Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is to announce details of a tightening of rules for migrants who have been granted asylum bringing their families to the UK.

As MPs return to Westminster, Cooper will also set out reforms to the asylum appeals system.

When a person is granted asylum in the UK, they can apply to bring their family too but Cooper believes changes to policies across Europe mean the UK is now out of kilter with its neighbours and restrictions are needed.

In the Commons this afternoon she is expected to set out the criteria that family members will need to meet - including tougher English language standards and access to sufficient funds.

Cooper will also say she intends to bring forward new legislation to reform the asylum appeals system.

In August 55 small boats crossed the Channel. It was the lowest figure for the month since 2019.

Yet the smuggling gangs seem to be putting more people on each boat - last month there was an average of 65 individuals per vessel.

The Conservatives say "Labour's claim to have smashed the gangs is completely discredited".

Reform UK say the "government's words aren't matching the reality".

Cooper will say the government's overhaul of a "broken" asylum system seeks to end the use of hotels for migrants arriving on small boats - an issue which has led to protests in recent months.

She will also highlight the National Crime Agency's efforts in tackling people smugglers, saying it led 347 disruptions of immigration crime networks in 2024-25 - the highest level on record and a 40% increase on the previous 12 months.

On Friday the Appeal Court overturned a temporary injunction which would have prevented the Home Office from housing asylum seekers at the Bell Hotel in Epping and it was seen as a possible precedent for legal challenges elsewhere.

Epping Forest District Council will meet later on Monday to decide its next course of action, including whether to take its attempt to prevent the hotel being used for asylum seekers to the Supreme Court.

In the Commons, the home secretary is expected to say the NCA efforts have led to "a significant and long term impact" on people smugglers.

The government's planned reforms to the asylum system announced in the last few weeks include a new independent body prioritising cases involving asylum accommodation and foreign national offenders within 24 weeks, and a new fast track appeals process.

Cooper will also give an update on the UK's returns deal with France, where some migrants arriving in the UK on small boats crossing the English Channel will be detained and returned under a pilot scheme lasting 11 months.

She is expected to announce that the first deportations to France are due to take place in the coming weeks.

"Our action to strengthen border security, increase returns and overhaul the broken asylum system are putting much stronger foundations in place so we can fix the chaos we inherited and end costly asylum hotels," she will tell the Commons.

Cooper will say the UK has a "proud record of giving sanctuary to those fleeing persecution" but the system "needs to be properly controlled and managed".

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the government had "lost control" and was "engulfed in a fully fledged borders crisis".

He said Cooper's statement was a "desperate distraction tactic", and pointed to the rise in asylum seekers being housed in hotels under the Labour government and the record number of arrivals in small boats so far this year.

A Reform UK spokesman said: "We have seen a record number of crossings since Labour came to power last year with no signs of it slowing."

Reform, they added, had a "detailed plan to deport over 600,000 illegal migrants" in its first term in office if elected. Labour sided "with foreign courts and outdated treaties" while Reform were "on the side of the British people".

A full High Court hearing to decide on a permanent injunction for The Bell Hotel is expected in mid-October.

The government says it plans to stop using hotels for asylum seekers by the end of this Parliament.

Ministers said the judgement on the legal challenge on the Bell Hotel, which was brought by lawyers for the Home Office and The Bell Hotel, would allow the government to do so "in a planned and orderly fashion".

But some councils say they are still pursuing legal action to stop asylum seekers from being housed in hotels in their areas.

Reform UK said all 12 councils it controlled should explore legal options to stop asylum seekers being housed in local hotels.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch urged Tory-run councils pursuing legal action to "keep going" and said advice would be issued to all Conservative councillors following the ruling.

The protests at the Bell Hotel began after an asylum seeker housed there was arrested and subsequently charged with several offences, including an alleged sexual assault on a 14-year-old girl.

Protests against the housing of asylum seekers at hotels - as well as counter-protests - continued to take place across England and Scotland at the weekend including in Epping, London, Gloucester, Portsmouth, Warrington, Norwich and Falkirk.

Staff at a luxury jewellery retailer were told to pose as customers to trick investors in the UK's biggest diamond scam, BBC Panorama can reveal.

The deception helped diamond dealer Vashi Dominguez get fresh cash from investors to prop up his business, which collapsed in 2023 with £170m of debts.

Those investors lost everything when the Vashi retail chain's promised £157m stock of diamonds was later only valued at about £100,000.

Vashi disappeared, but both the Metropolitan Police and the Serious Fraud Squad have decided not to investigate.

BBC Panorama has spoken to former shop staff, investors and the financial experts combing through the wreckage of the company to piece together how Vashi fooled so many people - and to ask why authorities are not looking for him.

"This is bigger than Hatton Garden, Brink's-Mat and the Great Train Robbery combined," says one of the investors, Michael Moszynski, an advertising executive.

'The Pied Piper of jewellery'

Vashi Dominguez made his name supplying diamonds to the rich. His reputation grew as his diamond deals grew bigger.

He appeared on ITV's This Morning, chatting with Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield, holding a crystal egg, which he claimed was worth £5m and he was selling for a billionaire in Canada.

"Vashi is very dynamic, he's a very charismatic character. He was almost like the Pied Piper of jewellery retail," says Will Hayward, a former Vashi store manager.

By 2017, Vashi was no longer just a diamond dealer to the rich. He was a High Street brand, with Vashi stores in London, Birmingham and Manchester.

Vashi said he was offering a different kind of jewellery experience, where customers could work with designers and then watch their jewellery being made on site. They were promised high-end diamonds at a cheaper price.

"Vashi was quite a magnetic individual," says Mr Moszynski. "He had gravitas, he had intelligence, he spoke in a very informed way about every detail of his business."

Vashi backed up his ideas with detailed business plans and accounts. He tricked experienced investors like Clive Schlee, the former boss of the sandwich chain Pret a Manger, and John Caudwell, the mobile phone billionaire.

Mark Schneider, a media executive who co-founded GB News, decided to invest about £750,000. "It seemed good. Some smart guys from around here were in the deal, I just kind of went along with it on that basis," he says.

The business seemed to be booming. In 2021, Vashi opened a new flagship store on a prime site in Covent Garden, central London. It was fitted out extravagantly, with a large interactive screen and an £8,000 sofa, staff say.

But on the shop floor, they suspected something was not right.

"After the shininess had worn off, we were getting, like, two, three, four people in it a day, and that was the reality in one of the busiest squares in London," says Charlotte Paul, a former data analyst for Vashi.

Vashi tried to bring in more money by tricking investors, telling staff to pretend to be customers so the store would look busy.

An email spelled out why: "This request is direct from Vashi, as he is in major investor conversations and expects surprise store visits."

Sales staff with no experience of making jewellery were also told to sit at work benches and pretend to be goldsmithing or diamond-setting.

"It was a whole elaborate show that Vashi would do with the clients, to show that they've got so many orders and this is how busy we are - this is why you should really be investing into Vashi," says Will Hayward.

"Total facade."

Customers were also being conned, staff say.

Diamonds for sale usually carry inscriptions that record their size and quality, called a GIA number.

Lezlie Bailey, who worked as a gemologist at Vashi, says the company was buying smaller or lower-quality diamonds than customers had paid for and scratching off the GIA numbers.

But the biggest trick Vashi used to cheat investors was in the accounts.

The figures sent to investors - and published at Companies House - showed sales of more than £100m in 2021.

But they were false. Internal documents show the real sales figures that year were only £5m - just 5% of the published figures.

"To completely misrepresent the accounts by this scale is just completely unacceptable," says Stuart McFadden from fraud investigation company Refundee, which represents some investors.

'Nothing to do with us'

Vashi's company was on its knees, but the man himself was still living the good life. The company paid for his fleet of luxury cars, including a Lamborghini, and the rent for several flats in prime central London neighbourhoods such as Mayfair.

It could not last - and in April 2023, the glitzy jewellery retail business went bust.

Investors were shocked but thought their money would be safe, because they had been sent valuations in February showing the company's huge stock of diamonds was worth £157m.

But they learned this had been another trick. Diamond consultant Rob Wake-Walker, who was brought in to value the gems that April, says: "Our first question was actually to ask if there was any more."

The valuation of the diamonds and the dodgy accounts had been signed off by a real accountant: Rajnikant Patel, who works from a small office on a row of shops in Ilford, east London.

He did not answer our letters, so I went to see him and asked where the missing money had gone.

Mr Patel said he did not know where the money was and did not want to discuss what happened, in case it prejudiced any future court case against Vashi.

Asked about the investors who had lost money, Mr Patel said he did not think anyone based their decision to invest "purely on our accounts".

"Obviously it's not good. The shareholders, the investors have lost their money. I certainly am very sorry that's happened, but nothing to do with us," he said.

Mr Patel said he did not know the figures in the accounts were wrong and would not have signed them off if he had known.

The liquidator, Benji Dymant, says creditors are owed £170m and that more than £100m of that is owed to investors. Mr Dymant would like to question Vashi, but he has vanished.

His disappearance also means the BBC was unable to put our allegations to him.

From bank statements, Mr Dymant says he knows Vashi flew to Dubai on the day the court ordered the company to be wound up.

"We have hired private investigators and there have been sightings of him, but we have not been given any hard evidence of a sort of residence or location in a certain place," the liquidator says.

Sparkle and glamour

Vashi has cheated investors, staff and the taxman, but the search party is surprisingly small.

There is no investigation by the police or the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

Investors are stunned that nothing is being done. "I mean, what are you actually doing?" says Mark Schneider, who is American. "All these people in your country can be ripped off in such an obvious way and you don't bother trying to figure out how to get hold of the person or to deal with the fraud."

Investors say they were passed between the Metropolitan Police and the SFO, until the SFO eventually said it was not a complex-enough case for it to take on.

The SFO told us it only "takes on a small number of high-level economic crime cases" each year.

The Met Police told us it had "not received any referrals from the liquidator or the Insolvency Service" and would reassess if it did.

The liquidator says he is not allowed to tell us whether he referred the case to the police or the SFO.

Investors think Vashi Dominguez committed the perfect crime and escaped with a fortune.

But the liquidator, who has gone through the books, says there is no evidence that he has taken a lot of the missing cash.

"What we haven't seen from the bank statements is significant bulk sums of money, or any obvious sums of the money, that have been put into an offshore account or anything like that," says Mr Dymant.

Like most investors, Mark Schneider has not got his money back. He still cannot work out whether Vashi was a scam from the beginning.

"I'm not sure whether the guy panicked because this thing just wasn't working like he planned or whether he planned it all along to be like this," he says.

What we know is Vashi Dominguez used sparkle and glamour to attract tens of millions of pounds from investors.

All the money has gone and so has he.

Many ScotRail passengers will benefit from cheaper travel after the state-owned rail operator scrapped peak fares.

From 1 September, the higher fares for busy times will no longer be imposed, meaning significant savings for customers.

A rail ticket from Edinburgh to Glasgow will be almost 50% cheaper, with trips between Perth and Dundee a third less than previously.

The aim is to get more commuters out of cars and onto trains. Fares on routes that do not currently have peak time prices will be unchanged.

ScotRail ticketing will also be more straightforward and flexible under the new system.

A pilot scheme scrapping peak-time ScotRail fares, a policy championed by the Scottish Greens, was introduced in 2023 but ended in September 2024 after ministers said the costs of the subsidy could not be justified.

However, in his programme for government speech in May, First Minister John Swinney announced that peak fares would again be scrapped.

He told MSPs: "Last year, in the face of severe budget pressures, we took the difficult decision to end the peak fares pilot on our railways.

"But now, given the work we have done to get Scotland's finances in a stronger position, and hearing also the calls from commuters, from climate activists and from the business community, I can confirm that, from 1 September this year, peak rail fares in Scotland will be scrapped for good.

"A decision that will put more money in people's pockets and mean less CO2 is pumped into our skies."

Joanne Maguire, managing director at ScotRail told BBC Scotland News: "We are really excited at the opportunity to get more customers out of their cars and onto the railway.

"If you are travelling from Edinburgh to Glasgow you will see a saving of about 50%.

"From Inverkeithing to Edinburgh, you will save 40% and between Inverness and Elgin it is 35% - so it's great news for our passengers."

Peak fares used to cover tickets bought before 09:15 on weekdays and certain services between 16:42 and 18:30.

The initial pilot scheme which scrapped them began in October 2023, but was ended in September 2024 following "limited success".

Passenger levels increased by a maximum of about 6.8% but the scheme required a 10% rise to be self-financing.

Ms Maguire said the trial period had seen an increase in passenger numbers and that ScotRail had enjoyed a successful summer of moving customers around to numerous big leisure events.

She added that the goal now was to grow the commuter passenger base.

The view from India

Just a few months ago, the armed forces of India and Pakistan were locked in a brief but deadly conflict.

The conflict indirectly involved a third nation – China. Pakistan's armed forces heavily used China-made equipment, including fighter jets and radar systems.

A senior army officer in Delhi said Beijing also provided "live inputs" to Pakistan on Indian positions.

India didn't take a public stand against China, but this left many asking if Delhi should continue on the path of normalising relations with Beijing.

Less than six months later, peace talks between the two Asian giants have been turbocharged by decisions taken thousands of miles away in Washington DC.

The Trump administration has imposed 50% tariffs on Indian imports, saying Delhi was being punished for its refusal to stop buying oil from Russia.

Delhi had two clear choices after this stunning onslaught from a trusted ally.

The first was to cave in and stop buying Russian oil. But it has refused to do so, largely because Russia is an "all-weather" ally and giving into pressure doesn't suit Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's strongman image.

The second was to stand firm and seek other opportunities and India appears to have to chosen this option for now.

It's also pragmatic to look no further when your neighbour is the world's second-largest economy and a global manufacturing powerhouse.

It was in this context, that Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Tianjin over the weekend.

Statements from the two sides were not heavy on details, though they promised to work through their differences to benefit their collective population of 2.8 billion people.

The immediate takeaway from the meeting was the resumption of direct flights between the two countries and making the process of issuing visas simpler.

But beyond the promise of "the elephant and the dragon" coming together, the two countries still have major roadblocks to clear before they are able to engage meaningfully.

Their first challenge comes from their immediate history.

Modi has invested personally in the India-China relationship since coming to power in 2014, visiting the neighbouring country five times until 2018.

But the 2020 border clash put brakes on this momentum and it has taken seven long years for Modi to visit China again.

The key to making further progress will depend on how the two countries deal with their border issues.

Tens of thousands of troops from both countries are still deployed at their contested borders - though there are ongoing talks between their civilian and military leaders to ease the situation.

Both Chinese and Indian readouts after the meeting this weekend talked about maintaining peace at the border and "not turning their differences into disputes".

For India, there is the issue of a burgeoning trade deficit with China, amounting to more than $99bn (£73bn).

Both countries still have high tariffs and duties against each other in many sectors.

Beijing would want India to open its market of 1.4 billion people to Chinese products, but Delhi would be wary of doing that without addressing the deficit.

The outreach to China, which started with Modi meeting Xi in Kazan last year, may have been supercharged by Trump tariffs, but ground realities for India remain unchanged.

The Modi-Xi meeting is being seen as part of India's policy of "strategic autonomy" but it will also cause more geopolitical challenges for Delhi.

India is due to host the Quad (which includes Japan, Australia and the US) summit later this year. The forum was largely seen as a challenge to China's dominance in the Indo-Pacific region.

It's not clear if Trump will attend, but if he does and says something against China, it will immediately test the renewed synergy between Delhi and Beijing.

Delhi is also part of several other multilateral forums that are perceived as anti-China and anti-Russia.

How Delhi plays its strategic autonomy in the next few months will very much influence the direction India-China ties take.

For now, it's clear that India-US ties are at an all-time low. A Trump aide recently called the Russia-Ukraine conflict "Modi's war".

Delhi has also consistently denied that Trump played any role in the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May – this has become a constant irritant for the US president.

Despite this, India has refrained from imposing retaliatory tariffs against the US and has left the door ajar for further negotiations. After all, the US is India's biggest trading partner.

Will going closer to China help India's negotiations with the US or will it have the opposite impact?

This is the question that will likely dominate geopolitical discussions in Delhi and beyond in the coming months.

The view from China

When Xi Jinping met Narendra Modi he used what has become his favourite catchphrase for China-India relations: "The dragon and the elephant should come together".

During "this period of transformation," he added that it was vital for the world's most populous nations to be friends and good neighbours.

In a case of spectacular timing, Prime Minister Modi's visit has coincided with Donald Trump's tariffs of up to 50% on India exports to the US.

This represents quite a hit on the country's economy so New Delhi would be looking around for other business partners.

Look no further than right here, Xi may well say, as his administration attempts to rebuild from the wreckage of China-India relations following years of tension between the two.

And, if their official readouts are anything to go by, Modi's attendance at the Tianjin Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation seems to have paid off.

His published comments to Xi were much more specific than the those coming the other way.

There is now a very good window for Beijing and New Delhi to repair their strained relationship.

China's leader knows that Donald Trump's tariff onslaught is pushing India away from the United States and that this great economic rival needs other partnerships.

Considerable obstacles remain.

They include China's backing of India's key rival Pakistan; interaction of all types has been in the doldrums; angry rhetoric from both governments (over many years) has created a climate of suspicion between the Asian heavyweights and their high-mountain border dispute has stirred nationalist sentiment on both sides of the frontier.

However, with the latter of these, this meeting would appear to confirm that pressure has already eased.

Last Thursday China's Defence Ministry spokesman was talking up the success of discussions between the representatives of China and India aimed at stopping the clashes along their disputed border.

He spoke of "win-win cooperation" and celebrating the 75th anniversary of ties between the two nations.

Xi also knows that the symbolism of having Modi in China right now is considerable, that images of them shaking hands and standing side-by-by side – as the Trump tariffs on India kick in – can be a powerful propaganda tool which is made even more significant by the fact that this is a multilateral gathering.

The two will not only be joined by Vladimir Putin but by the other SCO governments like Turkey (a member of Nato), Saudi Arabia (a key US ally), Iran (a key enemy of the US) as well as Qatar, Egypt and Pakistan.

And all of this in the days before Beijing holds a massive display of military might with a parade through the heart of the capital.

He's published books authored by Donald Trump, raised millions for his 2024 campaign, and helped him staff Washington with loyalists during the US president's second term.

Now Sergio Gor is set to become Trump's man in India, while also overseeing US relations with other South and Central Asian countries.

Last week, Trump announced that he was promoting Gor, his personnel chief, to be the next US Ambassador to India. He called Gor a "great friend" and someone he could "fully trust" to deliver on the agenda.

The 38-year-old's appointment comes at a time when relations between the two countries have become strained due to Trump's punishing tariffs on India.

Gor's appointment has evoked mixed reactions in India, with some observers saying that having a close Trump aide in the post is a positive sign for India-US ties. But others have questioned Trump's decision to share his India envoy with South and Central Asian countries, which includes Pakistan, with whom India shares a tense relationship.

Experts say that Gor's broad regional mandate threatens to expose India to an overreach by Washington in its affairs with Pakistan, including on the Kashmir issue - a red line for India.

"The special envoy's additional designation will likely create some challenges, at least in India. India typically prefers not to be "hyphenated" with Pakistan," says Alyssa Ayres from the Council of Foreign Relations, an American think-tank focussed on US foreign policy.

Lawrence Haas, a former senior White House official and senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, says that it could also be Trump's way of signalling to Delhi that he doesn't think the role of ambassador to India needs to be a full-time job.

"I imagine that India's leaders will feel slighted and insulted, which will further strain US-India relations," Mr Haas told the BBC.

India found itself in a similar situation in 2009, when the Obama administration reportedly considered appointing Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.

Delhi reportedly lobbied against the move, leading to Holbrooke being appointed envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Trump, however, is no Obama.

Unlike his predecessor's caution, Trump openly claimed credit for brokering an end to a recent four-day conflict between India and Pakistan - a claim India flatly denied, insisting no outside power played a role in the ceasefire.

The Trump administration has also been bullish in its demands from India in a prospective trade deal, seeking greater access to dairy and farming, sectors India has been keen to protect.

It remains to be seen if Gor's presence in India will help smooth out such bumps and strengthen Washington-Delhi ties, or if he is here to crack the whip on Trump's biddings.

• Trump-Modi ties hit rock bottom with new tariffs on India over Russian oil
• Trump's 50% tariff on India kicks in as Modi urges self-reliance

Bill Drexel, a fellow at the Center for Strategy and American Statecraft at the Hudson Institute, says that because decision-making is largely driven by Trump, having an India envoy who's close to him could be a major asset to India-US ties.

"But there may be a steep learning curve given his [Gor's] limited diplomatic and regional experience," Mr Drexel says.

Ms Ayres echoes a similar view. She says that Gor's closeness with the president could help "break through" potential policy logjams.

Mr Haas, however, says that Gor's lack of diplomatic experience could pose a problem in an already strained relationship and that the US should have picked an envoy who could help improve the situation.

"Instead, I suspect that Delhi will interpret this appointment as a slap in the face and further evidence that Trump doesn't care about the relationship," he says.

Gor is said to get along not just with Trump but the entire Trump clan, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr.

Kushner has called Gor "easygoing" and "trusted". Former congressman Matt Gaetz recalled his fun-loving side, noting he once DJed at MAGA parties in Palm Beach during Trump's exile. Western media, however, largely cast him as one of Trump's most reliable foot soldiers - someone who gets the job done.

Gor is known for vetting presidential appointees for loyalty to Trump. In June, Elon Musk branded him a "snake" after The New York Post reported that Gor had not filed the paperwork for his own permanent security clearance. The White House insisted Gor held an active clearance and is "fully compliant" with requirements.

Gor's origins are both unclear and interesting. Though he has been known to describe himself as being Maltese, he was born in 1986 in Uzbekistan when it was still a part of the Soviet Union. He reportedly spent much of his childhood in Malta before moving to the US at 12.

Gor is reported to have been interested in Republican politics from his school and college days, when he went by the name Gorokhovsky, which he later shortened to Gor.

In 2008, he became a junior staffer at the Republican National Committee and one of his jobs included wearing a squirrel costume at events to highlight Barack Obama's ties to an organisation Republicans accused of indulging in voter fraud.

After two years at Fox News, Gor worked with several Republican politicians before joining Trump's fundraising team in 2020.

A year later, he co-founded Winning Team Publishing with Donald Trump Jr., which has since released multiple Trump books, including the photobook Save America. Since 2022, he has owned a house in Florida, a short drive from Mar-a-Lago, where he is a frequent visitor.

Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

A 34-year-old British woman has been stabbed to death in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, local police say.

The victim was reportedly found with stab wounds in a garden in the Chamkar Mon district south of the city centre on Friday.

A woman, also a foreign national, has been arrested by the authorities in connection with the death.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told BBC News: "We are supporting the family of a British woman who has died in Cambodia and are in contact with the local authorities."

Local media say police spent around 17 hours investigating before making the arrest.

The British woman was reportedly renting a house in the city.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is to announce details of a tightening of rules for migrants who have been granted asylum bringing their families to the UK.

As MPs return to Westminster, Cooper will also set out reforms to the asylum appeals system.

When a person is granted asylum in the UK, they can apply to bring their family too but Cooper believes changes to policies across Europe mean the UK is now out of kilter with its neighbours and restrictions are needed.

In the Commons this afternoon she is expected to set out the criteria that family members will need to meet - including tougher English language standards and access to sufficient funds.

Cooper will also say she intends to bring forward new legislation to reform the asylum appeals system.

In August 55 small boats crossed the Channel. It was the lowest figure for the month since 2019.

Yet the smuggling gangs seem to be putting more people on each boat - last month there was an average of 65 individuals per vessel.

The Conservatives say "Labour's claim to have smashed the gangs is completely discredited".

Reform UK say the "government's words aren't matching the reality".

Cooper will say the government's overhaul of a "broken" asylum system seeks to end the use of hotels for migrants arriving on small boats - an issue which has led to protests in recent months.

She will also highlight the National Crime Agency's efforts in tackling people smugglers, saying it led 347 disruptions of immigration crime networks in 2024-25 - the highest level on record and a 40% increase on the previous 12 months.

On Friday the Appeal Court overturned a temporary injunction which would have prevented the Home Office from housing asylum seekers at the Bell Hotel in Epping and it was seen as a possible precedent for legal challenges elsewhere.

Epping Forest District Council will meet later on Monday to decide its next course of action, including whether to take its attempt to prevent the hotel being used for asylum seekers to the Supreme Court.

In the Commons, the home secretary is expected to say the NCA efforts have led to "a significant and long term impact" on people smugglers.

The government's planned reforms to the asylum system announced in the last few weeks include a new independent body prioritising cases involving asylum accommodation and foreign national offenders within 24 weeks, and a new fast track appeals process.

Cooper will also give an update on the UK's returns deal with France, where some migrants arriving in the UK on small boats crossing the English Channel will be detained and returned under a pilot scheme lasting 11 months.

She is expected to announce that the first deportations to France are due to take place in the coming weeks.

"Our action to strengthen border security, increase returns and overhaul the broken asylum system are putting much stronger foundations in place so we can fix the chaos we inherited and end costly asylum hotels," she will tell the Commons.

Cooper will say the UK has a "proud record of giving sanctuary to those fleeing persecution" but the system "needs to be properly controlled and managed".

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the government had "lost control" and was "engulfed in a fully fledged borders crisis".

He said Cooper's statement was a "desperate distraction tactic", and pointed to the rise in asylum seekers being housed in hotels under the Labour government and the record number of arrivals in small boats so far this year.

A Reform UK spokesman said: "We have seen a record number of crossings since Labour came to power last year with no signs of it slowing."

Reform, they added, had a "detailed plan to deport over 600,000 illegal migrants" in its first term in office if elected. Labour sided "with foreign courts and outdated treaties" while Reform were "on the side of the British people".

A full High Court hearing to decide on a permanent injunction for The Bell Hotel is expected in mid-October.

The government says it plans to stop using hotels for asylum seekers by the end of this Parliament.

Ministers said the judgement on the legal challenge on the Bell Hotel, which was brought by lawyers for the Home Office and The Bell Hotel, would allow the government to do so "in a planned and orderly fashion".

But some councils say they are still pursuing legal action to stop asylum seekers from being housed in hotels in their areas.

Reform UK said all 12 councils it controlled should explore legal options to stop asylum seekers being housed in local hotels.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch urged Tory-run councils pursuing legal action to "keep going" and said advice would be issued to all Conservative councillors following the ruling.

The protests at the Bell Hotel began after an asylum seeker housed there was arrested and subsequently charged with several offences, including an alleged sexual assault on a 14-year-old girl.

Protests against the housing of asylum seekers at hotels - as well as counter-protests - continued to take place across England and Scotland at the weekend including in Epping, London, Gloucester, Portsmouth, Warrington, Norwich and Falkirk.

A 34-year-old British woman has been stabbed to death in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, local police say.

The victim was reportedly found with stab wounds in a garden in the Chamkar Mon district south of the city centre on Friday.

A woman, also a foreign national, has been arrested by the authorities in connection with the death.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told BBC News: "We are supporting the family of a British woman who has died in Cambodia and are in contact with the local authorities."

Local media say police spent around 17 hours investigating before making the arrest.

The British woman was reportedly renting a house in the city.

Queen Camilla was the victim of an attempted indecent assault as a teenager, according to a new book about the Royal Family. The Queen is said to have fought off her attacker using the heel of her shoe.

The attempted assault is recounted in Power and the Palace by the former Royal editor of the Times newspaper, Valentine Low.

He says the Queen told Boris Johnson the story of her experience in 2008 when he was mayor of London.

It is reported that the Queen was 16 or 17 years old when the incident happened on a train to Paddington Station.

The man is said to have been touching the teenage Camilla Shand when she took off her shoe and hit him with it.

It was, she told Johnson, something her mother had told her to do if she ever found herself in that situation.

When she arrived in London, she reported the incident to station staff and the man was arrested.

Buckingham Palace has made no official statement on the story but is not disputing the details of the account.

• Queen sent letter of support to Gisèle Pelicot
• Domestic violence should not be taboo subject, says Queen
• 'It's hard to leave abusive relationships'

Much of the Queen's public work in recent years has been supporting the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and rape.

She is patron of the charity SafeLives and has visited women's refuges and rape crisis centres across the UK and globally.

In a number of powerful speeches, she has spoken of the courage of those who have experienced domestic violence and why they should not feel fear or stigma in coming forward.

In a speech in 2020 she said: "Through my work, I have talked to many women who have lived with coercive control and domestic violence and, thankfully, come out at the other end as the victors not the victims.

"They are some of the bravest people I have ever met. Their stories are harrowing and have reduced even the toughest of their listeners to tears. That is why it is so vital that these survivors should no longer feel any shame or any blame."

And at a reception at Clarence House in April for SafeLives, she spoke of domestic abuse.

"I would not be standing here if it was 10 years ago because we wouldn't have been talking about it - it was a taboo subject. Nobody actually wanted to talk about it.

"But now 10 years later we've got survivors telling their story who years ago would've been too ashamed to come forward to tell their stories, but now they'll get up and talk and inspire others to talk."

Sources close to the Queen say she has not gone public with the attempted attack before to avoid drawing attention to her experience rather than to the victims she now works with.

They also say this episode did not motivate the Queen to get involved in supporting domestic violence organisations as that work stemmed from hearing victims stories over the years.

Royal sources also say if discussion around the Queen's past experience helps destigmatise what far too many girls still suffer today, then that would be a positive from what was a negative episode.

Details of help and support with child sexual abuse and sexual abuse or violence are available in the UK at BBC Action Line.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has been injured in a car accident in the US state of New Hampshire, his security guard has said.

Giuliani's car was struck from behind at high speed while travelling on a highway, according to a statement posted on social media.

"He was diagnosed with a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg," the statement from security guard Michael Ragusa says.

Giuliani, 81, became known as "America's Mayor" after leading New York through 9/11. He later became an adviser and then personal lawyer to Donald Trump, though the two have since parted ways.

Giuliani was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment, Mr Ragusa said.

The incident happened shortly after Giuliani had helped an alleged victim of domestic violence who had flagged him down on a road, his statement added.

"Mayor Giuliani immediately rendered assistance and contacted 911."

The BBC has approached local police for comment.

The thoracic vertebrae form the middle section of the spine, while lascerations and contusions are deep cuts and bruises, respectively.

First elected New York City mayor in 1993, Giuliani was in charge at the time of the 11 September attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

In 2008, he made an unsuccessful run for US president, and later became one of Trump's adviser during the latter's 2016 campaign. He joined Trump's personal legal team in 2018 and remained a part of it through to the 2020 election.

In the aftermath of Joe Biden's 2020 election victory over Trump, Giuliani spread baseless claims the election was stolen.

Earlier this year, he reached a tentative settlement with two former election workers who won $148m (£120m) in damages after they successfully sued him for defamation over false election fraud claims.

A suspect in the fatal shooting of prominent Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy has been apprehended, the country's President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The 54-year-old parliamentarian was killed by an assailant posing as a courier in the western city of Lviv on Saturday, sparking a manhunt.

Ukraine's interior minister Igor Klymenko said in a statement issued in the early hours of Monday morning that the suspect had been detained in the western Khmelnytskyi region.

Parubiy rose to prominence during Ukraine's Euromaidan mass protests, which advocated closer ties with the EU and brought down pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

Klymenko said the preliminary investigation had found the killing had been "carefully prepared" with Parubiy's travel schedule and route mapped out, as well as an escape plan.

He added that Ukraine's national police force would provide further details later.

Unverified footage, purportedly of the shooting, appeared to show a gunman dressed as a courier approaching Parubiy on the street and holding up a weapon as he walked behind him.

At a news briefing on Saturday, Lviv police chief Oleksandr Shliakhovskyi said the gunman had "fired about eight shots from a firearm".

Sources inside Ukraine's law enforcement agencies told the BBC that the attacker had dressed to look like a courier for delivery company Glovo. The company said it was "deeply shocked" by the crime.

Parubiy, a member of the current Ukrainian parliament, had played a pivotal role in the Euromaidan movement, organising its "self-defence" teams who guarded the sprawling tent camp in the heart of the capital Kyiv during the protest.

"Socialism is good…" a pensioner warbles into a portable karaoke mic, slightly off-key and drowned out by her friends' chatter.

But they join her for the chorus: "The Communist Party guides China on the path to power and wealth!"

It is not the catchiest karaoke number. But it is an apt one to belt out as they look towards a horizon framed by cranes towering over ships of all sizes.

Suoyuwan park in Dalian, which juts out of north-eastern China into the Yellow Sea, has stunning views of one of China's largest shipyards, and is a place to gather and be merry.

But to White House analysts thousands of miles away in Washington, this cradle of Chinese shipbuilding is part of a growing threat.

In the last two decades, China has ramped up investment in shipbuilding. And that has paid off: more than 60% of the world's orders this year have gone to Chinese shipyards. Put simply, China is building more ships than any other country because it can do it faster than anyone else.

"The scale is extraordinary… in many ways eye-watering," says Nick Childs, a maritime expert with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "The Chinese shipbuilding capacity is something like 200 times overall that of the United States."

That commanding lead also applies to its navy. The Chinese Communist Party now has the world's largest, operating 234 warships compared to the US Navy's 219.

China's explosive rise has been fuelled by the sea. The world's second-largest economy is home to seven of the world's 10 busiest ports, which are critical to global supply routes. And its coastal cities are thriving because of trade.

As Beijing's ambitions have grown, so has its arsenal of ships - and its confidence to stake a louder claim in the South China Sea and beyond.

President Xi Jinping's China certainly wants to rule the waves. Whether it will is the question.

A grand military parade in the coming days may reveal just how close it is to that goal. Xi will host Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un for the event in a defiant message to the Western nations that have shunned them.

The US and its allies will be closely watching the photo-op and the display of military might, which is expected to include anti-ship missiles, hypersonic weapons and underwater drones.

"The US Navy, while it still has significant advantages, is seeing the gap in its capabilities with China narrow and is struggling to find a way of answering that," Mr Childs says, "because its shipbuilding capacity has dwindled significantly over the past decades."

US President Donald Trump has said he wants to fix this, and has signed an executive order to revitalise US shipbuilding and retake America's maritime advantage.

That, Mr Childs adds, will be a "very tall order".

A navy to end the 'bitter memories'

Between 2019 and 2023, China's four largest shipyards - Dalian, Guangzhou, Jiangnan and Hudong-Zhonghua - produced 39 warships with a combined displacement of 550,000 tonnes, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

That is the volume of water they displace, which is the most common way of measuring the size of a vessel or fleet. In comparison, the UK's Royal Navy currently has an estimated total displacement of around 399,000 tonnes.

While China has the world's largest navy by number of vessels, the US fleet has a greater overall tonnage and is more powerful - with far more large aircraft carriers.

But Beijing is catching up.

"There's no sign that the Chinese are slowing down," says Alexander Palmer from the CSIS and author of the report, Unpacking China's Naval Buildup.

"Hull count [number of ships] is not the only measure of a navy's effectiveness of course, but the ability to produce and churn out warships has been extremely impressive and could make a strategic difference."

There are still limits on China's naval rise. Beijing may have more ships, but it only has two operational aircraft carriers, and its navy has far fewer submarines than the US.

Some analysts argue they are also not as sophisticated as the American ones, which have a technological head start going back to the the Cold War.

The Chinese subs are also largely built for the shallower South China Sea, where a game of cat-and-mouse with the US is already under way. For now, China's ability to travel far from its own coastline is limited.

But there are signs this is changing, and fast.

Satellite imagery obtained by BBC Verify from Hainan, a Chinese island province in the South China Sea, suggests Beijing is pouring significant funding into expanding its naval bases.

The base at Yulin has five new piers which appear to have been constructed in the last five years. It is thought China plans to base all of its largest submarines, the Jin-class (or Type 094), in this port. These new subs can carry 12 nuclear missiles each.

Photographs and footage of rehearsals, shared on Chinese social media, suggest that at least two new types of unmanned underwater drones, which look like large torpedoes, will be among the new systems on show at next week's parade.

These could allow China to carry out surveillance deep underwater and detect other submarines or even undersea cables without risking its own naval forces.

Much of the technology is still "unproven and the timeline of its capabilities is still unclear", cautions Matthew Funaiole from CSIS's China Power Project. "The big question is how long will it take for the technology to mature."

And that's why the US cannot overlook the threat China's shipbuilding represents, he adds.

The country's vast naval buildup is being propelled by a party that is still reeling from the pains of the past - and is more than willing to channel them to buttress its message of loyalty, power and patriotism.

Holding a massive military parade to commemorate the victory over Japan, and the end of its brutal occupation, is testament to that.

What the rest of the world sees as China's rise, Xi sees as its resurgence.

He has touted the value of a "strong navy to safeguard national security". He cites 470 invasions between 1840 and 1949 - as the once-powerful Qing empire cracked, China plunged into turmoil, revolution and civil war, bringing "untold suffering".

And he has vowed that his country will never again be "humiliated" or relive those "bitter memories of foreign assaults".

Where China has an undeniable edge is the dual use of shipyards. Many of those that support commercial production can also help produce warships for the navy.

Military and civilian shipyards work hand in hand in some places, which state media describes as "military-civilian fusion", a concept Xi has pushed hard.

Dalian, which Beijing calls a "flagship shipyard", plays a big part in this.

In full view of the picnicking pensioners waving karaoke mics are huge commercial ships, some as long as three football fields.

But just around the corner, berthed where no-one can take pictures, is a group of military vessels. There, a crane is lowering a helicopter onto the huge deck of a ship, as a marching band bellows in Suoyuwan park.

"This is a politically motivated agenda to merge both the commercial and military entities together," Mr Funaiole says. "There are efforts to bring the technology needed to build both into a centralised location – Dalian is one of them."

That is why even without powerful aircraft carriers or submarines, China's commercial fleet and its expertise in building ships quickly can be key during a crisis, he adds.

"In any protracted conflict, if you have shipyards that quickly produce new ships, this is a huge strategic advantage," Mr Funaiole says. "Commercial ships can transport food etc into any conflict zone. Without this, the US is in a position where it might not be able to sustain a prolonged war effort."

It boils down to a straight question, he says: "Who can put more assets into the water more quickly and readily?"

The answer, at the moment, is China.

'Hide your strength, bide your time'

But the world should not worry, says Prof Hu Bo, director of the Center for Maritime Strategy Studies at Peking University.

"We have no interest in interfering in the business of other countries, especially militarily," he adds. His message is that China is building big ships because it can, not because it wants to take over the world.

There is one island which China does not see as another country: Taiwan.

Beijing has long vowed to "reunify" with the democratic island and has not ruled out the use of force. In recent years, high-ranking US officials have declared that China will invade Taiwan by 2027, but Beijing denies there is a deadline.

"China already has the capacity to take Taiwan back," Prof Hu Bo says, "but China doesn't do that because we have patience. China has never given up on the prospect of peaceful unification. We can wait."

The bigger concern is that any attack on Taiwan could trigger a wider war, and involve the US. Washington is bound by law to provide arms to help Taiwan defend itself - support which is unacceptable to Beijing for what is considers a breakaway province that will eventually be part of China.

Earlier this year US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that China posed an "imminent" threat to Taiwan, and urged Asian countries to boost defence spending and work with the US to deter war.

So despite Prof Hu Bo's assurances, it is hard to ignore the fact that China's warships are beginning to sail further from the country's shores.

In February, they were seen circumnavigating Australia's coastline for more than three weeks where they staged unprecedented live-fire drills.

More recently Chinese aircraft carriers conducted naval drills near Japan, sparking concern - although it was in international waters, the move was unprecedented.

As Beijing grows bolder in its attempts to project power in the Pacific, China's neighbours, from Taiwan to Australia, are worried that its famous mantra is paying off: "hide your strength and bide your time".

But Prof Hu Bo believes that fears of a conflict between the US, whose allies in the region - Japan, South Korea and Australia - are often at odds with China, are overblown, because they all know it could be catastrophic.

"In the last three years, I think the signal is very clear that both sides don't want to fight," he says. "We are prepared for that, but we don't want to fight with each other."

'We defend our ocean dream'

Back in Dalian, around an hour's drive from the vibrant city, tourists are arriving by the coach load in the naval fortress town of Lushunkou, which also has a military theme park in the shape of an aircraft carrier.

Guides on loud microphones lead their groups into the park, pointing to the official notices warning visitors not to photograph the military vessels moored in the crescent-shaped harbour and to report any behaviour that might be construed as spying "to help defend the Motherland".

More military notices on bridges and walls declare, "united as one, we defend our ocean dream".

China has fostered pride in its shipbuilding prowess, especially here in Dalian.

At the theme park, which also overlooks the shipyard, a 50-year-old blogger dressed in the local fashion - a floral pattern shirt - is giving his followers their daily rundown of the latest ships being built in the port.

"I am very proud – really, look at what this city gives us," he announces to his followers. A mother and her seven-year-old daughter, on holiday from the neighbouring province, marvel at the ships. "I was amazed. It's huge. How does it sail, I wonder?"

The key question for the US and its allies is how far can China's war fleet sail, and how far from its shores is Beijing prepared to venture.

"At what point will they will break out and be able to really show influence further afield, for example, in the Indian Ocean and beyond, will be a key thing to look at," Nick Childs says.

"They still have a significant way to go, but they are that they are certainly pushing the boundaries."

The final phase of the largest-ever expansion of publicly funded childcare support has begun in England, as thousands of working parents receive more help with their nursery costs.

Those eligible are now able to access 30 hours of childcare per week during term-time, paid for by the government, for their children aged nine months to four years.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said it was a "landmark moment" for working families, and that the scheme would "put money back in working parents' pockets".

But parents say they are facing long waiting lists for places, with nurseries warning that staff shortages are limiting their availability.

• How working parents can get 30 hours of free childcare

Parents Josh Harper and Chloe Hart say their 18-month-old son Oakley's name was the first one on the waiting list at his new nursery in Altrincham.

The £240-a-month saving on fees, which are falling from £1,130 to £889 because of the scheme extending from 15 hours to 30 hours of funded care, "just releases that little bit of stress", mum Chloe says.

"It is a significant saving and one that does really help us," dad Josh adds.

Both teachers, the couple were keen to secure a place, aware that demand has been rising.

The government had estimated that about 70,000 extra places would be needed by this September to accommodate that increase in demand.

The number of spaces is rising but availability varies across the country – and nurseries and childminders say inquiries for places have "gone through the roof" from families eligible for the extra funding.

"A few years ago, the percentage of families getting the funding was probably 20%, now I'd say it's nearly 95% of families," George Apel says as he shows me around the newly opened Altrincham Day Nursery, the Apel family's seventh nursery.

"Parents are having to be a lot more flexible with their acceptance of what days are available. Before, parents could try to match their childcare to their job, now they're actually matching their job to their childcare availability."

For Rachael Darbyshire, who lives in Bolton, the search for a childcare place for her return to work next summer has proved challenging.

Although she started her search before six-week-old Gabriel was born, all of her local nurseries have waiting lists up until September 2026.

"It is a massive help and will bring our bill down from £1200 to around £800, but the biggest issue is that it is only great if you can actually get a childcare place," Rachael says.

"It's all well and good saying that there are these hours available, but if the childcare places are not there, then it's not really supporting women in returning to work."

Some parents are going to extra lengths to make themselves eligible for the funded hours as early as possible.

Rachel Williams, from Warwick, says she was thinking about the scheme before the birth of her twins in 2022, when doctors told her she would need a Caesarean four weeks early.

She opted to have the procedure at the end of that March, rather than the beginning of April, so she wouldn't miss the deadline for being eligible for funded hours at the start of the April term.

"My friends all laughed at me, but it was a really conscious decision and it's definitely saved us thousands and thousands of pounds," she says.

If the twins were born in April, they wouldn't have been eligible for funded hours until the September entry points.

"You shouldn't really have to be thinking about that," Rachel says.

Research from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) suggests that workforce issues could be a key barrier to delivering the promised offer to parents, with low pay and limited progression opportunities a constant challenge for staff.

It is estimated the sector needs 35,000 more staff to provide the funded hours expansion, and the NFER says even if that figure is reached, there are likely to be regional discrepancies.

The government says the number of staff delivering funded childcare in nurseries rose to 272,500 this year - up by 18,200 from 2024, which it said was the highest increase on record.

It has been offering a £1,000 incentive for new recruits, or for people rejoining the workforce in some areas.

But Mr Apel says "retention is arguably more important than recruitment".

The nursery has started its own recruitment company because of the struggle to bring in and keep early years workers.

The number of childminders has also been continuing its long-term decline, with Ofsted figures showing the numbers falling by 1,000 in the last year.

'Free' childcare

There has also been confusion around what is "free" as part of the scheme, and what has to be paid for.

The government-funded hours cover term-time only, and providers say the funding rates, particularly for children aged three and four, are lower than the costs.

It means many nurseries are putting up their prices. A University of Bath study tracking fees over the past 18 months found that they have risen fastest in areas with the lowest government funding, which it says could deepen regional inequalities.

"Parents are phoning up, they're looking for this thing that's been called 'free', and then they are met with additional charges, for meals or nappies," says Sarah Ronan, from the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, which represents childcare providers and charities.

"The sector has been tasked with rolling out the biggest expansion of childcare in history, and they're doing it in a really constrained financial environment."

She says without extra funding, providers may reduce the number of hours they can offer and pause their recruitment plans, further limiting the availability of places.

Joeli Brearley, founder of the Pregnant The Screwed campaign group and the parent support programme Growth Spurt, says there is "a tussle between parents and providers" who are both struggling.

"For parents, it's really complicated, it's not really working," Ms Brearley says.

"We are hearing from parents who are moving their C-section day in order to fit in with the funding criteria, we're hearing from women who say they've gone to their midwife for a sweep to try and bring labour on faster, and people that are asking for inductions earlier just so they can fit with the funding criteria - and that is madness."

A survey by Growth Spurt and Women in Data suggests that many parents are paying extra consumable fees of £15 a day.

The government has issued guidance saying any additional costs need to be laid out clearly and are optional, but nurseries say charging for extras is the only way to make up the shortfall.

There is also concern about those being left out.

Parents who are ineligible for the entitlements pay £205 per week more for a child under two, according to Coram Family and Childcare.

The charity says a child with working parents eligible for the entitlements will receive three times as much government-funded early education than a disadvantaged child by the time they start school.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the scheme was designed to give children "the best start in life", and provide a "huge boost" to the economy.

"And this is just the beginning," she added.

"My vision for early years goes beyond this milestone. I want access to high-quality early years for every single family that needs it, without strings and without unfair charges.

"Over the next few years, that is my commitment to parents."

How are storm names chosen?

Why are storms named?

Who decides what name a storm has?

How many named storms were there in the 2024/25 season?

What impact has climate change had on UK storms?

A US judge has temporarily blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to deport dozens of unaccompanied Guatemalan children back to their home country.

District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan's order on Sunday was in response to reports children had been put onto planes and were about to be sent to Guatemala, where lawyers argued they would be at risk of abuse and persecution.

The children arrived in the US alone and are in government custody while their immigration claims are assessed.

Lawyers for the US justice department said the children were not being deported, but rather repatriated so they could be reunited with family.

The legal proceedings were sparked early on Sunday when immigrant advocacy groups asked for an emergency injunction, claiming around 600 children could be put on planes in Texas and deported.

Judge Sooknanan then issued a temporary restraining order barring officials from sending a group of 10 migrant children between the ages of 10 and 17 to Guatemala.

At a hastily arranged hearing on Sunday afternoon, Judge Sooknanan, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, expanded the order to cover all unaccompanied children said to be at risk of deportation. The order will be in place for 14 days.

At the hearing, Judge Sooknanan sought assurances from Trump administration lawyers that planes had not already departed with the children on board.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said all planes were "on the ground" in the US. He told the judge one plane may have taken off but had returned.

Ensign said the flights were not part of a deportation effort but for family reunifications with parents and other relatives in Guatemala.

He also said the Guatemalan government and the children's relatives had requested the reunifications. Advocacy groups said that was untrue in at least some cases.

In court filings, lawyers for the children argued the action was in violation of federal laws designed to protect children who arrive in the US alone. They said some of the children had pending cases before immigration judges and expressed credible fears about being returned.

"In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala," Efrén C Olivares of the National Immigration Law Center, which filed the suit, said in a statement.

"We are heartened the court prevented this injustice from occurring before hundreds of children suffered irreparable harm."

White House immigration advisor Stephen Miller criticised the judge for blocking the flights.

"The minors have all self-reported that their parents are back home in Guatemala," he wrote on X. "But a Democrat judge is refusing to let them reunify with their parents."

Since the start of his second term, Trump has embarked on sweeping efforts to remove undocumented migrants - a key election promise that drew mass support during this campaign.

In June, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to resume deportations of migrants to countries other than their homeland without giving them the chance to raise the risks they might face.

In a shopping plaza an hour outside Toronto, flanked by a day spa and a shawarma joint, sits a two-storey building with blue tinted windows reflecting the summer sun.

It is the modest headquarters of Canadensys Aerospace, where Canada is charting its first trip to the Moon.

Canadensys is developing the first-ever Canadian-built rover for exploring the Earth's only natural satellite, in what will be the first Canadian-led planetary exploration endeavour.

Models, maps and posters of outer space line the office walls, while engineers wearing anti-static coats work on unfamiliar-looking machines.

Sending this rover to the Moon is part of the company's "broader strategy of really moving humanity off the Earth", Dr Christian Sallaberger, Canadensys' president and CEO, told the BBC.

Learning about the Moon - which is seen to have the potential to become a base for further space exploration - is the "logical first step", he said.

"People get all excited about science fiction films when they come out. You know, Star Wars or Star Trek. This is the real thing."

The Canadian vehicle is part of Nasa's Artemis programme, which aims to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

As part of that overarching goal, this rover aims to find water and measure radiation levels on the lunar surface in preparation for future manned missions, and survive multiple lunar nights (equivalent to about 14 days on Earth).

The rover will also demonstrate Canadian technology, building on Canada's history in space.

Canada was the third country to launch a satellite, designed the Canadarm robotic arms for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, and is known for astronauts such as Chris Hadfield and Jeremy Hansen - the latter of whom will orbit the Moon on the Artemis II mission next year.

The 35kg rover is scheduled to be launched as part of a Nasa initiative in 2029 at the earliest. It will land on the Moon's south polar region - one of the most inhospitable places on the lunar surface.

The vehicle does not have a name yet. The Canadian Space Agency held an online competition to select one, and is expected to announce the winner in the future.

Canadensys is currently working on several prototypes of the rover. The final vehicle, Mr Sallaberger said, would be assembled shortly before launch.

Each component is tested to ensure it can survive the Moon's harsh conditions.

Temperature is one of the main obstacles. Lunar nights can plummet to -200C (-328F) and rise to a scorching daytime of 100C (212F).

"It's one of the biggest engineering challenges we have because it's not so much even surviving the cold temperature, but swinging between very cold and very hot," he said.

Designing the wheels is another challenge, as the Moon's surface is covered with a sticky layer of fragmented rock and dust called regolith.

"Earth dirt, if you look at it microscopically, has been weathered off. It's more or less in a round shape; but on the Moon the lunar dirt soil is all jagged," Mr Sallaberger said.

"It's like Velcro dirt," he said, noting it "just gums up mechanisms".

The search for water on the lunar surface is especially exciting, considering the Moon was generally thought to be bone dry following the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 70s, the US human spaceflight programme led by Nasa.

That perception changed in 2008, Dr Gordon Osinski, the mission's chief scientist, told the BBC, when researchers re-analysed some Apollo mission samples and found particles of water.

Around the same time, space crafts observing the Moon detected its presence from orbit.

It has yet to be verified on the ground and many questions remain, the professor at Western University in London, Ontario, said.

"Is it like a patch of ice the size of this table? The size of a hockey rink? Most people think, like in the Arctic, it's probably more like grains of ice mixed in with the soil," he said.

Water on the Moon could have huge implications for more sustainable exploration. He noted one of the heaviest things they need to transport is often water, so having a potential supply there would open doors.

Water molecules can also be broken down to obtain hydrogen, which is used in rocket fuel. Mr Osinski described a future where the Moon could become a sort of petrol station for spacecrafts.

"It gets more in the realms of sci- fi," he said.

Canada has wanted to build a lunar surface vehicle for decades, with talk of a Canadian-made spacecraft even in the early 2000s - but it was not until 2019 that concrete plans were announced.

Canadensys was awarded the C$4.7m ($3.4m; £2.5m) contract three years later.

Founded in 2013, Canadensys has worked on a variety of aerospace projects for organisations like Nasa and the Canadian Space Agency, as well as commercial clients.

More than 20 instruments built by the company have been used in a host of missions on the Moon.

But there are challenges ahead - as even landing on the Moon is no easy feat.

In March, a spacecraft by commercial US firm Intuitive Machines toppled over onto its side during landing, ending the mission prematurely.

Three months later, Japanese company iSpace's Resilience lost touch with Earth during its landing, and eventually failed.

"That's the nature of the business we're in," Mr Sallaberger said. "Things do go wrong, and we try to do the best we can to mitigate that."

Space exploration has been a collaborative field over the years, with countries - even rivals, such as the United States and Russia - working together on the International Space Station.

But that might be changing, Mr Osinski said. As the prospect of a permanent presence on the Moon becomes more realistic, wider geopolitical questions have begun to swirl around the ownership of the satellite.

"There's more talk around who owns the Moon and space resources," Mr Osinski said.

In 2021, the US passed a law to protect the Apollo Moon landing site "because they had a concern that China could just go and grab the US flag, or take a piece of an Apollo lander", he said.

But he had some encouraging words about the Artemis missions, which are "even way more international than the space station".

The Artemis Accords, which is a set of ideals to promote sustainable and peaceful exploration of outer space, has been signed by more than 50 countries - including ones like Uruguay, Estonia and Rwanda, which are not traditionally seen as key space race nations.

Space is also becoming more accessible. Private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have taken an increasingly important role and are able to take anyone with the money and barely any training - like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and pop star Katy Perry - into space for a few minutes.

But the Moon is the Holy Grail, as it opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Mr Sallaberger said that Canadensys is involved in longer-term projects, such as lunar greenhouses for food production.

Those still remain many years in the future, but the rover is a starting point.

"If you design something that can survive on the lunar surface long-term, you're pretty bulletproof anywhere else in the solar system."

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

He's published books authored by Donald Trump, raised millions for his 2024 campaign, and helped him staff Washington with loyalists during the US president's second term.

Now Sergio Gor is set to become Trump's man in India, while also overseeing US relations with other South and Central Asian countries.

Last week, Trump announced that he was promoting Gor, his personnel chief, to be the next US Ambassador to India. He called Gor a "great friend" and someone he could "fully trust" to deliver on the agenda.

The 38-year-old's appointment comes at a time when relations between the two countries have become strained due to Trump's punishing tariffs on India.

Gor's appointment has evoked mixed reactions in India, with some observers saying that having a close Trump aide in the post is a positive sign for India-US ties. But others have questioned Trump's decision to share his India envoy with South and Central Asian countries, which includes Pakistan, with whom India shares a tense relationship.

Experts say that Gor's broad regional mandate threatens to expose India to an overreach by Washington in its affairs with Pakistan, including on the Kashmir issue - a red line for India.

"The special envoy's additional designation will likely create some challenges, at least in India. India typically prefers not to be "hyphenated" with Pakistan," says Alyssa Ayres from the Council of Foreign Relations, an American think-tank focussed on US foreign policy.

Lawrence Haas, a former senior White House official and senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, says that it could also be Trump's way of signalling to Delhi that he doesn't think the role of ambassador to India needs to be a full-time job.

"I imagine that India's leaders will feel slighted and insulted, which will further strain US-India relations," Mr Haas told the BBC.

India found itself in a similar situation in 2009, when the Obama administration reportedly considered appointing Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.

Delhi reportedly lobbied against the move, leading to Holbrooke being appointed envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Trump, however, is no Obama.

Unlike his predecessor's caution, Trump openly claimed credit for brokering an end to a recent four-day conflict between India and Pakistan - a claim India flatly denied, insisting no outside power played a role in the ceasefire.

The Trump administration has also been bullish in its demands from India in a prospective trade deal, seeking greater access to dairy and farming, sectors India has been keen to protect.

It remains to be seen if Gor's presence in India will help smooth out such bumps and strengthen Washington-Delhi ties, or if he is here to crack the whip on Trump's biddings.

• Trump-Modi ties hit rock bottom with new tariffs on India over Russian oil
• Trump's 50% tariff on India kicks in as Modi urges self-reliance

Bill Drexel, a fellow at the Center for Strategy and American Statecraft at the Hudson Institute, says that because decision-making is largely driven by Trump, having an India envoy who's close to him could be a major asset to India-US ties.

"But there may be a steep learning curve given his [Gor's] limited diplomatic and regional experience," Mr Drexel says.

Ms Ayres echoes a similar view. She says that Gor's closeness with the president could help "break through" potential policy logjams.

Mr Haas, however, says that Gor's lack of diplomatic experience could pose a problem in an already strained relationship and that the US should have picked an envoy who could help improve the situation.

"Instead, I suspect that Delhi will interpret this appointment as a slap in the face and further evidence that Trump doesn't care about the relationship," he says.

Gor is said to get along not just with Trump but the entire Trump clan, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr.

Kushner has called Gor "easygoing" and "trusted". Former congressman Matt Gaetz recalled his fun-loving side, noting he once DJed at MAGA parties in Palm Beach during Trump's exile. Western media, however, largely cast him as one of Trump's most reliable foot soldiers - someone who gets the job done.

Gor is known for vetting presidential appointees for loyalty to Trump. In June, Elon Musk branded him a "snake" after The New York Post reported that Gor had not filed the paperwork for his own permanent security clearance. The White House insisted Gor held an active clearance and is "fully compliant" with requirements.

Gor's origins are both unclear and interesting. Though he has been known to describe himself as being Maltese, he was born in 1986 in Uzbekistan when it was still a part of the Soviet Union. He reportedly spent much of his childhood in Malta before moving to the US at 12.

Gor is reported to have been interested in Republican politics from his school and college days, when he went by the name Gorokhovsky, which he later shortened to Gor.

In 2008, he became a junior staffer at the Republican National Committee and one of his jobs included wearing a squirrel costume at events to highlight Barack Obama's ties to an organisation Republicans accused of indulging in voter fraud.

After two years at Fox News, Gor worked with several Republican politicians before joining Trump's fundraising team in 2020.

A year later, he co-founded Winning Team Publishing with Donald Trump Jr., which has since released multiple Trump books, including the photobook Save America. Since 2022, he has owned a house in Florida, a short drive from Mar-a-Lago, where he is a frequent visitor.

Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

A suspect in the fatal shooting of prominent Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy has been apprehended, the country's President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The 54-year-old parliamentarian was killed by an assailant posing as a courier in the western city of Lviv on Saturday, sparking a manhunt.

Ukraine's interior minister Igor Klymenko said in a statement issued in the early hours of Monday morning that the suspect had been detained in the western Khmelnytskyi region.

Parubiy rose to prominence during Ukraine's Euromaidan mass protests, which advocated closer ties with the EU and brought down pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

Klymenko said the preliminary investigation had found the killing had been "carefully prepared" with Parubiy's travel schedule and route mapped out, as well as an escape plan.

He added that Ukraine's national police force would provide further details later.

Unverified footage, purportedly of the shooting, appeared to show a gunman dressed as a courier approaching Parubiy on the street and holding up a weapon as he walked behind him.

At a news briefing on Saturday, Lviv police chief Oleksandr Shliakhovskyi said the gunman had "fired about eight shots from a firearm".

Sources inside Ukraine's law enforcement agencies told the BBC that the attacker had dressed to look like a courier for delivery company Glovo. The company said it was "deeply shocked" by the crime.

Parubiy, a member of the current Ukrainian parliament, had played a pivotal role in the Euromaidan movement, organising its "self-defence" teams who guarded the sprawling tent camp in the heart of the capital Kyiv during the protest.

At least two people have been arrested during a protest against the housing of asylum seekers at a hotel in Essex.

An organised march was held in Epping, where about 140 migrants are staying at The Bell Hotel.

Essex Police had a dispersal order in place and set restrictions on the protest, saying it must be finished by 20:00 and banners must not contain "offensive or inflammatory language".

Essex Police has yet to confirm the number of arrests or what the people were arrested on suspicion of.

• Four arrested at Canary Wharf anti-asylum protest

Around 200 people gathered outside the Epping Forest District Council building where a woman climbed the steps and unfurled a Union flag before being detained by officers after refusing to leave.

Another person was detained in the crowd.

The Bell Hotel became the focal point of several demonstrations and counter-protests in recent weeks after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl last month. He has denied the charges. The case is currently going through the courts.

On Friday, the Court of Appeal overturned a temporary injunction that would have blocked asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel.

Assistant chief constable Stuart Hooper said: "We've consistently said that we will always seek to facilitate lawful protest but that does not include a right to commit crime, and we'll take a firm approach to anyone intent on doing that.

"And to reiterate to the public, the strength of feeling in Epping is not lost on me – or anyone in Essex Police – and I would urge anyone who wants to make their voices heard to please do that peacefully and within the parameters outlined."

Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has been injured in a car accident in the US state of New Hampshire, his security guard has said.

Giuliani's car was struck from behind at high speed while travelling on a highway, according to a statement posted on social media.

"He was diagnosed with a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg," the statement from security guard Michael Ragusa says.

Giuliani, 81, became known as "America's Mayor" after leading New York through 9/11. He later became an adviser and then personal lawyer to Donald Trump, though the two have since parted ways.

Giuliani was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment, Mr Ragusa said.

The incident happened shortly after Giuliani had helped an alleged victim of domestic violence who had flagged him down on a road, his statement added.

"Mayor Giuliani immediately rendered assistance and contacted 911."

The BBC has approached local police for comment.

The thoracic vertebrae form the middle section of the spine, while lascerations and contusions are deep cuts and bruises, respectively.

First elected New York City mayor in 1993, Giuliani was in charge at the time of the 11 September attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

In 2008, he made an unsuccessful run for US president, and later became one of Trump's adviser during the latter's 2016 campaign. He joined Trump's personal legal team in 2018 and remained a part of it through to the 2020 election.

In the aftermath of Joe Biden's 2020 election victory over Trump, Giuliani spread baseless claims the election was stolen.

Earlier this year, he reached a tentative settlement with two former election workers who won $148m (£120m) in damages after they successfully sued him for defamation over false election fraud claims.

At least two people have been arrested during a protest against the housing of asylum seekers at a hotel in Essex.

An organised march was held in Epping, where about 140 migrants are staying at The Bell Hotel.

Essex Police had a dispersal order in place and set restrictions on the protest, saying it must be finished by 20:00 and banners must not contain "offensive or inflammatory language".

Essex Police has yet to confirm the number of arrests or what the people were arrested on suspicion of.

• Four arrested at Canary Wharf anti-asylum protest

Around 200 people gathered outside the Epping Forest District Council building where a woman climbed the steps and unfurled a Union flag before being detained by officers after refusing to leave.

Another person was detained in the crowd.

The Bell Hotel became the focal point of several demonstrations and counter-protests in recent weeks after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl last month. He has denied the charges. The case is currently going through the courts.

On Friday, the Court of Appeal overturned a temporary injunction that would have blocked asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel.

Assistant chief constable Stuart Hooper said: "We've consistently said that we will always seek to facilitate lawful protest but that does not include a right to commit crime, and we'll take a firm approach to anyone intent on doing that.

"And to reiterate to the public, the strength of feeling in Epping is not lost on me – or anyone in Essex Police – and I would urge anyone who wants to make their voices heard to please do that peacefully and within the parameters outlined."

Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

A police officer was punched in the face and three people were arrested in Canary Wharf in east London during a protest against hotels being used to house asylum seekers.

The Metropolitan Police said the arrests during the protest on Sunday were for common assault, possession of drugs and assault on police and public order offences.

The force said they had been "facilitating a peaceful anti-asylum protest on the Isle of Dogs" but said some masked protesters went into the Canary Wharf Shopping Centre and "became aggressive towards police".

The officer who was punched did not suffer "significant injury", the Met said.

A force spokesperson added: "We have a Section 60 AA in place for the Isle of Dogs south of the A1261 to prevent people concealing their identity with masks - failure to comply may lead to arrest.

"A Section 35 dispersal order is also in place in the same area directing protesters to leave."

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

A man and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated assault after a video of a confrontation in a Yorkshire park circulated online.

The video, seen by the BBC, shows a man and a woman making racial comments towards a woman and child as they walk through Manor Heath Park in Halifax on Thursday.

A man is seen throwing water at the woman and appears to ask her if she arrived in the UK by crossing the English Channel in a boat.

West Yorkshire Police said the suspects were arrested on Saturday and remain in custody as inquiries continue.

In the video, the woman told the man she is a health worker and has lived in the UK for 15 years.

West Yorkshire Police thanked the public for their help in finding the suspects.

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

Polish tennis player Kamil Majchrzak has met a young fan after a video appearing to show a man snatching his hat from a boy in the crowd at the US Open went viral.

Majchrzak shared two clips on his official Instagram account in which he shook hands with two boys and presented them with gifts - including a cap similar to one handed to the boy and then swiftly taken off him in the clip.

"Today after warm up, I had a nice meeting," the tennis pro wrote, adding: "Do you recognise [the cap]?"

The viral video, widely reported to be from Majchrzak's match on Thursday, showed the tennis player interacting with fans before offering a child the cap he had been wearing.

A man next to the child can then be seen taking the cap before the child had a chance to grab it himself. The boy can then be seen pleading to get it back.

Versions of the clip were subsequently shared on social media, with many users criticising the man - who multiple media outlets have since named as Piotr Szczerek, a Polish CEO of a paving company.

BBC News has approached Mr Szczerek through his company for comment.

Majchrzak also posted an image of him standing and smiling next to the boy wearing the cap.

"Hello World, together with Brock we wish you a great day!" the tennis player's caption said.

Majchrzak, 29, is ranked 76th in the world in men's singles.

He won Thursday's match at Flushing Meadows, New York against Russian player Karen Khachanov, ranked ninth in the world, but retired from a later match - saying he had torn an intercostal muscle.

Britain's marine safety body has called for a "radical rethink" over the use of ship lookouts "in the digital age" following a fatal collision in the North Sea and three other incidents. But any changes to regulations would require international agreement and could take as long as a decade to implement, the BBC has learned.

On 10 March, the Portuguese cargo ship Solong struck the US-flagged oil tanker Stena Immaculate, which was laden with jet fuel and anchored 13 miles (20km) off the East Yorkshire coast. The ships did not have "dedicated lookouts" in what were "patchy conditions", an interim report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) suggested.

Mark Angelo Pernia, 38, a Filipino crew member on the Solong, remains missing presumed dead, with the ship's captain, Vladimir Motin, accused of gross negligence manslaughter – a charge he denies. Mr Motin is due to stand trial in January.

Now, a new report, also published by the MAIB, suggests that in light of that incident, as well as three other collisions, there is a need to "radically rethink the role of human watchkeepers in the digital age".

It states: "Humans do not make good monitors and if under-stimulated they will find other things to occupy themselves."

The report adds that "humans can... be reluctant to utilise system functions that will alert them to impending problems".

David McFarlane, a marine safety consultant and accredited expert witness, said all vessels, regardless of whether or not they were moving, had "an obligation to keep a proper look-out".

This requirement is stipulated under the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, which states that vessels must "maintain a proper lookout by sight, hearing, and all available means, to assess the situation and risk of collision".

Mr McFarlane said crews of cargo ships, including tankers, were assisted by safety mechanisms such as a Bridge Navigational Watch Alarm System (BNWAS).

This was "designed to alert others if the officer of the watch doesn't respond to something, such as another vessel approaching", or to a person "falling asleep or becoming incapacitated".

"These systems require some degree of human intervention. Someone is needed to turn them on when the vessel is moving," he said.

An alternative system, or tweaks to existing technology that would enable them to be "automatically activated" as soon as a vessel set off from port, "could be the way forward".

According to Mr McFarlane, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) could issue an urgent safety ruling requiring UK-flagged ships to be fitted with fully automated anti-collision systems.

However, given the volume of marine traffic from around the world that passes through UK waters, he said it was likely that any proposal would need to pass through the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

This "could take between four and 10 years for any measures to be brought in", due to member countries needing to agree.

Mr McFarlane said BNWAS, radar systems and other safety mechanisms, such as the Automatic Identification System, were fitted with "a number of alarms" designed to alert crew to an impending collision.

In respect of BNWAS, he said "an alarm should sound in a public area", in order to ensure others were alerted should the person steering the ship become "incapacitated" or "distracted".

In addition to using new technology to avoid collisions, he said there should be a review of "really tight schedules", which created "very, very hectic conditions" for seafarers.

"Ships will often spend less than 24 hours in port before setting off again," he added. "On top of that, captains will be having to deal with customs and excise and paperwork around the cargo and immigration."

A spokesperson for the IMO said: "We look forward to receiving any proposal from the UK arising from the investigation into the incident."

The BBC has contacted the MCA for a comment.

Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.

Download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and iPad or Google Play for Android devices

It is smaller than your fingernail, but this hairy beetle is one of the biggest single threats to the UK's forests.

The bark beetle has been the scourge of Europe, killing millions of spruce trees, yet the government thought it could halt its spread to the UK by checking imported wood products at ports.

But this was not their entry route of choice - they were being carried on winds straight over the English Channel.

Now, UK government scientists have been fighting back, with an unusual arsenal including sniffer dogs, drones and nuclear waste models.

They claim the UK has eradicated the beetle from at risk areas in the east and south east. But climate change could make the job even harder in the future.

The spruce bark beetle, or Ips typographus, has been munching its way through the conifer trees of Europe for decades, leaving behind a trail of destruction.

The beetles rear and feed their young under the bark of spruce trees in complex webs of interweaving tunnels called galleries.

When trees are infested with a few thousand beetles they can cope, using resin to flush the beetles out.

But for a stressed tree its natural defences are reduced and the beetles start to multiply.

"Their populations can build to a point where they can overcome the tree defences - there are millions, billions of beetles," explained Dr Max Blake, head of tree health at the UK government-funded Forestry Research.

"There are so many the tree cannot deal with them, particularly when it is dry, they don't have the resin pressure to flush the galleries."

Since the beetle took hold in Norway over a decade ago it has been able to wipe out 100 million cubic metres of spruce, according to Rothamsted Research.

'Public enemy number one'

As Sitka spruce is the main tree used for timber in the UK, Dr Blake and his colleagues watched developments on continental Europe with some serious concern.

"We have 725,000 hectares of spruce alone, if this beetle was allowed to get hold of that, the destructive potential means a vast amount of that is at risk," said Andrea Deol at Forestry Research. "We valued it - and it's a partial valuation at £2.9bn per year in Great Britain."

There are more than 1,400 pests and diseases on the government's plant health risk register, but Ips has been labelled "public enemy number one".

The number of those diseases has been accelerating, according to Nick Phillips at charity The Woodland Trust.

"Predominantly, the reason for that is global trade, we're importing wood products, trees for planting, which does sometimes bring 'hitchhikers' in terms of pests and disease," he said.

Forestry Research had been working with border control for years to check such products for Ips, but in 2018 made a shocking discovery in a wood in Kent.

"We found a breeding population that had been there for a few years," explained Ms Deol.

"Later we started to pick up larger volumes of beetles in [our] traps which seemed to suggest they were arriving by other means. All of the research we have done now has indicated they are being blown over from the continent on the wind," she added.

The team knew they had to act quickly and has been deploying a mixture of techniques that wouldn't look out of place in a military operation.

Drones are sent up to survey hundreds of hectares of forest, looking for signs of infestation from the sky - as the beetle takes hold, the upper canopy of the tree cannot be fed nutrients and water, and begins to die off.

But next is the painstaking work of entomologists going on foot to inspect the trees themselves.

"They are looking for a needle in a haystack, sometimes looking for single beetles - to get hold of the pioneer species before they are allowed to establish," Andrea Deol said.

In a single year her team have inspected 4,500 hectares of spruce on the public estate - just shy of 7,000 football pitches.

Such physically-demanding work is difficult to sustain and the team has been looking for some assistance from the natural and tech world alike.

When the pioneer Spruce bark beetles find a suitable host tree they release pheromones - chemical signals to attract fellow beetles and establish a colony.

But it is this strong smell, as well as the smell associated with their insect poo - frass - that makes them ideal to be found by sniffer dogs.

Early trials so far have been successful. The dogs are particularly useful for inspecting large timber stacks which can be difficult to inspect visually.

The team is also deploying cameras on their bug traps, which are now able to scan daily for the beetles and identify them in real time.

"We have [created] our own algorithm to identify the insects. We have taken about 20,000 images of Ips, other beetles and debris, which have been formally identified by entomologists, and fed it into the model," said Dr Blake.

Some of the traps can be in difficult to access areas and previously had only been checked every week by entomologists working on the ground.

The result of this work means that the UK has been confirmed as the first country to have eradicated Ips Typographus in its controlled areas, deemed to be at risk from infestation, and which covers the south east and east England.

"What we are doing is having a positive impact and it is vital that we continue to maintain that effort, if we let our guard down we know we have got those incursion risks year on year," said Ms Deol.

And those risks are rising. Europe has seen populations of Ips increase as they take advantage of trees stressed by the changing climate.

Europe is experiencing more extreme rainfall in winter and milder temperatures meaning there is less freezing, leaving the trees in waterlogged conditions.

This coupled with drier summers leaves them stressed and susceptible to falling in stormy weather, and this is when Ips can take hold.

With larger populations in Europe the risk of Ips colonies being carried to the UK goes up.

The team at Forestry Research has been working hard to accurately predict when these incursions may occur.

"We have been doing modelling with colleagues at the University of Cambridge and the Met Office which have adapted a nuclear atmospheric dispersion model to Ips," explained Dr Blake. "So, [the model] was originally used to look at nuclear fallout and where the winds take it, instead we are using the model to look at how far Ips goes."

Nick Phillips at The Woodland Trust is strongly supportive of the government's work but worries about the loss of ancient woodland - the oldest and most biologically-rich areas of forest.

Commercial spruce have long been planted next to such woods, and every time a tree hosting spruce beetle is found, it and neighbouring, sometimes ancient trees, have to be removed.

"We really want the government to maintain as much of the trees as they can, particularly the ones that aren't affected, and then also when the trees are removed, supporting landowners to take steps to restore what's there," he said. "So that they're given grants, for example, to be able to recover the woodland sites."

The government has increased funding for woodlands in recent years but this has been focused on planting new trees.

"If we only have funding and support for the first few years of a tree's life, but not for those woodlands that are 100 or century years old, then we're not going to be able to deliver nature recovery and capture carbon," he said.

Additional reporting Miho Tanaka

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC's Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

The UK and Norway have agreed a £10bn deal under which Britain will supply the Norwegian navy with at least five new warships.

The agreement involving Type 26 frigates will be the UK's "biggest ever warship export deal by value", the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, while Norway said it would be its largest "defence capability investment" to date.

The government said the deal would support 4,000 UK jobs "well into the 2030s", including more than 2,000 at BAE Systems' Glasgow shipyards where the frigates will be built.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the agreement would "drive growth and protect national security for working people".

"This success is testament to the thousands of people across the country who are not just delivering this next generation capabilities for our Armed Forces but also national security for the UK, our Norwegian partners and NATO for years to come," he added.

The deal is also expected to support more than 400 British businesses, including 103 in Scotland, the MoD said.

The agreement represents a victory for the British government and defence industry over France, Germany and the United States - which were also being considered by Norway as possible vendors.

It will create a combined UK-Norwegian fleet of 13 anti-submarine frigates - eight British and five Norwegian vessels - to operate jointly in northern Europe, significantly strengthening NATO's northern flank.

The warships will be constructed at the BAE systems yard in the Govan area of Glasgow, where frigates for the Royal Navy are currently being built.

Scottish Secretary Ian Murray said the choice of the UK "demonstrates the tremendous success of our shipbuilding industry and showcases the world-class skills and expertise of our workforce on the Clyde".

Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who informed Sir Keir of the decision to select the UK in a phone call on Saturday night, said the partnership "represents a historic strengthening of the defence cooperation between our two countries".

Støre said the government had weighed two questions in its decision: "Who is our most strategic partner? And who has delivered the best frigates?... The answer to both is the United Kingdom."

The Type 26 frigates purchased by the Royal Norwegian Navy will be as similar as possible to those used by their British counterparts, and have the same technical specifications.

They are specifically designed to detect and track enemy submarines and engage them in combat if necessary, with deliveries are expected to begin in 2030.

UK Defence Secretary John Healey said: "For over 75 years, Britain and Norway have stood together on NATO's northern and north-eastern frontiers, keeping the UK and Europe safe. This historic defence deal deepens our strategic partnership.

"With Norway, we will train, operate, deter, and – if necessary – fight together.

"Our navies will work as one, leading the way in NATO, with this deal putting more world-class warships in the North Atlantic to hunt Russian submarines, protect our critical infrastructure, and keep both our nations secure."