The Home Office has earmarked more than £500 million to manage Channel migrants arriving on small boats for up to a decade, according to official documents.

Officials are seeking commercial partners to run two large facilities that will receive and process illegal migrants crossing the Channel from January 2026 until January 2032.

Bidding companies are being offered £521 million for up to six years but with a break clause if Sir Keir Starmer’s Government succeeds in bringing down the number of migrants crossing the Channel.

However, the contract also has an option to extend its time for up to four more 12-month periods if small boat crossings are still continuing up to 2036, according to the documents.

It came as the Home Office said 471 people arrived in nine boats on Saturday, following 142 in two boats on Friday. They bring the total so far for this year to 27,225 – a five per cent increase on the 25,931 at the same time last year but 25 per cent less than the 36,491 in 2022.

Sources said the Home Office had reduced by a quarter the cost of the proposed £700 million six-year contract offered by the last Conservative government and also introduced a break clause, unlike the Tories.

Officials also claimed the contract would reduce the number of companies providing different services to the migrants, which would save taxpayers money.

Labour has scrapped Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation scheme and diverted the money to help set up a new Border Security Command, which will oversee plans to combat the people-smuggling gangs.

Extra officers are being recruited to the National Crime Agency, Border Force and MI5 to target the gangs, with new arrest and seizure powers modelled on terrorist legislation to crack down on the people smugglers.

The invitation for commercial partners centre on the UK Border Force’s rescue and arrivals base in Dover docks, known as Western Jet Foil. This is a secure facility where migrants rescued from the Channel are initially brought ashore, registered and given emergency medical treatment.

The second part of the contract covers the much larger Manston centre in Kent, which was designed to accommodate up to 1,600 migrants while officials work out where to house them.

The tender on the Home Office website states: “The Manston reception centre and disembarkation point/s in Kent require providers of operator and healthcare services, including managing staffing of operations, security, healthcare facilities, and other wraparound services.

“The aim of the services is to provide a safe and secure environment, where Border Force can register and process individuals arriving in the UK on small boats from across the English Channel.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “We are committed to smashing the criminal smuggling gangs responsible for overcrowding people onto boats for financial gain. We are procuring to reduce the number of providers that run the Manston site to cut costs and save the taxpayer money.

“However, in time, as we take down the people smuggling gangs through the work of the Border Security Command, we expect to see fewer people exploited into making these dangerous journeys.”

The contract is currently largely run by Mitie at a cost of £120 million a year, but this excludes additional services provided by other contractors. The Home Office proposes that the new single contractor will be responsible for all services.

Alex Salmond “fell sick and died on the spot” from a suspected massive heart attack, police have said.

“Time stopped” when the former Scottish first minister fell backwards in his chair and was caught by a fellow speaker at a diplomacy conference in North Macedonia at around 3.30pm on Saturday, delegates said.

Efforts were made to resuscitate Mr Salmond, 69, with CPR, but when paramedics arrived they concluded there was nothing that could be done to save him.

Friends and family in Scotland were informed of his death by Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, a former SNP MP and close associate of Mr Salmond, who had accompanied him to the event in the city of Ohrid.

Sources who were close to Mr Salmond described a race to inform his 87-year-old wife, Moira, of his death before the news broke publicly.

Local police confirmed that Mr Salmond had died instantly, according to a statement issued by North Macedonia’s ministry of internal affairs.  Prosecutors have ordered an autopsy, with the cause of death not yet officially confirmed.

North Macedonian media also reported that they understood he had died from a significant heart attack, while friends of Mr Salmond said they believed he had suffered “a massive coronary”.

Chris McEleny, the general secretary of the Alba Party, which Mr Salmond led, arrived in Macedonia on Sunday to help repatriate his body, which it is hoped the RAF will fly home.

Mr Salmond had taken part in a panel discussion at the conference on Friday, where he appeared in good spirits. Mark Donfried, one of the conference organisers, said delegates had been left in a state of shock at his death.

“Really, time stopped,” he said. “All of a sudden at lunchtime he was sitting across [from me]. He collapsed, he was sitting and fell back into the arms of one of the other speakers.

“I immediately went to the front desk to ask for an ambulance, and by the time I came back he was on the floor and they were trying CPR. The good news is he didn’t suffer. I don’t think he felt any pain.”

In some of his final public remarks, the day before he died, Mr Salmond accused the EU of secretly conspiring with the UK Government against Scottish independence.

He had singled out Jose Manuel Barroso, the former European Commission president, as being “not at all helpful to Scotland” in the run-up to the 2014 referendum.

Before the vote, Mr Barroso had warned that it would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible” for an independent Scotland to join the EU in a major blow to the Yes campaign run by Mr Salmond.

Mr Salmond also suggested that an alleged covert partnership between the UK and EU against his campaign had backfired as it indirectly led to the Brexit vote less than two years later.

“It is a reasonable supposition that if Scotland had voted for independence, then England, two years later, would not have voted to leave the European Union,” he told delegates. “So the interesting thing is that although Scotland lost an opportunity, the UK has been diminished.

“The European Union of that time, President Barroso in particular, was not helpful at all to Scotland. In fact, [he] was secretly combining with the UK Government.

“What happened as a result of that is the UK, one of the major players in the European Union, ended up leaving 18 months later. So in many ways it was a bad outcome for Europe as a whole.”

Mr Salmond had earlier made a joke about Scots’ reputation for thriftiness to the international audience, warning them he would not be buying anyone lunch as “I’m Scottish after all, we don’t do these sort of things”.

John Swinney, the current First Minister, said Mr Salmond had inspired a generation to believe in independence and “left a fundamental footprint on Scottish politics”.

Following a series of sexual misconduct allegations, Mr Salmond fell out with Nicola Sturgeon, his former protege, and left the SNP in 2018.

She said that while she “cannot pretend” their fallout had not happened, Mr Salmond would be remembered for his achievements and that she was shocked and sorry to learn of his death.

However, Mr Salmond died believing some of his former allies in the SNP had conspired in an attempt to have him jailed, and his supporters vowed to continue to fight to clear his name.

He was acquitted of a series of sexual misconduct charges at a trial in 2020 and had a Civil Service investigation into the allegations ruled unlawful and “tainted by apparent bias”.

Joanna Cherry, a former SNP MP and KC, claimed that Mr Salmond was “stabbed in the back” by his former friends before his death, but that outstanding court cases would restore his reputation.

“We have innocent until proven guilty in this country for a reason, and I am very dismayed as a lawyer by the lack of respect there’s been for the jury verdict in Alex’s criminal charges,” Ms Cherry told BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show.

“I think it’s a terrible tragedy that Alex has died before he was able to be completely vindicated, but I believe that that time will vindicate his name.”

In his final public remarks, posted on X hours before his death, Mr Salmond had launched a scathing attack on Mr Swinney for participating in Sir Keir Starmer’s Council of the Nations and Regions on Friday.

He claimed the body implied a “regional status” for the “nation of Scotland” and that Mr Swinney should have boycotted it. His final comment was: “Scotland is a country, not a county.”

Louise Haigh has signed off on a deal which means train guards will receive a £300 bonus for working a six-day week.

The Transport Secretary struck an agreement in September to prevent strikes by Cross Country, which is based in the West Midlands and runs intercity services across the country.

It comes after Ms Haigh’s description of P&O Ferries as a “rogue operator” last week almost led its parent company DP World to withdraw £1 billion of investment in Britain.

Train guards will receive £300 a day as a bonus if they agree to work for a sixth day each week as part of the overtime deal, which was first reported by The Sunday Times.

Members of the RMT union had voted to strike after CrossCountry used managers to fill in for staff at weekends. To stave off the walkouts, guards working Saturday shifts between now and mid-November will receive the £300 payment on top of their normal wage.

The deal was criticised by the Conservatives on Sunday. Helen Whately, the shadow transport secretary, said: “Rail unions can’t get enough of this Government. They now know that every time they go on strike Labour will cave.”

CrossCountry was the second-worst ranked train operator for both cancellations and punctuality in the three months through to March. 

It also had a worse cancellations record than Avanti West Coast, the worst performer among Britain’s 20 train operating companies, in the full year, according to data from the Office of Rail and Road.

Ministers signed off a 15 per cent pay rise for train drivers last month, meaning they now earn just under £70,000 on average. 

Ms Haigh met Mick Whelan, the general secretary of the Aslef union, which represents train drivers, five days after Labour took office. The deal was announced four weeks later.

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said: “While this is a local matter for CrossCountry, it’s crucial that passengers receive a more reliable service, on every day of the week – something our overhaul of the railways will help deliver.”

Ms Haigh’s long-term future is thought to be in doubt after she angered Downing Street by blindsiding it over the deal. 

The Transport Secretary was also at the centre of a row over her P&O Ferries comments last week. She had encouraged people to boycott the company, prompting Number 10 to put in a late-night phone call to the firm to distance itself from her remarks.

She had been referring to the firm choosing to sack 800 staff in 2022, most of whom had been based in Dover. It had planned to replace them with cheaper workers from overseas.

Allies of Ms Haigh were unhappy with the way the Government responded because her description of P&O as a “rogue operator” exactly mirrored language that was used in an official press release issued earlier that day.

A Caribbean leader has called for David Lammy to be given the power to secure reparations from Britain over its role in the slave trade.

Sir Hilary Beckles, the chairman of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) reparations commission, said the Foreign Secretary should have a free hand on the issue of compensation.

Academics and lawyers have claimed the reparations bill owed by Britain for its part in the slave trade could be worth anything from £206 billion to £19 trillion.

Mr Lammy has previously argued that “hard truths” need to be told about slavery. He was one of the leading campaigners for payouts for the Windrush generation.

Caricom’s 14 member states are expected to push Mr Lammy and Sir Keir Starmer on the issue at next week’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting.

Sir Hilary told Reuters: “It is our intention to persist with this strategy of calling for a summit to work through what a reparatory justice model ought to look like in the case of the Caribbean.

“He [Mr Lammy] has been a supporter of the discourse while he was in opposition. The question is whether he would be given a free hand in his Government to take the matter to a higher level.”

Mr Lammy appeared to call for wider reparations following the Windrush scandal, in which the Government failed to keep records of those granted permission to stay.

Writing on X, then known as Twitter, in 2018, he said: “As Caribbean people enslaved, colonised and invited to Britain as citizens, we remember our history. We don’t just want an apology, we want reparations and compensation.”

In a separate post in the same year, Mr Lammy criticised a Conservative MP who had argued that the Windrush affair could not be “conflated” with slavery.

“I raised a point of order. In 1833 Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act,” he wrote. “£17 billion of compensation to slave owners for the loss of their property – my ancestors. The slaves received no reparations. Some people simply do not know their history or do not want to know hard truths.”

Earlier this month, Mr Lammy sent a memo to diplomats at the Foreign Office, which mentioned his family’s experience of slavery, as he reflected on Black History Month. The note read: “It’s a chance to celebrate the enormous contribution of black people in Britain, and also to acknowledge some of our country’s most painful history.

“This is important to all of us in the FCDO. First, because of this department’s role in that history. From King Charles Street, British officials administered colonies in which millions were enslaved. My ancestors were among them, taken from Africa across the Atlantic to labour in the Caribbean.”

Mr Lammy added that it was the job of the Foreign Office “to represent the UK, a nation in which black Britons make an astounding contribution in all walks of life”.

Rishi Sunak’s government repeatedly rejected the case for slavery reparations, but neither Sir Keir nor Mr Lammy have commented on the issue during their first three months in power.

Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, is another prominent figure urging the Government to draw up a package of reparations before next week’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting.

She has previously said slave-owning nations owed Barbados £3.9 trillion, and called for “difficult” conversations over how the debt should be repaid.

Rev Dr Michael Banner, the Dean of Trinity College Cambridge, claimed in May that Britain owes the Caribbean more than £200 billion in slavery reparations.

He argued that Britons were “the inheritors of wealth that came our way” during the slave trade and called on the Scottish Government to pay up even if Westminster failed to do so.

Patrick Robertson, a UN judge, said last year that the UK was more likely to owe around £18 trillion for its involvement in slavery in 14 countries.

The King and Queen will both travel to Samoa as they also attend the Commonwealth heads of government meeting next week.

The Foreign Office was contacted for comment.

A Strictly Come Dancing couple have brushed off an awkward on-air interaction where a dancer is seen pushing her celebrity partner’s hand away from her waist before ignoring his high-five attempt.

Wynne Evans, 52, put his arm around Katya Jones’s waist as host Claudia Winkleman announced voting lines were open during Strictly’s fourth live show.

As Mr Evans’s hand moved further around Ms Jones’s white top, she could be seen guiding it back to her side.

Later, the 35-year-old professional dancer appeared to deliberately ignore her partner’s attempts at a high-five following fellow contestants Sam Quek and Nikita Kumzin’s performance.

Mr Evans stood with both hands outstretched above his head, but Ms Jones seemed to roll her eyes and turn her back on her partner.

But in a social media video published later, the pair insisted that it was all a “silly joke”.

Addressing the camera, Ms Jones said: “Hello everybody it’s Wynne and Katya here. We just wanted to say we were just messing around in the Clauditorium on Saturday night and just want to say sorry. It was a silly joke.”

Mr Evans, a Welsh opera singer best known for his GoCompare.com adverts, added: “Yes sorry.”

The singer wrote in the caption: “Apologies for this tonight we were just messing around. We really are amazing friends. The high 5’s is a running joke. Have a great evening @‌katyajones.”

Wynne and Katya scored 34 for their Tango, which was set to Abba’s Money Money Money.

Judge Anton Du Beke, awarding the couple eight points, described the routine as “tremendous” and “one of your best performances”, while Craig Revel Horwood, who also gave a score of eight, said: “Your bum was sticking up – but I loved, loved, loved it. Winner, winner, winner.” He added: “The espressos kicked in I see.”

The pair received scores of nine from judges Shirley Ballas and Motsi Mabuse, making it their highest scoring dance so far.

Week four saw Tasha Ghouri and Aljaž Charleston expand their lead at the top of the leaderboard with the first 10s of the series.

The BBC has been approached for comment.

Sir Keir Starmer has taken down portraits of Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh that were on display in Downing Street, The Telegraph can reveal.

The paintings of the last Tudor monarch and the famous explorer of the Americas were previously on the walls of a room used for prime ministerial meetings with world leaders.

Both have now been replaced with scenes from Crivelli’s Garden, a mural by Dame Paula Rego, the late Portuguese-born artist, whose work focuses on “strong and courageous women”.

It comes after Sir Keir faced critism when it emerged he had also removed portraits of William Ewart Gladstone and Margaret Thatcher.

On Sunday night, Downing Street said the changes to the artwork had actually been drawn up under the previous government. 

A spokesman said: “The change of artwork is long planned, since before the election, and is timed to mark 125 years of the Government Art Collection.”

Both Elizabeth I and Raleigh have been criticised over their links to the slave trade. The artwork of Elizabeth I that has been taken down is known as the Ditchley Portrait, and was painted in 1592 by Flemish artist Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger.

It depicts her standing on a globe with her feet on Oxfordshire, and she is shown in a farthingale against a backdrop of storm clouds parting to give way to sunshine.

The portrait was produced for Sir Henry Lee two years after his retirement as the Queen’s Champion, a position he held for more than three decades.

According to the National Portrait Gallery, it is likely to mark “an elaborate symbolic entertainment” that Lee organised for the monarch after she forgave him for moving in with Anne Vavasour, his mistress.

Elizabeth I was an early supporter of English involvement in the slave trade and gave permission to the adventurer Sir John Hawkins to fly the royal flag on his ships.

Hawkins took 300 African slaves across the Atlantic to sell in Spanish colonies on his first voyage. The queen invested money and ships in Hawkins’s expeditions, and would go on to give him his own coat of arms.

The portrait of Raleigh appears to have been restored and created by an unknown artist. It depicts him wearing chainmail, with a neutral expression on his face.

Raleigh was a colonialist who attempted to establish a British settlement in North Carolina, only to ultimately fail in doing so because of sour relations with Native Americans.

The paintings have been replaced either side of a fireplace in Downing Street by two of Rego’s works – Study for Crivelli’s Garden and Study for Crivelli’s Garden (The Visitation). Crivelli’s Garden is one of Rego’s best-known works, and the National Gallery said last year that its focus was on “strong and courageous women”.

Study for Crivelli’s Garden is an acrylic painting produced between 1990 and 1991, which shows a woman praying as a second woman appears to wield a weapon behind her.

It was painted for display in the National Gallery’s restaurant and depicts a number of scenes from stories and myths in the Bible, with female characters featuring prominently throughout.

Study for Crivelli’s Garden (The Visitation) is a retelling of the Visitation in the Bible, in which the Virgin Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus , visited Elizabeth, her cousin, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Elizabeth can be seen grabbing Mary’s upper hand with one hand as she uses the other to cover her mouth.

Sir Keir’s decision to replace the portraits of Elizabeth I and Raleigh drew criticism from his political opponents on Sunday.

Robert Jenrick, the Conservative leadership hopeful, said: “Elizabeth I was one of our most iconic female leaders. She’s a hero I love to talk to my daughters about.

“Stripping her portrait from Downing Street – alongside Walter Raleigh’s – seems to betray a strange dislike of our history by this Labour Government.”

Last month, Sir Keir said he took down the portrait of Thatcher because he did not like pictures of people staring down at him, preferring landscapes.

The likeness of the former prime minister was removed from her former study weeks into the Labour Government and it has since been hung in a first-floor meeting room.

“I use the study for quietly reading most afternoons… This is not actually about Margaret Thatcher at all,” the Prime Minister told the BBC. “I don’t like images and pictures of people staring down on me. I’ve found it all my life.”

High up on the dry brush hills that rise steadily from the Israeli border, the UN watchtower surveys southern Lebanon and the plains below as far as the eye can see.

But no more than 100 metres from the blast walls below the tower, a rusty metal trapdoor swings open to reveal a tunnel cut deep into the rock.

This, the Israeli military says, is the entrance to a Hezbollah attack position.

It is one of two within a stone’s throw of a UN base where international soldiers have for years rotated in and out to prevent another war breaking out.

The tunnels were shown to The Telegraph by Israeli troops on Sunday before the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ordered the UN to withdraw “immediately”.

His demand came as Israeli tanks rammed through the gates of a UN base – and a few days after UN soldiers were injured by IDF tank rounds.

The “most important part is to see the proximity to the UN. It’s right here,” an Israeli soldier told this newspaper as he stood over the tunnel entrance.

“To build a tunnel like this you need a lot of equipment. You can’t hide it. It’s very odd to us that the UN didn’t see these activities,” General Yiftach, whose division now controls the area, added.

The Telegraph, the first British newspaper to enter southern Lebanon from Israel, was taken to the tunnel in an armoured vehicle.

It churned over rough terrain, kicking up clouds of dust on the hillside overlooking Israeli towns and villages which have been coming under rocket fire for months.

Israeli soldiers lined the dirt roads, tracks and pathways as the vehicle climbed high through dry brush and trees, vast swathes of which had been flattened by convoys of tanks and armed forces.

Arriving at the tunnel, the views into Israel stretched almost to Haifa, while up the hill a UN watchtower was clearly in sight.

The two tunnels revealed by the IDF are just 10 metres apart and served two different purposes for Hezbollah.

One was an observation post, full of cameras used to collect intelligence on Israeli villages across the border.

The other was used to fire anti-tank missiles at Israeli villages until Israeli soldiers invaded the south-west of Lebanon last week.

They are just two out of some 100 other Hezbollah posts found in the one sq km which IDF General Yiftach Norkin’s division has taken control of.

Mr Norkin insisted that the army is continuing to coordinate with the UN troops who are still in their compound, which overlooks two tunnels in the area.

“I want to emphasise that the UN isn’t our enemy. Sometimes we make mistakes and we investigate the incidents,” he said.

The UN later released a statement saying two Israeli tanks had broken through the gates of a UN base. It follows reports that Israeli tanks fired on UN bases last week, injuring two soldiers.

Mr Netanyahu on Sunday also demanded UN peacekeepers leave southern Lebanon or risk becoming “human shields”.

“Your refusal to evacuate Unifil soldiers has turned them into hostages of Hezbollah. This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers,” he added.

The UN has demanded Israel halt operations near its bases and has defended its peacekeeping mission, formed in 1978 and renewed after the 2006 war. 

Critics say Hezbollah has grown and entrenched itself in southern Lebanon during those times.

During the Telegraph’s visit into southern, Lebanon Olivier Rafowizc, an IDF officer, said the army asked UN peacekeepers to evacuate from the area due to the danger involved in staying in an area where Israeli troops are fighting Hezbollah members.

General Norkin admitted that their Unifil troops “got hurt from our action” in recent days, “but as you see it’s very complicated to operate in those areas when Hezbollah is using the UN’s bases as human shields”.

“They are operating very close to them. When a tank or another IDF force sees Hezbollah is about to act against us we fire back,” Mr Norkin added.

Hezbollah, he said, has built an extensive infrastructure across all of southern Lebanon, serving one purpose – to one day “conquer” the Galilee.

Ariel* said Hezbollah had fired at his troops in the valley across the border before they launched their ground invasion.

He said he was astonished to see the extent of Hezbollah’s military equipment and infrastructure, but that the IDF had now driven most of their fighters away from the border at this point.

“You have enough ammunition for two battalions just in this area,” he said.

After a string of incidents in the past two days which have seen Unifil peacekeepers once again coming under fire, the IDF’s spokesman, Nadav Shoshani, said more than 24 attacks had been carried out by Hezbollah firing missiles near Unifil posts, “in some cases a few dozen metres away”.

“Hezbollah has been purposefully locating their weapons in areas such as near Unifil bases,” Mr Shoshani told reporters. Today, 25 soldiers were injured in a “planned Hezbollah attack in very close proximity” to a Unifil post where Hezbollah is known to operate.

According to the IDF, the peacekeepers were already in shelters after being notified.

“Hezbollah has chosen to bring the battlefield near Unifil posts … a pattern Hezbollah operates,” Mr Shoshani added, saying Hezbollah wants to “drag Unifil into the line of fire”.

The armoured vehicle takes us through bumpy roads, occasionally swirling so much dust that we can’t see what is in front of us. Dozens of Israeli soldiers, men and women, walked wearily on the side of the sandy road.

They are among the thousands of troops who have been sent to southern Lebanon in recent weeks to push Hezbollah north of the Litani river. A strategic point for Israel which would provide a Hezbollah-free buffer zone for the residents of northern Israel.

And according to Mr Norkin, the IDF hasn’t met fierce resistance in south-west Lebanon, mainly due to heavy aerial bombardment of the area in the past 12 months which caused many Hezbollah members to flee their positions.

But their goal was clear, Mr Norkin said, to penetrate the border and take control of Israeli villages.

To back up their claim, the IDF takes us to a one-kilometre trail hidden inside bushes near the border. It’s just one of some 25 trails which had about 700 weapons depots spread across them.

Halfway through the trail, a small base meets us. Here the IDF is displaying the weapons and equipment Hezbollah left behind.

Boots, weapons, helmets, explosive devices and a small cave was Hezbollah’s “grab-backs” intended to be used for a simultaneous attack against Israel, the IDF said.

It destroyed some of the weapon depots and confiscated others. Water pipes and electricity connect the trails to nearby villages such as Labbouneh, a few kilometres from us.

Drone footage has shown mass destruction to villages in southern Lebanon after Israeli air strikes and battles with Hezbollah.

More than one million Lebanese have been internally displaced, the vast majority since Israel began its ground offensive.

Since then Israel has revealed footage of the thousands of weapons and missiles the IDF found inside civilian homes.

“When we understood that there’s a strong connection between the open areas and the villages we decided to take action there as well,” General Norkin said.

He explains that the weapons hidden in the 700 depots are highly sophisticated and originate from North Korea, Russia and Iran.

Iran has smuggled long-range missiles and weapons to Hezbollah through Syria into Lebanon since the last war with Israel in 2006.

As the general walks us through the strategy of the IDF, sounds of drones, artillery fire and what appear to be air strikes fill the air.

Cleaning all of south Lebanon from Hezbollah positions and infrastructure seems like a herculean task. But after thousands of air strikes, killing an estimated 1,000 Hezbollah members including its entire leadership, the army is only ramping up its attacks.

The IDF is trying to push Hezbollah as far north as possible so that 60,000 displaced Israelis can return to their homes.

The Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, visited the northern border on Sunday saying he instructed the IDF at all levels to “ensure the destruction of [attack infrastructure] and to ensure that terrorists may not return to these places. This is essential in order to ensure the safety of Israel’s northern communities.

“The IDF’s actions are powerful and effective – we are operating in the entire area. We have destroyed [attack] infrastructure in Beirut, in the Bekaa and across Lebanon, and now we are operating along the border. We will continue until operational requirements are achieved,” he said.

Christopher Columbus was Jewish, DNA experts concluded in a long-awaited investigation into the true origins of one of history’s most famous explorers.

Researcher conducted over 22 years suggests that Columbus was not a sailor from Genoa, as previously believed, but in fact from a family of Jewish silk spinners from Valencia.

Examinations of the bones of Columbus and of his son, Hernando, showed a Jewish origin, something the explorer concealed during a time in which Jews were being persecuted in Spain and other parts of Europe.

The discovery was the culmination of two decades of investigation led by Antonio Lorente, professor of legal and forensic medicine at the University of Granada.

It was presented in a prime-time Spanish television documentary on Saturday night to coincide with Spain’s national day.

“Both in the ‘Y’ chromosome and in the mitochondrial chromosome of Hernando, there are traits compatible with Jewish origins,” Prof Lorente declared.

He said the DNA showed a “western Mediterranean” origin, but he could not state categorically which country or region.

Francesc Albardaner, a historian who has written extensively about Columbus having origins in Catalan-speaking eastern Spain, explained that being Jewish and from Genoa was effectively impossible in the 15th century.

“Jews could only spend three days at a time in Genoa by law at that time,” said Mr Albardaner.

Mr Albardaner said his research has shown that Columbus was from a family of Jewish silk spinners from the Valencia region.

In the same year of 1492 that Columbus landed on Guanahani in the Bahamas, Spain’s Catholic monarchs Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon ordered the expulsion of all Jews who did not agree to convert to Christianity.

“Christopher Columbus had to pretend all his life that he was a Roman Catholic Christian. If he had made one mistake, this man would have ended up on the pyre,” said Mr Albardaner.

The DNA research shows that Columbus lied about his family; Diego Columbus was the explorer’s second cousin and not his brother, as he told the Spanish court.

A key part of the puzzle was to establish that the remains said to be those of Columbus kept in a tomb in Seville cathedral were really those of the explorer, in the face of a longstanding claim by the Dominican Republic to be the resting place of Columbus.

Prof Lorente’s team established without doubt that the Seville bones were those of Columbus thanks to a close match with the DNA found in the remains of his son, Hernando, kept in the same cathedral.

Speaking on the documentary ‘DNA Columbus – his true origin’, Prof Lorente agreed that Columbus was almost certainly not from mainland Italy and said that there was no solid evidence that he had come from France.

“What do we have left? The Spanish Mediterranean arc, the Balearic Islands and Sicily. But Sicily would also be strange, because if so, Christopher Columbus would have written with some Italian or Sicilian features. So it is most likely that his origin is in the Spanish Mediterranean arc or in the Balearic Islands”, the scientist said.

Analysis of the around 40 letters signed by Columbus that have been preserved show that his writing in Castilian Spanish was free of any Italian influences, with researchers pointing out that he even wrote letters to a bank in Genoa in Spanish.

Mr Albardaner said: “There were around 200,000 Jews living in Spain in Columbus’ time. In the Italian peninsula, it is estimated that there were only between 10,000 and 15,000. There was a much larger Jewish population in Sicily of around 40,000, but we should remember that Sicily, in Columbus’ time, belonged to the Crown of Aragon.”

Iran has threatened US troops sent to defend Israel, warning that their lives are “at risk” from its attacks.

The Pentagon confirmed on Sunday it would send a crew of troops to operate a missile defence battery in the region as it braced for an exchange of attacks.

Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, issued the warning amid reports that the US would send a THAAD missile battery and operators to Israel to defend against further missile attacks.

In a tweet, he said Joe Biden was “putting lives of its troops at risk by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel,” adding: “We have no red lines in defending our people and interests”.

It came as the Pentagon confirmed it would send a missile battery to bolster Israel’s defences in anticipation of a further barrage from Iran.

Asked on Sunday why he had taken the decision, Mr Biden replied: “To defend Israel.”

On Oct 1, Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, piercing its Iron Dome defence system in some places.

Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said the battery “underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defence of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran”.

“It is part of the broader adjustments the US military has made in recent months, to support the defence of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias,” he said.

While US forces have been deployed in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid and in neighbouring countries to defend Israel from incoming missile attacks, the move marks the first time American combat troops will operate in the country since the latest conflict began last year.

Israel is expected to launch a strike on Iran in the coming days, in response to its missile attack earlier this month. Iran is likely to respond with a further strike, prompting concern about Israel’s defences.

While both countries have insisted they are seeking to avoid further escalation, they have each vowed to protect their own forces and respond in kind to attacks from the other.

Iran’s attack on Oct 1 was the second direct assault on Israel since Hamas’s terror attacks on Oct 7 last year, which sparked a conflict that has since widened to include Lebanon.

“Iran does not seek war, but we are prepared for war,” Mr Araghchi said at a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday, after meeting with his Iraqi counterpart.

In his post on X, he added: “The US has been delivering record amount of arms to Israel.

“It is now also putting lives of its troops at risk by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel.”

“While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests.”

The THAAD battery sent by the US can fire kinetic projectiles from the ground at speeds of up to 6,000mph to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles.

The US deployed a THAAD battery to the Middle East last year to protect its own forces in Iraq and Syria from attacks by Iranian-linked Islamist groups.

The husband of a Labour MP has quit his role as chairman of West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority after being accused of exaggerating his military service.

Greg Brackenridge, a local Labour councillor and former mayor of Wolverhampton, allegedly told voters he served as a commando, but in fact never finished his training.

On Saturday night, he announced his resignation from the role he had held for the past five years, with immediate effect.

Cllr Brackenridge, 53, was previously pictured wearing a badge for veterans of the Iraq War from 1990 to 1991 and a Royal Marines Corps tie.

But he allegedly failed to complete the 32-week training in 1988 and left at the rank of recruit without earning his green beret, The Sun newspaper previously reported.

“Until you pass out, you’re still a recruit, you’re not really a Royal Marine,” a source told the paper.

Greg Brackenridge claiming service

Cllr Brackenridge’s wife, Sureena Brackenridge, won the Wolverhampton North East seat for Labour in July, and her son Ciaran also sits as a councillor.

In 2021, while unveiling the statue of a Sikh soldier in Wolverhampton in September 2021, Cllr Brackenridge told a journalist: “I served as a Royal Marine myself when I left school and I worked with members of the Sikh community in the Armed Forces and people from all around the world, the Nepalese, the Gurkhas.”

His resignation statement, which will be read out at a West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority meeting on Monday, did not specifically address the allegations.

The letter, first published by BirminghamLive, reads: “I write to inform you of my resignation as chair from the West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority.

“This has not been a decision taken lightly. Events over recent months are an unnecessary distraction. I will not allow this to happen.”

Cllr Brackenridge added: “I am proud of the dedication and professionalism of the people at West Midlands Fire Service.

“I thank all employees, currently led by deputy chief fire officer Simon Barry, for continuing to take the service forward in challenging circumstances.

“I wish to thank the fire authority members, political, independent and observers (from the) trade unions for their hard work, commitment and support. It has been an honour to serve with all of you.”

A biography on the Wolverhampton Labour Group, which has since been deleted, reportedly repeated his claim of serving with the Royal Marines.

“It has been my honour to serve the people of Wednesfield over many years as your councillor and in my previous professional careers firstly with the Royal Marines and as a local firefighter with the West Midlands Service,” it is alleged to have read.

In an interview with BirminghamLive earlier this week, Cllr Brackenridge admitted to never serving “in battle or the front line” and that his career was prematurely cut short for “personal family reasons”.

‘Devastating’

He added: “This was devastating, as I loved what I was doing, as any young lad would. I find it incredible anyone would attack people who join the military and want to serve their country.

“I have served as a firefighter, now retired, and as a councillor continue to serve my community.”

He has also claimed his own personal military record held by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had been illegally accessed.

“I am formally requesting the MoD investigate these matters, and I’m in discussions with lawyers about the next steps,” he said.

Cllr Brackenridge’s resignation comes days after that of interim chief executive, and decorated Royal Marines colonel, Oliver Lee.

Mr Lee said he was quitting because it enabled him to “do the right thing”, claiming he had been “gagged”.

He had earlier said he could no longer work with Cllr Brackenridge, who he accused of telling “untruths”.

Cubs groups are swapping camping in the woods for expensive all-inclusive trips to Disneyland Paris.

Parents are reacting with surprise to discover that Cubs are travelling by coach to the theme park in France and spending as much as £650 per person for a two-night stay.

The trips are part of a wider collaboration between the Scouts and Disney, which encompasses branding exercises, badges, themed activities, and discounted theatre trips.

The Scouts organisation has defended the trips, saying that an encounter with Mickey Mouse has as much place in the programme as “roasting marshmallows on a fire”.

On its website, the Scouts promise that Cubs aged between eight and 10½ will “master new skills”, “help others and make a difference”, and be “curious about the world around them”. The list is accompanied by a picture of two children building a makeshift shelter in the countryside.

Plans are already underway at Humberside Scouts to ship 150 cubs to Disneyland Paris for two days in February 2026, with tickets costing as much as £650.

‘Executive coach’

Likewise, Cubs in 1st Holmes Chapel are visiting the theme park in August 2026 to celebrate the group’s centenary, with costs coming to around £600 per person. The three-night trip promises travel in an “executive coach” with reclining seats, DVD player and drinks machine.

Peterborough Cubs have booked into the Campanile Val de France at Disneyland Paris in January 2026, with the £540 fee covering transport, food, insurance, a two-night stay and a T-shirt.

Avon Cubs are incorporating a visit to the theme park into their £460 excursion next autumn, while 5th Beckenham South Cubs have the opportunity to spend £400 on a trip to Disneyland Paris in May.

The Basingstoke East cubs visited Disneyland Paris and promised to return in February 2028.

Other Cubs groups to have recently visited Disneyland Paris include 1st Marston Green, Romsey, 38th Rossendale, 7th Walthamstow, Wardle and 2nd Whitton.

A surprised parent took to Mumsnet to ask if it was normal that she was being asked to spend £400 on her child’s Cubs trip.

“It sounds like great fun, but on the other hand (and perhaps I’m being a bit naive here) I’m a little surprised at the cost and the purpose of the trip, especially for primary aged kids”, they said, adding: “I thought cubs would be all about outdoor activities or community oriented stuff.”

One Mumsnet user responded: “I cannot begin to think of the families that can’t afford this and the kids that feel excluded. It seems to shy away from the whole inclusive ethos they bang on about.”

Another questioned why the Cubs didn’t spread the cost of the trip over multiple cheaper activities over the course of the year.

A spokesman for the Scouts said: “We believe that all residential experiences away from home provide an opportunity for young people to learn how to be resilient, self-confident and self-reliant.

“Going on camp in the UK or undertaking an international trip, gives young people the opportunity to develop important key life skills.

“Meeting Mickey Mouse in Paris or cooking marshmallows over an open fire both have their place in the Scout programme. We are proud of our volunteers who give their time freely to deliver all types of residential experience.”

‘Space noodles’

The Scouts have collaborated with Disney on badges and resources, such as the Timon and Pumbaa bug hunt, making Queen Elsa’s ice palace snowflakes, and cooking gumbo like Tiana in the Princess and the Frog.

Before taking part in the Star Wars-themed activity of cooking “space noodles”, the children are encouraged to use their internet devices to “tell everyone you’re going to meet the Young Jedi”.

As part of the close relationship, Scouts receive group discounts to performances of The Lion King at London’s Lyceum Theatre and a free scout leader ticket is also provided for every 10 tickets booked.

The Scouts website lists Venture Abroad, a holiday activity company, as a provider of its group coach packages to Disneyland Paris.

Venture Abroad sets out the intentions of its trips as “mastering new skills and confidence”, “fostering a sense of community and belonging”, nurturing “a deep reverence for nature and our world”.

The site’s trips to Disneyland Paris start at £349pp for a three day and two night coach tour for 48 passengers travelling in February 2025.

It’s a seasonal favourite in Europe, and now British retailers are adding white mulled wine to their shelves ahead of Christmas.

Marks and Spencer is hoping that its white mulled wine, similar to glühwein found in German and Austrian Christmas markets like Berlin’s Weihnachtsmärkte, will be a big hit this winter.

Retailers believe that the white variety will make a refreshing change to the “heavy, oaky and often alcoholic reds” that can “weigh” people down.

German Christmas markets have become a staple part of many cities and town’s Christmas celebrations around the country.

Shoppers in Bath, Manchester, Edinburgh and visitors to Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland, in London, can enjoy mulled wine and flame-grilled bratwurst sausages at markets throughout the festive season.

Experts say that white mulled wine appeals to people’s changing preferences to wine, with many preferring lighter white wines to heavier reds.

Maddie Love, a product developer at M&S, told The Observer that white wines’ “lighter, fruitier notes will appeal to those who prefer a more delicate flavour profile”.

Others argue that supermarkets are trying to find new ways of keeping alcohol sales up throughout the Christmas period, as younger generations drink less than their parents.

“I think this product development is more an attempt to keep consumers drinking alcohol in the first place rather than a reaction to changing tastes”, said Honey Spencer, a sommelier who runs the restaurant Sune in Hackney, east London.

“Across the whole sphere of wine, people are moving towards freshness and minerality,” Amber Gardner, a London wine buyer, added.

“They don’t want to feel weighed down by heavy, oaky and often alcoholic reds, so they’re turning more and more to white wine.

“As we all know, mulled wine can err on the side of sickly and cloying, so I reckon mulled wine is overdue a nouvelle vague! I can see a white version doing really well in the coming years.”

Miranda Hart’s secret husband has been revealed as a building company boss.

In her new book, I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You, the comedian disclosed she had married a mystery man with whom she struck up a romance during the Covid pandemic.

Hart referred to her new husband as “the boy from Bristol” and “the mould man”, after they first met when he removed mould from her house – but had held back from revealing his identity.

The star, 51, also told of her struggle with Lyme disease which has left her with chronic fatigue and away from working on television.

It has now been reported that the actress married surveyor Richard Fairs, 60, in July last year, at a country church ceremony which was followed by a Hawaiian-themed party, according to The Sun newspaper.

Photographs previously emerged of the pair embarking on a bike ride near Hammersmith Bridge earlier this year, spurring speculation that the cyclist could be Hart’s husband.

The actress appeared on The One Show on Wednesday to confirm her marriage status, complete with a debut of her gold wedding ring.

“I’ve got my best friend to do life with and it’s wonderful,” she said. Hart added: “The fact that I could meet somebody – it’s not a rom-com story but it’s hope, and that’s why I think, whatever situation you’re in, there’s always hope that things really do change.”

The actress later teased her Instagram viewers by holding hands on camera with her out of sight husband as she left BBC Broadcasting House in a taxi.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Hart said: “The reason I put this little love story of mine in it was mainly because at the beginning of the book, yeah, I’m alone. I’m bed bound by this illness.

“And waiting in the darkness in a confusing place gives you the chance to long for what you want to do. And I realised I didn’t want to be alone.”

She added: “I really recommend it, honestly, getting married in the midlife is a full injection of joy and fun. It’s the best.”

Mr Fairs, from Bristol, proposed on a walk around Kew Gardens in January, as the pair stood by a bridge overlooking the lake.

‘Burst out crying’

In her book, Hart recalled that she “simply burst out crying, apparently saying yes before he had finished the sentence”.

She added: “I didn’t think a traditional proposal would affect me so.

“But there was someone knowing all my ridiculousness and brokenness and still willing to bend down, look up and commit to loving me and standing by me for the rest of his life.”

Mr Fairs, who owns a company called The Building Consultancy, is said to have married Hart at St Peter and St Paul church in Hambledon, Hampshire, on July 6.

Hart started out performing on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe in the early 2000s before taking on the role of Miranda in her eponymous television sitcom, which ran from 2009 to 2015.

She has taken time away from acting as she recovers from Lyme disease – a bacterial infection that can transfer to humans via a tick bite.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales has been hit with a trigger warning by a leading university over “expressions of Christian faith”, it has emerged.

The University of Nottingham put the warning on the medieval collection of 24 tales which tell the story of pilgrims going to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.

A Freedom of Information request found that the university warned students that the medieval literature contains expressions of Christian faith as well as violence and mental illness.

The stories also contain explicit references to rape and anti-Semitism, but the warning made no reference to these themes, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.

The University of Nottingham has now been accused of “demeaning education” with its “ludicrous” and “weird” trigger warning.

Andrea Williams, the chief executive of Christian Concern, claimed that “without an understanding of the Christian faith there will be no way for students to access the world of Chaucer and his contemporaries”.

“From what point in history are we going to censor literary texts given most are steeped in a Christian world view?” she said. “Trigger warnings for Christian themes in literature are demeaning to the Christian faith and stifle the academic progress of our students.

“To censor expressions of the Christian faith is to erase our literary heritage. True education engages and fosters understanding, not avoidance.”

She added: “Our universities should allow students, who have chosen to study some of the greatest works in English literature, the freedom of academic thought to make up their own minds rather than planting loaded warnings about the Christian faith.”

Frank Furedi of the University of Kent said “the problem is not would-be student readers of Chaucer but virtue-signalling, ignorant academics”.

He told the Mail on Sunday: “Warning students of Chaucer about Christian expressions of faith is weird. Since all characters in the stories are immersed in a Christian experience there is bound to be a lot of expressions of faith.”

A university spokesman told the paper that it “champions diversity”, adding: “Even those who are practising Christians will find aspects of the late-medieval world view… alienating and strange”.

It comes as an increasing number of important pieces of literature are hit with trigger warnings.

In 2022, the University of Leeds issued warnings on dozens of classic works including Tarzan and Robinson Crusoe amid fears about how content including war, death, violence and suicide might affect students.

The Telegraph contacted the university for further comment.

A comet that last passed Earth 80,000 years ago will be seen streaking across the night sky on Sunday night.

Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, last orbited the Sun when the Neanderthals still existed, and will be visible for several nights.

Experts say it should be visible with binoculars or a small telescope above the western horizon at just after sunset in cloud-free conditions away from light pollution.

The orbit of the comet is taking it away from Earth at around 150,000 mph, and will be visible slightly higher in the sky on Sunday night than it was the night before.

The comet was observed last year by telescopes in South Africa and China, when it was beyond Jupiter, and astronomers have been anticipating its arrival ever since. Now around halfway between the Earth and the Sun, it has a tail stretching for several miles.

Astronomers think the solid core of the comet is several miles wide and made of ancient ice from when the Solar System was first formed billions of years ago.

It is believed the comet originated from a place called the Oort Cloud, a spherical shell surrounding our solar system, which contained billions of pieces of icy space debris the size of mountains.

Dr Gregory Brown, senior public astronomy officer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: “It contains lots of bits left over from the formation of the solar system. Every so often, one of those bits will be nudged towards the solar system, where it could end up in a very, very long orbit.

“Those orbits can take extraordinarily long periods of time – thousands of years. The estimate on this particular comet is that if it is in a stable orbit, its last path to the inner solar system was about 80,000 years ago.”

The sun’s heat is warming up the comet and causing some of the comet to evaporate, scientists say, and this is producing a haze of dust and matter that can be seen as the comet’s tail.

Dr Daniel Brown, an astronomer and associate professor at Nottingham Trent University, said: “It’s a cracker of a comet that has already delighted more southerly latitudes when it was visible in the morning sky.

“The orbit we have currently seen is what is called hyperbolic – even close to parabolic, which indicates that it is not on a closed orbit. As far as we currently know, it is making its first approach to the sun.

“As all comets, it is made of mostly frozen gases – ie ice – with lots of rocky debris and dust. There will also be trace elements of organic materials.

“These comets are not necessarily rare, however being able to see them with the naked eye is not that common. Comets are notoriously unpredictable and can break up or remain less active than expected. Probably the last such good comet I recall for us here was comet Neowise in 2020.”

Astrophotographers have been sharing their images of the comet from across the UK on Saturday night.

The comet also came into view above South Carolina in the US shortly after sunset on Saturday. It was previously visible from Earth in the southern hemisphere between Sept 27 and Oct 2.

Social media videos are making people think they have ADHD, scientists have said.

A study suggests a quarter of adults believe they may have the condition but have not received a diagnosis. But only half of those have sought professional help, data show.

Awareness of the condition, which can manifest as distractibility, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, is increasing with better diagnosis in children and social media sites such as TikTok being populated with awareness videos on the condition.

The survey of 1,000 American adults, conducted in August by Ohio State University, found younger adults were more likely to believe they had undiagnosed ADHD than older generations. They were also more likely to do something about it.

“If you’re watching videos on social media and it makes you think that you may meet criteria for the disorder, I would encourage you to seek an evaluation from a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a physician to get it checked out,” said Dr Justin Barterian, a clinical assistant professor in Ohio’s department of psychiatry and behavioural health.

Experts say that getting correct treatment is key to managing symptoms.

“Anxiety, depression and ADHD – all these things can look a lot alike, but the wrong treatment can make things worse instead of helping that person feel better and improving their functioning,” Dr Barterian said.

“There’s definitely more awareness of how it can continue to affect folks into adulthood and a lot of people are realising, once their kids have been diagnosed, that they fit these symptoms as well, given that it’s a genetic disorder.”

Symptoms of ADHD can vary.

“Some people might have more difficulty focusing on lectures or with organisation, while others may have more social difficulties with impulsivity and trouble following along in conversations,” Dr Barterian said.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence estimates the global prevalence of ADHD in children to be about 5 per cent, and in adults in the UK at 3 to 4 per cent.

This is likely to be an underestimate, however, as there is no concrete data.

Henry Shelford, head of ADHD UK, said that diagnosis in the US and UK is very different and they can be hard to compare.

“In the UK we recognised ADHD decades later than them and have significant under-diagnosis and population gaps as a result,” he said.

“In the UK we also have a very different healthcare system with much more restricted protocols on who can diagnose ADHD when compared to the US.

“Our situations are not the same so we should be very careful in how we consider the relevance of attitudinal research like this.”

When Vem Miller was stopped, police said they discovered his black SUV was unregistered and his loaded firearms unknown to the state.

There were also a fake passports, identity documents and press credentials.

Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff, said the finds were typical of a “sovereign citizen” — someone who does not believe in government control.

“They are certainly considered a far-Right group,” Mr Bianco added.

Mr Miller, 49, of Las Vegas, was named as the man whom the police chief said was a would-be assassin arrested less than a mile from Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Coachella on Saturday.

His vehicle was stopped because it was fitted with a homemade number plate, which Mr Bianco said was “indicative of a group of individuals that claim to be sovereign citizens”.

Counterfeit passports and driver’s licences featured different names to the one he gave authorities.

And then there was a loaded handgun and a shotgun, said to not properly be registered, which was given as the reasoning for Mr Miller’s arrest.

Mr Bianco said that his local law enforcers had “probably stopped another assassination attempt”.

Accusations are complete bull–t

In an interview with a local journalist following his release on bail, Mr Miller said he would never harm Trump, whom he supports in the upcoming presidential election.

“These accusations are complete bull—t,” Miller told Southern California News Group on Sunday.

“I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

Mr Miller said he had a “special entry pass” to the Trump rally, in contradiction to police claims.

The pass, the 49-year-old said, was handed to him by an associate in the Republicans, while he claimed he attended another campaign event in Nevada with firearms in his vehicle without any trouble.

Mr Miller is a registered Republican and ran for Nevada state assembly in 2022, local media outlets reported.

Campaign material issued by a man with the same name promised to “restore our constitutional rights”, including references to the Second Amendment on the right to bear arms.

There were also pledges to “revitalise small business, which was so grossly harmed by the Covid mandates” and “give power back to parents, who have had their voices ignored by authoritarian school boards”.

The FBI describes the sovereign citizens movement as a domestic terror threat, similar to eco-terrorists and animal rights extremists.

The agency says the movement’s participants likely believe that even though they reside in the United States, they are separate or “sovereign” from the government.

According to the Press Enterprise, Miller denied that he was part of the sovereign citizen group.

A potential third assassination attempt against Donald Trump was thwarted on Sunday, police have claimed.

Officers from the Riverside County Sheriff stopped Vem Miller, 49, at the perimeter of Trump’s rally in Coachella on Saturday, carrying weapons that the local sheriff said were likely intended for “another assassination attempt”.

If police are correct, the incident would mark the third time that Trump has been targeted by gunmen in the last four months, amid concern about the level of security around him on the campaign trail.

Mr Miller, who lives in Las Vegas and was described as belonging to a Right-wing group, was later bailed, and the US Secret Service assigned to protect Trump said his arrest “did not impact protective operations”.

But Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff in charge of local policing, told a local news outlet: “We probably stopped another assassination attempt.”

In a press conference on Sunday evening, Mr Bianco said he did not remember claiming that Mr Miller was an assassin, and admitted he had no evidence other than the seized guns, several false passports and a fake licence plate on his car.

However, he added: “If you’re asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination”, and accused those who doubted his theory about Mr Miller of being “politically lost”.

“If we are that politically lost, that we have lost sight of common sense and reality and reason, that we can’t say that…holy c–p,” he said. “What did he show up with all of that stuff for?”

Shotgun and handgun

He said police had recovered a shotgun, a handgun and a high-capacity magazine from the black SUV Mr Miller was driving, which was stopped at a police checkpoint with invalid media and “VIP” credentials.

Mr Miller was charged with two misdemeanour firearms offences, and is scheduled to appear in court in January, according to police records. Any further charges would be brought by the FBI. He was released from police custody on a $5,000 bail.

Both the FBI and Trump’s campaign told US media they did not believe the incident represented a threat to the former president’s life, and that an assassination attempt had not taken place.

Mr Miller, who is a Trump supporter, denies the claim he intended to assassinate the former president, and told the Southern California News Group he was “shocked” to be arrested.

“These accusations are complete bull—t,” he said. “I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

He said he had informed the police he was carrying guns in the car and that he had been invited to the rally by a local Republican chairman.

‘Unite and fight’

Trump, who suffered a grazed ear from a bullet in an assassination attempt in July, has used the threats on his life as a campaign tool, telling supporters they must “unite” and “fight”.

A second suspected plot was foiled last month when the former president’s protective team spotted the barrel of a rifle poking out of the shrubbery on Trump’s Florida golf course.

Ryan Routh, 58, was arrested and charged with five federal crimes. He denies the charges.

On Sunday night, the Riverside County Sheriff’s office said Mr Miller was “found to be illegally in possession of a shotgun, a loaded handgun, and a high-capacity magazine” and taken into custody.

Mr Bianco, a Trump supporter, told local media that Mr Miller had “probably” intended to assassinate the former president, and had raised suspicion by presenting false press and VIP credentials at a police checkpoint.

“They were different enough to cause the deputies alarm,” he said.

He added that he was surprised the incident had taken place in Coachella, a small city known mainly for its nearby music festival.

“We don’t have the same sicko issues and violent protests like they have in Los Angeles,” he said. “We’re better than that. Go figure.”

In a joint statement, the FBI and Secret Service said they assessed that “the incident did not impact protective operations and former President Trump was not in any danger”.

“While no federal arrest has been made at this time, the investigation is ongoing,” they said.

The agency was criticised for its apparent failure to protect Trump back in July, when 20-year-old Matthew Crooks opened fire on him from a nearby rooftop, grazing him in the ear with a bullet. Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper.

The second suspected attempt, on Sept 15, was foiled by Trump’s protective team and local police.

Sir Keir Starmer was last night facing calls for an independent inquiry into the decision to grant Taylor Swift a “VVIP” police escort to her Wembley gigs.

Senior Conservatives have demanded answers amid claims ministers improperly interfered with the decision.

It follows reports over the weekend that Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, was asked to intervene after the Metropolitan Police warned that granting the singer protection normally only afforded to senior politicians and working royals would breach its protocols.

Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, attended one of the singer’s  London concerts for free as a guest of her husband Ed Balls after allegedly pressuring Scotland Yard to give Swift the escort.

Both Ms Cooper and Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, are said to have pressed officers to grant the protection.

Sir Keir also received free tickets to the show, where he was pictured hugging his wife Victoria.

Conservative MP and former policing minister Chris Philp told the Daily Mail: ‘Ministers appear to have improperly interfered with the police’s operational independence.

“This merits an immediate independent inquiry. Labour must come clean about who authorised the Attorney General’s involvement.

Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, told the newspaper: ‘Why on earth is the Attorney General interfering with an operational decision of the Met about a blue-light escort?

“What point of law can conceivably be at stake? We need to be told or else we must conclude the obvious: Hermer is Starmer’s stooge and sponsor and he was just doing his buddy’s bidding.”

London Assembly member Susan Hall, who finished second in the London mayoral election, told the newspaper: “‘I’m astonished to be honest with you.

“I know there was a threat in Vienna and that’s why [Ms Swift’s] mother wanted it, but to have that kind of protection for a pop star is ludicrous.

“It’s not a security service for hire, as Prince Harry has found out.‘What on earth happened? The public deserve to know.’’

It follows claims the Home Secretary attended one of  London concerts for free after allegedly pressuring Scotland Yard to give the pop star a “VVIP’’ police escort, it has emerged.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens told the newspaper the decision to grant police protection to the pop star may help the Duke of Sussex in his legal battle with the Home Office over his security arrangements.

The Duke claims he was treated unfairly when he was stripped of the protection on stepping down as a working royal and and still faces significant security threats.

Mr Stephens said: ‘‘It’s likely that Harry’s lawyers will be look ing closely at the threat assessment in the Taylor Swift case in order to agree conditions for protection for him and his family.”

Downing Street has denied any suggestion of a link between the decision and the ministers’ attendance at the concerts, and last night would not comment to the Daily Mail on the work of the Attorney General.

A spokesman for Lord Hermer told the newspaper it was solely an operational decision for the police.

A Met Police spokesman said the force was “operationally independent’’ and that its decisions were based ‘‘on a thorough assess ment of threat, risk and harm’’.

Elon Musk claims he is going to take legal action because he believes his political views were used as justification for rejecting his application to launch rockets in California.

The tech mogul, 53, said he will file a lawsuit alleging the California Coastal Commission breached his First Amendment rights when it rejected a plan to allow him to launch 50 rockets a year from an air base in Santa Barbara County.

The agency’s commissioners voted against the application, which had been supported by the US Air Force, by six votes to four on Thursday.

Gretchen Newsom, one of the commissioners, said at a meeting over the application: “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking Fema while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”

Caryl Hart, the commission’s chairman, said Mr Musk had “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race” and managed his company in a “disturbing” way.

Mr Musk hit back on Saturday, describing the decision as “incredibly inappropriate”.

“What I post on this platform has nothing to do with a ‘coastal commission’ in California,” he posted on X, the social media platform he bought in October 2022.

“Filing suit against them on Monday for violating the First Amendment.”

The dispute came ahead of the fifth test of a booster rocket for SpaceX’s Starship craft in Texas on Sunday, which successfully landed back on the launch pad after takeoff for the first time.

Mr Musk’s political views were not the sole reason that his application was rejected.

Commissioners also expressed concerns about the environmental impact of the launches, and the plan to treat SpaceX as a military contractor that would not be required to apply for licences for each launch in future.

SpaceX is working with Space Force, the branch of the US Air Force that deals with space travel and defence at Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles.

“I do believe that the Space Force has failed to establish that SpaceX is a part of the federal government, part of our defence,” said Dayna Bochco, one of the commissioners.

However, the significant political divide between the coastal authorities and Mr Musk has seemingly frustrated the process of increasing the number of SpaceX launches from the base.

The commissioners, who have been embroiled in a row with Mr Musk’s company for more than a year, are appointed by Gavin Newsom, the state’s governor, and California legislators.

In May 2023, the Pentagon requested to increase the number of SpaceX launches from Vandenberg from six to 36 per year.

The commission agreed to increase the limit for launches, but called for greater environmental protections to avoid disruption to beachgoers and snowy plovers, a protected species of bird.

The Pentagon agreed before Thursday’s meeting to increase environmental monitoring at the launch sites, and to take action to reduce the impact of sonic booms.

But the application was rejected after, among other things, the concerns raised about Mr Musk’s political tweets by Ms Newsom.

Mr Musk has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump during this election campaign, appearing beside him on stage at a recent rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In a live X “space” earlier this year, Trump suggested he may appoint Mr Musk as chairman of a federal watchdog to reduce government waste.

The family of the only fatality of the Salisbury Novichok poisonings have said “her voice must be heard” at the public inquiry into her death.

The judge-led inquiry will seek to establish how and why Ms Sturgess came to die in the Russian poison attack in 2018.

It will also seek to find out how the same nerve agent used against the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, came to be found by Ms Sturgess’ boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, several months later.

For her bereaved parents Stan and Caroline, and for her two sons and teenage daughter, the inquiry may finally begin to answer the questions that have hung over her death the past six years.

“What happened to Dawn was so, so sad. It was just awful,” her mother Caroline told The Telegraph. “It’s been so difficult.”

Still clearly struggling with her grief, Mrs Sturgess – a retired civil servant who lives a short drive from Mr Rowley’s home, where her daughter collapsed into a fatal coma – is reluctant to speak more openly about her daughter’s death before the public inquiry reaches its findings.

But she told The Telegraph: “It’s been so long and there are so many questions that still haven’t been answered. I just don’t know what I feel at the moment.”

Dawn had just begun to “turn a corner” in her life when tragedy struck.

After a run of problems with alcohol and relationships, she had finally found happiness and was preparing to move into her own flat, enjoying time with her three children and visiting Stonehenge.

Small bottle of scent

After spraying herself with what she thought was perfume from a small bottle of scent her boyfriend had found discarded on the ground, Ms Sturgess collapsed and began frothing at the mouth.

She died eight days later, never having regained consciousness.

The events that took Mr and Mrs Sturgess’ daughter began to unfold on 30 June 2018, some four months after the attack on the Skripals.

On March 4 that year Skripal and his daughter had been found unconscious on a public bench in the centre of Salisbury by the passing Chief Nursing Officer for the British Army and her daughter.

It quickly emerged that Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, had been the target of a botched assassination attempt by two Russian GRU officers, Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, who had travelled to the city posing as tourists wanting to see its “famous 123-metre spire and famous clock”.

Both Mr Skripal and his daughter survived the attack, but spent several weeks in hospital in a critical condition. They have since been given false identities and have started a new life in an unknown country.

A police officer, Nick Bailey, was also taken into intensive care after attending the incident, and was later discharged.

For days after the poisonings, military experts in chemical warfare defence and decontamination could be seen dressed in protective hazmat suits scouring the city, as a huge clean-up operation swung into action with the aim of finding every last trace of the Novichok smuggled into the country by the two Russian agents.

Even the park bench on which the Skripals had been found unconscious was removed by military personnel and taken away for examination, as every location visited by the pair after coming into contact with the nerve agent at their home was decontaminated, including the Mill pub and Zizzi’s Italian restaurant.

Then, just as the cathedral city had begun to recover from the terror wrought by the events of the previous few weeks, Ms Sturgess collapsed and died after applying what she thought was the scent Mr Rowley gave her.

Her boyfriend, who had endured his own struggles with substance abuse, is understood to have found the perfume dispenser now known to have contained Novichok in Queen Elizabeth Gardens, close to the centre of Salisbury. The pair then caught a bus to Mr Rowley’s home 11-miles away in Amesbury, where they both collapsed.

Tests on the bottle and its contents carried out by the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory at nearby Porton Down confirmed the substance contained within was Novichok.

Visiting their daughter at Salisbury District Hospital before she slipped away, Mr and Mrs Sturgess had to wear gloves and her mother was at one stage told by doctors not to touch her face to wipe away tears after having stroked her hair.

Once more Salisbury was plunged into the fear of the unknown. Just how much more Novichok remained out there?

Footfall in local shops dropped by thirty percent just as the city’s economy had been starting to recover from the fall out of the attack on the Skripals. Visitor numbers plunged once more and American coach parties stopped coming to the city after visiting Stonehenge.

Police issued warnings, admitting traces could still be present in Salisbury and urging residents and visitors not to pick up any discarded objects in the area.

In the end it appears that no more of the deadly nerve agent was found.

But troubling questions remained.

How could a contaminated bottle containing one of the most deadly nerve agents in existence have been overlooked in the supposedly fingertip search and clean up of the large parts of Ms Sturgess’ home town?

How could an innocent mother – described by her family as a “gentle hippy” – have become an accidental victim of a deadly Russian plot carried out on British soil to execute an enemy of the Putin regime?

How did the Russians discover that the Skripals had been given supposed safe refuge in Salisbury by the British government?

And what lessons can be learnt about the risk of another chemical weapons attack in this country?

Matthew Dean, a Wiltshire councillor who was head of Salisbury City Council during the Salisbury poisonings, said: “There was a great deal of shock at the time that this seemed to have happened again, that someone else had fallen victim to this poison.

Mr Dean added: “Thankfully we have recovered as a city from the overall economic impact of the attack, but a young mother was taken from her children and it was very, very sad.

“I hope for the sake of Dawn’s family that the inquiry finds some answers as to how and why she happened to come into contact with Novichok. I hope the inquiry will allow them to have some closure to the awful events of that time and allow them to move on.”

A vivacious, fun-loving woman

They are words echoed by Dawn’s maternal uncle, Shaun Rennie, also a retired civil servant, who says he hopes the inquiry will place his niece at the centre of its search for the truth and remember her as the vivacious, fun-loving woman she was.

“Oh Dawn, she was such great fun,” he said. “She had her problems, but she was overcoming all that. She was definitely turning a corner and it was so sad that she was taken away just then. Her children are coping, but they miss their mother tremendously.”

Mr Rennie added: “I hope Dawn’s voice will be heard at the inquiry. And I want to hear what the authorities believe happened and to explain what their response was to the situation. It left a real scar on people’s consciousness.

“But why has it taken six years to get to this point? We’ve only reached it because of the fight Stan and Caroline put up to get a public inquiry. They want some answers.”