A Labour MP accepted a £1.2 million loan from Lord Alli to buy a house.

Siobhain McDonagh, the MP for Mitcham and Morden, said the Labour peer helped her buy the house for her terminally ill sister Baroness McDonagh, Labour’s first female general secretary, who was the donor’s “best friend” for 25 years.

Described as a “tour de force” for the party, Lady McDonagh was credited with helping Labour achieve its landslide election victory in 1997.

She was diagnosed with a brain tumour after suffering from a series of fits in November 2021 and died last year.

It is understood that the house paid for with the £1.2 million loan is in south-west London.

Siobhain and Lady McDonagh were born and brought up in the area and bought a house there together in the 1990s, where they had lived for almost 25 years when Lady McDonagh fell ill in 2021.

As her sister’s health deteriorated, Ms McDonagh tried to make various accommodations, including by installing a stairlift.

But when things became too difficult to manage, Lord Alli lent her the money to buy another house nearby so Lady McDonagh could have a downstairs bedroom and bathroom.

The MP said she was “really aware of just how fortunate I am to have a friend like Waheed”, adding that there was “nothing but love and kindness here”.

Ms McDonagh is still living in the second property, with the intention of repaying Lord Alli with the sale of the home she bought with her sister in the 1990s.

Ms McDonagh said that Lord Alli wanted “nothing other” than for her sister to be comfortable in the last months of her life.

The “interest-free loan”, received in March 2023, was declared in the MPs’ register of interests at a value of £1.2 million.

The entry stated that it was being used to facilitate a move to a property with “complete ground floor access” for a member of Ms McDonagh’s family.

Ms McDonagh said she had not yet repaid the loan because probate was yet to be completed.

She explained the circumstances behind the loan after it was suggested on social media that Lord Alli had donated the money to put her “in his debt”. On X, formerly Twitter, she wrote: 

She added: “The loan will be repaid on gaining probate on Margaret’s estate. It has been properly registered and Waheed wanted nothing other than his best friend being comfortable in the last months of her life.”

Challenged on what she had done for Lord Alli in return, Ms McDonagh wrote: “What can you give someone who has £200 million and who has been a Labour Member of Parliament for 25 years?

“I can’t tell the amount of work it used to take for Margaret to choose him a birthday present.”

Lord Alli, a major Labour donor, has given £947,032 to the party and its candidates since 2004.

After working in the background of politics for decades, he was thrust into the spotlight last month after it emerged he had been given a Downing Street pass.

The row escalated when further reports revealed Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, initially failed to declare money towards clothing he received from the Labour peer.

More details of his influence have followed, with The Telegraph revealing last week that Lord Alli funded at least seven Cabinet ministers in a campaign to reshape the Labour Party spanning multiple years.

The donations suggest he backed candidates running against Jeremy Corbyn during the hard-Left’s time in control of the party, before ramping up donations under Sir Keir’s leadership.

The Prime Minister and Angela Rayner, his deputy, top the list, taking £155,122 and £72,450 respectively from the peer in benefits and cash donations, records show.

Other beneficiaries include Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, who has been handed £14,600 by the media entrepreneur since 2021, as well as Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, who was given £10,000 last year.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the peer, but the row over “freebies” given to top Labour politicians overshadowed much of the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, which ended on Wednesday.

A man was stabbed during rush hour at Barnes station in west London on Thursday morning.

British Transport Police officers responded to reports of a serious assault at about 7.10am.

Paramedics also attended and the victim was taken to hospital with injuries considered to be life-threatening.

The incident is said to have started in the station before spilling out on to the road.

Forensic teams were later seen investigating the area, taking photographs of blood stains and discarded medical apparatus.

Det Supt Sam Blackburn said: “There is absolutely no place for violence on the railway network and detectives are working at pace to investigate the incident.

“The station will remain closed while our initial enquiries are carried out, and the public will see increased high-visibility patrols in the area and across the network to provide reassurance.”

Inquiries are ongoing.

A London Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We were called at 7.07am this morning to reports of a stabbing in Station Road, Barnes.

“We sent resources to the scene, including ambulance crews, a paramedic in a fast response car, an incident response officer and London’s Air Ambulance.

“The first of our crews arrived in one minute. Our crews treated a man at the scene, before taking him to a London major trauma centre by road as a priority.”

All trains were cancelled from the station earlier, but service has since resumed.

A binman has narrowly escaped injury after a “battery” deposited inside a rubbish lorry exploded.

Footage shows the council worker loading a plastic bin full of rubbish into the back of a truck.

After the emptied bin is returned to the ground, the man wearing a high visibility vest and yellow gloves drags it away. Seconds after he disappears from the shot, a large blast of smoke can be seen coming from the rear of the vehicle.

As the smoke clears, rubbish can be seen strewn across the street and a green bin has been knocked on its side. 

The footage was released by Barnet council in north London, which said the explosion was caused by a combustible item or items such as gas canisters or bottles, batteries or aerosol cans being wrongly placed into a residential bin.

When the item was crushed, it caused an explosion, resulting in the debris being spread all over the street.

Workers ‘lucky’ to be unharmed

Alan Schneiderman, the Barnet council cabinet member for environment and climate change, said the refuse workers had been lucky to emerge unharmed.

He said: “The video is incredibly shocking, and we’re relieved that the crew members escaped unharmed.

“I hope this helps people to understand how important it is to properly recycle items such as gas canisters and bottles, batteries and aerosols, as on another day we might not have been so lucky.”

It follows a similar case earlier this year in which a set of lithium batteries caught fire and burned a hole in the side of a bin lorry, the council said.

The council warned that combustible waste should not be placed in bins, and should instead be recycled at recycling centres.

A mother of five has died after having a cosmetic procedure that is believed to have been a “Brazilian butt lift”.

Two people have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after Alice Webb, 33, died in Gloucester on Tuesday following surgery.

A since-deleted GoFundMe page set up by a family friend revealed she had undergone a “BBL” procedure, which increases the size and shape of a person’s bottom using fat transfers or filler, but that it had “gone wrong”.

Ms Webb worked as an advanced aesthetic practitioner at cosmetics clinic Crystal Clear in Wotton-under-Edge, a market town in Gloucestershire.

Police said they were called at 11.35pm on Monday to an address in Gloucester after a woman had “become unwell following a suspected cosmetic procedure”.

“She was taken to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and died in the early hours of Tuesday morning,” a spokesman for Gloucestershire Constabulary said.

Two people have since been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and released on bail.

Dane Knight, Ms Webb’s partner, paid tribute to her online, saying: “Want to say a heartfelt thank you to all family and friends that were here for us at our time of need, including all of the kind messages sent to my children and myself.

“There was some very beautiful messages sent by some of your children that formed a start of a smile from the corner of my kids’ mouth.”

Another tribute on the GoFundMe page read: “Alice was beautiful inside and out with the biggest heart, her family was her world.”

Call for ban

Ashton Collins, the director of Save Face, which campaigns for patient safety in the cosmetics industry, said non-surgical BBL procedures should be banned in Britain.

“I am devastated to hear of Alice’s tragic passing,” she said. “We launched a campaign in December 2023 calling upon the Government to take urgent action to ban these procedures.

“We made it absolutely clear that without urgent intervention someone would die. It makes me incredibly sad and angry that today our fear has been confirmed.”

Ms Collins said that if the procedure was a BBL, Ms Webb would be the first person to have died after having one in Britain.

The spokesman for Gloucestershire Constabulary said: “Her next of kin and the coroner are aware. The woman’s family are being supported by specially trained officers.

“An investigation, led by the major crime investigation team, is ongoing. The two people who had been arrested have been released on police bail.”

As I took my first steps into the vast tunnel, stretching from an opening in the Galilee region deep into the bowels of the earth, the air turned sour and dusty.

The tunnel, discovered by Israeli forces and promptly sealed off in 2019, was half a mile long and 260 feet deep – all of it dug with handheld drills by Hezbollah fighters, piece by piece.

Descending the steps into the gloom, past walls dimly lit by glowing electrical cables, it was almost hard to believe that such a colossal tunnel had been dug by a secretive squad, and not industrial excavators.

But the evidence was right in front of me: all over the tunnel walls were cylindrical marks left by the hand drills of the Hezbollah men, who must have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours toiling away in the darkness.

It took several minutes to meander down to the bottom of the tunnel, which ended in a wall of rubble where the IDF had blocked the pathway leading to Lebanon.

It was May 2020 when I toured the tunnel with an Israeli army commander, a time when a full-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon was only a vague possibility.

But with a possible ground invasion looming, the tunnel offers just a glimpse of the type of enclosed, difficult territory Israeli troops will be facing. It is also just one component of Hezbollah’s vast arsenal, which also includes huge quantities of precision Iranian missiles smuggled into Lebanon via Syria.

Col Roi Yosef Levy, then Israel’s Northern Border brigade commander for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said as he showed me around the tunnel. “[It took] 14 years to build and only a few people inside Hezbollah knew about it.”

Had the tunnel not been discovered, Israel suspects it would have been used to launch a surprise assault on the north, perhaps to capture hostages and then take them back to Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s tunnel network is now feared to have grown even more vast and sophisticated in the four years since its discovery, posing a challenge for Israel should it opt for a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

Israel estimates that the tunnel network, which can be used for hiding shock troops for attacks or moving supplies, stretches for hundreds of kilometres.

Hezbollah recently published footage that showed a truck mounted with rocket launchers passing through long, winding tunnels. The same slick propaganda clip also features Hezbollah troops driving on motorcycles through tunnels surrounding a command centre, Imad 4, passing posters of Hassan Nasrallah, their leader.

Imad 4, a nod to Imad Mughniyeh, the late Hezbollah army chief, is a complex inspired by similar bases in Iran and North Korea, likely built in the Bekaa Valley rather than southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah claims to have started expanding the tunnels in the wake of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, and Israel says the tunnels are enmeshed with houses in villages and other communities across southern Lebanon.

The tunnel network remains shrouded in secrecy, something of an unknown quantity in any future war between the two countries. Some Israeli analysts call it the “land of tunnels”, and say they draw inspiration and possibly direct expertise from similar underground networks in Iran, Hezbollah’s main military backer, and North Korea.

Ronen Solomon, an Israeli intelligence analyst who served in the Israeli military as an escort for the engineering team that detonated tunnels as far back as 1984, said destroying them would be hugely complex.

“If Israel is to attack the tunnels, Israel needs to attack buildings, and doing that, especially in Beirut, will be the start of a war,” he said.

He said there are five different kinds of tunnels: the offensive tunnels as seen on the border with Israel, logistics tunnels – a network of tunnels under bricks that Iran built for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon – and tunnel systems built for the purpose of smuggling supplies via Syria.

There are also tunnels for storing missiles and air defence systems cut into the mountains of the Lebanon Valley area, and in other parts of Lebanon. Finally, there are tunnels used for underground missile launch facilities.

“Now, the tunnels are more like what we see in Iran. There are the tunnels under the villages in south Lebanon, hidden by trees, housing missile launchers, and in Beirut, they are under buildings like we have seen in Gaza. There are also football fields above them in south Lebanon,” Mr Solomon said.

But tunnels are just one component of Hezbollah’s arsenal, which is far more sophisticated and vast than the crude weapons amassed by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Hezbollah is said to hold tens of thousands of missiles, including sophisticated precision-guided weapons such as the Iranian-made Fateh-110 and the Syrian-made M-600. The short-range ballistic missiles have a range of 250-300km and carry 450-500kg high explosive warheads.

Hezbollah managed to get its hands on Israel’s Spike anti-tank missile during the 2006 war, in itself an achievement. It then handed over the missile to Iran, which began reverse engineering it to create its own version.

The replica was named Almas (diamond in Farsi), and just like the original Spike missile it can hit targets beyond the line of sight, and be fired both manually by a soldier, from a vehicle, helicopter and from the sea.

The Almas missile poses a significant threat to Israeli soldiers stationed along the border as the missile defence system isn’t equipped to detect or shoot them down due to their low altitude.

Hezbollah has thousands of smaller rockets at its disposal, most of which have been used since Oct 8 against northern Israel, such as the unguided Falaq-1 Falaq-2 rockets and Katyusha artillery rockets.

In the 2006 war, Hezbollah fired a long-range missile at Israel for the first time; The Iranian made Fajr-5 with a range of up to 75km. The unguided missile fades in comparison to what Hezbollah managed to acquire since then.

Dror Doron, a senior adviser at the campaign group United Against Nuclear Iran, who also worked as a senior analyst in the Israeli prime minister’s office, said that Imiyadh Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s military chief at the time, initiated the process of re-armament.

After Mughneih was killed by Israel in 2008, “the IRGC took over the project. It was an Iranian-based project”, Mr Doron said.

The smuggling of ballistic missiles and other long-range precision-guided missiles into Lebanon via Syria caused Israel to launch a campaign of airstrikes in Syria in 2014 to target the convoy carrying the missiles, he added. “Israel identified Syria as being a critical element in the route of supplying those missiles,” Mr Doron said.

Hezbollah produced weapons inside Lebanon, making it harder for Israel to target them as it would be seen as an act of war. The chaos of the civil war in Syria and various regional factions joining the fray made it easier for Israel to carry out successive waves of air strikes from 2014 onwards.

In terms of ground forces, Hezbollah is estimated to have as many as 100,000 trained fighters, including 20,000 full-time combatants.

But last week’s enormous sabotage attack on Hezbollah, in which pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to senior Hezbollah members exploded en masse, has partly thinned down their numbers. Lebanese officials say as many as 3,000 people were injured by the pager explosions alone.

Israel is currently conducting daily, extensive air strikes across southern Lebanon to target the large missile arsenals, which are said to be hidden inside civilian buildings. It’s unclear how many missiles Israel has destroyed, but the number is in the thousands, according to the IDF.

Following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the UN Security Council resolution 1701 called for a permanent ceasefire as well as the removal of Hezbollah from southern Lebanon and disarmament of militant groups.

But Hezbollah did the exact opposite according to Israeli military experts and former high-ranking officials, who told The Telegraph that Hezbollah began rebuilding its military capability, in particular its missile arsenal. Several countries would have been involved in this process, the most important being its financial backers in Tehran.

As anticipation builds for a potential ground offensive, Yaakov Amidror, former Israeli national security adviser, said Israel’s “biggest mistake” was not taking decisive action against Hezbollah earlier, even prior to the 2006 war.

“Before 2006, Israel was addicted to the quietness and was not ready to make any efforts to prevent Hezbollah from building its military capabilities,” Mr Amidror told The Telegraph.

According to Mr Amidror, Israel now has two goals: to guarantee Hezbollah won’t be able to carry out its own version of Oct 7 in the future, and to damage Hezbollah’s military capability to such an extent that it won’t be able to deter Israel in the future.

During that 2020 tour of the Galilee attack tunnel, Col Levy said even he was in awe of its scale, despite being a veteran of the Second Lebanon War.

“They are not resting,” said Col Levy, who would go on to be killed in action fighting Hamas during the October 7 massacre. “They wake up every morning and say, ‘what can I do to help for the day of war?’

“You need to hate Israel very much to build these things,” he reflected.

Additional reporting: Jotam Confino and Melanie Swan in Tel Aviv

A set of blood-stained trousers found in a tank of miso in 1967 sealed a young Iwao Hakamada’s destiny as the world’s longest-serving death row inmate.

But on Thursday, former professional boxer Mr Hakamada, now 88, was finally acquitted by a Japanese court of the murder of his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.

Mr Hakamada was too fragile to attend the hearing in person, but his sister and long-time supporter Hideko, 91, bowed in thanks to the judge, Koshi Kunii, who declared her brother “innocent” after a miscarriage of justice spanning more than five decades.

Hundreds of people had queued outside the Shizuoka district court for a seat to hear the verdict of a sensational case that has not only gripped the nation but also revived calls for Japan to scrap the death penalty.

Before he was released in 2014 pending his retrial, Mr Hakamada had spent 46 years on death row, never knowing from one day to the next if it was his last. In Japan, prisoners are only notified of their hanging a few hours in advance.

In March 2014, the Shizuoka court granted him a retrial after DNA evidence surfaced which questioned the reliability of his conviction and raised the possibility that prosecutors could have planted evidence.

Mr Hakamada was released from jail but legal wrangling, including protests from the prosecutors, meant that the actual retrial, a rare occurrence in Japan’s legal system, did not start until 2023.

As a young man, his ordeal began when he retired as a professional boxer in 1961 and got a job at a soybean processing plant in Shizuoka, central Japan.

Five years later, when his boss and his family were found stabbed to death in their home, Mr Hakamada was identified by police as the prime suspect.

Under intense questioning in detention, he initially confessed to the charges but later changed his plea, stating that the police had beaten and coerced him.

Central to his conviction was a set of blood-stained clothes found in a tank of fermented soybean paste, or miso, but the defence accused investigators of a set-up as the red stains were too bright. A DNA test on the blood later revealed no match to Mr Hakamada or the victims.

The marathon legal case has thrown a spotlight on Japan’s criminal justice system which critics say is excessively prone to intimidating suspects during long and arbitrary periods of detention, a phenomenon dubbed “hostage justice”.

A 2023 report by Human Rights Watch said that while Japan’s legal system was “widely regarded internationally as competent and impartial”, its criminal justice system “functions on laws, procedures and practices that systematically violate the rights of accused persons”.

It said the deeply ingrained problems of the “hostage justice” system included suspects being detained for up to several months or over a year to obtain their confessions.

Mr Hakamada has not publicly commented on the verdict.

In 2018, he told AFP that he felt he was “fighting a bout every day,” adding: “Once you think you can’t win, there is no path to victory.”

His mental health has since declined and his sister Hideko, who campaigned for decades to prove his innocence, told CNN that he was now “living in his own world”, seldom speaking or showing interest in other people.

Amnesty International welcomed the court’s verdict as “an important recognition of the profound injustice he endured for most of his life” and as the result of an “inspiring fight” by his sister.

But the rights group also used the occasion to call for the reform of Japan’s justice system.

Japan and the US are the only two countries in the G7 that still have capital punishment. The last execution in Japan was carried out on July 26 2022. Since 2000, the country has executed 93 inmates.

According to Amnesty, as of the end of 2023, 107 out of the 115 people on death row had their death sentences finalised and were at risk of execution.

“As we celebrate this long overdue day of justice for Hakamada, we are reminded of the irreversible harm caused by the death penalty. We strongly urge Japan to abolish the death penalty to prevent this from happening again,” said Amnesty’s East Asia researcher Boram Jang.

It was a brazen, cold-blooded murder in broad daylight. As Panagiotis Stathis drove a BMW to work in Athens, a man on a scooter drew up alongside him.

Drawing a 9mm pistol, he opened fire, spraying bullets into the vehicle.

The assassin, wearing a helmet, gloves and dark clothes, then calmly reloaded with a second magazine and shot more rounds before speeding off.

Mr Stathis did not stand a chance. He was dead within seconds, gunned down outside his company’s headquarters in the Athens suburb of Psychiko.

The murder of Mr Stathis in July has lifted the lid on a hidden underworld of criminality, corruption, drug dealing and protection rackets in Mykonos, one of the world’s most celebrated tourist hotspots.

Renowned for its blue-domed churches, whitewashed windmills and luxury resorts, Mykonos attracts more than two million visitors a year.

But behind the bling, the beach bars and the boutiques selling Gucci and Dior, a sinister side to the island has emerged.

Mr Stathis, a 54-year-old married father of two, was a surveyor who had worked in Mykonos for decades.

Islanders believe he got on the wrong side of powerful people – either by refusing to carry out surveying work for a new development or by investing in a patch of land that was coveted by others.

“Stathis was a guy who could help developers get permission to build. Some he helped, some he didn’t. And that made him enemies. There is a lot of money to be made from property on Mykonos and this has attracted criminality,” said Markos Pasaliadis, from a campaign group called the Movement of Active Citizens.

The vast amounts of money to be accrued from the luxury villas and five-star hotels that have popped up all over the island, the jewel in Greece’s tourism crown, have attracted shady characters, from Albanian drug dealers to Athenian mobsters.

The murder has shone a light on a side of the island that many would rather not show to the world.

In a hard-hitting editorial entitled “Who governs Mykonos?”, the leading Greek newspaper Kathimerini said: “The mafia now appears to control Mykonos. International organised crime has settled on the island, operating unchecked. The stakes for the state are high, fraught with risks. But this challenge must be met.”

The daily paper, Kathimerini, continued: “What is at stake is not just the future of a valuable destination. The critical question that needs to be answered is, who truly governs Mykonos: the mafia or the Hellenic Republic?”

Not long after the murder, the alleged killer, a 44-year-old Greek man, was arrested in Athens. He is in custody as police investigate a tangled web of real estate deals, rivalry – and revenge.

“There’s an expression in Greek – ‘you smack the saddle to make the donkey hear’. That’s the reason he was killed. A message was being sent to somebody to pay attention,” said an anti-development campaigner from an NGO called Friends of Mykonos who preferred to remain anonymous.

“People were shocked by it because it was so blatant. But it is representative of what is going on here. There’s a lot of money up for grabs and there’s a lot of corruption,” she said.

Criminals are accused of pushing through property deals through violence and intimidation, not only in Mykonos but in nearby Aegean islands such as Paros that are undergoing rapid development.

In Kos, an archaeologist was attacked by a building contractor on July 30. A verbal altercation over a development issue led to the contractor delivering “a direct, unprovoked physical attack and a violent punch with repeated blows to [his] face,” according to SEKE, an association of archaeologists.

There is a feeling in Mykonos that developers with deep pockets can ignore or subvert planning restrictions, building in supposedly protected zones or getting their projects fast-tracked.

Last year, a club on Psarou beach was found to be in flagrant violation of multiple zoning and public access laws, and was ordered to demolish a large number of illegal buildings.

Aerial photography showed that the owners had hugely expanded the beach club without permission.

The Mykonos mafia is accused of dealing drugs and carrying out robberies, targeting celebrities and other wealthy individuals who insist on bringing extravagant quantities of cash and jewellery and then advertising on social media when they are heading out for a night of partying.

Five years ago, the model Gigi Hadid was robbed while holidaying in Mykonos with her sisters. She told her 390,000 followers on Instagram that she would never return to the island. “Spend your money elsewhere,” she wrote.

A broader inquiry into organised crime on the island has been launched by Georgia Adeilini, a supreme court prosecutor from Athens.

In an official communication, she said that the murder had “highlighted the urgent need to tackle the serious crime, characterised by the press as the ‘Mykonos Mafia’, on the island”.

The nexus of crime in one of Greece’s best-known and most glamorous destinations extends to “extortion relating to construction activity, the ‘protection’ of businesses, murder, serious bodily harm, money laundering from criminal activity, serious offences regarding urban planning legislation… and drug trafficking,” the prosecutor wrote.

Greece’s minister for civil protection visited Mykonos last month, promising to boost police numbers and restore law and order.

Michalis Chrysochoidis said: “Our decision is to eliminate from the island all those who engage in illegal activities, whether related to transport, entertainment or a range of other anti-social phenomena.

“Our mission is to dismantle all such gangs and groups, who transgress and commit crimes. There is no place in Mykonos for goons or drug dealers or those who come here breaking the law to reap the benefits.”

The murder compounded an already tense situation on the island – last year, an archaeologist who had blocked several construction projects after finding archaeological remains on the proposed sites was viciously beaten up by unknown attackers.

Manolis Psarros was left with a fractured nose, broken ribs and severe bruising after the assault near his home in Athens.

The attack was “indicative of how out-of-control the situation in Mykonos has become”, said Despoina Koutsoumba, the president of the Association of Greek Archaeologists. It was a “mafia-style hit” related to big business interests, she said.

In June this year, an Albanian who had allegedly worked as an enforcer for a construction boss in Mykonos was murdered in Korydallos prison, a maximum-security jail in a grimy part of Athens.

A fire that ravaged a restaurant in Athens in August 2023 has also been linked to Mykonos mafia feuds.

The island’s mayor, who was elected last December, acknowledged that there was a problem with criminality, but insisted that he was up to the task of tackling it.

“It’s a fact that Mykonos has changed in the last 10 years,” Christos Veronis said in his office in the historic town hall, which overlooks the whitewashed houses and azure bay of Mykonos Town.

“There are many big companies, both Greek and foreign, that are investing in tourism in Mykonos and there are people who follow the money. There’s not a ‘Mykonos mafia’. It’s the Athens mafia, who come over here in the summer. They create this criminality.

“Our goal is to solve these problems and at the same time, the minister for civil protection came to Mykonos and promised extra police officers to protect the island.”

The murder of Mr Stathis in July was a big shock. “It’s the first time they killed a surveyor. He was not a criminal,” he said.

Meanwhile, the building work continues. The island’s last quiet, secluded spots, known mostly to locals, are being relentlessly swept up by developers. The economic rewards are huge: the total revenue from hotels in Mykonos has reached €750 million (£627 million) a year.

Two-thirds of that comes from five-star hotels. There are now 73 on an island that covers only 33 square miles. Between them, the five-star hotels offer 7,500 beds – the island’s permanent population is only 11,000.

In Panormos bay, on the north coast of the island, a large sweep of silky sand has been colonised by an upmarket beach club. Authorities imposed a €22 million fine for illegal construction last year, but the owners have launched an appeal.

The club was very much in operation when The Telegraph visited, with staff putting up sun umbrellas and preparing for big-spending guests.

“There was nothing here four or five years ago. Traditionally this is where a lot of Mykonos people came with their kids. A lot of them don’t come anymore,” said the anti-development campaigner from Friends of Mykonos, who has lived there for decades. “It’s in your face. People on the island are complaining all the time about it. They went ballistic when the beach loungers covered nearly the entire beach.”

It is the same story at Kalo Livadi bay on the south side of the island, where the valley behind the beach is now crammed with whitewashed villas and half-completed developments. A hillside that overlooks the bay has been scooped out by diggers to make way for a vast new Four Seasons resort.

What little remains of “old Mykonos” is unlikely to survive the onslaught of sleek hotels and sushi bars much longer.

A glimpse of what the island once looked like can be seen at Kalafatis Bay, where there is a crescent of sand backed by a cluster of jerry-built fishermen’s cottages and two small hillocks known as “the breasts of Aphrodite”.

Fishermen repair their boats and cats loll in the shade. It’s a scene straight out of the film Mamma Mia! – but this, too, is slated for a big hotel development. There is no suggestion of any criminal wrongdoing in these projects, but they are certainly contributing to overdevelopment on the island.

‘It is now spoilt’

Dimitris Koutsoukos, the deputy mayor, admits that construction has been allowed to get out of hand. Island authorities say they have almost no control over planning issues – they say it is the government in Athens that decides whether to allow or block developments.

“There was no planning. People didn’t think about parking, about roads, they just kept building, building. It’s too much for a little island. And where there’s money, crime follows,” he said.

Its iconic windmills, picturesque bays and expensive cocktail lounges still pull in the tourists in their droves. But rampant construction is threatening to erode the appeal of “the island that seduced the world”, as it is described in a photographic exhibition in Mykonos Town.

“I don’t think that it’s been destroyed yet, but we are very close to destroying it. It’s extremely sad,” said the anti-development campaigner from Friends of Mykonos.

She is more blunt in her language as she watches a mechanical digger prepare ground for yet another development.

“For people like me, who have grown up on Mykonos, it is now spoilt. We hope that somebody will say ‘enough’, no more raping the land. Let’s keep it for our children, let’s not destroy it.

“If we don’t look out, it will end up like Mexico City with people living behind high walls and big gates, protected by bodyguards. There will be various little empires run by unsavoury people. Nobody wants that.”

Hezbollah urged Iran to attack Israel but it refused because the “timing isn’t right”, two Israeli officials have said.

The request was denied because Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, is in New York for the United Nations general assembly, the officials told US news outlet Axios.

Hezbollah leaders reportedly told Iran to launch the attack as revenge for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, in Tehran two months ago.

It came as tensions escalated between Hezbollah and the Israeli military this week, with both sides engaging in a third consecutive day of cross-border rocket attacks.

Mr Pezeshkian told reporters on Monday that Israel was attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon in order to provoke a wider regional war, but stressed that Iran did not want to fall into this “trap”.

A senior Israeli official said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had been told to avoid launching any attacks that would give Iran a reason to join the escalating conflict.

Iran’s top military and political officials have repeatedly vowed to enact revenge for the killing of Hamas’s leader on Iranian soil in July, though a large-scale response is yet to materialise.

In April, Iran launched its first direct attack on Israel, launching a barrage of 350 or more projectiles, mostly intercepted by Israel and a US-led coalition.

Speaking to CNN, the Iranian president this week repeated his country’s support for Hezbollah, blaming the West for supporting Israel as it defended itself in the wake of the Oct 7 Hamas terror attacks.

“Hezbollah cannot stand alone against a country that is being defended and supported and supplied by Western countries, by European countries and the United States,” Mr Pezeshkian said.

Hezbollah started attacking Israel a day after Hamas’ terror attack, on Oct 8. Tensions escalated last week when a series of pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, killing dozens of the terror group’s fighters and injuring thousands more.

Israel launched “Operation Northern Arrows” on Monday, which has led to repeated attacks on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. At least 600 people have been killed in the operation, according to the Lebanese health authorities.

Sir Keir Starmer has said that he hopes to meet both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris ahead of the US election in November.

The Prime Minister said that it would be “very good” to hold talks with the Republican and Democrat candidates for the White House. 

He made the remarks as he headed to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly on Thursday.  

No 10 is understood to be trying to set up meetings with both politicians whilst Sir Keir is in the United States this week. 

The Prime Minister said: “As far as the candidates are concerned, if possible, it would be very good to meet both of them at some stage before the election.

“We’ll just have to see what’s possible.”

Sir Keir has made concerted efforts to build bridges with both camps ahead of the US election, which will take place on Nov 5. 

He was the first world leader to phone Mr Trump after the assassination attempt on the former US president’s life in July. 

Labour has naturally close ties with the Democrats, a fellow Left-wing party, with Ms Harris adopting some of Sir Keir’s election strategy. 

The Prime Minister headed to the UN summit with a declaration that Britain is “returning to responsible global leadership” under his administration. 

He said that talks with fellow world leaders are set to focus on the response to the situation in Israel and Lebanon as well as the Ukraine war.

“I think what will dominate is the Middle East and recent developments and, of course, Ukraine,” Sir Keir said.

“So I think that’ll be pretty central. And it will be really important for us to have the conversations with our allies about the situation in both of those areas.”

Sir Keir will use his speech to the assembly on Thursday to suggest that other countries had lost faith in the UK as an international partner under the Tories.

He will say: “We are returning the UK to responsible global leadership. This is the moment to reassert fundamental principles and our willingness to defend them. To recommit to the UN, to internationalism, to the rule of law. 

“Because I know that this matters to the British people. War, poverty and climate change all rebound on us at home. They make us less secure, they harm our economy, and they create migration flows on an unprecedented scale.  

“The British people are safer and more prosperous when we work internationally to solve these problems, instead of merely trying to manage their effects. So, the responsible global leadership that we will pursue is undeniably in our self-interest.” 

An antiques dealer and her husband have been fined £3,000 after they called police to report a migrant who had snuck into their vehicle at the French border.

Ed Masters discovered the young man when he returned to the UK after borrowing a van to assist his wife, Jane Cave, on a trip to buy antiques.

Despite calling Suffolk Constabulary himself, Mr Masters was told he was responsible for failing to properly secure his vehicle.

Ms Cave, an antiques dealer who features on BBC’s The Bidding Room, and her husband said they had been held up in lengthy delays at Calais caused by post-Brexit customs regulations when returning home on Nov 23 last year.

Mr Masters had been completing the necessary paperwork inside his van, which was unlocked, when he heard a noise and spotted a man attempting to climb in the back of the vehicle.

“I shouted, ‘Get out,’ which he duly did and ambled towards the rest of the car park,” Mr Masters said.

He and his wife then got back in the van and continued their journey towards customs.

At passport control a French border officer pulled their vehicle aside and inspected it before waving them through, Mr Masters said.

As they drove home along the A11 near Barton Mills, Suffolk, the couple heard noises coming from the back of the van.

“We heard banging on the side. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from,” Mr Masters said.

While his wife called the police, Mr Masters checked the back of the van, where he discovered a young man hiding inside.

The migrant, described as “dark, shortish, and carrying a mobile phone” then leapt out of the vehicle, jumped over the central reservation, and disappeared behind a nearby petrol station.

The police arrived shortly after and the man was caught within minutes before being taken to temporary accommodation nearby.

The officers then spent almost two hours searching Mr Masters’ vehicle.

“[That] should have been done thoroughly at the border in Calais,” Mr Masters said.

Despite reporting the incident to police himself and cooperating fully, Mr Masters was later informed in a letter from UK Border Force that he was being fined £3,000 for unknowingly smuggling a migrant into the country.

He was told that he should have informed the border authorities in Calais of the earlier attempt to get inside his van.

The couple insisted they took every precaution they could during the trip.

“We all thought we had done the right thing in calling the British police and making them aware of the situation, little did I know of the aftermath of all this,” said Mr Masters.

He said the experience had left him feeling like a criminal, despite his efforts to act responsibly.

“If I had just dropped him in a lay-by and not notified them, we would be £3,000 better off. Utter madness.”

Under the Government’s civil penalty scheme, tourists as well as commercial drivers are liable to fines if they fail to adequately secure their vehicle.

Mr Masters has since apologised for not alerting local police about the initial encounter in France but maintains that the fine is unjust and said it had made him lose faith in British policing.

He also questioned why the French authorities had failed to locate the migrant when they inspected his vehicle.

In the weeks following the incident, Mr Masters faced increased scrutiny from the UK Border Force.

He said he was detained four times at different airports, while his wife, who suffers from a rare neurological condition called ataxia which makes travelling difficult, was left to carry heavy baggage alone.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We are fully committed to stopping people from illegally entering the country and cracking down on people smugglers.

“The Clandestine Entrant Civil Penalty Scheme aims to ensure drivers are taking every reasonable step to deter irregular migration and disrupt people smugglers.”

It is understood the fines are only issued when Border Force officers consider they have “significant evidence”.

Suffolk Constabulary has been contacted for comment.

The gravestone of a teenager who was killed in a crash in Northumberland has been vandalised with the words “tick tock” and “you next”.

Bethany Fisher died at the scene of the crash on Victoria Terrace, Bedlington, in the early hours of Aug 19 2017, after celebrating her 19th birthday, Northumbria Police said.

She was a passenger in a car that collided with a number of parked vehicles.

Another woman sustained serious injuries as a result of the crash. The driver, Jordan O’Donnell, left the scene without reporting it to the police.

O’Donnell, of Bedlington, who at the time of sentencing was 20 years old, was jailed for six years at Newcastle Crown Court after pleading guilty to causing death by dangerous driving, causing serious injury by dangerous driving, causing death while uninsured, attempting to pervert the course of justice and failing to stop after a road traffic collision, the force added.

Fisher was laid to rest at Netherton Lane Cemetery in Bedlington, and her gravestone was vandalised the day before her birthday and two days before the seventh anniversary of her death, Northumbria Police said.

A picture of the gravestone released by police shows the words “tick tock” then a pixelated word and “you next”.

Isabelle Easson, Fisher’s mother, said: “We have to live with the heartbreak of losing our beautiful girl each and every day.

“Time will never heal these wounds, and now our suffering has been made worse by this horrendous act.

“Whoever is responsible for causing our family such distress at what is always the most difficult time of the year for us is utterly heartless.”

Police received a report of criminal damage at the cemetery that is understood to have been committed between 11pm on Aug 15 and midday on Aug 16.

An investigation has been launched and officers are appealing to anyone who may have information to contact them.

Insp Wayne Daniels, of Northumbria Police, said: “This act of vandalism at Bethany’s grave – a place where loved ones come to remember their beloved daughter, sister and friend – is an abhorrent crime.

“We would urge anyone who has any information about what has happened, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, to come forward.”

Witnesses should contact Northumbria Police by sending a direct message on social media, using the live chat on the force website.

For those unable to contact the force in the above ways, call 101 and quote the crime reference number 096827A/24.

A mother of five has died after having a cosmetic procedure that is believed to have been a “Brazilian butt lift”.

Two people have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after Alice Webb, 33, died in Gloucester on Tuesday following surgery.

A since-deleted GoFundMe page set up by a family friend revealed she had undergone a “BBL” procedure, which increases the size and shape of a person’s bottom using fat transfers or filler, but that it had “gone wrong”.

Ms Webb worked as an advanced aesthetic practitioner at cosmetics clinic Crystal Clear in Wotton-under-Edge, a market town in Gloucestershire.

Police said they were called at 11.35pm on Monday to an address in Gloucester after a woman had “become unwell following a suspected cosmetic procedure”.

“She was taken to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and died in the early hours of Tuesday morning,” a spokesman for Gloucestershire Constabulary said.

Two people have since been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and released on bail.

Dane Knight, Ms Webb’s partner, paid tribute to her online, saying: “Want to say a heartfelt thank you to all family and friends that were here for us at our time of need, including all of the kind messages sent to my children and myself.

“There was some very beautiful messages sent by some of your children that formed a start of a smile from the corner of my kids’ mouth.”

Another tribute on the GoFundMe page read: “Alice was beautiful inside and out with the biggest heart, her family was her world.”

Call for ban

Ashton Collins, the director of Save Face, which campaigns for patient safety in the cosmetics industry, said non-surgical BBL procedures should be banned in Britain.

“I am devastated to hear of Alice’s tragic passing,” she said. “We launched a campaign in December 2023 calling upon the Government to take urgent action to ban these procedures.

“We made it absolutely clear that without urgent intervention someone would die. It makes me incredibly sad and angry that today our fear has been confirmed.”

Ms Collins said that if the procedure was a BBL, Ms Webb would be the first person to have died after having one in Britain.

The spokesman for Gloucestershire Constabulary said: “Her next of kin and the coroner are aware. The woman’s family are being supported by specially trained officers.

“An investigation, led by the major crime investigation team, is ongoing. The two people who had been arrested have been released on police bail.”

A young mother who took her baby to a riot at a hotel used by asylum seekers has been spared jail, with a judge asking her: “What on Earth were you thinking?”

Nevey Smith, 21, brought her 20-month-old son in a pram to the disorder outside the Holiday Inn in Newton Heath, Manchester, and threw water at police officers trying to contain the violence.

A large mob descended on the hotel and hurled bottles, bricks and eggs at the building as riots broke out across the country in the wake of the Southport killings on July 29.

Daniel Calder, Smith’s lawyer, told the court that she did not know what an asylum seeker was.

Judge Patrick Field KC, sentencing Smith at Manchester crown court on Monday,  told her: “You chose to join, notwithstanding that you had your 20-month-old child in a pushchair. 

“What on Earth were you thinking? I doubt you had his safety in mind.”

The judge also told Smith, of Oldham, Greater Manchester, that she had a “lot to learn” and “quite a lot of growing up to do”, labelling her “misguided, naive and immature”.

He added that her role was “minimal and peripheral” as she had not been involved in throwing bricks or encouraging others to do so.

Mr Calder told the court that Smith had not set out to attend the protest on the day, and had been passing the riot when she “foolishly” got involved. He added that she had not expressed discriminatory views.

Smith was given a community order and made to attend reviews at a women’s problem-solving court and carry out 100 hours of unpaid work.

Her mother, Vanessa Smith, 42, was also at the protest and admitted violent disorder. She will be sentenced on Thursday.

John Barnes has accused Gary Lineker of failing to speak out against racism in football.

The former Liverpool forward, who played alongside Lineker with England in two World Cups, said he felt increasingly uncomfortable about appearing as a pundit because he was tired of black former players being asked about racism in the game.

Speaking at a Labour Party conference fringe event hosted by the charity Show Racism The Red Card, Barnes said: “If Gary Lineker or anyone asks me, I say ‘Don’t ask me what I think. What do you think? Because you are the ones who can make the difference’.

“Let Gary Lineker, let whoever else who are the real movers and shakers, let them start talking. We need you to say it, because if you think it’s wrong, say it’s wrong and tell me why it’s wrong. Because you haven’t even thought about why it’s wrong, because it doesn’t affect your life.”

Barnes, 60, said black players were frequently accused of “playing the race card” if they spoke out about the issue.

Speaking after the event, he told The Telegraph: “You cannot use black people to cure the ills of racism. 

“And the more you use black people at the front and centre of the debate, the worse it will become. 

“Because a lot of people, first of all, think you’re playing the race card to begin with. And they say, ‘There you are on television, making money, and now you are blaming white working-class people who haven’t got a job’,” he said.

“Now if Gary Lineker is going to say on television that this is wrong and this is why it’s wrong, that is going to carry more weight than a black person saying it.”

He said of many high-profile white people who speak about the game: “I tell you, they have a lot of opinions as to everything else. But when it comes to racism, they haven’t got an opinion. They obviously don’t feel strongly, because they will have an opinion as to other things.

“And they do have an opinion. But you know the opinion they’ll have? Most of them have the opinion that it’s not important.”

Barnes added: “They say, ‘Well, it’s not up to us. Tell us what you think, because you’re being affected by it’.

“Anybody on TV who is talking to black players, [asking] ‘What about that racism when the banana came on the field, or you heard some racist abuse, what do you think?’ Never mind about that. What do you think?

“Don’t ask Micah Richards and Thierry Henry. [Ask] Roy Keane: ‘What do you think, Roy?’ Why do they keep quiet?”

Lineker has been outspoken on many political issues, and has condemned racist attitudes towards migrants.

In 2022, he was mocked for revealing that he had suffered “racist abuse” as a child due to his “darkish skin”. 

He said: “Even in professional football, I had that a couple of times.”

Barnes was speaking on Monday at the event organised by Show Racism The Red Card, which was established in 1996 and uses high-profile footballers to campaign against racism.

On the podium alongside him were MPs including Seema Malhotra, a Home Office minister, and Tan Dhesi, chairman of the defence select committee, together with former England footballers Peter Reid and Trevor Sinclair.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Barnes said: “That is his (Lineker’s) bread and butter, talking about football all the time. Talking about racism in football all the time, but not giving an opinion.”

Barnes suggested that the football establishment did not think it was right to take the knee before games.

“We were taking the knee, were we not? Gareth Southgate said we were taking the knee, and now we’re not taking the knee. Did he believe it in the first place, or was he just saying we were going to do it?

“They’re not doing it now. If you believe in it and you believe it to be true, do it. If not, don’t do it. There’s no point in saying it’s really wrong if you don’t believe it.

“Let me tell you, 99 per cent of them don’t think it was right to take the knee. I can tell you, none of them. But they do it because they’ve been told, ‘we’ve got to do it’ and so they do it.

“So unless you’re going to be a real ally and believe it, why are you doing it?”

Lineker has previously appeared in a Show Racism The Red Card campaign, in which he said football was a shining example of integration.

In a video for the charity, he said: “I think that football is a real credit to a harmonious existence because within the dressing rooms, you get people from all parts of the world.

“What you get in the dressing room is people from various countries, of different colours, of different religions, and they all come together and nobody thinks along those terms. They’re just basically a fellow human being and a fellow footballer.”

A spokesman for Lineker has been contacted for comment.

Residents have been left “freaked out” by a “creepy” giant baby puppet installed in their town centre.

The 27ft-high figure, named Lilly, has been installed in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, by the council to encourage schoolchildren to talk about the environment.

Rochdale borough council recorded what the children said to the baby and plan to broadcast their remarks from the figure’s mouth at an event in October.

However, members of the public have been left unsettled by the baby’s “freaky” presence.

“I came around the corner and I thought, ‘It’s just creepy with its eyes shut, never mind open’,” one told BBC Radio Manchester.

The Labour-run council said the baby “aims to amplify children’s voices in the crucial conversation about climate change”.

“After waking up to meet local children, they sang to her and she was soon back asleep,” the authority wrote on social media.

“She’s invited hundreds of local schoolchildren to come and meet her this week, to find out what they think about the future of our environment.”

Sue Smith, the council’s cabinet member for communities and co-operation, said the schoolchildren’s reaction was “incredible”.

“It’s vital to spark conversations about climate change and empower Rochdale’s children to envision a better world,” she said.

“I eagerly await Lilly’s return next month; it promises to be a magical experience.”

The baby will be exhibited again at a nature event at the nearby Hollingworth Lake Country Park from Oct 24 to 27.

The council said the baby was “part of a broader cultural education programme in Rochdale, aimed at engaging young people and giving voice to their concerns about the climate emergency”.

A boarding school has severed its long-standing relationship with the Catholic Church to attract more families and better reflect its “diverse” student body.

Prior Park College in Bath has changed its faith designation from Catholic to Christian, ending an almost 200-year relationship with the Catholic Church.

The school, founded by Bishop Baines in 1830 as a Catholic seminary and school for boys, said the move followed a “lengthy re-evaluation” about “how well our college reflects the students we have today”.

Ben Horan, the headmaster, added that many parents had expressed frustrations over the “restrictive nature of being a Catholic school and the limited educational choices and outcomes that come with that”.

And the school’s website said gay former pupils had voiced concerns over “how difficult they found their education at the college – both historically and relatively recently”.

Prior Park claimed it had been told it should “censor student-led publications if they expressed a view contrary to Catholic teaching”, and that the school’s support for Pride celebrations “have been criticised by some for being contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church”.

In March, Mr Horan sent a letter to parents warning them that a new inspection framework for Catholic schools was “attempting to exercise a far greater degree of control” over their teaching.

The Catholic Schools Inspectorate (CSI) was established in 2022 to combine the diocesan school inspectors of England and Wales into one body.

It launched a “rigorous” new inspection framework that year to scrutinise Catholic schools’ teaching, writing on its website: “Inspection is one of the ways the bishop acts as a ‘good shepherd’ to his schools.”

An inspection report following the CSI’s visit to Prior Park earlier this year claimed that the school must “strengthen the centrality of Christ in the daily experience of students and staff”. It said this would help pupils “better understand the Catholic life and mission of the college”.

‘Faith on pupils’ own terms’

Mr Horan criticised the report’s findings, telling parents in March that his teachers “pride ourselves on not proselytising to our young people, but instead in encouraging them to engage with faith and spirituality on their own terms”.

The school already accepts pupils from all faith backgrounds, and fewer than one in five currently enrolled describe themselves as Catholic.

Its decision to axe ties with the Catholic Church means that it will no longer face mandatory inspections by the CSI, nor will students be required to study theology at GCSE.

The school said it will continue to offer Sunday Mass in its Grade I-listed chapel during term time, “pray together as a school”, and employ a lay chaplain.

Announcing the move, Mr Horan said Prior Park had become “increasingly diverse in recent years, with people from different backgrounds and sexual orientation now represented across both the student and teaching body”.

“The relationship with the Catholic Diocese remains important to us, but as society has changed, so have the pressures put upon schools to better reflect the needs and ambitions of those they serve,” he added.

A statement on the school’s website denied that the decision was directly linked to the CSI inspection, but added: “In a world of falling church attendances, it is perhaps unsurprising that there appears to be a greater level of expectation by the Catholic Church’s hierarchy for its Catholic schools to do the job of bringing young people to ‘the faith’.”

Fees to rise by 10 per cent

Mr Horan said a switch to a broader Christian underpinning would also help the school remain attractive as the sector is “crying out for help” amid increased financial pressures, including the Government’s imposition of VAT, that will come into force from Jan 1 2025.

The co-educational boarding school, which charges more than £40,000 annually for full boarders, will raise fees by an initial 10 per cent from January.

The school said that while the decision to ditch its Catholic roots “has been under consideration for many years … the pressure that a tax on education brings to schools like Prior Park has undoubtedly sharpened the College’s focus to complete the process”.

Mr Horan said he had already been in contact with “several other Catholic schools” that were asking for advice on how they might follow Prior Park’s lead.

It marks the latest evolution among historic private schools as they scramble to remain competitive, with many single-sex schools reportedly considering going co-educational.

Sir William Perkins’s School, a girls’ private school in Surrey, announced in June that it will be fully co-ed by 2030, starting with the phased admission of boys in Years 7 and 12 from September 2026.

Melanie Duke, the school’s chairwoman, said the decision followed increased demand from families to send siblings to the same school.

The Catholic Schools Inspectorate was contacted for comment.

A murderer who scattered his victim’s body parts in a park had been jailed previously for killing a taxi driver in 1998, a court heard.

Sarah Mayhew’s remains were discovered in Rowdown Fields in New Addington, Croydon, on April 2 this year.

Her head, arms and legs were found by police who were called after a dog walking in the fields returned to its owner carrying a human bone.

Further human remains were found in the River Wandle on May 21.

Steven Sansom, 45, who appeared at the Old Bailey via video-link from HMP Belmarsh on Thursday, admitted “dismembering” Ms Mayhew’s body, disposing of the body parts in various locations and cleaning up the crime scene.

His girlfriend, Gemma Watts, 48, who was also charged with murdering Ms Mayhew, 38, did not enter a plea.

Joel Smith KC, the prosecution barrister, said: “On April 2 a gentleman was walking a dog across the field in Croydon. The dog discovered a human bone and the police were called.

“A pair of arms and legs were found and the head which has been cut up using power tools.”

The court heard Sansom was previously convicted for the murder of cab driver Terrance Boyle, 59, after stabbing him in the throat and taking £25 from him on Christmas Eve 1998.

Mr Smith said: “This defendant has a previous conviction for murder to which he pleaded guilty in 1999 and received a minimum term of 20 years.”

Samson had called Mr Boyle’s taxi firm, Kendall Cars, in Station Road, Croydon, for a lift from East Croydon station to his home in New Addington.

He stabbed the driver as the car pulled up, inflicting a 12-centimetre slash to the neck and cuts to the head and back.

Father-of-five Mr Boyle also suffered a series of cuts to the hands when he tried to defend himself.

Sansom admitted robbery and murder at the Old Bailey in May 1999. He was released from his previous life sentence in December 2019.

Tornado warnings have been issued for parts of England, with heavy rain and flooding expected across the country.

The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation is forecasting much of the South East to see lightning, winds up to 50mph and even “isolated brief tornadoes”.

This includes much of East Anglia, the south-east Midlands and central southern England.

The Environment Agency also has 30 flood warnings in place across England, meaning flooding is expected, and 78 flood alerts, meaning flooding is possible.

Areas of Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire are listed as being the most vulnerable.

Last week a tornado swept through Aldershot, Hampshire, causing damage to properties and felling trees.

The warnings come after the Met Office issued an amber warning earlier on Thursday for areas of the Midlands and south of the country, set to come into force at 6pm on Thursday and last for 12 hours.

Yellow rain warnings had already been in place for large parts of England and Wales and western parts of Northern Ireland.

Areas affected by the amber warning, including Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire and the West Midlands, could see 30-40mm of rainfall within three hours, according to the forecaster.

The Met Office said: “Slow-moving showers and thunderstorms will develop through the afternoon, merging into a large band of heavy rain through the evening, before clearing slowly south overnight.

“Some places, especially across central and eastern parts of the warning area, are likely to receive 30-40mm in three hours or less, and perhaps 50-60mm or more in around six hours.

“This rain will fall onto already saturated ground and affect communities recovering from recent flooding. Travel disruption and further flooding is likely, with rivers continuing to rise after the rain clears.”

According to the warning, the weather could lead to difficult driving conditions and road closures, homes and businesses are likely to be flooded and there is a “good chance” some communities will be cut off due to floods.

Delays and cancellations to train and bus services and power cuts are also likely.

Parts of the country saw more than the monthly average rainfall on Monday, with flash flooding damaging homes and disrupting travel.

There were further downpours on Wednesday evening.

Around 385 properties were flooded in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Kent and the Home Counties, according to the Environment Agency.

Kate Marks, flood duty manager at the agency, said: “Heavy rainfall across the country means that significant river and surface water flooding impacts are possible in parts of central England today and into Friday. Minor river-flooding impacts are also possible in parts of North East England today and Friday.

“Environment Agency teams continue to be out on the ground, supporting local authorities in responding to surface water flooding. We urge people to plan their journeys carefully, follow the advice of local emergency services on the roads and not to drive through flood water – it is often deeper than it looks and just 30cm of flowing water is enough to float your car.

“People should check their flood risk, sign up for free flood warnings and keep up to date with the latest situation as well as following @‌EnvAgency on X for the latest flood updates.”

The rain is expected to clear during Friday, leaving conditions much colder on Saturday.

A man with a facial disfigurement was told to leave a restaurant because he was “scaring customers”.

Oliver Bromley, 42, went for lunch at the eatery, which has not been named, in Camberwell, south-east London, in August, while having treatment at the nearby King’s College Hospital.

But he was turned away by a waiter, who told him he had upset other attendees and would not be served.

Mr Bromley has Neurofibromatosis Type 1, a genetic condition that causes benign, non-cancerous tumours to grow on his nerves.

He was undergoing treatment at the hospital when he went to a nearby restaurant.

“I decided to take myself for lunch,” recalled Mr Bromley, who works for an NHS mental health crisis helpline. “The food looked good when I looked in one window, and I went inside.

“They said they were cash-only, so I took some money out and went to place my order. The gentleman behind the counter told me there had been complaints about me, and for me to please leave.

“I asked him to repeat himself, and he said I was scaring customers.”

Mr Bromley, who lives in Reigate, Surrey, said he was “incredulous” at what happened because he had hardly been in the restaurant long enough for someone to complain about his presence.

“I hadn’t even sat down,” he said. “I went to place my order and they asked me to leave. Perhaps they had seen me browsing, perhaps they didn’t want me in there.”

He added: “People stare – young children, especially – but I’ve never been treated as directly as that.

“It was very direct and very clear that I was not wanted.”

Mr Bromley, who is originally from South Africa, wrote to the restaurant, which he does not wish to name, but received no response.

He then contacted the Metropolitan Police, who recorded the incident as a hate crime.

The Met confirmed that officers had visited Mr Bromley about the incident and that although no arrests had been made, the force took “reports of hate crime seriously”.

Nerve Tumours UK, a charity which raises awareness for Mr Bromley’s condition, said such incidents were “not uncommon”.

Karen Cockburn, its director, said: “If Oliver felt that he had been discriminated against, there is the option that he could have a case under the 2010 Equalities Act, in which ‘severe disfigurement’ is a protected characteristic.”

Mr Bromley said he did not want “retribution” and instead aimed to “spread awareness”.

“There is nothing to be afraid of, it’s just something some individuals have to live with,” he said. “I am hoping this raises awareness and that, going forward, there might be a positive outcome and prevent it happening again.

“There’s always going to be nasty people in the world, but that’s my hope.”

Ed Balls has revealed that his wife, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, stopped him from dressing up as a “paedophile” on Strictly.

The Good Morning Britain presenter and former Cabinet minister had been set to dance to Jerry Lee Lewis’s Great Balls of Fire for movie week.

Lewis, the American pianist and singer, caused uproar when he married his 13-year-old first cousin once removed when he was 22.

Mr Balls said that he had been encouraged to take on the dance by the show’s producers.

“They wanted me to do Jerry Lee Lewis, Great Balls of Fire, for movie week,” he said, adding: “They wanted me to come down from the ceiling on a flaming piano.

“But two in the morning we’re driving back from Elstree and Yvette’s on her phone and she says: ‘Do you know this movie, where you’re going to assume the lead character, you do realise that the biopic it’s based upon is where he has an affair with his 13-year-old cousin?’

“She said: ‘I think this makes Katya [Jones, Balls’ dance partner] the 13-year-old and you the paedophile – I think this is a bad idea.’

“So I said: ‘Oh my God.’ I then rang the producers on Sunday morning at 10am and said: ‘I don’t think I can do this one.’

“They said: ‘Give us an hour.’ And they came back and said: ‘We want you do The Mask, Jim Carrey, and Cuban Pete, the Samba.’

“And I said: ‘Only if I can have a green face, do not do it by halves, let me be Jim Carrey, the Mask, with the green face.’

“That was fabulous – the green make-up was so cool. It took three people 50 minutes.”

Lewis was still married to his previous wife, Jane Mitcham, when he married Myra Gale Brown, whom he initially claimed was 15 years old, in 1957. The pair divorced in 1970.

Mr Balls also reflected on his first week waltz and the fear that he felt before his dance partner Jones led him to fully embrace the character he was assuming on the ballroom floor.

He said: “I learnt to put myself aside, my inhibitions aside, assume the character and just go.

“In politics, you are always yourself in performance, whereas what you’re actually allowed to do in entertainment is put yourself slightly to the side and then go to the character.

“The Charleston had worked, and I thought ‘I’ve got a real chance of getting through’ because the audience reaction was great.”

Mr Balls found viral fame on Strictly in 2016 with his Gangnam Style dance, before bowing out in week 10.

The spread of Gaelic signs across Scotland is “offensive”, Andrew Marr has said.

The veteran broadcaster argued it was “ridiculous” that bilingual signs had been erected across parts of the country where there are few Gaelic speakers.

Marr, who was born in Glasgow, highlighted the signs at Edinburgh’s Haymarket train station as an example. Since 2010, it has had signs declaring it to be “Margadh an Fheoir”, which translates as “market of hay”.

He also attacked Scottish “exceptionalism”, describing it as “one of the most offensive loads of tripe in modern politics”.

The former BBC political editor criticised “the Scottish Nationalist view that if you’re Scottish, you’re a better person; because you’re Scottish you’re more innately liberal; because you’re Scottish you’re more progressive”.

Scotland’s most recent census, conducted in 2022, found there were 58,000 Gaelic speakers. This equates to 1.1 per cent of the population, with half of them living in the Western Isles.

The last Gaelic-only speakers died out about 50 years ago but successive Labour and SNP-lead Scottish governments have tried to encourage more children and adults to learn the language.

Bilingual signs have been erected in Scotland since the 1990s, after first being approved by Donald Dewar, when he was Scottish secretary under Sir Tony Blair, before becoming the first first minister following devolution.

Marr made his intervention while holding a fringe event with Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, at the UK party conference in Liverpool earlier this week.

An audience member asked Mr Sarwar if he would learn lessons from Labour in Wales over its steps in promoting the Welsh language.

While the Scottish Labour leader was answering the question, Marr cut in, saying: “Perhaps I disagree totally with Anas here,” as he reeled off his reasons for finding it “offensive” that there should be Gaelic signs in parts of Scotland where people have never even heard the language spoken.

As the audience members applauded, the broadcaster, who now works for LBC and Classic FM, added: “Why does Haymarket have to have the Gaelic for Haymarket under it? It’s ridiculous. The Scots are made up of many different peoples historically.

“Many different groups of people have come to Scotland and they brought different languages and I think we should let languages rest and prosper where they come from.”

Mr Sarwar said he did not “take the Andrew Marr view” but accused the SNP Government of using Gaelic signs as “symbolism for a Nationalist message”.

“Right now it feels like the Gaelic language strategy is rooted around signs, symbolism, rather than economic opportunity and outcomes. And that’s where I think there is a fundamental break,” he said.