Kayla first tried fentanyl as a troubled 18-year-old, growing up in the US state of North Carolina.

"I felt like literally amazing. The voices in my head just completely went silent. I got instantly addicted," she remembers.

The little blue pills Kayla became hooked on were probably made in Mexico, and then smuggled across the border to the US - a deadly trade President Donald Trump is trying to crack down on.

But drug cartels aren't pharmacists. So, Kayla never knew how much fentanyl was in the pill she was taking. Would there be enough of the synthetic opioid to kill her?

"It's scary to think about that," Kayla says, reflecting on how she could have overdosed and died at any moment.

In 2023, there were over 110,000 drug-related deaths in the US. The march of fentanyl, which is 50 times more potent than heroin, seemed unstoppable.

But then came a staggering turnaround.

In 2024, the number of fatal overdoses across the US fell by around 25%. That's nearly 30,000 fewer deaths – dozens of lives saved every day. Kayla's state, North Carolina, is at the forefront of that trend.

Why fatal overdoses have fallen so sharply

One of the explanations is a commitment to harm reduction. This means promoting policies that prioritise drug users' health and wellbeing rather than criminalising people - a recognition that in an era of fentanyl, drug-taking too often ends with death by overdose.

In North Carolina, where Kayla still lives, and where overdose fatalities are currently down by an impressive 35%, harm reduction strategies are well-developed.

Kayla no longer takes street drugs. And she's a client of an innovative law enforcement assisted diversion (LEAD) programme in Fayetteville. It's a partnership between the town's police and the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition. Together, they work to divert substance users away from crime, and get them on the road to recovery.

"If someone's stealing from a grocery store, we run their criminal history. And often we see that the crimes they're committing appear to fund the addiction they have," says Lt Jamaal Littlejohn.

This might make them a candidate for the LEAD programme, meaning they can get support to tackle their addiction, and can start thinking about secure housing and employment.

The proponents of LEAD say it isn't about being soft on crime. Drug dealers still go to prison in Fayetteville. "But if we can get people the services they need, it gives law enforcement more time to deal with bigger crimes," argues Lt Littlejohn, who watched his own sister struggle with a substance use disorder.

• Listen to Assignment: Drugs, Overdose, Hope on The Documentary Podcast on the BBC World Service

Kayla has blossomed. She's such a long way now from the days when she used prostitution to fund her fentanyl habit. As part of the LEAD process, her criminal record has been wiped. She recently graduated as a certified nurse assistant, and is now working in a residential home.

"It's like the best thing ever. This is the longest time I've been clean," she says.

Critical to Kayla's recovery has been treatment. She's been taking methadone for nearly a year when she tells her story to the BBC. "It's keeping me from going back," she believes.

Methadone and buprenorphine are medications used to treat opioid use disorder. They stem cravings and stop painful withdrawal. Nationwide, treatment has played a role in puncturing the overdose fatality statistics.

In North Carolina, it's been a game-changer: more than 30,000 people were enrolled in a programme in 2024, with numbers climbing in 2025.

'You're still playing Russian roulette, but your odds improve'

At 09:00 at one of the Morse Clinics in the state capital of Raleigh, two or three people wait their turn in reception.

"The busiest time is 5.30am to 7am, so before work," says Dr Eric Morse, an addiction psychiatrist running nine clinics offering medication assisted treatment (MAT) in North Carolina. "Most of our folks are working - once they're sober, they show up to work on time every day."

The clinic runs a finely-tuned operation. After patients check in, they're called to a dosing window to receive their prescription. They're in and out in minutes.

They'll randomly be drug tested for illicit narcotics. Dr Morse says around half his patients are still testing positive for opioids bought on the street, but he doesn't see this as failure.

"Maybe you're using once a week and you're used to using three times a day… You're still playing Russian roulette with fentanyl but you've taken a whole bunch of bullets out of the chamber, so your survival rate goes up significantly," says Dr Morse.

This is harm reduction. So rather than be expelled from the treatment programme, patients who get a positive drug test are given extra support and counselling. Dr Morse says 80-90% will eventually stop using street drugs altogether. And in time, many will taper off their medication too.

The abstinence debate

Not everyone thinks this is the right approach.

Mark Pless is a Republican who sits in North Carolina's state House of Representatives, and used to be a full-time paramedic. He points out that illegal drug-taking starts with a choice.

And he doesn't believe in harm reduction. In particular he's against treating opioid use disorder with medications like methadone or buprenorphine.

"You're replacing an addictive product with another addictive product," he says. "If you have to take it in order to stay clean, it's still addictive. We've got to figure out how to get people to where they can do better – we can't leave them on drugs forever."

He favours abstinence treatment programmes, when drug users go "cold turkey".

But there's pushback from health professionals in North Carolina.

"I believe there are multiple paths to recovery," says Dr Morse. "I'm not pooh-poohing abstinence-based treatment - except when you look at the medical evidence."

Dr Morse references a Yale University study from 2023 analysing the risk of death for opioid users in a treatment programme compared to people not in treatment. The study suggested that someone in abstinence treatment was as likely - or more more likely - to have a fatal overdose as a person who wasn't in treatment and was continuing to use street opioids like fentanyl.

• How does fentanyl get into the US?

Treatment aside, another drug is helping.

Naloxone is widely available, and used as a nasal spray it reverses the effect of an opioid overdose, helping someone breathe again. In North Carolina in 2024, it was administered more than 16,000 times. That's potentially 16,000 lives saved – and these are only the overdose reversals that have been reported.

"This is as close to a miracle drug as we can ever imagine," says Dr Nabarun Dasgupta, a scientist specialising in street drugs at the University of North Carolina.

Many users of narcotics like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin want to know that what they're taking won't kill them. Some people use test-strips to check for fentanyl, because they know it's been implicated in so many fatal overdoses.

But the strips don't identify all potentially harmful substances. Dr Dasgupta runs a national drugs-testing laboratory. Users send him a tiny bit of their drug supply via local non-profit organisations.

"We've analysed close to 14,000 samples from 43 states over the last three years," he says.

A generational shift

Testing drugs for potentially dangerous additives is an additional weapon in the harm reduction armoury. Dr Dasgupta believes another reason for decreasing overdose fatalities in the US is that young people are avoiding opioids like fentanyl.

"We see a demographic shift. Generation Z are dying of overdose much less frequently than their parents or their grandparents' generations were at the same age," he says.

Dr Dasgupta isn't entirely surprised 20-somethings are steering clear of opioids. A shocking four out of 10 American adults know someone whose life has been ended by an overdose.

It was this epidemic of death, set in train in the 1990s by prescription opioids, that motivated North Carolina's former attorney general - now the state governor - to move against powerful corporations benefitting from so many Americans' dark spiral down into addiction.

Josh Stein picked up the phone to his counterparts in other states, and took a leading role in co-ordinating legal action against opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers.

"There was a Republican attorney general in Tennessee, I'm Democrat in North Carolina… But we're all caring about our people and we're all willing to fight for them," Stein reflects.

The upshot, after years of intense negotiations, was an Opioid Settlement totalling some $60bn (£45bn). This is money that huge companies have agreed to pay to US states, to be used for the "abatement of the opioid epidemic". North Carolina's share is around $1.5bn.

"It has to be spent in four ways – drug prevention, treatment, recovery, or harm reduction. I think it's transformative," says Governor Stein.

Meanwhile, funding from the national government is uncertain. The cuts to Medicaid included in President Trump's One Big, Beautiful Bill Act could have a tremendous impact on this area.

In the Morse Clinics in Raleigh, 70% of patients depend on Medicaid. If they lose health insurance, will they end treatment and become more vulnerable to death by overdose? Although North Carolina's drug fatality statistics look optimistic, thousands of people are still dying - and the state's black, indigenous and non-white populations haven't experienced the same rates of decrease.

And there remain other states that have witnessed a stubbornly slower rate of decrease in lethal overdoses - including Nevada and Arizona.

No one is complacent. Least of all Kayla.

In the grip of fentanyl for three long years, she never overdosed herself, but she did have to save her friends. Kayla's parents didn't know what to do with her.

"They kind of gave up on me - they thought I was gonna be dead," she remembers.

Kayla credits Charlton Roberson, her harm reduction mentor, as being instrumental in her recovery. Her aim now is to taper off methadone and become medication- and drug-free. She also wants to find a job in a hospital.

"I feel more alive than I ever did when I was using fentanyl," she says.

If you've been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.

The waters of the north Pacific have had their warmest summer on record, according to BBC analysis of a mysterious marine heatwave that has confounded climate scientists.

Sea surface temperatures between July and September were more than 0.25C above the previous high of 2022 - a big increase across an area roughly ten times the size of the Mediterranean.

While climate change is known to make marine heatwaves more likely, scientists are struggling to explain why the north Pacific has been so hot for so long.

But all this extra heat in the so-called "warm blob" may have the opposite effect in the UK, possibly making a colder start to winter more likely, some researchers believe.

"There's definitely something unusual going on in the north Pacific," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research group in the US.

Such a jump in temperatures across a region so large is "quite remarkable", he added.

The BBC analysed data from the European Copernicus climate service to calculate average temperatures between July and September across a large area of the north Pacific, sometimes known as the "warm blob".

The region extends from the east coast of Asia to the west coast of North America, the same area used in previous scientific studies.

The figures show that not only has the region been warming quickly over the past couple of decades, but 2025 is markedly higher than recent years too.

That the seas are getting hotter is no surprise. Global warming, caused by humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases, has already trebled the number of days of extreme heat in oceans globally, according to research published earlier this year.

But temperatures have been even higher than most climate models - computer simulations taking into account humanity's carbon emissions - had predicted.

Analysis of these models by the Berkeley Earth group suggests that sea temperatures observed across the north Pacific in August had less than a 1% chance of occurring in any single year.

Natural weather variability is thought to be part of the reason. This summer has seen weaker-than-usual winds, for example. That means more heat from the summer sunshine can stay in the sea surface, rather than being mixed with cooler waters below.

But this can only go so far in explaining the exceptional conditions, according to Dr Hausfather.

"It certainly is not just natural variability," he said. "There's something else going on here as well."

One intriguing idea is that a recent change to shipping fuels might be contributing to the warming. Prior to 2020, dirty engine oil produced large amounts of sulphur dioxide, a gas harmful to human health.

But that sulphur also formed tiny, Sun-reflecting particles in the atmosphere, known as aerosols, which helped to keep a lid on rising temperatures.

So removing that cooling effect in shipping hotspots like the north Pacific could be revealing the full impact of human-caused warming.

"It does seem like sulphur is the primary candidate for what's driving this warming in the region," said Dr Hausfather.

Other research suggests that efforts to reduce air pollution in Chinese cities has played a role in warming the Pacific too.

That dirty air did a similar job to shipping in reflecting sunlight away, while cleaning it up could have had the unintended consequence of allowing more ocean heating.

Possible impacts for the UK?

The north Pacific's marine heatwave has already had consequences for weather on both sides of the Pacific, likely boosting very high summer temperatures in Japan and South Korea and storms in the US.

"In California, we've seen supercharged thunderstorms because the warm ocean waters in the Pacific provide heat and moisture," said Amanda Maycock, professor in climate dynamics at the University of Leeds.

"In particular, there are things we call atmospheric rivers… bands of air, which contain very high amounts of moisture that fuel themselves from the ocean waters," she added.

"So if we have warm ocean waters… they can then bring a lot of moisture onto the land, which then falls out as rain, or in the wintertime can precipitate out as snow."

Long-term weather forecasting is always challenging, but extreme heat in the north Pacific has the potential to affect the UK and Europe in the coming months too.

That's because of relationships between weather in different parts of the world known as teleconnections.

"Although the current warm conditions are located in the north Pacific, these can generate wave motions in the atmosphere that can alter our weather downstream into the north Atlantic and into Europe," said Prof Maycock.

"That can tend to favour high-pressure conditions over the continent, which brings us more of an influence from the Arctic, where we have colder air," she added.

"That can be drawn over Europe and bring us colder weather in early winter."

A colder outcome is by no means certain, as this is a complex area of science. Several other weather patterns also affect UK winters, which are typically getting milder with climate change.

And a warm north Pacific appears to have different effects later in the winter, favouring milder and wetter conditions in some parts of Europe.

Emerging La Niña in the tropical Pacific

Another factor to throw into the mix is what's happening further south in the eastern tropical Pacific.

There, surface waters are unusually cool - a classic sign of the weather phenomenon known as La Niña.

La Niña, and its warm sibling El Niño, are natural patterns, although research published this week highlighted that global warming could itself impact the swings between them.

Weak La Niña conditions are expected to persist over the next few months, according to NOAA, the US science agency.

All else being equal, La Niña generally increases the risk of a cold start to winter in the UK, but also brings a higher chance of a mild end, the Met Office says.

"These two drivers in the north and tropical Pacific will be acting together this winter," said Prof Maycock.

"But since the La Niña is quite weak this year, the extreme warmth in the north Pacific could be more important for forecasting the winter ahead."

Additional reporting by Muskeen Liddar and Libby Rogers

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There are not many sports that can keep an audience enraptured through 45 minutes of ceremony before the first point is even contested.

And yet, the intricate traditions unfolding in a small clay ring - virtually unchanged in hundreds of years - managed to do just that.

Welcome, then, to the Grand Sumo Tournament - a five-day event at the Royal Albert Hall featuring 40 of the very best sumo wrestlers showcasing a sport which can date its first mention back to 23BC.

London's Victorian concert venue has been utterly transformed, complete with six-tonne Japanese temple roof suspended above the ring.

It is here the wrestlers, known as rikishi, will perform their leg stomps to drive away evil spirits, and where they will clap to get the attention of the gods.

And above all this ancient ceremony, a giant, revolving LED screen which wouldn't look out of place at an American basketball game, offering the audience all the stats and replays they could want.

Sumo may be ancient, and may have strict rules governing every aspect of a rikishi's conduct, but it still exists in a modern world.

And that modern world is helping spread sumo far beyond Japan's borders.

It was a "random video" which first caught Sian Spencer's attention a couple of years ago.

This was quickly followed by the discovery of dedicated YouTube channels for a couple of the sumo stables, where rikishi live and train, waking up early to practice, followed by a high protein stew called a chankonabe, and then an afternoon nap - all in the service of bulking up.

Then she discovered the bi-monthly, 15 day championships, known as basho, and from there, she was hooked.

The London tournament was simply a "once-in-a-lifetime", not-to-be-missed, opportunity to see it all in real life, the 35-year-old says.

Julia and her partner Cezar, who live in Edinburgh, discovered sumo through a more traditional route: a trip to Japan six years ago.

"We saw it as a very touristy activity, but we actually ended up loving the sport," says Julia, 34.

"From there on, we tried to find communities, information, just to learn more and more about it," Cezar, 36, adds.

Colleagues, friends and family, they found, could be quite taken aback by their new passion.

"It's the only sport we watch," explains Julia - so they found like-minded people on messaging apps like Telegram.

"We found Italian groups, English groups," says Julia.

"Outside of Japan, online is the only way to interact with the sport," adds Cezar.

Going to Japan is almost the only way to see a top-flight sumo tournament.

This week's event in London is only the second time the tournament has visited the city - the first time was in 1991 - while the last overseas trip was to Jakarta in 2013.

But even going to Japan isn't a guarantee of getting a seat. Last year was the first time in 24 years that all six of the bi-monthly, 15-day events had sold out in 28 years, Kyodo News reported - fueled by interest at home, and by the tourist boom which saw more than 36m foreigners visit in 2024.

So for many, the London tournament is the first time they have watched sumo in person - and it doesn't disapoint.

"Seeing it up close, you get a sense of the speed and the power which you don't get on TV. It was incredible," says Caspar Eliot, a 36-year-old fan from London. "They are so big."

To win, one man needs to push another out of the ring or to the ground using brute strength. The majority use one of two styles to achieve this, often in split seconds - pushing, or grappling.

Either way, the sound of the two rikishi colliding in the first moment of the match reverberates around the hall.

Caspar and his wife Megha Okhai had been among those lucky enough to get tickets when they visited Japan last year - only for them not to arrive in the post in time.

It didn't stop them falling head over heels, however, and they have watched every basho this year. So when it came to the London Grand Sumo Tournament, they weren't taking chances.

"I think we had four devices trying to book tickets," Caspar tells the BBC ahead of the event, displaying his sumo towels proudly - a must for diehard fans. "We got front row seats, on the cushions."

The cushions right next to the ring are of course highly prized - but also, a bit risky.

On Thursday, it was all 181kg and 191cm of Shonannoumi which went plummeting into the crowd - perhaps making those in the slightly cheaper seats breathe a sigh of relief.

Of course, the size of the rikishi is one of the first things most people think of when they think of sumo. The Albert Hall's director of programming revealed to The Guardian earlier this week that they "had to source and buy new chairs which can take up to 200kg in weight".

But sumo - for all its sell-out events - is not without its troubles behind the scenes. A series of scandals over the last couple of decades around bullying, match fixing and sexism have dented its image.

And then there is the fact that last year - while being a bumper one for ticket sales - saw the lowest number of new recruits joining the stables.

Perhaps the strict life of a rikishi doesn't look as appealing as it once might have. Its popularity among young Japanese is also being threatened by other sports, like baseball. As Thomas Fabbri, the BBC's resident sumo fan, said: "My Japanese friends think I'm mad, as they see it as a sport for old people."

Japan's falling birthrate will also not help - nor is the Japanese Sumo Association's rule which restricts each stable to just one foreign rikishi. Despite this, Mongolians have dominated for the past few years - and one of the most exciting rising stars hails from Ukraine.

Not that any of this has worried fans in London.

"Seeing all this ritual and ceremony that goes with sumo is quite special," fan Sian says. "Now, seeing it in person, you feel like you are more part of it."

Julia and Cesar agree in a message the next day.

"It's a Japanese sport but we didn't feel out of place, so many people from all around the world around us."

For Megha, the drama "made it so incredible" - as did meeting the other fans.

"Getting out of a very niche Reddit community and being able to see all these sumo fans in person and being able to chat with other people who are just as into this as we are - it was worth every penny of sumo gold."

Additonal reporting by Thomas Fabbri

Want to watch? Audiences can tune in via BBC iPlayer, the BBC Red Button, the BBC Sport website and app.

President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have come away empty-handed from a White House meeting after US President Donald Trump indicated he was not ready to supply sought-after Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.

Zelensky said after the cordial bilateral that he and Trump had talked about long-range missiles, but decided not to make statements on that issue "because the United States does not want an escalation".

Following the meeting, Trump took to social media to call for Kyiv and Moscow to "stop where they are" and end the war.

The Trump-Zelensky meeting came a day after Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and agreed to meet him in Hungary soon.

While Trump did not rule out supplying Tomahawks to Ukraine, his tone at the White House on Friday was non-committal.

"Hopefully they won't need it, hopefully we'll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks," the US president said, adding that America needed the weapons.

Trump said sending the missiles would be "an escalation, but we'll be talking about it".

Asked by the BBC if the Tomahawks had prompted Putin to meet Trump, the US president said: "The threat of that [the missiles] is good, but the threat of that is always there."

The Ukrainian leader suggested Ukraine could offer drones in exchange for the Tomahawks, prompting smiles and nodding from Trump.

Zelensky also complimented Trump on his role in securing a peace deal in the Middle East, suggesting the US leader could build on that momentum to help end Russia's war in Ukraine.

Outside afterwards, Zelensky was asked by a reporter if he thought Putin wanted a deal or was just buying time with the planned meeting with Trump in Budapest.

"I don't know," he said, adding that the prospect of Ukraine having Tomahawks had caused Russia to be "afraid because it is a strong weapon".

Asked if he was leaving Washington more optimistic that Ukraine would get the Tomahawks, he said: "I am realistic."

Zelensky believes using Tomahawks to strike at Russian oil and energy facilities would severely weaken Putin's war economy.

In recent days, Trump had shown an openness to the idea of selling the Tomahawks, although Putin warned that such a move would further strain the US-Russian relationship.

On Thursday, Trump said "great progress" was made during a phone call with Putin, with the pair agreeing to face-to-face talks soon in Hungary.

Asked whether Zelensky would be involved in those talks, Trump said before his meeting sitting alongside the Ukrainian president that there was "bad blood" between Putin and Zelenksy.

"We want to make it comfortable for everybody," he said. "We'll be involved in threes, but it may be separated." He added that the three leaders "have to get together".

Trump said his call, the first with Putin since mid-August, was "very productive", adding that teams from Washington and Moscow would meet next week.

Trump had hoped a face-to-face summit in Alaska in August would help convince Putin to enter into comprehensive peace talks to end the war, but that meeting failed to produce a decisive breakthrough.

They spoke again days later when Trump interrupted a meeting with Zelensky and European leaders to call Putin.

Back in Ukraine, the BBC spoke on Friday to a couple repairing the small store they own in a suburb of Kyiv, after it was obliterated by Russian missiles last month.

When the store-owner, Volodymyr, was asked about Trump's forthcoming summit meeting with Putin, he began to say: "We appreciate all support".

But he stepped away as tears welled up in his eyes. After a long pause, he composed himself and started again.

"Truth and democracy will win, and all the terrorism and evil will disappear," he said. "We just want to live, we don't want to give up, we just want them to leave us alone."

Israel's military says the Red Cross has retrieved a coffin of a deceased hostage in the southern Gaza Strip and is now "on the way to IDF [Israel Defence Forces] troops" in the territory.

Posting on X, the IDF urged the public to "act with sensitivity and wait for the official identification, which will first be provided to the families".

It also stressed that Hamas was required to "return all the deceased hostages" in accordance with a Gaza ceasefire agreement.

This follows an earlier statement from Hamas that it would hand over the body of an Israeli hostage to the Red Cross.

Hamas has returned the bodies of nine of the 28 dead hostages in Gaza, and freed all 20 living hostages.

Israel has freed 250 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and 1,718 detainees from Gaza as part of the US-brokered ceasefire deal.

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

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US President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of George Santos, a former Republican congressman serving seven years in prison for fraud and identify theft, ordering his immediate release.

In a post on social media, Trump said Santos "has been horribly mistreated", adding: "Therefore, I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY. Good luck George, have a great life!"

The former lawmaker was only the sixth in US history to be expelled from Congress, after a damning ethics report in 2023.

Santos, who admitted to stealing the identities of 11 people - including family members, is currently serving his sentence at a minimum-security jail in New Jersey.

In April when Santos was sentenced a judge told him: "You got elected with your words, most of which were lies."

He reportedly cried in court and begged for forgiveness, saying: "I cannot rewrite the past, but I can control the road ahead."

Prosecutors argued that the novice politician had lied about his background and misused campaign funds to finance his lifestyle.

In his post, Trump justified the move by criticising a Democratic lawmaker, Senator Richard Blumenthal, whom he accused of fabricating his US military service.

"This is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!" Trump wrote.

Trump has previously called for an investigation into Blumenthal over the claim. The Democrat has acknowledged that he misspoke on numerous occasions about his time in the military, but has said the mishaps were more than a decade old.

"This allegation of 15 years ago has been really rejected by the voters of Connecticut three times, overwhelmingly reelecting me," Blumenthal told CNN earlier this month.

A lawyer for Santos told the Associated Press that it remains unclear when his client would be released.

"The defence team applauds President Trump for doing the right thing," said Andrew Mancilla.

"The sentence was far too long."

Santos's downfall began after the New York Times in 2022 published an investigation revealing the freshman congressman had lied about his CV, including having a university degree and working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

From there, the lies continued to pile up, including allegations that he stole money from a fundraiser for a dying dog and that he lied about his mother surviving the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Shortly afterwards, local and federal officials began to investigate.

He was eventually charged with 23 federal felony crimes, and in 2023 he became the first expelled member of Congress in more than 20 years, and only the sixth in history.

A report from the House ethics panel accused him of misusing campaign funds for personal benefits, including Botox and subscriptions on the OnlyFans website.

Santos defeated a Democratic incumbent in 2022, flipping the district that encompasses parts of New York's Long Island and Queens, where he grew up.

Earlier this week, Santos published an open letter to Trump in the South Shore Press newspaper in Long Island, repeating his plea to be pardoned.

The letter, which was titled a "passionate plea to President Trump" asked for "the opportunity to return to my family, my friends, and my community."

He wrote that he had been kept in solitary confinement after a death threat in August, and apologised for his actions.

"Mr President, I am not asking for sympathy. I am asking for fairness - for the chance to rebuild," he wrote.

"I know I have made mistakes in my past. I have faced my share of consequences, and I take full responsibility for my actions.

"But no man, no matter his flaws, deserves to be lost in the system, forgotten and unseen, enduring punishment far beyond what justice requires."

Trump has issued pardons to at least two other former Republican lawmakers since re-taking office in January.

In May, he pardoned former congressman Michael Grimm, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to tax crimes.

He also pardoned former Connecticut Governor John Rowland, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to corruption and fraud charges.

A blood test for more than 50 types of cancer could help speed up diagnosis according to a new study.

Results of a trial in north America show that the test was able to identify a wide range of cancers, of which three quarters don't have any form of screening programme.

More than half the cancers were detected at an early stage, where they are easier to treat and potentially curable.

The Galleri test, made by American pharmaceutical firm Grail, can detect fragments of cancerous DNA that have broken off a tumour and are circulating in the blood.

Impressive results

The trial followed 25,000 adults from the US and Canada over a year.

Nearly one in a 100 of those tested had a positive result and in 62% of these cancer was later confirmed.

The test correctly ruled out cancer in over 99% of those who tested negative.

When combined with breast, bowel and cervical screening it increased the number of cancers detected overall seven-fold.

Crucially, three quarters of cancers detected were for those which have no screening programme such as ovarian, liver, stomach bladder and pancreas.

The blood test correctly identified the origin of the cancer in 9 out of 10 cases.

These impressive results suggest the blood test could eventually have a major role to play in diagnosing cancer earlier.

Scientists not involved in the research say more evidence is needed to show whether the blood test reduces deaths from cancer.

The topline results are to be released at the European Society for Medical Oncology congress in Berlin, but the full details have yet to be published in a peer reviewed journal.

Much will depend on the results of a three-year trial involving 140,000 NHS patients in England, which will be published next year.

The NHS has previously said that if the results are successful, it would extend the tests to a further one million people.

The lead researcher, Dr Nima Nabavizadeh, Associate Professor of Radiation Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University said the latest data show that the test could "fundamentally change our approach to cancer screening, helping to detect many types of cancer earlier, when the chance of successful treatment or even cure are the greatest".

But Clare Turnbull, Professor of Translational Cancer Genetics at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "Data from randomised studies, with mortality as an endpoint, will be absolutely essential to establish whether seemingly earlier-stage detection by Galleri translates into benefits in mortality."

Sir Harpal Kumar, President of Biopharma at Grail, told the BBC: "We think these results are very compelling. The opportunity in front of us is that we can find many more cancers - and many of the more aggressive cancers - at a much earlier stage when we have more effective and potentially curative treatments."

Naser Turabi of Cancer Research UK said: "Further research is needed to avoid overdiagnosing cancers that may not have caused harm. The UK National Screening Committee will play a critical role in reviewing the evidence and determining whether these tests should be adopted by the NHS."

Prince Andrew is giving up his titles, including the Duke of York, he has announced in a personal statement.

He has been under increasing pressure over his links with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with calls for the Palace to take action against him.

That now seems to have resulted in the prince deciding to voluntarily hand back his titles and to give up membership of the Order of the Garter.

In his statement he said he continued to "vigorously deny the accusations against me".

"In discussion with the King, and my immediate and wider family, we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family," said a statement from Prince Andrew.

"I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first.

"I stand by my decision five years ago to stand back from public life.

"With His Majesty's agreement, we feel I must now go a step further. I will therefore no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me. As I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me."

Prince Andrew has faced a series of scandals, including a court case he settled with Virginia Giuffre, questions about his finances and his involvement with an alleged Chinese spy.

He will remain a prince - but will cease to be the Duke of York, a title received from his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth.

Andrew had already ceased to be a "working royal" and had lost the use of his HRH title and no longer appeared at official royal events. His role now will be even more diminished.

His ex-wife will be known as Sarah Ferguson and no longer Duchess of York, but their daughters will continue to have the title of princess.

Prince Andrew has faced intense scrutiny over his links with disgraced financier Epstein, more recently including questions about when he had really cut off contact.

In his BBC Newsnight interview, Prince Andrew had said that he had severed all links with Epstein after they had been photographed together in New York in December 2010.

But emails sent in February 2011 later emerged suggesting that Andrew had privately stayed in touch with Epstein, including swapping a message: "Keep in close touch and we'll play some more soon!"

There had been growing frustration in Buckingham Palace at the scandals that continued to surround the prince.

Next week a posthumous memoir by Virginia Giuffre will be published which is likely to cast further attention on Prince Andrew's involvement with Ms Giuffre and Epstein.

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After so many scandals, Prince Andrew has given up the use of his titles and honours.

He can no longer sign off as the Duke of York, or put "KG", a Knight of the Garter, after his name, with a flourish of medieval chivalry.

The Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh are also scratched off his list of titles, with "Andrew Inverness" a name he'd sometimes used in his business dealings.

But what's caused this sudden announcement? Particularly as this dramatic move, removing the remaining vestiges of his royal life, comes with an assertion of his innocence and that he continued to "vigorously deny the accusations against me".

Prince Andrew has voluntarily given up the use of his titles - but he was clearly under pressure to jump before he was pushed.

This way, the changes in his status are kept in-house and there doesn't have to be the intervention of Parliament, which would have needed to legislate to take away his title as Duke of York.

That would have been messy, but the Palace was already sending signals it was prepared to take action, and it was confident that Parliament, and popular opinion, would have supported such a change.

Allowing Andrew to voluntarily give up his titles, which theoretically remain in place, gave him a way out, still holding on to a little of the disappearing vapour trail of his pride.

But it's no secret that Buckingham Palace was exasperated with the scandals surrounding Prince Andrew and what a royal source calls the "constant parade of headlines".

He was one of their "Dukes of Hazard" that kept making news for all the wrong reasons.

Questions about Andrew's links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were drowning out the work of the rest of the Royal Family. That was on top of unanswered questions about Andrew's finances and his connections to an alleged Chinese spy.

Next week will see an historic state visit by the King and Queen to meet Pope Leo at the Vatican, and there was a deep irritation that such a solemn occasion was going to be overshadowed by lurid stories about Andrew and Epstein.

According to royal sources, a "tipping point" had been reached and something had to be done.

Arguably that should have happened earlier. But that would also have meant the Palace publicly accepting that it had a responsibility for Prince Andrew, when it had so long argued that as a "non-working royal", his problems were his own to resolve.

But this latest move shows a recognition that even if Andrew isn't a royal responsibility, it's still their reputation he's been damaging.

What added to the sense of this no longer being a tenable position was an email published last weekend that showed Prince Andrew had stayed in touch with Epstein longer than he had claimed in his BBC Newsnight interview.

A royal source said this was a significantly different moment when there were such clear "fault lines" exposed in Prince Andrew's version of events.

Curiously, the same email had been partially published in January - again showing that Andrew had not cut ties to Epstein when he had claimed - but this time in October the impact has been like the pebble that has started an avalanche.

It followed a similar awkwardness for Sarah Ferguson, where a private email contradicted her own public claims to have cut links with Epstein.

And it added to the pressure from extracts published from a posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein victim who had reached a financial settlement with Prince Andrew, and had earlier this year taken her own life.

Ms Giuffre's memoir, to be published next week, once again casts Andrew into toxic associations with Epstein.

And the book's accusation that Prince Andrew was "entitled" echoed the title of a recent biography of Prince Andrew, by Andrew Lownie, that took another wrecking ball to his reputation.

It's been a landslide of bad news, month after month, that showed no sign of losing momentum. He'd become the disastrous football manager, or the damaged political leader, who had no obvious way of being removed. Particularly when it was like a football manager whose brother was the chairman.

There's always a tension between protecting an institution and a reluctance to remove the individuals within it. Even more so when the institution is also a family. It's where the Godfather movies meet the Crown.

But something had to be done, and in the end, Andrew has handed back the keys to his royal life and walked away.

More could still emerge in the United States in the trawling of documents related to Epstein.

Ominously for Prince Andrew, among those quick to respond on Friday evening was the leading Democrat on the US House Oversight Committee that has been pushing for the release of Epstein material.

Robert Garcia, whose colleagues recently revealed documents showing an "Andrew" getting massages on Epstein's private jet, said: "His decision to give up his royal titles is long overdue."

"We know rich and powerful men used their money and power to abuse girls and young women, and to shield themselves from justice. Prince Andrew's decision is just the beginning in the committee's work to deliver justice for the survivors."

Prince Andrew has always denied wrongdoing but this has become a global story.

When US President Trump arrived for his state visit, it was a picture of Andrew and Epstein that protesters projected on to the walls of Windsor Castle.

Prince Andrew's decision to step away from his remaining titles will also mean he stays in step with his ex-wife, who is no longer the Duchess of York. They are back to where they began when they first met - as Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

They still live together and as Prince Andrew has his own long lease on Royal Lodge, they'll carry on there as before. The King had already financially cut off Prince Andrew, so there isn't any change there, he'll have to find his own funding.

But by voluntarily stepping back, rather than being stripped of their honours, it means that their daughters will carry on with the titles of princess.

Prince Andrew won't be at the royal Christmas gathering in Sandringham this year. And the guessing game about seeing him at the Order of the Garter parade won't happen again.

But are the questions about his conduct really over?

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A weapons smuggler, who used a fishing boat to ship ballistic missile parts from Iran to Houthi rebels in Yemen, has been sentenced to 40 years in a US prison.

Pakistani national Muhammad Pahlawan was detained during a US military operation in the Arabian Sea in January 2024 - during which two US Navy Seals drowned.

Pahlawan's crew would later testify they had been duped into taking part, having believed they were working as fishermen.

The Houthis were launching sustained missile and drone attacks on Israel at the time, as well as targeting international commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they were acting in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Iran has consistently denied arming the Houthis.

The crew's detailed testimonies to a court in the US state of Virginia provide a rare look inside a smuggling operation that helped power the attacks.

The components found on Pahlawan's boat were "some of the most sophisticated weapon systems that Iran proliferates to other terrorist groups", US federal prosecutors said after his trial.

The 49-year-old was sentenced on Thursday, having been previously convicted on five counts - including terrorism offences and transporting weapons of mass destruction.

Court documents show the sentences for two of the five counts will run concurrently for 240 months, or 20 years. The other three counts, another 20 years, will run consecutive to that - making a total of 480 months, or 40 years.

'Walking dead person'

The eight crew members who testified in court said they had no idea what was inside the large packages on board the boat, named the Yunus.

One crew member said that when he questioned Pahlawan about it, he was told to mind his own business.

Pahlawan, however, knew just how dangerous the cargo was.

He referred to himself as a "walking dead person" in text message exchanges with his wife, sent in the days before the January 2024 voyage which would get him arrested.

"Just pray that [we] come back safely", said the message, used as evidence in court.

"Why do you talk like this, 'may or may not come back'", she asked him.

Pahlawan told her: "Such is the nature of the job, my dear, such is the nature of the job."

His final words to her before sailing were: "Keep me in your prayers. May God take me there safely and bring me back safely, alright. Pray."

For this journey, Pahlawan was paid 1,400 million rials (£25,200; $33,274) - a substantial fee prosecutors at his trial described as "danger money".

The trip was "part of a larger operation" funded and co-ordinated by two Iranian brothers, Yunus and Shahab Mir'kazei, said the then-US Department of Defense (now known as the Department of War) in a statement in June.

The Mir'kazei brothers are allegedly affiliated, it added, with Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) - the most powerful armed force in Iran. The IRGC is designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US.

Both Shahab and Yunus Mir'kazei have been charged by the American authorities, but are still at large and believed to be in Iran.

Pahlawan made two successful smuggling voyages before he was caught - one in October 2023, and a second two months later.

The dozen men he recruited to join him were all from Pakistan and had travelled across the border into Iran looking for work.

Before setting off on the December trip - the US court heard - the crew were tasked with loading large packages onto the boat in Chabahar on Iran's south coast.

Then, after five or six days at sea, when they were close to the coast of Somalia, the crew described another boat pulling up next to them at night and them having to hand over the cargo.

Crew member Mehandi Hassan told the court there were about five men on the other boat, who spoke in a language he didn't recognise.

Their next voyage, the following month, was expected to follow the same route. As before, it began in the small port of Konarak before sailing to Chabahar, where the crew were made to load heavy boxes on board.

The packages, the US Navy would later discover, contained Iranian-made ballistic missile parts, anti-ship cruise missile components and a warhead.

Once at sea, Pahlawan kept to himself - according to crew testimony - often staying in his cabin and watching movies on his phone. Sometimes they would see Pahlawan on a second mobile - a satellite phone - but they didn't know what he was saying, said Mehandi Hassan, because he would speak in a language they didn't understand.

On 11 January, the crew said they were woken by the sound of helicopter rotors overhead and a US Navy ship pulling alongside. Pahlawan came out of his cabin to tell everyone to "keep going" and not to stop the boat, telling them the ship and helicopters belonged to pirates.

Armed US Navy Seals and Coast Guard officers attempted to board the Yunus. "There was a lot of commotion," one crew member, Aslam Hyder, told the court.

Special Warfare Officer Christopher Chambers lost his grip and fell into the water during the operation - and Special Warfare Officer First Class Nathan Gage Ingram jumped in to try to save him.

Both men were so laden with equipment that they quickly drowned, an internal report later found. Their bodies were never found and they were declared dead 10 days later.

The crew remained on the Yunus for two days before being offloaded to a US Navy ship, the court heard, where they were separated into two groups and held in windowless containers.

Pahlawan ordered the crew to lie and to say the captain had already fled. "He said, 'Don't tell them that I am the [captain], because I can do serious damage to you guys if you do that'," Aslam Hyder told the court.

"He started to threaten us… It was about the family and the children, that they will not know about you and you won't know what happened to them," he said. "Then we got very scared and we became quiet."

One by one, said crew members who gave evidence, they were taken out of the containers to be interrogated individually. Everyone on board - including Pahlawan - was asked who the captain was and, according to US prosecutors, Pahlawan "simply evaded, lied, and hid".

The American military said the packages found on board the Yunus were the first Iranian-supplied weapons to be seized by US forces since the Houthis had started attacking vessels in the Red Sea a few months earlier.

But Pahlawan had been following a common route for smugglers carrying weapons bound for Yemen.

Between 2015 and 2023, US forces and their allies seized almost 2.4 million pieces of ammunition, 365 anti-tank guided missiles, and more than 29,000 small arms and light weapons from small boats in the Arabian Sea, according to a UN report.

Typically, smugglers use dhows - a type of small boat, often for fishing - to transport cargo close to the coast of Somalia.

As with the Yunus, it is here that weapons are transferred to other, smaller boats, which then set sail to "secluded beaches off the southern coast of Yemen… where they are then smuggled across the desert to Houthi-controlled areas of the country", the UN Office on Drugs and Crime report says.

William Freer, from the UK think tank Council on Geostrategy, told BBC News that while most of the Houthi attacks have involved smaller weapons, the components found on Pahlawan's ship are "a lot more complicated and can pack a lot more punch".

"Very quickly, most shipping companies decided to redirect all their vessels, where possible, around South Africa rather than transiting through the Red Sea."

This lengthy detour adds about 10 to 12 days of sailing time to each trip, and extra fuel, which previous analysis has estimated to cost companies about an extra $1m (£748,735) per round trip.

Mr Freer added that the impact on commercial shipping has continued to this day.

"Within about two months of the initial attacks [in October 2023], shipping transiting through the Red Sea had dropped by about 60% to 70%, and it has stayed at that level ever since, even with the ceasefires," he told us.

Even though Houthi strikes are now less frequent, he added, there are still "just enough attacks to convince shipping companies it is not worth running the risk of returning" to the Red Sea route.

Iran has been accused by the US, UK, Israel and Saudi Arabia of smuggling missiles and other weapons to the Houthis by sea, in violation of a UN Security Council resolution since the armed group ousted Yemen's internationally-recognised government from much of north-western Yemen 10 years ago, sparking a devastating civil war. Iran denies this.

On 5 June this year, Pahlawan was found guilty of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists; providing material support to the Iranian Islamic Revolution Guard Corps' weapons of mass destruction programme; conspiring to and transporting explosive devices to the Houthis, knowing these explosives would be used to cause harm; and threatening his crew.

"Pahlawan was not only a seasoned smuggler," prosecutors said, "he knew what he was smuggling and its intended use."

In a final plea to the court for leniency, Pahlawan's lawyer wrote that life for Pahlawan's wife had long been estranged from her family because of her marriage to him, and that since his arrest, her and her child's lives had become "extremely difficult and harsh".

"Since the jury verdict, Mr Pahlawan's singular focus in their telephone conversations is the wellbeing of his family," his attorney said. "He does not talk about himself or his fate. He cries with worry over what will become of his wife and child."

But the court ruled that his high sentence was "appropriate due to the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant".

The waters of the north Pacific have had their warmest summer on record, according to BBC analysis of a mysterious marine heatwave that has confounded climate scientists.

Sea surface temperatures between July and September were more than 0.25C above the previous high of 2022 - a big increase across an area roughly ten times the size of the Mediterranean.

While climate change is known to make marine heatwaves more likely, scientists are struggling to explain why the north Pacific has been so hot for so long.

But all this extra heat in the so-called "warm blob" may have the opposite effect in the UK, possibly making a colder start to winter more likely, some researchers believe.

"There's definitely something unusual going on in the north Pacific," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research group in the US.

Such a jump in temperatures across a region so large is "quite remarkable", he added.

The BBC analysed data from the European Copernicus climate service to calculate average temperatures between July and September across a large area of the north Pacific, sometimes known as the "warm blob".

The region extends from the east coast of Asia to the west coast of North America, the same area used in previous scientific studies.

The figures show that not only has the region been warming quickly over the past couple of decades, but 2025 is markedly higher than recent years too.

That the seas are getting hotter is no surprise. Global warming, caused by humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases, has already trebled the number of days of extreme heat in oceans globally, according to research published earlier this year.

But temperatures have been even higher than most climate models - computer simulations taking into account humanity's carbon emissions - had predicted.

Analysis of these models by the Berkeley Earth group suggests that sea temperatures observed across the north Pacific in August had less than a 1% chance of occurring in any single year.

Natural weather variability is thought to be part of the reason. This summer has seen weaker-than-usual winds, for example. That means more heat from the summer sunshine can stay in the sea surface, rather than being mixed with cooler waters below.

But this can only go so far in explaining the exceptional conditions, according to Dr Hausfather.

"It certainly is not just natural variability," he said. "There's something else going on here as well."

One intriguing idea is that a recent change to shipping fuels might be contributing to the warming. Prior to 2020, dirty engine oil produced large amounts of sulphur dioxide, a gas harmful to human health.

But that sulphur also formed tiny, Sun-reflecting particles in the atmosphere, known as aerosols, which helped to keep a lid on rising temperatures.

So removing that cooling effect in shipping hotspots like the north Pacific could be revealing the full impact of human-caused warming.

"It does seem like sulphur is the primary candidate for what's driving this warming in the region," said Dr Hausfather.

Other research suggests that efforts to reduce air pollution in Chinese cities has played a role in warming the Pacific too.

That dirty air did a similar job to shipping in reflecting sunlight away, while cleaning it up could have had the unintended consequence of allowing more ocean heating.

Possible impacts for the UK?

The north Pacific's marine heatwave has already had consequences for weather on both sides of the Pacific, likely boosting very high summer temperatures in Japan and South Korea and storms in the US.

"In California, we've seen supercharged thunderstorms because the warm ocean waters in the Pacific provide heat and moisture," said Amanda Maycock, professor in climate dynamics at the University of Leeds.

"In particular, there are things we call atmospheric rivers… bands of air, which contain very high amounts of moisture that fuel themselves from the ocean waters," she added.

"So if we have warm ocean waters… they can then bring a lot of moisture onto the land, which then falls out as rain, or in the wintertime can precipitate out as snow."

Long-term weather forecasting is always challenging, but extreme heat in the north Pacific has the potential to affect the UK and Europe in the coming months too.

That's because of relationships between weather in different parts of the world known as teleconnections.

"Although the current warm conditions are located in the north Pacific, these can generate wave motions in the atmosphere that can alter our weather downstream into the north Atlantic and into Europe," said Prof Maycock.

"That can tend to favour high-pressure conditions over the continent, which brings us more of an influence from the Arctic, where we have colder air," she added.

"That can be drawn over Europe and bring us colder weather in early winter."

A colder outcome is by no means certain, as this is a complex area of science. Several other weather patterns also affect UK winters, which are typically getting milder with climate change.

And a warm north Pacific appears to have different effects later in the winter, favouring milder and wetter conditions in some parts of Europe.

Emerging La Niña in the tropical Pacific

Another factor to throw into the mix is what's happening further south in the eastern tropical Pacific.

There, surface waters are unusually cool - a classic sign of the weather phenomenon known as La Niña.

La Niña, and its warm sibling El Niño, are natural patterns, although research published this week highlighted that global warming could itself impact the swings between them.

Weak La Niña conditions are expected to persist over the next few months, according to NOAA, the US science agency.

All else being equal, La Niña generally increases the risk of a cold start to winter in the UK, but also brings a higher chance of a mild end, the Met Office says.

"These two drivers in the north and tropical Pacific will be acting together this winter," said Prof Maycock.

"But since the La Niña is quite weak this year, the extreme warmth in the north Pacific could be more important for forecasting the winter ahead."

Additional reporting by Muskeen Liddar and Libby Rogers

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The boss of Lamborghini has said its customers still want "the sound and the emotion" of internal combustion engines, and the company will use them in its cars for at least the next decade.

Speaking to the BBC at the Italian supercar-maker's London showroom, chief executive Stephan Winkelmann said enthusiasm for electric cars was declining - creating an opportunity to focus on hybrid power instead.

Lamborghini will decide in the next month whether a long-planned new model, the Lanzador, will be all-electric, or merely a plug-in hybrid, he said.

Mr Winkelmann insisted the business was socially responsible, but added that as a low-volume manufacturer, its actions would have a limited impact on the environment.

Lamborghini is a luxury brand ultimately owned by the Volkswagen Group. It currently has three main models.

The Temerario and Revuelto are supercars. Both are plug-in hybrids, combining powerful petrol engines with electric motors. They can run in all-electric mode, but only for very short distances.

The Urus is a luxury SUV, currently available as a plug-in hybrid and as a conventional petrol-powered car. Less exotic and certainly less ostentatious than the supercars, it nevertheless makes up more than half of the company's sales.

There is also a limited edition 'super-sports' car: the Fenomeno, which has a top speed of more than 215mph. Only 30 will be built, each costing at least €3m (£2.6m) before taxes.

Two years ago, Lamborghini announced plans for an all-electric successor to the Urus, which would have been available from 2029. However, the plan was recently shelved, with the electric model now not expected before 2035.

It had also planned to make a brand new battery-powered grand tourer (GT), to be called the Lanzador. However, the future of that project is also deeply uncertain.

"We still need to decide whether we are going full electric, the decision we took some years ago, or seeing whether in the new environment this should also be a plug-in hybrid", said Mr Winkelmann.

The new environment he referred to is a perceived waning of interest in electric cars among high-end buyers.

"Today enthusiasm for electric cars is going down", he explained. "We see a huge opportunity to stay with internal combustion engines and a battery system much longer than expected".

Continuing to use internal combustion engines for another 10 years, he said, would be "paramount for the success of the company". Customers, he insisted, still hankered after the noise and fury of a conventional motor.

"This is something they want, they still want the sound and the emotion of an internal combustion engine", he said.

It's an approach that contrasts with that of Lamborghini's Italian arch-rival Ferrari, which is pushing ahead with its own plans for a first all-electric car.

The aptly-named Elettrica is due to be unveiled next year, though the company showed off some key components at its Capital Markets Day earlier this month.

It will be sold alongside conventional and hybrid models.

Ferrari chief executive Benedetto Vigna said it would have driving traits that were "unique in the heart, in the soul of our clients."

Mr Winkelmann insisted his own company was not ignoring the ongoing pressure to cut emissions.

"We are selling 10,000 cars in a world that is producing 80 million cars a year, so our impact in terms of CO2 emissions is not that important", he said.

"For sure, we are socially responsible, but it doesn't really make a lot of difference".

The sale of new petrol and diesel cars, including plug-in hybrids, is due to be banned in both the the EU and the UK from 2035.

However, in the EU, there has been intense lobbying from some manufacturers for the transition to electric cars to be given more time, in order to "acknowledge current industrial and geopolitical realities".

If that happens, internal combustion engines could remain on the market beyond the current deadline.

Meanwhile the UK's rules provide an exemption for "low volume" manufacturers who register fewer than 2,500 new cars each year.

This would currently cover Lamborghini, which sold just 795 cars here last year.

Israel's military says the Red Cross has retrieved a coffin of a deceased hostage in the southern Gaza Strip and is now "on the way to IDF [Israel Defence Forces] troops" in the territory.

Posting on X, the IDF urged the public to "act with sensitivity and wait for the official identification, which will first be provided to the families".

It also stressed that Hamas was required to "return all the deceased hostages" in accordance with a Gaza ceasefire agreement.

This follows an earlier statement from Hamas that it would hand over the body of an Israeli hostage to the Red Cross.

Hamas has returned the bodies of nine of the 28 dead hostages in Gaza, and freed all 20 living hostages.

Israel has freed 250 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and 1,718 detainees from Gaza as part of the US-brokered ceasefire deal.

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

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Reality TV star Molly-Mae Hague has said she won't be putting her engagement ring back on yet, despite getting back together with Tommy Fury.

The pair met on the 2019 series of Love Island, later becoming engaged, but last year shocked fans by announcing their split.

Earlier this year, Hague, 26, confirmed they were back together, but in her latest docuseries, she admits things are "not perfect" and that the pair still live apart.

The episodes, which dropped on Prime Video on Saturday, also cover issues such as her controversial remarks on a podcast in 2022, which she says led to her receiving "death threats".

On an episode of the Diary Of A CEO podcast, she said everyone had "the same 24 hours in a day" and appeared to suggest that if you want something enough, you can achieve it.

The remarks sparked a backlash on social media, with many accusing her of being "tone-deaf" as the comments didn't acknowledge her own privilege.

Hague says she received "hateful comments" in her inbox as a result of the controversy.

But she added she had "accepted and realised" that what she said "was wrong".

Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury were arguably the most high-profile couple to have emerged from Love Island.

When the pair announced their break-up in August 2024, Fury immediately began facing accusations of cheating and getting another woman pregnant.

Fury, also 26, recently released his own BBC series, in which he denied those "disgusting" claims, but admitted that alcohol had "cost him his family".

Hague does not address the cheating claims in the latest series of Molly-Mae: Behind It All, but hints there are "trust issues" between the pair.

In the episodes, the influencer is seen juggling her busy work schedule with looking after the couple's two-year-old daughter, Bambi, at home in Manchester.

"It's glitz, it's glamour, it's fishing poos out the bathtub," Hague says of her daily routine.

Fury appears several times on video call, where he talks to his daughter and asks how her potty training is going.

• Molly-Mae on 'kiss' with Tommy: 'It's complicated'
• Molly-Mae confirms she and Tommy are back together
• Molly-Mae Hague 'shocked' by Tommy Fury split

"Bambi has always been really good for our relationship, and recently Bambi actually brought us closer together," Hague said, who added it was "the right decision" to get back with her ex.

But after one scene in which she is seen having a spat with Fury on the phone, she opens up about the challenges they still face.

"It's just this shadow of the past that will always just - it sounds really deep - but it will come back and haunt us," she said.

Speaking to a friend, Hague said there were still things that "trigger" her and that she's had panic attacks.

"I hear the word alcohol and I'm tense, I'm shaking, I'm really anxious," she said.

In another scene, she tells the cameras that while she and Fury have been spending more time together, things aren't back to how they were.

"I'm not putting my ring back on yet, just because I just don't feel quite ready. And also, I would like him to make a bit of a gesture. Not ask me again. That's a lot, but a nice dinner or something, just to have that moment of, 'OK, I'll wear my ring again'," she said.

"We're still figuring it out. We're back together, yes, but it's not perfect. It's a new chapter for me and Tommy."

I faced death threats after '24 hours in a day' comments

Elsewhere in the series, Hague addresses the backlash she has faced online, including after that controversial podcast appearance.

In the episodes, Hague described the things sent to her inbox as "wild", saying: "To get so angry and to leave such hateful comments, send death threats, like, who's got that level of anger inside of them?"

But she added: "I was so disappointed in myself that I'd made that mistake," she said.

Hague also referred to the outrage sparked by a YouTube video, in which she claimed she had not "done one social fun thing" this summer, despite having posted about various holidays over the year.

"I can completely understand why people had a problem with what I said. The days where the nation's turned against you, they're not the best days," she says in the episodes.

"I get really frustrated with myself when I've said something that I think I could have worded better. I hate letting people down."

The new series, like the first, explores Hague's life behind the vlog camera.

It's a cross between a fly-on-the-wall reality show and a documentary series, in which cameras follow her around as she raises Bambi, while pursuing her various business ventures.

Hague, who has been open about her struggles with motherhood, says during the episodes she finds the balance of work and Bambi "quite hard to nail".

As well as her personal life, the episodes also look at her career as an influencer and founder of womenswear brand, Maebe.

For TV journalist Lauren Morris, the series is a "shrewd decision", as while she has to open up about her personal life, it also helps showcase her fashion business.

"I think it's brave of her to show us inside her life, when she doesn't have to," she said.

"Her critics won't change their minds about her, but then, it's her fans who will be watching this. Her critics won't - why would you bother."

The first series recently picked up a National Television Award, and Hague admitted the win "added to the pressure".

She was speaking at a Q&A event in London earlier this week, for which questions were submitted in advance by journalists. A moderator then asked a range of questions.

Hague said she was "really nervous" about people watching the second season of her series as she talks about things "I haven't spoken about before".

She added: "I just want everything that I put out to be... I want everyone to enjoy it and for it to be perfect."

Molly-Mae: Behind It All episodes 1-3 of Series 2 are available now on Prime Video. The latter three episodes will drop early 2026.

There are not many sports that can keep an audience enraptured through 45 minutes of ceremony before the first point is even contested.

And yet, the intricate traditions unfolding in a small clay ring - virtually unchanged in hundreds of years - managed to do just that.

Welcome, then, to the Grand Sumo Tournament - a five-day event at the Royal Albert Hall featuring 40 of the very best sumo wrestlers showcasing a sport which can date its first mention back to 23BC.

London's Victorian concert venue has been utterly transformed, complete with six-tonne Japanese temple roof suspended above the ring.

It is here the wrestlers, known as rikishi, will perform their leg stomps to drive away evil spirits, and where they will clap to get the attention of the gods.

And above all this ancient ceremony, a giant, revolving LED screen which wouldn't look out of place at an American basketball game, offering the audience all the stats and replays they could want.

Sumo may be ancient, and may have strict rules governing every aspect of a rikishi's conduct, but it still exists in a modern world.

And that modern world is helping spread sumo far beyond Japan's borders.

It was a "random video" which first caught Sian Spencer's attention a couple of years ago.

This was quickly followed by the discovery of dedicated YouTube channels for a couple of the sumo stables, where rikishi live and train, waking up early to practice, followed by a high protein stew called a chankonabe, and then an afternoon nap - all in the service of bulking up.

Then she discovered the bi-monthly, 15 day championships, known as basho, and from there, she was hooked.

The London tournament was simply a "once-in-a-lifetime", not-to-be-missed, opportunity to see it all in real life, the 35-year-old says.

Julia and her partner Cezar, who live in Edinburgh, discovered sumo through a more traditional route: a trip to Japan six years ago.

"We saw it as a very touristy activity, but we actually ended up loving the sport," says Julia, 34.

"From there on, we tried to find communities, information, just to learn more and more about it," Cezar, 36, adds.

Colleagues, friends and family, they found, could be quite taken aback by their new passion.

"It's the only sport we watch," explains Julia - so they found like-minded people on messaging apps like Telegram.

"We found Italian groups, English groups," says Julia.

"Outside of Japan, online is the only way to interact with the sport," adds Cezar.

Going to Japan is almost the only way to see a top-flight sumo tournament.

This week's event in London is only the second time the tournament has visited the city - the first time was in 1991 - while the last overseas trip was to Jakarta in 2013.

But even going to Japan isn't a guarantee of getting a seat. Last year was the first time in 24 years that all six of the bi-monthly, 15-day events had sold out in 28 years, Kyodo News reported - fueled by interest at home, and by the tourist boom which saw more than 36m foreigners visit in 2024.

So for many, the London tournament is the first time they have watched sumo in person - and it doesn't disapoint.

"Seeing it up close, you get a sense of the speed and the power which you don't get on TV. It was incredible," says Caspar Eliot, a 36-year-old fan from London. "They are so big."

To win, one man needs to push another out of the ring or to the ground using brute strength. The majority use one of two styles to achieve this, often in split seconds - pushing, or grappling.

Either way, the sound of the two rikishi colliding in the first moment of the match reverberates around the hall.

Caspar and his wife Megha Okhai had been among those lucky enough to get tickets when they visited Japan last year - only for them not to arrive in the post in time.

It didn't stop them falling head over heels, however, and they have watched every basho this year. So when it came to the London Grand Sumo Tournament, they weren't taking chances.

"I think we had four devices trying to book tickets," Caspar tells the BBC ahead of the event, displaying his sumo towels proudly - a must for diehard fans. "We got front row seats, on the cushions."

The cushions right next to the ring are of course highly prized - but also, a bit risky.

On Thursday, it was all 181kg and 191cm of Shonannoumi which went plummeting into the crowd - perhaps making those in the slightly cheaper seats breathe a sigh of relief.

Of course, the size of the rikishi is one of the first things most people think of when they think of sumo. The Albert Hall's director of programming revealed to The Guardian earlier this week that they "had to source and buy new chairs which can take up to 200kg in weight".

But sumo - for all its sell-out events - is not without its troubles behind the scenes. A series of scandals over the last couple of decades around bullying, match fixing and sexism have dented its image.

And then there is the fact that last year - while being a bumper one for ticket sales - saw the lowest number of new recruits joining the stables.

Perhaps the strict life of a rikishi doesn't look as appealing as it once might have. Its popularity among young Japanese is also being threatened by other sports, like baseball. As Thomas Fabbri, the BBC's resident sumo fan, said: "My Japanese friends think I'm mad, as they see it as a sport for old people."

Japan's falling birthrate will also not help - nor is the Japanese Sumo Association's rule which restricts each stable to just one foreign rikishi. Despite this, Mongolians have dominated for the past few years - and one of the most exciting rising stars hails from Ukraine.

Not that any of this has worried fans in London.

"Seeing all this ritual and ceremony that goes with sumo is quite special," fan Sian says. "Now, seeing it in person, you feel like you are more part of it."

Julia and Cesar agree in a message the next day.

"It's a Japanese sport but we didn't feel out of place, so many people from all around the world around us."

For Megha, the drama "made it so incredible" - as did meeting the other fans.

"Getting out of a very niche Reddit community and being able to see all these sumo fans in person and being able to chat with other people who are just as into this as we are - it was worth every penny of sumo gold."

Additonal reporting by Thomas Fabbri

Want to watch? Audiences can tune in via BBC iPlayer, the BBC Red Button, the BBC Sport website and app.

Kayla first tried fentanyl as a troubled 18-year-old, growing up in the US state of North Carolina.

"I felt like literally amazing. The voices in my head just completely went silent. I got instantly addicted," she remembers.

The little blue pills Kayla became hooked on were probably made in Mexico, and then smuggled across the border to the US - a deadly trade President Donald Trump is trying to crack down on.

But drug cartels aren't pharmacists. So, Kayla never knew how much fentanyl was in the pill she was taking. Would there be enough of the synthetic opioid to kill her?

"It's scary to think about that," Kayla says, reflecting on how she could have overdosed and died at any moment.

In 2023, there were over 110,000 drug-related deaths in the US. The march of fentanyl, which is 50 times more potent than heroin, seemed unstoppable.

But then came a staggering turnaround.

In 2024, the number of fatal overdoses across the US fell by around 25%. That's nearly 30,000 fewer deaths – dozens of lives saved every day. Kayla's state, North Carolina, is at the forefront of that trend.

Why fatal overdoses have fallen so sharply

One of the explanations is a commitment to harm reduction. This means promoting policies that prioritise drug users' health and wellbeing rather than criminalising people - a recognition that in an era of fentanyl, drug-taking too often ends with death by overdose.

In North Carolina, where Kayla still lives, and where overdose fatalities are currently down by an impressive 35%, harm reduction strategies are well-developed.

Kayla no longer takes street drugs. And she's a client of an innovative law enforcement assisted diversion (LEAD) programme in Fayetteville. It's a partnership between the town's police and the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition. Together, they work to divert substance users away from crime, and get them on the road to recovery.

"If someone's stealing from a grocery store, we run their criminal history. And often we see that the crimes they're committing appear to fund the addiction they have," says Lt Jamaal Littlejohn.

This might make them a candidate for the LEAD programme, meaning they can get support to tackle their addiction, and can start thinking about secure housing and employment.

The proponents of LEAD say it isn't about being soft on crime. Drug dealers still go to prison in Fayetteville. "But if we can get people the services they need, it gives law enforcement more time to deal with bigger crimes," argues Lt Littlejohn, who watched his own sister struggle with a substance use disorder.

• Listen to Assignment: Drugs, Overdose, Hope on The Documentary Podcast on the BBC World Service

Kayla has blossomed. She's such a long way now from the days when she used prostitution to fund her fentanyl habit. As part of the LEAD process, her criminal record has been wiped. She recently graduated as a certified nurse assistant, and is now working in a residential home.

"It's like the best thing ever. This is the longest time I've been clean," she says.

Critical to Kayla's recovery has been treatment. She's been taking methadone for nearly a year when she tells her story to the BBC. "It's keeping me from going back," she believes.

Methadone and buprenorphine are medications used to treat opioid use disorder. They stem cravings and stop painful withdrawal. Nationwide, treatment has played a role in puncturing the overdose fatality statistics.

In North Carolina, it's been a game-changer: more than 30,000 people were enrolled in a programme in 2024, with numbers climbing in 2025.

'You're still playing Russian roulette, but your odds improve'

At 09:00 at one of the Morse Clinics in the state capital of Raleigh, two or three people wait their turn in reception.

"The busiest time is 5.30am to 7am, so before work," says Dr Eric Morse, an addiction psychiatrist running nine clinics offering medication assisted treatment (MAT) in North Carolina. "Most of our folks are working - once they're sober, they show up to work on time every day."

The clinic runs a finely-tuned operation. After patients check in, they're called to a dosing window to receive their prescription. They're in and out in minutes.

They'll randomly be drug tested for illicit narcotics. Dr Morse says around half his patients are still testing positive for opioids bought on the street, but he doesn't see this as failure.

"Maybe you're using once a week and you're used to using three times a day… You're still playing Russian roulette with fentanyl but you've taken a whole bunch of bullets out of the chamber, so your survival rate goes up significantly," says Dr Morse.

This is harm reduction. So rather than be expelled from the treatment programme, patients who get a positive drug test are given extra support and counselling. Dr Morse says 80-90% will eventually stop using street drugs altogether. And in time, many will taper off their medication too.

The abstinence debate

Not everyone thinks this is the right approach.

Mark Pless is a Republican who sits in North Carolina's state House of Representatives, and used to be a full-time paramedic. He points out that illegal drug-taking starts with a choice.

And he doesn't believe in harm reduction. In particular he's against treating opioid use disorder with medications like methadone or buprenorphine.

"You're replacing an addictive product with another addictive product," he says. "If you have to take it in order to stay clean, it's still addictive. We've got to figure out how to get people to where they can do better – we can't leave them on drugs forever."

He favours abstinence treatment programmes, when drug users go "cold turkey".

But there's pushback from health professionals in North Carolina.

"I believe there are multiple paths to recovery," says Dr Morse. "I'm not pooh-poohing abstinence-based treatment - except when you look at the medical evidence."

Dr Morse references a Yale University study from 2023 analysing the risk of death for opioid users in a treatment programme compared to people not in treatment. The study suggested that someone in abstinence treatment was as likely - or more more likely - to have a fatal overdose as a person who wasn't in treatment and was continuing to use street opioids like fentanyl.

• How does fentanyl get into the US?

Treatment aside, another drug is helping.

Naloxone is widely available, and used as a nasal spray it reverses the effect of an opioid overdose, helping someone breathe again. In North Carolina in 2024, it was administered more than 16,000 times. That's potentially 16,000 lives saved – and these are only the overdose reversals that have been reported.

"This is as close to a miracle drug as we can ever imagine," says Dr Nabarun Dasgupta, a scientist specialising in street drugs at the University of North Carolina.

Many users of narcotics like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin want to know that what they're taking won't kill them. Some people use test-strips to check for fentanyl, because they know it's been implicated in so many fatal overdoses.

But the strips don't identify all potentially harmful substances. Dr Dasgupta runs a national drugs-testing laboratory. Users send him a tiny bit of their drug supply via local non-profit organisations.

"We've analysed close to 14,000 samples from 43 states over the last three years," he says.

A generational shift

Testing drugs for potentially dangerous additives is an additional weapon in the harm reduction armoury. Dr Dasgupta believes another reason for decreasing overdose fatalities in the US is that young people are avoiding opioids like fentanyl.

"We see a demographic shift. Generation Z are dying of overdose much less frequently than their parents or their grandparents' generations were at the same age," he says.

Dr Dasgupta isn't entirely surprised 20-somethings are steering clear of opioids. A shocking four out of 10 American adults know someone whose life has been ended by an overdose.

It was this epidemic of death, set in train in the 1990s by prescription opioids, that motivated North Carolina's former attorney general - now the state governor - to move against powerful corporations benefitting from so many Americans' dark spiral down into addiction.

Josh Stein picked up the phone to his counterparts in other states, and took a leading role in co-ordinating legal action against opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers.

"There was a Republican attorney general in Tennessee, I'm Democrat in North Carolina… But we're all caring about our people and we're all willing to fight for them," Stein reflects.

The upshot, after years of intense negotiations, was an Opioid Settlement totalling some $60bn (£45bn). This is money that huge companies have agreed to pay to US states, to be used for the "abatement of the opioid epidemic". North Carolina's share is around $1.5bn.

"It has to be spent in four ways – drug prevention, treatment, recovery, or harm reduction. I think it's transformative," says Governor Stein.

Meanwhile, funding from the national government is uncertain. The cuts to Medicaid included in President Trump's One Big, Beautiful Bill Act could have a tremendous impact on this area.

In the Morse Clinics in Raleigh, 70% of patients depend on Medicaid. If they lose health insurance, will they end treatment and become more vulnerable to death by overdose? Although North Carolina's drug fatality statistics look optimistic, thousands of people are still dying - and the state's black, indigenous and non-white populations haven't experienced the same rates of decrease.

And there remain other states that have witnessed a stubbornly slower rate of decrease in lethal overdoses - including Nevada and Arizona.

No one is complacent. Least of all Kayla.

In the grip of fentanyl for three long years, she never overdosed herself, but she did have to save her friends. Kayla's parents didn't know what to do with her.

"They kind of gave up on me - they thought I was gonna be dead," she remembers.

Kayla credits Charlton Roberson, her harm reduction mentor, as being instrumental in her recovery. Her aim now is to taper off methadone and become medication- and drug-free. She also wants to find a job in a hospital.

"I feel more alive than I ever did when I was using fentanyl," she says.

If you've been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.