Almost 90 flights linked to Jeffrey Epstein arrived at and departed from UK airports, some with British women on board who say they were abused by the billionaire, a BBC investigation has found.

We have established that three British women who were allegedly trafficked appear in Epstein's records of flights in and out of the UK and other documents related to the convicted sex offender.

US lawyers representing hundreds of Epstein victims told the BBC it was "shocking" that there has never been a "full-scale UK investigation" into his activities on the other side of the Atlantic.

The UK was one of the "centrepieces" of Epstein's operations, one said.

Testimony from one of these British victims helped convict Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of child sex-trafficking in the US in 2021. But the victim has never been contacted by UK police, her Florida-based lawyer Brad Edwards told the BBC.

The woman, given the name Kate in the trial, was listed as having been on more than 10 flights paid for by Epstein in and out of the UK between 1999 and 2006.

The BBC is not publishing further details about the women in the documents because of the risk this might identify them.

US lawyer Sigrid McCawley said the British authorities have "not taken a closer look at those flights, at where he was at, who he was seeing at those moments, and who was with him on those planes, and conducted a full investigation".

Under the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act, the deadline to release all US government files on the sex-offender financier is Friday.

But the flight logs were among thousands of documents from court cases and Epstein's estate which have been already made public over the past year, revealing more about his time in the UK, such as trips to royal residences.

The BBC examined these documents as part of an investigation trying to piece together Epstein's activities in the UK.

It revealed that:

• The incomplete flight logs and manifests record 87 flights linked to Epstein - dozens more than were previously known - arriving or departing from UK airports between the early 1990s and 2018
• Unidentified "females" were listed among the passengers travelling into and out of the UK in the logs
• Fifteen of the UK flights took place after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor, which should have raised questions from immigration officials

Although Epstein died in jail in 2019, before his trial on charges of trafficking minors for sex, legal experts have told the BBC a UK investigation could reveal whether British-based people enabled his crimes.

Two months ago the BBC sent the Metropolitan Police, which has previously examined allegations about Epstein's activities in Britain, publicly available information about the UK flights with suspected trafficking victims on board.

Later, we sent the Met a detailed list of questions about whether it would investigate evidence of possible British victims of Epstein trafficked in and out of the UK.

The Met did not respond to our questions. On Saturday, it released a broader statement saying that it had "not received any additional evidence that would support reopening the investigation" into Epstein and Maxwell's trafficking activities in the UK.

"Should new and relevant information be brought to our attention", including any resulting from the release of material in the US, "we will assess it", the Met said.

US lawyer Brad Edwards, who has been representing Epstein victims since 2008, told us "three or four" of his clients are British women "who were abused on British soil both by Jeffrey Epstein and others".

Other victims were recruited in the UK, trafficked to the United States and abused there, he said.

Mr Edwards said he is also representing women of other nationalities who say they were trafficked to the UK for abuse by Epstein and others.

Our analysis shows Epstein used commercial and chartered flights, as well as his private planes, to travel to the UK and to arrange transport for others, including alleged trafficking victims.

More than 50 of the flights involved his private jets, mostly flying to and from Luton Airport, with several flights at Birmingham International Airport, and one arrival and departure each at RAF Marham in west Norfolk and at Edinburgh Airport.

Limited records of commercial and chartered flights taken by Epstein, or paid for by him, show dozens more journeys, mainly via London Heathrow, but also Stansted and Gatwick.

In a number of the logs of Epstein's private planes, including some detailing trips to the UK, women on the flight are identified only as unnamed "females".

"He's absolutely choosing airports where he feels it will be easier for him to get in and out with victims that he's trafficking," said Ms McCawley.

Private aircraft did not have to provide passenger details to UK authorities before departure in the same way as commercial aircraft during the period covered by the documents we examined. The Home Office told us they were "not subject to the same centralised record-keeping".

That loophole was only closed in April last year.

Kate, the British woman who testified against Maxwell, was on some of the commercial flights in the records we examined. She described in court that she had been 17 when Maxwell befriended her and introduced her to Epstein - who then sexually abused her at Maxwell's central London home.

In the 2021 trial, she described how Maxwell gave her a schoolgirl outfit to wear and asked her to find other girls for Epstein. As well as the dozen flights to and from the UK, Kate told the court she had been flown to Epstein's island in the US Virgin Islands, New York and Palm Beach in Florida, where she says the abuse continued into her 30s.

Mr Edwards, her lawyer, told BBC News that even after that testimony, Kate has "never been asked" by any UK authorities any questions about her experience - "not even a phone call".

He said that if British police were to launch an investigation into Epstein's activities and his enablers, Kate would be happy to help.

Prof Bridgette Carr, a human-trafficking expert at the University of Michigan Law School, said trafficking cases usually require many people working together.

"It's never just one bad person," she said. "You don't think about the accountant and the lawyer and the banker - or all the bankers - and all these people that had to implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, be OK with what was happening for it to continue."

There are also questions about how Epstein was able to travel freely to the UK after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for sex, which meant he had to register as a sex offender in Florida, New York and the US Virgin Islands.

Epstein was released from prison in 2009 after serving 13 months. Documents suggest Epstein took a Virgin Atlantic flight from the US to London Heathrow in September 2010, just two months after he completed his probation on house arrest.

Home Office rules at the time said foreign nationals who received a prison sentence of 12 months or more should, in most cases, have been refused entry.

But immigration lawyer Miglena Ilieva, managing partner at ILEX Law Group, told us that US citizens did not usually require a UK visa for short stays, so there was no application process where they would be asked about criminal convictions.

"It was very much at the discretion of the individual immigration officer who would receive this person at the border," she said.

The Home Office said it does not hold immigration and visa records beyond 10 years and added "it is longstanding government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases".

During the 1980s, Epstein also used a foreign passport - issued in Austria with his picture and a false name - to enter the UK as well as France, Spain and Saudi Arabia, according to US authorities.

Epstein also listed London as his place of residence in 1985, when he applied for a replacement passport, ABC News has previously reported.

In its statement on Saturday, the Met said it had contacted "several other potential victims" when it examined 2015 allegations by Virginia Giuffre that she had been trafficked for sexual exploitation by Epstein and Maxwell.

Ms Giuffre also said she was forced to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on three occasions, including when she was 17 at Maxwell's home in London, in 2001. The former prince has consistently denied the allegations against him.

The Met said its examination of Ms Giuffre's claims "did not result in any allegation of criminal conduct against any UK-based nationals" and it concluded that "other international authorities were best placed to progress these allegations".

That decision was reviewed in August 2019 and again in 2021 and 2022 with the same result, it said.

But for lawyer Sigrid McCawley, the message the Met is sending to victims is "that if you come to law enforcement and this is a powerful person you're reporting on… it will not get investigated."

• ​​If you have information about this story that you would like to share, please email ​​epsteininvestigation@bbc.co.uk

Three members of Ben & Jerry's independent board will no longer be eligible to serve in their roles, after the ice cream company introduced a new set of governance practices.

These include a nine-year limit set on board members' terms. Chair Anuradha Mittal, who earlier said she had no plans to resign under pressure, is among those affected.

The move was criticised by the company's co-founder Ben Cohen, who called it a "blatant power grab designed to strip the board of legal authority and independence".

His remarks are the latest in a long-running row between Ben and Jerry's and its owner over the Cherry Garcia maker's social activism and the continued independence of its board.

The BBC understands that Ms Mittal will leave the company immediately, while board members Mr Dodson and Ms Henderson will go at the end of this year.

"Anuradha Mittal, Daryn Dodson, and Jennifer Henderson have served this company with integrity and courage. Over many years, they helped the board make bold, often difficult decisions to uphold Ben & Jerry's social mission," said Mr Cohen.

Ben & Jerry's said the move is aimed "to preserve and enhance the brand's historical social mission and safeguard its essential integrity."

The Vermont-based firm is now owned by The Magnum Ice Cream Company, after a spinoff from Unilever last week that created the world's largest standalone ice cream maker.

A spokesperson for Magnum said the firm wanted to build and strengthen Ben & Jerry's "powerful, non-partisan values-based position in the world".

But Ben & Jerry's would be destroyed as a brand if it remains with Magnum, Mr Cohen told the BBC.

Ben & Jerry's was sold to Unilever in 2000 in a deal which allowed it to retain an independent board and the right to make decisions about its social mission.

Since the sale there have been deepening clashes between the Vermont-based brand and Unilever, with this conflict now inherited by Magnum.

In 2021, Ben & Jerry's refused to sell its products in areas occupied by Israel, resulting in its Israeli operation being sold by Unilever to a local licensee.

Co-founder Jerry Greenfield left Ben & Jerry's in September after almost half a century at the firm, deepening a dispute with parent company Unilever.

In a letter shared on social media by Mr Cohen, Mr Greenfield said Ben & Jerry's had lost its independence after Unilever put a halt to its social activism.

University "cold spots" are developing in some parts of the country, new data analysis suggests, with courses in some subjects no longer available to students in certain regions.

The new data tool, published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) on Tuesday, showed a sharp decline in students taking French and other language courses in recent years.

But courses in other subjects, like artificial intelligence, showed a rapid rise over the same time period.

Universities have cut courses with low levels of enrolment with the sector facing growing financial challenges, while the government has announced yearly increases in tuition fees to help universities cope with the shortfalls.

The data published by Hesa showed the number of full-time students on courses in French studies had decreased from 9,700 in the 2012/13 academic year, to 3,700 by 2023/2024.

The number of those doing courses in language and area studies also decreased over that period, from 125,900 to 80,100.

The number of full-time students doing German and Scandinavian courses was at 1,400 in 2023/24, down from 3,900 in 2012/13.

But studies in artificial intelligence have skyrocketed over that 12-year period, with 1,800 full-time students in 2012/13, which dipped to just 900 the following year, but has since surged to 9,100 in 2023/24.

Universities grappling with financial deficits have cut courses and staff roles in courses with low student numbers.

In November, students and lecturers protested over the University of Nottingham's decision to suspend its modern languages and music courses, with no new students set to be enrolled beyond 2026.

BBC News has reached out to the university for an update, but at the time a spokesperson said the courses were "unsustainable", with many having fewer than 10 students enrolled, and that no final decision had yet been made.

They have previously said current students on courses at risk of closure would be supported to complete their studies.

Emma Walkers, course leader for modern languages at Bilborough Sixth Form College in Nottingham, said there would be nowhere local for her students to study languages at university if the cuts went ahead.

Publishing its new data tool, Hesa said the latest figures suggested that degree courses in French were no longer available to study in some locations, with student numbers now concentrated in London, Oxford, Bristol and Bath.

But with an increasing number of students wanting to live at home and commute to university to limit the cost of their studies, Emma says some of her students are being left with nowhere to go.

"Often, if a student is moving out of Nottingham, they're going to end up moving to a more expensive city," she said.

"If you're coming from a family which isn't particularly well-off, to then try to go to London or Bath or Bristol is a huge amount of money to try and find."

She said the decline in student numbers for French and other language courses suggests languages are "just not valued at all".

Catherine Richards, principal at East Norfolk Sixth Form College, which sits in another area with relatively low student enrolment numbers in language courses, believes the issue begins long before university.

"The challenge for places at higher education starts in primary school and the encouragement to do languages," she says.

She says schools in her region are offering fewer languages at GCSE, which leads to fewer pupils taking them at A-levels and then going on to study them at university.

In German, she says course entry levels in schools and colleges across the county are so low "that it's not a viable language anymore".

That's a "pity" because of the "great teachers" across the county, she added.

That sentiment is echoed by Prof René Koglbauer, former languages teacher and chair of trustees of the Association for Language Learning (ALL).

He says there are concerns that in regions without language provision at a university level, schools and sixth form colleges could stop offering A-level language courses too.

"If you then drop it at A-level, ultimately students may decide, 'Well, if I can't progress beyond GCSE, I'm not going to take that subject,'" he says.

"You can see the downward spiral."

Many universities now offer "ab initio" undergraduate courses for languages, meaning you can start as a complete beginner - something Prof Koglbauer says has bolstered uptake.

These intensive programmes, along with joint honours options and the introduction of non-European languages like Arabic and Mandarin, are part of the strategy to keep language learning popular for undergraduate students.

But in order to solve the regional "cold spots", Prof Koglbauer says universities may need to approach the issue differently.

He says the sector may "need to think more about working collaboratively and actually pool resources together" to reach students.

The New South Wales (NSW) premier has strongly rejected criticism of the police response to the attack on a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach, saying officers acted with "bravery and integrity".

Some witnesses have suggested police were too slow to disarm the two gunmen, who killed 15 people and injured dozens at an event celebrating Hanukkah at Australia's best known beach.

"There are two officers in critical care... at the moment," Chris Minns said after sustained questioning from reporters. "They weren't shot in the back as they were running away. They were shot in the front."

There have also been questions about whether adequate security was provided before the shooting took place.

"They shoot, shoot, change magazine and just shoot," one witness, Shmulik Scuri, told reporters the day of the assault, adding he thought officers "froze".

Asked about these criticisms, Minns said the "rush to conclusions" about the police operation was "disrespectful".

"They didn't take a backward step. They engaged the gunmen on the footbridge with handguns. The offenders had long range rifles," Minns said.

"If there's any suggestion that NSW Police didn't live up to their responsibilities to the people of this state, it should be rejected because it's not consistent with the facts."

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon avoided questions about how many officers had been deployed to police the event in advance. He told reporters police "regularly patrol that area as we did on that day" and that police presence was based "on the threat that exists at the time".

Australia's security agency has said the younger alleged gunman in the father-son duo, Naveed Akram, had come to their attention in 2019 due to his associations, but that there was nothing to suggest he was a risk of violence.

"Had there been intelligence that there was a particular threat at that location, or to that event, we may have had a different policing response," Commissioner Lanyon said.

NSW Police established Operation Shelter after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel to investigate antisemitic hate crimes. As part of the operation, regular patrols are conducted of high-risk locations. The eastern suburbs of Sydney, including Bondi, which has a significant Jewish population, is a key focus.

Another taskforce, Strike Force Pearl, was set up later to investigate hate crimes in Sydney.

Police received reports of gunfire at a park in Bondi Beach at 18:47 (07:47 GMT) on Sunday. The gunmen carried out a shooting spree that lasted around ten minutes before police shot both men, killing one and critically injuring the other.

Dr Vincent Hurley, a former police officer who lectures on policing at Macquarie University, told the BBC it was "unrealistic" to expect police to be able to know how to react to every possible scenario.

"To respond to a mass shooting and mass killing event like that, there's no training that can be done."

He pointed out that police officers would have initially been reliant on calls to emergency operators "and everyone would have given them a different story".

"Then they have to fight through traffic at Bondi Beach which is a nightmare at the best of times."

At the scene, police would have been confronted with "absolute chaos" as thousands of people attempted to flee.

Individual officers would also have been faced with difficult choices such as whether to stop and render assistance to injured individuals or to go and look for the gunmen, decisions for which there is no protocol.

And even once the offenders had been identified, he says the risk of hurting bystanders in the crossfire would have complicated responses.

"There would be no way as a police officer, I would have drawn my firearm because all of the innocent individuals", he added. "It's not what you see on Netflix."

At least 15 civilians have been confirmed dead in Sunday's shooting attack at Bondi beach.

Many were attending an event to mark the first day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

Authorities have confirmed that two rabbis, a Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl were among the victims.

This is what we know about those identified so far:

Matilda, 10

Authorities confirmed that a 10-year-old girl, named by her family to local media as Matilda, was among the dead.

Irina Goodhew, who organised a fundraiser for the girl's mother and said she was the child's former teacher, wrote: " I knew her as a bright, joyful, and spirited child who brought light to everyone around her.'

The Harmony Russian School of Sydney also confirmed that she was one of its students.

"We are deeply saddened to share the news that a former student of our school has passed away in the hospital due to injuries sustained from a gunshot," the school wrote on Facebook.

"Our thoughts and heartfelt condolences go out to her family, friends, and everyone affected by this tragic event … Her memory will remain in our hearts, and we honor her life and the time she spent as part of our school family."

Meanwhile her aunt spoke to ABC news and said that Matilda's sister, who was with her when she was shot, was struggling to come to terms with the loss.

"They were like twins — they've never been separated," she told the ABC.

Rabbi Eli Schlanger

Known as the "Bondi Rabbi", Eli Schlanger, 41, was one of the key organisers of Sunday's event. He was head of the local Chabad mission, an international Hasidic Jewish organisation based in Brooklyn.

The death of the British-born father of five was confirmed by his cousin, Rabbi Zalman Lewis.

"My dear cousin, Rabbi Eli Schlanger @bondirabbi was murdered in today's terrorist attack in Sydney," Zalman wrote on Instagram. "He leaves behind his wife & young children, as well as my uncle & aunt & siblings … He was truly an incredible guy".

In a post on its website, Chabad said Schlanger's youngest child was just two months old.

"He was the most godly, humane, kind, gracious human being I think I've ever met," Alex Ryvchin of the Executive Council of Australia Jewry, told reporters at Bondi on Monday morning.

Dan Elkayam

The death of French national Dan Elkayam was confirmed by Frances's Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.

"It's with immense sadness that we have learnt that our compatriot Dan Elkayam was among the victims of the terrorist attack that hit Jewish families gathered on the beach at Bondi in Sydney," he wrote on social media. "We mourn with his family and loved ones, with the Jewish community and the Australian people."

According to his LinkedIn profile, Elkayam worked as an IT analyst for NBCUniversal and had moved to Australia last year.

He was also a keen footballer, and "an integral member" of our premier league squad, the Rockdale Ilindin Football Club in west Sydney wrote on its Facebook page.

He was "an extremely talented and popular figure amongst team mates. Our deepest and sincerest condolances to Dan's family, friends and all that knew him. He will be missed," the club wrote.

Alexander Kleytman

Alexander Kleytman was a holocaust survivor who came to Australia from Ukraine.

"I have no husband. I don't know where is his body. Nobody can give me any answer," his wife Larisa Kleytman told reporters outside a Sydney hospital late on Sunday.

"We were standing and suddenly came the 'boom boom', and everybody fell down. At this moment he was behind me and at one moment he decided to go close to me. He pushed his body up because he wanted to stay near me," she told the Australian.

Chabad wrote on X that Alexander "died shielding her from the gunman's bullets. In addition to his wife, he leaves behind two children and 11 grandchildren."

The couple shared some of their life story with Jewish Care in 2023.

"As children, both Larisa and Alexander faced the unspeakable terror of the Holocaust," the health organisation wrote in its annual report.

"Alex's memories are particularly harrowing; recalling the dreadful conditions in Siberia where he, along with his mother and younger brother, struggled for survival."

Peter Meagher

Former police officer Peter Meagher was working as a freelance photographer at the Hanukkah event when he was killed, his rugby club confirmed.

"For him it was simply a catastrophic case of being in the wrong place and at the wrong time," Mark Harrison, the general manager of Randwick Rugby Club, wrote on its website.

"'Marzo, as he was universally known, was a much loved figure and absolute legend in our club, with decades of voluntary involvement, he was one of the heart and soul figures of Randwick Rugby."

The club said he had spent almost four decades in the NSW Police Force where he was "hugely respected by colleagues".

"The tragic irony is that he spent so long in the dangerous front line as a Police Officer and was struck down in retirement while taking photos in his passion role is really hard to comprehend," the club said.

Reuven Morrison

Reuven Morrison migrated to Australia from the former Soviet Union in the 1970s as a teenager, according to an interview he gave to the ABC exactly a year ago.

"We came here with the view that Australia is the safest country in the world and the Jews would not be faced with such anti-Semitism in the future, where we can bring up our kids in a safe environment," he told the national broadcaster.

Confirming his death, Chabad said that he was a longtime resident of Melbourne, but that he "discovered his Jewish identity in Sydney".

"A successful businessman whose main goal was to give away his earnings to charities dear to his heart, notably Chabad of Bondi," the organisation wrote on X.

At a meeting of his cabinet at the White House two weeks ago, US President Donald Trump looked around the long room filled with his top advisers, administration officials and aides, and made a prediction.

The next Republican presidential candidate, he said, is "probably sitting at this table".

"It could be a couple of people sitting at this table," he added, hinting at possible electoral clashes to come.

Despite a constitutional amendment limiting him to two four-year terms, his supporters chanted "four more years" at a rally last Tuesday night in Pennsylvania. Trump said at the time that the final three years of his second term amount to an "eternity".

But in the cabinet room last week, when talking about prospects for the 2028 Republican president nomination, he was clear: "It's not going to be me."

The next presidential election may seem a long way off, but Trump's own speculation – and certain frictions within Trump's coalition - suggest that the jockeying to succeed and define the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement after Trump is well under way.

In last month's local elections, the Republican Party lost support among the minority and working-class voters who helped Trump win back the White House in 2024.

Members of his team have feuded over policy. And some, most notably Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have cut loose from his orbit, accusing the president of losing touch with the Americans who gave him power.

There has been speculation about fractures within the Maga base in certain quarters of the international press, as well as at home. On Monday, a headline in The Washington Post asked: "Maga leaders warn Trump the base is checking out. Will he listen?"

The warning signs are there. While Trump has long been known for being in tune with his base, the months ahead will pose a series of challenges to the president and his movement. Nothing less than his political legacy is at stake.

From Vance to Rubio: A team of rivals?

It was all smiles and talk of historic presidential achievements inside the friendly confines of Trump's newly redecorated, gold-bedecked cabinet room two weeks ago.

But the presidential aspirants Trump may have had in mind as he looked around the table hint at just how hard it could be to keep his Maga movement from stretching apart at the seams.

Vice-President JD Vance sat directly across from the president. As his running mate, he is widely considered to be Trump's most likely heir apparent – the favourite of Trump's sons and libertarian Silicon Valley tech billionaires.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on the president's immediate right. The former Florida senator, who competed with Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016, had spent the past 10 years undergoing a Maga transformation.

He has jettisoned his past support for liberalising immigration policy and his hard line on Russia in lieu of Trump's America First foreign policy. But if there is anyone close to an old-guard Republican with influence in Trump's party, Rubio tops the list.

Then there is Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, whose vaccine scepticism and "Make America Healthy Again" agenda have sent earthquakes through the US health bureaucracy; he sat two down from Rubio. The Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Republican is a living embodiment of the strange ideological bedfellows Trump made on his way to re-election last year.

And finally, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, was tucked off to the corner of the table. While the former South Dakota governor is not considered a major presidential contender, her advocacy for aggressive immigration enforcement – including a recent call for a full travel ban on "every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies" – has made her a prominent face of administration's policies.

Each might believe they could, if they chose to run, become Trump's political heir and take control of the political movement that has reshaped American politics over the last decade.

But to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin's comments at the birth of American democracy, whoever wins the Republican nomination will have been given a winning coalition – if they can keep it.

The Republican empire transformed

Of course none of this is guaranteed - nor is it certain that the next generation of Maga leaders will be someone from the president's inner circle. Trump stormed the White House as a political outsider. The next Republican leader may follow a similar path.

"It's going to be up to the next Republican president who follows Trump to set him or herself apart," says former Republican Congressman Rodney Davis of Illinois, who now works for the US Chamber of Commerce.

"But at the same time make sure that you don't go too far away, because clearly it's Donald Trump [who] got elected president twice."

When the November 2028 presidential election rolls around, American voters may not even want someone like Trump. Some public opinion polls suggest that the president may not be as popular as he once was.

A survey by YouGov earlier this month indicated the president had a net approval rating of -14, compared with +6 when he took office again in January. Then there are concerns about the economy and his relentless efforts to push the boundaries of presidential power.

Leadership of Trump's movement still represents the keys to the Republican empire, however, even if that empire has drastically changed in recent years.

"I think the Republican coalition has become fundamentally different over the last few decades," said Davis, who served in Congress from 2013 to 2023. "The Republican coalition that existed when Ronald Reagan was elected is not the Republican coalition anymore."

Back in the 1980s, the Reagan coalition was a fusion of free-market economics, cultural conservatism, anti-communism and international foreign affairs, says Laura K Field, author of Furious Minds: The Making of the Maga New Right.

Trump's party, she continues, was perhaps best described by long-time Trump adviser and current state department official Michael Anton in a 2016 essay advocating for Trump's election. In contrast with the Reagan era, its core principles include "secure borders, economic nationalism and America-first foreign policy".

'Normie Republicans' versus 'the edgelords'

Earlier this month, the conservative Manhattan Institute released a comprehensive survey of Republican voters, shedding more light on the composition of Trump's coalition.

It suggested that 65% of the current Republican Party are what it calls "core Republicans" – those who have supported party presidential nominees since at least 2016. (If they were alive in the 1980s, they may well have voted for Reagan.)

On the other hand, 29% are what the Institute called "new entrant Republicans". It is among those new Republicans that the challenge to the durability of Trump's coalition presents itself.

Only just over half said they would "definitely" support a Republican in next year's mid-term congressional elections.

According to the survey, the new entrants are younger, more diverse and more likely to hold views that break with traditional conservative orthodoxy. They hold comparatively more left-leaning views of economic policy, they tend to be more liberal on immigration and social issues, and they may also be more pro-China or critical of Israel, for example.

Jesse Arm, vice-president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, told the BBC in an email: "A lot of the conversation about the future of the right is being driven by the loudest and strangest voices online, rather than by the voters who actually make up the bulk of the Republican coalition."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the so-called new entrant Republican voters are significantly less supportive of some of Trump's would-be heirs. While 70% of core Republicans have positive views of Rubio and 80% for Vance, just over half of new entrants feel that way about either.

Other findings could be more concerning for Republicans.

More than half of new entrants believe the use of political violence in American politics "is sometimes justified" – compared to just 20% among core Republicans.

It also suggests they may be more likely to be tolerant of racist or anti-Semitic speech and more prone to conspiratorial thinking – on topics like the moon landings, 9/11 and vaccines.

Trump was able to attract these voters into his coalition. The question is whether he and his political heirs can keep them there – or if they even want to.

"The real takeaway is not that these voters will 'define' the post-Trump GOP, but that future Republican leaders will have to draw clear lines about who sets the agenda," argues Mr Arm.

"The heart of the party remains normie Republicans, not the edgelords that both the media and the dissident right are strangely invested in elevating."

Clashes in the conservative ranks

The divides revealed in the Manhattan Institute poll helps explain some of the most notable frictions within the Trump coalition over the past few months.

The Trump-Greene feud that culminated in the latter's resignation from Congress began with her backing of a full release of the government files connected to the Jeffrey Epstein underage sex-trafficking case – long a source of conservative conspiracy theories.

It broadened, however, into a critique of Trump's Middle East policy and accusations of his failure to address cost-of-living and healthcare concerns for low-income American voters.

An earlier high-profile Maga split erupted over Trump's economic policy, with billionaire Elon Musk, a strong supporter and member of Trump's inner circle at the start of the year, going on to condemn certain tariffs and government spending policies.

The president has, for the moment, largely tried to stay out of another bitter clash within conservative ranks over whether Nick Fuentes, a far-right political commentator and Holocaust denier, is welcome within the conservative movement.

It's a dispute that has roiled the influential Heritage Foundation and pitted some powerful right-wing commentators against each other.

According to Ms Field, those who follow Trump may find it a difficult conflict to avoid. "Nick Fuentes has a huge following," she says. "Part of how the conservative movement got the energy and power that they've got is by peddling to this part of the Republican Party."

In the halls of the Republican-controlled Congress, some signs of friction with the president's agenda are showing. Despite White House lobbying, it couldn't stop the House from passing a measure mandating release of the Epstein files.

The president has also been unable to convince Senate Republicans to abandon the filibuster, a parliamentary procedure Democrats in the minority have been able to block some of Trump's agenda.

Meanwhile, Trump's party has been stumbling at the polls, with the Democrats winning governorships in Virginia and New Jersey last month by comfortable margins.

In dozens of contested special elections for state and local seats over the past year, Democrats have on average improved their margins by around 13% over similar races held in last November's national elections.

The future of Trumpism

All of this will be front of mind for Republicans ahead of the 2026 mid-term congressional elections - and it will do little to ease the concerns held by some that, without Trump at the top of the ticket, their coalition will struggle to deliver reliable ballot-box victories.

Yet even a defeat next year – or in 2028 – is unlikely to mark the end of Trumpism.

The ascent by Trump's Maga movement to the pinnacle of American power has been far from a smooth one. It includes a mid-term rout in 2018 and Trump himself losing in 2020, before his re-election last November.

But the changes that Trump has wrought within the Republican Party itself appear to be foundational ones, according to Ms Field. His Maga coalition builds on strains of populist movements in the US that date back decades or more – from Barry Goldwater's insurgent presidential campaign in 1964 to the Tea Party protests during Barack Obama's presidency.

"These things are not coming out of nowhere. They are forces in American politics that have been underground for a while, but have been just kind of fermenting."

The old Republican order, she argues, is a relic of the past.

"The Trump movement is here to stay and there's no real likelihood of the old establishment returning with any sort of clout - that much is clear."

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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The UK unemployment rate in the three months to October has increased to 5.1%, according to official figures.

That marked a rise from 5% for the three months to September.

The estimated number of employees on company payrolls fell by 0.5% in the 12 months to October 2025.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the data reflected a "subdued labour market".

The US military says it has carried out strikes on three boats it has accused of trafficking drugs in the Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.

The US Southern Command posted footage of the strikes on social media and said the vessels were "transiting along known narco-trafficking routes... and were engaged in narco-trafficking".

More than 20 vessels in the Pacific and the Caribbean have been targeted in recent months, killing at least 90 people, as part of President Donald Trump's escalating campaign against gangs he accuses of transporting drugs in the region.

Some experts say the strikes could violate laws governing armed conflict.

The first attack by the US - on 2 September - has drawn particular scrutiny as there was not one but two strikes, with survivors of the first killed in the second.

Several legal experts have told BBC Verify that the second strike on the alleged Venezuelan drug boat by the US military was probably illegal, and would likely be considered an extrajudicial killing under international law.

A former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court told the BBC that the US military campaign more generally fell into the category of a planned, systematic attack against civilians during peacetime.

In response, the White House said it had acted in line with the laws of armed conflict to protect the US from cartels "trying to bring poison to our shores... destroying American lives".

The Trump administration has accused Venezuela of funnelling narcotics into the US and has intensified its efforts to isolate President Nicolas Maduro in recent months.

Thousands of troops and the USS Gerald Ford have been positioned within striking distance of Venezuela.

On 10 December, US forces seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, which it claimed was being used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran in an "illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organisations".

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil called the seizure "international piracy" and has claimed Trump wants Venezuela's energy resources.

The South American nation - home to some of the world's largest proven oil reserves - also accuses Washington of seeking to steal its resources.

The New South Wales (NSW) premier has strongly rejected criticism of the police response to the attack on a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach, saying officers acted with "bravery and integrity".

Some witnesses have suggested police were too slow to disarm the two gunmen, who killed 15 people and injured dozens at an event celebrating Hanukkah at Australia's best known beach.

"There are two officers in critical care... at the moment," Chris Minns said after sustained questioning from reporters. "They weren't shot in the back as they were running away. They were shot in the front."

There have also been questions about whether adequate security was provided before the shooting took place.

"They shoot, shoot, change magazine and just shoot," one witness, Shmulik Scuri, told reporters the day of the assault, adding he thought officers "froze".

Asked about these criticisms, Minns said the "rush to conclusions" about the police operation was "disrespectful".

"They didn't take a backward step. They engaged the gunmen on the footbridge with handguns. The offenders had long range rifles," Minns said.

"If there's any suggestion that NSW Police didn't live up to their responsibilities to the people of this state, it should be rejected because it's not consistent with the facts."

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon avoided questions about how many officers had been deployed to police the event in advance. He told reporters police "regularly patrol that area as we did on that day" and that police presence was based "on the threat that exists at the time".

Australia's security agency has said the younger alleged gunman in the father-son duo, Naveed Akram, had come to their attention in 2019 due to his associations, but that there was nothing to suggest he was a risk of violence.

"Had there been intelligence that there was a particular threat at that location, or to that event, we may have had a different policing response," Commissioner Lanyon said.

NSW Police established Operation Shelter after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel to investigate antisemitic hate crimes. As part of the operation, regular patrols are conducted of high-risk locations. The eastern suburbs of Sydney, including Bondi, which has a significant Jewish population, is a key focus.

Another taskforce, Strike Force Pearl, was set up later to investigate hate crimes in Sydney.

Police received reports of gunfire at a park in Bondi Beach at 18:47 (07:47 GMT) on Sunday. The gunmen carried out a shooting spree that lasted around ten minutes before police shot both men, killing one and critically injuring the other.

Dr Vincent Hurley, a former police officer who lectures on policing at Macquarie University, told the BBC it was "unrealistic" to expect police to be able to know how to react to every possible scenario.

"To respond to a mass shooting and mass killing event like that, there's no training that can be done."

He pointed out that police officers would have initially been reliant on calls to emergency operators "and everyone would have given them a different story".

"Then they have to fight through traffic at Bondi Beach which is a nightmare at the best of times."

At the scene, police would have been confronted with "absolute chaos" as thousands of people attempted to flee.

Individual officers would also have been faced with difficult choices such as whether to stop and render assistance to injured individuals or to go and look for the gunmen, decisions for which there is no protocol.

And even once the offenders had been identified, he says the risk of hurting bystanders in the crossfire would have complicated responses.

"There would be no way as a police officer, I would have drawn my firearm because all of the innocent individuals", he added. "It's not what you see on Netflix."

US President Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC over an edit of his 6 January 2021 speech in a Panorama documentary.

Trump has requested billions of dollars in damages, according to court documents filed in Florida.

The BBC apologised to Trump in November, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed there was any "basis for a defamation claim".

Trump's legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by "intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech". The BBC has not yet responded to the lawsuit being filed.

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Thousands of drivers could have speeding fines cancelled after a fault saw some cameras falsely triggered on English A roads and motorways.

National Highways said it had found 2,650 wrongful speed camera activations since 2021 due to a delay between cameras and variable speed signs.

Affected drivers will be contacted by police and be reimbursed for any fines while points will be removed from their licences where needed.

Not all camera activations are enforced, so not all of the wrongful activations will have resulted in fines.

National Highways apologised for the error and chief executive Nick Harris said a fix for the issue has been identified.

"Safety is our number one priority… All drivers should continue observing the posted speed limits as normal. Anyone who has been impacted will be contacted by the relevant police force," he said.

National Highways, which runs England's motorways, blamed an "anomaly" in how variable speed cameras were interacting with signs on some A roads and motorways.

It meant a delay of around 10 seconds between cameras and relevant variable speed signs, meaning some drivers were incorrectly identified as speeding after the limit had changed.

The body said the 2,650 incidents since 2021 represent fewer than two each day, compared with more than 6 million activations of speed cameras on the affected roads over the same period.

It said the anomaly has impacted 10% of England's motorways and major A roads.

It is working with police to check activations and promised nobody will now be wrongly prosecuted.

Meanwhile, police forces have stopped issuing fines from variable cameras until they have confidence in their accuracy.

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: "We apologise to anyone who has been affected. Safety was never compromised, and we are working with policing to ensure nobody is incorrectly prosecuted in future.

"Enforcement is still in place, and the public can remain confident that only motorists who break the rules will be penalised."

The UK and South Korea have finalised a trade deal which the government says will create thousands of jobs and bring billions into the British economy.

British industries including pharmaceuticals, car manufacturing, alcohol and financial services are expected to benefit from an extension to the current tariff-free trade on most goods and services.

The deal is the fourth such agreement struck by the Labour government, following deals with the EU, US and India — none of which have had a material impact on the UK's economy so far.

South Korean culture, including music, cosmetics and food, has become much more popular in the UK in recent years.

Trade minister Chris Bryant announced the deal in Samsung's flagship store in London on Monday night, accompanied by his Korean counterpart Yeo Han-koo.

Under the deal, 98% of trade will continue to be tariff free, the same terms that the EU has with South Korea, and which the UK maintained temporarily after Brexit.

The UK's agreement with South Korea was set to expire in January 2026, but the new agreement will protect £2bn of UK exports from an increase in tariffs.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the deal was "a huge win for British business".

"This deal making trade even easier between us will help boost the economy - supporting jobs and growth which will be felt all over the country," he said.

Bryant said the deal would give "cast-iron protections to our key industries to speed up economic growth as part of our Plan for Change".

South Korea is the UK's 25th largest trading partner, according to the Department for Business and Trade. In the 12 months to the end of June this year, it accounted for 0.8% of the UK's total trade.

Over that same 12-month period, official figures show UK exports to South Korea fell 16.4% and South Korean exports to the UK fell 10.8%.

South Korea's trade minister told the BBC that South Korea and Britain's economies "are complimentary", and denied that the fall in trade between the nations suggested the relationship wasn't as important as it used to be.

Han-koo said the new agreement was more about reducing non-tariff barriers, such as making rules around product origin more business friendly, and creating new digital and investment protections.

"So these two economies can win by cooperating closer through this kind of framework," he added.

Han-koo also said Britain can serve as a gateway for South Korea in its trade with Europe, while South Korea can serve as a gateway to Asia for British companies.

The South Korean deal is the latest in a series of post-Brexit trade agreements, but the independent budget forecaster, the OBR, has so far deemed deals done with those larger partners as unlikely to make a measurable impact on the UK economy by 2030.

The government has said that its various trade agreements struck this year will grow the British economy by creating jobs and cutting red tape for small businesses.

But its own assessment showed that the deal with India will only increase GDP by between 0.11% and 0.14%.

That deal in particular was criticised for potentially undercutting British workers.

India is the UK's 10th-largest trading partner, accounting for 2.5% of British trade.

'Great news'

UK companies including Bentley Motors, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Guinness owner Diageo welcomed the news of the South Korean deal.

Frank-Steffen Walliser, chairman and chief executive of Bentley Motors, said that South Korea is a key market for the company and the wider luxury vehicle market.

"To secure immediate ongoing access to South Korea and a positive long term trade deal, is great news. Smooth international trade is vital to UK automotive business growth."

Diageo's interim chief executive Nik Jhangiani said it would "help satisfy the growing demand from South Korean consumers" for Guinness, which is canned in Runcorn, Cheshire.

Emily Weaver Roads, interim international director at the Scotch Whisky Association, said the Asia-Pacific region was the largest regional market by value for whisky.

"The reduction of trade barriers in the Republic of Korea will further enhance Scotch Whisky's access to an important market, especially for single malts."

US President Donald Trump says he has asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to "consider" releasing Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy tycoon who was earlier this week found guilty under the city's controversial national security law.

"I feel so badly," Trump told reporters. "I spoke to President Xi about it and I asked to consider his release."

The UK similarly called for the 78-year-old to be "immediately released", with UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper condemning the ruling, calling it a "politically motivated persecution".

Lai, who is a British citizen, has been in jail since December 2020 and is due to be sentenced early next year. He faces a maximum term of life in prison.

Trump made the brief comment to reporters at the White House on Monday - but did not specify when he had brought Lai's case up to Xi.

"He's an older man and he's not well. So I did put that request out. We'll see what happens, okay?," he said.

His comments come after a Hong Kong court on Monday found Lai guilty of colluding with foreign forces.

The verdict was welcomed by Hong Kong's chief executive John Lee, who said that Lai's actions had "damaged the country's interests and the welfare of Hong Kongers", but rights groups called it "a cruel judicial farce".

"He has been targeted by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression," UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper had told Parliament on Monday, calling for Lai's "immediate release".

She added that the Foreign Office has summoned the Chinese Ambassador to "underline our position in the strongest terms", adding that it was "heartbreaking that such a violation of a British man's rights could occur in Hong Kong".

China's foreign ministry had earlier on Monday dismissed criticisms of Lai's trial, describing them as "brazen defamation and smearing of the judicial system in Hong Kong".

Lai was on Monday convicted under the city's controversial national security law - which rights groups say is used to crush dissent, but which Beijing defends as essential for the city's stability.

He was also convicted of publishing seditious material on Apple Daily under a separate colonial-era law.

His detention and conviction have drawn concern from rights groups and foreign leaders, who have long called for his release.

His children have voiced serious concerns about Lai's deteriorating health in prison, with Sebastien telling the BBC earlier this year that given his father's age and health, he could "die in prison".

US President Donald Trump says he has asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to "consider" releasing Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy tycoon who was earlier this week found guilty under the city's controversial national security law.

"I feel so badly," Trump told reporters. "I spoke to President Xi about it and I asked to consider his release."

The UK similarly called for the 78-year-old to be "immediately released", with UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper condemning the ruling, calling it a "politically motivated persecution".

Lai, who is a British citizen, has been in jail since December 2020 and is due to be sentenced early next year. He faces a maximum term of life in prison.

Trump made the brief comment to reporters at the White House on Monday - but did not specify when he had brought Lai's case up to Xi.

"He's an older man and he's not well. So I did put that request out. We'll see what happens, okay?," he said.

His comments come after a Hong Kong court on Monday found Lai guilty of colluding with foreign forces.

The verdict was welcomed by Hong Kong's chief executive John Lee, who said that Lai's actions had "damaged the country's interests and the welfare of Hong Kongers", but rights groups called it "a cruel judicial farce".

"He has been targeted by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression," UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper had told Parliament on Monday, calling for Lai's "immediate release".

She added that the Foreign Office has summoned the Chinese Ambassador to "underline our position in the strongest terms", adding that it was "heartbreaking that such a violation of a British man's rights could occur in Hong Kong".

China's foreign ministry had earlier on Monday dismissed criticisms of Lai's trial, describing them as "brazen defamation and smearing of the judicial system in Hong Kong".

Lai was on Monday convicted under the city's controversial national security law - which rights groups say is used to crush dissent, but which Beijing defends as essential for the city's stability.

He was also convicted of publishing seditious material on Apple Daily under a separate colonial-era law.

His detention and conviction have drawn concern from rights groups and foreign leaders, who have long called for his release.

His children have voiced serious concerns about Lai's deteriorating health in prison, with Sebastien telling the BBC earlier this year that given his father's age and health, he could "die in prison".

The government has launched a new taskforce it says will help women "enter, stay and lead" in the UK tech sector.

Led by technology secretary Liz Kendall, it will see female leaders from tech companies and organisations advise the government on how to boost diversity and economic growth in the industry.

BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, recently suggested women accounted for only 22% of those working in IT specialist roles in the UK.

Ms Kendall said the Women in Tech group would "break down the barriers that still hold too many people back".

"When women are inspired to take on a role in tech and have a seat at the table, the sector can make more representative decisions, build products that serve everyone," she said.

BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, warned in December the amount of women working in the UK tech sector still lagged far behind men.

It said the government should look to help close the gender gap in order to meet its ambitious AI goals.

"We cannot create high-trust, high-integrity AI systems if the profession behind them is missing out on the talents and perspective of half the population," said chief executive Sharron Gunn.

Ms Kendall will lead the taskforce alongside Anne-Marie Imafidon, founder of Stemettes, who has been appointed as the Women in Tech Envoy.

Dr Imafidon, who passed A-level computing aged 11 and received a Master's Degree in Maths and Computer Science from the University of Oxford aged 20, has sought to encourage more young women into careers in Stem - science, technology, engineering and maths.

She told the BBC her role would build on more than a decade of work to establish greater equality for - and representation of - women.

But now, amid what she called "a fourth industrial revolution", was a key moment to "be part of shifting who is making those decisions for what comes next".

"This isn't just about having women being the driving force and building the technology, but this is about building technology that benefits everybody," she said.

'Equality long overdue'

The government said the taskforce will advise on ways to make the tech sector more representative and "ensure the UK accesses the full talent pool, market opportunities, and innovation capacity needed for economic growth".

BT Group boss Allison Kirkby, Revolut chief executive Francesca Carlesi and Dr Hayaatun Sillem, chief executive of the Royal Academy of Engineering, are among its 15 founding members.

It also includes TUC assistant general secretary Kate Bell, director of public policy at Uber Emma O'Dwyer, and Sue Daley, director of technology and innovation at industry group techUK.

"Entry routes, career progression to leadership, and access to capital are just some of the barriers women in tech still face today," Ms Daley said.

"Achieving gender equality is long overdue, and I am honoured to join the Women in Tech taskforce alongside Liz Kendall and several inspiring women from across the industry, working together to chart a path forward for true gender equality."

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Sunday dawned hot and clear at Bondi - not a cloud in the sky, the sun shining as the waves crashed onto the sand.

It was a day made for the beach. By midday, the entire stretch was heaving with thousands of people and the sea was full of swimmers and surfers. Our family of four, on holiday at Bondi Beach, was among them.

As we headed to the beach, crossing on a footbridge from the carpark of Campbell Parade, I noticed people were setting up white tents on the grass next to a children's playground.

A truck arrived, carrying a climbing wall. Later we would learn they were preparing for a Jewish community event, called Chanukah by the Sea, to celebrate the start of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

In the late afternoon, loud upbeat music boomed from the speakers and across the beach. The event had begun. Our family packed up our things at the beach at about 18:00 local time (07:00 GMT) to go back to the holiday home we had rented nearby.

As we crossed the footbridge again, we saw hundreds of people - families with young children and grandparents - at the event. A stage had been set up for live performances with rows of chairs set out in front. Activity stations and stalls lined the green. The mood was relaxed and festive as laughter and children's cries floated in the air.

Scores more people were streaming into the event via an entry point with what looked like bag checks. Metal barriers had been set up to fence the event off from the rest of the green, but there appeared to be minimal security.

As the event looked like it could have food stalls, I suggested to my husband we check it out for dinner. "Let's just get pizza back at the house," he sighed - the kids were getting cranky and needed a shower.

So I went back with the children, while my husband stopped by a pizzeria for a takeaway.

Half an hour later, he returned home with the pizzas, and a worried look. While he was buying dinner, people had run past him in a panic. One of them stopped to say, "Mate, get away from here, something bad's happened."

We could hear police sirens and the roar of helicopters. We checked the news, and I quickly went to the scene, which was just 100m from where we were staying.

Police officers were just starting to cordon off the car park in front of the footbridge where my family and I had crossed over - and which the attackers used, not even an hour later, as a vantage point to shoot at the festival we had seen earlier.

Many people had gathered at a corner close to the cordon where there were bars and restaurants. Lively music blared during a beautiful sunset - an incongruous setting for what had become a deadly evening at the beach.

People were anxiously milling about, some crying and in shock. A few were desperately trying to get in touch with their loved ones who were stuck in the area that was being cordoned off.

"My daughter's at the surf club just over there, and I can't contact her," one woman told me, her eyes filling with tears. Some were arguing with police at the cordon, insisting they needed to find their relatives or get to their cars or homes.

I caught a man running past - he told me his name was Barry. He had just fled the festival with his two children. When he heard gunshots, they dropped to the ground, he said.

"And as we're lying there on the floor, with my kids, I saw a shooter or two on the bridge on the side towards Bondi beach, shooting at all of us," he said. "It was pandemonium and chaos."

Soon the restaurants and bars on the corner shut down, even as the crowd of onlookers and media grew.

As the night wore on, police and emergency vehicles moved in and out of the zone, clearing what we learnt later was a car filled with IEDs.

A fierce wind whipped up from the beach, as officers tried to hold the cordon.

The next morning, the main stretch of Bondi was deserted. Uncertainty, shock and anxiety still lingered. At the police cordon, a crowd thronged a cafe, buying coffees while worriedly discussing what had happened the previous night.

Watching the scene were Bondi residents Ali Pattillo, Abby Agwunobi and Brooke Schlesinger. The three women, all Americans, live in an apartment overlooking the shooting site. When they heard the gunshots, they thought it was fireworks.

"I started hearing people kind of screaming and running, grabbed the dog and hid in the bathroom," Ms Pattillo said. "And then you could just sort of hear the entire thing play out in this like horrible dream."

Ms Schlesinger said the attack was such a shock because "what appealed to us most about the Australian lifestyle is that sense of security and safety and community".

Although the Bondi community was "incredibly tight", Ms Agwunobi said she was worried about "the backlash and fallout that might happen from this", particularly with "the kind of climate with people being very anti-immigration."

"So, yeah, I'm very afraid for the next few days. And my heart just goes to the Jewish community as well because... it's just such a violation to happen, especially on a holy celebration".

Across the street, some people began laying out bouquets of flowers, balloons and an Australian flag at the corner of a primary school, in an impromptu memorial for the dead.

Soon, more people arrived to grieve at the spot. Some draped Israeli flags around their shoulders and wore kippahs, or Jewish skullcaps. People wept openly and embraced one another.

Others expressed fear and despair, including Jewish people who said they had been feeling vulnerable after a spate of antisemitism-related offences. Yvonne Haber, a Bondi resident who is Jewish, said an attack like this has "been waiting to happen, and we've been saying this is gonna happen. And now that it's happened... it's absolutely horrific."

As the sun began to set, I went to Bondi Pavilion, which had become an enormous shrine for for mourners after police removed part of the cordon.

Israeli and Australian flags hung on the closed gates of the pavilion, as hundreds of people gathered to lay wreaths, bouquets, candles and pebbles from the beach. The enormous pile of flowers framed a handwritten sign: "We stay united, no more hate, just love."

As 18:47 neared - the time of the attack the day before - a group of local Jewish leaders stepped forward with a large menorah with candles. They announced they were going to light the candles - a ritual associated with Hanukkah - to remember those killed in the attack, and urged the crowd to light their own candles from the menorah and take it home with them.

"We invite the crowd to take the light, to spread peace and tolerance. We have survived for thousands of years... light will always prevail," Rabbi Yossi Shuchat announced to the crowd.

Then the group began singing traditional Jewish songs, with many in the crowd joining in. Their voices soared, cracked with grief, enveloping those gathered in a wave of pure emotion.

A woman behind me quietly sobbed as she sang and clapped along to the more spirited songs. At one point, the crowd broke out into the Australian national anthem.

Afterwards, Rabbi Shuchat told me that he and his friends had decided that morning to hold the ceremony for the victims - and to make a powerful statement.

"Darkness has no power where light arrives, and therefore we implore everyone to be that light in their surroundings. Don't allow evil to come. The best way to banish evil is to shine a light."

US President Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC over an edit of his 6 January 2021 speech in a Panorama documentary.

Trump has requested billions of dollars in damages, according to court documents filed in Florida.

The BBC apologised to Trump in November, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed there was any "basis for a defamation claim".

Trump's legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by "intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech". The BBC has not yet responded to the lawsuit being filed.

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.

Warning: Disturbing content

A little boy faces the camera. He is pale and has no hair.

"I am seven years old and I have cancer," he says. "Please save my life and help me."

Khalil - who is pictured above in a still from the film - didn't want to record this, says his mother Aljin. She had been asked to shave his head, and then a film crew hooked him up to a fake drip, and asked his family to pretend it was his birthday. They had given him a script to learn and recite in English.

And he didn't like it, says Aljin, when chopped onions were placed next to him, and menthol put under his eyes, to make him cry.

Aljin agreed to it because, although the set-up was fake, Khalil really did have cancer. She was told this video would help crowdfund money for better treatment. And it did raise funds - $27,000 (£20,204), according to a campaign we found in Khalil's name.

But Aljin was told the campaign had failed, and says she received none of this money - just a $700 (£524) filming fee on the day. One year later, Khalil died.

Across the world, desperate parents of sick or dying children are being exploited by online scam campaigns, the BBC World Service has discovered. The public have given money to the campaigns, which claim to be fundraising for life-saving treatment. We have identified 15 families who say they got little to nothing of the funds raised and often had no idea the campaigns had even been published, despite undergoing harrowing filming.

Nine families we spoke to - whose campaigns appear to be products of the same scam network - say they never received anything at all of the $4m (£2.9m) apparently raised in their names.

A whistleblower from this network told us they had looked for "beautiful children" who "had to be three to nine years old… without hair".

We have identified a key player in the scam as an Israeli man living in Canada called Erez Hadari.

Our investigation began in October 2023, when a distressing YouTube advert caught our attention. "I don't want to die," a girl called Alexandra from Ghana sobbed. "My treatments cost a lot."

A crowdfunding campaign for her appeared to have raised nearly $700,000 (£523,797).

We saw more videos of sick children from around the world on YouTube, all strikingly similar - slickly produced, and seemingly having raised huge amounts of money. They all conveyed a sense of urgency, using emotive language.

We decided to investigate further.

The campaigns with the biggest apparent international reach were under the name of an organisation called Chance Letikva (Chance for Hope, in English) - registered in Israel and the US.

Identifying the children featured was difficult. We used geolocation, social media and facial recognition software to find their families, based as far apart as Colombia and the Philippines.

While it was difficult to know for sure if the campaign websites' cash totals were genuine, we donated small amounts to two of them and saw the totals increase by those amounts.

We also spoke to someone who says she gave $180 (£135) to Alexandra's campaign and was then inundated with requests for more, all written as if sent by Alexandra and her father.

In the Philippines, Aljin Tabasa told us her son Khalil had fallen ill just after his seventh birthday.

"When we found out it was cancer it felt like my whole world shattered," she says.

Aljin says treatment at their local hospital in the city of Cebu was slow, and she had messaged everyone she could think of for help. One person put her in touch with a local businessman called Rhoie Yncierto - who asked for a video of Khalil which, looking back, Aljin realises was essentially an audition.

Another man then arrived from Canada in December 2022, introducing himself as "Erez". He paid her the filming fee up front, she says, promising a further $1,500 (£1,122) a month if the film generated lots of donations.

Erez directed Khalil's film at a local hospital, asking for retake after retake - the shoot taking 12 hours, Aljin says.

Months later, the family say they had still not heard how the video had performed. Aljin messaged Erez, who told her the video "wasn't successful".

"So as I understood it, the video just didn't make any money," she says.

But we told her the campaign had apparently collected $27,000 (£20,204) as of November 2024, and was still online.

"If I had known the money we had raised, I can't help but think that maybe Khalil would still be here," Aljin says. "I don't understand how they could do this to us."

When asked about his role in the filming, Rhoie Yncierto denied telling families to shave their children's heads for filming and said he had received no payment for recruiting families.

He said he had "no control" over what happened with the funds and had no contact with the families after the day of filming. When we told him they had not received any of the campaigns' donations he said he was "puzzled" and was "very sorry for the families".

Nobody named Erez appears on registration documents for Chance Letikva. But two of its campaigns we investigated had also been promoted by another organisation called Walls of Hope, registered in Israel and Canada. Documents list the director in Canada as Erez Hadari.

Photos of him online show him at Jewish religious events in the Philippines, New York and Miami. We showed Aljin, and she said it was the same person she had met.

• Outside the UK, watch the film on BBC World Service YouTube

We asked Mr Hadari about his involvement in a campaign in the Philippines. He did not respond.

We visited further families whose campaigns were either organised by, or linked to, Mr Hadari - one in a remote indigenous community in Colombia, and another in Ukraine.

As with Khalil's case, local fixers had got in touch to offer help. The children were filmed and made to cry or fake tears for a nominal fee, but never received any further money.

In Sucre, north-west Colombia, Sergio Care says he initially refused this help. He had been approached by someone called Isabel, he says, who offered financial assistance after his eight-year-old daughter, Ana, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour.

But Isabel came looking for him at the hospital treating Ana, he says, accompanied by a man who said he worked for an international NGO.

The description Sergio gave of the man matched that of Erez Hadari - he then recognised him in a photo we showed him.

"He gave me hope... I didn't have any money for the future."

Demands on the family did not end with the filming.

Isabel kept ringing, Sergio says, demanding more photos of Ana in hospital. When Sergio didn't reply, Isabel started messaging Ana herself - voice notes we have heard.

Ana told Isabel she had no more photos to send. Isabel replied: "This is very bad Ana, very bad indeed."

In January this year, Ana - now fully recovered - tried to find out what happened to the money promised.

"That foundation disappeared," Isabel told her in a voice note. "Your video was never uploaded. Never. Nothing was done with it, you hear?"

But we could see the video had been uploaded and, by April 2024, appeared to have raised nearly $250,000 (£187,070).

In October, we persuaded Isabel Hernandez to speak to us over video link.

A friend from Israel, she explained, had introduced her to someone offering work for "a foundation" looking to help children with cancer. She refused to name who she worked for.

She was told only one of the campaigns she helped organise was published, she says, and that it had not been successful.

We showed Isabel that two campaigns had in fact been uploaded - one of them apparently raising more than $700,000 (£523,797).

"I need to apologise to [the families]," she said. "If I'd known what was going on, I would not have been able to do something like this."

In Ukraine, we discovered that the person who approached the mother of a sick child was actually employed in the place where the campaign video was filmed.

Tetiana Khaliavka organised a shoot with five-year-old Viktoriia, who has brain cancer, at Angelholm Clinic in Chernivtsi.

One Facebook post linked to Chance Letikva's campaign shows Viktoriia and her mother Olena Firsova, sitting on a bed. "I see your efforts to save my daughter, and it deeply moves us all. It's a race against time to raise the amount needed for Viktoriia's treatments," reads the caption.

Olena says she never wrote or even said these words and had no idea the campaign had been uploaded.

It appears to have raised more than €280,000 (£244,000).

Tetiana, we were told, was in charge of advertising and communications at Angelholm.

The clinic recently told the BBC it didn't approve filming on its premises - adding: "The clinic has never participated in, nor supported, any fundraising initiatives organised by any organisation."

Angelholm says it has terminated Tetiana Khaliavka's employment.

Olena showed us the contract she had been asked to sign.

In addition to the family's $1,500 (£1,122) filming fee on the day, it states they would get $8,000 (£5,986) once the fundraising goal was met. The amount for the goal, however, has been left blank.

The contract showed an address in New York for Chance Letikva. On the organisation's website, there is another - in Beit Shemesh, about an hour from Jerusalem. We travelled to both, but found no sign of it.

And we discovered Chance Letikva seems to be one of many such organisations.

The man who filmed Viktoriia's campaign told our producer - who was posing as a friend of a sick child - that he works for other similar organisations.

"Each time, it's a different one," the man - who had introduced himself as "Oleh" - told her. "I hate to put it this way, but they work kind of like a conveyor belt."

"About a dozen similar companies" requested "material", he said, naming two of them - Saint Teresa and Little Angels, both registered in the US.

When we checked their registration documents, we once again found Erez Hadari's name.

What is not clear is where the money raised for the children has gone.

More than a year after Viktoriia's filming, her mother Olena rang Oleh, who seems to go by Alex Kohen online, to find out. Shortly afterwards, someone from Chance Letikva called to say the donations had paid for advertising, she says.

This is also what Mr Hadari told Aljin, Khalil's mother, when she confronted him over the phone.

"There is cost of advertising. So the company lost money," Mr Hadari told her, without giving any evidence to support this.

Charity experts told us advertising should not amount to more than 20% of the total raised by campaigns.

Someone previously employed to recruit children for Chance Letikva campaigns told us how those featured had been chosen.

They had been asked to visit oncology clinics, they said - speaking on condition of anonymity.

"They were always looking for beautiful children with white skin. The child had to be three to nine years old. They had to know how to speak well. They had to be without hair," they told us.

"They asked me for photos, to see if the child is right, and I would send it to Erez."

The whistleblower told us Mr Hadari would then send the photo on to someone else, in Israel, whose name they were never told.

As for Mr Hadari himself, we tried to reach him at two addresses in Canada but could not find him. He replied to one voice note we had sent him - asking about the money he had been apparently crowdfunding - by saying the organisation "has never been active", without specifying which one. He did not respond to a further voice note and letter laying out all our questions and allegations.

Campaigns set up by Chance Letikva for two children who died - Khalil and a Mexican boy called Hector - still appear to be accepting money.

Chance Letikva's US branch appears to be linked to a new organisation called Saint Raphael, which has produced more campaigns - at least two of which seem to have been filmed in Angelholm clinic in Ukraine, as the clinic's distinctive wood panelling and staff uniforms can be seen.

Olena, Viktoriia's mother, says her daughter has been diagnosed with another brain tumour. She says she is sickened by the findings of our investigation.

"When your child is… hanging on the edge of life, and someone's out there, making money off that. Well, it's filthy. It's blood money."

The BBC contacted Tetiana Khaliavka and Alex Kohen, and the organisations Chance Letikva, Walls of Hope, Saint Raphael, Little Angels and Saint Teresa - inviting them to respond to the allegations made against them. None of them replied.

The Israeli Corporations Authority, which oversees the country's non-profit organisations, told us that if it has evidence founders are using entities as "a cover for illegal activity", then registration inside Israel may be denied and the founder could be barred from working in the sector.

UK regulator, the Charity Commission, advises those wishing to donate to charities to check that those associations are registered, and that the appropriate fundraising regulator should be contacted if in doubt.

Additional reporting by: Ned Davies, Tracks Saflor, Jose Antonio Lucio, Almudena Garcia-parrado, Vitaliya Kozmenko, Shakked Auerbach, Tom Tzur Wisfelder, Katya Malofieieva, Anastasia Kucher, Alan Pulido and Neil McCarthy

• If you have any information to add to this investigation please contact simi@bbc.co.uk

At a meeting of his cabinet at the White House two weeks ago, US President Donald Trump looked around the long room filled with his top advisers, administration officials and aides, and made a prediction.

The next Republican presidential candidate, he said, is "probably sitting at this table".

"It could be a couple of people sitting at this table," he added, hinting at possible electoral clashes to come.

Despite a constitutional amendment limiting him to two four-year terms, his supporters chanted "four more years" at a rally last Tuesday night in Pennsylvania. Trump said at the time that the final three years of his second term amount to an "eternity".

But in the cabinet room last week, when talking about prospects for the 2028 Republican president nomination, he was clear: "It's not going to be me."

The next presidential election may seem a long way off, but Trump's own speculation – and certain frictions within Trump's coalition - suggest that the jockeying to succeed and define the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement after Trump is well under way.

In last month's local elections, the Republican Party lost support among the minority and working-class voters who helped Trump win back the White House in 2024.

Members of his team have feuded over policy. And some, most notably Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have cut loose from his orbit, accusing the president of losing touch with the Americans who gave him power.

There has been speculation about fractures within the Maga base in certain quarters of the international press, as well as at home. On Monday, a headline in The Washington Post asked: "Maga leaders warn Trump the base is checking out. Will he listen?"

The warning signs are there. While Trump has long been known for being in tune with his base, the months ahead will pose a series of challenges to the president and his movement. Nothing less than his political legacy is at stake.

From Vance to Rubio: A team of rivals?

It was all smiles and talk of historic presidential achievements inside the friendly confines of Trump's newly redecorated, gold-bedecked cabinet room two weeks ago.

But the presidential aspirants Trump may have had in mind as he looked around the table hint at just how hard it could be to keep his Maga movement from stretching apart at the seams.

Vice-President JD Vance sat directly across from the president. As his running mate, he is widely considered to be Trump's most likely heir apparent – the favourite of Trump's sons and libertarian Silicon Valley tech billionaires.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on the president's immediate right. The former Florida senator, who competed with Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016, had spent the past 10 years undergoing a Maga transformation.

He has jettisoned his past support for liberalising immigration policy and his hard line on Russia in lieu of Trump's America First foreign policy. But if there is anyone close to an old-guard Republican with influence in Trump's party, Rubio tops the list.

Then there is Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, whose vaccine scepticism and "Make America Healthy Again" agenda have sent earthquakes through the US health bureaucracy; he sat two down from Rubio. The Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Republican is a living embodiment of the strange ideological bedfellows Trump made on his way to re-election last year.

And finally, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, was tucked off to the corner of the table. While the former South Dakota governor is not considered a major presidential contender, her advocacy for aggressive immigration enforcement – including a recent call for a full travel ban on "every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies" – has made her a prominent face of administration's policies.

Each might believe they could, if they chose to run, become Trump's political heir and take control of the political movement that has reshaped American politics over the last decade.

But to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin's comments at the birth of American democracy, whoever wins the Republican nomination will have been given a winning coalition – if they can keep it.

The Republican empire transformed

Of course none of this is guaranteed - nor is it certain that the next generation of Maga leaders will be someone from the president's inner circle. Trump stormed the White House as a political outsider. The next Republican leader may follow a similar path.

"It's going to be up to the next Republican president who follows Trump to set him or herself apart," says former Republican Congressman Rodney Davis of Illinois, who now works for the US Chamber of Commerce.

"But at the same time make sure that you don't go too far away, because clearly it's Donald Trump [who] got elected president twice."

When the November 2028 presidential election rolls around, American voters may not even want someone like Trump. Some public opinion polls suggest that the president may not be as popular as he once was.

A survey by YouGov earlier this month indicated the president had a net approval rating of -14, compared with +6 when he took office again in January. Then there are concerns about the economy and his relentless efforts to push the boundaries of presidential power.

Leadership of Trump's movement still represents the keys to the Republican empire, however, even if that empire has drastically changed in recent years.

"I think the Republican coalition has become fundamentally different over the last few decades," said Davis, who served in Congress from 2013 to 2023. "The Republican coalition that existed when Ronald Reagan was elected is not the Republican coalition anymore."

Back in the 1980s, the Reagan coalition was a fusion of free-market economics, cultural conservatism, anti-communism and international foreign affairs, says Laura K Field, author of Furious Minds: The Making of the Maga New Right.

Trump's party, she continues, was perhaps best described by long-time Trump adviser and current state department official Michael Anton in a 2016 essay advocating for Trump's election. In contrast with the Reagan era, its core principles include "secure borders, economic nationalism and America-first foreign policy".

'Normie Republicans' versus 'the edgelords'

Earlier this month, the conservative Manhattan Institute released a comprehensive survey of Republican voters, shedding more light on the composition of Trump's coalition.

It suggested that 65% of the current Republican Party are what it calls "core Republicans" – those who have supported party presidential nominees since at least 2016. (If they were alive in the 1980s, they may well have voted for Reagan.)

On the other hand, 29% are what the Institute called "new entrant Republicans". It is among those new Republicans that the challenge to the durability of Trump's coalition presents itself.

Only just over half said they would "definitely" support a Republican in next year's mid-term congressional elections.

According to the survey, the new entrants are younger, more diverse and more likely to hold views that break with traditional conservative orthodoxy. They hold comparatively more left-leaning views of economic policy, they tend to be more liberal on immigration and social issues, and they may also be more pro-China or critical of Israel, for example.

Jesse Arm, vice-president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, told the BBC in an email: "A lot of the conversation about the future of the right is being driven by the loudest and strangest voices online, rather than by the voters who actually make up the bulk of the Republican coalition."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the so-called new entrant Republican voters are significantly less supportive of some of Trump's would-be heirs. While 70% of core Republicans have positive views of Rubio and 80% for Vance, just over half of new entrants feel that way about either.

Other findings could be more concerning for Republicans.

More than half of new entrants believe the use of political violence in American politics "is sometimes justified" – compared to just 20% among core Republicans.

It also suggests they may be more likely to be tolerant of racist or anti-Semitic speech and more prone to conspiratorial thinking – on topics like the moon landings, 9/11 and vaccines.

Trump was able to attract these voters into his coalition. The question is whether he and his political heirs can keep them there – or if they even want to.

"The real takeaway is not that these voters will 'define' the post-Trump GOP, but that future Republican leaders will have to draw clear lines about who sets the agenda," argues Mr Arm.

"The heart of the party remains normie Republicans, not the edgelords that both the media and the dissident right are strangely invested in elevating."

Clashes in the conservative ranks

The divides revealed in the Manhattan Institute poll helps explain some of the most notable frictions within the Trump coalition over the past few months.

The Trump-Greene feud that culminated in the latter's resignation from Congress began with her backing of a full release of the government files connected to the Jeffrey Epstein underage sex-trafficking case – long a source of conservative conspiracy theories.

It broadened, however, into a critique of Trump's Middle East policy and accusations of his failure to address cost-of-living and healthcare concerns for low-income American voters.

An earlier high-profile Maga split erupted over Trump's economic policy, with billionaire Elon Musk, a strong supporter and member of Trump's inner circle at the start of the year, going on to condemn certain tariffs and government spending policies.

The president has, for the moment, largely tried to stay out of another bitter clash within conservative ranks over whether Nick Fuentes, a far-right political commentator and Holocaust denier, is welcome within the conservative movement.

It's a dispute that has roiled the influential Heritage Foundation and pitted some powerful right-wing commentators against each other.

According to Ms Field, those who follow Trump may find it a difficult conflict to avoid. "Nick Fuentes has a huge following," she says. "Part of how the conservative movement got the energy and power that they've got is by peddling to this part of the Republican Party."

In the halls of the Republican-controlled Congress, some signs of friction with the president's agenda are showing. Despite White House lobbying, it couldn't stop the House from passing a measure mandating release of the Epstein files.

The president has also been unable to convince Senate Republicans to abandon the filibuster, a parliamentary procedure Democrats in the minority have been able to block some of Trump's agenda.

Meanwhile, Trump's party has been stumbling at the polls, with the Democrats winning governorships in Virginia and New Jersey last month by comfortable margins.

In dozens of contested special elections for state and local seats over the past year, Democrats have on average improved their margins by around 13% over similar races held in last November's national elections.

The future of Trumpism

All of this will be front of mind for Republicans ahead of the 2026 mid-term congressional elections - and it will do little to ease the concerns held by some that, without Trump at the top of the ticket, their coalition will struggle to deliver reliable ballot-box victories.

Yet even a defeat next year – or in 2028 – is unlikely to mark the end of Trumpism.

The ascent by Trump's Maga movement to the pinnacle of American power has been far from a smooth one. It includes a mid-term rout in 2018 and Trump himself losing in 2020, before his re-election last November.

But the changes that Trump has wrought within the Republican Party itself appear to be foundational ones, according to Ms Field. His Maga coalition builds on strains of populist movements in the US that date back decades or more – from Barry Goldwater's insurgent presidential campaign in 1964 to the Tea Party protests during Barack Obama's presidency.

"These things are not coming out of nowhere. They are forces in American politics that have been underground for a while, but have been just kind of fermenting."

The old Republican order, she argues, is a relic of the past.

"The Trump movement is here to stay and there's no real likelihood of the old establishment returning with any sort of clout - that much is clear."

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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Almost 90 flights linked to Jeffrey Epstein arrived at and departed from UK airports, some with British women on board who say they were abused by the billionaire, a BBC investigation has found.

We have established that three British women who were allegedly trafficked appear in Epstein's records of flights in and out of the UK and other documents related to the convicted sex offender.

US lawyers representing hundreds of Epstein victims told the BBC it was "shocking" that there has never been a "full-scale UK investigation" into his activities on the other side of the Atlantic.

The UK was one of the "centrepieces" of Epstein's operations, one said.

Testimony from one of these British victims helped convict Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of child sex-trafficking in the US in 2021. But the victim has never been contacted by UK police, her Florida-based lawyer Brad Edwards told the BBC.

The woman, given the name Kate in the trial, was listed as having been on more than 10 flights paid for by Epstein in and out of the UK between 1999 and 2006.

The BBC is not publishing further details about the women in the documents because of the risk this might identify them.

US lawyer Sigrid McCawley said the British authorities have "not taken a closer look at those flights, at where he was at, who he was seeing at those moments, and who was with him on those planes, and conducted a full investigation".

Under the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act, the deadline to release all US government files on the sex-offender financier is Friday.

But the flight logs were among thousands of documents from court cases and Epstein's estate which have been already made public over the past year, revealing more about his time in the UK, such as trips to royal residences.

The BBC examined these documents as part of an investigation trying to piece together Epstein's activities in the UK.

It revealed that:

• The incomplete flight logs and manifests record 87 flights linked to Epstein - dozens more than were previously known - arriving or departing from UK airports between the early 1990s and 2018
• Unidentified "females" were listed among the passengers travelling into and out of the UK in the logs
• Fifteen of the UK flights took place after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor, which should have raised questions from immigration officials

Although Epstein died in jail in 2019, before his trial on charges of trafficking minors for sex, legal experts have told the BBC a UK investigation could reveal whether British-based people enabled his crimes.

Two months ago the BBC sent the Metropolitan Police, which has previously examined allegations about Epstein's activities in Britain, publicly available information about the UK flights with suspected trafficking victims on board.

Later, we sent the Met a detailed list of questions about whether it would investigate evidence of possible British victims of Epstein trafficked in and out of the UK.

The Met did not respond to our questions. On Saturday, it released a broader statement saying that it had "not received any additional evidence that would support reopening the investigation" into Epstein and Maxwell's trafficking activities in the UK.

"Should new and relevant information be brought to our attention", including any resulting from the release of material in the US, "we will assess it", the Met said.

US lawyer Brad Edwards, who has been representing Epstein victims since 2008, told us "three or four" of his clients are British women "who were abused on British soil both by Jeffrey Epstein and others".

Other victims were recruited in the UK, trafficked to the United States and abused there, he said.

Mr Edwards said he is also representing women of other nationalities who say they were trafficked to the UK for abuse by Epstein and others.

Our analysis shows Epstein used commercial and chartered flights, as well as his private planes, to travel to the UK and to arrange transport for others, including alleged trafficking victims.

More than 50 of the flights involved his private jets, mostly flying to and from Luton Airport, with several flights at Birmingham International Airport, and one arrival and departure each at RAF Marham in west Norfolk and at Edinburgh Airport.

Limited records of commercial and chartered flights taken by Epstein, or paid for by him, show dozens more journeys, mainly via London Heathrow, but also Stansted and Gatwick.

In a number of the logs of Epstein's private planes, including some detailing trips to the UK, women on the flight are identified only as unnamed "females".

"He's absolutely choosing airports where he feels it will be easier for him to get in and out with victims that he's trafficking," said Ms McCawley.

Private aircraft did not have to provide passenger details to UK authorities before departure in the same way as commercial aircraft during the period covered by the documents we examined. The Home Office told us they were "not subject to the same centralised record-keeping".

That loophole was only closed in April last year.

Kate, the British woman who testified against Maxwell, was on some of the commercial flights in the records we examined. She described in court that she had been 17 when Maxwell befriended her and introduced her to Epstein - who then sexually abused her at Maxwell's central London home.

In the 2021 trial, she described how Maxwell gave her a schoolgirl outfit to wear and asked her to find other girls for Epstein. As well as the dozen flights to and from the UK, Kate told the court she had been flown to Epstein's island in the US Virgin Islands, New York and Palm Beach in Florida, where she says the abuse continued into her 30s.

Mr Edwards, her lawyer, told BBC News that even after that testimony, Kate has "never been asked" by any UK authorities any questions about her experience - "not even a phone call".

He said that if British police were to launch an investigation into Epstein's activities and his enablers, Kate would be happy to help.

Prof Bridgette Carr, a human-trafficking expert at the University of Michigan Law School, said trafficking cases usually require many people working together.

"It's never just one bad person," she said. "You don't think about the accountant and the lawyer and the banker - or all the bankers - and all these people that had to implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, be OK with what was happening for it to continue."

There are also questions about how Epstein was able to travel freely to the UK after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for sex, which meant he had to register as a sex offender in Florida, New York and the US Virgin Islands.

Epstein was released from prison in 2009 after serving 13 months. Documents suggest Epstein took a Virgin Atlantic flight from the US to London Heathrow in September 2010, just two months after he completed his probation on house arrest.

Home Office rules at the time said foreign nationals who received a prison sentence of 12 months or more should, in most cases, have been refused entry.

But immigration lawyer Miglena Ilieva, managing partner at ILEX Law Group, told us that US citizens did not usually require a UK visa for short stays, so there was no application process where they would be asked about criminal convictions.

"It was very much at the discretion of the individual immigration officer who would receive this person at the border," she said.

The Home Office said it does not hold immigration and visa records beyond 10 years and added "it is longstanding government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases".

During the 1980s, Epstein also used a foreign passport - issued in Austria with his picture and a false name - to enter the UK as well as France, Spain and Saudi Arabia, according to US authorities.

Epstein also listed London as his place of residence in 1985, when he applied for a replacement passport, ABC News has previously reported.

In its statement on Saturday, the Met said it had contacted "several other potential victims" when it examined 2015 allegations by Virginia Giuffre that she had been trafficked for sexual exploitation by Epstein and Maxwell.

Ms Giuffre also said she was forced to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on three occasions, including when she was 17 at Maxwell's home in London, in 2001. The former prince has consistently denied the allegations against him.

The Met said its examination of Ms Giuffre's claims "did not result in any allegation of criminal conduct against any UK-based nationals" and it concluded that "other international authorities were best placed to progress these allegations".

That decision was reviewed in August 2019 and again in 2021 and 2022 with the same result, it said.

But for lawyer Sigrid McCawley, the message the Met is sending to victims is "that if you come to law enforcement and this is a powerful person you're reporting on… it will not get investigated."

• ​​If you have information about this story that you would like to share, please email ​​epsteininvestigation@bbc.co.uk

More UK families will "know what sacrifice for our nation means" as the nation seeks to deter a potential confrontation with Russia, the head of the military has said.

Sir Richard Knighton said the country's security "cannot be outsourced to the armed forces" and "requires a whole-of-society response", including harnessing UK universities and manufacturing.

While the chief of the defence staff suggested there was only a remote chance of Russia directly attacking the UK, he told an event at the Royal United Services Institute that so-called hybrid attacks showed the threat was worsening.

He referenced a Russian spy ship that was recently suspected of mapping undersea cables near UK waters.

"Every day the UK is subject to an onslaught of cyber-attacks from Russia and we know that Russian agents are seeking to conduct sabotage and have killed on our shores," he added.

At the same time, Russia's military had become a "hard power [which] is growing quickly".

While Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine had been a strategic failure, he said, "we should be under no illusions that Russia has a massive, increasingly technically sophisticated, and now highly combat-experienced military".

Sir Richard said the UK needed to make itself a "harder target" for hybrid threats and to avoid war.

Building the nation's resilience went beyond strengthening the military and "more people being ready to fight for their country", and included harnessing the UK's universities, energy and manufacturing industries, and the NHS.

It also meant building industrial capacity "to meet the demands in the UK and of our allies to re-stock and re-arm".

"Building this industrial capacity also means we need more people who leave schools and universities to join that industry."

He added that "we need defence and political leaders to explain the importance of the industry to the nation, and we need schools and parents to encourage children and young adults to take up careers in the industry".

Addressing a skills gap highlighted in a recent report by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Sir Richard also talked about the need to work with industry and young people, announcing £50m for new defence technical excellence colleges.

In recent weeks, both France and Germany have outlined plans for voluntary national service.

Last year, the then-Conservative government set out its own compulsory proposals, which Labour dismissed as a gimmick.

Sir Richard, who became chief of the defence staff in September, said he found himself in a position none of his predecessors had: "looking at the prospect of the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War".

The government announced earlier this year that UK defence and security spending would rise to 5% of GDP by 2035 at the latest.

"Sons and daughters, colleagues, veterans will all have a role to play - to build, to serve, and if necessary, to fight," Sir Richard said. "And more families will know what sacrifice for our nation means.

"That is why it's so important we do explain the changing threat and the need to stay ahead of it."

The UK and South Korea have finalised a trade deal which the government says will create thousands of jobs and bring billions into the British economy.

British industries including pharmaceuticals, car manufacturing, alcohol and financial services are expected to benefit from an extension to the current tariff-free trade on most goods and services.

The deal is the fourth such agreement struck by the Labour government, following deals with the EU, US and India — none of which have had a material impact on the UK's economy so far.

South Korean culture, including music, cosmetics and food, has become much more popular in the UK in recent years.

Trade minister Chris Bryant announced the deal in Samsung's flagship store in London on Monday night, accompanied by his Korean counterpart Yeo Han-koo.

Under the deal, 98% of trade will continue to be tariff free, the same terms that the EU has with South Korea, and which the UK maintained temporarily after Brexit.

The UK's agreement with South Korea was set to expire in January 2026, but the new agreement will protect £2bn of UK exports from an increase in tariffs.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the deal was "a huge win for British business".

"This deal making trade even easier between us will help boost the economy - supporting jobs and growth which will be felt all over the country," he said.

Bryant said the deal would give "cast-iron protections to our key industries to speed up economic growth as part of our Plan for Change".

South Korea is the UK's 25th largest trading partner, according to the Department for Business and Trade. In the 12 months to the end of June this year, it accounted for 0.8% of the UK's total trade.

Over that same 12-month period, official figures show UK exports to South Korea fell 16.4% and South Korean exports to the UK fell 10.8%.

South Korea's trade minister told the BBC that South Korea and Britain's economies "are complimentary", and denied that the fall in trade between the nations suggested the relationship wasn't as important as it used to be.

Han-koo said the new agreement was more about reducing non-tariff barriers, such as making rules around product origin more business friendly, and creating new digital and investment protections.

"So these two economies can win by cooperating closer through this kind of framework," he added.

Han-koo also said Britain can serve as a gateway for South Korea in its trade with Europe, while South Korea can serve as a gateway to Asia for British companies.

The South Korean deal is the latest in a series of post-Brexit trade agreements, but the independent budget forecaster, the OBR, has so far deemed deals done with those larger partners as unlikely to make a measurable impact on the UK economy by 2030.

The government has said that its various trade agreements struck this year will grow the British economy by creating jobs and cutting red tape for small businesses.

But its own assessment showed that the deal with India will only increase GDP by between 0.11% and 0.14%.

That deal in particular was criticised for potentially undercutting British workers.

India is the UK's 10th-largest trading partner, accounting for 2.5% of British trade.

'Great news'

UK companies including Bentley Motors, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Guinness owner Diageo welcomed the news of the South Korean deal.

Frank-Steffen Walliser, chairman and chief executive of Bentley Motors, said that South Korea is a key market for the company and the wider luxury vehicle market.

"To secure immediate ongoing access to South Korea and a positive long term trade deal, is great news. Smooth international trade is vital to UK automotive business growth."

Diageo's interim chief executive Nik Jhangiani said it would "help satisfy the growing demand from South Korean consumers" for Guinness, which is canned in Runcorn, Cheshire.

Emily Weaver Roads, interim international director at the Scotch Whisky Association, said the Asia-Pacific region was the largest regional market by value for whisky.

"The reduction of trade barriers in the Republic of Korea will further enhance Scotch Whisky's access to an important market, especially for single malts."

A son of film director Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner has been arrested and booked on suspicion of murder after the couple were found dead in their Los Angeles home.

The Los Angeles Police Department said on Monday that Nick Reiner, 32, had been arrested and that he was in custody with no bail.

The deceased couple's 28-year-old daughter, Romy, found her parents in their home with multiple stab wounds on Sunday, sources told the BBC's US partner CBS News.

Rob Reiner is known for directing several iconic films in a variety of genres, including When Harry Met Sally, This is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, Misery and A Few Good Men.

Emergency services were called to provide medical aid at the Reiners' Brentwood, California, home at around 15:38 local time (23:38 GMT) on Sunday.

The Los Angeles Fire Department said two people - later identified as Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele, 68 - were pronounced dead at the scene.

Police said Nick Reiner was arrested several hours later, at about 21:15 local time on Sunday. Investigators have not publicly outlined a motive and said the investigation remains ongoing.

Nick Reiner has spoken publicly about his struggles with addiction and homelessness. His experiences formed the basis of the semi-autobiographical film Being Charlie, which he made with his father in 2015.

The family's home is in Brentwood, a wealthy celebrity enclave full of large mansions, boutique shops and restaurants. On Monday morning, a security guard stood outside the home as media gathered outside the front gate.

Rob Reiner, the son of comedy great Carl Reiner, began his career in the 1960s and rose to fame playing Meathead in the TV sitcom All in The Family.

He cemented his success with the cult mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap in 1984, which he directed and starred in.

Reiner was married to Laverne & Shirley actress Penny Marshall from 1971 to 1981 and is the adoptive father to Marshall's daughter, actress Tracy Reiner.

He married Michele Reiner in 1989, who he said he met during the making of the romantic comedy-drama film When Harry Met Sally. The couple have three children together.

Michele Reiner was an actress, photographer and producer, and the founder of Reiner Light, a photography agency and production company.

Rob Reiner was also known for his outspoken political activism and support for Democratic candidates.

In a post calling their deaths "very sad", President Donald Trump criticised Reiner, saying that they "reportedly" died "due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction" with "Trump Derangement Syndrome".

"He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump," the president wrote.

It is not clear what reports the president was referring to, and while the investigation is being treated as a homicide, police have yet to comment on any possible motive.

The president and his allies often used the term Trump Derangement Syndrome in reference to those who are critical of him. Reiner was a vocal critic of Trump's.

Several Republicans criticised Trump over the post, including former ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said the deaths were a "family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies".

"Many families deal with a family member with drug addiction and mental health issues. It's incredibly difficult and should be met with empathy especially when it ends in murder," she said.

Trump's post was also met with anger by some of the Reiners' friends.

In a post on X, Maria Shriver, the former first lady of California and longtime friend of the Reiners, said the couple were "devoted parents".

"They deeply loved all their children and they never gave up trying to care for them," she said.

Sir Elton John, who made an appearance in this year's Spinal Tap sequel, said: "I am in disbelief at today's news of Rob and Michele.

"They were two of the most beautiful people I'd ever met and they deserved better."

Fellow actor John Cusack, who appeared in Reiner's 1985 film The Sure Thing, called him "a great man", while Elijah Wood, who starred in 1994's North, said he was "horrified" by the couple's deaths.

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Rishi Sunak has said there was no "toolkit" to deal with the economic shock caused by the Covid pandemic.

The former Conservative prime minister, who was chancellor during the crisis, told an inquiry there was "not a playbook" to guide how to respond and deal with the economy being ground to a halt due to the lockdown.

"We were dealing with something no one had dealt with before," he said.

Sunak added job losses as a result of people being told to stay at home were unavoidable, but said the government was "successful in preventing mass unemployment".

The former PM was giving evidence to the public inquiry into the pandemic on Monday, answering questions on the policies he set out to support workers' incomes and keep businesses afloat.

He said that at the outbreak of the crisis, there was an "enormous amount of uncertainty", with policymakers and experts unsure of the scale and duration of the virus and how the population would respond to any measures imposed by the government.

"There was not a toolkit, there was not a playbook that you could pull of the shelf that said this is how you tend to deal with pandemics in the same way you somewhat have with other economic shocks or financial shocks," he said.

Over the past three weeks, the inquiry has been delving into the economic response to the pandemic, hearing from former ministers, treasury officials and central bankers.

Sunak's appearance on Monday was the second time he has taken the stand, after previously giving evidence in December 2023 when he was still prime minister.

He was appointed chancellor of Boris Johnson's government on 13 February, and was preparing to present a Budget before the pandemic hit UK shores and the country was put into lockdown a month later.

Sunak told the inquiry that one of his priorities was to prevent mass unemployment and said "speed was paramount" in the government's response.

He said there was an "acknowledgement" in the Treasury that they were not going to "get everything right straight away".

"We could not let perfect be the enemy of the good," he said. "We had to get things out fast."

Sunak said it was not possible "to save every person's job", but said that "as it turned out, the impact on living standards particularly for the most vulnerable in society... were stronger that I would have perhaps anticipated going into this and I'm very proud of that".

The coronavirus job retention scheme, known as furlough, was announced by Sunak in March 2020.

At his previous appearance in front of the inquiry, Sunak defended his Eat Out to Help Out policy, which was one of the government's policy measures aimed to support businesses reopening after the first lockdown.

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi was taken to hospital after being beaten when she was arrested last week, her family says.

The 53-year-old human rights activist told them in a phone call on Sunday that she was brought to an emergency department twice after being "attacked by plain clothed agents with severe and repeated baton blows to the head and neck", according to the Narges Foundation.

There was no comment from Iranian authorities, but they have said she was detained for making "provocative remarks" at a memorial ceremony in the city of Mashhad on Friday.

The Nobel Committee and award-winning film-maker Jafar Panahi are among those calling for her release.

Ms Mohammadi, the vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran, was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her activism against female oppression in Iran and promoting human rights.

She has spent more than 10 years of her life in prison. Since 2021, she has been serving a 13-year sentence on charges of committing "propaganda activity against the state" and "collusion against state security", which she denied.

In December 2024, she was given a temporary release from Tehran's notorious Evin prison on medical grounds.

She has continued campaigning while undergoing treatment.

On Friday, she gave a speech at a memorial ceremony in Mashhad for Khosrow Alikordi, a human rights activist and lawyer who was found dead earlier this month in what human rights groups described as "suspicious" circumstances.

According to the Narges Foundation, eyewitnesses cited by Ms Mohammadi's family said that she was attacked by around 15 plainclothes agents at the memorial, and that some were seen pulling her hair and beating her with clubs and batons.

On Sunday evening, Ms Mohammadi made a brief phone call to her family and told them that "the intensity of the blows was so heavy, forceful, and repeated that she was taken to the hospital emergency room twice", a statement said.

"She emphasised that she does not even know which security authority is currently detaining her, and that no explanation has been given in this regard. Her physical condition at the time of the call was not good, and she appeared unwell," it added.

The Narges Foundation cited Ms Mohammadi as saying that she was accused of "co-operating with the Israeli government" and that they had made a death threat, telling her: "We will put your mother into mourning."

The statement said that two other activists detained at the memorial ceremony, Sepideh Gholian and Pouran Nazemi, were also beaten by the plainclothes agents.

Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters on Saturday that Ms Mohammadi was among 39 people arrested.

He said that she and Khosrow Alikordi's brother, Javad, had encouraged those present "to chant norm-breaking slogans" and "disturb the peace".

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Friday that it was deeply concerned by what it called the "brutal arrest" of Ms Mohammadi and called on Iranian authorities to "ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions".

Jafar Panahi, fellow film-maker Mohammad Rasoulof and more than a dozen other activists said in a joint statement that what happened at Alikordi's memorial ceremony "was a stark reflection of the worrying state of freedom and security, and, consequently, the inefficiency and lack of accountability of the authorities in today's Iran".

The Louvre museum in Paris was forced to close on Monday as its employees went on strike over working conditions and pay, leaving thousands of would-be visitors disappointed.

The walkout at the world's most visited museum in the French capital was earlier backed unanimously by some 400 staff, trade unions announced.

They said understaffed museum workers were being required to cope with ever increasing flows of people. The management did not comment immediately.

Nearly two months ago burglars stole French crown jewels worth €88m (£76m; $102m), exposing glaring security gaps. And last week a water leak in the museum damaged hundreds of books.

In their strike notice to Culture Minister Rachida Dati, the CFDT, CGT and Sud unions pointed to "deteriorating working conditions" and "insufficient resources" at the Louvre.

"We need a change of approach... regarding the priorities and urgent needs" of the museum, CGT representative Christian Galani was quoted as saying by BFMTV news website.

The Louvre's reception and security sector, he said, had "lost 200 full-time equivalent positions in the space of 15 years, while visitor numbers have increased by half".

Some people had already purchased tickets for Monday.

"I'm very disappointed because the Louvre was the main reason for our visit in Paris, because we wanted to see the Mona Lisa," Minsoo Kim, who travelled from Seoul with his wife for their honeymoon, told AFP news agency.

Natalia Brown, a Londoner, said she was also disappointed. "At the same time, I understand why they're doing it, it's just unfortunate timing for us," she added.

The unions said Louvre employees would gather on Wednesday morning to decide what to do next.

The museum - which is closed on Tuesdays for maintenance - said it welcomed 8.7 million visitors in 2024.

A man who used his car as a "weapon" to plough into more than 100 people at Liverpool's victory parade told police he did it out of fear and panic, a court has heard.

But prosecutors said these were lies told by Paul Doyle and he had lost his temper and driven at crowds in a rage on Water Street during the celebrations.

At Liverpool Crown Court earlier, victims of his Water Street rampage on 26 May spoke about their terror and injuries.

Sheree Aldridge, 37, said she thought her baby son Teddy Eveson had died after his pram was thrown into the air after being hit by Doyle's car, adding that she thought she would "be next".

She said: "I felt an overwhelming pain in my leg and looked up to see Teddy's pushchair on its side further up the road. I thought my Teddy was dead.

"I thought I was next. I thought my children would grow up without a mother."

Hers was one of a number of victim impact statements read during the first day of Doyle's two-day sentencing hearing, with others describing how they have suffered "emotional and psychological injury" as well as "frequent flashbacks".

• As it happened: 'I've just ruined my family's life,' Paul Doyle told police after Liverpool parade attack

A 12-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: "I found myself on the floor having been hit by a car I did not see coming, I have never felt so scared before in my life."

The boy's mother said in her statement her heart sank when she saw her child motionless on the floor.

She said: "The sight of my son lying motionless on the road, not moving for those few seconds, and the sound of the car hitting people will live with me forever."

In the back of a police van immediately after the attack, Doyle told officers "I've just ruined my family's life".

He previously pleaded guilty to 31 offences relating to seriously injuring people during the victory parade when thousands of Liverpool fans were in the city.

The former Royal Marine, of Croxteth, Liverpool, changed his plea on the second day of his trial last month.

He admitted to dangerous driving, affray, 17 charges of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH) with intent, nine counts of causing GBH with intent and three counts of wounding with intent.

Doyle was picking up friends from the parade when, in the space of two minutes between 17:59 and 18:01 BST, he used his Ford Galaxy "as a weapon" and hit more than 100 supporters, Paul Greaney KC, prosecuting, said.

The 54-year-old cried frequently as horrifying CCTV and dashcam footage was played to the court.

In the footage, Doyle can be heard shouting "move" and swearing at the crowd, including after he struck a 10-year-old girl.

Mr Greaney described Doyle as a "man out of control" as a 15-second CCTV clip was played of the moment his vehicle hits Teddy's pram.

The Honorary Recorder of Liverpool, Judge Andrew Menary KC, lifted reporting restrictions preventing the media from publishing the baby's name as his parents had agreed for their son to be identified.

Mr Greaney said Teddy "remarkably" escaped injury.

Five other children, who Doyle either injured or attempted to injure, cannot be named for legal reasons.

Other footage showed the windscreen of his car smashed after a man landed on it.

Mr Greaney told the court: "The strong sense from the dashcam footage is that the defendant regarded himself as the most important person on Dale Street, and considered that everyone else needed to get out of his way so that he could get to where he wanted to get to.

"The truth is a simple one. Paul Doyle just lost his temper in his desire to get to where he wanted.

"In a rage, he drove into the crowd, and when he did so, he intended to cause people within the crowd serious harm.

"He was prepared to cause those in the crowd, even children, serious harm if necessary to achieve his aim of getting through."

He told the court that when Doyle was interviewed by police, he claimed he had stopped the car as soon as he realised he had struck someone.

Mr Greaney said: "The defendant could not have failed to see that he had struck very many people on his journey down Dale Street and Water Street, stopping to reverse and then drive on a number of times."

The court was told a man named Daniel Barr, labelled a "hero" by prosecutors, had "bravely" jumped into the back of the Galaxy and placed the vehicle into park.

"In any event, what brought the Galaxy to a halt was a combination of the number of people trapped beneath the vehicle and the actions of Daniel Barr - not the decision of Paul Doyle," Mr Greaney said.

"[Barr] saw the Galaxy weaving and hitting people, who were sent flying into the air.

"All of a sudden, the vehicle stopped right beside him. Daniel Barr instinctively pulled open the rear passenger-side door and climbed in. He did so with the intention of stopping the driver.

"As the car set off again, he leaned forward and moved the gear selector into "park". He held it there as hard as he could. The Galaxy did not stop immediately, but in the end it did.

"However, Daniel Barr describes how even after he had brought the vehicle to a halt, the defendant continued to keep his foot on the accelerator.

"That proposition is supported by other witnesses, too."

The hearing is set to continue on Tuesday morning.

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