Nearly 1000 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats on Saturday, the highest number this year.

A total of 973 migrants in 17 boats reached the UK, beating the previous record for 2024 – which was 882 people on 18 June.

It comes as French authorities said four people died while attempting to cross the Channel on Saturday – including a two-year-old boy who was “trampled to death”. The other victims were a woman and two men. They died in “two tragedies” on small boats, according to the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region in northern France.

The four deaths mean more than 40 migrants have died trying to cross the Channel this year, four times the number for the whole of last year.

Jacques Billant, prefect of Pas-de-Calais region, said the French coastguard had responded to a boat carrying almost 90 people, which suffered engine failure.

Fifteen people were transferred to a tow vessel, including the boy, who was unconscious. A medical team was sent by helicopter, but he was pronounced dead.

He was “trampled to death”, French interior minister Bruno Retailleau said on X.

He added: “The people smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands and our government will intensify the fight against these mafias who are getting rich by organising these crossings of death.”

Saturday’s total takes the number to be picked up in two days to 1,368.

It means 13,038 migrants in 230 boats have crossed the Channel since Labour came into power in July.

A total of 26,612 in 503 boats have now made the crossing so far this year, more than at the same point last year but down on the record year of 2022.

Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister and Tory leadership contender, said: “This is the highest number crossing the Channel in a single day for years.

“Starmer needs to rip up his dangerous so-called ‘plan’ on small boats. Our country’s security is at stake.

“He wants to lock up the criminals and terror suspects after they’ve got here – we should be stopping them in the first place.”

Labour is poised to U-turn on plans to tax investors after discovering the policy could have a “net cost to the exchequer”, according to reports.

In its manifesto, the party pledged to stop private equity investors from paying capital gains tax rates of 28 per cent on the money they make, and instead force them to pay 45 per cent income tax rates.

Sir Keir Starmer claimed the policy could raise £560 million but investment firms warned it could backfire and drive millions of pounds out of the UK to save it from the tax grab.

Further analysis by the Government has now come to a similar conclusion, it is understood, suggesting the policy could cost the Treasury hundreds of millions of pounds a year instead of raising any money.

The analysis, carried out by the Treasury, found it would incur a “net cost to the exchequer” of as much as £350 million a year after five years.

This was because wealthy individuals were more likely to leave the UK than pay the higher rates, The Times reported.

A government source told the newspaper: “We are absolutely in the revenue-raising maximising space rather than doing things for ideological reasons.”

In June, before Labour came to power, Rachel Reeves, then shadow chancellor, told the Financial Times: “I don’t think it is right that … what is essentially a bonus is taxed at a lower rate than employment income”.

The Chancellor did also say the Government would exempt private equity bosses who risked their own capital.

The tax break has allowed private equity fund managers to pay capital gains tax on some of their profits, rather than the higher rate of income tax, for decades.

Called “carried interest”, the tax loophole has seen firms earn more than £780 billion since 2000, according to a paper by Ludovic Phalippou, an Oxford School of Business professor.

Earlier this year, a report by investment bank Investec warned that nearly a third of private equity investors would relocate outside of the country if Labour’s tax policy went ahead.

The Government’s U-turn on taxing investors follows a similar decision by Ms Reeves to soften promises of a crackdown on non-doms.

Last month, it emerged the Chancellor was considering abandoning her pledge to abolish non-dom status altogether over fears it may fail to raise any money.

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

A Treasury spokesman said: “We do not comment on speculation around tax changes outside of fiscal events.”

An Israeli border guard has been killed in a terror attack at a bus station on the eve of the Oct 7 anniversary.

Officials named the victim as Sgt Shira Chaya Soslik, a 25-year-old working for Israel’s south military police.

At least 10 others were injured in the stabbing attack in the southern city of Be’er Sheva before the suspect was shot dead.

It follows a terror attack at a railway station near Tel Aviv last week as Israel continues its invasion of Lebanon and bombardment of Gaza.

The suspect, a Bedouin from the country’s southern Negev region, was killed by off-duty soldiers at the scene, around Be’er Sheva’s central bus station.

According to Israel’s Ynet news outlet, the terrorist had a criminal record and belonged to the family of Mohannad al Okbi, who carried out a terror attack that killed a soldier at the central station in Be’er Sheva in October 2015. He was said to be in contact with Hamas.

Walid al Huashla, a Bedouin parliament member, quickly distanced the community from the attack. The Bedouin community largely stay away from terror activities, with several also voluntarily joining the army. “This is not the way of Bedouin society,” he said.

However, Bedouin areas in Israel’s south are still home to Gazans from the time when there was free movement between Israel and Gaza.

‘Huge chaos’

Paramedics said they arrived to find “huge chaos” at the scene of Sunday’s attacks.

Speaking to Israel’s Ynet, Rubik Danilovich, the mayor of Be’er Sheva, said at the scene: “This is a cold-blooded killer … We as a city are doing everything to return life to full normality. We are in challenging and sensitive days, please be vigilant.”

Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, was met with shouts of “You have failed! Resign!” from the crowd when he arrived at the scene of the attack.

Unfazed, the hard-Right parliamentarian and lawyer said: ”There are a lot of Bedouin loyal to the state, but there are some who are not loyal. Those who are not loyal should have their houses destroyed … I call on the prime minister today to pass the law that we proposed for deporting families of terrorists.”

Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated Hamas leader, has a sister in the small community of Israel’s desert region, married to a local Bedouin.

In April, the prosecutor’s office submitted an indictment against Sabah Abdel Salam Haniyeh, who was arrested in March on suspicion of support of a terrorist organisation and incitement. She was accused of sending dozens of Whatsapp messages after October 7 praising the attacks.

Sunday’s attack happened as Israel was already on high alert on the eve of the first anniversary of the October 7 atrocities and just days after a terror attack in the mixed city of Jaffa killed seven people.a

After a string of solo appearances from her husband Prince Harry, the Duchess of Sussex made one of her own on Saturday night, at the 2024 Children’s Hospital Los Angeles gala.

Her vibrant red gown was by Carolina Herrera from the label’s pre-fall 2022 collection. Featuring a deep, U-shaped neckline and thigh-high slit, it couldn’t be further from the more reserved looks Meghan was required to wear as a working royal. Clearly, she’s still relishing the sartorial freedom she’s enjoyed since moving to the US.

If you think the dress looks familiar, it is: Meghan wore it for the first time in November 2021 at the Salute to Freedom gala. The gown has undergone a significant transformation since then: the full, fairytale overskirt of the 2021 outing has been removed, leaving just the sleek, minimal column dress that had been underneath.

Getting an old evening gown altered to look more current is a style strategy for which Meghan’s sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, has become famous. Catherine’s attendance at Trooping the Colour in June was a case in point – the sash of her Jenny Packham dress was updated with a stripe, and a black-and-white striped bow added to the collar.

Over the years, Catherine has also had the sleeves of three different Alexander McQueen evening gowns altered ahead of the Baftas, which requests that guests “keep sustainability in mind” when choosing their outfits. Meghan may not appreciate the comparison, but evidence that she has adopted the same practice with one of her own go-to labels can only be a good thing. 

Image consultant Annabel Hodin agrees – and believes it’s an improvement on the original dress, too. “The overskirt was rather matronly,” she says. “There will have been a fitting for the removal of the skirt top layer and [a number of alteration] options considered, but there was no surplus material to create a flattering drape. There is nowhere to put a dart or a ruche and the fabric has no stretch.”

It’s worth noting that the Duchess has been criticised in the past for wearing poorly fitting or creased clothes, but the slight volume at the hips in this case appears to be intentional – it’s a clever way to create the illusion of a smaller waist, while also allowing a little more freedom of movement. 

“This more streamlined look with a front slit could not easily be tighter as it would pull when walking or bending over,” Hodin explains. However, she gives the look her seal of approval: “Meghan has an incredible eye for stylish dressing and would not make the mistake of an ill-fitting dress.”

Meghan debuted a new hair look on Saturday too. Usually, she prefers a low bun, or loose, straightened hair, so these glossy curls with a centre parting are a departure from what we’ve seen in the past. “It’s a totally different look for her,” says Zoe Irwin, creative director at John Frieda. “What struck me the most is how young she looks all of a sudden.”

It’s a trend Irwin has already identified as the next big thing. “We’re calling this ‘La Belle Boheme’, she says. “I always like this kind of hair juxtaposed against the minimalist silhouette of the dress.”

This look is nothing like the beachy, boho waves we aspired to in the early 2000s though. It’s sleeker, with far less volume. It’s inspired by the modern boho look spearheaded by new Chloé creative director Chemena Kamali. The key ingredient, Irwin says, is gloss.

“The reason it’s of-the-moment is the high amount of shine in the hair,” she says. “You need to use a very lightweight oil through the hair when you’re blow drying it.”

Nor do you even need curling tongs: “What makes this really groomed is when you do it with a straightener – you get a lot of polish when you’re curling it with a straightening iron.”

The overall verdict? She looks great – although it’s probably not the easiest dress in which to sit down, and those Aquazzura sandals are not the easiest shoes in which to stand for a long period of time. But as a red carpet moment on its own, she’s nailed it.

Grandparents are avoiding booking holidays so they can save money to give to their grandchildren, a new survey suggests.

One in seven grandparents (16 per cent) are forfeiting holidays so they can financially support their youngest loved ones, the poll commissioned by cruise company Ambassador Cruise Line indicated.

The survey suggested other ways grandparents are making sacrifices so they can pass on more cash include holding back on socialising with friends (12 per cent) and remortgaging their home (8 per cent).

The poll also indicated 40 per cent of people in the UK have turned to their grandparents for money, while grandparents who spend time looking after their grandchildren clock up an average of 24.6 hours of childcare per month even though 38 per cent receive nothing in return.

Ambassador Cruise Line has launched a campaign for Grandparents’ Day – which falls on Sunday – to be afforded the same status as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Christian Verhounig, chief executive of the company, which caters primarily for the over-50s market, said: “Grandparents are the anchors of the family and Ambassador Cruise Line wants to provide a platform for people to recognise how important they truly are.

“Grandparents offer valuable wisdom, comfort and lessons to the younger generation, as well as support in times of need.

“We are proud to champion this amazing generation.”

The survey of 2,100 UK adults was conducted by research company Mortar Research in September.

A British climber who has been missing in the Himalayas for more than three days has been rescued.

Fay Manners, 37, and her American friend Michelle Dvorak, 31, had been unaccounted for since Thursday while trekking up India’s Chaukhamba mountain.

A spokesman for India’s Disaster Management Centre, a government agency, confirmed that the pair had been found after being stranded at 6,015 metres.

“Both mountaineers are safe, but they look very exhausted,” N K Joshi, the spokesman, said.

The Indian News Agency IANS said the rescue operation had concluded successfully after 80 hours. Conducted by the Indian air force, the army and local administration, the operation began on October 4 following a report from the Indian Mountaineering Foundation.

On Thursday, the pair sent an urgent message back to base camp to say they had lost their climbing equipment, tent and food down a gorge. 

It is believed they sent their SOS message to mountain rescue while they were 20,350ft (6,200m) up the mountain and were not heard from after. Helicopters were sent to search for the two women in the snow-capped region of northern India. 

Speaking to reporters after being rescued, Ms Manners said the pair had lost their equipment when a rockfall crashed into it.

“We were pulling up my bag and she had her bag on her,” she said. “And the rockfall came, cut the rope with the other bag, and it just went down the entire mountain.”

Ms Manners said the pair sent an urgent message calling for help.

“We sent a message to our friends and they knew,” she said. “I live in France and that team is also coming from France… and so they had told [the rescuers], ‘Oh they are stuck on the mountain, they have no equipment’. So then this other team [of mountaineers] came to help us.”

Images of the rescue shared by the Indian Air Force showed the climbers being airlifted in a grey Cheetah light helicopter from a snow-covered plateau.

“The rescue of two foreign mountaineers from Chaukhamba III trek in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli is a testament to the resilience and skill of the Indian air force, along with the collaborative efforts of SDRF, NIM, and French mountaineers,” the Indian air force said in a statement. “After battling two days of bad weather, the IAF’s Cheetah helicopter airlifted the climbers from 17,400 feet, showcasing remarkable co-ordination in extreme conditions.”

Ms Manners, from Bedford, left the UK to move to the Alps to pursue her passion for climbing, becoming a professional alpinist sponsored by brands including The North Face and Petzl.

Ms Dvorak is also an experienced climber as well as a teaching assistant at the University of Washington, according to her social media.

Both women were given permission by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) before they began their ascent, as is required to climb mountains as difficult as Chaukhamba.

The mother of the only British hostage still captive in Gaza said her daughter had been forgotten by Britain as she called on the Government to push for her release.

Mandy Damari’s 28-year-old British daughter, Emily, was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from her village in southern Israel on Oct 7 last year.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mrs Damari appealed to the Government not to let her daughter or the other 100 innocent people still being held hostage “continue to be tortured or even murdered”.

She said: “I implore those in power here to use every ounce of influence they have to advocate for the release of all the hostages, and to secure the release of their UK citizen.”

No 10 has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for both sides to reach an agreement to release the remaining hostages.

Some 100 hostages are thought to be held in Gaza still as Israel and the world prepares to mark the first anniversary of the kidnappings. Mrs Damari said she feared her daughter had been “forgotten”.

Given her daughter’s dual British-Israeli citizenship, Mrs Damari told the crowd in Hyde Park, central London: “How is it that she is still imprisoned there after one year?

“Why isn’t the whole world, especially Britain, fighting every moment to secure her release? She is one of their own. But her plight seems to have been forgotten.

“I know we could and should be doing more. I, and everyone else has failed her, and the only way to make us all feel whole again is to get Emily and all the 101 hostages back to their families.”

She implored the British public not to forget her “beautiful, charismatic” daughter locked away in Hamas tunnels.

“Emily, is 28 years old, full of life, with dual nationality, British and Israeli. She is a daughter of both countries, but no one here mentions the fact that there is still a female British hostage being held captive by Hamas for a year now, and I sometimes wonder if people even know there is a British woman there,” she said.

In the early hours of Oct 7 Emily was kidnapped from her home of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a village near the Gaza border, where she was born and raised.

Her beloved golden cockapoo, Choocha, was shot dead in her arms, and she was left with a gunshot wound to the hand.

At the commemorative event in central London organised by leading Jewish community groups, Mrs Damari asked the crowd to “imagine for a moment” that Emily was their daughter.

“Try to picture what she is going through. Since Oct 7  last year, she has been held a hostage by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza terror tunnels, 20 metres or more underground, kept in captivity, tortured, isolated, unable to eat, speak or even move without someone else’s permission. Stripped of every human right. It is almost impossible to comprehend her pain. Yet it is the reality she is living every single day.”

Mrs Damari was born in Surrey and brought up in Beckenham, south London. She told the crowd that she was “raised with the great British ideals of pubs, parties and freedom”.

Emily has British citizenship as it is automatically passed down one generation from Mrs Damari, who feels she has been let down by the British Government.

Mrs Damari told the crowd that the women and children hostages who came back last November, when the last ceasefire deal was reached, said that Emily was alive then.

She says: “They told me that some of them had met her while they were being moved around, some for short periods, some for longer. But they all told me about her bravery and courage and even her laughter and the way she helped hold everyone together even in the worst times. One even said she sang a song every morning called ‘boker shel kef’ – which means ‘it’s a great morning’, despite the darkness.”

But she added: “But who knows? I’m sure she’s not singing now. I keep thinking of the six hostages that were murdered hours before they were discovered by the IDF. About Eden Yerushalmi who weighed just 32 kilos. In the tunnel they were kept in, there was no room to stand up in and hardly any air to breathe, with just a bucket to relieve themselves in.”

She expressed the pain the family was in: “Every day is a living hell, not knowing what Emily is going through. I do know from the hostages that returned that they were starved, sexually abused and tortured.

“Every moment lost is another moment of unimaginable suffering or even death.

“Please, I ask of you all, and also the British government, do not let my daughter Emily Damari or the other innocent people held hostage continue to be tortured or even murdered. I implore those in power here to use every ounce of influence they have to advocate for the release of all the hostages, and to secure the release of their UK citizen.

“We must all stand on the side of humanity, life, justice and freedom and act with urgency and determination to obtain the release of Emily and the other hostages now. Please help us to return them home before it’s too late for them all. We must act now.”

Mrs Damari has also shared a message that she handed to the Prime Minister in Downing Street on Monday.

She hopes the note will reach her daughter when she is “alive and home” with her family, but said that if she reads it in Gaza “know that we all love you and miss you and are sick with worry about what is happening to you every day and we are praying and meeting whoever we can to get you back home”.

Mrs Damari goes on to strengthen her daughter’s resolve, writing: “Please keep strong, keep praying and just be your beautiful self that I love to the moon and back.

The heartfelt note ends with a promise to her young daughter: “You will come home. And I promise that I’ll never complain again about your perfume sticking to me when you’re home.”

At the No 10 meeting, the mother instructed Sir Keir Starmer to get the message to Emily by any means possible – and asked the Government to do far more to bring her home.

She also asked that every time the Government mentions the hostages they must mention Emily specifically.

Sunday’s event was organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish Leadership Council, and UJIA – a British charity supporting vulnerable communities in Israel – working with Israel’s embassy in London.

Hassan Nasrallah is dead. The Hezbollah he led is in tatters. Israel and Iran stand on the brink of all out, devastating war. For the optimists, it is the supreme opportunity. 

The Iranian regime will fall “sooner than people think,” as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it in an address to the Iranian public (delivered in English).

“When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents will be bankrupt, dismantled,” he announced. “Our two ancient peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace.”

“Israel has now its greatest opportunity in 50 years, to change the face of the Middle East,” Naftali Bennet, former prime minister and perennial Netanyahu rival, wrote after Iran fired rockets at Israel on Tuesday night. “The leadership of Iran, which used to be good at chess, made a terrible mistake this evening.

“We must act now to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime.”

It’s not just the politicians who are pushing for a decisive, region-changing war. There’s also a large constituency inside Israel who believe things must change fundamentally, and via airstrike and infantry assault if necessary.

It is driven by a cocktail of fatigue, years of conflict, cynicism about the moribund peace-process, and fury and fear at the slaughter perpetrated on October 7 last year.

“Look at it this way,” said Major Moshiko Giat, a veteran IDF special forces officer who fought in the last war in Lebanon (in 2006). Israel is surrounded by people who “want to kill you. To butcher you. They proved it on the seventh of October. They’re proving it in various other examples.

“So to come and tell me, ‘Listen, I gained 18, 20, 25 years of peace.’ What’s the meaning of that? That in another 10 years, maybe 15 years, they’ll come back? Yes. So probably my son, or my daughter, or my granddaughter or my future family are going to be at risk? Yes.

“Why? Why? Why can’t we actually get to some thought that it’s going to be different?”

Major Giat’s preferred answer to changing the paradigm is to “teach them a lesson by telling them Israel is here forever” in such a way even the terror groups will acknowledge.  

For many Israelis there is an obvious emotive appeal to finally beheading the snake (or decapitating the “octopus”, as Bennett put it). But beyond Israel’s borders, allies fear doing so my prompt a catastrophic, even nuclear, bloodbath. 

So with the region on the brink, which fate awaits. 

‘If you play this game, you have to pick between peace and war’

In some ways, the conflict between Iran and Israel makes no sense at all. They share no land border or territorial quarrels, they have common historic enemies in the form of the Sunni Arab monarchies, and the general public in Iran does not really share the anti-Israel animus of the regime.

After all, it was Cyrus the Great who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity. Before the 1979 revolution, the two countries were quite close allies.

But the Islamic Republic of Iran “has never really been a project about how Iran should be,” says Arash Azizi, author of What Iranians Want. “It has always been a project about how the world should be: a world without Israel and in which the United States is not a power broker.”

“It’s Bader-Meinhoff meets Nasserism. But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamaeni is the last of the revolutionary generation who really believes in this stuff,” explained Mr Azizi.  

Perhaps that is why yesterday, at a rare address to Iranians at Friday prayers, Khamenei said that Israel “will not last long”.

Faced with overwhelmingly superior enemies in the United States and Israel, and a population with bitter memories of all-out war with Iraq in the 1980s, he has long advocated “strategic patience” – spending billions on building an “Axis of Resistance” that at an unspecified date in the future would finally eliminate Israel, but which for now would foment revolution and act as a forward line of defence for the Iranian homeland and regime.

It is a vision with obvious parallels to revolutionary Soviet ideology of the 20th century. And to borrow another phrase of that era, it is now falling apart under its internal contradictions.

“Since 2019, Iran’s policy was no war, no peace. It’s a bit like the Israeli idea of de-escalation through escalation – it’s too smart by half, and it turns out there is no such a thing as no war, no peace, and that if you play this game, you have to pick between peace and war,” said Mr Azizi.

“And that’s exactly where Khamenei is. Now, he has to pick between peace and war. The problem is, peace means giving away his anti-Zionist street cred, and war means destruction of his regime.”

Mr Azizi says his military contacts in Iran are genuinely worried. Hezbollah was the jewel in the crown of the Axis, its massive rocket arsenal viewed as Iran’s principal non-nuclear deterrent against Israel – and most specifically against potential Israeli strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

It is now in tatters and Iran does not have much of an airforce to meet an Israeli strike on the homeland. The hawkish Mr Bennet is right: Iran is more exposed than at any time in recent history. So obvious is the danger that some hardliners in Tehran have even denounced Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who planned and executed the October 7 massacre, as a “Zionist spy”.

“A former official of the Ahmadenijad government said it, and he didn’t face any blow back for it,” said Mr Azizi. “Iran is crazy with conspiracy theories. But in reality the conspiracy theories reflect a truth, and the truth is the October 7 attack has proved the undoing of the Axis in many ways.”

So far, the Iranians have tried to walk a very narrow line. Bizarre as it is, the hope in Tehran seems to have been that Tuesday night’s 200-missile barrage against Israel would be seen as restrained, within the rules, and even responsible.

As with the last Iranian attack on Israel in April they signalled it well in advance and gave Israel and its allies time to evacuate key targets and intercept many of the rockets. Only one person, a Palestinian man in the West Bank, was killed.

It even wrote a letter to the United Nations Security Council saying it acted “in full compliance with the principle of distinction under international humanitarian law, has only targeted the regime’s military and security installations with its defensive missile strikes”.

“If you read some of the statements made by Iranians in the past 24 hours after the attack, it’s pretty clear what they are saying is ‘we would like to draw a line under this,” Sir Simon Cass, a former British ambassador to Tehran and nuclear negotiator, said this week.

“They found themselves in an impossible position. If they didn’t respond to the killing of Nasrallah they would look weak. That always worries the Iranians, that people will take them lightly. On the other hand if you do respond, what is the risk that you pull the roof in down on your own head?

“I think they would like to de-escalate. But my word, that is going to be very difficult to do.”

Nuclear tipping point

For Israeli hawks, that is all the more reason to act now. But this is where Israel, once again, differs sharply from many of its allies.

Until now it was thought (or hoped) by many Western watchers of Iran that the regime was content to remain just below the nuclear threshold.

It was a logical way of having some of the diplomatic leverage of nuclear deterrence without incurring the massive international punishments that actually building a bomb would incur.

That’s hardly an ideal situation, but it gave some space for diplomats like Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to keep talks going in a bid to avert possible proliferation.

For many Western governments, giving Iran a reason to abandon that cautious stance and actually build a weapon is the opposite of good statecraft.

But with its non-nuclear deterrent exposed as a paper tiger, Mr Netanyahu calling for regime change, and the United States and Israel more or less publicly debating a strike on Iranian oil facilities, that calculation could change.

Strikes on refineries would be much more disruptive and dangerous for Iran’s economy and public – and hence for the survival of the regime – than the destruction of the nuclear labs.

Which means at this point, regime insiders would not have to share the Supreme Leader’s revolutionary anti-Zionism to see the case for a nuclear insurance policy.

In theory, it wouldn’t take them long. Iran is believed to have enough near-weapons grade uranium to build a bomb in months, if not weeks, of choosing to do so. They already have the long-range missiles to tip with the warheads.

That does not mean there would be a nuclear war – although there might well be. The enduringly weird point of nuclear weapons is that they are not meant to be used, and with the exception of the end of the Second World War, they never have been.

Perhaps Iran and Israel, which has long had its own unacknowledged nuclear arsenal, would just end up locked in a Cold-War style missile standoff. That would probably suit the regime in Tehran, clearly the weaker side in the current war.

But they would not remain the only members of the Middle Eastern nuclear club for long. Saudi Arabia has been explicit about its own intention to seek a bomb if Iran gets one, for example.

And it is not just the Saudis. Mr Grossi of the IAEA told the Telegraph in July that several “other countries in the region” have said they too would seek a deterrent. “The moment you have two or three countries with nuclear weapons, the possibility of their use is very high,” he warned.

A grand bargain for peace

There is another view of how this ends. “History would tell that you’re never wrong if you take a pessimistic view,” said Alastair Burt, a former UK minister for the Middle East who has spent years wrestling with the topic of a two-state solution.

“But I have written fairly regularly since October the seventh, on the basis that this is now so awful, and we are never going back to October the sixth, that only something positive can come out of it.”

“By that, I mean  that whether or not you agree that the Palestinian issue is the central issue in the region, it is certainly used as a cause for those who can hitch their wagon to it, to make their case for a Middle East which is anti-West, anti-American.

“Now that it’s very clear that if normalisation of Israeli ties with UAE and Saudi is to mean anything at all, it has to encompass a Palestinian dimension. I see in that an opportunity.”

Arab nations insist they are prepared to do their part. Only this week, Ayman Safadi, the Jordanian foreign minister, vented his frustration at the United Nations. “Ask any Israeli official what is their plan for peace, and you’ll get nothing,” he said. “We are members of the Muslim Arab Committee, mandated by 57 Arab and Muslim countries, and I can tell you unequivocally that all of us are willing, right now, to guarantee the security of Israel in the context of Israel ending the occupation [of the West Bank] and allowing for the emergence of a Palestinian state.”

Trust is low on all sides, making a deal almost impossibly hard to secure, but Joe Biden’s White House is putting huge effort into making it work. 

The grand bargain envisioned by the Americans and Saudis, among others, goes something like this: To cement the peace gained by a ceasefire and release of hostages, Israel would commit to an arrangement for a two-state solution leading to a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Saudi Arabia and the other neighbouring Arab states would in turn guarantee Israeli security and shoulder the cost of rebuilding the new Palestinian state, including in Gaza.

A cleverly-structured deal in which the benefits of peace ratchet up and offer a clear, non-violent path to the goal of a Palestinian state would put the terror groups out of business. Hamas or Hezbollah would have the option of putting on suits and attempting to govern legitimately, or fading into irrelevance.

Israel would get security and the Palestinians would get a state and reconstruction. Israel, its Sunni Arab neighbours and the United States would form a single security bloc against Tehran.

The Gulf states would get their own benefits. America has reportedly offered sweeteners, including a bilateral security guarantee and civilian nuclear technology for the Saudis.

And for America, it would have the added benefit of rebottling the Iranian genie it unleashed with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which opened the door to the westward expansion of Iranian influence into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. 

This neat solution is highly appealing to those who view international relations as a clever parlour game.

The problem with that idea is selling it to the people on the ground. The two-state solution is very popular among western politicians and diplomats, acknowledges Mr Burt, but not so much with people on the ground.

Maj Giat rather gloomily complains that outsiders do not understand the mentality of Israel’s enemies. He’s not alone in feeling that there is no peace to be made with people who want to kill you.

Demarcation of borders and the future of Israeli settlements on the West Bank would be a very difficult sticking point, and not only for ideological reasons. Israel is a tiny country with a growing population and not enough room. Rents, not to mention other consumer costs, are through the roof. Anxiety about finding a place to live is a constant part of day-to-day life.

So the Right-wing settler movement is mixed up with the kind of basic bread-and-butter politics that makes any move that looks like giving up land difficult.

The answer, some hope, lies in an old axiom of Middle Eastern politics: that it is only the hardmen who have the political credibility to make the generous concessions that can bring peace.

The greatest single step towards peace in the Middle East, the Israel-Egypt peace agreement of 1978, was made by Anwar Sadat, ruthless dictator and architect of the Yom Kippur war, and Menachim Begin, a former terrorist so extreme that mainstream Zionists for a long time wanted nothing to do with him.

By the same token it was Yitzhak Rabin, hero of the Six-Day war, and Yasser Arafat, a career terrorist, who signed the Oslo Accords. Ariel Sharon, the general who led the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, pulled Israeli settlements out of Gaza.

Could the man who killed Hassan Nasrallah, crushed Hezbollah, and reduced Gaza to fine powder have enough credibility to do the same?

American diplomats, it is said, have been trying to persuade Benjamin Netanyahu that he could. Be a statesman, they whisper in his ear. Lead the country where no one has before. The public could follow you.

Return to the grim status quo

So far, Mr Netanyahu has resisted those voices. There are domestic political reasons to do so. He is reliant on a coalition including small far-right parties in the Knesset to stay in power, although a recent addition has neutered the threat of Itamar Ben Gvir’s ultra nationalists’ bringing him down by quitting.  

He has also built a political career on opposing the two-state solution. To turn around now and accept it would take chutzpah that even he might struggle to muster.

For some, it is simply a question of character. Netanyahu, said another former official who spoke on condition of anonymity, is just not Menachim Begin. Nor is there anyone of the stature of Sadat or Arafat on the other side.

And history tells us that the most likely outcome is a continuation of a grim status quo. Israeli conscripts will fight on three fronts. Palestinians will continue to live with the humiliation of blockade or occupation. Maj Giat’s grandchildren probably will have to fight again, despite his best efforts. 

For Lebanon there is the prospect of an open-ended Israeli occupation in the south, a collapsed state, and the threat of another inter-confessional civil war as armed groups take advantage of the chaos.

For Iran, an even deeper social and economic crisis than the one already underway, which will either cement the IRGC’s mafia-like grip on power, or trigger a collapse that would make “Iraq after 2003 look like a walk in the park,” said Mr Azizi.

“Israel attacking a couple of places in Iran won’t create an alternative. The military people I have talked to are very worried,” he said.  “Yes it could be the unravelling of the regime. Hell, for a lot of us it could be the unravelling of our country. And that’s what is so worrying.”

The ruins of countries where despots have recently been challenged offers grim warning. 

“Do we want the regime gone? Yes. Do we want the regime gone at any price? No. Do I want Iran to be Syria? No. Do I want Iran to be Libya? No.”

Hezbollah agents were duped by Israel into holding their exploding pagers in both hands in a ploy to maximise their wounds, reports claim.

Booby-trapped devices used in the Sept 17 attack were equipped with a decryption feature that required the user to push two buttons at once to read coded messages.

As device owners responded to a text saying they had received an encrypted message by attempting to decode it, the pagers exploded, the Washington Post reported.

“You had to push two buttons to read the message,” one Israeli intelligence official told the newspaper, adding that the intention was that the blast would “wound both their hands”, rendering the user incapable of fighting.

Less than a minute after that, thousands of other pagers were detonated by remote command, regardless of whether the user ever touched his device. 

As many as 3,000 Hezbollah officers and members are thought to have been killed or injured in the attack, along with an unknown number of civilians.

The attack has been described as one of the most successful penetrations by a spy agency in intelligence history.

Israel began hatching the pager plan in 2022, a year before Hamas’s Oct 7 attacks triggered an escalation in its war with Hezbollah.

Israeli success in penetrating the group and technical prowess in electronic eavesdropping had left Hezbollah increasingly concerned about surveillance and looking for hack-proof methods of communicating.

Mossad, Israel’s equivalent of MI6, began inserting booby-trapped walkie-talkies into Lebanon in 2015, with oversized battery packs hiding an explosive and a transmission system that gave Israel the ability to listen in.

Officials told the paper that for nine years the Israelis held off detonating the walkie-talkies and contented themselves with eavesdropping.

The pager plot was hatched later, and in 2023, Hezbollah began receiving sales pitches for a bulk buy of Taiwanese-branded Apollo pagers. 

The brand was a recognised worldwide trademark with no discernible links to Israeli or Jewish interests. Officials said the Taiwanese company had no knowledge of the plan.

The pitch came from a marketing executive trusted by Hezbollah with links to Apollo and who was a former Middle East sales representative for the Taiwanese firm who had set out on her own.

“She was the one in touch with Hezbollah, and explained to them why the bigger pager with the larger battery was better than the original model,” said an Israeli official.

The marketing executive was unaware that the production had been outsourced and the pagers were being built in Israel under Mossad oversight.

Each included a battery pack hiding a tiny but powerful explosive that was almost impossible to spot, and the devices could be triggered remotely by an electronic signal to detonate all at once.

Israeli leaders were unaware of what Mossad had achieved until Sept 12, when details of the scheme were disclosed in a meeting about potential action against Hezbollah. 

The revelation sparked intense debate about whether detonating the devices would further escalate the conflict. Eventually, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, gave the go ahead.

US officials said they were not informed of the scheme.

After the shock of the pager attacks, Hezbollah was hit again the following day, this time with the exploding walkie-talkies.

Since then, Hassan Nasrallah, its leader, and many of its top leadership have been killed by air strikes.

Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s potential successor, is reported to have been out of contact since Friday, when an Israeli strike near the city’s airport was reported to have targeted him.

Emile Hokayem, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, said: “The incredible penetration of Hezbollah’s security apparatus and the elimination of nearly its entire command structure, including Nasrallah himself, suggest internal betrayals, terrible security protocols and communications weaknesses.

“Losing its image of competence leaves the movement vulnerable to internal criticism but also to scorn from its foes.”

A Cabinet minister called on Israel to show “restraint” on the eve of the anniversary of the Oct 7 attacks after airstrikes killed dozens overnight.

Peter Kyle, the Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary, made the plea as the start of the war between Israel and Hamas approached its first anniversary.

It comes after Sir Keir Starmer urged Israel to “return to a political and not military solution” as he reflected on the past year of conflict in the Middle East.

Israel said airstrikes on Hezbollah in Beirut overnight had destroyed a weapons dump while Lebanon said the explosions killed at least 23. Najib Mikati, the Lebanese prime minister, urged renewed “pressure on Israel” for a ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Hamas said airstrikes in Gaza killed at least 24 when bombs hit a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people. Israel said it had carried out “precise strikes on Hamas terrorists”.

‘Advice is very clear and unanimous’

Asked about the events overnight, Mr Kyle told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “We can’t instruct Israel as a sovereign state to do anything, but as key allies we can advise them.

“And the advice is very clear and it is unanimous from our international allies that we must exercise restraint.”

He insisted the Government “do understand deeply what Israel has suffered in this year” but added: “The only way forward is restraint, a ceasefire to create the space for a political solution, because this is getting more complicated.

“The war is deepening and it is not moving towards the peace that we need, so we are urging the steps that will take us towards that peaceful settlement”.

In an article for The Sunday Times, Sir Keir called on all sides to “do everything in their power to step back from the brink” after weeks of escalating tensions.

His approach to the conflict was criticised as having “no coherence” on Sunday by Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, in the wake of the partial arms embargo.

Mr Johnson told Camilla Tominey on GB News: “How can you say we stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel while at the same time he is the first UK prime minister in modern history to put an arms embargo on Israel when Israel is under existential threat?

“So no, I don’t see any coherence.”

Asked about the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Mr Johnson said he “presents a very clear and coherent case” for ensuring the security of Israel.

The Archbishop of Canterbury joined Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, and Qari Asim, the chairman of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, in writing a joint letter to the Observer on the eve of Oct 7.

“It has been a year since the brutal Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, and the start of this devastating war in Gaza and beyond,” they said.

“As people of faith from Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities in the UK, while we may hold different views about aspects of the conflict, we stand united in our grief and in our belief that our shared humanity must bring us together.”

Hamas terrorists killed around 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds more hostage in a number of attacks on Oct 7, 2023, leading Mr Netanyahu to order the military bombardment of Gaza.

Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, repeated his calls for a ceasefire on Sunday, saying peace and reconciliation in the Middle East “seem more distant than ever”.

He condemned rising anti-Semitism in German society as he said Israeli hostages must be returned and the bombing of the Gaza Strip must stop.

On 7 October last year, Ziv Koren was at home in Tel Aviv with his seven-year-old daughter when he woke to the sound of sirens.

‘Over my 35-year career, I have always run towards what other people are running away from,’ he says, over the phone from his office in central Tel Aviv. ‘I understood immediately that I had to do what needed to be done. My first thought was about how quickly I could get my daughter back to her mother’s and get myself down south, even before I understood the magnitude of how big and dangerous the day was going to be.’

Koren, 54, is one of Israel’s most respected documentary photographers. Born in 1970, he began his career as a photographer for the Israeli Army during his national service.

He has documented countless military campaigns, as well as humanitarian subjects including Guantanamo Bay, the Haitian earthquake and the Aids crisis. His work has appeared in publications from Time to Le Figaro and been featured in exhibitions all over the world. But his latest book, The October 7 War, is his most intense and personal yet – an eyewitness account of the war between Israel and Palestine since the attacks last autumn.

On the morning of 7 October, Koren picked up his camera and got in a car with other journalists to head south. Going off-road to avoid the military checkpoints that had already closed routes leading south, Koren found himself perilously close to some of the heaviest fighting of that day.

‘Our aim was to get to Sderot [a city in the south, by the border with the Gaza Strip], because that is what we had seen and heard on TV: Hamas entering Sderot in white pickup trucks and assassinating every person on the street.

‘When we arrived, we saw it with our own eyes. So many dead people in the cars, in the bus station. Bodies everywhere. The first time we crossed the city, we did not see a single person alive.’

Leaving the city to continue their way south, they came to a crossroads where there were dozens of stopped cars, many shot up or burned out, filled with dead young people. ‘We stopped to see if anyone was still alive inside,’ Koren recalls. ‘The cars were full of young people, dressed nicely, with tattoos and earrings and bracelets. I thought to myself, where did they all come from, on the road on a Saturday morning?’

Suddenly they found themselves under fire from Hamas fighters, who had been lying in wait in sight of the road.

‘We lay under the cars while they were shooting over us,’ Koren says. ‘The cars were full of bullet holes. I’ve been under fire before, but here we were the target and there was nobody around. We were alone in the street. It was quite an experience. I was taking photographs and trying to call for help, but there were a few very lonely moments, where I thought, “This is how I’m going to end my life, lying on the road.” I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind.’

Only later did he realise the convoy of ruined cars had been trying to escape Nova, the music festival held near a Kibbutz south of Sderot that endured some of the most horrifying violence that day: 364 mostly young attendees were slaughtered as they tried to get away.

That day was the start of almost a year of intense non-stop work for Koren, during which he has taken around 350,000 photographs, a tiny selection of which have made it into his book. ‘I always go deep into the stories I document, but here, I was obsessed from the very first day with documenting everything possible, because I understood that the pictures I was taking were not just for tomorrow’s newspaper. This is documenting history, and the pictures I take today will be learnt and studied by my grandchildren in schools 50 to 60 years from now.’

Given the subject, he says it has been difficult to maintain objective distance. ‘I covered the war in Ukraine, too, and I can’t say I was neutral when I was photographing that either. I’m not part of any propaganda, I’m not shooting for the government. But I’m Israeli. It’s my backyard. I lost friends and relatives and friends of my daughters on 7 October. I cannot say it’s not personal, but I’m not shooting it differently to any other major story. Obviously it’s emotional. I think somehow most of the world doesn’t remember the atrocities that took place on 7 October, and the rest don’t believe it existed.

‘Everything is difficult to witness. My heart goes out to the civilians who are suffering from the acts of the Israeli troops going into Gaza, too.’

Koren hopes people who see the images in his book will come away with a ‘combination of knowledge and understanding’.

Recently, he says, he has been documenting survivors – hostages, survivors of the kibbutzim, soldiers that were fighting that day.

‘I’ve been taking them back to where they were on 7 October. Their stories are monstrous. You cannot imagine the atrocities that took place that day.’ 

The October 7 War by Ziv Koren, £52, is out on November 10. Available on Amazon for pre-order

A police force has apologised after putting down a family’s pet XL bully dog by mistake.

Lancashire Constabulary said it had given the family an “unreserved apology” for euthanising the seized dog, named Bruno, while the owners were in the process of applying for an exemption to keep him.

In a statement, the force said Bruno was put down due to an “administration error”.

“In August we seized an XL bully dog from an address in Morecambe as part of our powers under the Dangerous Dogs Act as XL bully dogs are a banned breed,” the statement said.

“A file was being prepared for consideration of the owner being prosecuted for the relevant offences.

“However, unfortunately, due to an administration error the dog was subsequently euthanised before the court hearing.”

A ‘never event’

The force added that it has introduced a process “to ensure the same mistake cannot be made again”.

Lizzi Collinge, MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, told the BBC that she is demanding answers over the incident.

“This should be a ‘never event’ and I have taken this issue up directly with the police,” she said.

Ms Collinge added: “I was shocked to see that a much-loved pet dog, Bruno, was wrongly euthanised while in police care.

“Processes should have been in place to ensure this never happened.

“There is a legal process when dogs are under police care and it appears this hasn’t been followed.

“I will continue to support the family and I appeal to the police to disclose how they are changing their practices so that this is something that can never happen again.”

Schools as well as Labour’s VAT raid are to blame for the middle-class exodus from private education, the former headmaster of the King’s alma mater has said.

Mark Pyper, who ran Gordonstoun for two decades, said private education had become “cripplingly expensive” because independent schools had spent millions on high-tech facilities.

He said those in charge had been guilty of “extraordinary profligacy” at parents’ expense.

His comments come ahead of Labour imposing VAT on independent school fees from Jan 1 2025, adding 20 per cent to education costs.

The Government hopes the measure will raise an extra £1.5 billion for the Treasury, but has also recognised that it will lead to pupils leaving private schools for the state sector.

Writing for The Telegraph, Mr Pyper said: “It is school heads and governors who have made independent education so cripplingly expensive in the first place.

“All those state-of-the-art sports facilities with their Astroturf pitches and Olympic-sized swimming pools and multi-million-pound music halls and ‘performing arts’ centres (AKA theatres)? Lovely to have but hardly essential.

“Brilliant concerts can be given in old gymnasiums and great plays can be performed in backyards.

“As for the ever more imaginative extra-curricular activities, does anyone really need polo, or origami lessons?

“Bluntly, those in charge have been guilty of extraordinary profligacy at others’ expense,” he added.

Real-terms increase

A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that there had been a 20 per cent real-terms increase in average fees since 2010, and a 55 per cent rise since 2003.

Mr Pyper added: “While they competed to provide the smartest facilities for work, play and pleasure – forgetting that the finest education depends not on the edifice but on the educator – most parents were never even asked if this is what they really wanted.

“Given the choice between ever higher fees and less discretionary spending, I think I know how the majority of parents would vote.”

The former headmaster, who has been a governor of eight other independent schools, urged the sector to “call halt to building more Valhallas and pleasure domes” to save money.

He also suggested that the curriculum be cut down to offer fewer subjects and exam systems, as well as enlarging class sizes, to save the school, and parents, money.

Mr Pyper said that private schools could look to generate more revenue “without attempting to squeeze yet more from parents”.

“Making better commercial use of facilities during holidays would be an obvious place to start. Most schools are in full operation for only 34 or 35 weeks of the year.”

The King attended Gordonstoun from 1962 until 1967. Earlier this year, in an apparent nod to the five formative years he spent at Gordonstoun, the monarch accepted a patronage to mark the first anniversary of his coronation.

A planning row has erupted in a Georgian conservation area after the council ordered an orange and blue shopfront to be repainted.

Peters’ Cleaner in Stamford, Lincolnshire was given the bold makeover in October 2022 in an attempt to make it “stand out”.

Vicky Whiter, its owner, has since been locked in a battle with South Kesteven district council because she did not apply for planning permission before the “unacceptable” paint job.

Conservation rules in her area of Stamford, which has been dubbed “Britain’s most picturesque” town, mean that any repainting of shopfronts needs to be approved by the council.

Ms Whiter said that she was unaware of the rules when she had it painted the shopfront and that she cannot afford to pay to have it changed, which she estimates would cost as much as £5,000.

She said: “I budget to re-decorate the shop front every four years and will happily adhere to all planning when I plan to re-decorate in the summer of 2026.”

“At this time however I cannot put the survival of my business at risk by spending now.”

Ms Whiter’s shop was previously painted dark blue, which she said made it hard to identify.

The new colours were introduced along with a vinyl orange screen covering the top of the front window which Ms Whiter said was necessary to protect her and her employees from the sun which shines into the shop for most of the day.

Several other shops in Stamford have eye-catching shades, including Oliver Bonas, which stands out in pink in the High Street, and Joules, which sports yellow.

Ms Whiter said she fears that she will be taken to court by the council if her request for more time to repaint the shopfront is refused.

According to the Stamford Shopfront Design Guide, a document drawn up by the district council to ensure that the heritage is retained, the maximum penalty for breaking the rules is two years in prison and an unlimited fine.

The rules include a recommendation to use white or neutral colours on slender shopfronts, and a single colour for all the major elements of the design.

But there is no indication of what colours are and are not allowed.

“This bullish attitude is unfathomable,” Ms Whiter said.

“Stamford’s independent shops are the heart and soul of the town and are what makes it special.”

She added: “I very much hope the council will take a pragmatic and supportive stance and work with small independent retailers to ensure that by improving the look of the high street they don’t immeasurably damage it by driving independents out of business.”

A spokesman for South Kesteven district council said any changes to the shop were subject to conservation area and listed building rules.

They said: “Listing ensures that the architectural and historic interests of buildings are carefully considered separately from the merits of any development proposals and before any alterations, either external or internal, are agreed.

“Listed building consent is required for any changes that would alter their special character.

“No advice or guidance was sought prior to the painting of these premises but council officers have since suggested alternative paint colours that would be appropriate and are happy to continue to work with the applicant to agree both these and a timescale for the repainting of the shopfront.”

Britain has never been fatter – with the average man weighing 14st by middle age, according to new data.

The NHS statistics show that we weigh around a stone more than we did 30 years ago – while waistlines keep expanding.

Middle-aged women now weigh an average of 12st, the figures show, with waists of around 36in.

Men of the same age tip the scales at 14st, with a waistband of around 40in.

Health officials said the figures, which reflect the average weights for those aged between 45 and 64, were “worrying” – saying obesity is now one of the greatest challenges facing the country.

It comes as new research suggests that adult obesity may now have peaked in the US. Rates have fallen by around two percentage points since 2020, to 40 per cent.

In England the figure is 26 per cent. Experts said increased employment of weight-loss drugs, which one in eight American adults have used, could be behind the recent US dip.

The NHS is now gearing up for the mass rollout of weight-loss jabs for the first time. The proposals will see up to 1.6 million people offered injections of tirzepatide, marketed as Mounjaro, with some prescriptions issued via “remote clinics” following online consultations.

The jabs will be targeted at the heaviest patients with the most health problems, starting with those with a BMI over 40 and multiple chronic illnesses.

But the national research results reveal a far wider problem – with two in three people losing in the battle of the bulge.

‘Diabetes, heart attack and stroke’

Dr Clare Hambling, NHS national clinical director for diabetes and obesity, said: “These worrying figures highlight that obesity is now one of the greatest public health issues we face in this country.

“It has a major impact on our health, increasing the risk of many diseases including diabetes, heart attack and stroke, and action is urgently needed across society to turn the tide on the rising rates seen in recent decades and stop so many lives being cut short.”

She said the NHS was “here to help” those trying to lose weight, rolling out 12-week courses which offer behavioural coaching and lifestyle advice for obese patients with health conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

“Maintaining a healthy weight can be difficult, but the NHS is here to help those at greatest risk through our effective digital weight management programme and providing access to new weight loss treatments, while supporting wider efforts to tackle the issues contributing to obesity to help save lives and reduce its cost to families, the health service and the economy,” Dr Hambling said.

The figures for England show that in 1993, when data collection began, the country was already battling a major weight problem.

In total, 44 per cent of men were overweight, while 13 per cent were obese.

Now 39 per cent are overweight – while 28 per cent are obese.

For women, 32 per cent were overweight and 16 per cent obese.

Now, the figures are 31 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.

The statistics from the Health Survey for England 2022 shows that the peak age for excess weight is 55 to 64, when 80 per cent of men and 69 per cent of women are overweight or obese.

Average heights come in at 5ft 9in for men, and 5ft 4in for women.

Across all ages, the average woman now has a waistline of 34.9in – around two and half inches more than in 1993. For men it is 38.3in, almost two inches more than it was 30 years ago.

The rest of the UK collects data in different ways, but the figures show similar trends.

Tam Fry from the National Obesity Forum said the statistics “highlight the abysmal failure of every administration since 1993 to tackle obesity.”

Katherine Jenner, director of the Obesity Health Alliance, a coalition of charities and medical royal colleges, which is calling for extra taxes on unhealthy foods said: “We all want to grow old healthily, and maintaining a healthy weight is an important factor in living out our years in good health.

“However, it is not always easy to access a healthy, nutritious diet, especially if you are juggling responsibilities such as being a parent, carer, worker and managing a household, as many people in middle age are.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “This country has failed to tackle the obesity crisis, harming people’s health and costing the NHS billions of pounds.

“This government is urgently tackling the obesity crisis head on – shifting our focus from treatment to prevention – to ease the strain on our NHS and helping people to live well for longer.”

Labour has suffered a dozen by-election defeats in less than a month as it grapples with the row over donations and freebies.

Sir Keir Starmer’s party has lost council seats across the country to all parties since mid-September, in a blow to his premiership in his first months in office.

Labour has had a net loss of 11 councillors since Sept 16, results far worse than the Conservatives who have gained four seats in the same period and Reform gaining two.

Analysts warn that the by-election results confirm the “lack of honeymoon” for the Prime Minister, with voters already keen to “punish” Labour.

It comes after weeks of negative headlines for the Government over Sir Keir and other Cabinet ministers accepting donations and freebies.

The Prime Minister received thousands of pounds from Lord Alli, a Labour peer, for glasses and clothing, including for his wife, and the use of an £18 million penthouse during the election campaign.

Members of his frontbench team have also declared large donations from the peer.

Cabinet ministers have come under scrutiny for accepting freebies such as concert and football match tickets.

Sir Keir last week announced that he would be giving back more than £6,000 for the freebies he had received since entering Downing Street, but said his colleagues did not need to follow suit.

Since the revelations began to emerge, the Conservatives have gained five council seats from Labour in areas such as St Albans, Worthing in Sussex and in Wales.

Meanwhile, Reform UK won their first council seat in Marton, Blackpool, from Labour in a victory described by Lee Anderson, the party’s whip, as a “political tsunami”.

Luke Tryl, the director of the More in Common think tank, said that while council by-elections are “low turnout affairs” and can be affected by local circumstances, they should be a cause for concern for Labour.

“Firstly, the fragmentation of our politics into a multi-party system where the Greens and Reform occupy the Left and Right flanks is continuing.

“Secondly, the rapid drop in Keir Starmer’s approval ratings and lack of honeymoon for this administration is so far being played out in these by-elections, with voters already showing a willingness to punish Labour.”

Sir Keir has lost four seats to the Tories, one seat to the Liberal Democrats, two to the Scottish National Party and one to the Greens.

As well as Reform’s success in Blackpool, the party won a town council seat in Heanor and Loscoe in Derbyshire on Friday night.

Over the decades, Formula 1 has been full of playboy drivers, their glamorous girlfriends and rivalries revving up off the track. And today it seems nothing has changed, as a love triangle has recently emerged between two young rival drivers. 

The talk of the paddock right now is the law student, influencer and model Estelle Ogilvy. The 25-year-old used to be in a relationship with Williams’ Argentine driver Franco Colapinto. She was then dating Ferrari’s junior driver Oliver Bearman, who became the youngest Briton ever to race in an F1 Grand Prix earlier this year. But this summer, she split with Bearman, and is reportedly now back with Colapinto. Even by F1 standards, it sounds pretty… intense.

So who is the young woman who has captured the hearts of two of motor racing’s hottest properties? 

She was born Estelle Langinier in Paris to a British mum, who is a lawyer, and a French father. After going to school in the south of France, she moved to the UK, where she lived in Surrey with her mum and brother Mattieu, 23, before moving to St Albans. 

She attended the £16,000-a-year mixed boarding school St George’s, and later adopted her mother’s maiden name of Manning, when she moved to London to follow in her footsteps and study law. Ogilvy is seemingly an adopted name and a relatively recent addition.

Although there are hints that Estelle always wanted to be famous. There is a video of her being interviewed for the show Secrets of Our Stars, aged just 10 years old. But it wasn’t until her relationship with Bearman that her popularity soared.

Estelle was by Ollie’s side in March when he was thrust into the spotlight after finishing seventh on his debut at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. The 18-year-old was called up last minute after Carlos Sainz, the Spanish driver, got appendicitis. At  the time, Tatler described them as Britain’s “glitziest young couple”. 

Ollie has 2.2m Instagram followers in his own right and Estelle has been signed up by model agency Storm Model Management. She posed for a photoshoot for luxury watch brand Longines, and appeared on the catwalk for Paul Costelloe at Paris Fashion Week.

“Lettie” as she’s known to her friends, now has over 139k followers on TikTok, using the handle @silly_lettuce. She posts clips of her at the gym or sucking lollipops at her laptop as she studies for her law degree. With a cut-glass British accent, she makes videos which nod to her dual-heritage; think strolling around Paris eating eclairs, or posing in front of a London bus. She’s very fond of a micro miniskirt and one of her most-watched videos is her getting ready to party at the Monaco Grand Prix. She often makes content with her friend, the model India Rawsthorn, who she calls the “Serena to my Blair” – clearly, she’s a fan of Gossip Girl. Which is apt.

Because after her and Bearman reportedly called it quits in July, Ogilvy became the one everyone has been gossiping about. She started following her ex, Franco Colapinto on social media again. The 21-year-old Argentine has driven for Williams three times to date, finishing 12th on his debut at the Italian Grand Prix. Franco and Estelle are yet to step out in public together, but insiders claim they’re back on.

Journalist and F1 expert Jessamy Calkin says that it’s not surprising that Ogilvy has dated two up-and-coming drivers. “Formula 1 is a very small world,” she says. “There’s an unwritten rule that if you’re an F1 driver you have to live in Monaco, play golf and have an influencer girlfriend. They all go to the same parties and events. The social circle is tiny, but that means that this love triangle could get awkward for them, or might lead to even more competitiveness on the track between Bearman and Colapinto.”

Even before this rumoured partner-swap, Colapinto and Bearman were being compared as two of the most promising new drivers on the circuit. “When you look at the job Oliver Bearman has done when he jumped in the Ferrari at one of the toughest tracks on the calendar in Saudi, he looked like a veteran,” said Christian Horner, principal of Red Bull Racing and Mr Ginger Spice. “Colapinto has been a complete surprise because he was largely unnoticed in F2. Nobody was even talking about him. He jumps in that Williams in the couple of races he’s done and he’s been exceptional. He’s been really, really impressive. The young guys, they get in, they’re hungry, and they just drive the wheels off it.” 

The excessive wealth, element of danger and undeniable glamour of Formula 1 have long made its drivers a magnet for beautiful women. Nineteen-seventies British champion James Hunt had the motto: “Sex, breakfast of champions” sewn into his racing overalls and boasted of bedding 5,000 women. Sir Stirling Moss admitted that while racing he could keep, “One eye on the track, another on the gauges and still… spot a pretty girl in the crowd.” 

Argentine racing legend Juan Manuel Fangio dated famous first lady Eva Peron. In the Nineties, “Fast” Eddie Irvine was linked with Rachel Hunter, Kelly Brook and Pamela Anderson. Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton was in an on/off relationship with Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger until 2015, and has subsequently been linked to pop stars Rita Ora and Shakira, and models Kendall Jenner and Camila Kendra.

So while a salacious F1 sex scandal is nothing new, this particular love triangle will be watched in a new way, by a new audience. In recent years, there’s been a so-called “fangirlification” of Formula 1, which has seen the notoriously pale, male and stale sport gain an adoring new following from young women. On YouTube, countless videos have been created by fans featuring handsome F1 drivers such as Sebastian Vettel, Charles Leclerc, and Daniel Ricciardo. They’re almost the new boy band members – think slo-mo, moody shots, a Wag running up to ruffle their hair, all set to a Taylor Swift soundtrack. Some have millions of views. There’s even a popular Formula 1 romance-novel series, Dirty Air by Lauren Asher, and podcasts, such as Two Girls One Formula, where an audience of “girls, gays, theys (and cool dudes)” get together to dissect the sport.

The reason for this transformation is that Formula 1 was purchased by the US company Liberty Media in 2016. It axed the sexist tradition of grid girls and relaxed previously strict social-media restrictions. In 2019, it partnered with Netflix for the massively popular docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survive, which opened up the world of the drivers – and the Wags – in a whole new way.

“It’s reality TV – we got to see heightened drama, we got to see relationships play out in real time. It’s ‘The Real Housewives of Formula 1’,” says Nicole Sievers, co-host of Two Girls One Formula.

There’s now a whole subculture of fans intensely following the lives of F1 Wags like Ogilvy and co. There are numerous Instagram accounts – WagsF1 (with 53,000 followers), Love 4 Wags F1 (19,900 followers), and F1 Wags (27,500 followers) – which document their designer wardrobes, their men and their every move. And these F1 Wags are making serious money in their own right, with sponsorship deals and fashion campaigns.

But the reality of dating an F1 driver may not be all sipping flutes of Veuve from the paddock. “These guys have barely any life outside of the circuit,” says Calkin. “Often they’ve been doing this since they were eight and they have barely any other interests or human experience. I think it’s quite a lonely life and despite the sport opening up, there’s still a sexist atmosphere at the track.”

It remains to be seen if Colapinto and Bearman will develop a rivalry that will make them the Nicki Lauda and James Hunt for the Instagram generation. Or if Estelle Ogilvy will be able to use this springboard to launch a long-lasting modelling career. But one thing’s for sure – Formula One just got a  whole lot more va va vroom.

A judge has said the justice system has “ceased to function” amid the court backlogs.

Judge Simon Carr made the comments as he was asked to list cases for trial which would not be heard for a year.

He was presiding over a number of plea and trial preparation hearings at Truro Crown Court on Friday.

There were some sex cases in particular where trials will not be heard until late next year.

One was Danny Fyffe, 20, who pleaded not guilty to three counts of rape against different complainants which are alleged to have taken place in 2020.

The court was told that a trial has been listed for Sept 1 next year.

Judge Carr told members of the Bar at Truro Crown Court: “The system has ceased to function. It’s only going one way. We are not clearing the backlog.”

Heather Hope, a barrister, agreed the situation was “overwhelming”, adding: “It is a very sad state of affairs.”

‘Beyond the point of collapse’

Judge Carr has previously criticised failings in the justice system warning it was “beyond the point of collapse”.

In 2019, he gave three men suspended sentences instead of sending them to jail because of how long it had taken for the case to get to court.

Abul Azad, Shahedul Bhuyia and Abul Hannan were found guilty of grievous bodily harm.

The judge said it was “a disgrace” that it had taken two years and nine months to hear the case and that the offence had clearly gone over the custody threshold.

However, he then added: “It’s evidence of a system having gone beyond the point of collapse that a straightforward case takes so long to go before a court.”

The judge said he accepted the “very real effect” of having a criminal charge “hanging over” a defendant.

”It’s that punishment that allows me to suspend what would have been immediate custodial sentences.”

The backlog has seen thousands of prisoners on remand awaiting trial.

A record 17,070 prisoners were on remand at the end of June, representing a fifth of the entire prison population and up from just 6,000 five years ago.

Delays include a woman who is facing a five-and-a-half year wait for justice after the trial of her alleged rapist was delayed and then postponed hours before it was due to begin.

The victim reported the alleged rape to police in September 2019 but found out earlier this year that the defendant in the case may now not stand trial until early 2025.

Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, the head of the judiciary, has told the Ministry of Justice that it needs to increase the number of judicial sitting days.

She said that at least 5,500 more sitting days were required if the backlog of crown court cases was to be brought under control.

‘It is unacceptable’

Figures released earlier this year showed that there were more than 60,000 cases in crown courts and more than 330,000 in magistrates’ courts.

The Law Society has said it is “alarming to see the criminal court backlogs continue to spiral”.

“It is unacceptable that victims, witnesses and defendants are having to wait so long, with their lives in limbo, to access justice,” Nick Emmerson, the society president, said.

“The criminal justice system is in crisis with huge backlogs of cases, crumbling courts and overcrowded prisons.

“There simply are not enough judges and lawyers to work on all the cases and we have heard concerning reports that court buildings are not being used to their full capacity.”

The Ministry of Justice has been approached for comment.

The mother of the only British hostage still captive in Gaza said her daughter had been forgotten by Britain as she called on the Government to push for her release.

Mandy Damari’s 28-year-old British daughter, Emily, was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from her village in southern Israel on Oct 7 last year.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mrs Damari appealed to the Government not to let her daughter or the other 100 innocent people still being held hostage “continue to be tortured or even murdered”.

She said: “I implore those in power here to use every ounce of influence they have to advocate for the release of all the hostages, and to secure the release of their UK citizen.”

No 10 has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for both sides to reach an agreement to release the remaining hostages.

Some 100 hostages are thought to be held in Gaza still as Israel and the world prepares to mark the first anniversary of the kidnappings. Mrs Damari said she feared her daughter had been “forgotten”.

Given her daughter’s dual British-Israeli citizenship, Mrs Damari told the crowd in Hyde Park, central London: “How is it that she is still imprisoned there after one year?

“Why isn’t the whole world, especially Britain, fighting every moment to secure her release? She is one of their own. But her plight seems to have been forgotten.

“I know we could and should be doing more. I, and everyone else has failed her, and the only way to make us all feel whole again is to get Emily and all the 101 hostages back to their families.”

She implored the British public not to forget her “beautiful, charismatic” daughter locked away in Hamas tunnels.

“Emily, is 28 years old, full of life, with dual nationality, British and Israeli. She is a daughter of both countries, but no one here mentions the fact that there is still a female British hostage being held captive by Hamas for a year now, and I sometimes wonder if people even know there is a British woman there,” she said.

In the early hours of Oct 7 Emily was kidnapped from her home of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a village near the Gaza border, where she was born and raised.

Her beloved golden cockapoo, Choocha, was shot dead in her arms, and she was left with a gunshot wound to the hand.

At the commemorative event in central London organised by leading Jewish community groups, Mrs Damari asked the crowd to “imagine for a moment” that Emily was their daughter.

“Try to picture what she is going through. Since Oct 7  last year, she has been held a hostage by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza terror tunnels, 20 metres or more underground, kept in captivity, tortured, isolated, unable to eat, speak or even move without someone else’s permission. Stripped of every human right. It is almost impossible to comprehend her pain. Yet it is the reality she is living every single day.”

Mrs Damari was born in Surrey and brought up in Beckenham, south London. She told the crowd that she was “raised with the great British ideals of pubs, parties and freedom”.

Emily has British citizenship as it is automatically passed down one generation from Mrs Damari, who feels she has been let down by the British Government.

Mrs Damari told the crowd that the women and children hostages who came back last November, when the last ceasefire deal was reached, said that Emily was alive then.

She says: “They told me that some of them had met her while they were being moved around, some for short periods, some for longer. But they all told me about her bravery and courage and even her laughter and the way she helped hold everyone together even in the worst times. One even said she sang a song every morning called ‘boker shel kef’ – which means ‘it’s a great morning’, despite the darkness.”

But she added: “But who knows? I’m sure she’s not singing now. I keep thinking of the six hostages that were murdered hours before they were discovered by the IDF. About Eden Yerushalmi who weighed just 32 kilos. In the tunnel they were kept in, there was no room to stand up in and hardly any air to breathe, with just a bucket to relieve themselves in.”

She expressed the pain the family was in: “Every day is a living hell, not knowing what Emily is going through. I do know from the hostages that returned that they were starved, sexually abused and tortured.

“Every moment lost is another moment of unimaginable suffering or even death.

“Please, I ask of you all, and also the British government, do not let my daughter Emily Damari or the other innocent people held hostage continue to be tortured or even murdered. I implore those in power here to use every ounce of influence they have to advocate for the release of all the hostages, and to secure the release of their UK citizen.

“We must all stand on the side of humanity, life, justice and freedom and act with urgency and determination to obtain the release of Emily and the other hostages now. Please help us to return them home before it’s too late for them all. We must act now.”

Mrs Damari has also shared a message that she handed to the Prime Minister in Downing Street on Monday.

She hopes the note will reach her daughter when she is “alive and home” with her family, but said that if she reads it in Gaza “know that we all love you and miss you and are sick with worry about what is happening to you every day and we are praying and meeting whoever we can to get you back home”.

Mrs Damari goes on to strengthen her daughter’s resolve, writing: “Please keep strong, keep praying and just be your beautiful self that I love to the moon and back.

The heartfelt note ends with a promise to her young daughter: “You will come home. And I promise that I’ll never complain again about your perfume sticking to me when you’re home.”

At the No 10 meeting, the mother instructed Sir Keir Starmer to get the message to Emily by any means possible – and asked the Government to do far more to bring her home.

She also asked that every time the Government mentions the hostages they must mention Emily specifically.

Sunday’s event was organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish Leadership Council, and UJIA – a British charity supporting vulnerable communities in Israel – working with Israel’s embassy in London.

An Israeli border guard has been killed in a terror attack at a bus station on the eve of the Oct 7 anniversary.

Officials named the victim as Sgt Shira Chaya Soslik, a 25-year-old working for Israel’s south military police.

At least 10 others were injured in the stabbing attack in the southern city of Be’er Sheva before the suspect was shot dead.

It follows a terror attack at a railway station near Tel Aviv last week as Israel continues its invasion of Lebanon and bombardment of Gaza.

The suspect, a Bedouin from the country’s southern Negev region, was killed by off-duty soldiers at the scene, around Be’er Sheva’s central bus station.

According to Israel’s Ynet news outlet, the terrorist had a criminal record and belonged to the family of Mohannad al Okbi, who carried out a terror attack that killed a soldier at the central station in Be’er Sheva in October 2015. He was said to be in contact with Hamas.

Walid al Huashla, a Bedouin parliament member, quickly distanced the community from the attack. The Bedouin community largely stay away from terror activities, with several also voluntarily joining the army. “This is not the way of Bedouin society,” he said.

However, Bedouin areas in Israel’s south are still home to Gazans from the time when there was free movement between Israel and Gaza.

‘Huge chaos’

Paramedics said they arrived to find “huge chaos” at the scene of Sunday’s attacks.

Speaking to Israel’s Ynet, Rubik Danilovich, the mayor of Be’er Sheva, said at the scene: “This is a cold-blooded killer … We as a city are doing everything to return life to full normality. We are in challenging and sensitive days, please be vigilant.”

Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, was met with shouts of “You have failed! Resign!” from the crowd when he arrived at the scene of the attack.

Unfazed, the hard-Right parliamentarian and lawyer said: ”There are a lot of Bedouin loyal to the state, but there are some who are not loyal. Those who are not loyal should have their houses destroyed … I call on the prime minister today to pass the law that we proposed for deporting families of terrorists.”

Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated Hamas leader, has a sister in the small community of Israel’s desert region, married to a local Bedouin.

In April, the prosecutor’s office submitted an indictment against Sabah Abdel Salam Haniyeh, who was arrested in March on suspicion of support of a terrorist organisation and incitement. She was accused of sending dozens of Whatsapp messages after October 7 praising the attacks.

Sunday’s attack happened as Israel was already on high alert on the eve of the first anniversary of the October 7 atrocities and just days after a terror attack in the mixed city of Jaffa killed seven people.a

Unless you have looked at a picture to prepare yourself, at first sight the tomb of the Blessed Carlo Acutis, which stands in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in the Umbrian hill town of Assisi, would strike you as distinctly unusual, perhaps a little unsettling.

There, in a glass-sided tomb, lies the body of a teenage boy wearing jeans, a track top and a pair of Nike trainers, a rosary clutched in his hands. The way the body is presented, it seems as if he is floating. 

His face, fixed in an expression of benign repose, is actually a silicone mask. It looks uncannily real, as though he is not dead, but simply sleeping. It is like a piece of holy conceptual art.

Beside the tomb is a photograph of a smiling Carlo, the ordinary teenager, very much alive, dressed in jeans and a zip-up jacket, rucksack on his shoulder.

Acutis, who died in 2006 at the age of 15 from leukaemia, has been popularly referred to as God’s influencer and the first millennial saint. In order for someone to be recognised as a saint, there must be two miracles attributable to his or her intercession. In the case of Acutis these came in the form of the healing of a four-year-old boy in Brazil, and a 21-year-old woman from Costa Rica, more on which later. Both have been ‘approved’ by the Vatican. 

The final step to him becoming Saint Carlo will be the canonisation Mass, which will likely take place next year, a Jubilee year for the Catholic faith, when hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world are expected to descend on Rome and St Peter’s Square.

“I would say, at this time, he’s probably the most popular saint in the world,” says Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, as we stand in the square outside the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. “It’s a big statement, but I see it, I know it.”

Figueiredo, 60, is a former City trader who was ordained as a priest in 1994, and worked in the Vatican before being sent to Assisi in 2020 as director of international affairs for the diocese – a role that largely means dealing with what he calls “the phenomenon” of Carlo Acutis.

As we talk, groups of pilgrims arrive, distinguished by blue scarves or white caps. A troop of Italian cubs wait in line. Two Slovenian monks in brown robes are shepherding a group of teenagers who are sitting in a small garden beside the church, singing songs to the accompaniment of a guitar. Over a six-month period last year, Figueiredo says, the church counted more than 500,000 people visiting the tomb, and numbers have only increased since then.

Images of the youthful Acutis have been reproduced countless times on posters, prayer cards, in the form of statues, and circulated on social media. On TikTok, one account dedicated to him has more than 700,000 likes. Courtney Mares, the author of a biography called Blessed Carlo Acutis: A Saint in Sneakers, describes him as “the first saint of the internet age”. “Carlo is the first to be put forward by the Vatican showing what holiness can look like in our digital age,” she says. 

“And I think that’s one of the ways he is resonating around the world. The fact that he lived a relatively normal life as a teenager and yet he’s now being declared a saint shows us that holiness is possible in the 21st century in our daily lives.”

It’s a reasonable question. How, in the 21st century, does a 15-year-old boy become a saint?

To all outward appearances, there is nothing in the story of Carlo Acutis’s short life that would have pointed to his elevation to sainthood. Home videos and photos show a normal, happy boy, pulling faces at the camera, diving into a river, petting his dogs. Nothing unusual there.

His father Andrea was a merchant banker, and is now chairman of Vittoria Assicurazioni SpA, one of Italy’s largest insurance companies. The family were living in London when Carlo, their first child, was born on 3 May, 1991. He was baptised in a church in Fulham, where a shrine to him now stands.

A few months after his birth they returned to Italy, settling in an apartment in an affluent quarter of Milan. The family were not practising Catholics. But when he was three they hired a Polish nanny, a devout Catholic, who would take Carlo to Mass and taught him to recite the Rosary. 

From that point on, he showed a particular devotion to the Church and to prayer. At the age of seven, at his request, his parents arranged for him to receive his first Communion, held in a private ceremony at a cloistered convent. The religious superior of the community later spoke of how as the moment for the Communion approached, he “began to move as if he could no longer keep still. It seemed that something had happened within him, something too great for him to contain.”

“Being always united with Jesus,” he wrote when he was seven years old, “this is my life plan.”

A school friend, Federico Oldani, remembers him as “a real person. He was someone who got angry if his homework went badly, someone who the French teacher always scolded because he made a mess, who was late for school even if he lived two metres away. But the more you got to know him, the more you realised he was special.”

The various accounts of his life tell of how he would take food and drink to the homeless and buy sleeping bags for them with money he’d saved. Classmates who were being bullied or shunned have said that he would step in to help and support them.

Taken individually these acts seem praiseworthy, but not especially remarkable. Taken together with other stories they paint a picture of an unusually pious teenager. 

It has become a key part of Acutis’s story that such was his religious devotion, his mother came to renew her Catholic faith. Rajesh Mohur, who was employed by the family as an au pair and would also take him regularly to Mass, has told how, inspired by Acutis, both he and his mother, who had been Hindus, converted to Catholicism. 

Acutis would often talk to his schoolmates too about the importance of going to Mass and confession. His views were strictly in line with traditional Catholic teachings. He was against abortion, and while the object of a number of crushes, he remained chaste, telling his family that the Virgin Mary was “the only woman in my life”.

“He would have conversations with some of his friends about the importance of chastity among high-school kids,” Courtney Mares says. “I don’t know if that would normally make him the most popular kid in school, but he wasn’t afraid to stand up for what he believed in… and his friends and classmates really loved and respected him.”  

Acutis was given his first computer when he was nine and was soon learning to code from textbooks bought by his mother. Like any boy of his age, he enjoyed video games, but according to his mother he would limit his game time to one hour a week. 

Following his death, his computer was examined and, perhaps uniquely for a teenage boy, there was no evidence of him ever having visited “immoral” sites, as Monsignor Figueiredo puts it.

At the age of 14 he was creating a website for his local parish and had started compiling what would become his unique legacy – a history of more than 100 supposed miracles to do with the Eucharist, the ceremony commemorating the Last Supper, in which bread and wine are consumed, and at which, according to the supposed miracles, the bread and wine are said to have actually turned into flesh and blood. The earliest of these is said to have taken place in 750 in Lanciano, Italy; the most recent in 2013, in Legnica, Poland. Acutis’s historical account would subsequently be posted on a website, The Eucharistic Miracles of the World, and turned into an exhibition.

On 2 October, 2006, Acutis complained of a headache, and fell ill with a fever, which quickly worsened. He was taken to a clinic where he was diagnosed as suffering from acute promyelocytic leukaemia, a form of cancer often linked to early death due to bleeding complications associated with the disease. He’d had no previous symptoms or serious illnesses. 

He was transferred to a hospital in Monza, where he died on 12 October. 

His mother would subsequently talk of how during the five days it took him to die, “he was always smiling, never complaining and saying there are people who are suffering much more than I.

“When we went in the hospital he said, “Mama, from here I never will come back alive, but don’t worry, I will give you a lot of signs.” And since the first day after the funeral he started to give miracles.” 

Saint-making is a process of tortuous complexity. Under canon law, five years must pass between a candidate’s death and the first step towards beatification, on the path to canonisation. (There have been exceptions, with shorter waiting periods in the cases of Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.)

At that point, the bishop of the diocese in which the individual died can petition the Holy See to initiate the cause, as it is called. A postulator, or promoter, is appointed to gather testimony from a wide range of people who have known the candidate, and evidence demonstrating that they have led a life embodying the Christian virtues of humility, simplicity and service to others.

It must also be demonstrated that they have been responsible for at least one miracle since their death, which the Vatican describes as an intervention of God that goes above and beyond the laws of nature – usually a cure deemed to be “scientifically inexplicable”. A second miracle is required after beatification before the person can be canonised.

This body of evidence, or positio, usually of more than 1,000 pages, is passed to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. This body, which has been examining causes of saints since the 16th century, has among its prelates a “promoter of the faith” – the so-called “devil’s advocate” – who acts as a sort of counsel for the prosecution, interrogating the evidence and presenting any arguments against the beatification. That position is currently held by a Spanish priest, Monsignor Alberto Royo Mejía.

“It’s essential that someone help search for the truth,” he told the Catholic news agency ACI Prensa in an interview this year, adding that “all people have defects; there is no saint who does not have any defects”. 

A Vatican medical board evaluates the evidence for each claimed miracle. The submission is then passed to the Pope to “pray to God for guidance” and give his final approval.

“We didn’t know Carlo was a saint during his life,” Monsignor Figueiredo says. “He didn’t do anything extraordinary – he didn’t build an institute or found a new religious order. He didn’t have people following him. 

“When we knew there was something different about him was at his funeral; there were so many people, they were spilling out into the streets. His parents didn’t know who these people were. And they were the beggars, the immigrants, the kids who’d been bullied – people Carlo had befriended and helped in his life. That was the point when the question arose, how did he touch so many people’s lives?”

As word started to spread about his life a cult began to form – not a word that in Catholic terms has negative connotations.

Sainthood, says John Allen, an author and authority on the Vatican who edits the Catholic news website Crux, “is supposed to be the most grassroots process in the Catholic Church. It’s not supposed to be top-down, it’s supposed to be bottom-up. And there was a popular interest in Carlo Acutis well before officialdom stepped in.”

A website dedicated to his life was set up by the Friends of Carlo Acutis Association. Stories began to appear in newspapers, and Nicola Gori, a journalist for the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published a book about Acutis, Eucaristia: La mia autostrada per il cielo (The Eucharist: My Highway to Heaven). It was Gori who became the postulator of the cause.

“Even before anything had happened formally, people were going to the cemetery in Assisi to pray to Carlo,” Figueiredo says. “The mayor of Assisi talks about being taken by her grandmother. So he already had that kind of fame – what we call the odour of sanctity.”

On the sixth anniversary of his death, the Archdiocese of Milan duly opened the cause for Acutis’s beatification, leading to him being formally given the title “servant of God”. As momentum grew, on 5 July, 2018, Acutis was declared “venerable” by Pope Francis, a declaration of having lived a life that was “heroic in virtue” in the eyes of the Church, and a step towards beatification.

Driven, appropriately enough, by the internet, stories multiplied of laypeople and priests inspired to pray to him. 

What was now required was a miracle. 

It came from Brazil, where a priest in Campo Grande, Father Marcelo Tenório, had first learned of Acutis in 2010 and established a shrine to him, including a relic – a piece of his clothing – given to Tenório by Carlo’s mother on a visit to Assisi. Each year, on 12 October, the anniversary of Acutis’s death and the feast day of Our Lady of Aparecida (the patron saint of Brazil), Tenório would conduct a special service displaying the relic for people to pray for Acutis’s intercession for whatever healing they might need.

A member of the congregation, Luciana Vianna, had a four-year-old son, Matheus, suffering from a serious condition called annular pancreas. Unable to eat properly or hold down food, he was living on vitamin and protein drinks and weighed only 20lb, making him too weak for surgery. Doctors told Vianna her son would die before he was five. 

On 12 October, 2013, Vianna took Matheus to the church. In an interview with the Catholic publication America, she would later recount how he was carried to the shrine, leaned forward to kiss the reliquary containing the piece of clothing and – in a moment witnessed by many other people – said out loud, “Stop vomiting.”

According to his mother, Matheus was unusually joyful – and hungry – following the service, and on returning home ate beef and French fries without becoming sick. 

“It was the first time in his entire life that this happened. He had been vomiting after eating since he was born; he even rejected breast milk,” she said. “Since that day, I knew he was cured because of Carlo. The change was too drastic and too sudden.”

Subsequent medical tests showed his condition had been cured. “One doctor said that he then had a textbook pancreas, an organ that is so perfect that it looks unreal.”

In an interview with a Brazilian television station in 2020, Dr Rosângela Maria Pereira Salgado, who had been Matheus’s paediatrician since his birth, said his healing could not be explained. “He could only be cured through surgery. The previous exam [before the miracle] showed the malformation. The following one [after the miracle] didn’t show the malformation any more. Science doesn’t explain that.” 

After Matheus’s health records had been validated by local doctors, they were passed to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to be evaluated by what the Vatican stipulates to be “highly specialised medical experts”. In November 2019, the healing through the intercession of Carlo Acutis was formally confirmed by the Vatican. 

“A secularist would say it’s just random luck this boy was healed,” says John Allen. “But from a Catholic point of view, if you have somebody who went to church, prayed to this figure to intercede before God that their son can be healed, and medical doctors sign off saying there is no medical explanation, then from a faith point of view that is going to be attributed to the saint’s intercession.”

(What cannot be known, of course, is how many people have prayed to Carlo Acutis for healings that have never come, or may have come but have never been attributed to him. The imponderables are countless.)

In October 2020 Acutis was duly beatified at a ceremony in Assisi, and officially declared as “blessed”. Thousands of people processed past the tomb and a live-stream posted on social media spread it around the world. 

As Courtney Mares puts it, “That’s when he really went viral.”  

Canonisation does not always immediately follow beatification. In some cases it can take centuries. The Argentinian laywoman María Antonia de San José de Paz y Figueroa, known as “Mama Antula”, who was canonised in February of this year, died in 1799. “Most saints,” Figueiredo says, “wait hundreds of years to get on to the ticket.” In many cases, canonisation doesn’t happen at all. 

But the second miracle necessary for Carlo Acutis to complete the path to sainthood followed with uncommon alacrity. 

On 2 July, 2022, a 21-year-old woman from Costa Rica called Valeria Valverde, who was studying fashion in Florence, was involved in a bicycle accident, seriously injuring her head. According to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, following an emergency craniotomy to reduce intracranial pressure, her family was told that her situation was critical and that she could die at any moment.

Valverde’s mother went to Assisi to pray for her daughter at the tomb of Carlo Acutis. That day, she began to breathe independently; the next day she regained the use of her upper limbs. She was discharged from intensive care 10 days later, and further tests showed that the haemorrhagic right temporal cortical contusion in her brain had vanished.

Two months to the day after her accident, she and her mother went on a pilgrimage to Acutis’s tomb, to celebrate her complete healing.

In a decree on 23 May, 2024, Pope Francis approved the healing as a miracle. 

The speed at which Carlo Acutis has progressed on the path to sainthood has raised questions in some Catholic circles about both his elevation, and the process of saint-making in general. 

Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, was a prolific maker of saints, beatifying and canonising more people than all his predecessors combined. Pope Francis has been even more prolific, canonising 912 saints during his 11 years as Pope – although this does include the 813 Italian “martyrs of Otranto”, who were massacred in 1480 by the Turks and canonised en masse in 2013. 

At a time when church attendances are falling, particularly among the young, the emergence of a teenage saint could be seen, for want of a better word, as a godsend.

“There is a feeling that under Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis it may be considerably faster to become a saint and that the Catholic canon of sainthood is being somewhat watered down by the addition of too many potential saints,” says William Cash, editor of the Catholic Herald. “This is something that some Catholics feel a little uneasy with. 

“I’m sure Pope Francis is keen to engage younger Catholics and have a digital saint. I can see that totally makes sense.”

He continues: “Nothing I have seen, heard or read suggests that Carlo was not an extremely holy person who deserves to be recognised. But the question some Catholics ask is, has this process of beatification under Francis introduced a different bar than in previous centuries?”

“Every sainthood process is one part holiness and one part politics,” John Allen says. “The declaration of sainthood is not for the saint, it’s for the rest of us. It’s a way of saying, you should follow this person’s example. And inevitably there is politics involved in that. A young layperson who was not a candidate for the priesthood but nevertheless was devoted to the Eucharist and was strongly pro-life – from the Catholic point of view that’s like the golden ticket.”

The process of making a saint is not cheap. US Catholic officials have previously cited $250,000 as a benchmark for the cost of a cause, from the initial investigation on a diocesan level, to a canonisation Mass in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican, although that cost can increase depending on the numbers of people taking part. The bulk of the cost is usually met by the diocese.

“Carlo has been fast-tracked,” Monsignor Figueiredo says. “And there has been some controversy about that, the parents being wealthy. Even here in Assisi some people say they probably bought this, which is ridiculous. You don’t buy a sainthood.”

That debate aside, the benefit to the Catholic Church has been undeniable. “He’s certainly been marketed brilliantly,” one visitor at the tomb in Assisi told me. It was a professional opinion – he was from Glasgow and ran a marketing company. I sensed a degree of scepticism. But not at all. He believed without a shadow of a doubt, he said, that Acutis was a true saint.

The most energetic promoter of the cause of Carlo Acutis has been his mother, Antonia. When, at the age of 44, she gave birth to twins, Michele and Francesca, four years to the day after Carlo’s death, she suggested their birth had been the result of divine intercession. A year after his beatification, she published a book, Il segreto di mio figlio: Perché Carlo Acutis è considerato un santo (The Secret of My Son: Why Carlo Acutis Is Considered a Saint).

Last year, she was in London, giving talks. The Catholic journalist Melanie McDonagh attended one of them, at Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane. The church, she remembers, was packed beyond capacity. 

McDonagh was sceptical about the cult of popularity around Acutis – “the kind of saint you’d want if you wanted to appeal to a young demographic”. But hearing his mother speak about him changed her mind. 

“I was very impressed. She was very composed and spoke with great simplicity, not at all mawkish and sentimental. It could have seemed dreadful but it wasn’t. I said to her, “You must miss him.” She said, “Yes, but life is short.” For her there will be a reunion.

“What Carlo represents is not reformist in any way. It’s very traditional – the Rosary, the Eucharist. And it’s very interesting that a teenager should appeal on that level.”

In the course of his life, Carlo Acutis spoke of feeling a particular love for St Francis of Assisi as an exemplar of the Christian way of life, and a particular connection to the beautiful little medieval town – a place of twisting streets and alleyways, and the constant peal of bells from its numerous churches – where St Francis lived and died. The family would visit so often for holidays that they bought a house there. 

Immediately following his death, Acutis was buried in Ternengo, in the Italian region of Piedmont. But in January 2007 his body was transferred to the cemetery in Assisi, and in January 2019, following his recognition by Pope Francis as venerable, his body was exhumed and moved to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where it now rests.

There is a long history of the “incorruptible bodies” of saints in the Catholic Church – bodies that appear to have completely or partially avoided decomposition as a result, it is said, of divine intervention. There are 102 saints or “blesseds” whose bodies are recognised by the Church to be incorrupt. 

When Acutis’s body was first put on display, the rumour spread that his body too was incorrupt – it certainly looked it – obliging Domenico Sorrentino, Bishop of Assisi, to clarify that at the time of his exhumation the body, though intact, “was found in the normal state of transformation typical of the cadaveric condition”.

There are, however, a number of relics – the physical remains or personal possessions of a saint, which are preserved for the purpose of veneration. The most valued of these – so-called first-class relics – are pieces of the body of the saint. In the case of Carlo Acutis, there are four pieces of his pericardium, the membrane that encloses the heart and the beginnings of the great blood vessels, contained in reliquaries. Figueiredo is responsible for one of them, fulfilling requests from various dioceses to display the relic for veneration. It has been displayed in churches in Italy, Ireland, the US and the UK.

The most common “first-class” relic is a piece of Acutis’s hair. “I don’t know the exact number now, but I would say it’s well over a thousand,” Figueiredo says. “Carlo had a great head of hair.”

One such relic is to be found at Our Lady of Dolours on Fulham Road in London, where he was baptised. The church also has other relics, including a piece of bone from the 14th-century saint Peregrine, the patron saint of those suffering from cancer. 

Each Monday the reliquary containing strands of Acutis’s hair is placed on the altar when there are special prayers for his intercession. The service is often attended by families visiting patients in the nearby hospital. 

“Some people want to touch the glass, or kiss the glass, and we have a piece of tissue or cloth so they can do that,” one of the church’s priests, Father Chris O’Brien, told me. “There’s something about touching. Everybody wants to touch everything.” He paused. “It was a nightmare during Covid.”

“We Catholics are very odd,” Xavier Galves told me with a smile. I met him at the tomb of the Blessed Carlo, where I had been standing for the best part of an hour, watching as people moved past, kneeling, praying, touching…

He was an architect, visiting Assisi from Mexico City with his family, pilgrims to the tombs of St Francis and Carlo Acutis. We talked about miracles. “The miracles that are done by Carlo or any other saint are done by God,” he insisted. “It’s not as if he was just made a saint by the Church – there has to be a whole process behind it.” He laughed. “We can’t be worshipping false idols.”

His daughter Maria Lourdes had been kneeling at the tomb, and walked over to join us, looking visibly moved. She was 20, studying multimedia design. She had first heard about Acutis at school, she said, when a friend who had been to Assisi brought back a picture of the tomb. I asked her, what did it mean to see it for herself?

“I guess it means hope, a hope that you can do great things in ordinary life and make ordinary life extraordinary.” She paused, wiping her eyes. “Seeing him with a jacket I could wear, seeing his face so young – all those little things connect you [to the fact] that sainthood isn’t just for a St Francis or St Clare. I can’t wear a sackcloth and move to the centre of Italy…” she smiled. “But I have a pair of Nikes.”

Israel has banned large gatherings as thousands of people are expected to turn out across the country to commemorate the Oct 7 massacre.

The IDF Home Command Front has limited gatherings in Israel to 2,000 people, citing the ongoing threat of rockets from Hezbollah as the reason.

However, anti-government campaigners, who had organised a 40,000-strong march on Monday, the first anniversary of Oct 7, claim the ban is a political ploy by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to quash dissent.

Israel has in recent months been rocked by protests seeking to pressure the government to negotiate a ceasefire deal with Hamas in return for the release of the 101 hostages still held in Gaza. The demonstrations have had little effect on the government’s prosecution of the war, which is ongoing.

Thousands of Israelis are expected to assemble on Sunday at Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square for a commemoration event to mark the day on which 1,100 mostly civilians were murdered by Hamas and 251 taken hostage.

Around the country, dozens more memorials are due to take place, in spite of a cap of 2,000 per event.

The Telegraph understands that many Israelis are planning to openly flout the army’s ban on mass gatherings in a show of solidarity with the families of the hostages.

Israeli Roni Tsuk, an Israeli war veteran who served in the Yom Kippur war, said the restrictions will not stop him from attending. “We will not be silenced on this important day when it’s so critical for us to come together as a family,” he told The Telegraph.

Another event, which organisers claim 40,000 people have purchased tickets for, is set to be held at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park at 7 pm on Monday.

Israeli Lior Gat said she and her family, who have all lost loved ones in the war, and on Oct 7, will be going out to show solidarity in spite of the bans on gatherings. “This is the one time we have to show the world and each other that we are united, beyond political division,” she said.

“What happened on Oct 7 touched all our lives and continues to, and I will not let our government stop us from being together at this tragic time, even if there are security risks. This is our life in Israel and we are sadly all too used to this.”

The hostage families are calling for the return of their relatives in captivity through a deal which has faltered since November as Israel and Hamas remain intransigent. On Saturday, Basem Naim, a Hamas spokesman, told The Telegraph there will be “no negotiations” for a ceasefire.

Protests in Tel Aviv in recent months have been full of signs blaming Mr Netanyahu for the ongoing war and hostage situation, with many featuring images of the prime minister with blood on his hands and placards saying “guilty”.

Gatherings will also be taking place from 6.29am on Oct 7, including outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. The hour marks the time Hamas invaded Israel by air, land and sea one year ago. It will commence with a siren for two minutes of silence.