“During his employment and afterward, we continued offering the employee psychological support, which he has repeatedly declined. At the suggestion of his brother, so that family could help provide the employee with support, and with the approval of medical counsel, we provided the employee with his flight back to Ethiopia.

“We have continued to offer the employee psychological support in Ethiopia, however he has declined the support. Instead, he has tried to extort Teleperformance for money under threat of going to the media.”

*Names have been changed to protect identities

The floral perfume of tea and coffee fills the air in ‘t Zonnetje (The Sun), as – behind the counter – Marie-Louise Velder weighs out loose leaf tea, parcelling black leaves into paper packets. Mahogany-coloured shelves are stacked with pots containing beans from Ethiopia, Java, India, alongside bric-a-brac, such as vintage tea tins and old master-style pictures.

But in less than two months, the sun will set for good on this cosy shop in Amsterdam, which was founded in 1642. For the owner, the rent is just too high.

Velder, an energetic 76-year-old, who took over the business 26 years ago from an English family, paid 975 guilders (about €440 or £376) rent a month in 1999. Now she expects a monthly bill of up to €4,500, backdated to last September, after a legal dispute with her landlord. That was reduced from €6,000 by an independent arbiter, but still represents a hefty increase on the €3,000 she pays now.

“It makes me sick, that’s all I can say,” she said over a cup of Ceylon tea. Traditional shops, she said, “are all dying” because of soaring rents.

Since the Amsterdam-based newspaper Het Parool revealed the closure last week, she said she had received a huge response from customers – “love, only love”.

As another independent shop closes, fears are growing that the city will be increasingly dominated by chain stores and shops catering to tourists.

Johannes Wilhelm, a 63-year-old local businessman, who had cycled over for some lapsang souchong, described ‘t Zonnetje’s imminent disappearance as a real pity. “There are a lot of cheese and Nutella-pancakes and all kinds of tourist shops. Tourists are fine [and] good. But this should be here as well,” he said.

Rents have been growing in the “most sought after high street retail locations” across the Netherlands, according to one market analyst.

Although the future of the shop site is uncertain, Karel Loeff, the director of the conservation organisation Heemschut, has observed that higher rents tend to mean bigger companies with more standardised offers move in when sole traders move out.

Founded in 1642, the shop on Haarlemmerdijk began by selling herbs, coal and buckets of water, but as the Dutch empire prospered it offered tea and coffee.

In the modern shop, Velder makes Earl Grey in the chilly basement by steeping Assam leaves in bergamot for three days, a blend that took two and a half years to perfect. She once sold 350 varieties of tea, but her offer is sharply reduced as she runs down her stock.

Loeff said preserving living heritage – one of the aims of Heemschut – was very hard.

“We can preserve the wooden beams and shelves … but we can’t preserve a function. We can’t say this is an original tea shop and you should preserve this for the future.”

Local shops run by private owners for decades “are what make cities unique”, he continued. “If you push them away and you only have standard brands and shops, the attractiveness of the city disappears.”

Amsterdam has been grappling for years with how to preserve its heritage in the face of increasing numbers of homogenous chain stores and tourist-friendly novelty shops selling sweets or rubber ducks in the historic centre. In 2017, the city government announced that retailers catering mainly to tourists, such as bike-rental companies or cheese shops, would be prevented from opening in parts of the city centre.

Iris Hagemans, an urban geographer at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, cautioned about generalising. Amsterdam has places where tourism has created a “monoculture in the shopping landscape”, she said, citing the congested central Damstraat. But just a few hundred metres away “the atmosphere is completely different” and shops confronted with dwindling demand from residents and competition from online shopping are benefiting from tourist footfall. “I think this monoculture is sometimes portrayed as a kind of oil spill that will eventually spread throughout the city, but the effect is much more local.”

Government support for independent businesses, such as intervention to control commercial rents, was a tricky area, she said. “There can be quite a big gap between the type of shops that people claim to want to see in their neighbourhood and … the kind of shop that they actually frequent … I think there’s a risk there of supporting a function for which there is not really a demand.”

Hagemans favours government action to protect basic needs, such as access to healthy food, healthcare and other essential services, but cautions against the state as an arbiter of taste. “The retail landscape should be able to respond to the market and be dynamic. And it’s democratic in the way that you vote with your wallet.”

Down the road from ‘t Zonnetje, near a pizza joint and lemonade shop, a banner has gone up to mark the 750th anniversary of Amsterdam, which falls in October. Velder has heard there are plans afoot to support small business owners in this anniversary year, “but it is too late for me”.

Sabastian Sawe is still a 26-mile novice, but he won a blistering London Marathon with a staggering injection of pace – and a move that would have made any veteran purr.

On a day where Tigst Assefa won the women’s race and the Olympic triathlon champion Alex Yee finished 14th in his debut marathon, Sawe attacked at a drinks station at 30km when there were still more than half a dozen big names around him.

As his rivals – including Eliud Kipchoge, the greatest of all time, and Tamirat Tola, the Olympic champion – slowed down, the 29-year-old Sawe decided to kick on rather than quench his thirst.

That sudden injection of pace caught everybody by surprise. And it was followed by a 13min 56sec five-kilometre surge between 30km and 35km that helped him finish in 2hr 2min and 27sec.

To put it into context, that time is only 12 seconds slower than the world record for the 5km parkrun, set by the Irish international runner Nick Griggs last December.

It proved to be decisive with the half-marathon world-record holder Jacob Kiplimo 70 seconds back in second. Tola was fourth in 2:04:42 and Kipchoge, a four-time winner here, sixth in 2:05:25. The leading British man, Mahamed Mahamed, was ninth in 2:08:52 while Yee was 14th in 2:11:08.

The women’s race broke up quickly and soon there were only three women out in front: Sifan Hassan, the Olympic champion and 2023 winner, Assefa, the second fastest women in history and Paris silver medallist, and Joyciline Jepkosgei, the winner here in 2021 and no slouch herself.

Everyone knew that Hassan had the fastest finish. But Assefa and Jepkosgei were determined not to let it get that far. One surge, just after 10 miles, briefly left the Dutchwomen 20 metres back. Another, before halfway, broke her.

Assefa and Jepkosgei were through 13.1 miles in 66min 40sec, but as the miles ticked by they increasingly began to watch each other rather than the clock. Yet Assefa had plenty left in the tank to ensure that when she made her move after 23 miles it quickly proved decisive. However the time for the second half of the race – 69min 10sec – showed how much the pace had slowed.

The Ethiopian took victory in 2:15:50, which was quick enough to surpass Peres Jepchirchir’s women’s only world record from 2024, which applies to races where women are not paced by men, by 26 seconds.

Jepkosgei was second in 2:18:44, with Hassan third in 2:19.00. However Assefa’s time for the second half of the race – 69 mins 10 secs – showed how much the pace slowed in an increasingly hot day.

Eilish McColgan was the leading British female athlete, finishing eighth in 2:24:25 to beat her mother Liz’s personal best by over two minutes. Rose Harvey was ninth in 2:25:01.

There was an irony as the winners celebrated. Both victors were wearing versions of Adidas’s £450 Pro Evo shoes on a day where Nike’s top executives were in London, amid whispers that they were looking to sponsor the race.

Sabastian Sawe is still a 26-mile novice, but he won a blistering London Marathon with a staggering injection of pace – and a move that would have made any veteran purr.

On a day where Tigst Assefa won the women’s race and the Olympic triathlon champion Alex Yee finished 14th in his debut marathon, Sawe attacked at a drinks station at 30km when there were still more than half a dozen big names around him.

As his rivals – including Eliud Kipchoge, the greatest of all time, and Tamirat Tola, the Olympic champion – slowed down, the 29-year-old Sawe decided to kick on rather than quench his thirst.

That sudden injection of pace caught everybody by surprise. And it was followed by a 13min 56sec five-kilometre surge between 30km and 35km that helped him finish in 2hr 2min and 27sec.

To put it into context, that time is only 12 seconds slower than the world record for the 5km parkrun, set by the Irish international runner Nick Griggs last December.

It proved to be decisive with the half-marathon world-record holder Jacob Kiplimo 70 seconds back in second. Tola was fourth in 2:04:42 and Kipchoge, a four-time winner here, sixth in 2:05:25. The leading British man, Mahamed Mahamed, was ninth in 2:08:52 while Yee was 14th in 2:11:08.

The women’s race broke up quickly and soon there were only three women out in front: Sifan Hassan, the Olympic champion and 2023 winner, Assefa, the second fastest women in history and Paris silver medallist, and Joyciline Jepkosgei, the winner here in 2021 and no slouch herself.

Everyone knew that Hassan had the fastest finish. But Assefa and Jepkosgei were determined not to let it get that far. One surge, just after 10 miles, briefly left the Dutchwomen 20 metres back. Another, before halfway, broke her.

Assefa and Jepkosgei were through 13.1 miles in 66min 40sec, but as the miles ticked by they increasingly began to watch each other rather than the clock. Yet Assefa had plenty left in the tank to ensure that when she made her move after 23 miles it quickly proved decisive. However the time for the second half of the race – 69min 10sec – showed how much the pace had slowed.

The Ethiopian took victory in 2:15:50, which was quick enough to surpass Peres Jepchirchir’s women’s only world record from 2024, which applies to races where women are not paced by men, by 26 seconds.

Jepkosgei was second in 2:18:44, with Hassan third in 2:19.00. However Assefa’s time for the second half of the race – 69 mins 10 secs – showed how much the pace slowed in an increasingly hot day.

Eilish McColgan was the leading British female athlete, finishing eighth in 2:24:25 to beat her mother Liz’s personal best by over two minutes. Rose Harvey was ninth in 2:25:01.

There was an irony as the winners celebrated. Both victors were wearing versions of Adidas’s £450 Pro Evo shoes on a day where Nike’s top executives were in London, amid whispers that they were looking to sponsor the race.

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.

The UK’s equalities watchdog has said trans women and men “should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use” as it issued interim guidance after the supreme court ruling on biological sex.

Trans women “should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities” in workplaces or public-facing services like shops and hospitals, the EHRC said, and the same applies to trans men, who are biologically female, using men’s toilets.

But the watchdog also insisted that trans people should not be left without facilities.

The supreme court has declared that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The ruling has been interpreted to mean that trans women, who are biologically male but identify as women, can be excluded from women-only spaces like toilets and changing rooms.

The guidance has been released because “many people have questions about the judgment and what it means for them”, the EHRC said.

Schools must provide single-sex changing facilities to boys and girls over the age of eight, according to the new guidance.

“Suitable alternative provisions may be required” for trans pupils, the watchdog said, as trans girls “should not be permitted to use the girls’ toilet or changing facilities, and pupils who identify as trans boys (biological girls) should not be permitted to use the boys’ toilet or changing facilities”.

The watchdog also said that sports clubs and other associations of 25 or more people are allowed to be exclusively for biological men or women.

Such clubs “can be limited to people who each have two protected characteristics”, the guidance said. This would mean, for example, that a lesbian women’s sports club should not admit trans women.

The watchdog has said it is working on a more detailed code of practice following the supreme court ruling and aims to provide to the government for ministerial approval by June.

An immense blast in Iran’s southern port of Shahid Rajaee has killed at least 18 people and injured more than 700, 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 spokesperson 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

Virginia Giuffre has been hailed as an unflinching campaigner for survivors of sexual abuse, who took on the wealthy and the powerful during the course of her life.

“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors,” her family said in a statement confirming her death.

Her relentless pursuit of justice for what she claimed were the crimes committed against her by the billionaire financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein made her a public figure in her own right.

The allegations she made against Prince Andrew set in train a legal battle that culminated in an out-of-court settlement in which the royal admitted no wrongdoing.

Andrew maintains his innocence, but the reputational damage brought on by the case – and the disastrous PR campaign he waged to cast doubt over Giuffre’s story – saw him step back from frontline duties with his image in tatters.

In 2000, when she was 17-years-old, Giuffre met the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell while working as a locker-room assistant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Maxwell then offered her a job as massage therapist to Epstein.

Giuffre alleged that after taking the role she was trafficked to the financier’s friends and clients and “passed around like a platter of fruit”. Among them, she claimed, was Prince Andrew.

It was in March 2011 that Giuffre went on the record about the alleged horrors she faced, and claimed that she had met Andrew on three occasions in 2001.

In the Mail on Sunday, she recounted her first alleged meeting with Andrew during a six-week trip to Europe and North Africa when she was still 17. Giuffre said she flew to London with Epstein, who then took her to Maxwell’s house.

She said that she, Epstein and Maxwell all stayed in the house overnight, and when Maxwell woke her up in the morning, she told Giuffre: “We’ve got to go shopping. You need a dress as you’re going to dance with a prince tonight.”

She alleged Andrew arrived at Maxwell’s home before they went out for dinner and visited Tramp nightclub where, Giuffre claimed, she danced with Andrew.

Later that evening, Giuffre said they all returned to Maxwell’s home where a now infamous photograph of Giuffre, Andrew and Maxwell was taken.

She recounted two further meetings with Andrew: one in New York, and one on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, by which time she was 18. At this point, claims of sexual contact with Andrew were not made public.

In 2014, Giuffre made a court filing in Florida claiming that she was made to have sex with Andrew. A year later, a judge decided that her allegations about the prince were “immaterial and impertinent” to a defamation claim against Maxwell and ordered them struck out.

In 2019, after Epstein’s arrest and death in jail, Giuffre gave her first television interview to NBC News, where she claimed she was “trafficked to that prince”.

Later that year, after mounting public outcry, Andrew granted the BBC’s Newsnight programme an extraordinary interview that was widely seen as an embarrassment for the duke.

Speaking to Emily Maitlis, Andrew said it was not possible for him to have been at Maxwell’s property in London on the night in question in 2001. Instead, he said he was at home after attending a children’s party at Pizza Express in Woking.

He denied claims during the interview that he slept with Giuffre three times, saying: “I can absolutely, categorically tell you it never happened. I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.”

The disastrous reception to the interview prompted Andrew to “step back from public duties for the foreseeable future”.

In 2021, Giuffre sued Andrew in a New York court, accusing him of sexually abusing her at Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan and at other locations in 2001 when she was under the age of 18. The duke settled the case for an undisclosed sum in 2022.

A month before he settled the case, Andrew was stripped of his military roles and use of the title His Royal Highness. The eventual settlement did not include an admission of wrongdoing from the duke, and he has continued to deny the allegations against him.

Time has done little to repair Andrew’s public image. Last week, a rare public appearance at the royal family’s Easter Sunday service with King Charles sparked a fresh round of negative headlines.

Giuffre’s death has not only drawn tributes, but also expressions of sorrow over the circumstances. Last month, she announced on social media that she had days to live after being involved in a bus crash. The story was later clarified by Giuffre and those around her.

On Saturday, her family said she taken her own life at her farm in Western Australia.

Charlotte Proudman, a barrister and women’s rights campaigner, said on X: “Virginia Giuffre survived sex trafficking, fought for justice for over a decade, and gave voice to the silenced.

“She donated part of her $12m settlement to other victims. She has now taken her own life. The fight cost her everything. Never forget what this system does to women.”

Donald Trump’s private golf resort in South Florida will next week host one of the world’s leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.

Andreas Kalcker is among 50 listed speakers at the “Truth Seekers Conference”, a two-day event opening on Thursday at the US president’s resort, Trump National Doral Miami. The event features several anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists who have been brought together by the far-right commentator Charlie Ward.

Kalcker, a German national thought to be living in Switzerland, markets the bleach under the brand name “CDS”, for chlorine dioxide solution. His online brochures claim that the toxic chemical, which he admits is a disinfectant, can “eliminate pathogens” that cause disease.

He boasts it is “possibly the greatest medical discovery of the last 100 years”.

Government health authorities in the US and Spain have denounced the remedy as fraudulent, saying it is no different from drinking bleach. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that it can cause serious and even life-threatening side-effects, including dehydration, diarrhoea and kidney injury.

Kalcker’s appearance at Thursday’s conference is the latest indication that potentially dangerous alternative health approaches are being emboldened and are proliferating during Trump’s second term in the White House. The US president’s choice of the prominent vaccine skeptic, Robert Kennedy Jr, to head the Department of Health and Human Services has spread alarm through medical circles.

Kennedy, who until 2023 led the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, has talked about treating the current measles outbreak in Texas with cod liver oil. He also praised without any evidence two doctors in Texas whom he claimed had “healed” 300 children with measles using the inhaled steroid budesonide.

At his confirmation hearings for the health secretary job, Kennedy directly mentioned chlorine dioxide. He praised Trump’s handling of pandemic, saying the president had not only speeded up the search for a Covid vaccine but had looked at “all of the different remedies including … even chlorine dioxide”.

Kennedy’s remark helped solve one of the enduring mysteries of Trump’s first term. In April 2020, early in the pandemic, he astonished medical scientists around the world by advocating the use of “disinfectant” as a treatment for Covid.

At a White House press conference, Trump said: “I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

Kennedy’s confirmation comments clarified that Trump was indeed referring to chlorine dioxide, a toxin that been falsely claimed as a “miracle cure” for autism, cancer, malaria and HIV/Aids.

Since Trump re-entered the White House in January his new administration has overseen an unprecedented censorship of government information relating to science. Several federal public health websites and databases have gone dark.

The FDA website page that describes chlorine dioxide as a “powerful bleach typically used for industrial water treatment”, and warning that it can be life threatening, has been taken down and replaced with a “page not found” notice.

However, a press release from 2019 publicizing an FDA announcement on the dangers of chlorine dioxide can still be found on the FDA website.

It states: “The US Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to purchase or drink a product sold online as a medical treatment due to a recent rise in reported health issues. Chlorine dioxide products, when mixed, develop into a dangerous bleach which has caused serious and potentially life-threatening side effects.”

The main distributor of “miracle cure” bleach in the US, Mark Grenon, was sentenced to five years in prison for selling an “unapproved and misbranded drug” in October 2023. His sons Jonathan and Jordan Grenon were sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison.

Kalcker is one of the most prominent peddlers of the bleach remedy. He has had success selling chlorine dioxide through many Latin American countries, including Bolivia and Mexico.

He wraps his product in pseudo-scientific language, calling himself Dr Kalcker and claiming he is a specialist in “electromolecular medicine”. He has set up what he calls a training institute, and claims without evidence that his products can lead to “recovery” from autism, dramatic improvement in Parkinson’s disease, and healing from “vaccine damage”.

“Kalcker presents himself as a doctor, is very clever, and has created a product that sounds and looks plausible. But at the same time he is promoting the lunatic idea that autism is caused by parasites,” said Fiona O’Leary, a campaigner against pseudoscience who has autistic children.

In 2021, Kalcker was investigated by Argentinian authorities and charged with falsely promoting bleach as a medical cure following the death of a five-year-old boy who had been given chlorine dioxide by his parents.

In addition to promoting his remedy on stage at Trump’s Doral resort, Kalcker will be selling books about his bleach product at a vendor stall.

The Guardian asked Trump’s resort whether it was appropriate to allow its space to be used to promote a potentially dangerous bleach remedy, but received no immediate reply.

The organiser of the Doral conference, Charlie Ward, is an associate of the president’s son, Eric Trump. He has promoted a number of conspiracy theories including QAnon.

In a speech in 2022 recorded by the monitoring group Media Matters he downplayed the Holocaust, saying that fewer people had died as a result of it than through vaccines. “More people have been killed by the jab than were killed in the Holocaust,” he said.