Virginia Giuffre would have viewed Prince Andrew giving up his titles "as a victory", the ghostwriter of her posthumous memoir told BBC Newsnight.

The book, Nobody's Girl, co-written by Amy Wallace, details Ms Giuffre's encounters with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell - and more details of her allegations about Prince Andrew, which he has always denied.

In the memoir - released on Tuesday - Ms Giuffre described three occasions where she alleged Prince Andrew had sex with her.

Ms Wallace spent four years writing the book with Ms Giuffre, who took her own life almost six months ago.

In the book, Ms Giuffre said she had sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions. She says the third occasion was on Epstein's island as part of what Ms Giuffre called "an orgy" with Epstein and approximately eight other young women.

Prince Andrew, who reached a financial settlement with Ms Giuffre in 2022, announced on Friday that he was voluntarily deciding not to use his titles including the Duke of York, an honour received from his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.

He is also giving up membership of the Order of the Garter - the oldest and most senior order of chivalry in Britain.

But there are still calls for them to be formally removed.

Ms Wallace said: "I can speak for Virginia; I know that she would view it as a victory that he was forced, by whatever means, to voluntarily give them up."

She called it a "symbolic gesture" which has made "modern history in terms of the royal era", describing it as "a step in the right direction".

"Virginia wanted all the men who she had been trafficked to, against her will, to be held to account, and this is just one of the men.

"Even though he (Andrew) continues to deny it, his life is being eroded because of his past behaviour, as it should be," Ms Wallace said.

Ms Wallace went on to say there was a period when Prince Andrew "indicated he was willing to help investigators in the US" but he was "never available, for some reason".

"That's something he could still do. He could say, as he has repeatedly, 'I still deny that I was involved... however, I was in these houses and I was on that island and I was on the jet and I saw things, and I know how much these women have suffered and I would like to share what I saw," Ms Wallace said.

Ms Wallace said the private jets used by Epstein "had been remodelled in order to afford many bedrooms - they were designed as flying trafficking agents, they were there to use girls in".

She added: "Prince Andrew was on at least one of those jets that I know of, if not more.

"He has to take sort of the measure of his own moral compass - he said in his settlement with Virginia that he now acknowledges the pain that these women and young girls had suffered. If you really feel it, do something about it."

Speaking about Ms Giuffre, Ms Wallace said: "I'm sad and I'm honoured to be able to speak at least a little bit on her behalf to stand up for her.

"She wrote this book to try to help other people, to make the world a better place.

"She deserves all credit for whatever role she played in forcing Prince Andrew to relinquish a few more of his titles but she deserves all credit even more than that for being brave enough to stand up to say 'this isn't right'."

The memoir, which the BBC bought from a book store in central London days before its official release, paints a picture of a web of rich and powerful people abusing young women.

At the centre of the abuse was Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.

Ms Giuffre says that even decades later, she remembers how much she feared them both.

Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a person under the age of 18. He died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Nicolas Sarkozy will become the first French ex-president to go to jail, as he starts a five-year sentence for conspiring to fund his election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Not since World War Two Nazi collaborationist leader Philippe Pétain was jailed for treason in 1945 has any French ex-leader gone behind bars.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007-2012, has appealed against his jail term at La Santé prison, where he is will occupy a cell roughly measuring 9 sq m (95 sq ft) in the jail's isolation wing.

More than 100 people stood outside the jail, after his son Louis, 28, called on supporters for a show of support.

Another son, Pierre, called for a message of love - "nothing else, please".

Nicolas Sarkozy, 70, was due to arrive at 10:00 (08:00 GMT) at the infamous 19th-Century prison in the Montparnasse district south of the River Seine. He continues to protest his innocence in the highly controversial Libyan money affair.

Sarkozy has said he wants no special treatment at the notorious La Santé prison, although he has been put in the isolation section for his own safety as other inmates are notorious drugs dealers or have been convicted for terror offences.

Other than Philippe Pétain, the only other former French head of state to have been jailed was King Louis XVI before his execution in January 1793.

Inside his cell he will have a toilet, shower, desk and small TV. He will be allowed one hour a day for exercise, by himself.

At the end of last week he was received at the Élysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron, who told reporters on Monday "it was normal that on a human level I should receive one of my predecessors in that context".

In a further measure of official support for the ex-president, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he would go to visit him in prison as part of his role in ensuring Sarkozy's safety and the proper functioning of the jail.

"I cannot be insensitive to a man's distress," he added.

• Read more: Former French president Sarkozy given five-year sentence after Libya case

Ahead of his arrival at La Santé prison, Sarkozy gave a series of media interviews, telling La Tribune: "I'm not afraid of prison. I'll keep my head held high, including at the prison gates."

Sarkozy has always denied doing anything wrong in a case involving allegations that his 2007 presidential campaign was funded by millions of euros in Libyan cash.

The former centre-right leader was cleared of personally receiving the money but convicted of criminal association with two close aides, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, to talk to the Libyans about secret campaign financing.

The two men both had talks with Gadaffi's intelligence chief and brother-in-law in 2005, in a meeting arranged by a Franco-Lebanese intermediary called Ziad Tiakeddine, who died in Lebanon shortly before Sarkozy's conviction.

As he lodged an appeal, Sarkozy is still considered innocent but he has been told he must go to jail in view of the "exceptional seriousness of the facts".

Sarkozy said he would take two books with him into prison, a life of Jesus and the Count of Monte Christo, the story of a man wrongly imprisoned who escapes to wreak vengeance on his prosecutors.

US Vice-President JD Vance has arrived in Israel as part of the Trump administration's efforts to strengthen the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

He is expected to push the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to start negotiations on long-term issues for a permanent end to the war with Hamas.

The two special US envoys who helped negotiate the deal, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, also held talks with Netanyahu on Monday.

Their visits come after a flare-up of violence on Sunday that threatened to derail the 12-day-old truce. Israel said a Hamas attack killed two soldiers, triggering Israeli air strikes which killed dozens of Palestinians.

US President Donald Trump insisted on Monday that the ceasefire was still on track but also warned Hamas that it would be "eradicated" if it violated the deal.

Trump is said to have dispatched his deputy and envoys to Israel to keep up the momentum and push for the start of talks on the second critical phase of his 20-point Gaza peace plan.

It would involve setting up an interim government in the Palestinian territory, deploying an international stabilisation force, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, and disarmament of Hamas.

Vance, Witkoff and Kushner are also attempting to ensure the ceasefire deal, which is based on the first phase of the peace plan, does not collapse first.

The New York Times cited US officials as saying they were concerned that Israel's prime minister might "vacate" the deal and resume an all-out assault against Hamas.

Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament on Monday that he would discuss "security challenges" and "political opportunities" with Vance during his visit.

He also said Israeli forces had dropped 153 tonnes of bombs on Gaza in response to what he called a "blatant" breach of the ceasefire by Hamas on Sunday.

"One of our hands holds a weapon, the other hand is stretched out for peace," he said. "You make peace with the strong, not the weak. Today Israel is stronger than ever before."

The Israeli military blamed Hamas for an anti-tank missile attack on Sunday that killed two Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza and then carried out dozens of strikes across the territory which hospitals said killed at least 45 Palestinians.

Afterwards, the Israeli military said it was resuming enforcement of the ceasefire, while Hamas said it remained committed to the agreement.

However, four Palestinians were reportedly killed by Israeli fire east of Gaza City on Monday. The Israeli military said its troops fired towards " terrorists" who crossed the agreed-upon ceasefire line in the Shejaiya area.

Later, Trump told reporters at the White House: "We made a deal with Hamas that they're going to be very good. They're going to behave. They're going to be nice."

"If they're not, we're going to go and we're going to eradicate them, if we have to. They'll be eradicated, and they know that," he added.

Hamas's chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, who is in Cairo, meanwhile insisted that his group and other Palestinian factions were committed to the ceasefire deal and "determined to fully implement it until the end".

"What we heard from the mediators and the US president reassures us that the war in Gaza is over," he told Egypt's Al-Qahera News TV .

Hayya also said Hamas was serious about handing over the bodies of all the deceased hostages still in Gaza despite facing what he described as "extreme difficulty" in its efforts to recover them under rubble because of a lack of specialist equipment.

Overnight, Israeli authorities confirmed that Hamas had handed over the body of another deceased Israeli hostage to the Red Cross in Gaza.

The remains were identified as those of Tal Haimi, 41, who the Israeli military said was killed in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October, which triggered the war.

That means 13 of the 28 hostages' bodies held in Gaza when the ceasefire took effect on 10 October have so far been returned.

Twenty living Israeli hostages were also released last week in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.

There has been anger in Israel that Hamas has not yet returned all the dead hostages, with the Israeli prime minister's office saying that the group "was required to uphold its commitments".

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others as hostages.

At least 68,216 have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

She's the astronaut who smashed through the glass ceiling. And kept on going.

Eileen Collins made history as the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft - but despite her remarkable achievements, not everyone will know her name.

Now a feature-length documentary called Spacewoman, which chronicles her trailblazing career, looks set to change that.

We meet Collins at London's Science Museum. She's softly spoken, warm and very down to earth - but you quickly get a sense of her focus and determination. She clearly has inner steel.

"I was reading a magazine article on the Gemini astronauts. I was probably nine years old, and I thought that's the coolest thing. That's what I want to do," she says.

"Of course, there were no women astronauts back then. But I just thought, I'll be a lady astronaut."

But that little girl set her sights even higher - she wanted to be at the controls of a spacecraft.

And the only way to achieve this was to join the military and become a test pilot.

In the Air Force, she stood out from the crowd and was selected to join the astronaut programme. She was to fly Space Shuttles - Nasa's reusable "space planes".

She knew the eyes of the world were on her when her first mission launched in 1995.

"As the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle, I worked very hard at that because I didn't want people to say, 'Oh look, the woman has made a mistake'. Because it wasn't just about me, it was about the women to follow me," she says.

"And I wanted there to be a reputation for women pilots that was: 'Hey, they're really good'."

She was so good in fact that she was soon promoted to commander, in another space first.

Collins was also a parent to two young children. The fact that she was a working wife and mother was frequently brought up in press conferences at the time, with some journalists seemingly astonished that she could be both.

But Collins says being a mum and a commander were "the two best jobs in the world".

"But I'm going to tell you it is harder to be a parent than to be a space shuttle commander," she laughs.

"The best training I ever had for being a commander was being a parent - because you have to learn how to say no to people."

Nasa's Space Shuttles, which flew for three decades, reached breathtaking highs, but also some terrible lows.

In 1986, the Challenger spacecraft suffered a catastrophic failure seconds after launching, killing all seven crew members on board.

And in 2003, the Columbia shuttle broke up in the skies over Texas at the end of its mission, killing its crew of seven as well.

A piece of insulating foam on Columbia's fuel tank broke loose during launch, damaging the heat shield with devastating results.

Columbia was unable to withstand the fiery re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, disintegrating as the world watched on in horror.

Collins shakes her head at the memory of the disaster, and of the friends whose lives were lost.

But with her job as commander, she had to pick up the mantle - she was to be in charge of the shuttle's following flight.

Did she think about quitting at that point?

"People throughout the shuttle programme were counting on the commander to stick with it," she says quietly.

"I think quitting the mission would have been the opposite of brave… and I wanted to be a brave leader. I wanted to be a confident leader. I wanted to instill that confidence in other people."

But when her mission finally took to the skies in 2005, the nightmare scenario happened again. A chunk of foam broke away during launch.

This time, though, there was a plan in place to check the damage. But it meant undertaking one of the riskiest maneuvers in space history.

Collins had to pilot the shuttle through a 360 degree flip while flying beneath the International Space Station. It allowed colleagues on the orbiting lab to photograph the craft's underside and check if the heatshield had been breached.

"There were engineers and managers saying it couldn't be done, all these reasons why it was too dangerous," she says.

"I listened to the discussion, they knew I was the commander, and I said: 'It sounds like we can do it'."

With her hands steady at the controls, her voice calm as she spoke to mission control, Collins piloted the craft through a slow, graceful somersault. With the shuttle's underside now visible, the damage was quickly spotted - and a spacewalk was carried out to repair it.

It meant Collins and her crew would make it safely home.

This was Collins's last flight. She tells us that she always planned to stop after her fourth mission - to give others a chance to go to space.

And she's watched plenty of astronauts follow in her footsteps. Does she have any advice for the next generation dreaming of the stars?

"Do your homework, listen to your teacher, pay attention in class and read books, and that will give you something to focus on," she says in a matter-of-fact way.

Those who follow Collins to space will learn just how much she achieved, not only as a woman, but as a formidable pilot and commander.

She says she has no regrets about bringing her astronaut career to an end. She made her decision and didn't look back. But there's still a wistful look in her eye when we ask if she'd be tempted if a seat on a spacecraft became free.

"Yes, I would love to go on a mission someday. When I'm an old lady, maybe I'll get a chance to go back in space."

I first met Nicholas Rossi - or Arthur Knight, as he insisted on being called - in February 2022 in a corridor at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

He was there to fight extradition to the US, where he has now been jailed for rape.

Sitting in his electric wheelchair, dressed in a three-piece suit and sporting a wide brimmed hat, the raspy voice behind the oxygen mask was telling anyone who would listen that this was all a terrible misunderstanding.

His hands, meanwhile, were hoovering up reporters' business cards.

Rossi's departure that day set the tone for what became a familiar scene - a slapstick performance in front of the cameras during which he tipped his wheelchair onto the pavement while trying to manoeuvre into a waiting taxi.

Later that evening an unknown number flashed up on my mobile phone and I heard that same raspy voice.

"Hello Steven, it's Arthur… do you have a minute?"

And so began an exercise in separating fact from fiction that lasted more than three years, which I explored in a podcast as part of the Strange But True Crime series on BBC Sounds.

The name Nicholas Rossi first came to wider attention in December 2021 when he was arrested on the Covid ward of a Glasgow hospital.

Staff had recognised his mugshot and distinctive tattoos from an Interpol wanted notice.

The problem for the American authorities was that the man they were seeking to extradite swore blind he was the victim of mistaken identity.

He claimed he was Arthur Knight, an Irish-born orphan who had never been to America - and said he could prove it.

A couple of weeks after our first phone-call, "Arthur" was sitting opposite me in a BBC studio, his wife Miranda by his side, telling his tale for the cameras.

He said he grew up in care in Dublin and escaped to London as a teenager. There, he sold books with his friends at Camden market, like Del Boy from the comedy Only Fools and Horses.

Years later he married Miranda in Bristol before they moved to Glasgow. He showed me their marriage certificate - accompanied by a special licence from the Anglican Church, because "I wouldn't lie to the Archbishop of Canterbury".

What he couldn't produce was a birth certificate. Or a passport.

He was vague about his schooldays and couldn't say what happened to his old friends.

At times the conversation veered as wildly as his accent – from claims he survived the London Tube bombing (he got the date wrong) to a story about once meeting Del Boy's sidekick Rodney.

He repeatedly denied being Nicholas Rossi, but when I asked about tattoos he said he was "too tired" to show me his arms.

It was a surreal, unconvincing performance that was being watched across the Atlantic by plenty of people who recognised the main character.

"I'd know those hands anywhere," Mary Grebinski later told me.

She'd been a college student in 2008 when Nicholas Rossi sexually assaulted her on the way to class. He was convicted and placed on the sex offenders register.

In Dayton, Ohio – the city where that attack happened – I also spoke to Rossi's ex-wife.

Kathryn Heckendorn said she had bought him the red silk pyjamas "Arthur" had been filmed wearing outside court.

Their unhappy marriage lasted eight months. The judge who granted their divorce in 2016 said Rossi was guilty of "gross neglect of duty and cruelty" on account of his abusive behaviour.

Conversations like this helped fill in the blanks.

Nicholas Rossi was born Nicholas Alahverdian in 1987. Rossi was the name of his stepfather, who at the time was Rhode Island's premiere Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator.

As a teenager he spent time in care and, years later, enjoyed a degree of local fame as a child welfare campaigner.

When reports of Alahverdian's death emerged in 2020, politicians paid tribute from the floor of the Rhode Island State House.

According to an online obituary his last words were: "Fear not and run towards the bliss of the sun."

But it didn't take long for this deception to begin unravelling.

A priest who had been asked to arrange a memorial mass was warned by a detective not to go ahead because "Nicholas isn't dead".

Instead, the authorities suspected Rossi was somewhere in the UK, having fled after discovering that the FBI were investigating an alleged credit card fraud.

It was his online footprint that ultimately led police to his hospital bedside in Glasgow – ironically as the fugitive was recovering from a genuine near-death experience in the shape of Covid.

At one of his early extradition hearings the sheriff commented that advancing the case shouldn't be "rocket science".

But the legal process dragged on and on – in large part due to Rossi's antics.

There were rambling courtroom monologues, questionable medical episodes and theatrical outbursts which were often directed at his own lawyers as a prelude to sacking them.

Sitting in the public gallery, it was rarely dull. Rossi's claim that a corrupt hospital employee called Patrick tattooed him while he was in a coma was one of the more memorable exchanges.

In the end the sheriff's conclusion was that the Arthur Knight charade was "implausible" and "fanciful".

And yet Rossi stuck to his story – even as his extradition was approved and High Court judges refused his appeal.

He stuck to his story as US Marshals bundled him onto a private jet and as prison guards booked him into the Utah County jail.

He stuck to his story in a Utah courtroom, until suddenly he didn't.

In October last year I tuned in to a routine bail hearing online when, without warning, the posh English persona disappeared.

Speaking in a clear American accent he told the judge he was born Nicholas Alahverdian before his name changed to Rossi.

As he claimed to have hidden his identity to escape "death threats", I found myself wondering why he'd chosen that specific moment for the mask to slip.

The intrigue and farce had been stripped away, but serious allegations remained.

He stood trial in two separate cases, accused of raping two women in 2008 in Salt Lake County and Utah County.

Those juries both returned guilty verdicts.

The judge in Salt Lake City described Rossi as a "serial abuser of women" and ordered him to serve between five years and life in prison.

He will be sentenced in the second case next month.

A lengthy court saga which has spanned continents will now end with Rossi serving a lengthy sentence in a US jail.

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The Business Secretary has insisted the government is making it easier for businesses by reducing red tape.

Peter Kyle defended Labour's approach to business, telling the BBC it will implement changes in a way that is "pro-worker and pro-business".

Ahead of next month's Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is launching a "crackdown on needless form-filling" for businesses at the first-ever Regional Investment Summit in Birmingham.

The government has been criticised by firms who say increased employers' National Insurance contributions and the Employment Rights Bill add to the burdens facing businesses.

The Chancellor will say at the Birmingham summit on Tuesday that the changes will save firms almost £6bn a year.

New, "simpler corporate rules" will remove requirements for small businesses to submit lengthy reports to Companies House, the Treasury said.

The changes will apply to over 100,000 firms such as family-run cafes.

The measures could include temporary exemptions for new AI software from regulation, Kyle told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"In certain circumstances when new AI technology is being developed, we can remove it from all regulation for a period of time to give it the space to really grow, to develop, to be commercialised really rapidly," he said.

This, he said, would enable the tech to be used "to benefit the health, the wealth, the education of our nations".

"We'll use that in a very targeted, a very safe way."

The government has pledged to reduce the administrative cost of regulation by a quarter by the end of this Parliament.

Kyle said the previous government "did not do enough on deregulation" despite pledging to do so, particularly after Brexit.

"If you look at some of the reporting that needs to be done by directors, for example, directors' reports to Companies House, I'm eliminating a great deal of that today because some of it is just so unnecessary," he said.

But pushed on whether the government's changes to employment rights would add costs to businesses, Kyle insisted that the changes would be fair for both employers and employees.

"We are making sure that the rights and responsibilities that people have in the workplace as employers and as employees [are] right for the age we're living in."

Jane Gratton, the deputy director of public policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, said the plans will be welcomed by businesses.

"The burden of unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy ramps up their costs and damages competitiveness," she said.

But the Liberal Democrats' Deputy leader Daisy Cooper said that if the government wants to reduce red tape they should pursue an EU-UK customs union.

"If the Chancellor was serious about cutting red tape she would tackle the mind-blowing two billion extra pieces of business paperwork created by Brexit by pursuing an ambitious tailor-made UK-EU customs union," she said.

Buckingham Palace may have hoped that Prince Andrew giving up his titles might decisively draw a line under the scandals - but the problems for the Palace show no sign of going away.

It seemed that it was the public's outcry that forced the Palace to recognise that something had to be done, before Andrew was pushed into giving up titles such as the Duke of York.

That raises questions about whether the Palace should have acted sooner in responding to events involving Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein that happened many years ago.

Royal sources say the accusations against Andrew are being treated with "very great concern and should be examined in the appropriate ways to the fullest extent".

Prince Andrew stopped being a working royal in 2019 - and as such Buckingham Palace has not been accountable for him in recent years.

But the era under scrutiny, from the late-1990s until Prince Andrew's BBC Newsnight interview in 2019, was when he was a working royal - and for a decade he was a government trade representative.

And with more evidence emerging from that era, such as damaging emails showing links between Andrew and Epstein, it raises questions about what royal officials and government departments might have known at the time and what information might still be held.

Did the Palace ever challenge the prince over his account of events in that Newsnight interview?

It included the claim that Prince Andrew had cut off any contact with Jeffrey Epstein after their meeting in New York in December 2010. But emails have since emerged showing that Andrew had been in private contact with Epstein months later, with a promise to "play some more soon".

About his accuser Virginia Giuffre, Andrew said he had "no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever". But documents that emerged at the weekend suggested he had Ms Giuffre's social security number and was asking the police for personal information about her.

It's a claim that the Metropolitan Police is now looking into, with the support of Buckingham Palace.

Prince Andrew has consistently denied any wrongdoing involving Ms Giuffre.

Much of the recent scandal around Prince Andrew has come from the discovery of old emails, including from trawls of Epstein documents in the US.

It remains to be seen whether there will be any release of Epstein-related records in the UK, including from the Royal Household, whose staff would once have worked and travelled with Andrew, when he was moving in the circle of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Ms Giuffre's description of meeting Prince Andrew in London included references to his security guards. What records are there of their movements, which might still be held by the police?

There are also unanswered questions about Prince Andrew's finances. He no longer has financial support from his brother King Charles, but still has to fund the upkeep of his home at Royal Lodge in Windsor.

His connections with business deals with China, including a contact accused of being a Chinese spy, were never fully explained, even though court documents revealed details such as Prince Andrew sending birthday cards each year to the Chinese President Xi Jinping and privately meeting the Chinese ambassador.

These questions returned last week when pictures emerged of Prince Andrew with a senior Chinese politician who had been a central figure in the collapsed Chinese spy trial.

Has there been an institutional lack of curiosity, or a misplaced deference, in finding out about Andrew's activities?

The era under discussion took place under the previous reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Is the current team at the Palace now having to face up to changing expectations over transparency?

It was a dramatic announcement last Friday evening that saw Prince Andrew giving up titles such as Duke of York and honours such as the Order of the Garter. But it was in a statement that showed little contrition and emphasised his innocence.

That's prompted challenges about whether the sanction against Prince Andrew has gone far enough. Prince Andrew has agreed not use titles such as the Duke of York, but he still technically holds them.

Keeping this as a voluntary decision kept it within the Royal Family. But there have been calls for Parliament to play a bigger role in holding the royals to account.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell wants to change the law so Andrew's titles could be completely removed. The SNP's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn says there was "no justification" for Parliament not to make this move to strip Andrew of his titles.

The House of Commons Library, in a new document published on Monday, shows Parliament could go a step further and remove Prince Andrew from the line of succession to the throne, if it had the agreement of the Commonwealth realms. Edward VIII had been removed from the succession when he abdicated in 1936.

King Charles could also remove Andrew's status as prince, using a legal document called Letters Patent, which would leave him as Mr Andrew Windsor.

But a royal source says that the actions taken showed that the Palace had acted "swiftly and robustly on new email evidence which emerged" and this approach had avoided using up valuable parliamentary time.

The Palace will support the police who are looking into the recent allegations and sources say the focus shouldn't be on PR battles or questions about reputation, but should be on Epstein's victims and the "whole network of girls and young women who were abused and treated appallingly".

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Nicolas Sarkozy will become the first French ex-president to go to jail, as he starts a five-year sentence for conspiring to fund his election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Not since World War Two Nazi collaborationist leader Philippe Pétain was jailed for treason in 1945 has any French ex-leader gone behind bars.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007-2012, has appealed against his jail term at La Santé prison, where he is will occupy a cell roughly measuring 9 sq m (95 sq ft) in the jail's isolation wing.

More than 100 people stood outside the jail, after his son Louis, 28, called on supporters for a show of support.

Another son, Pierre, called for a message of love - "nothing else, please".

Nicolas Sarkozy, 70, was due to arrive at 10:00 (08:00 GMT) at the infamous 19th-Century prison in the Montparnasse district south of the River Seine. He continues to protest his innocence in the highly controversial Libyan money affair.

Sarkozy has said he wants no special treatment at the notorious La Santé prison, although he has been put in the isolation section for his own safety as other inmates are notorious drugs dealers or have been convicted for terror offences.

Other than Philippe Pétain, the only other former French head of state to have been jailed was King Louis XVI before his execution in January 1793.

Inside his cell he will have a toilet, shower, desk and small TV. He will be allowed one hour a day for exercise, by himself.

At the end of last week he was received at the Élysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron, who told reporters on Monday "it was normal that on a human level I should receive one of my predecessors in that context".

In a further measure of official support for the ex-president, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he would go to visit him in prison as part of his role in ensuring Sarkozy's safety and the proper functioning of the jail.

"I cannot be insensitive to a man's distress," he added.

• Read more: Former French president Sarkozy given five-year sentence after Libya case

Ahead of his arrival at La Santé prison, Sarkozy gave a series of media interviews, telling La Tribune: "I'm not afraid of prison. I'll keep my head held high, including at the prison gates."

Sarkozy has always denied doing anything wrong in a case involving allegations that his 2007 presidential campaign was funded by millions of euros in Libyan cash.

The former centre-right leader was cleared of personally receiving the money but convicted of criminal association with two close aides, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, to talk to the Libyans about secret campaign financing.

The two men both had talks with Gadaffi's intelligence chief and brother-in-law in 2005, in a meeting arranged by a Franco-Lebanese intermediary called Ziad Tiakeddine, who died in Lebanon shortly before Sarkozy's conviction.

As he lodged an appeal, Sarkozy is still considered innocent but he has been told he must go to jail in view of the "exceptional seriousness of the facts".

Sarkozy said he would take two books with him into prison, a life of Jesus and the Count of Monte Christo, the story of a man wrongly imprisoned who escapes to wreak vengeance on his prosecutors.

Sanae Takaichi has been elected Japan's prime minister by parliament, making her the first woman to hold the office.

The 64-year-old won a clear majority on Monday - 237 votes in the powerful Lower House and another 125 in the Upper House - as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

A staunch conservative and admirer of the late former British PM Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi takes over at a challenging economic moment as Japan grapples with rising cost-of-living and a frustrated public.

It's also been an uncertain time for the world's fourth-largest economy. She is the fourth PM in just five years, after her predecessors' terms were cut short by plunging ratings and scandals.

Although she defeated four men to win the LDP race in early October, her path to the top job appeared to be blocked when the LDP's long-time coalition partner, the Komeito party, withdrew support.

But a last-minute deal on Monday night with another opposition party - the right- leaning Japan Innovation Party (JIP), known as Ishin - saved her. She and the LDP will face voters next in 2028.

Meanwhile aside from domestic challenges, she faces tricky relationships abroad. South Korea, which had started to mend historically delicate ties with Japan, is wary because of her right-wing politics, which lean nationalist. And, like some of her predecessors, including the late former PM Shinzo Abe, she is seen as hawkish when it comes to an increasingly powerful China.

But the most important relationship is with the US and a test is around the corner - a meeting with US President Donald Trump next week.

While both sides have reached a tariff deal, Trump's past comments questioning the value of a security treaty between them and demanding Tokyo pay more for defence have raised concerns - Takaichi must navigate these alongside an unpredictable US administration.

At the age of 64, Takaichi is no stranger to Japanese politics.

A known ally of Abe, she has held several ministerial roles over her career and has run for the PM job before.

She was elected LDP leader after former PM and LDP leader Shigeru Ishiba resigned following major losses in midterm elections.

Nicknamed the "Iron Lady" for her admiration of Thatcher, Takaichi is known for conservative views, including her opposition to same-sex marriage and a growing demand to allow married women to keep their maiden surnames.

This has made some young women sceptical of the significance of her win.

"Everyone's like, 'Wow, she's the first female prime minister in Japanese history and that's a great opportunity for women's empowerment'," said 21-year-old student Ayda Ogura.

"[But] if you look into her political beliefs and what she stands for, you realise that some of the things are very traditional. Instead of creating structural change, she rather perpetuates the patriarchal system."

During her recent campaign she proposed expanded hospital services for women's health and giving household support workers greater recognition.

She still has a major task ahead of her - to rebuild the trust of the public in the LDP.

The party has governed Japan for most of the past seven decades, but under Ishiba it lost its majority in the lower house for the first time in 15 years. Then it lost its majority in the upper house in July, amid public anger after a fundraising scandal.

In electing Takaichi, the LDP had hoped to win back conservative voters, many of whom had gravitated towards the far-right Sanseito party after being disillusioned with the usual options.

But first Takaichi has to turn her attention to public anger as prices continue to soar. An ongoing rice shortage, for example, has resulted in record prices for the Japanese staple.

Local media are reporting that she may apppoint Satsuki Katayama as finance minister, yet another historic first for a woman. Like Takaichi, Katayama too is a protege of Abe.

While concern over Japan's rising debt and lacklustre growth has been worrying investors, her win seemed to offer some optimism to the markets.

French police are desperate to retrieve priceless jewels stolen from the Louvre in a brazen daylight robbery, but experts have warned it may already be too late to save them.

In Paris on Sunday, thieves broke into the world's most-visited museum, stealing eight valued items before escaping on scooters, in a daring heist that took about eight minutes.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC he feared the jewels may already be "long gone", having been broken up into hundreds of parts.

It is highly likely the pieces will be sold for a fraction of their worth and smuggled out of France, other experts have said.

Who may be behind the heist

The group were professionals, Mr Brand believes, as demonstrated by the fact they were in and out of the Louvre so quickly.

"You know, as a normal person, you don't wake up in the morning thinking, I will become a burglar, let's start with the Louvre," he said.

"This won't be their first heist," he said. "They have done things before, other burglaries. They are confident and they thought, we might get away with this, and went for it."

In another sign the professionalism of the gang is being taken seriously, a specialist police unit with a "high success rate in cracking high-profile robberies" has been tasked with tracking them down.

Authorities have said they suspect the heist is linked to an organised crime network. Mr Brand says it means the perpetrators will likely have criminal records and be known to the police.

Organised crime groups like these generally have two objectives, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said. "Either to act for the benefit of a sponsor, or to obtain precious stones to carry out money laundering operations."

Mr Brand thinks it would be impossible to sell the items intact, and he said stealing-to-order for a private collector is something that only happens in Hollywood films.

"Nobody wants to touch a piece so hot," he explained. "You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children, you cannot sell it."

Potential £10m price tag

Mr Brand believes the objects will be dismantled and broken up, with the gold and silver melted down and the gems cut up into smaller stones that will be virtually impossible to track back to the Louvre robbery.

Jewellery historian Carol Woolton, who presents the podcast If Jewels Could Talk and was Vogue magazine's jewellery editor for 20 years, told the BBC the robbers had "cherry-picked" the most important gemstones from the Louvre's collection.

The "beautiful large flawless stones" would likely be dug out of their mountings and sold, she said, except for the crown from Empress Eugénie which has smaller stones set in it and was "too hot to handle", she added.

This could explain why it was dropped during the escape, along with one other item, and found by authorities.

Empress Eugenie's tiara, which was stolen, has rare natural pearls which have a very large value, experts say.

While the items have been described as being priceless, Ms Woolton expects them to be sold for a fraction of their worth.

"They will go to someone who is willing to handle these," she said. "Everyone will be looking for these – they will take what they can get."

How much exactly could they fetch in money if sold on? When asked about the potential value of the haul, Mr Brand said the cut-up parts could be worth "many millions".

The gems and gold stolen could fetch up to £10 million (€11.52m; $13.4m), says Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, an online jeweller.

He told the BBC the gang would need a skilled expert to remove the gems, and a professional diamond cutter to change the larger recognisable stones.

Smaller stones that were not easily identifiable could be sold immediately and while it was hard to tell the exact price of all the stones stolen, the larger ones could be worth around £500,000 each, he said.

"There are at least four of that size, so adding all of those up plus the gold, you are probably approaching £10m," he said.

"The diamond and gemstone market is liquid and there are many buyers on the fringes that don't ask too many questions."

There are hopes that the items could reappear intact one day - but those hopes are narrowing as the days pass.

There is a precedent - the Cartier exhibition at the V&A Museum features an item of jewellery stolen in 1948 before reappearing in an auction several decades later.

What is certain is many in France are deeply shocked by the Louvre heist, having felt an emotional attachment to the jewels.

"We don't necessarily like jewellery because it's a question of power, and that doesn't necessarily have a good connotation in France," Alexandre Leger, head of heritage at French jeweller Maison Vever, said.

"But inevitably, what was stolen belonged as much to you as it did to me. It belongs to France, so everyone owns a little piece of these objects, just as everyone owns a little piece of the Mona Lisa.

"It's as if someone had stolen the Mona Lisa from us... Someone stole France."

Additional reporting by Izumi Yoneyama.

US chess grandmaster and online commentator Daniel Naroditsky has died aged 29.

The popular chess player's family announced his "unexpected" death in a statement released by his club, the Charlotte Chess Center, on Monday. No cause of death was given.

"It is with great sadness that we share the unexpected passing of Daniel Naroditsky," the statement said. "Daniel was a talented chess player, commentator and educator, and a cherished member of the chess community, admired and respected by fans and players around the world."

The US and International chess federations have paid tribute to Naroditsky, along with other professional players.

American world number two Hikaru Nakamura said he was "devastated" at the news.

"This is a massive loss for the world of chess," Nakamura said in a social media post.

Naroditsky first took an interest in chess at the age of six, when his older brother Alan introduced him to the game to help entertain a group of children at a birthday party.

His father Vladimir and multiple coaches soon noticed his talents.

"As far as I was concerned, I was just playing games with my brother," Naroditsky told the New York Times in a 2022 interview.

He gained international attention in 2007 when he won the under-12 boys world youth championship in Antalya, Turkey. In 2010, at the age of 14, he became one of the youngest ever published chess authors when he wrote a book titled Mastering Positional Chess, covering practical skills and technical manoeuvrings.

In 2013 Naroditsky won the US Junior Championship, helping him earn the title of grandmaster, the international chess federation's highest-ranked chess competitor, while he was still a teenager.

Naroditsky later graduated from Stanford University and worked as a chess coach in Charlotte, North Carolina.

While still competing in high-level events, he transferred his talents to the online chess universe.

Naroditsky's YouTube channel gained nearly 500,000 subscribers and his Twitch stream drummed up 340,000 followers, with hundreds of thousands of viewers drawn to his regular video tutorials and livestreams against competitors. Fans praised his insight and passion, casually referring to him as 'Danya'.

In 2022 the New York Times named Naroditsky as its "new chess columnist" and invited him to contribute to a series of chess puzzles for the newspaper's games section.

In the publication's accompanying interview, the young grandmaster mused on chess's influence in his life.

"Even at my level, I can still discover beautiful things about the game every single time I train, teach, play or am a commentator at a tournament," he said.

An abuse victim has resigned from the panel overseeing the national inquiry into grooming gangs, over fears of a conflict of interest with two potential chairs.

Fiona Goddard, who was abused by gangs of men while living in a children's home in Bradford, said she was failed "multiple times" by social services and police.

She has left the victims and survivors liaison panel, citing concerns over the candidates shortlisted to chair the inquiry, one of whom is reportedly a former police chief and the other a social worker.

The Home Office said it was "committed to delivering a robust, thorough inquiry that will get to the truth and provide the answers that survivors have so long campaigned for".

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced in the summer there would be a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, covering England and Wales, with Ms Goddard joining the panel overseeing the process.

But in a letter of resignation, she said another reason for leaving was the "condescending and controlling language used towards survivors".

"This inquiry is supposed to be a public process and should have been conducted openly and transparently from the start," she said.

"Survivors' anonymity is obviously of utmost importance and they should be secure in knowing their personal details and opinions are confidential.

"The dynamics of this inquiry, including potential chairs and progress, should have been conducted openly and honestly by the government, and survivors should have had the choice to voice their opinions if they decided to."

Ms Goddard said instead, there was "secretive conduct" and "conditions imposed on survivors has led to a toxic, fearful environment".

She said of the selection of the potential chairs: "One has a background in policing and the other, a social worker.

"The very two services that contributed most to the cover-up of the national mass rape and trafficking of children."

She said it was a "disturbing conflict of interest".

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The abuse of children by grooming gangs is one of the most horrific crimes imaginable.

"Any suggestion that this inquiry is being watered down is completely wrong - we are committed to delivering a robust, thorough inquiry that will get to the truth and provide the answers that survivors have so long campaigned for."

They added: "We are working urgently to appoint the best chair to take forward this work and deliver justice, putting victims and survivors at the heart of the process.

"We are grateful to all those who have shared their insights with us.

"We share the concerns around unhelpful speculation while this process is live - which is why we will not be providing a running commentary."

Ms Goddard was one of two girls who were abused in 2008 while they lived at a children's home.

The abuse came to light in 2014, when she saw a report on the grooming and the sexual abuse of hundreds of young girls in Rotherham, and contacted the BBC.

She gave evidence at a trial in 2019 which led to nine men who abused her as a child being jailed.

The nine were convicted of 22 offences including rape and inciting child prostitution and Ms Goddard waived her right to anonymity to speak to the press.

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

A US man who faked his death and fled to Scotland after being accused of rape has been jailed for at least five years.

Nicholas Rossi, 38, of Rhode Island, was convicted in separate trials in August and September of raping two women in Utah in 2008.

On Monday, a judge in Salt Lake City sentenced him to five years to life for the first conviction. He is due to be sentenced for the second conviction next month.

Before sentencing, Judge Barry G Lawrence described Rossi as a "serial abuser of women" and said he was the "very definition of a flight risk".

• How the mask slipped during Nicholas Rossi's court saga

"He fled the country to avoid investigation. He took on an alias and, even in response to this case, refused to admit who he was," the judge said.

An online obituary posted in February 2020 said Rossi, who was born Nicholas Alahverdian, had died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

He then came to wider attention in December 2021 when he was arrested on the Covid ward of a Glasgow hospital. Staff recognised his mugshot and distinctive tattoos from an Interpol wanted notice.

Rossi claimed that his name was Arthur Knight - an Irish-born orphan who had never been to the US.

He made a series of bizarre court appearances in Scotland - in a wheelchair, wearing a three-piece suit and an oxygen mask, maintaining his claim of mistaken identity.

He was extradited to the US in January 2024 and put on trial in Utah for two separate charges of rape.

The saga from Glasgow to Salt Lake City was documented in the BBC's Strange But True Crime podcast.

Utah has an indeterminate sentencing, meaning it is given in a range of years rather than a fixed number. The judge said it was up to the state's board of pardons and parole to determine how long he should be jailed.

Shortly before sentencing, one victim said Rossi had left a "trail of fear, pain and destruction" behind him.

"This is not a plea for vengeance. This is a plea for safety and accountability, for recognition of the damage that will never fully heal," she said.

Rossi maintained his debunked claims of mistaken identity - which have been disproved by DNA and matching tattoos - during his court appearance on Monday.

"I am not guilty of this," he told the court before being sentenced. "These women are lying, and in due course, we will lodge an appeal."

UK government borrowing in September hit the highest level for the month in five years, according to the latest official figures.

Borrowing - the difference between public spending and tax income - was £20.2bn in September, up £1.6bn from the same month last year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

The ONS said a rise in debt interest payments offset the increased amount the government had raised through tax and national insurance.

Borrowing over the first six months of the financial year has now reached £99.8bn, the ONS said, which is up £11.5bn from the same period last year.

Virginia Giuffre would have viewed Prince Andrew giving up his titles "as a victory", the ghostwriter of her posthumous memoir told BBC Newsnight.

The book, Nobody's Girl, co-written by Amy Wallace, details Ms Giuffre's encounters with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell - and more details of her allegations about Prince Andrew, which he has always denied.

In the memoir - released on Tuesday - Ms Giuffre described three occasions where she alleged Prince Andrew had sex with her.

Ms Wallace spent four years writing the book with Ms Giuffre, who took her own life almost six months ago.

In the book, Ms Giuffre said she had sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions. She says the third occasion was on Epstein's island as part of what Ms Giuffre called "an orgy" with Epstein and approximately eight other young women.

Prince Andrew, who reached a financial settlement with Ms Giuffre in 2022, announced on Friday that he was voluntarily deciding not to use his titles including the Duke of York, an honour received from his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.

He is also giving up membership of the Order of the Garter - the oldest and most senior order of chivalry in Britain.

But there are still calls for them to be formally removed.

Ms Wallace said: "I can speak for Virginia; I know that she would view it as a victory that he was forced, by whatever means, to voluntarily give them up."

She called it a "symbolic gesture" which has made "modern history in terms of the royal era", describing it as "a step in the right direction".

"Virginia wanted all the men who she had been trafficked to, against her will, to be held to account, and this is just one of the men.

"Even though he (Andrew) continues to deny it, his life is being eroded because of his past behaviour, as it should be," Ms Wallace said.

Ms Wallace went on to say there was a period when Prince Andrew "indicated he was willing to help investigators in the US" but he was "never available, for some reason".

"That's something he could still do. He could say, as he has repeatedly, 'I still deny that I was involved... however, I was in these houses and I was on that island and I was on the jet and I saw things, and I know how much these women have suffered and I would like to share what I saw," Ms Wallace said.

Ms Wallace said the private jets used by Epstein "had been remodelled in order to afford many bedrooms - they were designed as flying trafficking agents, they were there to use girls in".

She added: "Prince Andrew was on at least one of those jets that I know of, if not more.

"He has to take sort of the measure of his own moral compass - he said in his settlement with Virginia that he now acknowledges the pain that these women and young girls had suffered. If you really feel it, do something about it."

Speaking about Ms Giuffre, Ms Wallace said: "I'm sad and I'm honoured to be able to speak at least a little bit on her behalf to stand up for her.

"She wrote this book to try to help other people, to make the world a better place.

"She deserves all credit for whatever role she played in forcing Prince Andrew to relinquish a few more of his titles but she deserves all credit even more than that for being brave enough to stand up to say 'this isn't right'."

The memoir, which the BBC bought from a book store in central London days before its official release, paints a picture of a web of rich and powerful people abusing young women.

At the centre of the abuse was Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.

Ms Giuffre says that even decades later, she remembers how much she feared them both.

Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a person under the age of 18. He died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

More on this story

• Listen to the latest Football Daily podcast

An abuse victim has resigned from the panel overseeing the national inquiry into grooming gangs, over fears of a conflict of interest with two potential chairs.

Fiona Goddard, who was abused by gangs of men while living in a children's home in Bradford, said she was failed "multiple times" by social services and police.

She has left the victims and survivors liaison panel, citing concerns over the candidates shortlisted to chair the inquiry, one of whom is reportedly a former police chief and the other a social worker.

The Home Office said it was "committed to delivering a robust, thorough inquiry that will get to the truth and provide the answers that survivors have so long campaigned for".

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced in the summer there would be a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, covering England and Wales, with Ms Goddard joining the panel overseeing the process.

But in a letter of resignation, she said another reason for leaving was the "condescending and controlling language used towards survivors".

"This inquiry is supposed to be a public process and should have been conducted openly and transparently from the start," she said.

"Survivors' anonymity is obviously of utmost importance and they should be secure in knowing their personal details and opinions are confidential.

"The dynamics of this inquiry, including potential chairs and progress, should have been conducted openly and honestly by the government, and survivors should have had the choice to voice their opinions if they decided to."

Ms Goddard said instead, there was "secretive conduct" and "conditions imposed on survivors has led to a toxic, fearful environment".

She said of the selection of the potential chairs: "One has a background in policing and the other, a social worker.

"The very two services that contributed most to the cover-up of the national mass rape and trafficking of children."

She said it was a "disturbing conflict of interest".

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The abuse of children by grooming gangs is one of the most horrific crimes imaginable.

"Any suggestion that this inquiry is being watered down is completely wrong - we are committed to delivering a robust, thorough inquiry that will get to the truth and provide the answers that survivors have so long campaigned for."

They added: "We are working urgently to appoint the best chair to take forward this work and deliver justice, putting victims and survivors at the heart of the process.

"We are grateful to all those who have shared their insights with us.

"We share the concerns around unhelpful speculation while this process is live - which is why we will not be providing a running commentary."

Ms Goddard was one of two girls who were abused in 2008 while they lived at a children's home.

The abuse came to light in 2014, when she saw a report on the grooming and the sexual abuse of hundreds of young girls in Rotherham, and contacted the BBC.

She gave evidence at a trial in 2019 which led to nine men who abused her as a child being jailed.

The nine were convicted of 22 offences including rape and inciting child prostitution and Ms Goddard waived her right to anonymity to speak to the press.

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

How does a group that has governed the Gaza Strip for almost 20 years, ruling two million Palestinians with an iron rod and fighting Israel in repeated wars, suddenly lay down its arms and relinquish control?

Judging by a steady stream of gruesome images emerging from Gaza since the ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, Hamas seems intent on reasserting its authority.

Its masked men, back on the streets, have been seen beating and executing opponents. Impromptu firing squads have dispatched kneeling men they say are members of rival groups, including some of Gaza's powerful clans.

Other victims, cowering in terror, are shot in the legs or beaten with heavy clubs.

Some of those now being attacked by Hamas had been part of groups involved in looting and diverting aid, according to one aid worker I spoke to, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. The UN has also accused criminal gangs of stealing aid.

This is not yet a world in which, as US President Donald Trump's 20-point Gaza peace plan envisages, Hamas fighters turn over their weapons, submit to an amnesty, leave Gaza and hand over to an international stabilisation force.

For his part, President Trump initially seemed ambivalent about the brutality.

On his way to Israel on 13 October, he signalled the US had given Hamas - designated a terrorist group by the US, UK, Israel and others - a green light to restore order.

"We have given them approval for a period of time," he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Three days later, he hardened his tone. "If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal," he wrote on Truth Social, "we will have no choice but to go in and kill them."

So, where does this situation on the ground in Gaza today leave Hamas?

And ultimately, after two years of war that has resulted in unparalleled suffering for its own people and the violent death of most of its key figures, what, if anything, does the future really hold for the group?

'A complete loss of law and order'

For many Gazans, traumatised and exhausted by two years of perpetual suffering - and a war that has killed 68,000 people in Gaza according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry - this ugly endgame is nerve-wracking, but doesn't come as a surprise.

Of the Gazans I spoke to - among them, aid workers, lawyers, as well as a former adviser to a Hamas leader - each has a different take on the likelihood of Hamas laying down its arms and relinquishing control.

And indeed - given the situation on the ground - whether now is the time for them to do so.

"It's been two years with a complete loss of law and order," aid worker Hanya Aljamal says from her home in Deir al-Balah, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. "We need someone to take over.

"As unqualified as Hamas is to rule the Strip, they are a better option than the gangs."

Dr Ahmad Yousef, a former advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, who was Hamas's political leader, is of the opinion that a firm grip is needed at present.

"As long as there are still people who try to take the law into their hands, we need somebody to scare them and squeeze them to the corner," says Dr Yousef, who now runs a Gaza think tank and remains close to the Hamas leadership.

"This will take time. Not a long time. Within a month we will host those police forces and soldiers from Turkey and Egypt," he continues, referring to the international stabilisation force for Gaza, outlined in the peace plan, that could be composed of troops from Egypt and Turkey, among others.

"This is the moment where they will set their guns aside."

Other Gazans are more sceptical, and fearful. Some aren't convinced that Hamas will give up their power - or weapons at all.

Moumen al-Natour, a Gaza-based lawyer imprisoned several times by Hamas, is one of them.

He has been in hiding since July, when he says masked Hamas gunmen came to his Gaza City apartment and ordered him to report to al-Shifa hospital for interrogation.

"Hamas is [sending] a message to the world and to President Donald Trump… that they will neither relinquish power nor hand over their weapons.

"If I fell into Hamas' hands now, they would make a video and kill me in the street with a shot to the head," he says in one of a series of videos sent to us from an undisclosed location in the Gaza Strip.

The wall behind him is riddled with bullet holes.

"It is a gang, not a government," he says of Hamas.

"I don't want them to remain in Gaza… I don't want them in government, and I don't want them in security. I don't want to see their ideas spread in mosques, in the streets, or in schools."

'Still the dominant player in Gaza'

Mr al-Natour has his own take on what Gaza could look like.

The disparate array of militias now under Hamas assault could, in his view, be integrated a new security apparatus. But with their competing agendas, sometimes murky pasts and, in some cases, controversial links to the Israeli military, it's a problematic proposition.

"The fact is – and sometimes it's very hard for Israelis to admit this – that Hamas still exists and is the dominant player in Gaza." says Dr Michael Milshtein, a former head of the department for Palestinian Affairs in Israeli Military Intelligence.

"Relying on suspicious players - clans, militias, gangs, many of them criminals, many of them affiliated with ISIS [the Islamic State group], many of them involved in terror attacks against Israel - and considering them as a kind of alternative to Hamas is an illusion."

Hamas officials have said the group is willing to hand over political control of Gaza. The Trump ceasefire plan, to which it gave its qualified support, envisages "temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee".

But even if the group is willing to step back from a political role – something many Palestinians and Israelis still doubt - persuading its battle-hardened fighters to lay down their weapons is a big step for an organisation whose power, even before October 2023, relied heavily on the force of arms.

Rise of Hamas and its iron grip

To begin to answer the complex question of what may happen to Hamas next requires delving backwards into how exactly it consolidated power in the first place.

From its origins in the 1980s as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and a rival to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas morphed into a violent militant group responsible for the deaths of Israeli civilians.

Initially, Israel offered discreet support to Hamas, seeing it as a useful counterweight to the PLO and its dominant faction, Fatah, led at the time by Yasser Arafat.

"The major enemy was Fatah," says Ami Ayalon, former head of Israel's domestic security service, Shin Bet, "because they were the people who demanded a Palestinian state."

But when Hamas launched deadly suicide bomb attacks in the 1990s and 2000s on Israelis, Israel responded with a series of high-profile assassinations.

A violent power struggle with Fatah left Hamas, which won a 2006 election, in sole control of the Gaza Strip.

Eighteen years of Hamas rule have followed, characterised by an Israeli military and economic blockade, and bouts of armed conflict in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

Despite Israeli claims since October 2023 that "Hamas is ISIS", the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously convinced itself that Hamas did not pose a strategic threat.

"His was a policy of managing the conflict," says Mr Ayalon. "He said we are not going to solve it and we are totally against the reality of two states, so the only way is to divide and control."

With Hamas in control in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, ruling in part of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinians remained hopelessly divided, enabling Israel to argue that it had no unified leadership to negotiate peace with.

"[Netanyahu] did everything in order to support Hamas in Gaza," Mr Ayalon says. "He let Qatar send them… more than $1.5bn."

The money from Qatar was meant to pay the wages of civil servants and support the poorest families, but security chiefs feared it was being used for other purposes.

Mr Ayalon adds: "It was clear to the director of the Shin Bet and the head of Mossad that this money would go to military infrastructure.

Netanyahu has defended allowing payments to Hamas, saying it was meant to aid the civilian population.

Hamas was always preparing for war

As 7 October brutally revealed, Hamas was always preparing for war. Nowhere was this more obvious than in its elaborate network of tunnels.

Tunnels had already been used to mount attacks on Israeli army positions during the second Palestinian uprising, or "Intifada" that began in 2000.

In 2006, Hamas fighters used a tunnel under the border with Israel to attack a military post near Kerem Shalom, killing two Israel soldiers and kidnapping a third, Gilad Shalit.

He was held for five years until his release, in 2011, in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar, who would go on to mastermind the Hamas attacks of October 2023.

Over time, Hamas' tunnel network expanded, to include workshops, weapons-manufacturing sites and command centres.

Regional developments also played a role. In 2012, after the fall of the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and the brief rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas was able to smuggle increasingly sophisticated weapons into Gaza, including sniper rifles, mobile rocket launchers and equipment for the manufacture of long-range rockets.

Hamas is thought to have benefitted from the help of technicians and fighters with experience of tunnelling in places like Lebanon and Iraq.

Iran was also a key supporter, seeing Hamas as a natural component in its "Axis of Resistance," a loose coalition of militant groups across the Middle East with a shared antipathy towards Israel and the United States.

In 2020, a US State Department report said that Iran was providing around $100m a year to Palestinian militant groups including Hamas.

Some tunnels were reportedly dug as deep as 230ft (70m) below ground, took years to build and cost tens of millions of dollars each. These were designed to protect senior Hamas commanders and house long-range weapons.

A local expert with extensive knowledge of the tunnels told the BBC the cost of the entire project totalled roughly $6bn (£4.5bn).

Precise figures are hard to come by, but it's thought that the scattered network extended for as much as 250 miles (400km), in a strip of land just 26 miles long and, at its widest, seven miles across.

Tunnels: a project shrouded in secrecy

Public discussion of the tunnels - their location or cost - could expose Gazans to accusations of espionage, leading to arrest and worse. But many knew what was happening.

Local residents would see the tell-tale signs: sand and clay being removed, new entrances appearing unexpectedly and machinery being brought in under cover of darkness.

What began as an opportunistic response to Gaza's isolation became, over the span of three decades, a multi-layered subterranean industrial and military complex.

It emerged later that much of it was concealed under Gaza's civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and, in the case of a tunnel containing a Hamas data centre, the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza City.

After 7 October 2023, when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage, it also became a massive underground prison. Not all of those held hostage were concealed in tunnels, but many were, especially as the war ground on.

Eli Sharabi, who became one of the most high profile of those taken, was first moved from a safe house into a tunnel after 52 of his 491 days in captivity.

"They tied us with ropes in our legs and hands," he told the BBC earlier this month. "I fainted from time to time from the pain. One time they broke my ribs."

By the time he was released, in February, he had lost more than 30kg (4st 10lb).

Hamas used the hostages as bargaining chips, to secure ceasefires or the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. As negotiations over their fate continued, Hamas drip fed the Israeli public with a cruel series of videos, often showing the hostages in situations of extreme distress.

Eventually it was, says Dr Yousef, internal and external pressure that forced Hamas to abandon the strategy.

"Qatar, Egypt and Turkey and also the people here in displacement camps sent a strong message to Hamas leaders outside that enough is enough."

In the meantime, Israel continues to destroy what it can of the tunnel network, often demolishing civilian neighbourhoods above in the process.

And the job is far from done.

"According to publications from the defence establishment, estimates speak of damage to between 25% and 40% of the tunnels," says Yehuda Kfir, an Israeli civil engineer and underground warfare researcher at Haifa's Technion University.

"No doubt [Hamas] aspires to rehabilitate the infrastructure, including restoring tunnels that were dealt with in various ways by the IDF."

A leadership in tatters

Restoring tunnels is one thing. Reconstituting the organisation is another. After the events of the past two years, Hamas' leadership is in tatters.

Israel has gone to enormous lengths - in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon and Qatar - to eliminate the group's key political and military figures.

From its best known, internationally recognisable leaders, travelling the world to promote their cause, to its battalion commanders on the ground in Gaza, Hamas has lost almost everyone of consequence.

Israel assassinated Hamas's powerful leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in July 2024.

Three months later, Haniyeh's successor, the elusive Yahya Sinwar, was killed in the ruins of a house in Rafah.

Despite the loss of these leading figures - and thousands of members of its armed wing - the group battled on, recruiting a fresh generation of radicalised young fighters and splintering into small cells intent on carrying out hit-and-run guerrilla-style operations.

But Hamas in October 2025 is a pale shadow of the organisation that carried out the attacks of 7 October. Today's leaders are less well known and, crucially, have little political experience.

Ezzedine al-Haddad, who is 55, now heads the five-member military council that commands Hamas' armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Outside Gaza, the remnants of the group's political leadership include Khaled Meshaal (the subject of a botched Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997), Khalil al-Hayya and Muhammad Darwish.

All are believed to have escaped death on 9 September, when Israeli jets attacked a building in Doha, Qatar, where they were meeting to discuss the latest US ceasefire proposals.

Hamas is 'tired of war'

Despite the violence still raging in Gaza, the former Hamas adviser, Ahmed Yousef, says the group is tired of war.

Without mentioning 7 October directly, he describes the cause of the war as a "terrible mistake" and that a "different approach" is needed.

"I'm talking to many of them and they have said that they are not interested in ruling Gaza anymore," he says.

"But Hamas has more than 100,000 members and those people are not going to disappear."

Hamas, he suggests, is looking to rebrand itself in order to continue to play a political role in the future, a process he likens to the ANC's transition from guerrilla warfare to political rule in post-apartheid South Africa.

"If tomorrow there [are] elections," he says, "I'm sure Hamas will come under different names, giving the impression it is more peaceful and more willing to be part of political life.

"Violence is not going to be part of any political party."

Dr Milshtein is doubtful.

"Even if there will be a new local regime in Gaza, of course behind the scenes Hamas will be the dominant player," he argues.

Disarmament, he continues, is even less likely: he predicts another Gaza war within the next five years.

But Ami Ayalon, the former Shin Bet chief, believes Israel should find another way to tackle its enemy.

"Unless we defeat the ideology, they will flourish," he says.

"The only way to defeat the ideology is by creating and presenting to the Palestinian and the Israeli people a new horizon. A horizon of two states."

For now, that horizon does not exist, perhaps making Dr Milshtein's prediction more likely than Ami Ayalon's vision of a shared future.

But Hamas, however diminished, is far from a spent force. One way or another, Israel may have to deal with it for some time to come.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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Demolition has begun on part of the East Wing of the White House in preparation for the construction of US President Donald Trump's new ballroom.

Construction crews on Monday tore down massive chunks of a covered entryway and windows in the East Wing, which Trump said is being "fully modernised".

The president previously said that his $250m (£186m) White House ballroom addition would be "near" the existing structure but would not change it.

"It won't interfere with the current building. It won't be. It'll be near it but not touching it - and pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of," Trump said in July. "It's my favourite. It's my favourite place. I love it."

Trump announced the construction in a social media post, saying "ground has been broken" on the "much-needed" ballroom space.

"For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc," he wrote.

He said the project is being privately funded by "by many generous Patriots".

The White House has served as the historic home of the US president for two centuries. The East Wing was constructed in 1902 and was last modified in 1942.

From the south side of the building, the BBC saw several large pieces of construction equipment - some adorned with US flags - near the East Wing.

Trump wrote in his post that the East Wing was "completely separate" from the White House, though it is attached to the main structure.

The covered entryway, which spans much of the East Wing's south side, appeared to be being gutted, with concrete debris and metal cables clearly visible from several hundred meters.

The activity had attracted a small number of curious onlookers who stopped to ask photographers and reporters what was going on.

One woman, who was wearing a surgical mask and a sign with an anti-Trump slogan on it, expressed her dismay. She did not identify herself.

"I don't like it," she said - seemingly speaking to nobody in particular - as she gestured at the White House from behind a yellow van that was parked nearby. "Look what he's doing to it!"

Many of the world's largest websites, including Snapchat, Reddit and Roblox, were knocked offline on Monday after a huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage.

More than 1,000 apps and websites - including banks such as Lloyds and Halifax - were impacted by problems at the heart of the cloud computing giant's operations in the US, according to platform outage monitor Downdetector.

It said reports from users of problems globally had soared to more than 6.5 million during the outage on Monday morning.

While Amazon said it had resolved the outage by 12:00 BST, experts say it demonstrates the perils that come with lots of companies relying on a single, dominant provider.

"What this episode has highlighted is just how interdependent our infrastructure is," said Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey.

"So many online services rely upon third parties for their physical infrastructure, and this shows that problems can occur in even the largest of those third-party providers.

"Small errors, often human made, can have widespread and significant impact."

The issues appear to have begun at around 07:00 BST on Monday, as users began to report problems accessing a slew of platforms.

This included a wide range of different sites and services, from massive online games like Fortnite to the language-learning app Duolingo.

Downdetector told the BBC it had seen more than four million reports from users across 500 sites within just a few hours - more than double the amount it would see across an entire regular weekday.

These later peaked at more than six million, it said, as more services including Reddit and Lloyds Bank attempted to recover.

At around 11:00 BST, Amazon said most of its affected services had recovered.

What went wrong?

Amazon has not yet fully detailed what caused Monday's outage or issued an official statement regarding it.

It said in an update on its service status web page the issue "appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1".

DNS, which stands for Domain Name System, is often likened to a phone book for the internet.

It effectively translates the website names people use (like bbc.co.uk) into numbers which can be read and understood by computers.

This process basically underpins the way we use the internet, and disruptions to it can leave web browsers unable to locate the content they are looking for.

Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare, told the BBC the AWS outage highlighted the power cloud services have over how the internet works.

"Everyone has a bad day, today Amazon had a bad day," he said.

"There are amazing things about the cloud, it allows you to scale… but if you have an outage like this it can take down a lot of services we rely on."

And Cori Crider, head of the Future of Technology Institute, told the BBC it was "a bit like a bridge collapsing".

"An essential part of the economy has fallen to pieces," she said.

And with so much of cloud computing relying on Amazon, Microsoft and Google - estimated at around 70% - she said the status quo was "unsustainable".

"Once you have a concentrated supply in a handful of monopoly providers, when something like this falls over, it takes a huge percentage of the economy out with it," she said.

"We should really look at trying to buy more local services, rather than relying on a handful of American monopoly platforms.

"That's a risk to our security, our sovereignty and our economy and we need to look at structural separations to make our markets more resilient to these kind of shocks."

Additional reporting by Esyllt Carr.

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French police are desperate to retrieve priceless jewels stolen from the Louvre in a brazen daylight robbery, but experts have warned it may already be too late to save them.

In Paris on Sunday, thieves broke into the world's most-visited museum, stealing eight valued items before escaping on scooters, in a daring heist that took about eight minutes.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC he feared the jewels may already be "long gone", having been broken up into hundreds of parts.

It is highly likely the pieces will be sold for a fraction of their worth and smuggled out of France, other experts have said.

Who may be behind the heist

The group were professionals, Mr Brand believes, as demonstrated by the fact they were in and out of the Louvre so quickly.

"You know, as a normal person, you don't wake up in the morning thinking, I will become a burglar, let's start with the Louvre," he said.

"This won't be their first heist," he said. "They have done things before, other burglaries. They are confident and they thought, we might get away with this, and went for it."

In another sign the professionalism of the gang is being taken seriously, a specialist police unit with a "high success rate in cracking high-profile robberies" has been tasked with tracking them down.

Authorities have said they suspect the heist is linked to an organised crime network. Mr Brand says it means the perpetrators will likely have criminal records and be known to the police.

Organised crime groups like these generally have two objectives, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said. "Either to act for the benefit of a sponsor, or to obtain precious stones to carry out money laundering operations."

Mr Brand thinks it would be impossible to sell the items intact, and he said stealing-to-order for a private collector is something that only happens in Hollywood films.

"Nobody wants to touch a piece so hot," he explained. "You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children, you cannot sell it."

Potential £10m price tag

Mr Brand believes the objects will be dismantled and broken up, with the gold and silver melted down and the gems cut up into smaller stones that will be virtually impossible to track back to the Louvre robbery.

Jewellery historian Carol Woolton, who presents the podcast If Jewels Could Talk and was Vogue magazine's jewellery editor for 20 years, told the BBC the robbers had "cherry-picked" the most important gemstones from the Louvre's collection.

The "beautiful large flawless stones" would likely be dug out of their mountings and sold, she said, except for the crown from Empress Eugénie which has smaller stones set in it and was "too hot to handle", she added.

This could explain why it was dropped during the escape, along with one other item, and found by authorities.

Empress Eugenie's tiara, which was stolen, has rare natural pearls which have a very large value, experts say.

While the items have been described as being priceless, Ms Woolton expects them to be sold for a fraction of their worth.

"They will go to someone who is willing to handle these," she said. "Everyone will be looking for these – they will take what they can get."

How much exactly could they fetch in money if sold on? When asked about the potential value of the haul, Mr Brand said the cut-up parts could be worth "many millions".

The gems and gold stolen could fetch up to £10 million (€11.52m; $13.4m), says Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, an online jeweller.

He told the BBC the gang would need a skilled expert to remove the gems, and a professional diamond cutter to change the larger recognisable stones.

Smaller stones that were not easily identifiable could be sold immediately and while it was hard to tell the exact price of all the stones stolen, the larger ones could be worth around £500,000 each, he said.

"There are at least four of that size, so adding all of those up plus the gold, you are probably approaching £10m," he said.

"The diamond and gemstone market is liquid and there are many buyers on the fringes that don't ask too many questions."

There are hopes that the items could reappear intact one day - but those hopes are narrowing as the days pass.

There is a precedent - the Cartier exhibition at the V&A Museum features an item of jewellery stolen in 1948 before reappearing in an auction several decades later.

What is certain is many in France are deeply shocked by the Louvre heist, having felt an emotional attachment to the jewels.

"We don't necessarily like jewellery because it's a question of power, and that doesn't necessarily have a good connotation in France," Alexandre Leger, head of heritage at French jeweller Maison Vever, said.

"But inevitably, what was stolen belonged as much to you as it did to me. It belongs to France, so everyone owns a little piece of these objects, just as everyone owns a little piece of the Mona Lisa.

"It's as if someone had stolen the Mona Lisa from us... Someone stole France."

Additional reporting by Izumi Yoneyama.

From the White House on Monday, US President Donald Trump waxed lyrical about his country's friendship with Australia.

"We've been long-term, longtime allies and I would say there's never been anybody better," Trump told Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, at the pair's first official meeting.

"We fought wars together and we never had any doubts," he said.

Australia though, for arguably the first time in its history, is feeling some creep in.

The US has historically been seen as its best friend, the ultimate ally.

Before Albanese hopped on his flight to Washington for the meeting - which he's been desperately trying to organise for months - he said it was an important opportunity to "consolidate and strengthen" the connection.

"Australia and the United States have stood shoulder-to-shoulder in every major conflict for over a century," he said in a statement.

But in a world order which challenges Washington's dominance, and under an administration which is stretching many of its ties, Australia is casting a more critical eye on the relationship.

"The Trump administration is clearly fraying some of those long-held, unexamined beliefs about the reliability of the United States as an ally," Sam Roggeveen, from Australia's Lowy Institute think tank, told the BBC.

Trump's first term was a challenge for Australia – and few here expected his second would be much different. An election campaign earlier this year was in many ways hijacked by the question of how each prospective prime minister would deal with the president.

Trump has frustrated Australia with his sweeping tariffs scheme, imposing an import tax of 10% on most of its goods - 50% for aluminium and steel - something seen as a breach of a decades-long free trade agreement.

"This is not the act of a friend," Albanese said at the time.

Then came a review of the landmark Aukus defence pact, announced in June to jolts of panic in Canberra.

Outwardly, the Albanese government didn't waver in professing its confidence that the agreement - which will give Australia cutting-edge nuclear submarine technology in exchange for help countering China in the Asia-Pacific - would go ahead. It is natural for a new government to review their predecessor's decisions, it said.

But the White House's isolationist rhetoric - along with the fact that the US is facing challenges in its own submarine supply - made some nervous that the deal may be cancelled or rewritten, threatening to leave Australia vulnerable with trouble brewing on its doorstep.

And then there was Albanese's long battle to secure a meeting with Trump – interpreted by parts of the Australian parliament and the country's media as a snub.

An awkward encounter between Defence Minister Richard Marles and his US counterpart Pete Hegseth earlier this year didn't help. Marles had met Hegseth in August to lobby him on Aukus, but the latter's office issued - and later retracted - a statement saying there were no talks, only "a happenstance encounter".

Ultimately the meeting on Monday went as well as it possibly could have for Albanese.

He leaves the White House with both Trump's praise and a deal promising US investment in developing Australia's critical minerals industry, which is hoped will help the nation break China's near monopoly of that market.

Albanese also got a renewed commitment to Aukus, in effect ending the dragged-out review.

He didn't receive a public dressing down – though Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister who was critical of Trump before taking up his current post as ambassador to the US, was awkwardly confronted with the president telling him "I don't like you either".

The tariffs remain a gripe but are at the lowest rate of any country, and in fact some Australian sectors, like beef, appear to be benefitting from the global upheaval.

And though the Aukus review was a scare it was ultimately a false alarm.

But all of this and other factors, such as Trump's unpredictable treatment of other allies, has fuelled increased distrust of the US.

"For the first time in my lifetime, one of our two major political parties benefited in the last election from slightly distancing itself from the US," Mr Roggeveen said of Albanese.

The numbers vary, but polling has consistently showed Trump is unpopular here, and fewer Australians believe America is a reliable ally under his leadership.

And yet the latest poll found that, nevertheless, about half of Australians think the nation needs its alliance with the US more than ever.

"It's one thing to say Donald Trump is difficult, Donald Trump is unpopular. It's another thing to come up with an alternative to the US right now," the United States Studies Centre's Jared Mondschein told the BBC.

"That's really due to Xi Jinping. In many ways, he's the gift that keeps on giving for the US in Asia."

Ahead of the meeting in Washington on Monday, a run-in between jets from the Chinese and Australian militaries served as a reminder of tensions in the region.

Beijing, which is Australia's biggest trading partner, has embarked on a huge military build-up and it's making Canberra, and a whole host of others, nervous.

Mr Roggeveen says there is a belief amongst Australia's political and security experts that the country cannot defend itself independently, if it comes to that - though he is among a small cohort which disagrees.

Many point to Pacific nations as a critical line of defence - something reflected in Australia's keenness to lock as many as possible into alliances - while a few voices argue China is in fact a potential security partner, not a threat.

"But there's a view... that the only reasonable course for Australia is to seek closer and closer relations with the United States," Mr Roggeveen says.

"A lot of allies and partners throughout the region are grabbing for the uncertainty of a term-limited Trump administration over the certainty of a Xi Jinping-led China," Mr Mondschein adds.

So while the way Australians feel about the US is changing, it is hard to see it greatly straying from the path it is on any time soon.

Virginia Giuffre would have viewed Prince Andrew giving up his titles "as a victory", the ghostwriter of her posthumous memoir told BBC Newsnight.

The book, Nobody's Girl, co-written by Amy Wallace, details Ms Giuffre's encounters with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell - and more details of her allegations about Prince Andrew, which he has always denied.

In the memoir - released on Tuesday - Ms Giuffre described three occasions where she alleged Prince Andrew had sex with her.

Ms Wallace spent four years writing the book with Ms Giuffre, who took her own life almost six months ago.

In the book, Ms Giuffre said she had sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions. She says the third occasion was on Epstein's island as part of what Ms Giuffre called "an orgy" with Epstein and approximately eight other young women.

Prince Andrew, who reached a financial settlement with Ms Giuffre in 2022, announced on Friday that he was voluntarily deciding not to use his titles including the Duke of York, an honour received from his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.

He is also giving up membership of the Order of the Garter - the oldest and most senior order of chivalry in Britain.

But there are still calls for them to be formally removed.

Ms Wallace said: "I can speak for Virginia; I know that she would view it as a victory that he was forced, by whatever means, to voluntarily give them up."

She called it a "symbolic gesture" which has made "modern history in terms of the royal era", describing it as "a step in the right direction".

"Virginia wanted all the men who she had been trafficked to, against her will, to be held to account, and this is just one of the men.

"Even though he (Andrew) continues to deny it, his life is being eroded because of his past behaviour, as it should be," Ms Wallace said.

Ms Wallace went on to say there was a period when Prince Andrew "indicated he was willing to help investigators in the US" but he was "never available, for some reason".

"That's something he could still do. He could say, as he has repeatedly, 'I still deny that I was involved... however, I was in these houses and I was on that island and I was on the jet and I saw things, and I know how much these women have suffered and I would like to share what I saw," Ms Wallace said.

Ms Wallace said the private jets used by Epstein "had been remodelled in order to afford many bedrooms - they were designed as flying trafficking agents, they were there to use girls in".

She added: "Prince Andrew was on at least one of those jets that I know of, if not more.

"He has to take sort of the measure of his own moral compass - he said in his settlement with Virginia that he now acknowledges the pain that these women and young girls had suffered. If you really feel it, do something about it."

Speaking about Ms Giuffre, Ms Wallace said: "I'm sad and I'm honoured to be able to speak at least a little bit on her behalf to stand up for her.

"She wrote this book to try to help other people, to make the world a better place.

"She deserves all credit for whatever role she played in forcing Prince Andrew to relinquish a few more of his titles but she deserves all credit even more than that for being brave enough to stand up to say 'this isn't right'."

The memoir, which the BBC bought from a book store in central London days before its official release, paints a picture of a web of rich and powerful people abusing young women.

At the centre of the abuse was Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.

Ms Giuffre says that even decades later, she remembers how much she feared them both.

Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a person under the age of 18. He died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Buckingham Palace may have hoped that Prince Andrew giving up his titles might decisively draw a line under the scandals - but the problems for the Palace show no sign of going away.

It seemed that it was the public's outcry that forced the Palace to recognise that something had to be done, before Andrew was pushed into giving up titles such as the Duke of York.

That raises questions about whether the Palace should have acted sooner in responding to events involving Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein that happened many years ago.

Royal sources say the accusations against Andrew are being treated with "very great concern and should be examined in the appropriate ways to the fullest extent".

Prince Andrew stopped being a working royal in 2019 - and as such Buckingham Palace has not been accountable for him in recent years.

But the era under scrutiny, from the late-1990s until Prince Andrew's BBC Newsnight interview in 2019, was when he was a working royal - and for a decade he was a government trade representative.

And with more evidence emerging from that era, such as damaging emails showing links between Andrew and Epstein, it raises questions about what royal officials and government departments might have known at the time and what information might still be held.

Did the Palace ever challenge the prince over his account of events in that Newsnight interview?

It included the claim that Prince Andrew had cut off any contact with Jeffrey Epstein after their meeting in New York in December 2010. But emails have since emerged showing that Andrew had been in private contact with Epstein months later, with a promise to "play some more soon".

About his accuser Virginia Giuffre, Andrew said he had "no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever". But documents that emerged at the weekend suggested he had Ms Giuffre's social security number and was asking the police for personal information about her.

It's a claim that the Metropolitan Police is now looking into, with the support of Buckingham Palace.

Prince Andrew has consistently denied any wrongdoing involving Ms Giuffre.

Much of the recent scandal around Prince Andrew has come from the discovery of old emails, including from trawls of Epstein documents in the US.

It remains to be seen whether there will be any release of Epstein-related records in the UK, including from the Royal Household, whose staff would once have worked and travelled with Andrew, when he was moving in the circle of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Ms Giuffre's description of meeting Prince Andrew in London included references to his security guards. What records are there of their movements, which might still be held by the police?

There are also unanswered questions about Prince Andrew's finances. He no longer has financial support from his brother King Charles, but still has to fund the upkeep of his home at Royal Lodge in Windsor.

His connections with business deals with China, including a contact accused of being a Chinese spy, were never fully explained, even though court documents revealed details such as Prince Andrew sending birthday cards each year to the Chinese President Xi Jinping and privately meeting the Chinese ambassador.

These questions returned last week when pictures emerged of Prince Andrew with a senior Chinese politician who had been a central figure in the collapsed Chinese spy trial.

Has there been an institutional lack of curiosity, or a misplaced deference, in finding out about Andrew's activities?

The era under discussion took place under the previous reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Is the current team at the Palace now having to face up to changing expectations over transparency?

It was a dramatic announcement last Friday evening that saw Prince Andrew giving up titles such as Duke of York and honours such as the Order of the Garter. But it was in a statement that showed little contrition and emphasised his innocence.

That's prompted challenges about whether the sanction against Prince Andrew has gone far enough. Prince Andrew has agreed not use titles such as the Duke of York, but he still technically holds them.

Keeping this as a voluntary decision kept it within the Royal Family. But there have been calls for Parliament to play a bigger role in holding the royals to account.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell wants to change the law so Andrew's titles could be completely removed. The SNP's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn says there was "no justification" for Parliament not to make this move to strip Andrew of his titles.

The House of Commons Library, in a new document published on Monday, shows Parliament could go a step further and remove Prince Andrew from the line of succession to the throne, if it had the agreement of the Commonwealth realms. Edward VIII had been removed from the succession when he abdicated in 1936.

King Charles could also remove Andrew's status as prince, using a legal document called Letters Patent, which would leave him as Mr Andrew Windsor.

But a royal source says that the actions taken showed that the Palace had acted "swiftly and robustly on new email evidence which emerged" and this approach had avoided using up valuable parliamentary time.

The Palace will support the police who are looking into the recent allegations and sources say the focus shouldn't be on PR battles or questions about reputation, but should be on Epstein's victims and the "whole network of girls and young women who were abused and treated appallingly".

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Many of the world's largest websites, including Snapchat, Reddit and Roblox, were knocked offline on Monday after a huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage.

More than 1,000 apps and websites - including banks such as Lloyds and Halifax - were impacted by problems at the heart of the cloud computing giant's operations in the US, according to platform outage monitor Downdetector.

It said reports from users of problems globally had soared to more than 6.5 million during the outage on Monday morning.

While Amazon said it had resolved the outage by 12:00 BST, experts say it demonstrates the perils that come with lots of companies relying on a single, dominant provider.

"What this episode has highlighted is just how interdependent our infrastructure is," said Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey.

"So many online services rely upon third parties for their physical infrastructure, and this shows that problems can occur in even the largest of those third-party providers.

"Small errors, often human made, can have widespread and significant impact."

The issues appear to have begun at around 07:00 BST on Monday, as users began to report problems accessing a slew of platforms.

This included a wide range of different sites and services, from massive online games like Fortnite to the language-learning app Duolingo.

Downdetector told the BBC it had seen more than four million reports from users across 500 sites within just a few hours - more than double the amount it would see across an entire regular weekday.

These later peaked at more than six million, it said, as more services including Reddit and Lloyds Bank attempted to recover.

At around 11:00 BST, Amazon said most of its affected services had recovered.

What went wrong?

Amazon has not yet fully detailed what caused Monday's outage or issued an official statement regarding it.

It said in an update on its service status web page the issue "appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1".

DNS, which stands for Domain Name System, is often likened to a phone book for the internet.

It effectively translates the website names people use (like bbc.co.uk) into numbers which can be read and understood by computers.

This process basically underpins the way we use the internet, and disruptions to it can leave web browsers unable to locate the content they are looking for.

Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare, told the BBC the AWS outage highlighted the power cloud services have over how the internet works.

"Everyone has a bad day, today Amazon had a bad day," he said.

"There are amazing things about the cloud, it allows you to scale… but if you have an outage like this it can take down a lot of services we rely on."

And Cori Crider, head of the Future of Technology Institute, told the BBC it was "a bit like a bridge collapsing".

"An essential part of the economy has fallen to pieces," she said.

And with so much of cloud computing relying on Amazon, Microsoft and Google - estimated at around 70% - she said the status quo was "unsustainable".

"Once you have a concentrated supply in a handful of monopoly providers, when something like this falls over, it takes a huge percentage of the economy out with it," she said.

"We should really look at trying to buy more local services, rather than relying on a handful of American monopoly platforms.

"That's a risk to our security, our sovereignty and our economy and we need to look at structural separations to make our markets more resilient to these kind of shocks."

Additional reporting by Esyllt Carr.

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A US man who faked his death and fled to Scotland after being accused of rape has been jailed for at least five years.

Nicholas Rossi, 38, of Rhode Island, was convicted in separate trials in August and September of raping two women in Utah in 2008.

On Monday, a judge in Salt Lake City sentenced him to five years to life for the first conviction. He is due to be sentenced for the second conviction next month.

Before sentencing, Judge Barry G Lawrence described Rossi as a "serial abuser of women" and said he was the "very definition of a flight risk".

• How the mask slipped during Nicholas Rossi's court saga

"He fled the country to avoid investigation. He took on an alias and, even in response to this case, refused to admit who he was," the judge said.

An online obituary posted in February 2020 said Rossi, who was born Nicholas Alahverdian, had died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

He then came to wider attention in December 2021 when he was arrested on the Covid ward of a Glasgow hospital. Staff recognised his mugshot and distinctive tattoos from an Interpol wanted notice.

Rossi claimed that his name was Arthur Knight - an Irish-born orphan who had never been to the US.

He made a series of bizarre court appearances in Scotland - in a wheelchair, wearing a three-piece suit and an oxygen mask, maintaining his claim of mistaken identity.

He was extradited to the US in January 2024 and put on trial in Utah for two separate charges of rape.

The saga from Glasgow to Salt Lake City was documented in the BBC's Strange But True Crime podcast.

Utah has an indeterminate sentencing, meaning it is given in a range of years rather than a fixed number. The judge said it was up to the state's board of pardons and parole to determine how long he should be jailed.

Shortly before sentencing, one victim said Rossi had left a "trail of fear, pain and destruction" behind him.

"This is not a plea for vengeance. This is a plea for safety and accountability, for recognition of the damage that will never fully heal," she said.

Rossi maintained his debunked claims of mistaken identity - which have been disproved by DNA and matching tattoos - during his court appearance on Monday.

"I am not guilty of this," he told the court before being sentenced. "These women are lying, and in due course, we will lodge an appeal."

South Korean police said they would seek an arrest warrant for a woman who set fire to her apartment building while trying to kill a cockroach with an improvised flamethrower, local media report.

One of the woman's neighbours died after falling to the ground in a failed attempt to escape through a window.

The woman, who is in her 20s, told police that she tried to torch a cockroach with a lighter and a flammable spray, adding she had used the method before. But on Monday, items in her home caught fire.

Police in the northern city of Osan said the woman could be charged with accidentally starting a fire and causing death by negligence.

Blasting cockroaches - with blowtorches or homemade flamethrowers - have emerged as a novel way of getting rid of house pests, made popular by videos on social media.

In 2018, an Australian man set fire to his kitchen while trying to kill cockroaches with a homemade flamethrower made from insect spray.

The woman who died in the Osan city fire, a Chinese national in her 30s, lived on the fifth floor of the building with her husband and two-month-old baby.

When they realised that a fire had broken out, the couple opened their home window and called for help.

They handed their baby through the window to a neighbour in the adjacent block, before trying to evacuate themselves.

The woman's husband managed to climb over to the next block. She tried to do the same, but fell from the window. She was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead hours later.

Police said they believed the couple had tried escaping through the window because thick smoke from the fire had blocked the stairway, local media report.

The building houses commercial shops on its first floor and 32 residential units from its second to fifth floor.

Eight other residents suffered from smoke inhalation because of the fire.