Last Tuesday, Oksana and her family could not escape fast enough. Though they did not know it, Ukrainian regular forces had entered Russia for the first time, and Moscow’s military wasted little time in hitting back, bombing their village around seven miles from the border.

“It was 9am and the first glide bomb hit the village,” she said, and its ferocity – “very scary, much bigger” than ordinary shelling – was such that they immediately knew they had to escape. “Our neighbour drove his children first and then came back and picked me and my sister and family,” the mother of two explained.

Like hundreds of others from the Ukrainian borderlands where last week’s surprise attack was launched, Oksana and her family made their way south to Sumy, normally a 40-minute drive away. They have rented a property and were working out what to do next at a crowded refugee centre in the city.

Others lining up to register as internally displaced tell similar stories. While there had been periodic cross-border shelling before, this time was different. “What happened last week was times a hundred,” said Mykola, 69, who had been evacuated with his wife from Yunakivka, five miles from the border, on Sunday.

Ukraine’s civilian authorities had little formal warning of the attack, though some people in the area suspected something was coming. Nevertheless, once it had begun, they announced the mandatory evacuation of 6,000 people from villages 5km to 10km from the border, and it is unclear when they might be able to return.

More fighting is now taking place on the Russian side of the border, though there are occasional strikes into the Ukrainian rear. A small multistorey building beside a residential area in southern Sumy was destroyed by a single missile on Sunday afternoon, injuring eight civilians who lived nearby and throwing up a smoke trail visible across the countryside.

After nearly a week, Ukraine has captured 28 villages inside Kursk oblast, next door to Ukraine’s depopulated Sumy region, according to Alexey Smirnov, the Russian acting regional governor. On Monday, he said that Ukraine’s incursion was up to 12km deep along a 40km front, Russian state media reported.

A few hours later, Ukraine suggested the territory it controlled was much larger. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy released a clip of the head of the armed forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, delivering a progress report. “Currently, we control about 1,000 sq km of the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said.

The areas remain modest compared with the vast size of Russia and Ukraine overall. But Ukraine’s attack marks the first time that a part of Russia has been occupied since the second world war – and president Vladimir Putin promised “a worthy response” on Monday to an attack whose motivation he presented as largely political.

“The main task, of course, is for the defence ministry to squeeze out, to knock out the enemy from our territories,” Putin said, though so far there has been no sign that Russian forces have been able to halt the Ukrainian invaders, who appeared to be gaining ground around Sudzha, five miles inside the border.

The Russian president, in his most detailed remarks yet about the incursion, also said that Ukraine “with the help of its western masters” was trying to improve its position before any possible peace negotiations – suggesting he believed that Ukraine was trying to hold land for a possible swap of territory when the war ends.

There is little sign of serious peace talks, though the Kremlin has previously indicated that it is willing to end the war along the current lines of control, which would leave Russia holding about 18% of Ukraine. Ukraine has repeatedly said it wants to restore its internationally recognised borders and seeks membership of Nato, which Russia has previously rejected as unacceptable.

In Sumy, the 150 or so refugees waiting for help appeared to show little interest in such an immediate peace, even though the danger close to the border means many said they had little immediate expectation of returning to their homes.

Nobody, however, blamed their displacement on Ukraine’s surprise attack, arguing instead that attack was a necessary form of defence. Liudmyla, 54, from the village of Khotin, was at times tearful as she said she worried for the safety of her husband, who is still trying to harvest soya beans from their border farm.

But asked whether it was right to attack from the area where she lived, causing such danger to her family, she immediately brightened. “I felt euphoria, euphoria,” Liudmyla said. “Absolutely, 100% – they should have done it earlier. I wish I could have done it myself.”

Mykola, who lost his right hand before the war, was of a similar mind. “We should have done something. We need to liberate our territory somehow. Last year, we failed in the offensive, but this year we seem to be in a better state with western aid,” he said, even praising the support of the former British prime minister Boris Johnson.

“So we hope that they will succeed and keep on succeeding, because as far as we know, when they succeed, we’ll get even more help from Europe and America,” he added.

A court in Bangladesh has ordered an investigation into the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s alleged role in the death of a grocery shop owner in the capital, Dhaka, during last month’s student-led protests.

The case filed by Bangladeshi citizen Amir Hamza against Hasina and six others was accepted by Dhaka’s chief metropolitan magistrates court after a hearing, Hamza’s lawyer, Anwarul Islam, said. The magistrate Rajesh Chowdhury ordered police to investigate the case, Islam added.

It was the first case filed against Hasina after a violent uprising that killed about 300 people, many of them college and university students. She fled to India on 5 August and has been sheltering in Delhi.

The other accused in the case include the general secretary of Hasina’s Awami League party, Obaidul Quader, the former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, and senior police officials.

Hamza alleged the grocer, Abu Saeed, was killed on 19 July at about 4pm (10.00 GMT) when he was hit by a bullet while crossing the street in the Mohammadpur area of Dhaka, as police fired on students and other people demonstrating against quotas in government jobs.

The complainant blamed Hasina, who had called for strong action to quell the violence, for the police firing. Hamza said he was not related to Saeed but voluntarily approached the court because Saeed’s family did not have the finances to file the case.

“I am the first ordinary citizen who showed the courage to take this legal step against Sheikh Hasina for her crimes. I will see the case to an end,” Hamza told Reuters.

Hasina, who was prime minister for 15 years, could not be immediately reached for comment. Quader’s phone was switched off, while Kamal did not answer his phone when Reuters tried to reach him.

Nahid Islam, a Bangladeshi student leader who was instrumental in overthrowing Hasina and is now part of the interim government, recently said that the former prime minister must face trial for the killings during her term, including during the recent protests.

The student-led movement started with demonstrations against quotas in government jobs before spiralling into violent protests to oust Hasina. She plans to return home to Bangladesh when the caretaker government, headed by the Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, decides on holding elections, her son has said.

USA Gymnastics officials say an arbitration panel will not reconsider a decision asking the gymnast Jordan Chiles to return the bronze medal she won at the Paris Olympics.

Last week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) voided an on-floor appeal from Chiles’s coach that was initially upheld and moved her from fifth to third in the floor exercise in Paris. Cas’s decision came after the Romanian Olympic Committee said the appeal came four seconds beyond the one-minute time limit for scoring inquiries. As a result, the International Gymnastics Federation (Fig) said Romania’s Ana Barbosu had been promoted to third and Chiles dropped back to fifth. The IOC said that Chiles had to return her medal as a result.

On Sunday, USA Gymnastics disputed the timing, saying that the agency submitted video evidence to Cas that showed the Team USA coach Cécile Landi first appealed 13 seconds before the deadline. That appeal has now been dismissed.

USA Gymnastics says it will continue efforts to let Chiles keep the medal.

“USA Gymnastics was notified [by Cas] on Monday that their rules do not allow for an arbitral award to be reconsidered even when conclusive new evidence is presented,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement. “We are deeply disappointed by the notification and will continue to pursue every possible avenue and appeal process, including to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, to ensure the just scoring, placement, and medal award for Jordan.”

The dispute over such minute details sets up what could be a months- or years-long legal battle over the gymnastics scores.

The IOC said it will be in touch with the USOPC regarding the return of Chiles’s bronze and will work with the Romanian Olympic Committee to discuss a reallocation ceremony honoring Barbosu. Rebeca Andrade of Brazil won gold and Simone Biles of the US was the silver medalist. The Romanian team had asked that the bronze medals be shared, allowing Chiles to keep her bronze.

Any appeal could go to Switzerland’s highest court, the Swiss Tribunal, or the European Court of Human Rights.

Late on Monday, the rapper Flavor Flav – who has been a prominent celebrity supporter of 2024 Olympians – posted on X that he had made a bedazzled bronze medal for Chiles as a potential replacement while the US fights “the Powers that be”.

“Thank you. Means the world,” Chiles’s mother, Gina, wrote on X. “She’s not on socials right now as you can imagine. I’ll share it with her.”

Spanish police have arrested a man whose alleged plan to sell a fake Leonardo da Vinci painting in Italy for €1.3m was thwarted when the work caught the eye of French customs officers.

Although the man had an export licence for the work, which was purported to be a Leonardo portrait of the Italian aristocrat and military commander Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, the licence had expired, prompting customs officers at the Modane border post to contact Spanish police.

According to the export permit, which does not constitute a guarantee of authenticity, the work was a Leonardo valued at €1.3m that was being transported for sale in Milan. Although the licence was genuine, the fact that it was no longer valid meant the attempt to export the work was illegal.

After receiving the alert in July 2022, officers from Spain’s national police travelled to the French border to recover the painting, which was then sent to the Prado in Madrid for expert analysis.

“The experts’ report concluded that the work was a copy of the Milanese portraits painted around the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century,” the police said in a statement.

“The painting was probably painted, with fraudulent intent, at the beginning of the 20th century. As such, its value is between €3,000 and €5,000, and the painting can categorically be ruled out as a being by Leonardo or any other Italian artist of the time.”

A spokesperson for the force said a Spanish man in his 40s had been arrested in Madrid in connection with the case.

“An export licence isn’t a guarantee of a work’s authenticity,” she said. “In this case, the licence was being used as a means of claiming the painting was original. Once it became apparent that the licence had expired, the painting was confiscated and an investigation was opened. As soon as the investigation determined that this was an alleged case of smuggling, the arrest was made.”

Greek authorities are continuing to battle scattered fires on the outskirts of Athens as officials take stock of the damage wreaked by a disaster that forced mass evacuations and killed at least one person.

On Tuesday, the third day of one of the worst wildfires in living memory, firefighters were helped by a drop in winds as they sought to contain the remnants of an inferno that had reached the capital’s northern suburbs and decimated homes and businesses.

“Forty hours after this extremely dangerous wildfire broke out we can now say that there is no active front, only scattered hotspots,” Greece’s climate crisis and civil protection minister, Vassilis Kikilias, said.

More than 700 firefighters, backed by water-bombing planes, forest commando units, the police, army, forest service employees and volunteers, had helped extinguish the blazes.

“[They] fought the fire in north-eastern Attica with superhuman effort,” Kikilias added. “We’re not talking about a simple fire that simply got out of control. We are talking about the most difficult and most dangerous scenario.”

As the fires tore through the countryside, homes, trees and cars, officials ordered thousands of people to evacuate, including from three hospitals, two monasteries and a children’s home. More than 30 emergency push alerts were sent to residents of the capital’s northern suburbs and in areas farther afield, ordering them to flee.

Rescue services from at least six countries weighed in with support after Athens requested assistance through the European Civil Protection Mechanism. Turkey, although not an EU member state, was among them.

Greece, a “hotspot” on the frontline of the climate emergency, has endured an exceptionally hot and dry summer. Successive heatwaves – June and July were the hottest months on record – helped turn terrain across the Mediterranean country into a tinderbox.

When Sunday’s wildfire erupted in the vicinity of Varnava, 35km (22 miles) north-east of Athens, firefighters were soon battling flames that in some cases reached 25 metres (115ft) high, fanned by gale force winds and advancing at lightning speed.

The rapidity of the fire was such that 400 sq km of land were destroyed, with homeowners looking on helplessly. At least one person was killed: the body of a woman, who was reportedly Moldovan, was found in a factory in the suburb of Vrilissia.

Questions are being asked. The sight of the fires racing through suburban streets has shocked Greeks, with the country’s opposition parties wasting little time in lambasting the prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s centre-right government for its handling of the disaster.

Criticism has also come from the media. “Enough is enough,” said the front page of the newspaper Ta Nea, while the left-wing Efsyn daily, referring to the building that houses the prime minister’s office, declared: “Evacuate Maximou.”

The government has announced support measures, saying that Mitsotakis will chair a crisis meeting at 6pm local time on Tuesday. The 15-strong aid package includes an initial support payment of €10,000 (£8,500) for properties deemed dangerous for use – marked with a red X – and €5,000 for those deemed temporarily unsuitable, marked with a yellow X.

Fire-stricken residents will also be able to apply for financial assistance and interest-free loans to rebuild damaged properties while being absolved from paying property taxes for three years. Business owners will be let off paying tax for at least six months.

But the opposition criticised the measures, saying they were just an “aspirin” doled out by a government bent on damage control.

“The government is attempting damage control after the huge and catastrophic fire that raged for 40 hours in Attica, even entering the urban fabric [of Athens] and leaving behind a dead woman,” Efsyn wrote.

Greek authorities are continuing to battle scattered fires on the outskirts of Athens as officials take stock of the damage wreaked by a disaster that forced mass evacuations and killed at least one person.

On Tuesday, the third day of one of the worst wildfires in living memory, firefighters were helped by a drop in winds as they sought to contain the remnants of an inferno that had reached the capital’s northern suburbs and decimated homes and businesses.

“Forty hours after this extremely dangerous wildfire broke out we can now say that there is no active front, only scattered hotspots,” Greece’s climate crisis and civil protection minister, Vassilis Kikilias, said.

More than 700 firefighters, backed by water-bombing planes, forest commando units, the police, army, forest service employees and volunteers, had helped extinguish the blazes.

“[They] fought the fire in north-eastern Attica with superhuman effort,” Kikilias added. “We’re not talking about a simple fire that simply got out of control. We are talking about the most difficult and most dangerous scenario.”

As the fires tore through the countryside, homes, trees and cars, officials ordered thousands of people to evacuate, including from three hospitals, two monasteries and a children’s home. More than 30 emergency push alerts were sent to residents of the capital’s northern suburbs and in areas farther afield, ordering them to flee.

Rescue services from at least six countries weighed in with support after Athens requested assistance through the European Civil Protection Mechanism. Turkey, although not an EU member state, was among them.

Greece, a “hotspot” on the frontline of the climate emergency, has endured an exceptionally hot and dry summer. Successive heatwaves – June and July were the hottest months on record – helped turn terrain across the Mediterranean country into a tinderbox.

When Sunday’s wildfire erupted in the vicinity of Varnava, 35km (22 miles) north-east of Athens, firefighters were soon battling flames that in some cases reached 25 metres (115ft) high, fanned by gale force winds and advancing at lightning speed.

The rapidity of the fire was such that 400 sq km of land were destroyed, with homeowners looking on helplessly. At least one person was killed: the body of a woman, who was reportedly Moldovan, was found in a factory in the suburb of Vrilissia.

Questions are being asked. The sight of the fires racing through suburban streets has shocked Greeks, with the country’s opposition parties wasting little time in lambasting the prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s centre-right government for its handling of the disaster.

Criticism has also come from the media. “Enough is enough,” said the front page of the newspaper Ta Nea, while the left-wing Efsyn daily, referring to the building that houses the prime minister’s office, declared: “Evacuate Maximou.”

The government has announced support measures, saying that Mitsotakis will chair a crisis meeting at 6pm local time on Tuesday. The 15-strong aid package includes an initial support payment of €10,000 (£8,500) for properties deemed dangerous for use – marked with a red X – and €5,000 for those deemed temporarily unsuitable, marked with a yellow X.

Fire-stricken residents will also be able to apply for financial assistance and interest-free loans to rebuild damaged properties while being absolved from paying property taxes for three years. Business owners will be let off paying tax for at least six months.

But the opposition criticised the measures, saying they were just an “aspirin” doled out by a government bent on damage control.

“The government is attempting damage control after the huge and catastrophic fire that raged for 40 hours in Attica, even entering the urban fabric [of Athens] and leaving behind a dead woman,” Efsyn wrote.

A man has appeared in court charged with the attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl who was stabbed eight times while visiting Leicester Square as a tourist with her mother.

Ioan Pintaru, 32, appeared at Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday and is also charged with possession of a bladed article in a public place, which the court heard was a steak knife.

The court heard Pintaru is a Romanian citizen of no fixed address and the charges were read to him through an interpreter during the 10-minute hearing.

Prosecutor David Burns said a woman and her 11-year-old daughter were in Leicester Square as tourists when the defendant “approached the 11-year-old girl, placed her into a headlock … then stabbed her eight times to the body”.

He added: “She sustained wounds to the face, shoulder, wrist and neck area. Fortunately members of the public intervened, which prevented any further injury to the child.”

Officers were called and “found the defendant being held by the members of the public” the prosecutor said.

He added that the defendant was detained and searched and a knife found on his person.

The girl was taken to hospital where she remains and is undergoing treatment. “I understand that she required plastic surgery for the injuries she sustained,” he said.

Police were called to reports of the stabbing in the central London tourist spot at 11.34am on Monday.

The girl’s 34-year-old mother was initially thought to have also been hurt but blood from her daughter’s injuries had been mistaken for injuries of her own, the Metropolitan police said on Tuesday.

Police said on Monday that there was no suggestion the incident was terror-related, and officers do not believe the suspect and the victims were known to each other.

Leicester Square and the surrounding area attracts an estimated 2.5 million visitors every week and is home to shops, theatres, cinemas and restaurants.

The stabbing happened near the TWG Tea shop, which is beside the Lego store and in front of the M&Ms store.

A shop security guard leapt in to help the girl as she was being attacked.

DCS Christina Jessah said: “This is a horrific incident and our thoughts are with the victims and their family. We will continue to provide support to them over the coming days and weeks.

“I would like to pay tribute to the members of the public, including staff from local businesses, who bravely intervened in this incident. They put themselves at risk and showed the best of London in doing so.”

Pintaru was remanded in custody and will appear at the Old Bailey on 10 September.

Twitter has been ordered to pay a record fine of more than €550,000 (£470,000) to a former senior employee at its European headquarters in Ireland, after it was found to have dismissed him unfairly when he failed to respond to an email from Elon Musk calling on staff to be “extremely hardcore”.

When Musk paid $44bn in October 2022 for the social media platform, which he rebranded the following year as X, Gary Rooney was a director of “source-to-pay”, a procurement role, in Twitter International’s Dublin office.

Within weeks of the takeover, the billionaire sent a message to staff outlining his vision for the business.

“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” the South Africa-born entrepreneur wrote.

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing a grade.”

The message was known as the “Fork in the Road”, a phrase Musk deployed again this week in reference to America, during an interview late on Monday with former president Donald Trump, who the Tesla boss said offered a “path to prosperity”.

In the email, Musk wrote: “If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” adding that staff who did not would receive three month’s severance pay.

Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), the country’s employment watchdog, heard that Rooney did not click “yes”.

Three days later, on 19 November, he received another email from the company “to acknowledge your decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer”.

Rooney, who had been with the company since 2013, was told that he was deemed to have resigned on 18 November and that his access to Twitter systems had been deactivated.

A week later, he emailed Twitter to say that “at no time have I indicated to Twitter that I am resigning my position, nor have I seen any separation agreement let alone accepted one”.

In evidence to a hearing in Dublin that lasted five days, Rooney told the WRC that prior to the change of ownership that saw Musk take control of the platform, he loved his job.

Rooney said his first reaction to the “Fork in the Road” email had been disbelief and that he was initially afraid to open it for fear it was spam or malware.

After receiving the email, he wrote to a colleague on the company’s internal messaging system, saying: “I need to step away for my own sake. I’m deeply troubled by whats going on here these days.”

In a message to another colleague, Rooney said: “Twitter 2.0 won’t be for you and me.”

Twitter claimed, unsuccessfully, that Rooney’s failure to click “yes” in response to the email indicated that he had resigned voluntarily.

Its senior director of human resources, Lauren Wegman told the hearing the email was sent to employees in Ireland who were not among 140 who had already been made redundant after the takeover. She said 235 of 270 staff who received it clicked “yes”.

In relation to the remaining 35 employees, she said: “We accepted their resignations.”

Wegman said the mood among workers at the time was mixed, with some excited about “Twitter 2.0” while others were more negative and wanted to leave.

In his findings, published in a 73-page decision document, WRC adjudicator Michael MacNamee said that 24 hours was not “reasonable notice”.

He said Rooney’s messages to colleagues outlining his reservations about Musk’s takeover “have no relevance to the question as to what brought about the termination of the complainant’s employment”.

The €550,131 total unfair dismissal award, an Irish record, is made up of Rooney’s lost remuneration of €350,131 from January 2023 to May 2024 and estimated lost future remuneration of €200,000.

Barry Kenny, a solicitor for Rooney, said he welcomed “the clear and unambiguous finding that my client did not resign from his employment but was unfairly dismissed from his job, notwithstanding his excellent employment record and contribution to the company over the years”.

He said: “It is not okay for Mr Musk, or indeed any large company to treat employees in such a manner in this country. The record award reflects the seriousness and the gravity of the case.”

An email to Twitter’s press office was met with the response: “Busy now, please check back later.”

United Nations human rights investigators have urged Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, to halt the “fierce repression” being perpetrated by his security forces after last month’s allegedly stolen presidential election.

In a statement published two weeks after the 28 July vote, the UN’s fact-finding mission to Venezuela condemned Maduro’s “escalating” crackdown, during which more than 100 children and teens have been detained. The UN investigators said they had recorded 23 deaths, the vast majority caused by gunfire and nearly all young men.

“Street protests, as well as criticism on social media, in the weeks following the election have been met with fierce repression by the State, as directed by its highest authorities, inducing a climate of widespread fear,” added the group, calling for a thorough investigation of “the spate of grave human rights violations that are currently occurring”.

Maduro, who claimed victory in the recent election despite compelling evidence that actually he lost heavily to his rival Edmundo González, looks unlikely to heed the UN’s call.

On Monday, Venezuela’s strongman leader ordered officials to treat his “fascist” opponents with an “iron fist” and vowed to severely punish those challenging his government. Maduro, who has governed in an increasingly authoritarian manner since being elected in 2013, has refused to release detailed election data supporting his supposed victory, despite calls from countries including Brazil and Colombia to do so.

The opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was the driving force behind González’s presidential campaign, has called fresh anti-Maduro protests for next Saturday in cities around the world.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Machado urged the world to challenge Maduro’s “campaign of terror”.

“What is going on in Venezuela is horrific. Innocent people are being detained or disappeared as we speak,” said the charismatic conservative who experts describe as the most significant political challenge Maduro’s Chavista movement has faced since it came to power 25 years ago with the election of it creator, Hugo Chávez. “[Maduro’s government has] decided that their only option to stay in power is using violence, fear and terror against the population,” she added.

The fact-finding mission – which was set up by the UN human rights council in 2019 amid growing international concern over abuses being committed by Maduro’s regime – said there were political leaders and activists, journalists and human rights defenders among the more than 1,260 people detained in recent days. “However, the vast majority of those detained were simply individuals who voiced their rejection of the presidential election results announced by the authorities,” added the group. “Many of these detentions occurred after individuals participated in protests or expressed their opinions on social media, with authorities selectively targeting them at their homes.”

The UN investigators said they had also received “particularly concerning information” about the detention of over 100 children and adolescents who, despite their young age, were being charged with extremely serious crimes such as terrorism, conspiracy and hate crimes. “These children have not been accompanied by their parents or guardians during judicial proceedings,” the statement noted.

A man from suburban Philadelphia stabbed his neighbor to death after the killer’s loud snoring led the pair to argue violently, according to authorities.

Christopher Casey, 56, was recently handed a relatively short prison sentence after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the 14 January death of 62-year-old Robert Wallace. Casey also pleaded guilty to possessing an instrument of crime to close the book on a case with a motive that has not been too commonly seen in the US justice system.

The two men lived next to each other, sharing a common wall in a duplex home in Upper Morland, Pennsylvania. Wallace ultimately became so annoyed at how loudly and often Casey would snore that he pushed in his neighbor’s first-floor window and threatened to kill him, local prosecutors had previously said in a statement.

Citing police records, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Wallace eventually calmed down and offered to pay for a surgery that would correct Casey’s snoring.

But Casey allegedly did not believe Wallace’s offer of assistance was genuine. He stabbed Wallace several times in the chest with a large, military-style knife before calling police to the home.

Officers arrived to find Wallace on the ground about 50ft away from the duplex. First responders brought him to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. Meanwhile, Casey was also taken to a hospital to be treated for a stab wound to his right thigh that he inflicted on himself.

Authorities subsequently charged him with third-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and possessing an instrument of crime, jailing him in lieu of $1m bail.

Casey then appeared before Pennsylvania state court judge Risa Vetri Ferman on Wednesday and pleaded guilty to reduced charges indicating that he had essentially killed Wallace through unintentional recklessness. In exchange, he accepted a sentence of between 11 and a half and 23 months in prison.

The Inquirer reported that the plea deal allowed for Casey to be free after eight and a half months in custody, of which he has one more to serve before being released to spend three years on probation.

According to the Inquirer, Wallace’s family told Ferman that the slain man had long been unable to sleep due to Casey’s snoring. That had caused so much fatigue in Wallace that it negatively affected his ability to work as well as his personal life, they maintained.

Casey apologized to Wallace’s family, calling the fatal confrontation between him and his neighbor “unfortunate”, the outlet reported.

Nonetheless, Casey’s attorney, James Lyons, said Wallace had repeatedly threatened his client’s life before the fatal stabbing. The Philadelphia Inquirer cited police records which showed officers had responded to multiple calls for disputes between Wallace and Casey over the latter’s snoring.

Lyons told the newspaper that Casey’s autism “makes it difficult to navigate confrontation” for him.

“He was terrified of this guy,” Lyons reportedly said, “and he believed that he had no option.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Celebrated Hong Kong martial arts actor and director Corey Yuen died two years ago during the Covid pandemic, it has been reported.

The Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers confirmed Yuen’s death following a social media post by action star Jackie Chan naming Yuen (also known as Yuen Kwai) among a list of late disciples of China Drama Academy head Yu Jim-yuen, who died in 1997.

Chan and Yuen were both members of the Seven Little Fortunes, a famous touring troupe of child performers from the China Drama Academy based in Hong Kong, along with other future notables, including Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. Having appeared as a fight extra in Hong Kong films in the 1970s including Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury, Yuen gained a larger role in Tsui Hark’s landmark 1983 film Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain while acting as a stunt choreographer and becoming a director in his own right.

Yuen worked on a string of martial arts films in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 90s, including Dragons Forever, starring Chan and which Yuen co-directed with Hung, hit comedy All for the Winner, co-directed with Jeffrey Lau, and Michelle Yeoh vehicle Yes, Madam. Yuen also branched out into English language film-making, with No Retreat, No Surrender marking Jean-Claude Van Damme’s first significant film role.

In the early 1990s Yeun began a productive collaboration with Jet Li, directing a series of the latter’s successful Hong Kong films (including The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk, The Bodyguard from Beijing and My Father Is a Hero). He followed Li to the US, becoming a fight choreographer and stunt coordinator on a number of Li’s Hollywood pictures, including Lethal Weapon 4, Romeo Must Die and The Expendables. He was also credited as joint director on the Jason Statham action film The Transporter, along with Louis Leterrier.

Yuen’s final directorial credit was the 2006 video game adaptation DOA: Dead or Alive, starring Jaime Pressly and Holly Valance, but continued to work as a fight choreographer or second unit director on high profile titles including War, Red Cliff and The Man With the Iron Fists.