Amid the blizzard of nocturnal numbers any by-election generates, three stand out in Caerphilly this morning.

Labour, so long the victor of so many a south Wales political contest, humbled, pummelled, crushed - attracting just 11% of voters.

The Conservatives, so often the victor of many a UK-wide election - 2%.

Yes, you read that right - the two big beasts of Westminster politics managed just 13% of the vote between them.

Just one in seven voters backed either Labour or the Conservatives, which is extraordinary.

This contest, for weeks, was instead a race between an outfit, Reform UK, which barely existed a few years back and another, Plaid Cymru - until now the perpetual bridesmaid in contests in Caerphilly.

Between them, Plaid and Reform attracted 83% of the vote – and Plaid beat Nigel Farage's party easily.

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As so often in election contests, there is a striking human story that illustrates the wider picture.

Today's victor, Lindsay Whittle, a Plaid Cymru councillor for nearly half a century, told me he remembers standing in the crowds in Caerphilly in 1968 as a 15-year-old new recruit to the party.

The party, then, came pretty close to toppling Labour in a Westminster by election.

But here is the thing: they didn't, they were second.

Defeat at Labour's hands was something Whittle was to get very used to - he has stood for election to Westminster ten times, and stood repeatedly for election to Cardiff Bay too. He had always lost - until now.

Now in his 70s, he tastes victory for the first time.

Speaking to senior Plaid figures, they detect - and have for some time - a sense that the tide may finally be going out for Labour in Wales.

They are determined to capitalise and allow themselves to dream of governing Wales, at least as the main party, after next May's Senedd elections across the nation.

So, what next for Reform? A solid second place with 36% of the vote, is a solid performance for an upstart, but insurgencies remain insurgent by winning – and they were easily beaten.

It is clearly not easy for them to be the first choice "none of the above" alternative to Labour and the Conservatives when there is another party also claiming that mantle.

That is a challenge for them in Wales, as it is in Scotland with the SNP, in a way that it isn't in England.

And then there are the consequences for Labour.

Labour's heritage in these parts includes some of the most consequential names in its long history: founding father Keir Hardie, NHS founder Nye Bevan, former leaders Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.

This morning, the prospect for Labour of heavy defeat across Wales next May - ending 27 years of continuous devolved power - looks more likely than ever.

And the questions for the Prime Minister pile up higher.

The number of 16-24 year olds in England reporting symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, has more than tripled in a decade, BBC analysis of NHS data has found.

The condition is now the second-most widespread mental health disorder for young adults, according to statistics from a major NHS England survey.

"OCD, I like to think of it as a bully, it attacks everything, everything you care about, everything you love," says Sophie Ashcroft.

"A lot of people do associate OCD with cleanliness, and being clean, and getting all your socks in a certain order. It's so much more than that."

The 22-year-old is one of a number of young people and their families to have contacted us through Your Voice, Your BBC News explaining how they can't access NHS treatment for their symptoms.

Those who could get seen spoke of a shortage of expert staff and effective treatments.

The average referral time figure for young people to be seen at a national OCD centre in London was 41 weeks last year, nearly three times as long as it was five years previously.

The government told us it was "turning services around", hiring 8,500 extra mental health workers, delivering more talking therapies and providing better access to help through the NHS App. It also said it was expanding the rollout of mental health support teams in schools.

Sophie sometimes struggles to leave her home because she feels compelled to repeat small tasks - such as getting into the shower or cleaning her teeth - to dispel intrusive or distressing thoughts.

"If I had a bad thought during the day, it would ruin the rest of my day. I'd think something bad was gonna happen," she tells us.

'Behind closed doors it's sheer panic'

The people who have contacted BBC News say lives have been devastated, with some families who haven't been able to get NHS help telling us they have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on private care.

Charities insist there is an OCD crisis and say the figures should be a wake-up call for the government.

OCD symptoms can affect adults and children, and can begin as early as six years old - but they are often triggered during puberty and early adulthood.

Sophie's symptoms first appeared when she was aged nine, she says, but it was a decade later, when a close friend died, that things became a lot worse.

To dispel troubling thoughts, she says it led her to repeat actions again and again - things most people would consider mundane and would do without a second thought.

"It's something telling me you have to do that again, you have to hug that person again, and it just takes over," says Sophie. "It's such an awful, awful feeling."

Despite all this, Sophie has just finished drama school. "I'm really, really good at hiding it, but behind closed doors it's sheer panic," she explains.

About 370,000 young people in England reported OCD symptoms in the financial year 2023/24, our analysis of the latest NHS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (June 2025) has found.

That is more than three times the number from 2014, when the figure stood at around 113,000.

It means OCD is now second in the list of named mental health disorders - placing it and other anxiety disorders well ahead of depression:

• Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) 7.6%

• Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) 5.7%

• Phobias 4.8%

• Depressive episodes 3.8 %

Why is OCD on the rise among young people?

Improved awareness of the condition has likely contributed to people seeking help, say experts - but, according to charities and many of those with OCD, societal problems, combined with the pressure of social media, are the main driver for the reported rise.

Leigh Wallbank, chief executive of charity OCD Action, describes many young people's lives as a "pressure pot".

"They're facing financial issues, educational issues, global issues - the environment is such a big issue," she tells us. "I think of them living in this pressure pot, and then underneath that, giving heat to this pressure pot, is social media."

The Covid-19 pandemic also played a part, says Minesh Patel, associate director of policy and influencing at the mental health charity, Mind.

The pandemic put a "particular and unique strain" on people with OCD, with disruption to routine, an inversion of social norms and a hyperfocus on hygiene, he says.

"Barriers to social interaction, including treatment and support services, meant that many coping mechanisms were disrupted or unavailable for an extended period of time," he adds.

NHS help for OCD patients includes specialist talking therapy called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - which can include Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP).

Through ERP patients are helped to manage their anxiety by gradually being exposed to their fears, while preventing them from performing their usual compulsive behaviours.

Medication is also offered - usually a type of antidepressant.

But not everyone can access these treatments.

Sophie was told by her GP that it is likely she does have OCD - but, two years on, she still hasn't received an appointment to see a specialist for a formal diagnosis.

In the meantime, her GP has referred her for a limited course of CBT which comes to an end soon. Sophie says she is "absolutely petrified" of what the future holds.

Leigh Wallbank from OCD Action is critical of the government for failing to collect regular quarterly data on obsessive compulsive disorder, and outcomes for patients who have it, as it does for many other conditions.

Without data, says the charity, the NHS is blind to the real scale of OCD, the success of treatments and who is being left behind.

We asked health officials in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland if they knew the number of young people with OCD symptoms, but they all said they do not collect that information.

'The system could not, or would not, provide help'

A mum from the south of England, who wants to remain anonymous, told us her autistic daughter first showed signs of OCD when she was 10 years old. Her daughter is now 17 and the OCD is severe, she says.

"My daughter has gone from being a scholarship-winning student, to being sectioned multiple times."

Some specialist treatment has been offered to the teenager, but her mum tells us her daughter is often too unwell to leave the house to attend appointments, or even take her medication.

"The impact on [all] our children, and us, is devastating. Our lives have been decimated not just by the illness, but by a system that could not, or would not, provide the help she needed, when she needed it."

The mother says the UK is failing in its treatment of young people with severe OCD. There are not enough specialists, beds or treatment options, she believes.

Children and adolescents with OCD across England can receive treatment at a national centre at the Maudsley Hospital in London.

However, the average wait time for a referral to the service rose from 15 weeks in 2020, to 41 weeks in 2024, according to a response to the BBC's Freedom of Information Act request.

But the hospital trust says that wait time is being cut.

Ade Odunlade, chief operating officer for South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust said: "We have worked incredibly hard to reduce delays and have lowered the average wait for assessments to around 20 weeks.

"We empathise with anyone who has had to wait for their assessment as we know how difficult that is."

The trust says it has now been able to secure additional funding which will allow them to employ further staff and drive down the waiting list even further.

It expects an approximate wait for assessment of about 12-16 weeks by early Spring 2026, it told us.

But even when people can access all the available help, it is sometimes not enough.

Graham and Marie Fuller, from Norwich, contacted the BBC to say their daughter had been hospitalised with OCD aged 12.

They described a revolving-door pattern of going backwards and forwards between NHS services for different treatments, with their daughter improving and then repeatedly relapsing.

After years of their daughter struggling with the condition, the family then decided to go to Texas to try a rare and radical procedure.

Their daughter, who is now 20, underwent deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery - where electrodes are implanted in the brain to deliver electrical impulses to help manage OCD symptoms.

The treatment is approved by US regulators, but in the UK the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says DBS can only be used for research studies, because there is not enough evidence on how safe or effective the practice is for OCD.

Having a loved one with OCD "has taken its toll on all of us, but we had to do all we could to help", says Marie, explaining how, before undergoing DBS, her daughter had discussed going to Switzerland to end her life.

Marie says her daughter is now back at university, though she concedes it is still early days in terms of the success of the treatment.

• OCD information and support from BBC Action Line

The UK's health guidelines for obsessive compulsive disorder are 20 years old - they are currently being reviewed by NICE. In 2019, it was agreed that policy around OCD treatment needed to reflect updated technologies and possible new drugs.

But for Leigh Wallbank from OCD Action she says better funding is imperative if young people are to get the help they need.

"Policymakers and the government need to invest in OCD services. [OCD] is preventable and it is a crisis that can be changed."

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said the government had inherited a broken NHS with mental health services suffering following years of neglect - adding that funding was now being boosted by £688m.

But people with OCD such as Sophie are scared about what the future holds.

The limited course of CBT that she's been prescribed is coming to an end and she fears a return of her symptoms.

"What am I going to do? What if it happens again?"

Retail sales hit their highest level since 2022 in September, with good weather giving a boost clothes shopping, according to new data.

Retail sales between July and September were 0.9% higher than the previous three months, new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows.

Retail sales rose by 0.5% on the month in September 2025, following a similar increase in August 2025.

Computer and telecoms retailers grew strongly, while within non-store retailing, online jewellers reported strong demand for gold.

ONS statistics are used in deciding government policy, which affects millions, and are also used by the Bank of England to make key financial decisions, such as setting interest rates.

A German company inadvertently embroiled in the Louvre Museum heist after one of its lifts was used in the theft is making the most of its free publicity - by launching a new advertising campaign.

Werne-based firm Böcker this week published a social media post featuring the now famous image of its furniture ladder extending up to a balcony outside the Gallery of Apollo.

"When you need to move fast," reads a banner under the image. "The Böcker Agilo transports your treasures weighing up to 400kg at 42m/min - quiet as a whisper."

Video has emerged of the alleged thieves escaping on the mechanical ladder after stealing €88m worth (£76m; $102m) of France's crown jewels on Sunday.

Speaking to the AFP news agency on Wednesday, the company's managing director, Alexander Böcker, said when it became clear no one was injured in the heist they used "a touch of humour" to draw attention to the family-run business.

"The crime is, of course, absolutely reprehensible, that's completely clear to us," Mr Böcker said.

"It was... an opportunity for us to use the most famous and most visited museum in the world to get a little attention for our company."

• How Louvre gang carried out France's most shocking theft
• Stolen Louvre jewellery worth €88m, prosecutor says
• Can France retrieve its priceless crown jewels - or is it too late?

Reaction to Böcker's new campaign have been enthusiastic, with responses on social media including "marketing genius" and "excellent, that is German quality".

"Your messaging takes the crown," one commenter quipped.

Mr Böcker told AFP he recognised his company's device from news reports, saying the machine was sold "a few years ago to a French customer who rents this type of equipment in Paris and the surrounding area".

The alleged jewel thieves had arranged to have the machine demonstrated to them last week and had stolen it during the demonstration, he added.

The thieves arrived at the Louvre on Sunday shortly after the museum opened its doors and visitors had started to file through its corridors.

Within eight minutes, they made off with some of France's most valuable treasure belonging to former royalty or imperial rulers.

Among the eight items stolen were diadems, necklaces, ear-rings and brooches adorned with thousands of diamonds and other precious gemstones.

The Louvre reopened on Wednesday, a few days after what has been called France's most shocking theft.

The museum's director admitted on Wednesday that the Louvre failed to spot the gang early enough to stop the theft and that CCTV around its perimeter was weak and "aging".

"We failed these jewels," Laurence des Cars said, adding that no-one was protected from "brutal criminals - not even the Louvre".

"We've had a terrible failure at the Louvre. I've taken responsibility for it," she added.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told France's Europe1 radio that he had "every confidence" the thieves would be caught.

Prosecutors said they believed the robbers acted under orders from a criminal organisation.

In a matter of moments, more than 100 years of history came crashing down for Labour as the results were read out.

For Plaid Cymru's Lindsay Whittle, his victory - at the 14th time of asking - must feel like it has been a long time coming.

This could be the sign that voters see his party as a viable alternative to Labour, with next May's Welsh Parliament election on the horizon.

The Labour stronghold has been breached and Plaid has stormed it.

• Watch: The moment Plaid wins the Caerphilly by-election
• What's your Senedd constituency?
• As it happened: Historic by-election victory for Plaid Cymru

For Reform, who had such high expectations, there are lessons to be learned.

Despite surging across the UK, they fell short in this big test.

Their ambition to be the biggest party after next year's Welsh Parliament election has taken a knock.

There will be questions about how effective the party is at getting their supporters out to vote, as the party had been banking on a high turnout being good for them.

The turnout was 50.43% - higher than any previous Senedd election.

For Labour, this was an awful result.

If their 11% vote share is mirrored across Wales next May, under the new proportional voting system, they could be facing a wipeout.

Before the vote, one source told me about the concept of a good defeat - something the party could work off.

This was not it.

The party's Members of the Senedd meet on Friday to start the difficult conversation of how to turn this round.

One Labour source suggested to me that the party will need a "retail offer" - something stand-out - that will grab voters' attention.

"People are desperate for material improvement to their lives," the source said.

"We can talk about improvements and we can talk about legacy issues like free prescriptions but there needs to be a big sell on something new."

The deputy first minister Huw Irranca-Davies said the party needed a "compelling story".

Another source said that First Minister Eluned Morgan needs to try to differentiate herself even further from her UK colleagues.

She has tried this with her concept of the Red Welsh Way, but has also spoken of a partnership in power.

Welsh Labour and UK Labour working together has its benefits, but it was never going to be easy.

Voters in Caerphilly have not bought the idea that two Labour governments working together is better for Wales.

Next May, the entire Welsh electorate could deliver the same verdict.

For now, whatever happens, Caerphilly has written itself into the pages of Welsh political history.

We are about to find out if this result is an eye-opening anomaly or a genuinely new chapter.

The number of 16-24 year olds in England reporting symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, has more than tripled in a decade, BBC analysis of NHS data has found.

The condition is now the second-most widespread mental health disorder for young adults, according to statistics from a major NHS England survey.

"OCD, I like to think of it as a bully, it attacks everything, everything you care about, everything you love," says Sophie Ashcroft.

"A lot of people do associate OCD with cleanliness, and being clean, and getting all your socks in a certain order. It's so much more than that."

The 22-year-old is one of a number of young people and their families to have contacted us through Your Voice, Your BBC News explaining how they can't access NHS treatment for their symptoms.

Those who could get seen spoke of a shortage of expert staff and effective treatments.

The average referral time figure for young people to be seen at a national OCD centre in London was 41 weeks last year, nearly three times as long as it was five years previously.

The government told us it was "turning services around", hiring 8,500 extra mental health workers, delivering more talking therapies and providing better access to help through the NHS App. It also said it was expanding the rollout of mental health support teams in schools.

Sophie sometimes struggles to leave her home because she feels compelled to repeat small tasks - such as getting into the shower or cleaning her teeth - to dispel intrusive or distressing thoughts.

"If I had a bad thought during the day, it would ruin the rest of my day. I'd think something bad was gonna happen," she tells us.

'Behind closed doors it's sheer panic'

The people who have contacted BBC News say lives have been devastated, with some families who haven't been able to get NHS help telling us they have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on private care.

Charities insist there is an OCD crisis and say the figures should be a wake-up call for the government.

OCD symptoms can affect adults and children, and can begin as early as six years old - but they are often triggered during puberty and early adulthood.

Sophie's symptoms first appeared when she was aged nine, she says, but it was a decade later, when a close friend died, that things became a lot worse.

To dispel troubling thoughts, she says it led her to repeat actions again and again - things most people would consider mundane and would do without a second thought.

"It's something telling me you have to do that again, you have to hug that person again, and it just takes over," says Sophie. "It's such an awful, awful feeling."

Despite all this, Sophie has just finished drama school. "I'm really, really good at hiding it, but behind closed doors it's sheer panic," she explains.

About 370,000 young people in England reported OCD symptoms in the financial year 2023/24, our analysis of the latest NHS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (June 2025) has found.

That is more than three times the number from 2014, when the figure stood at around 113,000.

It means OCD is now second in the list of named mental health disorders - placing it and other anxiety disorders well ahead of depression:

• Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) 7.6%

• Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) 5.7%

• Phobias 4.8%

• Depressive episodes 3.8 %

Why is OCD on the rise among young people?

Improved awareness of the condition has likely contributed to people seeking help, say experts - but, according to charities and many of those with OCD, societal problems, combined with the pressure of social media, are the main driver for the reported rise.

Leigh Wallbank, chief executive of charity OCD Action, describes many young people's lives as a "pressure pot".

"They're facing financial issues, educational issues, global issues - the environment is such a big issue," she tells us. "I think of them living in this pressure pot, and then underneath that, giving heat to this pressure pot, is social media."

The Covid-19 pandemic also played a part, says Minesh Patel, associate director of policy and influencing at the mental health charity, Mind.

The pandemic put a "particular and unique strain" on people with OCD, with disruption to routine, an inversion of social norms and a hyperfocus on hygiene, he says.

"Barriers to social interaction, including treatment and support services, meant that many coping mechanisms were disrupted or unavailable for an extended period of time," he adds.

NHS help for OCD patients includes specialist talking therapy called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - which can include Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP).

Through ERP patients are helped to manage their anxiety by gradually being exposed to their fears, while preventing them from performing their usual compulsive behaviours.

Medication is also offered - usually a type of antidepressant.

But not everyone can access these treatments.

Sophie was told by her GP that it is likely she does have OCD - but, two years on, she still hasn't received an appointment to see a specialist for a formal diagnosis.

In the meantime, her GP has referred her for a limited course of CBT which comes to an end soon. Sophie says she is "absolutely petrified" of what the future holds.

Leigh Wallbank from OCD Action is critical of the government for failing to collect regular quarterly data on obsessive compulsive disorder, and outcomes for patients who have it, as it does for many other conditions.

Without data, says the charity, the NHS is blind to the real scale of OCD, the success of treatments and who is being left behind.

We asked health officials in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland if they knew the number of young people with OCD symptoms, but they all said they do not collect that information.

'The system could not, or would not, provide help'

A mum from the south of England, who wants to remain anonymous, told us her autistic daughter first showed signs of OCD when she was 10 years old. Her daughter is now 17 and the OCD is severe, she says.

"My daughter has gone from being a scholarship-winning student, to being sectioned multiple times."

Some specialist treatment has been offered to the teenager, but her mum tells us her daughter is often too unwell to leave the house to attend appointments, or even take her medication.

"The impact on [all] our children, and us, is devastating. Our lives have been decimated not just by the illness, but by a system that could not, or would not, provide the help she needed, when she needed it."

The mother says the UK is failing in its treatment of young people with severe OCD. There are not enough specialists, beds or treatment options, she believes.

Children and adolescents with OCD across England can receive treatment at a national centre at the Maudsley Hospital in London.

However, the average wait time for a referral to the service rose from 15 weeks in 2020, to 41 weeks in 2024, according to a response to the BBC's Freedom of Information Act request.

But the hospital trust says that wait time is being cut.

Ade Odunlade, chief operating officer for South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust said: "We have worked incredibly hard to reduce delays and have lowered the average wait for assessments to around 20 weeks.

"We empathise with anyone who has had to wait for their assessment as we know how difficult that is."

The trust says it has now been able to secure additional funding which will allow them to employ further staff and drive down the waiting list even further.

It expects an approximate wait for assessment of about 12-16 weeks by early Spring 2026, it told us.

But even when people can access all the available help, it is sometimes not enough.

Graham and Marie Fuller, from Norwich, contacted the BBC to say their daughter had been hospitalised with OCD aged 12.

They described a revolving-door pattern of going backwards and forwards between NHS services for different treatments, with their daughter improving and then repeatedly relapsing.

After years of their daughter struggling with the condition, the family then decided to go to Texas to try a rare and radical procedure.

Their daughter, who is now 20, underwent deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery - where electrodes are implanted in the brain to deliver electrical impulses to help manage OCD symptoms.

The treatment is approved by US regulators, but in the UK the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says DBS can only be used for research studies, because there is not enough evidence on how safe or effective the practice is for OCD.

Having a loved one with OCD "has taken its toll on all of us, but we had to do all we could to help", says Marie, explaining how, before undergoing DBS, her daughter had discussed going to Switzerland to end her life.

Marie says her daughter is now back at university, though she concedes it is still early days in terms of the success of the treatment.

• OCD information and support from BBC Action Line

The UK's health guidelines for obsessive compulsive disorder are 20 years old - they are currently being reviewed by NICE. In 2019, it was agreed that policy around OCD treatment needed to reflect updated technologies and possible new drugs.

But for Leigh Wallbank from OCD Action she says better funding is imperative if young people are to get the help they need.

"Policymakers and the government need to invest in OCD services. [OCD] is preventable and it is a crisis that can be changed."

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said the government had inherited a broken NHS with mental health services suffering following years of neglect - adding that funding was now being boosted by £688m.

But people with OCD such as Sophie are scared about what the future holds.

The limited course of CBT that she's been prescribed is coming to an end and she fears a return of her symptoms.

"What am I going to do? What if it happens again?"

Out of a single room, with no DNA testing facilities or cold storage units of its own, the forensics team at Gaza's Nasser hospital face the challenges brought by peace.

Over the past eleven days, 195 bodies have been returned to Gaza by Israeli authorities, in exchange for the bodies of 13 Israeli hostages, under the terms of Donald Trump's ceasefire deal.

Photographs released by Gaza's medical authorities show some of the bodies badly decomposed, and arriving in civilian clothes or naked except for underwear, some with multiple signs of injury. Many have their wrists tied behind their backs, and doctors say some bodies arrived blindfolded or with cloth roped around their necks.

The forensic team at Nasser hospital are working with almost no resources to answer vast questions about torture, mistreatment and identity.

The head of the unit, Dr Ahmed Dheir, said one of their biggest limitations is a lack of cold storage space. The bodies arrive in Gaza thoroughly frozen and can take several days to thaw out, ruling out even basic identification methods like dental history, let alone any deeper investigation or post-mortem (autopsy).

"The situation is extremely challenging," he said. "If we wait for the bodies to thaw, rapid decomposition begins almost immediately, putting us in an impossible position [because] we lose the ability to examine the remains properly. So the most viable method is to take samples and document the state of the bodies as they are."

The BBC has viewed dozens of photographs of the bodies, many of them shared by Gaza's health authorities, others taken by colleagues on the ground.

We spoke to several of those involved in examining the bodies in Gaza, as well as families of the missing, human rights groups, and Israeli military and prison authorities.

We also spoke to three forensic experts outside the region, including one specialising in torture, to educate ourselves about the medical processes involved in this kind of investigation – all agreed that there were questions that were difficult to answer without post-mortems.

Dr Alaa al-Astal, one of the forensic team at Nasser hospital, said some of the bodies arriving there showed "signs of torture", such as bruises and marks from binding on the wrists and ankles.

"There were extremely horrific cases, where the restraint was so tight that blood circulation to the hands was cut off, leading to tissue damage and clear signs of pressure around the wrists and ankles," he said.

"Even around the eyes, when the blindfolds were removed, you could see deep grooves - imagine how much force that took. The pressure left actual marks where the blindfold had been tied."

Dr Astal also mentioned the loose cloths tied around the necks of some bodies as needing further investigation.

"In one case, there was a groove around the neck," he said. "To determine whether the death was due to hanging or strangulation, we needed to perform a post-mortem, but because the body was frozen, it was not dissected."

Sameh Yassin Hamad, a member of the Hamas-run government committee responsible for receiving the bodies, said there were signs of bruising and blood infiltration indicating that the bodies had been severely beaten before death. He also said there were stab wounds on the chest of face of some of them.

Some of the images we saw from the unit clearly show deep indentations or tightly-fastened cable-ties on the wrists and arms and ankles. One photograph appears to show the bruising and abrasion that would confirm that ties had been used while the person was still alive.

Other bodies showed only deep indentation marks, meaning a post-mortem would be needed to determine whether the ties had been used before or after death. Cable-ties are sometimes used when transporting bodies in Israel.

When we asked Israel's military about the evidence we gathered, it said it operates strictly in accordance with international law.

We showed the photographs we were given to the outside forensic experts. The images represent a fraction of the bodies transferred to Gaza by the Red Cross.

All three experts said that some of the markings raised questions about what had happened, but that it was difficult to reach concrete conclusions about abuse or torture without post-mortems.

"What is happening in Gaza is an international forensic emergency," said Michael Pollanen, a forensic pathologist and professor at the University of Toronto. "Based upon images like this, there is an imperative for complete medical autopsies. We need to know the truth behind how deaths occurred, and the only way to know the truth is to do autopsies."

But even with limited forensic data, doctors at Nasser hospital say the routine cuffing of wrists behind the body rather than in front, along with the marks observed on the limbs, points to torture.

"When a person is naked, with their hands tied behind their back, and visible restraint marks on their wrists and ankles, it indicates that they died in that position," Dr Dheir told us. "This is a violation of international law."

And there is strong evidence to suggest widespread abuse of detainees - including civilians - in Israeli custody in the months after the war began in October 2023, particularly in the military facility of Sde Teiman.

"At least in the first eight months of the war, the detainees from Gaza were cuffed behind their backs, and had their eyes covered, 24 hrs, 7 days a week, for months," said Naji Abbas, head of the Prisoners and Detainees Programme at the Israeli human rights organisation, Physicians for Human Rights (PHRI).

"We know that people developed serious infections on their skin, hands and legs because of the cuffs."

We have spoken to several people who worked at Sde Teiman over the past two years, who confirm that detainees were cuffed hand and foot – even while undergoing medical treatments, including surgery.

One medic who worked there said he had campaigned to loosen the cuffs, and that the treatment of detainees there was "dehumanisation".

But many of those detained during the Gaza war are held as unlawful combatants, without charge.

One complication for doctors at Nasser Hospital now is determining which of the returned bodies are Hamas fighters killed in combat, which are civilians and which are detainees who died in Israeli custody.

Some of the bodies returned by Israel are still wearing Hamas headbands or military boots, but doctors say most are either naked or in civilian clothing, making it difficult to distinguish their role, interpret their injuries, and assess human rights violations.

Photographs seen by the BBC show mostly naked or decomposed bodies. One dressed in civilian clothing and trainers has what officials say are two small bullet wounds in his back.

Sameh Yassin Hamad, from Gaza's Forensics Committee, said that Israel had sent back identification with only six of the 195 bodies it had returned – and that five of those names turned out to be wrong.

"Since these bodies were held by the Israeli authorities, they will have full data about them," said Dr Dheir. "But they haven't shared that information with us through the Red Cross. We were sent DNA profiles for around half the total number of dead, but have not received any details about the dates or circumstances of death, or the time or place of detention."

We asked Israel's army about the details in this report, including striking allegations by Gaza's forensic team that Israel had removed single fingers and toes from the bodies for DNA testing.

Israel's military said "all bodies returned so far are combatants within the Gaza Strip." It denied tying any bodies prior to their release.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, Shosh Bedrosian, on Wednesday described the reports from Gaza as "just more efforts to demonise Israel" and suggested the media focus instead on the experience of Israeli hostages.

As families of those missing gather at the hospital gates, Dr Dheir and his staff are under intense pressure to identify the dead and provide answers about what happened to them.

So far, only some 50 bodies have been positively identified – mostly through basic details like height, age and obvious previous injuries. Another 54 have been buried, unidentified and unclaimed, because of intense pressure on space at the unit.

Many families of the missing attended the burial of the unnamed dead this week, just in case one of them was theirs.

"Honestly, it's hard to bury a body when you don't know whether it's the right one or not," said Rami al-Faraa, still searching for his cousin.

"If there was [DNA] testing, we'd know where he is – yes or no," said Houwaida Hamad, searching for her nephew. "My sister would know if the one we're burying is really her son or not."

Donald Trump's ceasefire deal has brought some relief for Gaza, but little closure for the families of most of those missing, left burying a body in place of a brother, husband or son.

Retail sales hit their highest level since 2022 in September, with good weather giving a boost clothes shopping, according to new data.

Retail sales between July and September were 0.9% higher than the previous three months, new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows.

Retail sales rose by 0.5% on the month in September 2025, following a similar increase in August 2025.

Computer and telecoms retailers grew strongly, while within non-store retailing, online jewellers reported strong demand for gold.

ONS statistics are used in deciding government policy, which affects millions, and are also used by the Bank of England to make key financial decisions, such as setting interest rates.

Hong Suk-hui was waiting on the shore of South Korea's Jeju Island when the call came. His fishing boat had capsized.

Just two days earlier, the vessel had ventured out on what he had hoped would be a long and fruitful voyage. But as the winds grew stronger, its captain was ordered to turn back. On the way to port, a powerful wave struck from two directions creating a whirlpool, and the boat flipped. Five of the 10 crew members, who had been asleep in their cabins below deck, drowned.

"When I heard the news, I felt like the sky was falling," said Mr Hong.

Last year, 164 people were killed or went missing in accidents in the seas around South Korea – a 75% jump from the year before. Most were fishermen whose boats sunk or capsized.

"The weather has changed, it's getting windier every year," said Mr Hong, who also chairs the Jeju Fishing Boat Owners Association.

"Whirlwinds pop up suddenly. We fisherman are convinced it is down to climate change."

Alarmed by the spike in deaths, the South Korean government launched an investigation into the accidents.

This year, the head of the taskforce pinpointed climate change as one of the major causes, as well as highlighting other problems — the country's aging fishing workforce, a growing reliance on migrant workers, and poor safety training.

The seas around Korea are warming more rapidly than the global average, in part because they tend to be shallower. Between 1968 and 2024, the average surface temperature of the country's seas increased by 1.58C, more than double the global rise of 0.74C.

Warming waters are contributing to extreme weather at sea, creating the conditions for tropical storms, like typhoons, to become more intense.

They are also causing some fish species around South Korea to migrate, according to the country's National Institute of Fisheries Science, forcing fisherman to travel further and take greater risks to catch enough to make a living.

Environmental campaigners say urgent action is needed to "stop the tragedy occurring in Korean waters".

On a rainy June morning, Jeju Island's main harbour was crammed with fishing boats. The crews hurried back and forth between sea and land, refuelling and stocking up for their next voyage, while the boats' owners paced anxiously along the dock watching the final preparations.

"I'm always afraid something might happen to the boat, the risks have increased so much," said 54-year-old owner, Kim Seung-hwan. "The winds have become more unpredictable and extremely dangerous."

A few years ago, Mr Kim began to notice that the popular silvery hairtail fish he relied on were disappearing from local waters, and his earnings plunged by half.

Now his crews have to journey into deeper, more perilous waters to find them, sometimes sailing as far south as Taiwan.

"Since we're operating farther away, it's not always possible to return quickly when there's a storm warning," he said. "If we stayed closer to shore it would be safer, but to make a living we have to go farther out."

Professor Gug Seung-gi led the investigation into the recent accidents, which found that South Korea's seas appear to have become more dangerous. It noted the number of marine weather warnings around the Korean Peninsula - alerting fishermen to gales, storm surges, and typhoons - increased by 65% between 2020 and 2024.

"Unpredictable weather is leading to more boats capsizing, especially small fishing vessels that are going further out and are not built for such long, rough trips," he told the BBC.

Professor Kim Baek-min, a climate scientist at South Korea's Pukyong National University, said that although climate change was creating the conditions to make strong, sudden wind gusts more likely, a clear trend had not yet been established – for that, more research and long-term data is needed.

One foggy morning, we left shore in the dark on a small trawler with Captain Park Hyung-il, who has been fishing anchovies off Korea's south coast for more than 25 years. He sang sea shanties, determined to stay upbeat. But when we reached the nets he had left out overnight, his mood crumpled.

As he wound them in, the anchovies could barely be seen among the hordes of jellyfish and other fodder. Once the anchovies had been separated out, they filled just two boxes.

"In the past, we'd fill 50 to 100 of these baskets in a single day," he said. "But this year the anchovies have vanished and we're catching more jellyfish than fish."

This is the predicament facing tens of thousands of fishermen along South Korea's coastlines. Over the past 10 years, the amount of squid caught in South Korean waters each year has plummeted 92%, while anchovy catches have fallen by 46%.

Even the anchovies Park had caught were not fit for market, he said, and would need to be sold as animal-feed.

"The haul is basically worthless," he sighed, explaining it would barely cover the day's fuel costs, let alone his crew's wages.

"The sea is a mess, nothing makes sense anymore," Park continued. "I used to love this job. There was joy knowing that someone, somewhere in the country was eating the fish I caught. But now, with barely anything to catch, that sense of pride is fading."

And, with livelihoods disappearing, young people no longer want to join the industry. In 2023 almost half of South Korea's fishermen were over the age of 65, up from less than a third a decade earlier.

Increasingly, elderly captains must rely on help from migrant workers from Vietnam and Indonesia. Often these workers do not receive sufficient safety training, and language barriers mean they cannot communicate with the captains – further compounding the dangers.

Woojin Chung, a researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation, a UK-based charity, described it as "a vicious and tragic cycle".

When you combine more extreme weather with the pressure to travel further, the increased fuel costs this brings, and the need to rely on cheap, untrained foreign labour, "you have a higher chance of meeting disaster", she explained.

On 9 February this year, a large shipping trawler sank suddenly near the coastal city of Yeosu, killing 10 of the crew. It was a bitterly cold, windy day, and smaller boats had been banned from going out, but this trawler was deemed sturdy enough to withstand the gales. The reason it went down is still a mystery.

One of those killed was 63-year-old Young-mook. A fisherman for 40 years, he had been planning to retire, but that morning someone called and asked him to fill a last-minute opening on the boat.

"It was so cold that once you fell in you wouldn't survive the hypothermia, especially at his age," said his daughter Ean, still distraught over his death.

Ean thinks it has become too easy for boat owners to blame climate change for accidents. Even in cases where bad weather plays a role, she believes it is still the owners' responsibility to assess the risks and keep their crew safe. "Ultimately it is their call when to go out," she said.

As a child, she remembers her father's fridge would be filled with crabs and squid. "Now the stocks are gone, but the companies still force them to go out, and because these men have worked as fishermen their whole lives, they don't have alternative job options, so they keep fishing even when they're too frail to do so," she said.

Ean also wants owners to better maintain their boats, which are aging too. "Companies have insurance, so they get compensated after a boat sinks, but our loved ones can't be replaced."

The authorities, aware they cannot control the weather, are now working with fishermen to make their boats safer. As we were with Mr Hong, whose boat capsized earlier this year, a team of government inspectors arrived to carry out a series of on-the-spot checks on two of his other vessels.

The government's taskforce is recommending that boats be fitted with safety ladders, fisherman be required to wear life jackets, and that safety training be mandatory for all foreign crew. It also wants to improve search and rescue operations, and for fisherman to have access to more localised and real-time weather updates.

Some regions are even offering to pay fishermen for the jellyfish they catch, to try to clean up the seas, while squid fishermen are being given loans to protect them from bankruptcy, and encourage them to retire.

Because the problem will likely worsen. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation forecasts that total fish catches in South Korea will decline by almost a third by the end of this century, if carbon emissions and global warming continue on their current trajectories.

"The future looks very bleak," said the anchovy fisherman Captain Park, now in his late 40s. He recently started a YouTube channel documenting his catches in the hope of earning some extra money. Park is the third generation of his family to do this work and likely the last.

"Back then it felt romantic getting up early and heading out to sea. There was a sense of adventure and reward."

"These days it's just really tough."

Additional reporting by Hosu Lee and Leehyun Choi

US President Donald Trump has said he is immediately ending all trade negotiations with Canada.

He wrote on Truth Social that the country had run an advert featuring former President Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs.

"Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED," Trump wrote late on Thursday.

The US president has imposed a 35% levy on Canadian imports, although he has allowed exemptions for goods that fall under the USMCA - a free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that Trump negotiated during his first term.

Trump has also imposed sector-specific levies on Canadian goods, including 50% on metals and 25% on automobiles.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.

Sir Keir Starmer will push allies to provide Ukraine with more long-range missiles to strike Russian targets at a meeting in London on Friday.

The prime minister will host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky along with the so-called "coalition of the willing", comprising of more than 20 of Ukraine's allies who have agreed to provide Kyiv security guarantees once a ceasefire is brokered.

Zelensky has been pleading for weeks for more long-range weapons from the West, a move Russia has warned would escalate the conflict.

Ukraine's leader is travelling from Brussels, where he met EU leaders on Thursday seeking financial support.

Zelensky arrives off the back of two diplomatic wins this week: Donald Trump's decision to finally apply further sanctions against Russia, and the European Union agreeing to fund a Ukrainian budget hole.

Sir Keir is hoping to maintain the momentum by increasing the pressure on Moscow to negotiate an end to the war.

Among the leaders attending Friday's summit will be Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Netherlands' Dick Schoof. Others including French President Emmanuel Macron will join virtually.

Sir Keir will urge leaders to ramp up the provision of long-range weapons after a successful attack on a chemical plant in Bryansk, Russia, using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

"The only person involved in this conflict who does not want to stop the war is President Putin," Sir Keir said.

"And his depraved strikes on young children in a nursery this week make that crystal clear," he added.

Two children were among at least seven killed in a wave of Russian strikes on Ukraine, which hit a nursery in the second biggest city Kharkiv.

Sir Keir will also announce 100 additional air defence missiles will be delivered to Ukraine earlier than planned, as outlined in a £1.6bn deal struck between the UK and Ukraine in March.

"Time and again we offer Putin the chance to end his needless invasion, to stop the killing and recall his troops, but he repeatedly rejects those proposals and any chance of peace," Sir Keir said.

Long-range missiles have become a key demand in Zelensky's talks with allies.

US President Donald Trump floated the possibility of the US selling Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, but Zelensky came away empty-handed from a White House meeting last week.

Sir Keir will consult Western allies on how to take Russian oil and gas off the global market.

They will also discuss using frozen Russian assets to provide Ukraine with financial loans, although the plan faced a lack of political consensus and legal hurdles at the Brussels summit on Thursday.

The EU stopped short of agreeing to a proposal to use up to €140bn (£122bn) in frozen Russian assets to financially prop up Ukraine.

However, the leaders agreed to help support Ukraine's "financial needs" for the next two years.

The US also announced sanctions on Wednesday against Russia's two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, as part of efforts to add financial pressure on Moscow to enter ceasefire negotiations.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the southern Crimea peninsular Moscow annexed in 2014.

It's a mess. And it is extraordinarily difficult.

To give you a sense of that, one of the candidates to rule themselves out of chairing the grooming gangs inquiry is Jim Gamble.

Gamble's career goes like this: he worked in policing in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.

And then he spent years working to protect children from exploitation.

Neither are roles for the faint hearted, to put it lightly. And yet not even he wanted to take on chairing this inquiry.

So who on Earth would want to do it?

There is a reluctant acceptance in government that finding someone who is willing to do it, will last the course and will be universally accepted among the victims as the right person for the job is almost certainly impossible.

Little wonder then that those in government are making it known they are willing to spend months finding the right person to do it.

The best they can hope for, in all likelihood, is someone backed enthusiastically by some and tolerated by others.

"There is no such thing as a clean skin. Anyone with the necessary expertise and clout will likely come with what some will perceive as baggage," one Whitehall source told me.

And the personnel issues don't end there.

There has been a row over the last few days about whether the Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips should stay in her job – after some of those victims involved in setting up the inquiry said she should be replaced.

When we first reported that news, I was reminded of a thing reporters like me should always keep in mind. Journalists, inevitably, lean towards the outspoken, who generate headlines.

Rightly so – choosing to be outspoken, to go public with deeply held concerns, is often brave and noble. But reporters also shouldn't forget those who have chosen to remain quiet.

The vast majority of the 30 victims recruited to the panel being consulted in setting up the inquiry have not spoken out publicly.

Multiple sources in government are making it clear there is a widespread determination – from No10 to the Home Office - to keep Phillips in post.

And the latest twist is five other abuse survivors have written to the prime minister to say they will only continue to work with the inquiry if Phillips keeps her job.

It is another impossible bind the government finds itself in.

The central truth here is the victims of sexual abuse have been repeatedly and profoundly let down by multiple agencies of the state, over years, even decades.

Little wonder establishing, let alone maintaining trust is incredibly difficult.

"Upset and vulnerable people hit out when they are in pain, and that is entirely understandable," is how one senior government figure put it to me.

The panel members, I am told, are of a range of views and instincts – on their willingness or not to speak out, on their views on those who chose to do so or not, on who should chair the inquiry, how it should be run and on Jess Phillips.

Merely setting up this inquiry, let alone conducting it and then implementing the conclusions it comes to and the recommendations it makes, is already proving to be a huge headache.

Defence Secretary John Healey has a message for Russian President Vladimir Putin: "We're hunting your submarines."

There has been a "30% rise in Russian vessels threatening UK waters", he says.

This, according to Healey, is evidence of increased "Russian aggression right across the board" which he says is impacting Europe, not just Ukraine.

The Ministry of Defence says Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic is now back to the same levels as the Cold War era.

The RAF and Royal Navy have been stepping up their watch of the North Atlantic, where Russian submarines are most active. The RAF is flying missions most days, sometimes around the clock and often reinforced by other Nato allies.

BBC News joined the defence secretary on a flight on one of the RAF's new P-8 aircraft - the first media to be allowed to observe an active mission.

Members of the nine-strong crew face banks of monitors – showing them what's happening both on and under the surface of the water.

It is, in effect, a high-tech spy plane, which is one reason why we're not allowed to film or photograph any of the screens.

From the outside the P-8 may look like an airliner, just painted grey and with fewer windows. It is in fact the airframe of a Boeing 737, but inside it's fitted out with sophisticated cameras and sensors and listening devices.

Observing the crews at work, Healey tells me: "Russia is challenging us; it's testing us; it's watching us. But these planes allow us to say to Putin – we're watching you; we're hunting your subs."

At first, the crew track a number of surface vessels, using the aircraft's cameras to look for any suspicious equipment or activity. At times they're flying just a few hundred metres above the waves.

Last year, with help of the Royal Navy, an RAF P-8 monitored the Russian spy ship, Yantar, which was reported to be hovering over undersea cables in the Irish Sea.

Western nations are increasingly concerned that Russia might try to sever critical undersea cables as part of its hybrid warfare – causing chaos and disruption to internet communications.

Later, they switch the mission to hunt for submarines. At the back of the aircraft are stored 129 active and passive sonar buoys which can detect underwater sounds.

There's a loud pop as the buoys are fired automatically. One of the cameras on board shows them falling by parachute into the water. There's no sign of the torpedoes the aircraft can carry to destroy submarines.

One of the crew admits that finding a submarine is not always that easy.

But they know the signature sound of Russian submarines and are helped by a wider network of underwater sensors. In August the RAF, working with US and Norwegian P-8s, tracked a Russian submarine shadowing an American aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, on exercise in the North Atlantic.

'Time to get more aware'

It is a team sport – and the team is about to get even bigger, as Germany has ordered eight of its own P-8 aircraft. For this flight, Healey has been joined by his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius.

German military personnel have already been training alongside their UK colleagues and for part of this mission there's a German navy pilot in the cockpit.

Germany plans to frequently fly its own maritime patrols from RAF Lossiemouth - Pistorius tells me why.

"The North Atlantic is crucial, and it's threatened by Russian nuclear submarines," he says. "Therefore, we need to know what's going on here in the deep sea."

The German defence minister's presence underlines the deepening defence relationship with the UK. There's much closer co-operation following the signing of the Trinity House Agreement on defence last year.

Germany is already investing in the UK to build new tanks and armoured vehicles for the British Army. On this visit, Pistorius announced that Germany would be buying UK-made Sting Ray torpedoes for its P-8 aircraft. The two countries are also promising to work together on cyber-security.

Pistorius and Healey have already been leading Europe's efforts to supply weapons to Ukraine. Now they're turning their attention closer to home.

Pistorius says every day there is evidence of Russia's hybrid warfare – "fake news, disinformation, hybrid attacks, the threat to undersea infrastructure".

He says: "It's time to get more aware of what's going on."

Planned airport expansion that would result in hundreds of thousands of extra flights a year could risk the government's own net zero goals, a committee of MPs has found.

The report from the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee said the government had also "not demonstrated" that the negative climate impact of expansion would be outweighed by the economic growth created.

The government has approved several airport expansion schemes, most recently a third runway at London Heathrow and a second runway at Gatwick.

The Department for Transport said airport expansion plans would "only go ahead if it aligns with our legal obligations on climate change".

Ministers are expected to announce which of two rival proposals is preferred for the expansion of Heathrow within weeks.

The Gatwick decision could lead to an extra 100,000 flights per year. If Heathrow gets permission to build a third runway, that could mean another 276,000 flights a year, with approval for an expansion of Luton airport also potentially adding tens of thousands.

The Environmental Audit Committee said the only prospect of meeting net zero would be if airport expansion was "accompanied by a serious strategic approach to increasing the pace of decarbonising aviation".

However, its chair Toby Perkin noted that technological solutions - such as sustainable aviation fuel - were not yet being used on a commercial scale.

The report said the plans were likely to provide some economic growth, but how much was unclear, and the government had not provided supporting evidence.

The UK has legally binding targets to reduce its levels of planet-warming emissions, and contribute to the global goal of preventing average temperatures rising by more than 1.5C by 2050.

Above this temperature level, scientists anticipate significant impacts from global sea level rise, more extreme weather and impacts on agriculture.

To prevent temperatures increasing there is a limit to the amount of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, that the world can release, and the UK has set out its own share of these – known as carbon budgets.

On Wednesday, the Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told Parliament that Heathrow's expansion plans "must align with our legal, environmental and climate commitments".

A spokesperson for the DfT said: "We have been clear that airport expansion will only go ahead if it aligns with our legal obligations on climate change, including net zero, and we will be seeking advice from the independent Climate Change Committee to inform the ANPS review."

But Dr Alex Chapman, a senior researcher at New Economics Foundation (a think tank focused on environmental and social policies) who gave evidence to the environmental audit committee, said the inquiry was a "damning assessment of this government's airport expansion agenda".

"This government is unable to produce evidence that supports their central claim: that growing our airports will grow our economy.

"Had they done their research they would have found that demand for business air travel is collapsing and we're flying ever more tourists to spend money outside the country than we are flying in."

Just 37 years old, Chen Zhi is accused of being "the mastermind behind a sprawling cyber-fraud empire… a criminal enterprise built on human suffering".

With his wispy goatee beard and baby-faced features, he looks even younger than he is. He has certainly become very wealthy, very quickly.

Last week the US Department of Justice charged him with running scam compounds in Cambodia that stole billions in cryptocurrency from victims all over the world. The US Treasury Department has confiscated more than $14bn (£10.5bn) worth of bitcoin that it says is linked to him - it said this was the largest ever crypto-currency seizure.

His own company, the Cambodian Prince Group, describes him on its website as "a respected entrepreneur and renowned philanthropist" whose "vision and leadership have transformed Prince Group into a leading business group in Cambodia that adheres to international standards". The BBC has contacted the Prince Group for comment.

So, how much do we know about Chen Zhi, the mysterious figure allegedly running a scam empire?

A startling rise

Brought up in Fujian province in south-eastern China, he started with a small, and apparently not very successful internet gaming company, and moved to Cambodia in either late 2010 or 2011, where he began working in the then-booming real estate sector.

His arrival coincided with the start of a speculative property boom in Cambodia. It was fuelled by the availability of large tracts of land expropriated by powerful, politically-connected figures and by a flood of Chinese capital.

Some of it was pouring in on the tail end of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative to export Chinese-made infrastructure, and some of it was from individual Chinese investors seeking more affordable alternatives to China's overheated property market. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Cambodia was also rising fast.

The skyline of the capital Phnom Penh changed dramatically. The characterful, low-rise cityscape of mustard-coloured French colonial mansions was transformed into another Asian high-rise forest of glass and steel towers.

The transformation of Sihanoukville, a once quiet little seaside resort, was even more extreme. It was not just Chinese holidaymakers and property speculators heading there, but also gamblers - gambling is illegal in China.

New casinos sprang up, alongside gaudy, luxury hotels and apartment blocks. There was plenty of money to be made.

Even so, Chen Zhi's trajectory was startling.

In 2014 he became a Cambodian citizen, giving up his Chinese nationality. This enabled him to buy land in his own name, but required a minimum investment or donation to the government of $250,000.

It was never clear where Chen Zhi's money came from. When applying for a bank account on the Isle of Man in 2019 he listed an unnamed uncle who he said had given him $2m to start his first property company in 2011, but no evidence for this was ever provided.

Chen Zhi founded the Prince Group in 2015, focused on property development, when he was still only 27 years old.

He got a commercial banking licence in 2018 to establish Prince Bank. The same year he obtained a Cypriot passport, in return for a minimum investment there of $2.5m, giving him easy access to the European Union. He later acquired Vanuatu citizenship as well.

He started Cambodia's third airline, and in 2020 obtained a certificate to operate a fourth. There were luxury malls in Phnom Penh built by the Prince property arm, five-star hotels in Sihanoukville, and an ambitious scheme to construct a $16bn "eco-city" called "Bay of Lights" there.

In 2020 Chen Zhi was awarded the highest title bestowed by Cambodia's king, that of "Neak Oknha", which requires a donation of at least $500,000 to the government.

He had already been made an official adviser to Interior Minister Sar Kheng since 2017, was a business partner with his son Sar Sokha, and an official adviser to Cambodia's most powerful man Hun Sen, and later his son Hun Manet after he succeeded his father as prime minister in 2023.

Chen Zhi was lauded in the local media as a philanthropist, who had funded scholarships for low-income students and donated substantially to help Cambodia deal with the Covid pandemic.

Yet he remained an enigmatic figure, staying out of the limelight, making few public statements.

"Everyone I've spoken to who's worked with him directly, been in the room with him, they all describe him as very courteous, very calm, very measured," says Jack Adamovic Davies, a journalist who did a three year-long investigation of Chen Zhi which was published by Radio Free Asia last year.

"I think not being the kind of flamboyant person that people will write tabloid-y things about was smart. Even those who no longer want to be associated with him are still impressed by his quiet charisma, his gravitas."

But where was all this wealth and power coming from?

'A litany of transnational crimes'

In 2019 the property bubble burst in Sihanoukville. The online gambling business had attracted Chinese criminal syndicates, who then began violent turf wars with each other. Tourists were scared off.

Under pressure from China, then-prime minister Hun Sen banned online gambling in August that year. Around 450,000 Chinese left the city as its main business collapsed. Many of Prince Group's residential blocks were left empty.

Yet Chen Zhi continued to expand his business interests and spend freely.

According to the UK authorities, in 2019 he bought a £12m mansion in north London and a £95m office block in the city's financial district. The US says he and his associates bought properties in New York, private jets and superyachts, and a Picasso painting.

And, they allege, Chen Zhi's wealth came from the most profitable business in Asia today, online fraud, and the human trafficking and money laundering that go with it.

The US and UK have imposed sanctions on 128 companies linked to Chen Zhi and Prince Group, and on 17 individuals from seven different nationalities who they allege helped run his scam empire. Assets linked to Chen Zhi in the US and UK have been frozen.

The sanctions announcement describes an elaborate web of shell companies and cryptocurrency wallets through which money was moved to conceal its origins.

It says: "Prince Group Transnational Crime Organisation profits from a litany of transnational crimes including sextortion - a type of fraud involving the solicitation for eventual blackmail of sexually explicit materials, often from minors - money laundering, various frauds and rackets, corruption, illegal online gambling, and the industrial-scale trafficking, torture, and extortion of enslaved workers in furtherance of the operation of at least 10 scam compounds in Cambodia."

The 'scam empire'

China too had been quietly investigating the Prince Group since at least 2020. There have been a number of court cases accusing the company of running online fraud schemes.

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has established a task force "to investigate the "Prince Group, a major transnational online gambling syndicate based in Cambodia".

At its heart, the US and UK allege, were businesses like Golden Fortune Science and Technology Park, a compound built by the Prince Group in Chrey Thom, close to the Vietnamese border.

In the past the Prince Group has denied any involvement in scams, and said it no longer has any connection to Golden Fortune, but the US and UK investigation argues that there is still a clear business link between them.

Mr Adamovic Davies interviewed a number of people living and working near Golden Fortune for his investigation into Chen Zhi. They described brutal beatings of the mainly Chinese, Vietnamese and Malaysians who tried to escape from the compound, where they were forced to run online scams.

"I think it's the sheer scale of his operations which really makes Chen Zhi stand out," he says, adding that it is shocking the Prince Group was able to build a "global footprint" without raising alarm bells given the serious criminal charges it now faces.

"What should be uncomfortable for a lot of people is that Chen Zhi should never have been able to acquire all these assets, in Singapore, London or the US. Lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, bankers, all should have been looking at this group and saying, hang on, this doesn't add up. And they didn't."

Today, after all the publicity generated by the US and UK sanctions, businesses are rushing to dissociate themselves from the Prince Group.

The Cambodian Central Bank has had to issue a statement to nervous depositors assuring them they will be able to withdraw their funds from Prince Bank. The South Korean authorities have frozen $64m of its deposits held by Korean banks.

The Singapore and Thai governments are promising investigations into Prince subsidiaries in their jurisdictions - of the 18 individuals targeted by the US and UK, three are Singaporeans.

Cambodia's government has said little, apart from urging the US and UK authorities to be sure they have sufficient evidence for their allegations.

But it will be difficult for Cambodia's ruling elite to distance themselves from Chen Zhi, after being so close to him for so long. Cambodia was already facing growing pressure over its tolerance of scam businesses, which some estimate may account for around half of the entire economy.

And what of Chen Zhi himself?

Nothing has been heard or seen of him since the sanctions were announced last week. The enigmatic tycoon, once among the most powerful figures in Cambodia, appears to have vanished.

Afua Kyei, the Bank of England's chief financial officer, has been named the UK's most influential black person.

The 43-year-old is one of the UK's most senior finance leaders, in charge of the financial governance of the Bank's £1 trillion balance sheet and funding reforms.

The BoE executive director topped the 2026 Powerlist, which recognises the most powerful people of African, African Caribbean, and African American heritage in the UK.

Other influential names include former footballer Ian Wright, who's new to the list, make-up artist Dame Pat McGrath and actor Idris Elba.

Kyei, who was recruited by the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in his former role as the governor of the Bank of England, said topping the list was "incredibly humbling".

The mum-of-four said growing up she saw obvious differences in the workplace.

She said: "I didn't see so many women in big leadership roles who had families and I know that there are lots of women who think that they need to choose between work and having a family.

"What I love about the Bank of England is that we really support working families and working parents."

Kyei studied chemistry at Oxford University and was also awarded a junior research fellowship by Princeton University in organic chemistry.

'You don't need to be a mathematician'

During the global financial crisis, she was an investment banker before joining Barclays Bank where she was the Chief Financial Officer for Mortgages.

She joined the Bank of England in 2019 and is at the core of the Bank's leadership and decision making.

She said her parents, who moved to the UK from Ghana to go to university at 18, have been her biggest role models.

"My mother came to Liverpool, trained to become a midwife and enjoyed a 40-year plus career working for the NHS.

"My father has enjoyed a long career in the oil industry. I saw them juggling work and home. They instilled really strong values in us," she added.

Kyei hopes to inspire more young people to consider banking as a career.

"You don't need to be a mathematician, you don't need to be an accountant and you don't need to be an economist. What we're looking for is fresh perspectives and we want the best people".

Kyei takes the place of tech CEO Dean Forbes at the head of the list.

The rest of the 2026 Powerlist

The annual Powerlist was first published in 2007, with its aim to provide role models for young black people, according to Powerful Media.

Powerlist founder Michael Eboda said he thought they would run out of people after three years, but the opposite has happened.

"Over the last 20 years we've seen more influencers from the private sector as opposed to the public sector and that's a great story of success in Britain".

Spoiler warning: This article reveals details from the sixth episode of The Celebrity Traitors.

It started with a cliffhanger and ended with a cliffhanger.

And host Claudia Winkleman was in no mood for messing around.

"Silence please," she barked at the contestants seated at the round table as the banishment vote was split and had to be decided for the first time by chance - or should we say, the Chest of Chance. A dramatic version of flipping a coin, if you will.

Poor Mark Bonnar - an actor punished for overacting - took the high road (perhaps he shouldn't have sung The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond on Wednesday's episode) after the chest he picked was empty. Historian David Olusoga luckily found a protective shield in his.

One fan on X was clearly amused. "Imagine the first time they do this chest's of chance thing and it's over 2 faithfuls," they mused, later joking: "They've literally just made this up behind the cameras."

But it was no laughing matter for the faithfuls, who are now officially the worst performing group of all time on the UK version of the show.

In the first series of The Traitors, it took the faithfuls six episodes to get a traitor. And the game was new. This lot are still on the hunt going into episode seven, with only nine players now left from the original 19. And three of those are traitors. The faithfuls have just three episodes left to catch them.

Once again, the faithfuls were left to mull over another failure.

Claudia sounded genuinely distraught, her voice breaking as she told the group: "You are breaking my heart, you are not getting it, what are you not seeing? You have to open your eyes please."

"I feel that we are disastrously losing this game. And I think it's going to get worse," David added gloomily.

On a lighter note, while we all know someone who fast forwards the challenges when watching on catch-up, there was some real excitement on Thursday night thanks to the return of last season's life-size chessboard and larger-than-life traitor figures. Think Darth Vader after a growth spurt.

Sir Stephen Fry lived up to his brainy reputation over breakfast, by predicting the chessboard was back: "I could be a knight - oh, I already am," he joked. Comic Alan Carr was predictably quick to prick any potential pomposity: "Or an old queen," he quipped.

In fact, Alan continues to relish his role as a traitor with increasing enthusiasm.

When in the turret discussing who to murder next, he asked fellow traitors singer Cat Burns and presenter Jonathan Ross: "Stephen Fry: Shall we just get on with it and kill him? What's a knighthood when you're dead?"

"Brutal," Jonathan replied, and he wasn't wrong.

"Gets easier every time," Alan said later.

"I'm bursting with confidence now... not a single bead of sweat."

But it was comedian Joe Wilkinson who was sent to meet his maker, another faithful put to the sword.

Leopard-print PJs

Alan's strategy skills were then put to the test on the giant chess board.

The contestants split into teams, but former rugby player Joe Marler wasn't happy, believing (correctly) that the traitors were all on one team and would know all the answers to Claudia's questions (which the traitors had set).

So some swapping between the groups ensued.

To audible gasps, Nick Mohammed later admitted at the round table that he and Joe Marler had colluded by sabotaging the final round of the chess game so that Nick's team lost. He wanted to protect more faithfuls as he believed there were more traitors in his own team. But that only caused journalist Kate Garraway to be suspicious.

One viewer, posting on X, noted: "Nick has done a faithful sabotage! Unheard of games!"

Speaking of Kate, she also used her profession as a journalist to defend her performance on the show (she was voted the weakest player during the chess game).

"My weakness has become a strength. At last, I've been of use," she joked, explaining that she wasn't very good at the game because she just asked questions and didn't give opinions in her job.

It was also her turn for a fashion moment when she was later spotted sitting at her dressing table in leopard-print pyjamas. Luckily, there was no clash with Jonathan, a man partial to an animal print, who instead opted for a Showaddywaddy-style long checked jacket (if you're old enough to remember them).

Other notable moments on the show included Celia bringing Alan's name up at breakfast.

"I woke up thinking about you..." she told him over a plate of croissants.

"A fantasy?" Alan giggled. Actress Celia Imrie confessed to a crush on Jonathan in a previous episode, so perhaps it's Alan's turn now.

The Big Dog theory reared its head once again - would Jonathan or Sir Stephen be put to the sword?

"I am one of the whimpering hounds it seems - it's either Jonathan or Alan I would say," said Sir Stephen earlier in the day.

They finally seemed to be getting closer to the truth. Or were they?

Joe Marler called Jonathan "the wolf of The Traitors," saying "time's up for Mr Ross."

It was the most tetchy round table so far, as the pressure and frustration mounted.

Sir Stephen stated that traitors don't get as much sleep as the faithfuls do, pointing at Cat. But she said her autism and ADHD meant she "found it a lot more effort to speak".

After much debate, one of the Big Dogs was finally removed. But not the right one (for the faithfuls at least). The knight in shining armour, AKA Sir Stephen, was banished.

Following the show, on the podcast Traitors Uncloaked, Sir Stephen found out who the Traitors were.

"Two big dogs and one small Cat," was his response.

On the losing chess team, Jonathan, Kate, Nick and Lucy are now up for murder. And it will be a face-to-face killing, back at the chess board. Your move, Traitors.

The Celebrity Traitors is on BBC One on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 21:00 BST and on BBC iPlayer. There will be nine episodes.

The five-week shutdown of Jaguar Land Rover's (JLR) factories following a cyber-attack drove car production down by more than a quarter in September.

JLR facilities did not produce a single vehicle last month, after the cyber-attack forced the car maker to shut down its IT systems and halt its global manufacturing operations, including at its three UK plants.

Overall UK car production fell by 27% with just over 51,000 made last month, data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed.

It is the lowest number of cars made in any September in the UK since 1952, including the pandemic, the SMMT said.

The JLR cyber-attack was largely responsible for the slump in UK car production, the SMMT said, because other manufacturers reported stable figures for the month.

The attack is also estimated to cost £1.9bn and be the most economically damaging cyber event in UK history, according to research published on Tuesday.

The Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) found 5,000 businesses have been affected by the event and a full recovery will not occur until January 2026.

JLR said production across sites in Solihull, Wolverhampton and Halewood was returning in a phased approach.

The maker of the Jaguar I-Pace and Range Rover Sport is the second-largest car producer by volume in the UK after Nissan.

Overall, total vehicle production slumped by 35.9% in September compared to a year ago to about 54,300 vehicles.

The SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said: "September's performance comes as no surprise given the total loss of production at Britain's biggest automotive employer following a cyber incident.

"While the situation has improved, the sector remains under immense pressure," he added.

The majority of vehicles made in the UK are shipped overseas, and exports in September also slumped - down 24.5% - with the EU, US, Turkey, Japan and South Korea the top five destinations.

This year so far UK car and van factories have made 582,250 vehicles, which is 15.2% lower than at the same point in 2024.

The five-week JLR shutdown was a "severe, but short-term issue" for the overall industry, the boss of Autotrader Ian Plummer said.

"It'll be a bit like Covid, where after the shutdown and delays end, there's a surge in demand and sales," he said.

Mr Plummer, who runs the UK's biggest car-selling platform said, JLR brands had risen to have the highest number of monthly sales leads on Autotrader, "so there is demand out there, even as the pipeline is currently stuck".

The SMMT's Mr Hawes also said a recent ambition from the UK government to help foster a resurgence in domestic car production to 1.3m vehicles a year is in doubt if the chancellor Rachel Reeves ends tax breaks offered to Employee Car Ownership Schemes (ECOS).

"The industry is calling for rapid interventions to shore up its competitiveness," he said.

Keeping manufacturers' ECOS schemes would be "an immediate relief", he said, and bringing forward other interventions including programmes to bolster supply chain resilience "would further boost the sector".

Just 37 years old, Chen Zhi is accused of being "the mastermind behind a sprawling cyber-fraud empire… a criminal enterprise built on human suffering".

With his wispy goatee beard and baby-faced features, he looks even younger than he is. He has certainly become very wealthy, very quickly.

Last week the US Department of Justice charged him with running scam compounds in Cambodia that stole billions in cryptocurrency from victims all over the world. The US Treasury Department has confiscated more than $14bn (£10.5bn) worth of bitcoin that it says is linked to him - it said this was the largest ever crypto-currency seizure.

His own company, the Cambodian Prince Group, describes him on its website as "a respected entrepreneur and renowned philanthropist" whose "vision and leadership have transformed Prince Group into a leading business group in Cambodia that adheres to international standards". The BBC has contacted the Prince Group for comment.

So, how much do we know about Chen Zhi, the mysterious figure allegedly running a scam empire?

A startling rise

Brought up in Fujian province in south-eastern China, he started with a small, and apparently not very successful internet gaming company, and moved to Cambodia in either late 2010 or 2011, where he began working in the then-booming real estate sector.

His arrival coincided with the start of a speculative property boom in Cambodia. It was fuelled by the availability of large tracts of land expropriated by powerful, politically-connected figures and by a flood of Chinese capital.

Some of it was pouring in on the tail end of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative to export Chinese-made infrastructure, and some of it was from individual Chinese investors seeking more affordable alternatives to China's overheated property market. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Cambodia was also rising fast.

The skyline of the capital Phnom Penh changed dramatically. The characterful, low-rise cityscape of mustard-coloured French colonial mansions was transformed into another Asian high-rise forest of glass and steel towers.

The transformation of Sihanoukville, a once quiet little seaside resort, was even more extreme. It was not just Chinese holidaymakers and property speculators heading there, but also gamblers - gambling is illegal in China.

New casinos sprang up, alongside gaudy, luxury hotels and apartment blocks. There was plenty of money to be made.

Even so, Chen Zhi's trajectory was startling.

In 2014 he became a Cambodian citizen, giving up his Chinese nationality. This enabled him to buy land in his own name, but required a minimum investment or donation to the government of $250,000.

It was never clear where Chen Zhi's money came from. When applying for a bank account on the Isle of Man in 2019 he listed an unnamed uncle who he said had given him $2m to start his first property company in 2011, but no evidence for this was ever provided.

Chen Zhi founded the Prince Group in 2015, focused on property development, when he was still only 27 years old.

He got a commercial banking licence in 2018 to establish Prince Bank. The same year he obtained a Cypriot passport, in return for a minimum investment there of $2.5m, giving him easy access to the European Union. He later acquired Vanuatu citizenship as well.

He started Cambodia's third airline, and in 2020 obtained a certificate to operate a fourth. There were luxury malls in Phnom Penh built by the Prince property arm, five-star hotels in Sihanoukville, and an ambitious scheme to construct a $16bn "eco-city" called "Bay of Lights" there.

In 2020 Chen Zhi was awarded the highest title bestowed by Cambodia's king, that of "Neak Oknha", which requires a donation of at least $500,000 to the government.

He had already been made an official adviser to Interior Minister Sar Kheng since 2017, was a business partner with his son Sar Sokha, and an official adviser to Cambodia's most powerful man Hun Sen, and later his son Hun Manet after he succeeded his father as prime minister in 2023.

Chen Zhi was lauded in the local media as a philanthropist, who had funded scholarships for low-income students and donated substantially to help Cambodia deal with the Covid pandemic.

Yet he remained an enigmatic figure, staying out of the limelight, making few public statements.

"Everyone I've spoken to who's worked with him directly, been in the room with him, they all describe him as very courteous, very calm, very measured," says Jack Adamovic Davies, a journalist who did a three year-long investigation of Chen Zhi which was published by Radio Free Asia last year.

"I think not being the kind of flamboyant person that people will write tabloid-y things about was smart. Even those who no longer want to be associated with him are still impressed by his quiet charisma, his gravitas."

But where was all this wealth and power coming from?

'A litany of transnational crimes'

In 2019 the property bubble burst in Sihanoukville. The online gambling business had attracted Chinese criminal syndicates, who then began violent turf wars with each other. Tourists were scared off.

Under pressure from China, then-prime minister Hun Sen banned online gambling in August that year. Around 450,000 Chinese left the city as its main business collapsed. Many of Prince Group's residential blocks were left empty.

Yet Chen Zhi continued to expand his business interests and spend freely.

According to the UK authorities, in 2019 he bought a £12m mansion in north London and a £95m office block in the city's financial district. The US says he and his associates bought properties in New York, private jets and superyachts, and a Picasso painting.

And, they allege, Chen Zhi's wealth came from the most profitable business in Asia today, online fraud, and the human trafficking and money laundering that go with it.

The US and UK have imposed sanctions on 128 companies linked to Chen Zhi and Prince Group, and on 17 individuals from seven different nationalities who they allege helped run his scam empire. Assets linked to Chen Zhi in the US and UK have been frozen.

The sanctions announcement describes an elaborate web of shell companies and cryptocurrency wallets through which money was moved to conceal its origins.

It says: "Prince Group Transnational Crime Organisation profits from a litany of transnational crimes including sextortion - a type of fraud involving the solicitation for eventual blackmail of sexually explicit materials, often from minors - money laundering, various frauds and rackets, corruption, illegal online gambling, and the industrial-scale trafficking, torture, and extortion of enslaved workers in furtherance of the operation of at least 10 scam compounds in Cambodia."

The 'scam empire'

China too had been quietly investigating the Prince Group since at least 2020. There have been a number of court cases accusing the company of running online fraud schemes.

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has established a task force "to investigate the "Prince Group, a major transnational online gambling syndicate based in Cambodia".

At its heart, the US and UK allege, were businesses like Golden Fortune Science and Technology Park, a compound built by the Prince Group in Chrey Thom, close to the Vietnamese border.

In the past the Prince Group has denied any involvement in scams, and said it no longer has any connection to Golden Fortune, but the US and UK investigation argues that there is still a clear business link between them.

Mr Adamovic Davies interviewed a number of people living and working near Golden Fortune for his investigation into Chen Zhi. They described brutal beatings of the mainly Chinese, Vietnamese and Malaysians who tried to escape from the compound, where they were forced to run online scams.

"I think it's the sheer scale of his operations which really makes Chen Zhi stand out," he says, adding that it is shocking the Prince Group was able to build a "global footprint" without raising alarm bells given the serious criminal charges it now faces.

"What should be uncomfortable for a lot of people is that Chen Zhi should never have been able to acquire all these assets, in Singapore, London or the US. Lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, bankers, all should have been looking at this group and saying, hang on, this doesn't add up. And they didn't."

Today, after all the publicity generated by the US and UK sanctions, businesses are rushing to dissociate themselves from the Prince Group.

The Cambodian Central Bank has had to issue a statement to nervous depositors assuring them they will be able to withdraw their funds from Prince Bank. The South Korean authorities have frozen $64m of its deposits held by Korean banks.

The Singapore and Thai governments are promising investigations into Prince subsidiaries in their jurisdictions - of the 18 individuals targeted by the US and UK, three are Singaporeans.

Cambodia's government has said little, apart from urging the US and UK authorities to be sure they have sufficient evidence for their allegations.

But it will be difficult for Cambodia's ruling elite to distance themselves from Chen Zhi, after being so close to him for so long. Cambodia was already facing growing pressure over its tolerance of scam businesses, which some estimate may account for around half of the entire economy.

And what of Chen Zhi himself?

Nothing has been heard or seen of him since the sanctions were announced last week. The enigmatic tycoon, once among the most powerful figures in Cambodia, appears to have vanished.

An NBA player and coach are among dozens of people arrested as part of a sweeping FBI investigation into illegal sports betting and rigged, mafia-linked poker games.

Miami Heat player Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups were named by federal prosecutors in two separate indictments on Thursday.

Rozier, 31, is among six people arrested over alleged betting irregularities, including other NBA players who may have faked injuries to influence gambling markets.

Billups, a Hall of Fame player who has coached the Portland Trail Blazers since 2021, is one of 31 people charged in a separate illegal poker game case involving retired players and the mafia.

That case, which prosecutors said involved four of the five major crime families in New York, uncovered an alleged scheme to lure victims into playing rigged poker games alongside high-profile sports stars before stealing millions of dollars.

They did so using technology including special contact lenses and glasses that could read pre-marked cards and an X-ray table, according to authorities.

In a statement, the NBA said that Rozier and Billups were being placed on immediate leave as it reviews the federal indictments.

"We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority," the statement read.

Rozier's lawyer denied the allegations to CBS News, the BBC's US news partner, saying: "Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight."

Rozier is due to appear in federal court in Orlando later on Thursday, while Billups was arrested in Portland and will appear in court there.

FBI Director Kash Patel held a news conference with other prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday where he announced the two indictments. He called the arrests "extraordinary" and said there was a "co-ordinated takedown across 11 states".

"We're talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multi-year investigation," he said.

US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Joseph Nocella Jr, said all defendants are innocent until proven guilty, but warned: "Your winning streak has ended. Your luck has run out."

NBA games under scrutiny

Prosecutors said the first case involved players and associates who allegedly used information not available to the public to manipulate bets on major gambling platforms.

Nocella called it "one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalised".

• EXPLAINED: What we know about the arrests

Seven NBA games between February 2023 and March 2024 have been identified as part of the case. Rozier is said to have been involved in one between the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans, when he was playing for the Hornets.

Rozier is alleged to have told a friend that he would leave the game early due to injury. The friend and his associates then placed bets, or directed others to bet, "more than $200,000" that Rozier would underperform expectations in the game, prosecutors said.

He left the game after nine minutes, they said, which resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in betting profits for those involved.

During the game, Rozier played roughly nine minutes and scored just five points because of a sore right foot, according to the official NBA match report.

Before that game, he averaged 35 minutes of playing time and about 21 points per game.

"As the NBA season tips off, his career is already benched, not for injury but for integrity," New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

Rozier's lawyer James Trusty said in a statement that prosecutors "appear to be taking the word of spectacularly in-credible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case."

Trusty said he had been representing Rozier for more than a year and said prosecutors characterised Rozier as a subject, not a target, until they informed him FBI agents were arresting the player at a hotel on Thursday morning.

Former NBA player Damon Jones was also arrested as part of the investigation.

Jones is said to have been involved in two of the identified games - when the Los Angeles Lakers met the Milwaukee Bucks in February 2023, and a January 2024 game between the Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder.

Sports betting was outlawed in most of the US from 1992 until 2018, when the Supreme Court turned regulation of the practice over to the states.

Since the federal ban was struck down, sports betting has exploded with major sports leagues and media companies making deals with gambling firms to get in on the billion-dollar industry.

Rigged poker games and the mafia

The second indictment announced on Thursday involves 31 defendants alleged to have participated in a scheme to rig illegal poker games and steal millions of dollars.

The case involved 13 members and associates of the Bonanno, Genovese and Gambino crime families in New York.

Nocella said the targeted victims were lured to play games with former professional athletes, including Billups and Jones, in Las Vegas, Miami, Manhattan and the Hamptons.

Victims were "fleeced" out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game, he said.

He said defendants used "very sophisticated technology" like altered off-the-shelf shuffling machines that could read the cards. Some of the defendants used special contact lenses and glasses to read pre-marked cards, and an X-ray table that could read cards when they were face-down.

"What [the victims] didn't know is that everybody else at the poker game - from the dealer to the players were in on the scam," Nocella said.

Tisch said when people refused to pay, the organised crime families used threats and intimidation to get people to hand over the money.

The charges include robbery, extortion, wire fraud, bank fraud and illegal gambling.

The conspiracy cheated victims out of $7m (£5.2m), with one losing $1.8 million, officials said.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg," Christopher Raia, the FBI assistant director of the New York field office, said, adding the FBI is working day and night to ensure members of mafia families "cannot continue to wreak havoc in our communities".

For two months, the US military has been building up a force of warships, fighter jets, bombers, marines, drones and spy planes in the Caribbean Sea. It is the largest deployment there for decades.

Long-range bomber planes, B-52s, have carried out "bomber attack demonstrations" off the coast of Venezuela. Trump has authorised the deployment of the CIA to Venezuela too, as tensions have escalated.

The US says it has killed dozens of people in strikes on small vessels from Venezuela which it alleges carry "narcotics" and "narco-terrorists", without providing evidence or details about those on board.

The strikes have drawn condemnation in the region and experts have questioned their legality. They are being sold by the US as a war on drug trafficking but all the signs suggest this is really an intimidation campaign that seeks to remove Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro from power.

"This is about regime change. They're probably not going to invade, the hope is this is about signalling," says Dr Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at the Chatham House think tank.

He argues the military build-up is a show of strength intended to "strike fear" in the hearts of the Venezuelan military and Maduro's inner circle so that they move against him.

BBC Verify has been monitoring publicly available tracking information from US ships and planes in the region - along with satellite imagery and images on social media - to try to build a picture of where Trump's forces are located.

The deployment has been changing, so we have been monitoring the region regularly for updates.

As of 23 October, we identified 10 US military ships in the region, including guided missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships and oil tankers for refuelling vessels at sea.

A $50m reward testing loyalty of inner circle

It is no secret that the US administration, particularly Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would like to see Maduro toppled.

Earlier this year, he told Fox News Maduro was a "horrible dictator" and when asked whether he was demanding that Maduro leave, added: "We're going to work on that policy."

But, even for overt critics of Maduro like Rubio, it is difficult to explicitly call for military-backed regime change - something Venezuela's opposition has longed called for.

Donald Trump campaigned against regime change in 2016, pledging to "stop racing to topple foreign regimes", and more recently has condemned engaging in "forever wars."

The US does not recognise Maduro as the president of Venezuela, after the last election in 2024 was widely dismissed internationally, and by the opposition in Venezuela, as neither free nor fair. The US embassy in Caracas was closed during Trump's first presidency in 2019.

The US has upped its bounty for information leading to Maduro's arrest to $50m, an incentive for those within his loyal, inner circle to hand him in. But it has yielded no defections.

Venezuelan law professor and senior associate at the CSIS national security think tank, Jose Ignacio Hernández, says $50m is "nothing" for Venezuela's elites.

There is a lot of money to be made through corruption within an oil-rich state like Venezuela. The former head of Treasury Alejandro Andrade, made $1bn in bribes before he was convicted.

Many analysts agree the Venezuelan military would be key to any regime change, but for them to turn on Maduro and oust him, they would also likely want promises of immunity from prosecution.

Mr Hernández adds: "They will think, in some way or another I am involved in criminal activities too."

Michael Albertus, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who publishes extensively on Latin America, is not convinced that even a bounty of $500m would persuade Maduro's inner circle to turn him in.

"Authoritarian leaders are always suspicious of even their inner circle, and because of that, they create mechanisms for monitoring them and ensuring loyalty," he said.

Economic sanctions on Venezuela have exacerbated the already severe economic crisis, but have not succeeded in persuading senior figures to turn against their president.

Why this probably isn't just about drugs

Donald Trump has declared this is a war on narcotics traffickers and said one vessel the US struck, on 16 October, was "loaded up with mostly fentanyl."

But fentanyl is primarily produced in Mexico - not South America - and comes into the US over the southern border.

"It isn't about drugs," says Dr Sabatini. "But he's co-opted the Venezuelan opposition's language of how this is not just a dictatorship - it's a criminal regime."

Since 2020, the US Justice Department has accused President Maduro of leading a drug trafficking and narco-terrorism organisation, which he denies. Trump has said he has authorised the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela in part because of "drugs coming in" from Venezuela.

Venezuela does not produce large quantities of cocaine - that's mainly Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. There is some cocaine trafficked through Venezuela, which its own government claims it is cracking down on.

A US Drug Enforcement Administration report from 2025 says 84% of the cocaine seized in the US comes from Colombia and mentioned other countries but not Venezuela in its cocaine section.

The first seven strikes were carried out in the Caribbean, which is not a major sea route for drug-trafficking compared with the Pacific Ocean, where the subsequent strikes were carried out.

• Venezuelan fishermen in fear after US strikes

The US has not detailed its evidence of Maduro leading a drug trafficking organisation. Maduro has repeatedly denied the accusations, and for his part accuses the US of imperialism and worsening the country's economic crisis through sanctions.

There are known cases of those close to him being indicted.

In 2016, a New York federal court convicted the two nephews of his wife for conspiring to import cocaine to the US. The case said they planned to use some of the money to fund his wife's political campaign. They were later freed.

Bolstering US sea and air strength

Intercepting drugs at sea does not require a force as big as the current US one, according to military analysts.

As well as the US ships we tracked around Puerto Rico - where the US has a military base - satellite imagery also showed two vessels about 75 miles (123km) east of Trinidad and Tobago.

One was a guided missile cruiser, the USS Lake Erie.

The other appeared to be the MV Ocean Trader according to Bradley Martin, a former US Navy captain, now a senior policy researcher at RAND Corp.

This is a converted cargo ship designed to support special forces missions while blending in with commercial traffic. It can house drones, helicopters, and small boats.

There are a wide variety of missions it could conceivably support, including reconnaissance to prepare for strikes. But Mr Martin stresses that its presence "doesn't necessarily mean that those kinds of activities are being carried out or are planned".

The US has bolstered its air presence in the region - BBC Verify has identified a number of US military aircraft across Puerto Rico.

Stu Ray, a senior analyst at McKenzie Intelligence Services, says a satellite image taken on 17 October shows F-35 fighter jets on the tarmac, possibly F-35Bs.

These are highly advanced stealth jets prized for their short take-off and vertical landing capability.

On social media, a private jet pilot shared a video of a MQ-9 Reaper drone, filmed at Rafael Hernández Airport on Puerto Rico.

These have been used by the US to carry out attacks and surveillance in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Mali.

Earlier in October, BBC Verify tracked three B-52 bombers which flew across the Caribbean and close to Venezuela's coast.

The US air force later confirmed that the planes had taken part in a "bomber attack demonstration".

Flights of B1 bombers and P-8 Poseidon spy planes have also been visible on plane tracking platforms.

Images on social media have also shown military helicopters operating off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago.

Some of these are Boeing MH-6M Little Birds - nicknamed "Killer Eggs" - used by US special forces.

What CIA could do inside Venezuela

When asked if the CIA had been given the authority to take out Maduro, Donald Trump dodged the question and said it would be "ridiculous" to answer.

He has also said that the US is "looking at land now", referring to possible military operations on Venezuelan soil.

The CIA is viewed with a lot of suspicion by many in Latin America because of a long history of covert interventions, attempts at regime-change, and support for past right-wing military dictatorships, notably in Chile and Brazil.

Ned Price, deputy to the US representative to the United Nations and formerly a CIA senior analyst and State Department senior adviser, said CIA covert action can take "many forms."

"It can be information operations. It can be sabotage operations. It can be funding opposition parties. It can go as far as the overthrow of a regime. There are a lot of options between the low-end and high-end option."

This could include agents being used to target trafficking suspects inside Venezuela. By the US's own definition, this could include Maduro himself.

Dr Sabatini says given Venezuela isn't a major production point for drugs, there are no cocaine or fentanyl labs to "take out" but there are airstrips or ports which the US could target.

"If he wants to be aggressive, he could send a missile to a military barrack. There is pretty good intelligence certain sectors of the military are involved in cocaine trafficking."

Or it could be a "smash and grab situation", he notes, where they attempt to seize Maduro or some of his lieutenants and bring them to justice in the US.

The big question, he argues, is how long Trump is willing to keep so many US assets parked in the Caribbean.

If the prime purpose of this military build-up is to threaten Maduro, it is unclear whether it is enough to prompt defections.

Whether that goes as far as an actual attempt to dislodge the Maduro regime through force, ponders Professor Albertus, it is hard to know.

This week, millions of people took part in "No Kings" protests against President Donald Trump's policies in cities across the US, Amazon Web Services almost broke the internet, and Strictly fans were stunned by presenters Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman announcing their departure.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz collated by Ben Fell.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week's quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

Sign up for our morning newsletter and get BBC News in your inbox.

Celebrities, professional sports stars and wealthy gamblers sat at a table hoping to win big in a game of Texas Hold 'Em.

But they didn't know it was nearly impossible. They were "fishes" allegedly being targeted by the mafia in an elaborate poker gambling scheme that included X-ray card tables, secret cameras, analysers in chip trays and sunglasses and contact lenses that could read their hand.

In what sounds like an Ocean's Eleven film plot, prosecutors say these "unwitting" victims were cheated out of at least $7m (£5.25) in poker games - with one person losing at least $1.8m (£1.35m).

The scheme, which US prosecutors described as "reminiscent of a Hollywood movie," was dismantled in a sprawling federal investigation that led to more than 30 arrests, including members of the La Costra Nostra crime families, Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and former player Damon Jones.

FBI director Kash Patel called it a "mind-boggling" fraud scheme that cheated victims in New York, Miami, Las Vegas and other US cities.

The underground poker scheme started as early as 2019, prosecutors say, and was allegedly operated the mafia - specifically by members of notorious crime families, including Bonnano, Gambino, Luchesse and Genovese. A cut of the profits, prosecutors say, helped fund their criminal enterprise.

Former professional athletes, described by prosecutors as "face cards", were enlisted to help in the scheme and entice victims into playing.

Lured in by the opportunity to play with a high-profile celebrity - such as Billups or Jones - a wealthy, "unwitting victim" would be recruited for illegal, underground poker games where tens of thousands of dollars were on the line, prosecutors allege.

Unbeknownst to the lured-in players - referred to in the scheme as a "fish" - everyone surrounding them was in on the elaborate scam - from the players to the dealers, even the technology used to shuffle the deck and count the chips, according to a lengthy federal indictment.

Sophisticated wireless technology was also used to deceive the players during the games, most commonly in Texas Hold'em.

• NBA stars and mafia among dozens arrested in illegal gambling crackdown
• NBA injuries, poker and the mafia: What we know about gambling arrests

The technology was everywhere - an X-ray table that read any face-down card, analysers inside chip trays, a rigged shuffling machine that read cards and predicted who would have the best hand, and pre-marked cards that allowed those wearing special sunglasses and contact lenses to read what was in everyone's hands.

Secretive cameras - built into tables and light fixtures - also helped convey information to those helping in the plot, authorities say.

Then there was also a sophisticated method of communicating and rigging the game, prosecutors allege.

Information from the game would be sent to an off-site conspirator - called an "operator" by prosecutors - who then would send information to another player sitting at the table who was in on the scheme - which prosecutors call a "quarterback" or "driver".

That person would then secretly signal to others, prosecutors allege, effectively stealing money and making it impossible for victims to win.

Authorities estimate that each game would leave a victim out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Prosecutors say the defendants allegedly laundered the funds from the scheme through cryptocurrency, cash exchanges and shell companies.

A cut of the profits went to those who helped in the plot, prosecutors say, and some allegedly went to fund the mafia's criminal enterprise.

"This alleged scheme wreaked havoc across the nation, exploiting the notoriety of some and the wallets of others to finance the Italian crime families," said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher Raia.

Arrests in the scheme were announced Thursday along with a basketball betting plot, where professional National Basketball Association (NBA) players are accused of faking injuries to influence betting odds.

Billups, who was accused of being a face card in the fixed card games, was arrested in Portland and was placed on leave by the NBA. In a statement, the Portland Trailblazers said that they are aware of the allegations involving their head coach and are "fully cooperating with the investigation".

Jones was arrested in relation to both the poker and NBA injuries scheme. He is charged with two counts each of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.

When Brandi Carlile was 12 years old, living in a mobile home in an isolated community 50 miles outside Seattle, she begged her parents for a piano.

She'd fallen in love with her mum's Elton John albums and wanted to play along.

But when she broke her tiny Casio keyboard out of its Toys R Us box, she had to face an uncomfortable reality.

"I was just nowhere near talented enough," she laughs.

Instead, she put on Bruce Springsteen's Streets Of Philadelphia, dialled up the keyboard's "synth strings" setting, and pressed down two keys.

"You just hold them, all the way through the verse," she recalls. "Anyone can do it, but that's the foundation of my career."

Fast forward 32 years and Elton John is one of her best friends. In January, they released a collaborative album, Who Believes In Angels, that topped the UK charts (Carlile contributed significantly more than two notes).

The musician has also been responsible for Joni Mitchell's musical rehabilitation, coaxing the 81-year-old back onto the stage after a near-fatal brain haemorrhage.

And she's spent the last six years duetting with some of pop's biggest stars, from Miley Cyrus to Noah Kahan, while curating her annual Girls Just Wanna festival in Mexico.

All those opportunities stemmed from a single performance at the 2019 Grammys, where Carlile delivered a spine-tingling version of The Joke, an anthemic ballad for the persecuted.

"I'd played that song hundreds of times but I never could really hit that last note," she confesses now.

"But at the Grammys, I really wanted to get it right. So for days leading up to the show, I trained and I trained and I trained. And when I hit it, I could hardly finish the song. I wanted to jump up and down."

She wasn't the only one. Jaws were dropped. Eyes were popped. A star was born.

Before she'd even left the stage, Carlile's phone was blowing up with texts from people "so famous I couldn't fathom it".

"I suddenly had this river of opportunity flowing into my life, and I didn't know how long it was going to last, and so I said yes to everything," she recalls.

Looking back, she reckons the eagerness to grasp those opportunities was a reaction to her childhood.

Growing up in rural America, Carlile knew she was gay, but had "never met" another gay person in her life.

Her sexuality changed her relationship with her mother.

"All the ways she thought she was going to relate to me, she couldn't," says Carlile.

"I didn't want to do make-up or learn to shave my legs or have long hair, and she was just like, 'What do I do with this child?'"

They eventually bonded over music - even forming a sort of informal tribute act to mother-daughter band The Judds.

But the sense of otherness remained, even after Carlile married and had two kids with British charity director Catherine Shepherd. So when opportunity came knocking, she felt obliged to chase it.

"I think it could be the gay thing, this kind of coyote thing, where it's like, 'Keep your eye on the prize. You're being included right now, you might not be included tomorrow. Accept everything, do everything, achieve, assimilate,'" she says.

Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the instinct vanished.

Last October, she flew straight from a show with Joni Mitchell to a recording session with Aaron Dessner - co-founder of rock group The National, and a key collaborator for Taylor Swift.

By the time she landed in New York, she was hungover and overwhelmed with emotion. Instinctively, she knew the comeback concerts she'd masterminded with Joni had run their course.

"I couldn't bear the thought of not sitting next to her and listening to her sing Both Sides Now again," she says. "I'd had the best damn seat in the house."

Dessner showed Carlile a few pieces he'd been working on, then left her to work in his barn. Exhausted, she went upstairs, climbed into bed, and wrote a poem that captured her mood.

"Returning to myself is such a lonely thing to do / But it's the only thing to do."

After six years of chasing opportunities, it was time to turn inwards.

"I knew I was at the end of something," she says, "and that, yes, the phone might stop ringing, but I don't want to miss out on my kids' childhood."

The poem became the title track and north star for her new album, which wrestles with the passage of time, and the delicacy of human connection.

When Dessner started playing atmospheric synth chords in the studio, it unlocked the memory of those first musical experiments on her Casio keyboard.

"I felt 13 or 14 again, and it made me write things differently," she says. "I had this huge lump in my throat the whole time. I was embarrassed to sing the songs in front of everybody because I thought I would cry - and I did."

Listeners might need a box of tissues, too.

When Carlile played You Without Me at Glastonbury this summer, there were more than a few misty eyes, as people digested the story of a parent coming to terms with their child's independence.

"I've started to see those moments, and it's soul crushing," says the singer, whose eldest daughter, Evangeline, is 11. "But at the same time you're overwhelmed with pride."

Same-sex marriage threat

Her daughters inspired one of the record's angrier songs, too. Church And State rails against the increasing influence of conservative religious ideology on US politics.

Recorded live on election night 2024, it addresses Carlile's fear that the Supreme Court could overturn Obergefell v Hodges, which recognised same-sex marriage in 2015.

It was prompted by a dinner conversation, where Evangeline suggested the family could just get on Carlile's boat and "bebop up to Canada" if gay marriage was outlawed.

"I don't want to go to Canada," protested their youngest, Elijah.

"And Evangeline just snapped and said, 'Elijah, it's better than not having a mommy or a mama'.

"I felt so ashamed for not explaining it better. They assumed that if it ever happened, they'd be orphans.

"And then I felt so angry that something so archaic and antiquated could even be a possibility in the country I live in, let alone legitimately on the horizon."

The album's other guiding light is Mitchell, whose strict quality control is "the reason I write a lot fewer songs," Carlile says.

She pays an affectionate but cheeky tribute to the singer on a song simply called Joni.

"She doesn't suffer fools, she won't make cups of tea, and she won't bandage bruised egos," sings Carlile over a delicately plucked guitar.

"She is a wild woman," laughs the star. "She's 83 and she will drink you under the table.

"She loves Cadillac margaritas and plain Black Jack. And she is unpredictable, untameable, unknowable sometimes, and it's amazing."

Presumably it was nerve-wracking to play Mitchell the song?

"Oh, I was quaking," she laughs. "She was sitting at her desk in her bedroom, putting butterfly clips in her hair, as Joni Mitchell does, and just listening to the song with this furrowed brow, not reacting whatsoever.

"But this big smile spread across her face after the last chorus. Then she made me wait a good minute before she nodded at me like, 'This is great.'"

One lyric, however, created a little friction.

"When I tell you I love you, and you tell me 'OK'... That's love in your way."

"When she heard that she called me an asshole!" Carlile laughs, "because she knew exactly what I meant - and you're not supposed to get Joni Mitchell. She doesn't want to be understood."

As you might expect, Carlile is full of similarly starry anecdotes.

She recalls seeing Paul McCartney at the side of the stage during her Glastonbury set ("that was a top five moment"); and spills the beans on Dolly Parton's tattoos ("I haven't seen them, but I know people who have. She can be really rugged and curse.")

So what would that lonely child, who warmed her hands around a wooden stove and struggled to play Elton John songs, think about her elevation to the highest echelons of music?

"I have a lot of affection for that girl now, in ways that I didn't at the time," she reflects.

"She would love to know that it happened and that she made it. Because I've made it beyond where I hoped, and I'm not sure what to do with that."

If Returning To Myself is the first draft of her answer, it suggests the possibilities are limitless.

With a new confidence and a new direction, Carlile is breaking into uncharted territory: Herself.

The issue of grooming gangs in the UK has been a political hot potato for years, with particular sensitivities around ethnicity and race.

Despite a number of local reviews and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse - IICSA - it's widely accepted that no one has got to grips with the specific issue of grooming gangs.

So when Baroness Louise Casey recommended a national inquiry she said she wanted it to be a different kind to past proceedings.

Not an overarching judge-led process, but instead a series of local investigations, directed and overseen by a national commission with statutory powers.

Why then, do the wheels seem to be coming off before things have got going?

First of all, there's the issue of the inquiry's scope. The four survivors who've resigned from the consultation panel have all said they're concerned that its remit will be too wide. They're worried that it will extend beyond grooming gangs to examine other forms of child sexual abuse and exploitation.

The government has rebutted this strongly. Earlier this week Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips wrote a letter to the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee in which she said, plainly, that it is "untrue" that "the government is seeking to dilute the focus of the inquiry… by expanding the scope beyond grooming gangs".

That triggered another round of anger from the four survivors who've resigned. They say it's Jess Phillips whose words are untrue. They wrote to the Home Secretary to say, "being publicly contradicted and dismissed by a government minister when you are a survivor telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again".

The four survivors are calling for Phillips to resign. A fifth survivor, Carly, who remains on the panel, has told the BBC that she also wants the safeguarding minister to go.

However, five other survivors have written to the prime minister and home secretary saying one of their conditions for remaining on the panel is that Phillips remains in her post.

Their joint letter says: "Jess Philips MP has remained impartial to the process, only listening to feedback, we want her to remain in position for the duration of the process for consistency."

The five women also say they want stronger confidentiality assurances for victims, and no re-entry to the panel if a person has decided to leave.

Additionally, they have said they would like all forms of Child Sexual Exploitation to be within the inquiry's scope – including but not exclusively grooming gangs.

So, what are the survivors who are resigning basing their position on?

The BBC has seen screenshots of the agenda of one of the meetings held between officials and survivors, as part of the pre-inquiry consultation process. Several "questions for reflection" are listed as up for discussion. Number three on the list is this: "Should the inquiry have an explicit focus on 'grooming gangs' or 'group-based CSEA', or take a broader approach?"

One survivor told me that she was angered that this question had even been posed.

The official terms of reference for the inquiry have not yet been set. That's something that can only happen once the chair has been appointed. But the survivors say that the recommendation for an inquiry into grooming gangs has been made precisely because the subject hasn't been looked at in isolation at a national level before. They are offended that the question of a 'broader approach' was put to them.

The BBC has also been shown screenshots of text messages sent between one survivor, Fiona Goddard, and Jess Phillips.

After that consultation meeting, with the agenda item about a 'broader approach', Fiona texted the minister to ask why the question had been included. She wrote, "This is being manipulated away from what it was supposed to be and its unfair".

Jess Phillips replied via text to Fiona saying, "the reason for the question is because there have been differing views and we want you to be able to give a clear steer on what you want. I know it's hard to trust but I can promise you no one is trying to manipulate the response and it is my view that it is only a grooming gangs specific inquiry but it is not right for me to make that decision without it being formally consulted on."

Away from the remit of the inquiry, there's also been dissent over who should be selected to act as its chairperson.

Contrary to Louise Casey's point of view, some survivors DO want a judge led inquiry - and have objected to the concept of a chair with a background in policing or social work.

They say such a career history is too close to home and could pose a conflict of interest, given that the police and social services are two of the agencies who've previously failed victims of grooming gangs.

But not all survivors feel like this.

Others have said that a chairperson who has worked in a related field could bring understanding and relevance to the post. They've also pointed out that the judiciary and courts have failed victims in the past – as have parts of the health, education, and social care systems.

In other words, it may be virtually impossible to find someone without a connection to one of the agencies of state which will fall under the microscope.

Even if a judge-led approach was to be taken, there's no guarantee of an easy road ahead.

There are uncomfortable reminders of the national Inquiry into child sexual abuse which went through three chairwomen, before the fourth - Prof Alexis Jay - took the reins.

The issues of picking a chair, and the scope of the inquiry aren't the only ones which survivors have complained about. Others say they have been asked to sign confidentiality agreements and have felt silenced by officials, which is an upsetting reminder of how they've been made to feel in the past, by other agencies.

But it's hard to get a handle on how widespread this feeling is.

So far, the four survivors who've resigned have all been vocal about their reasons. Others, who've chosen to stay on board with the inquiry have also spoken out.

Some survivors have waived their right to anonymity and have gained a degree of profile as a result. Others have chosen not to. It's difficult to know how representative of the general feeling their comments are – and whether there is a majority consensus amongst survivors.

My experience of following a range of different public inquiries is that it's rarely the case that all victims and survivors have the same perspective.

The test of this inquiry will be whether it can find its feet whilst retaining the confidence of all of the very people who've been calling for it for so many years.

Five abuse survivors have written to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to say they will only continue working with the grooming gang inquiry if Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips keeps her job.

It comes after four different members of the survivors panel quit the inquiry and said they would only rejoin it if Phillips resigned.

The survivors panel, thought to include about 16 women, is playing a central role in setting up the national inquiry into grooming gangs.

But they are at odds over whether it should be expanded to cover other types of child sexual exploitation - and whether they can trust Phillips to lead the process of setting it up. The prime minister has repeatedly backed the minister.

The second group of survivors, headed by Samantha Walker-Roberts, has written to Sir Keir and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood with a list of seven conditions for their continued support.

"Jess Phillips has remained impartial to the process, only listening to feedback [and] we want her to remain in position for the duration of the process for consistency," they wrote.

"Her previous experience and drive to reduce VAWG [violence against women and girls] and her clear passion and commitment is important to us."

They praised Phillips, who they said had "devoted her life to hearing and amplifying the voices of women and girls who would otherwise have been unheard" and had helped some of them access support.

Earlier today, the first group called on Phillips to quit in order to restore trust in the inquiry, accusing her of "betrayal" for describing reports the scope of the inquiry could be widened as "untrue".

Headed up by Fiona Goddard, the group of four said they would only re-join it if the minister went, because they had "raised legitimate concerns around the inquiry's direction" but "in response, your safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips called our accounts untrue".

Another survivor, known as Carly, from Huddersfield, told the BBC she wanted to remain part of the inquiry, but she also believes Phillips should go, because "she can't lie about what we all know" around the question of whether to widen the inquiry's scope.

There is disagreement among survivors on whether the focus should be widened, which the BBC understands can be tracked back to an email sent to the panel by NWG, the charity tasked with organising it on behalf of the government.

This email asked survivors if they wanted to keep the the inquiry focused on grooming gangs or if they would like it to be widened out.

Ms Walker-Roberts' group of survivors stressed that this request had not come from Phillips.

"When asked directly in the feedback session, Jess was clear that the focus would be on grooming gangs," they wrote.

"However survivors in the group explained they would be excluded for not fitting the generalised stereotype of what that is and [the inquiry] should focus on CSE (child sexual exploitation]."

On how to reconcile the differences between the two groups of survivors, they suggested "the panel should be smaller" and there should be "no re-entry to the panel after you have forfeited your position".

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The rapper Ghetts has been charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving after a fatal crash in north-east London.

The musician, whose real name is Justin Clarke-Samuel, allegedly failed to stop after hitting a 20-year-old man in Redbridge Lane East, Ilford, on Saturday, 18 October, the Met Police said.

Mr Clarke-Samuel, 41, appeared at Stratford Magistrates' Court on Monday, the same day the man died in hospital. The indictment is expected to change from causing serious injury to causing death by dangerous driving at the next hearing.

The rapper, from Woodford Green, was remanded into custody and is due to appear at Barkingside Magistrates' Court on Monday, 27 October.

Mobo Pioneer Award

Police are appealing for witnesses to the crash to come forward.

Ghetts is a Mercury Prize-nominated grime MC, rapper and songwriter who has had high-profile musical collaborations with major acts including Stormzy, Ed Sheeran and Skepta.

Ghetts won the Best Male Act at the Mobo Awards in 2021 and received the Mobo Pioneer Award in 2024 for his significant contribution to British black culture.

He also had a supporting role in the Netflix show Supacell.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk

Five abuse survivors have written to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to say they will only continue working with the grooming gang inquiry if Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips keeps her job.

It comes after four different members of the survivors panel quit the inquiry and said they would only rejoin it if Phillips resigned.

The survivors panel, thought to include about 16 women, is playing a central role in setting up the national inquiry into grooming gangs.

But they are at odds over whether it should be expanded to cover other types of child sexual exploitation - and whether they can trust Phillips to lead the process of setting it up. The prime minister has repeatedly backed the minister.

The second group of survivors, headed by Samantha Walker-Roberts, has written to Sir Keir and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood with a list of seven conditions for their continued support.

"Jess Phillips has remained impartial to the process, only listening to feedback [and] we want her to remain in position for the duration of the process for consistency," they wrote.

"Her previous experience and drive to reduce VAWG [violence against women and girls] and her clear passion and commitment is important to us."

They praised Phillips, who they said had "devoted her life to hearing and amplifying the voices of women and girls who would otherwise have been unheard" and had helped some of them access support.

Earlier today, the first group called on Phillips to quit in order to restore trust in the inquiry, accusing her of "betrayal" for describing reports the scope of the inquiry could be widened as "untrue".

Headed up by Fiona Goddard, the group of four said they would only re-join it if the minister went, because they had "raised legitimate concerns around the inquiry's direction" but "in response, your safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips called our accounts untrue".

Another survivor, known as Carly, from Huddersfield, told the BBC she wanted to remain part of the inquiry, but she also believes Phillips should go, because "she can't lie about what we all know" around the question of whether to widen the inquiry's scope.

There is disagreement among survivors on whether the focus should be widened, which the BBC understands can be tracked back to an email sent to the panel by NWG, the charity tasked with organising it on behalf of the government.

This email asked survivors if they wanted to keep the the inquiry focused on grooming gangs or if they would like it to be widened out.

Ms Walker-Roberts' group of survivors stressed that this request had not come from Phillips.

"When asked directly in the feedback session, Jess was clear that the focus would be on grooming gangs," they wrote.

"However survivors in the group explained they would be excluded for not fitting the generalised stereotype of what that is and [the inquiry] should focus on CSE (child sexual exploitation]."

On how to reconcile the differences between the two groups of survivors, they suggested "the panel should be smaller" and there should be "no re-entry to the panel after you have forfeited your position".

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