Boris Johnson tried to persuade Prince Harry not to leave the UK with his wife Meghan, the former prime minister has revealed.

Mr Johnson said he was asked to give the Duke of Sussex a “manly pep talk” to convince him not to step back from his royal duties.

Officials from Buckingham Palace and Downing Street are said to have believed the last-minute intervention in January 2020 could have succeeded in talking Harry out of his decision.

However, despite his efforts, the Duke left for Canada the next day to be reunited with his wife and his son, Archie, triggering a rift with the rest of the Royal family.

‘Ridiculous business’

Mr Johnson said there was “a ridiculous business… when they made me try to persuade Harry to stay. Kind of manly pep talk. Totally hopeless.”

The disclosure comes in his memoir, Unleashed, which is to be published on Oct 10.

Mr Johnson writes that just weeks after his landslide election win, officials in both Downing Street and Buckingham Palace told him they believed he might be able to talk the Prince out of his decision to walk away from his royal duties.

The meeting is known to have taken place on Jan 20, 2020, during a UK-Africa investment summit in London’s Docklands and was one of the Duke’s final appearances as a working member of the Royal family.

At the time, it was reported that the Duke and Mr Johnson had “an informal ‘catch-up’ chat behind closed doors”.

The night before, the Duke had delivered a speech in front of guests at an evening event for Sentebale, his charity based in Lesotho.

In it, he had claimed he had “no other option” but to step back from royal life and spoke of his sadness that it had “come to this”.

The two men met for 20 minutes without aides as Mr Johnson tried to persuade the Prince to reconsider.

‘Harry wasn’t for turning’

A friend told the Daily Mail, which is serialising the book, that Mr Johnson praised Harry’s efforts with the Invictus Games as well as the Duchess’s work promoting the education of women and girls in developing countries, a passion of the former prime minister.

“He thought they were a great asset to UK plc and it was a real shame they were leaving when they were doing such great work,” the friend said.

“It was a man-to-man conversation, they were totally alone. But Harry wasn’t for turning – he was unpersuadable by that point.

“Boris succeeded in delivering Brexit but even he couldn’t stop Megxit.”

A week earlier, on Jan 13, Prince Harry had joined his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II, father and elder brother for what has become known as the “Sandringham Summit”, in which they attempted to discuss the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s transition out of royal life.

‘They remain a valued part of my family’

Then, the Queen released a statement affirming: “My family and I are entirely supportive of Harry and Meghan’s desire to create a new life as a young family.

“Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working members of the Royal Family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family.”

On Jan 8, the Sussexes had announced they intended to “step back as senior members of the Royal Family” to “work to become financially independent”, choosing to “make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution”.

At the time, they were living in Vancouver Island, Canada, before moving to California where they eventually settled in Montecito.

In March 2020, they returned to Britain for a final week of engagements.

The Duchess has since returned for the Platinum Jubilee and the late Queen’s funeral.

The Duke has made regular short trips for charity events and is due to return on Monday for the Wellchild Awards. He is embroiled in a long-running court dispute over his security provision.

The UK-Africa summit is among the final events the Duke attended at the request of the UK government. It saw him hold audiences with the prime minister of Morocco, the president of Malawi, and the president of Mozambique.

The following day, he flew to Canada to rejoin his nuclear family, who later moved to Montecito, California.

Mr Johnson’s book is being serialised on the eve of the Conservative conference, where members will hear from the four remaining candidates in the leadership race.

He has not yet revealed which of the four – Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly or Tom Tugendhat – he will support.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on Thursday night.

A third Cabinet minister used one of Lord Alli’s homes, it has emerged, leaving Sir Keir Starmer facing growing questions about his closeness to the Labour donor.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, hosted a fundraising event at Lord Alli’s London home where the guests included Sir Ian McKellen. Mr Streeting declared the value of the event as £4,600, which included the cost of drinks and catering paid for by Lord Alli.

The event, which was co-hosted by fellow Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, raised £20,000 in donations for the two MPs.

It raises fresh questions about the extent to which Lord Alli, a media entrepreneur, made properties available to Labour MPs, after disclosures about Sir Keir’s repeated use of the £18 million penthouse also used by Mr Streeting and Angela Rayner’s use of a flat in New York.

Lord Alli bought the Covent Garden flat in January 2020, three weeks after Sir Keir announced his bid to become leader of the Labour Party.

The Prime Minister has been urged to provide more details about a six-week stay at the flat during the general election campaign, amid suggestions he could have fallen foul of electoral law.

Mr Streeting hosted a high-powered reception at the property in March 2022, prompting speculation in Labour circles at the time that he was preparing for a leadership bid in case Sir Keir stood down for any reason. The 20 to 30 guests included Lord Cashman, the former EastEnders actor, and Linda Riley, the LGBT rights activist.

At the time Mr Streeting said Sir Keir’s office was “fully aware of the event”.

Ms Leadbeater, who is the MP for Batley and Spen and the sister of the murdered MP Jo Cox, split the money raised at the event equally with Mr Streeting.

A spokesman for Ms Leadbeater said: “It was all declared at the time and it was perfectly legitimate.”

A spokesman for Mr Streeting said: “This was declared years ago. Wes is proud of the support that Waheed Alli has given the Labour Party. He has given so much, never asked anything in return, and was instrumental to Labour’s victory, which is why the Tories are gunning for him.”

Speaking in New York on Thursday, Sir Keir insisted that “nothing wrong has been done here”.

“Everybody has complied with all of the rules,” he said. “Sometimes it takes time to go through the individual examples, which may or may not put the context for people to see and make their own judgments. But look, I know why you’re asking questions.”

Sir Keir also avoided questions over whether he had tried to pass the flat off as his own in a video filmed there during the pandemic in December 2021, in the background of which a family photo and Christmas cards can be seen.

He told reporters in New York: “The idea that I was trying to pretend it was in my home is pretty farcical.”

A spokesman for Sir Keir declined to say why the family picture was there, or whether it was placed there deliberately but confirmed it was not a Christmas card sent out by the Prime Minister.

Sir Keir and his family stayed in the flat from May 29 to July 13 this year, which he has defended by saying he needed somewhere quiet to stay while his son was doing his GCSEs. However. the exams finished in mid-June, around a month before the family moved out.

It means that Sir Keir was living there when he submitted his nomination to stand as an MP when he said he was living in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency. He would also need to have declared any political meetings held in Lord Alli’s flat as a campaign expense. National campaign expenses have not yet been published.

Richard Tice MP, deputy leader of Reform UK, said: “Sir Keir has got very serious questions to answer as to where he was himself living during the election campaign. That may lead to an issue of electoral law.

“If he was holding constituency campaign meetings there it should have been declared on his local return. He campaigned on the basis of transparency and an end to cronyism, and he keeps saying that rules matter, but unless he provides some answers people will conclude that he didn’t follow the rules.”

A Labour spokesman said: “These allegations are complete nonsense – and anyone with even the most basic understanding of electoral law would know that.” 

It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon in the Hertfordshire village of Abbots Langley, and two horses are grazing sleepily in the sloped field that buffers a ring of prettily thatched homes from the drone of the M25 in the distance. As with so much of the green belt countryside surrounding Britain’s motorways, the field may not look spectacular, but clearly protects residents from air and noise pollution, as well as providing a safe haven for wildlife. 

A kestrel hovers in the blue above the grass and, later, the birdsong identification app on my phone picks up the shrill cry of a kingfisher – a bird whose habitat depletion across Europe means it is a schedule 1 species and its nesting sites are protected against disturbance under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

“This is the field where the Government now wants to build a massive, hyperscale data centre,” says John Fung, a logistics manager who lives with his wife and young children in Notley Court, a small row of 12 terraced houses directly opposite the field.

“There will be emergency back-up generators right here, perimeter security fencing, lighting like something you’d see around a prison,” says Fung, 46, shaking his head. “Our houses were only built four years ago. We knew nothing about this. When the developers first tried to get planning permission, the whole project was rejected by the council. But now it seems Angela Rayner is trying to overturn the local decision.”

This month the new Government designated data centres as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), which means that previously rejected planning proposals such as this one are being revisited, with Rayner herself – Deputy Prime Minister and Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary – having the final say. The Abbots Langley data centre, proposed by investment company Greystoke Land, would sprawl over 84,000 sq metres across two buildings 65ft tall.

The UK has the highest number of data centres in Western Europe, with the industry generating an estimated £4.6 billion in revenue each year. The argument for building them is that they will help keep data, such as that belonging to the NHS and the financial sector, as well as to personal smartphones and computers, safer from cyber attacks, environmental disasters and IT blackouts. 

But when I chat to villagers visiting the Abbots Langley library, many cannot understand why the Government seems to want to put one on the green belt, when there is so much brownfield land available. With the backing of the local council, Three Rivers, they are gearing up for war with Angela Rayner. 

Not only are there concerns about the Government’s determination to potentially overrule democratically-made council planning decisions, but residents also raise fears that our cities will soon have rings of data centres surrounding them – as has happened in other countries – and what the knock-on effects of this would be for the National Grid.

Like ‘welcoming a vampire into your home’

Among those objecting to the data centre are Sarah and James Felstead, who live in one of a small group of 1980s-built homes leading away from a renovated 14th century tithe barn across the road from Notley Court. Sarah serves me tea in a garden where her pond offers refuge to frogs and newts, while many bird feeders swing from the trees.

The couple’s jobs afford them a good insight into the repercussions of the data centre being located in Abbots Langley. Sarah, 56, is a digital video producer and James, 57, is the director of energy storage for a renewable energy company.

Sarah says: “The problem is that people think all their data lives in ‘the cloud’, when actually it’s been stored in these massive warehouses full of computer servers that only last seven years if you’re lucky, and require vast amounts of energy to run and keep cool.”

James adds: “In my industry, we’re always frustrated by the lack of ability to connect to the National Grid, to put energy generated by renewables back into the system. Now the Government is saying we need data centres to suck out energy more than we need to connect renewables putting it back in. One is a greedy taker and the other is a giver. Where is the energy for these centres coming from, if we’re not connecting the renewables?”

To James, putting up a data centre in Abbots Langley feels like “welcoming a vampire into your home – they just take, take, take”. He throws up his palms. 

He also wonders why the Government isn’t killing two birds with one stone and building the data centres next to wind farms instead of on fields beside the M25. “In Scandinavia, they put them beside lakes, to save energy on cooling the servers. Chinese bitcoin miners have stuck stacks of servers next to a hydroelectric dam in Ethiopia… the whole industry is nomadic.”

Sarah says the residents of Abbots Langley are not Nimbys. “We understand there is a need for more homes in this country. We have to accept that. But data centres on this scale will suck the equivalent of 80,000 homes from the grid.”

Sarah suspects the proposed data centre and another one Greystoke hopes to build 30 minutes around the M25 (in Iver, Buckinghamshire) are likely to “be the first of many forming a ring around London” and points to the issues caused by data centres circling Frankfurt and Dublin. In Frankfurt, concerns over space, pollution and energy consumption have seen city authorities restrict data centres to a small number of districts. Meanwhile, there is a moratorium preventing the construction of new data centres in Dublin (where US companies Facebook, Google and Microsoft all run sheds of hot servers) as almost a fifth of Ireland’s electricity is used up by them. 

James tells me about the community meeting in which Abbots Langley residents were shown an animated vision of what it might feel like to live in the shadow of a data centre. “It was so beautiful and so absurd I couldn’t hold my tongue,” he says. “You couldn’t even see the data centre because of these 200-year-old oak trees the animators had put in the way. I wanted to know: where are these 200-year-old oak trees coming from? They’re not there now! They don’t exist!”  

He notes that the local community was promised a scheme that would divert the proposed data centre’s waste heat to the school up the road. “But the scale is way off. The school doesn’t need anything like that much heat. Also, the developers say: you come and get the heat from the edge of our site. Which isn’t the same as saying, ‘We’ll engage with the community and we’ll connect it to where it can be used.’ It’s a hands-off approach.” 

‘That was the point everybody got suspicious’

In the promotional video for the data centre, currently available to watch by clicking here, a fresh-faced Greystoke employee (title unknown) called Sam Matthew assures viewers that for the UK to “protect our position” we need more data centres, with specific fibre networks and robust energy connections, that are close to other data centres for back-up. Matthew says Abbots Langley offers the “very best” location, which will attract £1 billion of foreign investment. 

James rolls his eyes. “They’ve looked at brownfield sites but I think those are more expensive. Is Abbots Langley the very best or just the very cheapest field?” It’s on such a steep slope that the farmer who owns it now can’t do much with it apart from graze horses.

“At the planning meeting in Rickmansworth,” continues James, “Greystoke dropped a clanger when they said, ‘There’s billions of dollars of American money wanting to come into this.’ I think that was the point everybody got suspicious.”

Sarah speculates. “Is it Google? Apple? Amazon? The people who then go on to charge us to store all of our junk emails and replicated photos? [Greystoke] are being a bit shy about who wants this and I think that’s because it’s not worthy. It’s not the NHS, is it?!”

So if it’s a Californian tech company behind this data centre, is it really – as Greystoke promises – “boosting the UK economy, supporting Britain’s digital leadership” and “bringing employment”? 

Further around the M25, I visit the other proposed site, at Iver, and end up chatting to Derek Foster, 62, outside The Swan pub. He’s a supermarket delivery driver and says he makes regular drops of food at the data centres in Slough and, based on what he deliver there, “I can tell you not many people work in those places!”. 

James Felstead also makes the point that despite Sam Matthews, in his knotted scarf and green wellies in Greystoke’s promotional video, promises “hundreds of highly paid jobs”, the car park on the plans does not have hundreds of parking spaces.

John Fung also laughs off Greystoke’s promise of a landscaped country park “because we already have one”. 

Fung worries about the back-up generators, which will be right on his doorstep, and local councillor Vicky Edwards tells me that the Environment Agency has absolutely vetoed plans to use a diesel back-up generator on the site because of the risk to the local water supply. “So now they’ve started talking about a Rolls-Royce hydrogen back-up generator. But those haven’t even been made yet. At the moment they don’t even exist. They don’t know how long development will take and it might not be within their budget if it’s made.”

Leader of Three Rivers District Council, Stephen Giles-Medhurst, tells me that the council has employed a KC and three expert witnesses to defend its decision against the government’s challenge. “We were clear, as was official advice, that the building at this location would cause high harm to the green belt and start the merger of Abbots Langley and Bedmond villages, and it’s not needed in the area, given there is a new data centre already in Hemel [Hempstead] just a few miles north.” But he’s prepared for the possibility of failure, conceding that: “If our local views are overruled, we want the promised community fund allocated to the local community for improved facilities in the area, such as a health centre, more buses etc…”

But Sarah Felstead concludes that the issues at Abbots Langley only serve to highlight the Government’s failure “to create a proper, nationwide plan of how data storage will work now and for the future, as they would with road/rail/electricity networks”.

Both she and Fung think the data centre on their doorstep is “a bodged job, a short-term fix that will leave a mess behind it when these servers expire in seven years’ time”. They both suspect that American companies are transplanting a data storage model to the UK that works in the great spaces of the US. But they are doing so without considering the option of many smaller centres, which, they feel, would fit harmlessly into existing warehouses and brownfield sites.

They fear that by the time the Abbots Langley servers expire, the tech will have moved on. But, by then, the green belt will be gone. A tech company somewhere will be quids in. And the UK countryside, and its inhabitants, will have paid the price.

A spokesperson for Greystoke told the Telegraph: “The UK needs multiple large data centres to support economic growth and digital leadership. Failing to build in North West London will mean employers and investors will look to Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris instead.

“Cloud data centres have very specific technical requirements in terms of fibre connections, power and proximity to other data centres. Abbots Langley Data Centre is ideally located to meet these criteria. The project, next to the M25, will attract more than £1 billion of investment and help to secure thousands of digital jobs across the country.

“People living in Three Rivers will see hundreds of highly-paid jobs created, £12 million set aside for education and training, a new publicly-accessible country park the size of 25 football pitches, and a doubling of biodiversity. The country park is on land which is currently private, so it will be easier for locals to access green spaces than before.”

A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “Due to the role of Ministers in the planning process, it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases”

Rachel Reeves is considering abandoning her pledge to abolish non-dom status over fears it may fail to raise any money.

Labour included a pledge to end the tax perk for wealthy residents who are domiciled overseas in its manifesto, hoping the policy would raise £1 billion a year.

However, Treasury officials are concerned that the move will force so many wealthy foreigners to leave that the measure will backfire.

Government officials said they would consider changing the details of the policy to make it less punishing to non-doms, with reducing the amount of inheritance tax they would have to pay thought to be one of the options under consideration.

The Chancellor had hoped that ending non-dom status would raise at least £2.7 billion by 2028, but is concerned that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will say her measures will lose the Treasury revenue.

The OBR previously warned that non-doms are “already highly transient”, telling the former chancellor Jeremy Hunt in March that revenues from scrapping the existing regime were “very uncertain” and could leave a black hole in the public finances in the long term.

A government official said: “There are lots of ways the policy could be worked out and the Treasury will go for the one which raises the most money.

“The priority is to make money to fund the manifesto policies.”

However, a Treasury spokesman insisted they were “committed” to “removing the outdated non-dom tax regime”.

Mr Hunt, the shadow chancellor, said: “It will be no surprise if Labour’s policy raises no money, because, as always, they fail to understand the importance of globally competitive tax rates to our economy.

“I only hope that they drop their plans which turn non-dom tax policy from something that does raise money to something that may well not.”

A “non-dom” is a UK resident whose permanent home – or their domicile – is outside of the UK for tax purposes and means they only pay tax on the money they earn in this country.

Non-doms collectively paid £8.9 billion in UK income tax, NI contributions and capital gains tax in the tax year ending 2023, the latest data available

Earlier this year Mr Hunt announced he was scrapping the existing non-dom regime, which allows foreign-domiciled nationals living in Britain to earn money from abroad without paying UK tax on it for up to 15 years, in a move worth £2.7 billion.

From 2025, new arrivals to the UK will not pay any tax on foreign income and gains for their first four years of residency, but those who stay after this will pay tax like other UK residents.

While Labour vowed to “abolish non-dom status once and for all” by closing what it claimed were “loopholes” in the new system, experts have warned that the plans could risk a wealth exodus and deter inward investment.

Earlier this year the OBR assumed that around 1,000 non-doms could leave the country as a result of Mr Hunt’s changes.

One way in which the policy could be watered down would be changing the pledge to subject assets held overseas to British inheritance tax – charged at 40 per cent – if a non-dom has lived in Britain for more than 10 years.

They could also scrap current plans to get rid of inheritance tax protection for trusts set up by non-doms.

Another possibility would be to scrap the inheritance tax protection for trusts set up in future, but not for those already established.

They could also reintroduce Tory plans to apply a 50 per cent tax discount for non-doms bringing in foreign income in 2025-26.

While the OBR has said “personal and professional connections” are important to wealthy individuals as well as tax policy, Tim Sarson, UK head of tax policy at KPMG, said Labour’s reforms could be the “final straw” for many.

He said the most controversial part of Labour’s plans centred around its inheritance tax proposals on foreign trusts.

While many “ultra-high net worth” individuals had already left the UK, Mr Sarson added that the reforms could trigger a fresh exodus.

‘Government has to be careful’

“It’s industrialists and business owners that will probably be more frightened by inheritance tax changes,” he said.

“There’s quite a few of them. Not tens of thousands. But they are quite important to the UK economy which is something the Government has to be careful about.”

Mr Sarson also urged Ms Reeves to extend the so-called “special status” granted to non-doms by Mr Hunt that exempts them from UK tax on all foreign income and gains from four years to seven.

Another top tax partner urged the Chancellor to reduce the 10-year period for which individuals remain exposed to inheritance tax on their worldwide assets after leaving the UK.

“The bit that has offended people is this idea that their worldwide assets will be subject to inheritance tax, and that will stick for 10 years. That would affect trusts that have already been in existence for a very long time,” they said.

Ms Reeves’s departure from her flagship proposals would represent a humiliating climbdown from a Chancellor who has pledged to close non-dom tax “loopholes”.

She has already pledged to reexamine her £565 million raid on profits made by private equity managers, with some highlighting that the raid on so-called “carried interest” was not mentioned in her speech at the Labour Party conference, raising speculation of a further climbdown.

Another top tax partner warned that the two tax raids were linked. “There is a compounding impact because if you’re in private equity and you’re worried about carried interest, many of these people are typically also non-doms and often have trusts. And these people can up sticks and go,” they said.

An Oxford Economics report published earlier this month, commissioned by Foreign Investors for Britain, said that ending the preferential tax regime would cost the Treasury around £1 billion a year in lost revenues because of wealthy people emigrating or not coming to the UK.

The report suggested alternative policy options Ms Reeves could consider, including a Greek-style tiered-tax regime which sees non-doms paying fixed annual fees.

The number of non-doms had already declined by almost half to 74,000 over the decade before 2023, partly from a 2017 change to the rules that stopped individuals using the benefit permanently.

Andy Haldane, former chief economist of the Bank of England, told LBC Radio that the Treasury should be cautious about the economic risks of any reforms.

“This is a time where we need more private finance to fuel growth and recovery,” he said. “I’d be a bit careful in not deterring just the flow of finance we need to get growth going.”

An HM Treasury spokesman said: “These reports are speculation, not government policy. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility will certify the costings of all measures announced at the Budget in the usual way.

“We are committed to addressing unfairness in the tax system so we can raise the revenue to rebuild our public services. That is why we are removing the outdated non-dom tax regime and replacing it with a new internationally competitive residence-based regime focused on attracting the best talent and investment to the UK.”

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.”

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

Elon Musk has said that no one should visit Britain because it releases paedophiles from prison, after he was snubbed by Sir Keir Starmer over an upcoming investment summit.

Posting on his social media platform X, Mr Musk said: “I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles [sic] in order to imprison people for social media posts.”

Mr Musk has not been invited to the International Investment Summit next month after his claims about the Southport riots over summer.

The tech entrepreneur posted on X predicting civil war and repeatedly attacked the prime minister in comments which were described as “deplorable” by ministers.

During the riots, Mr Musk also spread misinformation and conspiracy theories including that the UK was building detainment camps on the Falkland Islands as a means of detaining rioters.

“Keir Starmer considering building ‘emergency detainment camps’ on the Falkland Islands,” the fake Telegraph headline read.

Beneath it, the subheading said: “The camps would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots as the British prison system is already at capacity.”

Mr Musk later deleted the reposted tweet to his 193 million followers after backlash.

He has criticised hate speech laws that have led to some jail sentences for people posting online in support of the riots.

Labour has introduced an early release scheme for some other prisoners since the unrest, to reduce overcrowding in jails, although sex offenders are not part of this scheme.

Secure foreign investment

The summit on Oct 14 is regarded as a key moment for the Government to secure foreign investment, with Sir Keir Starmer hoping to attract tens of billions in inward funding from the world’s biggest investors.

Mr Musk went to last year’s event and attended November’s AI Summit, including a fireside talk with Rishi Sunak, the then prime minister.

Under the Conservatives, Mr Musk – who owns or runs X, Tesla and SpaceX – was shown around several UK sites with potential for a gigafactory for cars and batteries.

He previously said that he opened a site in Germany and not the UK partly because of Brexit.

Under Mr Musk’s ownership, the social media site formerly known as Twitter has lifted a ban on far-Right figures including on the Britain First group.

The UK is considering a tougher Online Safety Act, after the role of misinformation in the widespread racist disorder in August.

The Government and Mr Musk were contacted for comment.

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 SAS soldier has died in a parachuting accident in South Africa. Staff sergeant Chris Good, 52, died while representing Great Britain at a competition in Pretoria.

The soldier had completed a total of 5,500 jumps since joining the Parachute Regiment aged 17.

He had also been part of the Army’s elite Red Devils parachute display team before joining the SAS in 2004.

Former SAS sergeant Matt Hellyer led tributes to Sgt Good online, writing: “A paratrooper and pilgrim, fly high brother, see you at the [final rendezvous].”

Sgt Good revealed last month that he was using a new type of harness to let him fly further and faster.

He wrote online: “As always, a change or development can bring risk!”

In a statement, British Skydiving said: “With immense sadness, we announce the passing of Chris Good whilst skydiving in Pretoria, South Africa.

“Chris was representing Team Great Britain at the 10th World Canopy Piloting Championships.

“He was a cherished member of the team and an exceptionally skilled skydiver. His loss will be deeply felt within our sport.

“Our heartfelt condolences go out to Chris’s family and friends during this difficult period.”

The International Skydiving Commission, which organised the competition, said: “What an immense loss.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Chris’s family and friends during this difficult time.”

Sgt Good is reported to have served with the SAS but attached to the Army’s Parachute Association at Netheravon, Wiltshire

Skydive Netheravon, the base of the Army Parachute Association (APA), said in a statement: “It is with deep sadness we mourn the loss of instructor and friend Chris Good.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends at this difficult time.”

A spokesman for the British Army said: “It’s with immense sadness that we must confirm the death of Staff Sergeant Chris Good in a skydiving accident in South Africa on 25th September.

“Our deepest thoughts and sympathies are with Chris’s family and friends at this difficult time, and we ask that their privacy is respected.”

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 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”.

The “extremely dangerous” Hurricane Helene made landfall in the US state of Florida on Thursday night, with officials warning of “unsurvivable” conditions and a potentially catastrophic storm surge high enough to swamp a two-storey house.

More than a million people were without power and roads were already flooded ahead of what is expected to be one of the largest Gulf of Mexico storms in decades.

Helene hit Florida packing sustained winds of around 130mph (209kph). Forecasters warned that the enormous system could create a “nightmare” storm surge and bring dangerous winds and rain across much of the southeastern US.

The governors of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas and Virginia all declared emergencies in their states.

Fast-moving Helene’s eye hit near the town of Perry at about 11:10pm local time (4.10am BST Friday), the US National Hurricane Centre said.

“We’re expecting to see a storm surge inundation of 15 to 20 feet above ground level,” NHC director Mike Brennan said. “That’s up to the top of a second-storey building. Again, a really unsurvivable scenario is going to play out here in this portion of the Florida coastline.”

The accompanying waves “can destroy houses, move cars, and that water level is going to rise very quickly’, Mr Brennan added.

President Joe Biden urged people to heed official evacuation warnings.

“I urge everyone in and near the path of Helene to listen to local officials and follow evacuation warnings,” he said. “Take this seriously, and be safe.”

Helene prompted hurricane and flash flood warnings extending far beyond the coast up into northern Georgia and western North Carolina. Heavy rains and strong winds reported in much of Georgia on Thursday evening.

Strong winds already cut power to over 320,000 homes and businesses in Florida, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us

Across the northern Florida coast, most small towns were deserted on Thursday, with stores closed and windows boarded up to protect against the high winds and potentially devastating storm surge 

When the hurricane was about 115 miles (240km) south of Tallahassee, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico, it had sustained winds of 130mph (215kph), according to the NHC on Thursday night. 

Federal authorities were staging search-and-rescue teams as the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee forecast storm surges of up to 20 feet (6m) and warned they could be particularly “catastrophic and unsurvivable” in Apalachee Bay.

“Please, please, please take any evacuation orders seriously!” the office said, describing the surge scenario as “a nightmare’’.

Helene arrived barely a year since Hurricane Idalia slammed into Florida’s Big Bend and caused widespread damage. Idalia became a Category 4 in the Gulf of Mexico but made landfall as a Category 3 near Keaton Beach, with maximum sustained winds near 125mph.

The storm’s wrath was felt widely, with sustained tropical storm-force winds and hurricane-force gusts along Florida’s west coast. Water lapped over a road in Siesta Key near Sarasota and covered some intersections in St. Pete Beach. Lumber and other debris from a fire in Cedar Key a week ago crashed ashore in the rising water.

Beyond Florida, up to 10 inches (25cm) of rain had fallen in the North Carolina mountains, with up to 14 inches more possible before the deluge ends, setting the stage for flooding that forecasters warned could be worse than anything seen in the past century.

Heavy rains began falling and winds were picking up in Valdosta, Georgia, near the Florida state line. The National Weather Service said more than a dozen Georgia counties could see hurricane-force winds exceeding 110mph. “This is one of the biggest storms we’ve ever had,” said Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that models suggest Helene will make landfall further east than earlier forecast, lessening the chances for a direct hit on the capital city of Tallahassee, whose metro area has a population of around 395,000.

The shift had the storm aimed squarely at the sparsely-populated Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida’s Panhandle and peninsula meet.

“Please write your name, birthday, and important information on your arm or leg in a PERMANENT MARKER so that you can be identified and family notified,” the sheriff’s office in mostly rural Taylor County warned those who chose not to evacuate in a Facebook post, the dire advice similar to what other officials have dolled out during past hurricanes.

Still, Philip Tooke, a commercial fisherman who took over the business his father founded near the region’s Apalachee Bay, planned to ride out this storm like he did during Hurricane Michael and the others – on his boat. 

“If I lose that, I don’t have anything,” Mr Tooke said. Michael, a Category 5 storm, all but destroyed one town, fractured thousands of homes and businesses and caused some $25 billion in damage when it struck the Florida Panhandle in 2018.

Many, though, were heeding the mandatory evacuation orders that stretched from the Panhandle south along the Gulf Coast in low-lying areas around Tallahassee, Gainesville, Cedar Key, Lake City, Tampa and Sarasota.

Among them was Sharonda Davis, one of several gathered at a Tallahassee shelter worried their mobile homes wouldn’t withstand the winds. She said the hurricane’s size is “scarier than anything because it’s the aftermath that we’re going to have to face”.

This stretch of Florida known as the Forgotten Coast has been largely spared by the widespread condo development and commercialisation that dominates so many of Florida’s beach communities. The region is loved for its natural wonders — the vast stretches of salt marshes, tidal pools and barrier islands.

“You live down here, you run the risk of losing everything to a bad storm,” said Anthony Godwin, 20, who lives about a half-mile from the water in the coastal town of Panacea, as he stopped for gas before heading west toward his sister’s house in Pensacola.

School districts and multiple universities cancelled classes. Airports in Tampa, Tallahassee and Clearwater were closed on Thursday, while cancellations were widespread elsewhere in Florida and beyond.

While Helene will likely weaken as it moves inland, damaging winds and heavy rain were expected to extend to the southern Appalachian Mountains, where landslides were possible, forecasters said. The hurricane centre warned that much of the region could experience prolonged power outages and flooding. Tennessee was among the states expected to get drenched.

Helene had swamped parts of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday, flooding streets and toppling trees as it passed offshore and brushed the resort city of Cancun. In western Cuba, Helene knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses as it brushed past the island.

Atlanta fears worst storm in decades

Areas 100 miles north of the Georgia-Florida line expected hurricane conditions. Most of Georgia’s public school districts and several universities cancelled classes. 

The state opened its parks to evacuees, and their pets, including horses. Overnight curfews were imposed in many cities and counties in south Georgia, including Albany, Valdosta and Thomasville.

For Atlanta, Helene could be the worst strike on a major Southern inland city in 35 years, said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd.

Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

In further storm activity, Tropical Storm Isaac formed on Wednesday in the Atlantic and was expected to strengthen as it moves eastward across the open ocean, possibly becoming a hurricane by the end of the week, forecasters said. Officials said its swells and winds could affect parts of Bermuda and eventually the Azores by the weekend.

In the Pacific, former Hurricane John reformed on Wednesday as a tropical storm and strengthened on Thursday back into a hurricane as it threatened areas of Mexico’s western coast with flash flooding and mudslides. 

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador raised John’s death toll to five as the communities along the country’s Pacific coast prepared for the storm to make a second landfall.

Donald Trump heaped praise on “popular” Sir Keir Starmer ahead of the first meeting between the pair on Thursday night.

The former president said the British Prime Minister had run a “great” election campaign in a major diplomatic boost for Sir Keir.

His remarks, during a press conference at Trump Tower, came an hour before the British leader was due to arrive at the building for talks.

The Prime Minister asked for the meeting as he looks to build ties with the Republican candidate ahead of the US election in November.

He had also hoped to meet Kamala Harris, the Democrat candidate, but said that “diary challenges” had meant it was not possible to do so.

‘He ran a great race’

Asked what he thought of Sir Keir, Trump joked: “Well, I’m going to see him in about an hour so I have to be nice!”

He then added: “I actually think he’s very nice. He ran a great race, he did very well, it’s very early, he’s very popular.”

The Republican candidate also praised Nigel Farage and said his Reform party deserved to win more seats.

Reform won 14.3pc of the vote in July’s election, which was the third highest proportion nationwide, but because its support was spread out it only translated into five MPs.

In contrast the Liberal Democrats, who won 12.2pc, clinched 72 seats because their vote was heavily concentrated in parts of the south.

Mr Trump said: “I think Nigel is great, I’ve known him for a long time. He had a great election too, picked up a lot of seats, more seats than he was allowed to have actually.

“They acknowledged that he won but for some reason you have a strange system over there, you might win them but you don’t get them.”

Sir Keir was in New York for the UN General Assembly, where he gave a major speech denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

His meeting with Mr Trump was scheduled to come just hours after the Republican nominee gave his strongest signal yet that he would scale back support for Kyiv.

Ahead of the talks, Sir Keir said: “It’ll be really to establish a relationship between the two of us. I’m a great believer in personal relations on the international stage.

“I think it really matters that you know who your counterpart is in any given country, and know them you know personally, get to know them face to face.

“Obviously, I still want to speak to Harris as well. But you know, the usual diary challenges, but it’s good that this one now has been fixed.”

Sir Keir was asked whether he would be prepared to stand up to Trump if he becomes president again on global issues including Ukraine.

The Republican candidate criticised Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday and said Kyiv should have “given up a little bit” to appease Vladimir Putin.

“We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelensky,” he said at a campaign event in North Carolina.

Asked whether he would confront Trump over his views, Sir Keir said: “The first thing I think is important to say in relation to this is we’ve obviously had a special relationship with the US for a long time, forged in really difficult circumstances.

“That always sits above whoever holds the particular office, either in the US or the UK, and it is really important.

“I think it’s probably as strong now as it’s ever been, in relation to the Middle East and Ukraine.”

He added: “The US people will decide who they want as their president, and we will work with whoever is president, as you would expect.

“I’m not going to speculate on what any particular issues may be the other side of the election.”

Donald Trump has launched a collection of branded watches for $100,000 each.

The watches are said to be made out of 18 carat gold, encrusted in diamonds, and display the “Trump” name and his signature prominently on the watch face.

The former president is not personally selling the timepieces but appears to have given permission for the use of his name and brand by a watch company.

Trump told followers on his Truth Social platform that the watches would make a “great Christmas gift”. It marks the Republican’s latest attempt to monetise his political appeal since he was ordered to pay $454 million following a civil fraud trial in New York.

Named the “Tourbillion”, the watches come in gold, black gold, and rose gold.

According to the advert, there are 147 available — seemingly a reference to the fact that Trump, if he wins the next election, will become the US’s 47th president.

“The Trump Victory Tourbillion’s design is one of classic sophistication combined with President Trump’s symbol of success: Gold,” it reads.

“Almost entirely made out of 18 carat gold and decorated with 122 diamonds, you will stand out for all the right reasons.

“The Trump Victory Tourbillion is designed to counteract the effect of gravity. You’ll be wearing the absolute statement of success.

“Each timepiece will be numbered and feature a personalised message, courtesy of President Trump.”

The advert also features a picture of Trump, who is not wearing the watch but appears to be adjusting his cufflinks.

The former president advertised the items of his Truth Social account on Thursday, where he referred to them as “The Official Trump Watch Collection”.

“You’re going to love them. Would make a great Christmas Gift. Don’t wait, they will go fast,” he told followers.

Three other cheaper watches are available, which cost between $499 and $799 in onyx gold tone, silver gold tone, and red silver tone.

The former president has earned at least $300,000 from selling Trump-endorsed “God Bless the USA Bibles” for $59.99 each, in partnership with country singer Lee Greenwood.

A day after the half-billion civil fraud judgement against him this year, he began selling $399 golden trainers called the “Never Surrender High-Tops”.

Keir Starmer has called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon to create space for diplomacy to resolve the conflict.

In his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, Sir Keir pleaded with both sides to step back from the brink and agree a truce following escalating clashes across the Lebanon border.

Stressing the need to prevent a regional conflict in the Middle East, he said “further escalation serves no one”.

“I call on Israel and Hezbollah. Stop the violence. Step back from the brink,” he said.

“We need to see an immediate ceasefire to provide space for a diplomatic settlement and we are working with all partners to that end.”

He warned that the alternative is “more suffering for innocent people on all sides and the prospect of a wider war that no one can control and with consequences that none of us can foresee”.

Sir Keir also called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the hostages held by Hamas.

Addressing the humanitarian crisis, he said: “It shames us all that the suffering in Gaza continues to grow.”

Sir Keir also called for the UN to be reformed and strengthened, saying the war in Ukraine was a test for the organisation.

He said the UK would “stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes”.

“Because the alternative would be to confirm the worst claims about this place.

“That international law is merely a paper tiger and that aggressors can do what they will.

“We will never let that happen.”

Sir Keir’s speech was intended to show that under his premiership, the UK would offer “responsible global leadership”.

He announced a new British International Investment initiative, working with the City of London to use billions of pounds from pension and insurance funds “to invest in boosting development and fighting climate change”.

Sir Keir also called for a new international levy on global shipping to “put a price on the true cost of emissions” with the money raised going to tackle climate change.

Meanwhile, he demanded changes to the UN Security Council “to become a more representative body” which was “willing to act – not paralysed by politics”.

That would involve permanent African representation on the body,

The existing five permanent members – the UK, US, France, China and Russia – should be joined by Brazil, India, Japan and Germany, he said.

And Sir Keir promised a change in the way the UK acted too: “Moving from the paternalism of the past towards partnership for the future.

“Listening a lot more – speaking a bit less.”

A Turkish businessman told Eric Adams he would “soon” become the US president, after he and his peers lavished the New York mayor with business class flights and luxury travel worth $123,000, according to prosecutors.

Mr Adams, 64, is accused of having “sought and accepted improper valuable benefits” including luxury international travel from “at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him”.

On Thursday, Mr Adams became the city’s first sitting mayor to be criminally indicted after he was charged with five counts including bribery, wire fraud and soliciting contributions from foreign nationals.

The 57-page indictment paints an extraordinary picture of an unscrupulous candidate motivated by greed and power to accept bribes and illegal donations in his attempt to become mayor.

It outlines an alleged scheme in which Mr Adams enjoyed opulent hotel stays, meals at high-end restaurants and a swathe of illegal donations to bolster his 2021 campaign.

In exchange, Mr Adams is accused of pressuring city officials to greenlight the opening of the new 36-storey Turkish consulate — despite safety concerns — in time for the visit of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to New York.

The New York mayor is accused of seeking and accepting thousands in illegal contributions from foreign nationals, which he allegedly used to “defraud” New York City and “steal public funds” for his successful 2021 campaign.

If convicted of the charges, the Democrat could be jailed for up to 45 years.

Mr Adams has insisted he is innocent and has said he will “continue to do my job as mayor”.

According to the indictment, the luxury travel perks Mr Adams, his family and his staff members received between 2016 and 2021 amounted to at least $123,000.

He did not disclose the travel benefits in annual financial disclosures, according to the indictment.

The most expensive trip, which cost upwards of $41,000, involved free business class flights from New York to France, Turkey and China for Mr Adams and two of his staff members, as well as a heavily discounted $7,000 stay in the luxury Bentley Suite at the five star St Regis hotel in Istanbul.

He also accepted boat trips, a driver, a Turkish bath at a seaside hotel, and a two-night stay in the Cosmopolitan Suite of the St Regis, Istanbul, worth $3,000.

During a nine-hour layover in Istanbul on his business-class flight from New York to Ghana in 2021, Mr Adams was met by a personal escort, picked up in a BMW 7, dined at a high-end restaurant with Turkish government officials, and returned to the airport for the second leg of his journey.

The original plan had also involved a boat tour of the Bosporus Strait, but Mr Adams declined saying he had “done the boat tour a few times”.

Mr Adams flew Turkish Airlines even when “doing so was otherwise inconvenient” due to the thousands of dollars of free travel perks, according to the indictment,

The mayor provided “favourable treatment in exchange for the illicit benefits he received”, according to the federal indictment.

One of the Turkish businessmen who wooed Mr Adams with gifts and donations, who was named as “the promoter” in the indictment, is said to have “celebrated Adams’ prospects” after he was elected mayor.

He told people, including Mr Adams himself, “that Adams would soon be president of the United States”.

An airline official who lavished Mr Adams with business class flights, is also alleged to have lobbied the mayor’s staff member for a plum role on Mr Adams’ transition team.

Appearing to threaten Mr Adams with the removal of his luxury travel perks, on Dec 8 2021 he messaged the staffer saying: “Lead Plz 🙂 Otherwise seat number 52 is empty On the way back”.

The airline manager was, according to the indictment, added to Mr Adam’s transition committee for Infrastructure, Climate and Sustainability.

Messages between some of the Turkish officials he worked with reveal how they wanted to use Mr Adams for their own political gain.

‘Turn this into an advantage’

In one exchange, the “promoter” messaged a Turkish businessman the day after Mr Adams was elected mayor, saying: “He is most likely going to assign me as a representative, sir. I’m going to go and talk to our elders in Ankara about how we can turn this into an advantage for our country’s lobby.”

The businessman replied: “That would be nice”.

One Turkish businessman agreed to donate $50,000 or more to Mr Adams’ 2021 campaign “believing that Adams might one day be the President of the United States and hoping to gain influence with Mr Adams”. The man did not end up donating to the campaign.

Mr Adams is accused of seeking and accepting illegal donations in the form of “straw” contributions, meaning through people who falsely claimed they were giving their own money.

It is illegal to accept political donations from foreigners in the US.

Mr Adams is also said to have used the straw donations to “defraud” New York City and “steal public funds”.

In order to uplift local voices, the city has a scheme which matches small donations from residents with up to eight times the amount in public funds.

Mr Adams’ campaign is alleged to have had these straw donations matched by public funds, “obtaining as much as $2,000 in public funds for each illegal contribution”.

His campaign is accused of reaping “over $10 million in Matching Funds based on the false certifications that the campaign complied with the law” when Mr Adams “knowingly and repeatedly relied on illegal contributions”.

When the Turkish “promoter” suggested donating to Mr Adams’ campaign through a US citizen in 2018, the then mayoral candidate’s staff member said he did not think Mr Adams would “get involved in such games”.

The Turkish national said he would donate “max $100k”.

‘Illegal scheme’

According to the indictment, Mr Adams’ staffer was directed by Mr Adams to “pursue the promoter’s illegal scheme”.

Mr Adams was accused of directing his staffer to “obtain the illegal contributions offered” by a Turkish businessman who owned a university in Istanbul.

After the businessman offered to help Mr Adams during a meeting at Brooklyn Borough Hall in November 2018, he wrote to his staffer that the businessman “is ready to help. I don’t want his willing to help be waisted [sic].”

In a message between Mr Adams and his staff member about raising funds from the Turkish University, the mayor said he was not “Not doing [an] in person fundraiser for less than $25K.”

The mayor’s foreign-national benefactors later “sought to cash in on their corrupt relationships” with the mayor as his influence grew, prosecutors claim.

The indictment hones in on the approval of the 36-storey Turkish consulate. The building was opened by Mr Erdogan to great fanfare in September 2021.

The indictment alleged Mr Adams was told by the Turkish official in September 2021 “it was his turn to repay” him by pressuring the New York City Fire Department to facilitate the opening of the new Turkish consulate.

The building would have “failed” a fire inspection at the time it was opened, according to the indictment.

But in exchange for travel perks and other bribes, “Adams did as instructed” and told the FDNY official responsible for assessing the building he would be fired if he “failed to acquiesce”.

After Mr Adams helped receive the approvals needed to open the Turkish consulate, despite safety concerns, the Turkish official said: “You are Great Eric, we are so happy to hear that. You are a true friend of Turkey.”

Mr Adams replied: “Yes even more a true friend of yours. You are my brother. I am hear [sic] to help.”

The politician is said to have “created and instructed others to create fake paper trails, falsely suggesting that he had paid, or planned to pay, for travel benefits that were actually free”.

In one message to the Turkish Airlines manager in June 2022, Mr Adams’ staffer urged him to “quote a proper price” for flights when he suggested Mr Adams pay $50.

The staffer wrote: “His every step is being watched right now… $1,000 or so… Let it be somewhat real. We don’t want them to say he is flying for free. At the moment, the media’s attention is on Eric.”

When the airlines manager suggested Mr Adams stay in the Four Seasons, Mr Adams’ staffer said it was “too expensive”

The airline manager replied: “Why does he care? He is not going to pay[.] His name will not be on anything either.”

Mr Adams is said to have sent several emails to his staffer about paying for free July and August 2017 Turkish Airlines flights.

‘$10,000 in cash’

In one email he said: “I left you the money for the international airline in an envelope in your top desk draw. [sic] Please send it to them.”

The email suggested he had left “well over $10,000 in cash” to send to them.

The indictment states the airline confirmed Mr Adams “did not pay the airline, in cash or otherwise, because the tickets were complimentary”.

After Mr Adams learned he was being investigated in November 2023, he is accused of increasing the complexity of the password on his personal mobile,

He said this was to prevent staffers from deleting its contents and impeding the investigation. He then claimed he had forgotten the new password, and therefore could not help the FBI unlock the phone, prosecutors said.

Later on Thursday, defending Mr Adams’ actions, Alex Spiro, his lawyer, claimed people “do this all the time” as he gave a press conference denouncing the allegations as part of a smear campaign.

He said Mr Adams had responded to a “courtesy” request from a Turkish official seeking to expedite a fire inspection at the consulate.

“New Yorkers do this all the time,” Mr Spiro said.

“They want to tarnish him. They want to tarnish him in your eyes,” Mr Spiro added “There’s no corruption, this is not a real case. we’re going to see everyone in court.”

Mr Adams is due to be arraigned in a federal court next week.

Prolific offenders should be forced to serve their entire sentence in jail, Tom Tugendhat has said.

The Conservative Party leadership contender and former security minister said repeat criminals should be excluded from the current automatic release rules under which offenders can be freed 40 per cent or 50 per cent of the way through their sentence.

Under these rules, offenders are freed for the remaining 50 per cent or 60 per cent of their sentence under licence, which can place conditions including where they live, who they contact and where they can travel. Any breach means they can be recalled to prison to serve the remainder of their sentence.

Speaking ahead of the Tory conference in Birmingham, Mr Tugendhat, one of four remaining leadership contenders, said they should serve their full sentence in jail and then spend the rest of their lives on licence, subjecting them to a lifetime of supervision by probation where any breach could see them returned to jail.

Prolific offenders are defined by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) as any criminal with 16 or more previous convictions or cautions. MoJ data show that 90 per cent of crimes are committed by just 10 per cent of offenders.

Mr Tugendhat’s pledge follows The Telegraph’s disclosure last month that career criminals with more than 100 previous convictions are being spared jail.

In more than 4,000 such cases since 2007, offenders have avoided prison. The proportion walking free from court has quadrupled in the past 16 years, with an average of five a week being spared jail in each of the past 10 years.

The MoJ data, the most comprehensive analysis of its kind, show that offenders with more than 50 previous convictions have been spared jail in more than 50,000 cases since 2007. The number of career criminals avoiding jail has nearly tripled – from 1,289 in 2007 to 3,325 in 2023.

The scale of repeat offending was exposed during the summer’s riots. Adam Wharton, 28, who admitted burgling a library in Liverpool, had 16 previous convictions for 26 offences. A fellow rioter who torched a police van had more than a dozen previous crimes, from robbing charities to dealing drugs.

Mr Tugendhat said: “In the aftermath of the shocking riots this summer, I made it clear that criminality and lawlessness must face the full force of the law. As the next Conservative leader and then prime minister, my mission will be simple: to safeguard the happiness and prosperity of the British people.

“This cannot happen if communities do not feel safe or if crime goes unpunished. Like millions across the country, I was appalled by the sight of thousands of criminals walking free under Labour’s early release scheme, celebrating outside the prisons they had just left.

“We must not allow prolific offenders to go unpunished and roam freely on our streets. Under my plans, we will impose tougher sentencing and ensure that communities feel safe and supported by a greater community police presence.”

Mr Tugendhat said he would recruit 2,000 extra neighbourhood police officers and create a dedicated task force for “hot spot” policing, under which police target officers in areas plagued by anti-social behaviour for intense policing and enforcement.

Qatar has been accused of waging a “campaign of intimidation and apparent bribery” to derail a High Court case in which the country is accused of funding terrorism.

A judge heard on Thursday how one of the claimants had his car and home broken into, with a warning note left telling him to “be careful”.

Others have allegedly received threatening phone calls and are now in hiding with their families.

Meanwhile, Basel Hashwah, a US citizen and the only non-anonymous claimant, has been arrested and detained in Oman, allegedly on the orders of Qatar, the court heard.

They are among nine claimants originally from Syria who say they lost family members, were tortured and had property and businesses destroyed at the hands of the Al-Nusra Front terrorist organisation during the Syrian civil war.

They are now bringing a writ worth tens of millions against various Qatari entities whom they say assisted the Gulf state in illegally financing the group.

The defendants are Qatar National Bank, the Doha Bank, a Lebanese businessman called Christian Comair, and Abdulhadi Mana Al-Hajri, who is the brother-in-law of the Emir of Qatar.

All categorically deny funding terrorism, as well as having any knowledge of or involvement in the alleged intimidation and bribery. 

However, Sir Max Hill KC, representing the claimants, said: “There is a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice at work at this time.

“If that conspiracy were to work it would work to the benefit of all the defendants in these proceedings.”

A witness statement from Jonathan Ivinson, the Syrian claimants’ solicitor, was presented to the court in which he claimed that Qatari negotiators had previously offered to settle the case for $40 million, before they were replaced.

He said one of the claimants had had his car broken into in Paris while meeting with him for legal advice, and that papers and a laptop were also stolen.

Mr Ivinson said a different client had been contacted “by the security services of the State of Qatar” and told that $2 million was available if he was able to convince his fellow claimants to abandon the proceedings.

The witness statement claimed that Mr Hashwah’s mental health had deteriorated while he was held in Oman and that he could not give confidential instructions to his legal team because of the risk they would be intercepted directly by Qatar, or by the Omani authorities and passed to Qatar.

‘Disturbing events’

Sir Max said on Thursday: “These are no ordinary proceedings.

“The events that have taken place and are still taking place are ones that we invite the court to find disturbing, indeed shocking.”

Andrew Scott KC, acting for Mr Al-Hajri, said the allegations were little more than an “eleventh-hour attempt to distract the court” from the fact that they were required to make a cost security payment, an interim payment to the defendants’ solicitors in case they lost, the deadline for which they had missed several times.

He described the allegations as “attempts to throw mud”.

“The claimants have absolutely no evidence to support these grave allegations.”

Ben Jaffey KC said Mr Hashwah had been detained because he had signed a bad cheque, which is a criminal offence in Qatar, which cooperates with Oman.

Sir Max alleged that this was a deliberate attempt to put pressure on the claimant.

The court was not making determinations on the substantive allegations of funding terrorism, nor of intimidation and bribery.

Master Richard Armstrong ordered the claimants to make the cost security payments by Oct 10, despite an application to adjourn, or he would throw out the entire claim.

He also ordered them to pay 50 per cent of the costs for the hearing, within 15 days, which he described as “eye-watering”.

The BBC has given the “complete green light” for Giovanni Pernice to take part in the Italian version of Strictly Come Dancing, Ballando con le Stelle, according to its host.

Milly Carlucci suggested the broadcaster’s approval of Pernice’s inclusion in the show “should tell us something” about the nature of the bullying allegations against the dancer.

Her comments came as the BBC continued an investigation into bullying claims made by Amanda Abbington, a contestant on last year’s Strictly, against Pernice.

The Sicilian professional dancer, 34, left the show this summer but strenuously denied the allegations and was said to be confident that his name would be cleared.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of Saturday’s launch show, Ms Carlucci said: “We were in very close contact with the BBC to understand the extent of these [accusations].

“It should tell you something that nine months later they still haven’t given an answer. If there had been proof, as it were, the perpetrator of the Agatha Christie-style crime would have come out by now. It hasn’t come out.”

She went on: “I don’t want to get into their affairs … but we have been monitoring the matter with the BBC and they have given us a complete green light in having Giovanni with us and that should also tell us something because the BBC seems to me to be a very serious company that wouldn’t have said to one of its partners: ‘Go ahead, it’s no problem’.”

In interviews earlier this year, Abbington alleged that his behaviour towards her during rehearsals was “unnecessary, abusive, cruel and mean”.

The Sherlock actress also claimed that she had suffered “humiliating behaviour of a sexual nature”, although she clarified that she was not claiming to have been a victim of sexual harassment.

Pernice has called the accusations “simply false” and said he rejects “any suggestion of abusive or threatening behaviour”.

He added: “I am looking forward to the conclusion of the investigation and ultimately clearing my name and establishing the truth.”

From this Saturday, Italians will be able to see Pernice perform on Ballando con le Stelle with his dance partner, the actress and TV host Bianca Guaccero.

Speaking about him during Thursday’s press conference in Rome, she said: “Giovanni is teaching me to let myself go, to trust myself… It’s been a very profound experience.”

Asked if it was difficult to establish trust between them, she added: “Look, it was all very natural, very nice, a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with Giovanni. We are really two jesters, we have fun.”

Pernice said he would “rather not talk about” the ongoing investigation into Abbington’s allegations when asked on Thursday.

The professional dancer simply insisted: “It’s a commitment. I love dancing. It’s my passion. I’m a teacher, I’m a dancer.”

He also said that he does not want to compare the cultures of Strictly and its Italian version, saying: “I think they are very, very different…I don’t want to compare…They’re both great.”

Asked if he thought his appearance on the Italian show would be some kind of vindication for what he had gone through in the UK, Pernice declined to comment, but he said he was grateful for the loyalty and support of his many British fans.

Luca Alcini, the director of Ballando con le Stelle, also defended Pernice, saying that the intensity of the show often tested everyone’s temperament but that Pernice had been great to work with.

“He is a professional,” he told The Telegraph. “Like everyone else, in order to reach a goal, he puts energy and effort into it.

“It may happen sometimes, and it happens to me too, during a live broadcast, the adrenalin leads you to do, or say things that normally you would not do or say, but the important thing, in my opinion, is the objective, the achievement of the objective.

“Of course, you must not overstep certain limits, but I don’t think Giovanni, as far as I know him, has overstepped them.”

Ms Carlucci said she had known Pernice for many years and insisted the BBC had approved his involvement in the Italian programme which is aired by the state broadcaster RAI on Saturday nights.

The Telegraph understands that all casting decisions for Ballando con le Stelle are a matter for the Italian programme, rather than the BBC.

Among the current celebrity line-up on the Italian show are Federica Pellegrini, the former Italian Olympic swimmer, and Alan Friedman, the 68-year-old American financial journalist and author.

Ms Carlucci said the BBC had a different rehearsal process to the Italian programme and suggested this had made it difficult to verify claims against Pernice.

“One difficulty the BBC has encountered in responding to these claims is that unfortunately, they don’t do what we do, we have rehearsal rooms where they prepare and we have cameras watching what happens all day,” she said.

“The BBC can’t do it because they often train without cameras. Every now and then the camera comes and takes a shot and does an interview, but it was all very choppy.”

Graziano Di Prima, another Strictly professional, also left the show this year following allegations about his behaviour towards partner Zara McDermott. He admitted to kicking her in “an isolated incident” which he “deeply regrets and apologised for at the time”.

The BBC has introduced new duty-of-care measures in response to the allegations against the dancers, including chaperones who are present in the rehearsal rooms for its ongoing 20th anniversary series.

The broadcaster has been contacted by The Telegraph for comment.