A BBC presenter has accidentally sent an email to his co-host containing scathing criticism of her presenting ability.

Tony Livesey, a Radio 5 Live presenter, is said to be embroiled in a row with Clare McDonnell after sending her the message, which was meant for someone else.

The pair had presented the drivetime show together since February 2022, but have started alternating broadcast days.

Ms McDonnell, 57, has refused to work with her co-presenter since the debacle, according to The Sun.

‘She no longer wants to work with him’

A source told the newspaper: “Clare received a message from Tony basically slagging her off and she was livid.

“She no longer wants to work with him and that has caused total chaos at the station.

“People are being shifted all over the shop and into different slots, which isn’t going down well.

“Clare is well within her right to be angry, but it’s made the atmosphere at 5 Live really frosty. It has become a nightmare there.”

The BBC announced that it would be making changes to the presenting rota earlier this month but stopped short of explaining why.

Ms McDonnell hosted the drivetime slot with Johnny l’Anso on Monday and Tuesday, while Mr Livesey was on air alongside Leila Nathoo.

Meanwhile, Chris Warburton has been lined up to take over the drivetime slot from December, replacing Mr Livesey who will return to the 10pm-1am shift on which he started his 5 Live career in 2010.

‘Massive kick in the teeth’

The source added: “Tony has lost a really good gig because of that message to Clare. It’s a massive kick in the teeth for him.

“Clare is happy she was listened to by station bosses and thinks Tony has got exactly what he deserves.”

The email mishap comes after Laura Kuenssberg was forced to cancel an interview with Boris Johnson after accidentally sending him her briefing notes in advance.

The presenter had been preparing to interview the former Prime Minister for BBC One earlier this month when she sent him notes meant for colleagues “by mistake”.

Writing on X, she said: “While prepping to interview Boris Johnson tomorrow, by mistake I sent our briefing notes to him in a message meant for my team. That obviously means it’s not right for the interview to go ahead.

“It’s very frustrating, and there’s no point pretending it’s anything other than embarrassing and disappointing, as there are plenty of important questions to be asked.”

The BBC has emphasised that schedules are refreshed on all radio stations.

A boarding school teacher who sexually assaulted a student and possessed images of children being abused has avoided jail. 

Nick Baldock, who spent five years working at Lancing College near Worthing, West Sussex, touched a student’s bottom at an event in July 2022. 

Police then discovered that he had shared details of pupils in a group chat with other men sexually interested in children. 

The student was “shocked and confused” after being touched by the 46-year-old teacher, Hove Crown Court heard, and pretended at first that it had not happened. 

Following his arrest, Baldock’s devices were seized by officers who found indecent images of children that did not attend the school. 

They also discovered non-indecent images of Lancing College pupils that Baldock had shared along with sexualised comments. 

The court heard that the history teacher boasted about seeing students in their underwear on the group chat and said “every day is agony” about his position at the school. 

He also shared their Snapchat details with a man on WhatsApp, inviting him to add and then communicate with the children. 

At Baldock’s sentencing on Thursday, Judge David Rennie said: “Parents have ultimate responsibility for loving their children and keeping them safe from harm.

“Teachers have a similar burden of responsibility.

“You shattered that trust as you placed your own sexual gratification over that.

“You are or should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself,” he added. 

Baldock previously pleaded guilty to sexual assault, two counts of publishing an obscene article, three counts of knowingly disclosing personal data without consent and three counts of making indecent images of children. 

‘Troubled soul’

Barrister John Hunter, defending Baldock, described him as a “troubled soul” who devoted himself to his job and had no life outside of school.

He said Baldock had genuine remorse and was undergoing counselling to “deal with the demons within”.

Baldock sat in the dock holding prayer beads as he received a 12-month sentence suspended for two years and an eight-year harm prevention order. His family were present in the courtroom. 

Judge Rennie added: “You are drawn to images of children being sexually abused; these are not victimless crimes…you are watching young people being traumatised and they must try and cope for the rest of their lives. 

“Those images will always be out there.

“One referee refers to you holding a deep religious faith – what a strange way to show it.”

An American pilot accused of kidnapping, drugging and sexually assaulting a nine-year-old French girl told a court that his intention was to “keep her safe” – and that he “absolutely” regrets not calling the police sooner.

Robert Prussak, 57, is said to have approached the child outside of Harrods after she became separated from her family during their holiday in London.

It is alleged that he then took his victim to his hotel apartment and drugged her, before taking her to Hyde Park where he allegedly touched her chest and stomach and “looked inside her trousers”.

Nneka Akudolu KC, prosecuting, described the case to jurors as “every parent’s worst nightmare”.

Mr Prussak denies kidnapping, drugging and assaulting the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Jurors at Isleworth Crown Court on Friday heard that Mr Prussak, a dad of two, decided to approach the girl when he spotted her because he would have wanted someone to help his own daughters.

‘She seemed lost’

The pilot, who was previously a member of the US Airforce, said: “When I spotted her I thought she seemed lost because she was looking around – like she was searching for someone.

“But then I thought maybe she was waiting for someone inside the shop and so I walked on.

“But as I did I thought, what if she is lost – and needs help? My mind went straight to my daughters who are a few years older than her.

“I thought if my daughters were lost in a big city, I wouldn’t want them stuck there alone. I was reluctant to get involved.”

Mr Prussak explained to jurors that after speaking to the girl via a translation app on his phone, she told him that her family had been heading to a museum.

He said: “She told me they weren’t going shopping and were going to a museum.

“So I decided we should walk towards the Science or Natural History Museum – which I had passed on my way there.”

Asked by his barrister whether he would have done things differently now, Mr Prussak admitted: “In hindsight, knowing now that her parents were in Harrods, staying at that spot or going inside would have been the best solution.

“But at that point I was told they weren’t shopping so I thought I had to find the parents or the police.”

Pressed on what his intention was, Mr Prussak said: “To keep her safe and reunite her with her parents.”

Mr Prussak said that when they did not find the girl’s parents whilst walking towards the museum, he decided to return to his flat to search for police stations.

‘No direct route to police station’

He said: “I had found three police stations on Google Maps but there didn’t seem to be a direct route to any of them.

“It started raining and the rain was dropping on my phone so because my apartment was near, I thought it would be best to go there.”

Catherine Donnelly, defending, asked her client why he did not call the police.

Mr Prussak said: “I absolutely regret not calling the police sooner. I had never done it before and I didn’t know what response I would get.

“I was scared they would send in the cavalry and the ambulances and everything. I thought I could get there more efficiently.”

Mr Prussak told jurors that once inside the hotel apartment, he offered the girl a drink of water, which he took from the tap.

When she finished that glass, he poured her a second drink of water – this time from a bottle.

Ms Donnelly said: “The allegation in this case is you have taken Benadryl and put it in the water yourself. Did you do that?”

“No,” Mr Prussak said.

She continued: “The allegation is you did that with the intention of putting her to sleep or stupefying her. Did you do that?”

“No,” Mr Prussak said again.

Urine sample

Isleworth Crown Court heard earlier that a urine sample taken from the girl was found to contain Diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in the medication Benadryl.

In searches of the flat, a number of glasses containing a clear liquid were seized. They all tested negative for Benadryl, jurors were told.

Dr Paul Skett, a pharmacology expert, told the trial: “Benadryl is used as an antihistamine and as a sedative. It can be used for allergic reactions, such as hay fever, and to assist with the onset of sleep.

“Its side effects can include drowsiness, disturbances in attention, dizziness, headaches, convulsions, a dry mouth, nausea, and vomiting, among others.”

The court heard yesterday that the girl complained of a headache when Mr Prussak was arrested – and later vomited.

Mr Prussak told jurors that he sometimes takes Benadryl to help with blocked sinuses and had the medication with him while he was in London.

He started taking Benadryl the night before his arrest as he started feeling “stuffy”.

Earlier in his evidence, the court heard that Prussak first trained as a pilot after joining the military in 1997.

He remained a member of the US Airforce for 18-and-a-half years, and after retiring became a pilot for Walmart.

He then switched to become a “pilot for hire” at the beginning of 2024 to allow him to visit his daughters more following his divorce from his wife.

He had travelled to London in April for a job interview, the court heard.

The trial continues.

Kamala Harris’s career includes stints as attorney general of California, as a senator and now as vice-president. 

During this time, her political position has been fluid and she has not been tethered to an ideological wing of the party in the way that Joe Biden defined himself as a centrist.

Here is where Ms Harris stands on the most important issues ahead of the 2024 election.

Abortion

Abortion is one of the areas where the Democrats – and Ms Harris – are strongest. The vice-president has been the party’s leading voice on reproductive rights.

She has always been more comfortable talking about the topic than Mr Biden, who early in his career described Roe v Wade as going “too far”.

Ms Harris launched a nationwide “fight for reproductive freedoms” tour earlier this year as the party attempted to capitalise on the hot button topic ahead of the November election.

She is also understood to be the first US vice-president to have visited an abortion clinic, touring a Minnesota branch of Planned Parenthood in March.

During her unsuccessful campaign to be the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2020, she proposed going further than Roe v Wade. She called for states known to have violated abortion rights to require federal approval for any new abortion laws.

As well as voting in favour of abortion rights in the Senate, as California attorney general Ms Harris helped launch an investigation into anti-abortion activists who secretly filmed at Planned Parenthood branches.

Tax

Ms Harris’s previous policy proposals suggest she might be more progressive on tax than Mr Biden.

During her presidential campaign, she vowed to undo the 2017 tax cuts pushed through by Donald Trump during his administration, which she saw as a gift to the wealthy.

“Frankly, this economy is not working for working people,” Ms Harris said during a 2019 Democratic primary debate.

“For too long the rules have been written in the favour of the people who have the most and not in favour of the people who work the most.”

Mr Biden, however, vowed to lock the tax cuts in place for households earning under $400,000 (£310,000).

As a senator, Ms Harris also proposed giving tax credits to lower-income workers – up to $3,000 for individuals and $6,000 for married couples.

Other proposed policies included increasing estate taxes on the rich to pay for an average $13,500 rise in teachers’ salaries.

Ms Harris also wanted to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 per cent to 35 per cent, higher than the 28 per cent Mr Biden had proposed.

Ms Harris has been a supporter of the Biden administration’s economic policies, such as the 2021 American Rescue Plan and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Immigration

Ms Harris has been attacked relentlessly by Trump and other critics for her track record on immigration.

One of her tasks as vice-president has been to address the root causes of migration to the US from Latin America, prompting Republicans to brand her the “border tsar”.

Ms Harris received flak from progressive Democrats in 2021 for warning migrants not to come to the country.

“Do not come. Do not come. The US will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders,” Ms Harris said at a press conference alongside Alejandro Giammattei, Guatemalan president at the time.

“If you come to our border, you will be turned back,” she said.

Ms Harris was heavily criticised for not visiting the border itself at the start of her tenure.

When she finally did, in June 2021 she appeared to soften her approach, saying: “This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue. We’re talking about children, we’re talking about families, we are talking about suffering.”

Ms Harris backed the bipartisan border security deal that was blocked by Republican lawmakers.

“We are very clear, and I think most Americans are clear, that we have a broken immigration system and we need to fix it,” Ms Harris said in March.

While she was San Francisco district attorney, Ms Harris was in favour of a policy to turn over young migrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they had been arrested.

Israel

Ms Harris appears to be more willing to criticise Israel for its response to Hamas’s October 7 attack than Mr Biden.

The former senator has privately said that the Biden administration should take a stronger stance with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, according to Politico.

She was also one of the first leaders of the administration to call for an immediate temporary ceasefire in March, describing the conflict as a “human catastrophe”.

National Security Council officials reportedly had to tone down parts of Ms Harris’s speech.

The remarks she delivered included stating “people in Gaza are starving” and calling on Israel to “do more” to ensure the delivery of aid.

Her first draft was harsher on Israel, sources previously told NBC News, although a spokesman for Ms Harris denied these reports.

Officials who quit the Biden administration to protest against the White House response to the war in Gaza have said they are “cautiously optimistic” that Ms Harris would be willing to consider policy changes to protect Palestinians.

Josh Paul, a former State Department official involved with transferring arms to American allies, told Politico Ms Harris seemed less “fixed and intransigent” than Mr Biden on the issue.

Such an approach could help regain Democrat voters put off by Mr Biden’s response to the war in Gaza.

Ms Harris is a supporter of the two-state solution. Asked whether it was “achievable” at the Munich Security Conference this year, Ms Harris said: “The short answer is yes.”

Ukraine

Ms Harris is staunchly in favour of helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia.

She has met Volodymyr Zelensky six times and has appeared on the world stage in Mr Biden’s place at key gatherings on the war.

At the Summit for Peace in Ukraine in June she pledged her “unwavering commitment” and in each of her three addresses to the Munich Security Conference she said the US was committed to helping Kyiv defend itself.

She has said the US will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” and warned that a failure to supply weapons and resources to Ukraine would be a “gift” to Vladimir Putin.

This year she appeared to take a swipe at Trump and Republicans as she attacked people in the US who want to “isolate” the country, “embrace dictators” and “abandon commitments to our allies”.

“Let me be clear: That worldview is dangerous, destabilising, and indeed short-sighted,” she said.

Ms Harris attacked Trump during the election campaign for his claim that he would pull the US out of Nato.

“Donald Trump has embraced Putin,” she said at a North Carolina campaign event earlier this year.

She added: “It’s not just happening today. It’s been happening, as he, Trump, threatened to abandon Nato and encouraged Putin to invade our allies.”

Climate

Ms Harris has a progressive track record when it comes to climate issues.

“It is clear the clock is not just ticking, it is banging,” she said in a speech last year in reference to climate change.

Her 2020 presidential campaign climate pledges were more ambitious than Mr Biden’s – including a carbon tax, a ban on fracking and $10 trillion in private and public climate spending.

As a California senator, she proposed legislation to tie environmental rules to the impact on low-income communities and to create an office of climate and environmental justice accountability.

When standing in for Mr Biden at the Cop28 summit, Ms Harris said: “This is a pivotal moment. Our action collectively – or, worse, our inaction – will impact billions of people for decades to come.”

Jason Miller, a Trump campaign adviser, claimed one of Ms Harris’s weaknesses was she wanted to ban plastic straws.

In 2019, the then senator told a CNN climate change forum that plastic straws should be banned but called for innovation noting that it is “really difficult” to drink out of a paper version.

“If you don’t gulp it down immediately, it starts to bend, and then the little thing catches it,” Ms Harris said. “So, we gotta kind of perfect that one a little bit more.”

Guns

Ms Harris has been a vocal campaigner for tougher gun laws as vice-president.

She oversaw the White House office of gun violence prevention and, earlier this year, visited the site of the 2018 Parkland school shooting.

Before she joined the Biden campaign in 2020, she had called for a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks.

In 2022, she backed bipartisan gun safety laws to bring in tougher background checks on young gun owners, and red flag laws to make it easier to confiscate weapons.

“Our nation is being torn apart by the tragedy of it all and torn apart by the fear and trauma that results from gun violence,” she said in a September 2023 speech.

“President Biden and I believe in the second amendment, but we also know common-sense solutions are at hand,” she added.

Ms Harris said in 2019 she owned a gun “for personal safety”.

She said as a career prosecutor and when she was “dealing with dangerous criminals while serving as district attorney in San Francisco I felt compelled to have a handgun. After leaving that job I disposed of the weapon.”

During her presidential campaign it was reported that Ms Harris still owns a handgun for personal safety reasons. It is stowed away in a secure location at her California home, a White House source told Reuters.

During an interview with Oprah Winfrey in September, Ms Harris joked that any intruders to her home are “getting shot”.

Mr Biden previously said he owns two shotguns.

Donald Trump, having met the delegate threshold to become his party’s presumptive nominee, will face Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Mr Biden, 81, and his White House team initially attempted to frame the next presidential race as a choice between democracy and decency, and what they claim is Trump’s threat to America’s championing of “democracy and freedom”, both at home and abroad.

But the narrative flipped after the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13. Trump has since cast himself as a unifying figure, while Democrats faced criticism for inflammatory rhetoric over the “existential threat” he posed to America. 

In strict policy terms, Trump, 78, wants to make the contest a referendum on the Biden-Harris administration, focusing on the issues voters say concern them most: the economy, immigration, and law and order.

As part of his pitch, Trump has invited Americans to compare his record to Mr Biden’s, asking: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

However, Trump promises not just a return to the policies of his norm-shattering first term, but a highly detailed and ambitious platform for a second White House stint.

Mass deportations of illegal immigrants, a rethink of US foreign policy and an escalation of his trade wars are all on the agenda.

Trump has been less definitive on some major policy positions – for instance how he would fulfil his claim to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. 

‘Draining the swamp’

First and foremost Trump plans to test the power of the presidency beyond any of his predecessors.

Much of Trump’s sweeping plans start with a root-and-branch gutting of the US government, in particular using an executive order to replace thousands of career civil servants with political appointees.

New hires would have to pass a thorough vetting of their political ideology, as well as a civil service test of Trump’s own creation.

Large swathes of the Department of Justice, the FBI, would be done away with, while the Department of Education would be totally abolished.

‘Drill baby, drill’

Trump is fond of neatly summarising his own energy policy with the chant: “Drill, baby, drill”.

He has pledged to reverse Mr Biden’s shift towards green energy production by ending subsidies and restrictions on fossil fuel production by reopening land to extraction.

Trump has also voiced scepticism about electric vehicles, a key area of focus for Mr Biden, whose stated goal is to have “half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030” be zero-emission.

Mass deportations

Trump’s hardline immigration stance is a central plank of his campaign. As well as resuming construction of his flagship wall on the US-Mexico border, Trump has vowed to deploy US troops to wage “war” on Mexican cartels and launch the biggest deportation and border arrest programme in American history.

He intends to revive his travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries and implement “ideological screenings” for immigrants from other countries.

While some of these efforts were blocked in court during his first term, he would face a considerably more conservative Supreme Court in his second. This could be critical to his effort to end “birthright” citizenship – automatically granted to children born in the US under the Constitution.

Trade wars

Trump has floated the idea of implementing a 10 per cent tariff on all goods imported into the US. Nations that impose tariffs on US imports would face higher retaliatory tariffs.

Trade links with Beijing would be dramatically curtailed by phasing out Chinese electric, steel and pharmaceutical goods.

Chinese companies would also face “aggressive new restrictions” on their access to critical US infrastructure.

Crime

Trump has promised a tough-on-crime approach that includes going to war with progressive prosecutors in liberal areas.

The hardline stance would see an expansion of the use of the death penalty, including for human traffickers and drug dealers.

America First foreign policy

Trump’s “America First” approach would pull back on US defence pledges to its allies, particularly Nato, with the Republican suggesting that he would let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to members that don’t meet the alliance’s spending commitments.

He has opposed large funding packages to Ukraine, throwing into doubt Washington’s continued defence and diplomatic support for Kyiv, suggesting instead that he could forge a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the fighting.

Reproductive rights

While he has taken credit for the overturning of Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion by shaping the Supreme Court, which repealed Roe v Wade, Trump has been more moderate on abortion than many of his Republican colleagues.

After months of mixed messages, he outlined his position in a video announcement in April in which he declined to endorse a national abortion ban and said the restrictions on terminations should be left to each state to determine.

It would mean leaving in place near-total bans in some red states, while allowing California, New York and other liberal strongholds to leave in place strong protections for the procedure.

Trump has been circumspect about his own person view on what point in a pregnancy he believes that the line should be drawn for allowing abortions, but has backed exceptions to bans for rape, incest and severe medical emergencies.

The former president’s position has been criticised by his party’s conservatives, but Trump said his GOP critics should “proudly get on with helping Republicans to WIN ELECTIONS, rather than making it impossible for them to do so”.

He has said if he wins another term as president he will make in vitro fertilisation treatment free for Americans.

Healthcare

In office, Trump routinely vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the signature healthcare law passed by his predecessor, which has come to be known as “Obamacare”.

Trump repeatedly promised to replace it with a new system that he claimed would give Americans a better deal, but the details of the plan never materialised and a bid to repeal Obamacare faltered in a Republican-held senate during his first term.

He is once again promising to repeal and replace on the campaign trail, but it’s a tall order: Obamacare is more widely used now than it was in 2017.

Trump has also vowed to do more to strike better deals with pharmaceutical companies for medicines.

Things aren’t looking good for Kamala Harris. The Democrats have experienced a slump in polling and with just two weeks to go, Donald Trump is making gains in key swing states. 

Our experts see a significant shift, with three coming out in favour of the former president. But of course, polling can be wrong. 

• Latest presidential election polls: Harris v Trump

As Trump and Ms Harris embark on a final campaign blitz over the next fortnight, whether Trump can take it all the way – or whether the Harris camp can claw it back – remains to be seen.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently speaking to Republican pollsters and focus group conductors. The best in the business say they are fearful of making a prediction.

But it does appear that the electoral map favours Donald Trump at this stage. The former president’s numbers have risen and Ms Harris’s bounce has faded.

It is significant that Trump’s job approval ratings are now higher than at any point during his time in office.

As the veteran pollster Frank Luntz put it to me, Joe Biden and Ms Harris are suffering from their proximity to power, while Trump is benefiting from a nostalgia boost. 

Now that the Kamala bounce has faded, and since Trump served fries “without the salt touching human hands”, it feels as if the race has returned to its “toss-up” status. The Dems enjoy a lead in the popular vote. Trump maintains an advantage in the electoral college. It’s 2016 again.

Trump has the momentum in the final two weeks of the campaign. In the past month, he has halved the gap in the national polls between himself and Ms Harris. He now has the advantage in all the states needed to win an election.

But that momentum seems unlikely to push him comfortably ahead by election day. Any poll you see has a plus or minus of 3 per cent built in, making those tiny leads in swing states almost meaningless.

If I was a betting man, I would put my money on Trump. Pollsters have continuously underestimated his base. Kamala’s approval rating is starting to fall. The right groups are being targeted.

But I also wouldn’t bet a lot.

There are two weeks to go until election day, and the polls have hardly budged. That’s bad news for Ms Harris. I’ve been predicting a Trump victory for a long time – before he had been officially nominated as GOP candidate, even – and the continued toss-up status of the election feels like a (hubristic) vindication. 

Ms Harris has lost her new candidate polling bump, having failed to separate herself from a woefully unpopular incumbent and present a simple message of economic improvement. 

If reports are anything to go by, her swing state ground game is not producing the results such a lavishly funded operation should expect. We may come to ask ourselves just how many undecided voters were really undecided. 

Perhaps, sceptical of the still-untrusted Ms Harris and wishing for a return of the economic conditions of the late 2010s, they will feel that they have no choice but to hold their nose and vote Red.

There is no doubt that this election is on a knife-edge. But in the last few days, some polling data has emerged for the Harris campaign, which shows her flagging in battlegrounds she was odds-on to win just weeks ago. 

For the first time since before Joe Biden dropped out of this race, I now think that Donald Trump is more likely to win, fuelled by victories in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and possibly even Michigan.

Methodology

Our experts are asked to plot their decision on a scale of 100, where 0 is a Harris landslide, 50 is a tie and 100 is a Trump landslide.