Israel has strongly rejected criticism from world leaders after its security cabinet approved a plan to take control of Gaza City.

Defence minister Israel Katz said countries that condemn Israel and threaten sanctions “will not weaken our resolve”.

“Our enemies will find us as one strong, united fist that will strike them with great force,” he added.

Israel’s decision to expand its war in Gaza sparked condemnation from the UN and several countries, including the UK, France and Canada, and prompted Germany to halt military exports to Israel.

The plan approved by the Israeli security cabinet lists five “principles” for ending the war – disarming Hamas, returning all hostages, demilitarising the Gaza Strip, taking security control of the territory, and establishing “an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority”.

Reports in Israeli media say the plan initially focuses on taking full control of Gaza City, relocating its estimated one million residents further south. Forces would also take control of refugee camps in central Gaza and areas where hostages are thought to be held.

A second offensive would follow weeks later in parallel with a boost in humanitarian aid, media say.

The move to escalate the conflict has drawn fierce opposition from some within Israel, including from military officials and the families of hostages being held in Gaza.

Hamas has said the plan to occupy Gaza City “constitutes a new war crime” and would “cost [Israel] dearly”.

Reacting to Israel’s decision, UN human rights chief Volker Turk warned that further escalation “will result in more massive forced displacement, more killing, more unbearable suffering, senseless destruction and atrocity crimes”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called the move “wrong”, saying it “will only bring more bloodshed”.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong urged Israel “not to go down this path”, stressing that it would “only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.

Turkey’s foreign ministry urged the world community to prevent Israel’s plan, which it said aimed to “forcibly displace Palestinians from their own land”.

In China, a foreign ministry spokesperson told the AFP news agency that “Gaza belongs to the Palestinian people and is an inseparable part of Palestinian territory”.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu told German Chancellor Friedrich Merz he was disappointed with Berlin’s decision to suspend arms exports to Israel, saying it was “rewarding Hamas terrorism”.

In Israel itself, families of the remaining hostages in Gaza have warned that the lives of the 20 believed to have survived will be put in peril.

The Hostages Families Forum Headquarters said the decision “is leading us toward a colossal catastrophe for both the hostages and our soldiers”.

However, the US has been less critical. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said it was “pretty much up to Israel” whether to fully occupy the Gaza Strip.

The IDF currently controls about three-quarters of Gaza, and almost all of its 2.1 million citizens are situated in the quarter of the territory that the military does not control.

The UN estimates some 87% of Gaza is either in militarised zones or under evacuation orders.

There are areas in central Gaza and along the Mediterranean coast that Israel does not occupy, according to the UN.

These include refugee camps, where much of Gaza’s population is now living after their homes were destroyed by Israel’s military action.

The vast majority of Gaza’s population has already been displaced by the war, many people several times over.

The war has created a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, most of which UN-backed experts say is at the point of famine.

The territory is also experiencing mass deprivation as a result of heavy restrictions imposed by Israel on what is allowed in – something it says is aimed at weakening Hamas.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said July was the worst month for cases of acute malnutrition in children in Gaza, affecting nearly 12,000 under the age of five.

The war began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages. Israel launched a massive military offensive in response, which has killed at least 61,158 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

News of the Israeli government’s decision to take over Gaza City is being met not surprisingly with despair in Gaza. Gaza City, its capital, is on a countdown to oblivion.

Assuming that Hamas does not capitulate in the coming weeks – and there are currently few signs of this happening – then the Israeli military is set to embark on a devastating new phase of the war.

For Gaza City, where an estimated one million civilians still live, the prospects are bleak.

Hundreds of thousands are people who were forced to flee during the early months of the war but who returned in January when a ceasefire raised hopes of an end to the fighting.

They spent more than a year away from their homes, driven from one location to another, living in increasingly desperate conditions.

When they returned to the north, many found their homes destroyed and their neighbourhoods erased. But they settled down where they could, believing the war might finally be over.

But life in the city, hard enough already, deteriorated rapidly after Israel broke the ceasefire in mid-March and cut off aid supplies, triggering the worst humanitarian crisis of the conflict.

Now it seems a new cycle is about to unfold.

The Israeli government is once again going to attempt to force Gaza City’s entire population to move south, a process which reports suggest could be completed in two months.

Expect to see curfews, evacuation orders and convoys of exhausted civilians on the road once more.

Last time, evacuees were able to seek shelter in cities like Khan Younis and Rafah. But those cities have been almost entirely obliterated, raising serious questions about where fleeing civilians will live.

Israel says more aid will be available, but has given few details.

Meanwhile, the story of Gaza City may soon echo that of Rafah.

In May 2024, Israel cut off the southern city and ordered its civilian population – around one million people – to leave. Most fled northwest to the coastal area known as al-Mawasi.

The US president at the time, Joe Biden, said an invasion of Rafah would represent a “red line” for his administration.

But with the civilian population mostly gone, the Israeli military proceeded to destroy Rafah, arguing that the presence of Hamas fighters and infrastructure made it necessary to cleanse the city.

A year on, a once-bustling city barely exists.

Unless there’s a diplomatic breakthrough before early October, what remains of Gaza City may go the same way.

That will leave the fate of the Gaza Strip’s “middle camps” – Nuseirat, Bureij and Deir-el-Balah – hanging in the balance.

Israeli officials say there is no current plan to invade and occupy the camps, which, though they have been attacked multiple times, have yet to experience the worst of the war.

But if Hamas remains a presence there, especially if it still holds hostages, then there’s no reason to think the same story won’t unfold there too.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, believes he can, and must, achieve all this in pursuit of total victory over Hamas.

A civilian population of two million people can still be forced to move out of the way, ordered this way and that and more or less kept alive through the chaotic – and in the case of distribution points frequently lethal – provision of minimal amounts of aid, while the places they call home are systematically destroyed.

A majority of Israelis oppose it for what it means for the fate of the remaining 50 hostages, around 20 of whom are thought to be alive.

Much of the world is looking on in horror. Israel’s diplomatic isolation looks set to deepen.

Netanyahu’s conquest of Gaza could even test the patience of his loyal ally in the White House.

But after defeating Hezbollah in Lebanon, helping to bring about the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and delivering a devastating set of blows against its arch enemy Iran, Israel has confirmed its status as a regional superpower, capable of taking on and defeating multiple enemies.

After the brutal humiliation inflicted by Hamas in October 2023, Netanyahu now seems emboldened and ready to take risks.

Who, he may be wondering, is going to stop him?

France’s multi-billion euro mineral water companies are under the spotlight because of climate change and growing concerns about the industry’s environmental impact.

At issue is whether some world-famous brands, notably the iconic Perrier label, can even continue calling themselves “natural mineral water”.

A decision in the Perrier case is due in the coming months. It follows revelations in the French media about illicit filtration systems that have been widely used in the industry, apparently because of worries about water contamination, after years of drought linked to climate change.

“This really is our Water-gate,” says Stéphane Mandard, who has led investigations at Le Monde newspaper. “It’s a combination of industrial fraud and state collusion.”

“And now there is a real Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Perrier.”

According to hydrologist Emma Haziza, “the commercial model of the big producers has worked very well. But it is absolutely not sustainable at a time of global climate change”.

“When you have big brands that feel they have no choice but to treat their water – that means they know there is a problem with the quality.”

The story hit the headlines a year ago in France after an investigation by Le Monde and Radio France revealed that at least a third of mineral water sold in France had been illegally treated, either with ultra-violet light, carbon filters or ultra-fine micro-meshes commonly used to screen out bacteria.

The issue was not one of public health. The treated water was by definition safe to drink.

The problem was that under EU law, “natural mineral water” – which sells at a huge premium over tap water – is supposed to be unaltered between the underground source and the bottle. That is the whole point of it.

If brands like Evian, Vichy and Perrier have been so successful in France and around the world, it is thanks to an appealing image of mountain-sides, rushing streams, purity and health-giving minerals.

Admit filtering the water, and the industry risks breaking the market spell. Consumers might begin to ask what they’d been paying for.

Complicating matters for Perrier and its parent company Nestlé – as well as President Emmanuel Macron’s government – is the charge that executives and ministers conspired to keep the affair quiet, covered up reports of contamination, and re-wrote the rules so that Perrier could continue using micro-filtration.

In their investigations, Le Monde and Radio France alleged that the government considered the mineral water industry so strategic that it agreed to suppress damaging information. A senate inquiry into the affair accused the government of a “deliberate strategy” of “dissimulation”.

Responding to the allegations, the government has asked the European Commission to rule on what level of micro-filtration is permissible for “natural mineral water”. Aurelien Rousseau, who was head of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne’s cabinet at the time, admitted there had been an “error of appreciation” but insisted there was never any risk to public health.

Earlier this year, at the senate hearing into the industry, Nestlé’s CEO Laurent Freixe admitted that Perrier had indeed used illicit methods to treat its water.

But he also had another admission: that an official hydrologists’ report into the company’s historic site in the Gard department in southern France had recommended against renewing “natural mineral water” status for the company’s output.

It raises the possibility that for the first time in its 160-year history, Perrier water may soon not be labelled as what people assume it to be.

According to the hydrologist Emma Haziza, “the link to climate change and global warming is absolutely established”. And if Perrier is feeling the impact ahead of other companies, it is probably because its geographical location sets it apart.

Far from the remote mountain landscape you might imagine, Perrier’s water is pumped from deep aquifers in the coastal plain between Nîmes and Montpellier, a short drive from the Mediterranean. The area is populous, heavily-farmed, and very hot.

“There has been a big climatic shift since 2017,” says Haziza. “For five years there was a succession of droughts, which were particularly badly felt in the south.”

“All the aquifers were affected. This means not just the upper water-table, which is where everyday tap water comes from. We can now see that the deeper aquifers – which the companies thought were protected – are also being hit.

“The unforeseen is taking place. We are moving from a period in which companies could draw water from the deep aquifers and be sure they would be replenished, to a period in which it’s obvious the whole system cannot go on.”

The analysis made by Haziza and other hydrologists is that there is now a clear link between deeper and surface aquifers. Contaminants (farm chemicals or human waste) that drain off the land in the increasingly frequent flash floods, can now make their way into the lower aquifers.

At the same time, the effects of long-term drought and over-pumping mean these lower aquifers contain less volume, so any contamination will be more concentrated, the experts say.

“We can foresee that what has happened first at Perrier’s site will happen to other producers in the years to come. That’s why we need to move away from our current model of consumption,” says Haziza.

Last year at the Perrier site, three million bottles had to be destroyed because of a contamination. But the company insists that any problems are swiftly detected; and it disputes the claim that contaminants are entering the deep aquifers.

“We are pumping water from 130 metres underground, beneath layers of limestone,” says Perrier hydrologist Jérémie Pralong. “We are 100% convinced of the purity of the water. And its mineral make-up is constant.”

Perrier says there is no EU ruling that specifically bans micro-filtration. The relevant text simply says that nothing must be done to disinfect or alter the mineral make-up of the water. The argument is over at what measure of micro-filtration alteration begins.

The original Perrier source was first tapped by a local doctor in the 1860s, but it was under British management that the brand took off 50 years later.

St John Harmsworth – brother of newspaper magnates Lords Northcliffe and Rothermere – made Perrier a byword for mineral water across the British empire.

According to company lore, Harmsworth took inspiration for the bottles’ bulbous shape from the Indian clubs he used for exercise following a crippling car accident.

Today the bottling plant at Vergèze is still next to Harmsworth’s residence and the original source. The plant has been heavily automated. A rail track connects with the SNCF network to bring hundreds of millions of cans and bottles every year to Marseille for export.

The focus for the last year has been on a new brand: Maison Perrier. These energy and flavoured drinks are proving highly successful in France and around the world.

The advantage for Perrier is that the new beverages do not claim to be “natural mineral water”. They can be treated and filtered without difficulty.

Perrier says the new brand is part of the mix, and that it has no intention of abandoning its original Source Perrier natural mineral water. It has stopped the ultra-fine (0.2 micron) microfiltration, and now uses a 0.45 micron system which has been agreed with government.

It has applied for “natural mineral water” status for just two out of the five drilling wells it was using for Perrier mineral water. A decision is due later this year.

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Scientists have found strong evidence of a giant gas planet in the nearest star system to our own.

At four-and-a-half light years away, the lifeless planet would be a close neighbour to Earth in astronomical terms and could have moons that sustain life.

The signs were found in the star system Alpha Centauri by the powerful James Webb Space Telescope.

The potential planet was detected last year, but it had disappeared in follow-up observations. Astronomers must now look again to prove it definitely exists.

Scientists are particularly excited about this discovery because of the similarities between the exoplanet’s star and our Sun.

“Four years is a long way but in galaxy terms, it’s very close – it’s in our neighbourhood,” said Dr Carly Howett, associate professor of space instrumentation at the University of Oxford.

“It is around a star that is Sun-like and about the same temperature and brightness. That’s really important if we want to think about habitable worlds,” she added.

The planet would be similar to our solar system’s gas giants, Saturn and Jupiter, and would be enveloped in a thick gas cloud.

That means it could not support life itself, but it could have moons that are habitable.

Jupiter and some other planets in our solar system have icy moons, which researchers believe could support life.

Scientists are currently investigating that possibility on missions called Europa Clipper and Juice.

But those planets are far away from our life-giving Sun. The potential “new” planet is comparatively close to its star.

The signs were found in direct imaging by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is the closest thing scientists have to taking photographs of distant objects.

“These are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world’s most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly,” said Charles Beichman from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-first author of the new discoveries.

Those stars create huge amounts of bright light that can block out nearby objects.

That could be why the planet was detected once, in August 2024, but then seemingly disappeared when scientists looked for it again.

“Probably the planet was either behind the star or too close to be able to see it. You need an element of luck,” said Dr Howett.

Astronomers will now look for more signs of the planet. They hope to use a new Nasa telescope – the Grace Roman Space Telescope – which is due to start operating in 2027.

Future observations by the James Webb Space Telescope should also be able to tell us what the planet is made up of, using something called spectral imaging.

That will build up a more detailed picture of what it looks like, and how habitable any orbiting Moons could be.

Astronaut Jim Lovell, who guided the Apollo 13 mission safely back to Earth in 1970, has died aged 97.

Nasa said he “turned a potential tragedy into a success” after an attempt to land on the Moon was aborted due to an explosion onboard the spacecraft while it was hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth.

Tens of millions watched on television as Lovell and two other astronauts splashed back down into the Pacific Ocean, a moment which has become one of the most iconic in the history of space travel.

Lovell, who was also part of the Apollo 8 mission, was the first man to go to the Moon twice.

Acting Nasa head Sean Duffy said he had helped the US space programme to “forge a historic path”.

In a statement, Lovell’s family said: “We will miss his unshakeable optimism, his sense of humor, and the way he made each of us feel we could do the impossible. He was truly one of a kind.”

One Saturday, a 16-year-old hauled a heavy, three-foot tube into the middle of a large field in Wisconsin.

He had persuaded his science teacher to help him make a makeshift rocket. Somehow, he managed to get his hands on the ingredients for gunpowder – potassium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal.

He pulled on a welder’s helmet for protection. He packed it with powder, struck a match and ran like hell.

The rocket rose 80 feet into the air and exploded. Had the chemicals been packed slightly differently, he would have been blown to pieces.

For Jim Lovell, this was more than a childish lark.

In achieving his dream to be a rocket scientist, he would become an American hero. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

James Arthur Lovell Jr was born on 25 March 1928 – just a year after Charles Lindbergh made his historic trip across the Atlantic.

“Boys like either dinosaurs or airplanes,” he said. “I was very much an airplane boy.”

But when he was five years old, his father died in a car accident.

His mother, Blanche, worked all hours – struggling to keep the family in clothes and food. University was well beyond their financial reach.

The answer was the US Navy, which was hungry for new pilots after World War II. It wasn’t building rockets but at least it involved flying.

Lovell signed up to a programme that sent him to college at the military’s expense while training as a fighter pilot.

Two years in, he gambled and switched to the Navy Academy at Annapolis, on Chesapeake Bay, in the hope of working with his beloved rockets.

It was a lucky decision.

A few months later, the Korean War broke out and his former fellow apprentice pilots were sent to South East Asia. Many never got to finish their education.

Marriage was banned at Annapolis and girlfriends discouraged. The navy did not want its midshipmen wasting their time on such frivolities.

But Lovell had a sweetheart. Marilyn Gerlach was the high school girl he’d shyly asked to the prom.

Women were not allowed on campus and trips outside were limited to 45 minutes. Somehow the relationship survived.

Just hours after his graduation in 1952, the newly commissioned Ensign Lovell married her.

They would be together for more than 70 years, until Marilyn’s death in 2023.

He did everything he could to advertise his love of rocketry.

His thesis at the Navy Academy was in the unheard of topic of liquid-fuel engines. After graduation, he hoped to specialise in this pioneering new technology.

But the navy had other ideas.

Lovell was assigned to an aircraft carrier group flying Banshee jets off ships at night. It was a white-knuckle, high-wire business fit only for daredevils. But for Lovell, it wasn’t enough.

In 1958, he applied to Nasa.

Project Mercury was America’s attempt to place a man in orbit around the Earth. Jim Lovell was one of the 110 test pilots considered for selection but a temporary liver condition put paid to his chances.

Four years later, he tried again.

In June 1962, after gruelling medical tests, Nasa announced its “New Nine”. These would be the men to deliver on President Kennedy’s pledge to put American boots on the Moon.

It was the most elite group of flying men ever assembled. They included Neil Armstrong, John Young and, fulfilling his childhood dream, Jim Lovell.

Three years later he was ready.

His first trip into space was aboard the two-man Gemini 7. Lovell and fellow astronaut Frank Borman ate a steak-and-eggs breakfast and blasted off.

Their mission: to find out if men could survive two weeks in space. If not, the Moon was out of reach.

The endurance record complete, Lovell’s next flight was in command of Gemini 12 alongside space rookie, Buzz Aldrin.

This time they proved that man could work outside a spacecraft. Aldrin clambered awkwardly into the void, spending five hours photographing star fields.

Now for the Moon itself.

The crew of Apollo 8 would be the first to travel beyond low Earth orbit and enter the gravitational pull of another celestial body.

It was Nasa’s most dangerous mission yet.

The Saturn V rocket that shot Lovell, Borman and William Anders out of our atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour was huge – three times larger than anything seen on the Gemini programme.

As navigator, Lovell took with him a sextant to take star readings – in case the computers failed and they had to find their own way home.

Sixty-eight hours after take-off, they made it.

The engines fired and Apollo 8 slid silently behind the Moon. The men heard a cackle in their headsets as the radio signal to Mission Control faltered and then failed.

The spellbound astronauts pinned themselves to the windows, the first humans to see the far side of our nearest celestial neighbour. And then, from over the advancing horizon, an incredible sight.

“Earthrise,” gasped Borman.

“Get the camera, quick,” said Lovell.

It was Christmas Eve 1968.

America was mired in Vietnam abroad and civil unrest at home. But at that moment, it seemed that humanity was united.

The people of the world saw their planet as the astronauts saw it – fragile and beautiful – shining in the desolation of space.

Lovell read from the Book of Genesis, the basis of many of the world’s great religions, to the people of the Earth.

“And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

For him, it was an image that changed our world forever. He put his thumb against the window and the whole world disappeared behind it. It was the most moving experience of his life.

As the spacecraft re-emerged from the darkness, Lovell was first to announce the good news. “Please be advised,” he said as the radio crackled back into life, “there is a Santa Claus.”

At that very moment, 239,000 miles away, a man in a blue Rolls-Royce pulled up outside Lovell’s house in Houston.

He walked past the dozens of reporters camped outside and handed a box to Marilyn.

She opened the star-patterned tissue paper and pulled out a mink jacket. “Happy Christmas,” said the card that came with it, “and love from the Man in the Moon.”

They went up as astronauts and came down celebrities. The people of the Earth had followed their every move on TV.

There were ticker tape parades, congressional honours and a place on the cover of Time Magazine. And they hadn’t even set foot on the Moon.

That honour went, of course, to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

A year later, Kennedy’s dream was posthumously seen to fruition. A small step was taken and mankind took its giant leap. The New Nine had done their job.

In April 1970, it was Jim Lovell’s turn. Fortunately, the crew of Apollo 13 did not believe in unlucky numbers.

Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise were men of science – highly trained and determined to follow Armstrong and Aldrin to the lunar surface. But things went badly wrong.

They were 200,000 miles above the Earth and closing in on their target when they spotted low pressure in a hydrogen tank. It needed a stir to stop the super cold gas settling into layers.

Swigert flicked the switch. It should have been a routine procedure but the command module, Odyssey, shuddered. Oxygen pressure fell and power shut down.

“I believe we’ve had a problem here,” said Swigert. Lovell had to repeat the message to a stunned Mission Control: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

It was one of the greatest understatements of all time. The crew were in big trouble – a dramatic explosion had disabled their craft.

Haise and Lovell worked frantically to boot up the lunar module, Aquarius.

It was not supposed to be used until they got to the Moon. It had no heat shield, so could not be used to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. But it could keep them alive until they got there.

The world stopped breathing and watched.

For a second time, Jim Lovell had brought the world together as one. The first time it had been for Earthrise, the second would be to witness his fight to survive.

“For four days,” said Marilyn, “I didn’t know if I was a wife or a widow.”

Temperatures fell to freezing, food and water were rationed. It was days before they limped back to the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere. They climbed back aboard the Odyssey and prayed the heat shield had not been damaged.

The radio silence that accompanies re-entry went on far longer than normal. Millions watched on TV, many convinced that all was lost.

After six agonising minutes, Jack Swigert’s voice cut through the silence.

The team on the ground held its breath until the parachutes deployed and the crew was safely down.

The mission was Nasa’s greatest failure and, without question, its finest hour.

Lovell retired from the navy in 1973 and opted for a the quiet life, working for the Bay-Houston Towing Company, giving speeches and serving as president of the National Eagle Scout Association.

His book, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, became the famous 1995 movie, starring Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell.

For the film, the director asked him to dress up as an admiral. It was for a cameo scene, shaking hands with Hanks when the crew were rescued from the sea.

But the old American hero wasn’t having it.

Jim Lovell had been to the Moon twice, witnessed Earthrise and narrowly avoided a cold death in space – and saw no reason to falsely burnish his résumé.

He took out his old navy uniform, dusted it down and put it on for the cameo appearance.

“I retired as a captain,” he insisted, “and a captain I will be.”

Convicted triple-murderer Erin Patterson allegedly tried to repeatedly poison her husband, including with cookies she claimed their daughter had baked him, a court was told.

The Australian woman was last month found guilty of murdering three relatives – and attempting to kill another – with a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington.

The 50-year-old was originally charged with three counts of attempted murder against her estranged husband Simon Patterson, but these charges were dropped without explanation on the eve of her trial.

The details of the allegations, which Patterson denied, were suppressed to protect the proceedings, but can now be made public for the first time.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the lunch on 29 July 2023: Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

Local pastor Ian Wilkinson – Heather’s husband – recovered after weeks of treatment in hospital.

In lengthy pre-trial hearings last year, Mr Patterson had detailed what he suspected was a years-long campaign to kill him with tainted food – including one episode which had left him so ill he spent weeks in a coma and his family was twice told to say their goodbyes.

In a quiet moment during the early days of Patterson’s trial, her estranged husband choked up as he explained his sorrow to a near empty courtroom.

Mr Patterson’s parents and his aunt had been killed, and his uncle almost died too, after eating the toxic meal prepared by his wife. He had narrowly avoided the same fate, pulling out of the lunch gathering the day before.

“I have a lot to grieve,” he said to the judge, sitting in the witness box as the jury prepared to return from a break.

“The legal process has been very difficult… especially the way it’s progressed in terms of the charges relating to me and my evidence about that – or non-evidence now, I guess.”

“I’m sitting here, half thinking about the things I’m not allowed to talk about and… I don’t actually understand why. It seems bizarre to me, but it is what it is.”

What he wasn’t allowed to talk about – the elephant in the room throughout the trial – was his claim that Patterson had been trying to poison him long before the fatal lunch that destroyed his family on 29 July 2023.

Mr Patterson gave evidence during pre-trial hearings, which are a standard part of the court process and allow judges to determine what evidence is admissible – or allowed to be presented to a jury.

As the charges relating to Mr Patterson were dropped, his evidence on the matter was excluded from the raft of information presented at the nine-week trial this year.

But he had explained that, as far as he knows, it all began with a Tupperware container of Bolognese penne in November 2021.

Mr Patterson and his wife had separated in 2015 – though they still aren’t divorced – and he thought they remained on amicable terms.

Under questioning from Patterson’s lawyer, Mr Patterson confirmed he had noticed “nothing untoward” in their relationship at that point: “If by ‘nothing untoward’, you mean anything that would make me think she would try and kill me, correct.”

But after eating that meal, he began suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea, and spent a night in hospital.

“I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food. I did not give it too much thought,” he said in his police statement, according to The Age newspaper.

Months later, in May 2022, he fell ill again after eating a chicken korma curry prepared by Patterson on a camping trip in the rugged mountains and alpine scruff of Victoria’s High Country region.

“While Erin was preparing food I was getting the fire going so I didn’t watch her prepare it,” he told the court.

Within days, he was in a coma in a Melbourne hospital, and a large part of his bowel was surgically removed in a bid to save his life.

“My family were asked to come and say goodbye to me twice, as I was not expected to live,” he said in a 2022 Facebook post, reported by The South Gippsland Sentinel Times two years ago.

In September 2022, while visiting a stunning, isolated stretch of Victorian coastline, he would become desperately unwell again after eating a vegetable wrap.

At first, he felt nausea and diarrhoea coming on, the court heard, before his symptoms escalated. He started slurring his speech, gradually lost control of his muscles, and began “fitting”.

“By the end of the journey [to hospital], all I could move was my neck, my tongue and lips,” he told the court.

A family friend who was a doctor, Christopher Ford, suggested Mr Patterson start a food diary so they could try to figure out what was making him so sick.

“I couldn’t understand why these things kept on happening to him in such a way that he had essentially three near-death experiences,” Dr Ford told the court.

Mr Patterson returned to see him in February 2023, five months before the fatal lunch, revealing he’d come to believe his estranged wife was responsible.

He told Dr Ford about a batch of cookies supposedly baked by his daughter, which he feared were treats tainted – possibly with antifreeze chemicals – by his wife, who had called repeatedly to check whether he had eaten any.

The court would hear investigators never figured out what Patterson had allegedly been feeding him, though they suspected rat poison may have been used on at least one occasion, and had found a file on Patterson’s computer with information about the toxin.

After this discovery, Mr Patterson changed his medical power of attorney, removing his wife, and quietly told a handful of family members of his fears.

The court heard that his father Don Patterson responded diplomatically, but his sister Anna Terrington told the pre-trial hearings she had believed her brother, and was anxious when she learned about the lunch Patterson had planned.

Ms Terrington called her parents the night before to warn them.

“Dad said, ‘No, we’ll be ok’,” she said.

Five days later, she gathered in a Melbourne hospital chapel alongside her brother and other worried relatives. Down the hall, deteriorating in their beds, were Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

Ruth Dubois, the Wilkinsons’ daughter, told the pre-trial hearings Simon Patterson had assembled the group to tell them he suspected his previous grave illnesses were the work of his wife.

“[He said] he had stopped eating food that Erin had prepared, because he suspected Erin had been messing with it,” she said.

“He was really sorry that he hadn’t told our family before this… but he thought he was the only person she was targeting, and that they’d be safe.”

It was also revealed that Patterson had visited a local tip the afternoon of the lunch at her house, though it is unknown what, if anything, she disposed of there.

The jury heard that she had travelled to the same dump days after the lunch to get rid of a food dehydrator used to prepare the meal, but the judge ruled they couldn’t be told about the first visit.

Other bizarre evidence which was ultimately left out of the trial included a 2020 post to a poisons help forum on Facebook, in which Patterson claimed her cat had eaten some mushrooms under a tree and had vomited, alongside pictures of fungi.

Patterson had never owned a cat, prosecutors said, arguing the post was evidence of a long-standing interest in the poisonous properties of mushrooms.

On Friday, Justice Christopher Beale set down a sentencing hearing for 25 August, where those connected to the case will have the opportunity to give victim impact statements.

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Eleven domestic workers have been arrested in Hong Kong on suspicion of “child destruction” and illegal abortions, police have said.

The women, in their 30s and 40s, were rounded up after one was found at her employer’s home with a dead foetus, later confirmed to be at least 28 weeks old.

Police also found drugs they suspected were abortion pills – which eventually led them to the 10 other women.

Five have since been charged, while five are on bail and one has been remanded in custody for further investigation. If found guilty of the most serious charge, child destruction, they could face a life sentence.

The investigation began in June after paramedics were called to help a 39-year-old domestic worker, who had collapsed at her employer’s home.

Paramedics then found the foetus hidden in a laundry basket in her room, police said, which had not been born alive.

When questioned, the woman admitted buying the pills from a friend – another foreign domestic worker.

She was arrested in July, with police eventually carrying out a series of raids between 29 July and 8 August, during which another eight domestic workers were detained.

Inspector Lam Ho-yin, of the Yuen Long district crime squad, said it did not appear to be a crime syndicate. Instead, preliminary findings showed “the 32-year-old foreign domestic helper… brought them back from another country” and had been allegedly selling them on.

It is not clear what each woman – whose nationalities police would not reveal – has been accused of.

Abortion is legal in Hong Kong, but only under strict conditions – under 24 weeks when continuing with the pregnancy would damage the mother’s life, or if health is at risk, or in the case of severe foetal abnormality. Over 24 weeks, abortions can only be carried out if the mother’s life is in danger.

People found guilty of supplying or using drugs for abortion can face up to seven years of jail time.

On Friday, police asked employers to get their domestic workers to speak to a medical professional if they were pregnant.

Hong Kong hosts some 368,000 foreign domestic workers, according to government statistics. Most – some 55% – come from the Philippines, while 42% are from Indonesia.

Most earn a government-fixed monthly minimum wage of HK$4,990 (US$636; £473).

One person has been killed after a large wildfire in Keratea, southeast of Athens, spread rapidly, destroying homes and prompting evacuation alerts.

The fire service says the body of an elderly man was found inside his home in the Togani area, close to where the fire started.

The blaze broke out shortly after 14:00 local time (12:00 BST) on Friday in the Manoutso area, initially burning through dry grass and plots of land.

Across Greece, more than 50 agricultural and forest fires have broken out in the past 24 hours – one of the worst days for wildfires this summer.

Fanned by winds of up to 8 Beaufort, with gusts reaching 9, the fire near Keratea grew quickly in size and intensity. Thick smoke and strong gusts are hampering firefighting efforts.

Emergency messages from the 112 civil protection service have been sent in quick succession, urging thousands of residents to leave affected areas.

Police are in place to help with evacuations and have already removed at least 10 people who had refused to leave their homes.

Authorities say seven areas have so far been evacuated: Synterina, Dimolaki, Maliasteka, Agiasma, Charvalo, Drosia and the settlement of Ari, which has been severely affected, with the fire sweeping through from end to end. Roads have been cut off as flames have crossed fields and reached residential areas.

Lavreotiki mayor Dimitris Loukas told public broadcaster ERT that the blaze is “extremely difficult” to contain and now stretches more than seven kilometres.

He said evacuations are under way for all residents in the affected settlements. The fire has moved south from Manoutso towards Drosia, entering a pine forest, with winds now pushing it towards the Anavyssos area.

Authorities warn that if it is not contained soon, it could grow even larger.

A force of 190 firefighters, seven ground teams, 44 vehicles and the mobile operations centre “Olympus” – is battling the flames, supported by 11 aircraft and seven helicopters. Tankers and heavy machinery from the Attica region are also deployed.

Fire crews from the Czech Republic and Romania have joined the effort, while army engineering units are providing heavy machinery to assist in containment.

Later on Friday, another large wildfire broke out in Helidoni, in the municipality of Ancient Olympia, western Greece.

Fire officials say the greatest danger comes from embers carried by the wind, which are igniting multiple spot fires. High-voltage power lines run through the area, and crews are working urgently to stop the flames from reaching them.

Evacuation messages were sent via the 112 civil protection service to residents of Grammatikos, Lantzoi, Agios Georgios Lantzoïou, Pournari and Irakleia in the regional unit of Ilia, advising them to move towards the town of Pyrgos.

Fire crews are battling the flames in Grammatikos, Lantzoi, Helidoni and Irakleia, with strong winds driving the fire dangerously close to Pelopio and the archaeological site of Ancient Olympia.

One person who had been trapped at the Helidoni football ground has been taken to hospital by ambulance with severe burns to their arms.

Around 80 firefighters, three ground teams, 25 vehicles and local authority resources are on scene. Six aircraft and three helicopters are assisting from the air.

Authorities have warned that the risk of further outbreaks remains severe, particularly in Attica, the Peloponnese and western Greece.

A fast-growing wildfire northwest of Los Angeles has prompted mandatory evacuations for thousands of residents, as extreme heat and dry conditions fuel its rapid spread.

The blaze, named the Canyon Fire, ignited on Thursday afternoon along the border of Ventura and Los Angeles counties. By Friday morning, it had expanded from 30 acres to nearly 5,000 acres.

More than 2,700 residents have been asked to evacuate, while a further 14,000 people have been given evacuation warnings, the Ventura County Fire Department said in a statement.

The fire has been partially contained, with 25% of its perimeter under control as of Friday, officials said.

Extreme heat and dry conditions are complicating firefighting efforts. The National Weather Service forecasts temperatures to soar to 100°F (37.7°C) in the coming days.

The city of Santa Clarita, one of the closest to the blaze, is on high alert. City officials have urged residents to stay away from fire-affected areas.

“The #CanyonFire is spreading fast under extreme heat & dry conditions near Ventura–LA County line,” LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger wrote on X.

“If you’re in Santa Clarita, Hasley Canyon, or Val Verde, take evacuation orders seriously – when first responders say GO, leave immediately. Keep aware–please don’t risk lives.”

As of Thursday evening, there were no reported injuries or residences damaged by the blaze, the LA County Fire Department said.

The Canyon Fire is one of several active wildfires across the state, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

The Gifford Fire, the largest active blaze in the state, has engulfed almost 100,000 acres and is burning across the San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

Wildfires have become more frequent in California, with experts citing climate change as a key factor. Hotter, drier conditions have made fire seasons longer and more destructive.

In January this year, the Eaton Fire tore through the Altadena neighbourhood just north of Los Angeles, killing at least 31 people and destroying thousands of structures.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has beaten Elon Musk’s Grok in the final of a tournament to crown the best artificial intelligence (AI) chess player.

Historically, tech companies have often used chess to assess the progress and abilities of a computer, with modern chess machines virtually unbeatable against even the top human players.

But this competition did not involve computers designed for chess – instead it was held between AI programs designed for everyday use.

OpenAI’s o3 model emerged unbeaten in the tournament and defeated xAI’s model Grok 4 in the final, adding fuel to the fire of an ongoing rivalry between the two firms.

Musk and Sam Altman, both co-founders of OpenAI, claim their latest models are the smartest in the world.

Google’s model Gemini claimed third place in the tournament, after beating a different OpenAI model.

But these AI, while talented at many everyday tasks, are still improving at chess – with Grok making a number of errors during its final games including losing its queen repeatedly.

“Up until the semi finals, it seemed like nothing would be able to stop Grok 4 on its way to winning the event,” Pedro Pinhata, a writer for Chess.com, said in its coverage.

“Despite a few moments of weakness, X’s AI seemed to be by far the strongest chess player… But the illusion fell through on the last day of the tournament.”

He said Grok’s “unrecognizable” and “blundering” play enabled o3 to claim a succession of “convincing wins”.

“Grok made so many mistakes in these games, but OpenAI did not,” said chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura during his livestream on the final.

Before Thursday’s final, Musk had said in a post on X that xAI’s prior success in the tournament had been a “side effect” and it “spent almost no effort on chess”.

The AI chess tournament took place on Google-owned platform Kaggle, which allows data scientists to evaluate their systems through competitions.

Eight large language models from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, xAI, as well as chinese developers DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, battled against each other during Kaggle’s three day tournament.

AI developers use tests known as benchmarks to examine their models’ skills in areas such as reasoning or coding.

As complex rule-based, strategy games, chess and Go have often been used to assess a model’s ability to learn how to best achieve a certain outcome – in this case, outmaneuvering opponents to win.

AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google’s AI lab DeepMind to play the Chinese two-player strategy game Go, claimed a series of victories against human Go champions in the late 2010s.

South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol retired after several defeats by AlphaGo in 2019.

“There is an entity that cannot be defeated,” he told the Yonhap news agency.

Sir Demis Hassabis, one of DeepMind’s co-founders, is himself a former chess prodigy.

Meanwhile in the late 1990s, chess champions were pitted against powerful computers.

Deep Blue’s victory was considered a landmark moment in demonstrating the power of computers to match certain human skills.

Speaking 20 years later, Mr Kasparov likened its intelligence to that of an alarm clock – but said “losing to a $10m (£7.6m) alarm clock did not make me feel any better”.

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Crocs’ share price plunged after the rubber clog-maker revealed a fall in US sales as shoppers chose to spend on trainers ahead of the World Cup and the Olympics.

The footwear became a stay-at-home staple during the Covid pandemic and has remained relevant as celebrities embraced the “ugly” shoe aesthetic.

However, North American consumers are buying into a “clear athletic trend” ahead of next year’s football World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, said Crocs’ boss Andrew Rees.

He also warned that US customers were being “super cautious” due to the high cost of living and the potential impact of Trump tariffs.

“They’re not purchasing, they’re not even going to the stores, and we see traffic down,” Mr Rees said.

US sales fell by 6.5% between April and June. Crocs cautioned on a “concerning” second half of the year as it reported a pre-tax loss. Its share price plunged by 30% to a three-year low of $73.

Mr Rees said Crocs appealed to a “particularly broad consumer base” and other brands were performing better “because they are focused exclusively on a high-end consumer”.

Crocs’ low-end consumer “is most sensitive to increases, is most nervous and in some cases, is not leaving the house,” he said.

He said these people were not buying new Crocs as they were worried how their personal finances would be hit by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs across imports to the US.

Susan Healy, finance director at Crocs, said the company would take a $40m (£29.8m) hit for the remainder of 2025 due to tariffs.

Mr Rees said: “I think we can over the medium-term mitigate the impact of tariffs. That will come from cost savings in our supply chain.”

Crocs said it will continue to pull back on discounting its products, cautioning that this could have a further impact on sales.

In China, where consumer purchasing is “not strong”, according to Mr Rees, Crocs was “bucking that trend”.

“That brand heat has been driven by a set of social-first digital marketing tactics using key Chinese celebrities,” he said.

It is working with three of China’s biggest influencers Liu Yuxin, Tan Jianci and Bai Lu to push its rubber shoes.

It is also collaborating with designer Simone Rocha, whose sparkly take on the Croc were recently seen on the feet of actress Michelle Yeoh.

While sales rose in China and fell in the US, overall revenue grew by 3.4% to $1.1bn over the three months to 30 June.

However, it reported a $448.6m pre-tax loss for the period, compared to a $296m profit last year.

The company’s share price suffered the worst single-day drop in almost 15 years after the results emerged.

Crocs also owns casual footwear brand HEYDUDE, following a $2.5bn takeover in late 2021.

Actress Gina Carano has settled her lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm after she was fired from Star Wars franchise spin-off The Mandalorian.

She was dropped from the cast in 2021 following comments she made comparing being a Republican in the US to being a Jew during the Holocaust.

Ms Carano, a former MMA fighter who played Cara Dune in the Disney+ series, shared the news of the settlement on X, writing “I hope this brings some healing to the force.”

The agreement, which has not been made public, comes after her case gained support and funding from Elon Musk.

Ms Carano described the settlement as the “best outcome for all parties involved,” adding she was “excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter”.

She also thanked Musk, saying she’d never met the tech billionaire but he stepped in to do this “Good Samaritan deed for me in funding my lawsuit”.

“Yes, I’m smiling”, she signed off.

The actress originally sued for wrongful termination and sexual discrimination, claiming that two of her male co-stars had made similar posts and faced no penalty.

She had sought $75,000 (£60,000) in damages and to be recast in the popular series.

Lucasfilm had condemned her comments in 2021 for “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities”.

In a statement released since the settlement, the production company said that it looks forward to “identifying opportunities to work together”.

The company described Ms Carano as someone who “was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff. She worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect,” it added.

Ms Carano is a former mixed martial arts fighter and has faced pushback in the past for deriding mask-wearing policies during the Covid pandemic and making false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Residents of Gaza City have told the BBC they are living in fear after the Israeli government announced plans to takeover the territory’s largest city.

“We are peaceful civilians. We have nothing to do with what is happening. Netanyahu knows that,” said resident Abu Mohammad.

“All this pressure is on us, not on Hamas. The movement’s leaders and their families are abroad. They’re not here among us.”

Under the plans announced last night – and agreed by Israel’s security cabinet – the Israeli military would take control of Gaza City, home to hundreds of thousands of people, with a view, it says, to disarming Hamas, freeing the hostages, and establishing security control over the Strip.

The plan has been met with heavy condemnation by much of the international community, with United Nations (UN) human rights chief Volker Türk saying it would “result in more massive forced displacement, more killing, more unbearable suffering, senseless destruction and atrocity crimes”.

One woman, speaking to a BBC team on a busy Gaza City street, said it was “going to be totally disastrous”.

“And it’s going to be a death sentence to every Palestinian, I think the whole population in Gaza will be killed, either by bombardment or by hunger.”

Local resident Dr Hatem Qanoua said: “We’re collapsing across every aspect of life: food, education, healthcare. Even if the war ends, we’ll suffer for years.”

He added: “I’m very afraid for my children and all the innocent people who may die. I’m over fifty, if I die, it doesn’t matter. But what about the children? They’ve never lived a normal life. They’ve only known death, destruction, and deprivation.”

More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military began its operation, in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Since the start of 2025, at least 99 people, including 29 children under the age of five, have died of malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization – which says its figures are likely underestimates.

Many residents told the BBC they were fearful of being displaced from their homes – or the temporary shelters they are staying in – if the plan goes ahead.

Sabrine Mahmoud said: “I will not leave my house. We will not live through displacement again. We left Gaza City for a whole year and endured the harshest humiliation in al-Mawasi. We will not repeat the mistake. Let them destroy the house over our heads – we will not leave.”

Abu Mustafa said Israel has “turned evacuation into a game: ‘Leave here, now go there.'”

Another resident, Um Ahmad Shalah, said: “We won’t evacuate, because when we did, we saw torture.

“We want the Arab countries, Trump, and all other nations to have mercy on us and stand with us, and feel for us. We cannot provide a kilo of flour for our children. We cannot afford to buy it.”

But some Palestinians also directed anger at Hamas, for what they said was a failure to negotiate an end to the war.

Ehab al-Helou, Gaza City resident and social media influencer, wrote online: “I swear to God, Hamas leaders are living in a science fiction world. Have mercy on the people. Who are you to decide to sacrifice us?”

Activist and resident Khalil Abu Shammala accused the group of “choosing suicide” and taking Gaza’s population with it, saying Hamas was “clinging to power over our dead bodies”.

Other residents said they were indifferent to the new plan, saying the Israeli military already had control over their lives.

“What are they threatening? Gaza is occupied. We are in a cage, they are surrounding the cage, and we are inside it,” said one man.

The Israeli prime minister’s announcement of plans to take control of Gaza City has been met with concern in Israel, particularly by families of hostages still being held by Hamas.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum: Bring Them Home Now has said the plan “means abandoning hostages”.

“By choosing military escalation over negotiation, we are leaving our loved ones at the mercy of Hamas,” the group said in a statement.

“The only way to bring the hostages home is through a comprehensive deal.”

• Follow live: Israeli security cabinet approves Gaza City takeover as UK’s Starmer calls escalation ‘wrong’
• Israel approves plan to take control of Gaza City, signalling major escalation
• US shrugs off Gaza escalation – drifting further away from allies

The move was decided by majority vote at a security cabinet meeting which lasted 10 hours.

While the meeting was taking place, some protesters chained themselves together outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

Anat Angrest, the mother of hostage Matan Angrest, said at the time: “For a year and 10 months we’ve been trying to believe that everything is being done to bring them back – you have failed.”

The group’s collective statement, published on Friday following the announcement, accused the government of “leading us toward a colossal catastrophe”.

Fifty hostages are still being held by Hamas – 20 of whom are believed to still be alive.

Yehuda Cohen, whose son, Nimrod, is one of t he captives, told the BBC World Service’s Newsday programme that Netanyahu’s decision is “endangering my son and other living hostages”.

“It is endangering the hostages and prolonging their suffering,” he added.

More widely within the country Tal Schneider, political correspondent at the Times of Israel, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday there had been a “huge public backlash” in Israel against the plans.

“All public polling suggests that the public is very much against this step,” she explained.

A hotelier in Tel Aviv, Danny Bukovsky, told Reuters news agency: “I think it’s a death sentence to all the hostages that are still being held there. And it’s the wrong decision to do it at this time.

“I think that we have to bring all the hostages back home safely.

“Afterwards, if they decide to take over the entire Gaza Strip – it’s their decision. I think we should do something about […] Hamas anyway, but not at this time.”

Israeli resident Talya Saltzman also told Reuters bringing the hostages home should be “first and foremost”.

“I know the plan is to get rid of Hamas, but we’ve been trying for two whole years,” she told the news agency.

“It just doesn’t seem that there’s any real forward movement with this plan and unless we can get rid of all of Hamas in one go [I] just think that the hostages need to be top priority and then we need to stop all of our soldiers from dying.”

US Vice-President JD Vance has raised questions about the UK’s plans to recognise a Palestinian state, in a meeting with Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

The UK has said it will formally recognise a Palestinian state in September if Israel does not meet certain conditions.

But US President Donald Trump has not followed suit and believes that recognising Palestinian statehood would be rewarding Hamas.

The difference in approach to the war in Gaza is among the issues being discussed by Vance and Lammy at the foreign secretary’s official country residence, Chevening House, in Kent on Friday.

Speaking alongside Lammy, Vance said: “The United Kingdom is going to make its decision.

“We have no plans to recognise a Palestinian state.

“I don’t know what it would mean to really recognise a Palestinian state – given the lack of a functional government there.”

The vice-president said the US administration wanted to see Hamas eradicated so Israeli civilians were not attacked again, but also to solve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Vance said while the UK and US shared focus and goals, there were “disagreements” which would be discussed at Chevening.

Lammy said he was concerned about Israel’s intention to take over more of Gaza.

The foreign secretary said: “What we all want to see is a ceasefire – what we all want to see are the hostages come out.

“We are hugely concerned by the humanitarian suffering that we are seeing in Gaza particularly.”

Striking a warm tone, Vance spoke of his love for England and praised his “good friend” the foreign secretary.

He said Britain and the US should work together to “bring greater peace” to the world as the two countries “have a lot in common”.

The pair are meeting for talks at the residence during Vance’s family holiday to the UK.

The two men went carp fishing in a pond near the 17th century house on Friday morning. Vance said he and his children caught fish but Lammy did not.

“Unfortunately, the one strain on the special relationship is that all of my kids caught fish, but the foreign secretary did not,” the vice-president said.

The Vance family is expected to spend most of their break in the Cotswolds and are also planning to visit Scotland.

Lammy and Vance have been meeting regularly on official trips since the foreign secretary started in his role last year, and they have bonded over their difficult childhoods and shared Christian faith.

But Vance has been critical of the UK over free-speech issues.

In a speech in February, Vance accused European governments – including the UK’s – of retreating from their values, and ignoring voter concerns on migration and free speech.

He claimed that a “backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons” under threat, and attacked the use of laws to enforce buffer zones around abortion clinics.

When asked about those criticisms, he said his concerns related more widely to “the entire collective West”.

Vance said: “Obviously, I’ve raised some criticism and concerns about our friends on this side of the Atlantic, but the thing that I say to the people of England, or anybody else, to David, is many of the things that I worry most about were happening in the United States from 2020 to 2024.

“I just don’t want other countries to follow us down what I think is a very dark path under the Biden administration.”

The other major area for discussion this weekend is Ukraine and the possibility of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the conflict.

Lammy has insisted there can’t be talks unless there is a ceasefire to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.

What Lammy, and other European nations, fear is that Putin will seek to use Trump to force terms on Ukraine without its presence at the table, and in a way that seriously undermines Europe’s security.

The vice president’s UK visit comes a few weeks after Trump travelled to Scotland, on a private visit to his golf courses.

Trump met Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as well as EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, agreeing a trade deal with the bloc, and will return for a full state visit in September.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that Israel intends to take control of all of the Gaza Strip signals an escalation that flies in the face of some emphatic international warnings.

But it is one that, at least so far, the US government has greeted with a telling and collective shrug.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said it was “pretty much up to Israel” whether to fully occupy Gaza. And when asked the following day whether he was giving Israel a “green light”, he instead spoke about the US strikes on Iran earlier this year.

Washington’s Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee was even more direct – and his answer was that Netanyahu’s Gaza plan is not America’s concern.

“It’s not our job to tell them what they should or should not do,” he said. “Certainly, if they ask for wisdom, counsel, advice, I’m sure the president would offer it. But ultimately, it’s the decision that the Israelis and only the Israelis can make.”

Netanyahu has faced some opposition to his plan – notably from the Chief of Staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir who, according to Israeli media, had argued against a full-scale occupation.

In the event, an announcement after a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet did not say Israel would take control of the entire territory of the Gaza Strip, but rather that it would “prepare for taking control of Gaza City”.

It did, however, mention that one of five principles for ending the war was “Israeli security control in the Gaza Strip”.

Some have suggested a full takeover of Gaza has always been on the table.

“Netanyahu had always planned to take over Gaza, he just was waiting for the right moment,” Amin Saikal, emeritus professor of Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, told the BBC.

Netanyahu has suggested Israel does not want to keep the territory, however, but “hand it over to Arab forces” – without specifying which.

Whatever the plan, however, the Trump administration is not giving Netanyahu any public indication that he is wrong.

That represents a marked change in White House policy. Trump previously had been more than willing to outline his views on Gaza’s future – even when it caught Netanyahu and the Israelis by surprise.

• LIVE UPDATES: Israel’s security cabinet approves plan to take control of Gaza City
• Netanyahu divides Israelis and allies with plan to occupy Gaza
• Hundreds of Israeli ex-officials appeal to Trump to help end Gaza war

In February, just weeks into his second presidential term, he said the US could be deeply involved in the reconstruction of Gaza as a global resort and suggested Palestinians might have to be relocated outside of the territory.

And while the US joined Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities in the brief clash between the two nations in June, Trump publicly and forcefully pressured Israel to abide by the ceasefire that ended that conflict.

The Americans also expressed their unhappiness with Israeli attacks on Syria last month – publicly disapproving, while offering even sharper criticism in private.

“Bibi acted like a madman,” a White House official told the news website Axios. “He bombs everything all the time.”

The White House has also been invested in ending the Gaza War, even pressuring Netanyahu for a ceasefire before Trump took office in January.

Steve Witkoff, the real estate magnate with a broad diplomatic portfolio in the Trump White House, has been the point person for these negotiations, seeking to broker a permanent ceasefire along with the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas in its 7 October 2023 attack.

As recently as a month ago, the White House was optimistic that a deal was within reach.

“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire,” Witkoff said on 8 July, adding that it could lead to a “lasting peace in Gaza”.

But just over two weeks later, ceasefire talks had collapsed, and Witkoff was publicly accusing Hamas of being selfish and not acting in good faith.

“Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal,” Trump said on 25 July. “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad.”

Trump’s comments – and his decision to abandon talks with Hamas and stay ambivalent about what could represent a massive new Israeli military operation – could be a ploy designed to force the Palestinian group to make new concessions at the negotiating table.

If so, that will become apparent soon enough.

“The Trump administration has got a lot of leverage, ” said Prof Saikal of the Australian National University. “I think Netanyahu would not make this move unless he had some sort of consent or tacit support from Washington.”

This American change of course from public disapproval to obvious distancing could, however, also be part of an effort by the president to return to his non-interventionist outlook – a position he temporarily abandoned during the Iranian strikes, much to the consternation of parts of his political base.

“There’s increasing concern that this is inconsistent with an America-first policy, getting the United States deeper and deeper into this horrible war is not something that the president ran for office on,” Frank Lowenstein, special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the Barack Obama administration, told the BBC.

“But for the time being, anyway, I think Trump is going to let Netanyahu do whatever he wants.”

If so, Trump’s position stands in stark contrast to the recent statements by France, the UK and Canada on recognising a Palestinian state. These moves were designed to bring additional pressure on Israel to wind down its military operations and reach a negotiated settlement with Hamas.

That diplomatic recognition, as well as America’s studied indifference to the prospect of a long – and possibly indefinite – Israeli military occupation, take the US and its allies in markedly different directions.

But both represent a tacit acknowledgement that the current situation is untenable, and that a negotiated peace is further away than ever.

With Trump, there is no telling how long this trend will last. But by the time Trump changes course again, Israel could be well down a path in Gaza that will be very difficult to reverse.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan to take control of Gaza City, in a controversial escalation of its war in Gaza.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in the city in the north of the Gaza Strip. It was the enclave’s most populous city before the war.

Several world leaders have condemned the plan, and the UN has warned it would lead to “more massive forced displacement” and “more killing”.

Hamas warned of “fierce resistance” to the move.

The plan also faces fierce opposition within Israel – including from military officials and hostages’ families.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told Fox News earlier that Israel planned to occupy the entire Gaza Strip and eventually “hand it over to Arab forces”. Much is still very unclear, but here’s what we know about the new plan.

A statement released by the office of the Israeli prime minister said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would “prepare for taking control of Gaza city”.

It also outlined what it said were five “principles” for ending the war:

• The disarmament of Hamas
• The return of all hostages, both living and dead
• The demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip
• Israeli security control over the Gaza Strip
• The establishment of an alternative civilian administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority

The IDF said the military would prepare to take control of Gaza City while providing humanitarian aid to the “civilian population outside the combat zones”.

It is unclear if this is new aid, and if it will be delivered by the controversial Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation or another mechanism.

Hamas has said the approval of plans to occupy Gaza “constitutes a new war crime”.

“We warn the criminal occupation that this criminal adventure will cost it dearly and will not be an easy journey,” it said in a statement on Friday.

Before the cabinet meeting Netanyahu said he wanted Israel to control all of Gaza, but in the new plan only Gaza City is mentioned.

Reports in Israeli media suggest there were heated exchanges with the army’s chief of staff, who voiced his strong opposition to a full takeover of Gaza.

Israel has said it currently controls 75% of Gaza, while the UN estimates some 86% of the territory is either in militarised zones or under evacuation orders.

The plan aims to have Israeli forces move to take control of the largest city in the enclave, which has already been heavily damaged by Israeli bombing and ground offensives.

It is surrounded by land that has already been under the IDF’s control or subject to an evacuation order.

Control over the city is likely to be the first phase of a full scale takeover of the Gaza Strip, our Middle East correspondent Hugo Bachega says.

There has also been some speculation that the threat of full occupation could be part of a strategy to put pressure on Hamas to make concessions in stalled ceasefire negotiations.

Netanyahu told Fox News Israel does “not want to keep” Gaza and intends to hand it over to “Arab forces”.

“We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it,” he told the channel.

Israel has not said when the takeover will begin but reports in Israeli media suggest the military will not move into Gaza City immediately – and residents will need to leave first.

Israel said it believed that the “alternative plan” presented to its cabinet would not “achieve the defeat of Hamas or the return of the abductees”.

However it it not clear what the alternative plan was or who had submitted it. Israeli media reports it was a more limited proposal from the army’s chief of staff.

Netanyahu is being “intentionally vague” over which “Arab forces” he believes could run Gaza, according to the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet, as he has been in the past with his plans for the territory.

He may be referring to the Jordanians and the Egyptians, who have said they are willing to work with Israel – but they have made it clear that they will not go into Gaza on the back of an Israeli occupation.

No more details have been shared regarding a timeline for Gaza’s post-takeover government.

Netanyahu is facing mounting criticism from hostage families and from world leaders.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has called Israel’s escalation “wrong” and that it “will only bring more bloodshed”.

On Friday Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said his government will not approve any exports of military equipment to Israel that could be used in Gaza until further notice.

He said it was “increasingly difficult to understand” how the Israeli military plan would help achieve legitimate aims. Historically, Germany has been one of the largest arms suppliers to Israel.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas has described the move as a “fully-fledged crime”.

Turkey’s foreign ministry said Israel aims to “forcibly displace Palestinians from their own land”.

The UN’s human rights chief Volker Türk says “the war in Gaza must end now” and warns that further escalation “will result in more massive forced displacement, more killing, more unbearable suffering, senseless destruction and atrocity crimes”.

The Hostages Families Forum Headquarters said the decision “is leading us toward a colossal catastrophe for both the hostages and our soldiers”.

However, the US has been much less critical. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said it was “pretty much up to Israel” whether to fully occupy Gaza, and Washington’s Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said that the plan is not America’s concern.

“It’s not our job to tell them what they should or should not do,” he said.

In January 1997, long before the modern phenomenon of online “paedophile hunters”, a Scottish grandmother found overnight fame when she successfully drove a convicted child sex offender out of the Raploch housing estate in Stirling.

Margaret ‘Big Mags’ Haney and her brand of mob justice transformed her into a matriarchal media personality.

One of her most famous appearances was on the popular daytime TV show Kilroy where she was invited to discuss the ‘paedophile panic’ that was sweeping the county.

Haney argued with the show’s host, squabbled with other guests, and threatened two men in the audience, clearly wearing disguises, who had been convicted of abusing kids.

Her profile skyrocketed and in her new role as a self-styled anti-paedophile campaigner she began to pop up at protests across the country.

She was embraced as a salt-of-the-earth straight talker, applauded in many quarters for standing up for decent folk and for taking action to, as she would put it, fix a problem no-one else was tackling.

Sometimes with a microphone, sometimes with a placard, if Mags was part of the mob, it got the press interested – and the media appearances kept coming.

“I think it was something at her core that she really believed was wrong,” says Cassie Donald, Haney’s granddaughter, who has spoken for the first time to a BBC podcast.

“The community was suffering enough without paedophiles.

“She wasn’t the only person who stood up. She just happened to shout the loudest.”

But Haney was harbouring a secret and it wasn’t long before it came out.

Six months after Haney’s vigilantism, and her steep rise to fame, the press’s focus shifted to the Haney family’s criminal rap sheet.

Big Mags was the head of a “one family crime wave” responsible for thefts and violence across Stirling.

They were dubbed “Scotland’s Family from Hell” by the tabloids.

“Some of them could have scores of crimes against their name,” the Daily Record’s Mark McGivern remembers.

“The amount of crimes committed in Stirling by that family was the stuff of legend so they weren’t great to have around,” he says.

With the family’s crimes exposed and the local community’s patience at an end, Big Mags and the Haneys were forced to leave the estate by a 400-strong mob – bigger than the one whipped up to remove the paedophile Alan Christie six months earlier.

The crowd gathered near Mags’s flat, chanting “build a bonfire and put the Haneys on the top”.

As the chants got louder, police vans screeched into Huntly Crescent to prevent a riot.

Haney came out in pink t-shirt and slippers and gave the crowd the finger as she was led away for her own safety.

After her exile from the Raploch estate, Haney was put in temporary council accommodation.

But with no other local authority in Scotland or the north of England willing to rehouse her, she eventually settled in Lower Bridge Street, a stone’s throw away from her old stomping ground.

Through it all she remained a cause célèbre and the Scottish press still loved a Big Mags story.

In 2000, a darker secret emerged about the matriarch and the Haney clan.

Mark McGivern’s newspaper launched their “Shop-A-Dealer” campaign that encouraged readers to anonymously tip off the biggest heroin dealers in their schemes.

The phones lit up, with many callers ringing up to put Big Mags in the frame, exposing her as the big boss of a drug dynasty that ran heroin out of their flats.

McGivern remembers how Mags’s status changed from celebrated to feared.

“She was a public figure, a community leader, quite a big heroin dealer, and she was a gangster,” he says.

The journalist had a well-placed source who laid out to him the Haney drug operation, with Mags at the top, so he “scratched around” and witnessed family members selling drugs from the flats.

McGivern even bought a couple of bags of heroin from Haney lieutenants as part of his investigation.

Despite having the goods to run the story, he thought he’d try his arm at a direct deal with the boss herself.

“I’ve walked in, I’ve been asked to come into the living room and I was kind of surprised that Mags had sat in a throne, a big chair in the middle of the room,” the reporter recalls.

“I asked to buy drugs – heroin – and she looked at me and said: ‘We don’t sell heroin here’.

“I was thinking, ‘how am I going to get out of here?’.”

Rumbled and feeling somewhat intimidated, McGivern scarpered out of “Fortress Haney”, as it was known, and headed back to write up his story.

The Daily Record splashed Mags’s face across the newspaper with the headline “Dealer number one”.

A police sting operation followed. Four members of the Haney clan were arrested for drug offences and tried at the High Court in Edinburgh.

The court heard Haney was making up to £1,000 a day from the operation in addition to getting paid £1,200 a month in state benefits.

The judge, Lady Smith, said 60-year-old Mags was the mastermind behind the operation, dealing vast quantities heroin from what was known as “Haney’s hotel”.

Haney was jailed for 12 years, her daughter Diane, 35, was sentenced to nine years, 40-year-old niece Roseann to seven years and 31-year-old son Hugh to five years.

Diane’s daughter Cassie was just 10 when her mum and “nana” went to prison.

“I can remember I went to school the morning of their sentencing and I came home and they just weren’t there,” Cassie told the BBC.

“It was, ‘your mum’s in prison but you’ll see her soon’,” Cassie says.

“The attitudes towards them at the time were very much, ‘you’ve made your bed and you lie in it’, and there wasn’t a lot of thought for everybody.”

Despite these convictions, local residents and journalists remained puzzled as to why it took so long to dismantle the Haney drug operation, which was allegedly rampant throughout the 1990s.

Those Haney family members were convicted for their involvement in an 18-month drug operation that ran until their arrest in 2001.

Simon McLean, a retired police officer who investigated the Haneys, told the BBC podcast why he thought their drug operation wasn’t shut down sooner.

“The obvious answer is that she was informing,” he said.

“Crime families and organised crime leaders, I have met all of these people and I’ve never met one that didn’t talk to the police at some level.”

Another police source confirmed that Big Mags would provide officers with information.

Mags Haney died of cancer in 2013, aged 70.

Twelve years on, Cassie believes her grandmother’s legacy is more complex than was portrayed in the media.

“Two things can be true at one time,” she says.

“You can be a drug dealer that has sold drugs that have potentially killed people, but you could also still be a loving grandmother and a good person.

“I still feel like we owe it to her to tell her story.”

The full series of the ‘Crime Next Door: The Ballad of Big Mags’ podcast is available on BBC Sounds now.

This week saw Donald Trump’s oft-threatened tariffs finally come into force, the US Coast Guard publish its report into the Titan submersible disaster, and two women denied an AirBnB booking because they were Welsh.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz collated by Ben Fell.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

In Gurugram, an upscale suburb just outside Delhi, gleaming SUVs, futuristic skyscrapers and neat apartments stand in stark contrast to nearby mosquito swarms, trash heaps and tarpaulin shanties.

Inside the gated compounds live some of India’s richest, while in the slums nearby live poor migrant workers – mostly domestic helpers, garbage-pickers and daily-wage workers – who keep the affluence going.

Last month, local authorities rounded up hundreds of these workers, most of whom say they are Bengali-speaking Muslims from India’s West Bengal state, in a “verification” drive targeting illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

The suspects were detained and kept at “holding centres” where they were asked to provide documents to prove their citizenship. Many allege they were beaten and mistreated by police during the process. Police officials deny these allegations.

“I had my voter and national ID cards, but they told me they were fake. I spent six days not knowing my fate before I was finally released,” said Ather Ali Sheikh, a daily-wage worker, who has lived in the city for 15 years.

The action has left indelible scars on the social fabric of the city, which prides itself on its cosmopolitan culture. Hundreds of workers have fled overnight – abandoning jobs, homes and, in some cases, even families in their haste to escape.

“I still don’t understand why they suddenly came after me,” Mr Sheikh said. Behind him, his wife hurriedly packed their belongings – torn clothes, old utensils and school books – into flimsy boxes.

“Was it because of my language, my religion or because I am poor? ” Mr Sheikh continued, his face hardening with anger. “Why weren’t the rich Bengali residents held up?”

Police in Gurugram deny targeting any particular community. “Neither religion nor class has anything to do with the drive,” public relations officer Sandeep Kumar told the BBC.

He added that out of the 250 people picked up, only 10 have been identified as illegal migrants and will actually be deported.

“Everyone else was released. No one was mistreated at the centres. We have been completely fair and objective.”

Meanwhile, trepidation is being felt on other side of the city as well.

With no workers left, heaps of trash have been overflowing from public bins and dump yards on to the streets, inconveniencing residents.

“Our house help and her husband, who worked as a driver, both left and now we have no help,” said Tabassum Bano, who lives in one of the complexes.

Crackdowns on alleged illegal immigrants from Muslim-majority Bangladesh are not new in India. The countries are divided by a porous border 4,096km (2,545-mile) long, and have seen waves of movement of people on both sides.

But these efforts seem to have intensified under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

In recent months, hundreds of people, including a veteran Muslim officer of the Indian Army, have been arrested on suspicion of being illegal migrants.

In the north-eastern state of Assam, where the issue has been a potent flashpoint for decades, authorities have been “pushing back” hundreds of Bengali-Muslims into Bangladesh on suspicion of them being “illegal Bangladeshis”.

Deportations are also under way in Delhi, where some 700 people were picked up and flown out to border states in the last six months.

This has had a chilling impact on the marginalised community.

In Gurugram, a sense of shock prevailed over their dust-blanketed colonies.

“For years, we have cleaned and collected their garbage. Now we are being treated like it ourselves,” said Rauna Bibi.

A domestic help, Rauna’s husband had returned from West Bengal the same day the detentions began. When he heard about it, he was so terrified he left again – this time, without informing his wife.

“For three days, I wondered if he was picked up; whether he was even alive,” Rauna said. “When we finally spoke, he said he didn’t call because he did not want any trouble.”

But it was not her husband’s behaviour that bothered Rauna, or the fact that he was now jobless. It was the theft of her pride – and the comfort of belonging to a place – that hurt her the most, making her feel absurdly insignificant.

“Unlike poverty, I can’t fight this with my hard work,” she said. “If they pick us, I wouldn’t know how to survive. This slum, the work we do and the houses we clean – this is our entire life.”

Mr Kumar says the recent action is based on a home ministry notice from May that lays down new guidelines for deporting illegal immigrants.

Under the order, all states are required to set up a special task force along with holding centres to “detect, identify and deport/send back illegal immigrants settled from Bangladesh and Myanmar”.

Each person would be given 30 days to prove their citizenship, during which authorities would send their documents back to their home districts for verification.

If they fail to confirm the details, the suspects would be taken by the police “under proper escort, in groups as far as possible”, and handed over to the border forces for deportation.

Critics, however, have questioned the order, saying it does not specify the basis on which a person is made a suspect.

“On the face of it, it’s nothing other than the fact that you speak Bengali, have a Muslim name and live in shanty,” said Aakash Bhattacharya, of the national council of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions which advocates for workers’ rights.

What is worse is that none of the suspects are being given certificates confirming their citizenship had already been verified, he added.

“This means they can be put through the same process again, making them extremely vulnerable.”

Mr Kumar says the detentions in Gurugram were made on the basis of strong preliminary evidence.

“We checked their phones and found suspicious contacts from Bangladesh. Some of them also failed to answer questions about their ancestry during interrogation,” he said.

Suhas Chakma, a human rights worker, says that the policy is not necessarily religious-specific.

“The arrest of the Muslims appears to be more as they constitute about 95% of Bangladesh’s population,” he explained.

But for a country that has seen an influx of refugees for decades, India does need a wider refugee law to address many of these complex issues, he added.

For now, Bengali-Muslims are living with a deep sense of foreboding.

Many of them have been sleeping with documents tucked under the pillow in case misfortune strikes.

“We were already fighting the harsh reality of our lives. Now we have to fight this too,” said Rabi-ul-Hassan, a resident of Jai Hind camp, a massive slum located in one of the poshest corners of Delhi.

Three weeks ago, authorities cut off electricity in the area, instantly plunging some 400 people into darkness.

The action came after a court ruled that the slum-dwellers, who say they have lived there for generations, were squatting on private land.

“They did this even when the area is recognised as a legal slum by the city’s own urban planning organisation,” said Abhik Chimni, a lawyer who is challenging the order.

Since then residents have been in some kind of stupor, dazed, angry and tired. “The heat is unbearable. The food keeps rotting and the children don’t stop crying. At night, we try to sleep outside but then mosquitoes bite us,” said Baijan Bibi.

“I am so exhausted,” she continued, “that sometimes I wonder if it’s better to live in a holding centre. At least there will be a fan there, right?”

Cameroon’s constitutional council has upheld the decision by the country’s electoral body to exclude opposition leader Maurice Kamto from the 12 October presidential election.

While the firebrand political figure was sidelined, 92-year-old President Paul Biya whose candidacy also faced opposition, was cleared to run for what would be his eighth term in the oil-rich Central African nation.

If he were elected for another seven-year term, he could remain in power until he was almost 100.

Kamto was ruled out because a rival faction of the Manidem party which endorsed him presented another individual as a candidate, highlighting an internal squabble.

In his first public comments, Kamto on Thursday evening said the decision was “arbitrary” and taken for political reasons.

Of the 83 candidates who submitted their applications to the electoral body, only 12 have been approved.

The reasons given by Elections Cameroon (Elecam) for the disqualification of the 71 range from incomplete files, non-payment of the required deposit, to multiple candidacies from the same party.

Of all the contestants, six are seen as the main contenders:

1. Paul Biya

At 92, Paul Biya is the world’s oldest serving head of state. He has been in power for nearly 43 years since 1982. Biya leads the ruling CPDM party which dominates the political scene. He is widely considered the favourite, now that his main rival, Kamto, is out of the way.

The veteran politician has never lost an election since the return of multi-party politics in 1990. However, his victories have been marred by allegations of vote rigging – claims which his party and the government have continuously denied.

Announcing his intention to run, Biya said his eighth mandate would focus on the wellbeing of women and young people.

2. Bello Bouba Maigari

Bello Bouba Maigari, 78, is an experienced politician who hails from Cameroon’s vote-rich northern region.

He is the president of the National Union for Democracy and Progress (NUDP) party founded in 1990. He served in the governments of both of Cameroon’s presidents -Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya.

In fact, he was Biya’s first prime minister between 1982 and 1983. Since 1997, Maigari has forged an alliance with Biya’s CPDM party that helped the latter clinch significant votes from the north.

However, this political marriage ended in June following pressure from within his party to run independently.

While serving as Minister of State for Tourism and Leisure, Maigari announced his resignation and declared himself a candidate against Biya, who he also faced in the 1992 presidential election.

3. Issa Tchiroma Bakary

Another former Biya ally whose candidacy came as a surprise is 75-year-old Issa Tchiroma Bakary. Like Maigari, he is from the country’s north and has been influential in helping Biya secure the region’s votes.

After a 20-year stint in different government roles, Tchiroma finally pulled the plug on his time with the 92-year-old leader, resigning from his role as Minister of Employment and Vocational Training to announce his candidacy.

Tchiroma, who heads the Cameroon National Salvation Front (CNSF) party, criticised Biya’s governance style and hinged his presidential bid on a promise to overhaul the system, which he described as “suffocating”.

4. Cabral Libii

Cabral Libii, president of the Cameroon Party for National Reconciliation (PCRN), is a vibrant member of parliament who is making his second attempt at getting the country’s top job.

In 2018, he was the youngest of the nine presidential candidates, aged just 38, coming third with 6% of the vote.

Libii’s candidature in this year’s election was challenged by PCRN founder Robert Kona, who disputed the lawmaker’s legitimacy to lead the party.

However, the Constitutional Council rejected Kona’s petition and upheld the electoral body’s decision to allow Libii to stand.

5. Akere Muna

Akere Muna was a candidate in the 2018 presidential election but pulled out at the last minute and threw his weight behind Kamto. This time around, Muna, a staunch international anti-corruption lawyer, says he wants to challenge Biya himself.

The 72-year-old is from a family of politicians – his late father Solomon Tandeng Muna served as Prime Minister of West Cameroon after independence, Vice-President of the then Federal Republic of Cameroon and Speaker of the National Assembly.

As Speaker, Solomon Muna swore in Biya when he took over as president after Ahmadou Ahidjo resigned.

Muna is promising to rid the bilingual country of the corruption and bad governance that he says have soiled its image at the international scene.

6. Joshua Osih

Joshua Osih is jumping into the presidential race for the second time after his first attempt in 2018 proved futile.

He heads the Social Democratic Front (SDF) party, succeeding the iconic late opposition leader John Fru Ndi. The SDF used to be the country’s main opposition outfit, but its influence later dwindled, exacerbated by infighting and the expulsion of several party members in 2023.

Osih, 56, came fourth in the 2018 polls with 3%, but is hoping to defeat Biya through a promise of social and institutional reforms.

• Social media revamp by 92-year-old president struggles to woo young Cameroonians

For many decades, President Biya has succeeded in maintaining a firm grip on power, making it difficult for him to lose elections.

The decision of political heavyweights Bello Bouba Maigari and Issa Tchiroma Bakary to challenge him appeared to make life more difficult, but some analysts believe they do not pose a significant threat to Biya.

Dr Pippie Hugues, a policy analyst with Cameroonian think-tank Nkafu Policy Institute, argues that their alliance with the current regime lessens their credibility with opposition voters.

“Cameroonians need more than just a resignation to trust them,” he told the BBC. “Both have been with the system and watched the nation suffer.”

Dr Hugues further suggested that the two northern candidates might be part of a political plot staged by the regime.

However, ruling party officials have portrayed the rupture as genuine, acknowledging that the CPDM could struggle to obtain as many votes from the north as before.

Given Kamto’s exclusion, Biya’s strongest challenger in 2018, third-placed Libii could arguably claim to be his main threat this year.

Although he got just 6% of the vote, Libii’s political evolution since then has been praised.

He led his party to win five seats in parliament and seven local councils during the 2020 legislative and municipal elections. Since becoming a member of parliament in the process, he has challenged the government on key policy issues, promising sweeping changes if he takes over the reins of power.

However, Dr Hugues says Libii’s vision is opaque, citing Akere Muna as a more convincing candidate with a much clearer project for the nation of nearly 30 million people.

“Muna has a wealth of international experience and diplomatic character, and that is what the nation needs now,” he said, while praising the renowned lawyer’s five-year transition plan to “put the nation back on track”.

Historically, Cameroon’s opposition has been fragmented especially during elections, with analysts saying this has disadvantaged them.

Ahead of this year’s presidential election, there has been much talk about the need for the opposition to unite and harmonise strategies to take on Biya. But with each candidate prioritising their own interests, it remains unclear if most – let alone all – of them would work together, despite the risk this could help the president.

“It might be the end of their political careers, or their parties, if they don’t come together,” said civil society leader Felix Agbor Balla.

“Kamto and the others must look for someone in the opposition who can carry the baton – and they must put the nation first, rise above their personal ego to look for a consensual candidate that can give the CPDM a run on the 12th of October,” he told the BBC.

Dr Hugues agrees that Kamto should use his influence to drum up support for an opposition coalition since he is now out of the race.

He insists “change must not [only] come with him [Kamto], but change can come through him”.

Kamto did not address these calls on Thursday, but said: “I’m on my feet and will remain at your side. The struggle continues.”

Dr Hugues says that an opposition coalition is possible and made reference to a meeting attended by opposition figures on 2 August in Foumban town in the West region.

Prince Michael Ekosso, president of the United Socialist Democratic Party (USDP), who took part in the meeting, told the BBC the aim was to lay the groundwork for a “consensual candidate”.

While no specific candidate has been designated yet, the criteria for consideration were laid down.

“We want a figure who is going to be responding to the aspirations of Cameroonians, someone who is flexible to work with others, someone who is bilingual and able to mobilise other candidates and political actors,” Ekosso said.

In the 1992 presidential election, firebrand opposition leader John Fru Ndi was backed by the Union for Change, a coalition of political parties and civil society organisations.

Although he was not the only opposition candidate, analysts say the coalition helped him get 36% of the vote – just shy of Biya’s 40%.

That was the closest anyone has ever got to beating Biya. Fru Ndi even claimed victory, but the authorities rejected allegations of vote rigging and confirmed Biya as the winner.

Many believe if the opposition doesn’t band together as it did in 1992, Biya might have an easy ride to the presidency.

“He has the experience, the human resources and the system to his advantage,” says Dr Hugues.

• ‘Nowhere is safe’ – Cameroonians trapped between separatists and soldiers
• Art curator Koyo Kouoh dies at height of career
• The lawyer risking everything to defend LGBT rights
• Paul Biya: Cameroon’s ‘absentee president’

Ghana’s President John Mahama has promised a full investigation into Wednesday’s helicopter crash that killed two government ministers and six other people.

Defence Minister Edward Omane Boamah and Environment, Science and Technology Minister Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed, both 50, were among those killed when a military aircraft crashed in the central Ashanti region.

In a televised address to the nation, Mahama said the crash represented “a personal loss” for him.

The president confirmed that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders – often referred to as the “black boxes” – had been retrieved and that the armed forces had “initiated a full and transparent investigation”.

“I shared a bond with many of those who died. Our nation is grieving,” Mahama told Ghanaians.

The Z9 helicopter, carrying three crew and five passengers, came down in a dense forest as it was flying from the capital, Accra, to the town of Obuasi for an event to tackle illegal mining. There were no survivors.

The bodies of the eight deceased have been recovered from the crash site, and samples have been sent to South Africa for forensic identification and analysis.

Ghana’s Deputy National Security Coordinator and former Agriculture Minister Alhaji Muniru Mohammed was also among the dead, along with Samuel Sarpong, Vice-Chairman of the governing National Democratic Congress party.

A state funeral will be held on 15 August for the victims, AFP reported.

Authorities have not confirmed the cause of the crash.

Ghana’s meteorological agency had forecast unusually cold weather for August, with recent rains and light showers causing foggy conditions in many forest areas. Local farmers near the crash site reported morning fog as the helicopter flew overhead.

One eyewitness told the BBC the helicopter was flying at an “unusually low altitude” and the weather was bad.

He said he heard the sound of the helicopter passing by, followed by a “loud sound” and then a “bang”.

“That’s when I realised that the helicopter had exploded. So I hurried to the place to see if I could find survivors,” he said.

The farmer said when he got to the scene there was “no-one to be rescued”.

This is the most deadly of three separate emergency incidents involving Ghana Air Force helicopters in recent years.

In 2020, a Ghana Air Force Harbin Z-9 helicopter made an emergency landing near Tamale Airport, and last year, another Ghana Air Force helicopter made an emergency landing at Bonsukrom in Ghana’s Western Region.

Many Ghanaians are shocked by the news and are still struggling to come to terms with the news. Images purportedly showing the charred remains of the helicopter have been circulating on social media.

President Mahama has suspended all his scheduled activities for the rest of the week and declared three days of mourning starting from Thursday.

The country’s flags are flying at half-mast.

The crew members were named as Squadron Leader Peter Bafemi Anala, Flying Officer Manin Twum-Ampadu, and Sergeant Ernest Addo Mensah.

Boamah served under Mahama’s previous government as communications minister and before that he was minister of environment. As defence minster he tackled jihadist activity that was brewing in the northern border in Burkina Faso.

In 2022, a France-based NGO, Promediation, said its research showed that jihadist groups had recruited between 200 and 300 young Ghanaians.

Violence in the area has also been on the rise, with concerns that jihadists may be trying to exploit communal in-fighting between rival communities in northern Ghana.

Boamah’s book A Peaceful Man In An African Democracy, about former president John Atta Mills, was due to come out later in the year.

Muhammed was at the forefront of the battle against illegal gold mining, which has wrecked the environment and contaminated rivers and lakes.

Protests against the practice, known locally as Galamsey, peaked during Mahama’s run for the presidency last year.

Authorities in Brussels are considering using ferrets to tackle the city’s longstanding issue with rats.

The rodents have become a major problem in the Belgian capital, prompting the council to set up a rat task force.

Under the proposals, a professional rat catcher would use trained ferrets to hunt out the animals and chase them towards traps.

“Since the rat is a natural prey for the ferret, the ferret is able to drive the rats out of their hiding places and bring them closer to traps,” a spokesperson for Anas Ben Adelmoumen, the councillor in charge of public cleanliness, said.

Ferrets have already been used in some instances in Brussels, the spokesperson said, and now the council is proposing extending the method across the city. A decision on their use is expected in the coming months.

One district, Etterbeek, has been using ferrets for some time with positive results. Rats that manage to escape the traps are usually scared off by the scent of the ferrets, allowing an area to be clear of rodents for several months.

Brussels has seen its brown rat population almost double in the last 10 years, according to the Brussels Times.

It is thought to be down to milder winters, which make ideal mating conditions. The popularity of compost bins is also thought to have boosted the city’s rat numbers.

Since January, the rat task force says it has carried out more than 600 “interventions” in people’s homes.

It has called on residents to contact the council as soon as they see the signs of a rat infestation. It has also boosted its budget by 20% to a total of 65,000 euros (£56,332, $75,766) and invested in smart traps to capture the animals.

A South African court has ruled that Zambia’s government can repatriate the body of former President Edgar Lungu and give him a state funeral, despite his family’s opposition.

Lungu’s family had wanted to bury him privately in South Africa, where he died in June. They were left visibly distraught by the Pretoria high court’s decision and intend to lodge an appeal.

The Zambian state welcomed the ruling, saying that while it mourned with the former statesman’s family, Lungu “belongs to the nation”.

The dispute follows a long-standing feud between Lungu and his successor, President Hakainde Hichilema, with Lungu’s family saying he had indicated that Hichilema should not attend his funeral.

Handing down the ruling, judge Aubrey Ledwaba said the Zambian government was “entitled to repatriate the body of the late president” and ordered his family to “immediately surrender” it to authorities.

• The presidential feud that even death couldn’t end
• From Dos Santos to Mugabe – the burial disputes over ex-leaders

Following Lungu’s death from an undisclosed illness at the age of 68, the family wanted to be in charge of the funeral arrangements, including the repatriation of his body, but the Zambian authorities sought to take control.

The government and his family later agreed he would have a state funeral before relations broke down over the precise arrangements, prompting the family to opt for a burial in South Africa.

The former president’s elder sister Bertha Lungu cried in court after the verdict was announced.

Speaking over the loud wails, Zambian Attorney General Mulilo D Kabesha said the ruling was not a win for the government but rather “what makes good sense”.

“When you are the father of the nation, you can’t restrict yourself to your immediate family,” he said.

Mr Kabesha praised the court for making a “sound judgment” and said that while the family had a right to appeal, this was a “learning curve” for those aspiring to the highest office.

The family has since said it intends to “appeal against the whole judgment and order” made by Mr Ledwaba.

This means Lungu’s body will remain in South Africa until the appeal is heard.

The BBC understands that private security services have been enlisted to protect Lungu’s remains at the morgue in Pretoria following repeated attempts to remove the body without authorisation.

Lungu led Zambia from 2015 until 2021 when he lost the election to Hichilema by a large margin.

After that defeat he stepped back from politics but later returned to the fray.

• Funeral row causes chaos for mourners of Zambia’s ex-president
• Zambia dismisses US health warning after toxic spill in copper mining area
• ‘My son is a drug addict, please help’ – the actor breaking a Zambian taboo
• Artist explores the toxic mining legacy of Zambia’s ‘black mountains’

The US has doubled a reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to $50m (£37.2m), accusing him of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world”.

US President Donald Trump is a long-time critic of Maduro, who returned to office in January following an election marred by vote-rigging allegations. The results were widely rejected by the international community.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the US would double its already announced reward of $25m (£18.6m), and said Maduro was directly linked to drug smuggling operations.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said the new reward was “pathetic” and labelled it “political propaganda”.

“We’re not surprised, coming from whom it comes from,” Gil said, accusing Bondi of attempting a “desperate distraction” from headlines related to backlash over the handling of the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

During Trump’s first term, the US government charged Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials with a range of offences, including narco-terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking.

At the time, the US Department of Justice claimed Maduro had worked with the Colombian rebel group Farc to “use cocaine as a weapon to ‘flood’ the United States”.

In a video posted on X on Thursday, Bondi accused Maduro of coordinating with groups like Tren de Aragua – a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has declared a terrorist organisation – and the Sinaloa Cartel, a powerful criminal network based in Mexico.

She claimed the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had “seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates, with nearly seven tons linked to Maduro himself”.

Maduro has previously rejected US claims he has direct involvement in drug trafficking.

Bondi’s comments are an extension of long-running tensions between the US and Venezuelan government – but the attorney general did not provide any further indication over how the government envisioned the renewed appeal and cash incentive would yield results.

Maduro – who is leader of the United Socialist Party and succeeded Hugo Chavez in 2013 – has been repeatedly accused of repressing opposition groups and silencing dissent in Venezuela, including with the use of violence.

He weathered protests in the wake of last year’s contested election and has retained his grip on power.

But in June, Hugo Carvajal – formerly the head of Venezuela’s military intelligence – was convicted of several drug trafficking charges after being arrested in Madrid and put on trial in the US.

Carvajal had been a feared spymaster who went by the name El Pollo, or The Chicken, but fled Venezuela after calling on the army to back an opposition candidate and overthrow Maduro.

He initially denied the drug charges but later changed his plea to guilty, fuelling speculation he had cut a deal with US authorities for a lesser sentence in exchange for incriminating information about Maduro.

The UK and EU announced sanctions against Maduro’s government following his return to office earlier this year.

The Dardanelles Strait has been temporarily shut to maritime traffic due to forest fires raging in north-western Turkey, the country’s transport ministry has said.

The major international waterway was shut as a precautionary measure as the blazes spread near the city of Canakkale where a number of residents were evacuated.

Turkish firefighters have been deployed to try to contain the fires. Specialist firefighting planes and helicopters are also in use.

The Dardanelles links the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Together with the Bosporus Strait, it serves as a vital route for commercial shipping between Europe and Asia.

Nearly 46,000 vessels crossed the Dardanelles in 2024, according to official data.

Strong winds fanned the wildfires, helping them spread in hot dry weather, local officials said. Efforts to extinguish the blazes from “both the air and ground” were ongoing, Canakkale’s provincial governor – quoted in Turkiye Today – said on Friday.

Canakkale’s main airport is closed to passenger flights, but firefighting and search and rescue aircraft are still operating from there.

Hundreds of wildfires have broken out across Turkey this summer, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes.

In July, at least 10 forestry and rescue workers were killed while battling wildfires in the country’s central Eskisehir province.

Convicted triple-murderer Erin Patterson allegedly tried to repeatedly poison her husband, including with cookies she claimed their daughter had baked him, a court was told.

The Australian woman was last month found guilty of murdering three relatives – and attempting to kill another – with a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington.

The 50-year-old was originally charged with three counts of attempted murder against her estranged husband Simon Patterson, but these charges were dropped without explanation on the eve of her trial.

The details of the allegations, which Patterson denied, were suppressed to protect the proceedings, but can now be made public for the first time.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the lunch on 29 July 2023: Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

Local pastor Ian Wilkinson – Heather’s husband – recovered after weeks of treatment in hospital.

In lengthy pre-trial hearings last year, Mr Patterson had detailed what he suspected was a years-long campaign to kill him with tainted food – including one episode which had left him so ill he spent weeks in a coma and his family was twice told to say their goodbyes.

In a quiet moment during the early days of Patterson’s trial, her estranged husband choked up as he explained his sorrow to a near empty courtroom.

Mr Patterson’s parents and his aunt had been killed, and his uncle almost died too, after eating the toxic meal prepared by his wife. He had narrowly avoided the same fate, pulling out of the lunch gathering the day before.

“I have a lot to grieve,” he said to the judge, sitting in the witness box as the jury prepared to return from a break.

“The legal process has been very difficult… especially the way it’s progressed in terms of the charges relating to me and my evidence about that – or non-evidence now, I guess.”

“I’m sitting here, half thinking about the things I’m not allowed to talk about and… I don’t actually understand why. It seems bizarre to me, but it is what it is.”

What he wasn’t allowed to talk about – the elephant in the room throughout the trial – was his claim that Patterson had been trying to poison him long before the fatal lunch that destroyed his family on 29 July 2023.

Mr Patterson gave evidence during pre-trial hearings, which are a standard part of the court process and allow judges to determine what evidence is admissible – or allowed to be presented to a jury.

As the charges relating to Mr Patterson were dropped, his evidence on the matter was excluded from the raft of information presented at the nine-week trial this year.

But he had explained that, as far as he knows, it all began with a Tupperware container of Bolognese penne in November 2021.

Mr Patterson and his wife had separated in 2015 – though they still aren’t divorced – and he thought they remained on amicable terms.

Under questioning from Patterson’s lawyer, Mr Patterson confirmed he had noticed “nothing untoward” in their relationship at that point: “If by ‘nothing untoward’, you mean anything that would make me think she would try and kill me, correct.”

But after eating that meal, he began suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea, and spent a night in hospital.

“I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food. I did not give it too much thought,” he said in his police statement, according to The Age newspaper.

Months later, in May 2022, he fell ill again after eating a chicken korma curry prepared by Patterson on a camping trip in the rugged mountains and alpine scruff of Victoria’s High Country region.

“While Erin was preparing food I was getting the fire going so I didn’t watch her prepare it,” he told the court.

Within days, he was in a coma in a Melbourne hospital, and a large part of his bowel was surgically removed in a bid to save his life.

“My family were asked to come and say goodbye to me twice, as I was not expected to live,” he said in a 2022 Facebook post, reported by The South Gippsland Sentinel Times two years ago.

In September 2022, while visiting a stunning, isolated stretch of Victorian coastline, he would become desperately unwell again after eating a vegetable wrap.

At first, he felt nausea and diarrhoea coming on, the court heard, before his symptoms escalated. He started slurring his speech, gradually lost control of his muscles, and began “fitting”.

“By the end of the journey [to hospital], all I could move was my neck, my tongue and lips,” he told the court.

A family friend who was a doctor, Christopher Ford, suggested Mr Patterson start a food diary so they could try to figure out what was making him so sick.

“I couldn’t understand why these things kept on happening to him in such a way that he had essentially three near-death experiences,” Dr Ford told the court.

Mr Patterson returned to see him in February 2023, five months before the fatal lunch, revealing he’d come to believe his estranged wife was responsible.

He told Dr Ford about a batch of cookies supposedly baked by his daughter, which he feared were treats tainted – possibly with antifreeze chemicals – by his wife, who had called repeatedly to check whether he had eaten any.

The court would hear investigators never figured out what Patterson had allegedly been feeding him, though they suspected rat poison may have been used on at least one occasion, and had found a file on Patterson’s computer with information about the toxin.

After this discovery, Mr Patterson changed his medical power of attorney, removing his wife, and quietly told a handful of family members of his fears.

The court heard that his father Don Patterson responded diplomatically, but his sister Anna Terrington told the pre-trial hearings she had believed her brother, and was anxious when she learned about the lunch Patterson had planned.

Ms Terrington called her parents the night before to warn them.

“Dad said, ‘No, we’ll be ok’,” she said.

Five days later, she gathered in a Melbourne hospital chapel alongside her brother and other worried relatives. Down the hall, deteriorating in their beds, were Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

Ruth Dubois, the Wilkinsons’ daughter, told the pre-trial hearings Simon Patterson had assembled the group to tell them he suspected his previous grave illnesses were the work of his wife.

“[He said] he had stopped eating food that Erin had prepared, because he suspected Erin had been messing with it,” she said.

“He was really sorry that he hadn’t told our family before this… but he thought he was the only person she was targeting, and that they’d be safe.”

It was also revealed that Patterson had visited a local tip the afternoon of the lunch at her house, though it is unknown what, if anything, she disposed of there.

The jury heard that she had travelled to the same dump days after the lunch to get rid of a food dehydrator used to prepare the meal, but the judge ruled they couldn’t be told about the first visit.

Other bizarre evidence which was ultimately left out of the trial included a 2020 post to a poisons help forum on Facebook, in which Patterson claimed her cat had eaten some mushrooms under a tree and had vomited, alongside pictures of fungi.

Patterson had never owned a cat, prosecutors said, arguing the post was evidence of a long-standing interest in the poisonous properties of mushrooms.

On Friday, Justice Christopher Beale set down a sentencing hearing for 25 August, where those connected to the case will have the opportunity to give victim impact statements.

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France’s multi-billion euro mineral water companies are under the spotlight because of climate change and growing concerns about the industry’s environmental impact.

At issue is whether some world-famous brands, notably the iconic Perrier label, can even continue calling themselves “natural mineral water”.

A decision in the Perrier case is due in the coming months. It follows revelations in the French media about illicit filtration systems that have been widely used in the industry, apparently because of worries about water contamination, after years of drought linked to climate change.

“This really is our Water-gate,” says Stéphane Mandard, who has led investigations at Le Monde newspaper. “It’s a combination of industrial fraud and state collusion.”

“And now there is a real Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Perrier.”

According to hydrologist Emma Haziza, “the commercial model of the big producers has worked very well. But it is absolutely not sustainable at a time of global climate change”.

“When you have big brands that feel they have no choice but to treat their water – that means they know there is a problem with the quality.”

The story hit the headlines a year ago in France after an investigation by Le Monde and Radio France revealed that at least a third of mineral water sold in France had been illegally treated, either with ultra-violet light, carbon filters or ultra-fine micro-meshes commonly used to screen out bacteria.

The issue was not one of public health. The treated water was by definition safe to drink.

The problem was that under EU law, “natural mineral water” – which sells at a huge premium over tap water – is supposed to be unaltered between the underground source and the bottle. That is the whole point of it.

If brands like Evian, Vichy and Perrier have been so successful in France and around the world, it is thanks to an appealing image of mountain-sides, rushing streams, purity and health-giving minerals.

Admit filtering the water, and the industry risks breaking the market spell. Consumers might begin to ask what they’d been paying for.

Complicating matters for Perrier and its parent company Nestlé – as well as President Emmanuel Macron’s government – is the charge that executives and ministers conspired to keep the affair quiet, covered up reports of contamination, and re-wrote the rules so that Perrier could continue using micro-filtration.

In their investigations, Le Monde and Radio France alleged that the government considered the mineral water industry so strategic that it agreed to suppress damaging information. A senate inquiry into the affair accused the government of a “deliberate strategy” of “dissimulation”.

Responding to the allegations, the government has asked the European Commission to rule on what level of micro-filtration is permissible for “natural mineral water”. Aurelien Rousseau, who was head of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne’s cabinet at the time, admitted there had been an “error of appreciation” but insisted there was never any risk to public health.

Earlier this year, at the senate hearing into the industry, Nestlé’s CEO Laurent Freixe admitted that Perrier had indeed used illicit methods to treat its water.

But he also had another admission: that an official hydrologists’ report into the company’s historic site in the Gard department in southern France had recommended against renewing “natural mineral water” status for the company’s output.

It raises the possibility that for the first time in its 160-year history, Perrier water may soon not be labelled as what people assume it to be.

According to the hydrologist Emma Haziza, “the link to climate change and global warming is absolutely established”. And if Perrier is feeling the impact ahead of other companies, it is probably because its geographical location sets it apart.

Far from the remote mountain landscape you might imagine, Perrier’s water is pumped from deep aquifers in the coastal plain between Nîmes and Montpellier, a short drive from the Mediterranean. The area is populous, heavily-farmed, and very hot.

“There has been a big climatic shift since 2017,” says Haziza. “For five years there was a succession of droughts, which were particularly badly felt in the south.”

“All the aquifers were affected. This means not just the upper water-table, which is where everyday tap water comes from. We can now see that the deeper aquifers – which the companies thought were protected – are also being hit.

“The unforeseen is taking place. We are moving from a period in which companies could draw water from the deep aquifers and be sure they would be replenished, to a period in which it’s obvious the whole system cannot go on.”

The analysis made by Haziza and other hydrologists is that there is now a clear link between deeper and surface aquifers. Contaminants (farm chemicals or human waste) that drain off the land in the increasingly frequent flash floods, can now make their way into the lower aquifers.

At the same time, the effects of long-term drought and over-pumping mean these lower aquifers contain less volume, so any contamination will be more concentrated, the experts say.

“We can foresee that what has happened first at Perrier’s site will happen to other producers in the years to come. That’s why we need to move away from our current model of consumption,” says Haziza.

Last year at the Perrier site, three million bottles had to be destroyed because of a contamination. But the company insists that any problems are swiftly detected; and it disputes the claim that contaminants are entering the deep aquifers.

“We are pumping water from 130 metres underground, beneath layers of limestone,” says Perrier hydrologist Jérémie Pralong. “We are 100% convinced of the purity of the water. And its mineral make-up is constant.”

Perrier says there is no EU ruling that specifically bans micro-filtration. The relevant text simply says that nothing must be done to disinfect or alter the mineral make-up of the water. The argument is over at what measure of micro-filtration alteration begins.

The original Perrier source was first tapped by a local doctor in the 1860s, but it was under British management that the brand took off 50 years later.

St John Harmsworth – brother of newspaper magnates Lords Northcliffe and Rothermere – made Perrier a byword for mineral water across the British empire.

According to company lore, Harmsworth took inspiration for the bottles’ bulbous shape from the Indian clubs he used for exercise following a crippling car accident.

Today the bottling plant at Vergèze is still next to Harmsworth’s residence and the original source. The plant has been heavily automated. A rail track connects with the SNCF network to bring hundreds of millions of cans and bottles every year to Marseille for export.

The focus for the last year has been on a new brand: Maison Perrier. These energy and flavoured drinks are proving highly successful in France and around the world.

The advantage for Perrier is that the new beverages do not claim to be “natural mineral water”. They can be treated and filtered without difficulty.

Perrier says the new brand is part of the mix, and that it has no intention of abandoning its original Source Perrier natural mineral water. It has stopped the ultra-fine (0.2 micron) microfiltration, and now uses a 0.45 micron system which has been agreed with government.

It has applied for “natural mineral water” status for just two out of the five drilling wells it was using for Perrier mineral water. A decision is due later this year.

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A 16-year-old boy who described himself in a TikTok video as a “serial rapist” has been sentenced after raping three teenage girls and sexually assaulting a fourth.

In what police described as “heinous” crimes, the boy used social media to contact the girls – who were between 13 and 15 – and convinced them to meet him, before sexually assaulting them.

He was sentenced at Salisbury Crown Court on Friday to eight years to be spent firstly at a secure training centre and then at a young offender’s institution. He cannot be named for legal reasons.

Det Con Dan England said the case highlighted “the troubling issue of toxic sexual behaviours in some young men”.

The teenager – from south Wiltshire – was found guilty following a Southampton Youth Court trial in January.

Police said the crimes took place on four separate occasions between May 2023 and December 2024.

Speaking after the sentencing, Det Con England said: “[Toxic sexual behaviours], which can stem from a variety of societal influences, must be addressed through education and open dialogue, in the home, at school, workplaces and throughout our entire community.”

The teenager will spend a further six years on licence after his release.

He will be placed on the sex offenders register for life and will be the subject of an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

Det Con England continued: “My thoughts are firmly with the victims, who have shown remarkable courage and resilience throughout this ordeal.

“It is their bravery in coming forward that has brought this perpetrator to justice. I applaud their strength in the face of such unimaginable trauma and thank them for putting their trust in us.”

The teenager was also given an indefinite restraining order against the victims.

Scientists have found strong evidence of a giant gas planet in the nearest star system to our own.

At four-and-a-half light years away, the lifeless planet would be a close neighbour to Earth in astronomical terms and could have moons that sustain life.

The signs were found in the star system Alpha Centauri by the powerful James Webb Space Telescope.

The potential planet was detected last year, but it had disappeared in follow-up observations. Astronomers must now look again to prove it definitely exists.

Scientists are particularly excited about this discovery because of the similarities between the exoplanet’s star and our Sun.

“Four years is a long way but in galaxy terms, it’s very close – it’s in our neighbourhood,” said Dr Carly Howett, associate professor of space instrumentation at the University of Oxford.

“It is around a star that is Sun-like and about the same temperature and brightness. That’s really important if we want to think about habitable worlds,” she added.

The planet would be similar to our solar system’s gas giants, Saturn and Jupiter, and would be enveloped in a thick gas cloud.

That means it could not support life itself, but it could have moons that are habitable.

Jupiter and some other planets in our solar system have icy moons, which researchers believe could support life.

Scientists are currently investigating that possibility on missions called Europa Clipper and Juice.

But those planets are far away from our life-giving Sun. The potential “new” planet is comparatively close to its star.

The signs were found in direct imaging by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is the closest thing scientists have to taking photographs of distant objects.

“These are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world’s most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly,” said Charles Beichman from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-first author of the new discoveries.

Those stars create huge amounts of bright light that can block out nearby objects.

That could be why the planet was detected once, in August 2024, but then seemingly disappeared when scientists looked for it again.

“Probably the planet was either behind the star or too close to be able to see it. You need an element of luck,” said Dr Howett.

Astronomers will now look for more signs of the planet. They hope to use a new Nasa telescope – the Grace Roman Space Telescope – which is due to start operating in 2027.

Future observations by the James Webb Space Telescope should also be able to tell us what the planet is made up of, using something called spectral imaging.

That will build up a more detailed picture of what it looks like, and how habitable any orbiting Moons could be.

Crocs’ share price plunged after the rubber clog-maker revealed a fall in US sales as shoppers chose to spend on trainers ahead of the World Cup and the Olympics.

The footwear became a stay-at-home staple during the Covid pandemic and has remained relevant as celebrities embraced the “ugly” shoe aesthetic.

However, North American consumers are buying into a “clear athletic trend” ahead of next year’s football World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, said Crocs’ boss Andrew Rees.

He also warned that US customers were being “super cautious” due to the high cost of living and the potential impact of Trump tariffs.

“They’re not purchasing, they’re not even going to the stores, and we see traffic down,” Mr Rees said.

US sales fell by 6.5% between April and June. Crocs cautioned on a “concerning” second half of the year as it reported a pre-tax loss. Its share price plunged by 30% to a three-year low of $73.

Mr Rees said Crocs appealed to a “particularly broad consumer base” and other brands were performing better “because they are focused exclusively on a high-end consumer”.

Crocs’ low-end consumer “is most sensitive to increases, is most nervous and in some cases, is not leaving the house,” he said.

He said these people were not buying new Crocs as they were worried how their personal finances would be hit by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs across imports to the US.

Susan Healy, finance director at Crocs, said the company would take a $40m (£29.8m) hit for the remainder of 2025 due to tariffs.

Mr Rees said: “I think we can over the medium-term mitigate the impact of tariffs. That will come from cost savings in our supply chain.”

Crocs said it will continue to pull back on discounting its products, cautioning that this could have a further impact on sales.

In China, where consumer purchasing is “not strong”, according to Mr Rees, Crocs was “bucking that trend”.

“That brand heat has been driven by a set of social-first digital marketing tactics using key Chinese celebrities,” he said.

It is working with three of China’s biggest influencers Liu Yuxin, Tan Jianci and Bai Lu to push its rubber shoes.

It is also collaborating with designer Simone Rocha, whose sparkly take on the Croc were recently seen on the feet of actress Michelle Yeoh.

While sales rose in China and fell in the US, overall revenue grew by 3.4% to $1.1bn over the three months to 30 June.

However, it reported a $448.6m pre-tax loss for the period, compared to a $296m profit last year.

The company’s share price suffered the worst single-day drop in almost 15 years after the results emerged.

Crocs also owns casual footwear brand HEYDUDE, following a $2.5bn takeover in late 2021.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has beaten Elon Musk’s Grok in the final of a tournament to crown the best artificial intelligence (AI) chess player.

Historically, tech companies have often used chess to assess the progress and abilities of a computer, with modern chess machines virtually unbeatable against even the top human players.

But this competition did not involve computers designed for chess – instead it was held between AI programs designed for everyday use.

OpenAI’s o3 model emerged unbeaten in the tournament and defeated xAI’s model Grok 4 in the final, adding fuel to the fire of an ongoing rivalry between the two firms.

Musk and Sam Altman, both co-founders of OpenAI, claim their latest models are the smartest in the world.

Google’s model Gemini claimed third place in the tournament, after beating a different OpenAI model.

But these AI, while talented at many everyday tasks, are still improving at chess – with Grok making a number of errors during its final games including losing its queen repeatedly.

“Up until the semi finals, it seemed like nothing would be able to stop Grok 4 on its way to winning the event,” Pedro Pinhata, a writer for Chess.com, said in its coverage.

“Despite a few moments of weakness, X’s AI seemed to be by far the strongest chess player… But the illusion fell through on the last day of the tournament.”

He said Grok’s “unrecognizable” and “blundering” play enabled o3 to claim a succession of “convincing wins”.

“Grok made so many mistakes in these games, but OpenAI did not,” said chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura during his livestream on the final.

Before Thursday’s final, Musk had said in a post on X that xAI’s prior success in the tournament had been a “side effect” and it “spent almost no effort on chess”.

The AI chess tournament took place on Google-owned platform Kaggle, which allows data scientists to evaluate their systems through competitions.

Eight large language models from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, xAI, as well as chinese developers DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, battled against each other during Kaggle’s three day tournament.

AI developers use tests known as benchmarks to examine their models’ skills in areas such as reasoning or coding.

As complex rule-based, strategy games, chess and Go have often been used to assess a model’s ability to learn how to best achieve a certain outcome – in this case, outmaneuvering opponents to win.

AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google’s AI lab DeepMind to play the Chinese two-player strategy game Go, claimed a series of victories against human Go champions in the late 2010s.

South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol retired after several defeats by AlphaGo in 2019.

“There is an entity that cannot be defeated,” he told the Yonhap news agency.

Sir Demis Hassabis, one of DeepMind’s co-founders, is himself a former chess prodigy.

Meanwhile in the late 1990s, chess champions were pitted against powerful computers.

Deep Blue’s victory was considered a landmark moment in demonstrating the power of computers to match certain human skills.

Speaking 20 years later, Mr Kasparov likened its intelligence to that of an alarm clock – but said “losing to a $10m (£7.6m) alarm clock did not make me feel any better”.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that Israel intends to take control of all of the Gaza Strip signals an escalation that flies in the face of some emphatic international warnings.

But it is one that, at least so far, the US government has greeted with a telling and collective shrug.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said it was “pretty much up to Israel” whether to fully occupy Gaza. And when asked the following day whether he was giving Israel a “green light”, he instead spoke about the US strikes on Iran earlier this year.

Washington’s Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee was even more direct – and his answer was that Netanyahu’s Gaza plan is not America’s concern.

“It’s not our job to tell them what they should or should not do,” he said. “Certainly, if they ask for wisdom, counsel, advice, I’m sure the president would offer it. But ultimately, it’s the decision that the Israelis and only the Israelis can make.”

Netanyahu has faced some opposition to his plan – notably from the Chief of Staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir who, according to Israeli media, had argued against a full-scale occupation.

In the event, an announcement after a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet did not say Israel would take control of the entire territory of the Gaza Strip, but rather that it would “prepare for taking control of Gaza City”.

It did, however, mention that one of five principles for ending the war was “Israeli security control in the Gaza Strip”.

Some have suggested a full takeover of Gaza has always been on the table.

“Netanyahu had always planned to take over Gaza, he just was waiting for the right moment,” Amin Saikal, emeritus professor of Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, told the BBC.

Netanyahu has suggested Israel does not want to keep the territory, however, but “hand it over to Arab forces” – without specifying which.

Whatever the plan, however, the Trump administration is not giving Netanyahu any public indication that he is wrong.

That represents a marked change in White House policy. Trump previously had been more than willing to outline his views on Gaza’s future – even when it caught Netanyahu and the Israelis by surprise.

• LIVE UPDATES: Israel’s security cabinet approves plan to take control of Gaza City
• Netanyahu divides Israelis and allies with plan to occupy Gaza
• Hundreds of Israeli ex-officials appeal to Trump to help end Gaza war

In February, just weeks into his second presidential term, he said the US could be deeply involved in the reconstruction of Gaza as a global resort and suggested Palestinians might have to be relocated outside of the territory.

And while the US joined Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities in the brief clash between the two nations in June, Trump publicly and forcefully pressured Israel to abide by the ceasefire that ended that conflict.

The Americans also expressed their unhappiness with Israeli attacks on Syria last month – publicly disapproving, while offering even sharper criticism in private.

“Bibi acted like a madman,” a White House official told the news website Axios. “He bombs everything all the time.”

The White House has also been invested in ending the Gaza War, even pressuring Netanyahu for a ceasefire before Trump took office in January.

Steve Witkoff, the real estate magnate with a broad diplomatic portfolio in the Trump White House, has been the point person for these negotiations, seeking to broker a permanent ceasefire along with the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas in its 7 October 2023 attack.

As recently as a month ago, the White House was optimistic that a deal was within reach.

“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire,” Witkoff said on 8 July, adding that it could lead to a “lasting peace in Gaza”.

But just over two weeks later, ceasefire talks had collapsed, and Witkoff was publicly accusing Hamas of being selfish and not acting in good faith.

“Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal,” Trump said on 25 July. “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad.”

Trump’s comments – and his decision to abandon talks with Hamas and stay ambivalent about what could represent a massive new Israeli military operation – could be a ploy designed to force the Palestinian group to make new concessions at the negotiating table.

If so, that will become apparent soon enough.

“The Trump administration has got a lot of leverage, ” said Prof Saikal of the Australian National University. “I think Netanyahu would not make this move unless he had some sort of consent or tacit support from Washington.”

This American change of course from public disapproval to obvious distancing could, however, also be part of an effort by the president to return to his non-interventionist outlook – a position he temporarily abandoned during the Iranian strikes, much to the consternation of parts of his political base.

“There’s increasing concern that this is inconsistent with an America-first policy, getting the United States deeper and deeper into this horrible war is not something that the president ran for office on,” Frank Lowenstein, special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the Barack Obama administration, told the BBC.

“But for the time being, anyway, I think Trump is going to let Netanyahu do whatever he wants.”

If so, Trump’s position stands in stark contrast to the recent statements by France, the UK and Canada on recognising a Palestinian state. These moves were designed to bring additional pressure on Israel to wind down its military operations and reach a negotiated settlement with Hamas.

That diplomatic recognition, as well as America’s studied indifference to the prospect of a long – and possibly indefinite – Israeli military occupation, take the US and its allies in markedly different directions.

But both represent a tacit acknowledgement that the current situation is untenable, and that a negotiated peace is further away than ever.

With Trump, there is no telling how long this trend will last. But by the time Trump changes course again, Israel could be well down a path in Gaza that will be very difficult to reverse.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

US Vice-President JD Vance has raised questions about the UK’s plans to recognise a Palestinian state, in a meeting with Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

The UK has said it will formally recognise a Palestinian state in September if Israel does not meet certain conditions.

But US President Donald Trump has not followed suit and believes that recognising Palestinian statehood would be rewarding Hamas.

The difference in approach to the war in Gaza is among the issues being discussed by Vance and Lammy at the foreign secretary’s official country residence, Chevening House, in Kent on Friday.

Speaking alongside Lammy, Vance said: “The United Kingdom is going to make its decision.

“We have no plans to recognise a Palestinian state.

“I don’t know what it would mean to really recognise a Palestinian state – given the lack of a functional government there.”

The vice-president said the US administration wanted to see Hamas eradicated so Israeli civilians were not attacked again, but also to solve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Vance said while the UK and US shared focus and goals, there were “disagreements” which would be discussed at Chevening.

Lammy said he was concerned about Israel’s intention to take over more of Gaza.

The foreign secretary said: “What we all want to see is a ceasefire – what we all want to see are the hostages come out.

“We are hugely concerned by the humanitarian suffering that we are seeing in Gaza particularly.”

Striking a warm tone, Vance spoke of his love for England and praised his “good friend” the foreign secretary.

He said Britain and the US should work together to “bring greater peace” to the world as the two countries “have a lot in common”.

The pair are meeting for talks at the residence during Vance’s family holiday to the UK.

The two men went carp fishing in a pond near the 17th century house on Friday morning. Vance said he and his children caught fish but Lammy did not.

“Unfortunately, the one strain on the special relationship is that all of my kids caught fish, but the foreign secretary did not,” the vice-president said.

The Vance family is expected to spend most of their break in the Cotswolds and are also planning to visit Scotland.

Lammy and Vance have been meeting regularly on official trips since the foreign secretary started in his role last year, and they have bonded over their difficult childhoods and shared Christian faith.

But Vance has been critical of the UK over free-speech issues.

In a speech in February, Vance accused European governments – including the UK’s – of retreating from their values, and ignoring voter concerns on migration and free speech.

He claimed that a “backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons” under threat, and attacked the use of laws to enforce buffer zones around abortion clinics.

When asked about those criticisms, he said his concerns related more widely to “the entire collective West”.

Vance said: “Obviously, I’ve raised some criticism and concerns about our friends on this side of the Atlantic, but the thing that I say to the people of England, or anybody else, to David, is many of the things that I worry most about were happening in the United States from 2020 to 2024.

“I just don’t want other countries to follow us down what I think is a very dark path under the Biden administration.”

The other major area for discussion this weekend is Ukraine and the possibility of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the conflict.

Lammy has insisted there can’t be talks unless there is a ceasefire to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.

What Lammy, and other European nations, fear is that Putin will seek to use Trump to force terms on Ukraine without its presence at the table, and in a way that seriously undermines Europe’s security.

The vice president’s UK visit comes a few weeks after Trump travelled to Scotland, on a private visit to his golf courses.

Trump met Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as well as EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, agreeing a trade deal with the bloc, and will return for a full state visit in September.

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Actress Gina Carano has settled her lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm after she was fired from Star Wars franchise spin-off The Mandalorian.

She was dropped from the cast in 2021 following comments she made comparing being a Republican in the US to being a Jew during the Holocaust.

Ms Carano, a former MMA fighter who played Cara Dune in the Disney+ series, shared the news of the settlement on X, writing “I hope this brings some healing to the force.”

The agreement, which has not been made public, comes after her case gained support and funding from Elon Musk.

Ms Carano described the settlement as the “best outcome for all parties involved,” adding she was “excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter”.

She also thanked Musk, saying she’d never met the tech billionaire but he stepped in to do this “Good Samaritan deed for me in funding my lawsuit”.

“Yes, I’m smiling”, she signed off.

The actress originally sued for wrongful termination and sexual discrimination, claiming that two of her male co-stars had made similar posts and faced no penalty.

She had sought $75,000 (£60,000) in damages and to be recast in the popular series.

Lucasfilm had condemned her comments in 2021 for “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities”.

In a statement released since the settlement, the production company said that it looks forward to “identifying opportunities to work together”.

The company described Ms Carano as someone who “was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff. She worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect,” it added.

Ms Carano is a former mixed martial arts fighter and has faced pushback in the past for deriding mask-wearing policies during the Covid pandemic and making false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.

In January 1997, long before the modern phenomenon of online “paedophile hunters”, a Scottish grandmother found overnight fame when she successfully drove a convicted child sex offender out of the Raploch housing estate in Stirling.

Margaret ‘Big Mags’ Haney and her brand of mob justice transformed her into a matriarchal media personality.

One of her most famous appearances was on the popular daytime TV show Kilroy where she was invited to discuss the ‘paedophile panic’ that was sweeping the county.

Haney argued with the show’s host, squabbled with other guests, and threatened two men in the audience, clearly wearing disguises, who had been convicted of abusing kids.

Her profile skyrocketed and in her new role as a self-styled anti-paedophile campaigner she began to pop up at protests across the country.

She was embraced as a salt-of-the-earth straight talker, applauded in many quarters for standing up for decent folk and for taking action to, as she would put it, fix a problem no-one else was tackling.

Sometimes with a microphone, sometimes with a placard, if Mags was part of the mob, it got the press interested – and the media appearances kept coming.

“I think it was something at her core that she really believed was wrong,” says Cassie Donald, Haney’s granddaughter, who has spoken for the first time to a BBC podcast.

“The community was suffering enough without paedophiles.

“She wasn’t the only person who stood up. She just happened to shout the loudest.”

But Haney was harbouring a secret and it wasn’t long before it came out.

Six months after Haney’s vigilantism, and her steep rise to fame, the press’s focus shifted to the Haney family’s criminal rap sheet.

Big Mags was the head of a “one family crime wave” responsible for thefts and violence across Stirling.

They were dubbed “Scotland’s Family from Hell” by the tabloids.

“Some of them could have scores of crimes against their name,” the Daily Record’s Mark McGivern remembers.

“The amount of crimes committed in Stirling by that family was the stuff of legend so they weren’t great to have around,” he says.

With the family’s crimes exposed and the local community’s patience at an end, Big Mags and the Haneys were forced to leave the estate by a 400-strong mob – bigger than the one whipped up to remove the paedophile Alan Christie six months earlier.

The crowd gathered near Mags’s flat, chanting “build a bonfire and put the Haneys on the top”.

As the chants got louder, police vans screeched into Huntly Crescent to prevent a riot.

Haney came out in pink t-shirt and slippers and gave the crowd the finger as she was led away for her own safety.

After her exile from the Raploch estate, Haney was put in temporary council accommodation.

But with no other local authority in Scotland or the north of England willing to rehouse her, she eventually settled in Lower Bridge Street, a stone’s throw away from her old stomping ground.

Through it all she remained a cause célèbre and the Scottish press still loved a Big Mags story.

In 2000, a darker secret emerged about the matriarch and the Haney clan.

Mark McGivern’s newspaper launched their “Shop-A-Dealer” campaign that encouraged readers to anonymously tip off the biggest heroin dealers in their schemes.

The phones lit up, with many callers ringing up to put Big Mags in the frame, exposing her as the big boss of a drug dynasty that ran heroin out of their flats.

McGivern remembers how Mags’s status changed from celebrated to feared.

“She was a public figure, a community leader, quite a big heroin dealer, and she was a gangster,” he says.

The journalist had a well-placed source who laid out to him the Haney drug operation, with Mags at the top, so he “scratched around” and witnessed family members selling drugs from the flats.

McGivern even bought a couple of bags of heroin from Haney lieutenants as part of his investigation.

Despite having the goods to run the story, he thought he’d try his arm at a direct deal with the boss herself.

“I’ve walked in, I’ve been asked to come into the living room and I was kind of surprised that Mags had sat in a throne, a big chair in the middle of the room,” the reporter recalls.

“I asked to buy drugs – heroin – and she looked at me and said: ‘We don’t sell heroin here’.

“I was thinking, ‘how am I going to get out of here?’.”

Rumbled and feeling somewhat intimidated, McGivern scarpered out of “Fortress Haney”, as it was known, and headed back to write up his story.

The Daily Record splashed Mags’s face across the newspaper with the headline “Dealer number one”.

A police sting operation followed. Four members of the Haney clan were arrested for drug offences and tried at the High Court in Edinburgh.

The court heard Haney was making up to £1,000 a day from the operation in addition to getting paid £1,200 a month in state benefits.

The judge, Lady Smith, said 60-year-old Mags was the mastermind behind the operation, dealing vast quantities heroin from what was known as “Haney’s hotel”.

Haney was jailed for 12 years, her daughter Diane, 35, was sentenced to nine years, 40-year-old niece Roseann to seven years and 31-year-old son Hugh to five years.

Diane’s daughter Cassie was just 10 when her mum and “nana” went to prison.

“I can remember I went to school the morning of their sentencing and I came home and they just weren’t there,” Cassie told the BBC.

“It was, ‘your mum’s in prison but you’ll see her soon’,” Cassie says.

“The attitudes towards them at the time were very much, ‘you’ve made your bed and you lie in it’, and there wasn’t a lot of thought for everybody.”

Despite these convictions, local residents and journalists remained puzzled as to why it took so long to dismantle the Haney drug operation, which was allegedly rampant throughout the 1990s.

Those Haney family members were convicted for their involvement in an 18-month drug operation that ran until their arrest in 2001.

Simon McLean, a retired police officer who investigated the Haneys, told the BBC podcast why he thought their drug operation wasn’t shut down sooner.

“The obvious answer is that she was informing,” he said.

“Crime families and organised crime leaders, I have met all of these people and I’ve never met one that didn’t talk to the police at some level.”

Another police source confirmed that Big Mags would provide officers with information.

Mags Haney died of cancer in 2013, aged 70.

Twelve years on, Cassie believes her grandmother’s legacy is more complex than was portrayed in the media.

“Two things can be true at one time,” she says.

“You can be a drug dealer that has sold drugs that have potentially killed people, but you could also still be a loving grandmother and a good person.

“I still feel like we owe it to her to tell her story.”

The full series of the ‘Crime Next Door: The Ballad of Big Mags’ podcast is available on BBC Sounds now.